Kenny Greenberg

Songwriter/producer/player Kenny Greenberg is lead guitarist in Kenny Chesney's band.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob Leftstt's podcast. My guest
today is guitarist producer Kenny Greenberg. Kenny, how'd you get
the gig playing on the road with Kenny Chesney?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I got the gig playing with Kenny Chesney because I'd
been playing on his records for a while and we
became friends doing that. It's like when you overdub with
someone and it's just you and the artist in the room.
That's a good way to get to know somebody. And
and then I went and did a tour with Bob Seger,

(00:44):
and I sent him a couple of clips of playing
with Bob, and I think a thing went off in
his head. Oh, he plays live too, And so when
he was going to do a tour in two thy twelve,
he called me and said, hey, one of my guitar
players quit, want to come out and play? And I said, yeah, absolutely,

(01:08):
And also knowing that Bob was winding down. Bob had
told me a couple of times, I think I'm about
to wrap it up, maybe one more, but that's about it.
So I thought, well, I think I'll go play with Kenny.
And it was a That's how I got the gig.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Well, let's back up a step. How'd you get the gig?
Played for Bob.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Seeger playing on his records. I played on like two
or three of his records, and he's just I can't
say enough good things about him. He's just like a
great guy to be around. He's one of those kind
of guys that laughs all the time and he's just
was awesome. And then we cut a couple things where

(01:47):
we cut him kind of live. We had reached windings
on the B three and I think when someone's called
Gypsy and we cut it live RCA studio, everybody in
the room and we stood up and played, and I
think he recognized, oh, he stands up and he can

(02:07):
play live. So he called me up and asked me
to come out and play with him.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Well, how do you feel about going on the road
as opposed to being in Nashville, you know, being in
the studio or losing gigs? What are your feelings?

Speaker 2 (02:22):
I mean, everybody, I'll put it to you this way.
I think fifty you know, twenty years ago, I think
studio players were more concerned about not going on the
road and making sure they kept all the studio gigs.
But the landscape has changed a lot, and most studio

(02:47):
players have some kind of a road gig because the
studio thing is just smaller now. So, I mean, there
are a few exceptions, but I mean I know a
lot of the guys that do are really the top
guys right now. A lot of those guys have road gigs.
And it's also worth noting that, especially in the country sphere,

(03:10):
the road gigs are usually either just Friday and Saturday
or Thursday through Saturday, and then you come back to
Nashville and then you go back out and then you
come back. So a lot of the sessions during the
week you just don't miss. You know, they're still there,
and everybody understands, Oh, you're out playing with Chesney. Wow,
what a cool gig. So we also all have our

(03:33):
mobile rigs in our hotel rooms and they send us
files and we overdub and send them back.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Okay, when we were scheduling this, you said you might
have to cancel if work came through. Is it a
last spinted thing or is this just a busy time.
What's it like in a studio player in Nashville now.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Well, it's just a lot of things come up at
the last minute. And actually I had a couple people
say I might need you either Wednesday or Thursday of
this week, but we're not sure yet. So that's why
I said that. And I'm also you know, is a
full disclosure. I'm not a full time session guy and
really never have. I've always produced records, written songs, played

(04:18):
on the road. So there are guys who are much
busier in the studio than me. I like to do
different things, so I've always I've always done that, you know,
maybe to my detriment. Maybe if I did one thing
it might have been better, but I just really enjoyed
doing different things, so I would have to say that

(04:39):
I'm really not as concerned about losing sessions. And also
the sort of arc of a session player, I'm probably
on the backside of that because of my age. I mean,
I just am.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Well, how did you end up playing on Kenny's Records?
To begin with?

Speaker 2 (04:58):
The way I got into play on Kenny's Records is
his co longtime co producer. His name is Buddy Cannon.
He's it's a wonderful guy, and the I was going
to produce a record for Sony on an artist named
Shelley Fairchild, and they said, man, what if we put
you together with Buddy Cannon, who I'd never met, And

(05:23):
this is in two thousand and early two thousand and three,
and I said, man, Buddy Cannon, I'd love to work
with Buddy Cannon.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Who wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
So we made a record on this artist named Shelley Fairchild,
and Buddy and I hit it off, and he liked
my playing, and probably in the fall, he said, what
doul come and play on this Chesney record that I'm
working on. So I went into a studio and did
one day, and then I did another day, and then

(05:53):
they had me on a tracking day and I was
sort of in the band then, I mean not on
the road in the band, but I was in the
studio band, and we just hit it off right away.
So I was fortunate to have that opportunity.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Now in the ensuing years, when Kenny goes to make
a record, how involved are you in making a record
with Kenny?

Speaker 2 (06:18):
I usually play on the tracking date. The tracking date
for those listeners that don't know, that's when you lay
the foundation. Sometimes it's the whole song. Sometimes it's just
the sort of rhythm track, basic foundation, And I'm usually
there and I'm usually the leader and help arrange the songs.

(06:39):
And but I will say that it's really his thing.
I mean more and more as the years have gone
by and he's become more confident in his record making.
It is really his vision. I mean, he is is
a guy who's like it's like not to digress. But

(07:03):
when you play live with him, it's loose, it's fun.
We jam, songs are extended. He throws out stuff at
the last minute when we're in the studio, especially now,
it's very very much his vision and very controlled, and
this is what I want and this is how I
want it to sound. And then he'll actually sing me

(07:23):
the parts that he wants me to play. So I
will say that it just answers your question. It's I'm
pretty involved in playing. But it is really his vision.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Okay, Well, he say show up in the studio on
Wednesday and then sing you the parts, or will he
send you the material in advance?

Speaker 2 (07:43):
He sends me the songs him or Buddy Cannon send
me the songs a couple of days before, and then
I make a chart and make the Nashville number chart.
And so I've heard the songs and I have an
idea in my head about what everybody ought to play
and maybe what we ought to do. And then we
all get in the room and it's usually a fairly

(08:05):
good sized band, and a lot of the band is
his roadband, because he's got a great band now, so
his road it's a good part of his roadband is
in the studio as well. And we go in and
we listen down to the song and we all hold
our charts and the players and this is standard stuff,
and the players have all heard it for the first time,
and we listen down and Chesney says, I hate what

(08:30):
they're doing on the intro. Do not do that. After
I learned the intro overnight, you know, I got to
learn how to play the intro. I learned the intro.
And he goes, I hate the intro. Don't do that.
So then we'll come up with a new intro, or
we'll just lay a bed and he'll say, I want
to think about the intro. I'm going to come back
to you with my idea when we overdub of what

(08:51):
I think that intro should be. He really likes to
take a basic track and think about what he wants today.
He's very thought and it is really really his vision
of how he wants the songs to be. Whereas when
I first started recording with him, which is sort of

(09:12):
the era of Heman Ways Whiskey and Living in Fast
Forward and some of those kind of stadium rock songs,
it's pretty loose. I mean, we just go in there
and jam and play live solos, and that's kind of
the way those records are. He doesn't do that as
much anymore. He's kind of more thoughtful about how he

(09:36):
wants to do it. And you know, really, for better
or worse, as an artist, he's changing and he's doing
different things, and it's probably a good thing.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Okay. He originally worked with Barry Beckett, famous and Muscle Sholes,
and then he went to work with Buddy. He's been
working Buddy for eons. Now, what's Buddy's special sauce.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Buddy is he is really like he's with Kenny because
Kenny is so hands on and such a song guy
that Buddy just kind of sits at the back of
the room and it doesn't say much and Buddy and
Kenny comes in and goes, Hey, the intro, this is
what I want to do. There's and we start, and

(10:19):
we go and we start to record the song, and
Buddy hits the talk back and he's got this sort
of southern drawl, kind of a slow talking guy, and
he goes like it's too fast, and then and we go, oh,
it's too fast, and he's right, and then we slow
it down and then we start to record it, and
then he'll say he'll say, Kenny, this isn't a great

(10:40):
key for your voice. We need to we need to
change the key. So we'll try and change the key.
So Buddy just sort of direct from the back, and
he doesn't have an ego. He's very cool about stuff.
You can't piss the guy off. He's just gonna sit
back there, and but he has really really great things

(11:01):
to say. That's sort of how he's not a I'll
put it this way. You're not gonna spend hours moving
around microphones on guitar cabinets with Buddy. He doesn't care
about that. He's more of the big picture guy.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Okay. Some people Jimmy Iavin famous for being on the
phone while he's producing records. Rick Rubin, you know, is
constantly telling the band to do things by themselves. Where
he shows up is Buddy there paying attention the whole time.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Absolutely, he's paying attention. He's sitting in the back of
the room. He's actually he's the first guy there and
he's sitting in the back of the room. He's got
an assistant that's always there with him. He is very
much paying attention. He's not on I've never seen him
on the phone, you know, he just sort of sits
back there. And yeah, he's also been making the Willie

(11:57):
Nelson records for a long time. He's he's been making
all those records.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Have you worked with Buddy on anybody else at this one? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (12:07):
I worked on a Willie Nelson record. I worked on
a Jamie Johnson record, a couple other things. He's brought
me into overdub on just on and off. Yeah, I
work with the Willie record I worked on. It was
really fun.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
So what's the style of making a Willie record?

Speaker 2 (12:31):
It was more loose and let's move fast. There was
a lot of people there, a lot of people in
the control room. His bus was parked out back. Everybody
wanted to go on the bus and smoke pot is.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
It was.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
It was a kind of a circus. And but my
great experience with that record. I've played on a couple
of his records, but on the record that Buddy did
we cut on my birthday. We cut got to Serve Somebody,
And so I didn't tell I didn't say it's my

(13:03):
birthday because I didn't want the whole thing where they
give me the cake and you know, so I just
I'm just thinking, this is freaking amazing. I'm playing with Willie.
I can see him in the vocal booth across the studio,
and we're playing got to Serve Somebody, which I love
that song. I mean, it's so and so we're playing
that song. But my story about it is is that

(13:26):
so we do two or three takes and Willie's playing
his guitar the way he plays guitar, and he plays
through this weird old Baldwin amp and it I don't
think there's a ground on the plug, and the radio
station was coming through and they were having trouble with
the amput. But we're cutting the song and his amp's
kind of kind of noisy, but he's playing the way
he plays.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
It's great.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
It's Willie Nelson. So we cut Serve Somebody and we
get into the oultro of the song, and a lot
of times in the studio, on the outro, which is
the end part of song, you can kind of jam
stretch out and they'll edit that out or do what
they want to do, but it's always fun for us
to do. So we're cutting surf somebody. We get to

(14:07):
the end of the song and Willie plays a little
bit and then I answer him, and then he plays
a little bit, and so we're having this conversation and
we're playing and I'm thinking to myself, it's my birthday.
I'm trading licks with Willie. He's playing Trigger, the famous guitar.
This is freaking amazing. And I was so excited and

(14:30):
and and I knew that his part was a little
rough in his amp was making some noises, but who cares,
you know.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
And so.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
I get the record and they replaced it with Jim
Horn on sacks on the outro. So so our little
conversation we had is gone, and they've got this wailing
sax solo, which was really great, you know. I mean,
Jim Horn is he's Jim Horn, you know that played
on all those great records, and it was it was great.

(14:59):
But I was like, oh man, you know, so that's
that's my story from that record.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
I mean, Baldman was a piano maker that made amplifiers
for like ten minutes. At the end of the sixties
early seventies.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
They make this big, tall solid state amplifier called the
Baldwin Exterminator. And if you see Neil Young play, he
has a couple of old Vinage Fender amps. He's got
these pile of amps he plays through live, and in
the middle of it, he's got a Baldwin exterminator and
it has a very particular, weird solid state sound. But

(15:37):
for whatever reason, Willie with his very unusual classical guitar,
gut string guitar, it's got a mic in it. That's
the empty plays through. I think, I mean, I guess
that's the ampies always played through. I don't know, you know,
but that's what he had.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
So he plays the same guitar he plays with live
with a hole in it. That's what he records with.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
That's what he records with, that same guitar, and it
was just it's amazing.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
Let's go back. You talk about creating a chart. Tell
my audience for those who don't know about creating a chart.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
A chart is it's really you know. I think if
you were in a on a string session in la
you would get a transcription with the notes and a
full score that you would read off of, and you
would find the guitar part and play those notes, and
you would read those notes. We don't really do that

(16:36):
in Nashville. What we do is they have a thing
called the number system, and each like, if you're in
the key of C, a C is a one, a
D minor is a two with a with a negative
sign next to it, and you do a little bit
of transcription in the case of where you might notate

(16:58):
above it that you're going to one measure, you're going
to play a one chord and a two minor, but
the two minor starts on the two and and you'll
make a little notation of the notes above it. And
so everybody knows how to read a little bit. But
the reason that my understanding of the reason why the
Nashville number system came into being because country music and

(17:24):
acoustic music uses acoustic instruments. If you change or even
forget about that, if you just change the key, if
you do it once and the singer goes, oh, it's
too high. So you're in the key of D, so
you got so you go down to you go down
to B flat. Well all the all the names of

(17:48):
the chords have changed, but if you use the number system,
it's just the intervals of the chords, so the numbers
stay the same. So you read the same chart. Does
that make sense what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So that's.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
That's And also because guitar players use KPO's, so the
song might be in G, but you may kpo up
three frets and you're playing out of E, and so
you're looking at the guitar and you're playing an E chord,
but it's really a G chord. But if you if
it's just a one, if the song's in the key

(18:22):
of G, it's just a one. No matter where you are,
it's just a it's a It simplifies things and it
makes it easy to adapt and change.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
Let's go back to the road as we're jumping around here.
You know, you talk to a lot of artists. They
love the hour two on stage and the rest of
the time is dreadful. What's it like for you?

Speaker 2 (18:48):
It's you know, I have to say, you know, I
didn't really start to tour. Until I was in my fifties,
I just was always playing club gigs or I would
occasionally do a one off with somebody in a large
hall or something, but I was never really and when
I was really young, I was on the road in
the van, but that's different. I was in my twenties

(19:10):
and that's a whole other thing. But my experience with
Bob c Or We're out for three months, and it
was difficult for me on the days off because it
was my first time doing that, and I didn't enjoy

(19:32):
it was fun being in Pittsburgh for three days in
exploring the city and whatever, but I didn't like playing
a gig having two days off. Playing a gig having
two days off, that was foreign to me because I
hadn't done that in a long time and when I
was a kid on the road playing gigs, we were

(19:53):
played every night. So for me, I didn't really love that,
but I adapted to to it and actually had a
great time because the gigs were just so incredible. I mean,
playing with Bob is just like, this was incredible. It's
a great experience. So it was all new. But then
I went right from that to Chesney, which is you're

(20:16):
either out Friday and Saturday and then you come right back,
or you're out Thursday through Saturday and you come right back.
So it's I really love it.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Okay, So if you go out and come back, everybody
fly on the same plane. Or does can he take
his own transportation?

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Well, he's got his own plane, so and he's got
a full time crew. And so the way it works.
When I first went out with him, he was pretty
separate from us, and we would either take a bus
and the band has her own vie and his organization
is so big, it's like a hundred people. So you

(21:04):
have this army of buses and the band has her
own bus. It's a very comfortable and nice bus. Or
if we were going to the West coast, we'd fly
and we'd fly out Southwest or American or whatever. In
the last four years, since the pandemic, we have a
newer band, and I mean his other band. His old

(21:25):
band was great. It was kind of more of a
for lack of a better word, like a country rock
bar band, which was really fun and there were great guys,
but they were guys he had come up with, but
he was sort of separate from them and they weren't
studio guys, and now the band is more he feels like,

(21:47):
in my mind, I think he feels like we're more
his equals or something. I'm not sure if that's the
right way to say, but what I'm getting around to
saying is that we'll fly on his plane. Some of
the time. He'll call and say, hey, guys, let's it'll
call the band and say, do you guys ride with me?
So we'll jump on the plane and ride to Pittsburgh.

(22:07):
We'll leave it four in the afternoon and get there
at seven, zip over and play the gig, get back
on the plane and be home at one in the morning.
And that's that's a that is a luxury. And so
we do that sometimes and it's great because we have
great conversations and we talk about recording and what we

(22:29):
want to work on, and everybody's in it together. But
then sometimes we're on the bus and I don't mind
the bus. I actually like the bus. I think the
thing I like the least is flying commercial. That's it's
just hard.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Okay. When you do have downtime, how do you entertain yourself?

Speaker 2 (22:53):
I do yoga, I like to work out, and then
I have a traveling pro tools rig and whatever records
that I'm working on, or songs that I'm writing, or
whatever i'm doing. I'll set up my stuff in my
hotel room and work. And there's something about being in

(23:15):
a hotel room where I'm not distracted. I'm not going
to take a break and go up and hang out
with my wife or run up to the store or something.
I'm just there. I get a lot of work done
and actually really like that. And the other guys in
the band all do the same thing. We all do
the same thing. We're all in our rooms with our
pro tools, rigs, And I think if you talk to

(23:37):
most bands on the road, a lot of the guys
will say, yep, I've got my ableton or my logic
or whatever they use. It's on my laptop and I'm
in my room and I'm working on stuff. So there's
a lot they can do during the day.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Well, in the old days, if you're doing twenty six
dates in thirty days, you were burnt crisp on both ends,
you know, So when you want to work today, you know,
are you awake enough for being a musician? You can
run on empty? How does it work?

Speaker 2 (24:12):
I go to bed early. I'm gonna go to bed.
And really, I almost hate to say this, it's almost embarrassing,
but the when we play and we get done in eleven,
we play like from nine to eleven, kind of sort
of somewhere in there, and then by the time you're
back at your hotel room or whatever you're doing, it's midnight.

(24:34):
I mean, that's usually the latest time ever up. And
I still get up early, but most of the time
I go to bed early, and I get up really early,
and I get a lot done in the morning. That's
and if I need to, I take a nap in
the afternoon.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Okay, you know, Canny sometimes play stadiums, sometimes play sheds,
as big a building as he wants. You're there, you're performing,
and it is a perform it's in front of fifty
thousand people. How do you calm down in an hour
such a you can go to sleep.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
I don't know how to answer that, and I don't
really ever think about it. There's something about playing his gig,
and it's kind of different than other gigs. I don't
know how to answer this exactly. It's I'm in it's exciting,

(25:29):
and you run around and there's tons of people and
it's very very loud, you know, and it's but it's
there's this weird I'm kind of relaxed doing it. I
enjoy it so much. And if I'm having a good night,
I do this mindfulness. It's the meditation that I do.

(25:52):
And if I'm having a good night, I can get
into mindfulness while I'm playing, and I just sort of
stop thinking and just play, and it's this very relaxing
and I just look out at all the people and
all the lights, and I'm a side man. I'm over
on the side, even though I get to step out
and plate, so all those and stuff, I'm a side man,

(26:14):
and so I can sort of watch the world from
my little side of the stage and look at all
the people and all the crazy shit they're doing. Or
if we're outdoors the lights at a festival, you know,
and if I'm in a good place, which isn't every night,
but when i am, I get into this mindfulness thing

(26:38):
where I just play and that's a really great place
to be. And then when I get done, I'm not
I'm not stressed or i'm not jazzed. I'm just sort
of relaxed. And it's easy for me to either get
on the bus. I'm usually the first one to sleep
on the bus. I'm also way older than everybody else,

(27:02):
but it's like I can.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
I could just get.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
On the bus, have a whatever, coconut water because I
don't drink, and go to sleep.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
Tell me more about mindfulness and how you get in
that zone.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
It's it's a discipline and I move in and out
of it, and it's like a meditation practice and it's
a Buddhist thing that it started that way. But there's
tons of mindfulness apps, Like Sam Harris has a great app.
I'm a big Sam Harris fan, and he has a
daily meditation that's very mindfulness based. And there's also ten

(27:48):
percent Happier, which is also a great app. And that
the guy that has that app is the guy that
was a he was a newscaster. I can't remember his name,
but it's his app. And you just try to stop
your mind from going on the treadmill and thinking about

(28:08):
what I gotta do tomorrow, what just happened, what do
I regret, what do I wish happen? You know, you
just sort of let that go and I find that
I play my best when I stopped thinking and there's
a there's a mindfulness expert named George Mumford. Have you
ever heard of him? He no, he has a book
out and he was he's a sports guy and he

(28:32):
with Michael Jordan was the first guy I did it
with was Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan's thing on the court
was mindfulness and talked to him by George Mumford. And
so what he did was it was the same thing
where you stop thinking, you forget about the people out there.

(28:53):
I mean they're still there and you still see him,
but you just let go and you play your best.
And he also worked with Kobe and a couple of
other people, but he was a he works with sports
people and gets them. It's sort of a way to
unstress and to play their best. So I find in

(29:15):
playing music as far as performing and actually in the
studio sometimes too, if I can shut off the noise
and just and it doesn't always work. There's some days
where you just you can't shut it off. You know,
there's stuff you're thinking about, or you got to do
something tomorrow and you're stuck thinking about it. But if
I or are you thinking about yourself?

Speaker 1 (29:36):
Do they like me?

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Do they not? Like me. Do they like what I played?
Do they not like what I played?

Speaker 1 (29:41):
You know?

Speaker 2 (29:41):
But if you can stop that and just let go,
you're still aware. I play my best that way, So
playing gigs, I play my best when I do that.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
Okay, how do you avoid making mistakes when you're playing live?

Speaker 2 (30:05):
Practice? For me, I'm a big practicer. I get up
in the morning and I practice every morning. And if
I I mean, once you're out on two and you've
played songs a bunch, you don't have to practice the
songs as much. But for me to avoid to get
my hands to do what my brain is thinking, I

(30:28):
have to practice. It's like a physical thing. Some people
don't have to. I absolutely have to. So for me,
I get up in the morning and I practice, and
I get my hands going, and then like for instance,
Friday night, tonight Night's Wednesday Friday. I'm playing with Pat mcgloughlin.

(30:49):
I'm not sure if you know who he is. Yes,
if you ever get a chance to see him play live,
it's the greatest. He's amazing to play with. But it's
for me. It's a lot of playing. And he likes
me to play a lot, and he'll send me I'll
probably get it tonight or tomorrow. He'll send me an
MP three and say, here's the new songs I just

(31:11):
wrote I want to do, so I have to learn
those songs. Or sometimes I'll also say sometimes we get
there and he just starts playing new songs and we
follow him. He's a great bandleader and so but what
I'm getting around saying is that the next couple days
I'll work on playing his songs. Even though it's just

(31:34):
a club gig, it's not being recorded. No one cares.
It's a club gig. You know, there'll be a lot
of people there, but playing at this club called Third
and Lindsley. And but for me to really enjoy myself
and to be able to relax and play great, I
have to practice and learn what I'm going to do,

(31:58):
and then I make less mistakes. I still might make
a few mistakes. I mean, that's just going to happen.
But yep, that's what I do.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
Okay, when you're on the road with Kenny, how many musicians,
backup singers, how many performers?

Speaker 2 (32:13):
We have a six person band and there is drummer,
a bass player. We have this female bass player named
Harmony Kelly who's just freaking great. She's like the crowd favorite.
And then the keyboard player, Wyatt Beard, he's the band
leader and he sings all the backgrounds and actually on

(32:37):
the record sings all the backgrounds. He's a great background singer.
And then there are three guitar players and one guy
sort of is the guy. Well, actually the other two
guitar players both play like well. One guitar players are

(32:58):
great banjo player. He'll do all the banjo stuff and
all the mandolin stuff, but he plays and he plays
a lot of acoustic guitar. And then the guy that
stands next to me, John Conley, he plays fiddle, a
little bit of mandolin, acoustic and electric. And then I

(33:21):
used to play a lot of acoustic and and electric.
I'm kind of more doing just electric playing now I
mostly do that. And so there's it's a six person band.
That's kind of how it works.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
So if you're going to go on the road and
this is a well oiled machine, how far in advance
do you start to rehearse.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Well, i'll tell you about this year. We're going to
do the Sphere again, So we're going to rehearse starting
in March. We'll do about a week and a half
and we'll that first week will just makes you our
sounds are good. Our front of house guy, Robert Scovil,

(34:04):
who's like the famous front of house guy that was
Tom Petty's guy for a long time. He's really great.
He'll be there, we'll get our sounds. We'll maybe change
some things this year for our sound and so we'll
do that for the first week and then we'll get
so that'll be like a week and a half in March,

(34:26):
and then in April we'll probably do two weeks of
rehearsal and we'll learn all the new stuff that we're
going to do, all the changes that we're going to make.
And I think we're playing a couple of festivals at
the end of April, and then May and June we'll
be at the Sphere and we'll do probably a week

(34:49):
on a sound stage in Las Vegas that has this
mini sphere thing technology where it's similar and it has
the surround speakers so they can get the same on
going and we'll spend you know, maybe four or five
days there and then we'll be in and we'll start playing.
But I also will say that Kenny does not like

(35:11):
to rehearse, and I don't think he'll mind me saying this,
and we'll so. Rehearsing with him is a great gig
because you get he'll book you for the week and
we'll do Monday and Tuesday and we'll run through stuff
and he'll go, man, you guys sound great. He said,

(35:33):
let's stick the rest of the week off. What do
you think and we'll go.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Sounds good to us.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
He does not like to rehearse this. It's funny because
he's so meticulous about everything else in the video and
the lights and the recording. He just sort of leaves
the live thing up to us as long as we
don't take advantage of that. You know, if you take
advantage of it, we're gonna hear about it.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
But you know, yeah, okay, Kenny has a lot of
production forgetting this. If you're just going out at a
normal summer, do you then go to Pennsylvania or some
other place to rehearse with all the production.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
For about a week. Yeah, And usually in my experience,
we go to Tampa. I've done this two or three
times with him. We did one time in Nashville. We
went to Jacksonville one time, but he kind of likes
the water and likes having his boat nearby. So we go.
We going down to Tampa and and we rehearse for

(36:33):
a week and that's really fun. I mean, you're the
tours are about to start. Everybody's super stoked and excited. You
meet the new crew people, and there's a lot of dinners,
and everybody hangs out and there's a real I think
a lot of big road artists would tell you that

(36:57):
there's a culture and a family to their to their
road thing where everybody hangs out and you and with
Kenny's thing, because it's in a stadium, they have this
whole thing set up with a bar in a grill
backstage and they're grilling, you know, fresh seafood and it's

(37:20):
pretty fun.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
So what was your experience playing the Sphere.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
My experience playing the Sphere was I really really enjoyed
the setup and we did I'm in my studio right now.
You can see it's a studio we're in, and we
did some of the content here at my place, which
would be the music before the show starts and as

(37:48):
the show starts, and some in between song stuff. So
I got to see some of the content. It was
exciting coming up with sort of cinematic sounds to start
the show, and so we did that in my studio
and I loved all that. That was great. I'm really
into doing music for film and TV now, so this

(38:09):
is sort of a parallel to that, and that was
really good. And I really enjoyed the first week at
the sound stage where we dialed in and we changed
the arrangements and we're trying new things. Everybody's super excited.

(38:30):
We're having a great time. And the first couple of shows,
it's kind of amazing being in there. I mean, it
sounds really great in there, and you know, you see
the whole you know, the three sixty spectacle of it.
And I also mentioned, especially in light of the past

(38:51):
few weeks, is that for this past week, is that
while we were at the sound stage, the Dead was
doing their their last set of dates and we had
passes to get into the sphere, so I went and
saw the Dead a couple times, which was just absolutely fantastic.

(39:11):
I can't say enough good things about what a great
band they had become, you know, sort of a new
I've heard you mentioned it in your email. It was
kind of a it's a different thing now, but it's
and they're tight in a different way that they weren't
tight before. And also the whole culture of the dead
looking at all the people, and I just I really

(39:33):
loved it so so I enjoyed that week, and the
first couple of shows were great, and then after that
it was because we had the floor open and the
people were down on the floor. It was just like
a regular Kenny Chesney show. It was not like I
heard that Vince Gill has this famous quote that everybody

(39:53):
I've heard ad nauseum where he says, it's the most
amount of people I've played for that weren't watching me.
And I did not have that experience. I felt like
it was pretty normal. It was kind of like a
regular big gig and it was exciting and the people

(40:16):
were very excited at the front to see all that
was going on, but they were watching us too. And
but then being stuck in Las Vegas for another six weeks,
you know, yeah, I don't drink or gamble, and it
was like one hundred and seventeen degrees out and I

(40:38):
don't really love Las Vegas. It's kind of a dark,
dark place.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
I'm with you on that. When you're on stage with
the band. You know with Kenny's band, you know most
of the people there, they know the hits, they may
know more. They're just thrilled to be there. But the

(41:04):
what degreed does the band lock in certain nights and
it's better certain nights the other nights? And when do
you feel that? And when do you feel it?

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Mesh, I think it's inevitable that every night isn't perfect.
And part of the beauty and the magic and the
mystery of music is it's always different. And we play
through two amplifiers, We play loud guitars through two amplifiers,
and they sound different. They sound different every night, especially

(41:35):
when you travel that they sound different. And I think
that's a good thing. And it's not always great, But
this particular band is just it's kind of a special
group of people. We've just discovered. This band came together

(41:55):
at the end of the pandemic quick aside and once
again not to guest any aspersions on the guys that
aren't in the band anymore. Two of the band members
would not wear a mask or get tested or any
of that kind of stuff. So when we all started
to go back out in twenty twenty two. You had

(42:18):
to you had to do that, and they refused to
do it, couldn't so, and it was an opportunity to
have a new band, which is probably and they were great,
they were great players, but it was probably time to
have a new band. This is an exceptional band. And
we also record on our own and have a record

(42:39):
out that gets played on No Shoes Radio, and we're
in the process of recording a second record. So yeah,
we're and what is that bill as the name of
the band is Rosie and the Revival, and the reason
it's part of the reason it's called that is we
At one point he wanted to do a whole lot Rosie,

(43:01):
which is a ac DC song, and so our bass player,
Harmony Kelly, she can really soul shout and she can
sing really high, so she could sing that's not Bond Scott,
that's the other guy whatever his name is. It's that guy.
It sing but he sings really high, so she could

(43:22):
do that. So we we we did that song and
we rehearsed it at a sound check and Robert Scovil
was recording all the soundchecks so we could check our
parts and everything, and he made a little mix of

(43:44):
that and we listened back to it and went like,
holy shit, just sounds amazing. So on our record is
the first time we played that our sound check our
that's on the record, so that's hence the name. So
so she's kind of Rosie, but she doesn't sing all
the songs, and so then we did. So then through
the rest of that tour, we did we would record

(44:08):
our sound checks. We did a Tom Petty song, we
did a song by the Stones, and we did a
meters instrumental. So I in my studio, I kind of
cobbled that together and then I also write songs, and
a couple of the other people in the band write songs.
So we came to my studio, we recorded those songs

(44:28):
and we really liked it. We played it for Kenny.
He loved it, and so I just we came up
with the idea to call the record sound checks and
tape decks, which is apropos of what of what of
what we did? And so yeah, that's out and it's gotten.
You know, it's not like a huge hit record or anything,

(44:49):
but for us, it's been great. And he'll we'll play
a gig and he'll have us do one of our
songs on the gig. You know, he's very gracious in
that way.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
So how much equipment? What equipment do you bring on
the road?

Speaker 2 (45:02):
I mean the overall thing is huge. I mean it's
a stadium gig. So but I like to play through
a Marshall amplifier and the other two guitar players they
do a lot of switching of instruments, and they do

(45:25):
there's this sort of thing that guitar players do now
where they play a lot of different guitars. Like if
you go see whoever, they're changing guitar every song. I
kind of bugs me. And when I when I.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
See like.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
A clip of Exile on Main Street that tour, Keith
is playing a strat the whole night. So I have
this firebird guitar and unless it's in a weird tuning
or I have to switch guitars or play a baritone guitar,
which is a low tuned guitar, I just play a
fire through a Marshall and my setup is is pretty simple.

(46:05):
I have amps off stage that are miked.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
So where'd you grow up?

Speaker 2 (46:11):
I grew up in Cleveland and moved to Louisville in
the sixth grade and moved to Nashville right when I
turned twenty one.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Okay, so did you play music before the Beatles or
was more you saw the Beatles and you got to
pick up.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
I saw the Beatles in the Hall deal, the standard deal.
But I also around that time heard I heard the
Beatles and loved that, and I didn't really play. And
then I heard of Jimmy Hendrick's record, like when I
was in grade school, and that was it. I was it,
and then I had to get a guitar, and then
I just I didn't. I just played in your typical

(46:49):
garage band, maybe at a high school dance or something
like that.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
What'd your parents do for a living?

Speaker 2 (46:57):
My parents are in Cleveland. We grew up in this
sort of working class, middle class area and my dad
was an engineer, a mechanical engineer. My mom was just
a housewife. And like when I was young, I would

(47:18):
say we were working class. Then as my dad started
to do better, we were middle class, you know.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
And how many kids in the family.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
There's three. There's three of us. I'm I'm the youngest,
and two brothers. And it's also interesting that in Cleveland
it was an entirely Jewish part of town where there
was nobody that wasn't one of us. We're all Jews
living in this area. And looking back on that, that

(47:51):
was a really great thing. The whole ethnic of the
northern ethnic culture.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
That was that was good. So what happened to your
two brothers? How did their lives play out?

Speaker 2 (48:04):
My next oldest brother who I'm very very close to,
that's a couple of years older than me. He's a
therapist and he's in Santa Rosa above San Francisco. And
then my oldest brother, who's a good bit older I'm
not very close with. He was a classical musician, but

(48:25):
never really did that well and he got into sales
and then his life just sort of fell apart and
he's had a lot of health problems.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Well, if he's a classical musician, sounds like there was
a lot of music in the home growing up.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
There was. Yeah, there was a lot, Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
And did your parents make you take piano lessons?

Speaker 2 (48:48):
No, but I played trombone and they got me trombone lessons.
They didn't like the guitar thing very much. They sort
of discouraged that. But I enjoyed trombone and play in
the youth orchestra. I played in the band and I
played cello in the orchestra, so I was always very
involved in those things, and my parents were very much

(49:11):
behind that, but they didn't like the thing of playing
in garage bands and loud. I had a amp and
a guitar in my room and I blasted really loud
and play along to Hendricks and Cream and you know
those kind of records. Then they were not into that
too much.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Well, if you play the trombone in the cello, are
you the kind of guy who can pick up anything
and figure out how to play it. No, I'm not.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
I have to practice and work at everything. I also
play steel guitar, and I love playing steel guitar. I'm
not really great at it because I don't play it enough,
but I have to really work at something. And I
played bass, so on a lot of the things that
I record here at my studio, I play bass. I
play guitar. I can eke out a key part, you know,

(50:01):
just sort of get a sound and play some chords
because I know the notes. But I'm not really a
keyboard player. Yep, that's what I do.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
And what kind of kid were you? Were? You good?
In school. Did you play spoards? Were a loaner? Did
you have friends?

Speaker 2 (50:15):
I was kind of a loaner. Our family was a
very dysfunctional family, and we once we grew up in
I mean, we didn't know this as kids, but once
we grew up, especially when my brother is a therapist,
we realized that my dad was on the autism spectrum,
probably a little closer to Asperger's, but he was. He was,

(50:39):
And so he was this guy that I kind of
didn't know. He was a guy that was around, but
I didn't. I had no relationship none with him, and
my mom was in the hospital all the time. So
we kind of raised ourselves. I didn't have any I mean,
I can tell you to an extreme amount, I had

(50:59):
zero parental supervision in any way whatsoever. There's just I
mean I did. I could come and go as I please.
I could stay all night and show up the next day.
And it's kind of weird, you know, so, and that's
probably not the best way to grow up.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
Why was your mother in the hospital.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
She just had all kinds of health issues and she
was we also learned we learned this out actually late
in her life. She was adopted and had a very
rough start, and she was just a really messed up person,
like a very angry, messed up person. And once again

(51:42):
I just sort of there was these people that I
lived in the same house with them, but I did
not really have a relationship with them, and so music
was my escape.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
You know.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
I was grateful to have that. That's kind of how
I escaped.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
So you live in outside Cleveland, you move moved to Louisville.
How is that different?

Speaker 2 (52:04):
It was night and day because my dad had gotten
a better job and we lived in the suburbs and
there were no Jews, and so.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
It was it was weird.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
It was a little weird, but you know, I in
junior high school. In high school, I had some really
good friends and I played in some bands, but I
also got in a lot of trouble and I got
into drugs, and it was sort of I was just
sort of the trying to figure myself out. And because

(52:38):
I didn't have any supervision, I did some things I
shouldn't have done and was around some people I shouldn't
have been around. I actually got arrested a couple of times,
and yeah, so it was but actually my I had
one really really great friend named Jeff Sipperman, who was
Jewish as well. We were the two Jewish kids at

(53:00):
our school. There's probably a couple others, but as far
as I can remember, it was the two of us,
and we both moved to Nashville together. He played bass,
So we moved together to Nashville to seek our fame
and fortune at the ripe age of twenty one or
twenty I guess I was just turning twenty one my moved.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Okay, before we get there, are you playing in bands
in high school?

Speaker 2 (53:27):
I'm playing in like garages and rehearsing and basements. Yeah,
I'm sort of doing it and sort of kind of
doing it, but not really. I mean, I would have
a guitar. Then I wouldn't have a guitar. Then I
would have a guitar, and I'd been playing trombone and.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
So sort of, yeah, what point did the bell go off?
I want to do this for a living.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
I went to college for a year and I always
got really good grades, and I got an academic scholarship
and to where to Bradley, to Bradley University, and I
wasn't in the music program, but I took a improvisational
music course for at that time was an unusual thing

(54:21):
to have. And I had my guitar and amplifier at
the school in my trombone, and the music teacher was.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
Really great, and.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
There's a couple of different people. There wasn't a specific
person like a mentor or anything like that, but they
really encouraged me. And what I realized is that I
didn't want to be in college, that I wanted to play.
And so I moved back to Nashville and got a
gig in a Holiday Inn lounge band.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
Wait wait, wait, back to Nashville or Louisville.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
I'm sorry, I met.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
I moved back to.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
Louisville and I lived at my girlfriend's house and her
parents were splitting up and no one was ever there.
So I was living at my girlfriend's house. I was
like eighteen, and I got a gig and a Holiday
Inn band, and once again, my best friend Jeff was
playing bass, and we had this this lounge gig and

(55:27):
we were getting paid like three hundred dollars a week
to play and we're like, this is amazing and so
and we just were having a ball.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
And so.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
That's when I started to think I had quit college
and I was practicing all day long and trying to
learn new things, and we met there. There was a
showcase bar in Louisville called the Lemon Tree and they
had like touring bands would play there, and we saw

(56:02):
this kind of outlaw country band play and we went
and we would go there because they would play later
than we played, and we would go there and see
who was playing. And there was this one band playing
there and the drummer, who's this very friendly guy, were
talking to him and saying, hey, we playing a holiday
inn band, and he said, you guys need to move
to Nashville. This band was from Nashville, and the drummer

(56:25):
was saying, you guys, what are you doing up here?
This is the wrong place to be. So we actually
went down for a weekend when I was twenty and
stayed at his house and went to a couple of
clubs in Nashville and he sort of took us around
and we said, that's it, We're coming to Nashville. So

(56:46):
we came back to Louisville, gave our two weeks notice,
put all of our stuff in my car, and this drummer,
Rich Kallus, this artist he was playing with, had a
single out and they were going to go on the road,
and his wife was six months pregnant, and he said,

(57:08):
you guys can save my house for free. So someone
was there with my wife, so she's not there by herself.
And so Jeff and I looked at each other and said,
this is.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
This is it.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
We got it. We got a way to go. So
we loaded up our car and on February second, nineteen seventy.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
Eight, we moved to Nashville. A couple of questions. You
mentioned Jimmy Hendricks, why I realized the opportunities came up,
but you didn't think of moving to LA I mean
in the seventies, Nashville, you know, was very country, not
like today where it's influenced by rock and roll.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
I think to be really well, there's there's two reasons.
We loved the whole outlaw movement. Like we love Johnny Paycheck.
We're really in it. And this was before take this
job and Shove it his Like earlier records we thought
they were just great. The Whalen record, Dreaming My Dreams
and Rambling Man to Us. Those records were more rock.

(58:15):
And this is like nineteen seventy seven, nineteen seventy eight,
to us, those records were more rock and roll than
like Kansas. There was this rawness to that, and there
was the guitar, the way it sounded, and in particular,
there's a Hank Junior song called Feeling Better and it's

(58:37):
actually Reggie Young on guitar. It's Reggie Young and Whalen
on guitar and something about that song. It was country,
but it had this raw it was kind of the blues.
I don't know that. I think that song came out
maybe in seventy seven, and that was our song. We

(58:57):
heard that song like that is the most bad ass
shit I've ever heard. Said they're making it in Nashville.
Let's go to Nashville. And on the other side of it,
you know, to be honest, is that New York and
LA were intimidating. They were far away, and Nashville was
one hundred and fifty miles away, and we had a
free place to stay. So I really didn't have a plan.

(59:20):
It just seemed the next best thing. I didn't have
any kind.

Speaker 1 (59:23):
Of like looking into the future.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
I had no freaking idea what I was going to do.
We just we just moved there.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
Okay, those records you mentioned the Outlaw country records. At
that time, I'm living in LA. We don't even have
a station that's playing country when I would drive cross
country when I lived on the East coast. Maybe if
you were in the hinter leands, you know, there'd be
an AM station you're you know, turning the value to
hear that. So what did you get exposed to this stuff?

(59:56):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
I think because we had this. We were playing with
this lounge singer who was into country music, and we
played kind of more. We played some Whalen and we
played some whatever was of the day, good hearted Woman,

(01:00:22):
some of those Willies songs, and we just so we
found those records and we just liked it. I mean,
I don't really know the answer to that question. It's
a good question to ask. I think we just sort
of discovered that. I would also say my friend Jeff,
he was this very, very bright guy who sadly enough

(01:00:45):
was an addict and ended up it killed them. But
he was just this really bright guy and he just
found these records. So we found these early Haggard records,
and the guitar playing on those early Haggard record they're amazing.
And I just listened and it was so kind of
raw and funky sound, and I just liked it so

(01:01:09):
And it's funny because I'm not a great country guitar player.
I'm really more of a blues guitar player. But there's
something about those records that I liked, and I just thought, Okay,
so Nashville is really close. We're just going to go
down there with no plan. I have any plan.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
Okay. Would your parents see about you dropping out of college?

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
They were not happy about it, but typical of my parents,
they just sort of didn't say much about it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
You were living on your own money, You weren't asking
for any money, or were you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
I was totally on my own. I've pretty much always
been on my own. I got a scholarship for college,
an academic scholarship. They didn't have to pay for anything.
And when I moved to Nashville, I mean when I
moved back to Louisville, I got a job at this
life like home depot type place, and I found an

(01:02:03):
apartment that was I think it was one hundred and
twenty five a month, and I had a job that
I could walk to and then I got a car
soon after that for like no money, almost I bought
an old car and so I was just on my own. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
Okay, So now you show up in Nashville. You're babysitting
the pregnant. Wait, what do you do? You don't know anybody.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Well, here's what happened. I've told the story a bunch
of times, and this is I mean, this is what happened.
So we drive in my car on February second. We
drive to Nashville, and we have a place to stay,
and we go there and the wife of rich Sharon,
Sharon callus. She's there. She's got a room set up

(01:03:03):
with a couple of mattresses that me and Jeff can
stay in. And we each had like our little funky suitcase.
We dropped it off, but I had my amp in
my car. And as we were driving to Sharon's house,
we heard there's a bar that had twenty five cent beer,

(01:03:24):
and we said, this is our first night in Nashville,
let's go celebrate. And it was called the Long Branch Saloon.
And so we go to the Long Branch Saloon is
twenty five sent beer and we go in there and
there's a guy like on a construction palette that you know,
you would stack bags of I don't know, feed or whatever.

(01:03:48):
He's on there with his electric guitarists little pa playing
the blues. And I'm always been a blues nerd. So
he's in there playing and I just went up to
him and his name was Bobby Bradford. And I went
up to him and I said, we just moved to town.
We have our guitars in the car. Can we play
with you? He said, bring them on in. So we

(01:04:11):
got our I got my amp out of the trunk,
Jeff had his bass, he plugged it into the PA.
I got my guitar and we played with Bobby. He
loved it, and he said, I've been looking for guys
that like the blues. And so he had a gig
there on Monday nights, and he had a Wednesday night

(01:04:31):
at this Vanderbilt bar called the Villager. And so literally
the night we got there, we had two nights a
week of gigs. And then this thing happened where we
just became the Vanderbilt band, like right away and right away,

(01:04:54):
and then we added dates and we would play frat parties.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
And this is with Bobby Bradford with who.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
This is with Bobby Bradford. This happened in the space
of about six weeks. Okay, it just I don't I mean,
I'm telling you this is I tell the story and
I think about it going like this is impossible, but
this is what happened. It's like it was this wonderful,
amazing thing where all of a sudden it was packed
every night we played, and it was Vanderbilt Kids. And

(01:05:23):
Bobby was a biker and he was in his thirties
and so he had and he was affiliated with I
don't remember the name of the biker club, but one
of the where they would wear the jackets, you know, right,
and with their names on the back of it, and
like the Fortune Seekers. I don't I can't remember the
name of it. And so those guys would all show up.

(01:05:46):
So we would play at the Villager and it would
be wall to wall with these club bikers and Van
Dey Preppy's students, and it just became a scene. And
so then Bobby Bradford was in the process of leasing
this like funky boat house on the outskirts of town,

(01:06:08):
and he made that into his blues club and they
had a place to live in the back. And this
was about June, so we got there in February. This
is in June. He leases the club. Me and Jeff
move into the back of this bar, and we're playing
five nights a week at this bar. And although he
had let we advertise it at Vanderbilt, so here comes

(01:06:32):
all the Vanderbilt students and the bikers, and I've got
a five night a week gig. That is how I
got started.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
Okay, at that point, what was the dream, Bob? You know?

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Man, I don't know, because I felt like I would
regularly think what am I doing here? Or people would
say to me, what are you doing here? You're like
a rock guitar player. Why are you well? You know,
I would go like, I don't know. I'm in this
blues band and everybody likes us, and I'm twenty one
years old. I don't know what I'm doing. And the

(01:07:12):
and we ended up having a quote unquote manager, and
we took a church bus and converted it and put
our ants in and played all around the South. We
had a little bit of a following. It was not
really a great band, it was, but it was a
great experience. And I don't know what I was doing.

(01:07:36):
But what ended up happening is that Bobby wisely, in
the early part of the week he would have songwriters
come play, like where they do the guitar poll, and
they'd be in a circle and it was a place
for them to come play. So I would do the
exact same thing where I would say, Hey, I play

(01:07:59):
in the week on I'm in the house band for
the weekends. Can I come back you up? And you know,
a songwriter would say, yeah, back me up. And so
the eventuality of that would be that one of those
songwriters would say, I'm going into the studio to make
a demo tape of my songs. Why don't you come play?
I'll pay you forty dollars And it's like, incredible, I

(01:08:21):
get to go to the studio. So that's how I
got into the studios.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
So what ended up happening with Jeff.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
What ended up happening with Jeff is we did about
a year hit that bar, maybe a year and a half,
and then it was just a disaster of a business
and you could see that it was not going to
work out. And Bobby was into drugs and selling drugs,
and Jeff, who was from a well to do family

(01:08:53):
and he got in with the biker crowd and started
shooting dough. And once he started shooting dope, he became
addicted and I would pick him up for gigs and
I would go into the house and they'd all be
half passed out with the needles, and it was a drag.

(01:09:14):
And he went to prison because he got caught selling
heroin or writing fake prescriptions. He went to prison twice.
One time got caught with heroin, the other time he
was writing fake scripts. He got out the second time
and immediately went and shot dope and overdosed and died.

(01:09:35):
Very sad.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Wow, that's a sad story.

Speaker 3 (01:09:42):
Yeah, he was my mate.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
Jumping back, you're working with songwriters in the studio? What's
the step after that?

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
That went on for a long for I mean I
was not I did not immediately get into being a
session player. It was really that I was in this
band and I would occasionally go into the studio with songwriters.
But maybe I had a tiny bit of a reputation.

(01:10:12):
But what happened is a couple of years after the
Bobby Bradford Blues Band, there were other bands around town.
There's this really great songwriter named Dave One who has
since passed away, and he had a hot band around town,

(01:10:34):
and I started playing with his band. And there was
a singer named Jimmy Hall who was in Wetwillie and
he moved to Nashville and he was playing gigs around.
So I found myself before I was a session guy.
I found myself being the guy that played in five
different bands. I was like twenty three, you know, I

(01:10:55):
played in a bunch of different bands. I was just
around town. So then Dave One would get a chance
to make another record, and he had a band called
the x Rays, and this writer named Don Schlitz who
wrote The Gambler. He produced that record, and I got

(01:11:16):
to play on the record, and I met Don and
then played on some stuff for Don, and then met
all the people from the publishing company he was with
and then played with them. And then I played with
three or four of the other bands I was in.
Somebody would go in and record, and I would show
up and record, but I was very much on the
outside of the session. It was still very much of

(01:11:38):
a good old boy kind of a closed thing. But eventually,
you know, or occasionally I would get called for something,
or I'd play on a songwriter's song, and that an
artist would cut that and the producer would say who's

(01:11:59):
playing that guitar? And they would the song and say, well,
say it was me, and I would be invited to
come over dub or track on that song. And that's
kind of how I made my way into the session scene.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
Well, at what point did it turn the corner?

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
It turned the corner when I was in this band.
Two things happened. I got into this band. It was
a blues band called the Kingsnakes and we would play
at the Bluebird every Monday night. And the drummer was
James Stroud, who was a famous record producer and drummer

(01:12:41):
from Muscle Shoals and hear it's from Jackson actually, but
was in the Muscle Shoals scene. And the famous studio
player Glenn Wharf was on bass. And so we'd play
every Monday night and we made a little record and
that band became the band to see. Everybody would everybody

(01:13:04):
who was in town would be there on Monday night,
from you know, whoever, from Bonnie Rait to whoever they
somebody was in town, they would be there at see
us play. And so that and then I produced a
couple of demos on an artist named Alison Moore, and

(01:13:24):
she got a record deal on MCA and Tony Brown
signed her. And I made that record and played all
the guitars on it, and so Tony started to use me.
So right about the mid and late nineties, those two
things happened and I found myself playing on a lot

(01:13:45):
of records.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
Okay, how did you meet Alison Moore? And how did
you say? I'm the guy that produced the demo?

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):
I met Alison Moore because I had right before that,
I had There's this guy named Wally Wilson. I know
I'm probably saying all these names.

Speaker 4 (01:14:06):
To your little I know the audience can do the
research in it. Yeah, yeah, who the hell are all
these people he's talking about? So this guy who was
in the Kingsnakes with me named Wally Wilson, who is
who was a mentor? He was a songwriting mentor to me.
It's a lot older than me. And you remember the movie, uh,

(01:14:28):
The Apostle with Robert Duvall. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you
ever see that movie where he's this kind of wild
guy that picks fights, and so Wally Wilson is a
cross between the Apostle and fog Horn. Leg Horn He's
this Texas loudmouth character. And he was in the band

(01:14:50):
and we wrote songs together, and he somehow met Aaron Jacovis,
who was an a and are Virgin, and Aaron was
hanging around Nashville because Nashville was starting to change and
things were starting to happen. So Aaron's hanging around Nashville.

(01:15:11):
Wally is writing for Sony Tree. He's writing at Sony.
So Aaron is, I guess we're looking for songs for somebody,
because Wally is the most likable guy you will ever meet.
And I mean, he's just this, He's a character, and
he says the craziest shit. So Aaron and Wally become friends,
and Aaron says, Aaron says, I've been assigned Joan Biez.

(01:15:39):
What am I gonna do with Joan byas she's on Virgin,
I don't know, And and Wally goes, well, we should
make her record and write.

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
All her songs. And so Wally says, We're going to
San Francisco, by God, and we're gonna go write songs
with Joan Bias. This is way, he said it. So
so Sony Publishing bought us tickets. We went and got

(01:16:08):
so we went to Joan's house and hung out with
her and wrote songs with her, and Wally's going, JONK,
we're going to produce your record. And Joan just loved
Wally and said okay. And so when we made a
record on Joan with Aaron, and we ended up making
two records with her, and so Aaron after that said hey,

(01:16:35):
I heard the singer name Alison Moore and she's amazing.
Why don't you cut some sides on her? I said great,
And so he also spoke to Tony Brown, so Tony
Brown was into signing her. So Tony Brown, through Aaron Jacovis,
paid for me to take Alison into the studio to
cut some songs. And one of the songs we cut

(01:16:58):
was called Soft Place to Fall, which ended up in
the movie The Horse Whisperer and was nominated for an
Academy Award. So that's that's that's how I got started.
That's how I got that gig.

Speaker 1 (01:17:15):
Okay, most musicians, especially those who are not the front person,
are incredible networkers. Were you working it in Nashville? Were
you getting to know everybody, hang everybody, talking to everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
No, I've never been a good networker. I just always
feel and I did go up to people and say hey,
I'd love to play with you, and I still do that,
but I am not a networker. I am not good
at that. I think it would be fair to.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
Say, Okay, so you're playing the guitar and now through
Wally you get this opportunity. At what point do you say, well,
maybe I want to be a record producer.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
That was it. I think when we had our band,
The King Snakes and we actually made a record for
CURB Records. We got a record deal, but it was
kind of ridiculous because nobody would go on the road.
They were all I mean, our drummer was the head
of us, the head of CBS Records. It's ridiculous there
was but we made a record and we actually played

(01:18:21):
a couple of festivals, but it was there's no way
we're going to go on the road. And so I
was really involved in the production of that record and
just loved it and felt like I don't want to
not play guitar and just produce records. I want to
play and I like to write song, but I want
to do this too. So I started doing it, and

(01:18:44):
we're in this story to get married. I get married
in the place where were before Joan Biaz. There's sort
of a friend group, you know, how you come up
with your group of friends, and you know, we had

(01:19:04):
there was a lot of these songwriter guys. It was
always a sort of left of center folks, you know.
And Ashley Cleveland was in that friend group, and everybody
loved her. She's an amazing singer, and everybody's talking about, Oh,
she's so great. So we're we're in the same friend
group and we're all coming up together. And Ashley's writing

(01:19:25):
for Warner Chapel and she's making demos and I get
to play on her demos, and then she starts playing gigs.
And that was another one of the gigs I had
was I was locally playing with her. She didn't travel
and play gigs. She had a small daughter, but she
had a publishing deal on Warner Chapel and she's playing
around town and I'm in her band. But we're not

(01:19:47):
a couple. We're just friends. And she's seeing other people
and I'm seeing other people. And we had this sort
of unique experience where we were you know, you're playing
a band with somebody of your friends, give each other
a hard time, and I always say, like, you know,
what a loser that guy as you were with, you know,
And she'd give me a hard time about who I

(01:20:08):
was seeing, and we just we were buds for a
long time. And then she got a record deal on Atlantic,
and I was fortunate to get to play on her
record because I was in her band, and we sort
of fell for each other while she was making that record,
and we after our first date, we got engaged two

(01:20:35):
weeks later. So all of our friends we were like, okay,
wait a minute, you're like what you know, because they
didn't even know that we were together, you know, and
we were all really good friends, but I was sneaking
over to her house at night and nobody knew it,
you know, for a.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
Couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):
And then we were a couple and we said, well,
we're getting married, you know, and they're like, this is
not a good idea, you know. And thirty five years later,
you know, we're still married.

Speaker 1 (01:21:11):
Okay, you're married. She has a major labeled deal. How
long after? She says she has a young daughter. Now
you have to support a family. Do you feel like responsibility,
Like I'm not like a drifter anymore, I got to
go out and earn a living.

Speaker 2 (01:21:28):
Bob, I don't no. I think I was already kind
of doing pretty good by that time. I just bought
my first house.

Speaker 1 (01:21:36):
She must be doing pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
Yeah, I had bought my first house. I was doing okay.
And the weird thing about in Nashville, you know, in
the eighties and early nineties, is you could play gigs
five nights a week in clubs and get paid. I
supposed now, like it is everywhere, you have to wait

(01:22:04):
six months to get a gig. There's five bands on
the bill, no one gets paid. The audience is all
the other people waiting to play and their friends. So
but back then, you know, so I was doing that,
and I was starting to get record dates, and I
had enough that I bought the small house. So I

(01:22:24):
was kind of I never really That's another thing where
it just I just sort of rolled with it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:31):
I think, So, how many kids do you have at
this point?

Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
We have three? So her daughter she had before we
were together, her name is Becca. I adopted her because
the dad was never in the picture. And then we
had two together. And an interesting thing is the you know,
a good year before we were a couple. She did

(01:22:56):
a showcase at a bar for I'm at erdigin to
at her deal, and we sound checked in the afternoon
and an Ahmet and his entourage were going to come.
And it was a big deal, I mean a huge
deal for Ashley. Was a good like that's like career,
you know, a door opening, you know, a major moment

(01:23:16):
in her life. So after we sound checked, I said, hey,
I'll take your daughter and we'll go to McDonald's. And
so I took her daughter to McDonald's. And then I
had just bought the house but hadn't moved in, and
it was close by this bar, and so I took
the daughter and said, hey, just so we can drive

(01:23:37):
around and you can eat your drink or shake and whatever.
Here's this house I'm going to buy. And a year
later she's living in that house, which is kind of
an amazing, kind of an amazing thing, you know. To me,
it was amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:23:52):
What are your three kids up to today?

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
That oldest daughter, she had a long run of addiction,
as did Ashley, but she's doing really, really great now.
She actually works at an addiction center in San Francisco.
My son is an actor in Brooklyn. He has his
Masters in theater and he's getting a few things to doing. Okay.

(01:24:19):
And then my youngest is also in New York and
runs the grant writing program at Columbia.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
Wow. Was Ashley addicted when you were with her?

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
No, she had actually recently gotten out of treatment. But
after we got together, and you know, if you're in
AA and NA, it's never about what the other person does,
it's about what it's really about.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
It's like, for instance, we have people over, we'll have
some wine and serve wine. We won't drink wine, but well,
you know, that's just what. So we would go out
and I would occasionally have a glass wine. I never
really drank much. And actually we always say, you have
yourself a glass of wine. I'm in AA, but it's
totally okay, And so I did that. But it ended

(01:25:10):
up that, like right after we got married, she was like, oh,
I guess it's okay if I have a glass of
wine too, And it very quickly went down the tubes
from there and and but she pulled out and she's
been sober for almost thirty years. Yeah, she's doing great.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
Okay. So you've been talking about this studio that you
have when did you build this studio and to what
the level is it built out? And what do you
do there?

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
I got this. We bought this house at the end
of nineteen ninety six, and we bought it half built.
And it's one of those houses that's on a hill.
So from the front it's two stories and from the
back it's three. So the lower level, which is the
same size as the main level of the house, I

(01:26:05):
made into a studio like a I slowly built it
like a couple of years after we moved in here,
and it has a drum room and a vocal room.
I mean, it's a full on studio. And so we
made after Ashley's first record, we made her records here
a lot. I do a lot of overdubs here. All

(01:26:26):
of the film and TV stuff I do, I do
top to bottom here.

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
We did the.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
Chesney Bands record here. I just produced a song on
a really interesting guy that comes out Monday, and we
cut the whole track here. And so I'll work here.
I'll always do my overdubs here, like I'll do the vocals,
and if I need to prepare the drums, I got

(01:26:52):
a great, great drum room. We'll redo the drums but
if I have the budget, I like to go to
the Sound and Porium or Ocean Way and cut my
basic tracks and then bring it back over here. But
I'm you know, Bob, the budgets, they're smaller, and especially
for the stuff I do, a lot of times I'll
just make the whole thing over here because it's affordable

(01:27:16):
and I can still get paid if I do it
over here.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
And what kind of equipment do you have in the room.

Speaker 2 (01:27:22):
I have pro tools, which is how I'm recording this now.
And I have really really good mic pres I have
some vintage mics, I have some newer mics. I've got
vintage amps. I've got a piano in the other room.
I've got some I got some pretty decent gear.

Speaker 1 (01:27:39):
Okay, what was it like when Ashley lost her major
label deal? Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):
I think for her, her entire recording career was always hard.
It never really worked out. I remember she had her
she had her first record, and she lost that deal.
Then she got signed to this label called Reunion, which

(01:28:12):
was a Christian label and was part of Arista. So
the idea was, Okay, we know she's a Christian artist
and her songs are spiritual.

Speaker 1 (01:28:21):
At least will do a cod.

Speaker 2 (01:28:23):
Deal with Arista, and so that record, that one was
nominated for a Grammy, and we went to the Grammys
and Clive was there, and Clive came up to us
and said, man, I love your voice, but you have
to sing about God, and as she was going, well, yes,

(01:28:49):
actually I do. You know. So it's always been this
thing where it was always a struggle. It was it
never nothing really ever worked out. I would probably say
I think she'd be okay with me saying that.

Speaker 1 (01:29:07):
And what's the status of her music like today?

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
Well, you know, through the different record labels in the
making records, she got three Grammys and so she had
a lot of critical acclaim and which is very satisfying
and made her feel like the work she was doing
was worthwhile. I love some of the records we made.
I'm very proud of the work we did. About fifteen

(01:29:33):
years ago, her voice started to change and singing became
not as much fun, and so she sort of stopped
doing it. But at the same time, she wrote a
book called Little Black Sheep, and it wasn't like a

(01:29:54):
big hit, but it got some notice and did well,
and she wrote a second book and she started to
lead retreats. She would do recovery retreats, women's retreats, religious retreats,
and she also works at a church now and is
a spiritual counselor.

Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
So her.

Speaker 3 (01:30:17):
I without a doubt her second career has been more
successful and more satisfying than her first.

Speaker 2 (01:30:30):
She's really in a great space.

Speaker 1 (01:30:32):
Okay, you moved to Nashville in the seventies. What's it
like being a Jew in Nashville then? And what's it
like being a Jew in Nashville today.

Speaker 2 (01:30:45):
I think back then it was like it made me
feel like an outsider. I never really got much discrimination.
I mean occasionally somebody would say something in the good
old boy world, you know, but I think with musicians

(01:31:08):
were musicians and we're all in it, you know, it's
a brotherhood and that like there was this keyboard player
from Muscle Sholes. It was actually originally from New York,
but he made his name and Muscle shows named Steve
Nathan who who was Jewish, and he came up and
was playing and there were a few of us and
it's like if you played good, and I don't think

(01:31:30):
anybody really cared, honestly, And now it's just it's wide open.

Speaker 1 (01:31:35):
Now, Yeah, you've been in Nashville nearly fifty years. How
is Nashville The town changed.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
It's night and day. It's so completely incredibly different, and
there's some good things and there's some not good things.
The it was this kind of small, sleepy town that
had some artists, little corners of artistry, and there was

(01:32:10):
the publishing business and all the country songwriters and the
record making and but it was a sleepy little town.
And now it's like the number one tourist destination. They're
they're blowing up buildings, property has gone through the roof,
they've overbuilt. It's kind of a mess. So there's great

(01:32:35):
stuff about it. There's a lot of energy here and
you know, I you know, and I read in your
emails you talk about, you know, the country music is
kind of the thing, and so there's a lot of
energy in that. And there's a lot of people that
come here and there's a lot of great people doing
great stuff. But it's it's it's a little bit like

(01:33:01):
how can I say, It's like we've gotten a little
bit too big for the size we are. It's a
little out of control.

Speaker 1 (01:33:09):
And tell me how the music business has changed in
this interim.

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
Uh, I think in Nashville, as opposed to some other places,
it's fairly healthy. I think the record companies don't know
what to do the I think that it's kind of

(01:33:37):
a mess, and that they don't know how to sell
records and artists don't know how to get across. I
almost feel like that the quote unquote country music industry
is probably more messed up than the Americana indie industry,

(01:33:58):
which is also here, is huge, right, They're thriving and
and you know, there's some country records that are doing
really good, you know, and but it's kind of a mess.
And from the musicians standpoint, we get paid less for
doing more work. So yeah, it's I mean, it's that's

(01:34:24):
sort of a fractured answer, but it's kind of a
fractured place.

Speaker 1 (01:34:30):
And what about the old saw of you know, writing
gigs and music grow, et cetera. What's the status of
that today?

Speaker 2 (01:34:39):
The writing thing is, you don't it's hard to get
a publishing deal and get paid to write. Where it
used to be, you'd get a publishing deal, you'd get
fifty grand a year, and you'd write songs and they'd
pay for your demos. And you'd have a band, and
there was a whole industry of the younger players.

Speaker 1 (01:34:55):
That come up.

Speaker 2 (01:34:56):
You play on Sony demos and Warner Chapel demos and
and uh, that's what you did. That is completely gone.
And it's completely gone because they don't pay the songwriters
for the most part, and they have to make their
own demos because there's no budget to take a band
into the studio, so you have to use pro tools

(01:35:17):
and ableton and logic and make your own demos. And
then in the last year there's this thing which really
we could have a whole separate discussion on called Suno
s U n O. Have you heard of that? Yeah,
yeah you can. What songwriters do is you take you
even on your iPhone, you sing the song and play

(01:35:41):
your guitar and input into so into Suno, and in
thirty seconds it spits out a full blown demo and
they're not bad. They're just not bad. So I've played
on a number of things recently where you hear the

(01:36:01):
song writer's demo and go, oh, it's a Sono demo,
you know right away. And the one particular experience I
had was for Chesney, had somebody pitched him a song
that he really liked. It's like weeks ago, we go
into the studio and he plays us a song and go,
oh shit, it's a sono demo. And the problem with

(01:36:24):
it for us as the players is that a lot
of times it'll play, it'll come up with a thing
that's sort of a steal guitar but not really and
it's a guitar and it's this synthesis of the two.
So Chesney goes, I love that part.

Speaker 1 (01:36:40):
Let's get that.

Speaker 2 (01:36:40):
Guy in there. They call the songwriter and the songwriter goes,
it's I have to full disclosure. It's a sono demo,
and so Jessney says, can you play that part? And
I go, you know, sort of it's gonna sound different
because that's not that's like two different instruments that have
become one instrument. I fucking don't know what it is,

(01:37:02):
you know, So you come up with something that's kind
of similar to that, but it's not exactly that. And
but now Suno you can take individual tracks, so if
he wanted to, I mean, there's there's copyright issues and
I don't know how all that. They're in the middle
of trying to get that worked out. But it's like
he could take that part and put it into his

(01:37:25):
recording if he wanted to, you know, but we didn't.
He chose not to do that. But yes, Suno has changed.
It's dramatically changing things. But I ascribed to the thing
of that that it's just change, and it's it's like

(01:37:47):
what a drum machine did, or it's what a synthesizer did,
or the first time they had a sequencer, and you'd
have all these cheesy demos that they used a sequencer.
It's like, and occasionally you'd have a song that would
have a sequencer part in it. It's you still have
to come up with a great lyric and a great

(01:38:08):
melody and the stuff. I've seen writers try to input
just a word and say, make a great song of that.
It can make sort of a generic song from it,
but something that's deep and has soul and really says
something special. I don't think it's there right now. I
don't think it's going to do that. So it's the tools.

(01:38:30):
It's just a tool.

Speaker 1 (01:38:32):
Okay, you got this work with Testney coming up the
sphere and other dates, anything else in the schedule going forward.

Speaker 2 (01:38:43):
Uh, I just cut a song that I'm excited about
on a singer songwriters, a very young guy from Kentucky
and he is from a rural Kentucky like way back
in the woods. But he's like a really good lyricist,

(01:39:04):
kind of like a towns van Zandt type guy. So
he has a song coming out on MLK Day. Is
that is that Monday?

Speaker 1 (01:39:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:39:13):
And it's called American War, And it's from the perspective
of the guy that lives out in the country that
doesn't have any money, and it really doesn't take sides.
It says, you know, you know, red or blue, you
know you're both at fault, you know, and we suffer,
you know, where it war with both of you, both sides,

(01:39:37):
and it's it's it's a good song. And he came
over to my studio and played me his other songs.
They are really good. So he's not signed yet. He
got a publishing deal. But the way I found out
about him is Universal is interested in him. So he's

(01:39:57):
going to put the song out on Monday, and I'm
hoping that he gets some traction and I can have
a budget and I can make more songs with him.
As I thought he was really really good and the
Chesney band is in the middle of making another record,
so I'm doing that and though and then just some

(01:40:22):
regular sessions, like next week, I have a blues record
that I'm playing on that I'm excited to go do.

Speaker 1 (01:40:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:40:31):
So just that's that's kind of a good cross section.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
And you mentioned TV and film work. What's the status
of that.

Speaker 2 (01:40:38):
I write for a company called Big Yellow Dog, and
they have a number They have a film and TV
department and they call it sink like writing for sinc.
And I do that a lot. And in the past
year I've gotten a number of things placed and I
really really enjoy that a lot. And I like to

(01:40:59):
write words, but I don't write lyrics in the sense
of a country lyric is. I'm really not a country guy,
you know. And so the music I write is more
outside the box, for lack of a better word, And
I like that. They send me a brief from like

(01:41:20):
we're looking for songs for land Man, and here's how
they should be. So I get with the writer and
we try to write something and we record it over here,
sing it over here. And so I'm doing a lot
of that and it's for me. It's something I really
want to pursue in this next chapter of my life

(01:41:41):
because I really really enjoy it, and having gotten a
couple of things, it makes me feel like, Okay, I
can do this.

Speaker 1 (01:41:50):
Okay. Do you only get paid when it gets synced?

Speaker 2 (01:41:52):
Or you only get paid when it gets synced? You
don't get anything before? That's the And luckily I can
play sessions and play gigs and can support myself and
I can do this.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
And how about do you play any gigs in town
or only on the road? Yep?

Speaker 2 (01:42:13):
I'm playing with Pat McLoughlin this Friday, and he has
a new record out called what is the name of
the record. It's called Nashville after Dark. I don't love
that title, that's what it's called. But it's him playing
live in a club and he didn't know, we didn't

(01:42:34):
know that we were being recorded. It's just a board
two mix, so it's very raw. But man, Pat is
the best, He's just the greatest. In playing with him,
the musicians, when we get done playing a gig with Pat,
we always say, after the gig, we stand around backstage

(01:42:56):
and go, that was the greatest gig I've ever played.
And I'm not making this up and I'm not exaggerating.
Pat McLoughlin is the hidden secret of He is the greatest.
Playing with him is like, I can't tell you what
that does for my soul and for the other guys
to play with him.

Speaker 1 (01:43:16):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:43:16):
As a writer, he's been really successful and he writes
like a lot of those little more recent John Prime
songs of John Prime and the Dan auerback stuff, all
those records of Dan makes and Pat, you know, and
they're writing songs on all of them. So I have that.
And then on Sunday there's a guy from Manchester, England,

(01:43:41):
I'm named Johnny Lucas who has a band and plays
gigs and I wrote a song with him, so I'm
gonna go up and play with his band. I'll just
play a few songs with his band on Sunday. So yeah,
I love playing clubs.

Speaker 1 (01:43:56):
Okay, we've been talking to Kenny Greenberg, guitarist, producer, works
with Chesney. Heard the story of how he made it. Kenny,
I want to thank you for taking all this time
with my audience. Man, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:44:11):
I read all your emails. I love it. You know,
we're on the same page on a lot of stuff.
So it was honored to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:44:19):
Great to hear the stories until next time. This is
Bob Lefstad's