Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Carlos del Junco interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Always looking to push himself in new directions, Carlos has released an eclectic mixture of genres across the range of his albums. But each song is underpinned with his great sounding fusion of blues / jazz harmonica, with a great tone.

Carlos is also known for his overblowing technique, and he shares how to use this to compliment his sound.

Carlos is also a passionate teacher of the harmonica, and is running some Webinars on how to transcribe music to aid learning.

Select the Chapter Markers tab above to select different sections of the podcast (website version only).

https://www.carlosdeljunco.com

Carlos has a teaching website:
https://www.harmonicapractice.com

Carlos has a Webinar coming up on 30/05/20 on using Transcribe! software:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kak3vC5rGI&list=PLnapgL3AuXGqePHifjO-E8YGdDWFjftSb


Some of the equipment Carlos uses:
Echosystem delay pedal by Empress Effects: https://empresseffects.com/products/echosystem
Lone Wolf effects pedals: https://www.lonewolfblues.com

Marble amps:
https://www.marble-amps.com/


Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

SPEAKER_02:

Hi, Neil Warren here again and welcome to another episode of the Happy Hour Harmonica podcast with more interviews with some of the finest harmonica players around today. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and also check out the Spotify playlist where some of the tracks discussed during the interviews can be heard. The Long Wolf Blues Company but each song is underpinned with his great sounding fusion of blues-jazz harmonica with a great tone. Carlos is also known for his overblowing technique, and he shares how he uses this to complement his sound. Carlos is also a passionate teacher of the harmonica, and is running some webinars on how to transcribe music to aid learning.

UNKNOWN:

Music

SPEAKER_02:

Hello, Carlos, and welcome to the podcast. Hey, Neil. It's a stage name all in one, isn't it? First of all, it sounds very cool. And it's of the reeds, of the harmonica reeds. It couldn't work better, really, could it? Yeah, why not? We're talking about your early life. So as you say, though, you're born in Cuba, and then you emigrated to Canada at the age of one. And you're around the Toronto area in Canada.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I basically grew up in Toronto all my life. And then about 14 years ago, I moved to this just 100 kilometers east of Toronto, still on Lake Ontario in Ontario, to a little town called Port Hope.

SPEAKER_02:

So what was the music scene like when you were growing up around there and your early influences to get you interested in music?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, Toronto is one of the biggest cities in Canada. Tons of musicians, a great blues scene. When I first started playing, I guess at the age of 14, it was pretty soon after that. When I was 17, I think I took my first lesson with someone, even though I'd already been playing.

SPEAKER_02:

So do you remember what first got you interested in playing the harmonica?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, when I was a grade nine or 14, a friend of mine played a little bit of harmonica on a neck rack, you know, while he was playing guitar. And I think just the sound of him bending a note, it was like, man, that's such a cool sound. I knew I wanted him to do that. So as a harmonica on a rack, were you aspiring Bob Dylan at that stage? Paul Butterfield was my first influence, I'd say. I mean, I like to joke that, you know, it's guys like Neil Young and Bob Dylan that have given the harmonica, the diatonic harmonica, a bad name. Brilliant songwriters that they are. It's used as an accessory to what they do best, which is writing songs. And I mean, and I say that, again, in all humbleness, like to say that, you know, they've helped get the harmonica out into the public ears through mainstream radio. But that's the point is that the folks on mainstream radio radio here, uh, They go, harmonica? Oh yeah, doesn't Bob Dylan play the harmonica? And that's all they're exposed to as opposed to the amazing underground Little Walters and Paul Butterfields and all those people.

SPEAKER_02:

Did you learn any other instruments when you were younger or before you started playing harmonica?

SPEAKER_01:

I lasted for three weeks on the violin when I was eight. And then I lasted for six months taking piano when I was 10. And then my hair got curly when I was 14 and the harmonica called out to me. I never really learned how to read music.

SPEAKER_02:

Was there particularly a song you remember early on, maybe a Paul Butterfield song that really grabs you and you felt, yeah, that's it. Harmonica's for me. I

SPEAKER_01:

guess, you know, my first kind of record that had a really big impact on me that I was exposed to was my brothers, older brothers had this, the very first Paul Butterfield blues record just called the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The opening cut, Born in Chicago.

SPEAKER_02:

Did you ever see Paul Butterfield play live?

SPEAKER_01:

Only once, and that was at the very end when he wasn't doing too well, like in the last year of his life, unfortunately. Have you seen that documentary about him? Funny enough, I was just looking at it

SPEAKER_02:

on Amazon Prime last night thinking I must watch it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's lovingly put together with some great footage and definitely worth a watch.

SPEAKER_02:

Then you went on to, I believe, majoring arts in college, and you studied sculpture.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I ended up majoring in sculpture. I went to this Ontario College of Art. Through that whole time, there was a couple of basement bands and a couple of different people I started playing with at the art school who were musicians as well. So hand-in-hand, you know, visual arts and music.

SPEAKER_02:

I saw a quote from you saying that music is just a different way of creating textures and shape. You know, you really see that link between the two then.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I do. You know, for me, you know, sculpture, the sort of three dimensionality and the tactile thing about sculpture as opposed to, you know, painting. But if it was just like, you know, pure shape and form, there's something about that sensuality of the tactile. And it's for me, music. Yeah, I like to think that I'm, you know, sort of sculpting these sounds when I play.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so you mentioned that you started playing at the age of 14. I believe you debuted at high school with a math teacher. That's some student talent now.

SPEAKER_01:

I used to practice in the stairwells, of course, because you have this great echo in the stairwell. Anyway, my math teacher heard me practicing one day. He was playing a 12-string and we played a couple of Lead Belly songs. Yeah, it was fun.

SPEAKER_02:

At what point did you decide to become a professional musician?

SPEAKER_01:

I kind of got a late start considering, you know, I started playing when I was 14 and dabbling in visual arts through my 20s and then sort of let it go away slowly towards the end of my 20s, the whole sculpture thing. You know, I ended up selling two-thirds of the things that I made. I was pretty good at it. You can actually see some photographs of some of them on my website, like on the About page. So it was a long roundabout way before I finally got to playing full-time professionally. So when I was 31, I had kind of a whole career thing about, oh, I can't. My girlfriend at the time was like, oh, you can't make a living as a musician, you know, and I was sort of doubting myself. And so I went actually to see a career counselor. I was thinking I could put some credits that I had from my art school towards a Bachelor of Arts. And I signed up for three courses at university when I was 30. Then I got an offer to go on the road for this play, playing music for this play called Dry Lep's How to Move the Cap of Skating, a And one of the characters in the play played harmonica, and there was all these dream sequences. So I created all these soundscapes on the harmonica around the characters in the play. And we ended up going on the road, and basically I dropped out of the school and sort of never looked back. I realized that I wanted to become full-time. So I continued working part-time at this place. poster shop and it was sort of full-time, part-time work and it gradually became more and more part-time until I was 40. So there's a long-winded way of saying it took a long time before, you know, taking the full dive and becoming completely full-time.

SPEAKER_02:

You were playing music, you know, on a sort of part-time basis until that stage. Were you in bands and things up until then?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I was. Act 20s, I started, there was a band called the Buzz Upshaw Band and we had a house gig playing every weekend for a good two years, and then we did a bunch of other gigs and stuff too. There was a saxophone player in the band. He taught me a lot about playing horn lines and playing in unison or harmony lines together.

SPEAKER_02:

Another point on your art connection, I see on your website you've got your emblem is the angry-looking dog with the earring and the harmonica in its mouth.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's Nelly the mongrel dog. A fellow that designs pretty much all my... CD jackets, certainly from my band CDs. Michael Rycraft, he's brilliant. And every single CD record is completely different. So he created Nellie the mongrel dog on a computer. So you've got two different types of bulldog heads, some wolf's teeth, a chihuahua's body, and a lemur's tail. It's become my mascot and kind of a logo. You released your first album in 93. Bill Kinnear was the fellow that I recorded that record with, who was a really interesting player. He's a guy, basically local in Ontario. He was like almost twice my age, but had only been playing since he was 35. And so his playing is really rough and tumble and kind of primitive, but he had such a passion. It totally worked. So his playing was super simple. You know, I was already into trying to learn, you know, different things and different ways of playing, you know, like I'd heard about the diminished scale, you know, and I remember trying to put that in one of the solos that I played with him and it kind of works. And he's doing a lot of Mississippi Fred McDowell and stuff, cover tunes. And yeah, it was really fun, but it really forced me to, to try to think and play simply.

SPEAKER_02:

Were you overblowing by this stage?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah, I was. I mean, I think one of the, better solos on the record you know it was in front of a live audience big road blues yeah i'm quite proud of that like that solo i mean you know we were just fooling around and playing in front of a small cafe audience but yes i was already fooling around with overblows And you had lessons with

SPEAKER_02:

Howard Leamy.

SPEAKER_01:

Is that how you got into overblows? I already figured out how to do an overblow sort of on my own and fumbled on it. And then I heard about Howard and it was like, you know, mind was blown just because he can do what he can do. I mean, he's sort of a musician's musician who's not really a blues guy. So my interests were, you know, trying to marry that blues sound with what Howard's doing. I went and took, I think in 1988, when Howard was still teaching in this... kind of music camp in the summer for a week they'd have these different themes in Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, West Virginia. And so you'd go down and there were just 10 students that hang out for a week and be bowing at Howard's feet. And he's just talking way over people's heads about stuff about music theory and jazz theory. Basically, they were just classes on jazz theory. And this is me playing this position. This is me playing in this position. So I got all these cassettes over four summers. Every time I thought I wouldn't go back, I'd always end up going back just because I'd learned more about jazz theory then probably than I had up until that point. Yeah. So that's my introduction to Howard and sort of trying to put that into my playing. The funny thing about playing with overblows when I first started trying to incorporate them into my playing live, I think my playing almost felt like it got worse because you're trying to, it's really demanding to play well with overblows and to make them musical. And you got, you know, your harps, it really helps to have harps that are set up. Honestly, even though my last few records haven't really been as bluesy, except for the one that I did with Jimmy Bosco. We can talk about that in 2016. I would love to make another duo record with somebody that's just more straight ahead blues and be an accompanist. I love being the accompanist, you know, and just playing. In

SPEAKER_02:

my last interview with P.T. Gazelle. I made the statement where I said, I don't necessarily like the sound of overblows because to me, you know, they don't necessarily sound that great. They maybe sound a little bit weak, you know, because if you don't get them right. And PT made the great point, which is, well, that's the case if you aren't very good at them. If you listen to some players and you mention your name, you know, they don't sound weak, you know, and I think, you know, that is something that really stands out when you're playing, you know, the overblows sound good with you, you know, because they can often sound a little strained, can't they? But what is the secret to getting them to

SPEAKER_01:

sound good? I'm laughing because practice, practice, practice, practice. I'm sort of of the mind. I hate repeating myself. I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm really critical of other players, but because I'm really self-critical, I, you know, I realize I put it out on other players when I listen to just jazz records, blues records, whatever it is, like it's such few things that really grab my attention. And I'm, so I'm really conscious and I'm not putting out the same record all the time. But the point is, is that you've got to really practice and practice and practice. Like if I'm, so I've been stretching my abilities, just playing things in a bunch of different keys. And so if I come up against something really challenging run, I'll just practice it and practice it. Everything is context. So if you're going to play an overblow okay here's the overblow let's say hole four this is my a flat harmonica so below four and you play the overbolt you know you gotta feel it and how round it is in your mouth the shape of it and be eventually be able to practice it with like any note i have a whole video just called ta ta dynamics and articulating any note whether it's bent unbent and and being able to play it louder quieter without changing the pitch And you gotta be able to do that with overblows as well. And then getting into bending them and putting expression. And everything is context. So it's what's coming into it. You got to practice the note above it or below it. It's hardest to go from a blow four straight into an overblow four. So you got to practice that. So it's simply just practicing the adjacent note and giving it context and making it as strong and practicing again, again, again. That's the essence of, you know, making your overblow sound good. But you've got to start with the foundation. And of course, when you first play an overblow, it sounds like you're strangling a chicken.

SPEAKER_02:

I think overblows has kind of become the new thing, I don't know, over the last 10, 20 years in harmonica. And talking to quite a few of the guys on this, they're a little bit dismissive of overblows, as some people are, and they think it's a bit of a fad that is unnecessary. But listening to your music, you know, it really shows me, you know, that, as you say, you can really use it effectively. You know, your overblows do sound great. So I think that it's interesting for people listening that, you know, if you get them right, you know, they can be a very effective tool, as obviously you would testify to, yeah?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you know, and again, for me... You know, I really use them as passing tones. You don't want to hang out on an overblow. Like, although on my last recording, there's a couple of things that are super challenging. This one song I played called the Stettel Waltz.

UNKNOWN:

Stettel Waltz.

SPEAKER_01:

And I was playing, it's a minor tune, and I'm playing in, I think, sixth position. It would be the equivalent of playing on a key of B on a C harp. There's a couple of spaces where I have to hang on an overblow. I'm not interested in trying to play in all 12 keys on a song and showcase that and put it on a recording. I would never do that. I just don't think it sounds that good, honestly, because, you know, why do you want to try to play a blues in the key of F sharp on a C harmonica? You know, it's just going to sound forced and it's an unnatural. Yeah, it's possible, but to use it with passing tones, it's totally acceptable, but you have to make them, you know, you do have to practice to get them to sound as good as possible.

SPEAKER_02:

So would you say you use overblows reasonably sparingly or does it depend on the song or?

SPEAKER_01:

I do, yeah. I mean, you know, I'm sort of a bluesy... I'm a guy that plays... blues in a jazzy way here and there, you know, and I'm not a super traditional player. My whole new series that I'm doing on webinars is sort of, it's called, I'm calling the series, you know, harmonica blues a little outside of the box. You know, I'm not Howard Levy. I'm not, uh, I'm me, you know, I'm doing what I do, but it's, yeah, just doing something different than your stock, you know, for lack of a better, you know, great that they were both in their own rights, guys like Sonny Boy, Little Walter, each had their own way of playing But they're sort of called traditional players. Little Walter actually could get pretty jazzy. But again, I start to question how their knowledge of music theory or applying stuff. And it just opens up your playing when you take some really basic things and apply them.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And again, I think, you know, you're a good maybe segue into playing overblows for people who haven't maybe investigated them because like you say, you use them in a way that fits music very well. You're very kind of, you know, that's a bluesy, jazzy bass player and it all sounds great. So this kind of perception that, you know, they are very technical or like you say, playing in some weird key on a C harmonica, you know, I think it all just goes away from that when they hear you playing. I play a lot of chromatic harmonica as well myself. So I've always sort of thought, well, why do I need to play overblaze? Because I just play the chromatic. But of course, the chromatic has got a very different sound than

SPEAKER_01:

the diatonic. It's interesting, the sound of chromatic harmonica. From my money, the best chromatic players have a really great understanding of the diatonic. So like Stevie Wonder knows how to bend a note. And he's probably one of my all-time favorite because he just makes a talk and makes it sound so sweet. Whereas like a guy like Toots Tillman, Toots Tillman was Toots Tillman. You know, he's like one of the gods of chromatic jazz harmonica. I don't really like his sound. Another example, Paul DeLay. Whenever Paul DeLay played the chromatic, I just went, yeah, I believe that. You know what I mean? Like, it's just so sweet. And again, Paul DeLay is one of my most favorite diatonic players. I love those sort of more progressive voices in the diatonic world.

SPEAKER_02:

I talked to PT Gazelle in the last interview, and we talked about half-valved diatonics. And then we had a conversation around the comparison between playing half-valved and playing overblows. And PT made the important distinction, which is, first of all, you can't do overblows on a half-valved diatonic because it doesn't mechanically work. But what you're doing on a half-valved is you're bending the note down, whereas on an overblow, you're bending it up. Yeah, yeah. Are you familiar with half valve diatonic?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm familiar with PT Gazelles playing in the sound of those things. Yes, I am. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But it's not something you play yourself, half

SPEAKER_01:

valve. No, again, you know, like the whole, to me, it just sounds like a completely different instrument. It doesn't sound like a diatonic anymore. As soon as you put a valve on a diatonic, yeah, it just completely changes the sound and it sounds more like a chromatic. And I just, I prefer the sound of, the freedom of the breath, so to speak, that you get out of a diatonic. And the way it sounds is because of the interaction between the two reeds. That's very specific, right? It's so subjective, right? I'm just not a fan as much of the sound of the chromatic harmonica as I am of the diatonic. Again, the expression that you get out of the fact that notes... interact with each other and bend and twist and torque. And, and you just don't get that sound out of a chromatic. I mean, I had to assume then that you don't play chromatic harmonica. No, I, I, I mean, I have a couple and I, um, on that play that I was talking about dry lips on and move the campus casing that I was playing on, there was one tango I had to learn and my heart was always pounding. Cause I, you know, I learned this song note for note on the chromatic and I really not a chromatic player. And, you know, the Astro Pialto Tango would come in and then it would fade out. It would just be me solo. And it might, like, it was always like, oh, I got through that, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Pressure.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Your tone is pretty incredible. It's got such a raw sort of sound to it. It's almost sort of savage sort of sound. You do these kind of dissonant chord bends. Can you talk about your tone a little bit and how you get that tone?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you. I'm going to make not a stab here because I'm going to say this with all of affection and humor. You know, when I was teaching in Throssingen with Joe Felisco and David Barrett and Steve Baker for a few years, I remember Dave Barrett, one day we were walking together and he said, you know, you've got a really good tone for a pucker player. And I'm just sort of going in my eyes and my head for a pucker player, right? I mean, I like to mix up the tongue blocking and the pucker playing. Tongue blocking and pucker playing are both. Tongue blocking is essential technique if you're a diatonic player. You just, you got to know it. So it's getting better and I'll use it without thinking about it to play some of the mid-register notes now, whereas I didn't hardly ever prior. That's just a roundabout way of saying that I think you have to work harder and be more conscious about it when you want to develop your tone, just pure tone as a pucker player. And so I'm very careful with my students to say, you know, you really got to learn both, but you might find one technique is easier than the other. But if you're going to play pucker, man, you got to make it count so we can, so that we don't give puckering a bad name. Yeah. I mean, there are other times when I, you know, I think, yeah, it could sound better if it was done with a tongue block. Absolutely. By what you do with, you know, the fact that you have to do it, your mouth to produce a tongue block, it automatically sort of produces a bigger tone.

SPEAKER_02:

It mentions somewhere on your website, I think there's a review saying that on your albums, you do include the keys of harmonicas that you're using on the songs. Is that part of the album notes?

SPEAKER_01:

I do. Yeah. In fact, on all my CDs, especially the band CDs, I do do that. In fact, yeah, the key of the harp and the position that I'm playing in.

SPEAKER_02:

But that's not available on your website?

SPEAKER_01:

No, it's not. Unfortunately, right. And of course, everything is streaming now. Just email me, you know, I'll tell

SPEAKER_02:

you. Yeah, you'll tell me. Coming back then to talking through some of your albums, and you did a couple of early duo albums initially, and then you had your first album with your band, the Blues Mongrels, I think in 1995 with Joshua Fool.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, I mean, hey, that's one thing I'll just quickly warn folks. Like, if you're looking up on the streaming services, you know, my name, because of the way things are listed, and if the front cover of the CD says, So check this out. My very first CD, 1995, Carlos Del Junco, Banned. So you've got to type in Carlos Del Junco, Banned, to get a hit. If you type in only Carlos Del Junco, you might not even see the option for Carlos Del Junco, Banned, until you finish typing it. It's really weird. And then there's a few CDs that are just Carlos Del Junco. And then there's two or three CDs. I think there's two. The last one and 2011, Mongrel Mash, that one and Hang On are Carlos Del Junco and the Blues Mongrels. So anyway, that's just a heads up on that.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, if people look at your website and see the album names, I'll link to that. So at least they can go and search the album names as well. 1995, the Just Your Fools, the first Blues Mongrel album. So yeah, maybe talk about that band and how you got that together and what's your vision with that band?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I mean, it was really just like, okay, I want to get a record out soon. I was early to singing. I didn't open my mouth to try to sing anything until I was 30. I was terrified to try to sing. Then I started trying to take singing lessons and stuff. My vision on that record, well, it was just a collection of tunes that I was playing at the time. They're all cover tunes. Kevin Bright had been playing guitar, an amazing guitar player. Just a little side note, I think my records are as much his records as they are mine because he has such a strong voice. His sense of comping and putting in the right notes and creativity is ridiculous. If you ever check out like Big Boy and some of the stuff he does, for instance, on a tune like Junko Partner, what he does on that tune. But anyway, my vision is, you know, on that wasn't so much a vision. It was just like, okay, I want to get something out here. That's my own group of guys have been playing for six months. And we went into a bar, a famous bar in Toronto where a lot of bands got their start called Grossman's Tavern and, you know, recorded a couple of nights and I just chose the best tracks.

SPEAKER_02:

I mentioned about how your albums show that kind of evolution of your sound. And I think that's a good example because Just Your Fool is the first album with them. It's a live album. Yeah. So, and it's a lot of blues songs on there, isn't there? So it's more of a kind of straight ahead, type of blues uh album and then you get to big boy uh in 1998 which has a song called i'm saying this right head on tadpoli spook is that is that right yeah hidden tadpoli spook yeah yeah what sort of music is that song i love that song by the way what sort of what genre is it

SPEAKER_01:

A quick side note, I re-recorded that in 2011, and that version is much better. On

SPEAKER_02:

Mongrel Mash,

SPEAKER_01:

that's right. Yeah, my playing is just much better. When I listen to that 1998 version on the Big Boy CD, it sounds so stiff to me. My playing just evolved, and that's why I wanted to re-record it and the whole band arrangement.¶¶ I mean, I would stylistically, I'd call that, you know, it's kind of a hybrid of a sort of ska meets jazz meets roots style. meets polka, you know, and I always introduced the song that way. Like, you know, even a bit of Italian wedding music thrown into the mix, you know, the melody, you know. Yeah, right. So that actually is the title of an antique fishing lure. And it just seemed like it's this quirky name for a quirky song. So it just seemed to fit.

SPEAKER_02:

As you then move forward, you're releasing an album every three years or so at this time. You had Up and Atom in 2001. You had more Latin sort of flavoured songs in here, the Tex-Mex stuff and a bit of Bluegrass even. You had the Mariachi song. And you also had How High the Moon on there, which is a jazz standard.

UNKNOWN:

.

SPEAKER_03:

up

SPEAKER_01:

and adam was an interesting like i'd say big boy in 1998 was still like 50 50 mix of blues and then up and adam was this hodgepodge mix of mostly instrumental which a lot of my records ended up being that afterwards and i had a producer at the time that was kind of a yeah it was just an interesting mix of records there's a few few cool tunes on that record And then 2005 was Blues Mongrel. That was a big popular one because I came out on a small Canadian label. And that was kind of like a part two to Big Boy. So again, it was a 50-50 mix of more bluesy stuff and instrumentals. And that's a very popular record as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Great record. And it's got the song Our Man Flint.

SPEAKER_01:

I've always been a fan. And when I was 11, I got to see on my birthday, my mom took me out to see in like Flint, which was the second installment of James Coburn sort of tongue in cheek playing, you know, a spy that sort of, spoof on James Bond, but women love him and he's got all these gadgets and he's out to save the world. So Jerry Goldsmith, iconic, did tons of soundtracks for different things. And this was a very cool melody that he wrote for the original movie called Our Man Flint. And I just knew that I wanted to cover it. So yeah, it's a kind of a Latin hybrid melody.

SPEAKER_02:

Very atmospheric. I think you do those songs very well, these kind of very atmospheric songs. It has that about it. So yes, Steady Moving, another excellent album, coming in the same sort of vein, I think, as Blues Mongol. And again, another song I really love of yours is on there, which is Diddle It.

UNKNOWN:

Diddle It

SPEAKER_02:

Possibly my favorite song of yours. I love that song. And then you do the doodle at the end, which is the kind of banjo version, which is kind of a ragged kind of banjo version, which is fantastic again, because it's kind of the same song, but in this very strange, ragged sort of banjo way as well, which is tremendous. So yeah, what about that song, those two songs?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, the original one, Diddle It, is just a little riff, basically, and kind of an elongated... 12 bar blues so that everything is doubled up. So it's a 20 ends up being 24 bars, but it's just a boogie sort of shuffle. Um, and it's just a riff. I mean, you know, and, but the fact that it hangs, everything hangs twice as long in the form, it kind of gives it a little bit more suspense, if you will, I guess, in terms of meaning to the melody.

SPEAKER_02:

And then you do two solo pieces, I think, don't you? Moving Down the River Ride and Amazing Grace, both as solo harmonica pieces on that album.

SPEAKER_01:

I've

SPEAKER_02:

been...

SPEAKER_01:

I've been... Cruising down the river ride I've been... Yeah, tip of the hat to Sonny Boy. You know, I mean, I love those old guys. And it's almost like I didn't have as much appreciation for the original sources like Sonny Boy and Little Walters until later in my career. Because I mean, I was sort of, I started with Paul Butterfield, who was taking some stuff, let's say, from Little Walter and doing his own thing. But yeah, you know, trying to pay respect and do some justice and just as a way of getting better at it.

SPEAKER_02:

You also play, you know, quite a lot of acoustic, don't you? Acoustic harmonica. And those two songs are good examples of that.

SPEAKER_01:

Steady Movin' is actually mostly an acoustic band record, except for the first four tunes are electric and then the rest are acoustic, either solo or with a band. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And then Mongrel Mash, which just came out again three years later. You seem to have a three-year cycle. Yeah. 2011. So on here, quite a lot of different styles of music. I think, again, you definitely went down playing different genres on this album, yeah?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So both Steady Movin' and Mongrel Mash probably only had really, I think there was 10 or 11 tunes in each of those records, but there was only like three tunes that I'd call blues tunes on each of those with vocals, and the rest were instrumental But it's also a very fun record, Mongrel Mash. It definitely requires a few listens because you take a left turn from one song to the next. I resurrected The Field and Mariachi.¦and Heat and Tadpoli Spook from earlier recordings because they'd kind of evolved, you know, in terms of the band sound.

SPEAKER_02:

My Favorite Uncle. That's an interesting one. Again, what genre is that song in?

SPEAKER_01:

Sort of a roots poppy, not exactly ska hybrid, but it's something jazzy. There was some song that I heard that was straight up ska of either a Swedish or Norwegian guitar player. And I sort of, based the melody and the chord changes loosely on that. I can't even remember what it was called. And yeah, it just, it just, it is what it is with a quirky.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, I don't want to give the people the wrong impression. I mean, all this is with a kind of a blues kind of root underneath it all, isn't it? And your players are kind of very much a bluesy sound to it. So yeah, you get these different genres, but still this kind of great toned harmonica coming through it, which is great.

SPEAKER_01:

The opening cut has a really crazy head on it, you know, but essentially it's It's a 12-bar blues, but the melody is this kind of like falling down the stairs, you know, like tripping down the stairs gracefully, as someone put it. I

SPEAKER_02:

was going to ask you about Mojo, which you've got on the Mongrel Mash album. So, you know, a great version of Mojo. We've heard Mojo obviously lots and lots of times, but, you know, you breathe new life into it. But you do this effect at the end of your solo. Is it a unison effect that you're doing, or are you using some sort of effect pedal?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

If you check out the guitar solo on big boy. that I actually mentioned it earlier, Junko Partner. Kevin Bright does this guitar solo. And then the second chorus of the solo, he has a delay pedal, basically. And I learned it from him, this trick. And it's basically, you have to have a tap tempo delay pedal that samples You get just one repeat only, and you make sure that the volume of the repeat is the same as the note that you play. But you set it to a dotted eight pattern. So here's what happens. Without having the delay pedal to demonstrate, I'm simply playing this.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_01:

I'm just playing these thirds going up the dominant seventh scale. But what it sounds like is this.

SPEAKER_03:

It

SPEAKER_02:

fills in the holes and it's sort of cheating. It's very effective though. And then, yeah, just finishing off, talking through your albums. So you did have another duo album in 2017, which is Blues Etc., which you mentioned earlier on. With Jimmy Bosco.

SPEAKER_01:

Jimmy Bosco is a young phenom. He was 14. Well, he's half my age. I mean, I'm 62, and so I think he's pushing almost 30 now. But he was 14 when he released his second CD and got nominated for Canada's equivalent of a Grammy. We call them Junos here. In the blues department. And he got nominated for a blues Juno when he was 14. So he moved to my little town. He actually grew up just north of this little town, Port Hope, where I'm living now. And he's now living in Port Hope. And we just got together and started playing some and thought, let's make a record. And that's the result. So five originals and five cover tunes. And, you know, a couple of the originals are sort of a bit kind of rootsy Americana, but it's mostly straight up blues. And he sings on, he does most of the singing on it. I'm actually really proud of that record. I mean, it's, again, you know, my first love, believe it or not, is as a blues player. And there's tons of cool stuff on that record, I think.

SPEAKER_02:

And then your most recent album is Hang On in 2018. So I think seven years since you'd done a Mongols band album.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. A couple of things, just some big shifts in my personal life and stuff. So I was sort of getting over some heartbreak back in 2011 when that record came out and I was just sort of reassessing things in my life at the time. So I was happy to do that record with Jimmy in 2016 and 2018, Hang On came out. And that's part of the reason for just the time delay. But I'm also, you know, being so self-critical of my own playing, I'm hyper aware of other more traditionally you know, harp players or anybody just sort of putting the same record out again and again and again. And I go, Oh, I don't want to do that. You know, I want to do something that's kind of a little bit different and then maybe come back and do another straight up blues record, but maybe with someone who's doing more of the singing or something that's just, so I'm really conscious of just not wanting to make the same record over and again. So the new one is again, not as bluesy. There's probably only three bluesy things on it. And it's definitely more of a quiet record because it's only featuring the trio and the guitar player, Eric St. Laurent, who's a brilliant guitar player, um, in his own right and with a his own band. We've been touring since 2007, so I thought it's finally time to get him on the record because I'd always put Kevin Bright on all my recordings. And so the tunes are, again, this time it's 50-50 vocals and 50% instrumentals. And the instrumentals tend to be a little bit quieter and more brooding, but beautiful, beautiful melodies. There's a John Zorn song on there. John Zorn is known for his kind of completely abstract, angular, weird, improvising tunes. But this particular melody is this gorgeous tune that sort of bounces between 5-4, 6-4, and 4-4 called The Rain Horse. Then another one written by a local... piano player called Aaron Davis. He wrote the song I mentioned called The Studdle Waltz, where I'm playing in sixth position.

SPEAKER_02:

I think I read another quote, an eclectic potpourri of styles sums it up well. There's a lot of different styles. It's a really nice record.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and also that's another thing I'm really aware of, you know, and I listen to a lot of jazz records. Okay, so there's some jazzier things in this record, but there's sort of I'm not a fan of really long blue solos or really long jazz solos, unless they're really telling a story and something's building and it's really evolving. I just sort of go like, what's the point? So I'm really aware of doing things that, yeah, a little bit more range. Like when I recorded three courses of a solo, over Little Wing. I'm actually really proud of that solo. It's one of the few, only one of the two tunes that has amplified harp on it. And so I was trying to play tribute when I mixed that record. The last two records I've mixed myself and I would have mastered the last one, except I ran out of time. I mastered the one I did with Jimmy Bosco and mixed it, recorded it in my living room. You know, I sort of figure out a solo that works. I just keep playing around with ideas so that it tells a story. That solo really tells a story. I think, anyway.

SPEAKER_02:

That's an interesting concept. And you often hear that said, you know, I'm trying to tell a story in my music. And I think a lot of people who are trying to improvise, you know, that's something that, you know, they may be, you know, they're struggling. What do I do with my improvisation? So when you say you're trying to tell a story, what's your thinking when you're trying to put that together?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm of the mind. I mean, I'll just confess that a lot of the tunes, especially the tunes that have a lot of chord changes, which Little Wing does, it's certainly not a blues tune. you know, it's considered sort of a rock ballad, I guess, and it's an odd 19-bar form. I just kept playing with it and playing with it and ideas and then eventually sort of strung a bunch of stuff and worked out a solo for that tune. And so when I play that tune live, I pretty much sort of more or less, you know, with variations thereof, but I'm playing that shape of the solo.

SPEAKER_03:

piano plays

SPEAKER_02:

Are some of your solos quite prearranged from the point of view that you're trying to, as you say, develop them in that way? Yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

the jazz, your tunes, absolutely. When I'm recording them, doing overdubs, because they're not live off the floor in this case, yeah, I'm just playing with ideas until something sort of works properly. I wish I had the chops as a jazz player just to go, hey, oh yeah, here's something. And it totally works. I don't. If it's going to go on a recording, man, I want it to sound good. And I don't think it sounds like, oh, Carlos is playing an O-dub. I'm very also critical of that. It's got to sound. There's got to be something that's organic sounding, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And Little Wing, you mentioned there, it was quite a brave song to include us, specifically with the harmonica solo. I mean, it's kind of like one of the classic rock songs of all time. So to take that one was quite brave.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. You know, and, you know, I was honestly like when I was singing that tune, it was like, oh man, you know, this is, I'm out of my element, you know, like a part of me, but I think, you know, it's not horrible. It's fine. You know, and I remember mixing it, trying to give it, you know, some sparkle, like the way putting in subtle chorusing effect on the voice and, and the harp too, and panning, panning delays and stuff like that, just to sort of pay homage to the sort of late sixties psychedelic.

SPEAKER_02:

And the other song I really like on there is what, well, there's quite a few. I like the Alberta Blues, which is a kind of nice, kind of almost like a folky tune sort of song, isn't it? And then the Ribbon of Darkness, again, is another one, I think, where you get a lot of kind of atmosphere into the song.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a ribbon of darkness over me.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, that's written by the iconic Gordon Lightfoot, sort of a Canadian singer-songwriter of singer-songwriters, kind of like a Canadian Bob Dylan, if you will, but very different. And that was one of his first big hits he did in 65. And it's a completely different version than his version. His version is almost happy and whistling, and yet the lyrics are really dark. And so a friend of mine, Rick Fiennes, recorded a version And I sort of took his version and sped it up a little bit. And it's still really slow. And then use this descending chord sequence to sort of play vamp on a solo towards the end.

SPEAKER_02:

I know you're very much interested in teaching. You've got your website at harmonicopractice.com. I'll put a link to that onto the podcast notes.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure, yeah. I think I got that up about three or four years ago. Did a few minor tweaks just recently because I'm starting to do webinars. So there's a webinar purchase page. I love teaching, I got to say. So, I mean, you know, I have quite a few students, single students that I teach on Skype or Zoom. But the webinar forum is a way to get a lot of people involved just through a chat box and to ask questions and it becomes more like a kind of a presentation and then they can ask questions about what you're doing. For this particular webinar that I'm doing on May the 30th about transcribing the memory, there's tons of class materials too, like PDFs to download, which talk about what I'm going to be playing and talking about how to think about transcribing well.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so I'm really enjoying doing that. The webinar that you're running on May the 30th, Can that be found through the harmonicpractice.com website?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's there. There's a link that says purchase webinars and it's there with webinar one. So the video recording and the audio. I actually also, I'm a big audiophile since I'm recording my own stuff. So I also record my own audio file. I record my own version of the audio and that's really useful when it comes to, you know, the best way that you're going to make use of the lesson is it's one thing to sit there for two hours and watch the webinars But it's another thing to actually do the work. The best thing you could do is to load it up into this program called Transcribe. Nothing else like it. Like I swear to God, I've tried a bunch of different ones. And this one is, it's simply called Transcribe with an exclamation mark. And it's basically a glorified word. mp3 player you can put any type of audio file in there you can even load up videos um and then you see the audio spectrum you can mark it up uh put little markers which you can snap to with your key command and you slow you can slow the audio down you can change the key you can write notes to yourself about what someone's talking or you can write lyrics to songs or whatever it just kind of streamlines your process of learning if you have a two-hour lecture you know you load it up you can quickly reference that at 200 speed 200 like just like you can on youtube you You know how you can play things faster if you want to get through them? You can do that just to quickly get through the material and then mark up the things that are important. And then you go back and, okay, today I'm going to work on this pentatonic scale or whatever. And you slow it down. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_02:

We were just talking about transcribing for a moment. Maybe people who haven't done a lot of transcribing, you know, what you see the value of transcribing.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, anyone who wants to learn how to play... Any instrument, doesn't matter whether it's harmonic or whatever it is, like if you're especially in the blues and the jazz realm and you want to learn about improvising, one of the best ways to learn your vocabulary is to really absorb the people that you love. It's not the same when someone gives you a piece of tablature and says, oh, here's the solo by Sonny Boy. It tells you nothing. Even though some of the riffs he's playing are reasonably straight ahead, it tells you absolutely nothing about the subtlety and nuance of the way he pushes and pulls the rhythm, even though the riff might be really simple. It tells you nothing about the tone, the way he's playing the vibrato, the way he's using his hands. It's all that stuff. And so whether it's a sax player, a guitar player, a piano player, all that way that the language, the way something's communicated, it's you sitting down as the person learning your instrument and sitting down and completely immersing yourself intimately with that player step by step, riff by riff. I mean, it's been, you can tell I'm really passionate about this. It's just, I can't stress how important it is. Everyone should be able to do this. Seriously, put the tablature away. You're missing so much of the process of figuring this stuff out for yourself. And it's literally as easy as getting from one note to the next. If you can do that, you can hear the difference of one note to the next. You get from the next note to the next note and then to the next note. And you go, well, I can't hear that interval. And so this way webinar I'm doing on May the 30th is very much about how to listen well, how to think about listening. It's patient work at the beginning, but the more you do it, it starts to go really fast.

SPEAKER_02:

But I think you're right. I think in this age now of YouTube videos, you know, intuition videos, I think a lot of people have this kind of expectation that they can be spoon-fed everything. You know, I need to go and look at YouTube and have this person tell me how I play this. But going and doing it yourself is just another level. It's useful to have a teacher to give you some pointers, particularly earlier on, of course, but it's almost like working it out yourself. You get a lot more out of it, don't you?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. There's the old saying, and I say this on the promotional video, everything you need to know is in your record collection or on those MP3s. So you could watch a YouTube video, let's say, of someone that you like and they're playing. You can take the audio, extract the audio, put it into transcribe, slow it down. But until you take the time to do that, again, forget the tablature. You're missing the most important part of the whole process, which is learning how to hear music. Again, there's so much information to be gleaned when you really try to absorb and become that player. And I have a whole method for doing it. I'll distill it really quickly. It's this. I mean, let's say you have a 12-bar solo, whatever it is, you know, Sonny Boy, you know, it doesn't matter. You break it up and you mark the bars and you take it bar by bar or phrase by phrase. You know, I'll sometimes take a musical phrase or a riff. Oh, here's this riff. Go to the next one. Okay, this is how you play this. And then you go to the next one. You're not writing anything. thing down and you, oh, I can, okay, this is how this goes and I can play this. You're not committing anything to memory, but you know that you can confidently repeat and play those, each of those phrases really well. Second step, you get to the end of the 12 bars. You're going sequentially. Now, when you want to put it all together, what I used to do with the tape recorder is you'd have to rewind to the beginning and start bar one and then bar one and two and then bar one, two and three. What happens is that your brain is going, oh, I've got one, two, three now solid, but then you got to string one, two, three and four together. So you got to go back to bar four and how does that go again? Oh yeah. Okay. And then go back to one, two, three and go one, two, three and four. But every time you get to four, You're so focused on playing bars 1, 2, and 3 that when you get to 4, it's like, oh, do I still know how to play this well? Maybe. And the farther you get into the tune, the more that starts to happen. So what I figured out, as soon as I got the program transcribed, because I can see visually the audio spectrum, it was just a revelation when it hit me one day. If I start at bar 12... Play that. I've already, remember, I've already acquainted myself with each little bar. But if I start at bar 12 and I want to commit the whole thing to memory, I start at bar 12, snap back to your marker with bar 11. And I go, okay, I reacquaint myself with 11. And then I play 11 and 12 together. And what I'm doing is I'm starting bar 11 is the sort of newer chunk of information I want to put into memory. But when it comes to bar 12, I'm just reaffirming what I learned a moment ago. And you'd be amazed how fast this stuff starts to become because you're just, all it is is you're like, I mean, to sound really pedantic and scientific about it, it's just, you're creating new neuronal connections of memory, like a little memory pathway. But when you do it that way, you keep reaffirming what you know, and then you go to bar 10 and you do the same thing. And you reacquaint yourself with bar 10 because you already played it. Okay, it goes like this. And then you reaffirm what you played a moment ago, which is bar 11 and 12. And you keep reaffirming the older stuff. You have to do the work in the time, but it's amazing

SPEAKER_02:

how fast it goes. There's a lot of online resources now. There's a lot of online teaching. Why do you think people should come to your online teaching?

SPEAKER_01:

Because actually, I don't think anyone's talked about transcribing this way. I think people need to actually do it and see me do it. And you realize how valuable, invaluable it is. It's just like such an amazing way to work. And the software itself, it makes just faster work of doing it.

SPEAKER_02:

Question I ask each time is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_01:

Lately, I've just been practicing just patterns and different keys and through like a cycle of force or chromatically down, just anything that kind of pushes me. I'm never going to be a hardcore jazz guy. It's actually opening up my blues playing. So if I try to play something in a weird key, it's helping my regular playing and stuff and just helps me to be a bit more free in the easy keys, if that makes any sense. Like, I mean, you know, even something like a triad coming down chromatically.

SPEAKER_03:

That's

SPEAKER_01:

the, just a whole one, two, three, four. But if you take it from the third. Et cetera, et cetera. So you. You have to literally think in your head, okay, now I'm in G, now I'm in F sharp, now I'm in F, now I'm in E, now I'm in E flat, and sort of visualize those patterns in each one of those key centers. It's a real workout. I just was doing that a little bit today with a metronome. Because I just started to visualize it, it's like, oh, I can actually think my way through this slowly. In a nutshell, lately, that's what I've been practicing, just different things that just sort of push me and challenge me to think clearly and deliberately in different key centers.

SPEAKER_02:

Just talking some questions around gear now. First off, which harmonica do you play? I understood you played golden melodies for a long time.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, golden melodies are... My first choice, I guess, partly I just like the way they feel in my hand. Honestly, I retune them so they're not equal temperament, which is they're out of the box, they're equal temperament. I retune them so they're more like a compromised or like an alternate just intonation, you know, not as hardcore as a straight-ahead marine band, but pretty close so that you can still play, like, draw five. It's not so flat as it should be in a just intonation so that I can play that as a root note in first flat position or 12th position. Yeah, but golden mellow is my preference. And then crossovers, I really like crossovers, especially for the low keys because they're nice and bright. And I like the brightness on a low key. But otherwise, for anything higher than a B flat or a C, I prefer a golden mellow just because they're a little bit rounder sounding. But I confess, I also have stock of a bunch of old stock reeds. Before Hohner changed the alloy in the metal of the reeds in the late 90s, I bought a huge stock of old reeds and replaced the reeds. And I think they sustain overblows better.

SPEAKER_02:

There's a rumor here that golden melodies are better for overblows. Do you think that is true?

SPEAKER_01:

No, no, it has nothing to do with it. It's simply how the reed is offset. And even the newer alloy metal, which I don't think is quite as stable for overblows, you can set them up properly and they're fine.

SPEAKER_02:

And do you have a favorite key of harmonica? I always like to preempt this with a guess. So I'm guessing that G is your favorite key.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, G and A flat are my favorite keys because they're right in that sweet spot where, you know, you start getting into lower harps and the lower notes are a little bit harder to respond well, but they still sound big and fat.

SPEAKER_02:

Amps wise, what's your amp of choice? Big amp first.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, you know, straight out of the box, you can't go wrong with a Fender Bassman reissue. You know, they have an amp tech, retweak it so they're down the mids a little bit. I had one that I had rejigged to a hand point to point wiring. Then I have a bunch of little boutique amps. I like marble amps actually, because I've toured in Europe quite a bit. I own three marble amps, two that live in Europe. That one is just like a eight or nine watt version of their marble max, but it's got a 10 inch speaker and it takes a 6L6 instead of a 6V6. So the transformer is a bit bigger than your stock 6V6, which would be in something like a five watt champ. And then there was another one that came out for a bootcamp called the Spirit Heart Pro. And the guy only ever made about a hundred of them. I own one, then I bought another one from another guy and they've got bass treble and mid control on them. And I really liked them because they're like a mini basement, but only five Watts. And I had one of them jigged up to more like a 10 watt amp again, so they could take a six, a six L six, but I still prefer the five watt version. It's got a different, so different sound to it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I've been hearing, hearing good things about the mobile amps.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And so I also own their biggest one, which is called the heart master. They have a six, eight version and it's four tens. I have the four 10 version and it's got a bunch of Ted Weber P10 cues in it. It's like driving a Cadillac. And what about effects pedals? I'm a delay-a-holic. I've tried almost every delay pedal under the sun. And I'll say the best one for the money, it's not cheap, but it's fully programmable. You can save presets and making really great analog or tape delay simulations. This digital one is called the Echo System by Empress Effects. It's a Canadian company. They make analog dry through signal path, which just means that you're hearing the original sound and the effect is only digital. Whereas a lot of the boss pedals and stuff when you engage the pedal it's the whole thing becomes digital so including your dry sound and so that affects the tone that's my main go-to but i use it very subtly two basic settings i use like a hard more of a hard slap for fast certain fast tunes and then a sort of a longer uh a tap tempo delay that depending on the tempo i usually choose a sort of a triplet delay And I'll very judiciously use a bit of reverb. I went to the dark side and got a pedal board a while ago. And then I have another Empress FX pedal that is called the Nebulas, which is basically, it does everything from chorusing and flanging and sort of Leslie effects. But again, I only use it like twice a night. I use my reverb pedal maybe twice a night, but the delay I use almost all the time. And then I have a kinder anti-feedback, which I... like what it does using it very minimally, but just having it in the sequence. I also use Lone Wolf. The octave. Yeah. And it's not an octaver, but it boosts sort of low-end harmonics and high-end harmonics. And again, used very judiciously. I have it on one of its lowest settings. It only works for certain amps. You honestly don't need it for certain amps, like bigger amps. And that's something I've just discovered recently, which is actually an MXR. It's just called an amp boost. It's sort of a clean boost, but you can help little amps sound bigger than they really are. And you can help bigger amps have more breakup, but in a kind of a clean way actually lone wolf makes a really good version of that too it's just called harp tone and i have that and depending on the amp like everything depends on the amp you're using you know um but yeah i'm not shy to to put in pedals to change the tone especially for live playing often when i'm playing in for the studio the only thing i might use is maybe a bit of the kinder anti-feedback and i'll add the delay in the plugins because you can just fool around more when you're mixing and stuff and editing

SPEAKER_02:

Touching a bit on the tone, every harmonica player answers this by saying, oh, the tone comes from you. But we talked about the great tone you got earlier on. How much is that, do you think, have you developed through the sound, through the amps and the pedals that you're using?

SPEAKER_01:

No, absolutely. It's absolutely true. I mean, it starts with you and your head tone and your mouth tone. I confess, I have terrible hand microphone technique. I hold the harp, by the way, in my right hand, which is completely the cup of my right hand which does not make any sense for doing wah but i just switched that way when i was young but i still make my tone work because i've got good head tone but my microphone technique i can't play with a bullet mic i just i don't know how to get a good sound it just doesn't feel comfortable to me which mic do you use mainly the re10 the electro voice which is discontinued and there's another one called the 664a which is kind of like an earlier version of that You have to get a mic tech to turn it into an XLR mic. It's a bit of a hassle, but they work nicely for small amps.

SPEAKER_02:

But that electro voice is a dynamic mic then? Yeah. Okay, so isn't, you know, a lot of people consider a harmonica microphone then, you know, so the tone you're getting is through a dynamic mic. Yeah. Again, I think that shows, doesn't it, you know, people are on this mission to find all this harmonica equipment, but, you know, you're using a dynamic mic, which is what

SPEAKER_01:

people... As opposed to, you mean, like a crystal mic or a magnetic cartridge, you mean?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, sort of, or a crystal, yeah, exactly, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Again, I think you have to have really good hand technique. Everything is a marriage of the combination of the amp, the microphone, and your own technique. All is what marries to what's going to produce the final sound.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and the last question then on the discussion is, obviously we're in pandemic time at the moment. Have you got any plans beyond that later in the year or next year about playing or more albums?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I've got a tour planned, half the tour, more than half the tour that I just did in March, which got cancelled right in the middle of the tour because of the pandemic. I've rebooked those dates, so hopefully we can actually do it and people are coming out. And I don't have plans for a new record at the moment. I'd like to find someone to do, I don't know if I want to do another blues monger, I'd love to do another duo record. I'd like to find someone just to do something different again.

SPEAKER_02:

So thanks very much, Carlos, for joining the podcast. It's been a real pleasure to speak to you today. Thanks so much, man, for taking the time, Neil. That's it for today, folks. Final word from my sponsor, the Longwolf Blues Company, providing some great effects pedals and microphones, all purpose-built for the harmonica. Be sure to check out their website.