Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Howard Levy interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 14

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Howard Levy is known to be the pioneer of overblows on the diatonic harmonica, but his music shouldn’t be defined merely by the use of this technical tool. Starting out as a piano player, he first started using overblows to enable him to play the music that  he wanted to play. And they have allowed Howard to take the instrument to soaring new heights across a diverse range of genres. And make no mistake, he has rhythm, feel, a great bluesy tone when he needs it, and most of all, blistering chops. 

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

Howard's website:
https://www.levyland.com/

Keys of harps on some albums shown here:
http://www.levyland.com/harpshop/

Discography:
https://www.levyland.com/discography/
https://www.levyland.com/discography/complete-discography/

Trio Globo website:
trioglobo.com

Teaching:

New Directions for Harmonica:
https://www.homespun.com/instructors/howard-levy/

ArtistWorks:
https://artistworks.com/harmonica-lessons-howard-levy

Out of the Box DVD:
http://www.levyland.com/product/out-of-the-box-dvd/

Effect pedals:
https://www.lonewolfblues.com/boogieman.html

YouTube:

Lonesome Pine Special with Bella Fleck and the Flecktones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGJqxXHiXko

Amazing Grace:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmL4RM7IA7A


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:

Hey everybody and welcome to episode 14 of the Happy Hour Harmonica podcast. Please remember to subscribe and check out the Spotify playlist. And another word of thanks to my sponsor, the Lone Wolf Blues Company. Makers of effects, pedals, microphones and more, designed for harmonica. Remember, when you want control over your tone, you want Lone Wolf. Howard Levy joins me today. Howard is known to be the pioneer of overblows and the diatonic harmonica but his music shouldn't be defined merely by the use of this technical tool. Starting out as a piano player he first started using overblows to enable him to play the music that he wanted to play and they have allowed Howard to take the instrument to soaring new heights across a diverse range of genres and make no mistake he has rhythm, feel, a great bluesy tone when he needs it and most of all blistering chops.

SPEAKER_01:

So

SPEAKER_02:

hello, Howard Levy, and welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey Neil, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02:

You were born in the New York area to begin with and now you live in Chicago, is that right? That's correct. And so what sort of age did you move to Chicago? I

SPEAKER_00:

came to Chicago to go to college at Northwestern University, which is in a town just north of the city.

SPEAKER_02:

You started playing the harmonica at age 18, yeah?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, I had my first breakthrough on the harmonica in student orientation week and that's when I bent my first note.

SPEAKER_02:

Before this, as a youngster, you had piano lessons. That was your first instrument.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. I started playing piano when I was about eight and a half years old. I started improvising right away. The teacher came to the house and showed me some of the basics. And after about two or three weeks, I just started improvising.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And your parents were musical, too. Your father, I believe, was an opera singer, professional for some time.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So I grew up around a lot of classical music. My mom played cello. So they were very into music and culture. And so I was raised around a lot of that.

SPEAKER_02:

So you had those early piano lessons, and did you learn other instruments at a young age as well before you picked up the harmonica?

SPEAKER_00:

No. I went to the Manhattan School of Music on Saturdays for piano and theory lessons from age 9 to 12. You know, I had a great classical piano teacher, but after that, I started getting interested in pop music and started listening to rock and roll and copied things that I heard on the radio because I always was improvising and writing my own tunes. And so it was just a matter of what I was interested in. Gradually, I got interested in blues and jazz. I started writing jazz tunes when I was about 17. From playing blues, that's when I got exposed to the harmonica. The drummer in our band taught himself how to play harmonica really well just by imitating records that he had of all these Chicago blues guys, which I had never heard before. I had no idea that this music even existed. So we all went to some clubs in the village, and we would hang out and go and listen to jazz and blues. And I heard a fantastic double bill one night with James Cotton and his band and Paul Butterfield and his great band. And that just blew my mind. After that is when I started getting the notion of, gee, maybe I could play some harmonica because the drummer learned how to play and you could put it in your pocket and you can bend notes, all the stuff you can't do with a piano. And so I went to Manny's Music on West 48th Street and plunked down my$2.25 for, I think, a blues harp and the key of G. And I had absolutely no success trying to bend notes on it. And my friend couldn't show me how. He said, well, it's just a feel. You just do it by feel. I went, thanks a lot. So as I said, it wasn't until I came to Chicago and somehow just walking down this path on the campus, that's when I started being able to bend notes and very quickly started playing all these blues licks that I had heard other harmonica players play. And it was really exciting. It was like the first day of the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_02:

A lot of people see you, is it coming from as a piano player? It sounds like from that, what you just said there, your harmonica playing was almost a release from the more kind of rigid, they can't bend notes on the piano. It's maybe more reading on the piano. So did you see the harmonica as a bit of a release rather than an extension of the piano?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, in the beginning, definitely. I had no idea I could express myself like that. It was so personal. And using the breath, I felt like a different person. After a while, I said, well, why don't I start practicing my scales on this instrument, you know, like a piano player would do? Because I was already writing some pretty advanced jazz tunes when I was 18 and, you know, learning about modes. And so I... started trying to play scales and different keys on the G harp. And I became frustrated at the fact that the instrument didn't have all the notes on it. That's what led to everything else. At first, I learned how to bend all the draw notes. And then I figured out how to bend the blow notes on the top of the instrument, which was interesting because the guys that I listened to mostly didn't play on the top of the harmonica. But I just figured out that, well, since you can bend a higher note on a hole down to just above a lower note, On the top, the higher notes were the blows. So why don't I try that? And so I did. And this is all within a few months of starting to play. And then trying to play the scales and arpeggios and stuff without having all the notes. It was like playing a broken piano with notes missing. Very frustrating. So I thought, you can bend down the higher notes, which are on the bottom are the draws and on the top are the blows. maybe some of these missing notes are hiding in this instrument somewhere. I just couldn't believe that it didn't have all the notes on it. I mean, it was just like my 18-year-old brain refused to accept the fact that all the notes weren't there. So I thought, well, what if I try to do a blow bend on a note that doesn't bend down, like the sixth hole on a G harp? And so the sixth hole draw, obviously... It bends down to an E flat. The note that's missing is the F. You know, there's this gap there where the F is on this keyboard. And so if you bend down the six, try to blow bend the six down, that F pops out. And so when that happened, at first I couldn't separate the F out from the D. It was just this funky sound. I thought, wow, that's a cool sound for the blues. And then I realized that's the F. So now I could play on the four-chord. You know, the standard blues lick or any guitar lick. You know, starting on the minor third. I mean, all the things that you just want to be able to play instead of playing notes that are sort of right because they're just the notes that are there. And then I thought, well, if I found that one... on that hole, then maybe every place else on the instrument where these notes are missing, maybe I can do the same thing. And of course, it's true. Fourth hole. Fifth hole. So now you have a complete chromatic scale on the second octave of the instrument. And then it took me a while to find the first hole overblow. And then I found the overdraws on the top of the harmonica. It's all within, like, month or two, November or December of 69, January of 70, something like that.

SPEAKER_02:

You discovered this all yourself and you weren't aware of anybody else doing overblows?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, no, of course not. I was 18 years old. The recordings where there are people doing it, there's one guy who squeaked one out in 1931. And then Will Scarlett was experimenting with them in a little earlier than when I found them. And I guess Toots Thielman apparently played one or two of them on albums where he played like one tune on a diatonic harmonica and he did a sixth-hole overblow right around the same time, or maybe the 70s. What was surprising to me was I couldn't believe that nobody else had ever found it. The answer is that, yeah, there were some people that had found it before me, but it never became a part of the harmonica mainstream. you know, of blues playing or jazz playing. I mean, nobody ever really tried to play jazz on a diatonic. I just took it as my personal mission to try to make this instrument that I love so much sound believable as a chromatic instrument for playing whatever style of music, classical music.

UNKNOWN:

piano plays

SPEAKER_00:

music from different cultures around the world and blues and jazz. And it was my mission, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

Would you credit yourself with inventing overblows on the Titanic harmonica?

SPEAKER_00:

Inventing? No. How could you invent something that's already there? I mean, people try to put words into my mouth or describe what I do. It's just exactly what I said. I discovered them. I didn't invent them.

SPEAKER_02:

So in his excellent book by Kim Field in Harmonica's Harps and Heavy Breeders, he describes you as maybe the most radical single technical innovator in the history of the instrument. So how do you like your label as the kind of king of overblows? Is that something you like to be labeled as?

SPEAKER_00:

If anyone thinks anything good about me, whatever they say, I'm happy to hear it. The fact that I've had a career as a musician... speaks to the fact that I play things that people enjoy hearing. The important thing is to sound good when you're doing it. It's not about having a technique that you use as some sort of gimmick or something. To me, this enables me to play more musically.

SPEAKER_02:

So overblows, to some people, diatonic players, they're quite mystical things. So maybe you could just describe how you get an overblow.

SPEAKER_00:

Being able to control the blow bands up on the top of the harp is sort of the bridge of being able to play overblows. And by the way, the name overblow, it's something I regret because I didn't know what to call it. So I asked a saxophone player friend of mine, what is it when I'm doing this? And he said, it sounds like I was overblowing a harmonic of the fundamental pitch of the note. And since I didn't know anything about wind instruments, I went, okay, I'll call it overblowing. That's not at all what it is. A

SPEAKER_02:

saxophone player invented the term overblows for harmonica.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, it's his fault. It makes people think you have to blow harder. Yes, that's not true. The same thing with bending. It's all about the position of the inside of your mouth. It's the resonance of your mouth cavity having to do with your tongue and your throat. You can bend

SPEAKER_01:

notes

SPEAKER_00:

at a whisper. It's the mouth position. To prepare to be able to get that kind of control, you have to be able to smoothly bend the eighth hole blow. And let back pressure build up in your cheeks. Instead of biting down hard on it and making it, hearing that little break, which is a cool sound if you want to get that sound. Instead of biting down on the instrument, have a relaxed embouchure in terms of not biting down. It always has to be firm from side to side, but the top and bottom have to be loose. I have my lips quite a ways over the instrument. When I'm holding the harp, I always make sure to leave lots of room for my lips. I don't want my fingers too close to my lips. I want to get a good seal. And of course, it's nice to be able to do that on 9 and 10 too. Then you try it on 6. And that magic note just pops out. And so it's a sort of a gentle pressure. And the way that bends work, you're bending down the pitch of the higher note, but the sound of a bend transfers to the lower pitch reed, which bends up. And so after you've bent a note down, to its lowest point, whether it's a blow or a draw, it's actually the other reed that you don't think you're playing that's making the sound, which is, I didn't even know this until I'd been playing for 15 years. I had no idea how I was doing this stuff mechanically until other people told me. And so with the overblows, it's this weird thing where the blow reed freaks out, just like freezes and creates what's called a closing reed. The blow reed becomes the closing reed. And the draw reed is what actually bends up because they're physically changing their shapes and getting shorter and vibrating at higher speed. When you hear that G on the A harp on the sixth hole, it's actually the F sharp reed bending up to G. And there's no limit. It's not in tune inherently. It's just like it's a little higher. It's up to you to tune it with the resonance of the inside of your mouth. And this is what's tricky about playing these notes is you have to kind of sing the pitch of the note in your mind to know where it's going to come out. Is it going to be in tune? Is it going to be a G? Is it going to be a G sharp? Where do you want it to be?

SPEAKER_01:

Same

SPEAKER_00:

thing with the fifth hole

SPEAKER_02:

draw. I think that's an important point, isn't it, about the pitch you're getting with the overblows. Because it's the same with bending. Obviously, you don't always hit the correct pitch. But in blues, that doesn't necessarily matter that much if you're not bang on pitch. But if you're playing melodies, you know, more melodic playing, then that pitch is very important. What puts a lot of people off maybe overblows is that they don't always sound that great. Now, we've talked about overblows quite a lot on this podcast. And people have the view that obviously in the right hands, like your hands, they do sound great. So, you know, it's a very important pointer Isn't it about hitting the right pitch, though?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's what Joe Felisco described my playing as bending in tune. And I really appreciated that because, yeah, I mean, I can play in whatever key on the harmonica. And that's another interesting subject. Right now I'm playing in B flat on the A harp.

UNKNOWN:

B flat.

SPEAKER_00:

That's where the piano comes in. In order to play in tune and play all of these things, I'm visualizing a piano keyboard. I started doing that probably about two years into my playing when I realized that I was seeing more than shapes and colors, which is what I was seeing at first, and that I was actually seeing the piano keyboard. And that kind of blew my mind. That is what enabled me to be able to play the way I play, is that mental visualization.

SPEAKER_02:

It's something you often practice with other instruments is you will practice playing the same song in different keys, which is what you're doing on diatonic harmonica there. But on diatonic harmonica, it's a bit of a different trick because you're changing key all the time. So usually you just swap harmonicas, yeah. But it must be hard to get your head around switching keys and then also doing that. So how do you visualize that?

SPEAKER_00:

I practice transposing things on piano. So, for example, I would take a jazz standard and play it in all 12 keys. And as a jazz pianist, which is how I also make my living and have made my living for many years, accompanying singers, they say, let's do all the things you are in A minor. And I go, okay, sure. I practice playing tunes in all different keys. And I even practice classical music, transpose things like Bach inventions into all 12 keys on piano. Then once I've done that on a piano, then when I start doing it on harmonica, it gets a lot easier because I visualize the harmonica as a piano.

SPEAKER_02:

What makes you, you know, the decision to choose a particular diatonic harmonic, how do you make that decision? If you're able to play almost, you know, every key of diatonic in every key, you know, what makes you choose a particular key of diatonic?

SPEAKER_00:

Part of it is the tonality of the tune. Like, does it fit? closely with one of the naturally occurring positions on the harmonica. Part of it is the timbre. I'd usually prefer to play on a lower key harp. And part of it is just sort of mysterious. There's this one tune called To Me You Are a Song. that is in the key of C major, then it's in F sharp major, and then it's in E flat. So I had to figure out, God, I really want to play this on harmonica. And I stumbled upon the fact that it fits really well on an A flat harmonica. But it was hard to play in C major on the A flat. But I practice so much. And I discovered that that was the most believable key to play it in. You know, from being thrust into many different situations where people say, wow, that Howard Levy, he can play anything on a diatonic harmonica. And I get to rehearsal and I discover, God, how am I going to play this? And so that's when I look around and say, excuse me, guys, I need a little time to figure out what key harmonica I'm going to play this on.

SPEAKER_02:

Obviously, you know, you know your scales and your modes, partly from playing the piano, but also practicing it on the harmonica. So would you say you played... certain positions on the harmonica more regularly, or do you just literally think in scales?

SPEAKER_00:

I just try to play whatever sounds best. And then if I'm on tour, sometimes I'll pick a different harmonica some nights. Tonight, maybe I'll play it on the low F harp tonight. Maybe I'll play it on the C harp tomorrow or the B flat harp. It depends on my mood and also who I'm playing with and what their solo sounded like if I'm following them. Some people make a thing of saying, I'm only going to use one harmonica and play in every key on it. That's cool. I mean, if you can do that, that's amazing. But if it doesn't sound good, it's not amazing. Maybe people who are encouraged by hearing me play and the kind of innovations that I've made will be more like, I want to do everything on a C-harp. And that's cool. I still started playing. thinking about positions, first position, second position, third position, fourth position, that kind of thing. So what's the best key harp for this tune? I started out thinking like that instead of let me play everything on one. So I'm sort of halfway between those things.

SPEAKER_02:

A lot of people maybe put off your music because they think, well, I just can't play that stuff. I can't play all those overblows. I did see on your website, it's got a great resource where you're showing which key of harmonica you're playing on different songs, which will really help. Okay, well, if I try, I can just use the same harmonica and try and work it out.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I did that. And by the way, we're revamping my website and pretty soon you'll be able to buy all the CDs there and everything. But the important thing for people to understand is that the harmonica is not inflexible. That if you have trouble getting an overblow, you can open the harmonica up and adjust the reed clearances, the distances from the reed plate, because the instruments don't come, harmonicas from the factory, designed to do this most of the time. So every harmonica is different. certain models are easier to get overblows on than others because they tend to make them with lower reed clearances, like the Golden Melody tends to be easier to overblow on. And also, I find that harmonicas with closed reed cover plates tend to be a little easier for whatever reason. I actually, for years, was playing Golden Melodies mostly, partially because they're tuned to the tempered scale, which I only found out later. but partially because they seemed easier for me to play the way I play on them. And then in the early 90s, I met Joe Felisco, and he started customizing harmonicas for me. In the beginning, it was Golden Melodies. And then later, it became Marine Bands with Special 20 reed cover plates because I told them I liked the closed reed cover plates for a mellower sound. When they're open on the end, they tend to let a lot of the bright upper harmonics come out. So that's mostly what I'm playing these days are these marine bands with rock maple plywood combs that are dyed black. So some people think they're ebony or something. They're not with special 20 reed cover plates. That's mostly what I'm playing.

SPEAKER_02:

As you say, golden melodies are sort of associated with overblows for the reasons you've just given. For people who may be interested who haven't tried it, there is some setup involved, isn't there, just to get the– to get the reeds offset correctly. So early on, is that something you had to do yourself when you were trying to get the overblows initially?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think that you should learn how the harmonica works. In the beginning, they were all put together with nails. So if I took one apart, I could never get it back together again. So I was very discouraged by that. And I just never messed with it. And I thought, well, this one works better. That one doesn't work as well. And I played for the first 10 or 15 years without adjusting anything. So, you know, that includes quite a bit of recording where I was using overblows and, you know, playing jazz and all sorts of stuff, but it was sort of treacherous. I was never sure like, God, is this one going to work? Is that one going to work? And I was just too partially intimidated because of the nailing together of the Coming from the orientation of being a pianist, I just didn't assume that I knew what I was doing opening up a harmonica. And it's actually not that complicated to adjust the reed clearances. It's extremely helpful to know how to do it. And it can save people a lot of frustration and a lot of time. And also, your harps will last longer. Because the more you force things on a harmonica, the more metal fatigue happens with the reeds. And they start going out of tune. and eventually so far out of tune that you can't use them. I do tune my own harmonicas, by the way. I tune them, and I also know how to replace reeds. I learned this from Joe. Especially for a musician who's going on the road playing custom harmonicas, you can't just toss it in the trash and go to a musical instrument store and buy another one.

SPEAKER_02:

Another thing that maybe puts people off a little bit is that if you set a diatonic up for overblows, that often means you can't play it quite so hard as you might do if you want to play it for blues. So do you... Do you use the same harmonicas to play when you play blues, using the same overblows, or do you use ones which are more friendly to doing more traditional second position type playing?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a really great question, and it's a complicated question, because it gets into tuning of the reeds as well as the responsiveness. But you heard me talk before about being able to play soft. A lot of the greatest blues players in the past, they didn't play really hard. A lot of it has to do with dynamics. I think the most important thing is to learn how to play your instrument relaxed, not to blow too hard on it. I'm not to think that blowing hard is like better. It's blowing powerfully and supporting the airstream from your diaphragm and having a good tone and amplifying yourself sufficiently so that you can be heard. That's one part of the answer. And the other part is, yes, some of my harps are set up closer. Some of them are a little further. and especially in keys that I use a lot from the album that I did with Chris Sebold called Art Plus Adrenaline, Fade to Black. And I discovered that it worked way better on an old golden melody that I had in C than on any of Joe's harps, for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_02:

You came from being a piano player originally. You picked up the harmonica. And now you're interested in playing quite a few different instruments as well. I think you play some guitar, some mandolin, some flute, some drums. You know, what's your view on, you know, how does that help your harmonica playing and, you know, whether people should invest that time to go and learn other instruments on top of, you know, trying to find the time to learn the harmonica?

SPEAKER_00:

I would just say that everyone has their personal path. And mine, after I learned how to play the harmonica, I just thought, what would it be like if I tried playing some other instruments whose sounds I love? John Coltrane is amazing. basically my favorite musician. And I thought, what would it be like if I learned how to play the saxophone? A friend of mine lent me a sax. I figured out basically how to play. Then I really fell in love with the sound of the instrument. So it was a very enlightening thing for me, as well as a soul satisfying thing to play the tenor sax. It's just an amazing sound. Your whole body vibrates with it. And then it enabled me to understand John Coltrane much better. trying to play the instrument that he played. It made me understand from the inside out some of the things that he was doing. That was a really big deal in my life. And also it taught me a lot about breathing and supporting my embouchure from my diaphragm.

SPEAKER_02:

so moving on to your music now you've had a wide range you play with a lot of different people different styles but you're probably best known uh at least initially playing playing with bella fleck and the fleck tones i think you've made you made four albums in the early 90s and another one later in 2010 so that's right yeah well bella flex known as being quite a um you know sort of an unorthodox radical banjo player and you're the same with harmonica as we talked about what you've done with harmonica so how did that come about you know and maybe about the bell flick and the flick tones?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, we met at a festival in Winnipeg, Canada. We started jamming at an after party and we ended up playing until seven in the morning, just all sorts of wild stuff. Then he was asked to play a TV show in Louisville called the Lonesome Pine Special. And you can actually see this on YouTube. So he called me and he said, hey, Howard, I want to put together a band. And so we played the TV show. The audience went crazy. Then he booked a few more gigs, and by the second one, we all thought, this is really something. And so he put up his own money, and we recorded the first album, and Warner Brothers picked it up, and it went on from there.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's great stuff, and it's really interesting for people who haven't checked it out to really listen to how the harmonica can fit into that sort of music. I mean, some reason before I was stuck, like the Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, the album and the song off there, I think you're playing harmonica in a cup on there, aren't you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I read that some of the old Vaudeville guys used to do that, so I thought... Why don't I try that? You know, to sound like a plunger mute trombone. It's just a great sound. I actually have used that on a bunch of other things. One of my favorite recordings that I've done on my own where I use that is on my Alone and Together CD. It's Every Time We Say Goodbye. There I used the cup more like a harmon mute, more like the sound that Miles Davis would get on a trumpet. Because a lot of times I imagine that I'm playing a different instrument. You know, for the tone color that I'm getting, you know, I'll imagine that it's an alto sax or a violin or a trombone, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

And then with Bella Fleck, you got back together with them and created the album Rocket Science in 2011. And which song, Life in Eleven, won a Grammy for Best Composition?

SPEAKER_00:

The funny story about that tune, though, the ending, we worked really hard on it. It's in a Bulgarian 11-8 rhythm. For those of you who don't know, I am very comfortable playing Bulgarian and Macedonian music. That's another thing I learned how to do by forming a band to play that music in Chicago in the early 80s called the Balkan Rhythm Band. And so I had showed this 11 to Bela years before it. He worked on it. So by the time we got together in 2010 to work on this album, he was totally comfortable playing at 11. So we're in the studio and we're working, working on it. And OK, we're ready to record. I said, just a minute. How are we going to end it? So I made up the ending like on the spot. I said, OK, here's the ending. Bang. You know, I really love that rhythm of 11. And I'm very proud of that tune.

SPEAKER_02:

Looking through, again, you play with lots of different bands, different genres. So Trio Globo, reading as a contemporary acoustic jazz. What about those guys?

SPEAKER_00:

We put out three albums. This is one of the greatest groups I've ever played in. Glenn Velez is a percussive genius, virtuoso frame drum player. Eugene Friesen, the cellist, he came out of a classical background, but always improvised and composed. It's just an indescribable thing to play with these guys. There's a tune written by Eugene called In the Village. Where I basically improvised my entire part, just looking at a chord chart. And it was so coherent that I play it pretty much the same way live. I had to memorize my pianos, my piano part. I played simultaneous piano and harmonica. You could look at trioglobo.com and see harmonica. Some of our recording process, which was filmed live in the studio, two tunes, one called Promenade and another one called Steering by the Stars, which was the title track of our last album. You can see me playing simultaneous piano and harmonica, which I do a lot in that band. And that's the Flecktones was the first group that I started doing that in a lot because that was the sound of the band. So I had to be able to play live what I had done in the studio. So I tried to tailor the things in the studio to be things that I actually could do live that didn't sound like overdubs. And the piano is really my main instrument. It's the one I think on. I write most of my stuff on piano.

SPEAKER_02:

You never use a harmonica rack, though. Do you always play one-hand piano?

SPEAKER_00:

I actually helped design the Hohner Flex rack, which I'm very proud of. But I never felt organically comfortable with the rack. You can't surround it. with your embouchure the same way as when you're holding with your hand when you make those little minute adjustments with the angle. I kind of gave up on the idea of playing with the rack.

SPEAKER_02:

Obviously, you're known for playing jazz. Another band you played some jazz with is Acoustic Express.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm very, very proud of that. If I had to recommend any CD to anybody who just wants to hear my harmonica playing, I would say that one because I don't play any piano on there at all. Time Capsules. There's a lot of styles. There's like Middle Eastern and Bulgarian and Jelly Roll Morton and Robert Johnson and the Beatles. It came out of my desire to have a swing quartet, kind of like Django and Stefan. And I had had a band like that in the mid-1980s with the great mandolin player Jethro Burns. Recently, I found a cassette recording of our first concert, and it's fantastic. And so I remastered it and put it out as a CD. And so Acoustic Express was kind of my yearning to have an acoustic band where the harmonica could be heard acoustically in balance with the other instruments, where I didn't have to rely on the PA to rehearse, you know. I truly loved it. I felt very relaxed playing without drums and without having to compete volume-wise.

SPEAKER_02:

One thing I've got to mention is in 2011, you released a classical CD, Concerto for Diatonico Armonico in Orchestra. So the first concerto composed for the Diatonico Armonico.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's a fascinating journey. I was asked to play one of the chromatic harmonica concertos by a orchestra in the Chicago area. And I told them that I don't play the chromatic harmonica, but if they were interested, I would write a concerto for myself for the diatonic. And they said, we'll get back to you. And I thought I'd never hear from them. And they called me back a few months later and said, we're very interested in having you compose a concerto. And I went, really? And so I thought, how do I write a concerto? My God, I'm not really a classical composer for an orchestra. I've never had any training in this. But I had written a chamber suite five years earlier in 1995, which is one of the other pieces that ended up on my classical CD. And so I worked on it for six months and the concerto was the result. I left room for improvisation in all three movements. It's very, very classical sounding. People are very surprised by that. And I've performed this piece probably 35 or 40 times all over the world, in the United States and all over Europe and Asia. The recording that's on the CD was made in Prague with the Czech National Symphony, led by Paul Freeman, who also conducted the Chicago Sinfonietta, So I played it with him in Chicago, and he persuaded me to come to Prague and record

SPEAKER_02:

it. Would you be interested in doing something like that again?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, yeah. Actually, I have the whole outline for another one, and also a piano concerto as well. So it's just very... time-consuming to write all that orchestration. It's kind of intimidating because I don't really have the computer chops. So I wrote the concerto just with pencil and paper and had to give it to a copyist. That's another project that I'm working on is playing classical music but improvising over the chord changes like a jazz musician. I'm working right now on music of Debussy, Ravel, Brahms, and various other composers playing the composition, but also improvising on

SPEAKER_02:

it. You've also done lots and lots of session work. Any particular ones of those you want to pick out?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't know. There's about 500 of them. I had fantastic times playing on things that are incredibly obscure and things that are really well-known. I'd say two of my standout adventures, just in terms of the personalities of the people and the music, were recording with Dolly Parton and Donald Fagan from Steely Dan. And they both led to live performances with them. In Dolly's case, she flew me out to L.A. to play with her on The Tonight Show. And with Donald, I've sat in with his band and also with Steely Dan probably like four times. With Dolly, it was just totally unexpected and unexpected. joyful experience meeting her. She cooked me breakfast for Pete's sake, you know. Oh, lunch. It was lunch, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Moving on to your teaching, you've done a lot of teaching. I think probably the first time I became aware of you is that I saw the DVD, New Directions in Harmonica, which is still available on Homespun. Yeah. The incredible thing I always remember about that is when you did this ultrasound filming of the inside of your mouth and throat. So that's kind of amazing. I can still see the inside of your mouth now, Howard, from that video.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm sorry. Yeah, that was an adventure. That was done at the University of Pittsburgh Hospital with Dr. Henry Bonson, who was somebody who signed up for one of my classes at Augusta. He had been the chief of thoracic surgery and had done over 120 heart transplant operations. So he was a medical luminary. When he started hearing about all the stuff I was doing, sitting there in the class and not being able to play any overblows at all, he was really curious about physically how all this stuff worked and so he had me come to the hospital and they they hooked me up to all sorts of devices and one of them was this ultrasound where they could see the inside of my mouth i could see as well as while i was playing it and it blew my mind

SPEAKER_02:

yeah so do you think that helped at all understand how you're playing you know did it help you playing at all or

SPEAKER_00:

i would say it was enlightening yeah i i had no idea what how sophisticated the tongue muscle is it And then later they did some tests on me just to prove that bending has to do with resonance. And they did it with water displacement. And this was several years later. They were wearing their white robes and injecting water into my mouth after I played a note. It was like a scene out of a Mel Brooks movie. It was so funny. So I cooperated and we did the full three octave chromatic scale. And they proved with a human being instead of a laboratory apparatus that indeed it has to do with resonance, the size of the cavity of the mouth.

SPEAKER_02:

So now you do lots of teaching. You've got lots and lots of material available on ArtistWorks, which is an excellent site. Tons of videos on there covering all sorts of styles and going up the levels. A big basic intermediate, advanced, and virtual. So even as you call it on the... Tell us about ArtistWorks.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, the great thing about ArtistWorks is that it's incredibly affordable. One three-month subscription is less than the cost of one one-hour private lesson. And you get unlimited access to all the pre-recorded lessons, interviews that I've done with people, films of performances, and the interactive video exchange, which if you're a member of the school, you can send me a video of something you're working on and I will send a video response trying to help you play it better. And the two videos are not just for the person who sent it. They're displayed on the website as a kind of a mini masterclass that everyone there can learn from. These are actually, I think, better than the lessons, than the pre-recorded lessons because they're interactive. It's a very multidimensional platform. Everybody gets their own homepage. You can post your own videos, your own tracks. You can communicate with your fellow students. There's people from all over the world who are members. I'm extremely proud of it. And especially in this time with the pandemic shutting down schools and possibility for human interaction, the school assumes even more importance.

SPEAKER_02:

So again, you've been on there since I think 2009, so lots of videos. Do you know how many videos you've got on there?

SPEAKER_00:

I have no idea. There's thousands. Thousands of video exchanges and many hundreds of pre-recorded lessons about technique and also dealing with specific tunes. My school is one of the maybe two that are there where the lessons are divided up by level and also by style. classical, jazz, blues, Irish folk country, world

SPEAKER_02:

music. Like you say, the pricing plans are good. You can kind of sign up for just a few months. So you don't have to be a big outlay initially, see if it's for you. It's a really good model that they put together there. So yeah, for sure, I'll put a link.

SPEAKER_00:

But in between ArtistWorks and New Directions, I also put out another one called Out of the Box Volume 1. Well, that was just a desire that I had to play tunes in all 12 keys on one harmonica. I decided to do it on a C harp for ease of teaching. And I had tunes in all 12 keys, some major, some minor, in all different styles, blues, Indian music, jazz, swing, klezmer, all different stuff. So it's a performance. And then there's also explanations of how the tunes work and how I wrote them. And then there's PDFs, each one, and also backing tracks for about half of them.

SPEAKER_02:

Great, yeah. So moving on from your teaching then, first of all, I've talked to you already, but do you play any chromatic harmonica? I know you don't really play it much, but I believe you have played it in the past and even played it in a musical in Chicago.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, I taught myself how to play chromatic in the mid-1970s, I'd say. I was really trying to learn how to play music, to read music, rather, on harmonica. Somehow reading music on diatonic back then was... Very challenging. And I thought, well, here's this instrument. All the notes are just there. So I started practicing Bach and other classical stuff on it. And then I did get a gig playing for Shenandoah, one of the two musicals, Broadway musicals with a full harmonica part. And that was all on chromatic. A little known fact, and I might actually offer this as a download on my new website. I never really played chromatic in public and I never played jazz on it because I wasn't attracted to the sound for jazz. You know, I played saxophone. I mean, if I wanted an instrument with a bunch of keys on it and separate notes, I had one that I loved and the chromatic never appealed to me as a jazz instrument. And so an orchestra asked me to play a concerto in 1988. And even though I hadn't played chromatic in probably like eight years at that point, I took it on as a personal challenge and performed it. the Arthur Benjamin Concerto with a very good community orchestra in Chicago. And I recorded it on cassette, which I had totally forgot about. I made a really nice recording of it. And it's not terrible. But at the end of the performance, I put the harp back in the case and I said, you know, for me to be really great on this instrument, It would just take way too much time. I was starting to really like playing it as a classical instrument. There are so many other people who can really play chromatic great. Why should I do that? My mission in life is to make the most out of the diatonic. And I appreciate great chromatic play.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's interesting. Chromatic is probably much more similar to a piano than a diatonic, but I guess it's the difference of the diatonic that you like, isn't it, as you talked about earlier on? It's the soulfulness of the diatonic against the more somewhat mechanical way that the chromatic plays and sounds.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, it didn't draw me to it, especially since my initial... Attraction to the harmonica was the bluesiness of it, and it still is. And the fact that these reeds are alive, they're interacting. On the chromatic, the reeds are separated from each other with the windsaber valves. And of course, you can do things with half valves, and you can even do that, obviously, on diatonic. And that's another subject, alternate tuning harmonicas, half valves. Hey, man, if it sounds good, it is good. Whatever tuning harmonica you want to play, if you sound good on it, that's great. If you don't sound good on it, that's not great. So I don't discourage anyone from playing whatever kind of harmonica they feel like playing, as long as they sound good doing it. And it's not like they're not trying to prove some sort of point. If it sounds musical and good, cool.

SPEAKER_02:

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

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I have these things that I call rhythmic breathing rudiments, where I transfer drum rudiments to the harmonica, paradiddles, roughs, all sorts of things like that, which I do, and certain arpeggios, playing melodies in certain keys, expanding the pitches of the overblows, stuff that I warm up with before I play my concerto.

SPEAKER_02:

So we're moving to the last section now. So first question, again, you've already talked about a little bit. So what harmonica you play, you've already said, so you started out on golden melodies, but now you've moved to Joe Felisco custom marine bands with special 20 plates. Are they your diatonics of choice now?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but I still use golden melodies sometimes. I still really like golden melodies out of the box. And sometimes I tweak certain reeds a little bit just for the clearances, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

And I read you used some double reed harmonicas. Do you still use those?

SPEAKER_00:

I was using double thick reed plates in the late 90s. And the tone was wonderful, but the reeds were breaking too often. And so I kind of abandoned that around 2001, maybe.

SPEAKER_02:

The next question is, what's your favorite key of harmonica? And I always like to try and guess this. And I'm going to guess G, because that was the first key you got, wasn't it? And that low key, you like the G.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, G, A flat, A, B flat. I like all those. And I like C more than I used to, because when I was forced to use it for that out-of-the-box video, I discovered, yeah, I kind of like playing a C harp. So yeah, everything from C on down. But I really like playing some of the high harps as well. I like playing D harps sometimes.

SPEAKER_02:

Do you find you can get the overblows out of the higher-tuned harps the same, or is it more difficult?

SPEAKER_00:

No, it's not more difficult. It's actually easier to play like fourth hole overblow on a C harp than it would be on a G harp because you don't have to be so far back in your mouth to do it. So overdraws sometimes are a little harder on the higher pitched harmonicas. Yeah. But overblows are actually easier when you're not playing a super low harmonica.

SPEAKER_02:

again, you just touched on different tunes. Do you play any different tunes or because you're playing overblows, you feel you don't need them?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I, you know, experimented with it years ago. I would actually file reads and, you know, come up with my own tunings. I had some interesting ideas, but I figured out that what I'm supposed to do is to make the most of what's in front of me. So take the Richter tune harmonica and just find absolutely everything I can find in it. And when you do that, It's kind of like the diametric opposite of what Brendan Power does. And Brendan is a genius. I mean, I just am amazed at all the stuff he comes up with. He's exploring this infinity of different tuning systems, and I'm exploring the infinity that can be found in the one tuning system.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's funny talking to Brendan. I had a similar view of him. But actually, talking to him, he had a very similar approach to you, which was, well, basically, I just had this harmonica in front of me. I just wanted to make it work the way I wanted it to work. You know, exactly the way that you were recounting your story about discovering overblows early on. It was a very similar sort of view. He didn't see what he was doing as radical at all. It's just like, oh, this doesn't quite do what I want, so I'm going to just do this to it. And, you know, very similar, interesting comparison between the two of you there.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I agree. It is the same motivation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So what about your embouchure? Are you a puckerer?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. And I do the tongue blocking, of course, for playing intervals and doing counterpoint and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

But you find that puckering is needed to get the overblows. Is tongue blocking– you can

SPEAKER_00:

use it, though? Oh, I mean, there are people who do overblows with tongue blocking, sure. I just always– started with the pucker to seem more natural, they're very different. I've done one or two overblows with tongue blocking. It's one of those things that if I live long enough, maybe I'll figure out how to play all the stuff I do pucker with tongue blocking. But I don't know if I'll be able to live to 140.

SPEAKER_02:

Talking about amplifiers, obviously, again, you're playing a lot of different styles. So do you use a particular amplifier or are you using a PA a lot of the time?

SPEAKER_00:

Mostly a PA. If I'm playing distortion blues stuff, of course, it's great to have an old Fender amplifier. I love Fender Deluxe Reverb. It's a wonderful amp. I used to have a Princeton that was fantastic. And with all different kinds of mics, you know, I had some Green Bullet and EV-10. And lately, I've used some of the Boogeyman from Lone Wolf Boogeyman. It's got some pretty decent distortion and delay. You know, you plug a mic into it, go into the PA system, not bad. In the past, I had some little tube modules. I had one by, what was it, Hughes de Kettner, I think, that I recorded with. It sounded really good. Yeah, if you put a tube into the proceedings, usually things get better.

SPEAKER_02:

When you're playing clean, do you have one particular microphone when you're playing clean?

SPEAKER_00:

My favorite mic for most applications is a Sennheiser 441. I just love it. Also, I have to say for handheld, I really like the Beyer TG-88. It's not a distortion mic per se, but it has a very rich, full, low end. If you put it through a distortion unit, it sounds very rich. Even if you don't put it through one, it just sounds really good just hand-holding it. Everyone's different. Some people really love hand-holding. I discovered that for playing jazz, most of the time I don't like hand-holding the mic. I like the freedom of being able to move around without gripping something. And also, I felt that having the mic on the instrument, you lose some of the nuances of moving on and off mic. It can kind of create more humidity buildup in your hands too. It can kind of freak the reeds out a little bit. It's a weird thing. I go back and forth about that. And sometimes I've discovered that If I'm not having success in the studio, this is really interesting. On the Acoustic Express album, we recorded some stuff in a studio, really nice studio, but they just didn't get a good sound on my Sennheiser. I just wasn't happy with it. I don't know why. And I ended up playing, hand-holding a Shure Beta 57A, which I used to really like playing. And it sounds really warm and rich, like you'd never dream that that's what I was playing through. Sometimes it's just the match of the mic and the mic preamp and the particular engineer who's recording you.

SPEAKER_02:

And what about effects pedals? Do you use any in particular?

SPEAKER_00:

You know, I tend not to. I used to mess around with stuff just to experiment. But just due to the nature of how I play, especially some of the contrapuntal things that I do, I don't know if you've ever heard any of that, you know, where it sounds like I'm playing a drone and a melody at the same time. And... And I just figured that some people think that it's a trick, that it's an electronic trick or something. I just don't want anyone to think that what I'm doing is due to electronics. Even though chorus and octave stuff can sound good on a harmonica, I just prefer, like I said, to make the most of what's in front of me, to not use effects for that reason.

SPEAKER_02:

Right, so you don't even use reverb or delay or anything?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, no, no, of course I use reverb. That's not an effect. I'm not changing the nature of the sound, like a chorus would or like an octave harmonizer and stuff like that. Oh, no, no, reverb, sure. I mean, reverb is like breathing, you know, and delay when it's tasteful, like for the distortion stuff. Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so your final question now, and obviously we're in pandemic time, or hopefully coming out of pandemic time now. So just wondering on your future plans, I know that you're working on memoirs and also some music tuition books as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, lots of stuff. I've been writing my memoirs for a few years. I definitely want to put that out. I did put out one book called Songs, Poems, and Stories, which I'm very pleased with. I'd like to record a CD of my vocal tunes because I do sing. Not great, but I can sing my songs. And I was doing a bunch of free improvisations on piano that ended up, a lot of them came out really good. They're kind of contemplative and meditative. And I'm going to put that out. I called it looking inward. And that's kind of a reflection of these times because we can't really go anywhere or really do anything. So you end up spending time introspecting and evaluating who you are. So that's what that's about. And then I have a book, a music theory book that is basically written about integrating scales and modes and rhythms for musicians to be able to be comfortable improvising on any combination of different rhythms, different scales, different modes, different harmonies. It's very simple, the principles it's based on and the exercises. But if you do it, it's sort of like having an exercise regimen. It's very organized and it starts paying you dividends. I'll just put it that way. It's stuff that I've done myself. And I did one workshop where I laid it all out at a music conservatory in Germany. Really went over well. So I'm just Just trying to get all the musical examples into Finale so I can publish it.

SPEAKER_02:

Fantastic, Howard. Thanks very much for your insight. I was thinking very deeply about your music and it really shines through. But I think the message to a lot of people, if they haven't checked you out, is it all sounds great. So I definitely recommend people to check out your music. So thanks very much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_00:

You're welcome. It was a real pleasure talking with you.

SPEAKER_02:

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. Mr Levy shows what that humble diatonic harmonica can do.