Willie Pollock On Blues Roots, Berklee Lessons and The Long Island Scene

Music careers rarely move in a straight line, and Willie Pollock is proof. We talk about how a junior high knee injury took him out of sports and pushed him into a music store, where a rented guitar and Mel Bay books started a chain reaction that never really stopped. From learning solos off vinyl and chasing Duane Allman’s slide sound to hearing Robben Ford on Long Island radio and realizing there was a deeper vocabulary to master, Willie shares the moments that shaped his ear, his taste, and his identity as a guitarist.

The story turns when an unexpected Jazz Improv elective in college makes the whole thing click and puts him in demand overnight. That spark leads to Berklee College of Music, then back to the Long Island music scene and the Manhattan grind, where original bands, showcase gigs, and low pay test your spirit fast. Willie breaks down the real-life mechanics of becoming a working musician: relationships, subs, bandleaders, touring opportunities, and why “connections” often come from simply showing up and playing well.

We also get into the part of the journey people don’t romanticize: choosing a teaching career for stability while staying a musician at heart. Willie explains how he brings music into the classroom, what he learns from kids as technology changes, and why phones, social media, and AI music tools like Suno raise big questions about creativity and craft. He closes with the freedom retirement brings, including a hard line many players eventually draw: only taking gigs that feel meaningful.

If you care about blues guitar, Berklee stories, the working musician life, music education, and what AI might do to songwriting, press play. Subscribe, share this with a musician friend, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Transcript

Meeting Willie Pollock

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Okay, so this is episode 31 of On Drums. I am Johnson Mione. Today I have my good friend. Actually, we only did one gig together, right? But Willie Pollock's here today. Um, and uh I I heard your name for forever in the Long Island like scene and everything, and then we did one gig together about a month ago, was it?

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Yeah, it was kind of a gig. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

So I it's funny how how that works with like no like knowing people, but then you don't know them until you all of a sudden heard a gig together. Yeah, same with me. I've heard your name forever, John. Yeah, so it's just so weird. So so um I'm interested in um I want you to tell me all your stuff here, man. Like what um how how did all this start for you? Like because you're you you're you're a full-time musician now.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

And and but you played all your whole life, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

And but you did other things. So what so how uh I'm interested let's go to s to the beginning, like where it where it started for you.

Family Records And Early Piano

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Okay. Um back in junior high. Um Everybody starts in junior high. Everybody starts in junior high. I wish I would have started younger, but um I've got older siblings, a lot of music in my family, but no one played any instruments. We did have a piano. How many siblings do you have? I had three sisters and a brother. Oh my god. All much older. My oldest sister was like a Woodstock Woodstocker. Uh-huh. And she was like a hipster. She had jazz records and stuff like that. And then my brother and sister, other two sisters, just had a slew of records and eight-track tapes and all that. So uh-track tapes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's funny. I grew up, we had a piano, I had piano lessons as a kid. Um they told me I had a great ear. Of course, uh, you know, uh the piano teacher would play a note and I would find it right away.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Oh, so you took piano first?

SPEAKER_01 1:59

I did as a little kid, yeah. I can still remember some of the little jingles that I learned. Um we had a uh the piano bench was filled with music. I would memorize all the words to the song. My older sister took piano lessons also. So there was m sheet music in there, like, you know, the impossible dream and just like crazy stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

And um Were were your parents musicians? They just cool about it. They just Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

They just had the piano there. And um no musicians, no. And my dad listened to like, you know, Sinatra and Elvis and stuff and other stuff, but I mean it was not really it wasn't a big music family, it was a lot of sports. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. Um but um, you know, I I remember my earliest records that I love was like the Fifth Dimension, Aquarius. I had that record. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

God.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

That whole record.

Injury Sparks The Guitar Decision

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Anyway, um, so you know So you started playing guitar in junior high?

SPEAKER_01 2:57

In junior high, what happened was um I had to stop playing sports for a while. I uh I had this uh hereditary disease in my knee, Osgood Slaughters, a lot of people have it, and basically uh took me out of being able to play sports. And my mom I was driving my mom crazy, and we were driving around, and I was just like, I think it was on a whim basically, driving past a musical store, and I was like, you know, how about guitar, you know? And uh she she brought me in, it was like a spur-of-the-moment decision. She brought me into the store, she wouldn't buy me a guitar. I had we rented one and I had her sign up for lessons, and my first teacher, uh Frank Fico, it was the same store in Massapequa, um, where the aggrestas owned it, and Brian Sensor took lessons there and other notables came out of there. Um but um I had to go through those Mel Bay Mel Bay. The Mel Bay books one through five, went through all of them reading, you know. And um, you know, it was easy for me. Right. I didn't practice that much, you know, but so you just said like a natural ability for guitar.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

That's interesting because you said your family was more uh they were athletic. You used to do sports.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

All sports. Well, I mean my older sister, like I said, was more of like a hippie and stuff like that, but she was way older than me. She was twelve years older than me, which back then was like a lot of years in between us. Um But there was a l they were always listening to music. My one sister, Beth, I remember, uh I was playing guitar for a while and she would bring me to concerts, like we went to see Muddy Waters and David Bromberg, and like I remember all these things. They don't even remember taking me. I'm always reminding them, like, you remember you did this, you remember we went there, you remember and they're like, What? We did that? How old were you? I was telling my brother, my brother used to set up concerts in Boston College, and he's eight years older than me. And I told him, I was like, Yeah, um, you know, you took me to see Dave Mason, the acoustic show with uh Mike Finnegan playing, they were playing acoustic guitars, and I got to carry the guitars onto the stage, and he was like, I had you with me in Boston College? And I was like, Yeah, and he was like, How did you even get there? And I was like, on a bus. So I was like, and I always tell people, like, because I had older older siblings, and my parents, I don't know what they were. Were you the youngest? You're the youngest by far. Yeah. And so I always say that I was raised by wolves and lady luck because nobody was watching anything that I was doing. Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

And I just basically Which was not so bad, right? Everything turned out okay.

Learning Solos Off Vinyl

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Yeah, I mean, in the long run. I mean, I learned a lot of hard lessons that way because I had really had no guidance. Right. Right. You know, but uh but you know, you persevere and then hopefully you come out okay on the other side. So I took lessons and then um from there, you know, going through junior high, I be fell in love with um the Orman brothers and uh would start to uh learn solos, pick off solos off the records by p moving the needle. Yeah, I remember that. Nope, by nope, you know what I mean? I ruined a lot of records that way. Uh but that was what I was doing. I I was I had a I remember I had um a picture of Dwayne Orman like over my bed. This is maybe like eighth, ninth grade, uh, and um he had that that slide on his finger and I was like looking at it and I was like, Oh, I gotta get one of those, you know? And I went to the drugstore and I started opening the different uh pill bottles. Oh and I came to this one, Corus Eden, at the time, opened it up, it looked like the same bottle that he was using. I had no idea that it actually was the same bottle until he was. He was using a pill bottle?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

I thought that was it a dedicated guitar thing that he had, like uh made for slide guitar.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Back then those guys would use anything that they could find, you know. That's why they called it bottleneck. Sometimes it was like a broken like wine bottleneck or something like that. Oh man. So I found that. And then when I was learning his solos, I also kind of realized through trial and error that like he must have been in a different tuning because I wasn't getting the note, you know, with when you play slide guitar, you have to play the two notes like together. And when I would play it, I couldn't get the same two notes together, like adjacent to each other. So I was like having to like turn the slide on like an angle to get the notes, and I was like, there's something to this. Like intuitively, I kind of knew that he was doing something different, but it wasn't until years later because I had really no no guidance with that. The guys that were teaching me guitar lessons didn't weren't teaching me blues and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

So they were teaching you Mel Bay, the Mel Bay books.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Mel Bay, and maybe that I had this other guy who wanted me to learn like James Taylor finger picking stuff, and you know, it was all good, but it wasn't like the blues, you know, which was what I loved, you know. So that's kind of that's kind of how it started, and it just kind of went from there. I I uh I fell in love with Jimi Hendricks and Dwayne Allman and Eric Clapton, and I learned a lot of those songs note by note, did my best with them even way back then. And then um, you know, over time my uh my taste sort of evolved past that because I I don't want to say I got a little bored with it, but um I kind of wanted to sound a little different than other players after a while once I got into high school and moving through high school and I my one teacher uh actually told me, and this was probably later in high school, he said uh Dennis McNamara used to have uh live concerts on W L I R R W L I R. WLIR, I remember that. Right. And he would have live concerts from whatever local because there was a lot of music on Long Island, all the acts would come here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

And uh You're talking about like 19 was this like the late 70s. Late 70s or 79.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Yeah. And um he said, listen to this guy uh tonight on uh L I R um Robin Ford. And uh so I I listened to it and uh taped it. And that kind of changed everything for me. And nobody at that time, now when I go on the internet, I see like there's a whole website of people around the world that listen to Robin Ford, but I thought I was like the only guy, you know? Yeah. Him and Larry Carlton.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

He well those yeah, those guys are big limit big influences for for everybody, I think. I mean, those guys were the the staples. They were like st the Steve Gadd of guitar.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Yeah, you know, like Yeah, the modern sort of more like um yeah, diverse players.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

So you went so you did you played in high school, I guess, and then what happened after high school?

SPEAKER_01 9:08

After high school, I went to uh I didn't know I I was like pretty unmotivated with a lot of stuff. Like I I didn't care about getting a driver's license because I had a skateboard. I didn't care about going to college. I was I was like always like the the dumb kid in the smart classes, like because I never applied myself to anything, you know what I mean? So um I wound up going to Plattsburgh University uh for to study earth science. I went there for one semester.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Wait what made you choose earth science?

Jazz Improv Changes Everything

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Because I was a surfer and I just liked the environment and everything, and I just didn't, you know, I didn't know what I liked. Yeah. I knew I really didn't like math. I didn't really have an acumen for math. I was more uh, you know, so earth science. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. So I went there and uh uh but of course when you first when you first go to college, you're not necessarily right into the sort of your core, you know, you take you're just taking regular classes, and uh one of the courses as an elective that I took was called Jazz Improv. And I had no idea what it was gonna be. Right. And uh I went into this room, it was all these kind of guys that had played in bands like high school bands, a trumpet player or this or that, a drummer that was actually a pretty good jazz drummer was there. There was an upright bass player, and there was this teacher uh named Doc Miller. And what they did was uh they played this song, I never I'll I'll always remember it. Um the first day I'm in there and everyone's in a circle, and they put on this song uh and uh I didn't even know who Miles Davis was at the time, I don't think. But it was one of his like an F blues, and they put it on and they played the head, and then everyone w went around soloing, and it came to me, and I'm listening to this and I'm going, Oh, this is just the blues. I know I can play on this. And like I know I need bebop language, yeah, but I knew how to bend notes and play the blues, you know. So it came to me, you know. I I I played what I played, whatever it was, and uh and it and then at the end of the class I had all these guys coming up to me saying, Can you be in our band? You know what I mean? And so that kind of started me on my journey to studying music, you know, from there. I had never taken it seriously up to that point. You know, like I loved playing guitar in high school, but I'd never really thought of myself as like a either a pro or even someone that was gonna really, you know, dedicated myself.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

So you went to school for science w what w right?

Switching To Berklee And Finding A Path

SPEAKER_01 11:30

And then so what you do you just you kept a science major and you then you No, what happened was uh I I took that class and then in the next semester at Plattsburgh I switched to music. Oh but it was like it was like now it was like classical and it was like I was taking courses like antiquity to sixteen hundred music performance, not music education. It was just called it wasn't music ed, it was or performance. It was just there they didn't really I don't think still have different majors. I think it was just music major. And it was um you know, you would have to do a jury at the end to to graduate or whatever. Um so I'm taking these classes and some of them are really hard, you know. I remember and I had a yeah, it was it was very like I had to be in the chorus, which I was like losing my breath and getting dizzy.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

I didn't like I had to do this, I had to do all this stuff. Girls I hated it.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Yeah, that I didn't like uh it was it was hard for me. Um but um my dad who was it was really sort of it I told my brother this not long ago and he was like you gotta be kidding me. He really said that. He was a World War II and Korea veteran who like basically had no siblings and was like raised himself. I don't know how he did it, but he was like really like that kind of guy.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Right, so he's talking about the 40s and 50s type. Yeah, my dad was the same era, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

So he he said to me, Listen, I see you're studying music, why don't you go to a music school? And I was like, uh okay, you know. And so he said, What are the music schools? And I just looked at it very briefly and I said, Well, there's one called Berkeley in Boston. And my brother had gone to Boston College. And so I wound up that very next year at Berkeley. Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

So you did one year in um Plattsburgh. Plattsburgh, and then you went to Berkeley.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

And they did any of those credits transferred over for you or not too many.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Not too many. Um I'm trying to remember. I mean, probably a few. Did you do four years at Berkeley? I did. Yeah, so you I graduated. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

And you graduated with a music degree.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Yeah, and I switched a couple different majors at Berkeley. Like I tried Music Ed at Berkeley, and I was like, and again with like guys that had been in band and all that, and I was like, I done this is this is why I never I I didn't fit in with them at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I learned some cool stuff. I mean, they had me, I can still play like scales on a trombone and I I know how to conduct, you know.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

I went to school for music performance, which is a ridiculously dumb degree. You know, I it's you don't want to be a good idea. What do you do with it? Yeah. Yeah, so I went before I and I loved school. I went to school with the with, you know, Weckel and and Joel Rosenblatt, all these guys that were players, they were all great players. And I I loved school, and my dad my dad said to me at the end of the thing, um you know, if you want to stay at school, because he knew I loved it, we'll pay for you to go for an ed degree, because he wanted me to get an ed degree. So I said, great. And I did. Right. Never thinking I'd get a job. And then I did, and yeah, it was the end it was the end of that. I just thirty thirty-two years of teaching and you know, and it's over. You know, so I I I'd had no intention of going that way, you know, and I did, you know, so it's sort of sort of the same. Yeah, it's a similar journey. Yeah. So you got a degree in music and then one. What happened when you graduated? Um well I'll assume you were doing gigs through all this and a little bit, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

I was actually still going to Plattsburgh and playing gigs. I was still on weekends. I was because I had, you know, I had through the one year that I was there You gained some uh I started playing with a w a a couple different bands and one of them was still playing. So on weekends I would travel back there. I never played in Boston. But I would go on weekends back to Plattsburg. I did a couple different majors at Berkeley Music Ed. Then I did uh recording and engineering. Uh again, I learned a lot of cool stuff about different ways of micing things and all that, but didn't really stick with me. Then I did I wound up they didn't know what to do with me. I need they but I had a lot of credits. I'm asked. So they gave me this thing. What do we do with this guy? Yeah, right. We gotta get him out of here. He wants to leave. So they gave me a degree called Professional Music, which I don't know, but you know. But it was a degree.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

It's still a higher it's still a degree, right?

Back Home To Gig On Long Island

SPEAKER_01 15:37

It was a degree. And I came out of that and I just came back down to Long Island, and then uh I had all my friends were sort of into music, and that's when I started playing locally around on Long Island. I had uh one particular friend, uh my buddy George, who knew like Phil Semino from the Jim Small. His name is George McPhee. He wasn't a uh musician, but he was he's one of these guys that like he's the doorman at the high end in the city and he knows everybody. Right, yeah. You know, and he was like one of my best friends. I still feel Phil Phil, you know Phil Semino? He told me about the Jim Small band, and this guy Phil Semino likes the same kind of music as you and Phil.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

I you know, I try to get Phil to do this. He can you won't answer me? I don't know what he's doing. Phil's he should be like a drummer slash stand-up comedian. Oh yeah, oh my god. He's years I've been with him. He's funny.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Tears rolling down my cheeks with some of the stuff that we went through. Forget about it. Oh my god, he had me. And you know, his family, uh, we would play at his house all the time, and it would be great because his dad was from Tunisia, but they were from like Brooklyn.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

And so Phil was Italian and his grand his grandma, he was telling me his grandmother didn't speak English.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

No, they spoke French in the family. Yeah. So it would go from, hey, what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 16:47

He had the best stories about like his his growing up life. Like he told me a story one time that he was I don't know if we should tell us, but he he hey went to do the gig and he brought a girl home and he and he told the girl to go, you know, he should just go through that door and she fell down the stairs.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

It's true, it did happen. Oh my god. Yeah, no, and and him and his brother Vinny, he's a good drummer, also. Also, right. And they had they lived in the basement of that house that's that stairs led to. Right, right, right. And there was a very thin wall between the two rooms. And we would I would go over there and we would play in the main room, and then they had a door to each bedroom on the side there, and they would fight. And we would go into Phil's room and sit there, and then in the other room, him and Vinny would be throwing each other around the room, fighting, like seriously fighting, like brothers, like really going at it. So the wall would be s I mean we would be just sitting in the room going, Holy shit, like what the hell's going on in there, you know? But th those were good times, and uh and that was sort of like he was one of the guys I started playing with and from there just meeting other than that.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Phil played in a million dance. And I can't remember one myself.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

It was called Outback.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Oh, Outback.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Yeah, that's what it was called. And originally it was uh it was a jazz fusion thing with uh with Lenny La Penta.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Oh, Lenny was in it. So Lenny and I were in the same school district for thir for these past thirty some odd years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

It was with Lenny and we were doing like Tom Scott songs and like you know, kind of like, you know, whatever you call funk jazz stuff, you know, Grover Washington tunes and stuff like that. And then for some reason, we switched from Lenny over to uh Fred Ryder. I don't know if you know him, he's a really good sax player.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Uh that name sounds familiar.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

He was a burner. And uh but he was one that Phil got a lot of I mean, some of the stuff Phil would make f he would have us laughing so hard. I hate to say it, but kind of making fun of him. About making fun of us while we were driving to go pick him up. And then we would get there and we'd be like wiping the tears off of our cheeks, and Fred would be standing there, and I'd be like, I mean, Phil has you really had us going. Yeah. And then that fizzled, and then we brought a singer in, this guy, Bob uh Scheffler, and then we turned it into sort of a rock band, and we that's when we sort of started writing a lot of original material and you know, tried to get a record deal with. I hope we were playing in the village all the time. Yeah with you know, the Bitter End, Kenny's Castaways, all all around Manhattan. And um that that was when it was hard to park in Manhattan, and you weren't getting paid for any gigs, and it it kind of took a little bit of my spirit away after a while, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Kind of like it is now. Same thing. It's probably is. I don't go in anywhere. Yeah, I know. The gig pay is like 1970. It's the same. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Yeah, it was uh it was like it was like everything was just a showcase. Yeah. And it was the stupid A and R people coming to listen to you. Yeah, I remember it well. Yeah. Not the best of times for me anyway. Uh although I I somebody gave me a uh a CD of the recordings recently about 13 songs, and I was actually like I liked it more than I thought it. Like back then I couldn't listen to myself play. I would listen to that and I'd be like, Oh god, I could turn this off. I can't listen to that. It's terrible.

&B Bands Touring And Connections

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Yeah, I do that now. Um so so gimme so so now or you're post-college and you graduated. You're just doing gigs? So you you said you went into education.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

You started Yeah, so I got my uh my I was in the band called Initial Charge after Outback, and that was like a funk RB thing. Originally I was the only white guy in the band. Uh I I got in the band through, you know, connections again. Uh my girlfriend back at the time uh worked in a gym, and these other girls that were there were uh gonna be doing uh a performance at Sweetwaters in the city and selling tickets for it, and they needed a guitar player. So I joined that band and we would do like Y and Danch Day and this, and and it was and uh I could play RB. Like I was always like because we grew up in the 70s, so funky music was like in my blood. You know what I mean? I would play to the radio all the time.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Radio stuff was great in a sense. It was really all good stuff. Anything you heard on the radio was great.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Yeah, and that's what I would do. I would sit there and just jam to the radio. Yeah. And so uh we so we were doing like, you know, Shaka Khan, Aretha Franklin, like really um uh brand new heavies, like a lot of cool stuff. And then gradually, the players in that band, uh there was one the drummer was really good, but he was very busy. He was the main drummer in Le Miz in the city. Who names the drummer? Bill Lambham.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Bill Anham.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

You know Bill?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Of course I know Bill. Bill did this this podcast. Yeah. Billy um used to it's funny, it must be around the same time. He used to sub for me.

unknown 21:37

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

He was doing he was he was doing the road Le Miz. He was on the road now. Right. So he would sub out Le Miz to do a club date, to sub for me, because the club date paid more than the than the road gig. Oh see that? Yeah. I know Bill for for literally Oh man. That's amazing. Yeah. That's amazing. Great guy.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

I haven't seen him since yeah, he was a super nice guy. The other person who's still around on the scene is Dornette Darden. Do you know Dornette, the singer? She's she's still on the on on the circuit nowadays. Dornette, no. She's actually the one that brought me into that band. And um she and I and I met Bill, and Bill was Bill was the only guy, I hate to say, in the band that really could play. The other guys were kind of like, you know, the the keyboard player that she had met at church. So, you know, he was I remember he, you know, he just he wasn't well rounded at all, you know. And then uh or the bass player. So I brought in Barry Heller to play bass. I brought in um I think Vinny Semino to play drums. Why Vinny played? Yeah, because Bill couldn't do it a lot of times. And then um Manny Focorazzo to play drums. Sure, Manny Manny. Yeah, Manny's great.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Yes. So here's how our guy these connections. Manny's cousin is Carla. Yeah. And Carla is married to Dave Siegel, who I do a trio with. I do it, we do a Bill Evans trio. Dave's amazing. Yeah. So it's funny. I see Carla like every week we rehearse at our house. And it's funny, you bring up Manny, but you know, it's so funny, like we know all these people in common, but we never met I mean until the church gig.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

We didn't uh know each other really. Well, I'm not surprised about any of that, really. Uh yeah, so all those people, so we we did that initial charge band for a while, and uh eventually that fizzled, but uh that was good. We went to Germany, we traveled around a little bit. I met my wife in that band, she was one of the singers. Um and then after that I just started, you know, playing with the other people. I met Willie Steele around that time also, and that's the guy that I still play with, him and Frank Bellucci.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

And those are the guys that I sort of latch on to nowadays.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Willie Steele is a guitar player, isn't he?

SPEAKER_01 23:50

Yeah, but he hires me.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Willie's great. He's a great family. We just did a dual no not a dual gig, but a gig with we did a gig that Willie was on too. He was on before us. But I don't know it was just Willie, it was a trio. And it wasn't Frank playing drums. I think it was just no drummer, actually.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

I think it was just every you know, you don't even know who you're gonna be playing with when you play with him.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

With Willie.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

You don't even know who's gonna be there. I mean, I ask nowadays, you know what I mean? Uh and it's usually on drums, it's either Frank or Matt Miller. So yeah, and they're both great players. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

And then Matt was here about two months ago. Yeah. I took lessons from his dad.

unknown 24:28

You know.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Everybody did, you know. He's a legend, right? Yeah, I used to I used to I was telling him Al, right? Al, yeah. Nicest guy ever. And I'd come out of the lesson, and there would be Matt and his younger brother playing shit way better than I could play. They'd be banging on a pad like he used to want to smack them.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so we'll so Frank and you know, I I met Frank on Willie's gig. Frank Belushi. Yeah, yeah. And uh so and um so that's you know, I've been playing, I do with I do the Earth, Wind, and Fire thing now. Oh, which what band is that? That's called uh Shining Star.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Shining Star. So uh I know guys on that band. Is um Oh man. Who's playing drums in that band? Fran it's Frank's band. Oh, Frank, right. Frank's playing drums.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Um Kevin uh who's the singers?

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Kevin Morris. Kevin not Kevin Morris. Kevin There's two Kevins. Kevin Martin and Kevin Morris.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Right, Kevin Martin with was I used to play an uppercut. Yeah. And Kevin was in that band.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Right, right, right. Yeah, so those guys are the singers. Those two, and then whoever they can get for a third guy, it's been hard for them to get a solid third guy.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

Is Terry the girl you're doing that gig? Yes, Terry's doing it.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Wayne Schuster. Wayne, yeah. And then um Phil Gray's been the trumpet. Phil, yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

You d you know those guys have they do a thing every year called the uh Romeo Dinner. Did you hear about this? Well, they go out and hang out and it's called the Really Old Musicians. Yeah, yeah, I saw a picture of that. Well, I I've been somehow I got invited. You know, I don't even I was there the last two. And and Terry was there, and Wayne was there, and Phil. They were all there. You know, those guys just chill out in the city for for a night. I guess they you know they didn't I'm I hang out with you.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Well, you know, I'm kind of like maybe they don't think I'm old enough to do it, but I totally totally am. So I don't know what's going on with that.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

There's hardly any rhythm section players there.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

I don't know, so I'm surprised that you're there. I don't know how they're they're like a fraternity, those two.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

They are.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

Yeah.

Choosing Teaching For Stability

SPEAKER_00 26:26

But it's funny. It's a funny gig. There's a couple of there was a guitar player there who I sat next to, and also um Mike Hall goes, you know, Mike's a bass player. So there's a couple of rhythms. And Dave Siegel goes. Dave goes? Yeah. He picks me up. We I go I go to his house and then we drive. Anyway, let's get back to you. Um so now when did the teaching thing come in?

SPEAKER_01 26:47

So yeah, so uh my wife who I met in initial charge, um, we she became pregnant, and I just got tired of scraping for money, playing music, uh teaching lessons, half the people wouldn't show up for less, you know, people cancel right away on lessons, doing club dates, you know, playing a lot of music. I really didn't want to play. I was doing a lot of club dates. Yeah, club dates is blood money. Yeah, and it and it's almost like a trap once you start doing that. It isn't it's like stepping on gum. That's what it is.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

So um I just decided to pursue a couple of other things, and uh my mom actually encouraged me and she said she'd help me out with going back to school uh money wise. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

And uh so you didn't have to do a full four years, you but you had a lot of credits that kind of I got enough credits.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

I went to CW Post, that's what it was called at the time. It's a L I U now.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

And uh I went there and started taking I I thought about education, I thought about teach being a music teacher, and then I said, Well, there's only two music teachers in the school and there are like thirty regular classroom teachers because you know, I want to get a job. Right. And so uh I decided that um I would stick it out with just being a regular classroom teacher and uh and um I started taking night classes, one you know, one a semester, two a semester. Yeah, I didn't go full time uh but I got enough credits to um I started also I had some other connections too. Uh believe it or not, through um through surfing that I like to do as a kid. Um my old high school coach uh from junior high needed to borrow a surf bag to go to uh board bag to go to Barbados and when he came over to my house to borrow it, he asked me what I've been doing with myself and I told him, Well, I'm going back to school to be a teacher. And he was he was uh uh the um athletic director at a school right up the block from me and he said, Well, I can get you in subbing if you want.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

That's the way to do it, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Yeah, and then I said, Well, John, his name is John McGovern, he's still my boss after all these years. I said, What I'm also interested in, and believe it or not, is like what you do is teaching and lifeguarding in the summer. Yeah. And so I became a lifeguard.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

A lot of teachers do that. Yeah, they teach and they lifeguard in the summer.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

So I started doing that, and then eventually I really lucked out with the education thing. I got enough credits and I wound up doing student teaching right in my hometown, right at the school that I went to as an elementary school.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Which was what?

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Um It's in Massapo. It was called Birch Lane Elementary. So they had a list of schools you could apply for to possibly do your student teaching there, and I wound up going to the school that I went to as a kid, as a student teacher. And um I was there, and then uh a job opened up and a couple of the teachers liked me working with me and stuff like that. So so they kind of uh sort of talked the principal into interviewing me. And I'm gonna tell you one of the questions the principal asked me, I'll never forget it was, you know, we know you love music and we play music where you see you, we let you know, you've been a musician for all these years. If you teach in Massapua, are you still gonna be a musician?

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Why why would he ask that? Because he d think it maybe distract you from your job?

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Yeah. Really? Is that why you asked? Uh I think so. And I said, um That's interesting. I said, uh honestly, I said, I'm always gonna be a musician.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Yeah, it shouldn't it should be an asset to, you know, play guitar and it was.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

I I worked it into my career. I had the guitar on the wall, I would write songs about Egypt. When I got my social studies job, I wrote a song about Greece, about Egypt, about Mesopotamia. I mean, I wrote songs I would like, you know, you know.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

See that that's that's interesting because it's it, man, forever there's always been that divide between music education and academic education. There's always been some disconnect there where they always put more weight on academics and not as much on music. And music was like, you know, the Department of Entertainment and not really said important. I got I went through this my whole career. People saying, well, I you know, he's gonna miss lessons because he has to go to biology, because that's more important, because he's probably gonna be biologist, you know, it was ridiculous. You know, and it's still today. Today, it's like, you know, what I go to open house for my kids, and parents are asking the band teacher, well, what if he has lessons w during his math class? And the teacher's like, well, he's got lessons. Well, no, then he I'm sorry, he can't. It's like it's such a bizarre mentality between the between music and academics. Like the academic teachers feel like not not you, I don't not judging you, but you know, like the science teachers and the math teachers, they just a different attitude, you know. Absolutely. Because they feel more important. They feel like that's more important.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

And you know, respect uh wise too, like when I was going for when I was a musician, and people would ask me, Well, what do you do? And I would say I'm a musician, they'd be like, Oh, oh, yeah, those guys.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Meanwhile I'm practicing like eight hours a day.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

You know what's funny about it is you know, I went I I I sort day uh Weckle did an interview like a month or two months ago, whatever it was, and I and he said the him and I always were sympathetic. We always saw eye to eye on on things. And he said the thing that made everything make sense to me, which was he didn't choose drums, drums chose him. And that's what people don't get if you're a non-musician. Right? If you're an if you're an accountant or whatever you do, you're bricklayer, I don't know, and you're not a musician and you don't get it. It you don't get it, right? I mean, uh we don't have a choice, right? You you and I and everybody else I know who's who's really a musician doesn't have a choice. You know, it's it's uh and that's why I get pissed off when I see people who are sort of like musicians who are like kind of butchering the music, you know, music. It's like it's like you're you're hitting my kid, you know what I mean? It's like it it's it's upsetting and they just don't get it. They really don't get it.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

You don't want to come across the wrong way about that, but you know, they really it they're you know, they just don't it's not the same. And Frank always uses the word hacks. Ah, they're hacks, they're hacks, and I don't like to say that. Frank Frank Belushi, yeah, because he always because you know, him, he's like a gypsy when it comes to music, you know. But um but I mean, you know, it it's just I can't I and even since then, when after I became a teacher, and by the way, when you tell people you're a teacher, they're like, oh, that's great. Yeah, right, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

God bless you.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

You know, but when you're a musician, they're like, oh, right, you're homeless.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

I I really hate that, man.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

I gotta tell you, that that bothers me.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

You know, I I remember dating a girl like man, this is 30 years ago, whatever. She was she had her own company and she was had a lot of money and she lived in the city, the whole deal. And it was going places, and and then one night at dinner she said, you know, if if we ever had kids, they're not gonna be musicians. And in my mind, I was like, Well, that's the end of that one. That's the deal later. How can you say that? It's a craziness, man. And and again, she just didn't get it. You know, she just didn't have whatever that is that you need to have to understand.

unknown 33:45

You know.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Well, we're blessed, John, because we're gonna have this thing for the rest of our life as long as we can. Exactly. We're gonna have this thing that keeps our mind going and our our and physically we're gonna be, you know, still playing and trying to get better. Yeah. And getting better, actually, in different ways.

Modern Music And AI Song Tools

SPEAKER_00 34:01

You know, Yeah, I feel like I feel like I'm I'm playing I feel more comfortable now than I did twenty years ago playing. And that's something. You know, it's just weird. It it's such a weird thing. Like it's it's it's almost like you like a DNA thing. Like you it's just there. It's in you, it's like part it's it's part of the code that you have. Uh-huh. I feel I don't know. I mean you know, I just I I always take everything about music personally. You know? I it I do. I I you know and and my kids listen to this stuff. I was like, oh you know, it's just bizarre. The music now is like I mean what do you what do you think about music now? I mean it's not like it was when you knew when you put the radio on in 1979, those guys were playing and singing, right? That was them. Now you don't know what, right? You don't know what you're listening to. They don't even call it writing music, they call it writing beats. Well, that's part of it. There's there's a thing called um have you heard of this website called Suno?

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Oh my god. It writes music for you.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

Yeah it's it does. It writes you just put lyrics in. And you say I want an R and B, uh make it this style, I'd like to hear a soul guitar solo, you know, verse chorus verse, whatever, and it it does it. Yeah it's nuts.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

When I go to weddings, I hear like, well, first of all, like if you think about 30 year olds and what they're listening to, um they one cool thing is that they have music that they listen to, like my daughter's age group, uh, but they do that pogo stick dancing where they're just jumping up and down and like doing the and doing this, and but they're shouting the lyrics like they know the words to the songs. Right. So it's real music at least. Yeah. You know? But it's not I don't know, it's not the it's not music that I would listen to, but uh that's that's an a few an older generation too. But it is now you're talking about it is something that's that's come since then. Right. I don't even know what that is.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

I I don't I don't know where it's gonna go from here because um Do you know Ken Talvey, he's a guitar player? Yeah, so I do a tr I do Ken's fusion trio with uh you know Sam Powell. Yeah, you can't see Sam's in the band also. Right. And um Ken's daughter is is a writer, she works for Hans Zimmer.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

So she writes real scores. She does, you know, like The Simpsons and Yeah, you were talking about it when we played recently. Right, right. And the he's kind of worried about that, I think, because maybe this could take that over. You know, if you want to score a film, you could just say, you know, score a film. Score a film, you know, and you can tweak it and do all this other weird stuff to it. You n nobody will ever know.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

No.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

It's biz it really is a crazy I didn't want to hear about this till I heard about a month ago. Yeah. And I started messing around with it. Yeah. It's just it's weird. It really is weird.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Yeah. It is. And it's uh and it's sort of why I I w the way I pursue music now is just worrying about my own playing, playing gigs and just sort of, you know, appreciating that experience and not and not worrying about writing music to try and sell it to anybody or I mean not that I wouldn't want to write music and stuff like that and play it and and do that, but but as but that field is, you know, I think it's crazy.

MS 101 Phones And Middle School Life

SPEAKER_00 37:10

It's a it's a bizarre it well I don't want to get it to it because I get I get upset. Yeah. So so tell me um tell me about uh you w w when did you start teaching science, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:22

You started teaching science No, I was actually well I was a sixth grade teacher and the job that I got. Well they they they they compandalize it. So you can either be a math science teacher. Or social studies ELA, which is the job that I got. So I taught social studies in ELA for most of my career, and then when they moved us to the junior high, I got this really cool class called MS 101. It sounds like a street gang.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

It does, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

But it's middle school 101. And what what it basically was was it was almost really like a psychology course for kids that are probably too young to not be in the elementary school, right? So you you're at this developmental age where you're taking kids and you're putting them into a junior high with older kids instead of them being the big dogs of the younger of the of the elementary school, where you've got second graders walking in lines in the h in the hallways holding hands, and now you've got seventh and eighth graders older than them dropping F bombs in front of them and and you know, didn't doing all sorts of crazy stuff in the hallway and in the lunchroom. So a lot of the sixth graders in Massapeka was back and forth. They were parents were fighting and fighting and fighting. They didn't want it, they didn't want it. But finally the sixth grade went over to the junior high. I went over with them, and I got this course MS 101, and it was the most awesome course ever because it was um every day the kids I had them write in a gratitude journal to start the class, so they had to put a date and write, you know, something they were grateful for. Like I'm grateful for my mom because she cooked spaghetti last night. Like you couldn't just write your mom, you had to write something that she did for them, you know. So we'd start out that way, we would do breathing exercises, we would do conflict resolution goal setting, uh all the stuff.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

Wow, that's that sounds like a every a class every school should have.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

Yeah, and I think it's good for adults too. I think you know what I mean. It was phenomenal. And uh for me, uh it was a pass fail class, so there's no it wasn't grading anything. Okay, that's yeah. And then um and then it was I didn't I never even knew who my uh curriculum associate was, like the the head of my department. Like I never met him. I w I taught that class for I swear I I taught that class for like maybe uh maybe six years before I retired, and I never even met the guy. That's great. It was unbelievable. I mean, if there was ever a uh a way that like a job where I could have kept working, but it was still it was still taking a lot out of me. Because as you I was getting older and the kids were staying that same age, there was more g gap in between me and the kids. And after a while, we you know, like when I first started teaching, like my kid my own kids were the same as the kids I was teaching. Yeah. So they were watching the same program, SpongeBob, and you know, other stupid stuff on Nickelodeon, there were no cell phones, and it was like, you know, it was very sort of like I was like really like sort of immersed in it and I liked it, you know. Yeah. The only thing that was bad about it was it did interfere with with practicing as much as I wanted to, and it took a lot of my energy. Right. And that's the way it takes a lot of your energy. Yeah, that's the way it is. That's the oh that's always the downside.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

I I did uh when I my entire career I played every weekend. I mean, literally every weekend, I maybe have one or two off in here and there, but I was playing with you know, every band I joined from nineteen eighty to like ten years ago was was one of those hundred or plus gigs a year band.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

You know, I mean I was with Gus Coletti for eighteen.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

That's a working place.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

And it and it it it just didn't stop. You know, it was like you get home from work, take a nap, and then you get back in the car, get your tucks on, and you go back to work again, you know. It was rough. It was it was a rough existence.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

I was doing not as many club dates as an office like that, but I was playing enough for sure every weekend. And then I was also lifeguarding, and there were times where lifeguarding would start on the weekends while still was school was still going on, and then I was going to gigs that night, and it was like three jobs at once. Yep. And it was it really kicked my ass.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

So w when did you when did you stop teaching?

SPEAKER_01 41:17

Two years ago. This is my second year retired.

SPEAKER_00 41:18

Oh, you're second year retired?

SPEAKER_01 41:20

Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah, second year retired, and um I haven't even gone back to the school once to say hello to everybody.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

I tell you what, man, when I left I didn't even look back. I just like I just I didn't even clean up my desk. I just drove away. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

Like there's a box of stuff that I took out of the class but at the end I really didn't have a lot of stuff because in the junior high, you don't even have your own classroom. So all of a sudden it went from having your own classroom with a desk and everything to like I was just using a Chromebook and I didn't have even a poster on the wall. So that was kind of a good thing. But I have a box of yearbooks and stuff like that at home and I haven't some. I haven't even opened it much time.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

So you you were in you were in in the classroom when when phones became a thing and like I just caught the end of that. Yeah. I used to like when I my last year teaching phones were not quite the c quite an issue. I mean, and I was it was a different time back then, yeah. And I was very strict about it. I would I wouldn't have it in my class. Yeah. But now it's it's like nuts with this stuff that's going on. Yeah, I mean it's I mean, you must have had that in your class, right? Kids were trying to look at their phones or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Yeah. Um in more in the junior high. Junior high, yeah. Yeah. And in the elementary school it wasn't that bad, John. But when I went to the uh junior high, and then Massa Picqua did this crazy thing, which I actually commend them for. They actually took the phones out of the classroom.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

Yeah, they did it, they're doing it now. That's trending now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

I mean kids were still sneaking them in their sweatshirts and you know, uh and you know, trying to use them still. And then they, of course, they've got the w the smart watches and stuff like that. So the but uh but yeah, I mean it's weird. I used to go on field I have pictures of the kids in field trips where they would be sitting there, we would go on a field trip, we'd go out to eat somewhere, and they're all sitting at the table talking to each other, and then at the end, nobody's talking to anybody. They're all just staring at their phones.

SPEAKER_00 43:09

Wow, I just uh we're we're having that that here with m you know, my kids, they they have limited use compared to their friends who have un unlimited use of everything. You know, no no um restrictions at all. Every one of them. You know, and I'm talking about you know, 13 year olds, 14 year olds. They're just they're just they're stuck on it, you know. So my kids are kind of the odd kids out because I we don't have it really. And I think there's a few other parents that are like that, but not many. You know.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

Not enough. Yeah. That's a blessing. They'll they'll they're you know, in the long run, obviously, I think it's really good for them. I mean there's all sorts of information out there and people basically saying that kids starting so young with with uh the phones and social media is just not a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 43:55

No, it's not. It can't be. And you know, it it affects everything. Anyway, so You retired two years ago and and through your teacher how long did you teach?

Retirement And Only Taking Good Gigs

SPEAKER_01 44:05

Uh I taught twenty six plus one years. They gave me one extra year uh for uh subbing because I sub like every day in the district. Right. And then because of my age, because I started at an older age, I qualified to retire with only twenty-five years of teaching.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

Oh, that's great. So you get your full pension.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

Yeah, I got my full pension. It all lined up together. I turned the same age, I turned sixty-two with twenty-five years of teaching, and then got an extra year because of the and you know a lot of teachers I've heard I've heard them say all the time, Well, no matter what, I'm working thirty years, blah, blah, blah. You know, my pension's gotta be this, my pension's gotta be like, and I was feeling like at the end of my career, I was feeling like I'm eligible now, I'm going next. That's what I did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

My my birthday's in June, and I I went in June. I went, you know, I I uh I always said my birthday was June 7th. I I was gonna not show up June 8th of the retirement year, you know. But I did, you know. But the it's it's funny, uh, you know, I did 32 years and my wife has to do thirty.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

She has to do thirty years. Right, right. And you have to have both those things. Yeah, so I was older, so in a sense I lucked out. You know what I mean? Yeah, because you get social security, right, and all that stuff. You're doing that. Yeah, I'm not doing that yet, but I mean, um, but and then my lifeguarding, I got some time for that also. Uh-huh. Uh with lifeguarding with a pension, it's like you can't you can only get Oh right, because you can't make money.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

Yeah. Um Or they're there they have their own pension, don't they?

SPEAKER_01 45:29

They have their own pension, but the thing is is that in terms of your service time, you can't add it on from lifeguarding because you can't earn more than one year of service time in a year. Right. So, but if you if you were a lifeguard before you started teaching, you can that time counts. And I was. I was a lifeguard first. So I got a little extra time for that too. And um so I was, you know, I wasn't sure if I would have enough money to retire.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

Nobody's sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

But I totally do. I totally do.

SPEAKER_00 45:58

Yeah, I mean uh you know you want to hear something funny? We're we're way off the subject of music, by the way. I know, I know. But um I I I had kids so late in my life that I I collect the Social Security at 62. And when you have children under 18 and you collect, they also get your benefit. Yes. Nobody knows that.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

That's a freaking great.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

Yeah, so I have three of them, they get they get the same amount. What? And it's tax free. God bless. No, but see, it's kind of like nobody knows that because they don't want you to know it. They want you to just like kinda like wait till sixty five and you know, miss that whole thing. I do like that. Yeah, so you know. Oh, good for you. That's awesome. I still rather be young though.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

Yeah, that's the thing. You know what I mean? I mean, you look at it now and you're like, well, how much longer can I be alive? And I have a great life now. Why do why couldn't I have had this, you know, all those years ago? You know what I mean? I get to practice as much as I want, I'm playing the music that I want to play finally. Right. You know, and uh Right, that's where I'm at.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

I mean, I'm sure you're at that place too. I'm I'm at the place now where it's like, I'm not doing a gig unless it's music I I I dig good doing. You know, like the stuff I like to do, I'll play I'll play for free. You know what I mean? But if it's if it's bizarro, you know, terrible musicians or whatever the deal is, I I can't do it. I can't do it.

SPEAKER_01 47:15

I absolutely agree. And um I actually turned down, you know, I was playing as a sub for a couple of different bands, and uh you know, they pay like uh the Neil Diamond thing, uh so good. Uh oh I saw that band. Yeah, so I'm subbing I traveled with them last year, I was in Oregon, I was in Florida with them, I was in Georgia with them, I was in New Jersey with them. That's cool. Boston. But I didn't like playing that music. You didn't like the music, yeah. No, and after and this year when the guy started calling me for dates, like for this summer, and I'm already looking at, well, what if one of them what if one of the you know, first of all, he's like, you know, I want you to play with the B band, and I'm like, F the B band. I'm not gonna be I'm not the B band. You know, and then I said to him, I said, Well, you know, I think I'm just gonna have to hold up because the bands that I'm actually a member of, they might call me for that date. Right. Like you're asking me about something that's three or four months away, and I don't like staying in hotel rooms.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:05

And that whole thing of doing a sound check in the theater at three o'clock in the afternoon and then hanging around for three hours, eating, and then finally playing the gig, like I don't like that.

SPEAKER_00 48:16

Yeah. I just don't like it. I'm with you on that. Completely. It's it's it's almost like a it's abuse in a way, you know. It's like you get these guys who want to play and then you just abuse the hell out of them, you know. I don't I don't like that at all.

SPEAKER_01 48:27

Yeah. I I didn't I and with that gig, not to t not to I don't want to say too much about it, but telling me where to stand on the stage, when to look this way, how to bow, everybody's got to hold their hand up at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

I was like, what the what? That's what I'm talking. It's it's so anti-mu it's so like the opposite of what music was meant to be. You know what I mean? It's like it's the bastardization of music.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Well, you know, the guy's a broadway I mean, uh, I guess a Broadway performer and like a film actor. So but you know, I'm a musician. Yeah. So I just want to I just want to, you know. When I c well when I play with Willie, like I don't even ask him what we're gonna play because this is this is what I get. Will, what are we gonna be doing? Don't worry about it. Good for him, man. And then on the bandstand, this is the song. All right, boys, swing it up and be flat.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Yeah, that's that's great.

SPEAKER_01 49:17

That's where I want to be. So, you know.

Final Thoughts And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 49:21

Alright, so kind of running out of time here. It was great having you, man. I'm glad you uh excellent.

SPEAKER_01 49:26

That was an awesome day.

SPEAKER_00 49:27

Those are great stories, and you know, I'm glad we finally got to at least play together and you know, meet or whatever. And maybe who knows? Maybe we'll play something else.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

Yeah, something a little more meaningful. I mean, that was a fun game.

SPEAKER_00 49:37

That was fun, I thought.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

Yeah. But I wasn't really prepared for that, and you know, there was another guitar player there, and I kind of all right, man.

SPEAKER_00 49:47

Thanks. Thanks a lot.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

Okay.