Chewing the Gristle with Greg Koch
Welcome to Season 5! Listen in on Greg Koch's conversations with his guitar-hero friends. Every episode Greg unleashes his fiendish humor and unique perspective as "one of the most famous unknown guitar players in the world", asking his often-famous musical friends the questions that we all want to know the answers to! Each episode is brought to you by Fishman and Wildwood Guitars
Chewing the Gristle with Greg Koch
Allen Hinds
What if your musical idols became your mentors? In our latest episode, we sit down with the extraordinary guitarist Allen Hinds to uncover the stories behind his transformative journey from the Southern rock roots of Minnesota and Alabama to the creative hub of Los Angeles. Allen Hinds shares how iconic bands like the Allman Brothers and Cream shaped his musical identity, while also reflecting on the rich and diverse influences of the South. Listen as he recounts his humbling yet pivotal experiences at Berklee and his deep appreciation for the vibrant, artistic ecosystem of California’s Laurel Canyon.
Allen opens up about the influential figures who guided him, such as Scott Henderson and Joe Pass, and the memorable interactions with legends like Robben Ford that profoundly impacted his career. He also narrates the unforgettable moments and serendipitous events that led him to teach at a prestigious music school and perform with renowned bands like Hiroshima and Bobby Caldwell. These stories offer invaluable insights into the challenges and triumphs that come with navigating the unpredictable landscape of the music industry, from record deals and contractual hurdles to the joys of spontaneous collaborations.
Don't miss Allen's reflections on his versatile career, from recent gigs and recording sessions to plans for future creative projects. Hear about his exciting performances, including a gig at a Burbank bistro with notable musicians and a successful tour in Japan. This episode wraps up with Allen expressing heartfelt gratitude and sharing a few light-hearted anecdotes, making it a must-listen for anyone passionate about music and the artistic journey. Tune in for an episode brimming with wisdom, humor, and the resilient spirit of a true musician.
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At long last. Ladies and gentlemen, season five of Chewing the Gristle is indeed upon us, a convivial conversation fest between myself, gregory S Caulk, esquire and a variety of musical potentates from hither and yon, brought to you by our friends at Wildwood Guitars and our friends at Fishman Transducers, of course, both of which I've had long-standing and continuing relationships with, and I'm very grateful for their continued support in this endeavor to bring you Chewing the Dog on Gristle. We've got a bunch of fun guests, some you have heard of, some maybe not so much. It'll be a little bit of discovery and a little bit of chaos all rolled into one. Thanks for tuning in folks. Now, without any further ado, let's chew some gristle.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, this week on Chewing the Gristle, we have the amazing Alan Hines. He's out there in LA expanding minds with the power of his sweet musical activity, and he's been a stalwart teacher at GIT, forever playing on sessions. You've seen him on the road. He's a madman. Ladies and gentlemen, alan Hines, this week chewing the gristle. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, once again we convene around the gristle campfire for a little convivial conversation. And today we have a majestic musician, guitar tickler extraordinaire, alan Hines. He hails from Alabama originally. Now he lives out there in that Los Anglias and he's joining us today for a little chat-scaroonie. Alan, how the hell are you?
Speaker 2:What an intro. Thanks, I'm great. I'm kind of waking up, you know, having my morning Joe, as it were.
Speaker 1:I wish people could see I got my mug on here. Because you are an Alabamian.
Speaker 2:You know, actually I was born in Minnesota, but I was only there one month and then we moved south. But most of my formative years, if they ever happened, was in Alabama, nice was in Alabama, nice, whereabouts in Alabama, auburn, a little university called Auburn University, more famous for their football than anything else. Bo Jackson and Charles Barkley actually for basketball yes, famous.
Speaker 1:Auburn Knights.
Speaker 2:But it was a great place to grow up. I mean, the south had, um, you know, the combination of a lot of cool things going on back in the 70s. It was great growing up with, uh, you know, in the 50 miles away where the Allman brothers, so they were a huge influence. I mean, you know the first, I think the first guitar player I ever saw play live was, uh was, dickie Betts yes right right after Dwayne had died.
Speaker 2:Uh, they used to. They did a tour and they had like a um, they set up a microphone for Dwayne had died. They did a tour and they had like a. They set up a microphone for Dwayne. He wasn't there, you know, kind of a memorial to him. And that was the first time I ever heard of Les Paul played through a Marshall stack. You know, it was like 1972. Yep, I think.
Speaker 2:You know, and it kind of blew me away and ironic, well, this kind of surprisingly to me, a couple of years ago I was in Germany and this guy said I have something I want you to see. And he brought me upstairs and he had that same guitar that he had the dickie betts guitar, uh, the same 57 gold top that somebody had ripped off the finish and tried to do a sunburst with, you know, the, the matching book and they weren't matching. But uh, yeah, he had the same guitar. So I sat there and played the guitar and it was kind of just like a weird dream, you know, to play the first guitar I ever heard yeah, that was the first time I ever heard electric guitar really played like that um.
Speaker 2:And then being down south, being around a lot of black culture, I heard a lot of blues stuff, you know when I was growing up. So it was um, and you know the whole food culture, everything down there is great. I mean, you know it's very conservative. I'm tend to be more liberal in my political viewpoints but you know, conservative and in other things about life I like a lot. But yeah, no, I love the South. I still go back there all the time. I have grandkids back there. I have friends back in Auburn, birmingham. You know I love it down there. It's the nothing beats the food. I love the environment, I love it. Yeah, it's great. And California Laurel Canyon's not bad either.
Speaker 1:Right, we did a little recording down there years ago with Johnny Sandlin and Decatur oh yeah, sure, yeah. And it was a blast.
Speaker 2:I love the stories about the Stones or whoever saying let's go down and record down there in the South with all those black musicians. And they go down there and all the swampers, all these like fat, dumpy white guys who sell insurance in the daytime and play this funky-ass guitar, like you know.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly so. You grew up in alabama and then you, you did go to berkeley for a while. Did you do the?
Speaker 2:whole schmigag there, just go there for a little bit. I went there one quarter just to be embarrassed enough to go back, uh, to alabama and uh, you know, my, my first day at berkeley. I remember I got there and it was, um, uh, I somehow placed into a harmony group that I probably shouldn't have been in. But I remember I walked in, this teacher walked in. He was like a drill sergeant, I mean, everything got really quiet and he points at me. I was on the front row. He goes, give me the notes in C sharp, minor 7, flat, 5 chord, and I went C sharp. I got C sharp right, and then this little Japanese girl next to me goes C-sharp, b-g-b, and he went around the room and everybody knew their stuff so well.
Speaker 2:So that embarrassing moment forced me to go and really, you know, I kind of learned it all in one week. It was just memorizing circle of fifths and sharps and flats. You know I had, you know, the key of A has three sharps because it's an A and it's like three. You know, I learned how little gimmicks are a way to learn stuff fast, but what that did? It kind of enabled me to to like know what he was talking about the next. I didn't want to be the dunce in the class, you know. So, uh, yeah, I kind of kicked my ass right off the bat and then three months was kind of good to soak up, you know, to hang out with these stinky european guys and uh, who were smoking galois cigarettes and, you know, never use deodorant, you know and the little berkeley.
Speaker 2:Then I went back to alabama and you know, as you know, like back in 78, that's when I went in 78, even playing in top 40 bands, we could get away with murder man, we played like Chick Corea songs We'd do, some Dixie Dreg songs We'd do, then we'd turn around and play a foreigner song and then we'd do you know the mixture of stuff and growing up in Alabama, playing in cover bands was we got away with. You know, I would think now you kind of well, I don't even know what's on the radio now, but back then there was such a great variety, but we would always throw in something that was kind of like, you know, weather report song or something. It just kind of right.
Speaker 2:It'd be good, cause nobody. Everybody said, oh, that's kind of cool, and I know what it is it was. People were much more open and accepting at it was a really fun time to be a guitar player. As you know, how old are you, greg? I'm 58. Okay, we're close, I'm 67. Okay, but it's like, yeah, it was just such a fertile time to be playing guitar. So anyway, yeah, berklee was a big help.
Speaker 2:I learned my basic modes and the way music kind of is the architecture of basic music, you know. And then years of pretending I was a rock star down in Alabama, you know, cause we had like a big you know. We are the apex, really the epitome of what you could do at that point, for what I was doing was play for the fraternity party. So we'd play all the spring breaks for university of Alabama and Georgia and Mississippi and, you know, louisiana. We were always on the beach playing and we were just chasing girls and having fun playing music, which is what rock and roll is kind of supposed to be about, I guess, you know, and we had a great time.
Speaker 2:And then, um, and then I got a little more serious, I and out of you know, back back then, like we were all following whatever happened in Guitar Player Magazine you know we were, you know I had a subscription that to that, of course, and would read every article that Tommy Tedesco did and whatever, uh, back in the day. And then they had a. They had a scholarship, uh, a competition in guitar player magazine. So I entered that and I won that. That was a. I won the larry carlton scholarship to mi. So I got, I got the free year of school at mi, which is what it offered at the time. They said, wow, you, you're, you're winning is worth 2400. That's how much a year of school was at MI back in 1984, 85.
Speaker 1:A little different now A little different now.
Speaker 2:It's like for one class, for one quarter, you know. But that was pretty cool and I mean, I don't know if Larry actually chose me, but the teachers chose me. So I got free school because my family was pretty poor. My dad had split up with my mom, we were kind of just living. You know, my mom was using welfare at the time and and we were just didn't have any money. So, um, you know, we're eating powdered eggs, it's packing out, but uh, uh. So I was pretty poor, so I was pretty lucky, and then I got to go to mi and, um, you know, it was a great, yeah, that was a great time to be at mi too.
Speaker 2:There was jeff buckley was there, the great singer, songwriter? A lot of my students revere jeff buckley now, and he and I used to play standards every day together because he was a real kind of a jazz head. He was only 18. But we were both playing these eclectic, you know, wayne Shorter, miles Davis songs. We just duck into a room every day, and he and I both worked at this magic thing called the Magic Hotel out here too, which is, we both worked the night shift, so we get to stay up all night and practice guitars at this little hotel near the Magic Hotel, anyway.
Speaker 2:But you know, oliver Wood from the Wood Brothers was there, jimmy Herring was there. Yeah, there were a lot of just really good players coming out of that kind of era. And Frank Ibali had just gotten famous. You know, he was just getting, he was still teaching there and hadn't yet gotten any gigs yet with Jean-Luc Ponty or Chick Corea yet at the time. So, yeah, I walked down the hallway at MI in 85, and here's the way it would go. It would be Scott Henderson would be on your left, frank Imbali's room was on the right, jeff Berlin, there was Jennifer Batten oh, joe Pass is here today and Robin Ford was here like one week out of every month. It was a great environment for guitar players.
Speaker 1:That is crazy. So when you were down in Alabama before you went to Berklee, what was your musical tastes or your goals at that time? Were you kind of into the jazz stuff a little bit, or was it more kind of rock and blues and whatnot?
Speaker 2:No, you know, my earliest, my older, I had older brothers and sisters so they would always bring in the records and I, you know, I heard Hendrix, you know, first, are you experienced? That just freaked me out, the way it looked and the way it sounded. Uh, the Allman Brothers, of course I always liked songwriters. Uh, I like Joni Mitchell, because she always had just such beautiful melodies and great lyrics and great musicians right, I mean all of her.
Speaker 2:She went through so many great periods where she has Larry Carlton one day and Robin Ford the next and there's's Jocko on everything. It's just like Pat Metheny, right. So I don't know. We were pretty open. I was a pretty. My friends were pretty progressive. You know my friends, all their parents taught at the university so they weren't all local, but we hung out with all the local kids too. So we played a lot of.
Speaker 2:I gravitated towards songwriters and pop songwriters more than I did jazz ever, even in my songs now on my records now they're less. I might look back at when I actually were doing a new class at Musicians Institute where they're featuring my songs or ensembles playing my tunes. I'm taking over where Dean Brown left off. If you know, dean Brown has passed away, so I'm doing his type of their Alan Hines songs I was thinking about when I was explaining to the students. You know the form of the songs. My stuff is pretty pop. I mean I have an intro, I have a verse I had, you know. I have a chorus. I usually have a bridge in there and a guitar solo. So I'm pretty much it's not the jazz exploration like a lot of guys like scott henderson. Right, it's more. My stuff's really more pop. But I hope with a twist of harmony it makes it a little more interesting than your average smooth jazz or pop stuff, you know. But yeah, early on it was songwriters I think. For me it was the Beatles, for sure.
Speaker 1:Was there any doubt, like from the get go, that that's what you wanted to do, or what? At what point did you realize that's what you wanted to do?
Speaker 2:I didn't know until I was 17. Wanted to do. I didn't know till I was 17. I didn't really pick up a guitar till I was like 17 years old. It was like in the my uh sophomore year at high school when I was, you know, my brother had a line around the house and I picked it up. I had a really good friend named jack fitzpatrick who just passed away but he was um uh, really instrumental in uh. He had perfect pitch. He could play piano from the time he was like 12. He was playing at his dad's you know parties. He was just a kid wonder who had perfect pitch, who even after he didn't play for like 20 years he could sit down and still play the right voicings for Steely Dan songs. You know he was just a great thinker and he got me started with you know, how to hear harmony and how to go about you know, hearing harmony parts and hearing chord progressions and hearing complex stuff. So he was a big influence on me but it was, you know I started 17 late.
Speaker 2:They had an experimental uh lab band. They called it at our high school where we were doing. Well, it was a big band so it couldn't have been too hip. I mean at the time, uh, for a high school band in alabama but we were doing, like you know, some uh, blood, sweat and tears or chicago songs kind of different arrangements so the high school kids could play it. So I was getting exposed to stuff like that and I had a guitar liner in and I just automatically picked it up. I kind of had the pentatonic thing nailed pretty quick. I could find little patterns and make it work and I said, oh, that's what Dickie Betts is doing there. And then one thing just led to another, trying to hear what Clapton and Hendrix and the Allman brothers pretty much were doing. Those are my early and Jeff Beck, jeff Beck from, even from the Yardbird. My sister had all the Yardbird stuff.
Speaker 2:So I remember, even back before I even picked up guitar, I was like you know, I was grooving and singing to all the Yardbird stuff. For sure it was definitely not jazz until until jazz was kind of popular in the 70s, you know.
Speaker 1:Got it? Yeah, it sounds like we had similar influences.
Speaker 2:My siblings had the record collections too, and it was Hendrix and Cream and Allman Brothers and James Gang and all that kind of stuff and we had Sam and Dave and Otis Redding and I remember the Four Seasons Lightning Striking Again. Remember those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, lightning Striking Again.
Speaker 2:Songs like that. Oh, my father had a Henry Mancini record the Greatest Hits and I listened to that as much as anything, because you know Moon River and stuff. Some of those songs were just fantastic.
Speaker 1:You know Exactly. So when you ended up out in California, what kind of happened after you went to GIT? Did you start doing sessions?
Speaker 2:right away and stuff Did you have your own band.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I was one of the better players. Whether I could get over all the hardest chord progressions or not, I always had a good enough ear to fake it. I was really good at kind of finding my way on the fretboard even if I didn't know exactly what to play. But Scott Henderson was a big learning help for me at time, cause he explained to me how melodic minor works and how the different diminished scales can be used, and that's all been fascinating to me. When I hear cause I I never wanted to be left out. So when I'd hear Schofield and Robin Ford some guys do stuff that was a little more interesting, a little bit outside the box, and and I always wanted to know what that was. So I was all and I'm pretty socially extroverted, so I would. I was not shy about asking questions, you know, over and over again, so I would bug people to death. But what about this? What is this, you know? And actually Robin Ford was my. He was there one week out of every month I was there. So he and I kind of became friends to this day and we just talked the other day. He was always really helpful for me. Um, uh, so yeah, so I got I was one of the better students. They're probably, you know there's. There are all the guys that are great and everybody, everybody's really great in their own way.
Speaker 2:I remember one day, uh, sitting with joe pass and this is a name I'll drop, just because this story was pretty funny we were playing um. He had everybody. Like he said give your best players. So they had like six of us. I don't know why I was in the cause. I really wasn't a jazz player, but I can get over chord changes and so we're playing a jazz blues, 12 bar blues, and he would, joe would call out a new key when you get to the end of the form, okay, f sharp. So then you had to nail, you know, and go into like a jazz blues and F sharp, he would just call these things. It was a great practice.
Speaker 2:But I remember there's like six guitar players and they're all playing these or whatever, and I was. I wasn't going to do that. So I was trying to go like I'm trying to do some kind of holds with shit up high, and he stopped the band. He goes, he has a cigar, he goes. Don't you know any good chords. I was like I got shot down by Joe Pass immediately, you know. So it was pretty funny. But actually afterwards he found me in the hallway Because I was friends with Joe DiIorio at the time they were good friends and he found me afterwards and said you know, give me some compliments.
Speaker 2:But that kind of thing kind of made me realize, you know, I'm never going to be that guy, I'm never going to be the straight ahead Julian Lage, maybe the great. I love listening to jazz guys, but I'm much more of a of a feel good. But you know, whatever I can get around. Ok, so at the final meeting of all the students, they used to have these suggestion meetings where Tommy Tedesco and Howard Roberts and Pat Hicks whoever owned the school came in and they asked the students what they could do to improve the school. And one of my classmates stood up and said Alan Hines should be teaching here. So Tommy Tedesco goes, who's Alan Hines? And so I stood up and he said you got a job. So I've been teaching there ever since.
Speaker 1:Oh, no shit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I but I never was a core instructor like of uh, I mean, I'm a horrible sight reader. I mean I can read chord charts pretty well, but sight reading stuff I would never put me in that. I got another great story about being embarrassed of that, but anyway, um, I have a lot of embarrassing stories. But so I got been teaching there ever since and, um, but immediately I started back then they used to have a lot of auditions out here. You know, I don't think they do much anymore, but they had a lot of like open auditions where you just go audition.
Speaker 2:My first audition was with Jean-Luc Ponty actually, and I remember I got a call from his management. They had heard a tape of me playing with somebody in one of the school jams and playing over some standards, and they liked the way I played. So I got called and so, of course, course, because it was my first audition, I called all my friends back in Alabama. I called all my friends I knew. I said man, I'm auditioning, they all go. They're like man, you're gonna get it. I just know you're perfect for that gig. You sound like Holdsworth, you can do the Holdsworth thing, and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:And so I walked into the to the rehearsal studio and there was. I'd never met anybody I'd seen on records before, right, except for Robin Ford, you know. So I walk in and I'm supposed to perform for him and I was just I froze like a deer in the headlights and I remember, you know, I'd forgotten all the parts and the songs were an odd meter which I'm terrible at, terrible at anyway, I wasn't the right guy. But I remember the next day I get a call on the phone. It was Alan fuck off, matthias. I just figured it was my friend Matthias messing with me, you know. And his phone got really quiet. I went, oh oh, it was on the phone and he called me just to say. He said look, you have the most beautiful tone of anybody, but I have to go with Frank Gambale, and I said so.
Speaker 2:Lessons learned here is like make sure you learn the stuff doubly good to account for nerves and don't tell everybody you're auditioning for anything until you get it.
Speaker 2:I had to kind of relive that story over for the next year. But I did start getting a lot of the auditions I went out for it was a band called Hiroshima, which at the time were really big smooth jazz guys and they were doing a big United States tour. So I got that gig. I was playing with Bobby Caldwell. It was, you know, what you Won't Do for Love. Actually, I just started last night. Bobby passed away last year and his management found these old like 16 songs that he's singing on their disc demos. So they're extracting his vocals and we're redoing some of these songs that have never been put out before and, um, I just started working on them. It's very 90s pop, you know.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you know bobby caldwell's, you know uh, his, uh cat, uh his catalog. But he wrote so many things for peter satara and chicago and the commodores and boz gags and algero. He wrote a lot of songs for a lot of people and I played with him for like three years. I played with Hiroshima for about three years. Gino Vanelli I auditioned for that Actually this was a recommendation from Haslip. Jimmy Haslip is a friend of mine, so that was a fun guitar gig. Was Gino Vanelli's? Because if you don't know his music, he was. I remember Gino Vanilla. Yep, yeah, his stuff. I mean it was almost like Steely Dan, hard, you know, in the chord changes, sophistication Right and great musicians always. I think he introduced kind of Vinnie and Haslip to the scene back then. But his is one of those tragic record business stories. You know he got destroyed overnight by having an argument with Clive Davis.
Speaker 2:And they took all this stuff off the shelf overnight by having an argument with Clive Davis and they took all this stuff off the shelf overnight and he spent the next 10 years paying for lawyers to get out of the contract so he could do anything else. That's why Gino Vanelli, the first record he did with Appaloosa or I Just Wanna Stop and Tell you what I Feel about big hits back in the day which now you'll see the old Time Life hits, or this CD has all the hits on it and Gino's always on there someplace, you know, with his hair.
Speaker 1:You know doing the Right Brother to Brother. That was another one, right.
Speaker 2:Brother to Brother was a big guitar and they always had big guitar solos in them, you know, right. So that was a great gig, but he, yeah, overnight lost it and he the songs that they wanted him to air supply songs, oh no, kidding, even the night, all those like air supply songs would have been gino vanelli songs had he, you know, stuck with clive. But it was kind of tragic because gino, I think, was really talented and he's a good friend. Now I just recorded something for him, um, uh, last month for his new, next record, um, but yeah, so I got several gigs like that, you know, gigs that were took a little more than just playing funky rhythms and single note stuff, a lot of the R&B stuff.
Speaker 2:I did like James Ingram or Patty Austin or Randy Crawford. I played with Randy Crawford for many years too, and she's another great singer, gifted, kind of bipolar, so she's kind of hard to get along with, but she's liked me and I played with her for 15 years, off and on, on and off, and we went to Europe. That was my main gig, I guess, for about well, kind of longer than that, I guess, 20 years, and we had a whole tour planned for 2018, 19.
Speaker 2:And it got. She had a couple of mini strokes, but that was it they sent me to. That's why I know all over the world, from Japan, australiaralia, south africa we played everywhere and to big, huge crowds. So, um, that was great, that was a great time. You know, get traveling, get paid for it excellent yeah you know we're.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately we're only using the audio here, but I see a couple of glorious. It looks like a broadcaster in the uh in the back. There are uh, an esquire and a uh and an old old Tele in the background there.
Speaker 2:My favorite go-to guitar is a 1952 Esquire.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And everything's original on it, except for the pickguard which I refused to buy. It's been $3,500 for a pickguard, but yeah, that's a great guitar. That's kind of my go-to. Compare all guitars to that guitar, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, there's something about Esquires, you know it's a great guitar. That's kind of my go-to. Compare all guitars to that guitar, you know, well, there's something about Esquires, you know, it's just that single pick, same with Les Paul Juniors. It's that one pickup Getting all the magnetic juice. It just has a thing.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of a believer there's a little more zing there. For that reason no-transcript got two, which is a 64 oh, it is cool yeah, it's a real. It's a real one, which is I just got back from japan. It was a long story. It had to have some work done to it. Instead of historic makeovers which is great a company down in Florida I opted for this company in Japan that does the same thing for about a third of the price. I go to Japan a lot through my connection with exotic guitars.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:I got you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been kind of hooked up with them for years. They're out here in California so I have a lot of their guitars. They have some new prototypes I think that are wonderful too. I'll tell you a guitar you got to check out really quick. Greg, you'd appreciate this. I just got this back. There's a guy in Baton Rouge his name is Hoagie Hoager, not so. Have you ever heard of this guy?
Speaker 1:No, he uh, yeah, joe.
Speaker 2:Bonamassa, it's a 1925 Martin 018 and I bought it Out of curiosity. I got it for cheap cuz it was in pieces and so he said there's a guy in Baton Rouge who does the best work, so I sent it to him.
Speaker 1:So I sent it to him. I don't know how well you can hear oh, it sounds great. Does it have one of those big V-necks on it?
Speaker 2:yes, it's just gorgeous, you don't have to do anything to it, you know, and it's as light as a potato chip and I was thinking, oh, it's going to be old, it's going to be hard to play, it's going to be frumpy, but man, it's just the notes. I took it to Joe Bonamassa, who is my neighbor. He lives five minutes walk from here and so I brought it over to his house. I showed it to him, he loved it. And then, of course, he breaks out his five Martins pre-war Of course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to ask you. You had the SG out. I don't know what it is, but I didn't really notice it until you know, I do all those videos at Wildwood and I started playing the SGs and I was like what is that sound? For some reason, the way my hand rests on the bridge, my pick is always hitting the neck pickup on an SG. Pick is always hitting the neck pickup on an SG. I'm always hearing this oh, weird, yeah, yeah, and it's only with SGs, everything else.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of right in the middle. There it's got to be because there's so much. I mean, your vantage point with an SG is so you're right on top of the pickup, if that's where you normally pick with a Strat Exactly. This thing is great, though I can do my Dickie Betts licks. Yeah, it's a great sounding guitar. These old pickups are little pad number pickups.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of my favorite tones of all time, of course, was the Cream SG into the Marshall tone. That was one of my faves, that's freaking awesome.
Speaker 2:And my favorite one that I always tell my students about is I mean, I actually like Dwayne Allman's playing a little better than Dickie Betts'. I thought his time was better. I love the. I actually like Dwayne Allman's playing a little better than Dickie Betts'. I thought his time was better. I play a lot of slide too, right, but the tone that Dickie Betts gets on the solo on One Way Out, oh, it's diabolical. Yeah, it's just blasting to a Marshall 100-watt Bum, bum, bum, bum, ba-da-dum, bum dum. Yeah, oh man about it, because it's um, it's just like the epitome of what paf should sound like. You can hear all the harmonics yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the duane and dickie thing that's uh. You know it's kind of interesting because back in the day, remember, when I first heard the record, I loved duane's slide playing, but I kind of preferred dickie's conventional playing, especially, like you know, on live at the film or sure, uh, just because he was more precise, you know what I mean. And then, and then after a while it's like no, I like the. I mean not that I you have to pick one, I like them both. Uh, but I really got into the greasy nature of of duane's ways, even though that sometimes he would over band or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah, people, I've had people say, yeah, you mean like the all the-tune stuff you played on the end of Layla and you know, did you ever check out? There was a. You could buy the outtakes from the Layla sessions.
Speaker 1:Yes, I got that one yeah.
Speaker 2:I spent $50 on that and got it and I can see why they used the ones they did. Right, because there were some jams that were just totally you know they were all just like torqued up out of their mind and having fun jamming. So but uh, you're right, I mean dickie betts had a certain and he had an interesting I mean even to this day he had some interesting patterns that were that were kind of nice. You know that I and he was very precise listen to um jessica or the song that the after duane died. When they did um, those are he's like really great his time he would rush a lot but you know they were doing. Nobody cared that much back then. And what I like about the Fillmore East album is that when they both or maybe it's the E to Peach album where they break down, where it's just like drums and guitar, oh yeah, on Live at the Fillmore yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:Oh man, that is just so On one way out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, that's so because they just create stuff and then the band comes in. Yeah, it was great. I love the All-In-One. They were so much more than just another Southern rock band. Charlie Daniels' band had some kind of one song. That was pretty cool, can't you See? Leonard Skinner's first album, I guess, was pretty cool. But I don't know Something about the All-In-One. Brothers were a little bit a step above all that stuff. And Greg, just you know.
Speaker 2:Greg's a singing fool 80 year old black guy at age 18, you know, yeah, it's not weird.
Speaker 1:I just till this day, I just tell people I'm like you know, when you listen to live at the Fillmore. I mean he was 23 years old on there and then you listen to that stuff, even in hourglass. You know, years before, when he was a teenager, he was I know he was singing like yeah, it's just crazy, yeah, yeah and Dwayne Allman's slide playing.
Speaker 2:Of course, dwayne. Yeah, and Dwayne Allman's slide playing, of course. My favorite Dwayne Allman slide stuff is on. I think it's Trouble, no More. Yeah, his fills, that he does. I don't care. The stuff he does behind him is just the slickest stuff that Derek Trucks wishes he could do. No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1:Well you know what's interesting is that because of the advent of YouTube and people are just because I had friends of mine back in the day who were real bootleg collectors, you know they had and they would send away for all this shit and bargain with people and go to the little conventions and I never had the organizational skills to go that deep but I would occasionally benefit from their quests. But now all of that shit's online. So it's amazing to me when you hear all the different Dwayne era live stuff that you can get and they're in various different conditions sonically speaking, as far as the audio quality. But man, depending on the night Statesboro Blues opened, and they always as the audio quality, but man, depending on the night Statesboro blues open, and they always did the same set, which was crazy to me as much as they improvised within the songs and those were all different.
Speaker 1:The set list was like the same and they'd start with Statesboro and there would be times where it's I mean they were always great, but there'd be nights where you could tell he had a, he had a swerve on. You know what I mean he was a little buzzed and it was a little more syrupy and it was just like to your point. I mean, it's like I always liked Dwayne's. I mean again, it's not like who's the best or whatever, but I just preferred Dwayne's grime because it's just so stinking Well, he had a certain sophistication that was still steeped in traditional Southern blues.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:But he had something in the exit that was a little bit more elegant. It was almost like the difference between hearing a Southern accent and gone with the wind and hearing an accent in a Trump rally. You know, it was just a different. They're both Southern, but the Southern accent can be quite charming, right. Yeah, you know, if was just a different. You're both Southern, you know, but the Southern accent can be quite charming, all right. Yeah, you know, if you do it right, you know so, and that's the way Dwayne always kind of seemed to me. But you know, I would have loved to have met him boy. He just died way too young. And another guy who I liked a whole lot was was Lowell George.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I'm a huge think.
Speaker 2:I know he's another guy who I just like you know I stumped my students because I it sounds like a lot of songs might be easy just to first listen, but when you actually try to learn them, the kicks and the chords and the progression.
Speaker 1:They're a bitch, no doubt.
Speaker 2:Totally Very cool and very different. And he's another one who died too young. I Joe Bonham also just bought his.
Speaker 1:I saw that the dumbbell yeah, yep.
Speaker 2:I was over at his house the other day I said I was trying to get him to tell me how much he paid. I said so you must have paid a lot for this, joe, and he goes yeah, it was a fortune. You know I wanted to go. Well, how much damn it. You know, I don't know if anybody knows exactly how much he paid for it, but he just yeah, yeah, the Lowell contraption, that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, back in Alabama when we were trying to, I even tried, you know, playing slide guitar with a Craftsman socket wrench, like he did, and using the Dynacomp compressors, and I had a Music man amp. That was as close as I could come.
Speaker 1:That's what Paul used. Paul Burrell would always use the Music man amp I used to see them on stage.
Speaker 2:I can buy those in the store, but I never knew about the Dumble, of course, back then. But there's one particular lowell george recording that I like. Well, I like his songwriting, you know right it's just you know, and he was one love stand.
Speaker 2:I mean all those songs are great, two trains running, yeah, but um uh, there's a on youtube. Another great thing about youtube is that there's one uh concert at the rainbow in london right, which I guess rainbow uh, some club there. But and in the first couple songs his voice is kind of rough, it's not really clicking. But man, when you get into like the third or fourth song on, it's just like over the top great. And he's just so charismatic and so spot on great. I mean he must have been a fun hang for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, paul used to tell me stories. You know because I was pretty good friends with Paul Barrere. Oh, before I forget, they I saw it like last year his daughter was selling his guitar after he passed away.
Speaker 2:Oh, I didn't see that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what he used like a PB guitar or no music man guitar, right well, he had a music man and then he had those like late 60s, early 70s strats. There was like kind of the cocoa colored, one coffee colored, and then he had the black one, and he had the one tuned to like open D and the other one was tuned to open G.
Speaker 2:Well, she was Paul Burrow's daughter was selling one of his guitars and I actually I wrote her. I said I said, you know, I think she was asking like how much it was worth or something like I can't remember what it was, but I was considering maybe putting a bid on that because, just a bit of history.
Speaker 1:Anyway, but he would have great story, he said. Of course their recreational chemical habits back then were prolific. And he would say that they both knew each other's songs because when the song would begin and they were going up to the microphone they would look at each other to see who was going to be able to pull it off. And he said one time they're going up to the microphone at the same time. Lowell had a big rock right in his beard. And Paul's, like I'll get this one, yeah, right.
Speaker 2:I'm sure it happened a lot man.
Speaker 1:The wildest story he told. Well, there were all kinds of stories, but they were opening up for the who and they were doing two nights in a row in I forgot what town, but they were at the same venue for two nights in a row. So they get done with the first show and they go back to the hotel and it's Lowell and Richie and Paul Barrere and um and Keith moon in a room and they just start partying and they're going, and they're going, and they're going, and they're having a good old time until there's a knock at the door and the road manager comes in and goes. It's time for the second show, the door and the road manager comes in and goes, it's time for the second show.
Speaker 2:I believe it. You know, there's some great um, there's a great thing on youtube about him when he said was hanging out with linda ronstadt a lot and they're doing like an interview and some I want to say tucson, because I think that's where she was from, some tucson or el paso tucson, I think she's they're doing like a radio interview and they're both there together, together, and they're just delightful. They must have had so much fun together Because he had a really good silly side and he was just you know. Yeah, I have a lot of respect for Little Feet now and it was hard for me to listen to him after Because Lowell was such a huge presence in that band Sure, no doubt.
Speaker 2:And Robin played on the last record. He that band no doubt, and robin had a robin played on their last on the last record or the record on down on the farm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and um, and I asked robin, I said, did you meet him? He said yeah, just one time, it was very briefly, you know, he came into the studio and robin or before, but I think when robin did the solo he wasn't alive anymore. But um, yeah, those are some. Like you know, I hear stories every night and where I live in laurel canyon, he, um, they had a house right around on Hermit's Glen, right, I bought around the block from where I live and I every now and then I walk up there and just kind of think about because it's one of these beautiful little cul-de-sacs up here in Laurel Canyon with all these beautiful trees, just so you'd like this picture, you know, bonnie Raitt and those guys sitting out there on the doorstep, yeah, a, yeah, a lot of history out here. Man, it's a. You know, laurel kane's a little different now. It's mostly like screenwriters and it's not the musician hang, like it used to be there's.
Speaker 2:So how long you've been living there? I've been here since 94. I was after the big earthquake in 94. I was in the valley and I was gonna hightail it back to um, atlanta, georgia or someplace down south because, um, I was working a lot but, uh, when the I was in the valley when the hit, when the earthquake hit, it scared the crap out of me so much I was thinking, god, I don't want to stay here, what am I here for? But then somebody said, you know, the hills don't move as much because they were formed by earthquakes. And so I said, okay, so I'll give it a second chance.
Speaker 2:And I came up here and found this little guest house and um landlady's suite, as she can be, and I it's like about a half an acre lie with a creek outside you can't see it from the road. I can play guitar all night long, my cat's, um, you know. So I lucked up into a great place and she's pretty much kept the rent the same for 30 years. Oh, no shit, awesome. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And, laura, can you I mean, hollywood has changed a lot, laura, can you? But it's still, you know, close to the beach and it's close to you know, if I need to get anywhere, I can kind of zip down to the airport pretty quickly. So it's, it's okay. I mean, I don't know, I still I can see me someday, I was going to say when I get old but I'm already old when I get older getting back, getting back down south someplace. You know I have friends and grandkids in Birmingham, so it's tempting.
Speaker 1:We interrupt this regularly scheduled gristle-infested conversation to give a special shout-out to our friends at Fishman Transducers, makers of the Greg Koch Signature Fluence Gristle Tone Pickup Set Can you dig that? And our friends at Wildwood Guitars of Louisville, colorado, bringing the heat in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Where do you live, greg? I live in Wisconsin. I live in the Milwaukee area. Yeah, so we're actually just about to head out by you again.
Speaker 2:We're leaving tomorrow.
Speaker 1:And we're doing St Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Phoenix. See, we need to talk.
Speaker 2:It's so weird because I I mean sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, that's all right.
Speaker 2:But my band. It's so weird because I have six CDs of music and my stuff's like not fusion, it's not really blues, it's not in the middle and I'm a hard sell. I think so, and thanks to Exotic I've been able to build a following in Japan of all places, and I went over there a lot with Bobby Caldwell, of course, in the years past. But the last 20 years I've been able to go over there and do clinics and concerts through Japan, but never in the United States and in Europe I can do stuff every now and then too. Before COVID I was going to Norway and Sweden and Italy and places, but I signed my first record deal two years ago here in the States.
Speaker 1:You were telling me about that.
Speaker 2:Jay Marciano, which is I was excited. You know I was getting ready to, you know, set the world on fire Cause I got a record deal and pretty much they wanted after they finally listened to my stuff. After six months he said, alan, we listened to your CD and it's not very commercial. I said, well, yeah, it's not very commercial. I said well, yeah, it's not very commercial. That's, you signed me to, you know anyway. So they wanted me. I had to go back in the studio. I did a couple commercial tracks, covers, and they got on the radio all of a sudden. I was all over a serious exam. But it turns out the record deal I signed was with umg and they keep all of the all of the proceeds until they recoup. And I was trying to figure out what are they recouping from. I made the record before I gave it to them.
Speaker 2:But they tell me it's for all the promotion stuff. They can tell me anything they want to, of course. Of course they can. So now I haven't been able to put out my last CD, which I'm pretty. I sent it to you, I think, at some point, just to the SoundCloud, but I haven't been able to release because I'm under contract and they kind of own the rights to it. So it's been really frustrating.
Speaker 2:I was trusting the process and they kind of said well, we'll build you up on Smooth Jazz and we'll get you an agent. Then you can go out and do these concerts and play a couple of the commercial songs and do whatever you want to do. And it never really happened. So it's kind of I have a feeling I'm just like another one of those stories about the record business who you know just lost out. So right now we're trying to get out of the contract so I can put my new stuff out. What new stuff? New stuff that I finished in 2019. Sure, out and um, it'll still be new to most people. But yeah, it's been kind of frustrating and I wish I could get around. You know, if I go to europe, I can play in italy and, uh, portugal and london and through the in japan. I can go all over, but I don't really have that kind of following in the states, um, or at least I don't have the hookups to know where to go to play.
Speaker 1:Well, what's interesting is I always tell folk, you know, it took until I was, you know, 54 years old before I had an agent in the States. I've had an agent in Europe for 20 years, you know. But that's to your point. I mean it's you have a. Getting a record deal is almost the easy part. Of course, nowadays, record deals are not what they used to be. But even 20 years ago, when I got my first deal and I thought, oh, this is great. Now I'm going to get, you know, I'll get a booking agent and I'll begin to tour and all that other kind of shit, and I remember calling up agents and they're like, uh, well, how much airplay are you getting and in what markets? I'm like, well, none that I know of.
Speaker 1:But I got this record deal now and I'm, you know, I'm doing all this stuff for Fender and they book clinics all over the place and we could probably, you know, book gigs in between. It's like I could not get arrested at at with a booking agency, any kind of stonewalling. It's like I ask once you know what I mean, I'm not going to keep on harassing people and I didn't have representation at the time, but yeah, it was always one of those things where I would try to get agents. We'd play festivals, we'd get a one-off thing and book a couple things around it, and it would go great and the crowds would go crazy and couple of things around it and, and it would go great and the crowds would go crazy, and then try to follow up with an agent.
Speaker 1:It's just, it's just so counterintuitive. You know, it's just a matter of finding the person that just says, okay, I believe in this and I'll, I'll take a risk on it and it's. You know, I thank God I found somebody, because it's been great and because I kind of built an online thing. You know we go out. You know, if I do enough promoting online, we get enough people there to make it worthwhile for us to do. You know, and a lot of them are door gigs. You know we'll show up and we'll do a door gig but we'll get enough people out because the cover charge is enough where we get people coming in, and then I have a bunch of stuff to sell it at the merch stand which is really what it's all about these days, you know.
Speaker 2:So it's it's just having all those different spigots open. I know, and you know I'm so lazy too. I mean, I I make my music and I just put it on CD, baby, and I was kind of content with that, and now I don't even have that because of the record deal. So I'm, you know, and actually I don't know which way I lost my eyesight in one eye. Uh, blind man heinz. He's had a new blues career. I like that kind of gallows humor, I like it. Thank you, yeah, I have a lot of that too.
Speaker 2:No, I lost it playing tennis. I got a detached retina and, um, and I, like an idiot, didn't go in immediately. I kind of waited for a week and that's, you're not supposed to do that. So the retina actually fell off and so I was like two and a half years of surgeries with putting bubbles in my eyes and they finally had to put a buckle around one eye. So I'm kind of blind in this eye. It all stays, you can probably see it. It stays more dilated than this one. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's always a lot blacker than the other one and you know, it's kind of one girl come up to me and says she said you have david bowie eyes and I was thinking this could work for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, no, it's weird, but anyways I'm back trying to play tennis. So actually the last year since I got out of the last surgery I've been doing a lot of sessions for people doing, uh, you know, the geno stuff I do. There's a few clients around the united states keep me busy teaching it on my, and I've been trying to get my tennis game back with one eye. It's really not having any depth perception or training your brain to see uh, depth perception is really a trip, um, but you know I'm not giving up yet, so that's that's why I spend my days. I'm getting ready as soon as we get off here. I'm gonna go play some tennis and then I go to a gig tonight where are you playing tonight?
Speaker 2:um.
Speaker 1:It's a singer named keith england oh, yeah, he wrote some songs with Greg Oman.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he worked with the Elm Brothers for a minute. Yeah, yeah, it's more of a rock thing tonight, so I already know all those songs like Midnight Rider and stuff, so we're going to do. He has a little gig at some little winery place in Burbank, a little wine restaurant, a little bistro, so it's the same place where I play with it. I have a band called the Cookies that I do with Bobby Watson, the original bass player from Rufus. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:He played bass on Nothing From Nothing, billy Preston. So he played on Rock With you and he put all the old Rufus stuff. Bobby's a good friend of mine, great bass player. I mean, don't ask him to read anything, but you know as far as his groove goes and his time, his ideas, he's just great. He's a great guy. So we have a little band called the Cookies. It's me and him and Max Ann Lewis, this great singer who was in iCat with Ike and Tina Turner years ago, and she's awesome. So we do our own weird covers of Beatles songs. And just a trio, just me and Bobby and a drummer's coming to go.
Speaker 1:So what will you bring to that gig tonight?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm going to bring a small gig tonight. Just two deluxes, two old, like I have some blackface deluxes, late 60s Nice, and just a pedalboard and probably my SG yes, the SG, because we're doing like some Southern so I've got to play some slides, you know.
Speaker 1:So you pack up the vehicle and rock people's brains in Burbank.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do that. We play there with the Cookies and we pack it up, though that band is really fun the Cookies, if you get a chance. You know it's a cover band, but when we do a trio it's like it's me. It's all about me being able to substitute and do weird chord voicings, and it still works, you know.
Speaker 1:So how many times a week do you reckon you play these days? If so, how many times a week do you?
Speaker 2:reckon you play these days, play out, oh, it depends. You know, last week I played three gigs, this week I have like one, and the next week I have none. Then it gets busy again. But I'm doing sessions. Mostly I'm doing this Bobby Caldwell thing. Okay, that's going to keep me busy. I do have a gig next week too, probably one on average.
Speaker 1:I don't know. So do you record at your lair there or do you go to studios?
Speaker 2:No, I record here, unless it's. You know, it depends on if they want the whole band involved. But I have like a nice old Avalon preamps and some nice Norman mics and you know I know how to record them correctly. So I do sessions for people, often up here my records. I did mostly my guitar parts up here. We actually did. We recorded the band at East West Studios and Joe Bonamassa let me use his little combo dumbbell amp down there and I used that to track with the band and we ended up keeping a lot of the tracks actually from that. But the solos I like to kind of hone in. I'm usually really good at getting the good idea for a solo first time through, but then it takes me a few passes just to tighten up all the edges and make it work first time through, but then it takes me a few passes just to tighten up all the edges and make it.
Speaker 2:Make it work. You know, conceptually I'm good at coming up with a solo quick, but I'm not really good at executing that solo immediately. Sometimes I have ideas that are greater than my capacity. How do I put that? Basically, I'm not good enough to do it like first time through. I usually have to kind of go back in and kind of, you know, fix, fix it up, but, um, yeah, but you know, about once a week maybe.
Speaker 2:And then I was in Japan a couple of weeks ago and that was really great. We were able to go there and, um, I played like five, six shows Osaka, nagoya, tokyo, packed up the club in Tokyo, the best venue in the world. Um, like I said, I have a following over there. So people and you probably know this feeling I mean, it's just so life affirming to play to a club of about even 300 people and they're all there to hear your music. Yes, they know all your songs and you know it feels great and the band was kick ass. I have a great Travis Carlton, larry's son plays bass with me. Donald Baird is my drummer Well, my drummer, I prefer him. He plays with Lady Gaga now that's his money gig. Matt Rohde is a keyboard player who has recently played with the Chicks. I guess he played with Alanis Morissette. He does the Voice, the TV show.
Speaker 2:He does all the arrangements backstage for all the singers and stuff. He's a whiz kid who sounds like Keith Jarrett. I met him on a Brenda Russell gig and I was warming up playing an Alan Holdsworth like just warming up and he knew it. He started playing keyboards. He knows more guitar stuff and he has an album out of all Black Sabbath songs or is it Black Sabbath or Deep Purple songs that he did on keyboards? So he's more of a. He's a frustrated guitar player in a keyboard player's suit, you know. So that's my yeah. We play the baked potato once every two months usually. They usually give us a Friday or Saturday cause we pack it out.
Speaker 1:Nice yeah. So what's your kind of your goals for the immediate future? You want to get out on the road in the States a little bit more. In, in, in. Uh. Well, I'm working on my backhand.
Speaker 2:No, I'm kidding. Uh, I States a little bit more. Well, I'm working on my backhand. Aha, no, I'm kidding, I have a good backhand. That's a good question, because I kind of feel something's in the air. I don't know, is this a political election coming up? A lot of different things are going on in my life. I just ended a relationship with somebody who I'd been with for a few years, you know, just kind of exploring some new territory in a lot of different ways. I mean, I've got a bunch of new ideas for songs, but I'm kind of waiting to see what happens with the other CD, to see if we can get it released, and considering to move back down south.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, the cost of living down south you can't beat it.
Speaker 2:No, I know the price of gas. I saw it when I was down there. A few weeks ago I went down back to Destin, florida and Auburn for my 50th high school reunion. Wild yeah, I was like are you still alive? That was a question to ask a lot You're still alive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just had my 40th. So yeah, we're 10 years apart.
Speaker 2:We're 10 years apart, yeah, so I don't know, but it probably. I mean, I think my music, if the crowd, if they're open, we usually kick ass wherever we play. I wish we had a chance. But I'm a hard sell, like I'm not. You know, you can't put me in the blues category with Josh Smith or maybe even with you and some stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm not a rock guy like a Richie Kotzen or you know, and not really a. I'm definitely not a jazzy guy like Scott Henderson or Holdsworth and I'm definitely not smooth jazz, for God's sake, you know, cause my stuff's not that insipid but it's. You know, it's like I'm kind of an, it's kind of a combination of all that stuff, you know. And so I think it's a kind of a hard sell for anybody to really know where to put Alan Hines. But I know my band is so good whenever we play anywhere, we always rule the day because they carry me, even if I'm having a sucky day. But you know you can find me, go to alanhinescom, you can there's, or just YouTube me, and you know I don't I'm really bad about not taking stuff down on YouTube. Scott Henderson is like he goes down. He takes stuff down all the time because he doesn't want any bad representation of himself and I, on the other hand, I just left everything up there. So there's a lot of good with the bad.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm the same way. Well, plus so much stuff goes up that you have no control over people posting stuff Most of the stuff I have with the most views on YouTube or on other people's channels, but I figure it is what it is. You know what I mean, and plus the average person, you know how they listen to stuff versus how you listen to stuff is completely different. I mean, there's stuff the things I think are like well, that was a throwaway thing and that'll be the thing that people think is the greatest thing, and you're like okay, Tell me about that.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's exactly right, you never know. So I try to take a bird's eye view, I try to back up and go okay, it's not so bad after all. I mean, I definitely get too introspective and picky about stuff. Man, I missed that one note there and everybody goes what what? No, I thought that was supposed to be there, you know.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:So anyway, yeah, who knows? But I don't know I'm going to keep plugging along, keep playing. I'm going to keep playing tennis and as many gigs. I'm going to keep writing songs. I feel like I've got about 10 new ideas that I'm about to start putting down and tracking, and so that'll be something new that the record label won't own.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Yeah Well, hopefully we can cross paths when we're out there. We're going to be at Venice West on the 21st of July.
Speaker 2:I have a gig on the 21st. Yes, are you in town, though, before you're coming to that day?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're going to be around on the 19th and 20th hanging out in Venice.
Speaker 2:Beach. Well, call me on the 19th. I have a gig on the 20th and the 21st.
Speaker 1:Okay, I definitely will Do you know where you're playing on the 20th or the 21st.
Speaker 2:The 20th is with a smooth jazz guy who keeps me busy doing sessions Again, darren Ron, it's smooth jazz saxophone stuff, just between you and me. And the 21st is with the Cookies that band I was telling you about, with Bobby Watson.
Speaker 2:And probably Keith Englund will come sing with us, because we always you know, maxies, that band I was telling you about with Bobby Watson, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And probably Keith England will come sing with us, because we always. You know Max Anne, this girl I play with, she's steeped in R&B, of course, because she sang with everybody, from Duran Duran to Michael Jackson. Like I said, she was an Ike Cantina, a big black girl. She sings awesome and she's like one of the band. You know, she's just loves it. When we just rock out and we got keith england, I mean it couldn't be more diametrically, you know, opposite keith england, this like this kind of white guy with long hair up there singing, you know crossroads, but it's great, it's great, you know, um, it's a great combination. So that's going to be on the 21st at this club called urban press in burbank. It's a little winery, little, uh, wine restaurant excellent.
Speaker 1:Those are my two gigs this month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like it. Yeah, well, find me. I'll give me a call when you're in town and maybe the 19th we can hang out some.
Speaker 1:That'd be great. It'd be great to. I wish I could hear you play out here, yeah exactly so it must be wild out there when you just do like pickup gigs. It's like you know, know all these people that have played with everybody, you know what I mean. It's like where that's where I'm from, there's great musicians, but you know what I mean. It's not like, but they don't have.
Speaker 2:Well, it's like you know you know who mike miller is yeah, I have the guitar player.
Speaker 1:I saw him play with chick korea back in the day very understated, you know you.
Speaker 2:You can hear him on some recordings, go, oh, he's okay, you know he's. But then you hear him on some other things. You go whoa, this guy, he's really. He reminds me of Bill Frizzell in that he doesn't ever try to really show off, but he has immense capabilities and really melodic and really creative soul on guitar. I mean, when you get him in his element he's really great. But he called me up a few months ago. He called me and says Alan, look, I have a gig tonight, can you sub for me? And it was his gig, I think.
Speaker 2:But the players in the band were Chad Wackerman, jimmy Johnson, mitch Foreman. I mean the band was like this all-star of these great players in Los Angeles. And I was going man, I'll do it if I don't have to read anything. As long as we do all blues for like a half an hour, I'm fine. And it turns out he hadn't played in a a while. He didn't feel like getting out in front of public and playing. He actually ended up doing going back and doing it. But, um, yeah, things like that happen. All of a sudden you're like looking for on the other side of the stage and there's danny carey or there's uh, you know some great keyboard player or you know there's yeah, there's great players everywhere, and luckily that's. One perk of living out here for so long is that I've had a chance to play with the very best Gary Novak on drums, or Jimmy Johnson, or all these guys. Jeff Babko on keys is awesome, matt Rohde is incredible, travis Carlton is really my favorite bass player. Have you ever met or worked?
Speaker 1:with Travis. I've met him, but I've not played with him.
Speaker 2:He's an old soul, I mean he's a young kid, but he knows everything about the rhythm sections from Philadelphia and Detroit. He knows all the you know. He's steeped in music history, Nice, and he's a great kid. I mean he's come to my open counseling at MI, my big workshop forum, that thing there, and I didn't know he was Larry's son At the time. He just came in and played and he was always just the most musical guy there was there. He just had great time, great ideas. We were always good friends. But yeah, that's a good perk about living in Los Angeles for sure, nice, yeah.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So how often are you at MI?
Speaker 2:Well, because of what I did. I was kind of a special. I was kind of faculty visiting, visiting faculty for the last 20 years because I was on the road and I'll just kind of come in and do a thing called they called open counseling, which is just a big open up the doors and students come in and ask me whenever their schedule permits. So when covid hit, that was the last thing to come back, because it was really not a core essential class of any sort, it was just kind of a perk and they just started having that back last year. So I got you know what used to be like two days of that a week. Uh, it turned out to be like two hours a week. So now it's getting back more and um, now they're actually doing an alan hines ensemble class where they're doing some of my songs and I bring in charts and we rehearse.
Speaker 2:The guys and most, most of the kids right now are Asian, because they did a lot of their marketing to the Asian market the last several years. So majority of kids are from, you know, korea or China. Great kids, they're totally cool and into it and it's cool to see their eyes light up when you turn them on to a. It's like a Freddie King song that they've never heard. Right, turn them on to a um, it's like a freddie king song that they've never heard, right, or they, or they think that this one song is done by some song, and no, you know, joni mitchell wrote that back in like 1969, or whatever. You know, right, right, can I go really, and then you know, or just to tell them that I knew jeff buckley. They kind of freak out. You know, jeff buckley is like a legend to those kids.
Speaker 1:Now right, yeah he was.
Speaker 2:uh, he would have been so great had he lived, of course, but yeah, so I'm there now like one full day a week, which is just fine with me. One full day is enough.
Speaker 1:Do you do much private teaching, like online or in person or anything like that?
Speaker 2:During COVID. I made more money that year than ever in my life. I was doing like five or six lessons a day, got it. And I also had a class with John Harrington, the guitar player for Steely Dan Okay, yeah day. And I also had a class with John Harrington, the guitar player for.
Speaker 2:Steely Dan okay yeah, he's a good, he's a good friend of mine and we had a Harrington Hines workshop. We did, and we would charge people money. They would, we would send backing tracks to them. We just made it really quick, two minutes, and they would solo on it and send it back to us and we would, we would, we would critique them in a in a in a zoom thing for a couple hours every month. And we had guests. We had guest artists. We had Robin Ford and Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale and who else?
Speaker 2:Lyle Workman, I think, did it one time and different people, you know, were just friends, because Luca there lives right down the street from me. Actually, I have an idea for a Bonamassa thing, I'm animasa thing. I'm going to try to get him to do this. I I'm getting ready to start doing some videos again and I want to be there talking about whatever I'm going to be talking about. And then I want joe to walk up with a cup of coffee behind me, says here, mr irons, here's your coffee. Thanks, joe. Joe, I told you two lumps of sugar, you know. Whatever. Just to do a cameo. I think would be hilarious, you know, just to have him walk through and not even introduce him at all, you know anyway, but no, I did yeah I do.
Speaker 2:You know it comes and goes. If I don't advertise on instagram or something, I do an average of three or four lessons a week. Sure, you know, but if I and I put the word out there I just want to get a little more work that week I'll beef it up, but it's a twice that or so. But you know it's definitely calmed down since covid is over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I kind of go through my phases where it's I've taken them off my website for now because I just I'm traveling too much and it's hard to arrange them all you know timing wise, like, oh well, this person's in England I got to figure out when I'm available and they're available, and of course I could be more organized and have some kind of a you know scheduling thing on my website, but I don't, so I just kind of get a hold of them, said hey, when are you available?
Speaker 1:and that's, and so often you get with these guys and it's like it's like counseling instead of playing, and I'm fine with whatever, but it just sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's true sometimes, and there's you have the other side of the spectrum too, where I have one kid in uh alabama who's actually korean, who's adopted by this french guy who married a southern girl and he's korean, this old korean kid. He's 12 years old and he has this weird I can't remember the name of it, but it's a weird um sensory, some kind of disease, where if he concentrates too much on the visual then he won't be able to hear, or too much on the like. They said they put him to a swimming pool one time. He couldn't figure out how to, how to swim because he couldn't paddle his feet, but once they put flippers on his feet he could feel them. So he had he could that. That triggered the feeling. Where you do it same way with guitar. He has a real hard time keeping anything in time because he can't feel the beat. You know he's got this weird. There's a certain name for it and it's a learning disability.
Speaker 2:But he's the coolest kid. He works his butt off and every month, every week, he writes me this big long. Here's what I work on for this week, alan, and he's really great. He's coming along, he's getting really good, he's learning. I mean, he's learning all this stuff that I never thought. He's 12, he's gonna be great. I just hope he keeps it love.
Speaker 2:You know, a lot of kids, you know, give it up after you know that is they. It's like I've seen like tennis kids too. They go. He's the next rafael nadal and six months later he goes. I hate tennis, you know. I hope it's like a beauty pageant moms you press their kids to go, but, um, hopefully he won't turn into that. But so far, yeah, he's the other side of the spectrum, who's just so into it. He writes, he's like, and he listens to everything and he gets it. Um, yeah, there's all. And I gave a lesson to a guy today in spain who was, you know, he's like an older guy who you know, you know, is having trouble. You know, playing a complete C scale, you know, all the way through. So you get all sorts of all levels, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no doubt about it, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's a trip. It becomes like. It becomes like psychology, doesn't it? I mean, you cause you a lot of him, you're. I can kind of see when they're kind of insecure and they're making excuses or or they have like some other kind of other, some other other thing happening in their life and I it's uh. It turns into more than just a lesson about uh modes or right, yeah, it's, it's an interesting uh.
Speaker 1:I was talking with uh did this guitar camp last summer and, um, and I shared this house and Eric Johnson was in there and we're. You know, I've known Eric for a while and he's always nice as pie and and I sat in on his uh workshop and these people were asking, you know, they were asking various different questions but I I was like, you know, eric, if I was, if I was in a lesson with you or something like that, I would know exactly. Hey, you know, you do these really cool chord voicings. Give me like four chord voicings you do over an A minor 7. You know what I mean? Or something like that. I would just have questions prepared. You know what I mean Of stuff that, hey, this is something I can tangibly take from this person that interests me and I just find it so amazing that 99% of the people that take lessons don't have that mentality. I mean not that I'm judging, but I guess I kind of am.
Speaker 2:No, it's true. I know I know, like some teachers who I know who are probably better teachers at a low, well, at a level, they have like a worked out schedule of things they want the students to do every week.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You got to practice this in this position all the way up and down in quarter notes. End of story. You know, do it Right. Well, I tend to be a little more on the spacey edge myself. I mean I tend because a lot of my concepts are they're geared towards guys who already kind of know that stuff. And I try to, I try to, I try to get them thinking outside the box. That's the box, that's the problem. The comment I get from most of my students are like I paint myself into a box, I'm stuck, I don't know where to go. So, you know, I have all these exercises on how to, like, improve your visual. They say you know visualizing the fretboard, uh, and learning the scales and thinking intervals, and, uh, I don't know. I think you know it's, it comes down. There's so many videos of people teaching the basic stuff. Right, I sometimes wonder why they would even come and you know ask. You know how do you hold your pick?
Speaker 1:you know right exactly, so it kind of becomes psychology.
Speaker 2:You know, you've got to get into their heads a little more um, and I love it when they get it or when something's sparked. You can see. You can see the light bulb go on, all of a sudden.
Speaker 1:yeah, when someone really gets it, it's awesome and and they're like oh my God, that was a revelation and ever since then you know that's the best Speaking of stupid questions.
Speaker 2:There's the last videotape of Jaco Pastorius at Musicians Institute. He's doing a clinic in 1985 when I was a student there, and you can hear me stand up and ask him a question. It's my you can't see me, but you can hear my voice. And I said and Jaco, he's talking, and people were asking stupid questions, you know. So I stood up and went Jaco, of all the great things you've done, what are your favorite tracks? What are your favorite memories of sessions? And he goes, he gets really quiet and goes.
Speaker 1:What do you mean? And?
Speaker 2:I knew I was kind of in trouble right when he said that I was like uh-oh, again he goes. I said, well, I mean Joni Mitchell Weather Report, you know, matheny. I said, were there, what did anything? He goes, look he goes. I've got four kids and I love them all the same.
Speaker 1:Ah, there you go.
Speaker 2:So I was like okay, I'll just sit back down with my tail between my legs. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Well, listen, my friend, it's been so awesome talking with you. I'm glad we had an opportunity to find to have a chat face-to-face and hopefully when I'm out there in California we can actually be literally in the same room so we can shoot the shit.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm looking forward to it. The 19th I'll be here, so if you have time I know you'll be busy If you get time, shoot me a text and I'll run over to Venice the 19th I'll be here. So if you have time, I know you'll be busy, but if you get time, shoot me a text and we'll um, I'll run over to Venice.
Speaker 1:That'd be awesome. It'd be great to see you. Thanks so much, greg. Thank you, have a good one, take it easy. Thank you so much, folks, for tuning in. Special Thank you to Wildwood guitars of Louisville, colorado, and the mighty Fishman Transducers for making this podcast possible. If you enjoyed yourself, ladies and gentlemen, please subscribe and review so that people can get the word out that this is worth experiencing. Can you dig it? Thanks again. We'll see you soon or you'll hear me soon.
