Speaker 1: Pushkin. Dear friend of the show, Don Was has had
Speaker 1: a remarkable career, moving between different corners of the music world.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, he fronted the Eclectic band Was
Speaker 1: mixing funk, rock and pop in unexpected ways. As a producer,
Speaker 1: who's helped shape landmark albums for artists like the b
Speaker 1: fifty two's and Bonnie Raid, her album Luck of the Draw,
Speaker 1: which she produced, featured the hit something to Talk About
Speaker 1: and marked a major turning point in her career. Over
Speaker 1: the years, he's worked with Bob Dylan and become a
Speaker 1: regular producer for the Rolling Stones. For the past decade,
Speaker 1: don has led Blue Note Records as its president, bringing
Speaker 1: new energy to the story jazz label, and he's also
Speaker 1: just released his own album, Groove in the Face of Adversity,
Speaker 1: a tribute to Detroit and the music that came out
Speaker 1: of the city where he grew up. On today's episode,
Speaker 1: I talked to Don Was about his wide ranging career
Speaker 1: and why his new album is his first onunder his name.
Speaker 1: He also talks about how working with musical heroes like
Speaker 1: Willie Nelson, Leonard Cohen, and Brian Wilson in the nineties
Speaker 1: initially shut down his own creative ambitions and reflects on
Speaker 1: his time at Blue Note, and I was experienced as
Speaker 1: a toying artist himself. Now allows him to relate to
Speaker 1: the label's roster in a completely different way. This is
Speaker 1: broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's my conversation with
Speaker 1: Don was, Well, you have a new record out, like
Speaker 1: the first, your first record in a long time.
Speaker 2: It's the first record I ever put my name on
Speaker 2: as an artist. Even it was not was I was
Speaker 2: hiding behind the band.
Speaker 1: Why now?
Speaker 2: I don't know why? You know why not? It's a
Speaker 2: series of I wish I could tell you there was
Speaker 2: a master plan to it, but it was a series
Speaker 2: of random events. Terrence Blanchard's a good buddy of mine,
Speaker 2: and he was curating a series at the for the
Speaker 2: Detroit Symphony Orchestra. It's called the Paradise Valley Jazz, Paradise
Speaker 2: Valley being the black area of the city where all
Speaker 2: the great music happened before urban renewal. And so he
Speaker 2: asked if I wanted to play a night. He asked
Speaker 2: me two years before the show, and I said, yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: six months before. Jesus, I don't have a band. I
Speaker 2: don't have songs? What am I going to do? So
Speaker 2: I started thinking back to what I tell artists in
Speaker 2: the similar situation, but I suggest to them, which really
Speaker 2: stems from an experience I had in the early nineties
Speaker 2: where in very rapid succession I got to work with
Speaker 2: my greatest heroes Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Brian Wilson, Willie Nelson,
Speaker 2: Chris Christofferson, and Macon Keith. And a byproduct of that
Speaker 2: was that it gave me writer's block. For about five years,
Speaker 2: I just every time I sat down at the piano,
Speaker 2: I'd go for ten seconds and think, well, what is
Speaker 2: the point of me doing this? When Brian Wilson is
Speaker 2: down the street and let's just let's just take him
Speaker 2: the lyric. Right about five years into it, I was
Speaker 2: in a studio with Willy Nelson, again lamenting the fact
Speaker 2: that I could never be Willie Nelson, and then boom,
Speaker 2: a voice went off and said, but Willie Nelson can
Speaker 2: never be you. He didn't drop acid and go see
Speaker 2: the MC five of the Grandy Ballroom, George Clinton and
Speaker 2: the Parliaments, didn't play a sock hop at his ninth
Speaker 2: grade school dance in in the gym, which that did happen.
Speaker 2: The Parliament still there. They were out promoting I just
Speaker 2: want to testify. And in those days, a legal form
Speaker 2: of paola was the DJ at the big Top forty
Speaker 2: stations would get paid to MC a school dance and
Speaker 2: if you wanted to get played on a show, you'd
Speaker 2: go and play for free and lip sync your record.
Speaker 2: So he was he was bringing a show to the school,
Speaker 2: but he was keeping all the bread. And that's why
Speaker 2: you got your record play.
Speaker 1: And the original version of that song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they were. It was a five piece vocal
Speaker 2: group like the Temptations, but they were they were dressed
Speaker 2: like hippies, not in tuxedos. And it was it was
Speaker 2: synchronous with Hendrix. It wasn't before him, but you know,
Speaker 2: you had to have that that that movement, that that
Speaker 2: kind of fashion to dress that way. So synchronous. Uh,
Speaker 2: there's something in the zeitgeist of R and B and
Speaker 2: blues that created Hendrix and George Clinton and plus George
Speaker 2: Clinton was going to see the m C five in Detroit.
Speaker 2: He was going to see the Stooges in Detroit, and
Speaker 2: he understood that probably wud be good to incorporate that
Speaker 2: which is how Funkadelic comes about as more of a
Speaker 2: rock and roll band or anything. But but then he
Speaker 2: was just it's like a hippie doop group. It's so.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, but you but to your point, yes, to
Speaker 1: my point, yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Thought he didn't eat. That's not his background. So usually
Speaker 2: in the music business, the thing that makes you different
Speaker 2: from everybody else is considered a marketing lightmare. You know,
Speaker 2: how do we market this? It's not just like everything
Speaker 2: else that's out there. But I've come to view it
Speaker 2: as your superpower. It's really the only chance you have
Speaker 2: is to be different from everybody else and approach the
Speaker 2: whole sensibility of your music and all the theme of
Speaker 2: it from a unique perspective. Otherwise, what are you? What
Speaker 2: have you got? You just copy and other people. So
Speaker 2: when so, I've always encouraged artists I was producing to
Speaker 2: be extremely them, And so when it came time to
Speaker 2: put this band together, I thought, all right, well, what
Speaker 2: are you? I'm some yob from Detroit, right, So I
Speaker 2: called eight other musicians that I've known for a long
Speaker 2: time and I've played with, you know throughout the years
Speaker 2: who grew up listening to the same radio stations as
Speaker 2: me played in the same bars, all people from Detroit,
Speaker 2: all people who still live in Detroit, and I'm the
Speaker 2: only one who's a part time residence in Troia. And
Speaker 2: we got in a room together. This is just to
Speaker 2: see we could play together, to do this Terence Blanchard thing,
Speaker 2: And after about ten minutes, it was like, oh, hold
Speaker 2: on a second, man, this is this is something more
Speaker 2: than a bargain for where we really speak a common
Speaker 2: musical language, which is kind of the sound of Detroit,
Speaker 2: kind of growing up in Detroit. And it was clear
Speaker 2: from the first day that we should probably do more
Speaker 2: than the one show. So we booked a whole tour
Speaker 2: and turned it's not turned into five or six tours.
Speaker 2: And he'd been to Japan, went there and played a
Speaker 2: couple of months ago. We got six weeks coming up
Speaker 2: in January and February, and then we put on an
Speaker 2: album and it's it's now a thing. It's it's gone
Speaker 2: from being a one off to be in a nine
Speaker 2: piece band with an identity based on the characters and
Speaker 2: the band. If if one of them is sick, we
Speaker 2: can't call us ub anymore. Now it's just like, Wow,
Speaker 2: we just got to cancel because this is it's the
Speaker 2: sound of these nine people from Detroit playing together.
Speaker 1: And is the material on the is the material on
Speaker 1: the album? Is that stuff that you guys have been
Speaker 1: playing over the last few tours or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've been playing it. It really was kind of
Speaker 2: some of it was haphazard, like choose from the cameo
Speaker 2: song insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, come on, that was a that was incredible.
Speaker 2: I was so surprised. Well, I was just it was
Speaker 2: that was actually that was recorded the first day we
Speaker 2: played it at the first rehearsal we had. We recorded.
Speaker 2: We rehearsed at a studio called rust Belt and Detroit.
Speaker 1: To go into make the album.
Speaker 2: You rehearse. This was just the first day we got
Speaker 2: together to play. There was just a room where a
Speaker 2: comfortable and thankfully Al Sutton, who owns the joint, he
Speaker 2: put up some mics and that version insane is from
Speaker 2: it's maybe the second time through it or something like that,
Speaker 2: and we just did it to see what kind of
Speaker 2: breadth we would have stylistically, how how far, how many
Speaker 2: directions can we move in and how how wide a
Speaker 2: path can we curve, you know, And so that was
Speaker 2: one end of the extreme and it just it just
Speaker 2: felt so natural to play that, and it felt like
Speaker 2: a lot like what the grooves from I was and
Speaker 2: I was, so, you know, it's the eighties.
Speaker 1: That's what I was gonna. So the coolest thing about
Speaker 1: the record to me is it feels very different from
Speaker 1: Midnight Marterers, which is the first song on the album,
Speaker 1: to take to Insane. But what I loved was like
Speaker 1: if you listen to Insane, which is the last song
Speaker 1: on the album, and then you just rolled into something
Speaker 1: from the course was.
Speaker 2: Not was album very good? Yeah? Yeah, it's almost the
Speaker 2: same beat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like this really cool book end for
Speaker 1: all you according music thus far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it What was kind of cool was the
Speaker 2: the trombone player in the band, Vincent Chandler, who's the
Speaker 2: he's the head of the jazz studies program at Wayne
Speaker 2: State University. He was not in was that was a
Speaker 2: couple of guys Dave McMurray and Luis Resto are on
Speaker 2: that wreck that outcome the Freaks that you just played
Speaker 2: there but wasn't But he knew how we arranged horns,
Speaker 2: and he came up with the horn line for Insane.
Speaker 2: It was just like it was right out of there
Speaker 2: was not was songbook, so we thought, all right, well
Speaker 2: we can do this, and and then we worked on
Speaker 2: a Henry Threadgill song called I Can't Wait Till I
Speaker 2: Get Home. Kenny Barron wrote that Newbie and Lady song,
Speaker 2: He's just a flatief recorded yeah, and then this Midnight
Speaker 2: Marauners that they're all, yeah, there's a lot of breadth
Speaker 2: to it, but I think it's all tied together. It's
Speaker 2: clearly one band. Actually the record is half from live
Speaker 2: shows and half from studio, and some you're a little
Speaker 2: calmer in the studio. You don't have the audience giving
Speaker 2: you this energy, and so on three of the songs
Speaker 2: they were just better won't played them live, so we
Speaker 2: use that version. But three of them, like Midnight Marauders,
Speaker 2: is a good example where it's a hypnotic groove and
Speaker 2: you don't want to get too excited. So the calm
Speaker 2: the studio I think was beneficial. But we still set
Speaker 2: up the same way we set up to play live,
Speaker 2: and we didn't we didn't really overdub. Maybe some hand
Speaker 2: claps or you know, a couple of background vocals doubled
Speaker 2: up or something, but it was so live in the
Speaker 2: studio or live on record, it seemed to have some
Speaker 2: unity to it, and that's what this band sounds like. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It made me start to think too about the connection
Speaker 1: between jazz and funk a little bit too, because I
Speaker 1: mean listening to it and there's like a really strong
Speaker 1: second line feel to it. You know, I don't really
Speaker 1: ever thought it through, but to the degree that you
Speaker 1: know zig Aboo from from the Meters, you know, like
Speaker 1: probably grew up with that second line. New Orleans was
Speaker 1: a big is a big ingredient funk, it seems to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well absolutely well Africa is right, so it's all
Speaker 2: you get regional derivations of it. Yeah, But I think
Speaker 2: that one of the things that makes you Detroit unique
Speaker 2: is that after World War Two, people from all over
Speaker 2: the world came there to work in the auto factories,
Speaker 2: and they brought their cultures with them. So we had
Speaker 2: everything when we were growing up, not just funk, not
Speaker 2: just New Orleans, but we had polka's, you know, you
Speaker 2: could hear every kind of music. You know. I think
Speaker 2: it's the the largest era of American community in the country, certainly,
Speaker 2: and so all that quarter tone stuff and which does
Speaker 2: up in our music too. And especially in the horn lines.
Speaker 2: I think we did a song called carrying Me Back
Speaker 2: to Morocco, which there wasn't I was song. We started
Speaker 2: playing it live and it's very much got that bende
Speaker 2: kind of sound. Also it set was I was up
Speaker 2: really well to be the backup band for Chevrahaled. We
Speaker 2: made some you know, Chevaled, he's a Algerian rye music singer,
Speaker 2: being chevs like being MC. It's a title means a
Speaker 2: young woman or something like that, and it's a style
Speaker 2: of music. I came out of Algeria and Morocco in
Speaker 2: late eighties early nineties, and I became a fan of
Speaker 2: it because they were sticking eight o eights and you know,
Speaker 2: they were putting some synthesizer things in there, but it
Speaker 2: was quartertone music and it's it's you know, if you
Speaker 2: took the lyrics apart, it's not really like two live crew.
Speaker 2: You know, it's pretty pretty old stuff. But it was
Speaker 2: quite controversial in the fundamentalist country, and they came after
Speaker 2: these guys and killed a lot of the musicians and
Speaker 2: now had to kind of flee to France. So Chevale
Speaker 2: was living in France and making really cool records. But
Speaker 2: he just he ran into tremendous racism there for being Algerian. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so they didn't really play him on the radio. In fact,
Speaker 2: they had laws about how much Arabic language content you
Speaker 2: could have on the French radio station. See it limited
Speaker 2: for like four hours a day. Yeah, it was crazy, man.
Speaker 2: So the Barkley Records in the late eighties put us
Speaker 2: together just because I was a fan, wasn't I was.
Speaker 2: We played in Paris and I met him and we
Speaker 2: clicked and I loved what he was doing. So he
Speaker 2: came to La and we cut with a couple of
Speaker 2: guys in his band and some of the guys from
Speaker 2: Was and I was wet song called d D That
Speaker 2: was one of the things we cut that started getting
Speaker 2: played in Ibiza one summer when in August when everyone's
Speaker 2: on holiday, when France closes down. So they came back.
Speaker 2: That was like the song of the of the of
Speaker 2: their vacation. So it became a really big record, and
Speaker 2: they had to repeal the law limiting Arabic language content.
Speaker 2: I think it probably they probably put it back, but
Speaker 2: for a minute we changed things and it was an
Speaker 2: Arabic language song that went to number one in France.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know it at the time, but turns
Speaker 2: out it kind of changed. It was the Sergeant Pepper
Speaker 2: of the genre. Everyone heard it and because it mixed
Speaker 2: American R and B and funk with the Algerian music.
Speaker 2: But for us it made perfect sense because we grew
Speaker 2: up hearing that music all the time in Detroit, so
Speaker 2: that that's just all those things seeped in and created
Speaker 2: a certain feel.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know that was was so cool for
Speaker 1: that reason, man, just the breadth of things you guys
Speaker 1: were able to just fit into, even you know, even
Speaker 1: doing the the the Richard pryor you know, like and
Speaker 1: it was not Jean Chandler but.
Speaker 2: Uh Uhlan wild. Yeah, like, yeah, that's wild that we
Speaker 2: got to make a music video with the two of them.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. And you guys are really the perfect, you
Speaker 1: know group for that, I would say, you know, because
Speaker 1: you guys are like just so so eclectic and just
Speaker 1: you know, you know.
Speaker 2: I think people's taste runs along those lines. Genres are
Speaker 2: good for organizing record stores. If you can find one,
Speaker 2: It's a great way to get to what you're looking for.
Speaker 2: It's like the Dewey decimal system in a library. But
Speaker 2: does anyone say, well, I'm only going to listen to
Speaker 2: I'm only going to read nine hundred series books, or
Speaker 2: more importantly, does an author say I just wrote a
Speaker 2: six hundred series book. I think I'll do a nine hundred.
Speaker 2: That's not how it works, man, and that's not how
Speaker 2: musicians play. You don't sit there and think, all right,
Speaker 2: I think I'll throw a bluest lick in in a
Speaker 2: couple of hours, and then after that, I'm going to
Speaker 2: do this country thing that's gonna blow people's minds. You
Speaker 2: never think that you're it's just well, if you do,
Speaker 2: you're doing Some people probably do and they're doing it wrong.
Speaker 2: Really you shouldn't. I don't recommend because I hear people.
Speaker 1: I'm not to hear people think I want to do
Speaker 1: a one hundred dpm song. Why are we talking this
Speaker 1: way about?
Speaker 2: And when do we start talking this way about it?
Speaker 2: But I just think you play what you feel, and
Speaker 2: your language is determined by what you've absorbed. So everyone
Speaker 2: in our band grew up drinking this really rich cultural jambalaya.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and it's reflected and what we play.
Speaker 1: Did did it bug people out? When you left Detroit?
Speaker 1: They coming to La from Detroit. Was it was it
Speaker 1: where they you know, I mean the first you listened
Speaker 1: to the first hour, the first singles, and the first.
Speaker 2: Album wasn't it was? Yeah, well we had We were
Speaker 2: a marketing nightmare. And they made no bones about telling
Speaker 2: us that. At one point they just couldn't figure out
Speaker 2: where we If we're white guys, it should be a
Speaker 2: rock and roll band, but this doesn't sound like rock
Speaker 2: and roll and the singers are black, So what band?
Speaker 2: What is this? How do we market this? Right? And
Speaker 2: they sent us to a big label, to the R
Speaker 2: and B department. That was the label we were on,
Speaker 2: and the head R and B took us, took David
Speaker 2: and I in his office and put on a Michael
Speaker 2: McDonald record, and he said, this is how people do
Speaker 2: R and B here. That was Warner Brothers hobbies. So
Speaker 2: we said, well, you know, I love Michael McDonald. I
Speaker 2: ended up producing Michael McDonald. He's one of my favorite
Speaker 2: singers on the world. But that's not what we're doing.
Speaker 2: And I was relieved when someone else came into the office.
Speaker 2: It was right around the time Prince had just delivered
Speaker 2: his Controversy album to them, and one of the promotion
Speaker 2: men came into this guy's office. What are we supposed
Speaker 2: to do with this shit? I thought, Okay, we're not
Speaker 2: alone here. There's something going on. And there was actually
Speaker 2: something going on in Detroit that fed the whole world.
Speaker 2: And we've talked about Electrifier and Mojo before electrifiering Mojo
Speaker 2: changed not just musical tastes in Detroit, but impacted the
Speaker 2: whole world. And the weird thing is that he did
Speaker 2: it mostly with Warner Brothers bands because there was a
Speaker 2: great promotion man in Detroit by the name of Ted
Speaker 2: Joseph who was taking Mojo these records. And Mojo understood
Speaker 2: listening to craft Work, listening to talking heads, listening to
Speaker 2: the B fifty two's he understood, and especially listening to Prince.
Speaker 2: He was Prince's first big advocate in the United States,
Speaker 2: I think, and he understood that this had broader appeal,
Speaker 2: that white kids and black kids would all like this
Speaker 2: as well as the Gap band, and he built this
Speaker 2: audience that no one had ever cultivated, and it became
Speaker 2: incredibly popular. You know, Africa bombarda, John Roby and Arthur Baker.
Speaker 2: They did Planet Rock, which is craft work with a
Speaker 2: rappin on top, and that comes from Mojo playing it.
Speaker 2: The word is that Tommy Silverman was in Detroit heard
Speaker 2: it and said, oh, man, do something on top of
Speaker 2: craft work. Really yeah, but he made that fashionable for
Speaker 2: black audiences. It made it cool to listen to this,
Speaker 2: turned them onto it. Yeah. I played the ship out
Speaker 2: of prints before anybody was. And then it started trickling
Speaker 2: back to Warner Brothers. They weren't saying, you know, what
Speaker 2: are we going to do with this shit? But it
Speaker 2: didn't help to be It didn't do you any favors
Speaker 2: to be six months ahead of your time, you know.
Speaker 2: So we paid a price for it. They didn't know
Speaker 2: what to do with us. We had some dance hits,
Speaker 2: and then the next label said, look, we don't know
Speaker 2: how to market to either fire the black singers, hire
Speaker 2: some white guys and be a rock and roll band,
Speaker 2: or you guys stay out of the band and let
Speaker 2: the singers carry it and be a sole band. And
Speaker 2: we said, but that's not what we do. Man, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to but like a family, you know, we're friends.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to fire an. So they put us
Speaker 2: on suspension, and I thought it was like baseball. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they put us on suspension, and I thought you'd do
Speaker 2: your thirty days and you come back and they'll put
Speaker 2: the record out. No, it's indefinite. Man, We're on suspension
Speaker 2: for years. Is that what happened?
Speaker 1: Is that why there was no Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And now later I came to realize that what
Speaker 2: they were really saying was get someone to buy out
Speaker 2: your contract, you know, don't don't make us look like schmucks,
Speaker 2: you know. So, but it was it was a long,
Speaker 2: hard two and a half years where we couldn't do anything.
Speaker 2: We couldn't play, and we couldn't release a record. But
Speaker 2: that's how I became a producer. That's how, that's how
Speaker 2: it happened. Yeah, because it's actually a couple of guys.
Speaker 2: Gary Gersh was an A and R guy at EMI
Speaker 2: America Records, and he took a look at this thing.
Speaker 2: Everyone paid attention because I don't even think David Geffen
Speaker 2: knew we were on the label, you know, or was
Speaker 2: paying attention to what we were doing, or was even
Speaker 2: a part of saying putting us on suspension. But people
Speaker 2: paid attention to what David Geffen did, So why did
Speaker 2: he sign these guys and wait a minute, they're just
Speaker 2: right and produce, so they could do that for anybody.
Speaker 2: So Gary Gersh was the first guy to hire me
Speaker 2: to produce a record in the United States. Came to
Speaker 2: Detroit and Steve Jensen, who ended up managing the B
Speaker 2: fifty twos and a bunch of other bands, he was
Speaker 2: an agent at the time and he became our first
Speaker 2: agent because he understood. He came to Detroit to and
Speaker 2: figured that out. So in that period of time I
Speaker 2: started producing records.
Speaker 1: So what was your first job as a producer.
Speaker 2: Well, the first job is actually it was an English
Speaker 2: band called Floyd Joy that had we didn't have We
Speaker 2: had like regional hits in the UK. I don't even
Speaker 2: know if it was ended up being released in this country.
Speaker 2: They were signed to Virgin Records and they liked the
Speaker 2: first was and that was album. They were from Sheffield
Speaker 2: and there's a link between Sheffield and Detroit industrial cities,
Speaker 2: you know, and they related to it, and so they
Speaker 2: sought us out in the United United States and we
Speaker 2: had a chance meeting in New York City and I
Speaker 2: ended up producing their record. They came to Detroit and
Speaker 2: recorded with our guys and there was a whole procession
Speaker 2: after that of British artists wanting to get motownized. Produced
Speaker 2: telling Terry and did some stuff with boy George, his
Speaker 2: friend Marilyn. I got a record with him, uh, just
Speaker 2: a chain of stuff. It became fashionable, but we did
Speaker 2: have big hits. And then Gary hired me to produce
Speaker 2: a singer named David Lastly, great songwriter. He wrote you
Speaker 2: Bring Me Joy and Big Bus Gags Records. Jill Lowdown, Yeah, maybe, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was one of those Yeah, I can't remember your
Speaker 2: song was. So I produced his his album and we
Speaker 2: were after the races did producing?
Speaker 1: Was it fulfilling as fulfilling as being an artist is creating?
Speaker 2: It's it's kind of it's the same thing. Man. You know,
Speaker 2: you're you're trying to make music that gets under people's skin,
Speaker 2: makes them feel something, helps them make sense out of life,
Speaker 2: helps them make sense out of confusing and chaotic times
Speaker 2: for which there is no good answer. How do you
Speaker 2: how do you live? I mean that's a real question,
Speaker 2: and especially today, man, how do you live with the
Speaker 2: stress that's caused by what's going on in the world.
Speaker 2: That's hard. Music helps you with that. So the goal
Speaker 2: is to you want. You want to create something that
Speaker 2: communicates to the inner emotional life in a way that
Speaker 2: conversational language fails to do. That's the goal of art.
Speaker 2: We can only convey so much just talking like this.
Speaker 2: I can't really describe my feelings, but I can play them.
Speaker 2: I can turn life into notes. And you want to
Speaker 2: do that in a way that is not only fulfilling
Speaker 2: for you, but it's meaningful to the listener. That's the goal, right.
Speaker 2: The goal is not to see how many notes you
Speaker 2: can squeeze into a bar. That's you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of people do that, and I admire the practice it
Speaker 2: takes to do that, but I'm not impressed with it
Speaker 2: as a as a means of communication. It's acrobatics. It's
Speaker 2: like wow, but yeah, man, how do you do for
Speaker 2: somersaults in a road? It's great? It doesn't make you
Speaker 2: feel anything. Yeah, So you want to make people feel something.
Speaker 2: So whether you're producing or playing, or really even running
Speaker 2: a record company, it doesn't really change. That's that's still
Speaker 2: what you're trying to do is be a part of
Speaker 2: feeding the listener's emotional life with something valuable.
Speaker 1: So, so across all the different roles you've played in music.
Speaker 1: That's that's the common denominen it.
Speaker 2: That's what It's all one thing to me. People say,
Speaker 2: how do you run a record company and and go
Speaker 2: out and tour at the same time. It's not that hard.
Speaker 2: That's part of the same thing.
Speaker 1: Is there are there any logistical challenges that?
Speaker 2: No, not not in these times, you know, thankfully, you
Speaker 2: can actually be more productive sometimes just getting on a
Speaker 2: zoom call and getting off and uh, you can stay
Speaker 2: in touch. I have no problem doing the blue note
Speaker 2: job from a tour bus. I think I do a
Speaker 2: better job. Plus, I'm out there every night playing and
Speaker 2: going through what the artists are going through, so we
Speaker 2: can relate in a little different way. You know, I
Speaker 2: used to phase a moment ago. They're turning life into notes.
Speaker 2: That's you have to bleed to do that. You go,
Speaker 2: it's a thing that you go through. And when someone's
Speaker 2: in the middle of doing that making a record, you
Speaker 2: you know, you can't call them up and start saying,
Speaker 2: I need the credits by Wednesday or you're past the deadline.
Speaker 2: We're going to take your record out of the It
Speaker 2: just doesn't even register, you know. Some Yeah, some labels
Speaker 2: do that. Yeah, No, they just don't understand the artistic temperament.
Speaker 2: So I think it's good to someone of the company
Speaker 2: who's actually out there playing every night doing the same
Speaker 2: thing I can. I understand what they're going through. Not
Speaker 2: only do I understand what they're going through, but they're
Speaker 2: all way better than I am. Everybody on Blue Notice,
Speaker 2: way better than I am as a musician. So I'm
Speaker 2: in awe of what these characters do all the time,
Speaker 2: and and I treat them differently as such. You know,
Speaker 2: I understand the magnitude of what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Earlier, you said, you know, a big reason why you
Speaker 1: stop playing, you know, in the early nineties is you're
Speaker 1: producing people like Dylan and you're working with Brian Wilson,
Speaker 1: and so there's sort of a feeling of, well, why
Speaker 1: why would I do anything? Having now crossed back, having
Speaker 1: now gotten rid of that notion, kind of tossed that aside.
Speaker 1: Does that feel? Was that like a burden for I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean that does not feel good For a while.
Speaker 2: Well, like I said, it wasn't that big a shift.
Speaker 2: I was still making music and participating, and I was
Speaker 2: doing it with my heroes man the best people ever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So I learned a tremendous amount, and it was incredibly rewarding.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't have to be playing. The biggest
Speaker 2: difference to me was the difference between actually playing live
Speaker 2: and interacting with the audience in the in the moment,
Speaker 2: as opposed to being in a bubble in the studio
Speaker 2: and the audience may not hear it for another twelve
Speaker 2: months and you won't see them. When they do hear it.
Speaker 2: They're going to be home or in their cars, and
Speaker 2: you'll get a check and, if you're lucky, a trophy,
Speaker 2: but you won't actually get that interactive experience. When I
Speaker 2: started playing with Bob Weir in twenty eighteen, he called
Speaker 2: me up and wanted to start a trio called the
Speaker 2: Wolf Brothers. He had the whole thing and vision, well,
Speaker 2: the grateful dead audience. Man, there's such an engaged, expressive audience.
Speaker 2: It blew my mind to actually go out there and
Speaker 2: play those songs for them and see their faces and
Speaker 2: feel the energy and they're so engaged. You play notes
Speaker 2: and you know they're being received in that instant, and
Speaker 2: you get energy back that actually impacts the next notes
Speaker 2: you choose. So it's a cooperative venture into collective euphoria
Speaker 2: kind and when you get that cycle going, which happens
Speaker 2: not in every song, but it will happen a couple
Speaker 2: times a night, you blow the roof off the motherfucker.
Speaker 2: It's really it changes, you change the space you're in,
Speaker 2: and it's exhilarating. It's the greatest feeling to do that
Speaker 2: with a band that's listening to each other and speaking
Speaker 2: the same language and being generous and trading things, and
Speaker 2: then taking that same kind of cooperation to the audience
Speaker 2: and having them be part of it. I actually don't
Speaker 2: know a feeling in life that's better than that. So
Speaker 2: you just become addictive to it, addicted to it. You
Speaker 2: ever talked to Bob Weird about that a whole the time?
Speaker 2: Why do you think he's out there playing for sixty
Speaker 2: seventy years? Yeah, every time I read about him or
Speaker 2: or the Rolling Stones, people saying don't they have enough money?
Speaker 2: You know, when are they going to retire? You don't
Speaker 2: retire from that. And it's got nothing to do with money,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sure micking key where if you said
Speaker 2: just go out there, it's going to you got to
Speaker 2: pa us ten thousand dollars tonight, meaning you pay Bob.
Speaker 2: We're pays for the privilege of pay, and he pay
Speaker 2: the ten thousand dollars. Stones would pay the entry fee
Speaker 2: because it's the experience of getting connected to all those people.
Speaker 2: That's what we crave. Man. We're tribal, communal people. We
Speaker 2: really have not evolved that much from living in caves
Speaker 2: and groups of thirty forty klansmen, right, and we craved this.
Speaker 2: But look at how we're living here in La Man.
Speaker 2: Everyone's locked in their cars. I don't even know my
Speaker 2: next door neighbors and I've lived next door to them
Speaker 2: for ten years. One time he came over with a
Speaker 2: dog that told me to tell my son to stop
Speaker 2: playing drums loud encounter with the man. Can you imagine that?
Speaker 2: But that's how crazy, you know, life has become. So
Speaker 2: we crave that kind of communal situation, and what better
Speaker 2: way to do it than in a musical concert.
Speaker 1: It's so heartening to hear man. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I don't know. I don't think we've ever
Speaker 1: talked about it. I want to bother you about it.
Speaker 1: I am like the world's biggest stones Man. I love
Speaker 1: I love the stones Man. Like every era of the Stones,
Speaker 1: And you know, the rap on Mick amongst the general
Speaker 1: public is he he's like the business. You know, he's
Speaker 1: business minded, and it's probably he's in it for but
Speaker 1: to hear from you that, and it's like, you know
Speaker 1: he he He as much as anyone else, as much
Speaker 1: as Keith or anyone else, is still in love with music.
Speaker 2: They're all savvy businessmen. But that's not why they do it.
Speaker 2: Uh And anyone who if you think that about Mick,
Speaker 2: listen to his harmonica playing. You know, you can't play
Speaker 2: like that if if you're not a deeply soulful musician.
Speaker 2: He's one of the great frontmen of all time, which
Speaker 2: is nothing to be minimized. You know, Like, motherfucker can
Speaker 2: get up on a stage in front of eighty thousand
Speaker 2: people and make every one of those people think he's
Speaker 2: talking one on one to them, even if they're thousands
Speaker 2: of feet away from him. I went to see him
Speaker 2: when they were at Sofi Stadium the last Yeah, and
Speaker 2: you know, I know him pretty well. I spent twenty
Speaker 2: five at least years with him, right, and he came out,
Speaker 2: he came walking down that long ramp and I go, wow,
Speaker 2: it's that guy. Ready. He came to visit us in
Speaker 2: LA and I just turned into such a fan, you know,
Speaker 2: because he can't help it. He just makes you feel
Speaker 2: like he's singing to you in a stadium. Man, that's incredible,
Speaker 2: and he's got this great gift. I don't even know
Speaker 2: how to describe it exactly. Listen to Humbling Dice and
Speaker 2: listen to the mix. Almost nobody in the right mind
Speaker 2: would mix a vocal that low, so low in, But
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter because he is so charismatic. He comes
Speaker 2: leaping out of the speakers anyway. You can't you can't
Speaker 2: bury him. That's and you can't be that guy without
Speaker 2: having tremendous soul and tremendous powers of communication. So no
Speaker 2: one should ever think that he's just some guy out
Speaker 2: to make a buck. I don't think he minds getting paid.
Speaker 2: Why he's doing it. I guarantee you and none of
Speaker 2: them are.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from Don Was after the break.
Speaker 1: He was come to think of me too. When I
Speaker 1: was I was, I talked to Raphael Sadek one time
Speaker 1: and I asked him about the Grammy performance they did.
Speaker 1: I guess he said, you actually you upset that up
Speaker 1: a bit, Yeah, but he was saying like during the rehearsals,
Speaker 1: like they went to they did the song that they
Speaker 1: were gonna do, but then Mick was just like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's just do some blues numbers, and the mers just
Speaker 1: kept going and they just ran through blues.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then by the way, Mick speaking of like his charisma,
Speaker 1: like it's one of the great like Grammy performances ever,
Speaker 1: Like he killed that stage.
Speaker 2: It was just incredible killed that. He was absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2: He just he just showed everybody what a real.
Speaker 1: King insane and you're seeing everyone, Everyone's there, Beyonce's loving
Speaker 1: everyone is like I wrapped it. You know.
Speaker 2: It was an electrifying moment and a masterclass what being
Speaker 2: a front person means. He made it was at Staples Center,
Speaker 2: and he made it feel like he was in like
Speaker 2: a little nightclub. He made it so intimate and he
Speaker 2: just filled the room. Uh. You know, there was a
Speaker 2: moment when we were making a record called Bridges to Babylon.
Speaker 2: We're kind of like right across the street from here.
Speaker 2: We're what was then called Ocean Way, it's now East
Speaker 2: West Studios Studio one, which is a big room, and
Speaker 2: we were on the dinner break, and I walked into
Speaker 2: the room to talk to the guys and it's just
Speaker 2: ncking Keith and Charlie standing there. And I walked in
Speaker 2: and the first thing that grabbed me was that with
Speaker 2: these three guys in the room, this gigantic room, and
Speaker 2: they're not big guys, the room was full their personalities,
Speaker 2: their essence transcended the skin by so much. They were like,
Speaker 2: their personalities are the size of like the blow up
Speaker 2: dolls that they had on the Voodoo the remember it
Speaker 2: was like five stories high, right, or maybe it's the
Speaker 2: Steel Wheels tour then, But that's who that's who they are.
Speaker 2: They're their enormous musical personalities, enormous personalities. They can contain
Speaker 2: it and walk through the world, but they unleashed this thing.
Speaker 2: And you know, exact same thing with Keith Man. What
Speaker 2: a soulful player. Man. There's nobody like him. Man. Anyone
Speaker 2: who thinks he's sloppy is out of their fucking minds. Man,
Speaker 2: He's he's his technique. It's so crisp man. The attack
Speaker 2: where he lays into the rhythm and where he releases
Speaker 2: the notes, that's the other thing. It's a it's a
Speaker 2: lost art releasing the notes, don't don't just let it
Speaker 2: sustain into as fine if you're in the ramones and
Speaker 2: that's that's your sign. But man, but to be to
Speaker 2: get a groove going, you have to let go of
Speaker 2: the note and let some air come in there so
Speaker 2: you can feel the syncopation of the rhythm. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: it requires tremendous practice and technique, and he's got that's
Speaker 2: He's a badass guitar player. He completely redefined the connection
Speaker 2: between rhythm guitar and lead guitar in rock and roll.
Speaker 2: He's come up with some of the most incredible licks
Speaker 2: of all time. And I think he's an incredible singer
Speaker 2: and writer and just an absolutely brilliant and soulful cat man.
Speaker 2: He's it's such a privilege to have been able to
Speaker 2: know him and play with music with him and be
Speaker 2: part of it watching him create a record incredible. Charlie
Speaker 2: watts Man, nobody played like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people discount Charlie's but if you're a fan, I
Speaker 1: feel like you Charlie's contribution is.
Speaker 2: I mean, you wouldn't have had that band. That band
Speaker 2: would not have achieved that level of you know, it's
Speaker 2: more than popularity important not have penetrated the souls of
Speaker 2: millions and millions and millions of people if they wouldn't ahead.
Speaker 2: Charlie Watts playing, I used to think about a graphic
Speaker 2: depiction of a pocket, you know, trying as a bass player,
Speaker 2: you try to land in the pocket of the drummer
Speaker 2: so you can feel it. But the second you start
Speaker 2: playing with someone you can feel it. And Charlie Watts,
Speaker 2: let me put it this way. If you're listening to, say,
Speaker 2: a drum machine where the beat is quantized, it's it's
Speaker 2: like if you're the bass player and you want to
Speaker 2: land in the pocket of that thing, It's like getting
Speaker 2: up on a diving board and diving into like a
Speaker 2: flute of champagne. You got it. You got this narrow
Speaker 2: little space in which you can hit it and express
Speaker 2: your own sense of the rhythm. Charlie Watts was like
Speaker 2: this big, beautiful, gigantic swimming pool that you could land. Man.
Speaker 2: Because from where his high hat hit, which would sometimes
Speaker 2: be a little ahead, his snare be a little bit back,
Speaker 2: and the bass drum was somewhere in between. You could
Speaker 2: if you graft it out, and you could actually see
Speaker 2: how the beautiful a pocket he carved and and they
Speaker 2: and Keith can land in that pocket. Bill Wyman could
Speaker 2: land in that pocket, and it could sing in that pocket,
Speaker 2: and it was wide enough to cover the disparity between
Speaker 2: mix rhythm, rhythmic feel and Keith, because Keith feels it
Speaker 2: behind more and mix mix more patuated and attacking. That's
Speaker 2: when people think the Stones are sloppy. I think they
Speaker 2: don't understand that sometimes the riff is also the melody
Speaker 2: start me up. So Mick is going to sing it
Speaker 2: in a different place than Keith's going to feel it
Speaker 2: because they feel the rhythm in two different places. So yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, so they're not It's not perfect, and you
Speaker 2: don't slide mix vocal overr to land where Keith guitared
Speaker 2: ad or vice versa. But that disparity is where the
Speaker 2: character and the soul lives, you.
Speaker 1: Know, capturing that in the studio was that ever challenging
Speaker 1: or was it always? Was it always just an you know.
Speaker 2: Well they can always sound like the Stones, you know,
Speaker 2: I personally have never been to a Stone show that
Speaker 2: I thought was a bad show. Some nights were transcendental,
Speaker 2: but they always play well just in general for anybody
Speaker 2: not just the rolling stones. The biggest enemy you have
Speaker 2: in the studio is good. Being good sucks. Any motherfucker
Speaker 2: can be good. That's that's your enemy, because it can
Speaker 2: fool you. Good can trick you into thinking it's great.
Speaker 2: And if you can't be great, don't, don't go to
Speaker 2: the studio. Man, You know, if that's not your intention.
Speaker 2: I mean, so, yeah, we've all made records that aren't
Speaker 2: necessarily great. You can't. You can't always control it, but
Speaker 2: you at least strive for it. So it would just
Speaker 2: be the take when everybody sat in the pocket just
Speaker 2: right and you feel some magic. There's a thing about
Speaker 2: making records. You're waiting for lightning to strike. The great
Speaker 2: ideas don't originate inside you. They come from somewhere else,
Speaker 2: and they'd come through you. I'll take you back to
Speaker 2: where I first started thinking along these lines, which was
Speaker 2: when I produced the first time I worked with Bob
Speaker 2: Dylan nineteen eighty nine. I said, how come you can
Speaker 2: write Gates of Eden and I can't, And he said, well,
Speaker 2: look it makes you feel any better, he said, I
Speaker 2: remember moving the pencil over the page, but I didn't
Speaker 2: write that song. It came from somewhere and I just
Speaker 2: I was the scribe. I wrote it down and I
Speaker 2: thought at the time, I thought, oh, isn't that sweet.
Speaker 2: He's telling me this to make me feel better. Then
Speaker 2: I started it was a I'd see it everywhere everyone
Speaker 2: I talked to who I thought had achieved this level
Speaker 2: of extra terrestrial genius. You know, Yeah, Brian Wilson, the
Speaker 2: same thing. He'll just talk about it. He'll talk you
Speaker 2: talked about it coming from God. Keith Richards, if he's
Speaker 2: in the studio, he doesn't say, hey, wait, I got
Speaker 2: an idea, he said, hold it incoming, incoming. And eventually
Speaker 2: I realized that the great artists are the ones who
Speaker 2: just have really great antennae and can pick this up.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, and this is the curse of
Speaker 2: for these guys who are that great, they don't control
Speaker 2: when it comes. So it's like surfing a little bit.
Speaker 2: You know, you can you can learn how to stay
Speaker 2: up on the board, how to get a good ride,
Speaker 2: but you don't control the waves surf. That's it. Well,
Speaker 2: that's it's the same thing. Man. You know, you ride
Speaker 2: the wave that you get, or or you wait till
Speaker 2: one comes in, but you don't control when it comes in.
Speaker 2: So that's that's kind of hard for people, man, to
Speaker 2: know that the thing that everyone's expected from you is
Speaker 2: it's not something that you can just spew out at random. Man,
Speaker 2: you gotta go fish and then wait for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you think so? Because there are people like
Speaker 1: Dylan's one, you know people, I mean, I think there
Speaker 1: are there are people who only want Dylan narrowly to
Speaker 1: be you know, free will and Bob Dylan. Maybe or
Speaker 1: times there are a change in Bob Dylan. But I
Speaker 1: happen to think all Dylan is great to varying degrees.
Speaker 1: Every album is there's incredible, amazing stuff. I think Neil
Speaker 1: Young is the same, like he seems to always be.
Speaker 1: So what is like or what is it? The tenna?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Is? It? Is it a sensitivity thing?
Speaker 2: Is it? Maybe you're chosen? I don't know. It depends
Speaker 2: how ordered you think destiny is okay, and I don't
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know the answer. The way
Speaker 2: I used to make sense out of it metaphorically because
Speaker 2: I pictured this this ether way up there, and and
Speaker 2: in the ether, all the really great ideas, all the
Speaker 2: times they are a change in all the every grain
Speaker 2: of sands. They all float at the top, and only
Speaker 2: a few people got tentative tentacles that are long enough
Speaker 2: to reach the top and pull those ideas down. And
Speaker 2: I don't know why that is. You know, I became
Speaker 2: aware of something when I worked for the first time
Speaker 2: with Garth Brooks in the studio. He I liked him.
Speaker 2: I understood that he had tremendous communicative powers, but I
Speaker 2: didn't fully get it till I heard him coming through
Speaker 2: the speakers singing. Because you know, sometimes you put the
Speaker 2: speakers on the edge of the board, they're behind the thing.
Speaker 2: And I viewed the lot of the speaker line. It's
Speaker 2: like the fifty yard line on a football game, right,
Speaker 2: Who's who's going to carry the ball across? You know,
Speaker 2: get into the fifty yard line, you don't score a touchdown, no,
Speaker 2: no glory. And making it to the fifty you got
Speaker 2: to you gotta get down there. Whose voice jumps out
Speaker 2: of the speaker line and crosses into into your head? Right,
Speaker 2: And Garth Brooks, when he opened his mouth and started singing,
Speaker 2: his voice leapt out of the speakers so far that
Speaker 2: it was almost like it was behind me. Wow, And
Speaker 2: I thought, oh, now I understand. Now I get it
Speaker 2: and mixed. Got that Aretha Franklin's got that Gladys Knight,
Speaker 2: It's got that Bonnie Raid It's got that just a
Speaker 2: handful of folks.
Speaker 1: Man Frank Sinatra, you see Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I got to play Frank Sinatra's last gig.
Speaker 2: It was I was working with Willie over it right
Speaker 2: over there Oceanway, and he said, I gotta leave early
Speaker 2: today and somewhere you go. He said, I'm going to
Speaker 2: Palm Springs. I'm opening for Frank Sinatra at his Voice's
Speaker 2: celebrity pro am golf tournament banquet. And it's Frank Sinatra's
Speaker 2: last gig. Everybody knows it except for Frank. I said,
Speaker 2: what you got to take me? Kenny Aronoff was playing
Speaker 2: drums on it, so Willy Willy was just going to
Speaker 2: do it with Mickey Raphael, but he took Kenny and
Speaker 2: his heart player. Yeah yeah, Mickey, you know like his
Speaker 2: he's almost inextricable from the sound of Willie. He's So
Speaker 2: the four of us drove up there and we played
Speaker 2: our set, and then I knew Frank Junior, who was
Speaker 2: this conductor.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you put, you put.
Speaker 2: Frank was coming to me and I loved him. He
Speaker 2: was a really, really good guy and I felt for
Speaker 2: him a lot, because that's a that's a tough road.
Speaker 2: He chose man to be a singer and be Frank
Speaker 2: Sinatra junior. You know, it's tough, tough to win like that.
Speaker 2: But he was conducted for his dad, and so he said, here,
Speaker 2: you guys, sit right here. And it wasn't a ballroom.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like a theater and a reader and it
Speaker 2: was a hotel ballroom at a Marriott. Then there was
Speaker 2: a banquet for golfers who were in anything, and so
Speaker 2: we sat five feet from Frank Sinatra on the side
Speaker 2: of the stage, you know, like it was like were
Speaker 2: a wedding band would play, but he had a big band.
Speaker 2: And it was the last time he played. And Willie
Speaker 2: introduced me to him at the thing, and I saw
Speaker 2: him play a number of times. And man, you talk
Speaker 2: about charisma and character and peckable technique and brilliant phrasing,
Speaker 2: you know, he had it all. We just did a
Speaker 2: blue note. We have an audiophile series of records. It's
Speaker 2: called the Tone Poets Series and is they're produced by
Speaker 2: a guy named Joe Harley and mastered by a guy
Speaker 2: named Kevin Gray, who were just brilliant and they just
Speaker 2: know how to maximize the thing. And we'd expanded into
Speaker 2: the Capitol Vaults and we just did WE Small Hours.
Speaker 2: And when you put on this tone poet version of
Speaker 2: WE Small Hours and play it on your turntable, it
Speaker 2: sounds like Frank Sinatra is like six inches from your face,
Speaker 2: singing right to you. It's so intimate and you can
Speaker 2: really hear every nuance in his singing. And even though
Speaker 2: I feel WE Small Hours was cut in fifty three,
Speaker 2: I think he got better, you know, over you know.
Speaker 1: In fifty three he's like late also by the way,
Speaker 1: also for Sinatra, and you.
Speaker 2: Know, but he's still even then. Man, he was there
Speaker 2: was no one could touch him. No one could touch him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we brought up Garth Brooks and you did you
Speaker 1: did it. Also did a round maybe a little earlier,
Speaker 1: he did a great Travis Tritt record, Thank You.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was a cool record.
Speaker 2: Man. Well it was weird because he he called me
Speaker 2: because he wanted to make a more traditional, rootsy country album.
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't want to do the whatever slip
Speaker 2: the country was at the time, and he felt he
Speaker 2: had to leave Nashville to do it, so we got
Speaker 2: it in l A and uh No, I thought. I
Speaker 2: thought he was an incredible singer. Man, I'd like to
Speaker 2: travels a lot. We had a good time making that record,
Speaker 2: and I thought he was a really soulful cat. We did,
Speaker 2: we did, I met him. I did an album called Rhythm,
Speaker 2: Country and Blues in the nineties. There was it was
Speaker 2: duets between country artists and R and B artists. Really
Speaker 2: meant to show that, oh man, despite whatever differences you
Speaker 2: want to imagine, everyone's got the exact same emotions and
Speaker 2: there are just some phrasing differences, but everyone's the same underneath,
Speaker 2: you know, And and that's it was a strong testimony
Speaker 2: to connection among humans.
Speaker 1: I thought.
Speaker 2: So initially we thought it's even going to work. And
Speaker 2: Gladys Knight and Vince Gill sing a duet. They were
Speaker 2: the first one who sang on it, and of course
Speaker 2: they could, so we did. You just covered R and
Speaker 2: B or or country classics, and as it went on
Speaker 2: we got more adventurous with the tracks. But he's Travis
Speaker 2: sang when Something's wrong with My Baby, and you gotta
Speaker 2: go in the studio and sing live with Patty LaBelle
Speaker 2: good luck, motherfucker right. He was awesome. He was and
Speaker 2: I was blown away by how good he was. And
Speaker 2: we became friendly and I enjoyed making that record, and
Speaker 2: we had a we had a number one country record. Anything.
Speaker 1: It sits different in his in that in that era
Speaker 1: of his catalog.
Speaker 2: It's really it's a little more intimate sounds. Agreed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanted to ask you, man, you're talking about
Speaker 1: making that album showcasing that there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: daylight between what we think of as R and B
Speaker 1: and country. We're talking the day after Steve Cropper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you did you everny to work with Steve.
Speaker 2: Or I played with him a couple of times in
Speaker 2: you know, some big settings, you know, tribute kind of thing,
Speaker 2: and I had dinner with him a couple of times.
Speaker 2: A lovely guy and what a heroic figure man, What
Speaker 2: an important figure in music. His style of guitar playing
Speaker 2: impacted everybody, you know, It's just what Steve Cropper brought
Speaker 2: to the game has become part of the musical vocabulary
Speaker 2: that everyone shares and so many generations removed. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure younger musicians understand that he played that way first right, yes,
Speaker 2: And what a wild milliar to come out of being
Speaker 2: a white guy in Memphis making those records and just
Speaker 2: having that band book and MGS man, But what what
Speaker 2: a great statement that made about people getting along and
Speaker 2: being the same and the commonality of human experience. Just
Speaker 2: seeing that band at that time, just seeing them play
Speaker 2: and having so much fun and seeing Duck Dun so
Speaker 2: happy and grooving around.
Speaker 1: Like that, and Al Jackson Junior's drama.
Speaker 2: Every one of them, man, every one of those guys.
Speaker 2: Was there's a diamond you know? Uh yeah, no, there's one.
Speaker 2: Steve Cropper. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember reading the Hendricks Bigraphy at some point, and
Speaker 1: somewhere in it it's mentioned that like Hendrix can'meer where
Speaker 1: he was in his career, and he went, yeah, he's like,
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm in Nashville, like I'm going He like
Speaker 1: waited in the studio for twelve hours and Steve Cropper
Speaker 1: to show up.
Speaker 2: The Cropper knew something that Hendricks had played. I can't
Speaker 2: think he was on some session of.
Speaker 1: Like like Mercy Mercy or something, yeah, something.
Speaker 2: Like oh yeah maybe it's Don Kobe. Yeah yeah it
Speaker 2: might have been, but yeah it is. Yeah, but he
Speaker 2: knew that, and he wanted to meet Hendricks but didn't
Speaker 2: know him. But Jimmy Hendrix was aback. He just knew
Speaker 2: he was a guy who played on on on the
Speaker 2: don kovie.
Speaker 1: So I didn't know that part of it way. So
Speaker 1: he that's fast. Yeah, what it's time to be alive?
Speaker 2: Man? Imagine that.
Speaker 1: Yeah for Bookatin mgs for their first single to be
Speaker 1: green Onions, unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Man. Well, I've been able to play with Booker a
Speaker 2: lot over the years, and he played on it was
Speaker 2: wasn't help him play one. He's on the It's an
Speaker 2: album called Boo that it took us sixteen years to finish.
Speaker 2: We started it in ninety three, got dropped by our
Speaker 2: label and went back and finished it in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight. And and he's on it. But you know I
Speaker 2: could call. He would do sessions and I got to
Speaker 2: play it. Actually, what a big thrill man. For a
Speaker 2: couple of years ago, it was William Nelson's ninetieth birthday
Speaker 2: and we did at the Bowl and I was n't
Speaker 2: you dah Yeah, So I I'd never played at the
Speaker 2: Hollywood Bowl. Before i'd been there, I never was on
Speaker 2: stage playing, so just at the soundcheck, we did start Us,
Speaker 2: same exact arrangement from the album that Booker produced and
Speaker 2: played on right, and the song was going down. There's
Speaker 2: no one in the audience. Song was going down over
Speaker 2: the hill, and Willie sounded like Willie, you know, like
Speaker 2: forty years ago. And I just couldn't believe. I remember
Speaker 2: buying Start Us, you know, being broken Detroit and trying
Speaker 2: to learn how to make records and just playing it
Speaker 2: over and over and listen to it, and I got
Speaker 2: choked up, man, that I was standing on stage at
Speaker 2: the Hollywood Bowl with these two guys, and the universe
Speaker 2: had parted in such a crazy way to allow me
Speaker 2: to get up on stage be playing that song with them.
Speaker 2: There were so many highlights musically of that. The two
Speaker 2: nights we played like sixty songs and it was just
Speaker 2: an incredible array of people coming to pay tribute to Willie.
Speaker 2: But that one moment was the highlight.
Speaker 1: One last break and were back with Don was we're
Speaker 1: talking about like the intersection of like you know our
Speaker 1: country and all that I mean you have going back
Speaker 1: to your new record, you have a Hank William Williams
Speaker 1: song work its way into your guys's repertoire that was
Speaker 1: that blew me away too.
Speaker 2: I initially wanted to well, I wanted to have a
Speaker 2: good song. I want to go a good you know
Speaker 2: who you get? I don't. I don't really know better
Speaker 2: writer than Hank Williams. I know different kinds of writers.
Speaker 2: But if ever there was a guy plugged into the
Speaker 2: basic stream of human emotion, it was Hank, and he
Speaker 2: could express it with the simplicity that no one else could.
Speaker 2: What I wanted with this album, to be honest with you,
Speaker 2: was I didn't want the writing to be the weak link,
Speaker 2: and I certainly didn't want my writing to be the
Speaker 2: weak link, so I didn't write much for it. I
Speaker 2: wanted to to launch this thing with an advantage, so
Speaker 2: I just tried to choose great songs that would help us.
Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean you got to do it. Just
Speaker 2: no point in doing it, just like Hank.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, Well, then, how do you guys arrange your Now?
Speaker 1: Do you guys arrange these songs?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Everyone comes to do? You write their own?
Speaker 2: Well? That one I arranged. I did an album in
Speaker 2: the nineties called a Building as Orchestra was, which was
Speaker 2: kind of the buzzner was guys. There's Sweet Pea sing
Speaker 2: and McMurray but also had Herbie Hancock, and I had
Speaker 2: Robbie Turner who was way Lund's pedal steel player on it.
Speaker 2: We had like thirteen musicians in the room. Terrence Blancherd,
Speaker 2: but Dave McMurray and Luis Resto from from from Wesna.
Speaker 2: I was w Aaron Sweet Peace sang and that was
Speaker 2: one of the songs, and I just worked out a
Speaker 2: different arrangement it was. It was actually all Hank Williams songs.
Speaker 2: Merle Haggard sang a song no one's ever heard. It's
Speaker 2: it's it's streaming.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pull it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So but we never played any gigs. We played
Speaker 2: one gig, I think one time, and there's too many people,
Speaker 2: too hard to get everybody together, so I never just
Speaker 2: the first chance I had to play it live. So
Speaker 2: we started doing it with the Pandatroit Ensemble and it's
Speaker 2: we've been opening shows on the last tour.
Speaker 1: Oh that's amazing.
Speaker 2: So it's a Hank Williams song, but it's pretty rewarked
Speaker 2: from the Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had to go get permission.
Speaker 2: Let me put it that way. From the publisher to
Speaker 2: take that kind of liberty with the song you did. Yeah,
Speaker 2: liver cool, they don't mind.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. Can I I want to ask you about
Speaker 1: this song because I wonder what did this? I wonder
Speaker 1: how specifically where this sounds came from?
Speaker 2: Oh? What is that? Well? Here, this that's from our
Speaker 2: first was not was record called Wheel Me Out. And
Speaker 2: they didn't have they had eight o eeights, you know,
Speaker 2: they hadn't They didn't have the lin drub. There were
Speaker 2: no digital sampling things when we made the record. We
Speaker 2: did that probably in nineteen seventy nine. So yet I
Speaker 2: wanted to make dance records, and I knew that having
Speaker 2: a hypnotic groove was essential, and I thought the groove
Speaker 2: should be repetitive. So we made loops with analog tape.
Speaker 2: And but when the way that would work was that,
Speaker 2: you know, you'd play something for a while and you'd
Speaker 2: find the section that was great, and you'd cut the
Speaker 2: tape and and so that it began beginning of the
Speaker 2: loop and ended, you know, right before the one of
Speaker 2: the next bar or wherever you wanted to cut it,
Speaker 2: and then and then you just taped it together. So
Speaker 2: it was literally a loop that's why they that's what
Speaker 2: they call it looping it. And then but you did,
Speaker 2: you put it down on the analog tape recorder and
Speaker 2: it was too big. The reels didn't matter because you
Speaker 2: wanted the same thing to play. You thread it through
Speaker 2: the cap stands so that it would turn. Then you
Speaker 2: set up mic stands all over the room. You could
Speaker 2: I think that loop covered it filled the control room.
Speaker 2: We had to have three or four mic stands. We
Speaker 2: had the right amount of tension. And then we recorded
Speaker 2: it on a sixteen track two inch machine and then
Speaker 2: bounced it over to it made the loop play on
Speaker 2: the sixteen track, bounce it over to twenty four track,
Speaker 2: and we built the song up from there.
Speaker 1: How how the hell is you don't know how to
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 2: People have been doing it for years. Yeah, it was
Speaker 2: not that we didn't invent it, but that was the
Speaker 2: only way to make a loop there was. They didn't
Speaker 2: have samplers. There's no digital sampling. And it was nice
Speaker 2: because it was all played by humans. So uh, we
Speaker 2: had a drummer come in and then those are like
Speaker 2: soda bottles that that we're playing by hand. There's a
Speaker 2: couple of us just sitting on the floor really yeah,
Speaker 2: hitting hitting soda bottles with drumsticks, but tuned to it.
Speaker 2: We picked ones that had a pitch. I knew it
Speaker 2: had to be that interval in those notes.
Speaker 1: And who's playing that part?
Speaker 2: Uh, there's a couple of us. Uh, it's probably I'm
Speaker 2: trying to remember who was. It was probably Larry Fartangela,
Speaker 2: who was the percussionist with George Clinton Funkadelic. Right some
Speaker 2: One Nation under a Groove because that was One Nation
Speaker 2: under Groove was pretty Uh. It informed a lot of
Speaker 2: that album, what George was doing at that time in Detroit. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Larry was a buddy mine and he toured with
Speaker 2: them for years, so I think I had him come over,
Speaker 2: but I think it was there were a couple of us.
Speaker 2: It took a couple of people to play it so
Speaker 2: cool and and there was a and then we played
Speaker 2: played drum drum beat and bounce that over and we
Speaker 2: built the track up from the loop.
Speaker 1: So it's one of it's it's just to this day
Speaker 1: it still sounds a he It's.
Speaker 2: Been sampled a lot. I never got fun for it,
Speaker 2: but it's been.
Speaker 1: There's another thing you can relate to your artist, how
Speaker 1: did the Curtis Mayfield song make It onto Your Uh,
Speaker 1: this is My Country. It's kind of an over looks
Speaker 1: song today in his catalog, but I love I love
Speaker 1: that song that album too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's a great album. Curtis was such a
Speaker 2: brilliant writer, and I think I just played it on
Speaker 2: my radio show, and when I heard the lyrics, it
Speaker 2: just it broke my heart because I remember the mood
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty six when he made that, and it
Speaker 2: was so hopeful the mood then. Man, if you'd told
Speaker 2: me in nineteen sixty six that that song was going
Speaker 2: to be more relevant in twenty twenty five than it
Speaker 2: was in nineteen sixty six, I wouldn't have believed you, man,
Speaker 2: And it actually got me choked up to think, how oh,
Speaker 2: how many backward steps have been taken in the last
Speaker 2: few years, and it just seemed like an essential message.
Speaker 2: So we started closing the shows with it, and beyond
Speaker 2: the message, everyone in the band on the bus, you
Speaker 2: know the should we'd get back on the bus at
Speaker 2: eleven thirty at night, at five o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 2: everybody and their own agrhythm was singing down Down, It's
Speaker 2: so infectious so we just thought, well, we should cut it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a timely important thing to say right now.
Speaker 1: The album cover looks I feel like you've shown me this.
Speaker 2: I might have showed you that. I could have showed
Speaker 2: it to you. It's a great picture taking it in
Speaker 2: front of Jove von Battle's record store, which is on
Speaker 2: Hastings Street and Detroit. Hasting Street was the center, the
Speaker 2: main street of an area called Black Bottom, which was
Speaker 2: the black residential and economic area of Detroit and one
Speaker 2: of the most heinous episodes in the history of the city,
Speaker 2: and it happened all over the country. In the late fifties,
Speaker 2: there was this thing called urban renewal that was just
Speaker 2: basically a plan to destroy black communities and displace people
Speaker 2: into areas that there was not enough housing for. It
Speaker 2: got turned into a freeway ramp. The fact that I
Speaker 2: visited it recently, I did a thing that don Ganie
Speaker 2: for NPRT Music Sites in Detroit, and the Joe's Record
Speaker 2: Store stood just south of mac Avenue on the entrance
Speaker 2: on the southbound entrance ramp to the Chrysler Freeway. Torn
Speaker 2: down for nothing. Man, they could have built that half
Speaker 2: a mile over, but Joe von Battle was a really
Speaker 2: important person in Detroit music. Had a recording studio on
Speaker 2: the back. He recorded John Lee Hooker there, Recordedretha Franklin
Speaker 2: when she was fourteen. Her first record was made in
Speaker 2: his studio because he used to record her dad's sermons,
Speaker 2: ce L. Franklin, Reverend C. L. Franklin. He'd press up
Speaker 2: the sermons and sell them the week after after church
Speaker 2: on Sunday. It was like immediate distribution, and that record
Speaker 2: store was the heart of Detroit music. The photo was
Speaker 2: taken by a French photographer who went to shoot at
Speaker 2: John Lee Hooker album covered. It's kind of a famous cover.
Speaker 2: You see him, you see the store from another angle.
Speaker 2: He moved over onto the sidewalk and John Lee Hooker's
Speaker 2: standing in front of the store and you get a
Speaker 2: better view of Hastings Street. So I saw that picture
Speaker 2: and I thought, man, this is that record store is
Speaker 2: metaphorically our spiritual home for this band. So it's actually
Speaker 2: my wife Jema, photoshopped us into the picture. It looks
Speaker 2: like we're hanging out in front of the store with
Speaker 2: Joe as in the picture, and metaphorically, musically that's what
Speaker 2: we're doing. We're hanging out in front of that store,
Speaker 2: and those sounds. To me, the real sound of Detroit
Speaker 2: kind of comes from John Lee Hooker because he's raw
Speaker 2: and unpretentious and so raw you think the music's maybe
Speaker 2: gonna the song could collapse at any moment, right, but
Speaker 2: it never does. Not only doesn't it collapse, but it
Speaker 2: swings like crazy. Matt groos like crazy, and it's just
Speaker 2: soulful and from the heart. And that's at the root
Speaker 2: of Detroit music. If you're looking for the thing that
Speaker 2: makes Detroit unique, it's a raw groove with real heart
Speaker 2: and soul on top of it. And it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: what stream of music that flowed from that record store out,
Speaker 2: whether it's the rock and roll bands like Mitch Ryder.
Speaker 2: No one like Mitch Rider in the world when he
Speaker 2: came along, and Mitch Ryder informed the MC five and
Speaker 2: the Stooges and really Funkadelic too. But then the R
Speaker 2: and B stream, not just motown, which everyone knows, which
Speaker 2: if you really listen to those records, it's clear that
Speaker 2: those are regional there it's folk music from Detroit. You know,
Speaker 2: those are raw records.
Speaker 1: They had a Berry Gordy to somehow.
Speaker 2: Well he put pop melodies, and he understood how to
Speaker 2: tap a world's sensibility. But they're very Detroit. Those records
Speaker 2: and Fortune Records before that, you know, which was you know,
Speaker 2: incredible R and B cut in another record store, in
Speaker 2: the back of another record store. So the jazz comes
Speaker 2: from Detroit. To me, Alvin Jones epitomizes the thing. Man.
Speaker 2: He's level of sophistication and knowledge and technique that's not
Speaker 2: been exceeded, but he's still got this raw energy to
Speaker 2: his plan. That's it's a rambunctious Detroit feeling. But so
Speaker 2: many great jazz musicians. When I first got the job
Speaker 2: a Blue Note man, I thought, let's start doing Let's
Speaker 2: do a series of regional albums. We'll do famous cities.
Speaker 2: We'll get people from each city. I'll curate the Detroit one.
Speaker 2: And I went through this Donald Bird. There's Paul Chambers,
Speaker 2: there's Ron Carter, there's Thad Elvin and Hank Jones, there's
Speaker 2: Curtis Fuller. I mean, it just goes on and there's
Speaker 2: Jerry Allen, there's Dave McMurray. Who's on the label. Now,
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's the number of Joe Henderson, John Henderson.
Speaker 2: It just goes on Kenny Burrell. Kenny Burrell's from Detroit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I did not, so I thought, well, we'll do this
Speaker 2: in every city. No, maybe Newark if you put a
Speaker 2: lot of Wayne Shorter, maybe Philadelphia. But that's it. You
Speaker 2: can't do it. Uh So there's a there was a
Speaker 2: Detroit thing that happened in all that, But I see
Speaker 2: it as being descended from the same. It's just there's
Speaker 2: no bullshit. Yeah, it's unpretentious.
Speaker 1: Was was Richard Pryor sober when he worked with this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And he wasn't well, he wasn't just towards the
Speaker 2: end of his life. Yeah, he's sweet, but he was
Speaker 2: he was sitting a lot. Yeah mm hmm. Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: a real honor. Man. We were like, we're we're gobsmacked.
Speaker 1: You know, that's crazy. I mean, you know, some of
Speaker 1: his records are I don't know, as mythological as you know,
Speaker 1: any other music record, you know what I mean. Some
Speaker 1: of those records are just like putting like wild the
Speaker 1: good Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: No, I agree. He was way ahead of everybody. Sometimes
Speaker 2: you it just lonely being ahead everybody. That's a that's
Speaker 2: a lonely spot to be in. And uh, you understand
Speaker 2: why he chased the distractions he chased.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he seemed to have an inability as well to
Speaker 1: be anyone other than him. There was no life cosby
Speaker 1: I'm this, but I'm really that.
Speaker 2: It's like you. You can't do that and not be it,
Speaker 2: be it. I think it's the same music too. You
Speaker 2: can't act. You know. One time I saw I was
Speaker 2: when I was working with Bonnie. Rait writer named Paul
Speaker 2: Brady sent us a song that I guarantee you would
Speaker 2: have been a top ten pop single, but it's about
Speaker 2: a breakup, and Bodie wouldn't sing it. She said, I
Speaker 2: can't sing this now. I just got married. Ah, And
Speaker 2: she didn't want to actress. If she didn't write them,
Speaker 2: they had to be as if she had written them.
Speaker 2: And I think that's why she can go so deep
Speaker 2: with those songs, because she finds a place deep inside
Speaker 2: where it rings true and she only sings songs that
Speaker 2: do that. Yeah, and that's why she's You know, there's
Speaker 2: a better singer around. I don't know who it is.
Speaker 1: We are you a fan of hers when you started?
Speaker 1: Because I mean her catalog is so insanely good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bought her first I didn't buy it.
Speaker 2: I got her first album when it was new in
Speaker 2: like nineteen seventy one or something like that, and it
Speaker 2: was so refreshing. Man.
Speaker 1: It was cut on the.
Speaker 2: Thank You and uh yeah, it's it's a it's just
Speaker 2: a it's just a really raw, real album, which was
Speaker 2: refreshing at the time when everyone was still imitating Sergeant
Speaker 2: Pepper and doing prog rock. To find someone who I
Speaker 2: think it was like an abandoned summer camp she recorded,
Speaker 2: or a deserted one. It was not in the summertime
Speaker 2: and they were just in cabins and set up a
Speaker 2: four track and it's just real and not echoee or anything.
Speaker 2: It's just it's a beautiful record. So I was with
Speaker 2: it the whole time, and she was always one of
Speaker 2: my favorite singers. When there's a guy named Hal Wilner
Speaker 2: who invented the tribute record, but he did real artful ones.
Speaker 2: You know. He did a a Nina Rota record, he did,
Speaker 2: he did a felonious Monk one that any Call was
Speaker 2: not was when we were just getting started and they
Speaker 2: were crazy records and everyone Carla Blaye was on it,
Speaker 2: and you can't out Carla Blade Carla Blaye, right, So
Speaker 2: everyone used it as an excuse to go outside, and
Speaker 2: you couldn't compete in that arena with the real outside people.
Speaker 2: So the next album, I thought, we're going to go
Speaker 2: in and we'll be so inside that we'll stand out
Speaker 2: that way. And so we came up with him. It
Speaker 2: was a Disney tribute album, and we came up with
Speaker 2: an arrangement really probably based around a Steve Cropper guitar
Speaker 2: part for baby Mine, which is this great sad song
Speaker 2: from Dumbo where the where the mother elephant gets locked
Speaker 2: up and the baby wants to go to sleep and
Speaker 2: puts her trunk in there and wants her mom out.
Speaker 2: So I just heard body Raight singing it and now
Speaker 2: put us together and we just clicked from the moment
Speaker 2: we met, and you know, we're still close. Man. I
Speaker 2: love her dearly. She's one of a kind body. And
Speaker 2: I went on my birthday this year. She was playing
Speaker 2: in Detroit and I was there at the Fox Theater.
Speaker 2: So I went to see her, and she just sounds
Speaker 2: as great as ever, maybe better than ever.
Speaker 1: She's amazing. Yeah, I think I have a bootleg of
Speaker 1: her performing at like A Yeah, I shouldn't say that.
Speaker 1: I think have a bootleg of her performing though whatever. George, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: sev one seventy years.
Speaker 2: They can't fign My Way Home? Yeah ye really good ship.
Speaker 2: Yeah really the radio station show, I think, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, insane. Yeah, those those shows were bugged out.
Speaker 1: I think I like that son Rob from one of
Speaker 1: those things too, like whoa you know? Two more questions
Speaker 1: and I'll let you go. Man, you mded the Willie
Speaker 1: Nelson Ninetie you were? Were you also m D or
Speaker 1: you at least played in the band for the Dylan
Speaker 1: thirtieth I was.
Speaker 2: I played on some songs I went. Smith was the
Speaker 2: m D and most people played with the band that
Speaker 2: he put together. But I played with Willie and Chris
Speaker 2: Christofferson and Keltner played drums, and I think we had
Speaker 2: Reggie Young playing guitar. And then two days later Bob
Speaker 2: came I was making the record Across the Borderline with Willie,
Speaker 2: and Bob came in and sang a duet with him
Speaker 2: on the song Heartland. And that's the show that Snead
Speaker 2: O'Connor got booed off the stage on the Bobs at
Speaker 2: Bob thirty because it was a week after she ripped
Speaker 2: up the picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live,
Speaker 2: so New York wasn't having her at the Garden and
Speaker 2: it was pretty heavy. Christofferson came out she couldn't sing,
Speaker 2: she couldn't do her song, and Willy saw that and
Speaker 2: he said, let's do a song with her. So she came.
Speaker 2: We did Don't give Up the Peter Gabriel song, and
Speaker 2: Shanaid sang the Kate Bush part. It's really a cool record.
Speaker 2: Of all the records I have ever worked on, I
Speaker 2: think across the borderline that album I made with Willie Nelson,
Speaker 2: it's the most overlooked and probably my favorite. Oh it
Speaker 2: just it's one that I put on I can disconnect
Speaker 2: myself from like thinking, oh man, we should have the
Speaker 2: tambourine is too loud or whatever, and I can listen
Speaker 2: to it and it just makes me feel good.
Speaker 1: I've listened it, but I haven't listened in a long time.
Speaker 2: And put that on the visit them. I'm real proud
Speaker 2: of that record.
Speaker 1: I was watching a some recording of Bob Geldoff in
Speaker 1: the studio with George Harrison and they were recording something
Speaker 1: and Bob asks George like, oh, have you heard this?
Speaker 1: Like they were talking about feedback, and then and Bob goes,
Speaker 1: I heard this great Neil record where it's just all feedback,
Speaker 1: this Neil Young records arc Welder. It's just like half
Speaker 1: his live and the other half it is just all
Speaker 1: feedback from the show. And George is like, I can't really, Neil,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We're playing at the Bop there and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, someone starts slowly and I look
Speaker 1: over it and it's Neil and I have to look
Speaker 1: at He's like, I look at Eric and I said,
Speaker 1: what I tripped?
Speaker 2: The whole thing must have been, man, it was. It
Speaker 2: was quite a green room, that's for sure. Man. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The thing I remember most is being afraid to go
Speaker 2: up to Johnny Cash. And then I ended up producing
Speaker 2: The Highwaymen a couple of years later, maybe a year later,
Speaker 2: A couple of years later, I don't know, insane and
Speaker 2: he was he was such so approachable and so sweet. Man.
Speaker 2: He was a really nice guy. Yeah, and uh, what
Speaker 2: all Whalen was whaling? Great? Well, I didn't know Whalen.
Speaker 2: He was sober all the time I knew him. I
Speaker 2: met him a cut a duet with him that never
Speaker 2: came out with him and Bob Seegers for Bob Seegers
Speaker 2: record It's a really cool song, but Bob sitting on it.
Speaker 2: And I loved him. Man. He was a real soulful
Speaker 2: guy and a real good heart. He's another guy you
Speaker 2: know you would have afraid to go up and talk
Speaker 2: to him, but he was incredibly approachable. I remember going
Speaker 2: over to the Sunset Marquis and talking about I said,
Speaker 2: what kind of record you want to make? And he
Speaker 2: said I wanted to be like the like the Dylan
Speaker 2: album Oh Mercy. He said, I want to be wailing
Speaker 2: and do I think, but I want those atmospheric textures behind.
Speaker 2: I said, wow, okay, and then we tend to forget that.
Speaker 2: What a what a progressive character Wayne was that he
Speaker 2: was the first guy to cut the person national guy
Speaker 2: to cut a Stone song. I think he cut a
Speaker 2: Christofferson song before Johnny Cash. Did you know he was
Speaker 2: hip to all kinds of different writers and open to
Speaker 2: it and play with Buddy Holly. Yeah, Oh there's that too.
Speaker 2: What a guy like.
Speaker 1: What a career man.
Speaker 2: In retrospect, I'm glad I made all the records I
Speaker 2: made and got all those experiences, and I don't know
Speaker 2: that i'd changed, but I'm sorry that we didn't keep
Speaker 2: building that audience. Yeah, it's very interesting starting a band
Speaker 2: at age seventy three, right, and starting from scratch. You know,
Speaker 2: some places we're lucky if we can draw three hundred people.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you know, more people on stage. But it's so
Speaker 2: much fun just to start from scratch and build a
Speaker 2: thing up, go from city to city and then see
Speaker 2: get back there the next time and see twice as
Speaker 2: many people. That's a cool thing.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're doing it.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: It's a great album. And like I said, I mean
Speaker 1: just you know the way that album plays, it moves.
Speaker 1: There's such variety on it. But and I just loved
Speaker 1: that while they get something to the end, it's cameo
Speaker 1: and I'm hearing, like, you know, an echo of your
Speaker 1: your past in it, you know, And it's so cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, man, will be better.
Speaker 1: Can do Is it cut?
Speaker 2: I'm working on it.
Speaker 1: It's not cut, No, okay, I can't wait to hear.
Speaker 1: Thanks Don, Thank you brother. An episode description you'll find
Speaker 1: a link to Don was his new album, Groove in
Speaker 1: the Face of Adversity, as well as a collection of
Speaker 1: songs he's produced throughout his career. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record podcast to see
Speaker 1: all of our video interviews, and be sure to follow
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at the Broken Record pot. You can
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Speaker 1: produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from
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Speaker 1: Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond Show