Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Michael D'Eath interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 15

Share episode

Michael D’Eath is the President of the American harmonica organisation SPAH. He tells us what SPAH is all about and the many benefits it brings to its members.

The SPAH convention is one of the biggest events on the harmonica calendar, and this year it will be online. Allowing more international artists to be utilised, and providing the opportunity for people around the world to take part in the convention, which takes place from Aug 12-15 2020. 


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

SPAH website:
https://www.spah.org

SPAH 2020 online convention:
https://www.spah.org/content.asp?contentid=138&fbclid=IwAR0AWfRlCCFEoan9lMhJln4bXH2NY7texiH9hgskc0XFX5ekUwfrr1Xlx9Y

SPAH donations page:
https://www.spah.org/content.asp?contentid=156

SPAH Facebook site:
https://www.facebook.com/SPAH63/

Archive material:
SPAH Archive website:
https://archive.org/details/SPAH-archive

Roger Trobridge's Archivist website: the first 20 years of SPAH:
http://www.the-archivist.co.uk/spah-the-first-20-years/

HarmonicaUK (formerly National Harmonica League), Lockdown sessions, including info on Chromatic Weekend: July 25/26 2020:
https://www.harmonicauk.com/lockdown-sessions/


Michael's band, Him & Her:
https://www.himandhertx.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/

Support the show

SPEAKER_01:

Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of the Happy Hour Harmonica podcast. Please be sure to subscribe and check out the Spotify playlist. Another word to my sponsor, the Lone Wolf Blues Company, makers of effects pedals, microphones and more, designed for harmonica. Remember, when you want control of your tone, you want Lone Wolf. Michael Dieff joins me today. As well as playing in his own band, Him and Her, Michael is the president of the American harmonica organization, SPAR. He tells us what SPAR is all about and the many benefits it brings to its members. The SPAR convention is one of the biggest events on the harmonica calendar, and this year it will be online, allowing more international artists to be utilized and providing the opportunity for people around the world to take part in the convention, which takes place from August 12th to 15th, 2020. So hello, Michael DF, and welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, thanks, Neil. I appreciate it. Good to be here.

SPEAKER_01:

Michael, for those who don't know, is the president of SPAR. So we're here partly to talk about SPAR today, but we'll start with Michael. So I've got to start with your name, first of all, Michael. Michael DF. You must have got some really cool as a youngster with that name.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, absolutely. Yes. Mick the Dead and the Black Death and everything that an English prep school and public school could possibly do to me, they did. And I'm totally immune to it.

SPEAKER_01:

And I noticed your wife, Brenda Freed, she hasn't taken the name on.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, she, you know, being a perennial performer, she was touring in Europe before we met, actually, 20 years ago. And she was smart enough to keep her name because, you know, it's well known. And we don't call things by my last name. We use hers. So we have Be Freed Music as an example, not, you know, death music. You know, it'd be okay if I was, you know, if I was a heavy metal band or something, but it doesn't work very well for a folk and blues and jazz guy.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, we'll pick up on a bit of your history now and how that led you to become the president of... bar. So you're originally from England.

SPEAKER_00:

I was born in South London, Kingston, and lived most of my first 19 years in the south of England and then ended up in Winchester for a little while and then Cambridge for a little while and discovered computers in the early 1970s in London and ended up working on some of the largest computers. And I had no intention of doing that. I was going to be an engineer and went to Cambridge to do that. But before I went up there, I discovered that I really enjoyed writing software. And by the time I got to Cambridge, I decided that that's what I really wanted to do. And Cambridge didn't know how to spell the word, let alone how to teach anything about it. And so I left Cambridge after a year and got a place at a university in Houston called Rice University. I spent one semester there and took a leave of absence and never went back. Started my first company in Houston in 1975 at the age of 21 and basically did startups and sort of entrepreneur entrepreneurial things for 45 years and I'm still living in Texas now in what is called the Texas Hill Country, which is unlike anything you'll see in the movies for the most part. It's hills and we have a house about 2,000 feet, which I would have called a mountain if I was still living in the UK because there wasn't anything close to that where I grew up. So I've spent all but five of the last 47 years

SPEAKER_01:

in Texas.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So talking about your own harmonica playing initially. So I think you took it up a little bit later in life. So what was your history of picking up the harmonica?

SPEAKER_00:

I grew up singing in choirs and madrigals and playing piano and that sort of thing. You know, the respectable stuff. And came over here and was mostly a listener. I actually had listened to a lot of American music in the UK before I came over here. In the mid-90s, a friend of mine was fighting cancer and had throat cancer. And we started playing music. He was a guitar player and had been a harmonica player and a singer. He did an awful lot of instrumental work. And so I couldn't sing, obviously, in those moments. for those songs. And so he said, well, why don't you try this and handed me a harmonica. I still actually have that one in my studio right through the window there. So I started playing harp and it was interestingly, a lot of things like Django Reinhardt, a lot of minor key stuff. And it took me about two years to figure out that just because I was playing a C harp didn't mean I was playing in G. I was actually playing in D minor. So I learned to play third position probably before I learned to play second, all by ear. And then I started taking lessons. So I've been playing about 25 years.

SPEAKER_01:

So you didn't have any particular harmonical influences and you sort of learned it yourself by playing with a guitar player, did you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but playing, we actually had a small group. We had a mandolin, guitar, banjo, and then me. And, you know, two of us sang and then the rest of us played. And we actually did some recording at that time. But I mean, mine were mostly John Mayall, you know, Lennon, you know, and obviously I had heard a lot of harmonica playing, but it really, you know, it wasn't sort of like, I was more immersed in things like the Grateful Dead and Jeff Snare playing and jazz than I was in any particular instrument. You know, I was immersed in music as a, as a whole not as any particular instrument. I never really thought of myself as a player until that time.

SPEAKER_01:

More recently, was it, you have a band now called Him and Her with your wife, Brenda Freed.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so Brenda has been performing and been involved in music all her life. She actually has a master's degree in music education and music therapy. And so she's done it a very long time and played it. I mean, I've got posters on the wall here where she's playing on the bill with Ralph McTell and Jackie McShea. So we met in the late 1990s and got together, got married actually in Edinburgh 20 years ago this year. I started going to listen to them playing and I was careful to ask her guitar player if it was okay if I played with them because I figured that was at least fair. And so I started playing with them and then I started taking lessons and then I met the harmonica community in Austin, Texas through an organization called Hoot, Harmonica Organization of Texas. And that started me down this path that ultimately has led me to spa.

SPEAKER_01:

And so going back to your band, Him and Her, you released a few CDs. One of the songs on the Texas Woman album is, I think, the High on the Mountain.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

We're fortunate enough, one of the nice things about working in the technology community and particularly the entrepreneurial community is it was rather good to us financially. And so we now live on this wonderful open space and I was able to build a recording studio up here. And so that album, Him and Her Do Texas Women, is a collection of 12 songs all by female Texas songwriters. So we've done three albums as a group. We actually perform now as a trio with another guitar player called Jonathan Lee, who's a fabulous player and has brought us into music. We're doing some Stevie Wonder stuff, some Jeff Beck, some... Frank Zappa on harmonica. I don't know if I'm the only person who's played Frank Zappa on harmonica, but it's a challenge, I'll tell you that. Having a good time with it. So we're continuing to explore new avenues in addition to sort of the songwriter genre that Brendan and I had spent 20 years working with.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so you play chromatic harmonica as well, don't you?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

You like to play diatonic and chromatic then?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I started playing chromatic actually very early on. Got a little frustrated with it because I really didn't understand what I was doing. And then as a result of taking the lessons that I did and then the Kerrville Folk Festival with which I have a longstanding relationship and was actually my nonprofit experience. I was chairman of that organization for, was it four years, I think, and involved with them as a board member for eight years prior to joining the spa They have had a harmonica workshop there for about 15 years. Rob Roy Parnell, who is quite well known in the United States, he and his brother are both fine, fine musicians and part of a musical family that grew up in Texas. He has been the director of that organization. And so I've had the luxury of taking lessons from blues players like Gary Primitch.

UNKNOWN:

piano plays

SPEAKER_00:

from wonderful people like Norton Buffalo that we all miss so much. Norton was probably one of the first people that I watched him play rock chromatic. And it really started giving me the opportunity to sort of think about how to do it. I play a lot of different keys. I use the chromatic. I play it in third position. I play it in first and fifth, occasionally in fourth position. And then obviously I have a C64 in addition to the various keys of 48. And that's, by the way, that's how I get to play Frank Zappa.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. So you mentioned there that you were involved with the organization of the Kerrville Folk Festival. So is that what led you on to becoming involved with SPAR?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, a little bit. As I mentioned earlier, I found the harmonica community that had been started by a good friend of mine now, Tom Stevens, called Hoot, and it was Hoot, Texas. And there are several Hoots in Texas. And each one of them are separate organizations, but it is basically a nonprofit organization that meets monthly and provides education and performance opportunities. We did a number of fundraisers. We brought in people like Peter McCatruth to do an evening of class with Gary Primich. And so I joined Tom and Dan Rupa, who's a major part of the SPA organization, has been playing guitar and enjoying himself at SPA for longer than I have. The three of us actually ran that organization for three years before I was invited to join the Kerrville Folk Festival board. And so my involvement with Kerrville, because of the fact that we had the harmonica workshop there, Winslow Yerxa, who was then current president, came down to teach. And I met Winslow and he said, maybe you'd be interested in getting involved in spa on the board. And I'd been to spa since it came to Dallas in the early 2000s. And then again later, I said, well, I'm committed here. This is a full-time volunteer effort to keep this 49-year-old festival on its legs. And so we made that transition while I was there. Joe Felisco came down and asked me the same thing, Mad Cat. And those three are pretty much responsible as my eight-year tenure. I termed out, we had three-term limit at the Folk Festival Foundation. And so I joined Winslow's board as secretary and then was encouraged to throw my head in the ring to be president now five years ago and have been, you know, that's an elected position. And so I've now been elected twice and my tenure will expire again next year and we'll see what happens. But have a wonderful team of people helping us run the organization.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So you're in your second term of a possible three. So yeah, you may be carrying on for a few more years yet in the role if you were to be reelected.

SPEAKER_00:

We'll see how that plays out. I would love to, and I will always encourage other people to step forward. If somebody said, I want to do this, I will be the first one to say, okay, come on, let me help you. We recently made a change at vice president, Jerry Deal, who was secretary, has just joined as vice president after five years. Mike Runyon, a fabulous Chromatic Player helped us a lot over that first five years and has stepped back as he's still very much involved, but not on the board. I'm the first one to encourage other people, but I have had a number of people who've asked me to continue to do it. And Jerry and I have both talked about it and we're prepared to do it if we are so asked. But we would love for somebody else to step in and start working with us. And we continue to look for succession.

SPEAKER_01:

Getting on to SPAW itself now. So SPAW, for those who don't know, is the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica, founded in 1963 by Earl Collins, Gordon Mitchell, and Richard Harris. So it's been around now for almost 60 years. So yeah, so what do you see the role of SPAW in today's harmonica community?

SPEAKER_00:

One of the first things we did after I sort of got the team together is we, because we're a geographically distributed organization, None of us live in the same town. And so we meet by phone and we see each other once a year at a convention, except this year, obviously, for obvious reasons. And one of the things that I started doing at the end of the convention was saying, let's take the core group of the board and let's sit down and think about what it is that we want to do and who are we. And so if you think about what preservation and advancement of the harmonica, and you sort of do a little bit of a scientific thought about what does that mean, right? So what are we preserving? We're preserving the instruments, so the chords, the basses, and indeed the archives. And in fact, Jerry Deal, our vice president, is now seems to be catching the archivist bug. Sadly, we lost Manfred Weevers about a year and a half ago. who had been our archivist for many, many years, but he did a wonderful job. And Jerry has now inherited all of those materials and also has a basement full of really interesting harmonicas and microphones. And so we're about preserving the instrument and the music that is being played. So from the harmonic hats to the old blues music, To the styles of playing, the trio, Spa was, until, oh gosh, 20 years ago, was very much about the chromatic and the trio. So bass chord and chromatic, as opposed to those long-haired blues players.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I was wondering about that because I had Peter Madcat-Roof on a few episodes ago. So he was the first person to win the Player of the Year award as a diatonic player in the late 90s, wasn't he? So I think that was starting to be the shift away from the emphasis on the chromatic and, as you say, the orchestral harmonica there. So has that been a deliberate ploy to move that away from those a little bit to, well, to cover both, I guess, including the diatonic, which is probably much more popular these days than the chromatic, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, the transition had happened by the time I got involved in the board. I mean, and in fact, at this point, in some ways it is, we are focused as much, it is getting harder to get trios to come and play. Many of the trio players are, you know, in their 60s, 70s and 80s as well. So part of our preservation has to be getting young people, first of all, involved with the instrument, not just, you know, for a year, but for their lives and keep them involved. in the community. So we sort of know they might be out there, but actually coming to spa and participating. And secondly, encouraging them to pick up the bass or the chord or the chromatic, playing not necessarily the old music, but playing the new music. And so we'll do things like one time Mad Cat played and we said, would you mind having a bass and chord behind you instead of a bass guitar and a rhythm guitar? And so he played with a bass and chord player behind him instead of, and played the same songs he was going to play. uh, Mac at is, you know, one of my very good friends. And, and, and I think is, you know, in terms of somebody that shows what the diatonic can be in terms of, and his love of the instrument and the way he, you know, he puts it across, you know, as I said, he was instrumental in me, uh, in me taking on this role. And I, you know, you can see if you've talked, as you've talked to him, why he was a really good transitional kind of, you know, having, having played in the jazz community, you know, it's hard to argue his credentials. Um, I mean, and people he's played with. And he was playing the same music, but with a diatonic. And so he was a great sort of transitional person. So at this point, we are as much reaching back to the trios, whether or not those instruments are playing the old music or whether we're playing new music with those old instruments. I'm pleased to say that we do have... Occasionally, we have a scholarship program at SPA, and occasionally we will get scholars, some of whom are playing on main stage now, who are playing bass and chord on stage with us. And I'm pleased to say we actually have two of our scholars who are going to be playing during SPA week this year. So the part of what we try to do is encourage the use of those older instruments, either in new context or playing the old music. So sometimes we'll pair one of our older chromatic players with a young backing band, and sometimes we've got a 20 and 30-year-old group playing harmonica music from the 30s and 40s. So it's all of the above.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm involved with the National Harmonica League, as it was called, in the UK, which is possibly a stranger name than the Society for Presentation of Harmonica. So the National Harmonica League in the UK is a similar sort of club in the UK base. And I help run a chromatic weekend. So we've got a similar thing, you know, kind of helping keeping the chromatic relevant. And obviously, the diatonic is more popular these days and so certainly the more orchestral instruments aren't not many people playing those so the bass and the chords and things but um the chromatic still reasonably popular and at least people use that to play some blues as well so yeah very much interested myself in helping keep that going in the chromatic weekend we do and we will certainly get on to the spa online convention but we're uh we're planning to do a sort of use of a chromatic weekend right around this year each year and we're actually going to do an online sort of weekend at the end of july to replace that so a similar sort of idea is obviously see what's happening with the spa convention.

SPEAKER_00:

Keep me posted about that. I'd love to listen in. The more I play chromatic, the more I realize how versatile an instrument it is, particularly if you allow yourself to buy in the keys of G and A and some of the others where you can play in some of the other keys. It gives you the ability to play some of the jazz standards in a way that they might more reasonably be intended. Some of the chromatics have the ability to do a fair amount of bending in addition to using the button And the button gives you some of the wonderful... I mean, just listen to Stevie Wonder. You know, it's like...

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think you make a very good point. I think a lot of people have the opinion of the chromatic that it's quite old-fashioned, the music that you hear some of those guys play. But of course, you hear some of the great players. You've got Antonio Sereno playing some great music that's very exciting to listen to, getting away from that more old-fashioned type of music, which maybe some people associate with the chromatic.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and I think that's really important. I mentioned that about Norton Buffalo. He was one of the people that I listened to. He played with Steve Miller for 35 years. He was a big part of that sound. the steve miller band sound but i heard him play you know his own music and and some of his wife's italian music as well just listening to how he was using that chromatic and that's a totally different sort of feel And you've got all the chord stuff in there. If you've got the right key harmonica, if you're playing an A minor and you pick up a G, third position falls right out there. You've got the button to give you all those half steps and more. And so I actually taught things like Serenade to a Cuckoo, which is an old Roland Kirk song that was made famous by Jethro Tull. And I taught it last year at Kerrville, and I taught it on diatonic and chromatic in E minor so that you could play it on a C chromatic, and we have people doing both. I'm trying to sort of say, look, there's a lot more you can do with that instrument. Using it in the way that is being used by those kinds of players like Antonio and Stevie Wonder and like Norton did for many, many years. If you're not doing that as a blues or jazz player, you're missing an opportunity to really have some fun.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, I think as spa and harmonica players, we love all harmonicas, yeah?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's

SPEAKER_01:

right. Going back to that role of, you know, of what sport, I mean, it's not just about the chromatic and it's not just about the bass and chords and, you know, it's orchestral. So it is about the diatonics too as well, which again is more popular now. So what about the preservation of the diatonic? Do you feel that's being, you know, needed in the same way?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I think the music and the instrument seem to be in very good health if I judge it by what's going on here. We have a tremendous number of diatonic players. My wife and I go out to a place in Kerrville every year and we gave 300 of them away and taught kids how to play you know one song and we had groups of five and ten kids walking away playing you know and by the way I should acknowledge Hohner's support of giving us all the harmonicas so we can do that it's an inexpensive instrument and you can learn to play a tune the supply is much broader part of that is cost part of that is because that people hear they hear people playing it on you know whether it's country or blues or jazz people like Will Scarlett and the And then more recently, Howard Levy and others have done in terms of teaching people how to do overblow and playing a lot more notes on the instrument. We get a tremendous breadth. Part of our challenge in four days is covering all the bases, right? It's covering all the trio stuff and having enough of sort of the old style music and then also having jazz and blues and country and gospel and doing all of that over a period of four and a half days in a convention. It turns out we've sort of finished figured out how to do that. Our challenge at this point is supporting the diversity in every axis, if you will. Men and women, people of color as well, all across, right? And presenting all of that music and all the different genres. And so, yeah, we get a tremendous amount of diatonic music on there. We get a lot of different tunings. Obviously, there are a lot of people who are doing modified Richter tuning, and I tend to play things out of the box. But there are a lot of people who are doing a lot of amazing stuff. I came to the World Harmonica Forum, was it three years ago and listened to all these incredible folks, you know, many, many of them from all over Asia and listening to what they're doing and realizing how much the diatonic harmonica is a part of life. We're getting a lot more influence now from, you know, from Chinese manufacturers and also from, I mean, we're bringing players and scholars over from India, some playing chromatic, some playing diatonic and doing a lot of overblows and overdraws to do what they need to do. So I feel very good about the, you of the diatonic as a whole. I think, I mean, there's no doubt, you know, the harmonica is alive and well. It's interesting, the US probably is not. If you look at what's going on in Asia, you know, pretty much every child in many countries is learning the harmonica before they reach the age of 15. That obviously is not happening in North America. I don't know that, you know, if we'll ever make those changes. There are some who suggest that spa should be involved in that. I wish I had the energy. I would love to. And I think having low cost, you know, lower cost instruments helps. The part of the challenge has been, you know, instrument cost has gone up and up and up with, you know, as a result of various, you know, international manufacturing and currency conversion rates and so on and so forth. And so a typical diatonic over here, a good one might cost you$35,$45 now and not five, right? You can buy a harmonica for$5, but it doesn't sound as good. I think the instrument as a whole, I think it's still alive and well and doing just fine. You know, part of our challenge is to continue to make that exciting and interesting in the US and to sort of bring it back to what we're going to be doing in August with Spa Week. Doing this online means that not only is our sort of close-knit community of a thousand people who sort of participate in Spa every year in one form or other, you know, by being members or coming to the convention, those people clearly will come and listen and enjoy and participate. What I'm hoping is that we can expose a much broader audience around the world to what we're doing here, because we do have broad We actually get visibility in, as I mentioned, in a lot of countries, but obviously they're not able in most cases to come over here and enjoy the convention. And so I'm hoping that we're going to get being forced into doing this online thing will give us the skills so that we can continue to spread that, what we do internationally and bring and domestically and bring more people into the fold, if you will, who don't necessarily have the ability to get in a car and drive to St. Louis or Charlotte or whatever.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I think in many ways, you know, this online, although it's got its downsides, it's got a lot of advantages as well, hasn't it? So just concluding that part around spa and its relevance, I mean, what are the spa bringing you? If you remember, you get the magazine four times a year, there's the convention. Is that the main benefits of spas or anything else?

SPEAKER_00:

No, that is not the only thing. SPA membership is 50 bucks a year. And if you come to the convention, you get a$50 discount. So if you're going to come to the convention, being a member is basically free. And so that's a pretty good deal. In fact, one of the things that I changed about how we talk about ourselves when I got here was, I spent a lot of time in the tech industry with really good marketing people. And so a lot of people would say, well, we're going to go to SPA. And by that, they meant going to the SPA convention. And I said, it is the SPA convention. SPA a lot more than the convention. But first of all, if you donate to SPAR, you're donating to all the things we've just talked about, which is the preservation. And if you're a member of SPAR, you're doing the same thing. You're allowing this organization to continue to preserve the music in North America. It can be said 20 years ago when the diatonic harmonica was, to a large extent, maybe 30 years ago, was becoming a toy. The quality of the instruments was going down and down and down. And a lot of the members of SPAR got together and started, people like Joe And so I think this organization had a lot to do with making sure that the instrument actually did survive 20 or 30 years ago. In addition to getting a full color magazine mailed to your house, including in England, four times a year for the cost of that membership, you also get discounts. Anybody who offers a spa discount, a spa member discount, you get a discount. is allowed to advertise free in our magazine. And so if you've got a workshop and you're willing to give a 10% discount up to$50, because if it's more than that, then we understand that's too much, then on a bona fide, we assume you're doing this properly, we will allow you to run one or possibly two small ads in our magazine at no cost to you. So one of the benefits you get if you're going to go to the Harmonica workshop, for example, at Kerrville and many of the others, You get a$25 discount for a$250 workshop, four-day, three-day workshop just by being a member. So we're doing more of that. All of our vendors who are going to be showing their wares online during spa week online are going to be giving discounts to spa members. And so we try to add more value to the membership and say, look, even if you cannot come to the convention, you're going to get a magazine and you're going to get discounts to go to any number of other events that might be more local to you that you will benefit from. from and be a member of a community you can find local members you can find local clubs you know we have a searchable database online so you can find you know who else I get we get questions all the time you know who else is who else plays harmonica in my area giving them that kind of access and we'll answer those questions if you ask us even if you're not a member but being able to go on and look up you know look up people and say you know email my friend Joe down the road and see if we can get together and learn something you know

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think that's an important point, isn't it? Again, in the National Harmonica League in the UK, which I've been involved with for a long time. I know Roger Trowbridge very well, too, so I know you know Roger. Yeah, I know Roger well, yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a harmonica community in many ways, isn't it? It's like a harmonica club, you know, you get to meet other people. The conventions, you know, the meetups you have are great. I know Spar was kind of built off local clubs kind of coming together originally, wasn't it, in its history. So it moves around the different things to go to the different harmonica clubs. So it's about that community as much as anything, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. One of the key ways that we pick a location to hold the convention is having a good harmonica club. One of the challenges is that a lot of those clubs were formed 30 years ago by 30 and 40 and 50 year old people who are now less, there are less of them. And we depend on them when we go to that town to provide some of the volunteers. Obviously we bring our own volunteer staff with us, but having local people who can help bring people from the airport and help sell tickets or t-shirts and that kind of stuff. And so we do a really good sort of trade with the local volunteers. They get get to come to spa while they're working and, you know, you work for four hours and you get to enjoy the concert in the evening. So, you know, you save a little bit of money and you get to meet all these amazing people and hang out with, you know, with all the people we've talked about, you know, the So it is very much a community. In fact, one of the things we did when I first got involved, we started selling registration to the convention in February when we didn't know who was going to play. And nobody had ever tried that before. It's like, well, why is anyone going to buy a ticket to go to a convention when they don't know who's going to play? Well, it turns out half the people bought tickets to come to the convention before they even knew who was going to be on the stage, which confirmed what you just said, Neil, which is that people come because they want to be with their friends. And it really is a community. The the sitting around playing in jams, there are some folks who don't go to the stage very often. They sit around and play music together all day long. And that's such a wonderful thing. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

So this year, things are different, of course. Yes. The convention this year is planned, of course, to be an online convention. So yeah, so let's get into that now. Lots of advantages and disadvantages of that. So yeah, so maybe just introduce the plan for the online convention this year.

SPEAKER_00:

When we looked at the calendar sometime in May and said, there are just way too many things that could go wrong that would prevent us from having our convention in St. Louis this year. And we decided that we were going to have to pull the plug. And one of the reasons that we didn't sort of jump into that very early in the year, other than just the uncertainty of the climate of this virus, was that we wanted to be able to have an alternative. And many of us had sort of come up with this idea of what we now call Spa Week 2020 of let's do this online. Spa is fortunately in a good financial position. We're not dependent upon a convention to survive. In fact, we put a rainy day fund away four years ago, thanks to Thank you so much. were going to do. But as importantly, we also knew that so many of our community, our teachers, but most importantly, our performers were not being paid. And we saw this as an opportunity to put some money in the pockets, not much, but a little bit of money in the pockets of some of our performers. And because we're doing this now online, provide awareness of a few more international artists in what is seen as a US organization. It's hard, sadly, to bring international artists over here to play. I mean, even to attend, there's a lot of sort of, let's just say, immigration stuff that gets in the way of people. And it seems to be uniquely aimed sort of artists and musicians. If you're a businessman and you want to go to a sales conference, it's easy. But if you're a musician and you just want to come, if you're not careful, they're going to say, well, you're going to some place and they're charging entry and you're probably going to play. So no, you can't come in. And that has happened, unfortunately. And so we've had to be incredibly careful with international artists this year, because what we're going to be doing is showing videos of people playing through Zoom and YouTube and other mechanisms. We're not constrained by that at all. And so we are able to bring in international artists with more abandon, let's say. And so we wanted to do both of those things, keep it on the calendar. So we are going to put on a series of afternoon seminars. Usually at SPA, we'll have four going in parallel. We didn't want to trip over ourselves the first time doing this. And we actually have hired a professional production company who's working with us to do this. So it will be professionally produced. And then obviously the SPA team are involved in the content and and the emceeing and so forth at this event. But we're going to have afternoon seminars. So they'll be starting at one o'clock. This is all central time. And we've got, you know, beginner seminars. We've got diatonic and chromatic. We've got country tuned seminars. We've got Jason Ricci, who's a fabulous rock and blues player doing scale exercises.

UNKNOWN:

So Hey!

SPEAKER_00:

Michael Rubin is going to teach bass harmonica. We've got how to embellish music as a performer. We've got Don Caesar, anyone who's ever seen Caesar perform. He's a fabulous showman and did a show for us a couple of years ago on main stage on our Saturday night banquet and just did a little Richard thing that just blew everybody's mind. So all of those sessions in the afternoon, and there'll be one hour session. Some are going to have multiple presenters. They will all be interactive. They're all going to be live. So they will be on zoom and fully emceed so that people can enjoy them and we're going to have like 15 minute breaks during those breaks we're going to run i hope we we have some wonderful archives that we discovered that are audio archives and so we're going to run slideshows about our vendors about you know donating to spa and spa we during those breaks it also gives us some flexibility if a session runs over so somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes of music some of these spa will be from from sessions from the 60s and 70s and so you'll get to hear some of the old of music in between all these things. And so we're going to fill the time with some stuff that for many people will go, I was at that session. And other people are going to go, wow, you can do that with the whole market. So we look forward to doing that. And then in the evenings, starting in my best English, half past six, which unfortunately will be until after midnight for you, but we will be recording this and playing it. So you'll be able to watch it the next morning, if you like, on the same evening. So Wednesday through Saturday night, we're going to have everything from the local harmonica group in St. Louis who would have opened the show for us doing a group performance. We've got Katrina Sturton, who's going to play live. We've got a whole bunch of Joe Felisco's guys who are going to play a couple of songs. We've got a group who's going to do fiddle tunes. So showing how you can play fiddle tunes on harmonica, which is obviously its own skill. We've got Steve Baker, who many of you know, who now is an Englishman who lives in Germany, works with Horner. He was going to be coming over this year and he's going to be playing. It will be recorded, but I hope he will be We're going to put him on first in the evening so that he has the opportunity to be with us at one in the morning, not at four in the morning. We have Boaz Kim and Steve Geiger. We've got Michael Fall and Michael Bachman, who are from Sweden, who will be joining us also. So another piece of international flavor. Rob Paparazzi, who many of you may know, is going to be performing with Chris Bauer. Aki Kumar from the West Coast. I'm very pleased to say that Antonio Serrano will be on the bill with us on Saturday.

UNKNOWN:

¦

SPEAKER_00:

He was due to come over and play for us and close the show on Saturday. He's going to follow our awards ceremony, which is and do a half an hour set. And again, hopefully he'll be with us on the chat at least to talk. We're paying all these performers and presenters. And the way we're paying them is this. And this is as important as I mentioned as what we're doing. Spa put up some money. We went to our sponsors this year who typically sponsor annually and said, don't sponsor us this year. We're fine. But if you'd like to sponsor spa week we'd love you to do that and many of them have stepped forward to do that we also offered people who had paid for their registration for this year we gave them some choices you could have your money back you could put it towards next year and we'll give you a t-shirt and and we've already been through all these choices many of those people offered to donate the money to spa week we also have on our website at www.spa.org spah.org we have a donate site specifically for spa week and we also have a paypal.me slash Any of those donations that we receive by noon on Sunday, the 16th of August will be used to put tips in the tip jar of everybody playing. If we get 30% more money than we needed, everybody's going to get 30% more money. All that money is going to go straight through us and in the pockets of these people who have been unable to perform for the most part. We're looking forward to that. We're not going to ask people to pay to listen or watch, but we are going to have a recommended donation of$20 per session. That's an honor system. We're not going to police it or say anything, but all that money, if you enjoy what you see or you're learning something from that,$20 for four hours of harmonica classes is a really good deal.

SPEAKER_01:

making that point clear. The event is free, but certainly be strongly encouraging donation to be able to go and straight to the artist. So yeah, great way. I mean, people obviously usually spend quite a lot of money going to the convention. Yeah, the cost of the convention, travel, the hotel. So, you know, in many ways, this is much cheaper than doing that, isn't it? And yeah, it's great to be able to sit together and play and see your friend. This does have its advantages in many ways.

SPEAKER_00:

It does indeed. And one of the things I'm asking our production company. Because we're using a commercial Zoom license, what we're asking them is after the show, going to offer the Zoom license to a different genre of jazz, like say jazz one night, maybe blues one night, to take over that Zoom license and get together. You obviously have to have your own guitar player or a backing track to play on Zoom because you can't play it with each other due to the timing issues. We may offer to turn that over to somebody if they want to run a couple of hours and go late into the night and play amongst the themselves and somebody could host it. We have several experienced hosts in that community who are still doing this online. So I'm hopeful that we're going to be able to offer some more participatory things as well in the evening to sort of close the evening. Will

SPEAKER_01:

all of it be recorded and available offline, not live?

SPEAKER_00:

We are definitely planning to do that. There are some legal issues that I have to sort out. These organizations called PROs, if you're playing music that is copywritten, we have to be careful and take care of the people whose music we're playing. Our intention is to make it available broadly to people after the fact, yes.

SPEAKER_01:

But I think in many ways there's a lot to be said for joining it live, isn't it? You do get more of a sense, even though it's online, you do at least get a more sense of community if you participate live.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and the seminars will all be live and those, you know, obviously you get a lot more out of it because you'll be able to play along, you'll be able to ask questions, you'll be, you know, and it's all of that, right? I'm pleased to say that, you know, all of our sessions, all the educational sessions will be over by 11 o'clock England time, right? So they'll be in your evenings, right? One to, you know, from one to five our time.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, it's a great point, actually, for people over in Europe who are listening to this, you know, that that works out very well for us over here that we can watch the seminars. The concert, more of a problem because that's getting late.

SPEAKER_00:

And the seminars, I know we will be able to leave up as long as our teachers are okay with that, which I think they all are.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, we're seeing obviously during this time that there's a whole explosion of online activity. You know, everyone's doing things online and we're all trying to learn very quickly how to do that. It's good to hear that you've got a professional production company helping them. Hopefully that'll make it all smooth. What's the thoughts about online? Obviously this does beg the question is, you know, even after things open up, hopefully that, you know, we might start to see a lot more things online and maybe sport might be interested in doing other stuff online as well. Any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I, One of the things as we got to this point that the board started talking about was that we're going to learn a skill in doing this. The company who's helping us, the production company who's helping us is the company, our sound company, the company that has traveled with us for the last seven or eight years and done our live sound for us, retired at the end of last year. And so we went to a company that actually did spa, I think, in Colorado in the mid-2000s. And they were hired to do the live convention in St. Louis this year. and they will be with us next year in Charlotte. And so we went to them and said, can you help us? And they said, absolutely. And so they're actually the ones who are going to be helping us with this. So we're going to build a relationship with them. And so we're talking about the possibility, maybe we do something six months in the off cycle, right? So maybe we do something in January or we get pretty busy in January and February. So we've got to be careful we don't overwhelm 100% volunteer organization in having to book two groups. I feel certain we will do something in sort of, let's say the off cycle.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think that's an important point as well. Yes, it's a voluntary organization. It's the same with the National Harmonica League in the UK. So, you know, maybe this is a chance for people who are interested in helping out. Maybe they've got some time that, you know, your spa wants some help if possible, if people are willing to help, especially, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and we do have, you know, Keith Mitchell's already stepped up and he will be helping us. He's the one who runs the gospel community here and he's actually been doing regular Zoom sessions. And obviously, you know, the appearance of Zoom in this time, you know, was sort of fortuitous for them as a startup. They've obviously changed their technologies because people started crashing Zoom sessions. And so all of a sudden, you start having people who are misbehaving in your Zoom session. So we've had to grapple with how do you deal with that? Who do you let in the room versus watch? All of those kinds of things we're sorting through now. Again, one of the reasons we wanted to hire professional firms. So they will be putting together all the live portions like the MC for people like me and Jerry, who will be sitting in our living rooms or recording studios or possibly in the sound room of our production company to do the MC work. We'll be live introducing people and then going to recorded sessions and then going possibly to a recorded video from a spa from 2003. We have some of those as well that we'll be using. Possibly then to a slideshow featuring some vendors who are offering special discounts during spa week or thanking our sponsors or telling people how they can donate to a slide deck and then back to a recorded show where at least they're going to be doing at least two live shows. So we've put out guidelines for what the requirements are for doing a live show, using a good quality microphone and a camera, having low noise environment, having no light behind you, all the things you have to do to do live video. And so it's going to be a blend and we're allowing these little cushions in between each session so we can handle any small hiccups. And we also know that this is going to be the first time for many people that they've attended something like this. And so we're going to have sort of a helpline. I don't know if it'll be an email or a chat session or whatever, but if somebody doesn't know how to get on Zoom, we're going to have some people who can help them so it doesn't interrupt me when I'm trying to introduce Antonio Serrano. Again, part of having a professional organization.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And it's a great opportunity. I've never been to sport myself. So it's a great opportunity for lots of people to be able to go for the first time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And I'm really encouraged by that. We've had folks from, we've got one gentleman, I think it's a man from Brazil who wants to teach and we had somebody drop out. And so they're going to jump in and talk about playing tango music and straight from Brazil. So yeah, I mean, it's fun because we can do more of that and we can be more international. One of the other really nice things about this is that two of our performers are, and I'm going to sort of bring this full circle back to sort of, you know, what is spa about? Two of our performers are former scholars. Every year for the last, oh gosh, 10 years now, we've been providing scholarships, initially those scholarships for 21 and under. And initially it included, you know, hotel for you and your guardian, your parent and registration for you to attend. We fundraise specifically for this. So it's a restricted fund aimed at this youth Rosebush fund. And we've been able to help pay for our some amount of travel. And so this year, we were due to have two fine young gentlemen from India coming over. And we've already told them, please come next year, sort of pre-approved. We're now bringing as many as six scholars. They spend the whole week with us. We put them on the stage, once on the small stage, once on main stage. As I said, we have two of them on our main stage this year in their own right as performers. That is really exciting. What we're now doing is internships. And so we're looking for like, let's give an internship to this former scholar who wants to learn more about sound. And let's put them to work helping David Bernson and Carolyn Dolan, our stage managers, and help them learn how to run a sound check. Help them set up the sound systems, help them maybe run the jazz jam in one evening or the open mic session during the afternoons and learn how to do that stuff. So we're trying to find other ways for kids and young people, not just to come as scholars and play, but to come back year after year and be part of the organization. Yeah, absolutely. And we're now starting on our second generation of young performers and watching them come up through the ranks. And to me, if that isn't preservation, I don't know what is.

SPEAKER_01:

So brilliant. Yeah. So just to mention that the convention, just to reiterate the day, is between the 12th and the 15th of August this year.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. And it'll be every afternoon and evening on those four days of August. And that is our typical week. It's usually our live convention would have been that week. Next year, we will be in Charlotte, North Carolina, August 10th through 14th of 2021. You know, God willing, and the creek don't rise.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

We will be there in person again and doing that there.

SPEAKER_01:

We want to talk about gear now, Michael, which is the usual last slot of the podcast. So what harmonicas do you play?

SPEAKER_00:

Before I start on this, let me just say, I'm not an endorser of anybody. I feel that in this role, it's important to be independent. And I want to encourage all our vendors to do their best and do everything they can for everybody. And obviously, I get wonderful support from all the vendors in everything we do. But in terms of the gear itself, I actually have four different manufacturers represented in my case. Sort of the dominant diatonics I play these days are Ahroner crossovers and some Deluxe. When those came out, I was getting marine bands tweaked by some local folks. I've not spent the time to learn, you know, to spend a lot of time doing it myself, although I have done some very simple things myself in terms of, you know, opening them up and working on tuning and so forth. So the crossover has been a wonderful out-of-box experience. I also carry Lee Oscars. I I spent many, many years playing Lyosco harmonicas, and I still have many of those in my backup kit. For chromatics, when I first got involved in chromatics, I tried a few, and I ended up playing Suzuki. I have a lot of chromatics 48s in various keys. I have a Sirius 64, which is a wonderful instrument, and I just love the way they sound. I also actually have a herring with a plastic comb that I bought at Spa, I don't know, 15, 18 years ago, and sadly, they don't sell in North America much. anymore. I have an E48 that I play of theirs. And then over the course of the last five years, I've picked up an E-stop, I've picked up a Kongsheng, and those are fine instruments. And obviously, their price point is fabulous. I mean, they're incredibly affordable, and the technology is getting better and better every year. I have a few other diatonics of various other manufacturers. I have a Suzuki or two, and I have an E-stop or two diatonic. Do you

SPEAKER_01:

have a favorite key of harmonica? That's usually a diatonic question, but as you As you like different key chromatics, maybe you can tell me your favorite key of diatonic and chromatic.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't actually. By using the sort of two octaves coverage that you can get when you play the low harps and occasionally a high G if you want to call the dogs over. I'm an accompanist. I'm not a solo artist. I play with other singers and pickers. I learned that skill at Kerrville playing at campfires when somebody throws out a song and my job is to be invited to do it more than once. And you learn pretty quickly that you don't trample on people. And so you have to have every key and you have to be able to find the key without asking, unless you can read the chords on the instrument they're playing. And so I've got everything. I've got everything from a low D all the way up to a high G. And I play them all. Sometimes playing in C on a high F is really good. Other times I'll pick up the low F. I love the shuffle of a low D. Playing a shuffle on the bottom, I'm sometimes the bass player. But I'll also pick up the serious. and play that low octave on the 64 chromatic as well. On chromatic, I carry a C48 as well as a 64, and that's to some degree a backup of each other. I have a G, an A, an E, and a B flat. And that gives me those keys obviously in first position, but it also gives me C minor, F sharp minor. And so, you know, G gives you A minor, A gives you, you know, I play that in, you know, mostly in first position in A, but it also gives you B minor. You know, and B flat, obviously, it gives you the C minor. Um, and then, and then the fifth position C gives you E minor, you know, because two blow is, is the E and the E minor. The fifth position actually is, I'm learning more and more about it, but it's, it's also very powerful, as powerful as third position is on a chromatic as well.

SPEAKER_01:

You touched on earlier on that, um, you don't play any other tunings. You, you pretty much play, uh, root to tune diatonics and solo, well, standard tune chromatics.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. Yes. And occasional natural minor. I still have one song I play on natural minor and I I have probably four or five of those Lee Oscars, but I've sort of now, I enjoy doing those mostly in third and fifth and fourth occasionally. Do you use any overblows yourself? I have never mastered the overblow. I have had several people, you know, Will Scarlett probably was the first person to do it and nobody knew it then. But I was listening to Will when he was playing with Hot Tuna in the late 60s. And I've come to know him as a very good friend and listen to how he does it. And he makes it sound so easy that I don't know if there's something about my embouchure that isn't letting me do it. And I'm intent on figuring that out.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, you touched on the next question. What

SPEAKER_00:

embouchure do you use? I am a lip blocker for the most part. I do tongue block, obviously, for chords. I've played around with tongue blocking. Early on, I learned to do it with my lips, and I love the tone I can get because I'm able, you know, my tongue is, if you will, is able to be more involved in the sound because it's not stuck up against the harmonica. I'm not knocking the tongue block. You know, it does give one some additional options, you know, That's what I do. I'm a total lip purser.

SPEAKER_01:

What about amps? You play mostly quiet melodic type music. So are you going for more of a clean sound most of the time?

SPEAKER_00:

Most of the time I'm playing clean sound. The gig I played the other day, I actually had one of the 57s with the shroud on it. So it was sort of purpose modified 57. But I also had a 57 beta because I was playing chromatic a lot and holding a microphone and playing chromatic can be hard. I actually own an A-static bullet and I've played that. I have a blues drum. Junior that I bought back when I first started. And I've never tried to sound like anybody else. It wasn't sort of what I have set out to do. When I play through a PA, I actually have a little 9-volt battery amp called a Mountain Amp. And it'll run about 20 hours on a 9-volt. And it has a direct out. If you turn it up, it's a solid state. And it's got a little 8-inch speaker you can use for a monitor if you want to. But if you turn it up, it starts putting a little crunch on the sound. And I use that sometimes with a Shaker Madcap microphone, which is a very clean sounding microphone and gives you more mobility because it's just in between your fingers. As I'm doing more with chromatic, I'm finding having a stationary mic is very convenient, but I like to be able to move around and so having something I can pick up and play. So these days I'm now playing a bit of both, but all of it through the PA Ultimate. When I practice, I'm playing through an old PV practice amp and that sounds pretty good. I've actually taken that to a gig once or twice. It's usually when I'm playing in a blues jam thing, you know, I'm not trying to do straight up jazz or in some cases very delicate folk music. And do you use any effects pedals? Nope, never have. I just do a little bit overdrive to get a little fatness out of it and obviously hand control, cupping the microphone. Actually, I was talking to our guitar player about possibly trying some of that for one or two songs. And so how do I fatten my sound up? Part of that is switching to a low octave harmonica. The other one would be to possibly add some chorusing or something on what I'm doing. Last year, I bought the Blows Me Away, that 57 microphone I talked to you about. It's from is from greg it blows me away i really enjoying the sound that gives me i ran that through the little mountain amp with a little crunch on the mountain app and then into the pa so that was my mobile mic for the gig we played last saturday it was first time i'd taken it out in public and i i really enjoyed it

SPEAKER_01:

so yeah thanks very much uh michael jones today really looking forward to the online convention any last words from you or about yourself spa or the convention

SPEAKER_00:

I would encourage everybody to come check it out. Go to spa.org. We will publish everything in terms of how to join the event on our Facebook site, which is spa63, so facebook.com slash spa63, or go to spa.org and look under the convention tab. We'll have instructions on how to join there. If you are a member and already getting emails from us, we will also be publishing or sending that information out over email. And the next issue of Harmonica Happenings, which will land at the end of July right before this virtual convention. will be essentially our program. We'll have some other articles in there as well, but we'll put in there the full schedule and everything we can, some photographs and one thing or another. And in fact, we're going to ask everybody who's joining us at the Spa Week to send us a photo of them during Spa Week. So the following issue where we would normally have photographs of people at the convention, we will have photographs of people in the convention. So check out, you know, stay in touch with us through spa.org and our Facebook site and And we'll look forward to having you at Spa Week.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, brilliant. And I'll put links up on the podcast page to some of those sites that you mentioned there. So, yeah, thanks very much, Michael. Great to talk to you today. Cheers. Thanks so much, Neil. That's it for Episode 15, everybody. Just to let you know, the Longwood Blues Company will be offering a 15% discount to Spa Week attendees. Just use the coupon code SPA. Over to you, Harmonica Rascals, to play us out.

SPEAKER_02:

¶¶ Thank you.