Dec. 11, 2021
Richard Gjems interview
Richard Gjems joins me on episode 51. Richard hails from Norway, with its many blues clubs demonstrating how popular the music is there. Richard is a real student of the blues, and the place of the harmonica within it, and he is involved in archiving music at the National Library in Norway. Richard has incorporated pre-war styles into his contemporary approach to playing the harmonica, where he covers multiple genres, including Nordic folk music. A big exponent of different tunings, Ric...
Richard Gjems joins me on episode 51.
Richard hails from Norway, with its many blues clubs demonstrating how popular the music is there.
Richard is a real student of the blues, and the place of the harmonica within it, and he is involved in archiving music at the National Library in Norway.
Richard has incorporated pre-war styles into his contemporary approach to playing the harmonica, where he covers multiple genres, including Nordic folk music.
A big exponent of different tunings, Richard likes to pick the tuning that works best for a particular recording.
He has released three acoustic albums with a pianist, two electric blues albums and will soon be releasing some of his ‘field recordings’ from his extensive YouTube channel.
Links:
Richard's website: http://richardgjems.wix.com/richardgjems
Videos:
YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/RichardGjems
You Don’t Have To Go (rack playing):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyO4qobTuy8
Strange Love (vocals):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUZd3D2ExEs
Harmonica Didgeridoo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq6lbRX4lLM
Natural Minor Blues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEFhWI_lfMM
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
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/
00:59 - Based in Norway, Richard got into the harmonica by hearing recordings played by his school teacher
01:35 - Blues is popular in Norway, with over 80 Blues clubs
02:02 - The harmonica players who inspired Richard when he started out
03:12 - Richard is a cultural historian of the Blues and has contemplated it’s universal appeal
05:18 - Believes music is an interconnected combination of lots of different parts
06:02 - Music archiving carried out at the National Library in Norway
06:39 - Differences in the use of harmonica in Scandinavian music
07:52 - Material available from the library service (quite limited harmonica recordings)
08:53 - Piano was Richard’s first instrument and advantages this brings to playing the harmonica
09:48 - Also plays guitar and blues mandolin
10:50 - Found it easier to develop own voice on harmonica
11:06 - Drawing from different instruments to improve harmonica playing
11:20 - Studying Chicago Blues guitarists to improve harmonica playing and playing it as an ensemble
12:46 - Is an accomplished rack player, with some great Jimmy Reed songs on YouTube
14:16 - Richard also been developing his singing
15:43 - Rack playing helps you focus on the bare essentials on playing on a song
17:06 - Good rack playing by Canadian Ray Bonneville
17:46 - Poetic human voice element to the harmonica is one of its big appeals
18:50 - Nordic folk music on harmonica, which is rooted in accordion playing
20:58 - 2009 album with pianist Tor Einar Bekken
21:36 - Used to play more chromatic harmonica but prefers diatonic now
22:49 - Album includes a jazz song, but doesn’t play much jazz
24:30 - Looked into what makes Little Walter such an iconic harmonica player and pre-war harmonica
25:19 - 2013 Slaveriet album
30:38 - Played with an electric band, Blatt Rom (Blue Room) which is amplified blues
32:49 - Visited Chicago some years back to experience the Chicago blues scene in person
33:20 - Richard has a YouTube channel with 100 videos, with a mixture of different material
34:12 - Recordings from YouTube channel are being turned into an album
36:12 - Has played with many notable Norwegian musicians
37:13 - Has played with lots of well known harmonica players as they performed at a blues club in Oslo
38:14 - Made extensive use of the harp-l mailing list in the early 1990s
38:27 - Has done lots of session work, including films in Norway
39:56 - TV appearances in Norway
41:31 - 10 minute question
42:31 - How Richard chooses the correct tuning for a given song
44:08 - The great French harmonica JJ Milteau uses the Dorian 2nd position tuned harmonica
45:07 - Words of encouragement to people reluctant to try new tunings
46:16 - Brendan Power’s new Modular Reed harmonicas, where individual reeds can be changed
47:34 - Richard is cautious that harmonica modifications shouldn’t take away the essence of what makes a harmonica sound good
49:05 - Is a Seydel endorser and what the company offers the customer
49:48 - Likes to play low tuned harmonicas
51:18 - Likes the quality of the tuning of the Hohner harmonicas and using different brands of harmonicas for a different sound
52:24 - Overblows
52:45 - Embouchre
53:15 - Amps and mics
54:52 - Set-up for recording
56:01 - Effects pedals
56:47 - Future plans
WEBVTT
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Richard Jems joins me in episode 51.
00:00:03.149 --> 00:00:07.918
Richard hails from Norway with its many blues clubs demonstrating how popular the music is there.
00:00:07.958 --> 00:00:16.070
Richard is a real student of the blues and the place of the harmonica within it, and he is involved in archiving music at the National Library in Norway.
00:00:16.109 --> 00:00:25.984
Richard has incorporated pre-war styles into his contemporary approach to playing the harmonica, where he covers multiple genres, including Nordic folk music.
00:00:26.754 --> 00:00:32.706
A big exponent of different tunings, Richard likes to pick the tuning that works best for a particular recording.
00:00:33.587 --> 00:00:43.627
He has released three acoustic albums with a pianist, two electric blues albums and will soon be releasing some of his field recordings from his extensive YouTube channel.
00:00:55.170 --> 00:00:57.575
Hello Richard Jems and welcome to the podcast.
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Hello Neil, thank you.
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A pleasure to have you on and you're talking to us from Norway today.
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So how did you get into the harmonica and the blues and everything else you play up in Norway?
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Well, I got into the blues when I was like 13 years old.
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I had this music teacher that played a lot of blues recordings for us, actually.
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And he played stuff like Blind Willie Johnson and Sanitary and Brown and McGee and John Lee Williamson.
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And there was something about the sound of the harmonica that really got to me.
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And I still, more than 30 years after, I don't have any rational explanation for why.
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But it seems to be a thing among a lot of Norwegians because Norway is actually famous for having almost...
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80 blues clubs in a country with only 5 million inhabitants.
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So the blues is pretty big up here.
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And what really got me into it was the sound of the harmonica.
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It just spoke to me in a way.
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Paul Butterfield used to call the harmonica the heart's horn or something like that.
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And I think it's that kind of vocal quality that you can get out of a harmonica that I really fell for.
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Yeah, great.
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And so are you one of the long list of people who were first inspired by Sonny Terry then by the sounds of it?
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I'm Born in 1976.
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I'm probably too young for that, actually.
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But in a way, I am.
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Because, you know, Sonny Terry played, I think it was something of the last, probably the last session he did, was playing on that Crossroads soundtrack.
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¶¶
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So in the blues revival thing at the beginning of the 90s, he kind of had this stamp on soundtracks and so on.
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It was kind of hard not to bump into Sonny's playing in a way.
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But of course, he influenced a whole generation of players back in the 70s that got to hang with Sonny and see him play live.
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He actually played in Norway too in the 70s a few times.
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So yeah, he was one of the big inspirations and actually John Lee Williamson.
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So yeah, so getting back to Norway and the big blues scene there, as you said, 80 blues club.
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clubs it's amazing isn't it and it's the same with me I grew up in the northwest of England and we had a couple of blues festivals there which went on each year and that was quite a big inspiration for me so it's interesting isn't it how the blues has popped up in all these different places a long way from the US and you know it's gone on to inspire lots of people to play it around the world
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yeah I think it's fascinating and at the same time being a cultural historian from the University of Oslo I tend to analyze why I got into the blues and you know what is the blues and why do we play a blues and is it?
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Do I have the right to play the blues and so on?
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If you don't ask these questions, it's kind of strange playing the blues, especially being a music based on the Afro-American experience of suffering, racism and so on.
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You have to reflect on that stuff, I think, in a sincere way.
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And that raises a lot of questions around why the blues and what attracts you to the blues.
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I think it's important to think about the blues as an idiomatic tradition, a way of going into the act of making music based on timing, texture, and tonality.
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It's quite like when we talk about jazz today, it can be anything of improvised music.
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It doesn't have to be the traditional jazz thing.
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But if you talk about blues, everybody associates it with a specific period and with a specific 12-bar format and so on.
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But I also think there's some inherent qualities in the playing of the great blues masters and of blues music per se, which is based on this idiomatical stuff, which is connected to the way you use your timing, the way you use your tonal qualities, and the way you use texture and chords and so on.
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And I think for me, being a blues musician from Norway, I played with quite a few traditional Afro-American blues musicians.
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And I think the most important thing there has been that you got the idiomatically, I wouldn't call it correct, but idiomatically deep way of playing under your skin.
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I think that aspect of making blues music is really important.
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And I think it's often under-communicated when we talk about the blues.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, it's not just people who play the blues that it connects with.
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Like you say, there's 80 blues clubs in Norway and blues gigs still happen all around the world.
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So there's something that connects with the audience as well, isn't it?
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That raw emotion of the blues.
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Absolutely.
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And I really
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don't believe in these clear-cut genres or boxes of using different categories, so to speak.
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I more believe that playing music is a messy network of different connections and different kind of use and perspective.
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You know, the blues that has been played around the globe the last 20, 30 years is something quite different than the original blues that was played back in vaudeville clubs in the early 20s.
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It's something that's really different when it comes to meaning and context.
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But there's some similarities too when it comes to the way of playing and the way of using timing, tonality and so on.
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So you mentioned there you're a cultural historian and you've done some archive work, haven't you, about researching into the blues and harmonica history.
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So maybe tell us a little bit more about that?
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Well, I have been working at the National Library in Norway for 15 years now, with archiving and collecting Norwegian music in different genres, mainly so-called popular music, whatever that is.
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When it comes to playing harmonica, I come from the blues tradition, but after a while you also get interested in the traditional way of playing harmonica in the Scandinavian countries, and you dabble a little bit into that.
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I would not say in any way that I'm an expert in that aspect of harmonica playing, but I find it quite fascinating.
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Also because there's some similarities between the traditional blues harp tradition and there's some differences, especially when it comes to the use of diatonic harmonicas compared to using tremolo harmonicas, the whole repertoire playing waltzes and Scottish songs and so on, based on one-three time patterns and so on.
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So there's some differences there.
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But at the same time, if you listen to archival recordings of Scandinavian harmonica music, all of and play tongue block.
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You have this polyrhythmic thing going on.
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You have this use of double stops and use of intervals that are quite similar to players like the Forbalian.
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So I think it's fascinating to listen to this stuff.
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I tend to take a little bit from this tradition and a little bit from that tradition and so on.
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After a while, I'll dabble into something else.
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So I'm kind of like, I'm a little bit of everywhere.
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And I like also to listen to contemporary stuff too.
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I think that's a fascinating thing about an instrument like the harmonica, where you have this hundred years of recorded history.
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There's a lot of things that you can get into and it never stops.
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Do you have some sort of material available in the library there in Norway, or is there anything online, anything like that?
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The National Library of Norway has actually a streaming service for Sherlock 78 records, all Norwegian 78 records until 1958, which was the last year of the Sherlock record before you had vinyl records, can be listened to from Norwegian IP addresses.
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But when it comes to harmonica, there was very few commercial recordings with harmonica.
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There were some harmonica orchestra in Bergen, town in Norway, and that's about it.
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when it comes to harmonica instrumentals or harmonica music.
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The other things are archival recordings done in the mainly 50s, 60s and 70s with tape recorders.
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And some of that stuff are released on compilations together with accordion music because, you know, those repertoires are very closely connected.
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There's more stuff to be released there in the future.
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So going back to your, you know, you're getting started, you say you had a teacher at the age of 13 and you started then getting into the harmonica.
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Was the harmonica your first No, piano was my
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first instrument.
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I was a very lazy piano student.
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I played a simple version of the classical pieces and I never rehearsed.
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And I was a lousy sheet music reader, but I had a good ear so I could kind of, you know, improvise and get away with it.
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So I started out on piano and I think that's a big advantage when it comes to playing harmonica later on, because it's very easy when you play piano to visualize the different intervals, the different keys and tunings.
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So I think, you know, learning all the positions and so on, being a piano player, I think that's a really good thing.
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And I think some of that way of thinking is also reflected in a lot of, you know, Howard's instructional videos and so on.
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He's not to compare me to Howard by any means, but he's a fantastic piano player too.
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And that really helps giving you a good foundation, I think.
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So I would recommend everyone to be a lazy piano student.
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So piano, and you also play other instruments which you still play now, yeah?
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So you play some pretty good guitar and we'll get on so i've heard you also play some pretty good um blues mandolin as well on the on youtube
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yeah i uh i've been dabbling a bit with the blues mandolin too i love that whole blues mandolin tradition if you can call it a tradition so i've been you know listening to guys like yanni young or yank rachel and a lot of those mandolinists they also played with a lot of good harp players john lee williams or big walter hork so they're kind of connected the mandolin and the harmonica
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so you play as well guitar you know sorry wendy Did you start picking up the guitar and is that something you've incorporated into your playing?
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I think I started playing guitar when I was like 15 years old or something.
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I took some guitar lessons.
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But the competition was so hard on the local music scene on the guitar part.
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So I stuck with the harp because that made me stand out in a way.
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At the same time, getting individual signature on the blues guitar is pretty hard.
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It's very hard.
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It's hard on the harmonica too, but I found it easier on the harp finding my own voice in a way.
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So it spoke to me in another way than the guitar did back then.
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But I've been playing a lot of guitar too.
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But if you ask me, my primary instrument is, of course, harmonica.
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But I would recommend everyone to play different instruments because it feeds back on your harmonica playing.
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So you can, you know, play guitar for a month and don't pick up the harp.
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And next time you're out playing, you have some new ideas or, you know, some new things that you get from your guitar playing or mandolin playing for that sake.
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And I would recommend all harmonica players that play, you know, traditional Chicago blues to study the guitar playing of a guy like Robert Lockwood Jr.
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that plays on a lot of classic little recordings.
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Really good at backing up harp players.
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I've been studying with his stuff for a while and he gives me a different understanding of that whole concept of ensemble interplay.
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That is the definition of good Chicago blues in my ears, which I think a lot of people tend to forget sometimes.
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I went to Chicago like eight years ago, went to this club and I heard, I think I heard Willie Buck with a beautifully in on guitar, and it had Martin Lang, which is a great harp player, playing harp there.
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And when I heard those guys playing, it kind of stuck me that, you know, I can't play Chicago Blues.
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Not the way they play, you know, the way of playing it in an ensemble, where they all have these interlocking parts that are so connected to each other, and where the harp player doesn't play, for example, a specific kind of turnaround, because the guitar player plays the turnaround, and they have these parts that really fit together in a very Very, very nice way to play that kind of music, just like playing Dixieland or something.
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I think it's important to understand the role that the different instruments that they have in the whole context, so to
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speak.
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Yeah, and one thing definitely picked up from you is you did some very nice rack playing.
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You're playing some Jimmy Reed that I saw you playing on YouTube.
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What about, you know, touching on playing harmonica on the rack?
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Is that something you do a lot?
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I've been
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playing harmonica in rack, well, playing guitar for 10, 15 years or something, but I didn't do it for many, many years because I just focused on my harmonica playing for a while.
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And now during the pandemic and the lockdown and so on, I haven't had that many gigs.
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I bought myself a new rack and I started playing harmonica and guitar again.
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My take on that is that the coordination between your hands and the harmonica playing just needs a lot of practicing because there can be playing these tremolo patterns on the harp that you use a lot in the blues.
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For example, something like...
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Something like that.
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While playing the guitar...
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It's quite hard.
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It's like playing boogie boogie piano, you know.
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You do one thing in your right hand and another thing in your left hand.
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And sometimes to make these neural patterns in your brain, it takes really a while.
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So I've been working on
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that.
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...
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Of course, you're singing as well whilst you're doing that.
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So some good vocals as well.
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So is vocals something you've always done and worked on?
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Mainly I've been an instrumentalist, but I played in a band called, we actually had a reunion last year, called JB and the Delta Dukes like 20 years ago.
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And I just forced myself to start singing.
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It gave me new opportunities in the context of that band.
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I think a lot of hard players, they sing because getting a gig as a pure really hard player, it's not that easy, especially if you play the blues and so on.
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But at the same time, you know, singing is, it takes really a while to get comfortable with your own voice, especially when you hear it on record.
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I've been working on my singing the last two or three years and now I'm feeling more comfortable with it than I used to because I think it's all about being relaxed and being focused at the same time.
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Like singing traditional blues without trying to mimic the classical singers, which has quite a different resonance You can never touch that stuff anyway.
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I sing and I'm more comfortable with it than I used to be, but I don't think I will be as comfortable as a vocalist as I am as a harp player.
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I'm working on
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it.
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You know, and
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again, just finishing off this topic of playing on the harmonica on a rack obviously it's a bit different you know you're not holding you don't have the same sort of control but i mean what do you see about the advantages of doing it and maybe you know going out as a solo artist and you know being able to take all the money yourself etc you know is that something you'd want to push with or do you prefer playing in an ensemble you know just just doing the role of harmonica player for me
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one of the big advantages of playing harmonica in rack is that it makes you focus on the bare essentials of the song of the bare essentials of playing the blues.
00:16:18.371 --> 00:16:24.177
You can't play all the triplets, and you can't play all the ornaments that you tend to put in when you're playing with a whole band.
00:16:24.477 --> 00:16:45.921
And it kind of makes you focus on the song instead of focusing on your ego, which I think can be a problem, because when you get to a certain level playing harmonica, if you are in the widest kind of context good, then a lot of people that start out playing the blues, they start going down this path of being more and more flamboyant, doing different difficult stuff and so on.
00:16:45.961 --> 00:16:48.283
That's, you know, natural, challenging yourself.
00:16:48.524 --> 00:16:55.931
I've done that myself, you know, trying to play Charlie Parker lines, Jason Rich stuff, which I really respect, all that kind of stuff.
00:16:56.051 --> 00:17:05.721
But I think it's good also to, you know, try to connect in another way when you play harmonica in rack, when it's more, it's a part of the whole context.
00:17:06.021 --> 00:17:11.627
Especially appreciate good harmonica playing in rack when I listen to artists like Ray Bonwill.
00:17:14.145 --> 00:17:19.390
oh
00:17:20.673 --> 00:17:23.536
Canadian
00:17:23.576 --> 00:17:32.523
singer-songwriter that uses the harmonica in a very kind of, you know, bluesy way on his songs, which really add texture to the whole expression.
00:17:32.723 --> 00:17:46.096
Playing harmonica in rack has made me a better harmonica player, but I'm not playing in rack because I tend more to focus on playing the melody properly, getting my points across and let the music in itself speak more than my egos.
00:17:46.395 --> 00:17:57.928
I think something that attracts people to the harmonica and that probably attracts to me through harmonica when I started out playing, is this kind of poetic, human voice-like quality to the instrument.
00:17:58.228 --> 00:18:11.702
This casualness, this kind of romantic sound when you end up playing bebop in 12th or 11th position with a lot of overblows, that kind of stuff, that aspect of a harmonica evaporates in a way.
00:18:12.042 --> 00:18:13.324
It gets in the background.
00:18:13.463 --> 00:18:14.505
And there's nothing wrong with that.
00:18:14.665 --> 00:18:26.480
But I think a way of connecting to that primal quality of the harmonica, like the sound of John Mayles' harmonica play, which is really, in a way, in a good way, simple, but that really connects with people.
00:18:38.838 --> 00:18:48.894
The way of getting back to that quality is by playing, for me, harmonica in rack, because then I have to focus on that in a minimalistic way.
00:18:49.250 --> 00:18:53.173
And you mentioned earlier on that you like to play different genres.
00:18:53.354 --> 00:18:54.954
Lots of us do, but you do too.
00:18:54.994 --> 00:19:00.500
But one thing you've done, and obviously you're a Scandinavian, is you play some Nordic folk music.
00:19:00.559 --> 00:19:07.185
So there's an example of a song on one of your albums called, help me with the pronunciation, Midisjollen, is it?
00:19:07.546 --> 00:19:11.469
Which is a Norwegian folk song, I think, from the 17th century.
00:19:12.109 --> 00:19:14.571
That pronunciation is quite good, actually.
00:19:14.632 --> 00:19:28.227
It's Midisjollen, which is actually from the part of Norway, the south-eastern part of Norway, which I'm from originally, which had a lot of immigrants from Finland coming over in the 17th century.
00:19:28.267 --> 00:19:30.970
It's Finnish-Norwegian folk music, so to speak.
00:19:31.351 --> 00:19:38.739
And a lot of it had this kind of minor quality that suits harmonic or natural minor harmonica really well.
00:19:38.759 --> 00:20:04.773
¦So with a good friend of mine and a great musician, Tor Einar Becken, I've been working with some songs in that idea on over, I think we have three records out.
00:20:05.054 --> 00:20:06.715
I didn't have any reference there.
00:20:06.756 --> 00:20:12.361
There was not a lot of harmonica playing or nothing from that part of Norway that I'd found.
00:20:12.500 --> 00:20:13.741
A lot of accordion playing, though.
00:20:14.403 --> 00:20:24.771
I came up with my own expression based on a fusion between traditional blues harmonica playing and more hybrid Norwegian-Finnish folk music.
00:20:25.231 --> 00:20:39.434
Because the traditional harmonica playing in Norway has been more, you know, focusing on the repertoire that accordion players played from the late 19th century, which is more like the German marches, waltzes, dance numbers and so on, you know, like...
00:20:45.089 --> 00:20:45.951
and so on.
00:20:46.391 --> 00:20:57.840
While this Finnish-Norwegian folk music that we've been dabbling with has more melodic side to it, which suits second position blues-based harmonica better.
00:20:58.060 --> 00:21:02.724
So, yeah, so we'll get on to the albums you mentioned there with the pianist Tor Eina Beckin, is it?
00:21:03.006 --> 00:21:03.185
Yeah.
00:21:03.445 --> 00:21:04.866
Yeah, so you've done three albums with him.
00:21:04.926 --> 00:21:07.750
So an album in 2009, Songs from a Forest.
00:21:07.990 --> 00:21:09.790
Two first ones are instrumental albums.
00:21:09.810 --> 00:21:11.732
So quite a nice mixture on there.
00:21:11.833 --> 00:21:13.454
So picking out a few of the songs.
00:21:13.994 --> 00:21:16.598
The Forest song, which is the sort of title track from the album.
00:21:16.659 --> 00:21:17.980
Is that played on a chromatic?
00:21:18.161 --> 00:21:19.403
That is played on a chromatic.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.
00:21:36.577 --> 00:21:38.058
How much chromatic do you play then?
00:21:38.700 --> 00:21:41.782
You know, I used to play quite a lot of chromatic.
00:21:42.123 --> 00:21:52.090
When I was 18 years old, I got my driver license, mainly to drive to a big blues festival in Notodden in Norway, because Charlie Musselwhite was playing there.
00:21:52.412 --> 00:21:55.594
So I got my driver license the same day as I drove to Notodden, I think.
00:21:56.855 --> 00:21:58.817
And I heard Charlie playing with his band.
00:21:58.836 --> 00:22:00.818
This was back in 94.
00:22:01.239 --> 00:22:06.523
And he played chromatic on quite a few songs and also in different keys and positions.
00:22:06.544 --> 00:22:48.406
after that I really got into chromatic and George Smith and Rod Piazza and Larry Adler but these days or the last 10-15 years I've been playing less and less chromatic because for me I think it's difficult to have good embouchure on both chromatic and diatonic at the same time and I prefer the sound the tone of the diatonic harmonic I'm not so fond of the wolvey sound or the sound of wolves but that's just my take on it so I have been working more on different diatonic tunings than playing the chromatic but sometimes there's some studio gig or some passage that's impossible to play legato and with a good tone
00:22:49.508 --> 00:22:58.416
yeah so this album is you know let's say 2009 to 12 years ago so there are a few songs in chromatic and you play goodbye pork pie hat which is a classic charlie mingus jazz song
00:23:00.157 --> 00:23:00.338
so
00:23:16.321 --> 00:23:18.503
Is jazz still something you're playing?
00:23:18.523 --> 00:23:20.605
Are you attempting that more on the diatonic than the chromatic?
00:23:21.226 --> 00:23:46.888
I don't play jazz that much but I listen a lot to jazz and it blends into all my playing and I have so much respect for playing jazz that I don't like to call myself a jazz musician or jazz player but I listen a lot to especially pre-war blues you know if you listen to like Bessie Smith or you listen to Eddie Lang or Lonnie Johnson this blurry line between blues and jazz and that I really like.
00:23:47.128 --> 00:23:54.736
I also really like Django Reinhardt, a lot of string swing music, and I also tend to like romantic Gershwin stuff with Larry Adler.
00:23:55.115 --> 00:24:00.381
So I pick up a lot of motifs and riffs and ideas listening to that stuff.
00:24:00.421 --> 00:24:02.182
But I don't play jazz standards that
00:24:02.982 --> 00:24:03.063
much.
00:24:03.083 --> 00:24:03.923
No, not too much now.
00:24:04.144 --> 00:24:04.544
Yeah, cool.
00:24:04.584 --> 00:24:08.048
And another song on there, which I picked out, was Blues for Bird Head.
00:24:08.127 --> 00:24:10.549
Some nice, tasteful, high-end playing.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
...
00:24:15.521 --> 00:24:28.289
Thank you.
00:24:30.402 --> 00:24:46.455
I really got interested in why Lil Walter is such an iconic harmonica player in that way that there's almost no harmonica player on earth today that in some way is not influenced by Walter or, you know, doesn't sound like him.
00:24:46.615 --> 00:24:52.760
I really got into this pre-war compilation to listen to, you know, the harp players before Walter to study, you know, that stuff.
00:24:52.922 --> 00:24:59.067
And then I got into Blues Birdhead as one of the, you know, more jazzy, bluesy pre-war first position players.
00:24:59.686 --> 00:25:10.719
And I got, like, Rhythm Willie, which I actually think was from Chicago or around Chicago, that Little Walter really respected, according to Dave Myers in some interview way back.
00:25:11.098 --> 00:25:18.768
So those songs that I recorded them, they're kind of like a homage to that tradition and those players.
00:25:19.048 --> 00:25:24.634
And then your next album with the piano player, Becken, is called Slaveriette, which I believe means slavery.
00:25:24.653 --> 00:25:31.401
So this is just the, you know, you're alluding to earlier on, the history of African-American black There's
00:25:31.500 --> 00:25:40.151
a double link there because this is also recorded in Kastel in the eastern part of Norway in the city of Kongsvinger.
00:25:40.411 --> 00:25:47.919
Recording facility used to be a prison for military or war prisoners that they called the slavery in Norwegian.
00:25:48.259 --> 00:25:50.721
So that also gave allusion to the title there.
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