The Blasters - "The Blasters" with Dave Alvin

Graham is joined by Dave Alvin to discuss The Blaster’s 1981 self-titled album. Dave also shares his perspective on labels, creative control, and loving what you do. Also, beer and BBQ.

📻🎚️
The Blasters “Marie Marie” (3:02)
Carole King “Up On The Roof” (32:04)
The Germs “What We Do Is Secret” (45:35)
X “Los Angeles” (46:01)
Los Lobos “Walking Song” (46:37)
Shakin’ Stevens “Marie Marie” (55:26)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is major label debut. It's the podcast about major
label debuts. I'm Graham right. Something that I would hear
a lot when I was working in a band, working
in the music industry that would really annoy me was
business people, record label people, management people, etc. They would
always talk about how it all really comes down to
having a song, like you'd be struggling to write the

(00:32):
next record, or you'd be struggling with the last record
and it wouldn't be performing commercially in the way that
you hoped it would, or maybe the record label seemed
a little bit disappointed by it, or the ticket sales
the shows weren't as good as you were hoping, et cetera,
et cetera. There's a million ways in which an album
campaign can be unsatisfactory and very very few ways in
which it can be satisfactory, because, of course, the goalposts

(00:54):
are always moving anyway. All of which goes to say
this common refrain that it would keep coming back to
when you're asking these so called experts, these supposed professionals,
what you could do, what levers you could push to
help yourself, to help your career, to get everyone you
know closer to the brass ring that they were supposedly
reaching for. They would keep on coming back to this
notion that you really just need a song, by which

(01:17):
they really mean you just got to get lucky. Because
for all of the Swedish hit song scientists and all
of the algorithmic geniuses out there who purport to understand
how a hit is made, I think that history has
really demonstrated basically, when you have a real hit, a
smash hit, like a capital S song that changes not
just your life but like the world, that is luck.

(01:40):
It's kind of the right idea at the right time.
And yeah, some of them might have commonalities in terms
of hooks or superficial sonic elements or whatever the case
may be, but really, you know, an all time song
is just kind of a little bit of magic. And
so it always really frustrated me when we would get
that advice, because you know, it's not the kind of

(02:01):
magic that is that easy to just snap your fingers
and conjure. The other annoying thing about it is that
it's kind of true. Of course, there's nothing like a song,
you know, and if you're making music for your living,
chances are that your life was changed by a song
or by a number of songs, and of course you're
always going to yearn to do that, no matter how iconoclastic,

(02:22):
how indie committed, how diy you are. I think every
single musician somewhere in their heart of hearts dreams of
having a hit, not necessarily to get rich, not necessarily
to get famous, but to have a song that reaches
and touches many, many people. However, the reality is most
of us don't have that, and there are ways to

(02:44):
carve out a living and a life making music that
don't involve just getting a check every day because you
wrote hey yah, as much as that would be really
really nice. All of which brings me to today's guest,
Dave Alvin Mury Dave Alvin of The Blasters and X

(03:10):
and many many other bands. Dave Alvin has been making music,
living music for decades and decades. He wrote a hit song.
He wrote a song called Marie Marie that was a
hit for him and also for other artists. It sounds
like this.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
With me live tell.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
And it's a great song. It's a great song, but
it's not like a check every day hey yeah song.
It's not a song that you write and release and
then you don't have to worry anymore, you know. And
Dave Alvin has played in a lot of bands, He's
made a lot of music and a lot of contexts.
And as you're going to hear in our conversation, which
is nominally about the Blasters self titled nineteen eighty one
major label debut that was upstreamed from the indie Slash

(03:55):
Records to the major Warner Brothers. But as usual at
this point on the show, we kind of just want
off in all directions and talked about music and life
and art and philosophy. Dave is a guy who really
understands how he wants to work through this business, how
he wants to exist in the world of making music professionally,
and what he's not willing to do in the places

(04:15):
he's not willing to go to. That is something that
I think I personally really needed to hear at this point,
you know. And Dave is a man who is clear minded,
pretty unsentimental, and just matter of fact about it, and
I consider that to be wisdom. And I think Dave
Alvin is a really wise guy and a man who

(04:36):
knows what it is to make your music the way
you want to love it. And live it and embody
that notion of a song without necessarily getting that ultimate validation.
I think that that's really a beautiful thing and we
need it. It's the ecosystem that makes it possible for
songs to exist and thrive in this world. This is

(04:59):
the interest of art and commerce and where they really
They get inside your brain and inside your soul, and
they change the way that you think about the music
you make, about your own art, about your own life,
let alone your own career. Dave Alvin doesn't seem bothered
or screwed up by any of that stuff, and that
really made me happy to hear. So, without further ado,

(05:20):
here is my fantastic conversation with Dave Alvin of the Blasters.
One of the like surprise treats for me about doing
this podcast is we've got to talk to all kinds

(05:41):
of musicians who have been making music for you know, decades,
and it is so amusing to me that the first
thing we get to do with all of them is
talk about how to go into their computer settings and
fiddle around with you know, little tick boxes. When you
were starting the Blasters, did you ever imagine that you
could be interviewed in such a futuristic fashion. It's like
the Enterprise, you know what.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
You won't believe this, but yes, because my brother Phil
was when we started the band, he had just gotten
his BS in science, but his thing was artificial intelligence.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
And we started in nineteen seventy nine, around March April
of seventy nine, and yeah, he was already talking about, well,
you know everything, you know, within the next five years,
everything's going to be a computerized all. Get out of here,
get out of that crazy talk. And yeah, and when

(06:35):
he when I quit the band, and then he he
after Gene Taylor, the keyboard player, and I quit in
eighty five and then you know, we finished out sort
of the gigs that were booked and blah blah blah.
My brother went back to school that he went back
and got his MS and then went to U. Say,

(06:58):
this was all at Long Beach State University than anyone
the UCL later work on this PhD. And yeah, so
that was his deal. So yeah, it was. It was
a constant chatter and blaster circles was I mean down
to you know, the stuff about making people immortal via

(07:19):
computer chips, you know, and we're all this, You're out
of your mind.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Man, Well, you're starting a rock and roll band, You're
you're angling for a different kind of immortality.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, I mean, and you know, my brother is a
genius in some ways, and I'm I'm just a dumbbell
and you know, to me, it was all about you know,
beer and girls, you know, and yeah, on rock and roll,
and my brother was thinking decades ahead.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
I was listening to another interview with you, and you
were talking about sort of your first two like mechanical
things that you learned, being how to work the radio
in the car and how to put the records on
the turntable. And it strikes me that technology and music
have been intertwined for, you know, as long as both
of us have been alive. And they're kind of like,

(08:07):
you know, it's just sound waves moving through the air,
and once upon a time it was people singing in caves.
For a long time, the gizmos and the gadgets have
been a crucial part of it.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, at least since I would say when Edison people
like that started making the first recordings. It changed music
forever in that previously music was so regional. So if
you were a classical musician, let's say in the nineteenth
century you would be familiar with if you were Austrian,

(08:37):
you'd be familiar with, you know, Austrian and German operas
and symphonies. But you'd also be aware of Italian and
French and this, that and the other. As far as like
day to day folk musicians, you had no idea what
the guy on the other side of the hill was playing,
you know, and so you played a certain style on
your whatever your instrument was, guitar or bagpipes, and and

(09:00):
But then in the twentieth century, with the rise of
recorded sound, a banjo player in West Virginia could hear
a banjo player from Alabama and there would be similarities
and there'd be big differences. So the guy in West
Virginia said, hey, I'm going to do a little bit
of that too. And then so then then the sound

(09:21):
becomes the regionalism becomes, you know, more diffused, and over
the course of the twentieth century you would see, you know,
rises in regionalism, say with you know, Chicago blues or
Sun records, rockabillyes styles or West Coasts, this that and
the other. But then that gets quickly gets spread out

(09:44):
among the amongst musicians, and it changes everything. So regionalism,
which is something that I really like in folk music,
in traditional music's and all that is pretty much a
done deal now. And it affects how you record, It
affects how you how you when it say, when digital
recording first came in, I was more of a purist.

(10:07):
Oh man, it's got to be analog, you know. But
once I realized that, in a weird ass backwards way,
digital recording made it easier to make records like they
did in the nineteen twenty in that I was always
burdened by you know, you used to have those two

(10:29):
inch two and a half inch reels tape right laid
a ton and you had to carry at the studio
at the studio, and then you'd be playing in the
in the studio looking into the control room and you'd
see that thing spinning. Each one of those reels was
like two hundred, two hundred and fifty bucks. So you
got to get right, you know, and then you start playing,

(10:50):
you start playing like this, you know, Oh my god.
Once I saw that with digital, oh I screwed up.
Screw it. You know, we got we got eighty more
hours on this, you know, on this hard drive. Fine, Yeah,
I changed my whole way of recording, my whole personality
when I record. I'm no longer no longer go into

(11:11):
recording sessions like, oh my god, we only got we
got well Marello tape and four songs and I don't know, no,
don't play that long solo. Play it to keep it,
you know, And now it's like whatever.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
You know, that idea of regionalism. I was thinking about
a lot listening to the Blasters and thinking about this
coming up and everything because of how much it seemed
like where you guys, and especially you and your brother
Phil grew up and came of age as music lovers
and then musicians, how much that influenced your development as musicians.

(11:45):
I mean, you were so close to what sounds like
all these amazing clubs, and you got to see all
these iconic legendary musicians playing and like learn from them
in person. I mean that is fundamentally different from you know,
watching a YouTube masterclass Withjohn guitar Watson or whatever.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
I wish there was a YouTube basket class for Johnny
yitar Watson. Yeah. It's my brother and I and the
other members of the Blasters, you know, along with say,
the vond Brothers in Texas and the Duke Groobal Art
and the Room Full of Blues gang up in the Northeast.
I'm not saying it's hard to say, but we were

(12:24):
about the last people to see the last people. Yeah,
it's one of the reasons why you know there was
friction in the Blasters was we felt this need to
continue this legacy that was handed to us, you know,
and then the problems, the artistic problems developed with well,
how do you do what's the best way to do that?

(12:46):
Is the best way to do that doing note for
note recreations of t Ball Locker or whomever, or is
it finding your own voice and taking what you learn
from them and writing your own songs or whatever. Or
do you just do t bone shuffle note for note
like Tibon Walker did it. And there's valid cases to

(13:08):
be made for each. You know, on the one hand,
you're doing note for note recreations, you're you're basically like
a Baroque orchestra, a modern day Baroque orchestra that's playing
seventeenth century music on the original instruments. You know, Oh man,
this obo was killer Man. It's from sixteen ninety nine,
and you know, it's the last good year of Obo's

(13:28):
and you know, and that's valid. I don't have a
problem with that at all. I don't necessarily want to
be in that band, you know, but you know, but
it's it's it's an important tool to have, it's important
education to share with others. This is how we used
to play it. This is how this was done. This

(13:49):
is who did it, and it applies to to you know,
blues and R and B and rockabilly and folk music
and whatever is anyway. So yeah, we were the last
two to see the last of the greats roughly near
their prime, you know, like when we first started seeing
Big Joe Turner and lightnin Hopkins and T. Boat Walker

(14:11):
and I go down the list, but Big Joe Turner
was was our guy, you know. He was He lived
in LA. And once we figured out one he lived
in LA and two he was an incredibly sweet man
and didn't mind these little white kids fall him around
from gate to big That's what we did. You know.
We were like dead heads, but we were Big Joe heads.

(14:34):
There were T. Bon Walker heads or whomever, and they
were still they were still they were at the tail
end of their prime. But they were still in their
prime when when my brother and I first saw them,
you know, and I saw Jimmy Hendricks twice when I
was twelve, so I already I was already like a
little snotty, no at all. And but then you know,

(14:57):
within six months I saw t bon Walker first time
and it was the same. He had the same effect
on me that Jerry Hendricks did, of Wow, I want
to do that. I can't do it like him, but
I want to do that, you know. And anyway, it's
a real blessing and all that that we got to uh,
we got to see those guys. But then people ask me,

(15:17):
now you get young kids, young little thirteen year olds
coming to your show because now you're here one of
the guys, you know, occasionalogy.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, they're all watching master classes on YouTube instead.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
On my guitar playing.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
I can guarante, well, I wonder how much that because
I really recognize that push pull between wanting to you know,
carry on whatever tradition you're trying to honor by literally
picking up the notes of it and the performance of
it in the style of it and just repeating that
and you know, in that way delivering it to a
new generation. You know, it was obviously a whole different

(15:52):
generation of music for me. But one of the first
things that sort of affected my my own creative journey
is that I couldn't play any of the songs that
I wanted to play like And so the necessity of
my own limitations led me down an entirely new creative
path that brought all of those traditions like, they translated
through me. They meant something to me, and I tried
to express it using my abilities. And I wonder if

(16:15):
you feel like that is sort of what set you
off on what became this amazing rock and roll adventure.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Well, that kind of, yeah, I guess if I'm understanding correctly, Yeah,
but that's really kind of came a little late. That's like,
you know, the tail end of my time in the Blasters,
when I was like, my brother and I were artistically
kind of moving in opposite directions. And my brother Phil
is a great, great, great, great great singer, and I'm

(16:45):
not I'm a great I'm good at interpreting, particularly my songs.
I'm very good at interpreting not all of them, but
most of them that I write. But my brother is
a great singer. So and his interest musically was not
only and whatever songs I was writing. But you know
anything from the nineteen twenties, thirties, forties, you know that's

(17:07):
he can sing it. You know, he can sing like
Big Joe Turner. He could sing like you know, being
Cross or really Bing Crosby or or you know or
whomever you know, Cap Callowen, And I can't. And you know,
I mean he would have filled with it, would have
been happy in a weird way if the Blasters had
been a room full of blues kind of band. And

(17:28):
that's about a slag on room full of blues. That's
a high compliment in that in the eighties nineties, that
was the top of the line, you know, as far
as a blues R and B orchestra went. And I wasn't.
I wouldn't be good enough to be a room full
of blues. You know. All the other Blasters could have
basically been in that band, and on me I was

(17:49):
the I was the loud, noisy, dufous you have jumped
around on stage tream much. And what I brought to
the band was a certain time of energy and the
bandit just because I wasn't in those days of guitar virtuo.
So but I'm not going to have you tell me

(18:09):
that I can't play guitar loud, and I'll show you
I can, you know. And am I making any sense?

Speaker 1 (18:17):
Complete sense? I know exactly what you mean. And it
felt like that to me too. I'm feeling a lot
of resonance with my own experience, which is very reassuring.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Frankly, in the Sarah songwriter world, who have told me that,
you know, one of the reasons they started writing songs
was because they were terrible singers, you know, and they
only felt comfortable doing their own songs as opposed to doing,
you know whatever, the Great American Songbook. And you know,

(18:44):
I'm kind of the same way I've done. I've done
albums of covers because I tried. When I do covers,
it's covers. I think that I can interpret a certain way.
But in general, you know, I don't see myself as
Al Green or with Sam Cook or George Jones or
I do what I do and some people like it,
some people don't. But for me like the thing to

(19:06):
go back to seeing, you know, hanging out at clubs
like the astrob when You're thirteen years old and all that,
and seeing everybody from Cleveland Sheineer, Clifton Shineer and Johnny
Guitar Watson and Reverend Gary Davis and Buckle White. You know. Well,
the thing that I learned, the thing that I've picked

(19:27):
up on, like lightnin Hopkins, was the first time I
saw Lnon Hopkins. All I wanted to do with my
life was be Lightning Hopkins. How can I be Lightning Hopkins?
And it took me about maybe an hour figure out, Oh,
I I never can be Blighten Wunkins, you know, but
I can learn some of his licks, and I can

(19:49):
take some of his attitude and some of his life
experience and apply it to my own life. Where with
a lot of other younger musicians, they you know, they
want to go the note for note route. You know,
I can't do that because not that I you know,
typically in the early days of the Blasters, we first started,
we were a note for note band. If a song,

(20:11):
if a junior Parker's song was two and a half
minutes long. On the forty five, it was two and
a half minute song when we played it, you know,
But yeah, for me, it was more about my you know,
I learned early on, I'm going to have to write
my own blues and if I'm going to make any
kind of mark, if I'm going to if I'm going

(20:31):
to carry on this tradition, it's my way of saying
the world.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Because you guys were doing all covers for like the
first six months, give or take. Am I right about that?

Speaker 2 (20:41):
All right? I mean my brother, my brother had had
a blues band. He's you know, from the time he
was like thirteen years old. You know, we had these
older cousins, our cousin Donna Dixon and Mike Keller who
Donna was a rock and roll r and b jick
you know, refer to herself. She would give us her

(21:02):
records when she get tired of them. So from an
early age, she was giving us Ray Charles, Big Joe Turner,
Ruth Brown, a lot of do wop stuff, particularly West
Coast dow wop, like the Medallions and the penguins and
the and the cadets and the flares and the jacks
and you know. And then my cousin Mike was a

(21:22):
folky and he played banjo and a good guitar, and
he turned us on too. You know, Dave Ben Rock
and Ram the Jack Elliot and Sonny Terry and Brownie
McGhee and you know, and early Bob Dylan and things
like that. So by the time, yeah, by the time
my brother was thirteen, and you know, we were a
little you know it all hipsters, you know, And I forget, Sorry,

(21:46):
what was the question.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
I was just asking, Well, what I was getting at
It wasn't. It was more of a prompt, honestly, and
I think you took it exactly how I meant it.
But what I was leading towards was sort of how
you made the transition from being a pure covers band
starting to work originals in. And I'm also curious now,
based on what you've said, if that was did anyone
in the band argue against that? Was anyone like no originals?

(22:08):
We got to keep doing covers?

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Oh no, No, it's a long story that i'll shorten. Basically,
we couldn't get a record deal. We didn't have originals.
And I had studied poetry in college. I had a
buried check her dubious college career, different than my brother
and my sister, who were very good students. But I
studied poetry and I had great teachers, great poets, Gerald

(22:33):
Laughlin and Elliott Freed and a man named Richard Lee.
And this was at Longbeat State University, and they were
serious about they you know, you just couldn't go in
and oh, I wrote a free verse thing to meby
I felt bad because I saw dandelion flying in the
wind and I tried to catch it and say, you know,
you couldn't do that. You had to come in write

(22:54):
sonnets and they would check your you know, your syllable count,
they check your meter. You know. It was. It was
very strict and so, you know, so we'd have to
write song it's Alexandrines Haiku's, you know. And I was
pretty good at it. You know. I won't say it
was great, but I was pretty good at it. And
so when we realized we needed to have original songs,

(23:18):
we had a band meeting and my brother said, okay,
next week, everybody bring in three songs. And I brought
in three songs and no one else did. Fiang. I
became a songwriter, and I'd been writing songs in my
head since I was a little kid. So it just
never seemed like a career choice, you know, unlike all

(23:40):
my singer songwriter acquaintances and friends who were like, oh,
I knew when I was ten that I was going
to be playing Carnegie Hall. You know that ten I
was trying to figure out out to put the play
though back into the box.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
Was it daunting to start writing songs? I mean I'm
always struck. You know, you hear these legends of like
they they locked Mick and Keith and kitchen and told
them you have an hour to write a song, and
they came out and they've written Ruby Tuesday or some
you know, iconic thing that will last forever, that will
outlast not just them but all of us. I mean,
it's not you took a week, you came back in
with three songs that became three blaster songs.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Right, Yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Was it easy?

Speaker 2 (24:18):
No? Writing songs is about the hardest thing in the world.
I hate it. I hate doing it. It hurts my head.
You know. When I was a kid, I had my
long story. I had my head split open rough housing
and they had to sew my head back together when
I was like, you know, six years old. So whenever
I'm writing songs, guess where it hurts, right where they

(24:38):
sewed my head back together. So I hate it, but
there are a few feelings better than when you finish
the song or go hey, this doesn't suck. And with
the Blasters it had its challenges in that you couldn't
just write anything because the band wasn't going to just
play anything. You don't go to the Rolling Stone and

(25:00):
I say, hey, I wrote a polka for you guys.
You know. So the Blasters were basically everybody's background was
in blues and R and B, little side things here
and there, and so you had to write songs that
a blues band would play that were not straight blues songs,
but they had enough blues in them so that the
guys would say, Okay, this is cool, we'll do this.

(25:21):
And then you had the I had the issue of
what my brother would sing, So what do we share,
what outlooks on life, what opinions, whatever do we share
that he'll he'll want to have coming out of his
mouth night after night. And then there was the other
thing is they're all older than me. All the guys
in the band are older than me, and I looked

(25:42):
up to them and I still do. You know, they
were my heroes growing up, and so for me, as
this young idiot, bringing in songs to these older, cool guys,
you know, well, what do you think of this one?
And then I, you know, and the way the blasters
we have a rehearsal. I'd bring in a song, I'd

(26:03):
play it, I'd sing it like five six times, and
then my brother Phil would take over singing it. He'd
listen and then he'd get it. So a lot of
times it just like we had a song called Marie
Marie that just that was when I knew was like man.
I played it once or twice and the band had it.

(26:23):
My brother I kept her the third time started singing it.
But there were many others that I brought in and
you could tell, you know, by the way the guys reacted,
and so much to my detriment as a songwriter. If
I was like working, I found an idea for a
song and I started writing, and I felt like, oh,
the guys I'm going to play this, I just throw

(26:44):
it away. It could have been the greatest song everten
could have been you know, early version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.
And I would just work. Nope, last ers won't play it,
don't need it.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
What would like? What did Marie Marie, sound like when
you brought it, did you have vision in your head?
For Hey, you play a beat like this and the
bass should go a bit like that. Are you sort
of directing everyone or is it more just here's the
chords and the melody and now everybody do your thing.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
It depends on the song with Murray Marie. It played itself. Yeah,
that song I wrote. I was laying in bed and
it just kind of came into my head. Not the lyrics,
but the melody and the groove all just came into
my head. And I was laying in bed on but
what's this about? And then the next day we had
a rehearsal that evening, in about half an hour before

(27:28):
leaving for a rehearsal, I just sat down and wrote
some lyrics and in about twenty five minutes and that
was that. And I had an image in my head
from childhood that I had once seen on a drive
with my parents sitting in the back seat. I was
sitting in the backseat of the car and I saw
this young girl on the porch of an old, old wooden,

(27:49):
late nineteenth century farmhouse, playing a guitar and a bad
The image just stuck with stuck in my head throughout
my life, and then I just thought, hey, let's use that,
you know, and so then I created this whole story
inside my head and just wrote it down.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
It's I mean, it's an amazing song. I probably don't
have to tell you that at this point. It's really evocative.
And that image to start off with is like, I mean,
I guess that's what you need for a great rock song,
is just one really strong image that has just that
quality to it.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Yeah, you know, it's it's that's where the hard part
of songwriting comes. Sometimes they just hit you, and other
times you can go fishing, you know, and you just
get there with your broad and reel the line in
the going there's nothing in the you know, there's nothing
here today, and then two weeks later, oh man, you know,

(28:40):
so it's random.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Do you have a songwriting practice do you try or
did you ever go through a period where you were
sort of doing it every day like a job, real
building style or is it more just when inspiration strikes
you go running for the guitar.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
At my age, now it's it's inspiration. I can sit down,
you know, if you put a gun on my head
and said it right, Ruby Tuesday in an hour, Yeah,
I can do that. I don't think I'd come up
with Ruby Tuesday. But yeah, in blaster days and then
another periods in my solo career, if I get way
into songwriting, then I'm a different guy. There's a songwriter.

(29:15):
The songwriter brain is a different brain than go to
the market and get bread and eggs brain. And so yeah,
and blaster days, I would quit drinking, I wouldn't go out,
I wouldn't do anything. And and it can still get
that way when I get into a songwriting jag, you know.

(29:35):
So yeah, I mean certain songs were written, you know,
in my throughout my career. I won't say it with
a gun on my head, but what a time thing
on me?

Speaker 1 (29:45):
Well, it's I mean these you know. You hear John
and Paul talking in similar ways about how you know,
the label would say it's time to go into the
studio next week, and John would have to cram and
do all the songs. And I love that because by
the time I came along, and by the time I
was an band, the art cenis and the oterness of
it had taken on enough narrative strength that you sort

(30:06):
of felt like Will will tell you when our art
is ready to be recorded, Will bring the songs when
the songs come to us, And it's always a good
reminder that, you know, there is an element of professionalism
to this and an element of you know, sometimes you
got to do your job and write your songs.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
Easier when you're young, because when you're writing your first
batch of songs, because you've not written a bunch of
songs yet. Right for me, I've written a bunch of
songs now. And the one thing I don't want to
do is is in the same way, if you you know,

(30:44):
patting myself on the back from the Blasters through my
solo career and everything else, I try to not make
the same record twice, you know, so each Blaster record's
a little different, you know, sonically, song wise, you know,
just the way the band's playing, everything's different. And the
same thing in my solo career. And what it does
with songwriting is when I'm writing a song now, and

(31:08):
I am writing some songs right now, and so what
happens is I get this backlog of songs that are
they're like the Roman populace in the coliseum going no,
And you don't want to write the same song again.
You know, especially as you get to be an older,
more mature art artist, you don't want to write about

(31:31):
things the twenty two year old and you wrote about
And at the same time, it's like, well, I already
wrote that one. You know. I've written a few political songs,
not a lot, But you why don't you write a
song about this and run it because I already wrote it.
You know, I don't want to write it again. You know,
go back and listen to this one. It's pretty good.
I like it, you know, so yeah, you don't want

(31:52):
to repeat. But there is something about the brill building
kind of songwriting that you know, it appeals to me too,
you know. I look back on that era. You know,
just yesterday I was thinking just how amazing Carol King was,
you know, and you think about a song like up
on the Roof. So if this, well, stop scatting you.

(32:17):
There's rule enough.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Everything.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Come on. If I had written that, I would have quit.
I would have said, well, I wrote the greatest song
ever written. You know, I'm done. And in the case
of the Beatles and people like that, you know, I
will say this to the greatest songwriting lesson and I'll
save you all hundreds of thousands of dollars. Find the

(32:57):
Playboy magazine interview with John Lennon right before he was shot.
That's the greatest songwriting class you could ever take. Read
that interview and what they do is they go through
a variety of Beatles songs and they asked John Well
who wrote the bulk of this, Paul or you, and
particularly on the songs that they really wrote together, he

(33:20):
gets into the details. He goes, okay, well, we took
a chorus from a Roy Orbison song and made that
the verse, and then we took the verse from a
Marblette song and made that the chorus, and then we
you know, we change the lyrics. And then the more
we played it, the less it sounded like those things.
And it was all about how they taught themselves how
to write songs and what about structure, bridges, modulations, you know,

(33:45):
diminished chords. It's all in there. So if you want
to if you want a songwriting one oh one. And
I read that interview and I was just flabbergasted. And
it's funny. Every now and then I'll run into another
songwriter and battle come up. So that's that's how you
write songs.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
I will be hunting that down, and I think it
is you know, you were talking about going into poetry
class and not being able to bring in a free
verse sort of you know, free associative, just pure vomit
expression of your feelings. And I know, I'm sure a
lot of people feel this way. I certainly had to
get used to the notion that it's okay to use
the tricks of the trade that have been developed by

(34:27):
you know, one hundred years of brilliant songwriters or longer.
And it's I'll still find myself to this day. I'll
be working on some song and I'll be stuck, and
I'll be stuck, and I'll be stuck, and then it
turns out the solution is just I need a pre
chorus or a middle eight, or do you know, I
just need to employ you know, a relative minor or
a seven chord, or just one of the things that
I don't want to admit that my you know, my beautiful,

(34:48):
precious art that I'm making could possibly need something so
simple and and pedestrian as that. And yet almost every
time there are the tricks of the trade for a reason.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah, you know, there's there's not. I mean, there are
are now, I'm sure that the same way that there
are classes, you know, university guitar center. But when but
when I started right a song as god damn it,
you kids, you know you didn't have that. And the
thing about songwriting is there's really no there's no rules
to songwriting in that you can start with the bridge.

(35:20):
You know, you don't start with the chorus. You're not
to start with the verse. It's not like building a house,
where you build a house, you got to start with
the foundation and then you build a house up and
songwriting and start with the roof build down. When I
started writing songs, I realized, like I said, I'd studied
poetry and study poetic forms, and I knew that the

(35:40):
blues farm, the standard blues form, is just another poetic farm,
in the same way that a sonet is, you know,
the twelve lines, you know, abb whatever, a rhyme, scheme,
and and there's no different. The blues is exactly that.
And you know and not you know, not all blues

(36:01):
is poetry, not all rock and roll songs poetry. But
they're working off those structures, and so that made it
ease or easier you know, to write songs too, because
I could write a blues song and then change it
a little bit so that it wasn't a straight blue song.
And that's still how I operate.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
And that gets towards something I've really been interested to
ask you about, which is broadly speaking, genre, because from
reading interviews with you and listening to the music and stuff,
first of all, you have this amazing saying. It's if
you google your name, the first result is your official website,
and the description of your official website is a quote
from you that says, there's two kinds of music, quiet

(36:41):
folk music and loud folk music. I play both, and
I thought that was such a beautiful distillation of it.
And it occurs to me sometimes it seems like there
are very rigid genre markers, and you know, I played
indie rock, whatever that means. It was a bit of
a vague one. And yet there's a bit of a
you know what the who was it that said about barography?
You know it when you see it. There's a bit

(37:02):
of that, And yet there are also these artificial rules,
and they're these you know, I don't know how much
of it is structure and how much of it is
sort of imposed narrative expectation. Do you have an opinion
on that or a relationship throughout your career with the
tyranny of genre or possibly the freeing structure of genre.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, well it can't come work either way. I don't
like genres because as a songwriter, it goes back to
kind of what I was saying about the Blasters, and
that I would have to bring songs in that the
Blasters would play and feel comfortable playing. Great. Okay, so
I know what the boundaries are and how to push them.
Maybe I can push them this way, maybe push them

(37:43):
that way. But I don't like being told what tore
right now. You know. One of the reasons I left
the band was I kind of ran out of songs
that I could write for my brother. I kind of
wrote them all and over the years in my solo career. Yeah,
I've written a couple of few songs that, yeah, my
brother could saying that well out of this, but I
can't sit down and say I'm only writing songs for

(38:04):
my brother. And to me, it became about the song
has to dictate everything, you know, So if you're writing
a song and it doesn't fit what you've done, before,
but it still it is kind of a okay song. Okay,
well we'll cut this and see what happens. And that
sometimes defies genres. You know, there were times I was

(38:27):
My first solo record was on Epic Records, and it's
a long story, but my second solo record, I was
signed out a CBS Nashville in the late eighties, and
and I made a rock and roll record. It just
happened to have pt'll steal on some songs. You know,
my best friend Greg Lease, the Genius, was in my

(38:49):
band and one of the world's greatest musicians, let alone
one of the world's greatest pedal steel players. Sure, I'm
going to use that, you know, but it became in
those days, you know, we got pedal steel is country record,
forget it. So CBS Pop had problems with me because
I had pedal steel in the band and any and
and CBS Nashville had problems with me because my band

(39:13):
was basically an R and B blues rock and hole band.
They had a pedal steel in it, you know. And
and yeah, I wrote a couple of songs that were
kind of country ish, and then they said, you know,
the president the late brilliant producer named Rick Blackburn was
president of the label, and he told me, he said, look,
I think you're I think you're really good, and here's

(39:34):
what I want to do with you. You can write
side too. I wanted to have professional Nashville songwriters right
side one. I'm going to choose all the musicians and
I'll produce your record and I can make you into
a country star. I'm a sweaty rock and roller, you know.
And I said, yeah, can I have a day to
think about that? And I just saw a long highway

(39:57):
of County Ferris in my future. And you know, the
thing about country music at its best is maybe not
so much the bro country of today, but in the
old days, it was its honesty and the honesty, particularly
in a lot of the seventies song I it was,
you know, sixties and seventies country songwriters making you there,

(40:18):
Steve young, guy Clark, you know, those people were great, honest.
You know, Billy Joe Shaberg, we rip your heart out.
And I couldn't guarantee, you know. I mean, like I said,
I don't want to be bound in. If I would
have chosen Okay, in my solo career, I'm just going
to do blues. I could have had a nice career

(40:38):
in the blues world for a while, or you know,
like I said, I could have done the country kind
of thing, you know, or maybe I should have just
you know, stayed with LA style punk rock. But I
get bored as a songwriter. I want to write whatever
the hell it's me, you know, and I don't want
people telling me what to do. That's hindered my my career,

(41:01):
and it's also helped my career in that I'm still
here and I've got a bunch of guitars, and I've
got some rare naveljo rugs, and I've got this on
the other because I stuck to my guns. You know,
I may not have a big tour buses and this
and the other, but I've managed to I put it
this way, I've managed to never make a disco record.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yet.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
We had Warner Brothers kind of trying to push us
in a direction. When I was an ex, Electro was
really pushing X to go into a certain direction. And
when I was on CBS, they were pushing me, you know,
Nashville was pushing me to go this way, CBS Pop
was pushing me to go this way, and I realized,

(41:44):
you know, I had to chart my own route, and
that meant independent labels, not the same amount of promotion
that you're going to get from a major label. And
also I had to find my singing voice, you know,
because I didn't have one. I had was a drunk
howl when I first one. So I signed with High
Tone Records, which let me do whatever I want, and
then I eventually an over to Yep Rock Records, who

(42:08):
basically let me do whatever I want. You know. Knock
on Wood.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Your label mates with my friends the Born Ruffians from
Toronto and yep Rock in the States.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Wow, I've heard the name.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
They're excellent. I recommend them to you and everyone. Nominally,
I'm supposed to be asking you about The Blasters self
titled record, which became your major label debut when it
sort of upstreamed from Slash Records to Warner Brothers, but
I wanted to ask you since we're talking about genre
and these arbitrary lines sometimes signing the Blasters to Slash Records.

(42:44):
My understanding is that that was you were carrying the
torch for that, and you kind of had to convince
the label and the Blasters that it was the right idea.
Is that how it went down.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
I did not have to convince the label label wanted
to sign the Blasters, and unfortunately, at that time no
other label did. The weird thing that was going on
in LA and West Coast scene in those days, you know,
what was going on everywhere was punk rock versus rock,
and if you didn't look a certain way, if you

(43:13):
didn't look the rock way, and in those days that
meant looking like Ario Speedway or Fog Had or whomever,
then you were in this other category that a lot
of radio program if you put this way, if you
had weird hair, a lot of radio programs just look
at your hair and go nope. You know, if you

(43:34):
don't look like the Thompson Twins, we're not playing. In
the other side, oh if you don't look like Pink Floyd,
we're not playing it. So you'd had this weird thing where,
you know, you had bands that could sell out the
Whiskey and Go Go and that would be two shows
a night, right, and yet you couldn't get a record deal.
And then there were artists who musically may have been incredible,

(43:57):
who were getting big record deals and they couldn't get
anybody into the whiskey. And in the Blasters case, we
got to be so popular that we would we would
have the managers for those kind of acts calling us
to open for their act so that we'd bring in

(44:18):
the crowd. And if you offered us enough money. You know,
in those days, I booked the band. So you offered
us enough money, Yeah, okay, I mean we don't want to,
but you know, sure we'll have them for insert artists
name here. And again I'm not slagging them, I'm just
saying it was weird that we couldn't get a record deal.
And you know there's a particular artist, really nice guy,

(44:39):
very talented guy, but he couldn't draw flies. And he
got a it was a half a million dollar record deal,
and his managers called us to open up fault and
begging me, could you please. We really got to get
a crowd in it's his record release party. And I
was like, okay, They're like, well we'll give you this,

(44:59):
We'll to do this, We'll get you this gig if
you do this for us, And and so I knew
that why can't we get a deal. Why couldn't the
Alley Cats get a deal. How come the plugs can't
get a deal. How come you know, you know, the
weirdos can't get a deal. How come with dickies you know,
can't get a big deal. And so it became frustrating.

(45:22):
You know. Slash, you know, was the label that wanted
to sign us, And what's going on with Slash is
it started as a punk rock magazine. Then they started
a label and their first record was The Germs, and
the Germs record did incredibly well, I mean incredibly well,

(45:52):
and so then they asked the Germs who should we
sign next? And the Germs that sign X because X
couldn't get a record deal and X again selling out
two three nights at the Whiskey, getting banned you know
by the L A P. D. We're coming, you know,
all this kind of ships. So they signed X and

(46:26):
then X did incredibly well, and then they asked X,
who should we sign and they said, oh, sign the Blasters.
And then when we got signed and then we started
doing good. I was like, they asked, well, who should
we sign? Night were oh Los Lobos. You got to
sign these guys. You know, these are our friends from
used to a walking got me talking talking to got

(46:54):
no jo, you know, and so everybody kind of helped
each other in that regards. You know, the sad thing
about Slash was and I'm going to try to not
let bitterness enter into this. We set up the deal

(47:15):
where we did our first Slash album, and then once
it started doing really nicely, you know, then Sundy Record
labels started showing up. Oh we always loved you guys,
and so we had a couple of labels. But then
when Warner Brothers came in. I always knew that Warner

(47:36):
Brothers was sort of an artist label, you know, with
their history with Randy Newman and the Little Feet and
Right Cooterer and people like that, and I just thought, well,
these guys seem, you know, Lenny Warnicker who produced a
lot of those great records, particularly My favorite Good Old
Boys by Randy Newman and other how to learn, how

(47:57):
to learn to write songs. Listen to that album. So yeah,
I wanted to sign with Warners because of Lenny Warnicker,
and so we did. I wanted, though, to keep Slash
involved so that we would have somebody representing and fighting
for us. But it's you know, when you signed to
a major label, kids out there, it's a hole Baheaton.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
I remember learning that lesson going. You know, we were
a young band and we had a few labels that
wanted to sign us, and they'd send their coolest, youngest
day and our guy out to wine and dinahs, and
you'd think, oh my god, this is great. He really
knows our stuff, he really knows the bands we like,
He understands us, we speak the same language. He'd have
a great dinner, he'd pick up the tab and then
he'd go back to the label all excited. They love

(48:39):
the new songs. Then two weeks would go by and
they'd come back with the deal that business affairs are
allowed to they're allowing them to offer you, and it's
this unsignable, horrific deal where the terms are just completely
not in your favor, and you realize, oh, this, this little,
one tiny piece of this machine is simply not representative
of the larger hole.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
Yeah, that's true. And if the business department's having squabbles
with the in R department, and you don't, you know,
you're not privy to that. You know, you're just a
dumb artist, you know. So Yeah, over the course of
my dealings with major labels have always kind of run
seeing that happen where the business and art you know, yeah,
sometimes they click and other times they don't. And you know,

(49:23):
my thing was always I always wanted to survive playing music.
My thing was to be you know, we My heroes
were Lighting Hot still are Lightning Hopkins, Big Joe Turner,
Muddy Waters, Merle Haggard, guys that did it their whole career.
They played music. So to me it was it was
how do you survive doing this. I've had a lot

(49:45):
of friends that got signed to major labels that are
incredibly talented that can't do can't play music professionally, not
that they can't play music, it's they're not allowed. And
to me it was always the the people I kind
of modeled myself after on you know, on one hand,
like the Grateful Dead, because the Grateful Dead were able

(50:07):
to create a world outside their own music world, outside
of the music industry, so they could go eight, nine,
ten years without making an album and still being you know,
the number one concert act. And at the same time,
punk rock band's like Black Flag that could also do
the same thing, just with a different you know, approach
to playing music, but same thing. We don't need to

(50:28):
you know, they start their own label. We don't need
to be part of this industry. We've got our own thing.
And then also jazz guys. One of the reasons I
signed with independent labels was in those days, it was
all about what records are in the stores. And if
you went into a record store and you went to
the jazz department and you looked up Hank Mobile or

(50:49):
Lou Donaldson, jazz guys like that, not the top tier,
not Miles Davis or John Culture, but the next you know,
Jack McDuff. There was always records by those guys that
you know, and that way they could always tour and
they could always make a living playing music. And so
it became like, Okay, how do I survive outside of

(51:09):
this machine, because you know, I'm not the best looking guy.
And it became apparent to me in the late eighties
that I am never going to have a hit record,
you know. And with the blasters, I thought we would.
I thought we were capable of them. But when I
when I came to my solo career, I realized, nah,

(51:31):
I looked funny, you know. And in those days particularly,
it's kind of transferred. I mean, rock and roll has
always been about looks. It's the reason why Elvis was
Elvis and Bill Hailey was Bill Haley. But I was
not going to have hit records, so I needed to
create a world where I didn't need a hit record,
you know anyway, And I'm kind of babbling, I apologize.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
No, you are delivering pure wisdom to my ears, because
that's it. That's the dream, you know, I feel like,
are pretty John Paul said before we started the interview.
You know, Josh and I were in this band for
twenty years. I thought that was going to be my shot.
I thought that was going to be it. We did
really well. We got to tour, you know, we did
it for twenty years. Professionally. We made some great records,
no regrets, but we never had the hit. We never

(52:14):
became the thing that I assumed when I was thirteen
I would just become. And now after that, I'm just
looking for a life in music and I don't care
about having a hit or fame or fortune or anything.
I just want to not have to stop. And so
it's nice to hear someone else wants the same thing
and it has achieved the same thing. I mean, my god,
you did it.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
Wait, wait, you try, you know, I mean it could
all get you know, we could you know, as the
old saying goes, we're all be at the working at
the gas station. To mom, when the blasters started, I was,
I was a fry cook in a Middle Eastern restaurant
in Long Beach, California. Yeah, unfortunately it's gone out of business,
so I don't know what's going to so I better
make a living playing music something Like I said, I

(52:57):
have a lot of friends who got screwed over by
the music industry and you know, would make a debut
record on a major label back when there's plethora of
major labels, had a bunch of money thrown at their careers,
and some of them clicked and it worked, and others
that didn't. And there and they're in my mind they're

(53:18):
equally great artists. The ones that clicked and the ones
that do and the ones that didn't. Not a lot
of them go on tour and play music for a
living anymore. That to me is a real tragedy. And
that's not just an age thing that we're going back
twenty thirty years. I'm not going to say any of
the band's names, but bands that signed major label deals

(53:39):
and then it didn't happen, and then you know, they're
not playing music and they're living other lives. Maybe they're happy,
maybe they're not. You know, I just know that this
is all that I can do. Whether I do we're
good or not, I don't know. That's all I can do.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
You mentioned that, you know, the Blasters you thought could
have had a hit. You know, we were there kind
of banding, and that I agree with you. Was there
ever making the self titled or any of your records?
Was there ever like a song that everyone seized on
and either the label people or the producer or the
band who often produce themselves, was like, we got to
really work hard on this song. We got to make

(54:16):
this one the hit. We got to shine it up.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
No, we didn't know how to shine it up when
we made our first couple of records. You know, that
song I was referring to earlier Murray had been an
international hit. A Welsh rock and roll rockabilly surer named
shak And Stevens, who I had never heard of at
the time, recorded the song and apparently he was already
a big deal in Great Britain and he made it

(54:42):
an international hit, and so I went from being a
fry cook in Long Beach getting these BMI checks everyone like,
oh you know, and I forget. I'm sorry. I went
back to being a fry cook for a minute there.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
How did you find out it became a hit? Did
you know? Did someone call you? Did a check just
come in? And you called them and said, I think
there's been a mistake.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Well, a guy in the rockabilly scene who had given
him our record of ours, our first record on Rolling
Rock Records, a small little label, and it had Marie
Marie on it, and the guy heard it. The singer
heard it and said, I'm going to cut that. That's
a hit song. And I forget to produced it were

(55:27):
something I can't remember, but he did a beautiful job.
And it's Albert Lee playing the lead guitar. You know,
how can you go wrong there? And it's it's a
Papa Billy record, the Shack and Stephens version of Marie Marie.

Speaker 3 (55:38):
And that's not a slag, you know.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
The way the Blasters did it though. We played it
like a bar band, which is what we were, and
we didn't put any pop machine on it. And what
was crazy about Marie Marie is it was huge internationally.
You know. Oh, I remember your question. How did I
find out? Yeah, I just got a call from this
rockabilly guy saying, hey, I just gave Shake and Stephens

(56:23):
you know, a copy of your saw Marie marine and
he says he's going to cut it. And I was like,
who's Shake and Stevens. I never heard of him, And oh,
he's huge, He's huge in England, you know. And then
I started finding out once once the record started shooting
up the charts.

Speaker 4 (56:42):
Wow, And then I started getting Yeah, I started getting
the checks, and I started getting My publishing company at
the time, Bug Music, would send me either cassettes or
forty fives of not only Shake and Stephens version, but
then versions from France, Sweden.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
From Germany, from Estonia, from Singapore, from Australia, you know.
And then I was like, wow, I'm a songwriter. You know,
you wrote a hit I wrote up on the route man,
you know, what do you want?

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Yeah? And at a time when it's I mean, that's
I don't think that happens anymore. I think if you
write a hit now, it goes on the internet and
everyone listens to that record, which maybe you know, it's
certainly better for the label. But to have a French
version and a Estonian version and all these different versions
coming down the transom, it's just so exciting. I mean,
it makes it seem so real.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
Yeah, you know. I mean, particularly there's a couple of
songs that I've written that have sort of you know,
I make the joke that I never get tired of
playing Marie Marie because I still don't believe I wrote it.
It's gotten to that point where it's like, didn't Chuck
Berry write this? No? I wrote there, you know, and
it's sort of Marie Marie and maybe maybe my song
Fourth of July and maybe one or two others have

(57:53):
kind of are in the transition zone into folk song
and that, you know, when I'm dead and gone, you know,
Murray Murray is still going to get played somewhere, you know,
because I still get weird covers will pop up on
YouTube or someone will say such and such band. You know,
did Murray Murray in the encore? Really? Wow? So yeah,

(58:16):
you know it's no, it's some music business man. You
just throw up your hands and go, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Yeah, you input the music and then the business does
the business, and you hope that you like what comes
out the other end.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
Yeah, you know, and the business has changed, as you
were saying so much. You know. The analogy I use is,
you know, you're playing baseball, right, and you're up at
bat and you hit a base hit and you get
the first base, and the outfielder bobbles the ball, so
it's like, hey, I think I can steal second, So
you start to steal second. Then right midway between first
second base, a guy in full hockey riggame it comes

(58:50):
out with his hockey stick and crams you in the head, right,
and then you're like, what the hell does happen? A
different game, you know, and then by the time you
do get up and make it the second base, a
guy playing basketball there. So you just kind of have to,
you know, one way to guide yourself through the rapids
of the music industry. You know, and this sounds really corny,

(59:13):
but it really is. It's a love thing, and you
have to love music. You have to love the process
of making music. You have to love the people you're
playing with or at least tolerate them that you have
to love making music with them. You know, the blasters
were a love thing. We all loved each other. We
still do. You know, we couldn't We'd fight and punch

(59:34):
each other and couldn't get along, but we loved each other.
It was no ever any doubt about that. And I
love playing music. I love writing songs. That's why what
I say about hurting my head. You know, I don't
hate touring. I love playing music live. I love the
interconnection between me and the audience, particularly in roots music
or any kind of oddball music that's that audience has

(59:56):
found you, you know, and they react to your odd
ball view of the world, and you're reacting to their
odd ball view that's not part of the overall pop culture.
And you know, sort of like the Grateful Dead or
Black Flag, you and your audience people behind it, you know,
And I love that, and so it it really just
does boil down to how much are you willing to

(01:00:19):
go through all the frigging headaches and uncertainty and instability
of living in the music. You know, whether you're in
downtown Music City with Beyonce and Taylor Swift or your
way out on the outskirts, you know, you have to
love it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
And that can be a vulnerable and dangerous thing because
that love of it and that notion. Oh you know,
I would do this for free if I had to.
The suits and the business can take advantage of that,
and they can sort of slide into that, but you
just got to love your way through it and know that,
you know, they might be able to take your masters
from you on one record, or they might be able to,
you know, trip you up on one song you loved.

(01:00:56):
And that's no small potatoes. But at the end of
the day, if you keep your love strong, you can
come at the other end and as you say, keep
making music for your whole life.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
You don't want to be the bitter guy, you know,
And there are times in my career where I it
would be nice to be bitter guy. Now can't do it,
you know, because when I was a kid, and you know,
i'd go to shows, I could tell when somebody's phoning
in a performance. I never wanted to be in that
kind of band, and so you know, I am lucky

(01:01:26):
in that I play, you know, certain songs of mine
at every show because I know that that's what the
audience wants to hear. I can do other things inside
the show, but I know that for example, I've got
this side project band called the third mine sort of
psychedelic folk blues. And I know that people come to
those shows. Some people come expecting to hear some blaster

(01:01:50):
songs from some Dave Alvin songs, and you know you're
not going to get that. But that's really the only
kind of shows in mine. If you come to a
Dave Alvin show where it says Dave Alvin and the
Guilty One through Dave Alvin and Jimmy Dedlill, you're gonna
hear Marae Murray, you know. And it doesn't bore me.
It's like it's like, you know, you try to find

(01:02:11):
something new every time you play it, you know, find
a new mistake to play. Oh, I never made that
mistake on this song before, you know. And so I
love my songs. You know. I hate to sound like
that guy, but I do. I think I'm I'm a
pretty good songwriter when I like when I'm pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
I remember a good friend of mine, Craig Norris, Canadian broadcaster.
We were working together at the same radio stations playing
independent Canadian music, and he was griping about how all
these you know, nice young Canadian indie bands would always
be so bashful and humble about their music, and that
he'd say, you any good, and they'd say, oh, gosh, gee,
I don't know, and scuff the dirt. And he sort
of said, you know, if I what other occupation. If

(01:02:51):
you take your car to the mechanic, and he says, oh,
you know, gee, I guess I'll give it a shot.
You take your car to a different mechanic, And he
was sort of saying, why why can't musicians have this
same confidence, because you know, everyone loves their songs. You
don't spend all this time writing a song and recording
it and taking it on the road because you hate it.
We all have anxiety, of course, but I think that's
a I think that's another good lesson for our young

(01:03:13):
listeners and old.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
The other hand, there are so many guys that are like, oh,
I love the best guitar player in the world. Now
you're not. There's a kid down the street. Yeah. Years ago,
I got mad at a singer not my brother, and
the singer was copping this attitude. And the singer, to
be honest, you know, I've heard great singers I saw

(01:03:37):
I wanted to kid it. I saw Esther Phillips, I
saw Jackie Wilson and I saw a guard show, you know,
and you're not that. And not only are you not that,
I could go drive to a Pentecostal church two miles
away and pick any any person out of that choir
that's a better sentrityde So tone it down so anyway,

(01:04:00):
so you have to You don't want your musicians to
be too cocky because they're flawed. You know, you don't
want your songwriters to be too cocky because you know,
post Dylan, everybody thinks songwriters have an answer will Bob
don't be the first one to tell you they don't.
They're just flawed individual like everybody else. And you know,
and I see a lot of sort of songwriter worship

(01:04:23):
where people think singer songwriters have got some kind of
clue to the universe. No, they just know how to
access that part of their brain. And it ain't easy,
and it's to be admired. But on the other hand,
you know, they're not the archangel Gabriel or something. They
just people. But I will say, yeah, I've written some
good songs. You know, I'll stack up my best song

(01:04:45):
against Bob Dylan's worst any day of the week.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
I think that's a true achievement. If I could stack
my best song up against Dave Alvins worst, I'd be
feeling pretty good. You've been so generous with your time,
and I'll let you go. I have three questions, and
the first one is who are your favorite songwriters?

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Oh? Everybody, you know, as far as as far as structure.
Come on, you can't beat Bullporter, you can't beat George Brishman.
You know, I don't like a lot of the songs
that he writes. But Paul McCartney's a goddamn genius, you know,
maybe more so than John Lennon, you know, just talking structure,
you know, Lennon maybe is more insightful and lyrically eat

(01:05:24):
but musically they're both geniuses. Uh. But you know I
love I love Lever and Solar. I love Robert Johnson,
I love Skip James, I love Leroy Carr, the Great Boosterer.
I love Hank Williams, I love Merle Haggard. You know,
Chuck Berry, Steve Young, Terry Allen, Guy Clark, Randy Newman,

(01:05:47):
you know, go down the list. Leonard Cohen to me
is you know, and of course Dylan. But you know,
I think overall, to be honest, Leonard Cohen is a
great songwriter to study because differently, but Leonard Cohen was
always evolving and talk about honesty. Particularly the last few

(01:06:07):
albums were just like wow. And if I could be
an artist like Leonard Cohen and be eighty seven years
old and he is penetrating as Leonard Cohen was, I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
Yeah, yeah, if anyone listening has not checked out the
last few Leonard Cohen records he made, so he was
making music right up till he died, and they are
as wise and insightful and I'm getting goosebumps just thinking
about it. I mean, and his perspective on getting older
and looking backwards is it's everything you'd hope for from
Leonard Cohen. It's all on there, yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
I mean, he wasn't trying to write Suzanne again, you know,
when he was eighty. Although I had one interaction with
Leonard Cohen.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
If you're willing to tell me, Leonard Cohen is like
my greatest hero, So if you would tell me, I'd
be very thrilled to hear it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
He used to have he had these two singers in
his band for a while, Julie Christensen and Thriller Batalida
and they put on this show at Royce Hall and
it was a benefit for one thing or another, but
it was they had, you know, the band. The backup
band was Greg Lease and Bill Frizell on guitars, the
great late drummer Don Heffington playing drums. There was a

(01:07:15):
string quartet actually not even a quartet, it was like
an octet. It was it was. It was a big
to do right and Royce Hall, Eila is this legendary
historic theater on the campus of the UCLA beautiful and
so they had like Jackson Brown and Graham Nash and
Michael McDonald and all these kind of people. And then me,

(01:07:37):
you know, so I went out back to have a
cigarette and I'd never met Leonard and Shiitney Fall and
Leonard and Leonard Cohen, and my image of him was
probably from around the Ladies Band album. To me, that's
what Leonard Cohen looked like. Okay, so I'm hanging out
behind back Royce Hall and I'm smoking a cigarette. This

(01:08:00):
little guy that looks like he was selling used cars
on Venture or Boulevard, and then Sino comes over, hands
next to me and goes, what if I just stand here?
I was like, no, why, why do you want to
do that? He goes, oh, man, I just want to
smell that. And I was like, okay, yeah, because you know,
they don't let me smoke anymore. But I tell you what,

(01:08:21):
I may get to eighty, I'll call back on cigarettes.
Like that's a good good role model or a good
plan there. And then he's like, so what are you
doing here? And I was like, oh, or, I'm singing
a song and this Leonard Collin tribute. He goes, yeah,
what song are you doing? I said, Democracy comes to
the USA? He do you like the song? I said yeah,
I think it's a pretty good song. Then it gets

(01:08:42):
a point across right, and he goes, yeah, I think
it does. And then we went back and then he
finally at one point he goes, no, man, can I
get one of those from you? And I was like
their Menthol was like, oh man, So I hand them
a cigarette and he lights it up and we're sitting
there small then I think it's small talk about this,

(01:09:02):
then the other you know, the weather, you know, and
then when he finished, Sary goes, thank you so much.
It's really an honor to meet. Charming Up was like, well, sir,
it's an honor to me, you thinking that he's a
used car Saltan from Encina. He walks away, and then
about five minutes later, Julie Christiansen comes up and he says,
so what were you and Leonard talking about? I was like, so,

(01:09:27):
what was my meaning with Leonard plan?

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Great choice of song to sing. Also, by the way,
you mentioned not needing to write another political song, I
feel like maybe no one ever needs to write another
political song after Leonard Cohen wrote Democracy.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
You know, me and Leonard the one thing we share
in common is nicotine voice, and soone does the world
really need another nicotine soap version of democracies coming to
the USA? Hey, you know what, A million people have
cut hallelujah. And probably Leonard would have preferred if a
million people have cut Democracy coming to the USA and

(01:09:59):
left hollan lujah. D him.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
I'll tell you what, Dave, I'd buy it. So if
you get it out there, I'll be first in line. Okay, thanks,
Well to wrap up last question, I promise we always
wrap up by asking a food related question. Now I
got to say, we got two into our really interesting
conversation for which I cannot thank you enough about art
and about creativity and life and music. I didn't really

(01:10:21):
remember to ask you many questions about making the Blasters
self titled record, but I can ask you this one,
which is what were you eating while you were recording
The Blasters. By the Blasters, we used to have every
day we'd show up at the studio and there would
be five cases of beer stacked up outside the studio door.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
That's what we ate in those days. We were drinkers,
and I can't imagine living that way now, but we
live that way then, and that's why we punched each
other and fought. And besides alcohol, barbecue, that's what we ate.
We lived on barbecue and beer and blaster days. Dave.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
I don't know what to say, man, what I really
enjoyed that so much. I was looking forward to talking
to you. I loved talking to you. I feel like
what you were talking about at the beginning about you
didn't use this word and speaking of getting corny. I'm
sorry if this is past the line, but being a
bit of a disciple for these you know, brilliant musicians
that you were following around being a you know, a deadhead,

(01:11:20):
so to speak, and I'm I and all of us
are just so grateful to you for now passing that
wisdom on to us into the podcast listenership, and now
it can be preserved in the AI cloud for all eternity.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
Well, I'll just say this the biggest lesson I learned.
You know, if you follow around the older musician, the
older blues singers, some of them were jaded, bitter guys.
Some of them Big Go Turner, Lee Allen who was later,
and the Blasters with us keep on walker people like that.

(01:11:56):
The thing that they taught me was it is about love,
you know. I asked Big Joe Turner once, how could
you go because we were falling from gig to gig
and you play a gig where he'd he'd play a
gig where he'd be a sold out club with three
hundred people, and then two nights later being a different
part of town and there'd be thirty people in Maas

(01:12:16):
And I asked him, I was a dumb, little fourteen
year old, what does it feel like to play for
three hundred people thirty? The next he said, well, sometimes
there's people and sometimes they're eight. And the thing that
got him up there in front of those thirty people
was he loved what he gave. He gave that it's
just about the same to those thirty that he did

(01:12:37):
to those three hundred, you know. So that's the lesson
I took, was this is all about love.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
It seems to have served you well.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
Thanks. Thanks David Videos.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
That's Dave Alvin, Dave Alvin of The Blasters on their
album The Blasters, and just generally on Dave Alvin's life
and career in music. I really especially loved what he
said about love. He qualified it by saying, I don't
want to be corny, and I find myself also tempted
to qualify it in the same way. But I'm trying

(01:13:14):
to be brave about that stuff and not disclaim so much,
because as I get older as an artist and also
just as a human, I am more and more convinced
that love for the people around you, and for the
work you make and for yourself is the only real
thing in the world. The only genuinely important, meaningful element

(01:13:37):
of life is love. And it's not easy love. You know,
the love that we learn about from pop songs when
we're younger. Think we learn about that just as a
gift that keeps on giving. It's not like that. It's
like any relationship, be it romantic, familial, fraternal, friendship, whatever.
Love is something that is alive and you feed it

(01:14:00):
and it feeds you, and you teach it and it
teaches you, and it changes shape and you change it
and it changes you. And that never stops being true.
And it's not always easy, and it's not always fun,
but it's always meaningful and it's always important and rewarding
because it's real. It's a real thing. And Dave Alvin
is someone who seems to really intuitively or maybe intellectually

(01:14:21):
or both understand how his love of what he does,
of making music, of writing songs, of being Dave Alvin,
how that's a living thing that he is conscious of nurturing.
And I think you kind of can hear from listening
to him talk and also just looking at his continued
amazing career that he's doing it right and that it

(01:14:43):
can work, and that even in this moment of like
your cell phone is blasting statistics at you and likes
on your video or follows or virality or whatever, it
is absent, all that absent, the seeming reward system absent,
like the fish bit that comes out if you solve
the polar bear cage puzzle from lost. Even without any

(01:15:05):
of that, if you're making music and you love it,
and you're making it with people you love, you can
create something that's really sustainable and really beautiful and really
meaningful both to yourself and to strangers and to the
people around you, and just something that makes the world
a little more beautiful, a little less ugly, you know,
to inject something into the world that isn't cruelty or selfishness,

(01:15:28):
that isn't just commodified and ugly. As much as you know,
music and art have been commodified and made ugly because
of it. That's the whole point of the podcast. But
Dave Alvin is doing it. It really seems to me
for the right reasons and in the right way. You
can hear I'm getting pretty pasionate about it. But it's
because we really got there and at the intersection of
art and commerce is the important thing that is there,

(01:15:51):
that's waiting for us that we can take away is love.
And I won't keep banging this drum. This isn't about
to become like the Love Podcast, or maybe it is.
I don't know if this If this was viral I
guess I'll be talking about love every week from now on.
But it was such a joy to talk to Dave
Alvin and an Honor. I mean, a man like that
who has done so much, lived so much, been part
of so many incredibly important, influential moments in music history.

(01:16:16):
For him to take all that time to yack with
me about it is once again, I'm just so humbled
and thrilled to get to do this. And I'm learning
so much about music, yeah, but like mostly about life.
I'm finding more and more. What I'm getting out of
these conversations is learning different ways to live, and getting
to talk to people who have lived on their own

(01:16:36):
terms is fucking amazing. I really really am so grateful
for it, and we couldn't do it without you listening,
So thank you for listening. Really, I hope you get
stuff out of this as well. I'm having a great
time doing the podcast and we want to keep doing it,
and the more people that listen to it, the easier
that decision is. I'm not threatening to stop or anything.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
We're not.

Speaker 1 (01:16:56):
We're going to keep going, but you know, please like
and subscribe. That's really what I'm saying here. All you
can really do with a podcast is like press the
buttons that algorithmically juice it, and then at some point,
I guess maybe you hit a critical mass and then
you get a few bucks or something, or like a
free sandwich. You know, if anyone in Toronto would just
like has a sandwich shop and wants to hook me
up with a sandwich, a couple of lunches would go

(01:17:16):
a long way. Anyway, this has been the panhandling hour
on major label debut. I better stop, I better quit
while I'm ahead. I was talking about love and then
I just started hitting people up for sandwiches. I'm fine,
I'm doing fine. I just had a sandwich. Can make
my own sandwich. Back off, get your own sandwich. Graham
major label debut, in all of its baffling and off
the rails Glory is produced by people I love, Josh Hook,

(01:17:40):
John Paul Bullock. Our wonderful music is by the great
Greg Allsop. We really appreciate you listening. We really appreciate
all of the podcast. Everything this podcast is giving us.
Just the fact that Josh, John, Paul and I get
to talk on group text every single day has been
a real beautiful addition to my life. And so for
that alone, the podcast is worth it. But it's even

(01:18:01):
more worth it because we know that you're out there listening,
and we thank you for it. That's the end of
major labeled debut for this week, but we'll be back
with more panhandling, love, philosophizing, and tales from the intersection
of art and commerce. Peace Out