Aug. 23, 2024
David Barrett interview
David Barrett joins me on episode 118. David is based in San Jose, California, where he took lessons from Gary Smith from age 16, in addition to learning from great harmonica recordings. He started teaching harmonica himself from age 18 and has become one of the foremost harmonica educators around, with his BluesHarmonica.com website an invaluable resource. He ran the School of Blues for twenty years and has written over seventy instructional books, DVDs and CDs. David has four albums ...
David Barrett joins me on episode 118.
David is based in San Jose, California, where he took lessons from Gary Smith from age 16, in addition to learning from great harmonica recordings. He started teaching harmonica himself from age 18 and has become one of the foremost harmonica educators around, with his BluesHarmonica.com website an invaluable resource. He ran the School of Blues for twenty years and has written over seventy instructional books, DVDs and CDs.
David has four albums to his name, including two albums where he has collaborated with other harmonica players. These albums showcase his dedication to playing blues harmonica, where he has crafted harmonica parts from his lifelong study and love of the art form.
Links:
Website:
https://www.bluesharmonica.com/
School of Blues:
https://www.schooloftheblues.com/
Hohner profile page:
https://www.hohner.de/en/david-barrett
David's tuition books:
https://www.melbay.com/AdvancedSearch/Default.aspx?SearchTerm=david+barrett
Videos:
David's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@bluesharmonicateacher
Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com
Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB
Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ
Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
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Blue Moon Harmonicas: https://bluemoonharmonicas.com
01:27 - David is from San Jose, California, and is part of the great West coast harmonica scene
01:51 - Started playing harmonica age 14 and harmonica recordings remain his greatest influences
02:08 - Saw Gary Smith perform at a blues festival at age 16 and ‘begged’ him for lessons
03:14 - Gary Smith didn’t teach much harmonica before teaching David
03:51 - David recorded the lessons with Gary and believes it’s important to record any lessons you have
04:21 - Played some trumpet and saxophone in the school band before taking up harmonica
04:47 - Initially learnt from Phil Duncan’s harmonica tuition book published by Mel Bay
04:57 - Crossroads movie soundtrack was a big inspiration
06:11 - David’s teaching is very rigorous compared to his main way of learning by playing along with records
07:23 - As student progresses tries to write less down and teach more by ear
08:45 - In his early days probably gave too much information as a teacher as wanted to provide good value
09:13 - Important for students to give themselves time to absorb the material
09:49 - Teaches study songs and how he crafts instrumentals and solos
10:42 - Transcriptions has always been an important part of his own learning and teaching
11:45 - After having written so many tutorial books BluesHarmonica.com website changed his approach of teaching
11:59 - Learning songs is often the most fruitful way for a student to learn, and so David focused writing songs to teach
12:55 - Most difficult thing about learning harmonica is the learning curve when moving from simple songs to blues
14:32 - Took a long time to record first album, although had recorded a lot of tuition material
14:46 - Songwriting skills were what David could offer in the album
14:52 - Doesn’t sing
15:32 - First album was Serious Fun from 2003
16:18 - Starts writing a blues song with the groove, also a hook or a head and then soloing
17:25 - Started teaching age 18, and his teaching career grew organically from there
18:20 - Had decided he wanted to be a performer and did everything he could in that direction
19:14 - Turned his written teachings into his first harmonica book: Building Harmonica Technique, published by Mel Bay
21:08 - This was probably the first focused harmonica tutorial book focused on blues
21:14 - Steve Baker’s Harp Handbook was probably the first serious harmonica tutorial book, but wasn’t focused just on blues
21:37 - Focused on blues tuition from the beginning as that is David’s true love
22:32 - Focuses on traditional blues harmonica, and not modern approaches to playing blues
22:49 - Ran the School of Blues for twenty years which gave local musicians a chance to play with a band and form their own
24:26 - Once a month would do a harp night for the School of Blues students where they would play in front of other people in a low pressure situation
26:42 - Released an album with the School of Blues All Star Band, which used to educate students
28:56 - The History of the Blues Harmonica concert, with Joe Filisko, Kinya Pollard and Dennis Gruenling, released as an album in 2009
29:33 - Deliberately kept the songs on this album true to the source as part of the educational aspect
31:57 - Fourth album: It Takes Three, with Gary Smith and Aki Kumar
32:33 - Gary Smith has been doing multi-harmonica player albums for years
33:13 - Added Aki Kumar, who was a students of David
33:25 - Wrote horn style parts for the harmonica for the album
34:13 - Grammy nominated from appearance on a John Lee Hooker Junior album
35:06 - John Lee Hooker Jnr plays more complex blues arrangements, which David was qualified to play over due to his knowledge
36:59 - Has taught at workshops for a long time, running the first one in 1994, which was a big success
38:13 - Workshops aren’t so popular now due to YouTube and other online resources, but still does Trossingen Harmonica Masterclass
39:03 - David has done video interviews of around 50 harmonica players, available on Blues Harmonica dot com, which David sees as a great legacy of harmonica knowledge
41:10 - First interview was with Gary Primach, who died a month later
42:36 - Ten minute question
44:27 - Plays Hohner Marine Bands customised by Joe Filisko
45:08 - Why Joe’s custom harmonicas are so good include the ability to play them softly and greater dynamic range
46:47 - Doesn’t play different tunings, although has used them in the past
47:43 - Plays in 1st, 2nd and 3rd and is working hard at improving his 1st position
49:02 - Embouchre: big advocate of tongue blocking for Chicago blues style, but uses some puckering when called upon
51:01 - One advantage of puckering is the speed of articulation
51:29 - Plays blues chromatic, although doesn’t spend lots of time on it
52:46 - Amps of choice include a Fender Bassman, Masco ME18 amps for medium sized gigs
53:51 - Mics: likes the older CR black label elements. Also recommends the Husky Red Devil mic to his students
54:41 - Effects: uses some delay, with the Dan Electro Echo pedal
55:06 - Future plans: continuing doing lots of transcribing and lots of teaching and performance groups
56:14 - Can’t share transcriptions due to copyright
58:14 - Has a black belt in Taekwondo
WEBVTT
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David Barrett joins me on episode 118.
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an invaluable resource.
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He ran the School of Blues for 20 years and has written over 70 instructional books, DVDs and CDs.
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David has four albums to his name, including two albums where he has collaborated with other harmonica players.
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These albums showcase his dedication to playing blues harmonica, where he has crafted harmonica parts from his lifelong study and love of the art form.
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This podcast is sponsored by Seidel Harmonicas.
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Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Seidel Harmonicas.
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Thank you.
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Hello David Barrett and welcome to the podcast.
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Hi Neil, thanks for having me on.
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You're based in San Jose in California, yep?
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Yeah, the greater Bay Area.
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Yeah, so you're in that great west coast US harmonica scene there.
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So have you always been based around there?
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Yeah, pretty much born and raised in this area.
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You saw some of the great harmonica players around there.
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I mean, I know that you had lessons with Gary Smith and you know, so what were your influences around that great area for harmonica?
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I started when I was 14 years old.
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My greatest influence influences and still are my greatest influences are recordings.
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Local public radio stations would play blues from midnight to four o'clock in the morning and so as a teenager that was my primary influence was recordings and then I went to a blues festival when I was 16 and Gary Smith performed and that was my very first time actually seeing live blues harmonica.
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That was pretty fantastic so I saw the musicians after their set were going out the side gate to get their barbecue after their set.
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My plan was to plant myself there and wait for Gary to go out.
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When he came out, I said, You know, I told him who I was, and now I've been playing harmonica, and I'd love to take lessons.
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And he actually first said no, and then I begged and pleaded him and asked him again.
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He says, okay, I'll give you lessons.
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So I took, I think, nine, maybe seven to nine lessons with him, and as a stupid kid, I thought I learned as much as I could from him, though there was a lot more I could have learned from him.
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After that, he did take me out to some of the local blues clubs and invited me to play some of the local blues blowouts, so...
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He was and still is my greatest influence on the harmonica besides recordings.
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So interesting that Gary Smith didn't want to teach you.
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So he didn't give lessons generally to other harmonica players then?
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You know, he said he would get one or two students, and what they would do is they would start, and they wouldn't practice, and then they would just, you know, take a lesson or two and stop.
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My begging him to give lessons, please, Mr.
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Smith, I'll practice.
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Those lessons were great, really.
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Up to that point, I'd only been puckering, and all these sounds that I was trying to mimic for a couple years on recordings, I did my best to mimic them, but I didn't know that there was actually a different embouchure that was being used.
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So he really opened up a whole world for me.
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I audio recorded, I brought my boombox into each lesson, and that was really important.
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I know that I would have only gained maybe 10% of what he had to teach if I didn't record it, and then just spend the month going over and over and over what he taught, not only playing what he showed me, but also trying to copy what examples he was playing for me.
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Nothing was written down, so it was all by ear.
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And actually, when I started teaching when I was 18, I always provided recordings for the students, still to this day.
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then you did play some trumpet and saxophone was that before you took up the harmonica at 14?
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Yeah so I started in third grade and around seventh or eighth grade played a little bit of trumpet so saxophone up to that point and I wouldn't say that I was good it was just something that I did it was an elective in in school but it wasn't until the harmonica and actually very specifically when I heard blues for the first time that really ignited me so I just went to the local music store bought a harmonica a lesson book of Phil Duncan lesson book published by mel bay and that taught the basics of folk tunes and such and then a couple months later i saw the movie crossroads and wow hearing john duke logan playing a lot of the harmonica work frank frost some cemetery stuff on there as well so And I took my little tape recorder and put it up to the speaker of the TV and recorded all the harmonica parts, and that's when I figured out they're doing stuff that I can't do, and I think this harmonica might come in different keys.
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So I went back to the local music store, bought some more keys, and that started my education of blues harmonica.
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And I mentioned before the local nonprofit radio stations, colleges basically would play blues from midnight to 4 a.m.
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on Friday night and Saturday night and there was a Sunday afternoon show.
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So I'd stay up till midnight, put a tape in there, record it, flip it over 45 minutes later.
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I'd set my alarm for another 45 minutes.
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Sometimes I would wake up, sometimes I wouldn't, and I'd put a fresh tape.
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And I spent my weekends as a teenager going through those tapes and finding anything that had harmonica on it and tried to learn it.
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So I think that's quite common for people of our age.
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I think we're similar age that, you know, we would learn from records, get hold of whatever harmonica records we could and learn from that.
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Whereas now with your, you know, your great teacher resources that you've done, you're obviously not teaching that way.
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You know, you learn from sort of records and learning them by ear and some teaching, obviously, with Gary Smith.
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So what do you think compared to how you teach now where you've got very, you know, a rigorous sort of schedule for how people learn compared to, you know, how you learned when you were younger?
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Yeah, very different.
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Blues is an oral tradition.
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Listen, copy, try to use.
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So, you know, Developing the ear is still, of course, the most important thing.
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As an educator, I want to provide as many tools as I can to have the student be successful in what they're learning.
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And especially nowadays with online education, I can give them video recordings, audio recordings, PDF study songs, and eventually I'll move them as soon as they're capable to copy in the grates.
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So I am spoon-feeding the student the material that works for most people as a student advances I try to do lesson lesson written form it's kind of funny to watch them in the lessons because they kind of look at me like well you're going to write this down but I'll play a simple lick and then I'll just look at them like okay it's your turn to figure this out and I'm thinking in my head come on this is only three notes you can do it so little by little what happens is I force the student to do more and more by ear I think some Sometimes that exploration of a small idea over a long time is very beneficial.
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I don't think most people are patient enough or honestly want it as much as, say, I did or you did, for example.
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And they might not put that same amount of effort that allowed us to be successful because it just takes a lot of work.
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I've heard in your past interviews, and I want to say thank you for your podcast.
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It's very inspiring to listen to all these great players.
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It's inspiring to me.
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and my students, that things didn't come across our path very often, whether it's something we figured out or we heard a little nugget of someone kind of mention something.
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It wasn't like fully explained.
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It was just like, yeah, you got to put your tongue to the right.
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And I'm like, okay, well, what does that mean?
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And you would explore it.
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And there wasn't any hurry.
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You just kind of worked on it and tried to absorb it into your playing.
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For me as a teacher, Especially in the past, I've tended to give students too much.
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And it was simply because I wanted to give them value.
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I want to give them as much value as I can for their time.
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Obviously, they took time off for work and their family and paid money to attend the workshop and fly down.
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I learned over time that I got to be careful not to teach with a fire hose, that I need to give them smaller chunks to work on and allow that to absorb into their plane.
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So I'd say now it's important for players, now that we've moved from a model of scarcity to abundance and actually confusion it's important that you moderate your own digestion of material and and kind of put blinders on and say okay cool this new technique or this song or whatever you're working on give yourself some time to not only learn the song but take the licks out of the song and put a jam track on and try to put those licks and surround those licks with your improvising your own vocabulary so that these new ideas will show up in
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your improvising.
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coming out and you know different ideas you're not playing the same thing I think that really crafting the way you've really looked really deeply into a lot of these players has really benefited so you know what do you think about that kind of crafting solos as you have
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you know early on it was basically a way that I was teaching it just felt natural that if I'm teaching a technique then I'll show the students some licks and then I'll show them how to take those licks and put them into phrases I've always done transcriptions so learning from the greats that's an an essential part, especially, again, of the folk music style.
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You've got to learn from the greats.
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But in my books, that format worked out really well.
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And I might just do a one-chorus example of these ideas in context.
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For a period of time, I moved away from it and was doing more things purely from transcriptions for a number of years.
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Actually, Joe Felisco and I had a good conversation about this.
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At that time, he'd been teaching pretty much solely with transcriptions, and I'd been teaching solely from examples that I've written, and we had some good conversations about this, and I kind of started moving towards what he was doing.
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What I liked about teaching from transcriptions is it wasn't my opinion.
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It was, this is what they're doing, and I'm going to teach you what they're doing, and it's up to you on how you want to utilize their approach, their licks, their techniques, etc.
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And actually, Joe started moving into writing study songs, which he still does today.
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I did that probably for a good five, maybe even ten years, and then when I decided to do blues harmonica dot com it gave me the opportunity you know up to that point I'd written many many books for Mel B publications and it gave me an opportunity to rewrite how I approach my teaching so my buddy Tony Wilder he took lessons from me for a while he said that he gets the most gratification from learning songs because it's empirical you know you work on the choruses the licks and the song and by the time you're done you got a song you can play at a jam session you got something you can play for somebody and I noticed that with students as well, so I decided when I started writing material for bluesharmonica.com, I'm going to kind of do the opposite.
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I'm going to write a full song of which you can then pull the licks out and then use that in your improvising, for example.
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And my focus was to make each chorus, each 12-bar blues, equal about two weeks' worth of practice.
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So if a song has four choruses, that's about a couple months to learn the song.
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So it gave me a great vehicle to teach students, give them something that they can play at a jam session when they're done.
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But also, most importantly, the main reason why we write study songs is the most difficult thing about being a harmonica player is once you're able to do basic when the Saints go marching in Kumbaya on the harmonica, you learn some techniques, some bending, some tongue blocking, whatever it might be, is that when you feel like, okay, now I'm ready to start studying this little Walter song or Paul Butterfield, the learning curve goes way up.
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So actually the upper beginning, lower intermediate, that's where most harmonica players stop because what happens is that in a professional player, there could be four to seven techniques in one lick that they play, and that's very difficult to teach and even in a song that might have most of the song is pretty approachable by an upper beginning to lower intermediate player there's always going to be licks that they cannot play I can show them ways but there's always something kind of nagging on at them that like I but for me to play the song I want to play it like the original to give them great songs I hope with my you know skill set as a writer hopefully great songs when they listen to it that they're like wow wow, that's a cool blues harmonica song.
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That's what I want first, is I'll play them a song and say, what do you think?
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I want them to go, wow, that's really cool.
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Okay, well, I'm going to show you that next.
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So it inspires them to learn the song, but also I can moderate those banging your head against a brick wall moments of nothing, everything's going to challenge you, but nothing's going to stop you from being able to play this song.
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So you have your stepping stones to success instead of all these little points that could lead to failure, at least from a motivation standpoint Now, for me, when it comes to songwriting, I actually had written a lot of books and recorded a lot for those books.
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It took me a lot of years before I recorded my first CD.
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I felt like I didn't have anything to offer that the other great blues harmonica players out there were already doing.
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It kind of dawned on me one day that, you know, what I can offer is my songwriting skills because I don't sing.
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So I have spent a lot of time in studying and writing instrumentals for myself and for for my students.
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And understanding how phrasing works and how you can develop that phrasing over what is two and a half minutes to five minutes, how do you keep the listener's attention over a long period of time and taking what is in some ways a limited instrument and not making it sound limited over that, again, two to five minute time range?
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To me, improvising, songwriting, soloing themes, ways to keep that interest, that's very fascinating to me
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yeah and so this first album you mentioned is called Serious Fun released in 2003 with the John Garcia band so on here there are about four or so instrumentals right so all written by you crafted in that way yeah so you know you've been quite careful what you've done you're not just improvising them right
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Correct.
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Yeah, there's definitely improvising in there, but there would be a head, maybe a second head, hook.
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You got to be careful, in my opinion, to not write too much.
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I'd say the majority of players have songs that they do work out note for note, phrase for phrase, because the song kind of wants to be that way.
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So I allow the song to go where it wants to go.
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But a lot of times in the blues, what we do is we start with the groove, something that either is not in your current repertoire so that, you know, that's how you keep a set interesting and is with different grooves and then from there you try to write a hook something that permeates the entire song or a head which is if it's a 12 bar blues it's 12 bars maybe you play it twice and then you're off to soloing and then probably the guitar or piano and then you come back to the head I'm careful not to write too much for two reasons one I don't want to give too much direction to the other musicians because I want them to bring what they have to bring that's why I hired them that's why I'm playing with them I want them to bring their own voice so That's one thing, and then you have to allow room for what our music style is, which is it's an improvised music style.
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So you write the head, you have the groove, you know generally what impact it's going to have on the audience, but you allow the inspiration of the moment, the musicians you're playing with, the venue that you're playing with, to allow the solos to turn into what they want to turn into at that moment.
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So you mentioned earlier on that you started teaching at the age of 18.
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So did you make a decision early on to, you know, really push into the education side?
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And was that partly based on the fact that so you could be a full time musician, harmonica player and, you know, and have that supplementary income?
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You know, what was the thinking of that?
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You know, it was pretty organic.
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I was asked to teach.
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I was playing jam sessions and jamming with everybody that I could at that time.
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And what would happen is I'd go into local music stores and I'd go in to buy harmonicas and they would ask, hey, have you ever thought about teaching?
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Because we get people all the time asking for harmonica teachers.
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My first thought was like, I don't know how to teach.
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I'd have no idea how to approach that.
00:18:07.713 --> 00:18:09.296
So I didn't really take it seriously.
00:18:09.375 --> 00:18:13.419
But after two or three times of them mentioning it, I thought, why not?
00:18:13.819 --> 00:18:19.403
I wanted to do anything and everything having to do with music and specifically blues and harmonic.
00:18:19.785 --> 00:18:29.153
So I decided before I went into my senior year of high school, so I guess 17 or 16, that I did want to do music, but I wanted to be a performer.
00:18:29.472 --> 00:18:32.455
At that time, Stevie Ray Vaughan was very popular.
00:18:32.496 --> 00:18:34.778
I was thinking I wanted to be the Stevie Ray Vaughan of the harmonica.
00:18:35.679 --> 00:18:38.882
I took whatever classes were available at my high school.
00:18:38.903 --> 00:18:39.623
One was choir.
00:18:40.243 --> 00:18:41.945
One of them was AP music theory.
00:18:41.965 --> 00:18:51.195
I did not belong in an advanced placement music theory, but the instructor let me in, and I was the literal dumb blues harmonica player in the class.
00:18:52.057 --> 00:18:58.303
So this was kind of part of my plan of just doing anything that had to do with music.
00:18:58.923 --> 00:19:03.648
Then I started writing material just because, like, okay, well, What am I going to teach them?
00:19:03.689 --> 00:19:07.512
So I wanted to write something down so that they can look at it and we can work on it.
00:19:07.953 --> 00:19:18.865
I started in Gilroy at Porcello's Music and then I quickly went over to the Music Tree in Morgan Hill and then I looked around at other places and then San Jose was Showcase Music Institute.
00:19:19.365 --> 00:19:31.258
Bruno at Showcase Music Institute, he is a vocal instructor, a serious musician, had a great band and he had a vision of this being specifically a teaching institution.
00:19:31.999 --> 00:19:38.384
I decided I'm going to do, each month, I'm going to do a workshop on a specific technique on the harmonica.
00:19:38.684 --> 00:19:46.731
And I spent a lot of time writing and thinking and exploring in my own mouth what was going on to create these sounds and recordings.
00:19:47.232 --> 00:19:52.076
And my thought was, you know, after a year, maybe I'll have a book and I could use that for my teaching.
00:19:52.116 --> 00:19:54.598
Maybe I'd shop that around to different publishing companies.
00:19:55.098 --> 00:19:58.422
So after a year, I had what I called Building Harmonica Technique.
00:19:59.303 --> 00:20:01.065
I sent it off unsolicited.
00:20:01.105 --> 00:20:02.205
I didn't know that...
00:20:02.978 --> 00:20:06.580
That was not the norm to five of the largest publishing companies.
00:20:07.602 --> 00:20:11.305
And Mel Bay, I was fortunate that Mel Bay did pick up that book.
00:20:11.505 --> 00:20:15.308
And then it then led to Classic Chicago Blues Harmonica.
00:20:15.368 --> 00:20:24.376
Then Mel Bay, Bill Bay, who I've always worked with at Mel Bay, pretty much gave me a full open opportunity to write whatever I wanted to write.
00:20:25.156 --> 00:20:26.518
Here's a word from my sponsor.
00:20:26.939 --> 00:20:28.140
Looking for a new harmonica?
00:20:28.359 --> 00:20:31.282
Or maybe you just want to replace the replays on an existing harp?
00:20:31.742 --> 00:21:02.435
Theharmonicacompany.com Thank you very much.
00:21:02.895 --> 00:21:12.998
So that's right, so the book you released was the first real focused blues harmonica book.
00:21:13.569 --> 00:21:14.570
Yeah, that I'm aware of.
00:21:14.590 --> 00:21:18.473
I wasn't aware of Steve Baker's harp handbook at that time.
00:21:18.493 --> 00:21:22.057
I would say that's the first serious book on harmonica.
00:21:22.116 --> 00:21:23.999
It wasn't focused on blues harmonica.
00:21:24.038 --> 00:21:32.205
Deciphering what us as blues harmonica players use, like tongue blocking slaps and other techniques that blues harmonica players use.
00:21:32.707 --> 00:21:35.788
It was a general harmonica book, but I'd say that was the first serious one.
00:21:35.808 --> 00:21:36.849
I wasn't aware of it.
00:21:37.590 --> 00:21:40.313
So you decided to focus heavily on blues from the beginning.
00:21:41.614 --> 00:21:48.461
Very much your bluesharmonica.com is you know focused on blues harmonica that's obviously a decision you made yeah
00:21:48.922 --> 00:22:31.882
yeah it was pretty simple just because that's what I play and that's what I love blues harmonica has always been the the most popular dominant style anyways so as a private music instructor I of course have students who want to go in different directions whether it's country or pop or even a little bit of chromatic and I'm happy to help them with it I let them know that hey this is not my specialty I can probably help you out a little better than what you could do on your own but simply put i've just always followed my goosebumps and still to this day even if i wasn't teaching and this wasn't my income i'd still be doing something with blues harmonica every day i transcribing and just research i just i just love it
00:22:32.226 --> 00:22:36.373
Yeah, I mean, your focus is on the traditional approach to blues, I think, isn't it?
00:22:36.393 --> 00:22:43.084
You know, tongue blocking and the Chicago blues, you know, you're not going into kind of modern techniques of overblows and that sort of thing.
00:22:43.684 --> 00:22:48.932
No, again, it's just following my goosebumps, though I highly respect players that do that.
00:22:49.730 --> 00:22:53.276
So picking up on the School of Blues then, I think you started this in 2002.
00:22:53.297 --> 00:23:00.009
So this was specifically a school for the study of blues music and possibly the first one in the world doing so.
00:23:00.048 --> 00:23:01.151
So what was the setup here?
00:23:01.191 --> 00:23:02.773
This was a sort of in-class thing, was it?
00:23:02.874 --> 00:23:04.236
And it wasn't just harmonica, right?
00:23:04.277 --> 00:23:07.261
You had different instruments, guitar and bass and things, yeah?
00:23:07.490 --> 00:23:23.042
Yeah, one of the music stores that I taught at, I ended up managing that store for about six years, and what I would see is students would come into their little cereal box of a teaching studio, walk to the back of the store, take their private lesson, and then walk out.
00:23:23.384 --> 00:23:31.230
And I thought, what a shame that these instructors don't team up and help give their students the opportunity to play together.
00:23:31.770 --> 00:23:40.920
You know, some people, they just want to play music in their home, and they're totally happy with that, but a lot of people would have loved to have had the opportunity to get together and play with other like-minded people.
00:23:41.460 --> 00:23:48.647
So the reason why I started School of the Blues was, one, as a kind of a central place to do my business.
00:23:48.708 --> 00:23:58.357
At that time, I'd been doing a lot of workshops over years, and I also sold products on my website, my own books, but also I used to manufacture products for the harmonica.
00:23:58.818 --> 00:24:09.451
So that gave me a home base, a place to teach my private lessons, but also bring in other people, like-minded teachers like myself, guitar, piano, piano, voice, bass.
00:24:09.791 --> 00:24:13.196
We didn't have drums on site because of just space limitations.
00:24:13.837 --> 00:24:19.046
So at the core, they were private lessons in the individual studios that I built.
00:24:19.847 --> 00:24:25.435
But the next step was the key thing for me was to give students an opportunity to play together.
00:24:25.537 --> 00:24:41.451
So once a month I would do a harp night and that would be students sitting around in a circle and we would jam and that would give them a first comfortable step among friends, just jamming, playing to a jam track, getting comfortable playing in front of other people.
00:24:42.232 --> 00:24:48.337
Then they would quote-unquote graduate, or whenever they feel comfortable to do so, they could play at our monthly jam session.
00:24:48.597 --> 00:24:53.021
The jam sessions, first of all, were the instructors backing the students.
00:24:53.442 --> 00:24:57.726
And it actually ended up being a real popular show, even though I didn't mean it to be a show.
00:24:57.766 --> 00:25:03.371
And it was packed, and students, little by little, started to feel uncomfortable to play.
00:25:03.611 --> 00:25:38.932
The advanced students loved it but the beginning students were terrified of it so actually I talked to the club and said hey can we come in on a Sunday like in the afternoon when you're closed and that made all the difference in the world gave the students an opportunity to play and not be in front of an audience and gain that experience we eventually moved to another place and that other place I chose it because it didn't have a stage I didn't want it to be you're up here playing down to there and have all this intimidation factor so we do our monthly jam sessions and then we also had house bands So every six months, as instructors, we'd sit down and say, okay, who's ready for this?
00:25:39.594 --> 00:25:55.944
And we would create two bands of the various instruments, and we'd walk them through a six-month training program of what it meant to play in a band, from picking songs, charting, what it meant to run a jam session, because the students, these house bands were students.
00:25:56.642 --> 00:25:58.262
providing backing for the other students.
00:25:58.604 --> 00:26:04.528
So I'd tell my students, say, hey, this band is not a professional band that's going to look down at you if you make mistakes.
00:26:04.608 --> 00:26:09.933
These are other students who have made those same mistakes, probably will be making mistakes when you play.
00:26:09.973 --> 00:26:14.136
So I wanted to try to make it as low pressure as possible.
00:26:14.257 --> 00:26:27.888
So from the harp night to the jam session, student concerts every six months to being part of a house band, and then eventually, if they keep doing it, then they become local blues musicians in our area.
00:26:27.930 --> 00:26:41.744
So that was one of the great things as the years went on to see our students become local, influential harmonica players, or not harmonica, all instruments, different instruments, professional players in the Bay Area.
00:26:42.226 --> 00:26:42.967
Yeah, so great stuff.
00:26:43.227 --> 00:26:49.094
And you also released an album with the School of Blues all-star band, We Are the Blues, in 2007.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
...
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
...
00:26:58.049 --> 00:27:06.858
That was your second album?
00:27:07.318 --> 00:27:14.326
Yeah, at that time I designed a Blues in the Schools program for the Monterey Bay School District.
00:27:14.386 --> 00:27:16.127
It was through the Monterey Bay Blues Festival.
00:27:16.808 --> 00:27:19.372
And part of the program was to...
00:27:19.392 --> 00:27:22.914
We went into the studio and recorded a whole bunch of blues standards.
00:27:23.435 --> 00:27:24.557
It was live in the studio.
00:27:24.596 --> 00:27:25.357
I think it was...
00:27:26.145 --> 00:27:29.292
from load in to out of the studio.
00:27:29.313 --> 00:27:33.722
I think it was in there, record, mix, master, and out in like seven hours.
00:27:33.762 --> 00:27:36.088
So it was a very, very fast process.
00:27:36.169 --> 00:27:38.032
But actually, it's one of my favorite albums.
00:27:38.594 --> 00:27:40.115
just has a nice feel to it.
00:27:40.355 --> 00:28:14.125
But what we did then is we would go to the local school and do a history of the blues in an assembly type of thing, and then we'd tell the kids, hey, whoever's interested in learning more about the blues and playing the blues, let your teacher know, and then we would come back later and we'd work with these individual kids in ensembles, put them in ensembles, and we would take the songs that we recorded on that CD and say, you guys choose which ones you want to do, and We would help them chart it out, and then they would actually get a chance to perform on a special stage.
00:28:14.445 --> 00:28:17.990
And the best band of the different schools actually got to play on the main stage.
00:28:18.029 --> 00:28:25.939
And I remember one of the guitarists, we were walking in the back of the stage going up, and he's pointing at Buddy Guy's guitar.
00:28:26.179 --> 00:28:27.619
He's like, that's Buddy Guy's guitar.
00:28:28.161 --> 00:28:30.343
So that was a really cool experience.
00:28:30.383 --> 00:28:35.388
So We Are the Blues came from the song selections that we wanted to show the kids.
00:28:35.868 --> 00:28:38.511
No one would know listening to the CD that we chose those songs.
00:28:38.511 --> 00:28:42.095
for a specific purpose because they're all just great blues standards.
00:28:55.970 --> 00:29:03.243
So another great album that you released, which I had and I listened to a lot when I was younger, is the History of the Blues Harmonica Concert.
00:29:03.683 --> 00:29:14.084
So this is a live concert that you recorded with Joe Flisco, Dennis Gruening and Kinya Pollard, where you're covering different parts in the history of the harmonica with Joe Flisco playing the pre-war.
00:29:15.425 --> 00:29:20.998
southern pacific
00:29:21.980 --> 00:29:28.895
and
00:29:28.955 --> 00:29:53.698
you playing the chicago blues can you playing sort of butterfield and dennis playing more modern stuff so a really great album and i know it's something that you deliberately made a decision to try and emulate the records as closely as possible you know you weren't trying to put your own slant on it so and i thought it was really educational myself listening to it getting all these different songs and styles so i really love that album and you're playing on it you know you do some uh some little walter stuff um some junior well stuff
00:30:00.885 --> 00:30:00.925
so
00:30:01.665 --> 00:30:02.365
Yeah.
00:30:05.281 --> 00:30:07.723
Tell us about how you got that one together, that concert and the album.
00:30:08.124 --> 00:30:08.404
Thanks.
00:30:08.464 --> 00:30:16.070
Yeah, my goal was to recreate the experience of going to see these great harmonica players live.
00:30:16.811 --> 00:30:21.395
So at my harmonica masterclass workshops, there'd be concerts in the evening time.
00:30:21.435 --> 00:30:30.183
So my idea, I contacted Joe and said, why don't you do the pre-war stuff, and then we'll talk a little bit about the players, their importance in history.
00:30:30.804 --> 00:30:31.984
I'll do the post-war.
00:30:32.085 --> 00:30:33.967
Now, of course, Joe could have done all the post-war.
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