Tony Mantor's : Almost Live..... Nashville
Tony Mantor talks with entertainment industry people in the U.S. and internationally that have made a mark for themselves.
Conversations with those behind the scenes people that help them achieve their success along with up and coming entertainers as well.
Stories that give a deeper understanding on what it takes to achieve success in the entertainment industry.
Whether listening for entertainment or for tips on how others faced their challenges this has something for everyone.
Tony Mantor's : Almost Live..... Nashville
Dave Pomeroy on Music, Leadership, and Passion
Discover the extraordinary journey of Dave Pomeroy, a quintessential figure in the music industry, as he reveals how a British military upbringing and an expired visa ultimately led him to the heart of Nashville's vibrant music scene.
With anecdotes that include spontaneously jamming with legends like Sleepy LaBeef and witnessing Neil Young in casual settings, Dave's story is a testament to the unpredictable and exhilarating path of a musician.
Join us as we explore his captivating transformation from a hopeful rock star in London to a pivotal player in Nashville's dynamic music community.
As we sit down with Dave, he recounts the serendipitous moments and influential collaborations that have defined his career, including work with iconic names like Keith Whitley, Trisha Yearwood, and Emmylou Harris.
Learn how Dave's connections with industry greats, such as Chet Atkins, have contributed to his creative journey and the projects that stand out as milestones in his illustrious career.
This episode also uncovers Dave's leadership role in the Nashville Musicians Union, where he's at the forefront of advocating for musicians' rights and fostering unity across the nation's major music hubs.
The conversation continues with an insightful look at Nashville's evolving music scene, a place where diverse genres coexist and opportunities for musicians abound.
Dave shares his vision for balancing the city's booming tourism with authentic music experiences, highlighting the importance of independent venues and the recognition of indie artists by major labels.
Through Dave's personal stories and reflections, experience the essence of Nashville's unique music community, the joy of live performances, and the inspiring pursuit of passion that defines a successful music career.
My career in the entertainment industry has enabled me to work with a diverse range of talent. Through my years of experience, I've recognized two essential aspects. Industry professionals, whether famous stars or behind-the-scenes staff, have fascinating stories to tell. Secondly, audiences are eager to listen to these stories, which offer a glimpse into their lives and the evolution of their life stories. This podcast aims to share these narratives, providing information on how they evolved into their chosen career. We will delve into their journey to stardom, discuss their struggles and successes and hear from people who helped them achieve their goals. Get ready for intriguing behind-the-scenes stories and insights into the fascinating world of entertainment. Hi, I'm Tony Mantour. Welcome to Almost Live Nashville. Today's guest has such a great career. He has performed with so many stars. Now he's president of the local union right here in Nashville. Dave Pomeroy is our guest today and it's great to have him here. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2:Absolutely my pleasure.
Speaker 1:This may date you a little bit, but how long have you been here in Nashville?
Speaker 2:I moved to Nashville on October 5th 1977.
Speaker 1:1977. Wow, that's a while ago. So what prompted you to make the move to Nashville?
Speaker 2:Well, I was living in London, England. I'd lived there for a year. I was a military kid, so we traveled around a lot, including some years in England when I was very young, which gave me a two-year head start on the Beatles, which is probably why I'm a musician and my brother and sister are lawyers. After two years of college at University of Virginia, I started playing in a band and was working a lot in this kind of folk acoustic trio. I had an opportunity to go to Europe because my dad was stationed at NATO headquarters in Belgium. So I showed up in Belgium, announced that I'd quit college and wanted to go to London to be a rock star, and after they pulled my dad out of the ceiling a couple months later, he gave me a ride to London and I picked up a music paper, got an audition the next day, got the gig, played my first show and then on the following Monday went applied for a work permit, which I got, and so I lived in England, London, England, for a year, from September 76 to September 77.
Speaker 2:And it was a great life experience, a great musical experience. But my visa ran out and it was time to go back to the States. So I thought, well, after this, New York, LA or Nashville and I don't know anybody in New York, I don't know anybody in LA and this singer, Mary Bomar, who I had worked with in this trio at Charlottesville, had moved to Nashville and had gotten a publishing deal with Roger Cook and Ralph Murphy, Picklewick Music. And so I thought, well, I'll try Nashville first and check it out for a couple weeks. And it's been 46 years, Hard to believe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it definitely is amazing how time flies, yeah, so once you moved to Nashville, was it what you expected? And then what transpired to get you to where you are today?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know if it was what I was expecting, other than I just I didn't know much about country music. I didn't know much about singer songwriters, as opposed to just artists, you know, and bands. I was a band guy, but the very first show that I saw was a great songwriter named Dave Olney and he had a full band and it was not anything like I expected and that was encouraging. I also saw Neil Young hanging out in a bar with some guys he was working in the studio with and I was pretty impressed by that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I was here about three, four weeks and realized that I either had to get a job or get a gig, and I wasn't going to get a gig in town right away, because those were the days where, you know, you had studio musicians and road musicians and they were very different. Right, I literally put up a couple of homemade business cards and got a call a couple days later from a drummer named Cleet Chapman, who played with an artist named Sleepy LaBeef.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Interesting guy, from Arkansas originally, who was working primarily in the Boston area at the time, and what I didn't realize was that he was literally just driving through Nashville and his bass player, I guess, jumped off the out of the motorhome and so I jumped in the motor home and we drove straight up to Boston and were there for about a year without ever coming back to Nashville. Wow, a great musical experience. Sleepy was, one of his nicknames was the human jukebox, because he knew thousands of songs and no charts, no rehearsals, just follow. And he was a big old guy and if I wasn't, if I was supposed to be playing 4-4 bass instead of 2-4, he would glare at me and start playing the bass line I should be playing and I would jump on it. So I learned a whole lot from him. He was a classic example of what they now call Americana music, where it was a mixture. You know, in one set he would string these medleys together 45 minutes long, sometimes one song into another without breaks, where he'd go from Johnny Cash to Ernest Tubb, to Bo Diddley, to Muddy Waters, to Nelson, to a polka song and back again. And you just, it was great ear training and learning how to watch the back of a guitar neck and figure out what might be happening next, and it was a really good experience, and he and I remained close over the years and my son and I actually made a little documentary film about him in 2012 called Sleepy LeBeef Rides. Again, he's a really interesting guy.
Speaker 2:I learned a lot from him, but I had to get back to town, so I came back and did day jobs for a little while, sold encyclopedias door to door and worked at a lumber yard briefly, and then I stumbled onto an opportunity to play with Guy Clark, which immediately led to playing at the same time with Billy Joe Shaver, because they were at the time, sharing a band.
Speaker 2:Those guys were especially. Guy was my kind of speed bump on the way to figuring out how to be employable in Nashville, because I was still all about bass solos and high energy rock and roll and Sleepy would give me 20. Once he figured out I'd play a bass solo, he'd give me 20 solos a night. And suddenly I'm sitting in a basement with Guy Clark hearing these songs and you just kind of go wow, do you even need bass? Guy had a way of writing these very simple songs that had incredibly deep meaning, and so it was I call it my speed bump on the way to Don Williams, which I managed to land a gig with Don in 1980. That was a game changer for me.
Speaker 1:Now you've got a resume of great singers you've either recorded with or been on the road with. So you was with Don for the most of it. But how did those others help you get into the studio and start really moving forwards to what you was going to do for your career?
Speaker 2:I was with Don full-time for 14 years. He was very encouraging to us. Danny Flowers, our guitar player, had written the song Tulsa Time for Don, which was a huge hit. Of course Eric Clapton covered it, which made it even bigger. So Don did what very few artists would ever do and went to his label, mca, and said I've got a really good band. I think you should give them a record deal. And so two years after I joined his band, we were in the studio making a record and Biff Watson and I wrote an instrumental kind of a funk tune, and Don liked it and it made our record somehow, and so I felt very gratified. But it still took quite a few more years before I really began to understand recording. And so, starting in about 85, I started playing on Don's Records and that was a great education. And then his co-producer, garth Fundus, started branching out, and one of the first projects he did was the final two albums with Keith Whitley.
Speaker 2:I was playing more or less the kind of things that had been done before on Don's Records a lot of one, five, very simple stuff. With Keith. He had a very unique voice. Garth did a really interesting thing because he was really from the bluegrass world. But Garth convinced him to lower his keys by about a step and a half and it took him to a whole other register in his voice and I had this electric stand-up bass that I had a guy make for me and mostly just got weird looks from people who didn't understand what it was. Yeah, I love that bass Really fit Keith's voice. I ended up playing that on almost that whole record called Don't Close your Eyes, and a song called I'm no Stranger to the Rain became a number one hit and I had a big bass slide and that just suddenly opened the door to a lot of other things. But I owe Don and Garth Fundus a lot for giving me that chance.
Speaker 2:Garth's next project was Trisha Yearwood and I ended up playing on Trisha's first seven albums and then everything just started to steamroll. I played on Alan Jackson's first three number one singles and as one thing led to another and I always kept playing live throughout all this stuff, I would do my own band and I always felt like those creative things gave you a little edge when you went in the studio and somebody wanted something different, right, oh, you know, I was able to. Just, you know, have one one, literally one door lead to another. I was doing a lot of demos with Paul Kennerly, the songwriter, who at the time was married to Emmylou Harris, and I would go out to the house and overdub some things for Paul and he'd say, oh, you know, he's British.
Speaker 2:You know, do you fancy a cup of tea? And it's like, oh, that'd be great. We go in the kitchen and there's Emmylou making tea for us, and so you know, I was well aware of her. I'd seen her play when I was at UVA and always loved her stuff. And the next time she made a record, it was the first time that she'd made a record without her significant other producing it. And her and Richard Bennett made an album called Bluebird and they made a deal where Richard got to pick the drummer and she got to pick the bass player and somehow or another, she picked me, that's great.
Speaker 2:And that opened a door and to different things. And Richard did a record with Joel Sonnier and I was also very involved in the NAMM show stuff when they would come to town and I did several of these all-star guitar nights and things like that. So I got to meet people like James Burton and Peter Frampton and Adrian Ballou. Suddenly I met out at Adrian's house doing a song with him and Peter, a tribute to Hank Marvin, the great British guitar player, and it was really just this, you know, evolution of one thing leading to another. And you know, I first met Garth Brooks when he was taking the money at the door at the Bluebird for another writer for the same company, buddy Monlock, came on stage and sang a little harmony, and so it's really been amazing. I mean, nobody's more surprised than me.
Speaker 2:I get that Russell Smith was a great guy to work with and we wrote a couple of songs together. And I met Larry Nectal through Jim Horn and Dwayne Eddy. Larry Nectal and I wrote a couple of songs together and got to play on his solo records and of course he was also a wonderful bass player and had played bass on Mr Tambourine man and other things when he was in LA Right, not to mention playing piano on Bridge Over Troubled Waters, right, right, so you know it. Just it's kind of I look back at that list and it looks amazing to me too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's an awesome story. I love it, so I'm going to make it a little bit tougher on you. Of all the things that you've done, all the people you've worked with, played with, performed with what's one of your favorite projects that just stands out in your mind.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 2:Well, I think you know I'm very I mean I'm very proud of Don. I would think of it more almost as songs. We did a song with Don called Old Coyote Town. That was a single. That was on the album. I believe it was on the album. It was called Shades oh gosh, I can't remember the name now. But the Don stuff, the Emmylou Bluebird album was huge. The first Keith Whitley album that I've already spoke about, don't Close your Eyes.
Speaker 2:But a real thrill for me was getting to know and play with Chet Atkins. David Hungate, who had been producing Chet for some time wonderful bass player, great guy was mowing his yard one day and fell down the hill and broke his ankle and decided he didn't want to fly to Texas to do this TV special for Chet's new album that he had just produced. And he recommended me to take his place, as did Chet's manager at the time, fred Cueley, and so Chet was literally like, well, I don't know who this guy is, but you're both recommending him. So okay, and so I fly down to Texas. I'd met Chet before but he had no idea who I was. And it was this amazing TV special with Earl Clue and Steve Warner and Eric Johnson, the great Texas guitar player, and Susie Boggess, and it was a magical thing and Chet was very nice, very complimentary thing. And Chet was very nice, very complimentary, and he said to me afterwards hey, you know, we do this Saturday morning breakfast out at the Cracker Barrel on Charlotte Pike. You're welcome to come out anytime. And so I started going out there and you never know, one week it would be Mark Knopfler and the next week it would be Goober. You know, george Lindsay, you know, and you just never Ray Stevens, whoever.
Speaker 2:And so I got to know Chet a little bit and when he decided he was going to get out and play some gigs, he knew that I was playing every Monday at the Exit Inn. I used to do these kind of variety shows called Monday Night Madness. And he came to see me and called me the next day and said, hey, that funny song, you did send that over. I like that and so I, you know, with double spaced lyrics. So I sent over a version of the song that I had co-written after the fact with a woman named Emily Cates, that Guy Clark had discovered called the Day the Bass Players Took Over the World and Chet recorded it with Tommy Emanuel as the Day Finger Pickers Took Over the World and it became the title track of his last album. So I think that was a really special thing and I did get to record some with Chet as well. But the TV special was really great and for some reason I always seem to end up in audiovisual things.
Speaker 1:Well, the entertainment business has so many different things, so there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2:There was a show that we tried to get off the ground that never did take off back in the 80s called Nashville Skyline and we recorded at the exit end kind of. It really was, I think, the first of the songwriters in the round, kind of thing, and one of the combinations was, you know, guy Clark, rodney Crowell and the very young Vince Gill, and you know we had Russell Smith and Don Schlitz and the Kathy Mateo, all these different people and ended up playing with Dickie Betts and Jimmy Hall at the end of the day and we filmed like 50 songs in a day. It's hard to say one thing I've been very grateful to get to do my own projects on the side and I put out 14 records on my own, 12 records and two DVDs on my own label. But I think really, you know, the Emmy Lou record is one that I can still go back and just it seems like a dream. One other one I would go on, that is Emmy called me a few years later and we recorded a song with the Chieftains.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And that was really special too. Yeah, that was great.
Speaker 1:That is such a great story and what a history. And now, all of a sudden, you become president of the Nashville Union. So how did that happen that you wound up as president of the Nashville Union?
Speaker 2:So how did that happen that you wound up as president of the Nashville Musicians Union? Well, it was interesting. I joined the union right away because somebody who I respected said hey, kid, join the union. And I found out early that it can be really good to be under a union contract. We did a show with Don at Giant Stadium in the Meadowlands and I'd only been with him about six months and for me, I pretty much was ready to retire. I thought I'd made it playing at the Meadowlands. Unbeknownst to me it was filmed and unbeknownst to me it was under a union contract.
Speaker 2:And about a month or two later a friend called and said hey, turn on Channel 4. You're on TV. And it was Casey Kasem's American Top 10, the TV version of his radio Top 40 show. And sure enough, don had the number one country single that week Good Old Boys Like Me. And there we were. And so, man, that's great, this is incredible. And then I got a check, a nice check. And then it aired again a month later because it was still the number one single. And I got another check and was like, wow, I got paid three times for one gig.
Speaker 2:That was my first awareness of the union being significant. I really first got involved because they used to have, in the old days, business agents whose jobs seemed to be to just kind of hassle people for doing stuff that didn't fit what they were used to. All over town there were clubs where you played your own music but they weren't giving you a guarantee. It was up to you to draw a crowd and if you drew a crowd they'd have you back and you paid your money at the door and they made their money at the bar. And it was pretty organic situation the Bluebird, douglas Corner and this guy kept messing with me and finally I sort of you know, what do you want me to do? Forge a contract. And he kind of looked at me like that's not a bad idea on it. And finally I stood up at a meeting and I said, hey, you know, I got two kids. I'm trying to tell the truth, learn how to tell the truth, and can we figure something out on this? Because this doesn't fit the business model. What you're asking us to do doesn't fit, which has kind of been a metaphor for everything that I've done since. And so they made me head of a committee and we wrote a very simple bylaw that said when you're playing original music in a listening room, the band leader can be the employer, and so we would file contracts and made that go away. But in the meantime that guy had probably run off 500 or 1,000 people by being much too aggressive. So that was my first education.
Speaker 2:And then, as I got more involved in the recording side of things in the early 2000s, I became president of the Recording Musicians Association, which is a subdivision of the union representing those that work on recording. As I began to look at the national picture, I could see that we had issues that could only be resolved with a change in leadership. My predecessor, harold Bradley, very famous, respected musician who I had worked with a lot, even with his older brother Owen, who was one of the real founders of the music row and Harold had kind of been persuaded by the president, who was from DC and had figured out that if you keep everybody fighting all the time, you can stay in power. So he'd kind of convinced Harold that I'd been brainwashed by Los Angeles recording musicians, which was not true. So I got a little frustrated with it and finally it was like you know I think we need a change in leadership and so I ran against Harold, against the advice of some people who were sure that it was a crazy idea, and Craig Cramp ran as secretary treasurer and we much to the surprise of everyone, in 2008, we pretty soundly defeated Harold and Billy Lineman, who was a you know, harold was international vice president and Billy was a board member, and it was the first time in the history of the AFM that national officers of that stature had been defeated at home. It was just time for a change. It was a generational shift.
Speaker 2:A year later, the same thing happened in New York. Six months after that, we put, we united New York, la and Nashville for the first time in a long time and we're able to run a ticket of candidates. That got the national officers out of there, right, and so you know, it was just one of those things I never could have imagined when I came here. I just felt like we've got to have, we've got to reinvent ourselves here or we're going to become obsolete. And I've been very fortunate to be able to be in a position, because people do look at Nashville with a different eye.
Speaker 2:We're getting stuff done that other locals have not been able to do. We came up with a scale for home recording where you could get paid by the song and pay into your own pension, which is something they told us we were not allowed to do, and all we had to do was create a sentence that allowed the employer to give the musician authority to make the payment. So we also came up with a way to bill artists that are using tracks from the records on tour, similar to when they do it on a song in an award show and they use tracks from the record. They go out on the road. They want to do the same thing. Well, our agreements always said that's prohibited, but we came up with a way to make it legal and fair. We've been able to bill and collect almost a million dollars on that, so it's been very interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the biggest word there is fair. If people think that they're being treated fair, then that can overcome just about anything.
Speaker 2:That's a great point because to me, I talk about respect a lot. This is mutual respect between employers and musicians. Right, you know I work for you. Yeah, we work hard for you, and you treat us the way we like to be treated To us. It's a no-brainer, right Situations. It seems like the music business is portrayed as it has to be a win-lose and for somebody to be successful, somebody else has to suffer, right, it does not have to be that way, and I think that's why Nashville has had the staying power that some of these other cities that only get the big stuff or only get symphony orchestras and the theater work, and we have more freelance musicians in our local, I think, than any other local in the AFM.
Speaker 1:Now, you just mentioned vice president of international, and I think you've just been elected to that position, right?
Speaker 2:Ironically, yes, I'm now in the position that Harold was in when I took him on and defeated him in election. We had the same, the people that we elected in 2010,. The president, after 13 years, retired at our convention last year, and Tino Gagliardi, from New York, who got elected in a similar fashion to me in 2010,. Tino stepped up to be the new president, the secretary treasurer, also retired, and a gentleman named Ken Shurick, who's got a lot of great, extensive experience, took over that. And the vice president, also retired. He'd been there for 13 years. I took it on. It's not a super high-paying job. It's in addition to what I do as president of the local here. What I've found is it does give me, and therefore Nashville, a clearer voice where we can say hey, you know, that's not the only way to look at this. Maybe we should try this, because in Nashville you kind of have to be nice to make stuff work and sometimes that gets forgotten as a strategy.
Speaker 1:Right right In Nashville. The last 30 years we have seen so many changes major labels, independent labels, major studios A lot of them aren't here now. Nashville has seen such a drastic change. So what do you see for Nashville in the next three to five years?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. I think that we're finally seeing a catch-up in diversity and an awareness of all of the styles of music and all of the different business models that are going on. I think Americana, which really started as a catch-all genre, has broadened things quite a bit. Plus, I think you're seeing a lot more inclusion in country music. So I think the increased diversity is definitely part of it. The way that recording has changed there are still some big studios that do things the old-fashioned way People recording in their house and passing on things. I think that's, you know, a new business model.
Speaker 2:I think the challenge of the next five years will be to balance the tourism with professional musicians. In other words, garth Brooks has a club down on Broadway, but chances are he's not going to be performing there very much. I think what we're looking for now is a balance. I really like the new mayor, freddie O'Connell. We've got some big growth issues. I think we're just going to see more and more of these kind of and crossover is kind of an old word, but I think we're multiple genres going on at once where, even beyond category, which was a term Duke Ellington used to use a lot you can find almost any kind of music you're looking for in Nashville, but you do have to know where to look, because the tourist thing will not necessarily get you there.
Speaker 2:I think we're going to see more and more of, hopefully, a balancing out of the bachelorette parties and venues where people can get in and out, where locals can go, because it's a challenge for locals to go downtown. A lot of them don't want to fool with it. Symphony Center is right in the middle of honky-tonk. World had an effect on their attendance to some degree. So we've established this persona, if you like, as Music City and I think now it's a question of. I think we're going to see more of like a rather than continued growth, more of a settling down and, hopefully, things being a little less frantic and a little more user-friendly, local-friendly.
Speaker 2:I think it's a challenge and, of course, real estate has gone crazy and a lot of people moved out of town, but I do think we've made some good steps forward. Traffic is an issue, but the good stuff is here and it's sort of like my thought to the people who go oh man, I can't take it anymore. It's like well, where are you going to go? Where are you going to go where you can find all this stuff. You just got to realize that sometimes it's better to go out on a Monday or Tuesday than a Thursday or Friday, you know, because the tourists kind of take over the town on the weekends. But I think we're going to see continued diversity, continued independent artists blowing up and then getting absorbed into one of the larger entities. We're seeing that a lot, where people do an independent record and then they go viral and then boom, they get picked up by a label because the labels don't do artist development the way they used to.
Speaker 1:Right Production development has definitely changed.
Speaker 2:The example I always use is Bonnie Raitt made like nine or 10 albums for Warner Brothers and they never could break her Right. And then she switched label to Capitol, made a slightly more pop record and all of a sudden she was a superstar. You just don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the thing Major label production development. That has all changed from what it used to be. Now everyone has to find their own direction and hopefully they can find someone that's been there, done that they can guide them and help them with production management and really help them towards their goals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it is such a great place for artists to be in terms of finding musicians a place to tour because of the location. There's so many cities within a reasonable distance here and I'd like to see some independent venues come back. We really miss Douglas Corner and some of those places like that. You know where I played dozens, hundreds of times and there are a few, but again, you got to know where they are.
Speaker 2:I think the Station Inn is a great example. If you blink, you miss it with all the stuff that's around it, but you walk in the door and you're in a timeless world of great acoustic music. It's a total time warp in the best possible way, and I guide people there all the time who've never been to Nashville because it's really special. There's so many great acoustic and bluegrass musicians in this town that any night of the week, whoever's playing the station in, is really really, really good and it's a great vibe. And you know, I mean I've been playing the Bluebird on and off since 1984. A little hard to get in now with the building going on around it, but it's still there and it's still a great experience to sit there and 75 people and hear music that could very easily be in a 100,000 seat arena.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. That's the great thing about Nashville. It gives so many people so many great opportunities. One of the good things I think that has changed here in Nashville is the diversity of the music that you can hear pretty much anywhere you want to go. When I first moved here, it was pretty much country down on Broadway and that was it. Then you could go off to Printer's Alley and find a few different things. But now you can hear so much diversity in music and it's really a good thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. And there's always been a very healthy R&B scene here, going back to Jimi Hendrix and Billy Cox getting out of the Army and coming down here down to Printer's Alley and playing those clubs and getting picked up on the road with the Isley Brothers and Little Richard and eventually becoming famous. But some of those folks you know, they've always been here, you know Jimmy Church, clifford Curry, all these folks. But I think now the awareness of that is much more and the world we're in, all these things have co-mingled and I think the days of trying to separate out genres is kind of obsolete and personally I don't miss that. I always liked the stuff that was in the cracks, exactly.
Speaker 1:I have to say this has been a really great conversation and I'm just so glad that you were able to come on.
Speaker 2:Well, hey, tony, you know I appreciate all the opportunities I've been able to have here in Nashville. I do look back sometimes and go, wow, how did that happen? Being able to be in the studio with Earl Scruggs and Elton John, that was definitely a great experience. It was just one song but it was my absolute favorite Elton John song Country Comforts.
Speaker 2:E Murray had played bass on the original version and D had lived in Nashville for a while. He had passed away quite a while ago, before that record. But you know, I got to meet Elton and say, hey, you know, d Murray was a friend of mine. And just to see him light up and have a smile thinking about his old bass player and then just trying to play my version of that part and guess all the right, left hand moves he was going to make, I mean I couldn't have you, couldn't? You know you could have pinched me a thousand times as a 21 year old moving here and I never would have thought that could have happened.
Speaker 2:And this is a place where you can come and get paid and still be cool. It's not really exclusive. Sometimes in places other places like Austin and New Orleans it seems like you're a sellout if you actually are making a living doing what you want to do, and I think Nashville's always had this mentality of hey, we're being professionals, we're working together and let's be nice to one another, let's not screw each other over. I think that's. It's huge. I cannot thank this community enough, and so for me being in a position to try to pay it forward and help keep this good stuff going, I'm honored to be doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I understand that for sure. I always tell people don't look at your individual things. Take a little time, work at whatever you choose to do and then a little later on, take a look at everything that you've done. So if you look at your body of work, it stands pretty tall and I don't blame you for being very proud of it.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm really incredibly grateful for it. I came here just wanting to meet a band that people liked. I didn't really know about all these other jobs in the music business and I'm really grateful. And when I see these great young musicians who get it and want to do it the right way and know and have so many more tools at their disposal to promote themselves and things, you know, someone like a Guthrie Trapp who's just kind of created his own universe, victor Wooten, this kind of folks and I, you know never really being around the acoustic bluegrass community, getting into that scene and seeing those folks and these young kids that grow up going to the festivals and learning how to play them by the time they're 15, they can play everything their hero played by the time they were 30, who learned everything his hero could play by he was 60. And I just love that generational family thing because I was the only musician in my family so I didn't really have that experience growing up. I just wanted it so bad that I forced it on myself. I'm really lucky and it's great to get to work with guys like you, that you come in the studio, you've got a great song, you put a great collection of players together and you know how to guide it to the finish line, and I love being on either side of the glass. As a bass player, it's just you serve the song and as an artist, you're trying to create a vision for yourself, and I've been fortunate enough to get to do both and I feel grateful for that.
Speaker 2:One thing I'm really glad that I never stopped doing was playing live gigs, because there's things that happen in that live environment that you know and then the next day somebody goes hey, I want something weird here. It's like, oh man, I just was doing something weird last night, let me do this. And I can't tell you how many, how many times that's happened the last thought I would leave you with. When I go talk to kids in schools which I do a fair amount I always tell many of the teachers hey, I'm happy to come talk to your kids, whether it's college or elementary.
Speaker 2:I always say you've got to trust yourself. You've got to listen to your heart, listen to your gut, your inner voice, god, whatever you want to call it. You've got to listen to that voice, because all the craziest decisions that I ever made, like moving to Nashville, getting a weird electric upright bass running for president of the union. All these things were things that I just were in my gut and I couldn't ignore them and I always say, if you stop listening to that voice, it might stop talking. So trust yourself and follow your dreams. I mean it can happen. This is a place where I think our percentage of people making their dreams come true is probably higher than anywhere else in the world, certainly in the music business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is a great place and that is just great advice to give to people.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for for asking me to talk. I'm, as you can tell, I'm always happy to talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, that's, that's, that's me too, it's. It's great to have conversations, you know.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's that's great, to have conversations, you know. Oh, that's great. And anybody who's interested in checking out my stuff, they can go to DavePalmeroycom and it'll be there for those few people that are buying physical product, but I still have a few.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm a big fan of physical product as well.
Speaker 2:I miss it. I mean, I like holding it, whether it's an album or CD, whatever. But at the same time I'm out there on all the streaming services and you know, happy, just happy, to be able to have made a living doing what I love to do.
Speaker 1:Yes, we are both very fortunate to do what we love to do, so thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:I've been very blessed and happy to pay it forward and glad to be your friend, Tony. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, the pleasure's been all mine. Thanks for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the show. This has been a Tony Mantor production. For more information, contact media at platomusiccom.