August 15, 2025 • 62 mins
Jason Kendall is a multi‑instrumentalist—vocals, saxophone, piano, guitar, harmonica—who began performing professionally at age 15. Since founding Jason Kendall Productions in 2007, he’s delivered tailored live entertainment across classical, smooth‑jazz trio, acoustic pop, dance‑band, and DJ formats for weddings, corporate events, fundraisers, and more! A songwriter and composer, his music appears in two feature documentaries. He also taught music at Penn State University (2005–2015) and holds a Master’s degree in music from West Virginia University’s College of Creative Arts.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I know that this is an ovidio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Oh and you are. I'll bless your heart. This is
the Cold podcast chronicle in Pittsburgh music scene. All Right,
welcome man. I'm Johnny Hertwell, your host along with any Pugar.
Today we're gonna be talking with musician and entertainer Jason Kendall. Hello, allong, Jason,
nice to meet you. How are you, sir.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I'm doing great. It's great to be here. Thanks for
having me, Johnny.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
All right, we're gonna explore all of you. This is
Jason Kendall. This is your life. All right, take me back,
take me back. Do you come first of all? Do
you come from a musical family?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I do? I do. My father was the saxophonist. His
name was Lloyd Kendall. He played in a band called
the menta Chance. You're also great singer.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
And was it here in the Pittsburgh area.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
In the Pittsburgh area, they recorded in the early sixties
at Gateway Studios put out a single.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
You have It? Do you still have?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I Still Have It? Uh? It was it was interesting.
They they recorded a it was kind of a surf song,
I guess uh that called Countdown and it was released. Uh,
to coincide with John Glenn's uh, you know, three Times
around the Earth, And it started out with a sample
of Colonel Shepard doing three It was great, uh. And
(01:28):
the flip side was a version of as Time Goes By,
And it was interesting the way that they recorded at
the time. They brought the band in and set them
up and and just said, okay, do a test song.
So my dad just started you most remember, and that
was just to be the sound check, and then they
recorded a bunch of songs and then they left the
(01:48):
studio and then whoever was in the studio decided what
was going to be the single and what was and
the the sound check song, As Time Goes By became
the flip side of that. They sold two hundred and
fifty thousand copies. It was mostly for the flip side.
They liked the cover, so it was interesting. But you know,
that was their their fifteen minutes and it kind of
(02:10):
came and went and.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Well, and when you sell that many copies of a single,
they had to have had some airplay, right.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, yeah, And they had big support. This was like
early sixties, nineteen sixty one, sixty two. Porky Chedwick played
them a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
You know who is he again?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah? It was a radio DJ from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah. Well, okay, so your father played. Do you have
any other siblings that played? Yeah, my oldest brother Bruce
is guitarist. He lives in Boston, and my brother Jeremy
is a bassist and great singer. We both performed together
for years in various bands. We still played together pretty regularly.
(02:53):
All right, So what is your earliest musical memory? My
earliest musical memory.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
You know, I I was slow to come to music.
I always enjoyed music and love music, but I wanted
to be a baseball player, much like the other Jason
Kendall that's supposedly from. Yeah, I don't know. I've signed
some baseball's for people. Yeah, but uh, you know, when
(03:21):
I when I was when I was a kid, I
would go to work with my father and he had
a construction business. And uh, when I was twelve years old,
I had an accident where power saw slipped and cut
off three of the fingers on my right hand, and
they luckily reattached them and they worked pretty well, and
the doctors recommended to my parents that maybe, you know,
(03:45):
piano lessons would help with my next tarity and to
kill a and uh, interestingly enough, and this is a
Pittsburgh tie. So I was at school and my hand
was in bandages, and I was kind of sad that
I don't want to have to go take piano lessons.
I want to play baseball. Right, And Frank o'harris visited
(04:05):
our elementary school. Right, it was just kind of like
a special I think it was a ritath on. He
came and he read to the kids and he was
talking to everybody, and he asked me about my hand,
and I said, you know, Franco, I had a accident.
My fingers got cut, and you know my mom wants
my mom wants me to take piano lessons. I don't
want to take piano lessons. I don't want to play
(04:26):
it play sports. And Franco said, well, I think you
should listen to you to your mom because to play
sports you need strong hands and piano will help you
with that. Right.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
What a good answer from here.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So here's the crazy part about this. In December of
twenty twenty three, I play piano, I play saxophone, I
play guitar. I got a call from Heinz History Center
that they in anticipation for the fiftieth anniversary of the
Immaculate Reception, that they were going to have an event
there at dinner. And it was around Christmas time, and
(04:58):
they wanted to hire me to play piano because they
might do some holiday songs. And you know, tragically, two
days before this happened, Franco passed away. So they called
off the dinner. And then Franco's wife and his son
Doc said, no, you know, all these old players are
in town from the seventy Steelers and the Oakland Raiders.
(05:21):
We're going to have the dinner and we're going to
turn it into more like a celebration of life. Can
you still come and play? And so the piano was
set up right by the stage and I'm playing, and
right by the podium here comes mean Joe Green, Frenchy Fuqua,
you know, phil Via piano from the Oakland Raiders. And
I'm playing the piano and I'm thinking, forty years ago
(05:41):
Franco told me that I should take piano lessons. And
here I am playing for playing for this Franco.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
You're playing for Franco.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, playing for him. I know, I know.
I got goosebumps and It kind of blew my mind,
you know, that I was fortunate circle and just that
I was fortunate enough to get the call, I mean, yeah,
to do that, so it was meant to be. So
thanks Franco.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Thanks Franco. All right, so so did you take?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I came up and yeah, yeah, getting back to the
so I took the piano lessons because Franco you know,
said it was okay, and and I didn't get too
much slack from my friends for but I loved it.
I but what I didn't like was playing the sheet
like the written music. I would labor it that. But
(06:36):
I liked found I liked to play stuff, you know,
and I wanted to play you know, rock and roll
and whatever, and so it kind of took off from there.
I started playing the saxophone for high school band because
my dad had saxophones there and I really enjoyed that.
And I, uh, you know, I was in high school
in the eighties and and uh, the girls liked all
(06:56):
the guitar players and def Leppard whatever, so I had
to figure out how to play play guitar. And then
I ended up getting a music scholarship to West Virginia
University and I graduated, I taught public school music for
a while, and then I taught music as an adjunct
(07:17):
at Penn State for ten years CCAC here and during
that time, I you know, all that time I was
I was playing. I had an original band in the nineties,
and then you know, doing variety of different shows. And
now yea, since twenty fifteen, I've been pretty much full
time doing music again. So I'm very fortunate and very
(07:41):
blessed to have that opportunity.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
All Right, your father was a musician. What's the pecking
order of the brothers. The pecking order of the brothers,
I'm the best. I mean, no, no, who's the oldest? Well,
there are, there are a lot of us. I'm the
oldest of my brother Jeremy, and he's three years younger
than me, and my brother Bruce is eighteen years older
(08:03):
than me. So yeah, we have a very large family.
It's kind of a mixed family. But you know, so
how involved did your father get in encouraging you?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Oh he was great. My father was the best teacher.
But he taught, you know, I think he taught.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Let me start. Let me ask you a question, when
did you realize he was a musician? You know, early on,
my dad played like five nights a week, and he would.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Dress and I mean he put on like the tuxedo.
He would come home from work all day, he would
take a nap, eat dinner, and then he'd get dressed
to go out and play at night. And I remember
it as a kid, not understanding where he was, you know,
and and like he didn't have to haul a lot
of pa here. He just took his saxophone and left.
But he's My first memories was every time I'd see
(08:57):
him put on the tuxedo, I would start to grow,
why are you going I have to go play? Well,
why don't you stay here and play with me? You know,
I did not understand. And then I would play his record,
you know, and I would listen to his record and
that would kind of calm me. But as a kid,
I thought my dad was like Elvis, you know, I
thought he was famous because he was he had a
(09:19):
record and he was playing out you know, but he
was he was, he was, he was the best. But
as far as a teacher, he was kind of a
mister Miyagi, kind of familiar with the karate kid where
he would, you know, he would you would I'd be
up ustairs in my room practice and I couldn't wait
to get home and go in my room and and
he would be listening, and he'd come down and he'd
(09:39):
give you like little suggest try this, try do this,
you know, And he was always encouraging. He was never
overbeering with it. He kind of lets you do your
thing and then he'd shape you here and there, you know. Uh.
And and when we were kids, we started a band
called Deja Vu, and we played mostly oldies music. And
(10:00):
because I was really into like Chuck Berry and stuff
are growing up, and he would run sound for us.
He helped us to get sound equipment and he was
very supportive. Yes, all right.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Did he played sacks?
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Did he play any other instrument? Did he play the keys?
Speaker 1 (10:18):
He didn't play the piano, He didn't play the guitar.
He always wish that he would have learned, but primarily
and he played clarinet first. My dad was born in
nineteen thirty six, so his hero growing up was Benny Goodman.
He was like the Big band era, you know. And
he would always say, you know, real real players play
the clarinet, not the saxophonees easy, you know, but yeah,
(10:42):
so he primarily was a sax player, and he was
a great singer, you know so, yeah, great entertainer.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
And what kind of music were you drawn to at
an early age?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
At an early age, I, like everybody else, I listened
to the pop music that was out at the time.
I'm you know, I think the first record that I
ever bought on my own was at Hills department store
was Van Hale in nineteen eighty four. Because they had
the angel smoking the cigarettes on the cover. I thought
that was the coolest thing. But I got my own money,
(11:15):
I bought my own record, you know. So, so I
love loved all of that eighties eighties music, and then
after I started playing the saxophone, I really got into
big band music because there's a lot in sag you know.
So I'm listening to Glenn Miller, I'm listening to you know,
Lewis Armstrong and that era of music. And then from
(11:35):
there I really got into like fifties music, oldies music,
Elvis and Buddy Holly and you know that, that Chuck Berry,
Little Richard. And then somewhere in like junior high, I
discovered the Beatles. I was watching a TV commercial and
it was for Nike, and it came on and it
was just the beginning to revolution running no no, no, no, no,
(11:57):
no no no. And I was like, oh my god,
what is that? Like? I had never heard it before
until that, And and that was kind of around the
time that I wanted to I wanted to play guitar
just so I could learn to go, you know. And
so then I kind of really started exploring sixties music.
Uh led up. We didn't have a lot of like
(12:18):
records in our house. We had we had a old
Philco record player, and you know, it didn't have a
lot of rock and roll records at the time. But
it was kind of like this sense of discovery, you know.
And uh So from from there, uh you know, I've
learned to love all kinds of music. I really got
(12:38):
into classical music for a while and I still am,
so you know, I never wanted to limit myself.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
It's always just kind of like discovery. What about writing,
writing music writing? I've I love writing music. I have
several albums of original music. When did you start? When
did that start?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I think it may have started really when I first
started playing the piano. If you think about it, sitting
and just playing was writing right, it was it was composing,
even if it was just making up a little tune
or just doing your own thing, improvising. So that was
kind of the seed of it. I'd say in high school,
(13:19):
I started writing lyrics and trying to write songs, and
usually it would be you know, I really love this
Bob Dylan song, so I want to try to write
a song like that. So it's that's all kind of
your I guess a songwriting for me was training, trying
to imitate the people that you admire, and then from
there trying to, you know, find your own voice as
(13:40):
a writer. So I just keep writing.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
And do you remember any of those early songs that
you wrote? Oh yeah, how did they go?
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Let's see early on. Well, I'm trying to think. Uh man,
you're taking me back. Uh I'm kind of at a loss.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
You'll think of it, Yeah, it'll come to me.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
I think the first one was a song called Because
because it was really kind of simple, you know, because
because sound slipped, sand slipped through the overglass, because because
time is moving, So darn fans. It doesn't mean we
don't have time. It doesn't mean we don't have time
to fall in love, because because because because, I mean,
(14:41):
it was like a sixteen year old writing writing a song.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, did did falling in love inspire you? Was that
a muse?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Oh? I fell in love every day in high school?
You know?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
So you had a not only do you start? When
did you start? You kind of mentioned, you know, piano, saxophone,
guitar was at that in that order. When did you
form your first band? When did you know?
Speaker 1 (15:10):
The first band that I formed was for a talent
show at our school when I was in eighth grade.
And the guy that lived across the street for me,
his name was Robbie Orvitz and uh, he played the
drums and I played the saxophone, and we we started
a group. We we the the We're in the Batman.
(15:30):
We was originally called the Penguins, and then we decided
we wanted to be Whiplash, all right, and then and
then we and then we decided on Deja Vu because
it sounded kind of exotic, you know. I think there
was an Iron Maiden song called and it was just
a duo's just the two of us, Yes, and and
and we recorded the The guy that played guitar in
(15:51):
in the menta chance my father's band recorded. Uh, so
we were using tracks back then. He recorded the guitar
part to like I Think Tequila and some other song.
I played on sacks and we played at the talent
show and we were, yeah, we were a big we
were a big hit. We didn't win, but we were
a big hit. And so from there we got a
(16:14):
bass player. Chris Jordan was like the only kid that
we knew that played bass, and he was great. And
my friend Jeff Savareice was he had a guitar and
it was like, oh, we're going to form a band.
We're in eighth grade, ninth grade. And then I was
fifteen at the time, fourth fifteen, and my younger brother
was twelve, right, and you know, he can't be in
my band. He's like still a kid, but he could
(16:36):
sing really well. So he played the tambourine and sang
and we were doing like real gigs. We were playing.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Okay, what was your first paid gig?
Speaker 1 (16:45):
My first paid gig we played at the Point Mary
and Regatta. I'm going to say it was nineteen eighty seven.
And from that we got a wedding gig and we
only knew maybe ten twelve songs, and I think we
made two hundred dollars to play the word yeah, and
we were like, wow, this is great. But we had
(17:06):
friends that were aspiring DJs and it was like, Okay,
here's what we can do. And it was like when
you DJed with records, right, So the band will play
and then the DJ will play, and then a band
will play. So I think we ended up playing the
same songs maybe twice or but but it was it
was great. So that was my first paying gig. But
(17:27):
that's really the first time I remember we we loved
the song Twist and Shout. I remember we were doing
Twist and Shout and people were dancing and it got
to the big part in them ah oh shit. And
I can remember specifically that that was the moment that
something like sp snapped in my brain. It was like,
(17:50):
this is the greatest thing in the world that you know,
You're just playing this music and people are dancing, and
I've been addicted to it ever since. It's just, you know,
one of those moments. It was the energy.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
And so did you introduce any original music the days?
When did that start?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah, we we started recording some original songs, maybe when
I was in tenth or eleventh grade at a studio
near our home. Randy Rhoads, great engineer, had a studio
and we recorded a song called We had a song
called Gino. We had a song called Forever Goodbye. We
(18:27):
had a song.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Uh because because because yeah yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
And and we we recorded them. We also recorded a
demo of of cover songs at the time too, because
it was like we're trying to get get some some
some paying gigs. But that really kind of started the
buzz of the bug and learning how to record, learning
how you know, they were very patient with us as kids.
And and from there Desvo we we.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Well, hold on, hold on, yeah, do you still have
all those recordings?
Speaker 1 (18:58):
I do? I do? That's nice, yeah yeah, and it's
and and I go back and I listened to it,
and uh, you know, my brother and I started singing
harmony together really early on. And and that was again
was our dad encouraged this that and it was all
he would teach us everly brothers songs, so we would
do like learn like you know all that all that
(19:21):
kind of that's how we learned how to sing harmony.
And to this day, you know, they I've heard the
term like blood harmony or brother harmony.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Right, it's you know something about somebody who grows up
in the same household. Yeah, they sing and they just
seem to be just they just they just blend. So
my brother and I just have this instinctive thing. We
used to learn songs where we would do harmony on
the chorus and he could always sing higher than me.
(19:49):
So there were there were it would be like he
would sing the he would sing the lead on the verses,
and then when it got to the we wanted to
do harmony on the chorus, I would start lead so
that he could sing the higher harmony. It was like
we would instinctively kind of switch parts and we still
do that.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
It's great.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Were some of your favorite harmony groups or bands or artists.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Oh, Brian Wilson, love the Beach Boys, I'd love. I
got to meet Brian Wilson in twenty sixteen when he
was here doing the fiftieth anniversary Pet Sounds tour him
Blondie Chaplin and Al Jardine. I got to go back
to the meet and greet and you know love that.
(20:31):
I love the Association Great Harmony group of course, the Beatles,
Simon and Garfunkel, yeah, all of them really. Yeah. You know,
in modern recording, you can stack your own harmony and
record your singing with yourself. And I was in South Carolina.
(20:55):
I do a lot of kicks down there, and a
friend of mine who's a really great accomplished songwriter and singer,
Angie Apara, we were sitting and something came on the
jukebox and it was, you know, Poco or something. It's
a great like like that acoustic folks, And he said,
you know, the best harmony comes when there's more than
(21:15):
one heartbeat singing, and you think about it, like just
hearing those different voices blend that gives you know, yeah,
I mean we have harmony pedals that can harmonize that
we have. You know, you can stack and layer and
stuff in the studio, but just to hear that different people,
different voices, character characteristics of their voices coming together is
(21:38):
really great.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Some of my favorites are like the Hollies and Crosby Stills.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Nash Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Or even the Eagles. You don't really really realize the
harmonies until you see them live and how they blend it,
and you go, how are they able to do that?
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah, it's just you years of years of years of
live performance, and you know, I saw an interview was
one of these random YouTube clips where an engineer, a
studio engineer, recording engineer from the sixties was saying that
one of the fundamental differences for him from the music
(22:20):
that was being created through the sixties and seventies and
the music now was when we used to record people then,
it was how they're already polished, they're already on stage.
How do we create a recording of what they do
live and give it the best fidelity? And now it's
(22:40):
we have all all this technology, we make the recording,
and then we've got to figure out how to recreate
it live.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
It's like that different backs. Yes, yeah, you know, and
back let's go back to Sun Records. Some of those
records that they created back in the fifties still stands.
Oh they're great, They're miraculous.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
And it was probably one one mic in a room.
Everybody was there, and they you know, they moved the
things closer and further away from the mic to balance it.
It was very much a you know.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Organic I really wish we could go back to that
that that kind of music experience, because experience I don't think.
I don't think today's music is better. I mean it's
it's technologically better. You can do a lot of different things,
and I respect that sure. But you know, some of
those early recordings from you know, Sun Records and Stacks.
(23:37):
I'm a huge fan of Ye Memphis Sounds and things
like that. It was just you know, four guys who
you know, basically like you know, the played on all
those records and they yeah, they in motown and things
like that, that they they just got so good, they
just locked it in. You don't get that. You don't
(23:57):
get that experience.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
That that human thing. I think that we have the
ability to make everything super perfect. And you know, if
a drum hit is a little earlier or late, you
can put it on the grid, or you can tune
things and you can and it's great. I'm not a
person that wants to knock modern music for that reason.
(24:18):
But some of the things that I love about those
old records that you're mentioning is maybe there were some mistakes,
maybe the guy didn't quite hit the note, or maybe,
like you know, when they released the Beatles early stuff
on CDs, you could hear parts where you know, Paul's
voice cracks and they just left it in because you know,
(24:39):
they were off the road and they only had so
much time to record. And maybe you didn't hear it
as much in the in the vinyl mix that you
did in the digital mix, but there was something about
the humanity of it of those early records that shone through.
And I think that there's a movement in modern music
that is embracing that, like some of the newer rock
(25:02):
and stuff that seems to be coming out. Maybe you
don't hear it on the radio, but it's there where
you know it's people are always going to gravitate towards
that more.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Again, especially if it's live. It can be produced live,
and Prince is a really good modern example of leaving
the mistakes in because it gives it a feel. Yeah,
I need he wanted songs that could be felt.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Which is the most important thing. You know, you could
you can. There are records that are that are perfectly
produced that you play them and they inspire nothing to you,
maybe emotionally, and records that are scratch like songs that
you're driving down the road and their static and you'll
still listen to it through the static because of what
(25:49):
you're emotionally you're getting from it or you have the
memory or whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
All right. You mentioned that nineteen eighty four Van Halen
was the first album you bought anybody who So, you know,
a vocalist knows that David Lee Roth is not a
good singer, but the way he made us feel with
those songs.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, he I think that David Lee Roth was one
of the greatest front men of all time. I I
love Sammy Hagar too, you know, but yeah, you're one
hundred percent right. It was attitude, it was he he
he brought something to it, to it, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
All right, So let's let's get back to where we were,
all right. So deja vu Yes, starts recording some songs
with their aspirations of trying to get signed to a label.
And where did that take Where did that take you?
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Well? By the time that I that that I was
in college, Uh, the lineup had kind of changed, you know,
from the original, uh five piece group when we were
in high school. We kind of you know, people graduate
and they go separate ways, but we we kind of
pared down and we're a four piece band. My brother
Jeremy on on bass, he's playing bass now, And I
(27:03):
didn't know that he had learned how to play bass
until we had had a substitute bass player on a
gig and the guy got upset and left. He said
I quit, and he left this bass sitting there, and
Jeremy's like, well, I know how to play the bass,
and he just picked up the guy's bass, and they're like, Okay,
we don't need that guy anymore. Jeremy's the bass player.
(27:23):
So it was Jeremy myself and then guitarist Derek Eberheart,
and then a drummer. First it was Willie Dennis, then
Dave Ray and that was our kind of best lineup,
and we decided, this is probably the early nineties, mid nineties,
(27:43):
we're going to start writing songs recording, and we bought
an old ambulance. It was an ambulance for sale and
we bought it and the light still worked on it.
We put our logo on the side deja vu, and
had all these compartments where you could put your stands
and stuff like this is the best. This is going
to be our cool touring touring truck. And we would
(28:06):
we would go up to to Eerie Cleveland, Pittsburgh at
the time, there were a lot more that seems, at
least in the city, more places to play. So we
were playing at everywhere. Knicks Fat City, we were playing
at the Bee Hive, Rowlands in the Strip used to
have music upstairs, club log uh, you know, Blue Loose wherever.
(28:30):
And at that time you would kind of do shows
with other other bands. So there were a lot of
great bands and that Whiskey Dix and places in the Strip.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So who are some of the bands that it was
like that was the.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Era of like the big the really popular bands of course,
the Clarks and Gathering Field, the buzz Poets, the vibro Kings.
There was a band called Sauce at the time. Uh.
And I remember Mercury. We would come, we would come,
like Knicks Fat City would do Okay, you got an
(29:05):
opening slot on Wednesday night and we'll see how you do,
and then you could be the headliner on Wednesday night
and then it's okay, you guys are pretty doing pretty good,
We're going to do the opening on Thursday, and then
if you move up to the headliner on Thursday and
like all the moste yeah, because that the weekend was
(29:25):
for the really the really popular bands. And we never
kind of got I think we've got opening slots for
for the buzz Bots a few times. I don't know
that we ever got to do a show with any
of the with the biber Kings or or or the Clarks,
But I love all those bands too. It was too
tall Jones show, nuf. You know, so many great bands,
(29:51):
uh and uh. I was just such a super huge
fan of all these bands, like you know, you would
get into the local scene and have their records and
and and it was really exciting.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
And what was your set list?
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Like our set list at that time, we had kind
of evolved into more of a rock heavy rock band,
so akin to the to the alternative rock of the
of the the nineties, you know, probably more like Soundgarden
or that that kind of that kind of band with Weezer,
which came a little bit around that time. So like
(30:25):
power Pop, I would say, as how we described it,
we had good catchy songs, We had a pretty good following,
and we got into the Graffiti Rock Challenge was a
big deal back in that and that era. And the
first year that we ran, and I think it was
ninety nine, ninety eight or ninety nine, we we we won,
(30:46):
we won our we didn't win our first round. It
was like that there was each week there was a
there were four groups, and you would you would if
you won your week, then you would compete in like
a semi final round, you know. In two thousand, I
think that was the last year that they had it
because they closed Graffiti not long after that. And we
made it to the finals and then and the group
(31:09):
that won was a punk group called the Ultomatics, and
they were great. But uh, it was just such a
fun time because there were so many bands and and
and it seemed like there was really a lot of
support for the original music in the city.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
And when you were playing, was it some covers and
some originals are all?
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, yeah, we we mixed it up for for for
if we were doing an orial original show, I mean,
we probably had forty minutes.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Is it wanted only originals?
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, the askap Fees, Yeah, But but we'd always throw
in throw in uh covers, you know. And I remember
having band meetings and it'd be like, yeah, well, the
the Beatles and the Rolling they played covers to man,
and you know, you just know you got to fill
it out the set, and so you knew we always
had popular stuff, but we would try to find like
(32:07):
something that a cover that we could try to make
our own. And one of our the big covers that
we did at the time was we did a version
that you mentioned Prince of Let's Go Crazy that was
kind of really up tempo, but it always kind of
hit really well for us. But even though that was
a huge hit, it wasn't more of an obscure kind
of hit.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Let me explore the relationship with your brother Jeremy. What
is what is it like for the other band members
to deal with brothers? My brother Jeremy is just such
a sweet, like uncon non confrontational kind of person.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
You know. I think that that that that's never been
an issue. You know, Jeremy and I have have our
own well we'll argue with each other sometimes, but not
in front of the band. But when you're in a
band together, it's like you're all kind of brothers really,
you know. So sometimes I'm the favorite brother, sometimes brother.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
All right, So now we're up to like nineteen ninety nine,
two thousand, Yeah, all right, take me where are you
after that? Oh well, that was kind of the year
that things started. It was after the Graffiti Rock Challenge.
We were doing big shows like the Icy Light Amphitheater
(33:31):
at Station Square.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
We were doing opening slots for We opened for steppen Wolf,
we open for Cheap Trick, We opened for the Fabulous Thunderbirds,
like those kind of touring bands that would come in.
I remember when we when it was Steppenwolf, we set
up our stuff in front of the Steppenwolf. So there's
pictures of like the wolf on the drum set behind us,
and I remember that behind the stage there were trailers
(33:55):
where you would go to get your paycheck and they
had them all laid out, like the Steppenwolf check was there,
and then there was our much much.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Quite a few less zeros.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Yeah yeah, yeah, but but it was it was, it was.
It was great to do those things. So we're we're
doing those kind of shows, and then it was just
one of those things where in retrospect, and I'm sure
this is the story for many bands, like why did
we break up? I don't know, you know, it's like
we got somebody got mad about something and this was
(34:30):
going this way, and this was going this way and
I quit, Well if you quit, then I quit. And
then thinking Okay, we're just gonna cool off and get
back together. And we didn't get back together, and the
drummer and the bass player joined another band. I'm trying
to think of the name of that band, but they
(34:51):
they just kind of went on with another band. And
then Jeremy and I did acoustics shows for a while
as the Kendall Brothers and we would go around and
and we did that and so it was probably a
hiatus until about two thousand and seven where we we uh,
(35:11):
you know, Jeremy. Jeremy plays bass, I played guitar or guitar,
keyboards and saxophone. And there was another band of guys
here in Pittsburgh that had broken up and it was
they had a drummer and a guitar player. So I
was like, oh, okay, this is like you guys want
to get together and do some shows. And so we
reformed and that band. We didn't really pursue the original music.
(35:36):
That was more like just playing out and you know,
the playing music as an occupation, right, But aside from that,
I started recording my own music. And in the in
the modern era, with technology, you can record everything and
you can shop it around and I've had some placements
(35:57):
in some films and television of original music. Tell me
about that, well, I'd say probably in twenty fifteen, I
had written a song called Take and it was like
a kind of an industrial techno kind of song. And
there was at that time there was a a website
(36:19):
where you could submit your submit your music, and you know,
industry professionals would listen to it and then they would,
you know, say yeah, yeah, kind of like Taxi and
this guy in in UH named Michael Davenport that in
LA it was like, this song is perfect for a
movie that that that I'm producing called Far Too Far,
(36:43):
and we want to we want to do the rights
for it and license it. And I was I was
like super excited. I mean, how could this be possible?
You know that one of my songs is going to
go into into a movie. And so I started to
writing some writing, writing more, writing more, recording more, submitting more,
(37:04):
and I realized that sometimes in this licensing game, it's
not about how good the song is or it's just
this song fits for this project and uh. And so
from that I got another Uh. I had an instrumental
piece that had cello's and and it it made it
into a movie called Chasing the Cardboard Butterfly, which was
(37:28):
a documentary narrated by James Hetfield. But the funny thing
about when you do this is you you never know
where they're going to put this in the movie or
how much of it is going to be in there.
And in my mind, I was like, this is kind
of this is an instrumental kind of background piece, and
maybe if James Hetfield of Metallica is narrating this, it'll
be behind him talking in the movie, and then technically
(37:52):
I'll be doing a duet with Metallica, but that wasn't
the case. But yeah, you know, and the movie comes out,
all right.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
We're going to edit that, so we're going to make
that happen, right.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
And I'm scanning through the movie and I'm scanning through
it and I'm like, and I hear the music, and
it was the part of the documentary with this woman
is like crying and talking about how she, you know,
caught her husband cheating on her. And I was like,
I didn't picture that for this music at all, but
there it is. And then I had a Christmas I
(38:28):
do a huge Christmas show every year to benefit the
Food Bank We've done thirteen years, my wife and I
and every year it's we bring together a group of performers.
We have a houseman and all different genres of music.
We have R and B. We have a lot of
really top Pittsburgh performers that are annually in it. But
(38:50):
it's all Christmas music and all the proceeds go to
the Food Bank and we're usually able to provide like
thirty to forty thousand meals every year with the in
conjunction with the Food Bank. So I put out an
album of Christmas songs, and so I did covers of okay, yeah,
(39:11):
covers of Christmas songs. But then I was like, I
got to write a couple original Christmas songs. So I
did one called Christmas nineteen eighty five, which is it's
kind of I made it sound eighties and it's about like,
you know, being a kid in the eighties. And I
did another one that was just instrumental piano. And I
did one called Christmas Lights the World with Love, and
(39:32):
there was I don't know. My wife loves these Hallmark
Christmas movies, the Hollow other movies, so one of them
got picked for for Yeah. It was a movie called
Letters at Christmas with Dean Kine who was Superman, and
I'm waiting for the the movie. I saw that it
was going to be released and we waited up release
(39:54):
it midnight. Okay, we're gonna watch this Christmas movie. And
I'm watching it and watching them, like, where's the song
on it be? And how much of it's going to
be in there? You know? And it's just the scene
comes up and they light the Christmas tree and you
just hear maybe like thirty seconds of the song, but
it was there. Yeah, I mean it's it was instrumental,
but it was in there, you know. Yeah. So so
(40:20):
that that's kind of my My outlet for original music
is doing licensing.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
And do you still do a lot of that?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
I do? I do. I had a song that sometimes
you get, you get almost there and then it's it
doesn't make the final cut, which has happened a couple
of times. I had a song called young Love off
of an album I did a couple of years ago
called Cream with Your Cacophony, and it was very kind
of eighties production. And there was a new movie on
(40:51):
Netflix called Fear Street prom Queen that takes place in
the eighties and my guy, Michael Davenport said, he called
me on the phone. He's like, Chase and your song
young Love is going to be It's the end credits
song for this new promp Fear Street prom Queen movie.
And I was like, I'm like, he's like, it's in
the song. It could be replaced, but it's in the movie.
(41:12):
But it could be replaced, but for right now, it's
it's there. And this was like in July of last year,
and and and so I'm waiting for the release of
this movie. I'm like, oh, there's this is the fourth
Fear Street movie. When it comes out, the other one's
really popular. This it's gonna be This is gonna be huge.
And I waited until, like it's going to be released
(41:34):
on Make twenty fifth, and I'm waiting in midnight, and
I'm like, oh, it's going to drop. And then it's like, oh,
it's midnight on the West Coast. And then and the
movie came up and I'm like, oh, it's on. And
I skimmed all through the movie to get to the
end credits and I listen and it was a different song.
(41:55):
So sometimes you win and sometimes it doesn't happen, but
you know that's that's that's part of it. But I'm
not writing. There are folks that write specifically for their
like call sheets that come out from the industry, like
we're looking for songs that sound like this, this, this, this, this,
this is this and record your three and some studios
are just like, we're just going to make music that
(42:18):
is specifically targeted for these kind.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Of Well, you play multiple instruments and you have you're
interested in it in a variety of different styles and genres.
That maybe is that that should be an advantage to Oh.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Yeah, yeah it is. But I never wanted to write
music to order like that, Like I didn't want to
write something specific Well, they want a country song about
driving a car in the woods, Like I didn't want
to write specifically for that, And that's not really how
I write. I it's hard for me to It feels
disingenuous to me to try to force a song like that.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
How often do you produce music?
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Well, right now, I've been remark so I haven't had
much time, but I think I'm always coming up with ideas.
Like many songwriters, you know, you'll something will pop into
your head. And now we have technology you can pick
out your phone and sing the chorus in there, and
maybe that'll end up being you, Like you'll write a
great half of a song earlier and and and put
(43:20):
this new chorus to it, and you know it's it's
it's an it's it's something you're always what is.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
What is your process? What is your process? Do you
have a process?
Speaker 1 (43:29):
I think that for me, the process is I have
to just sit down at a piano or or guitar.
I mean, it's very rare that a song will just
like pop into your head, like Paul McCartney says, I
dreamt yesterday and woke up and had to figure out
how to play it. Sometimes that does happen, But for me,
it's more like I have to be actively playing and
(43:52):
then I'll play something that I'd like and I'll do
it again.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
It's a discovery, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Or you might come up with one like the hook line.
And then So the most recent song I wrote was
and recorded at home, was one called people Talking, And
all I had of the song was that's just people talking,
and so it's okay that. So sometimes you start with
that and then write the rest of the song around
(44:19):
that idea. Yeah, to that point, Yeah, you know, so
it comes different ways. I almost always have the music
before the lyrics, but sometimes you just you strum the
guitar and you you just sing random words, and what
you're doing is kind of I think it's figuring out
the vowel sounds, you know, because if you think about
(44:44):
why we have vowels A E, I owe you, those
are the letters that you actually sing, right. All other
word consonants are you know, like their their sounds that
you make with your mouth. So in singing, you know,
certain vowels are easier to sing on certain notes. So
you might be singing random words, but I've found that
really what you're doing is kind of figuring out the
(45:06):
vowel sounds and singing this song and then you can
shape the song from there.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
I guess that's a weird, weird way to say it,
but it happens. So when when do you get inspired?
How what's your day like when you're writing music? And
how often do you do you and you still play live,
so how often do you do that?
Speaker 1 (45:26):
I do it as often as I can. Usually it's
like late at late at night, I'll work on stuff
I think I like to have. You know, the advantage
of having a home studio with these modern workstations and
computer programs. I use one called logic is. It's almost
(45:48):
like a painter that has an oil painting. The oil
paint doesn't dry right away, so you might come up
with some ideas and it sits there on the easel,
and then you keep coming back to it and scraping
off the paint and doing this. So that's kind of
the process now, is I'll come up with an idea
and I'll start it and put a drum beat and
maybe some chords and maybe the hook, and then over
(46:10):
the course of maybe two weeks of messing around with it,
I'll start to shape it into a song. I always
kind of put more into it than what needs to
be there and then take it away. I think the
tools that we use now allow you to write songs
that way on them and record them at the same time.
Whereas before it was like I'm writing a song on
(46:32):
this guitar for me to play live, Now I'm kind
of writing for the whole production. During the pandemic, I
really had a lot of time, so that's all. Yeah,
So I got really more involved in learning how to
use that technology, and it was a very prolific time
because I had the time to spend doing it. And
(46:54):
also during that time, I was trying to find ways
to make money as a musician, and I found a
site called air gigs, where it's basically, say your home
recording and you need a drum track, or you need
a guitar track, or you need a whatever, a singer
to sing your song. You can hire a studio musician online.
(47:14):
You send them there your song file, and then that
person records the part and then sends you the part back.
So I was doing saxophone parts, saxophone solos for people,
and it was the coolest thing because I was meeting
people from all over the world, you know, and in
varying degrees of you know, quality, like it could be
(47:37):
very sorry drop my water, amateur folks like Hey, I
just wrote this song and I envisioned a sax solo.
Can you play this on there? And it might be
a professional thing. I did one for another TV show
on Netflix called I Can't Believe I'm Married something like that.
(47:59):
It was an aw but the guy sent me, the
client sent me, can I need these sacks? This is
a score. I need you to record the tenor part
the very part the you know all the sax parts,
here's the sheet music, but I need to buy Friday.
There's a deadline and I didn't know what it was for.
And I recorded it and then about three months later
(48:19):
he says, okay, it's an episode six of this show,
and I did. I got no credit. It was a
work for hire, but just to turn it on and
it's like, that's me playing the saxophone and that was
the composed And that's kind of where music is going now.
Where this guy got the gig as a composer for
the show, and instead of booking a studio, he's going online.
(48:41):
He's finding studio musicians that he can get to play
the parts, and then he puts it together and there
it is. So during the course of this I know
I did. There were stuff with people from Israel. A
woman sent me a whole album worth of religious songs
that she wanted. The the vocal line replaced with saxophone,
(49:02):
like soprano saxophone, which was a learning curve for me
because the melodic content was different than what I was
used to, so I had to try to learn to
copy that. I have a guy that has his name's
Neil Anderson has a record company in London called Original Gravity,
and he does all vinyl records. They're all throwback and
(49:24):
it's all like SKA and R and B, and he
there's an underground like dance market for like this old
old soul. He sells a lot of sells all of
these records that he'll call me and he's like, I've
got this drum bass part and I need saxophone on
this and I'll record it. And the first one I
(49:44):
did for him a couple about a month or two later,
a vinyl record came in the mail from England and
it was it said the title was whatever the song was,
and then the artist was Prince Alfonso in the Regents.
And I'm like, he's just has a studio. He's making
up the names of the dands. So and I did
(50:05):
maybe thirty of these, and I would keep getting Prince.
I'm like, someday I'm going to go to London and
I'm just going to be like, hey, everyone, you know,
but I was in. I was in prove prove that
I'm not right. But the Neil does put on on
the records made in the UK and Pittsburgh, PA. And
(50:26):
he uses like he has a trumpet player from Italy
and some some different musicians that he uses. He always credits.
It's great that the graphic design of him are awesome.
He's a really cool guy. So funny story about him.
I was in England last last spring and I went
with a friend. We were visiting a film set and
(50:48):
I contacted Neil at and I maybe did thirty records
for Prince well as Prince Alfonso, and I wanted to
meet this guy that I met through this online recording
service in person. He's like, yeah, well you're going to
be in the western England and it's a short drive over.
Maybe we could meet up. So I got to meet
this guy in person and we we we we We
(51:10):
had a few pints and talked about music and and
he's obsessed with Pittsburgh now and he's like, you've got
to explain Yin's to me, right. So I had this
shirt okay that I took with me that just that.
It was a black shirt that says on the front
Yin's in yellow letters. It was and I said, you
know what, Neil, I have a gift for you. And
(51:31):
I gave him this yen shirt. He loves it. So
now on his Instagram, he travels all over the world.
It's in every picture he has on his end shirt.
So he's in Neil and in Tokyo, Japan, is you know,
in Budapest, Hungary. Is it's like the traveling the traveling
(51:51):
nome So but but but I would have never forged
that relationship if it wasn't for technology and and doing
doing this. So, uh, you know, it's it's great and
I and I and conversely, I've used you know, musicians,
string players, uh to to record some things that I've
had and it's it's really an exciting time for for music.
(52:14):
And what's funny is if you go on to the
to that website, you can see, uh you know now
that people are more recording music at home studios. Uh.
You see session drummers like I played on a you
know a lot of more sets record I played on
the you know, these are like top l a studio
(52:36):
people that are now going, yeah, you're now doing that.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Wow. So do you prefer that kind of creativity or
playing live?
Speaker 1 (52:46):
I prefer I'm a live musician at heart. There's nothing
there's it's very difficult to train yourself to record with
the same energy that you have when you're playing live,
because playing live is a conversation. It's the same as
(53:06):
like being a movie actor or a stage actor. You'll
often hear stage actors say, we're real acting is on
the stage. I don't know if I have a judgment
on that, but uh, playing live, you're It's a two
way conversation. You feed off of the energy from the
crowd and it you know that. That's That's a completely
different experience to me anyway. Recording is more like you
(53:31):
go into a bubble, and for me, it's like you
go into your own little world where you you control
the vertical, you control the horizontal. So it's uh, I'd
like being in both both the extroverted world of live
performance and the introverted world of Create Create Creation.
Speaker 2 (53:50):
When it comes to instruments, do you prefer sacks, guitar, keys? What?
It depends?
Speaker 1 (53:57):
All that's I'd say that I'm best on saxophone. I'm not,
by far not the greatest saxophone in the is in
the world, but of the instruments I play, I feel
most comfortable with the saxophone. Second would be piano, third
would be guitar. As far as a guitarist. I'm not
a lead guitarist. I'm a rhythm guitarist. I'm self taught,
(54:19):
and I've learned enough that I can function and play
and accompany myself, so I feel competent enough to record
that I can play bass. I'm not a bassis I
wouldn't do a gig on bass, but I can play
a bass line.
Speaker 2 (54:31):
You know, it's funny you you don't hear any saxophones
in today's music. Not a lot. No, And in the
seventies and eighties there was saxophone on all the records. Yeah,
I mean amazing performances.
Speaker 1 (54:46):
Yeah, yeah, And that's the era that I grew up
in and learning those solos that were on records.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
Who were some of your favorites?
Speaker 1 (54:53):
Oh well, Junior Walker, I remember learning the the saxophone
solo in George Harrison's I Got my mind set on you.
I was like, this is the great I love that
and even like when I improvised, like some of those
(55:14):
licks from those sade whatever.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Of course, the iconic George Michael Careless whisper all uh
Baker Street. There's so many famous sax lines. But uh uh,
those those saxos that I grew up with will come
through in what you're playing, and I think that early
on especially sixties records, if you think about the sound
(55:38):
of that tenor saxophone of those big it was a
huge sound. And I think that as guitars got more
fuzz and you could get that big sound out of
a lead guitar, it kind of the guitar started to replace.
But I don't really hear instrumental solos in modern recordings
too much. Chapel Roone came out with this mega hit
called Pink Pony Club that has a guitar sol and
(56:00):
all the bands are like, did you hear this song?
It's got a guitar solo in it, Like, we haven't
heard that for years?
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Yeah, because a lot of the nineties, a lot of
the grunge artists really didn't like their solos were more
uh you know, feedback, yeah, than than an actual solo.
And uh so when you hear it now, you're like, well,
that's that really stands out? Yeah, yeah, Uh what do
you what are you currently working on? And what what
(56:29):
do you what do you have any aspirations or goals
that you want down the road?
Speaker 1 (56:36):
Sure? About two years ago and it's such a shame
that the the hard rock has closed. You know. We
seems like we were just talking on a way in
about Lynden Grove closing, that live music venues in the
city have kind of been closing, and uh, I had
a I sponsored a singer songwriter forum for about a
(56:58):
year and a half in conjunct was coming out of
the pandemic at the hard Rock and we would invite,
you know, five different songwriters to come in all original stuff,
and we partnered with Women Who Rock did a few
showcases there and I really was got back into, you know,
being on stage doing the acoustic singer songwriter and it
(57:20):
kind of fell off the hard Rock closed. Obviously I'd
like to start that again, continue to record, but right now,
you know, I've recorded two albums, most original music rock music.
One was autobiographical called When at Last We Saw the Sunrise,
(57:44):
and it's kind of a whole story. It's kind of
about a musician from Pittsburgh who starts a band who
have an ambulance that drive around, you know, and only
in this story, they make it really big. And then
once they make it they make it big, they decide
that you know, it's not all the cracked up to be.
So there's a comic book that that goes with it.
(58:04):
And I recorded all that stuff and I haven't gotten
to play it live. And subsequently I made an album
called uh uh Cream with Your Cacophony. So what I'm
working on is putting putting together a set to do
these songs live, because really they've only existed in in
the in I recorded them in my in my home studio,
(58:27):
and so I want to put that together and do
some live shows. And and uh, I know, Club Cafe
just recently reopened and they're they're they're starting some some
new shows. There's some great places Bottle Rocket Spirit in Lawrenceville,
uh and I'm probably gonna leave some places out, but Pittsburgh,
(58:48):
Pittsburgh Winery, you know, so uh, there are those venues
are there. But I want to put together because mostly
what I do now, I play four or five nights
a week, and mostly it's it could be playing jazz
as one night, playing piano for a dinner the next night,
playing for with a band for a party the next night.
I want to concentrate on, you know, just having that aspect,
(59:09):
doing some of my own stuff live, so you know,
I've never wanted to just do one thing, so having
a variety of things is great. And that's my next
next project.
Speaker 2 (59:19):
Well, there's one question that Annie and I always end on,
and that is what would you like your legacy to be?
Speaker 1 (59:27):
My legacy, you know, just that the people would remember
that I was part of the music scene here in
the city and have good things to say about me.
You know, I love when people tell the stories, you know,
like have you hey, you remember remember that time when
we were over at Chance or whatever and Jimmy so
(59:50):
and so was playing, and then we got up on
stage and it was you know, just I've always just
wanted to live the life of a musician, and I've
been very blessed that I've been able to to live
that life. And so to be remembered in any way
as part of this scene or that you know, man,
that was such a great, great night and Jason Kendall
(01:00:11):
was there, that would be my one part of my legacy.
The other part would be that some young person would say,
I grew up and I listened to you and I
wanted to learn to play the saxophone, or I wanted
to learn to play like you. You know that would
be like mind blowing, you know, Like I know, Sonny
(01:00:34):
had many young people that were like wow, I heard
Sonny Pugar play and I wanted to learn to play
the drums like him. And he would mentor them and
he would teach them. That's the legacy, you know, having
young songwriters that we do the Songwriters Circle say, you know,
I went on to Nashville and I'm but I remember
when I was, you know, a young songwriter in Pittsburgh.
(01:00:57):
There was this sky Jason Kendall that brought gave me
a chance and brought we came in and I played
my song like to be a part of that ongoing story.
Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
It's definitely a legacy.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
And then to continue to get you know, my music
into some into film, into soundtrack of a huge movie.
Buff you know that it's kind of a hobby. I
don't know that it's the I could ever make a
real living doing it, you know, but just the pride
of hey, listen to this, you know turn this TV show.
(01:01:32):
That's great. So yeah, just the legacy of getting the life,
getting to live the life as a musician and being
part of it and having people remember you and what
you meant to them their audiences. I played a gig
recently and a guy came up and he said he
owned the club. He's like, this is my club, Jason.
(01:01:52):
You might not remember nineteen ninety four. You played at
my brother's graduation party, man, and I was like fourteen.
I was like, whoa. This is the coolest thing, just
to be remembered, you know,
I know that this is an ovidio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Oh and you are. I'll bless your heart. This is
the Cold podcast chronicle in Pittsburgh music scene. All Right,
welcome man. I'm Johnny Hertwell, your host along with any Pugar.
Today we're gonna be talking with musician and entertainer Jason Kendall. Hello, allong, Jason,
nice to meet you. How are you, sir.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I'm doing great. It's great to be here. Thanks for
having me, Johnny.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
All right, we're gonna explore all of you. This is
Jason Kendall. This is your life. All right, take me back,
take me back. Do you come first of all? Do
you come from a musical family?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I do? I do. My father was the saxophonist. His
name was Lloyd Kendall. He played in a band called
the menta Chance. You're also great singer.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
And was it here in the Pittsburgh area.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
In the Pittsburgh area, they recorded in the early sixties
at Gateway Studios put out a single.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
You have It? Do you still have?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I Still Have It? Uh? It was it was interesting.
They they recorded a it was kind of a surf song,
I guess uh that called Countdown and it was released. Uh,
to coincide with John Glenn's uh, you know, three Times
around the Earth, And it started out with a sample
of Colonel Shepard doing three It was great, uh. And
(01:28):
the flip side was a version of as Time Goes By,
And it was interesting the way that they recorded at
the time. They brought the band in and set them
up and and just said, okay, do a test song.
So my dad just started you most remember, and that
was just to be the sound check, and then they
recorded a bunch of songs and then they left the
(01:48):
studio and then whoever was in the studio decided what
was going to be the single and what was and
the the sound check song, As Time Goes By became
the flip side of that. They sold two hundred and
fifty thousand copies. It was mostly for the flip side.
They liked the cover, so it was interesting. But you know,
that was their their fifteen minutes and it kind of
(02:10):
came and went and.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Well, and when you sell that many copies of a single,
they had to have had some airplay, right.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, yeah, And they had big support. This was like
early sixties, nineteen sixty one, sixty two. Porky Chedwick played
them a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
You know who is he again?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah? It was a radio DJ from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah. Well, okay, so your father played. Do you have
any other siblings that played? Yeah, my oldest brother Bruce
is guitarist. He lives in Boston, and my brother Jeremy
is a bassist and great singer. We both performed together
for years in various bands. We still played together pretty regularly.
(02:53):
All right, So what is your earliest musical memory? My
earliest musical memory.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
You know, I I was slow to come to music.
I always enjoyed music and love music, but I wanted
to be a baseball player, much like the other Jason
Kendall that's supposedly from. Yeah, I don't know. I've signed
some baseball's for people. Yeah, but uh, you know, when
(03:21):
I when I was when I was a kid, I
would go to work with my father and he had
a construction business. And uh, when I was twelve years old,
I had an accident where power saw slipped and cut
off three of the fingers on my right hand, and
they luckily reattached them and they worked pretty well, and
the doctors recommended to my parents that maybe, you know,
(03:45):
piano lessons would help with my next tarity and to
kill a and uh, interestingly enough, and this is a
Pittsburgh tie. So I was at school and my hand
was in bandages, and I was kind of sad that
I don't want to have to go take piano lessons.
I want to play baseball. Right, And Frank o'harris visited
(04:05):
our elementary school. Right, it was just kind of like
a special I think it was a ritath on. He
came and he read to the kids and he was
talking to everybody, and he asked me about my hand,
and I said, you know, Franco, I had a accident.
My fingers got cut, and you know my mom wants
my mom wants me to take piano lessons. I don't
want to take piano lessons. I don't want to play
(04:26):
it play sports. And Franco said, well, I think you
should listen to you to your mom because to play
sports you need strong hands and piano will help you
with that. Right.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
What a good answer from here.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So here's the crazy part about this. In December of
twenty twenty three, I play piano, I play saxophone, I
play guitar. I got a call from Heinz History Center
that they in anticipation for the fiftieth anniversary of the
Immaculate Reception, that they were going to have an event
there at dinner. And it was around Christmas time, and
(04:58):
they wanted to hire me to play piano because they
might do some holiday songs. And you know, tragically, two
days before this happened, Franco passed away. So they called
off the dinner. And then Franco's wife and his son
Doc said, no, you know, all these old players are
in town from the seventy Steelers and the Oakland Raiders.
(05:21):
We're going to have the dinner and we're going to
turn it into more like a celebration of life. Can
you still come and play? And so the piano was
set up right by the stage and I'm playing, and
right by the podium here comes mean Joe Green, Frenchy Fuqua,
you know, phil Via piano from the Oakland Raiders. And
I'm playing the piano and I'm thinking, forty years ago
(05:41):
Franco told me that I should take piano lessons. And
here I am playing for playing for this Franco.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
You're playing for Franco.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, playing for him. I know, I know.
I got goosebumps and It kind of blew my mind,
you know, that I was fortunate circle and just that
I was fortunate enough to get the call, I mean, yeah,
to do that, so it was meant to be. So
thanks Franco.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Thanks Franco. All right, so so did you take?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I came up and yeah, yeah, getting back to the
so I took the piano lessons because Franco you know,
said it was okay, and and I didn't get too
much slack from my friends for but I loved it.
I but what I didn't like was playing the sheet
like the written music. I would labor it that. But
(06:36):
I liked found I liked to play stuff, you know,
and I wanted to play you know, rock and roll
and whatever, and so it kind of took off from there.
I started playing the saxophone for high school band because
my dad had saxophones there and I really enjoyed that.
And I, uh, you know, I was in high school
in the eighties and and uh, the girls liked all
(06:56):
the guitar players and def Leppard whatever, so I had
to figure out how to play play guitar. And then
I ended up getting a music scholarship to West Virginia
University and I graduated, I taught public school music for
a while, and then I taught music as an adjunct
(07:17):
at Penn State for ten years CCAC here and during
that time, I you know, all that time I was
I was playing. I had an original band in the nineties,
and then you know, doing variety of different shows. And
now yea, since twenty fifteen, I've been pretty much full
time doing music again. So I'm very fortunate and very
(07:41):
blessed to have that opportunity.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
All Right, your father was a musician. What's the pecking
order of the brothers. The pecking order of the brothers,
I'm the best. I mean, no, no, who's the oldest? Well,
there are, there are a lot of us. I'm the
oldest of my brother Jeremy, and he's three years younger
than me, and my brother Bruce is eighteen years older
(08:03):
than me. So yeah, we have a very large family.
It's kind of a mixed family. But you know, so
how involved did your father get in encouraging you?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Oh he was great. My father was the best teacher.
But he taught, you know, I think he taught.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Let me start. Let me ask you a question, when
did you realize he was a musician? You know, early on,
my dad played like five nights a week, and he would.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Dress and I mean he put on like the tuxedo.
He would come home from work all day, he would
take a nap, eat dinner, and then he'd get dressed
to go out and play at night. And I remember
it as a kid, not understanding where he was, you know,
and and like he didn't have to haul a lot
of pa here. He just took his saxophone and left.
But he's My first memories was every time I'd see
(08:57):
him put on the tuxedo, I would start to grow,
why are you going I have to go play? Well,
why don't you stay here and play with me? You know,
I did not understand. And then I would play his record,
you know, and I would listen to his record and
that would kind of calm me. But as a kid,
I thought my dad was like Elvis, you know, I
thought he was famous because he was he had a
(09:19):
record and he was playing out you know, but he
was he was, he was, he was the best. But
as far as a teacher, he was kind of a
mister Miyagi, kind of familiar with the karate kid where
he would, you know, he would you would I'd be
up ustairs in my room practice and I couldn't wait
to get home and go in my room and and
he would be listening, and he'd come down and he'd
(09:39):
give you like little suggest try this, try do this,
you know, And he was always encouraging. He was never
overbeering with it. He kind of lets you do your
thing and then he'd shape you here and there, you know. Uh.
And and when we were kids, we started a band
called Deja Vu, and we played mostly oldies music. And
(10:00):
because I was really into like Chuck Berry and stuff
are growing up, and he would run sound for us.
He helped us to get sound equipment and he was
very supportive. Yes, all right.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Did he played sacks?
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Did he play any other instrument? Did he play the keys?
Speaker 1 (10:18):
He didn't play the piano, He didn't play the guitar.
He always wish that he would have learned, but primarily
and he played clarinet first. My dad was born in
nineteen thirty six, so his hero growing up was Benny Goodman.
He was like the Big band era, you know. And
he would always say, you know, real real players play
the clarinet, not the saxophonees easy, you know, but yeah,
(10:42):
so he primarily was a sax player, and he was
a great singer, you know so, yeah, great entertainer.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
And what kind of music were you drawn to at
an early age?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
At an early age, I, like everybody else, I listened
to the pop music that was out at the time.
I'm you know, I think the first record that I
ever bought on my own was at Hills department store
was Van Hale in nineteen eighty four. Because they had
the angel smoking the cigarettes on the cover. I thought
that was the coolest thing. But I got my own money,
(11:15):
I bought my own record, you know. So, so I
love loved all of that eighties eighties music, and then
after I started playing the saxophone, I really got into
big band music because there's a lot in sag you know.
So I'm listening to Glenn Miller, I'm listening to you know,
Lewis Armstrong and that era of music. And then from
(11:35):
there I really got into like fifties music, oldies music,
Elvis and Buddy Holly and you know that, that Chuck Berry,
Little Richard. And then somewhere in like junior high, I
discovered the Beatles. I was watching a TV commercial and
it was for Nike, and it came on and it
was just the beginning to revolution running no no, no, no, no,
(11:57):
no no no. And I was like, oh my god,
what is that? Like? I had never heard it before
until that, And and that was kind of around the
time that I wanted to I wanted to play guitar
just so I could learn to go, you know. And
so then I kind of really started exploring sixties music.
Uh led up. We didn't have a lot of like
(12:18):
records in our house. We had we had a old
Philco record player, and you know, it didn't have a
lot of rock and roll records at the time. But
it was kind of like this sense of discovery, you know.
And uh So from from there, uh you know, I've
learned to love all kinds of music. I really got
(12:38):
into classical music for a while and I still am,
so you know, I never wanted to limit myself.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
It's always just kind of like discovery. What about writing,
writing music writing? I've I love writing music. I have
several albums of original music. When did you start? When
did that start?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I think it may have started really when I first
started playing the piano. If you think about it, sitting
and just playing was writing right, it was it was composing,
even if it was just making up a little tune
or just doing your own thing, improvising. So that was
kind of the seed of it. I'd say in high school,
(13:19):
I started writing lyrics and trying to write songs, and
usually it would be you know, I really love this
Bob Dylan song, so I want to try to write
a song like that. So it's that's all kind of
your I guess a songwriting for me was training, trying
to imitate the people that you admire, and then from
there trying to, you know, find your own voice as
(13:40):
a writer. So I just keep writing.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
And do you remember any of those early songs that
you wrote? Oh yeah, how did they go?
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Let's see early on. Well, I'm trying to think. Uh man,
you're taking me back. Uh I'm kind of at a loss.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
You'll think of it, Yeah, it'll come to me.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
I think the first one was a song called Because
because it was really kind of simple, you know, because
because sound slipped, sand slipped through the overglass, because because
time is moving, So darn fans. It doesn't mean we
don't have time. It doesn't mean we don't have time
to fall in love, because because because because, I mean,
(14:41):
it was like a sixteen year old writing writing a song.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, did did falling in love inspire you? Was that
a muse?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Oh? I fell in love every day in high school?
You know?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
So you had a not only do you start? When
did you start? You kind of mentioned, you know, piano, saxophone,
guitar was at that in that order. When did you
form your first band? When did you know?
Speaker 1 (15:10):
The first band that I formed was for a talent
show at our school when I was in eighth grade.
And the guy that lived across the street for me,
his name was Robbie Orvitz and uh, he played the
drums and I played the saxophone, and we we started
a group. We we the the We're in the Batman.
(15:30):
We was originally called the Penguins, and then we decided
we wanted to be Whiplash, all right, and then and
then we and then we decided on Deja Vu because
it sounded kind of exotic, you know. I think there
was an Iron Maiden song called and it was just
a duo's just the two of us, Yes, and and
and we recorded the The guy that played guitar in
(15:51):
in the menta chance my father's band recorded. Uh, so
we were using tracks back then. He recorded the guitar
part to like I Think Tequila and some other song.
I played on sacks and we played at the talent
show and we were, yeah, we were a big we
were a big hit. We didn't win, but we were
a big hit. And so from there we got a
(16:14):
bass player. Chris Jordan was like the only kid that
we knew that played bass, and he was great. And
my friend Jeff Savareice was he had a guitar and
it was like, oh, we're going to form a band.
We're in eighth grade, ninth grade. And then I was
fifteen at the time, fourth fifteen, and my younger brother
was twelve, right, and you know, he can't be in
my band. He's like still a kid, but he could
(16:36):
sing really well. So he played the tambourine and sang
and we were doing like real gigs. We were playing.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Okay, what was your first paid gig?
Speaker 1 (16:45):
My first paid gig we played at the Point Mary
and Regatta. I'm going to say it was nineteen eighty seven.
And from that we got a wedding gig and we
only knew maybe ten twelve songs, and I think we
made two hundred dollars to play the word yeah, and
we were like, wow, this is great. But we had
(17:06):
friends that were aspiring DJs and it was like, Okay,
here's what we can do. And it was like when
you DJed with records, right, So the band will play
and then the DJ will play, and then a band
will play. So I think we ended up playing the
same songs maybe twice or but but it was it
was great. So that was my first paying gig. But
(17:27):
that's really the first time I remember we we loved
the song Twist and Shout. I remember we were doing
Twist and Shout and people were dancing and it got
to the big part in them ah oh shit. And
I can remember specifically that that was the moment that
something like sp snapped in my brain. It was like,
(17:50):
this is the greatest thing in the world that you know,
You're just playing this music and people are dancing, and
I've been addicted to it ever since. It's just, you know,
one of those moments. It was the energy.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
And so did you introduce any original music the days?
When did that start?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah, we we started recording some original songs, maybe when
I was in tenth or eleventh grade at a studio
near our home. Randy Rhoads, great engineer, had a studio
and we recorded a song called We had a song
called Gino. We had a song called Forever Goodbye. We
(18:27):
had a song.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Uh because because because yeah yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
And and we we recorded them. We also recorded a
demo of of cover songs at the time too, because
it was like we're trying to get get some some
some paying gigs. But that really kind of started the
buzz of the bug and learning how to record, learning
how you know, they were very patient with us as kids.
And and from there Desvo we we.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Well, hold on, hold on, yeah, do you still have
all those recordings?
Speaker 1 (18:58):
I do? I do? That's nice, yeah yeah, and it's
and and I go back and I listened to it,
and uh, you know, my brother and I started singing
harmony together really early on. And and that was again
was our dad encouraged this that and it was all
he would teach us everly brothers songs, so we would
do like learn like you know all that all that
(19:21):
kind of that's how we learned how to sing harmony.
And to this day, you know, they I've heard the
term like blood harmony or brother harmony.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Right, it's you know something about somebody who grows up
in the same household. Yeah, they sing and they just
seem to be just they just they just blend. So
my brother and I just have this instinctive thing. We
used to learn songs where we would do harmony on
the chorus and he could always sing higher than me.
(19:49):
So there were there were it would be like he
would sing the he would sing the lead on the verses,
and then when it got to the we wanted to
do harmony on the chorus, I would start lead so
that he could sing the higher harmony. It was like
we would instinctively kind of switch parts and we still
do that.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
It's great.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Were some of your favorite harmony groups or bands or artists.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Oh, Brian Wilson, love the Beach Boys, I'd love. I
got to meet Brian Wilson in twenty sixteen when he
was here doing the fiftieth anniversary Pet Sounds tour him
Blondie Chaplin and Al Jardine. I got to go back
to the meet and greet and you know love that.
(20:31):
I love the Association Great Harmony group of course, the Beatles,
Simon and Garfunkel, yeah, all of them really. Yeah. You know,
in modern recording, you can stack your own harmony and
record your singing with yourself. And I was in South Carolina.
(20:55):
I do a lot of kicks down there, and a
friend of mine who's a really great accomplished songwriter and singer,
Angie Apara, we were sitting and something came on the
jukebox and it was, you know, Poco or something. It's
a great like like that acoustic folks, And he said,
you know, the best harmony comes when there's more than
(21:15):
one heartbeat singing, and you think about it, like just
hearing those different voices blend that gives you know, yeah,
I mean we have harmony pedals that can harmonize that
we have. You know, you can stack and layer and
stuff in the studio, but just to hear that different people,
different voices, character characteristics of their voices coming together is
(21:38):
really great.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Some of my favorites are like the Hollies and Crosby Stills.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Nash Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Or even the Eagles. You don't really really realize the
harmonies until you see them live and how they blend it,
and you go, how are they able to do that?
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah, it's just you years of years of years of
live performance, and you know, I saw an interview was
one of these random YouTube clips where an engineer, a
studio engineer, recording engineer from the sixties was saying that
one of the fundamental differences for him from the music
(22:20):
that was being created through the sixties and seventies and
the music now was when we used to record people then,
it was how they're already polished, they're already on stage.
How do we create a recording of what they do
live and give it the best fidelity? And now it's
(22:40):
we have all all this technology, we make the recording,
and then we've got to figure out how to recreate
it live.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
It's like that different backs. Yes, yeah, you know, and
back let's go back to Sun Records. Some of those
records that they created back in the fifties still stands.
Oh they're great, They're miraculous.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
And it was probably one one mic in a room.
Everybody was there, and they you know, they moved the
things closer and further away from the mic to balance it.
It was very much a you know.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Organic I really wish we could go back to that
that that kind of music experience, because experience I don't think.
I don't think today's music is better. I mean it's
it's technologically better. You can do a lot of different things,
and I respect that sure. But you know, some of
those early recordings from you know, Sun Records and Stacks.
(23:37):
I'm a huge fan of Ye Memphis Sounds and things
like that. It was just you know, four guys who
you know, basically like you know, the played on all
those records and they yeah, they in motown and things
like that, that they they just got so good, they
just locked it in. You don't get that. You don't
(23:57):
get that experience.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
That that human thing. I think that we have the
ability to make everything super perfect. And you know, if
a drum hit is a little earlier or late, you
can put it on the grid, or you can tune
things and you can and it's great. I'm not a
person that wants to knock modern music for that reason.
(24:18):
But some of the things that I love about those
old records that you're mentioning is maybe there were some mistakes,
maybe the guy didn't quite hit the note, or maybe,
like you know, when they released the Beatles early stuff
on CDs, you could hear parts where you know, Paul's
voice cracks and they just left it in because you know,
(24:39):
they were off the road and they only had so
much time to record. And maybe you didn't hear it
as much in the in the vinyl mix that you
did in the digital mix, but there was something about
the humanity of it of those early records that shone through.
And I think that there's a movement in modern music
that is embracing that, like some of the newer rock
(25:02):
and stuff that seems to be coming out. Maybe you
don't hear it on the radio, but it's there where
you know it's people are always going to gravitate towards
that more.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Again, especially if it's live. It can be produced live,
and Prince is a really good modern example of leaving
the mistakes in because it gives it a feel. Yeah,
I need he wanted songs that could be felt.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Which is the most important thing. You know, you could
you can. There are records that are that are perfectly
produced that you play them and they inspire nothing to you,
maybe emotionally, and records that are scratch like songs that
you're driving down the road and their static and you'll
still listen to it through the static because of what
(25:49):
you're emotionally you're getting from it or you have the
memory or whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
All right. You mentioned that nineteen eighty four Van Halen
was the first album you bought anybody who So, you know,
a vocalist knows that David Lee Roth is not a
good singer, but the way he made us feel with
those songs.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, he I think that David Lee Roth was one
of the greatest front men of all time. I I
love Sammy Hagar too, you know, but yeah, you're one
hundred percent right. It was attitude, it was he he
he brought something to it, to it, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
All right, So let's let's get back to where we were,
all right. So deja vu Yes, starts recording some songs
with their aspirations of trying to get signed to a label.
And where did that take Where did that take you?
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Well? By the time that I that that I was
in college, Uh, the lineup had kind of changed, you know,
from the original, uh five piece group when we were
in high school. We kind of you know, people graduate
and they go separate ways, but we we kind of
pared down and we're a four piece band. My brother
Jeremy on on bass, he's playing bass now, And I
(27:03):
didn't know that he had learned how to play bass
until we had had a substitute bass player on a
gig and the guy got upset and left. He said
I quit, and he left this bass sitting there, and
Jeremy's like, well, I know how to play the bass,
and he just picked up the guy's bass, and they're like, Okay,
we don't need that guy anymore. Jeremy's the bass player.
(27:23):
So it was Jeremy myself and then guitarist Derek Eberheart,
and then a drummer. First it was Willie Dennis, then
Dave Ray and that was our kind of best lineup,
and we decided, this is probably the early nineties, mid nineties,
(27:43):
we're going to start writing songs recording, and we bought
an old ambulance. It was an ambulance for sale and
we bought it and the light still worked on it.
We put our logo on the side deja vu, and
had all these compartments where you could put your stands
and stuff like this is the best. This is going
to be our cool touring touring truck. And we would
(28:06):
we would go up to to Eerie Cleveland, Pittsburgh at
the time, there were a lot more that seems, at
least in the city, more places to play. So we
were playing at everywhere. Knicks Fat City, we were playing
at the Bee Hive, Rowlands in the Strip used to
have music upstairs, club log uh, you know, Blue Loose wherever.
(28:30):
And at that time you would kind of do shows
with other other bands. So there were a lot of
great bands and that Whiskey Dix and places in the Strip.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So who are some of the bands that it was
like that was the.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Era of like the big the really popular bands of course,
the Clarks and Gathering Field, the buzz Poets, the vibro Kings.
There was a band called Sauce at the time. Uh.
And I remember Mercury. We would come, we would come,
like Knicks Fat City would do Okay, you got an
(29:05):
opening slot on Wednesday night and we'll see how you do,
and then you could be the headliner on Wednesday night
and then it's okay, you guys are pretty doing pretty good,
We're going to do the opening on Thursday, and then
if you move up to the headliner on Thursday and
like all the moste yeah, because that the weekend was
(29:25):
for the really the really popular bands. And we never
kind of got I think we've got opening slots for
for the buzz Bots a few times. I don't know
that we ever got to do a show with any
of the with the biber Kings or or or the Clarks,
But I love all those bands too. It was too
tall Jones show, nuf. You know, so many great bands,
(29:51):
uh and uh. I was just such a super huge
fan of all these bands, like you know, you would
get into the local scene and have their records and
and and it was really exciting.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
And what was your set list?
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Like our set list at that time, we had kind
of evolved into more of a rock heavy rock band,
so akin to the to the alternative rock of the
of the the nineties, you know, probably more like Soundgarden
or that that kind of that kind of band with Weezer,
which came a little bit around that time. So like
(30:25):
power Pop, I would say, as how we described it,
we had good catchy songs, We had a pretty good following,
and we got into the Graffiti Rock Challenge was a
big deal back in that and that era. And the
first year that we ran, and I think it was
ninety nine, ninety eight or ninety nine, we we we won,
(30:46):
we won our we didn't win our first round. It
was like that there was each week there was a
there were four groups, and you would you would if
you won your week, then you would compete in like
a semi final round, you know. In two thousand, I
think that was the last year that they had it
because they closed Graffiti not long after that. And we
made it to the finals and then and the group
(31:09):
that won was a punk group called the Ultomatics, and
they were great. But uh, it was just such a
fun time because there were so many bands and and
and it seemed like there was really a lot of
support for the original music in the city.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
And when you were playing, was it some covers and
some originals are all?
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, yeah, we we mixed it up for for for
if we were doing an orial original show, I mean,
we probably had forty minutes.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Is it wanted only originals?
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, the askap Fees, Yeah, But but we'd always throw
in throw in uh covers, you know. And I remember
having band meetings and it'd be like, yeah, well, the
the Beatles and the Rolling they played covers to man,
and you know, you just know you got to fill
it out the set, and so you knew we always
had popular stuff, but we would try to find like
(32:07):
something that a cover that we could try to make
our own. And one of our the big covers that
we did at the time was we did a version
that you mentioned Prince of Let's Go Crazy that was
kind of really up tempo, but it always kind of
hit really well for us. But even though that was
a huge hit, it wasn't more of an obscure kind
of hit.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Let me explore the relationship with your brother Jeremy. What
is what is it like for the other band members
to deal with brothers? My brother Jeremy is just such
a sweet, like uncon non confrontational kind of person.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
You know. I think that that that that's never been
an issue. You know, Jeremy and I have have our
own well we'll argue with each other sometimes, but not
in front of the band. But when you're in a
band together, it's like you're all kind of brothers really,
you know. So sometimes I'm the favorite brother, sometimes brother.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
All right, So now we're up to like nineteen ninety nine,
two thousand, Yeah, all right, take me where are you
after that? Oh well, that was kind of the year
that things started. It was after the Graffiti Rock Challenge.
We were doing big shows like the Icy Light Amphitheater
(33:31):
at Station Square.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
We were doing opening slots for We opened for steppen Wolf,
we open for Cheap Trick, We opened for the Fabulous Thunderbirds,
like those kind of touring bands that would come in.
I remember when we when it was Steppenwolf, we set
up our stuff in front of the Steppenwolf. So there's
pictures of like the wolf on the drum set behind us,
and I remember that behind the stage there were trailers
(33:55):
where you would go to get your paycheck and they
had them all laid out, like the Steppenwolf check was there,
and then there was our much much.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Quite a few less zeros.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Yeah yeah, yeah, but but it was it was, it was.
It was great to do those things. So we're we're
doing those kind of shows, and then it was just
one of those things where in retrospect, and I'm sure
this is the story for many bands, like why did
we break up? I don't know, you know, it's like
we got somebody got mad about something and this was
(34:30):
going this way, and this was going this way and
I quit, Well if you quit, then I quit. And
then thinking Okay, we're just gonna cool off and get
back together. And we didn't get back together, and the
drummer and the bass player joined another band. I'm trying
to think of the name of that band, but they
(34:51):
they just kind of went on with another band. And
then Jeremy and I did acoustics shows for a while
as the Kendall Brothers and we would go around and
and we did that and so it was probably a
hiatus until about two thousand and seven where we we uh,
(35:11):
you know, Jeremy. Jeremy plays bass, I played guitar or guitar,
keyboards and saxophone. And there was another band of guys
here in Pittsburgh that had broken up and it was
they had a drummer and a guitar player. So I
was like, oh, okay, this is like you guys want
to get together and do some shows. And so we
reformed and that band. We didn't really pursue the original music.
(35:36):
That was more like just playing out and you know,
the playing music as an occupation, right, But aside from that,
I started recording my own music. And in the in
the modern era, with technology, you can record everything and
you can shop it around and I've had some placements
(35:57):
in some films and television of original music. Tell me
about that, well, I'd say probably in twenty fifteen, I
had written a song called Take and it was like
a kind of an industrial techno kind of song. And
there was at that time there was a a website
(36:19):
where you could submit your submit your music, and you know,
industry professionals would listen to it and then they would,
you know, say yeah, yeah, kind of like Taxi and
this guy in in UH named Michael Davenport that in
LA it was like, this song is perfect for a
movie that that that I'm producing called Far Too Far,
(36:43):
and we want to we want to do the rights
for it and license it. And I was I was
like super excited. I mean, how could this be possible?
You know that one of my songs is going to
go into into a movie. And so I started to
writing some writing, writing more, writing more, recording more, submitting more,
(37:04):
and I realized that sometimes in this licensing game, it's
not about how good the song is or it's just
this song fits for this project and uh. And so
from that I got another Uh. I had an instrumental
piece that had cello's and and it it made it
into a movie called Chasing the Cardboard Butterfly, which was
(37:28):
a documentary narrated by James Hetfield. But the funny thing
about when you do this is you you never know
where they're going to put this in the movie or
how much of it is going to be in there.
And in my mind, I was like, this is kind
of this is an instrumental kind of background piece, and
maybe if James Hetfield of Metallica is narrating this, it'll
be behind him talking in the movie, and then technically
(37:52):
I'll be doing a duet with Metallica, but that wasn't
the case. But yeah, you know, and the movie comes out,
all right.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
We're going to edit that, so we're going to make
that happen, right.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
And I'm scanning through the movie and I'm scanning through
it and I'm like, and I hear the music, and
it was the part of the documentary with this woman
is like crying and talking about how she, you know,
caught her husband cheating on her. And I was like,
I didn't picture that for this music at all, but
there it is. And then I had a Christmas I
(38:28):
do a huge Christmas show every year to benefit the
Food Bank We've done thirteen years, my wife and I
and every year it's we bring together a group of performers.
We have a houseman and all different genres of music.
We have R and B. We have a lot of
really top Pittsburgh performers that are annually in it. But
(38:50):
it's all Christmas music and all the proceeds go to
the Food Bank and we're usually able to provide like
thirty to forty thousand meals every year with the in
conjunction with the Food Bank. So I put out an
album of Christmas songs, and so I did covers of okay, yeah,
(39:11):
covers of Christmas songs. But then I was like, I
got to write a couple original Christmas songs. So I
did one called Christmas nineteen eighty five, which is it's
kind of I made it sound eighties and it's about like,
you know, being a kid in the eighties. And I
did another one that was just instrumental piano. And I
did one called Christmas Lights the World with Love, and
(39:32):
there was I don't know. My wife loves these Hallmark
Christmas movies, the Hollow other movies, so one of them
got picked for for Yeah. It was a movie called
Letters at Christmas with Dean Kine who was Superman, and
I'm waiting for the the movie. I saw that it
was going to be released and we waited up release
(39:54):
it midnight. Okay, we're gonna watch this Christmas movie. And
I'm watching it and watching them, like, where's the song
on it be? And how much of it's going to
be in there? You know? And it's just the scene
comes up and they light the Christmas tree and you
just hear maybe like thirty seconds of the song, but
it was there. Yeah, I mean it's it was instrumental,
but it was in there, you know. Yeah. So so
(40:20):
that that's kind of my My outlet for original music
is doing licensing.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
And do you still do a lot of that?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
I do? I do. I had a song that sometimes
you get, you get almost there and then it's it
doesn't make the final cut, which has happened a couple
of times. I had a song called young Love off
of an album I did a couple of years ago
called Cream with Your Cacophony, and it was very kind
of eighties production. And there was a new movie on
(40:51):
Netflix called Fear Street prom Queen that takes place in
the eighties and my guy, Michael Davenport said, he called
me on the phone. He's like, Chase and your song
young Love is going to be It's the end credits
song for this new promp Fear Street prom Queen movie.
And I was like, I'm like, he's like, it's in
the song. It could be replaced, but it's in the movie.
(41:12):
But it could be replaced, but for right now, it's
it's there. And this was like in July of last year,
and and and so I'm waiting for the release of
this movie. I'm like, oh, there's this is the fourth
Fear Street movie. When it comes out, the other one's
really popular. This it's gonna be This is gonna be huge.
And I waited until, like it's going to be released
(41:34):
on Make twenty fifth, and I'm waiting in midnight, and
I'm like, oh, it's going to drop. And then it's like, oh,
it's midnight on the West Coast. And then and the
movie came up and I'm like, oh, it's on. And
I skimmed all through the movie to get to the
end credits and I listen and it was a different song.
(41:55):
So sometimes you win and sometimes it doesn't happen, but
you know that's that's that's part of it. But I'm
not writing. There are folks that write specifically for their
like call sheets that come out from the industry, like
we're looking for songs that sound like this, this, this, this, this,
this is this and record your three and some studios
are just like, we're just going to make music that
(42:18):
is specifically targeted for these kind.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Of Well, you play multiple instruments and you have you're
interested in it in a variety of different styles and genres.
That maybe is that that should be an advantage to Oh.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Yeah, yeah it is. But I never wanted to write
music to order like that, Like I didn't want to
write something specific Well, they want a country song about
driving a car in the woods, Like I didn't want
to write specifically for that, And that's not really how
I write. I it's hard for me to It feels
disingenuous to me to try to force a song like that.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
How often do you produce music?
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Well, right now, I've been remark so I haven't had
much time, but I think I'm always coming up with ideas.
Like many songwriters, you know, you'll something will pop into
your head. And now we have technology you can pick
out your phone and sing the chorus in there, and
maybe that'll end up being you, Like you'll write a
great half of a song earlier and and and put
(43:20):
this new chorus to it, and you know it's it's
it's an it's it's something you're always what is.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
What is your process? What is your process? Do you
have a process?
Speaker 1 (43:29):
I think that for me, the process is I have
to just sit down at a piano or or guitar.
I mean, it's very rare that a song will just
like pop into your head, like Paul McCartney says, I
dreamt yesterday and woke up and had to figure out
how to play it. Sometimes that does happen, But for me,
it's more like I have to be actively playing and
(43:52):
then I'll play something that I'd like and I'll do
it again.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
It's a discovery, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Or you might come up with one like the hook line.
And then So the most recent song I wrote was
and recorded at home, was one called people Talking, And
all I had of the song was that's just people talking,
and so it's okay that. So sometimes you start with
that and then write the rest of the song around
(44:19):
that idea. Yeah, to that point, Yeah, you know, so
it comes different ways. I almost always have the music
before the lyrics, but sometimes you just you strum the
guitar and you you just sing random words, and what
you're doing is kind of I think it's figuring out
the vowel sounds, you know, because if you think about
(44:44):
why we have vowels A E, I owe you, those
are the letters that you actually sing, right. All other
word consonants are you know, like their their sounds that
you make with your mouth. So in singing, you know,
certain vowels are easier to sing on certain notes. So
you might be singing random words, but I've found that
really what you're doing is kind of figuring out the
(45:06):
vowel sounds and singing this song and then you can
shape the song from there.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
I guess that's a weird, weird way to say it,
but it happens. So when when do you get inspired?
How what's your day like when you're writing music? And
how often do you do you and you still play live,
so how often do you do that?
Speaker 1 (45:26):
I do it as often as I can. Usually it's
like late at late at night, I'll work on stuff
I think I like to have. You know, the advantage
of having a home studio with these modern workstations and
computer programs. I use one called logic is. It's almost
(45:48):
like a painter that has an oil painting. The oil
paint doesn't dry right away, so you might come up
with some ideas and it sits there on the easel,
and then you keep coming back to it and scraping
off the paint and doing this. So that's kind of
the process now, is I'll come up with an idea
and I'll start it and put a drum beat and
maybe some chords and maybe the hook, and then over
(46:10):
the course of maybe two weeks of messing around with it,
I'll start to shape it into a song. I always
kind of put more into it than what needs to
be there and then take it away. I think the
tools that we use now allow you to write songs
that way on them and record them at the same time.
Whereas before it was like I'm writing a song on
(46:32):
this guitar for me to play live, Now I'm kind
of writing for the whole production. During the pandemic, I
really had a lot of time, so that's all. Yeah,
So I got really more involved in learning how to
use that technology, and it was a very prolific time
because I had the time to spend doing it. And
(46:54):
also during that time, I was trying to find ways
to make money as a musician, and I found a
site called air gigs, where it's basically, say your home
recording and you need a drum track, or you need
a guitar track, or you need a whatever, a singer
to sing your song. You can hire a studio musician online.
(47:14):
You send them there your song file, and then that
person records the part and then sends you the part back.
So I was doing saxophone parts, saxophone solos for people,
and it was the coolest thing because I was meeting
people from all over the world, you know, and in
varying degrees of you know, quality, like it could be
(47:37):
very sorry drop my water, amateur folks like Hey, I
just wrote this song and I envisioned a sax solo.
Can you play this on there? And it might be
a professional thing. I did one for another TV show
on Netflix called I Can't Believe I'm Married something like that.
(47:59):
It was an aw but the guy sent me, the
client sent me, can I need these sacks? This is
a score. I need you to record the tenor part
the very part the you know all the sax parts,
here's the sheet music, but I need to buy Friday.
There's a deadline and I didn't know what it was for.
And I recorded it and then about three months later
(48:19):
he says, okay, it's an episode six of this show,
and I did. I got no credit. It was a
work for hire, but just to turn it on and
it's like, that's me playing the saxophone and that was
the composed And that's kind of where music is going now.
Where this guy got the gig as a composer for
the show, and instead of booking a studio, he's going online.
(48:41):
He's finding studio musicians that he can get to play
the parts, and then he puts it together and there
it is. So during the course of this I know
I did. There were stuff with people from Israel. A
woman sent me a whole album worth of religious songs
that she wanted. The the vocal line replaced with saxophone,
(49:02):
like soprano saxophone, which was a learning curve for me
because the melodic content was different than what I was
used to, so I had to try to learn to
copy that. I have a guy that has his name's
Neil Anderson has a record company in London called Original Gravity,
and he does all vinyl records. They're all throwback and
(49:24):
it's all like SKA and R and B, and he
there's an underground like dance market for like this old
old soul. He sells a lot of sells all of
these records that he'll call me and he's like, I've
got this drum bass part and I need saxophone on
this and I'll record it. And the first one I
(49:44):
did for him a couple about a month or two later,
a vinyl record came in the mail from England and
it was it said the title was whatever the song was,
and then the artist was Prince Alfonso in the Regents.
And I'm like, he's just has a studio. He's making
up the names of the dands. So and I did
(50:05):
maybe thirty of these, and I would keep getting Prince.
I'm like, someday I'm going to go to London and
I'm just going to be like, hey, everyone, you know,
but I was in. I was in prove prove that
I'm not right. But the Neil does put on on
the records made in the UK and Pittsburgh, PA. And
(50:26):
he uses like he has a trumpet player from Italy
and some some different musicians that he uses. He always credits.
It's great that the graphic design of him are awesome.
He's a really cool guy. So funny story about him.
I was in England last last spring and I went
with a friend. We were visiting a film set and
(50:48):
I contacted Neil at and I maybe did thirty records
for Prince well as Prince Alfonso, and I wanted to
meet this guy that I met through this online recording
service in person. He's like, yeah, well you're going to
be in the western England and it's a short drive over.
Maybe we could meet up. So I got to meet
this guy in person and we we we we We
(51:10):
had a few pints and talked about music and and
he's obsessed with Pittsburgh now and he's like, you've got
to explain Yin's to me, right. So I had this
shirt okay that I took with me that just that.
It was a black shirt that says on the front
Yin's in yellow letters. It was and I said, you
know what, Neil, I have a gift for you. And
(51:31):
I gave him this yen shirt. He loves it. So
now on his Instagram, he travels all over the world.
It's in every picture he has on his end shirt.
So he's in Neil and in Tokyo, Japan, is you know,
in Budapest, Hungary. Is it's like the traveling the traveling
(51:51):
nome So but but but I would have never forged
that relationship if it wasn't for technology and and doing
doing this. So, uh, you know, it's it's great and
I and I and conversely, I've used you know, musicians,
string players, uh to to record some things that I've
had and it's it's really an exciting time for for music.
(52:14):
And what's funny is if you go on to the
to that website, you can see, uh you know now
that people are more recording music at home studios. Uh.
You see session drummers like I played on a you
know a lot of more sets record I played on
the you know, these are like top l a studio
(52:36):
people that are now going, yeah, you're now doing that.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Wow. So do you prefer that kind of creativity or
playing live?
Speaker 1 (52:46):
I prefer I'm a live musician at heart. There's nothing
there's it's very difficult to train yourself to record with
the same energy that you have when you're playing live,
because playing live is a conversation. It's the same as
(53:06):
like being a movie actor or a stage actor. You'll
often hear stage actors say, we're real acting is on
the stage. I don't know if I have a judgment
on that, but uh, playing live, you're It's a two
way conversation. You feed off of the energy from the
crowd and it you know that. That's That's a completely
different experience to me anyway. Recording is more like you
(53:31):
go into a bubble, and for me, it's like you
go into your own little world where you you control
the vertical, you control the horizontal. So it's uh, I'd
like being in both both the extroverted world of live
performance and the introverted world of Create Create Creation.
Speaker 2 (53:50):
When it comes to instruments, do you prefer sacks, guitar, keys? What?
It depends?
Speaker 1 (53:57):
All that's I'd say that I'm best on saxophone. I'm not,
by far not the greatest saxophone in the is in
the world, but of the instruments I play, I feel
most comfortable with the saxophone. Second would be piano, third
would be guitar. As far as a guitarist. I'm not
a lead guitarist. I'm a rhythm guitarist. I'm self taught,
(54:19):
and I've learned enough that I can function and play
and accompany myself, so I feel competent enough to record
that I can play bass. I'm not a bassis I
wouldn't do a gig on bass, but I can play
a bass line.
Speaker 2 (54:31):
You know, it's funny you you don't hear any saxophones
in today's music. Not a lot. No, And in the
seventies and eighties there was saxophone on all the records. Yeah,
I mean amazing performances.
Speaker 1 (54:46):
Yeah, yeah, And that's the era that I grew up
in and learning those solos that were on records.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
Who were some of your favorites?
Speaker 1 (54:53):
Oh well, Junior Walker, I remember learning the the saxophone
solo in George Harrison's I Got my mind set on you.
I was like, this is the great I love that
and even like when I improvised, like some of those
(55:14):
licks from those sade whatever.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Of course, the iconic George Michael Careless whisper all uh
Baker Street. There's so many famous sax lines. But uh uh,
those those saxos that I grew up with will come
through in what you're playing, and I think that early
on especially sixties records, if you think about the sound
(55:38):
of that tenor saxophone of those big it was a
huge sound. And I think that as guitars got more
fuzz and you could get that big sound out of
a lead guitar, it kind of the guitar started to replace.
But I don't really hear instrumental solos in modern recordings
too much. Chapel Roone came out with this mega hit
called Pink Pony Club that has a guitar sol and
(56:00):
all the bands are like, did you hear this song?
It's got a guitar solo in it, Like, we haven't
heard that for years?
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Yeah, because a lot of the nineties, a lot of
the grunge artists really didn't like their solos were more
uh you know, feedback, yeah, than than an actual solo.
And uh so when you hear it now, you're like, well,
that's that really stands out? Yeah, yeah, Uh what do
you what are you currently working on? And what what
(56:29):
do you what do you have any aspirations or goals
that you want down the road?
Speaker 1 (56:36):
Sure? About two years ago and it's such a shame
that the the hard rock has closed. You know. We
seems like we were just talking on a way in
about Lynden Grove closing, that live music venues in the
city have kind of been closing, and uh, I had
a I sponsored a singer songwriter forum for about a
(56:58):
year and a half in conjunct was coming out of
the pandemic at the hard Rock and we would invite,
you know, five different songwriters to come in all original stuff,
and we partnered with Women Who Rock did a few
showcases there and I really was got back into, you know,
being on stage doing the acoustic singer songwriter and it
(57:20):
kind of fell off the hard Rock closed. Obviously I'd
like to start that again, continue to record, but right now,
you know, I've recorded two albums, most original music rock music.
One was autobiographical called When at Last We Saw the Sunrise,
(57:44):
and it's kind of a whole story. It's kind of
about a musician from Pittsburgh who starts a band who
have an ambulance that drive around, you know, and only
in this story, they make it really big. And then
once they make it they make it big, they decide
that you know, it's not all the cracked up to be.
So there's a comic book that that goes with it.
(58:04):
And I recorded all that stuff and I haven't gotten
to play it live. And subsequently I made an album
called uh uh Cream with Your Cacophony. So what I'm
working on is putting putting together a set to do
these songs live, because really they've only existed in in
the in I recorded them in my in my home studio,
(58:27):
and so I want to put that together and do
some live shows. And and uh, I know, Club Cafe
just recently reopened and they're they're they're starting some some
new shows. There's some great places Bottle Rocket Spirit in Lawrenceville,
uh and I'm probably gonna leave some places out, but Pittsburgh,
(58:48):
Pittsburgh Winery, you know, so uh, there are those venues
are there. But I want to put together because mostly
what I do now, I play four or five nights
a week, and mostly it's it could be playing jazz
as one night, playing piano for a dinner the next night,
playing for with a band for a party the next night.
I want to concentrate on, you know, just having that aspect,
(59:09):
doing some of my own stuff live, so you know,
I've never wanted to just do one thing, so having
a variety of things is great. And that's my next
next project.
Speaker 2 (59:19):
Well, there's one question that Annie and I always end on,
and that is what would you like your legacy to be?
Speaker 1 (59:27):
My legacy, you know, just that the people would remember
that I was part of the music scene here in
the city and have good things to say about me.
You know, I love when people tell the stories, you know,
like have you hey, you remember remember that time when
we were over at Chance or whatever and Jimmy so
(59:50):
and so was playing, and then we got up on
stage and it was you know, just I've always just
wanted to live the life of a musician, and I've
been very blessed that I've been able to to live
that life. And so to be remembered in any way
as part of this scene or that you know, man,
that was such a great, great night and Jason Kendall
(01:00:11):
was there, that would be my one part of my legacy.
The other part would be that some young person would say,
I grew up and I listened to you and I
wanted to learn to play the saxophone, or I wanted
to learn to play like you. You know that would
be like mind blowing, you know, Like I know, Sonny
(01:00:34):
had many young people that were like wow, I heard
Sonny Pugar play and I wanted to learn to play
the drums like him. And he would mentor them and
he would teach them. That's the legacy, you know, having
young songwriters that we do the Songwriters Circle say, you know,
I went on to Nashville and I'm but I remember
when I was, you know, a young songwriter in Pittsburgh.
(01:00:57):
There was this sky Jason Kendall that brought gave me
a chance and brought we came in and I played
my song like to be a part of that ongoing story.
Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
It's definitely a legacy.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
And then to continue to get you know, my music
into some into film, into soundtrack of a huge movie.
Buff you know that it's kind of a hobby. I
don't know that it's the I could ever make a
real living doing it, you know, but just the pride
of hey, listen to this, you know turn this TV show.
(01:01:32):
That's great. So yeah, just the legacy of getting the life,
getting to live the life as a musician and being
part of it and having people remember you and what
you meant to them their audiences. I played a gig
recently and a guy came up and he said he
owned the club. He's like, this is my club, Jason.
(01:01:52):
You might not remember nineteen ninety four. You played at
my brother's graduation party, man, and I was like fourteen.
I was like, whoa. This is the coolest thing, just
to be remembered, you know,
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