Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Grant Dermody interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 24

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Grant Dermody first picked up the harp in Alaska, where he emulated the greats before developing his own acoustic sound playing American roots music. 
He played as a session man on various albums before releasing the first of his four solo albums to date, which included harmonica duets with Phll Wiggins and Joe Filisko. In-between Grant toured for six years with Eric Bibb, and for his latest album, My Dony, he has returned to his roots with a raucous electrified harmonica sound. Not only a great harmonica player with a strong sense of rhythm, Grant is a vocalist, and has penned the lyrics on many of the songs on his albums. On top of all this, Grant is a passionate teacher of the harmonica. 


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

Links:
Grant's website:
https://www.grantdermody.com/

Discography:
https://www.grantdermody.com/discography/

Teaching:
https://www.grantdermody.com/teaching/


YouTube:
Harmonica duet with Joe Filisko:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWZjtbNmyUc&feature=youtu.be

EuroBlues Week Harmonica Tutor intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECQRu2kEyok&feature=youtu.be

Jerry Devillier playing Cajun Harmonica:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptNsv7s7or8


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:

Grant Dermody joins me on episode 24 of the podcast. Grant first picked up the harp in Alaska, where he emulated the greats before developing his own acoustic bass sound. He played as a session man on various albums before releasing the first of his four solo albums, which included harmonica duets with Phil Wiggins and Joe Felisco. In between, Grant toured for six years with Eric Bibb and for his latest album, My Donny, he has returned to his roots with a raucous, electrified harmonica sound. Not only a great harmonica player with a strong sense of rhythm, Grant is a vocalist and has penned the lyrics on many of the songs on his albums. A word to my sponsor again, thanks to 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. So, hello, Grant Dermody, and welcome to the podcast. Hi, Neil. Thanks for having me today. Now, you've been having some trouble over there with Hurricane Delta down in Louisiana.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that was a big one. I left and went up to visit friends farther north, but I'm going to have to head back in the next day or two.

SPEAKER_01:

I think you've had six major hurricanes, I was reading, in the last year in the South of America.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's a whole different thing than where I grew up in the northwest part of the United States. Yeah, never have to

SPEAKER_01:

deal with hurricanes. It must be quite frightening to have to experience those.

SPEAKER_02:

I haven't been in town for the big ones. I've always left because I didn't want to risk anything. Yeah, when the wind picks up and it starts to batter at your house, it can be pretty scary.

SPEAKER_01:

You grew up in Seattle, but before then, I think you lived in Seattle and then you moved to Alaska for a while. And that's where you sort of first picked up the harmonica, was it, in Alaska?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, I grew up in Seattle. My dad was an oceanographer at the University of Washington. And then when I graduated from high school, I moved to Fairbanks, Alaska. And that was where I picked up the harmonica.

SPEAKER_01:

What made you pick

SPEAKER_02:

up

SPEAKER_01:

the harmonica?

SPEAKER_02:

My dad gave me one when I was 18. I just was kind of spinning my wheels and wasn't heading down a road in a very good direction. direction, and my dad, he thought the harmonica might help, and it turned out he was right. It was just the thing I needed. I didn't even know he played. He was a really accomplished violin player, and I never heard him play growing up. And then when World War II hit, he was in the Navy. There wasn't room on the ship for a violin, so he grabbed a chromatic harmonica. He had a great ear for melody. He could just pick tunes out really easily. He was a musical guy, but I just never knew that growing up. Yeah, so I'm in Fairbanks, Alaska, and it's right during the pipeline, so there's a ton of money around, and there's a bunch of places that have live music there were all kinds of musical genre being explored there bluegrass appalachian old-time fiddle tunes jazz straight up rock and roll blues bands there was all kinds of stuff going on and i just started sitting in with anybody who'd let me play

SPEAKER_01:

so does that explain your different genres that you play because you know like you mentioned a few there you know old time play country blues of course chicago blues but you also play you know bluegrass yourself so quite a range of styles is that what you picked it up in the early days? I think so. Yeah, it seemed

SPEAKER_02:

like early on, partially by choice and partially by being forced to, I needed to make my instrument adapt to what was going on around me. And I learned early on that you can't just play Chicago blues licks in everything that you do and expect it to work. You got to adapt to what the genre needs and what the song needs. And I've kept that all along the way. That's been a lesson that I continue to practice. You know, and then from From there, once I got better at the instrument and started to be able to pick up more things, then I started to explore that more deeply. I've always admired guitar players, fiddle players, mandolin players that can sit down with anybody and play anything. And that's what I wanted to do on the harmonica.

SPEAKER_01:

So did you start off listening to the, you know, the sort of the classic blues guys? Is that how you started learning the harmonica initially?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, not very long after my dad got me my first harmonica, which was like a 12-hole key of C, I think it was. I still have it somewhere. I was literally walking down the street trying to mess with it. And this guy walked, you know, we just kind of met at a cross street. It turned out that he was a harmonica. He knew how to play harmonica. He knew how to get single notes. He knew how to tongue block. He knew how to bend. And he started showing me some stuff. His name was Jackson Hiley, and he's still a good friend. And then another really good friend. We're still very close. His name's Pat Fitzgerald. He was leading the band leader of a lot of the great bands that were happening at Fairbanks at the time. And he turned me on to Little Walter Jacobs, and he turned me on to Charlie Musselway. So he lent me the Little Walter Master double record set and Charlie Musselwhite's Stand Back. And I got lost inside of those records for a long time. And then I started looking around at other chess artists. So Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters. When I heard Walter Horton, that was it. He just blew my head right off. And Sonny Terry and James Cotton. And I was just really interested in what other people were doing with the instrument. I was really interested and struck by the harmonica players that could make the harmonica sound big and powerful. The first two people that I heard do that live were James Cotton Sonny Terry.

SPEAKER_07:

Oh, and

SPEAKER_02:

then I got really into Slim Harpo, too. I still love Slim Harpo, and I recommend that all my students really dive into him. So I got into Scratch My Back and Rain It In My Heart.

UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, Slim Harpo is an interesting one. He's mentioned by quite a few people. I mean, he's, you know, he's probably not as flamboyant, you know, as great a player. He plays reasonably simple stuff, but very effective. And what is it, you know, that appeals to his playing to you? Oh, he's got great

SPEAKER_02:

tone. He's absolutely in the pocket. His note choice is really cool. His melodic sense, I really admire. You know, and he swings like a crazy man and he grooves like a crazy man. And he's doing all of that while he's playing guitar at the same time. So that's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, great. So, yeah, so you definitely grew up then in this sort of, you know, all the blues greats, harmonica players on a lot of the tracks you've mentioned. So what made you, you know, get interested in the other styles of music that you're playing now? Is that something that you picked up on a little later on, or did you start playing it at that young age?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I spent a long time going pretty hard after that Chicago sound. And I... I started teaching. I started teaching at blues camps, blues workshops. And I started hanging out with people like John Cephas and John Jackson and Phil Wiggins and Joe Felisco and Ethel Caffey Austin and John D. Holman and Del Ray and Susie Thompson and just, you know, a lot of really great acoustic blues players. And so in order to, like I said earlier, you know, when you're playing country blues, you can't just sound like a Chicago a blues player who's not playing through the microphone. It requires a whole different kind of playing. You've got to be a much better rhythmic player, and the sense of melody is a lot stronger as well. And the nuance of the instrument, you know, you have to be careful. You can bury a mandolin pretty easily if you're playing too hard. So all of that, you know, I started playing with amazing musicians like that. And then, you know, I started traveling around and going to different kinds of festivals and hearing different people play. And I learned how to play old-time fiddle tunes because I wanted to play with Scotty Meyer and Forrest Gibson from the Improbabilities. Forrest and I play blues together too, but that's not really Scotty's thing, but he's one of my top four favorite all-time old-time fiddle players. I just think he's a tremendous musician and really fun to play with, and so I decided to learn how to play his music.

SPEAKER_01:

You're probably better known for playing acoustic style music. So you went away from the more Chicago sound, you started picking up, say you got interested in playing fiddle tunes, and that got you into playing, being interested more in acoustic sound, didn't

SPEAKER_02:

it? Yeah, and I really enjoy that sound. One of my absolute favorite things is to do a house concert with no PA system. So when I play with Orville johnson and john miller that's our preferred way of doing things and then i'm also in a duo with frank fitusky and we love to do that too so if we're just in a room with just the two of us and we're just making the sounds that our instrument makes with no help from anything electronic that's pretty great

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and that's nice. People have to be quiet and listen carefully then too, don't they? Which is always nice.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they do. But then there's also nothing like plugging into a Fender amp and through a static JT-30 microphone and doing that. And that's what my most recent record, My Donie, that's what that was all about. We thought it was going to be an eclectic record at first and be like most of my recorded work where it's lots of different genre all kind of put together. But the electric blues was so strong and so good and we locked in so well with each other. that we decided that the record was telling us it needed to be an electric blues record. There's some Zydeco and some gospel in there, too, but mostly it's an electric blues record.

SPEAKER_01:

So after your time in Alaska, you then moved back to Seattle, which is where you grew up, yeah? We met with Kim Field, who wrote the great book Harmonica's Harps and Heavy Breavers.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Oh, man, that was great. He's a good friend, and we've known each other a long time. I've been playing harmonica five years, something like that, and I'd had a little bit of instruction. but I knew that what I was doing wasn't it you know I just didn't have it and you know the stuff that I was hearing other people do on records and live some of it sounded like what I was doing most of it didn't so I started going out and listening to blues bands in Seattle of which there were many at the time and I thought Kim was the best harmonica player in town by a good margin so I hit him up for lessons and we started working together you know he had that whole thing he had that tongue blocking thing at a much higher level than anybody else that I studied with. And his tone was fabulous. He had this huge, fat, gorgeous sound. He could really lean into a slow blues. He could swing. And he was a scholar of the instrument. He turned me on to Dee Ford Bailey and turned me on to a lot of really good players. So I learned an enormous amount from him.

SPEAKER_01:

And again, his book is a great read and definitely recommend anybody to read that. Like I say, a real scholar of the instrument and has done a great work with that book that he published. And before you picked up the harmonica as well, you were a drummer, yeah? So that was your first instrument.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I've always been kind of a rhythmic guy. I was just banging away on my mom's knitting needles at home in like the third grade or second grade or something like that. And she eventually got me a pair of drumsticks. And so I started doing that. I started studying with a classically trained percussionist from the Seattle Symphony. So I did that in school, you know, junior high school, and then I kind of got away from it in high school. I started playing basketball, and that was where most of my interest was at that point. Dabbled around with a guitar a little bit, but when I turned 18 and my dad gave me the harmonica, that was it. I just took off with it. It's been that way ever since.

SPEAKER_01:

People often play other instruments before they come to the harmonica and there's quite a few people who play drums and that idea that it's, you know, obviously you get that rhythmic sense which is going to be great to build on and that's definitely a strong part of your playing, isn't it? So do you think that has had quite an influence on your approach to the harmonica?

SPEAKER_02:

I think so. I think the harmonica is very much a rhythm instrument as well as a lead instrument and I think it's important to be able to do both. So yes, I think whatever, yeah, whatever rhythm sense I have has definitely helped on the instrument.

SPEAKER_01:

For getting to your recording career now, you've got a great discography on your website. So I'll put a link up for that. And again, you play a diverse range of styles. So the first album you've got listed is from 1989 with Michael Goethe, which is a beautiful album. I listened to it, really high quality instrumental album. So what about that album?

SPEAKER_02:

So I was teaching. I was teaching in a K through 12 private school. And the middle school music teacher heard me play at a faculty party and said, you should be recording. I'm recording a record. Why don't you come and record? So it was my first ever recording experience. There was no improvising or anything like that. It was a straight melody that was written out. And I think the first 16 bars or something like that are all draw notes. So you just have to have the wind to do it. He didn't really think about what the harmonic can do and can't do. He just played the melody on the piano and said that it'd sound good on the harmonica and gave me the music So that's how that worked. Yeah, Michael's a very talented guy. Yeah, that was cool. It was a cool first recording experience.

SPEAKER_01:

You played on the song The Fullness of Time.

SPEAKER_02:

And I played that on the chromatic harmonica.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, so that was your first recording. And then, so then you recorded with a few different people as a sort of session sort of guy. You did a few recordings with a guy called Jim Page.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So that came out of doing gigs. I started performing with him and then he asked me to be on his records. Jim is an amazing guy. He's a really good singer-songwriter. He writes political songs, protest songs, and he also writes gorgeous love songs. And he's a huge Lightning Hopkins fan and Mississippi John Hurt fan and he's a much better guitar player than your average singer songwriter so he's really fun to play with in the studio When I was recording with Michael, and this is not a criticism at all, but it was just, you know, here's the melody, here's when it happens, and this is what I want you to do. I want you to play the notes that I wrote, and I want you to play them at the right time. With Jim, it was a lot more loose and organic than that. It was, well, here's the song, here's how it goes, and we start jamming on it, and if I have a suggestion, I'll go, well, what if we try this? And he'll go, yeah, that's great, let's try that. Or other times it won't resonate with him, and he'll say, nah, let's try it the other way. So there's this kind of give and take thing going on. That was really fun. I enjoy playing with Jim very much.

UNKNOWN:

......

SPEAKER_01:

then so i've got you down here's your first appearance on a as a band in your own sort of right was with the improbabilities in in 1998

SPEAKER_02:

improbabilities it's like improbable hillbillies yes so that was the first time i i was part of a band that i was an equal part of and um you know it wasn't just you know like you say being a session guy on somebody else's project that came out of scotty meyer and i playing together in alaska we enlisted forrest gibson to play guitar and then And we got Richie Stearns and June Drucker on banjo and bass. And we all went down to New Orleans and recorded at Al Tharp's studio. We were there for the better part of a week and we tracked a record. And it was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01:

This playing and these people you're playing with mainly around the Seattle area at this point, were they?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, Jim lives in Seattle. Dan Crary, I'm not sure where he lives, but he was coming through to do a recording just outside the Seattle area. So I got called in to do that. Yes, I was living in Seattle and doing most of my playing around there.

SPEAKER_01:

So what's the music scene like around Seattle? Is that pretty good? That's up in the northwest of the US, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's changed quite a lot. The club scene isn't anywhere near what it was in the 80s. There's just not as many places to play or hear live music. So that's one of the reasons I left to go be in Louisiana.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So when did you move down to Louisiana? Quite recently, was it? Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

pretty recently, about a

SPEAKER_01:

year

SPEAKER_02:

and

SPEAKER_01:

a half ago. I'm familiar with the geography down there. Is that reasonably close to New Orleans? Two hours west. Is New Orleans part of the scene there, or is that too far to travel to?

SPEAKER_02:

I don't consider two hours to be a long drive. I know people in your part of the world do sometimes. But yeah, it's like you have to get a visa and shots and everything to drive two hours in the UK, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, you're halfway up the country if you drive two hours here.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's true. No, it's not a long drive. So Lafayette, where I am, has its own museum. It's Cajun, Zydeco, and Creole. And then there's quite a bit of country swing, quite a bit of country. There's some blues, but the blues is more R&B flavored. And then in Baton Rouge, you have a more traditional kind of blues scene. And then in New Orleans, of course, you have the jazz. So it's kind of cool. So Baton Rouge is an hour away from Lafayette and New Orleans is two hours away. So you don't have to travel very far to get a pretty huge variety of music. excellent music.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so back to your recording career then. So in 2003, you released your first solo album, Crossing That River. What brought that on? And I think you had 16 other musicians playing with you on that album. So you had quite a mixture of people and, again, styles on there.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it was kind of what you were just alluding to. I felt like it was time to do a record, you know, that I'd been playing music for a while, and it was time to have something that was mine that I put out. And what I tried to do is capture the musical relationships that I developed during that time up until that record. And so, yes, some of the 16 people that were on the record were people I knew from Seattle. Some were from other places that I had traveled to. I wanted to capture all of those flavors. And I think We were pretty successful in that. And then Orville produced it and was wonderful helping me through all of the learning and growing pains that happen when you're doing your very first record.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a great album. Congrats on the first album of your own. It's really great. And of course, you play with two other harmonica players. You play with Phil Wiggins on Anacostia Two-Step, which is a great tune. And then, of course, you play with Joe Felisco on River of Jordan.

UNKNOWN:

.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

well, Joe and I met right when the Improbabilities record came out. We were both teaching at the Augusta Heritage Center Blues Week in West Virginia. And we hit it off right away, and we're both kind of harmonica nerds in the same way. We were doing a spa thing and we were kind of putting together a performance for it. And he called me up and said, hey, let's do River of Jordan, you know, that Alice Martin, Jay Bird Coleman thing. And he knew that I would know that tune. And so we got together and we played it and we just locked in. So that was first recorded in the 1920s by Jay Bird Coleman and Alice Martin. And to my knowledge, nobody else has done it as a harmonica duet until 2003 when Joe and I did it. That was really fun. And then Anacostia Two-Step was originally called Butt Naked Blues, but Phil toned it down a little bit. He decided to call it something else. That was also in Elkins, West Virginia. We had just finished teaching an entire week with no sleep and basically on our lips going on fumes when we get to the studio on Friday afternoon. And we got it in one take. We just nailed it, like right off the bat. I don't even know if we tried a second take. I think we might have just went, nope, that's it.

SPEAKER_03:

Playing

SPEAKER_02:

with Phil is a lot of fun. He brings a ton of energy to what he does. So yeah, it was great. It was fun to do those harmonica duets because not many people do them. And Phil and Joe are both good friends and I play quite a bit of music with. And, you know, so what do you do? Do you bring a guitar player and a bass player in and do something? Or what happens if we just play with two harmonicas? That was really fun.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, great to hear. Yeah, so you don't always get that. Bacon Fat, of course, had two harmonica players famously. But yeah, great to get it, particularly as harmonica fans. You're known for your songwriting as well, of course. Did you write some of the songs on this first album?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, I wrote Breakthrough, It's Alright as an instrumental, and then Slow Boat, kind of a folky, slow... ballady

SPEAKER_04:

kind of

SPEAKER_02:

tune. And that's the one that Jim Page plays guitar on so beautifully. Yeah, so those are the three songs I wrote on the record.

SPEAKER_01:

And of course, as well as being a harmonica player, you're the main vocalist, yeah, certainly in your band. So that's an important part you're playing as well, of course.

SPEAKER_02:

But that was the first time I'd done any singing on a record. Yeah, I'd never sang on a record before that record. So that was, yeah, you've got to learn how to do that. So that was part of the deal.

SPEAKER_01:

So is that something then that you say you've been a sideman just as a harmonica player? Had you not really thought about being the main vocalist until that stage?

SPEAKER_02:

I had sung as a performer, but always as part of an ensemble. So I was always sharing the vocals with somebody else. I had never carried an entire project vocally by myself. So that was a big deal. It was a big deal to step into that and kind of go get that.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so and then you mentioned that you've done two albums with Johnson, Miller and Dermody, which is another of your outfits. First album in 2006. Yes. So yeah, and then the great second album, we heard the voice of a pork chop. I mean, what a name. Where did the name from that album come from?

SPEAKER_02:

That's the title cut of the record. It's a weird, twisted, obscure blues tune that Orville found, and it's just great. I love playing with those guys. It's a really fun trio. Orville, of course, is a multi-instrumentalist, and so is John. But for the purposes of that band, John holds down the guitar parts, which he does so, so, so well. And Orville plays mandolin, and I play harmonica. And then we all take turns singing. So it's just a blast. I mean... You know, I mean, in some ways it's kind of like Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rochelle, and Hammy Nixon. That trio had that same instrumentation. Yeah, so that was really cool. So it's just, we just get together and we have fun and we throw tunes at each other, performing and recording with those guys and just hanging out is always just one of my favorite things.

SPEAKER_01:

Some of those great old blues songs, as you say, from the 1920s have these great names. You can dig them up and they have these names like that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's great.

UNKNOWN:

.

SPEAKER_01:

In 2008, you started playing with Eric Bibb. So how did that come about?

SPEAKER_02:

I was teaching at a blues camp in Telluride, Colorado, which it occurred at the same time as the Telluride Blues Festival. So Eric was coming in, playing the festival. He came in and did a workshop for the students at the blues camp. And at the very end, he asked if I would play with him. We just did a shuffle. We just did one of his tunes. I think it was Don't Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down. So after all of this teaching and all of this talking about music, he just, you know, got up and played and asked me to join him and he just loved what I was doing. And right there, he said, will you play with me on my main stage set? I did. So any, lots of people would have had me play in the middle of the set in case I didn't play all that well, they would have had time to recover. He had me play the last two songs of the set with him. So, uh, He was a gutsy guy. And then that started six years of playing and touring with Eric. And I think I'm on like six or seven of his records. And I've traveled all over the U.S. and U.K., Ireland, France, Italy. We did a lot of playing together over a six-year period.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, he's great, isn't he? He's really got that authentic blues sound about him, hasn't he? And he doesn't really do solos, does he? He's more of a rhythm player, so you get the solos when you're playing with him a lot of the time, don't

SPEAKER_02:

you? That's the deal. Yeah, I was the only soloist, and we traveled as a duo most of the time. And so the trick there is to just make sure that the solos sound fresh and new with each song.

SPEAKER_01:

And the song you mentioned, Don't Let Anybody Bring Your Spirit Down, I used to play that song in a band, because a friend of mine who was in the band used to really like Eric Bibb. So that's his song, is it? That

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, he wrote that song. His mother said to him, you know, that's the song. If they only give you one song, that's the song that you play. I played that song with him every night that we played for a long time. So it's a great tune. It always got the audience up and going and clapping their hands and really responding.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so great. A song I love where you're playing on the Get On Board album, which is the second one you did with Eric called New Beale Street Blues. That's a great one, a real great feel to that song.

SPEAKER_02:

yeah that's a cool tune it's got a nice melody and it's got a nice feel to it

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And then in 2010, you did your second solo album, Lay Down My Burden. I think you had 26 guest musicians on this time. So you've definitely got the draw to get the musicians on.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that was a tough one. You know, my dad had just passed away and my mom and my wife were both very ill. It became a bunch of different things. It became an outlet. I was the primary caregiver for two years while my wife was battling cancer. And she passed away in December of 2009. And so she got to hear the album and she got to see the artwork, but she didn't get to see the final pressing of it. But she sang on it. And that's something that would have really scared her at another time. But she figured, well, man, if I can deal with all this cancer stuff, I can sing on a record. So we sang Hard Times Come Again No More together with two dear friends, M.H.B. Conant and Rich Hill.

SPEAKER_05:

Hard times, hard times, come again no more. Many days you have lingered around my cabin door. Oh, hard times, come again no more. So

SPEAKER_02:

during that two-year period, I would just grab some time to play some music with different people, sort of like I did on Crossing That River, but with different kinds of songs. And more bluesy, I think, maybe in some ways, than Crossing That River was. I ended up playing with three blues musicians. musicians that I greatly admire, John D. Holman, Louisiana Red, and John Cephas. The Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues that we did on that record, that was John Cephas' last recording. So there was a lot of loss that was going on right then. It was a way for me to deal with it. It was a way for me to express what it was all about. It was a way to... talk to friends about it musically rather than sitting down and having a conversation

SPEAKER_01:

it's really interesting you hear you say that i didn't know that was obviously the history of the album but it really comes across i was listening to the album and it does really have a kind of really mournful feel about it so some of it doesn't it has that i can almost feel uh feel the pain there at the time it you know it does come through i think on that album and

SPEAKER_02:

I didn't want it to be a dirge. I didn't want it to be something that was just so heavy that you had to gear yourself up to listen to it. And I don't think it came across that way, but I've heard from many people that it has helped them when they were going through similar losses.

SPEAKER_01:

And a song I really like on there is David's Cow. What about that one?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, so Dee Ford Bailey did an instrumental called Davidson County Blues. He took that from a piano tune called Cow Cow Blues by Jed Davenport. I've been playing that song as a solo instrumental for a really long time. And Scotty and Forrest from the Improbabilities. both really liked that tune and they just kept asking me, you know, play that tune, play that tune some more. I think I want to get, I want to see what we can do with that. So Scotty added a fiddle part, Forrest added a guitar part and we recorded it. And so David's Cow is just a play on where that song came from.

SPEAKER_01:

And then the next album, the first time I heard you play was on this album, the Sun Might Shine album. Yeah, I really loved that album. And, you know, when I discovered you. Again, you had different styles on there. And the title track, Sun Might Shine, great. I love those lyrics. Did you write those lyrics for that song or was it

SPEAKER_02:

somebody else? I wrote eight of the songs on that record. So I wrote three originals for Crossing That River, three on Lay Down My Burden, and then I wrote eight for that one. It ended up, there were some songs about grief, but the grief was from looking at it from farther down the road. And that's where the lyrics of that song are. She's gone, it's all right, sun's gonna shine tomorrow. She's gone, it's all right, sun might shine on me. You gotta move on, you gotta keep moving. You gotta feel what there is to feel. And you can't numb it out, and you can't run away from it. But you can't get lost in it either. You've got to keep moving and living. A lot of the record is about that.

SPEAKER_06:

Oh, yeah, it's all right. The sun might shine on me.

SPEAKER_02:

So that record was the first record that Dirk and I worked on. And Orville was co-producer as well. And Dirk and I had done some recording and some touring with Eric Bibb toward the end of my time with Eric. We hit it off musically and personally. And I asked him if he'd be willing to work with me on my next record. And he said, yeah. So I went down to Louisiana and we recorded it in his studio. And I was really happy with it. It's good. I think it's a strong record. If you look on the lighter notes, Dirk plays like nine different instruments and sings hard. and he engineers and co-produces. He had a lot to do with that record.

SPEAKER_01:

I think the thing which really makes an album good is the atmosphere that it captures, and it has that atmosphere. I think that album is really, really great. I really love that one. Thank you. One of them is, excuse my pronunciation, J'ai passé. J'ai passé. Is that a Cajun tune?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, it's a traditional Cajun tune. J'ai passé And it was taught to me by my friend Jerry DeVilliers. He's a Cajun harmonica player born and raised in Eunice, Louisiana. And he's one of the best harmonica players I know. He's easily the best living Cajun harmonica player. What he does with the instrument is tremendous. So he taught me how to play that tune. So I kind of did that to honor him. And because the record was recorded in Louisiana, it was kind of a way to add a little Cajun flavor to it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's good. Again, the different styles on there and hearing that Cajun. It's great to hear. Very effective on the harmonica.

SPEAKER_02:

The accordion and the harmonica are so closely related. You know, I mean, that's the deal. It's like in that part of Louisiana, accordion is king it drives the cajun music it drives the creole it drives the zydeco so if you know what you're doing on the harmonica you can make the harmonica sound like an accordion and that was a deal with jerry jerry's mom gave him a harmonica when he was five years old and he taught himself how to make the harmonica sound like an accordion all the hardest stuff there is to do he can do it he's completely self-taught

SPEAKER_01:

and then um your most recent album uh just uh really well put together in 2019 is is my donny album which you touched on earlier on so this i believe is still under consideration for Grammy nomination? Is that still something that's going through?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. So the way it works is that somebody who's a voter has to submit you to be considered. And then if enough of the voters, enough of the eligible voters vote for you, then you get to the final 15, I think it is. It might be 12, but I think it's 15 in a given category. And then if that happens, then your record gets listened to by the judges for that category all at once with everybody else's. And then if you make the final five, then you're a Grammy nominated record. And if you win, of course, then there you go. We are waiting to see if we make the final 15 right now.

SPEAKER_01:

Great. So good luck with that. That's obviously always good to get on those sort of lists, isn't it? To help, you know, raise a profile and everything. So yeah, good luck with that. So it's not something that external people can vote on. Is it just decided by a judge?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, there's a committee of, I'm not even sure how many there are. I want to say there's like 12,000 voters or something like that that are eligible. And in order to vote, you have to apply and people in the music business need to write recommendations for you and that sort of thing. There's a bunch of voters from all kinds of musical worlds. Yeah, so that's the deal. So the public, you know, people who are fans have said that, have said, you know, I love your music. I'd love to help. Can I vote? What can I do? And at this stage of the game, there isn't anything really except to hold good intention. So we have to get enough of the 12,000 voters to like our record and vote for it.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, good luck with that. And then The category is Best Traditional Blues Album, which is in contention for, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so that record, the way that came about, it was time to do another record. And I said to Dirk, do you want to do another one? And he said, yeah, you know, let's do it in my studio. So he was doing another recording with Rhiannon Giddens and her rhythm section was in town. Jamie Dick on drums and Jason Seifer on bass. So we just sat down and we started playing blues and it sounded really good. We just locked in. We all felt where the pulse was and where the grooves were and how they needed to be. And so again, you know, My previous three records were pretty eclectic. This one's eclectic, but it's within a certain genre. I play more amplified harmonica than I ever have on a recording. I mean, it's pretty much a blues record, I think. Yeah, there's some gospel. Yeah, there's some zydeco. But it's mostly a blues record. It was really fun to do. And it's been very, very well received. It's got great airplay all over the world. It's gotten really good press. We were very pleasantly surprised and gratified by the response.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I think you recorded it live in the studio.

SPEAKER_02:

We did, except for the vocals. Yeah, the vocals we did later. But all the instrumental stuff is live. That means, of course, that whatever solos you come up with, that's your solo. You don't get to fix it. So you've got to be in the moment and really just bring everything you have right there at that time. And the trick is to play as well as you possibly can. Some people play carefully, like They play to not make any mistakes. You can't do that. You've got to push beyond that and just go for it. If you have four people or five people, when Corey came in and played accordion with us and joined us for the Zydeco stuff, when you have five people that are just going for it with no fear and no reservation, some pretty magical, powerful things can happen.

SPEAKER_01:

And you mentioned that, as you say, this is pretty much a full electric album for you on harmonica, which, you know, you normally play acoustic. So it's a slight change from your recorded material from that point of view. But listening to it, you know, you really push, you know, the electric sound. You're going for quite a heavy sort of dirty, distorted sound. It's almost as if you've sort of gone, right, I played all these years of acoustic. Now I'm really going to push and get us kind of, is that something you deliberately went for on that sound on the harmonica?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, because that's what the songs required. You know, I mean, I think that, you know, the songs had a certain nastiness and bite to them. And so I wanted I wanted a dirty kind of a nasty sound. And in some ways, it's kind of circling back to how I started. You know, like I like I mentioned, I started my harmonica journey going pretty hard after that Chicago sound. I kind of returned to it for a whole record, which was really fun. Yeah, so I think that that amplified sound and that bite that it gets was just the right thing for most of those tunes. So, you know, when we did that springtime blues, that eight bar tune, I played acoustic for that because that was a better choice. And then Great Change, that gospel tune, I played acoustic on that because that's what that song needed. But the rest of it's electric.

SPEAKER_01:

And some interesting lyrics again on there. And I was going to ask you, is 3559 based on a real experience?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Sort of. That's all I'm going to say on that one.

SPEAKER_06:

It's

SPEAKER_02:

just, I mean, it's kind of a thing where you get to There comes a time as you get older where you have to start paying attention to age and what's going on. You know, when you're 20-something and you're 30-something and 40-something, you know, if you meet somebody who's a few years younger, a few years older, it's not a big deal. But as you get older, it becomes a big deal. At least it does to me. And so it's kind of a humorous way of looking at that particular situation. 35 and 59 is a fairly significant age spread. That's what the song was about. Just kind Just talking about what it's like to kind of be aware of that, feel that. So it's actually written kind of tongue-in-cheek about a friend of mine in Seattle. I told her the song was coming and she cracked up. She thought it was hilarious. So that's the background on that tune.

SPEAKER_01:

And again, we touched on writing lyrics. So, you're a songwriter yourself. So, what about this writing kind of modern blues lyrics? You do that very well on your albums and it's something which does kind of bring the music up to date, isn't it? Instead of just playing all the old classics, which we all love, yeah, but it's nice to get those up-to-date songs, isn't it? And is that something you've really tried to develop and almost bringing the blues into the modern day?

SPEAKER_02:

I think in any music that you play, but I think Well, I mean, because I spend most of my time playing blues, I guess it's more in the forefront for me. You got to tell the truth. You got to get underneath it. You got to dig deep and soar high. And you have got to tell the truth. You have got to sing about something that you know. You know, I don't drink, so I don't sing about drinking. You know, I wrote some songs about experiencing loss because that's what I was going through. And it was a way to get that out and do some healing. But it was also a way of communicating with other people that might be going through the same thing. The lyrics that I write have to do with kind of what I'm going through and what I'm thinking about. So there's spiritual lyrics. There's love, not being able to find love, love that didn't work, love that did work. And then there's, yeah, so that's what most of my songs seem to be about.

SPEAKER_01:

And then a recent record you recorded on a hip-hop song, All Love With Lucid Dreams. So that's an interesting one.

SPEAKER_02:

Myron is, so one of the first people I met when I moved to Louisiana was Elizabeth McNabb. And she's just, she's a local gal. She's a huge music lover. She ran a radio show for quite some time. And her boyfriend, Myron, just kind of asked me one day, he said, I'm doing a record. It's kind of hip hop and I want to bring some blues into it. Do you want to play? And I said, sure. So he sent me a kind of a work tape And I listened to it. He had a home studio kind of all set up. Yeah, I went over there and I think we did like three passes. And I'm not sure which of the ones he took, but I've heard it. And I like what he did with it. He's great. He's a really, really good person. Young guy, full of talent. He really respects the roots that he is drawing from. He knows very well that the music that he does has a huge blues background, and he pays attention to that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I always thought that harmonica could work in a hip-hop sense, so it's great to hear you've done that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So another thing you do lots of, and you've touched on a few times, and you played in lots of teaching camps where you've met lots of the other musicians that you played with. Teaching's a big part, isn't it? And you're still teaching a lot now, and you're teaching these camps, don't you? You teach in the UK, where I live, in the Euroblues Week, where you've met my friend Pete Week. So what about teaching? What's your involvement in teaching at the moment?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, when I started, I had two main people that were just really willing to pass on what they knew, Jackson and Kim. And it's kind of been that way ever since. I just, you know, I moved down the harmonica road and I meet people and, you know, maybe they're doing something in a way that I don't do. And, you know, we talk about it. They show me how to do things. I think passing it on is part of the deal. It's just something that I think is important to do. So I think tone is really important. I think you need to learn how to make the harmonica sound good. So I work with my students on that a lot. I think it's important to be a strong rhythmic player as well as a strong soloist. So we work on that a lot. I also think it's important to be able to improvise. So we work on that. I want them more than anything else to develop their own voice on the instrument. I don't want them to imitate me or little Walter or big Walter or cotton or anybody like that. I want them to have, I want them to learn from the masters, but I want them to have their own voice. And so those are the things I think are most important about teaching. You know, it's important to learn the great songs that people have done in the past. You know, there's great music that precedes us and it's important to be aware of that music and learn from that music, but not to recreate that music note for note on stage. Doing a little Walter solo note for note on stage is not okay. You've got to do your own thing. If there's a melody, like if you're going to do blues with a feeling and do an opening melody thing or something, fine. But then do your own solo. Do something else. And then I guess I'm coming back to something that you asked me earlier. But one of the things that was happening with that record, Sun Might Shine On Me, is that here I am six years down the road from my wife's passing. And what am I feeling? And what's going on? And I started looking around for songs that were saying what I wanted to say, and I couldn't find any, so I wrote my own. And that's kind of where that comes from. So yeah, so I want my students to have a big, open, fat, relaxed tone, and I want them to be able to serve the song. I really enjoy teaching. I think it's one of my favorite things to do. And it's really cool when somebody gets to a place that they haven't been to before and they hear it and you hear it and everybody in the room hears it. It's pretty great. That'll keep you going for a while.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And you're still doing online teaching during this time as well, aren't you? So I'll put a link on for that.

SPEAKER_02:

I am, yes. I'm accepting new students. That's how a lot of us are trying to keep going during the pandemic.

SPEAKER_01:

A question I ask each time, which links very strongly to what you just talked about there, is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend that 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I'd probably pick up a G harmonica because I love that sound. It's just got that big, deep, rich sound. And I'd probably just start with playing how I'm feeling at the moment. Just kind of see what comes. It wouldn't necessarily be somebody else's song. It wouldn't necessarily be somebody else's groove. If I had 10 minutes, I would just sit down and play what's inside of me and just let it come out.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, you touched on it a little bit yourself, you know, about your style of playing. You said a lot of it obviously based on acoustic, you know, the importance of playing rhythmically is something that you really, you know, I think is important. Playing bass line, playing chords, you know, fat sound, all these things, you know, really go to make up your style, I think.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's true. All of those things I think are important. But, you know, the thing about music is that there's so many different ways to be musical and there's so many different ways to express yourself. And there's, you know, I mean, if you're just looking at the harmonica world, you know, you could go down the Chicago blues road and that could take you a long time. And then you could go down the country blues, Sonny Terry, pre-war solo stuff, and you could do that. And that would take you a long time. You could do the overblow jazz thing and that could take you a long time. There's so many different paths and there's so many different ways to do it. I'm sort of interested in everything. So I do a lot of it at the same time. But it's important to play what's inside of you and so that it's the truth. It's important to play what the song requires in your own voice. That's really what it's about. And so you never get there. That's one of the really great things about music is that the better you get, the more you realize how much we're all works in progress. And you just continue to understand that you're a work in progress, the better you get. The higher up you move, the more there is to know, the more there is to learn. And it never stops. I'm always searching for bigger, fatter, more open tone. I'm always searching for being able to dig deeper, soar higher, tell the truth. I'm always searching for ways to serve the song that I haven't explored before. So that's all the stuff that I love to do and never get tired of. And I'll be pursuing that until I take my last breath, hopefully with a harmonica in my mouth.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it's great to hear, you know, someone who's been playing as long as you have and albums under your name, that you still feel, have that attitude to learning and that, like you say, you're open to it all and it never ends, does it? So great to hear. You mentioned earlier on that you play some chromatic, so you certainly have recorded some chromatic, haven't you? For example, you've got It's Alright on the Cross and that River album is played on chromatic.

UNKNOWN:

It's Alright

SPEAKER_01:

Is chromatic something you play much of?

SPEAKER_02:

Not nearly as much as the diatonic. It's something that I've been spending a little bit of time with lately. And this winter, I plan on playing quite a bit more. I'd like to get to a place where I'm a fluid soloist on the chromatic harmonica.

SPEAKER_01:

And would that be blues or in other genres as well?

SPEAKER_02:

I'd like to get into some jazz, you know, start being able to do that. At the spa thing that I was talking about, I've heard incredibly good chromatic jazz harmonica players. Charlie Layton is the best I've ever heard. Of course, I've heard Toots Thielman a lot, too. He used to come to Seattle a lot, and I love what he did. There's a guy named Mike Turk that lives around the Boston area. He's fabulous. And any time I start listing harmonica players, I'm always going, I'm going to leave somebody out that's amazing. So that art form is something I admire, and it's not an art form that I do well at all. And I'd like to work on that. That's just another path, right? And for some people, that was their whole path. That's wonderful. We all benefited from that.

SPEAKER_01:

So we'll talk through gear now and run through which gear you use. So first of all, what harmonicas do you like to play?

SPEAKER_02:

I'm a marine band guy. I play custom marine bands made by Joe, my buddy Joe Felisco. And he kind of gaps them and he adjusts them to how I play. I play hard. I play very hard. I move a lot of air when I play. And Joe... does, you know, well, anybody who knows harmonica knows Joe Felisco. So yeah, he does tremendous work and I'm very grateful to play his harmonicas. And then as far as chromatics go, I've got a Toots Thielman hard bopper and a mellow tone. And then I've got a Meisterklasse that has long, you know, more notes. And that's what I do. When I sing and play acoustic, I play through a Beyer M69. It's got a really nice range for the harmonica and also my voice, which is lower pitched. Yeah, I've got an old Estatic JT-30 that's got a volume pod on it. So I can dial it down for comping and I can dial it up for soloing. And then I've got an old Champ, like a 1970s Champ that I use for small gigs. And I've got an old vintage Bassman. that I like a lot, and I've got another Fender Blues Deluxe that I like quite a bit. As far as gear, that's it.

SPEAKER_01:

Which amp did you use to record the My Donny album?

SPEAKER_02:

I used one of Dirk's amps. He had another Fender. All of my amps were in Seattle at the time, so I used one of his. I forget what the brand name was. It had two 10-inch speakers in it and had a nice, dirty sound. But that's it. I don't use pedals. I don't use octave things. I'm probably the least... techie gearhead that you that you've talked to harmonica wise i just you know i'm more when i play acoustic i want it to sound just like i play in a room the acoustic sound should be the same thing as the sound with no amplification at all

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I was going to make that point exactly, you know, because of your approach to playing largely acoustic, you know, it's exactly that, isn't it? And like you say, you like that kind of, you know, real sound in a room kind of sound, which is great, and using hand effects and, you know, all the effects you need, yeah? Yeah. So what about a favorite key of diatonic? I take it that's a G diatonic from what you said earlier. I love G harmonicas. I really like

SPEAKER_02:

low harmonicas. When I was doing the Improbabilities record, I stumbled across low-pitched harmonicas. There was a fiddle tune we did called Eupat, And I used a low D on that one. Because if I used a regular D, I was going to be right exactly where the fiddle and the banjo were, sonically. So I went underneath them and found my own space. So I like low-pitched harps a lot. Yeah, A's, B flats. But it's also true that vocals drive the tune. I have to figure out where the best key for me to sing something is and then choose the right harmonica from there.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, because I've noticed, because I often like to guess which is the favorite key, and I definitely notice you like the low ones. But then I also notice that quite a lot of your songs aren't always played on the low ones. You know, you certainly do a few on the C harmonica and a few others. So I was thinking, I'm not quite sure what his favorite is, because you do have quite a mix of keys that you use.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and most of that comes down to vocals. You know, you've got to deliver the song in the right key when you sing it. I used to do it the other way around. I used to choose the harmonica I wanted to use and then try to make my voice work with it. I don't recommend that. That's not the best way to do it.

SPEAKER_01:

But you mentioned low keyed harmonicas and obviously there's great, you know, great rhythmical playing, you know, they got that beautiful sound to them, fat sound, but they can, you know, they sort of sit below the mix a little bit, don't they? They may be more suited to rhythmical playing in some cases and they don't quite cut through the same as the higher keys, do they? So do you do something to try and address that when you're playing on it?

SPEAKER_02:

I just play really hard. I can take it up into an extra, I can kick it up a few notches when I really bring it and I really breathe from as deep a place as I can. So I don't, yeah, so that works out that way. And then, you know, years playing on jam sessions with a million different musicians all playing the same blues tune at the same time. You learn how to make your instrument cut.

SPEAKER_01:

And what about any different tunings? Do you use any?

SPEAKER_02:

No. And what about overblows? No, never did that. It was never a sound that appealed to me enough to want to pursue it. And what embouchure do you use? I tongue block most of the time. I pucker the bottom three holes most of the time because I can get... I adjust the inside of my mouth a lot to get different shades and sounds of the things that I'm doing. And so puckering enables me to do that in a much better way, in a much broader way than tongue blocking does.

SPEAKER_01:

So you use both, but you're mainly a tongue blocker.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I mean, you could say that I pucker the bottom three holes and tongue block everything else, but that's not always true. Sometimes I tongue block... Yeah, sometimes I tumble up the bottom three. I play a lot of intentionally sloppy notes, especially if I'm trying to fatten up a melody. If the melody calls for a four, five, six, draw, I might widen my mouth out a little bit and make that an intentionally sloppy sound. I like those sounds. I like those dirty kind of raspy sounds. Like, yeah, like for instance, if you're doing something on a C harp and you're playing sitting on top of the world, the way I like to play that melody is to kind of give it some grit and give it some dirt instead of having it be all single notes.

SPEAKER_01:

And so then final question, what about your future plans? Obviously you've just got your album, My Donnie's just recently come out and what are you planning to do? What we can do at the moment, of course, with the pandemic going on, but any plans?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I've got three, I have three things going on. right now. Three balls in the air. One, I wrote a song for the woman, MHB Conant, who sang on Hard Times Come Again No More. She passed away last July. I wrote a song for her. A hymn. And I'm getting some help from some Irish musicians. There's a friend of mine that lives in Spittle, Ireland. His name is Charlie Lennon. Brilliant Irish fiddle player. He's going to play on it. Dirk's going to play on it. And then Dirk knows a vocalist, an Irish soprano in Cork, who's going to sing on it. So it's going to be about peace. It's going to be kind of like an Irish version of Dona Nobis Pacem, which means grant us peace or give us peace. So that's one thing. That's kind of in the works right now. We're going to do a follow-through to Maidoni. We're going to do another electric record so that when touring opens up again, we'll have two strong records in our back pocket that we can tour off of. So we'll start that in the spring. And then I just finished tracking an acoustic blues record with my good buddy Frank Fatusky, just duo, just harmonica and guitar. And we're dedicating that record to John Jackson, who was a huge mentor to both of us, a Virginia blues guitar player and singer. Those are the three projects that are happening right now. Continuing to teach, I'm going to be working on putting an instructional DVD out at some point soon.

SPEAKER_01:

That's what's going on right now. It's great to hear you're keeping nice and busy and plenty of stuff to look forward to. Hopefully, see you touring next year. Hopefully, you come over to Europe. I'll definitely come and check you out and say hello.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Thank you so much for the interview, Neil. It's been great talking to you.

SPEAKER_01:

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. Grant, tell us all about that tree of life.