Ep 272 Handsome Devils

 A blast from the past! Rockabilly music from the original legends like Elvis, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis. 

Transcript

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Coming to you from the studios at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66, it's the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Hey everybody, it's Ray the Roadie. And this is Hollywood Mike.

Mike, Mike, Mike. Again with the echo. Yeah, I did that.

It's the voices in my head. I don't know. Ah, I can tell.

That's exactly what it is. Yeah. What about, hey, how about the weather today? Beautiful today.

Let's be, let's be old men for a minute and talk about the weather way too much. Well, if we were old men, we'd be talking about our medical issues, medications and stuff like that. Yeah.

But no, I went for a long ass walk today with the dog and stuff. It was a good time. Very nice.

Hey, I got a question for you. Sure. Don't you have some kind of gig coming up at the Roxy? I think it's on the 29th.

Yes, absolutely. What is that exactly? The Spring Soul Sessions is coming up. Okay.

And that goes to fund some important organization. I'm supposed to, it does, but I'm just showing up and playing, but I'll tell you, but I'll tell you what though. Okay.

We've scheduled the podcast for March 3rd. So, so hopefully we can get the podcast in in time where we can talk about it a little bit more. I'm not, I'm not.

So that means they were here last week. Yeah. Something like that.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

No, Jamie McLaren is the, I'd known her for a long time. It's actually been very interesting because I think when I first met her, I, gosh, I mean, I'm older, I'm an old man nowadays. So when I first met her, I thought she was like 18 or something like that.

I don't know exactly how old she is, but she decided she wanted to do this and she pulled together a bunch of her favorite musicians and I begged her to let me do it as well. Okay. And, and here's, here's the crazy story.

Yeah. So the piano player is a guy named Tony keys, right? Okay. I walk into rehearsal on Sunday and Tony comes over and shakes his hand and introduces himself to me and says, yeah, you know what? We're long lost cousins.

You don't know this, but I know your mother and your father and starts naming off family members and everything. Wow. Yeah.

He's, he's a stalker. One of the two, he's from Louisiana, just like all the rest of us never met him. And he's like, when I saw your last name, I was like, I got to do this.

So I'm sorry. I asked you about this guy. I thought maybe you'd know more about it.

Yeah. Well, that's, that's, that's, but on the other hand, I'm getting, I'm very excited about who we got here tonight because I think they're going to ask us to be part of the band. I think they're going to, because I mean, yeah, we're handsome devils ourselves.

You are El Guapo. Welcome the handsome devils. Yeah.

All right. I mean, you know, it's, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be a far cry for me because everybody knows my musicianship isn't great. I'm usually on stage because I can shake ass.

Okay. Yeah. So, you know, I've got a face for radio.

Yeah. Well, Hey, you know, it works. Yeah.

How you guys doing? We're doing good. Glad to be here. Yeah.

Thanks for having us. Yeah. Long drive.

No, no. You guys, you guys are local, right? You guys are pretty local. Downers Grove.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay.

Not too bad. So is it just the two of you guys or you got a whole group of guys that are, that are in your band? Okay. Four piece.

Run it down. Tell us who you are and introduce those guys for us. Angelo.

I started this project about four and a half years ago or so during the pandemic. Go figure. But I was going to say, this sounds like a, it sounds like a COVID baby.

Yeah. But it was one of my, I think the last Rawhide. That's going to be the name of my next punk band.

COVID baby. People will come see that. There you go.

Yeah. And so, you know, it's always been my kind of first love with doing the rockabilly, the classic stuff, Elvis, you know, Johnny Cash. So I gave it a shot.

You know, we did we've been doing classic rock country stuff for, for years now, but this is the first time we're doing this stuff. And uh, I love it. Like I said, it's, uh, it's easy music.

I mean, you gotta be a musician to understand that, but it's fun. It's a lot of roots, you know, it goes with this place for sure. You know, and uh, yeah, it's fun.

Got to wear a tie though. Oh, gotta wear a tie. So we're out.

These guys are out. Yeah. I'm strict with that.

I want that look. I want that clean, you know, black suit, white shirt, black tie kind of thing. We leave the jackets out.

That can get kind of hot quickly. Oh yeah. Yeah.

But uh, come on, full nudie suit, man. You got to do the full with the embroidering and the, and the roses and do all this stuff. I'd do the jumpsuit.

Hey, just, and I got the jumpsuit. You know what? You got to bring it back. I'll put it on.

Lime green, lime green jumpsuit with white patent leather shoes and a big belt like George Jones. 100. You don't have to ask me twice.

Mutton chops and the whole bit. Yeah. You got to do it.

Love it. So it's straight up rockabilly music. Yeah.

We, we keep it pretty, uh, classic, you know, really to the genre, you know, it's rock, you know, I mean, all that old stuff, uh, can get converted into that, uh, rockabilly sound. So the Bakersfield sound, the, the route 66 sound and that, that kind of thing. Yeah.

Simple stuff. Um, blues based obviously. And it's so old that maybe it's new now.

You go way back, but, uh, um, people seem to like it. Uh, we get the, the, um, the older crowd in and they love it. You know, people in their, their, their sixties and stuff.

And, um, it's good, you know? Yeah. It's a cool thing. And what do you do in the band? I play guitar.

You play guitar. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. No, you're, you're, you are correct that that sound is coming back. I'm starting to see more and more acts around that are doing like, they're not really calling it rockabilly.

I guess they're kind of, maybe the term, maybe the term could scare people away. A lot of times they call it Americana. You know, it gets, it gets lumped in a whole bit.

I, I started listening to it again because of a television show on HBO. Which one? Yeah. True Blood.

Oh yeah. The theme song to True Blood is one of the most kick-ass songs I've ever heard. I actually went out and bought the soundtrack just for that one song.

That's how old the show was. I had to buy a CD. And that's, that's the basis of a lot of the songs.

You just start with that, you know, that E 145 kind of going. Yeah. Shit.

You can play 40% of, no, 60% of those songs on that one chord line. But instead of coming in on, but instead of hitting that ninth for that blues, you kind of rock back and forth. Right.

It's, it's more like the eighth or so that you don't complicate it. What are you talking about? I'm a rhythm guitarist. What is that ninth? No, no, no, no, no.

Somebody challenged me one time to make it sound like I'm musical, musical intelligent. I can do everything with just two fingers. Don't tell me what I'm playing.

You're freaking me out. Yeah. Stop.

Yeah. I don't want to hear about any of that stuff. Okay.

So we do, uh, we do some of the Psychobilly stuff, which I started in chord just cause it was, you know, it, I love the genre, but you know, you want to beef it up a little bit, especially you get some of the younger people. If you ever seen them do some of those swing dancings, how they start growing. Oh God.

Yeah. They move. Right.

So, and I've gone to festivals and in Vegas, we did Viva Las Vegas. Now we didn't went to Viva Las Vegas in Texas. So there's that whole, just like following that you, not the classic stuff.

They love it, but it's that Psychobilly. It's like a style of life, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

It's a lifestyle for sure. I mean, really get it going. And it's, it's pretty, it's, it's pretty cool to watch.

And they basically have taken, you know, Elvis and all that simple rock back fifties. And then they just going at it and it's like taking off like a rock show. It's cool.

Yeah. But so we try to throw in a few of those ones. I love the, um, I love the instrumentation for it.

Um, like guys like Chris Tableton has, they've got a little bit of that flavor in with their music and stuff like that. And it sparked the whole comeback of just vintage instruments, you know, guitar into amp and maybe have some type of a tape echo or take delay to get you that sound. Right.

And it's vanished. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

When a live guitar sounds like, like a studio recording when the, you know, like when they used to put the guitar amps in the bathroom, you know, it's got that, it's got that sound again, which is pretty cool. I've always liked that. Yeah.

It's the Sun Studios. You just put them in a little room layer and figured, get some reverb, get something there. And it just started making all this crazy reverb, echo, delay, slapback stuff.

And I think it's important to make, uh, for that comeback to happen. Cause with AI now it's going to be a big thing. People will be able to write songs on a computer, play songs.

Um, I've heard some things online, uh, some early AI stuff. It's incredible. It is.

I mean, how's this happening? I'm not sure, but it's incredible. It's going to, it's going to, it is absolutely crazy. We were, we were sitting at our local watering hole down the, down the road after a podcast.

No, we weren't. We were having this. Yeah.

Yeah. We never do that. We were, we were having this conversation and I had experimented with it because I wanted to see what this whole thing was all about.

Mainly what I was concerned about with the AI thing was, okay, if you go on onto a website and you have them create, say three songs for you. And that's what it is nowadays. It's like you can pay 80 bucks and they'll generate three songs for you.

Right. And, and I was like, okay, so then who owns the song? Right. You know, can I go around? Can I, can I perform the song? But if I record it and try and sell it, am I going to get a cease and desist? Am I going to get sued? What's it all about? And I found a site that said, you know, 80 bucks, we create the songs, you put all the input in and the whole bit, you make the song yours.

And, and at the end of it, you, you have ownership of the song. I'm like, okay, but you, I'm guessing they're my partner. You know, they're not going to, you know, they're not going to create it.

And then all of a sudden, oh, here's a free song for 90 bucks. What if the song by chance becomes a huge hit? Huge hit. Right.

And they're going to settle for 90 bucks. Something like that. Yeah.

But, but anyways, so I just, I went onto it. I had the app on my phone for a second and all I did was say something like, uh, write a song about falling in love in new Orleans in the springtime, make it bluesy little country. I literally said that in 30 seconds, this amazing song was playing on my phone.

It was, it was unbelievable. And it was good. Right.

Yeah. And it was, it was good. Absolutely.

It's like, how do you do stuff? I mean, if you're going to record something like that, I think you have to put that it was created by AI. You can't take credit for it. Yeah.

You didn't write it. You didn't do any of that. Right.

Right. You would hope that they come up and you'd hope. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, and then I did absolutely nothing with the song. It was, it stayed on my phone long enough for me to listen to it a couple of times side of, I liked it or whatever.

But, but, um, I couldn't take it. I wouldn't be able to record it or perform it exactly the way it was because I'm listening to it thinking, okay, these lyrics are so poetic using words that I would never think of. Anybody who knows me well enough is going to know I didn't write those lyrics.

Right. That goes with all that AI stuff. Resumes.

I get, you know, I got my own business and people resumes and I'm like, this is bullshit. You didn't write this. You didn't write this.

Yeah. Education, a high school degree. Yeah.

You didn't, you didn't write this. You don't even know what half of these words mean. So, but that's AI.

That's what it's there for. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So to be a teacher these days. Right.

For sure. Yeah. Oh, for sure.

For sure. I actually know somebody that got asked to leave their university because they were caught AI in all their work. It's hard to flag, I think.

Yeah. You know, think about it this way. The next generation of doctors got through medical school because of AI.

Right. Right. Right.

You know, you know, it's like a, it's like, what do you call a guy who graduates last in his class from medical school? A doctor. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm going to, I'm going to get a Harvard diploma. Yeah. Yeah.

You could do that. Why not pay for more for this then? That's right. Yeah, that's right.

Right. So what do you think the appeal is, or is there an appeal out there for younger people to get more involved in your style of music, the rockabilly, the psychobilly kind of music? What's the draw? What's in it for them? That's a tough one. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't, I, the music this day, these days for me, I just, I mean, I'll take an example, like trying to watch the Grammys. I get maybe 10 minutes into it.

Yeah. It's because I just don't know anybody. You know what I mean? It's like, so how can I. The contrast is huge, right? You take a Johnny Cash song and then you compare it to what's out there now.

My kids are in their twenties. They're not going to listen to Johnny Cash. And part of it, I think, is because the production isn't quite up to what's happening now.

It's probably not as appealing, but I'm sure that there are kids who are 20, who will put on an old album and find something that's, that's interesting. If anything, it's pure, right? Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's finding some value in that pure sound, in that simple guitar line, as opposed to what's happening now, which is all overproduced and overdone, I think.

And you're hearing sounds from instruments that don't exist. Right. You know, you really are, you know, a swirl or a sparkle effect or whatever the heck they want to call it.

Right. It's musical, but it's not an instrument. Right.

Right. Go find the instrument that made that noise, you know, is, is kind of what it comes down to. True.

And you're right. It is, it is a huge contrast. I think.

The contrast is huge. Yeah. I, I mean, for me personally, I love hearing the strings of a guitar or the strings of a bass slap on the wood body and, you know, and leave that in the recording.

Right. You know, leave that in the recording. Right.

It's, it's, it should be there. Right. I think if you, I, if I, I think if you're going to motivate young musicians to do that genre of the fifties and the rockabilly and stuff is challenge them, say, I'd like you to try to sound like he did it.

Scotty Moore did it for Elvis. Right. And there'll be, oh, this is easy.

Go ahead and try it. Do it. Let me see.

Let me see you do every note. Without any pedals. Yeah.

Pedals are a drummer. And no capo. That might be a motivating fact.

And then they realize, cause he's done it a few times. Cause he was a rock and roller. He was an Eddie Van Halen guy.

No, but I was a classic rock lover of all the era. And I dragged him into this project and he knows now sometimes some of this stuff, like we were there at last one, maybe we'll play it later on is Get a Rhythm by Johnny Cash. Oh, and we're sitting there and he does, uh, what's the guitar player's name? Luther.

Uh, I don't have his name, but yeah, for Johnny Cash, the guitar player. He does this thing. They never had a drummer doing when they recorded it.

And he does, he stays on the fifth chord or something, just, just longer than you want them to. Right. And it messes them.

Lyrics trying to jump into it. Johnny Cash just talked. Right.

Yeah. It wasn't even, he followed any patterns. And then, and then he's trying to just do this little simple solo, but it's like, you know, it's a, want to pull your hair out.

It's a rhythm so hard. It's awkward, but it fits. Right.

That's what these guys did. And they probably walked into the studio and said, Hey, I got a riff here. Let's do it.

And sure enough, it's magic. And Ken came up with, you know, Johnny Cash always said, we play the way we do because we don't know any better. Yeah.

Right. You know, and if you're the one that came up with that riff, you're probably the only one that knows how to play it. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Well, exactly.

Exactly. But I mean, yeah. I mean, that happens at open jams all the time.

I can't tell you how many times people have come up to me and the, you know, they're the guys, everybody knows them. They're the guys that show up with their amps and their pedal boards to play an open, open jam. And they're like, you know, this is an open jam.

We, a lot of blues happens here. You can play anything you want, but it ultimately usually turns into, you know, blues night or wherever it's going to be. And there's always the guy that's like, nah, we don't play that stuff.

That stuff is too easy. It's, it's primitive. Okay.

Well try it. Give it a shot. Right.

And those are, those are the guys that end up tripping over their own dicks. You know, cause they don't, they don't understand it. They, you know, it's, it's not what you think it is.

So yeah. Excellent. I'm hopeful that it'll all come around again.

Right. Yep. How and when, I don't know.

They got to get some rock and roll bands out there. I don't know what's going on. I mean, unless I just don't know, I do everything to try to listen to new.

They're there, but they're under the radar. I'll tell you what you have to get off of your radio stations, your, you know, your corporate radio stations, because you know, here's funny thing is, you know, it was literally about, about a week ago I was running errands and I left my phone at home and I decided I'm not going to go back from my phone. I got an Apple watch.

Somebody's trying to get ahold of me. I've got a phone with me. Right.

So I'm listening. So probably the first time in 10 years I'm listening to corporate radio and I stopped listening to corporate radio 10 years ago because they were playing the same shit that sounded like the last song over and over and over and over again. Right.

I shit you not, I'm driving down the road. Here I am 10 years later and they're still playing backstreet boys. Wow.

I mean, they're, and they're still playing the stuff over and over again that I stopped listening to 10 years ago. Right. And so if you want new rock and roll, you gotta go to Spotify.

You gotta go to Pandora. You gotta go out and find it because there's a lot of cool stuff out there. There's a lot of, I've discovered fantastic bands by not listening to the radio.

Right. Right. And even the satellite stations are doing that.

Yeah. They just record it and they throw it out because I've heard I'm listening to one day or even earlier in the day, I'm listening, I hear the DJ talking about something, some songs and like six hours later talking about the same thing and same. So it's just, it's just looping.

It's just looping. Yeah. That's who's paying the bills.

So they got to do it. I guess. Yeah, exactly.

Like it's always been. Yeah. My kids, my kids are probably about the same age of your kids.

And, uh, they've turned me onto a lot of, a lot of new music, you know, right. Because they're the, they're the technology people. They know how to find it all.

Right. My son turned me onto the band Dirty Honey. I was like, Holy crap.

Yeah. Dirty Honey is great. They opened up for Black Crowes.

What a voice that guy has. Oh gosh. Dirty Honey is good.

Uh, Greta Van Fleet. Greta Van Fleet. That's like, that's like Led Zeppelin Jr. Yeah.

I actually, I actually saw Greta Van Fleet live many years ago. Cause they were, they were from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I used to work in Ann Arbor a lot.

Yeah. I actually saw them live and didn't know. Next thing you know, they blew up.

It's like, Holy crap. I saw these little punks in a, in a little Think about everybody knows their name, but yet they're not really mainstream. Right.

Yeah. You don't hear them on the radio. You gotta do the work to go listen to them.

You'll never hear them on the radio. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I did, I, you know, 20, you know, 15 years ago I discovered Blackberry Smoke the same way, you know, found, found them on the internet. You know, you're never going to hear Blackberry Smoke on a radio station. Right.

If you want to hear rock and roll, you got to get off of it. You got to do something different. And we just saw them at the Rialto.

We keep adding members of their touring band. I know their bands. How many guys are in this band? Yeah.

It started off when it was five guys. And now I think they're up to like seven or eight guys or something. They're kind of becoming, you know, all, all the, all the Southern rock bands do that eventually.

Even your commercial radio. Yeah. There's no more loops.

Yeah. There's no more METs. There's no more CKGs.

There's nothing like that. It's all iHeartRadio. It's all owned by the same, by the same people.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Oh, well.

Terrible. Well, I'll tell you what, I think it's time to hear some of this music. Okay.

Sounds good to me. We're going to take a break. Let's take a break.

And have them tune up their guitar strings. All righty. We'll be right back.

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We ready? All right. We're back and live in the studio for the first time tonight. We got the Handsome Devils.

All right. Take it away, fellas. Happy.

All right. Same tune? Yep. Two, a one, two, three.

Hail, boss. Oh, that the red slate. Oh, yeah.

Oh, well. A brother, that won't do. Welcome to my hail.

I feel sorry for him. So much fun left at the end of the beat. Oh, yeah.

Oh, well. A brother, that won't do. Oh, yeah.

Oh, well. Welcome to my hail. Welcome to my hail.

I tried to wash it all down with a bucket of gin. I know all the drinking sure looks better through a bottle of gin. Welcome to my hail.

Welcome to my hail. Where's that crowd coming from? Where are they? Yeah. All right.

That's getting up and jump up and down music. I'll give you that. It is.

I'll give you that for credit. You know what I have to do? I have to do this because if I don't, I'm going to be upset at myself if I don't. I have to take a picture of this guitar.

Oh, do it. Look at this. Look at this pick guard on here.

He's like, he's like, yeah, I want a guitar. I want a pick guard. I see.

I don't want any scratches on my guitar. So this is a it's a Blue Ridge acoustic. Right.

Nice. All solid by. But it's a Carter Stanley edition.

Again, didn't know who the guy was. I literally bought off this guy because of that pick guard. I wanted it to look vintage.

So the guy was a bluegrass player in the 50s. And apparently they made this for him because he was a picker. Right.

And he had big nails and he would scratch shit out of it at the top. Right. So I said, I need something to protect that.

Yeah. So they made this and then they made an edition for him. So it's a giant ass.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

I don't want any scratches on this thing. I love you guys. I know you guys been playing my guitar because I'll have scratches on it.

And my pick is a diamond tipped pick. So I don't want to know. No, but wait, that's what is this? No.

Oh, no. But it is great. I mean, look at it.

It was like silver. And I was like, he's serious over here. No, that's pretty cool.

No, it's nice. So you play this live. You play this in the band, right? Most of the time.

I really we put I do pull it out to Johnny Cash and stuff like that. But I'm a grudge player. Okay.

That's usually. Well, yeah, that makes sense. I think.

Yeah. This is all foreign to us right now. This whole acoustic.

Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask you, how's that solo on that acoustic over there? It's a different animal.

Yeah. A little bit. Yeah.

Leave any fingertips over there on the floor. Well, there may be a few. Yeah.

Just mop up, you know. Yeah. Well, the last the last band that we had in here said, we've never played acoustic before.

This was so fun. I think we've fallen in love with it. It's like, they're going to think we're going to have to have a trio now and do acoustic stuff.

No, that's interesting stuff. So, yeah, you know, you're right. There is a specific type of instrumentation associated with rockabilly music.

And it is that that hollow body Gretsch. For sure. Yeah.

And what's your amp? I'm a Fender guy. Yeah. Well, yeah.

Yeah. You have to be. Yeah.

I got it. I got a vintage one, a sixty four tremel X, you know. Yeah.

And then a super reverb. So I've always been. And then, you know, what makes the music? And it's really simple.

You got to have a slapback echo. Oh, yeah. That's it.

That pretty much is it in a nutshell. Right. You know, and that's pretty much all I play.

Yeah. It's a simple setup. And it it sounds like every 50 song you ever want, even though, you know, we do the Stray Cats, Brian Sessler stuff.

He's done it. He he rockified it for sure. Of course.

Dirty. He likes it a little dirty too, but it works because he's the lead. That means two things.

Yeah. Musically. Yeah.

And you play a Tele. I play Tele, play Thunderclone, a little bit of overdrive, a little slapback and that's it. Well, you know, the little bit of overdrive is perfectly acceptable.

You got to have a little bit there. You got to have the slapback. But I'm just imagining the nightmare when your slapback echoes get out of sync because that can be pretty.

Mine's like turned off. Like, it's like, I'm like, I'm not even hitting the note here. Well, how many times is this going to keep going? Yeah.

And I go to clubs and I see guys and bands and they've got like a pedal board. It's got nine pedals. Like, dude, what are you doing? Nine's not even a lot.

Yeah. Nine's not even a lot. I've seen guys that have pedal boards the size of this table.

Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

Unless you're Alex Lifeson of Rush knows how to use all that stuff. I don't know why you do it. You can't get into a rabbit hole, though.

Let's be honest. No, you can't. Like you go on YouTube and you're like, you will.

You want you to need this rocket pedal. And then a guy's like, let me show you my setup. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm like, oh, fuck. I'm going to buy every one of those.

Yeah. I'm the I'm the dumbest pedal owner that exists because I spend a lot of money on pedals to not use any of them. I just I just I've been there for something for some reason.

I love MXR pedals. Yeah. I love to just when I'm home screwing around.

Let's let's see what this one does. Let's see what this one does. Right.

And play them and have a good time with them and stuff. And they're in like a shadow box down in my guitar room with all the different colors and the paint jobs and stuff that they have on them. And it's like a work of art.

There's not a single MXR pedal on my pedal board. My pedal board consists of a tuner, a walk pedal, a volume pedal. There you go.

Yeah. Yeah. And they sound like a guitar center.

Yeah. Like you're walking into a guitar center. Hey, look at all this.

Yeah. Look at all this stuff. Yeah.

I just like the way they look. And I don't I don't use any of them. I got irritated with when you step on this pedal, then you step on this pedal, then you step on this pedal.

Now it doesn't sound like I want it to sound. So I just I just don't bother with it anymore. Yeah.

And there's 15 of each kind, right? There's 15 different overdrives. There is crazy. 15 different delays.

And you got to have this one. Otherwise, it's not it doesn't sound good. And you got to have this one.

And yeah. And this one's got to be plugged into this one before this one, because if it's signal chain. Yeah.

OK. I got it done. And you you hit it and it's like, oh, shit.

No, move this over here. Eventually, you have to call the union electrician. Right.

Right. Right. Pay out.

There were no pedals. There was just an amp. That's it.

That's all there was. Myself a bit here. I saw UFO at the stadium back in seventy nine.

The great Michael Shanker. Right. Yeah.

Guitar and a wall. Marshall. Yeah.

Like it was the driest tone you could possibly think of. Yeah. It worked for him.

Yeah. Absolutely. Great.

Absolutely. Well, there's a lot of guys like that, you know, ACDC, you know. You know, that that's that's that's pretty much their style.

Wall of Marshalls. Yeah. Yeah.

That's all it is. And I love that sound that that is my sound. I want to hear the dry, you know, natural to distortion of it.

All right. So you guys are playing the kind of music that's like perfect. Because keep it nice and simple.

Yes, it helps. It still costs money. Yeah.

Get that sound. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Got to get the right amp. Yeah.

Well, you sit there and write amps in port. I got a 1964 Fender and I'm like, yeah, that's what I want. Thirty five hundred dollars later.

Well, I guess I pay for that sound. Well, but you know what, though? If you spend that kind of money on that kind of, you know, on that kind of amp, you shouldn't need anything else. You know, you really don't, you know, shit in and shit out.

You know, you know, you know, you spent thirty five hundred bucks on an amp. You shouldn't need anything else. It's it's it's pretty much that simple.

And speaking of AI and like all that stuff. Now, when you go into a studio, they've got those those emulators where you want one, a sixty five verbal or a twin or you want a Marshall and they they dial it in. Yeah.

I'm not convinced that that is quite there yet, but but it will be. Yeah. Somebody will will will figure that out.

You can buy a silver tone amp and play anything through anything, anything through it. And one day somebody is going to take me up on this and call me out on my on my bullshit. But I don't think it's bullshit.

I can I can hear the difference. I can tell the difference. I can tell.

I can tell if somebody is playing through a through some type of a modeling, modeling, you know, amp or whatever it is, or if somebody is playing the real McCoy, I can I can tell the difference. And people say, no, you can't. Yes, I can.

There's something to warming up tubes and that sound. It's the same thing. You can the argument about vinyl and that thing, you can tell the difference on a vinyl record when it's being played.

Right. Other than that, you hear the maybe scratching, but you can really tell there's a different warmth to it. I mean, again, arguments, I guess, besides that part of it.

Or at the end of it. Yeah. Yeah.

OK. It's the end of the side. I got it.

Yeah. Yeah. But now we talk about this kind of stuff on the on the podcast all the time.

We talk about vintage gear versus the new gear. We talk about the new music that's out there versus the the old stuff. And, you know, I guess the the greatest thing about it is I see a trend.

It's coming back around again. I'm seeing the younger people, you know, you know, I play in a band that that plays music for older people, you know, and, you know, most of the stuff that we play is from the 70s, you know, and then we have some 80s stuff and some 90s stuff in there. And there's a lot of young people at our shows.

You know, they're they're starting to like that a little bit more because the is has gotten old. Yes, it is. But 20 years ago.

Yeah. Right. Right.

Right. Right. So how about you give us another one, guys? I'd like to hear you guys play some more.

Uh, we're going to do the. That's all right, mom. Yeah.

Oh, great. Elvis. Elvis is my first.

Elvis is my very first rock and roll hero. All right. This one's for you, mama.

That's all right, mama. That's all right. That's all right, mama.

That's all right. That's all right. That's all right.

That's all right, mama. That's all right. That's all right, mama.

That's all right, mama. That's all right. Oh, man.

Anytime anybody plays any kind of Elvis like that, man, I I was I was a huge Elvis fan. I was when I was a kid. I was I was so young when he died.

I mourned his death. I had a I had a poster of him. It was on the it was the front page of the Star newspaper.

And it was it was it was during the time where he looked and sounded the best, where he wore the butterfly collars. Yeah. Right.

Right. And his hair slick black, you know, slick back and stuff. He hadn't gained any weight or anything like that.

And I had that poster on my wall so long. It was so faded. You didn't even know it was Elvis anymore.

That's all. Right. He was my very first rock and roll man.

68 Comeback. I was I could just watch that thing all the time. You know, black leather.

Well, I don't know. I don't know if you heard it, but I was over here. I'm on the guitar case because the way they were doing that on the guitar case, and it was right after that song.

And he started he started doing the pinky. Remember that? He was that was that was a great thing. Greatest cover band in the world.

Yeah. Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley.

Yeah, exactly. Led Zeppelin's a pretty good pretty good second. Yeah, that's true.

That's for sure. Yeah. No, I mean, but, you know, you know, everybody everybody kind of says that everybody kind of faults Elvis and Zeppelin and stuff like that for, you know, for, you know, calling them cover bands.

But that's the way it was back then, because it was because the record companies owned the owned all of the copyrights to the music so they could have any one of their their acts play whatever the they wanted. I mean, that's where they got away with it. So and he did it better than anybody.

So they said, yeah, it's your song. It's your song. Yeah.

Well, yeah. I mean, look at it. I mean, he owns Blue Suede Shoes now.

You know, Elvis owns Blue Suede Shoes now. I mean, Carl Perkins may have may have the copyright on it, but Elvis made that his song. So yeah.

Well, amazing. Did you guys ever see the Million Dollar Quartet? I did. Yeah.

I've seen a bunch of times. Great, great little, I guess, whatever the story of those guys all being in the one place. It was really good.

Yeah. You know, somebody tells me that that was kind of a they kind of glorified it a little bit. They made it seem like it was this fateful night or whatever.

No, they were just all, you know, it's like, you know, Johnny Cash walked in to get a paycheck. And, you know, and Jerry Lee Lewis was like working as a studio musician or something like that. Yeah, they weren't they didn't think they were creating history.

Yeah, they were. No, they were just they were hanging and jamming. And when somebody said, wow.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And that and that probably didn't come till many years later. And then somebody realized that we had all four of them together, you know? Yeah. I mean, think about the tours that they were all those guys that were doing it together.

You got Cash, you got Elvis, you had, what's his face? Pretty Woman. Oh, Orbison. Orbison was there.

Jerry Lee. I mean, they were actually touring together. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.

Yeah. Yeah. They were all part of a big rock show, just kind of going through the countryside on a bus, just cruising around.

Yeah, that's all they were doing, man. Can you imagine that? Man, what a time they were doing. You know, one of the last things that happened before the the the place that shall not be mentioned closed down as the owner of the place, Laura, who's a good friend of mine.

Miss her every day. Hi, Laura. Miss you.

We were actually working on doing a live production of the Million Dollar Quartet. We actually had a band put together in the whole bit. We had a guy, a young, young kid that, that's Aaron Newsome, that's actually been on our podcast.

He sounds exactly like Elvis. We had him picked out to play the Elvis in the whole bit. And I was going to do the Carl Perkins and stuff.

And then the place closed down. So it never came to be. But that's a project that I would love to, that's a project.

The hardest one would be Johnny Cash. You got to get the guy who's got the chops. We had a Johnny Cash and we had a Johnny Cash.

Oh, you did? Yeah, because Laura, Laura herself plays in a, in a band called the Simple Remedy. And they're, they're kind of a Americana, country, rockabilly kind of, kind of thing. Got a fiddle player in their band in the whole bit.

And so their guitar player was going to do the Johnny Cash for us. So we had the whole band set and ready to go. And, and then the place closed down.

And I know just the place to book you. Yeah. Yeah.

But they don't sponsor the podcast. So I'm not going to name it. So we can't.

Yeah. Who are you guys playing? Well, uh, the, I think by the time this comes out, we're going to be doing a St. Patty's show in a Gulliver's Bar and Grill. It's in Oakport, Oakport Terrace.

Oh yeah. Roosevelt Road. So that'll be, uh, March 14th, Saturday, March 14th.

We got something coming up the end of February, February here. But, uh, like I said, I don't know. That was a few weeks ago.

That was an awesome show. It was. And then, uh, yeah, we, uh, we got this kind of a regular gig.

We were playing at the Blue Chip Casino in Indiana. In the Rocks Lounge. Yeah.

So we got one May and July there. And then we got a one in, uh, May, mid May at Wrigleyville, the place called Home Away From Home. Oh yeah.

Down at Wrigleyville, which is always entertaining to play down at Wrigleyville. Of course. Yeah.

Yeah. So we'll, we'll, we'll be busy a little bit, you know, not too much. We're getting old.

Can't do that Rocks stuff too much anymore. So where can people find your social media ways? Uh, our band is on the Facebook page. We don't have.

We're on the Facebook. Yeah. That's such an old person thing is that we're on the Facebook.

It's on the internets. It took me a while to figure out how to do that. You know what I mean? No website, no.

No, we don't do the website. I do the Facebook thing. And then we got a YouTube channel too.

Uh, that's linked to the Facebook. That's the new hot thing is putting together the YouTube channel and stuff like that. You know, the, the website, the website hasn't had, they haven't had the draw that it used to be a Facebook YouTube channel.

You're done. And that's what, that's kind of why I went that direction because I asked about that and they were like, you know, people just, they're going to link you to the Facebook. They see your name.

And so it just keeps going. And then you put your YouTube channel on there and people go on YouTube all the time. Yeah.

And post a clip to TikTok or bing bong or whatever the heck it is. Yeah. And it ties it all in together.

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, Hey, thanks for coming in guys. Yeah.

Thanks a lot. I enjoyed talking to you. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. Sure. Yeah.

Great. And uh, if you come on out. Yeah.

I'd like to see you guys. I'd like to check out your group too. Yeah.

Yeah. One of these days we got to figure out when we're all not working. Thanks.

Thanks a lot guys. Thanks a lot. The Rock and Roll Chicago podcast is edited by Paul Martin.

Theme song courtesy of MNR Rush. The Rock and Roll Chicago podcast does not own the rights to any of the music heard on the show. The music is used to promote the guests that are featured.