Alan Paul's Blog, page 24

The Allman Brothers Band Memorabilia – an Interview

I’ve been really enjoying a new book, The Allman Brothers Band Classic Memorabilia, 1969-76. The topic is pretty much right in the title.

The book highlights individual collectibles, including band instruments and equipment, t-shirts, apparel and merchandise, autographs, bookkeeping documents, passes, posters, tickets, programs, promotional items, vintage photographs, and more. Duane’s Galadrielle Allman wrote the introduction.

The authors are Willie Perkins, the Allman Brothers road manager from 1970-76 and Jack Weston, an avid ABB collector who hipped me to the awesome W. David Powell coloration of David and Flournoy Holmes that graces the front and back inside covers of  One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. Willie is also the author of No Saints, No Saviors: My Years with the Allman Brothers Band.

I caught up with Willie and Jack for the following interview.

Duane 1970 – Twiggs Lyndon photo.

Willie – you were in the middle of a hurricane and at the center of what many consider the best rock band ever. How aware were you of all that at the time, and how much were you just hanging in on for dear life every day?

PERKINS: A lot of hanging on! Linda Oakley told me recently that the band guys had me so flipped out my eyes were spinning around in their sockets like a cartoon character. We were so busy getting it done that there was little time for reflection as I note in the book. I remember early on saying: “This is the best band in America, only America doesn’t know it yet.” That was somewhat prophetic.

You kept a lot of documents and files, so you must have had some sense that this stuff would have historical significance. Do you remember when it started to occur to you that things like tour ledgers and guitar cases would be of interest to people?

PERKINS: Probably around the time of Duane’s passing. We certainly knew those guitars had to be secured that weekend before they “wandered” off. I don’t think anyone began collecting for monetary gain. I know that I wanted to preserve from a historical perspective any important documents I had possession of. By the late 1990’s I realized business checks signed by Duane definitely had collector appeal and monetary value. I receive almost weekly social media inquiries regarding dates and sequences of shows performed and am so glad I held on to copies of the monthly personal appearance financial reports. That info is priceless to me and I have the most comprehensive records for 1971 – 1976.

Jack, when did you start collecting ABB memorabilia?

WESTON: I first started to collect Allman Brothers Band memorabilia in the late 1980’s. It was driven by my love of the band’s music which first began in 1971 soon after I heard the band’s At Fillmore East.  I began to trade tapes with other tape traders that placed ads in the back section of Relix magazine.  Most of the traders at this time were trading Grateful Dead cassette concert tapes but some were also trading Allman Brothers Band shows.  In addition to concert tapes some of the Allman Brothers Band traders were trading posters, handbills, tickets, photos , and other ephemera from the band’s early days. When the Allman Brothers Band’s magazine Hittin’ The Note was first published in the early 1990’s I became a subscriber and it had a traders section in it as well which of course fueled the fire.

Is there one section or even item in the book that you would like to call special attention to? What are you most proud about?

PERKINS: I am so glad we led off the book with “instruments and musical equipment” because the band was certainly all about the music. I am pleased with the high definition and clarity of the images. Also, Jack and I gave the book design concept to the team Burt & Burt and they delivered exactly what I had in mind and our publishers Mercer University Press gave us virtually everything we asked for and didn’t edit a single word or image. The colors and concept just pops right off the page.

WESTON: It would have to be Dickey Betts’ 1968 Fender Bassman amplifier, one of the first two purchased by the band in early 1969. It was at first used by Duane Allman, Dickey Betts and Berry Oakley.  Then it became Dickey Betts’ stage amp. The band’s first road manager Twiggs Lyndon wrote “ Allman Bros” and “Dick” on the back panel of the amp in white marker pen. The Lipham Music Co invoice for this amp’s purchase is also pictured in this chapter showing the amp’s serial number. I learned a great deal after having this amplifier restored to working condition.  When I first acquired the amp the two output tubes in it were modern Groove Tubes. These were replaced with a set of original matched 1960’s Fender brand 6L6’s. My friend Skip Simmons of Sacramento, California did a historical restoration of the amp’s electronics. Only the power supply capacitors needed replacement.  All the other active electronics in the amp are vintage original.

There are a lot of great and beloved bands but none have their own museum like The Big House.  What do you attribute this to?

PERKINS: I give 100% credit to the idea of restoring and conserving the Big House to Kirk and Kirsten West. There have been many financial and creative contributions made by countless others, but they had the foresight and love to get the ball rolling. The band inspired a lot of love from a lot of people with the soul, passion and originality of their music. The museum is manned by a great staff and volunteers as well. Nothing like it for any band before or since!

WESTON: The history of The Allman Brothers Band spans over 50 years.  As a result The Allman Brothers Band has a very large and loyal fan base, which encompasses virtually all age groups.  From the time the band played free concerts at Piedmont Park in Atlanta until its final concert at The Beacon Theater in 2014 it has always been regarded as “The People’s Band. I can’t recall many other band’s having this unique type of fan base other than The Grateful Dead. As you know, The Big House Museum was once the home of the band  in the early years. It is not just a museum.  It is a home.  This unique combination is why The Big House has so many fans coming back year after year to share in the music, culture, and legacy of their favorite band.

What about the Allman Brothers inspires so much passion?  

WESTON: To me the passion stems from “The Brotherhood,” which was established early on between the founding band members, their families, and the band’s original road crew. In the beginning it was a strong cohesive brotherhood that still exists today amongst the band’s contingent of loyal fans.  This passion was inspired early on by founding member Duane Allman making the musical journey revolutionary as well as evolutionary.

Willie, a lot of your tour documents are now in the Big House Archives and were incredibly helpful for me in researching One Way Out. So thanks for that.

PERKINS: I am glad so many of my financial records and other items of interest made it to the Big House Museum and they will be preserved for current and future fans and historians. I am glad Jack’s and my book will do the same in the printed word and image medium as well.

New Tedeschi Trucks Band Album – January 29

This is a press release – not my words or thoughts! I just thought my people would want the info.

On January 29th, 2016 Tedeschi Trucks Band, led by the husband-and-wife team of singer-guitarist Susan Tedeschi and guitar virtuoso Derek Trucks, will cap an extraordinary and transformative year with the release of Let Me Get By, their third full-length LP and debut for Fantasy Records. Listen to the lead album track “Anyhow” on the band’s website:

http://tedeschitrucksband.com/

In addition, the special, 2-Disc deluxe version of Let Me Get By includes an 8-track bonus disc featuring live recordings from the legendary Beacon Theatre in New York, alternate mixes, early song takes and additional studio material, along with an expanded booklet containing exclusive studio and live photos, all housed in a custom-designed vintage amp box. The 10-track standard version and 18-track deluxe version are both available for pre-order beginning today on the TTB website and via iTunes and Amazon beginning Friday.

Recorded at Swamp Raga Studios, the band’s home studio in Jacksonville, Florida, Let Me Get By is an absorbing, self-assured, artistic leap forward. Playing with an economy of power and uncommon grace, the 12-piece outfit—one of the most deeply skilled and admired musical ensembles in the world—explores themes of independence, love and release.

Let Me Get By is an album of firsts – in addition to being the first TTB record Trucks produced on his own, and the first on which he and Tedeschi wrote all the songs within the TTB family, it’s Trucks’ first album since his 15-year run as a member of the Allman Brothers concluded when the group disbanded last year. In Trucks’ own words, “That’s what I hear in the music on this new album – this feeling that we’re now putting 100% of what we have into this band, not going back to anything else, everyone giving it their all.”

The songs are distinct for their communal nature, with each band member contributing to the album’s varied and diverse sonic textures. Opener “Anyhow” perfectly embodies the group’s newfound liberation; with Tedeschi’s voice levitating above a symphony of towering horns and Trucks’ inventive soaring slide guitar tones. Elsewhere, “Don’t Know What It Means” serves up a funky church sermon, and “Crying Over You” delivers a classic 70’s Philly soul throwback.

Combining inspired Memphis soul, electric rhythm & blues, country, rock and classic song craft; TTB has captured the admiration of both concert audiences and critics worldwide. Since their inception in 2010, TTB have seen both of their previous albums debut in the top 15 of the Billboard Top 200 album chart, and won a GRAMMY for their debut album Revelator, which was hailed by Rolling Stone as a “masterpiece.” They tour over 200 days a year, with such highlights as headlining their first Wheels of Soul amphitheater tour this past summer, four consecutive sold-out shows at the Beacon Theatre in NYC this fall, and a surprise appearance on the debut episode of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In studio and on stage, TTB continue to flourish and surprise, and the release of Let Me Get By marks the beginning of another exciting chapter in the band’s storied tale.

Let Me Get By track list:

1. Anyhow

2. Laugh About It

3. Don’t Know What It Means

4. Right On Time

5. Let Me Get By

6. Just As Strange*

7. Crying’ Over You/Swamp Raga for Holzapfel, Lefebvre, Flute and Harmonium

8. Hear Me*

9. I Want More*

10. In Every Heart

Produced by Derek Trucks

Recorded and Mixed by Bobby Tis

*Co-produced by Derek Trucks and Doyle Bramhall II

Mastered by Bob Ludwig

TOUR DATES:

Dec 3 – Port Chester, NY – The Capitol Theatre

Dec 4 – New Haven, CT – College Street Music Hall

Dec 5 – Providence, RI – Providence PAC

Dec 8 – Albany, NY – Hart Theatre at The Egg

Dec 10 – Roanoke, VA – Jefferson Center

Dec 11 – Virginia Beach, VA – Sandler Center

Dec 12 – Asheville, NC – U.S. Cellular Center

Dec 143 – Austin, TX – Austin City Limits

Jan 16 – St. Petersburg, FL – Sunshine Music Festival

Jan 17 – Boca Raton, FL – Sunshine Music Festival

Jan 19 – Augusta, GA – Bell Auditorium

Jan 20 – Jackson, MS – Thalia Mara Hall

Jan 22 – Chicago, IL – Chicago Theatre

Jan 23 – Chicago, IL – Chicago Theatre

Feb 18 – Philadelphia, PA – Keswick Theatre

Feb 19 – Philadelphia, PA – Keswick Theatre

Feb 20 – Philadelphia, PA – Keswick Theatre

Feb 25 – Washington, D.C. – Warner Theatre

Feb 26 – Washington, D.C. – Warner Theatre

Feb 27 – Washington, D.C. – Warner Theatre

Mar 3 – Nashville, TN, – Ryman Auditorium

Mar 4 – Nashville, TN, – Ryman Auditorium

Mar 5 – Nashville, TN, – Ryman Auditorium

Mar 19 – Melbourne, AUS – Forum Melbourne

Mar 20 – Canberra, AUS – Canberra Theatre Centre

Mar 22 – Newtown, AUS – Enmore Theatre

Mar 24 – Byron Bay, AUS – Byron Bay Bluesfest

Mar 30 – Nagoya, JPN – Nagoya City Auditorium

Mar 31 – Osaka, JPN – Orix Theater

Apr 1 – Toyko, JPN – Nippon Budokan

http://www.tedeschitrucksband.com

https://www.facebook.com/DerekAndSusan

https://twitter.com/derekandsusan

www.concordmusicgroup.com

New Tedeschi Trucks Band Album – January 29

This is a press release – not my words or thoughts! I just thought my people would want the info.

On January 29th, 2016 Tedeschi Trucks Band, led by the husband-and-wife team of singer-guitarist Susan Tedeschi and guitar virtuoso Derek Trucks, will cap an extraordinary and transformative year with the release of Let Me Get By, their third full-length LP and debut for Fantasy Records. Listen to the lead album track “Anyhow” on the band’s website:

http://tedeschitrucksband.com/

In addition, the special, 2-Disc deluxe version of Let Me Get By includes an 8-track bonus disc featuring live recordings from the legendary Beacon Theatre in New York, alternate mixes, early song takes and additional studio material, along with an expanded booklet containing exclusive studio and live photos, all housed in a custom-designed vintage amp box. The 10-track standard version and 18-track deluxe version are both available for pre-order beginning today on the TTB website and via iTunes and Amazon beginning Friday.

Recorded at Swamp Raga Studios, the band’s home studio in Jacksonville, Florida, Let Me Get By is an absorbing, self-assured, artistic leap forward. Playing with an economy of power and uncommon grace, the 12-piece outfit—one of the most deeply skilled and admired musical ensembles in the world—explores themes of independence, love and release.

Let Me Get By is an album of firsts – in addition to being the first TTB record Trucks produced on his own, and the first on which he and Tedeschi wrote all the songs within the TTB family, it’s Trucks’ first album since his 15-year run as a member of the Allman Brothers concluded when the group disbanded last year. In Trucks’ own words, “That’s what I hear in the music on this new album – this feeling that we’re now putting 100% of what we have into this band, not going back to anything else, everyone giving it their all.”

The songs are distinct for their communal nature, with each band member contributing to the album’s varied and diverse sonic textures. Opener “Anyhow” perfectly embodies the group’s newfound liberation; with Tedeschi’s voice levitating above a symphony of towering horns and Trucks’ inventive soaring slide guitar tones. Elsewhere, “Don’t Know What It Means” serves up a funky church sermon, and “Crying Over You” delivers a classic 70’s Philly soul throwback.

Combining inspired Memphis soul, electric rhythm & blues, country, rock and classic song craft; TTB has captured the admiration of both concert audiences and critics worldwide. Since their inception in 2010, TTB have seen both of their previous albums debut in the top 15 of the Billboard Top 200 album chart, and won a GRAMMY for their debut album Revelator, which was hailed by Rolling Stone as a “masterpiece.” They tour over 200 days a year, with such highlights as headlining their first Wheels of Soul amphitheater tour this past summer, four consecutive sold-out shows at the Beacon Theatre in NYC this fall, and a surprise appearance on the debut episode of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In studio and on stage, TTB continue to flourish and surprise, and the release of Let Me Get By marks the beginning of another exciting chapter in the band’s storied tale.

Let Me Get By track list:

1. Anyhow

2. Laugh About It

3. Don’t Know What It Means

4. Right On Time

5. Let Me Get By

6. Just As Strange*

7. Crying’ Over You/Swamp Raga for Holzapfel, Lefebvre, Flute and Harmonium

8. Hear Me*

9. I Want More*

10. In Every Heart

Produced by Derek Trucks

Recorded and Mixed by Bobby Tis

*Co-produced by Derek Trucks and Doyle Bramhall II

Mastered by Bob Ludwig

TOUR DATES:

Dec 3 – Port Chester, NY – The Capitol Theatre

Dec 4 – New Haven, CT – College Street Music Hall

Dec 5 – Providence, RI – Providence PAC

Dec 8 – Albany, NY – Hart Theatre at The Egg

Dec 10 – Roanoke, VA – Jefferson Center

Dec 11 – Virginia Beach, VA – Sandler Center

Dec 12 – Asheville, NC – U.S. Cellular Center

Dec 143 – Austin, TX – Austin City Limits

Jan 16 – St. Petersburg, FL – Sunshine Music Festival

Jan 17 – Boca Raton, FL – Sunshine Music Festival

Jan 19 – Augusta, GA – Bell Auditorium

Jan 20 – Jackson, MS – Thalia Mara Hall

Jan 22 – Chicago, IL – Chicago Theatre

Jan 23 – Chicago, IL – Chicago Theatre

Feb 18 – Philadelphia, PA – Keswick Theatre

Feb 19 – Philadelphia, PA – Keswick Theatre

Feb 20 – Philadelphia, PA – Keswick Theatre

Feb 25 – Washington, D.C. – Warner Theatre

Feb 26 – Washington, D.C. – Warner Theatre

Feb 27 – Washington, D.C. – Warner Theatre

Mar 3 – Nashville, TN, – Ryman Auditorium

Mar 4 – Nashville, TN, – Ryman Auditorium

Mar 5 – Nashville, TN, – Ryman Auditorium

Mar 19 – Melbourne, AUS – Forum Melbourne

Mar 20 – Canberra, AUS – Canberra Theatre Centre

Mar 22 – Newtown, AUS – Enmore Theatre

Mar 24 – Byron Bay, AUS – Byron Bay Bluesfest

Mar 30 – Nagoya, JPN – Nagoya City Auditorium

Mar 31 – Osaka, JPN – Orix Theater

Apr 1 – Toyko, JPN – Nippon Budokan

http://www.tedeschitrucksband.com

https://www.facebook.com/DerekAndSusan

https://twitter.com/derekandsusan

www.concordmusicgroup.com

The Wolf’s Man – An Interview with Hubert Sumlin On His Birthday

Today would have been Hubert Sumlin’s 84th birthday. The great guitarist passed away on December 4, 2011 at age 80. He was one of my favorite guitarists- and also one of the all time great guys, as I learned when I interviewed him for Guitar World in 1994.

Before I ventured uptown to a Manhattan club to interview him, there was no way I could have grasped the warmth, humor and deeply entrenched good-time vibe given off by the guitarist whose pithy, perfectly placed lines put much of the sting into the great Howlin’ Wolf’s most famous sides with Chess Records –easily some of the greatest blues ever recorded.

Walking into the “dressing room” at Manny’s Car Wash, the Manhattan club where Sumlin was performing, and where we were supposed to do an interview, I was immediately surrounded by a dozen or so bodies crammed tight into the tiny room. Most of the occupants were white and in their 20’s, like me, which is to say a different race and some four decades younger than their host, who was holding court with a crooked grin pasted across his face.

I introduced myself, but rather than commencing an official interview, I was swept up into his orbit, and became another party guest. A beer was placed in my hand and we started talking, with my tape recorder rolling. But the tiny room was directly behind the stage, where an opening band was making it hard to hear one another, and was surely obscuring our conversation on the tape. The situation wasn’t helped by the party going on all around us. We chatted until Hubert performed a strong if sloppy first set, then resumed on his break. It was then, I believe, that he invited me back to his room after the show to finish the interview, an offer I accepted. I drank beers and watched Hubert perform until he had wrung the last bit of vibrato out of his purple ESP guitar for the night, which was, of course, actually early the next morning.

At that point, I had had a great night, but was still far from accomplishing my mission. I had filled a 90-minute tape with our rambling, noisy conversations, but I had no idea what was actually on there. As I waited for him to load up so we could go back to his room and finish the interview, I noticed that most of his partying dressing room guests were still hanging around. I started to get a little nervous as I realized that they may well be accompanying us back to Hubert’s room, where I had hoped to have a quiet, one-on-one conversation.

As we headed back to his room, in a relatively cheap and seedy west side Manhattan hotel, we were indeed accompanied by a couple of young blueshounds, including one hippie kid I recognized as a busboy from the Lone Star Roadhouse, at the time still New York’s best roots music venue. This was Rob, Hubert’s “adopted son,” and constant protector.

Back at the room, Hubert had cans of Spam and sardines sitting around. Sitting on the couch was a beat-up hat box held together by duct tape, in which he transported his crisp, beautiful stage Fedora. Once we started talking, Rob and the others sat on the floor, rapt with Hubert’s still sharp memories about his days helping make the music of one of America’s greatest performers even greater. It was a role he relished. Throughout the long, early morning conversation, Hubert never lost his good nature or his mischievous, impish grin. He really was just as nice as his guitar lines were nasty.

We talked the night away and by the time I climbed into a cab to head home, dawn was approaching. I barely had time to get a few hours’ sleep and a shower before grabbing a cup of coffee and heading into work. Everything was a little fuzzy that day, and I wasn’t sure the whole night had really even happened as I had remembered it; it was one of those experiences that is extremely vivid while it’s occurring, but as soon as it’s over, it feels like a dream or hallucination. But a day or two later, I started transcribing my tapes, and they were even better than I had hoped. Here is the entire story:

Hubert with Wolf

Hubert Sumlin: The Wolf’s Man

Hubert Sumlin is one of the greatest and most influential of the Chicago blues guitarists. From the time he joined the legendary Howlin’ Wolf’s band in 1954 until the singer’s death in 1976, Sumlin played a central role in crafting some of the most memorable electric blues ever recorded. His economical, stinging fills, unusual rhythmic approach and perfectly placed bent notes are integral to classics like “Spoonful,” “Smokestack Lightnin’,” “Killing Floor” and “The Red Rooster.” The recently released Howlin’ Wolf Chess Box, a 71-song collection, is as much a tribute to Sumlin as it is to his immortal boss.

Sumlin’s playing had a particular impact on those rock guitarists who cut and bloodied their teeth on Howlin’ Wolf tunes: Jimi Hendrix, who often covered “Killing Floor”; Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones, who continue to play “The Red Rooster”; Robby Krieger, who helped The Doors remake “Back Door Man”; Stevie Ray Vaughan, who took Sumlin’s signature glissandos and made them a staple of his own bag of tricks, and who paid the blues man explicit tribute on “May I Have A Talk With You,” [The Sky Is Crying]; and Page, Clapton and Beck, all of whom flattered Sumlin by imitating him on “Spoonful” and “Smokestack Lightnin.’”

Sumlin backed Howlin’ Wolf for 23 years, a stretch broken only by six months in 1956 when he worked for Wolf’s arch-rival, Muddy Waters. After Wolf’s death, Sumlin launched his long-delayed solo career, becoming a Chicago blues club fixture and making occasional festival appearances. Over the past five years, however, he has picked up steam, touring often and recording three albums: 1986’s Blues Party (Black Top), 1988’s Heart And Soul (Blind Pig) and 1990’s excellent Healing Feeling (Black Top). Sumlin seems to truly enjoy performing, grinning broadly as he roams a small New York stage, his purple ESP Strat – a gift from Buddy Guy – held in place by a red and white music-note strap – a gift from Stevie Ray Vaughan.

ALAN PAUL: Did Howlin’ Wolf explicitly tell you what to play?

HUBERT SUMLIN: Not really. When I first got with him, he told me that I wasn’t ready to play his music, so I should go home and think about it for a day, a week, a month or a year, whatever it took. “Come back when you’re ready,” he said. “When you figure out how to play my stuff, then you’re hired.” I went home and prayed and slept with my guitar under my pillow trying to figure something out, because I knew that this man was serious – Wolf did not bullshit.

I had played with a pick for eight or nine years, and I couldn’t put it down. Then I woke up one morning and started playing without a pick, and the first thing I thought of was “Smokestack Lightnin.’” I played it better than I ever had and realized, “I don’t need no pick. I don’t need anything but my fingers.” And that was it.

AP: Everything fell into place when you got rid of the pick.

SUMLIN: Exactly. I started playing with a lot more soul. I never used a pick again – that was my secret to unlocking everything. My tone, my sound, everything happened right then. People can’t understand how I play – the average guitar player don’t know what I’m doing. But it’s my thing. It’s what God gave me; I don’t need a pick, because I got five fingers – how can one pick compete?

AP: One unusual aspect of your style is that you don’t play a lot of chords.

SUMLIN: No, I don’t, but I play a lot of tricks. Like Muddy Waters once said, I’ve got a lot of gimmicks up my sleeves. I know when to get in and when to get out. Lots of guitarists just miss out on that aspect of playing. I know how and where to put it, which is what it’s all about.

AP: Did many of your personal playing trademarks develop as a result of playing with Howlin’ Wolf for so long?

SUMLIN: Yes and no. I also played with Muddy Waters for six months and, Lord, I learned a lot from Jimmy Rogers [Water’s lead guitarist]. I picked up from every guitarist I ever worked with. I’d take a note from here and a note from here, a lick from him and a lick from him, and put it all together – that’s the Hubert Sumlin style. And that’s what I would recommend any guitarist do – listen to players you like and pick things up from everyone and everywhere.

You have to learn how to use your instrument to its fullest. You got five different E’s, you got five different A’s, and you got to use them all. If you’re all over the neck, you’re better. That’s why I never used a clamp [capo] like Muddy or Albert Collins or Jimmy Rogers: Why limit yourself? You’ll notice that kids coming up today play great, and they don’t use a clamp. Because they’ve got better knowledge of the instrument.

AP: There’s one element of your background that’s almost unique among bluesmen: you studied guitar at The Chicago Conservatory Of Music. What was the extent of your formal training?

SUMLIN: I studied for six months with this old guy who was with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It was the first time I ever saw a dude who played both opera and blues on his guitar. It had a huge impact on me, because I didn’t know the piano keyboard and I didn’t know how to read – I didn’t know an F from an A, an A from a B or a B from a C. That guy showed me so much in just six months.

AP: Even though you always played electric guitar with Wolf, your sound often had a bit of a country blues vibe. Is that where you come from, musically?

SUMLIN: Actually, when I was a kid I wanted to be a jazz player like Charlie Christian more than anything. But I also loved and heard the blues. They were all around me, and at a certain point, I realized how great all these dudes I listened to were: Charley Patton, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, all those guys. Peetie Wheatstraw, the “devil’s son-in-law”: Jesus, man, he was something. Then when I got with Wolf and Muddy I realized that they actually played with these guys, and that blew my mind. I’ll never forget my old 78 of Charlie Patton. He was a wizard, man, a genius. I tried to ask Wolf about him and he said , “Aw, you young punk, you’re too young to understand.” It always hurt me that I missed out on seeing and playing with those old guys, because they wrote the book that Wolf and Muddy electrified and expanded. If Wolf and Muddy were the fathers of rock and roll, then those acoustic guys were the granddaddies.

AP: It sounds like Wolf was very conscious of the age difference between you two.

SUMLIN: Yeah. He told me one time, a couple of years before he died, that he was “40 years too early.” He said, “I plowed mules barefoot in December, with snow on the ground, the dirt frozen as a rock.” I said, “Don’t lie, man.” And he said, “I’m not lying. I’m 40 years too early. Things are getting better all the time.” The next year he got sick and went on a kidney dialysis machine.

AP: It can be said that you are the link between the Delta bluesmen and rock and roll. On the one hand, you played with Wolf, who was a contemporary of Robert Johnson and the other guys you mentioned. At the same time, you also exerted a huge influence on the next generation – rock guitarists who weren’t really all that much younger than you.

SUMLIN: I’m very proud of that, and I got to meet those guys. I met Eric Clapton in 1970 when I played on Wolf’s London Sessions [Chess]. I wasn’t supposed to be there, but Clapton said, “If Hubert’s not there, I don’t record.” Then Wolf said he couldn’t record without me, so they had to bring me. Wolf was on a dialysis machine right in the studio, with doctors tending him night and day. He was so sick that on a couple of nights, we didn’t even record. We just sat in the studio and got high. Mick Jagger and Bill Wyman came in and we partied all night long, man. The cleaning lady came in the next morning and everyone was laying there on the floor. Mick Jagger had his head up inside the bass drum. [laughs] It was wild. We had a ball.

Hubert with Derek Trucks and Gregg Allman

AP: Did you spend much time with Clapton?

SUMLIN: Yes. One day, Eric sent a limousine for me, and we drove for 30 or 40 miles outside of London to his big old mansion in the country. A gorgeous place, like a castle. We had a beautiful dinner, then he took me down to the basement, where he had all these guitars. It looked like a factory – three-and-a-half walls of a room lined with every kind of guitar you can imagine.

He said, “Pick out a couple of those guitars, Hubert. I’m giving you two of them.” I walked all the way around the room, looking at every one of them. Then I saw this case sitting in the middle of the room. I sat down on the floor and said , “What’s in there?” He said, “It ain’t nothing, man.” I asked if I could take a look. He said. “You don’t want that.” I opened the case and took out this beautiful Fender Stratocaster and started playing it there, sitting on the floor.

He said, “Hey, man, I told you to pick any two you want from those that are up against the wall.” I said, “I know, but this Fender sure sounds good. Is it your regular?” He said, “It sure is.” I said, “I knew it, because that’s the one.” He said, “You mean to say you’re going to take it from me, man?” I said, “No, I can’t do it. I don’t want none of these.” He said, “Take it, man. At least I know it’s got a good home. Just promise me that if I ever want it back you’ll give it to me.”

I kept it for two years and hardly ever played it. Then we were both at the Montreaux Jazz Festival, and I brought it over to him. He asked me how much money I wanted, if there was anything I needed. I said, “Nothing man, it’s your guitar. Don’t embarrass me.” He just gave me a hug. He’s a nice guy, a beautiful guy.

AP: Did you have any sense that you were making history when you recorded those classic tracks with Wolf?

SUMLIN: No, and I really didn’t care. But I knew that he was going to be one of the greats. And I was so devoted that I wanted to push him to the top. When you’re recording for people the caliber of Howlin’ Wolf, you’re going to do your best. And in those days, there wasn’t even a question, man: you were going to play your guts out. There had been some days in the past when my stomach ached from not having anything to eat. When I recorded, I would remember those days, and remember how I never wanted to go back to them – and I would play!

AP: What kind of personal relationship did you have with Wolf?

SUMLIN: We were like father and son, although we had some tremendous fights. he knocked my teeth out, and I knocked his out. None of it mattered; we always got right back together.

AP: You fought with Wolf? He was a huge man.

SUMLIN: Oh man, he was big – he could wrap one of his fingers around my guitar neck three times. One time after a gig, we were loading up the truck and I wasn’t there, because I’d run off with this cute girl who’d been sitting on my amplifier, smiling at me all night long. When I got back they were just finishing loading, and Wolf was standing on top of the stage. He started yelling at me, calling me every name you ever heard – and some you couldn’t imagine – because he had to load my gear. I was embarrassed, man, because this was right in front of the whole band.

So I thought, “He can’t do this to me. He can’t humiliate me.” So I waited until he was looking the other way, and I hit him in the face as hard as I could. He didn’t move. He just turned back real slow and slapped me with the back of his hand. I fell and rolled down the ramp that was pushed up to the stage to load the amps. I got up and walked back, screaming at him. When I got to the top he did the same thing again, and I rolled right back down, spitting out teeth.

AP: Is that why you left to play with Muddy Waters?

SUMLIN: No. Me and Wolf patched it up right away. In fact, the next morning, my wife woke me up and said that Wolf had been sitting in his car in front of my house all night long. I went out there and he apologized, and gave me money to fix my mouth.

I left to play with Muddy because he tripled my salary. They were rivals, and Muddy wanted to take me away from Wolf.

AP: Was the rivalry between Wolf and Muddy apparent to everybody?

SUMLIN: Sure. They were jealous of one another; they were enemies: “You stole my shit.” “You did this.” “You did that.” It was endless because they were the two biggest dudes in Chicago, and they were always arguing and competing about who was number one. [laughs] I’ll never forget the day we played the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, and Wolf and Muddy sat down and talked and made friends. They shook hands and said, “No more enemies.” That thrilled me so much, I went and got a beer. This is a business which we do every day and love to death, and I never understood that jealousy. It’s music. Who cares who’s the best?

AP: What are your memories of Jimi Hendrix?

SUMLIN: He was just a little ol’ dude living in England. It was before his band, the Experience, hit it big. We played in Liverpool, the Beatles’ home, and in walked Jimi Hendrix, a little ol’ hip guy wearing earings and a bandanna. Wolf said, “What the fuck is this guy? I ain’t saying nothing to that motherfucker.” He came right up to Wolf and asked if he could play his guitar. Wolf nodded and Hendrix picked it up, turned it over and played it with his teeth. [laughs] He played the hell out of it. Wolf looked at him, big-eyed, and said, “You hired, man, you hired!” He said, “No, thank you Mr. Wolf. But I admire you and the blues. You guys are 100 percent. Beautiful, man.”

I never played with him after that, but I saw him do his thing in New York, after he hit, and I fell in love. The guy was great! Just a little ol’ skinny youngster. He was in his twenties, but he looked 16 or 17, and he was good, man. I mean, really good.

AP: Hendrix often called you a big influence. Your playing on several tracks from the Fifties represents some of the earliest instances of guitarist using distortion. How did you do that?

SUMLIN: I was just using my Gibson and my Wabash amp, which I used for a long time. It was one of the first amps to have 15-inch speakers. I also got an Echoplex right when they came out, and combined with those 15-inch speakers, that made “distortion.”

AP: What sort of Gibson did you play?

SUMLIN: A Les Paul – I believe it was a ‘56. I often played them. I also had a Kay guitar. For four years, Wolf didn’t have a piano or even a bass – just two guitars and drums, so Jody Williams [Wolf’s second guitarist] and I coordinated our parts closely and decided that we would both play Kays. I didn’t like that Les Paul all that much, but I sure do wish that I had it now. [laughs]

The Wolf’s Man – An Interview with Hubert Sumlin On His Birthday

Today would have been Hubert Sumlin’s 84th birthday. The great guitarist passed away on December 4, 2011 at age 80. He was one of my favorite guitarists- and also one of the all time great guys, as I learned when I interviewed him for Guitar World in 1994.

Before I ventured uptown to a Manhattan club to interview him, there was no way I could have grasped the warmth, humor and deeply entrenched good-time vibe given off by the guitarist whose pithy, perfectly placed lines put much of the sting into the great Howlin’ Wolf’s most famous sides with Chess Records –easily some of the greatest blues ever recorded.

Walking into the “dressing room” at Manny’s Car Wash, the Manhattan club where Sumlin was performing, and where we were supposed to do an interview, I was immediately surrounded by a dozen or so bodies crammed tight into the tiny room. Most of the occupants were white and in their 20’s, like me, which is to say a different race and some four decades younger than their host, who was holding court with a crooked grin pasted across his face.

I introduced myself, but rather than commencing an official interview, I was swept up into his orbit, and became another party guest. A beer was placed in my hand and we started talking, with my tape recorder rolling. But the tiny room was directly behind the stage, where an opening band was making it hard to hear one another, and was surely obscuring our conversation on the tape. The situation wasn’t helped by the party going on all around us. We chatted until Hubert performed a strong if sloppy first set, then resumed on his break. It was then, I believe, that he invited me back to his room after the show to finish the interview, an offer I accepted. I drank beers and watched Hubert perform until he had wrung the last bit of vibrato out of his purple ESP guitar for the night, which was, of course, actually early the next morning.

At that point, I had had a great night, but was still far from accomplishing my mission. I had filled a 90-minute tape with our rambling, noisy conversations, but I had no idea what was actually on there. As I waited for him to load up so we could go back to his room and finish the interview, I noticed that most of his partying dressing room guests were still hanging around. I started to get a little nervous as I realized that they may well be accompanying us back to Hubert’s room, where I had hoped to have a quiet, one-on-one conversation.

As we headed back to his room, in a relatively cheap and seedy west side Manhattan hotel, we were indeed accompanied by a couple of young blueshounds, including one hippie kid I recognized as a busboy from the Lone Star Roadhouse, at the time still New York’s best roots music venue. This was Rob, Hubert’s “adopted son,” and constant protector.

Back at the room, Hubert had cans of Spam and sardines sitting around. Sitting on the couch was a beat-up hat box held together by duct tape, in which he transported his crisp, beautiful stage Fedora. Once we started talking, Rob and the others sat on the floor, rapt with Hubert’s still sharp memories about his days helping make the music of one of America’s greatest performers even greater. It was a role he relished. Throughout the long, early morning conversation, Hubert never lost his good nature or his mischievous, impish grin. He really was just as nice as his guitar lines were nasty.

We talked the night away and by the time I climbed into a cab to head home, dawn was approaching. I barely had time to get a few hours’ sleep and a shower before grabbing a cup of coffee and heading into work. Everything was a little fuzzy that day, and I wasn’t sure the whole night had really even happened as I had remembered it; it was one of those experiences that is extremely vivid while it’s occurring, but as soon as it’s over, it feels like a dream or hallucination. But a day or two later, I started transcribing my tapes, and they were even better than I had hoped. Here is the entire story:

Hubert with Wolf

Hubert Sumlin: The Wolf’s Man

Hubert Sumlin is one of the greatest and most influential of the Chicago blues guitarists. From the time he joined the legendary Howlin’ Wolf’s band in 1954 until the singer’s death in 1976, Sumlin played a central role in crafting some of the most memorable electric blues ever recorded. His economical, stinging fills, unusual rhythmic approach and perfectly placed bent notes are integral to classics like “Spoonful,” “Smokestack Lightnin’,” “Killing Floor” and “The Red Rooster.” The recently released Howlin’ Wolf Chess Box, a 71-song collection, is as much a tribute to Sumlin as it is to his immortal boss.

Sumlin’s playing had a particular impact on those rock guitarists who cut and bloodied their teeth on Howlin’ Wolf tunes: Jimi Hendrix, who often covered “Killing Floor”; Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones, who continue to play “The Red Rooster”; Robby Krieger, who helped The Doors remake “Back Door Man”; Stevie Ray Vaughan, who took Sumlin’s signature glissandos and made them a staple of his own bag of tricks, and who paid the blues man explicit tribute on “May I Have A Talk With You,” [The Sky Is Crying]; and Page, Clapton and Beck, all of whom flattered Sumlin by imitating him on “Spoonful” and “Smokestack Lightnin.’”

Sumlin backed Howlin’ Wolf for 23 years, a stretch broken only by six months in 1956 when he worked for Wolf’s arch-rival, Muddy Waters. After Wolf’s death, Sumlin launched his long-delayed solo career, becoming a Chicago blues club fixture and making occasional festival appearances. Over the past five years, however, he has picked up steam, touring often and recording three albums: 1986’s Blues Party (Black Top), 1988’s Heart And Soul (Blind Pig) and 1990’s excellent Healing Feeling (Black Top). Sumlin seems to truly enjoy performing, grinning broadly as he roams a small New York stage, his purple ESP Strat – a gift from Buddy Guy – held in place by a red and white music-note strap – a gift from Stevie Ray Vaughan.

ALAN PAUL: Did Howlin’ Wolf explicitly tell you what to play?

HUBERT SUMLIN: Not really. When I first got with him, he told me that I wasn’t ready to play his music, so I should go home and think about it for a day, a week, a month or a year, whatever it took. “Come back when you’re ready,” he said. “When you figure out how to play my stuff, then you’re hired.” I went home and prayed and slept with my guitar under my pillow trying to figure something out, because I knew that this man was serious – Wolf did not bullshit.

I had played with a pick for eight or nine years, and I couldn’t put it down. Then I woke up one morning and started playing without a pick, and the first thing I thought of was “Smokestack Lightnin.’” I played it better than I ever had and realized, “I don’t need no pick. I don’t need anything but my fingers.” And that was it.

AP: Everything fell into place when you got rid of the pick.

SUMLIN: Exactly. I started playing with a lot more soul. I never used a pick again – that was my secret to unlocking everything. My tone, my sound, everything happened right then. People can’t understand how I play – the average guitar player don’t know what I’m doing. But it’s my thing. It’s what God gave me; I don’t need a pick, because I got five fingers – how can one pick compete?

AP: One unusual aspect of your style is that you don’t play a lot of chords.

SUMLIN: No, I don’t, but I play a lot of tricks. Like Muddy Waters once said, I’ve got a lot of gimmicks up my sleeves. I know when to get in and when to get out. Lots of guitarists just miss out on that aspect of playing. I know how and where to put it, which is what it’s all about.

AP: Did many of your personal playing trademarks develop as a result of playing with Howlin’ Wolf for so long?

SUMLIN: Yes and no. I also played with Muddy Waters for six months and, Lord, I learned a lot from Jimmy Rogers [Water’s lead guitarist]. I picked up from every guitarist I ever worked with. I’d take a note from here and a note from here, a lick from him and a lick from him, and put it all together – that’s the Hubert Sumlin style. And that’s what I would recommend any guitarist do – listen to players you like and pick things up from everyone and everywhere.

You have to learn how to use your instrument to its fullest. You got five different E’s, you got five different A’s, and you got to use them all. If you’re all over the neck, you’re better. That’s why I never used a clamp [capo] like Muddy or Albert Collins or Jimmy Rogers: Why limit yourself? You’ll notice that kids coming up today play great, and they don’t use a clamp. Because they’ve got better knowledge of the instrument.

AP: There’s one element of your background that’s almost unique among bluesmen: you studied guitar at The Chicago Conservatory Of Music. What was the extent of your formal training?

SUMLIN: I studied for six months with this old guy who was with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It was the first time I ever saw a dude who played both opera and blues on his guitar. It had a huge impact on me, because I didn’t know the piano keyboard and I didn’t know how to read – I didn’t know an F from an A, an A from a B or a B from a C. That guy showed me so much in just six months.

AP: Even though you always played electric guitar with Wolf, your sound often had a bit of a country blues vibe. Is that where you come from, musically?

SUMLIN: Actually, when I was a kid I wanted to be a jazz player like Charlie Christian more than anything. But I also loved and heard the blues. They were all around me, and at a certain point, I realized how great all these dudes I listened to were: Charley Patton, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, all those guys. Peetie Wheatstraw, the “devil’s son-in-law”: Jesus, man, he was something. Then when I got with Wolf and Muddy I realized that they actually played with these guys, and that blew my mind. I’ll never forget my old 78 of Charlie Patton. He was a wizard, man, a genius. I tried to ask Wolf about him and he said , “Aw, you young punk, you’re too young to understand.” It always hurt me that I missed out on seeing and playing with those old guys, because they wrote the book that Wolf and Muddy electrified and expanded. If Wolf and Muddy were the fathers of rock and roll, then those acoustic guys were the granddaddies.

AP: It sounds like Wolf was very conscious of the age difference between you two.

SUMLIN: Yeah. He told me one time, a couple of years before he died, that he was “40 years too early.” He said, “I plowed mules barefoot in December, with snow on the ground, the dirt frozen as a rock.” I said, “Don’t lie, man.” And he said, “I’m not lying. I’m 40 years too early. Things are getting better all the time.” The next year he got sick and went on a kidney dialysis machine.

AP: It can be said that you are the link between the Delta bluesmen and rock and roll. On the one hand, you played with Wolf, who was a contemporary of Robert Johnson and the other guys you mentioned. At the same time, you also exerted a huge influence on the next generation – rock guitarists who weren’t really all that much younger than you.

SUMLIN: I’m very proud of that, and I got to meet those guys. I met Eric Clapton in 1970 when I played on Wolf’s London Sessions [Chess]. I wasn’t supposed to be there, but Clapton said, “If Hubert’s not there, I don’t record.” Then Wolf said he couldn’t record without me, so they had to bring me. Wolf was on a dialysis machine right in the studio, with doctors tending him night and day. He was so sick that on a couple of nights, we didn’t even record. We just sat in the studio and got high. Mick Jagger and Bill Wyman came in and we partied all night long, man. The cleaning lady came in the next morning and everyone was laying there on the floor. Mick Jagger had his head up inside the bass drum. [laughs] It was wild. We had a ball.

Hubert with Derek Trucks and Gregg Allman

AP: Did you spend much time with Clapton?

SUMLIN: Yes. One day, Eric sent a limousine for me, and we drove for 30 or 40 miles outside of London to his big old mansion in the country. A gorgeous place, like a castle. We had a beautiful dinner, then he took me down to the basement, where he had all these guitars. It looked like a factory – three-and-a-half walls of a room lined with every kind of guitar you can imagine.

He said, “Pick out a couple of those guitars, Hubert. I’m giving you two of them.” I walked all the way around the room, looking at every one of them. Then I saw this case sitting in the middle of the room. I sat down on the floor and said , “What’s in there?” He said, “It ain’t nothing, man.” I asked if I could take a look. He said. “You don’t want that.” I opened the case and took out this beautiful Fender Stratocaster and started playing it there, sitting on the floor.

He said, “Hey, man, I told you to pick any two you want from those that are up against the wall.” I said, “I know, but this Fender sure sounds good. Is it your regular?” He said, “It sure is.” I said, “I knew it, because that’s the one.” He said, “You mean to say you’re going to take it from me, man?” I said, “No, I can’t do it. I don’t want none of these.” He said, “Take it, man. At least I know it’s got a good home. Just promise me that if I ever want it back you’ll give it to me.”

I kept it for two years and hardly ever played it. Then we were both at the Montreaux Jazz Festival, and I brought it over to him. He asked me how much money I wanted, if there was anything I needed. I said, “Nothing man, it’s your guitar. Don’t embarrass me.” He just gave me a hug. He’s a nice guy, a beautiful guy.

AP: Did you have any sense that you were making history when you recorded those classic tracks with Wolf?

SUMLIN: No, and I really didn’t care. But I knew that he was going to be one of the greats. And I was so devoted that I wanted to push him to the top. When you’re recording for people the caliber of Howlin’ Wolf, you’re going to do your best. And in those days, there wasn’t even a question, man: you were going to play your guts out. There had been some days in the past when my stomach ached from not having anything to eat. When I recorded, I would remember those days, and remember how I never wanted to go back to them – and I would play!

AP: What kind of personal relationship did you have with Wolf?

SUMLIN: We were like father and son, although we had some tremendous fights. he knocked my teeth out, and I knocked his out. None of it mattered; we always got right back together.

AP: You fought with Wolf? He was a huge man.

SUMLIN: Oh man, he was big – he could wrap one of his fingers around my guitar neck three times. One time after a gig, we were loading up the truck and I wasn’t there, because I’d run off with this cute girl who’d been sitting on my amplifier, smiling at me all night long. When I got back they were just finishing loading, and Wolf was standing on top of the stage. He started yelling at me, calling me every name you ever heard – and some you couldn’t imagine – because he had to load my gear. I was embarrassed, man, because this was right in front of the whole band.

So I thought, “He can’t do this to me. He can’t humiliate me.” So I waited until he was looking the other way, and I hit him in the face as hard as I could. He didn’t move. He just turned back real slow and slapped me with the back of his hand. I fell and rolled down the ramp that was pushed up to the stage to load the amps. I got up and walked back, screaming at him. When I got to the top he did the same thing again, and I rolled right back down, spitting out teeth.

AP: Is that why you left to play with Muddy Waters?

SUMLIN: No. Me and Wolf patched it up right away. In fact, the next morning, my wife woke me up and said that Wolf had been sitting in his car in front of my house all night long. I went out there and he apologized, and gave me money to fix my mouth.

I left to play with Muddy because he tripled my salary. They were rivals, and Muddy wanted to take me away from Wolf.

AP: Was the rivalry between Wolf and Muddy apparent to everybody?

SUMLIN: Sure. They were jealous of one another; they were enemies: “You stole my shit.” “You did this.” “You did that.” It was endless because they were the two biggest dudes in Chicago, and they were always arguing and competing about who was number one. [laughs] I’ll never forget the day we played the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, and Wolf and Muddy sat down and talked and made friends. They shook hands and said, “No more enemies.” That thrilled me so much, I went and got a beer. This is a business which we do every day and love to death, and I never understood that jealousy. It’s music. Who cares who’s the best?

AP: What are your memories of Jimi Hendrix?

SUMLIN: He was just a little ol’ dude living in England. It was before his band, the Experience, hit it big. We played in Liverpool, the Beatles’ home, and in walked Jimi Hendrix, a little ol’ hip guy wearing earings and a bandanna. Wolf said, “What the fuck is this guy? I ain’t saying nothing to that motherfucker.” He came right up to Wolf and asked if he could play his guitar. Wolf nodded and Hendrix picked it up, turned it over and played it with his teeth. [laughs] He played the hell out of it. Wolf looked at him, big-eyed, and said, “You hired, man, you hired!” He said, “No, thank you Mr. Wolf. But I admire you and the blues. You guys are 100 percent. Beautiful, man.”

I never played with him after that, but I saw him do his thing in New York, after he hit, and I fell in love. The guy was great! Just a little ol’ skinny youngster. He was in his twenties, but he looked 16 or 17, and he was good, man. I mean, really good.

AP: Hendrix often called you a big influence. Your playing on several tracks from the Fifties represents some of the earliest instances of guitarist using distortion. How did you do that?

SUMLIN: I was just using my Gibson and my Wabash amp, which I used for a long time. It was one of the first amps to have 15-inch speakers. I also got an Echoplex right when they came out, and combined with those 15-inch speakers, that made “distortion.”

AP: What sort of Gibson did you play?

SUMLIN: A Les Paul – I believe it was a ‘56. I often played them. I also had a Kay guitar. For four years, Wolf didn’t have a piano or even a bass – just two guitars and drums, so Jody Williams [Wolf’s second guitarist] and I coordinated our parts closely and decided that we would both play Kays. I didn’t like that Les Paul all that much, but I sure do wish that I had it now. [laughs]

Live Stream and Photos from Dead & Co @ MSG

Photo – Jay Blakesberg

Live Audio and Video Stream below, as well as great photos from my friends jay and Derek.

You know about out my Ebook, Reckoning: Conversations with the Grateful Dead – right?

Interviews with Phil, Bob, Trey, Hunter, Billy, Warren and more. Costs less than your coffee. Order it now.

VIDEO STREAM – Thanks for the tunes, Amex.

Mayer’s guit

AUDIO STREAM:

Photo – Derek McCabe

Photo – Jay Blakesberg

Photo – Derek McCabe

Photo – Derek McCabe

Dead & Co. MSG 11/7/15

Photo – Jay Blakesberg

Hey, you, check out my Ebook, Reckoning: Conversations with the Grateful Dead.

Some thoughts on Dead & Co. at the Garden.

“The wheel is turning & you can’t slow down

You can’t let go and you can’t hold on,

You can’t go back and you can’t stand still,

If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.

Won’t you try just a little bit harder,

Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?

Won’t you try just a little bit harder,

Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?”

The wheel keeps turning and they keep trying. Four months after we marked the end of the Core Four Grateful Dead appearances together with triumphant fireworks over Chicago’s soldier Filed, here we were in a sold-out madison Square Garden. While Weir, Kreutzmann and Hart kept Jeff Chimenti and signed up John Mayer and our old friend Oteil Burbridge for anew venture called Dead & Co., Phil Lesh continued to pump away with his Phil & Friends. They were playing at the Capitol Theater 30 Miles north in Portchester, just weeks after Phil announced he was undergoing treatment for bladder cancer.

Think about the above for a minute because it’s really quite amazing. And I don’t think fans at either venue left disappointed.

Dead & Co is really a pretty fascinating venture and I thought it succeeded with flying colors. Oteil and Mayer are bringing a new energy and a slightly different direction to the music. Mayer has his own style and, while he’s clearly embraced and ingested the music of the Dead, he is not shying away form sounding like himself. I think that’s a good thing. There are enough Dead tribute bands out there and we don’t need another one anchored by the real deal. The tunes themselves are so sturdy that they invite reinterpretation and any sincere effort can work. And Weir seemed to be really enjoying the energy radiating out from his right flank. I thought he sang and played at a very high level, and you could really hear his guitar,

Mayer’s guitar alpha and omegas are, I think, Clapton and SRV and that works beautifully for me, though I’m sure some Heads feel otherwise. He helped make “Cold, Rain and Snow” like Backless-era Clapton. In a good way. Oteil dug into the songs and provided stone cool grooves, helping steer jams and nailing complicated passages on songs like “Slipknot” and “The Other One.” It was especially fun to hear him go to town on loping tunes like “Tennessee Jed” and “He’s Gone” where the groove is distinctive but elastic. He and Mayer bought the bad tremendous energy, Chimenti filled in so many holes, often working in tandem with Oteil to play and high and low around the main melody and guitars.

Oteil even joined Billy and Mickey for drums, as he often did with the Allman Brothers. It was great to see him so happy and so engaged. And to hear the music be so strong. I’m looking forward to seeing where this all heads. Seems to me, it’s got some serious legs.

Photo by Derek McCabe

Set 1:

Shakedown Street

I Need a Miracle

Cold Rain and Snow

Tennessee Jed

They Love Each Other

Jack Straw

Set 2:

Help on the Way

Slipknot!

Franklin’s Tower

He’s Gone

St. Stephen

Drums> Space

The Other One

Stella Blue

Not Fade Away

Encore:

Brokedown Palace

The story behind “Free Bird”

On this day (October 20)  in 1977, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s twin engine plane crashed in a swamp in Gillsburg, Miss., killing three of the band members – singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and singer Cassie Gaines – assistant manager Dean Kilpatrick and both pilots on impact. Twenty other people survived with various injuries, some very severe.

The last surviving original member still in the band Gary Rossington is recovering at home from a heart attack. Sending him best wishes and also to early members Ed King, Artimus Pyle, Cassie Hawkins, Larry Junstrom….

In tribute to the band and those lost, this is the story of their most enduring song.

Foto by Kirk West

“FREE BIRD”

Originally released on pronounced leh-nerd skin-nerd  (MCA, 1973)

 

Guitarist Allen Collins came up with the music to “Free Bird” very early in the band’s songwriting process. But while everyone recognized the grace of the chord progression, Ronnie Van Zant could not come up with a suitable vocal melody.

Recalls Gary Rossington, “Allen had the chords for the beginning, pretty part for two full years and we kept asking Ronnie to write something and he kept telling us to forget it; he said there were too many chords so he couldn’t find a melody. He thought that he had to change with every chord. Then one day we were at rehearsal and Allen started playing those chords again, and Ronnie said, ‘Those are pretty. Play them again.’ He said, ‘I got it,’ and wrote the lyrics in three or four minutes—the whole damned thing!

Like “Stairway to Heaven,” one of its chief competitors for the unofficial title of rock’s most epic song, “Free Bird” starts out as a ballad before becoming a solo-fueled rocker. That was not by design, recalls Rossington: “When we started playing it in clubs, it was just the slow part. Ronnie said, ‘Why don’t you do something at the end of that so I can take a break for a few minutes.’ I came up with those three chords at the end and Allen and I traded solos and Ronnie kept telling us to make it longer; we were playing three or four sets a night, and he was looking to fill it up and get a break.”

Gary Rossington

The structure of “Free Bird” was set, but it was still lacking one final element; the elegant piano intro, which was written by then-roadie Billy Powell. “One of our roadies told us we should check out this piano part that another roadie had written as an intro for the song,” says Rossington. “We did–and Billy went from being a roadie to a member right then.”

The original album version of the song clocked in at almost 10 minutes and according to Rossington and Ed King, MCA objected to putting such a long song on the band’s debut album. A 3:30 radio edit was cut and the single, at 4:10, became a Top 20 hit. “MCA said we couldn’t put a 10-minute song on an album, because nobody would play it,” recalls King. “Of course, that was the song everyone gravitated towards!”

On Skynyrd’s first live album, 1976’s One More from the Road, Van Zant can be heard asking the crowd, “What song is it you wanna hear?” The overwhelming response leads into the 14-minute version of the song that became iconic. Though Van Zant often dedicated “Free Bird” to Duane Allman, contrary to urban legend, it was not written for him.

The story behind “Free Bird”

On this day (October 20)  in 1977, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s twin engine plane crashed in a swamp in Gillsburg, Miss., killing three of the band members – singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and singer Cassie Gaines – assistant manager Dean Kilpatrick and both pilots on impact. Twenty other people survived with various injuries, some very severe.

The last surviving original member still in the band Gary Rossington is recovering at home from a heart attack. Sending him best wishes and also to early members Ed King, Artimus Pyle, Cassie Hawkins, Larry Junstrom….

In tribute to the band and those lost, this is the story of their most enduring song.

Foto by Kirk West

“FREE BIRD”

Originally released on pronounced leh-nerd skin-nerd  (MCA, 1973)

 

Guitarist Allen Collins came up with the music to “Free Bird” very early in the band’s songwriting process. But while everyone recognized the grace of the chord progression, Ronnie Van Zant could not come up with a suitable vocal melody.

Recalls Gary Rossington, “Allen had the chords for the beginning, pretty part for two full years and we kept asking Ronnie to write something and he kept telling us to forget it; he said there were too many chords so he couldn’t find a melody. He thought that he had to change with every chord. Then one day we were at rehearsal and Allen started playing those chords again, and Ronnie said, ‘Those are pretty. Play them again.’ He said, ‘I got it,’ and wrote the lyrics in three or four minutes—the whole damned thing!

Like “Stairway to Heaven,” one of its chief competitors for the unofficial title of rock’s most epic song, “Free Bird” starts out as a ballad before becoming a solo-fueled rocker. That was not by design, recalls Rossington: “When we started playing it in clubs, it was just the slow part. Ronnie said, ‘Why don’t you do something at the end of that so I can take a break for a few minutes.’ I came up with those three chords at the end and Allen and I traded solos and Ronnie kept telling us to make it longer; we were playing three or four sets a night, and he was looking to fill it up and get a break.”

Gary Rossington

The structure of “Free Bird” was set, but it was still lacking one final element; the elegant piano intro, which was written by then-roadie Billy Powell. “One of our roadies told us we should check out this piano part that another roadie had written as an intro for the song,” says Rossington. “We did–and Billy went from being a roadie to a member right then.”

The original album version of the song clocked in at almost 10 minutes and according to Rossington and Ed King, MCA objected to putting such a long song on the band’s debut album. A 3:30 radio edit was cut and the single, at 4:10, became a Top 20 hit. “MCA said we couldn’t put a 10-minute song on an album, because nobody would play it,” recalls King. “Of course, that was the song everyone gravitated towards!”

On Skynyrd’s first live album, 1976’s One More from the Road, Van Zant can be heard asking the crowd, “What song is it you wanna hear?” The overwhelming response leads into the 14-minute version of the song that became iconic. Though Van Zant often dedicated “Free Bird” to Duane Allman, contrary to urban legend, it was not written for him.

Today is Bob Weir’s 68th birthday. Happy birthday Bob.T...

Today is Bob Weir’s 68th birthday. Happy birthday Bob.

This interview appears in my Ebook, Reckoning: Conversations With the Grateful Dead, along with similarly extensive interview with Phil, Phil and Trey, Robert Hunter, Bill Kreutzmann, Warren Haynes, Mark Karan and Steve Kimock. It costs less than a latte. Check it out!

A couple of notes: I spent a lot of time with Bobby down in Philly on this afternoon and really enjoyed talking with him. He was gracious, relaxed and easy to be with. We did most of the interview in his hotel room, but also hung out quite a bit at the show.

Just before this – I think even the night before — we also hung out at the Jammies for a good while. They were at Roseland that year, and I actually presented an award. Wish I could remember what it was or to whom. Anyhow, we chilled in his dressing room then. And then I also hung out with him in an NYC hotel room as he did a guitar lesson with Andy Aledort that ran with this piece and it was really fascinating to watch/listen to him demonstrate many of his songs and the proper way to play them.

For as long as the Grateful Dead has existed, people have loved to rag on Bobby for a lot of different reasons – some of which are easy to understand, others of which I think are really unfair. But he is a very interesting and different guitar player; he composed a lot of their most intricate and interesting songs, such as “The Other One,” as well as their catchiest tune – “Sugar Magnolia”; and he is a very good hang. Ultimately, only thing matters: he’s the guitarist Jerry wanted playing by his side all those years.

One other editorial note: when you see Bobby discussing Napster and downloading below, this interview was conducted when that was a very hot issue and Metallica was a taking a lot of fire for battling downloading and file sharing.

Kirk West Foto

Top Dog

Former Grateful Dead rhythm guitarist Bob Weir returns to the land of the living with Ratdog, his ever-evolving “rock and roll Dixieland” band.

by Alan Paul

Outside Philadelphia’s Electric Factory the wind is whipping on a cold winter night. Shivering ticket scalpers circulate through a parking lot slowly filling with musical pilgrims arriving to see Ratdog, the band led by Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir.

Inside the nearly empty theater, the mood is sedate as soundcheck gets underway. Lead guitarist Mark Karan is showing off his beautiful assortment of instruments, including a vintage Gretsch and Les Paul and gleaming new PRS and Modulus guitars. Drummer Jay Lane is giving his young daughters lessons, with one girl banging the snare drum while another taps the high hat. Keyboardist Jeff Chimenti is eating a slice of pizza and chatting with the techs.

Without uttering so much as a single word, Weir plugs in his custom Modulus guitar, turns up the volume and starts playing a slinky triad riff. Longtime Weir collaborator Rob Wasserman settles down behind his upright electric bass and joins in. Within moments, the guests peel away, the musicians turn serious and the band falls into place, quickly moving into “Bury Me Standing,” the lead track of the group’s debut album, Evening Moods (Grateful Dead Records). And just like that, they’re off, tearing through a half-hour tune-up for the coming gig. In a few hours, they’ll bring down the house full of aging Deadheads and young jam lovers with their interlocking, ebb and flow improvisations, playing a mix of new material and beloved Grateful Dead standbys.

Those are the moments for which Weir lives, the reason why he’s out here humping it night after night, promoting his new album and whipping his band into shape. He has a beautiful wife and gorgeous two-year-old daughter 3,000 miles away in California and he could be with them, spending his days relaxing in the sun, riding his beloved mountain bike or hiking the wooded trails of Marin County, north of San Francisco. Such are the perks of 30 years spent in the Grateful Dead, a group he helped form when he was just 17 years old.

But Weir is far from ready to give up the ghost. He sees himself as a guitarist. And a guitarist plays guitar, so here he is on a cold East Coast night, pushing ahead with the group that has received most of his passion and effort since the Dead’s 1995 disbanding following Jerry Garcia’s death.

“We are coming into our own,” says Weir. “We’re not there yet, but we are learning how to read each other’s moods and impulses, which is what makes a good band. You need to get to the point where you hear footsteps coming up behind you and know with certainty that someone else is about to pick up the ball and finish your phrase. That’s what the Grateful Dead had and I feel it coming in this group.”

Evening Moods is an important album for Weir, the first of his six efforts outside the Dead that really captures his essence. In doing so, it clearly illustrates what he brought his old band. Weir hardly ever played solos, content to spur on Garcia’s crystalline flights of fancy. But he is an extremely interesting and inventive player, rarely playing the consistent, revolving patterns that are the bedrock of most rock rhythm styles. Instead he relies on counterpoint, riffs and non-circular chord progressions. He was also an important songwriter for the Dead, contributing much of the band’s oddest, most ambitious tunes, like “The Other One,” “Weather Report Suite” and “Estimated Prophet,” as well as “Jack Straw” and “Sugar Magnolia.”

All of these tunes can be heard in different versions on the never-ending stream of Grateful Dead live albums, released on both Grateful Dead Records (mail order only, online at www.dead.net) and Arista. There are also plans to digitize the band’s extensive tape archives to make them available for online downloads, a process said to be causing rifts with bassist Phil Lesh. And, of course, there’s the ongoing story of Ratdog. Certainly, there is much to discuss with Weir and he’s game to talk about it all, reclining comfortably on a hotel suite couch, barefoot and clad in jeans and polo shirt, hours before the Ratdog gig in Philadelphia.

Your guitar style is extremely original. Who were your primary influences?

Initially country and acoustic blues players, but my dirty little secret is that I learned by trying to imitate a piano, specifically the work of McCoy Tyner in the John Coltrane Quartet. That caught my ear and lit my flame when I was 17. I just loved what he did underneath Coltrane, so I sat with it for a long time and really tried to absorb it. Of course, Jerry was very influenced by horn players, including Coltrane, but I never really explicitly thought about that relationship, because I didn’t really ever decide to pattern myself after McCoy Tyner’s piano. It just grabbed me.

I’ve never had much of an idea of what I’m up to and I’m not sure that I do even now, but I have always been there to serve the music and believed that if you sincerely do so then your appropriate role will present itself. Then it’s just a matter of finding the perfect place to play that role and I’m very fortunate that this happened to me at a very young age.

Photo by Jay Blakesberg

One of the hallmarks of your style is that unlike conventional rock and roll rhythm playing, you do not play repetitive patterns.

I think that is partly a result of my dedication to rhythm playing and not really trying to be a soloist. Because I’m concentrating on just that figure, I can put a little more energy into it and develop it more brightly. Another big reason for me not being repetitive is the influence of Jerry and, even more so, Phil, who never repeats anything. If no one else is repeating anything, I’ll be damned if I’m going to play the same thing over and over. Besides, it’s not what the music ever wanted. It wants to keep developing and growing and moving, and I really am in service to the music.

Rather than straight chords, you play a lot of figures, riffs and fills that often verge on lead guitar. I’m thinking, for instance, of your work on “China Cat Sunflower.”

Right. I always played a lot of counterpoint in support of Jerry’s guitar or vocal melody. But it’s funny that you mentioned “China Cat Sunflower” because that’s just about the only song where Jerry ever taught me a riff and told me it’s what he wanted to hear. That little arpeggiated lick was his. I do something similar on “Scarlet Begonias,” which I came up with. But the concept of the band was always group improvisation, not merely playing behind Jerry’s solos. The Grateful Dead’s m.o. was to play together in a seamless mesh. We coined the term “rock and roll Dixieland,” a phrase we also often use in Ratdog, and that explains a lot because in Dixieland jazz, every instrument plays a crucial role in support of one another. Jerry was quite a lead guitarist but he also often chugged away in support of what someone else was doing. But people focused so much on his leads they often missed that, and frankly he was so far up in the mix that fans often thought his support lines and rhythm parts were lead lines.

A lot of your songs have featured unusual timing and odd chord changes. Do those things come naturally to you, or did you say, “I want to use unconventional structures?”

It goes back to the late Sixties when the Beatles studied with the Maharishi and suddenly there was an explosion of Northern Indian classical music in American popular culture. To even begin to appreciate people like Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar you have to be able to count in their time signatures, where they will take, say, 13 and put it against 18. They call them the “talls” and it’s nothing I ever expect to master because it is very deep. But even attempting to understand it got me started.

I got this little box called a Trinome, which had three levers, a ding and two clicks. You set a quarter-note pulse, then one through 12 for the ding and within that bar there’s another pulse, so you could get things like three going against four. Working with that, I developed a fascination with seven, because it gave me the best of both three and four. For instance, you can play something in 28 where you play several bars in three then make it up by playing a four here and there. It’s odd at first, but once you learn to breathe in seven, it becomes really interesting because it rocks the rhythm by skewing it one direction then very suddenly skewing it the other. And you can play slightly ahead of the beat and get a whole different feel. It’s a lot of fun to play with.

You can hear a lot of similar ideas in Ratdog’s music. It seems that the reason this band is so successful is you’ve embraced the role you always played in the Dead. Some of your earlier side bands took a left turn, consciously going in a very different direction. Is that because this is now your primary artistic outlet?

There is probably something to that because I’m definitely marshaling my resources for this effort. I’ve taken it slower and easier. In some of my previous groups, I was thinking, I have six months so I have to make something happen, and I often tried to force stuff. With Ratdog I am just letting the band and the music know where to go. And it took a while to find the right lineup. We went through several different incarnations until we settled on the right guys. Another reason the record worked is we started recording it, then went on the road where the songs grew up a bunch. So we ditched what we had and started over, working fast and live. It was mostly cut like a jazz record, so you can hear the conversations going back and forth between all of us. That approach even led us to do songs we hadn’t planned on doing, like “Corrina.”

I had no interest in redoing an old Dead song, but at the end of “Two Djinn” the segue just happened. Everyone just started playing “Corrina,” because the connection was so strong. I actually tried to dig in my heels and stop, but everyone ignored me. The segue you hear on record is what actually happened, minus a few bars snipped out as I changed guitars, putting on my Roland guitar synth.

You were the lone guitarist for Ratdog’s first several years. Did that change your approach at all?

Not radically, but it would sometimes become clear that a certain passage needed a featured guitar part, so I had to step away from putting my shoulder to the wheel and do something. I started poking my head out here and there and, much to my surprise, I found that I rather like leading the charge. I do more of that now, though I doubt that in this middle part of my life I am suddenly going to develop into an extended soloist à la Django Reinhardt or Jerry Garcia. Those guys are good at stating a theme, developing it, taking it for a walk in the woods and coming back home. I generally like to stay home. I am really rediscovering the joy of group improvisation and I want to camp out here for a while.

Along those lines, there’s not too much soloing on this record.

No. There is no dominant soloist because the music we’re playing is telling us that we need group improvisation and a weave. One of us will start to play something and someone else will pick it up and finish the idea. It’s the type of thing that only comes from playing together a lot.

T he word on the street is that the entire vault of Grateful Dead music is being digitized to be made available for download. What is the status of this project?

We’re still trying to round up financing for it because it’s going to be an expensive process. There’s no infernal rush. We do have to get to those tapes before they deteriorate but the means of distributing the music over the internet is not yet hi-fi enough to any of our satisfactions. In the meantime, we can and will get started as soon as we get some financing. It will take a while, so we’ll probably do an internet survey of the most popular shows and do those first. The first way we are going to make it available is not going to be via download, but rather made-to-order CDs. You go the web site, click on a show, listen to some of it, and shop until you know what you want and then we’ll burn you a disc. Or if you want every “Dark Star” from ’72-’76 or a disc of all the stuff we did while someone was changing a broken string, we can do that, too.

There are a lot of rumors that this process has caused dissension between Phil Lesh and the rest of you.

No, this is not what has caused the dissension, believe me. My read of the situation, basically, is Phil wants to be the captain of his own ship. If you’re on board with him, that’s great. But don’t argue with him because he won’t have it. That’s all there is to it, really. I guess since having a brush with death [Lesh had a liver transplant in 1998—GW Ed.], he’s come to the realization that he wants to do things his own way with absolutely no compromise and that’s his right.

Over the years most Grateful Dead songs were written as collaborations either between Jerry and Robert Hunter or you and Hunter or John Barlow. A lot of people assumed that you or Jerry wrote the music and the others wrote the lyrics. Now that you clearly co-write all your lyrics, I wonder if that assumption was wrong.

Yes and no. It was exactly that way with Jerry and Hunter and that’s one of the reasons that Hunter didn’t particularly like to work with me. I throw away a lot of stuff and do it myself. On the Barlow songs, I wrote anywhere from a third to a half of the lyrics. There are a few of the songs he wrote entirely himself, most notably “Cassidy,” but most of them were full-fledged lyrical collaborations.

Y ou were always seen as sort of the Dead’s blues guys since you sang most of them. Now you have direct Robert Johnson references on “Bury Me Standing,” the first track on Evening Moods.

Right, Gerrit [Graham, co-writer] and I set out to do that very explicitly. A long time ago I got the notion to bounce flamenco and blues off of each other and see what resulted and I finally did it, with that ham-handed flamenco riff. [laughs] I’m certainly no flamenco guitarist, but I feel that the two idioms are so close they are like brothers, both born and raised in barrooms and whorehouses, driven by six-string guitars largely tuned to “standard” tuning and evocative of evil, smoky imagery.

“Ashes and Glass” seems like a sequel to the great Dead tune “Throwing Stones,” tackling the topic of nuclear apocalypse and lightening it with a child’s rhyme, this time “Mockingbird” instead of “Ring Around the Rosie.”

Yes, I returned to that dire frame of mind. In fact, it was getting more and more dire, so much so that I was about to abandon the song. Then I was bouncing my six-month-old on my knee, singing her “Mockingbird.” She was loving it, so I started making stuff up, just anything that rhymed so as to keep going. And it came to me that was what the song was about, juxtaposing all this dire imagery with the only way you can respond—do what you can and keep going. So you have the pessimism of the verses contrasted with the optimism of the choruses.

You have talked before about the ecstasy of realizing that you are nearing a musical peak. Is that more of a rush than actually hitting the peak?

The exciting part is the anticipation, but the payoff is when you actually become electric in the classical sense. You are no longer flesh and bones. I actually believe that you physically transcend for a while, and if someone fired a bullet at you, it would pass through, because there is nothing there. You are still visible and you are still causing physical things to happen—you’re singing into a microphone, tubes are humming—but you’re not there. You don’t weigh anything. Those are the minutes that I live for. Fortunately, we are hitting those moments more often in Ratdog.

Your mentioning of metaphysical electricity reminds me of a story I’ve heard that you were almost killed at Woodstock by physical, voltage-type electricity.

A very different sort of electricity! [laughs] Yes, that’s true. Our soundman decided that the sound system was woefully inadequate and he was going to set up our P.A. He got the ground plane wrong—real wrong—so anytime Garcia, Phil or I touched our strings, we got 30 or 35 volts, enough to really irritate you. And all hell broke loose if you had the temerity to go anywhere near your microphone while touching your strings. I did so and a blue line about an inch and a half thick flew out, hit me in the mouth, lifted me off my feet and sent me eight or ten feet through the air, crashing into my amplifier. I had a few fuzzy moments and when the birdies went away, I had a fat lip.

If this had been in England, with their higher voltage, I would have been history. As a result of that whole fiasco, the Grateful Dead have been written out of the history of Woodstock. We played so poorly that we wouldn’t allow the footage to be used in the movie or soundtrack album. You try playing with a constant 35-volt shock every time you touch a string.

You took lessons from the great blues fingerpicker Rev. Gary Davis. How did you come to meet him?

Jorma [Kaukonen, Jefferson Airplane guitarist] was a big fan of his and he helped me look him up in Queens. I made my way out there whenever I was in New York. I only got three or four sessions with him before he passed from this mortal coil [in 1972]. He was my main guitar influence, really, and if you listen to his stuff you’ll see that he took it all from piano, too—all of his parts are stride piano playing adapted to guitar. It’s amazing stuff. He had a Bachian sense of music, which transcended any common notion of a bluesman.

You also co-wrote “Eternity” with one of the blues’ greatest writers, Willie Dixon.

That’s right. I went to see him when he played a club near my house and he called me up to jam and, of course I had a great time. Then Rob [Wasserman] suggested we work on a song for his Trios record. We got together in a studio in West Hollywood and kicked some ideas around and agreed to regroup the next day in my hotel room. I had the song’s signature descending riff, which I wrote based on him telling me, “Don’t be going to any of them jazz chords.” He wanted to step slightly out of his bag, which is why he wanted to work with me, but he didn’t want to step too far, so I came up with this Louis Jordan jump-blues style pattern. He slowed it down and we started developing it, and he came up with a chorus and got me singing it with him singing the harmony part. Then we went to separate corners to hammer out our parts and he was jotting down words really fast.

He handed me this piece of paper, filled with simplistic, almost child-like writing and I was really disappointed. He said, “Sing it out loud,” so I started and after two verses and choruses of thinking it rather lame, the eloquent simplicity of the words hit me and my jaw just dropped. I think he read everything I was thinking because he just started laughing and said, “That’s the wisdom of the blues.” That was a big moment for this boy because as far as I’m concerned Willie Dixon was a living fucking saint. I thought that before I met him, and I had every single suspicion confirmed from knowing him for a few years.

Y our best known song, “Sugar Magnolia,” is atypical of most of your work.

That was my take on Southern Rock, and an attempt to do a rock and roll version of a Cajun fiddle tune. We did the Trans Canada Festival Express tour with Delaney and Bonnie and I spent a lot of time hanging out with them and the boys in their band. I loved the way Delaney played rhythm guitar, marked by sliding into A chords. I picked that up and used it in “Sugar Magnolia” as well as in “Monkey See, Monkey Do” and a few other tunes.

At the same time there was an outbreak of Cajun fiddle music, with guys like Doug Kershaw becoming popular. So I tried to throw an overlay of that onto Southern Rock and see what shook out, and the result was “Sugar Magnolia.” The chorus uses a trick straight out of Cajun fiddle tunes, where you go to the four chord, then walk to the four chord of that and back.

And it fit right in with what Garcia and Hunter were writing on American Beauty. Was the outbreak of Americana on that album and Workingman’s Dead a result of the influence of people like Delaney and Bonnie and the Allman Brothers Band?

To a certain extent. We were certainly well aware of those people and we were influenced by anything that came our way. Anything that came within pissing distance of us would be sucked up and incorporated into our music. We sort of forgot our roots during our psychedelic era, but as soon as we stopped taking psychedelics with any absurd regularity and put our feet back on the ground, our love of American music took back over. We osmosed it right up through our systems and it came out our pores and into those songs.

And acoustic roots music was your initial link to Jerry, right?

Absolutely. We formed a jug band [Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions] about a week after we met. That happened on New Year’s Eve, 1964. I was walking through an alley behind the [Palo Alto] music store where I gave guitar lessons with two friends and we heard some banjo music and knew damn well it was Jerry. We went in and he was sitting there waiting for his students. I said, “Man, this is New Year’s Eve, I don’t think you’ll be seeing anyone.” He wasn’t quite ready to give up the ghost, so he said, “Do you guys play? I have the key to the instrument room.” He got some guitars and we ended up playing well into the evening and had enough fun to think about doing something together. The next week we had a jug band and the next year we had a rock and roll band. The rest is pretty well documented.

 So you knew Jerry before that night?

More like I was aware of him. He was a local hero, playing banjo with the Black Mountain Boys, a really hot bluegrass band. For some reason, our jug band took off and became real successful with much less accomplished musicianship. There was some juice behind it that there’s no explaining. I was 16 and had only been playing guitar for a few years, but I knew I was onto something here. Jug bands were big at the time and one thing that really gave us a leg up was that just after we formed, I was at a friend’s house and discovered his folks’ collection of old Bluebird “race record” 78s and it was a treasure trove of obscure down-home blues. There were no reissues then so no one had heard this stuff and that gave us a lot of material which none of the other guys were doing. Then we also discovered Jesse “Lone Cat” Fuller and that gave us the rest of what we needed to be a viable contemporary jug band. Someone came up with a live tape and we just put that out [Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, on Grateful Dead Records], but unfortunately it doesn’t contain many of the songs I’m talking about.

Despite your obvious belief in the potential of online music distribution, you have been an outspoken foe of Napster.

Of course. It’s like Marxism except they forget the “from each” part. It’s not a complete system because it consists of people taking and not giving, and it is therefore doomed to failure. It can really bust stuff up. It can really fuck up American popular musical culture. I argue this point with advocates all the time. I say, “How are musicians going to make a living and let their craft be their livelihood?” They always get squinty eyed and go, “But don’t you see, don’t you see?” They have nothing else to say—and I don’t see, though I wish I did. People pick on Metallica by talking about how rich they are, but it’s not about them or me. I’m a guy who can afford to give it away, but I’m talking about the guys in my band, who need to make a living. I’m talking about me when I was 18 years old living on the street. We couldn’t afford to go on the road. The Grateful Dead had to make a record and get an advance in order to get out there and make our way.

On a more personal level, I have to say that we just made a damn good record and Napster is killing us because we’re square in the middle of that demographic. If we can’t at least make back the money we put into that, we’re going to have to think twice about making a record again. And if I’m in that position, believe me, others are, too.

But the entire history of the Dead, as well as bands from Phish to the Allman Brothers who copied your “allow taping” model of business indicates that the more that is available for free, the more people will be into the band and support you. You’ll sell more tickets. More people will buy the actual releases…

But there’s a huge difference between a third- or fourth-generation cassette tape and a digitally reproduced downloadable version of what is essentially the master recording. Then you don’t have to buy the record unless you want the cover and you can probably get that online, too. It can be really injurious to American musical culture. And it’s not like these guys are Robin Hood. Give me a fucking break. They’re making money hand over fist. Napster is worth millions. Of course, I can’t defend the music industry either. You hear stories of mid-level executives having catered lunches or chefs coming in and preparing them gourmet meals, and someone’s paying for this behavior, too. And the whole business of not being able to get something on the radio if it’s not four minutes long is not good. It’s bad. Real bad. And that’s our music industry as it stands. It’s got to come to somewhere in the middle. I think the net is going to have a huge and hopefully positive effect on music, but the absurd left and the absurd right have to disappear for a meeting in the middle if music is going to survive. Maybe it will even open some people’s minds so they throw off the labels the industry has tried to apply to them—“you’re a metalhead, you like jam bands and you only listen to jazz.” The net could take us back to the late Sixties when you could hear the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane and Igor Stravinsky back to back on the same radio station.In any case, we need the utopian idealists and there always will be people who are only in it for the money. That’s the lexicon of humanity and that’s music. It will sort itself out, but as my friend Bobby Cochran said, “People are going to have to honor what they love.” If you love music enough, support it.

 

This interview appears in my Ebook, Reckoning: Conversations With the Grateful Dead, along with similarly extensive interview with Phil, Phil and Trey, Robert Hunter, Bill Kreutzmann, Warren Haynes, Mark Karan and Steve Kimock. It costs less than a latte. Check it out!