Pat Donohue Is Fingerpicking Good: The Acoustic Maestro Talks Shop

The 103rd episode of No Hair, No Heart has Mookie sitting down with Pat Donohue, one of the most respected acoustic guitarists alive and a player whose reputation among musicians is legendary. A Grammy winner, National Fingerpicking Guitar Champion, longtime performer with A Prairie Home Companion, and an artist once praised by Chet Atkins as one of the world’s great fingerpickers, Pat joins Mookie with zero ego and tons of good advice. 

What follows is a sharp, grounded, often funny discussion about talent, discipline, and staying sane in a noisy world. Pat talks about his life in music, the long road from learning guitar as a kid to becoming one of the most admired players in the business, and why he still carries himself with the modesty of a working craftsman instead of an icon.

The conversation also gets into something rare these days: an artist intentionally keeping politics out of the music. Pat explains why he prefers to let the songs speak for themselves and why not every stage needs to become a soapbox. In a culture addicted to public declarations, Pat's voice and approach are a refreshing stance.

Pat also shares stories from his years on A Prairie Home Companion, where he spent decades as part of the famed Guys All-Star Shoe Band, performing for millions of listeners each week and contributing to one of America’s most beloved radio shows. 

For younger listeners and aspiring players, Pat also offers the most practical advice imaginable: get out there and play. Don't theorize endlessly, or wait until you’re “ready.” Play live. Play often. Learn in public. Make mistakes. That’s where musicians are forged.

The Guest

Pat is one of the most listened-to finger pickers in the world. As the guitarist for the “ Guys All-Star Shoe Band” of Minnesota Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion, for twenty years, Pat got to show off his savvy licks and distinctive original songs to millions of listeners each week. Pat’s musical tastes are eclectic. Though he considers himself foremost a folk guitarist, Pat’s influences are rooted in bluesmen Blind Blake, Robert Johnson, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Muddy Waters and Miles Davis. He manages to blend jazz and blues with folk, and the mix is seamless. Over the years he has captivated audiences with his unique original compositions, dazzling instrumentals and humorous song parodies, including Sushi-Yucki and Would You Like to Play the Guitar?

If you're in the city, come out and see Pat Donohue & Friends Dan Newton and Mike Cramer at the Midway Saloon in St. Paul. 

His Website

https://www.patdonohue.com/index.html

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the No Hair All Art Podcast. I'm your host with No Hair, Mookie Spitz, and I've got the legendary figure-picking goat. Mr. Pat Donahue, and he's got more hair than I do, so he's already had a distinct advantage here. How are you, Pat? Thanks for making time for us.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

All right. Well, I'm I must admit that in that sense I've never been referred to as a goat before. Uh in other ways I have, but I'm not the goat by any means. Either way.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Okay. By goat, we were meaning uh greatest of all time.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

I really can't claim that.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

You can't claim that? Well, I'll I'll throw you in there. You're you're good buddies with Chet Atkins, or you were. You guys played together. You did an homage for him, and he did one for you. And people put you in the same same group of guitar players as Leo Kotke and Tommy Emmanuel. And uh, and we feel blessed for having you.

unknown 1:09

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

And I had uh Peppino Di Agostino on the podcast fairly recently.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Yes, I haven't seen him for a long time. I I always loved hanging around with Pepino.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Pepino is a great storyteller, and Lawrence Juber told me that Pepino is also a great cook.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yes, that's what I've heard. I've never experienced that personally, but I wouldn't doubt it.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

So I had Lawrence on too. Papino suggested I have Lawrence on, and then I had Lawrence, and we had a wonderful conversation, and we talked a little bit about you. So I thought I'd give you a ring and see if you could join. And and here we are, and I've got a bunch of things to ask you, and I'm sure our listeners and viewers would love to hear directly from you.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

I'll do what I can for sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

All right. So um, I guess we could just take it back. You're uh you're a Minnesota kid, yeah, and St. Paul.

unknown 2:09

St.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Paul, Minnesota, which is where I am right now.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yeah, I'm a Chicago native, so we used to always freeze our ass off every summer, and our only recourse was to know that you and Minnesota had it probably worse than we did.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

It's cold in the winter, you mean, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah, yeah. It's cold, cold. I've I've been up there, it's nice, and I think it became kind of known with the movie Fargo, making a little fun of the accents. Oh yeah. Tell us a little bit about your background. Are you were your parents natives? You just grew up there.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Uh yes, I'm just uh you know from St. Paul, you know, an Irish kid, then uh went to school here and uh and uh discovered music at a fairly early age and uh kind of followed that, ended up following that route. But I didn't really set out to become a musician. Um but you know it's a long story. I like I said, I grew up here and uh my my older sister had a uh Goya, a Goya guitar, a real folk guitar back in the early 60s, like uh Joan Baez kind of a thing. And uh so I was forbidden to touch it when she by her, you know, her little brother didn't, and I don't blame her, but when she was out out of the house, that's the first thing I did. And so I kind of learned uh secretly for a while on her guitar. Uh but then I I found another old uh instrument and just kept plunking away at it. And at the time I was also a drummer in a rock band. Um but uh more and more I I just like playing guitar and eventually just switched over entirely.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

So your your sister wouldn't let you play guitar, and that of course made you want to play guitar even more.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

I suppose it did, yeah, on some level. But I just decided, well, I could do that if I had a chance, you know, so I kept at it. Uh then you know, when I was later on in my teens, I got in interested in blues guitar playing, and especially that of um early blues masters from the 20s and 30s. And that fit in more with the um acoustic sort of thing that I was going for at the time. And um that just kind of took over my playing for a while, and that's how I learned to play, but then I you know slowly musically expanded to not just blues, but applying those those things to all kinds of different styles of American music that I wanted to play.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

How did you approach it? Obviously, there's a natural proclivity, and every guitar player is different in terms of picking up the instrument and starting to to master it. Were you most mostly by ear listening, playing along?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Did you yeah almost strictly by ear, but the um to this day I'm not a very good reader. Um I can do it with a gun in my head. But I don't I don't uh can you know relate to music like that naturally at all, but always by ear. And over the years I learned, you know, a certain amount out of books. Uh I have to admit I learned a lot out of the back of Guitar Player Magazine. You know, I just would find something that I didn't know and just grab onto it the best I could. So a lot of it came from that. We I did not have uh videos and things like that that that are so uh easily accessible now. Not to sound like an old crotchety fool, but uh that's the way we learned back in those days from records.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Yeah, it was old old school. You lift the needle up and then you put it back, listen to the measure to the song again, lift the needle up, put it back. That that was all we had. That's how I learned too back back in the day. There was no YouTube videos, no instructional videos. Did did you have someone who inspired you who taught you, or are you an autodidact for the most part?

SPEAKER_00 6:00

I learned from everybody, really, uh, whoever I could learn something from. I had some friends that I played with around town here, and they taught me a certain amount of things, and uh I just I picked it up off the streets, really. I did take uh three guitar lessons when I was in Denver back in the 70s from uh uh a guy named Dale Bruning, a jazz guitar player and instructor, and he was quite uh quite the jazz guitar group guru, and I that was what I was aiming for at the time, but I was he was way above me, and yet the things that he sh showed me I learned over the next 15 years or so to where I now I know what he was talking about. So there is that, but mostly it's been by ear and by playing with other musicians. And I used to go to concerts of guitar players that I really liked and and get there early enough to sit in the front row and and do this, you know, and I go home and then I just work on the stuff that I saw, which helped with what I was working on from hearing it on the records.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

That's another aspect, too, back in the old school way of doing stuff. You would you would see people, uh even Eddie Van Halen talks about going to the Hollywood Bowl and seeing Jimmy Page do the heartbreaker, and then figuring that he could he could tap it instead of just hold it. And uh I remember seeing shows too, wondering like how the hell they do it. Because again, we didn't have access to YouTube videos on-demand content, and the only time we really saw our favorite musicians play might be a documentary on television, but that's as good as it got, and we actually got to see them see them play.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Yeah, there's something about live that communicates the energy, an urgent urgency, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:42

The urgency, and and I remember going to my early shows too, and just the one it was almost like a religious experience to actually see the band live that was just living on the vinyl. You felt the energy, the lived experience of actually playing in front of people, and then being on the receiving end of all that sound, and then the the audience itself, like this hive consciousness tapping into the the groove. It's really transformative.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

It's all about when it when it comes right down to it, is that kind of communication right can be simulated or reproduced, but when it's actually happening, that's that's not really describable.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

It just and that's all we had too back in the day, which which made it even more urgent and and profound and and fun. Were you mostly an acoustic player from from the roots, or did you veer into electric, especially when you're playing in bands and you're hanging out?

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Oh, I veered all right, yeah. Yeah, I do I have several electric guitars and I do play electric on occasion, but I've always been more of an acoustic player. And uh it's a really a good question because to me they're they're very different instruments, and the things that you have to do to make them sound good are very different. And so I'm pretty good at the acoustic part, and the electric, I kind of I don't know, I'm not I can't convince myself that I'm an electric guitar player.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

So yeah, that that's that's very interesting. Especially when you're younger, you want you want more bang for the buck, so to speak, and there's a natural draw to uh especially testosterone-laced adolescence to to make some noise and to really and to really jam.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

I have plenty of that, but I uh expressed it acoustically, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yeah, yeah. And you're in that group of acoustic masters too, like like we mentioned, and uh, and all of them just love the immediacy of the instrument, and maybe that lack of of extra firepower heightens the sensitivity and the connection with the with the instrument and even the percussive aspects that that all you guys embody too.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Finger style versus pick style or acoustic versus electric?

SPEAKER_01 9:56

I was just going acoustic versus electric in general, but then you're bringing up now finger versus picking, too, which is yet another dimension of that.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Yeah, guitar is a fascinating instrument, I think, in a lot of ways. But yeah, there are several ways to approach it, uh, and then a couple of different instruments traditionally to play it on. Yeah. And uh the percussive aspect I can I think is common to either one. Um the feel on the electric is so much different from uh that on acoustic that I'm always uh seems to me I'm always overplaying on the electric, even if I got the same uh gauge strings on there. Um, just because I don't know, everything is really amplified, and every little thing that's out of tune is really out of tune, and maybe I'm just hearing that where I don't on acoustic.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

And even the lighter touch, especially when you have heavy-duty amplification. I mean, the the even the shredders like Ingwei Momstein, he uses the one millimeter pick, and he barely touches this the strings. You hear this wall of sound and a tsunami of notes, but um it's a very, very light touch, and with acoustic, you you need to work at it a little bit, right? You're yeah, you're digging in there, you're connecting with it, and you're you're responsible for all the output.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Well, that's right, and that's probably why my tone on electric is I'm not that satisfied with it because my technique is really basically geared towards acoustic. Yeah, uh but sometimes it it's get you get lucky, and that cross crossover helps, and you come up with something that hasn't been come up with.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

So that could be neat, yeah. Another aspect is it frees up multiple fingers. So you've got Noffler from Dire Straits, who used the finger-picking approach to electric, and he cut his swath that way, kind of unique and and fresh. But you're you're especially well known for your thumb riding the bass, and and you've got a dimensionality to your playing, which would be impossible, I think, if you picked acoustic, let alone you're playing the electron.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Well, yeah, I don't know. There's probably nothing that I do on acoustic that you couldn't do on electric, but it would just sound different because it was conceived on you know learned on the acoustic. Um but um, you know, Martin Offler was another chat chat head, I call him. Chet Atkins uh uh influenced by chat quite a bit. And um so I don't know, there's something in that that uh lineage of finger style guitar that goes back to Merle Travis and even further before that, American finger picking basically, that uh people like Mark Knopfler have going for him and made them, I think, distinct from other rock guitar players.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Absolutely, especially when you're picking, and this is what I was I was hinting at that if you're picking, it's you're you're really thinking very linearly and one note at a time. And even if you're blazing through arpeggios, it's still very linear. You you're getting one note at a shot, and finger picking opens up to chordal kind of trajectories, right? And and the way you arrange in particular, you're taking advantage of that. You've got all the layers and the arrangements that goes on. I mean, that's what I particularly love about your stuff, too, that there's a lot coming out of the guitar.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Uh yeah, well, I tried to, but um, that's uh one of the differences between finger style and pick style is you can play a little bit more orchestrally with finger style and pick the notes that you want uh easily because you can pick them with your fingers. Where if you did the same thing with a pick, you'd have to come up with a technique that just allowed the notes that you want to have play play. And people do that, you know, but it's not natural on uh finger style to play very deliberate harmonies and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Yeah, some some of the newer players are actually adapting finger style to electric, like the up-and-coming guy is really making a name for himself, Mancuso. He's he's all over the place, and uh he's he he he's quite impressive, and he's all oh, he uses the three fingers, mostly these two fingers, but I better do it. Yeah, two or two or three. Probably, probably, but he's got the the three finger, one, two, three, one, two, three. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. He's super fun to watch, and and and I'm sure that he was influenced by guys like you and the finger pick picking acoustic guitar guys. Um I don't know. I put money on that that he he's listened to some of your 20 records today.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Well, I don't know if he heard any of that along the line that uh inspired him to play the way he does. I'm gratified.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

But uh yeah, he's terrific. Yeah, so there's there's fun hybrids that are coming out, but but again, you embody that kind of old school approach, which is so anchored in the Delta Blues, like you're mentioning, you foray'd into jazz. You've got so many different styles across your different albums, and most people probably know you from your prairie home companion days when you were pretty much the house band on the radio. Yeah, I was wondering. You and you and Garrison were fist pumping. Can you tell us a little bit how how did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Well, we still fist bump every now and then, but um uh let's see, how did that happen? Uh well, no, the history of the show goes from about 1974 to 19 to 2014, something like that. And uh I wasn't involved with the first iteration of it very much, although I was an occasional guest back in the 80s during that that time. But then Garrison quit the show for a few years and he went to Denmark and eventually worked his way back in about 1993. He started the show back up again uh from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, and he I think was looking for musicians around here he had worked before with uh successfully. And one day I just got a call and he said, You want to do a few shows this this season? And and I said, Sure. And you know, 20 years later, uh you know, I did that, ended up doing that and being part of the uh guys all-star shoe band for uh about 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Which was very fun, amazing, and again, a bigger exposure for you and and for your your your music.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Very much so. If anybody knows of me, it's probably because of that.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but for those who know and those who do follow follow finger finger picking acoustic, again, you're you're in the Mount Olympus of these these few guys.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Well, it's another thank you.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Yeah, but but it's it's true, and it's it's delightful, delightful having you. Can can you share with us a little bit about your trajectory? I mean, you've got so many albums and you've covered so many genres, and I'm assuming some of it might even be circumstantial, just like hooking up with Garrison and doing that. But if you're looking back at at your career playing, are there common themes or threads? How do you look at decades of of jamming in retrospect? How does it make you feel? And does does it make sense to you? Is it is it something that you you kind of were driving toward, or it it just kind of played itself out?

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Do I have any deep life regrets?

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Is that what you're well kind of hitting at the opposite, which is looking back at you know, this or that being great, but I've been very, very, very fortunate to be able to you know mostly make my living as a musician and and uh you know in a in a nice way.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

So I feel very lucky about that. I I'm very thankful about the fact that I can still play and um I will continue to do so as as long as I can because I love doing it. I think that, you know, certainly one of the biggest things that happened in my musical career was getting hooked up with a national radio show like a Prairie Home Companion. Uh, not only because of the exposure, but um it was kind of a living, breathing thing where every week uh you know I had to have something and it had to be something different and something that uh that fit was appropriate, should we say, uh, to the show or whatever occasion, whatever time we were in. So it really helped me develop uh you know, as an artist also to just have to have to do that every week. And and so I wrote a lot of songs for that occasion or that show, and I still play a lot of them today. They turned out to be good songs. And I don't know if I would have written them if I hadn't had to, you know.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yeah, deadlines are a creator's best friend, actually. You got a goal, you got you can't you can't mess around too much, you need the output, and then you breadcrumb yourself, you can see where you were, and then you know, you can go do some new stuff in that model. Yeah, so it's very productive for for musicians to uh have have that kind of schedule, especially if you're just like noodling around. I'm I'm assuming that you play guitar a lot, even even these days, where you kind of live with live with the instrument.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Uh I I certainly have uh a lot of times in my life, more than to now, but even now I I managed to get a few hours in of playing a day. It's my still remains my favorite activity. So um I still play as much as I can, and like I said, I'm glad to still be able to do it. But I don't think I could put in six and eight hour days the way I used to. I'd get physical problems.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Oh, sure. We all we all uh uh it's a drag getting old, just like Mick Jagger saying for all of us. And uh it is cool to your point that you're still rocking it.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Yeah, yeah, I love that aspect of it. Um in regard to what you had asked earlier, like some pivotal uh gigs and uh points in in my lifetime, I would say that the time that I spent um touring on my own as a Pat Donohue, the solo act, and I did a lot of stuff in various p pockets of the United States and did a lot of touring, and um you know, I never got that uh fame and name recognition that allowed me to be more successful at it uh than uh than it was worth because it's a lot of trouble and a lot of uh risk and um you know uh it can be a lot of pain also, but uh uh it can be very rewarding. And so just the experience of having done that for I don't know a long time really uh probably formed my presence on stage and my repertoire to some degree because I try and find things that I like and that the people I'm playing for like and the Venn diagram is you know sometimes like about like this. But uh I definitely want to play things that people like to hear. More and more and more I keep thinking, you know, that's the trick. You play songs that people want to hear, but not the ones you think they should want to hear. Uh that's the key to say that's there, but there is a crossover, and and there's enough good music to to do both. So that helped me form uh my particular musical style. And the last thing I'd say is that uh in the last five years or so, I've had a weekly gig here in St. Paul, Minnesota, called Pat Donahue and Friends at a place called the Midway Saloon, and we every Wednesday night from six to eight, I get two or three of my m musical buddies, and I've got a lot of really talented musical friends around town, and uh we get together and play fairly uh casually and spontaneously for a couple hours every week. And it's been going on for about four years, five years now. And um it's kind of taken on a life of its own in a certain way, you know. People have seem to have accepted it, and uh are are coming to see it and and it's always something for me to look forward to playing the same and yet different every week. And uh so I'm really happy with how that's going along too knocking on wood.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

To your point, that's what it's all about, really. Just playing playing for people and connecting. It's interesting that you bring up this apparent tension between what you like to play and prefer playing and what audiences would be eager to hear from you. Because listening to your stuff, uh especially looking at at all your albums and your output for years, I I don't feel that tension. You you've got such a broad range of content but I I never felt as though you're you're out there the way some musicians can be like atonal super chromatic or experimental or going off going off the conventional deep end. I always found your your music very accessible very melodic and and and popular that that's just my take on it what what kind of content would you have liked to have done if um if you really had your way of it if you could snap your fingers and audiences would appear that perfectly matched what you wanted to play how different would it have been or what stuff would you have done or could you have done that would be more more more fun for you or more up your alley I don't know I I feel like there's a slight misunderstanding but um maybe I can figure it out uh you know I never did any recordings that I didn't want to do. No no I don't mean it that way but just um it you know this this sense of trying to appease the audience I I've I found all your stuff very accessible and and popular.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Yeah well it's I'm not not meaning meaning to be unpopular I was always kind of hoping it'd be more popular than it is as far as the style of music it is um and I what I was referring to before was the fact that I've spent an inordinate number of hours perfecting certain instrumentals or um songs that I really thought were just great. You know and then I finally get them to where I could perform them and and people just didn't respond to them. I see what you mean you can uh go down that road a lot but if you start to pay attention to what the things that they do respond to and they're usually fairly universal type musical things um you I think that you can communicate a little bit better and there's a lot less self-involvement needed.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

I I see what you're saying. So um I mean this is prevalent for every musician too like uh you know people be pumped to go see a stadium rock act and in their mind they've got two or three hits that they want to hear and even ostensibly you're a fan you're not gonna be familiar with 90% of the content of of a band even a popular band and you kind of sit around and you go for a beer and come back without thinking twice and then you're just hoping that at least for the encore they pay they play your favorite song. So I think that's probably an endemic challenge for all artists. I'm a writer too and I I know that sometimes I I'll put something out that I just think is the best ever. No one cares and then I'll offhandedly just shoot through something and throw it out there and there's a reaction so it could it could it could be frustrating right you wonder why people reacted the way they did to that particular thing that you didn't think was that important. Yes worth examining yeah and I think there's random elements too like memes on the internet why the hell does this thing have 1 billion views and something that's arguably much more innovative or interesting falls flat I don't know I don't even pretend nobody does I don't think Hollywood has this problem what's a hit and what isn't and like William Goldman said nobody knows nothing. And I think same rules apply to music so yeah I think your frustration is is pretty much universal and uh you know looking back what what can you do? You did make the one point about having to hustle and bust ass and uh and if you innately love to do what you do and just do it then you're putting most of your time and energy into the actual joy of content creation and there's a sincerity that's there too which is I think this is awesome. It's coming from my heart hear a world give it a listen but then you have no control over it they'll take it or leave it. And in order to convince them that it's good that's a completely different aspect of being an artist all of a sudden you're a business person or a marketer which is which is not you which is not you right some people it is they're very good at marketing the subject at both some can do both and I'm certainly not one of them so um I'm kind of a take it or leave it sort of a nerf right what I do I sure won't be like it otherwise what can I say yeah well bless you for it because there's an integrity to it and to your point you've had a lot of satisfaction just and success doing what you like to do. Yes that's true um an immense amount of uh satisfaction and a certain amount of success uh yes absolutely I always try to learn what it is when I see people react to whatever it is I always it makes me perk up and think well what is that how can I exploit that whatever it is you know it's right of uh the communication yeah and is it completely random or is there something in the song itself that hits home some kind of universal trigger to to get get people I mean there are hits right in in retrospect you look at a hit and you're like of course that's a hit because you know everyone likes it but a cat chases its tail everyone likes it because it's a hit and it's a hit because everyone likes it. Yeah right it is how the hell do you know do you know and how do you recreate that that did happen again right so I don't know maybe the best thing to just ignore the past and go on and do your thing yeah for life yeah do do your thing what kind of advice would you give younger guitar players especially like younger ones who really are going back to the foundations not not the Instagram jockeys who are just out there for clicks and playing whatever at 90 miles an hour but uh there's a young generation and I see a lot of them uh getting to the down home delta blues they're playing Robert Johnson they're they're sing they're singing like Sunhouse they're they're they they mean it they feel it and they're doing it there's a tradition there you embody a lot of that in your own playing can you give them any encouragement or advice for for mastering the craft and going out there and trying to hustle it into something that could even be a career well um musically I might be able to give some direction and advice but as far as uh taking on music as a career uh I I didn't know when I was doing it how you do it and I don't know now I know that I tried awfully hard and mostly at playing as well as I could and also trying to be a professional when I did play gigs and I expanded my gigsmanship to not only be able to play coffee houses but I could play um strolling dinner music and I could play all the standards and all improvise with people by ear all this by ear so I think that all kind of snowballed into whatever I I've got going right now. How did you pick the pick it up? I mean can you it like we came naturally to especially since you're not looking at the sheet music it's not map versus territory it's territory for you you're listening you're playing along you're playing with people you're playing with bands it's kind of what you did but if you could slice it and dice it in a way that you could advise a younger guitar player in terms of best practices some of the cool stuff I'm sure a lot of people listening and watching are are learning uh see you as a kind of idol and and and want to play what you can play.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

First you have to get out more kids. Yeah and don't worry about your career just uh play the play the damn thing I don't know there's on one hand there's so many more uh uh resources for learning music very easily available than there were uh as we told that we talked about before and yet um there's uh a disconnect it seems like because I'm I'm hearing people that are playing uh once in a while hear a younger person who played a country blues song pretty well and I saw how how'd you learn that well just off the YouTube and somebody had taught them that who had learned it off something who had somebody somewhere along the line learned it off of listening to Blind Blake or somebody like that. But I think there's a disconnect is people don't necessarily go back and listen to those influences because there's no video of them. You have to actually listen and see what they were doing. But that does give you an insight into the actual feel that goes with that style of music not just the notes that are played. And so I would say listen listen listen is probably my my most uh important thing that I could tell an aspiring musician listen and try and you know feel something and and understand how music works.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

It sounds to me like you're recommending go to the source. So you're hinting that there's copies of copies of copies. It's like a Xerox copy that gets duller and duller the more times you put it you put it through it.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

If you will because there's those things that that blues players were doing that uh if you do the same things without having listening to that it's hard enough when you do listen to trying to relate to it. But I think when you learn it off of YouTube you don't even know what you're shooting for in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah yeah Jack White comes to mind White Stripes fame because he he liked to get down and dirty he liked he'd treated guitar like a block of wood with six strings on it and then his uh wife Meg pots and pans drumming no bass flare and just kind of shouting into that mic and uh he he he spawned from some of this DNA of the Delta blues and all that and he tries to embody that transmission of that raw emotional energy not filtered through Instagram and and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Yeah I think that's and and I think he's turned a lot of younger players onto his source material where where it comes from that's a real benefit yeah and it's an attitude that you share which is um go to the source and the source is also a lived experience of of figuring out why you're playing in the first place it's no accident that the blues is called the blues it's uh you know your your your landlord evicted you your girlfriend left you and uh life sucks so you look at music as a catharsis and a release and in that release is where the passion and the energy comes from take away that passion and energy then what's the point you're just on Instagram yeah yeah it's uh there's less and less humanity it seems like involved with music these days uh and so I think the more we can play live and uh have access to real music is the better.

SPEAKER_01 34:44

And what do you think of um I mean the music scene now is weird you've got ai bands that are streaming on Spotify and uh the kids are mixing the computer is now their instrument rather than an actual instrument DJs have reached the point where the remix is more famous and more more listened to than the actual content that's being mixed to the point where the DJs are considered the artists they don't even know who wrote the song or composed it's irrelevant that just strikes me as so incredibly bizarre at this point in the game that's you're gonna I'm not denying that's true. Yeah and then the genres there there's no you've got the originals right the Delta blues blues blues rock you have the improvisational offshoot into jazz yeah the influence of reggae and Caribbean stuff and then we went into our rock rock evolution you know new wave industrial then ediem and dance and it's been growing I kind of feel like everyone's almost exhausted themselves and they just keep combining and recombining things in odd mixtures ska punk bluegrass that's a new band but there's not not nothing really original and it just seems to be reconstituted like the AI songs that now people are listening to what do you think is an antidote to that because you've been pure in the sense of drawing from an established tradition mastering the craft putting your own signature style and voice to it and that's like almost a lost tradition I don't know maybe um I I know several younger musicians who who are really true musicians that don't you know don't have a a bad attitude at all so I don't I don't know if we're losing music or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Because I know too many young people that are that are on it. But I will say that it it's increasingly rare it seems like that an instrument is being played as opposed to um an electronic device. And so I could see it being that there's really not very many of certain type of instrumentalists left.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Yeah and then what's lost is the humanity behind it right the story.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

That's distressing to me because there's a certain beauty in the way a saxophone vibrates or a trumpet or a guitar that's that's a physical thing and not a reproduction of the physical thing.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

Yeah. And especially finger picking acoustic guitar so we go full circle that way right that's like about as physical as it gets you can they say that any anyone can play the piano instantly so you know a five year old can go up to a piano it's percussive and then you start hitting on if you happen to hit the right keys you might hit CGE and you got a chord but guitar is hard you you gotta you gotta build the strength in your fingers even getting a coherent D chord let alone a C can take people weeks months to build up everything from the finger strength to the calluses coordinating right hand and left and then even if you're bold enough to go multiple fingers then you gotta re really re rewire your brain which strings am I picking with which finger plus I've got all this to maintain but uh that's true uh you run your start and it it it hurts after you've played guitar for about an hour and you haven't played a lot or even 15 minutes your um your fingertips will start to get red and even blistered at times but you I guess that's uh every instrument has it's it's a it's a pain factor and you have to decide whether you want to play the instrument bad enough to withstand the pain.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

But if you do then you get galluses and then you can actually play quite a bit longer. So it's a progressive process at first it's painful.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

But on the other hand guitar is one of the easiest instruments to play some play a mute sound like music on like if you do play a D chord you can go play and it almost sounds like music whereas a a violin you're struggling just to oh no that's that's that's even rough that's like cats screwing in an alley for two years you can't even get a coherent coherent sound on it and there's no chords too you're just like yes that's a rough instrument I think clarinet is a little like that too it's hard to get just a decent sound out of it. Right right right so maybe guitar's kind of in between you know banging on a piano and uh you know trying to squeeze something that isn't piercing out of a violin no but it it's one reason the guitar is kind of abused a little as an instrument because if you got can play three chords you can kind of make a career if you if you want so people don't necessarily have to be that good of an instrumentalist to get by with guitar. Yeah yeah yeah I was talking to the unique aspects of guitar dynamics with with Lawrence Juber and with Pepino Diagostino when when I had them on and they've got very different views of of the same essence so Pepino plays a lot of chromatic stuff and he he does a lot of interesting percussive and Lawrence is uh is more more refined in the sense where he's playing more in a more in that box but very polished very polished and uh and arranged and he both of them use alternate tunings like Lawrence is big on the dad gad he's got a whole album and he plays a lot in that he plays in uh in G and C.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

Have you have you experimented in in terms of some of those tweaked tunings and going chromatic and getting getting a little weird I can go chromatic i i like that a lot but as far as tunings uh I play a bit in drop D. Yeah yeah that's a rock thing too people love drop D and for listeners it's just a whole step down usually uh E is the low note on a six string and when you do a drop D it's like the one string goes down a whole step to D right otherwise you play everything the same except everything the same right right and I'm a big fan of playing in that tuning in a different key from D play a song in G using a drop D tuning there's all kinds of little cool things of course yeah but I otherwise I've I've I've dabbled a little in open G and open D which are the the blues tunings if you will mostly for playing bottleneck style guitar.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

And then you could slide because it's uh it's a one finger major chord yeah and you just kind of zoom it around. That's Keith Richards has made a career out of that.

SPEAKER_00 41:47

Well that's true if you have a a guitar that's tuned to a chord now my problem was with the Prairie Home is that it was a a very live experience and I didn't have the opportunity to tune my guitar to an open chord and I couldn't bring an extra guitar just for that. So I learned to play the slide that I play on standard tuning. Yeah and it's almost as effective if you were damping you have to be really good at damping with both no no I betcha no one noticed.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

Well I tried to make nobody noticed I tried to make nobody noticed that's great and I have to ask you just being in Minnesota and you know this is just a podcast about music but politics and music have been interwoven since since the beginning and now there's been a lot of controversy in Minnesota and and blues rock have had statements and that energy flows into it and I'm just curious how the political landscape the cultural landscape has influenced some of your playing and some of the energy that's gone into music.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

Yeah yeah I've got to tell you very very little okay that's interesting right very little if if at all and it's a bit by design because um I think that one of the stronger things is about my particular representation of music at least live is the fact that it's an opportunity to not really think about that stuff for a little while. And uh all I can say is that from a as a personal just a guy who would go to any other concert if that performer goes into a political diatribe of any kind I'm really apt or not be interested. And so I don't really try to present that in my shows or in my playing at all. I don't know how Would represent your guitar playing, but um I I really try to stay as apolitical as possible. I have my own beliefs, as does everyone.

SPEAKER_01 44:09

So yeah, that that's refreshing to hear because um, you know, everyone from Roger Waters, now Bruce Springsteen, and on the other side of the political aisle, too, you have performers who have to integrate their ideology, especially into live performance. So you find yourself as uh as a participant just having to listen to uh a political diatribe rather than just experience the joy of music, which by its nature frees you, liberates you, makes you feel good. Last thing you want is to be reminded of things that are uncomfortable or contentious.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

Personally, that's true. I think there are a lot of people who who do uh see a big connection between their the art that they experience and their politics.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

But I guess that's not my that's not your cup of tea.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

I think that's why I asked, because it it's you've been kind of neutral about it. And this I think goes back to your core playing, like to the foundations of blues and jazz, and just being the master arranger and craftsman and songwriter in a way where you're not you're not pulling in this extraneous stuff, you're focused on the music itself. And I think that's that's refreshing to a lot of people. Yeah, I think that that that's really refreshing, refreshing to folks.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

I think it's great that the people who are doing it are doing it, and they're certainly entitled to do whatever they want to do, right?

SPEAKER_01 45:43

Right, right, right. Well, I want to thank you for your time, and it it's been uh great, great catching up with you. Uh we have folks listening and watching who who are your fans and would love to see love to see more of you. Any uh anything you want to say in terms of uh you know being able to talk to some of your fans and say, hey, this is a candid moment.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

Well, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 46:10

Um, I guess I would add something on my hey you picked up on my on my head. Maybe you could play a Diddy for them.

SPEAKER_00 46:17

Yeah, just make something up. Yeah, I'll try make not to make it too long here, but uh, go for it. I was gonna sit down and play guitar right now, which I guess I am. I might be something like this.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Very nice, very nice. Thank you. Thank you for taking me up on the hint and and playing us a little song. That's that's terrific. And can you remind us where you're playing in Minnesota with your little band? Where's that?

SPEAKER_00 47:38

All kinds of little gigs here and there, but there's one pretty constant one, and I'll tell you about that, which is Wednesday evenings from six to eight in St. Paul, Minnesota, at a place called the Midway Saloon. It's called Pat Donahue and Friends. We have a good time. We have a good time.

SPEAKER_01 47:52

All right. And they can go to your website too. You got gigs that are coming and going. You got your little itinerary there. Can you tell us about being on the road?

SPEAKER_00 48:01

Um say that I'm not doing it very much anymore being on the road. I did that for, like I said, a lot of years, and now um the thought of flying someplace and renting a car and driving around to coffee houses where there might not be very many people there, it doesn't really appeal to me in the way that it wants it.

SPEAKER_01 48:18

Yeah. Good for you. And you know, on the on the on behest of all your fans and also personally, thanks for just doing doing what you do all these years and contributing to the to the genre, to the craft. You know, you had your own signature guitar too.

SPEAKER_00 48:37

Well, yes, this is a Patana you modeled, Martin.

SPEAKER_01 48:39

Oh, okay. I was gonna ask about that if that's uh if that's one of your signatures.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

It doesn't come with this tool.

SPEAKER_01 48:45

Yeah, we couldn't see it with the capo. Yeah, that's the PD model. Yeah, very nice. Very nice. Cool. So thanks so much, Pat, again, for making time.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

All right, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 49:00

Follow 'em if you're in Minnesota, go check 'em out.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

That sounds great, Moogie.