Dweezil Zappa: Navigating Musical Legacy and Creative Freedom

Greg Koch sits down with guitar virtuoso Dweezil Zappa for a fascinating deep dive into musical authenticity, technical mastery, and the challenge of preserving a legendary legacy. Their conversation reveals the extraordinary dedication required to perform Frank Zappa's intricate compositions, with Dweezil candidly sharing his 14-year journey to truly internalize his father's musical vocabulary.

What begins as a discussion about guitar techniques evolves into profound insights about musical connection. Dweezil explains why, despite growing up as Frank Zappa's son, he initially gravitated toward more guitar-centric players, such as Eddie Van Halen, before tackling his father's complex work. He compares performing Frank's arrangements to an "orchestral mindset" where precision and teamwork are paramount, revealing that despite years of touring, he must essentially relearn most pieces before each performance.

The conversation takes unexpected turns through musical philosophy, modern guitar culture, and the realities of today's music industry. Dweezil offers a valuable perspective for independent musicians, suggesting that cultivating meaningful relationships with a dedicated fanbase is far more sustainable than chasing mainstream success: "Instead of trying to get a dollar from a million people, what if you cultivated a relationship with 10,000 people who want to spend a hundred dollars every year?" Throughout their exchange, both guitarists reflect on finding balance between technical skill and emotional connection, agreeing that the ability to move an audience often transcends pure virtuosity.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Ladies and gentlemen, it's time once again for
another season of Chewing theGristle with yours truly Greg
Kauk.
Can you believe it's alreadyseason six?
We've got so many coolinterviews lined up.
Are we going to talk aboutmusic, you betcha?
But what else are we going totalk about?
Well, quite frankly, anythingthat comes to mind.
So stay tuned, doggone it.

(00:30):
Let's chew that doggone gristle.
Season six come.
Ladies and gentlemen, this weekon Chewing the Gristle we have
the legendary Dweezil Zappa,guitar player, extraordinaire
torchbearer for his dad'sglorious legacy, of course, that
would be frank zappa and justall-around cool cat.

(00:53):
My buddy dweezil zappa, thisweek on chewing the gristle.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys andgirls, welcome once again to
another installment of Chewingthe Gristle with yours truly
Gregory Cochrie.
I'm here today with themajestic Dweezil Zappa, a man

(01:15):
who needs no introduction, butsomeone I've been very fortunate
to know for a few years here.
We've actually played a littlebit together.
I'm a huge fan, of course, hisplaying, his father's legacy and
playing the whole nine yards,and just a pleasure to be able
to just shoot the breeze today,or chew the gristle if you will.
How's it going?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Very good Thanks for having me.
And of course, many people mayor may not know the Gregory
Cochrie is very close to GregoryPeckery.
Yes, One of my dad's songs.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
And that's no accident?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yes, I figured as much, but perhaps other people
have no idea where that comesfrom, so it might be good to
give them some insight into therest.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yes indeed.
Insight into the rest of it?
Yes indeed.
So you sent me a video theother day of you playing for the
4th of July, unleashing thepowers of Ed Van Halen and Slim
Jim Hendrix in one fell swoopfor some revelers of the
Independence Day activities.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yes, and it was done on a guitar with no locking
tremolo, so a very bold move,Indeed my friend Well, it
sounded, spot on, you got thatAylan thing down.
Well, you know, it's the nuancesand the details that I like to

(02:42):
try to recreate as best as I can, and I know that that's a thing
that is very much in yourplaying style as well, for the
people that are your influences,you know, getting the vibrato
stylings of Eric Clapton orother players and incorporating
it on the deepest level of yourown playing.

(03:03):
So when I was doing that asjust a fun thing for the
neighborhood shindig, I wantedto play it as well as I could,
and it's always interesting tosee if you can actually, in a
live situation, play somethingas close as possible to the

(03:24):
original.
So in the case of Eruption,that might have been the best
time I ever played it.
Yeah, it was spot on.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
It was spot on and the tone was glorious.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, it was from my fractal.
I spent a lot of time making asound that would recreate the
album as best as I could, and Itried a lot of different ways to
go about getting the sound asclose as I could.
These days, the tools that wehave in terms of being able to

(03:57):
make sounds and utilize them invarious different live playing
situations are better than theyhave ever been.
So you know, of course I loveactual tube amplifiers and
whatnot, but I didn't have themanpower to drag out a bunch of
gear.

(04:17):
We were setting up for thislittle shindig in the middle of
the street in our neighborhoodand I figured it was going to be
easier for me to just use myfractal FM nine and a couple QSC
wedges than to try to wranglesome major Marshall amplifiers
and other effects and things totry to get into that ballpark.

(04:38):
And I wanted it to be a decentrecording and not be too crazy
loud because there was kids inthe strollers and all.
So, uh, I was happy with how itturned out.
But, um, you know, at the endof the day, when people want to
freak out on, oh, you can neverget a modeler to sound like a
real amp.

(04:58):
I think you can, I and I thinkyou can actually be happy with
the results, especially when youhear the finished recording.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, I think it comes down.
It always comes down to who'sperpetrating the music
activities at that particularjuncture in time.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yes, that definitely has something to do with it.
But you know, for the peoplethat want to get into the
corksniffing things and talkabout how terrible it is that
people are moving to modelersversus amplifiers, you know,
everybody loves the sound of anamp, but it's not always

(05:41):
practical these days in someenvironments to be able to use
very loud amps et cetera.
This is true.
But you know, we wouldn't havemodelers if people didn't love
the sound of amplifiers.
You know, so it's.
It's not that people are soobsessed with trying to replace
it with digital stuff.
It's that if you really lovethat sound and you need an

(06:04):
alternative, this is a goodpractical application.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Absolutely.
You know I was interested.
I know you've probably answeredthis many times, but you know I
remember back in the day, youknow you were always, you know,
initially inspired by old Ed VanHalen and I remember when you
played on that Don Johnsonrecord years ago.
And I'm just wondering, youknow, with your dad being Frank,

(06:31):
who I'm a big fan of his guitarstylings, I mean, he did very
cool things.
I know he was not one thatperhaps I always remember
hearing that he would neverpractice until he went on the
road and would just kind of gethis chops together as he went.
But he always played amazingstuff to me, especially all the
as we were talking about earlier, all the weird little nuanced

(06:53):
blues stuff that he had gleanedover the years and whatever, and
his tones were always killerand so on and so forth.
But a lot of times when a dadis the guitar player or really
good at a particular thing, theson kind of goes yeah, I'm going
to go over here.
So how much was that a placewhen you started playing guitar?
They're like I'm going to dosomething different from the old
manner.
Did you see it as, uh,consistent, or was it an act of

(07:17):
rebellion?
What?
What was your?

Speaker 2 (07:19):
I think the the thing is.
I've always been a fan of mydad's music, but I always knew
that it was way more difficultthan any other music.
So even when I heard it and wasinspired by it, I thought to
myself one day I will get tothat.
But right now is not the timebecause I don't know enough to

(07:39):
be able to do it, it you know.
So the stuff that was easierfor me to wrap my ear around was
Van Halen and Randy Rhodes,which is not to say that their
playing is easy to emulate orlearn at all, it's just that
it's so guitar centric that Icould focus my attention on that

(08:01):
and tune everything else outand only hear the guitar.
And it was easier to do thatwith that music than it was with
my dad's music, because it wasfar more harmonically complex
and sophisticated and it washarder to be able to learn any
of the stuff that my dad wasdoing, just because he was a

(08:23):
composer who used a guitar ashis main instrument but started
as a drummer.
So, rhythmically, the stuffthat he did was very advanced
and it was complicated as hell.
So to some people it soundslike random things are happening
, but he's very, very precisewith the rhythms and the things

(08:44):
that are happening are very hardto duplicate.
So, like I said, it was muchharder for me to go from the
beginning and say, hey, I'mgoing to do this because, uh,
who would you know?
It's hard, uh, and when I didreally dive into it even at that
point.
Uh, so that was 2004.

(09:06):
I started really learning themusic in depth and then we
started touring it in 2006.
But I toured it up until thewhole crazy world shut down in
2020 on an annual basis, and itwas really that whole 14-year
period that I got to the pointwhere I could feel like I

(09:32):
started to understand where hewas coming from as a guitar
player and learn the vocabularyand the nuances that were
important to be able to thenplay in a way that evoked his
style but still allowed me toplay as myself in that moment,
at the speed of thought.
And that's the real trickything is, if you're trying to

(09:54):
play in context to the music ofmy dad, for example, it won't
sound like my dad at all.
If you don't have the knowledgeof his vocabulary, it'll start
to sound like some lame fusionexperiment where you know you're
opening at Magic Mountain for apuppet show and that kind of
thing just doesn't appeal to me.

(10:16):
So it did take a long time tohone the skills to create enough
knowledge of his vocabulary sothat I could actually use it in
real time.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
Got it.
So when you were coming up withstuff, would he sit down with
you and say hey, check this out.
Or was it you just kind of wereon your own, or were you asking
little questions about this In?

Speaker 2 (10:37):
the early days of me playing.
You know he has such anidiosyncratic style of playing
and technique so he didn't thinkthat what he had to offer was a
good place for me to start.
He thought well, you know, hehimself thought I play so much
in a style that's my own.

(10:58):
This might not be the way thatyou should try to learn how to
play the guitar.
You need some more fundamentalbasics and at the time Steve Vai
was in my dad's band, so he wasabout 21 years old.
I was 12 when I started playingand Steve wrote down a few
lessons in a notebook thatbasically had some chord

(11:21):
diagrams and he mapped out thepentatonic scale in the key of A
, and so essentially I took thatand ran with it.
I just sat and listened torecords and tried to figure out
stuff on the guitar and over theyears I really never learned to
read music well.

(11:42):
Other people in my band canread very well, but I have to
learn everything by ear.
So all the complicated stuffthat I ever learned to play, I
learned it by ear and just tryto have that get internalized
somehow.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
You know, I'm going to kind of jump ahead a little
bit too, because it reminded me,as you were saying, that you
know the arrangements of Frankstuff.
I mean it's insane, there's alot of memorizing of very
complicated parts and thereisn't.
You know, there there's someroom to.
You know, extemporize a littlebit with.

(12:20):
You know the attitude orwhatever of a specific part.
But how did you get in themindset and the discipline to
memorize those parts so thatthey were performance ready and
maintain them in such a way?

Speaker 2 (12:35):
It is a challenge.
It remains a challenge, but thebest way to think about it is
that if an orchestra is going toplay the music of Bach or
Beethoven or whoever thecontemporary composer might be,
the notes are on the page withspecific rhythms and guidelines
as to how the stuff is meant tobe played.

(12:56):
There are instructions from thecomposer, and my dad's music
was all written in that same way.
So when you're in a band that'splaying this stuff, if you're
going to do it correctly, youhave to have an orchestral
mindset, meaning everybody hasparts to play and they're part
of a team and the team bringsthe whole piece to light.

(13:19):
And if you're going to play itunder the instruction of the
composer, you want to adhere tothose things and you have to be
familiar enough with the colorsand textures that are used when
the stuff is performed.
And so we always reference itto recordings.

(13:39):
We double check notes becauseyou know sometimes on the page
it might be different than whatyou hear in a recording.
Double-check notes because youknow sometimes on the page it
might be different than what youhear in a recording.
Something might've been changedon tour because my dad
preferred it a different way atthat point.
So we're always doing the duediligence, and it's a very, very
difficult task to maintain anyof that stuff, even when we're

(14:00):
learning stuff for a tour where,let's say, we're going to play
60 shows in a year's worth oftouring, we might learn 35 or 40
songs, and some come in and outduring that period.
But I, as much as I try tolearn the stuff in advance, I

(14:31):
just never have enough time forthis stuff to to really be fully
internalized to where I feellike I go out on stage and I
know it very, very well.
It's always a tightrope actwhere at any moment something
could go seriously wrong, andthen I would have to bail on a
part, and, and so that's thereason why, when it's arranged
for the band, the most difficultmelodic parts are usually split

(14:54):
between two to threeinstruments, so that if anyone
bails, the part still continues.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Right gotcha.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
And that's the same way it would be in an orchestra

(15:28):
Right Gotcha in the music.
So a lot of people have to dodouble duty.
So sometimes you'll see SheilaGonzalez, who plays saxophone
and keys, playing saxophone andkeys at the same time.
You know two differentinstruments at the same time and
you know there's just a lotthat goes on in all of this.
But at the end of the day it'sone of the greatest challenges
you could ever have as amusician to learn this music and
try to play it so that it iscommensurate with the way that

(15:50):
my dad had his bands play it.
You know that is a greataccomplishment and at the end of
the day, like, what I alwayssay is that the music has to
speak for itself.
You know I don't need to tellanybody, hey, my band is really
good.
Like, just listen to what isbeing done and then think to
yourself could I do that?

(16:10):
And the answer is most likelyno.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
You know it's going to ask you about you know, like
those parts and bailing on apart, and it reminded me of
something I was describing tosomeone about.
I was asking somebody aboutthis.
This same type of thing inregard to you know you can learn
something and you will have itlike muscle memory in a state of

(16:36):
preparedness, like musclememory mode and and, and that
kind of leads it to what we,what we just discussed, where
you might get to the point whereyou just have a brain fart and
it's gone, and then there's thatdeeper level of really having
internalized it that at anypoint you could start at any
point during that head and knowexactly where you're going.

(16:56):
So with 35 tunes, I wouldimagine it's hard to and of
course, other tunes in the wholearsenal depending on the year,
from year to year.
But to have that level ofpreparedness for each one of the
songs there's got to be asliding scale.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
There's no way.
And over a period of time, evenif I've played certain songs
many times over the years, theydon't stick.
Songs many times over the yearsthey don't stick.
At the beginning of everyrehearsal period I have to

(17:34):
relearn most of the things.
Now it does come back faster ifI've played them many times
over the past 15 or 16 years,but I still have to relearn
pretty much anything that I haveever played.
I have to spend time to relearnbefore we're in rehearsals and
then by the time we're at theend of the rehearsal process I'm

(17:55):
hoping to have enough musclememory that I can get through
the show where I'm cued by themuscle memory because a lot of
the melodies might be sort ofobtuse and if you can't sing it.
I'm not a guy that can sing andplay what I'm playing while I'm
playing it.

(18:15):
But some people have thatability and it helps them lock
things in because they can kindof sing it and play along to
whatever they're hearing intheir head.
But you know, many of themelodies that we end up playing
are you take the black page.
It's very hard.
You can't.
The way that the intervallicstructure of these compositions

(18:40):
put together it's very, verydifficult.
You would never be able toaccurately sing this stuff
rhythmically or intervallically.
So it does have to come tomuscle memory and a good
understanding of what therhythmic components are.
And even when it comes to that,I wouldn't be able to if
somebody said, hey, explain tome how to play this nested

(19:04):
tuplet part in the black page.
I wouldn't be able to explainit in a rhythmic discussion, I
would just have to play it andgo.
This is how it goes.
I have to just follow alongwith the band when it's playing
it.
But yet they can all tell youoh well, yes, it's this and this

(19:25):
is a quarter note and you haveto think about it like this.
And then there's a metricmodulation.
All that stuff makes no senseto me.
I just have to hear it and playit back, as if it's me learning
the heartbreaker riff.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
It's all, just a different riff to learn and
memorize this is kind of abizarre question, but do you do
you think that frank ever justcame up with something like
let's see if these fuckers canplay this?

Speaker 2 (19:58):
you know, as opposed to sure, right, that's Right,
that's funny, the person thatdrives the bus in my dad's band
and you're 22 years old andyou're the drummer and, uh, you

(20:28):
know it's.
It's really hard to imagine kidstoday wanting to be good enough
to be able to do that stufflike the ethic now is dog shit
compared to back in the middle70s or late 70s or what you know
, when people were like I wantto be the best I can possibly be
right.

(20:48):
So so, yes, the challenge wasput forth on the page and then,
when terry could do it, then mydad was like okay, great, well,
on to the next thing.
And so probably one of thehardest pieces of music he ever
wrote, which has only beenplayed a handful of times by
different versions of his band,is a piece of music called

(21:09):
Molenherb's Vacation, and VinnieKaliuta was able to sight, read
the most difficult parts inthat and play them.
So we're talking about a.
This is like alien ability todo that kind of stuff.
Not, this is not normal forsomeone to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
Right.
So, and then you put on top ofthat that it seemed that in that
era it just seemsextraordinarily difficult to be
able to find someone with thatkind of sight reading and that
kind of musical technical skillbut also have the grease thing.

(21:52):
That's understood.
You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
It just seems that that is extraordinarily unlikely
combination makes my dad'smusic stand out is that it's not
.
For some people, theuninitiated, who don't really
know what they're listening forit might sound like technical
exercises to them.
If they're, if for them,improvisational music is the

(22:16):
grateful dead or fish right?
They, that's like level one.
You know that's right.
So the thing is what you'retalking about the nuance and
detail that's required to beable to play the hard stuff but
still give it that cool grooveand the syncopated stuff is all

(22:38):
working.
The whole band is able to justlock in to what that stuff is
and have that innate thingpropelling the music forward the
authenticity of all thedifferent styles that you need
to be able to back up.
If you're in my dad's band, youhave to be able to play
everything from crazy jazz togospel, to blues, to rock to

(23:05):
funk.
Everything has to be done in away that is authentic and real
to the style.
There's no just like oh, I'mfaking it here.
Everybody has to bewell-rounded and can convince
you that whatever style thatthey're playing, they're
well-versed in it, and that'show my dad wrote his music.

(23:27):
It has so many differentflavors and styles at all times,
so that's why it's so difficult.
You know, the keyboard playersdid a ton of work to make sure
that all of the harmony and, uh,the feel for a lot of,

(23:48):
especially the, the bluesy,gospel-y stuff, you know,
players like George Duke,amazing stuff, you know but you
put the wrong person in thatenvironment and they have the
wrong set of um, uh, influences.
It's not going to sound good.
A good example of that, too,would be there's an interview

(24:09):
that George Duke did where,early in his time playing with
my dad, my dad was having himplay some doo-wop chord
progressions and George wasadding extensions to the chords
and my dad was like no, I justwant triads.
And George was like, yeah, butI'm a jazz guy, I mean there's

(24:33):
more that can be done here.
And my dad said the musicrequires triads here, just these
triads.
And George was continuing toargue a little bit and it was
like well, I don't know if thisis for me.
And my dad said what is thisbeneath you?
Then he really had to thinkabout it and he was like I need

(24:57):
to play.
What serves the music in this?
And then he actually kind ofreally got into the idea of
playing in the appropriate wayfor the music that was being
played at that moment it didn'tneed all this other stuff.
Now is there a time when itdoes yes, absolutely, but you
have to have the discipline tobe part of the team and do the

(25:21):
thing that makes it sound theway it's supposed to sound for
what's happening in that momentwell, I think that that's that.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
That touches on something that I've been, you
know, um, contemplating as I see.
I mean, obviously, arguably, weare in the time, uh, especially
on guitar, but all the otherinstruments as well with the
advent of all the, the socialmedias, where people, people can
put on these amazing displaysof technical virtuosity, uh, for

(25:49):
60 seconds and uh, and youwatch these things and you're
like he gads, you know, and, andthe bar just keeps getting
raised and so on and so forth.
But it seems like all thatlittle nuanced stuff of of of
why a simpler thing like a triadwould work over a more extended
voicing or a simple phrasingwith nice vibrato and tone, is

(26:11):
something that escapes someonewho can do the most technically
adept thing.
I just think that you know toyour point that Frank's music
and Frank's whole approach, asmuch as it was extraordinarily
difficult, it was not snobby,you know.
I think there's a technicalsnob craft that looks over all

(26:32):
of that minutiae stuff thatmakes the stuff memorable, for
lack of a better term, butsoulful, to be a little bit more
to the point.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Well, you know, at the end of the day, people want
to connect with music and itmakes them feel something, and
so I feel like what you'retalking about and the challenge
as a musician that wants to begood at their instrument in a
technical way.
There's a lot of time spentpracticing the technical things

(27:03):
and then applying that to music.
So I think it may in some casestake a technically proficient
musician many more years torealize how to bring the feeling
and the connection to the musicto the listener, because they

(27:23):
spent so much time trying to betechnically proficient to the
next level where it's amind-boggling technical
precision.
But at the same time, if you'rethe listener, you only can
tolerate so much of that, right,you don't want to just see
technical perfection over andover and a billion notes.

(27:47):
It becomes the struggle for thetechnically proficient or
technical-minded musician to beable to figure out how to write
music that allows for thetechnical aspect to be present
but have enough of the otherstuff that makes repeat

(28:08):
listening enjoyable, right, youknow.
So that, I think, is the biggerpart of it, which is the bigger
struggle.
I myself still have adifficulty with that kind of
balance, because I like to learnnew things, and I like to try
to employ them as regularly as Ican, because I think the only

(28:31):
way that you can propel yourselfforward when learning new
things is to actually use it inthe battle.
Sure, absolutely so.
But sometimes, you know, let'ssay, if it's my own playing, if
I'm going to be critical aboutmy own playing, if I'm trying to
do too many things at oncebecause I'm thinking, oh, this

(28:52):
will be fun, let me try this orthis other thing, it comes off
as the sound of a run onsentence, right, and so that's a
hard thing to selfit in themoment when you're improvising.
And improvising a complicatedpiece of music is way more of a

(29:14):
different thing than justperforming something that you
have rehearsed very well.
That's just this acrobatic feat.
That's just this acrobatic feat, you know.
So there's a big differencebetween the players that can
play something very technicaland they've rehearsed it, and
they can just do it because it'sbeen rehearsed so much, versus

(29:34):
somebody that can go up and playlike what Alan Holdsworth could
do, or some other players thathave a different vocabulary but
still a huge ability toimprovise.
Or some other players that havea different vocabulary but
still a huge ability toimprovise.
A guy like Oz Noy or a guy likeJulian Lodge.
These guys can improvise inways where they could play.

(29:56):
You.
Give them three 10-minute solosin a row.
They will play almost zero ofthe same ideas because they have
such a large vocabulary andthey can build and structure
their compositional ideas basedon reacting to the music that's

(30:16):
happening in the moment.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Right, well, I was kind of thinking, as you were
talking about that is that youknow a couple of different
things.
First of all, like when there'slike different idioms now where
the people that are playingthis technical stuff online and
people are enjoying doing it andthey're making a living out of
it Fantastic, uh, but thatability to connect at a visceral

(30:46):
level and a live performance um, as you were illuminating is is
not always predicated ongymnastics from beginning to end
, whereas online it seems likeyou're much more, shall we say,
inclined to get massivefollowership and be able to

(31:11):
propel your career on thatonline situation in a way where
it maybe never dictates that youactually perform live.
Seen with some of these youknow online personalities that
when they get found out thatthey are doctoring their
performances or so on and soforth, and that they can't
actually play it live, which,again, if people are enjoying

(31:34):
what they're doing, you knowthere's, you know the argument
could be made who gives a shitone way or the other?
But when you have this othersituation of what we grew up on
is this live situation andconnecting with the crowd, and
and and also on top of that,what you're talking about is
like when you're learning newstuff.
I always referred to it as thethe gestational period of a lick

(31:54):
.
You know it's like, it's likeyou were going to try.
You learn like a new word.
Now I always use the word likerecalcitrant.
You learn recalcitrant, you'regoing to try to throw it in a
sentence.
Well, if you throw it in, itdoesn't make any sense.
It's just kind of what are youtalking about?
But by the same token, you'vegot to at some point, as things
are in a gestational period go,I'm going to try that thing now.

(32:15):
And the goal is is to get pastthe point of I think I'm going
to try that thing now, I thinkit's going to work, versus it's
just subliminal and you just doit.
But that only happens really,from playing out live a lot and
having the freedom to improvise.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
That is true, but also there has to be something
that clicks in your brain thatgives you enough knowledge of
why the thing that you're tryingto do will work at the time
you're trying to do it.
So, knowing that you're tryingto target a particular chord
tone and then you want to leadto something, or knowing that

(32:52):
you have a rhythmic element thatyou want to incorporate, these
things, in advance of you doingit, help you actually use the
idea, versus just saying I'mgoing to throw this lick in here
.
It's better to know what thefundamental idea is and how to

(33:13):
use it in a way where you canreact to the music and throw it
in that way, than it is to say,well, I've learned this lick,
I'm just going to play this lickas a thing, because you might
not be playing over somethingthat has the right feel or the
same practicing that lick forAbsolutely, it's going to have

(33:33):
to adjust somehow Right, and sothat's where the challenge of
learning a new thing andimplementing it comes in, where
the if you understand why youlike the sound of something and
you think, okay, what I'm doingis I'm blending two triads here
and I've got a pattern whereit's.
These two triads fit within 12notes.

(33:56):
If you know that you can adjustto the rhythm of what you're
playing, but still use that sameidea, it's easier to filter
that into your playing than itis, like I said, to just say, oh
, I'm just going to throw thislick in here somewhere Right
right, right, right, get awaywith that.
but I don't think it's aseffective as actually using it,

(34:18):
because you know why you'reusing it.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Right, yeah, I get you Absolutely.
We interrupt this regularlyscheduled gristle infested
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And our friends at WildwoodGuitars of Louisville, colorado,
bringing the heat in the shadowof the Rocky Mountains.

(34:44):
So at what point in yourdevelopment as a guitar player
did you make the leap from being, you know, maybe more of a
rock-oriented individual totrying to tackle some of these
more exotic chord structures andso on and so forth?
And I mean, do you rememberlike I got the Slominski book

(35:05):
then at this point?
Or I studied this thing and Istarted adding this kind of
different scalar ideas here orthis particular harmonic
approach?
How did that kind of develop?
And was there a time where itkind of really took off versus a
time where you were just moreof kind of a rock dude?

Speaker 2 (35:20):
Well, I've always been interested in different
music, because I grew uplistening to my dad's music but
also what my dad listened to athome, which was oftentimes folk
music from different countries,so Bulgarian women's choir or
Indian ragas or Arabic music orso microtonal things and things

(35:44):
that have weird rhythms anddifferent textures.
All that stuff has always beenappealing.
But the thing that I neverreally had that much of an
interest in was bebop.
I mean, I can appreciate whatit takes to do that, but I don't
love that sound so much.

(36:05):
So it's the idea to be able tohave the phrasing ability of a
player that could easily playthrough changes in a bebop way,
but not necessarily choose thosenotes, is kind of like the idea

(36:27):
of something that would beappealing to me.
I never got great at playingover chord changes.
That's something I would liketo be able to do better and be
able to recognize easier.
You know there's some peopleand I bet you're one of them
that could be, and I bet you'reone of them that could be hear

(36:47):
somebody playing, whether it's ablues or any kind of you know,
perhaps standard or a pop kindof song and you're going to be
able to recognize.
Oh, that's kind of a one, four,five or two, five, one or
whatever kind of thing ishappening and you can adjust to
that in real time.
I can't do that because I learnthings more as the song goes,
like this, and I only rememberthe song based on the

(37:10):
arrangement of that particularsong.
So I'm not able to instantlyfilter what I'm hearing and say,
oh, that's the four chord orthat's the five.
I don't think that way at thispoint in time.
I wish I did, because it wouldbe better.
It would be easier for me toplay more different ideas.

(37:32):
Most of the time when I'mplaying something in an
improvisational way, I'm hearingit.
At the same time the listeneris hearing it versus.
There are some players thatknow what they want to do as
they're doing it or in advanceof doing the thing.
They can already see whatthey're going to do with the
finish line.
They've got it all mapped outin a way where they can turn the

(37:53):
corners of every chordprogression and basically tell a
whole story versus me.
I'm thrown into it.
Like I said, it's like a tightrope act where I'm hearing it as
everybody else is hearing it,so it's either good or bad and
then I'm moving on, you know.
But the point is you asked,like, when did I kind of figure

(38:17):
out how to start incorporatingsome of these things that maybe
go outside the norm of the rockworld?
So the first thing that reallygave me the idea that you could
play notes that maybe aren't theright notes but they still
sound good, is the stuff thatEdward would do when he was
trying to emulate.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Alan Holder.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
So I started to see these three note per string
patterns that he was using, andI want to emphasize the major or
the minor third here, or theflat five or whatever the case

(39:10):
may be in some of those kind ofsituations, and that's been only
because of playing live on theroad for 15 years in a row and
playing with a rhythm sectionthat I'm comfortable with, where
I can play a lot better with myown band than I could sitting
in with somebody else.
I'm just not comfortable withthe different rhythm sections

(39:35):
and oddly enough, I think youcan hear that even in Edward Van
Halen's playing.
He sounds way more like EdwardVan Halen when he's playing with
Alex Van Halen than he'splaying with anybody else Right.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
You know, Yep, absolutely Crazy activity.
So when you were in high school, did you have high school bands
that you were playing with, andwhat kind of stuff were you
doing?

Speaker 2 (39:59):
No, I started playing when I was 12.
The first thing I ever recordedwas nine months or so after I
was playing.
I did my Mother's a Space Cadetwith the flip side Crunchy
Water Delicious yeah which wasproduced by Edward Van Halen and
Don Landy.
But then I made my first albumat 15 years old and then the

(40:21):
second album at 17 and the thirdalbum at 19, so on and on.
A couple years.
In between records uh, but I Iwasn't doing a lot of live shows
up through all that time.
The majority of the liveperformance stuff that I've done
, uh, has been playing my dad'smusic starting back in 2006.

(40:43):
Prior to that, I had done a fewtours of my own music for the
Confessions album and theShampoo Horn record.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
I actually opened up for you in Milwaukee at Shank
Hall on the Shampoo Horn tourand I still have that t-shirt
someplace.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Yeah, and I just remember that we did that medley
.
My band was playing that200-song, 70s and and I just
remember that we did that medleyum the band my band was playing
that 200 song 70s medleyexactly.
Yeah, we kept changing thelyrics to every song to be about
shank hall, exactly exactlycorrect the thing about the live

(41:23):
experience.
I would say only in the lastmaybe four or five years have I
started to develop what I wouldperceive as my own style of
guitar playing, a style comingfrom me sooner than that.
But you know, if you listen toany of my records, they don't

(41:46):
sound alike from record torecord.
The song style, the guitarplaying style, changes.
The tones change prettydrastically.
There's no, it's.
It's not like ACDC, where you,you know what you're going to
get, you know it is that thing,uh, it's.
It's very, very different fromfrom record to record.
But, um, I think I'm at thepoint now where I have developed

(42:11):
a keen interest in certainthings on the guitar and I'm
trying to propel those thingsforward when we do live
performances and now with someof the stuff I'm doing with
YouTube and whatnot.
But I'm at a point now where Ifeel like it would be fun to do

(42:31):
collaborations with people andmake stuff that is just
different than any of the stuffI've done before and kind of
bringing it back to what we weresaying earlier, where, if you
can do it in a way that's simplebut then still has the
personality and the nuance andthe detail of the thing that
you're trying to get across outof simple stuff like just

(42:54):
phrasing vibrato, yeah, that's.
I think a great challenge atthis point is like make some
music that does have some stillcool ideas as far as arranging
and tone and and uh songstructure, but not have it just
have to be super complicated.

(43:15):
So if you and me, if we were todo a record of of our two
styles blending, I think itwould be a very interesting
sound.
Because it would be a veryinteresting sound because it
would be twisted guitar.
Yes, I'm in, let's do it.
Yeah, we should.
We should just make somethingthat is based on all the things
that we were just talking about,have the ability to play freely

(43:38):
in where our skill set is atthis time, but not have it have
to be predicated on complexity,like what we sound like when
something's more simple.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
Right.
Well, that's one of the thingsI've.
You know we've kind of veeredtowards with my trio, you know,
earlier on.
You know I mean my tunes,especially instrumentally.
I always felt they had to havea certain level of complexity to
be different.
And then all of a sudden Istarted to realize, you know,
what's fun is just writing songswhere you can either play over

(44:15):
the changes or not.
You can just kind of, you know,play phrasing and pentatonic-y
stuff, or you can actually playover those different changes and
it'll sound cool.
But the point is that,especially since we've been
touring so much is you cantotally tell what songs resonate
with a crowd.
There are some songs that Ithink have the most
heart-wrenching chord changesand so on and so forth.

(44:38):
But I'm hearing them with myears right, because we've been
playing for so long.
You get moved by certainsequences of chords that you
hear in a different way than theaverage jamoke who might listen
to it and say, yeah, that'sjust too complicated, whereas
all of a sudden you play like atwo, three chord song with a
certain kind of groove and theylose their shit.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
So it's like again ACDC as an example.
Uh, they are so good at doingwhat they do and it's not easy
to actually play the way thatthey, they play them.
I mean, they are masters at thatstuff.
And the thing is, when it works, the power of that simple thing

(45:22):
there really isn't anythingbetter in terms of the power of
rock.
You just get sucked into it andthe energy is there and the
whole thing just moving as agiant unit is really cool.
You know, when you have thecomplicated stuff, the more
sophisticated things you canhave.

(45:52):
People really enjoy that too,but it's a more limited audience
, right, and I feel like, uh,you know, as an experiment, it
would be interesting to be ableto, to just try playing in a way
that is, um, outside of what Ihave been doing maybe for the
last uh 15, 20 years, and see,see what that's like, um, cause
I just I haven't really had achance to make anything brand

(46:15):
new for a long time, uh, but Ifeel like it would be fun to do
some stuff with some differentfolks and, and now is uh just as
good of a time in terms of um,being an independent artist and
just making stuff and saying,hey, look, going to do this
thing, here's how you find it,and, you know, telling them to
go to the website, or orwhatever I'm.

(46:36):
I'm not ever going to be on alabel.
You know there's no, no labelthat would want anything that I
do.
So it wouldn't be evennecessary because you know you
have all the tools Everybodydoes now in terms of being able

(47:20):
to get your stuff distributedand out there in front of people
.
You know, the whole point oftrying to do something different
as you keep progressing is whenyou get to that point where you
feel like the thing that you'remotivated to do is do something
that actually hits the rightway and make somebody feel
something.
That's a different way ofplaying and writing than just
being like, oh, I have thistechnical skill and I can do
these complicated things andthat sounds cool and it's fun,
but it is different than whenyou play a song like what you
were saying, where you just yousee people react to it a certain
way and you know if you canfind a few things that are new

(47:45):
that you write and you can getthat reaction.
That's an interesting challenge.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
It is Absolutely Well .
You know, what's beeninteresting is that I know
you're going to do some of theAllman family things in the fall
right and those tunes and thatapproach is, you know, I was
always a big Allman Brothers fanand what's so crazy about those
harmonies is that I mean thosetunes, you got to know the parts

(48:11):
but at the same time there's alot of room for interpretation.
It's a lot of feel, of course,improvising, they're mostly over
one or two chords but you know,as we've been stating, you know
, know you can get a lot done inthat environment.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Your dad used to like to solo over one or two chords
almost all the time the thingabout that is his band was good
enough to be able to hear wherehe would go with that right,
adjust to the modal things thathe might, uh, allude to, and and
then, whatever happened, theycould back him up.

(48:46):
It could start as somethingthat's simple, but it could go
completely in another direction.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
And that's the beauty of seeing a live performance,
and my dad really loved beingable to do something that that
audience that night was going tosee, that no other audience was
going to see.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Right, and that's the way it should be.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Unique every time is.
It's really cool if you thinkabout it and also the way that
he would create arrangements sothat that specifically could
happen.
It was by design.
Right could happen.
It was by design.
A song like Inca Roads, wherethe structure of the song has

(49:28):
difficult things that come inand out, which is the
foundational elements, thethemes in it, but then there's a
wide open guitar solo and awide open keyboard solo and they
can go anywhere.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
Right.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
But you could have that song get performed a
thousand times and it will neverhave the same solo section.
It won't have the same attitude, and that's what's cool is that
you could create a song thatcould be different every time
it's played.
Exactly, and that's the waywhere every time it's played it

(50:03):
will sound different, becauseit's the name of it is really
the instruction.
There's certain rhythms thathave to be played, but the notes
are the choice of theinstrumentalists who are playing
it.
So there's things that willhappen.
You have to basically followthe.
If you just saw a shape of thenotes on paper, they're not

(50:27):
specific notes, but there is aspecific contour to it.
So that's what's funny is thatif you listen to the song
Approximate, the notes aredifferent every single time it's
played, but it's still going tobe recognizable as the song
because of the contoured rhythmof it.
You know so that I love that.

(50:48):
My dad was always experimentingwith those kinds of things in a
compositional realm.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Now, did he?
I mean, I can't remember if wetalked about this in the past or
not, but would he do stuff like?
I mean?
It seems like a lot of timeswhen you're listening to,
especially like in the, you know, the early to mid 70s
incarnations of his ensemblesand records that he would have a
composition that maybe wasrecorded in the studio but then

(51:14):
he'd fly in like the live solo.
Would he do stuff like that?
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
So he had a technique , and this was before DAWs, you
know, before digital audioworkstations.
He was a master with the razorblade edit on tape.
So there are solos that are onrecords where you hear it and
you go, wow, this is an amazingsolo and the interplay between
the guitar and the drums is socool.

(51:40):
Yet it's not what you think.
Think because, like, let's say,a song on shake your booty, yo
mama, that guitar solo that'sfrom a different performance
than the rhythm track.
So that is a solo that wasplaced on top of that rhythm
track, completely unrelated tothat.
Yet it sounds like it wasimprovised and played with that

(52:05):
track.
So he called that xenocrany.
It was basically, uh, the ideaof taking two different things
and putting them on a similartimeline so that the time could
be synchronized.
So it's basically two differentsynchronizations of what could

(52:26):
be.
Uh, in some cases, like hemight take a solo from a
relative key right and put it ona song that had a different
structure, different uh feel and, and he would just say, what
does this sound like?
And if he liked it, that becamethe solo on on that record.
So he did stuff like that allthe time.
He was constantly recording ofthe shows.

(52:48):
I pretty much recorded everyshow, right yeah, which is
really crazy, yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
So it's just to me.
It's amazing to me, you know,as someone who was never, you
know, I was never reallyinterested in getting under the
hood of the recording process.
I just you know, I was neverreally interested in getting
under the hood of the recordingprocess.
I just, you know, let's go tothat studio.
That guy's good.
I know what I want in thestudio in terms of, hey, let's
do that there, let's do thisthat sounds like this, or
whatever.
But to have the minutia levelof being able to manipulate all

(53:20):
the gear, know how to get allthe different sounds, not to
mention to be able to composeall this stuff and be able to
understand all the differentlimitations of the different
instruments.
Get it up to.
I mean, the guy must never haveslept.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
Definitely worked the back of the clock.
You know he liked to work allthroughout the late night hours
and then sleep in the daytime,so that wasn't great when we
were trying to play in thebackyard because you couldn't,
you know.
But yeah, generally a 17-hourworkday was nothing for him.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
Insane, insane, but the results speak for themselves
.
I remember, um, I think it waspre COVID, when I saw you up in
Minneapolis and I sat in and youguys played sleep dirt, yep,
and uh, and I remember I waslike what is the song?
And I, you know, I I thought Igot 10 Zapper records.
You know, I'm a fan.
And then you realize that ain'tshit.

(54:22):
And then I did the big deepdive after that and I got, of
course, I started with the sleepdart and I got a bunch of
different records and so on andso forth.
But man, it's just, it's amazingthe amount of music that was
made and it's it's impossible tokind of get your mind around
the whole thing.
But it was his mind and hereally didn't wasn't under the

(54:42):
mindset of caring about thelegacy.
He just wanted to create in themoment, do the thing and be in
the moment and go on to the nextthing and not worry about it.
I mean, I'm sure he wanted tomake sure that all the you know,
the I's were crossed orwhatever that expression is T's
were crossed, wanted to keepgoing full speed ahead.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Yeah, I mean, he just uh, he had one phrase which was
keep going, never stop, uh.
But the thing is, um, you know,somebody, uh, towards the end
of his life, asked him how wouldyou like to be remembered?
And he said I wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Right, I remember seeing that interview.
The thing is like.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
He had a self-deprecating sense of humor,
but he also had a disdain forsomebody that did want a legacy.
He's like why are you focusedon what your legacy is, you know
?
So I feel like there's a goodlesson in that in terms of like,
don't take yourself tooseriously.
Do what you like.
If other people like it, toogreat.

(55:42):
But you know everybody is isgonna have their own experience
in life and you know, if you'retrying to do too much to
influence somebody to behave acertain way, that's not, would
you know, try too hard to makewhat they thought be what they

(56:13):
wanted him to think as well.
He was a very independentthinker and stood up for, you
know, all the things thatessentially are the most
important personal freedoms.
It's in his music.
He did it as a person and Ijust think that when it comes to

(56:35):
music and what he was able toaccomplish, people barely know
the half of it.
He made over 65 albums in hislifetime and I don't know how
many have come out since.
Maybe another 40.
Right, and there's still tonsof music from live performances

(56:55):
with things that people haven'theard.
But the difference is, when hewas curating all of it, he knew
what he wanted people to hear,versus let's just pull anything
out of the vault and put it out.
There's definitely things thathave come out that he never
would have put out.
Right, they have nothing to dowith the stuff that comes out,
you know, but I know for a factthat there are certain

(57:18):
performances that have come outwhere his guitar is out of tune
a lot.
He wouldn't have put that stuffout.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Well, it's the same.
It's the same thing with theHendrix thing.
Like he was, you could tell hewould.
He would just from the stuffthat was put out in his lifetime
versus what came out.
But you know, then there'salways the thing of as fans,
you're curious because you wantto hear it, but the date, but
the danger is is that you know,just like with everything
nowadays, that people will hearthat one thing and go, well, he

(57:46):
wasn't that great, Listen to hisguitar, it's out of tune.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Yeah, exactly.
But you know, the thing is, youused to be able to, as an
artist, curate what you wantedpeople to hear.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
Right.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
And I think that's still an important factor.
These days, everybody bootlegswhatever your performance is,
puts it up on Instagram orimmediately, so you can't curate
what you do.
No, absolutely not Bad night.
It's going to be out thereforever, you know.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
And then people will, you know, see that one thing
and judge your entire career, orjust be complete randos and
never do any research on.
Well, who is this guy?
Does he have a past?
Does he?
Has he played with anybody, isit?
They'll just like randomlyadjudicate in the most horrific
way possible.
You're just going wow, you know, you've got this thing in your
hand.
That's like the Oracle and youcould find out.

(58:39):
You know things that ourforefathers would have wished
they had access to, and yet youcan't even read in the comments
to figure the answer to yourquery.
You know what I mean?
It's, it's insane.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
Yeah, it's super lame how that stuff works, but uh,
but you know you have to justnot care.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
No, that's exactly it .
I mean you, you, you just can'tcare and certainly I'm
certainly not engaged.
I was talking about exactly it.
You mean you, you, you justcan't care and certainly I'm
certainly not engaged.
I was talking about this withsomebody that, uh, not too long
ago, is you can never engagewith the people online saying
this, that, and the next thing,cause it's just like, oh yeah,
no, I'm not, I'm not beingdragged down, that particular,
uh, alleyway of shame, alleywayof shame.

(59:21):
That's our first song thatwe're going to work on alleyway
of shame, alleyway of theknowledgeable things that sound
good in the bluesy, jazzycontext.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
but then you have the quirkiness of your sense of
humor in the playing as well.
But what I like the most isthat it's everything that you're
doing is being done with yourhands, specifically, Like you
can be playing through anything,but it's still going to sound
like you because the way thatyou bend and all of the quirky

(01:00:12):
things that are in your playing.
So for me I appreciate that inyour style, in the same way that
I appreciate that in JeffBeck's playing.
Oh, thank you very much.
And stuff is is.
It takes a lifetime to buildthat and I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Oh well, thank you, I mean that's.
You know I was talking with my.
My son today, as you know,plays drums in the band and um
and I, we were just talkingabout the fact that you know
it's I never stop uh, refining,you know, and it's always and
it's not really um, it's allthose things you were talking.
It's.
It's like little bends, little.

(01:00:52):
You know the microtonal things,tone things, you know it's.
That that's the reason why youknow, um, you know, hendrix, to
me, was all my all-time favoriteuh, because you would, I mean
just a little.
You know the, the pick rakesand the and the little pinchy
harmonic things that he would do, clean and just all of that
cool nitty gritty stuff.

(01:01:14):
As, as opposed to uh, but not tosay that I don't appreciate
somebody who's got moretechnical, I was a huge holes
worth fan.
I never wanted to, or even hadthe patience or the ear to sit
down and and dissect what he wasdoing, but I loved listening to
it, you know, and I loved thechord changes spoke to me.
But you know, frank had thesame effect on me in terms of,

(01:01:34):
you know, I would listen to liveat the Roxy and elsewhere, and
I could still there's.
There's one note, and we'vetalked about this before, and
the torture never not.
The torture never stops, butduring that solo on live at the
Roxy and elsewhere, and he bendsone note and it's not quite a

(01:01:55):
whole step down from where itshould be and he bends all the
way.
It's like that's the greatestnote in rock history.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
And the tone has got such an attitude.
It's got a ton of mid range.
It's the SG yes, the wallhappening.
But yeah, it's one of thosethings where it's a bend from
nowhere into the note that thatarrives at the chord change and
it's so good because he startsfrom the wrong note, right and

(01:02:26):
it and it moves.
It's not a quick bend, no, soit's like you know, you're going
for a ride there, you know yes,and that's.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
That's the kind of stuff I've always gravitated
towards, because that, to me,makes makes the flavor yeah,
well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
well, that is the thing, and you know to what we
were talking about.
When you're doing it and you'redoing it with minimal things,
like you know you don't have tohave a pedal board and you're
the kind of player that can justbe like I got my amp, I got my
guitar, I'm good to go.
I am not comfortable.

(01:03:04):
I don't have a specific style.
I'm much more like I will playdifferent ways depending on the
sound that I have in front of me.
So I react to the sound and Iplay based on what the sound is
giving me.
I can't just play with aneutral sound and feel like I

(01:03:28):
know that I'm going to be ableto play whatever I want to play.
A sound will dictate what I'mgoing to be able to go for.
Gotcha there's nothing wrongwith that either.
Well, it does.
It makes it harder to do thingsyou know, because you know I
have, and then it also dependson how well I can interact with

(01:03:50):
the rhythm section, Right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
Exactly.
You know I was going to ask yousomething before I was thinking
about it.
You know so much of, you knowthe music that was done in the
late 60s and 70s.
You know Frank described it, youknow, as maybe one of the
reasons why is because therecord executives were these old
men who were just kind of heylet those kids try whatever they

(01:04:15):
want and then later on it wastheir hip nephew that would take
over, who thought they knewwhat was going on and became the
gatekeepers and so, and thenthings just got progressively
less cool.
But a lot of that music has, aswe well know and I would put

(01:04:35):
Frank in the same uh, uh,echelon there is a like a
religious dogmatic worship ofthese individuals Frank, I think
deserves it but of some ofthese other folks.
Just because of that, musicmeant more to people back then.
It was more of an outliersocietal shift that was so much

(01:04:58):
different from what happenedlater, when everything got a
little bit more commercializedand it just didn't have as much
gravity and so on and so forth.
But I think most people,including myself, grew up with
this kind of iconography ofthese individuals and I would
imagine that you, growing up inFrank's house, didn't have that
same approach to some of thosemore iconic players, because

(01:05:20):
your dad was one of them.
Your dad knew those people andyou probably didn't have that
same.
Am I correct in saying that?

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
Well, I think to the extent that I just if I liked
something, I would be interestedto learn more about it, and I
liked players and I would.
At that time, you know, youcould only buy a record and read
the liner notes or maybe buy amagazine that had an interview
with somebody.
So the connection that you madewith the music and the fact

(01:05:50):
that you spent your own money tobuy these things and own them
the real reason why I think alot of that music does connect
better with people and they havea stronger attachment to it
because they spent time with it.
It's not, like you know, thesedays music is just on in the
background and a lot of stuff isjust like.

(01:06:12):
My dad described it as reallyjust wallpaper for people's
lifestyle.
It was something that showedwho you were in the background
and you know, it's almost thesame as you see people that

(01:06:33):
effectively just wear a costumeso that other people can
recognize.
Oh, you're that type of personI've been, you know like I know
straight away from looking atyou that you like these five
bands and this is the coffeethat you're going to order when
you go to a Starbucks, you know.
And so, uh, that kind of thingwasn't a thing back in the day,
you know.
And so now I think theappreciation of the music and

(01:06:56):
where it came from, uh, there'sa lot of that that's missing for
younger generations and thetricky part of it is that they
don't really care, they don'treally know more about where it
came from.
You know, they that's.
It's just like.
Here's a good example, likethis happens over and over.

(01:07:17):
But so Van Halen covered.
You really got me, but it waswritten by the kinks.
When I was 12, I heard VanHalen's version of it first.
So when I heard the Kinksversion, I was like man, they
can't play that Van Halen song,for shit.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
Right sure.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
And I didn't appreciate what the difference
between the two were.
But later I'm like wait aminute.
You know, when the Kinks wrotethat song and it came out and
the guitar tone that's on there,it's a killer guitar sound.
And back then it was to getpeople's attention.
You had to make something sounddifferent.
That guitar never existedbefore.
So you heard it and you go, wow, that's cool, right, but now

(01:07:57):
anybody can just press a buttonand make a classic sound.
And so they don't have anappreciation for actually coming
up with the sound to begin with, or the history of why it

(01:08:27):
sounds the way it does and whypeople like it.
It becomes the worst version ofwhat we would recognize it as,
but it's new to them.
So they go, oh, this is cool.
It's like, you know, whensomeone hears Greta Van Fleet,
who's you know 20 years old, andlike, oh, this is the rock band
for me, and it's like, have youever heard Zeppelin?
And they're like, who?
It doesn't matter when thatstuff happens and it flips in

(01:08:49):
that way.
I think it's easy for us whohave the knowledge and
experience of listening todecades of music, it's easy for
us to get frustrated by the lackof wonderment from a younger
generation to no more.
It's like, wait, you like thatversion, but this version.
The original is so much better,but for them it's not because

(01:09:13):
the song they heard in themoment they heard it there's in
the way that the original didfor us Right, exactly, I always
say it all depends on where youstart the clock.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
You know it's like, but I think the thing that's
that's, I think, is different.
Um, is that, uh, you know, whenI, my parents, were world war
two generation people, my dadwas born in 1923.
Um, so the music that I gotinto they did not understand and

(01:09:46):
it was an act of rebellion.
You know what I mean.
It's like they'd hear, likewhat is this shit?
You know, I want to hear StanKenton, you know what I mean, or
whatever, and they just theydidn't get it, Whereas, you know
, grandparents now, andgreat-grandparents were people
that were Frank's age.
You know what I mean, and themusic is not something that they

(01:10:09):
would, you know.
Granted, when you talk aboutdifferent metal things and all
kinds of different music that'sout now that maybe you know us
older people would be like, ah,that's shit.
But for the most part, the kindof medium-level stuff that's
accepted really hasn't changedthat much in like 60 years,
which I think is kind of weird.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
Well, there's a lot that has been done, so there's
less new stuff that can be done.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
That's true, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
And so the thing is, when we're in a place now where
a 20-year-old doesn't know whothe Beatles are and doesn't care
Right, that's like that's aline in the sand.
For a lot of people from ourgeneration, that will be like
wait a minute.
You're like you are skippingover really good stuff.

(01:11:01):
You should be interested inthis.
Like, how come this doesn'tmatter to you?
You should be interested inthis.
Like how come this doesn'tmatter to you?
You know, but they just want tohear a three-note melody with
some guy going yeah, yeah, yeah,you know.
And to them it's like that'sthe greatest song that's ever
happened and I don't get itRight.

Speaker 1 (01:11:19):
Ah, what are you going to do?
What are you going to do?
Well, you know, as I like tosay with my whole approach to
everything, it's like thank God,I don't need a million people
to make a living, I just needenough.
So as long as I can find enoughpeople to actually give a shit,
we're good.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
Yeah, and that's a good point, you know, because I
think a lot of people artists um, they get into this thinking,
all right, I'm going to make ago at this, and they have this
idea that you have to havemillions and millions of people
that love what you do in orderfor it to actually be anything.
But if you just do a simplenumbers game and you look at

(01:11:57):
like, well, wait a minute,instead of trying to get a
dollar from a million people,and these million people may
never come back and may never beinterested in you again, what
if you were able to cultivate arelationship with 10,000 people
that want to spend a hundreddollars every year, that you're
doing something because you areable to give them something that

(01:12:19):
they want and you have areciprocal relationship with
them?
Artists don't like the ideathat only 10,000 people or less
would be their customers.
They start to feel like, well,what's the point?
But that is the real thing hereis, if you're an independent

(01:12:39):
artist, you really need to beable to look at it from a
numbers perspective and say youwould be thrilled if you had
10,000 people that were willingto buy a hundred dollars worth
of merchandise from you on anannual basis.

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):
Right, absolutely, absolutely Well.
I think the other thing too isthat I think you know to that,
to that same point, people want.
I mean, I mean, I know, when Iwas younger I was like, well,
someone's going to fucking findme and I'm going to be whisked
out of this hell.
And then you realize prettyearly on, you got to do
everything yourself, pal, oryou're going to be, you're going

(01:13:15):
to be in trouble.
And so nowadays I mean you know, I have a lot of people say,
well, how doesn't the road getold?
I mean it's you.
Guys are driving all over theplace in that van.
I go, listen, it's me, my sonand another guy who we get along
with great, who hauls a fuckingHammond B3 with him.
Everywhere we go we fit in onevehicle.
We show up to places where theonly reason why people are

(01:13:37):
coming there is to see us play.
I set up the merch, I sell themerch before the gig.
Talk to all the people coming.
We play the gig, I go there.
Afterwards you makeacquaintances and friends that
will come back for as long asyou're willing to go on the road
and come back to whereveryou're going.
And then you're back in yourhotel by 1030 or 11 o'clock at
night and you drive to the nextplace and do it all over again.
It's like what's the greatestthing on earth.

(01:14:00):
And then people try to.
I was talking about anotherbuddy of mine earlier today as a
musician and you know whenpeople give you that.
You know why.
Why aren't you better known?
I mean, why isn't this placepacked and just like listen?
If you're under the, thedelusion that life, and
particularly the music industry,is a meritocracy, I hate to
burst your bubble, but it'sreally kind of a bullshitocracy.

(01:14:21):
So, whatever you can get andhowever they come here and
however they're digging it, Ihave no idea, but I'm just
grateful they're coming.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
It's a lot of hard work and people don't know what
it really takes to do it,especially when you're in the
ranks of being able to do it ona tour bus.
You know the cost of a tour busit's unbelievable.
People have no idea.
Plus, you have to put a downpayment on the rental before the

(01:14:52):
tour even starts.
So, uh, you know, back in 2020,before the shutdown, it was
already expensive.
You know it was like 65 grand amonth for a tour bus
unbelievable.
A over a hundred now.
A month for a tour busUnbelievable.
Pay over a hundred now.
And and you could even get likea shitty, shitty bus that's 25
plus years old with all kinds ofproblems, and you still have to

(01:15:13):
pay that much because thedemand is there and they can
they can make you pay that price.
That's insane.
So, uh, you know, if you havethat kind of uh overhead just
for the bus, and then you have aband and a crew and all that
stuff, it's very difficult tomake it all work, oh my God.
So, during schedule for us, youknow, it's oftentimes six shows

(01:15:37):
in a row and then you have aday off and maybe that day off
is a drive day you might noteven have it sitting in a hotel
room, and then we don't alwayshave hotels, you know you
basically live on the bus andyou shower at venues.
Right, you know, this is not,this is not the dream of fancy

(01:15:58):
rockstar land.
This is, this is very much, youknow, like.
Let's just try to make thiswork and when people show up
we're grateful, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
Right, Absolutely Well, and that's the thing of
the people who really I mean,you know, if you love music and
you love playing, you'll do allthat stuff to do it, because
that's the main thing.
If it's about anythinginvolving oh, I want to become
powerful and renowned, and allthat other kind of shit, it's
like you're in for a long, longor a short one.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Then it comes back to the whole thing, like we were
talking about with my dad, where, you know, people said, well,
how would you like to beremembered?
And he said I wouldn't so ifyou're doing this because you
want to be remembered.
And you want to be rememberedand he said I wouldn't.
So if you're doing this becauseyou want to be remembered and
you want to be this like amazingthing, you know, a lot of
people are going to be like fuckyou, who cares about what
you're doing?
Who are you?

(01:16:56):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
no doubt about it.
Absolutely Well, listen myfriend.
Thanks so much for spendingsome time today.
I I love to chat more.
This is fascinating and I'mdefinitely up for for making
some music anytime.

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
I have a whole setup but you know I've got a studio
where we could just make a wholething.
You know we could bring yourguys in.
I got some other people wecould throw into the mix.
But we should, we should justdo something and and film it
while we're doing it, make likea little mini doc about it and
that sounds fantastic, causethat's what I've got in mind for

(01:17:32):
this.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
This next thing you know, devin and Oman and I have
done this uh collaborative, um,uh, record project where, uh,
you know, he comes up with halfthe money, I come up with half
the money and we're just tryingto build my thing and so far
it's been really a goodrelationship and we're talking
about doing kind of aninstrumental record.
Next and I'm kind of justfloating around ideas, but that

(01:17:56):
was my main thing was it'd begreat if we could video it and
have the content, because that'sgonna drive everything.
You put that up online andpeople see what's going on.
And you know the records arealways going to buy to a certain
extent, but they want to buythe experience and that promotes
the gigs.
Yada, yada, yada.
That sounds awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:18:16):
Yeah, well, we definitely have many avenues to
explore, and I think people willprobably be interested in some
twisted guitar from the two ofus.
Oh, indeed.

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
And the humor level, I rest assured will be of a
certain level.

Speaker 2 (01:18:36):
Well, I appreciate you having me on and we'll make
this little thing happen.

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):
I love it.
All right, my friend.
Thanks so much.
I'm going to turn this off here.
Hold on just a second.
Well, thanks for tuning in.
Ladies and gentlemen, toanother episode of Chewing the
Gristle.
We certainly do appreciate youstopping by.
Make sure you tell your friendsall about us.
I think they might enjoythemselves.

(01:19:03):
So thanks again for tuning inand we'll see you next time.