The Denny Laine Interview

By Bo White

In 1965 Denny Laine was one of the most recognizable faces of the British Invasion. He sang lead on Go Now, the Moody Blues first big international hit back when they were a rockin’ R&B outfit. Laine was the de facto leader and when he left the band in 1967, it was widely hailed as the beginning of the end for the Moodies and those in the know predicted Laine would continue to ascend to even greater heights of musical Nirvana. Depending on your world perspective the cognoscenti were right and wrong on both counts. The Moody Blues became orchestral Zen philosophers who did indeed reach the pinnacle of superstardom. In the meantime, Denny Laine formed the Incredible String Band (inspiring the creation of ELO) played a legendary gig at Brian Epstein’s Saville Theater in 1967 with the Jimi Hendrix Experience - and almost stole the show. He formed Balls, another great Black Country band and went on to play an integral role in Ginger Baker’s Air Force in 1970 before joining Paul McCartney and wings in 1971. All this before he was 28 years old.

Denny, when did start playing professionally? What was it like performing with your first professional band Denny & the Diplomats? How did you get top billing in the group?
First of all, because I was the singer: Denny Laine and the Diplomats. It’s a made-up name, but that’s the way it was done in the old days, like Johnny and the Hurricanes, you know. But the fact is, I turned professional after school. I was encouraged to go into the music business one way or another, obviously because at school I used to play my guitar and get everybody singing, and I wrote a few things that were read out in the assembly. So I went and got a job at a huge store owned by Harrods of London, called Rackhams. I was in the music department as a trainee buyer, so I learned all about pianos and hi-fi equipment. I introduced guitars to that store, because it was a very high-class place, and they didn’t have guitars. They had a record section, and people started coming in, like Ella Fitzgerald, Lonnie Donegan, and a lot of people I liked. And I would meet a lot of people from the music business – I would get to talking about records, and playing records, and that kind of thing. But when I started being late for work, because I was gigging in the evenings with my band, I decided to knock it on the head. I then decided to go professional, because I was making money at it and I didn’t want to work in a shop. I got bored being in one place all the time. I left on good terms with everybody, and went off to do my thing with the band. My band was getting very popular around the Birmingham area, and so I decided I wanted to be a pro.

As a Black Country chap did you get close with the musicians from that area Roy Wood, Noddy Holder, Plant and Jones etc?
Funnily enough, I was just reading an article, and I saw that Robert Plant and John Bonham were in a band called Band of Joy. They were supporting me at a gig that I did in Birmingham. They were just a little bit younger than me. I got very friendly with John Bonham over the years. I found out that he used to come and watch us at one of our regular gigs at the Wednesbury Youth Centre r. I remember that Bevan used to put a lightbulb inside his drum, so it flashed on and off. That was the first light show! And John Bonham used to stand at the front, taking notes. And one day, during the Wings era, he was staying at my house, and I heard him singing in my studio a song that I remembered…but couldn’t remember really. I went down and said, “What’s that song?” He said, “You wrote that song, and you used to do it at the Wednesbury Youth Centre.” And I couldn’t believe that he remembered it. Anyway, he’s gone to his grave with it, because I can’t remember it now either!
Roy Wood was in another band called the Strangers. I didn’t know Noddy Holder because they were younger. But the Spencer Davis Group, and all the bands of my era really, we were all friends, we all gigged together. I don’t think any band ever did a gig just on their own, they always had support as part of the package. And we used to meet in the cafes on the motorways. And that’s what happened when we moved to London, we met everybody at the clubs and just became friends that way.

Who inspired you as a musician?
First of all, I was inspired by Alan O’Dale, who used to sing in the Robin Hood series. He was a court jester, a wandering minstrel with his guitar, and he used to sing the theme tune to Robin Hood. I come from a folk-type background, an Irish/Gypsy background, and I was always into folk music and jazz. A friend of mine at school who was a jazz guitar player, his brother was a really good guitar player, he taught me how to tune my guitar properly. And then I started getting into jazz and Django Reinhardt, and Stephane Grappelli, and all that stuff, which I love still to this day. I was talking to Ted Nugent about this the other night, that like Detroit, where he comes from, Birmingham was a factory town – they used to make all the electrical parts for cars and airplanes, and there was a lot of music there because of that, from all over the world. Reggae, Irish show bands, folk bands, jazz bands, all sorts of stuff. So there was a lot to choose from. Consequently, a lot of Birmingham musicians became very good at all styles; you had to be, to get a gig. So that’s what we were known for, good copiers and good styles. I don’t like to copy these days, I do my own thing, but I learned that way.

What influenced your style of composing?
Well, composing comes from our folk background, the fact that we’re telling stories and painting pictures with words, if you like. It’s pre-videos, you know. Videos now tell the story just by looking at a song being sung. But we had to get it in the words, and get the words across without the visuals. Especially at some places that didn’t want to hear original music, they wanted all the hits of the day. I tried to avoid that as much as possible, I used to do a lot of obscure blues and R&B stuff. That’s how “Go Now” came about, basically, we always used to do weird stuff. Songwriting became something I used to do as a hobby, and I would throw a song in a Denny Laine and the Diplomats set just to see what the audience reaction was going to be like. And they loved it all, so I did a little bit more of that. But really, right up until the Moodies had to put an album out, I’d never really gotten into songwriting seriously. I had to get Mike Pinder to come along and help my put a lot of my ideas together, because I just wasn’t experienced in doing it, as much as I should have been. So he kind of helped me with the arrangements and stuff. I basically wrote the songs, but he helped me piece them together and turn them into proper songs, like he did with a lot of Justin Hayward’s stuff, I believe. So that’s how that came about.
Then of course with Paul encouraging me to write, to take some of the focus off of him so much, he encouraged me to write a lot more. A lot of my writing did emulate a lot of the old folk and skiffle style, or country-style almost. Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino, you name it. I was watching clips on You Tube last night, of Paul and me sitting with a couple of acoustic guitars. There’s a load of stuff on You Tube with me and him just jamming through a few of these old songs. It’s quite fun, you know, some good feels there.
Also, the fact was we weren’t making any money from anything on the road in those days, because all our money supposedly went into promoting the band, and we all walked away broke. Nobody made any money in the Moody Blues – if you ever see their documentary, you’ll laugh your ass off at the way it all came about. They went on to bigger and better things, and so did I, so that’s good. But basically the money was in publishing, and you can ask Paul McCartney about that, you know – he knew that’s where the money was going to be, so you get into it because of that. Same as the Stones did. Generally speaking, it was our way of making money. But again, in order to get record deals in the early days, if we wrote songs, they went and gave us a publisher, and the publisher would automatically take 60% off you, which was totally unfair, because they hardly did anything for it, especially in the case of the Beatles, they made their own fame. And people recorded their stuff because they liked it, they heard it on records. The publishers didn’t go out there and sell their songs. So right up to this day, Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono only get half of what they should have gotten. Publishers have been living off of that for years, and basically doing nothing with it. Michael Jackson is the only one who ever did anything with those songs, turning them into TV ads and stuff.
But anyway, I like to write my own stuff, because therefore I’m expressing myself. I don’t like to copy too much, I like to take other influences and turn them into my thing, like a lot of people do. It’s like any kind of art form, you’re inspired by people you admire the most, and then you turn it into your own thing. That way it’s easier to sing, easier to remember, and easier to put the emotion and the truth behind it, you know?

What is your creative process? Do you start with a piano or guitar riff? Do you dream the melody and lyrics or intentionally work on a particular theme and fit the music or the lyric to it?
All of the above, basically, because – in the case of writing with Paul, he might come up with a line, like in Mull of Kintyre, he came up with the chorus, and to me, that was the song, it didn’t need anything else. But obviously for it to be a song, we had to write lyrics. I contributed quite a lot to those lyrics. Then I wrote No Words, and then he ended up helping me put it together, put some words in the last verse, joined two songs together, and it became that song.
When I’m writing for a specific thing – if somebody says to me, I want you to write a song for this ad, like a Coca-Cola ad, I would be inspired by whatever to write that song. In the case of Arctic Song, which is the musical I’ve had for years that I’m trying to put on now, I was inspired by a friend of mine who went to the Arctic, and he came back with a load of pictures and storylines, song titles, because he wanted me to help him put a musical together. Well, I ended up writing a lot of it myself, because he didn’t get down to the writing part of it, so I ended up kind of taking over the project. We’re still co-writers, of course, but I kind of wrote it according to the way I wanted it to be a lot more. But I used all his influences and ideas; I couldn’t have done it without him, that’s for sure. But I turned it into my stories and my thing. So it depends really, on what the circumstances are leading up to the writing.
Now, on this new album I’ve been doing over the last two years – because I went to England for a year, I never got to finish it, I wrote all the songs basically on piano, or 90 percent of them anyway. And then when I did the demos, I wrote the guitar parts around the piano parts. Same with the bass and the drum parts. And I put them all down as a song and then sang over the top. The songs that I wrote with Paul, I wrote on guitar. So it just depends on what instrument is at hand. Somebody loaned me a mandolin one day; I wrote a song on that. Somebody gave me an idea for a French-style song, that came out of living at the Boulevard de la Madeleine, which is where the Hotel de Paris was, where we all used to stay. And I used an accordion to write that song. Because I thought, well, France – they play accordions in France, so I’ll write a song based around that. Even though I didn’t play on the original single, which was quite a big hit in France.

What was it like in the early days with the Moody Blues, and what was your most memorable gig during the early days of your career?
The most memorable gig prior to the Moody Blues was when the Diplomats played with the Beatles. Because we opened for the Beatles at the place in Birmingham that has a revolving stage. When we came off, the Beatles came on, and all the leads got pulled out of the speakers because somebody forgot to take them out before the stage moved around. So the Beatles came on to no microphones. The girls are all screaming, but John is pointing at his microphone, saying “Where’s the f---ing microphone!?” So anyway, that was funny, and I got to meet them all then. When I was working at the shop, when I first heard “Love Me Do”, I knew it was gonna be a hit. So I said “The minute I heard ‘Love Me Do’ I knew you guys were gonna be a problem!” and we all laughed.
When we moved to London, we became friends with the Beatles, at the Ad-Lib club, and they used to come to our parties. We used to have big parties with the Moodies. When we weren’t working on weekends we used to have three-day events, crazy parties, and everyone in the music business used to come there. But we were on their first British tour, so that was one of the biggest memorable things about playing live.
Prior to that, the most memorable thing was “Go Now” going to Number One while we were on the Chuck Berry tour. Because we had it out, it was our first tour with the Robert Stigwood Organization, and Robert told us all to turn down in the sound check at rehearsals, and I said “this is how loud we play, like it or lump it.” And of course, when the crowd was in, it was fine, you know. But they all try to tell you what to do, that’s life you know. But me and Robert Stigwood became firm friends after that, so…. So we were on the Chuck Berry tour, and Chuck was borrowing my amp, because it was a great new amp that was out, and he didn’t bring an amplifier with him, just his guitar. So he was using my amp, and that was quite a thing. And then suddenly while we were on that tour – and we were going down really well, by the way, ‘cause we were closing the first half. When we were on that tour, “Go Now” went to Number One, so we had a big celebration, you know. I mean, how can you forget that? There were other gigs where people would storm the stage and fights would break out in the audiences, but those kinds of gigs you try to forget!

How long did you work with Ginger Baker? How would you characterize time with Ginger Baker’s Airforce?
Ginger and Jack Bruce were in a band called Graham Bond Organization on that same Chuck Berry tour, that’s how I met them. Ginger and Jack were great jazz players from the London Blues Clubs. So when the Moodies were doing the blues circuit, because we were basically a blues band in those days, we met a lot of people like that. I kept in touch with those people. Ginger came up to me at a party at Steve Winwood’s house one day, it was his birthday, and Eric had bought him a piano, and Ginger bought him a kit of drums. Me and Trevor Burton from The Move were visiting friends, because of course we were all from Birmingham, we knew Stevie. And I’m jamming away with Ginger and Eric, and we had a great time all jamming. One day at the house up in Kensington, we had a little bit of a get together, and Ginger asked me to join a band, and that was it. We were just standing around the piano singing, and he says “Do you want to get a band together?” and I said “Fantastic!” I was in the band until it broke up, but that was really because of Ginger’s situation, you know, with – I hate to say it, but... his addiction situation.
So Stigwood said to me, we want you to stay around for when we get it up and running again. I said “Don’t worry, I’ll be there”, but it never did get up and running again. A lot of great players, but the direction was a little bit wild. But we had a great gig at the Royal Albert Hall, and we recorded “Man Of Constant Sorrow”, which me and Ginger took the writing credits for because it was an open publishing situation on that song. And I think we had a bit of a minor hit with that in England. But I love Ginger, and I was supposedly going to the launch of his book three months ago, but I couldn’t go because of my work visa situation; I haven’t got a new visa, I’ve got to re-do it, so I couldn’t go out of the country yet. I was going to be playing with Ginger, Eric and Steve Winwood for this get-together, they invited me over, so that was a real disappointment. But if they ever come to launch that book here in America, obviously, I’ll join them for that.

How did you come to get involved with Paul McCartney?
Well, me and Paul used to go to all the clubs, and we’d be sitting there, and he’d be talking to me, and I’d be talking to him all night long about music and stuff. Even then it was always selling songs, you know “I’ve got this great song you should do, called ‘Those Were The Days’.” He gave it to Mary Hopkins in the end, it wasn’t his song, but he was always pushing good songs, you know, and talking about music. So I used to go out with him a lot in the clubs, in fact, we went together to see Jimi Hendrix for the first time, doing his debut at the Bag O’Nails club. Also, I went to visit them when they were doing Sgt. Pepper. And me and Paul went upstairs by the invite of Norman Smith, who then became Hurricane Smith the singer, who had a few hits. Norman Smith was a producer at EMI, and he was record-testing Pink Floyd. So we went upstairs to give it the thumbs-up, which we did, and that was that. We used to go gambling at the Playboy Club in Mayfair, we used to do all sorts of things, bump into each other at the clubs, and through our parties, as I said, there would always be parties. The Stones, Rod Stewart Band, we used to work with the Jeff Beck Group, we used to work with everyone. Tom Jones was always around, and Engelbert Humperdinck, and a lot of the British bands and acts were all basically friends of ours.
Paul would come to see me do the Electric String Band thing at the Seville Theatre, that was Brian Epstein’s place. Jimi Hendrix was doing two weekends there, and I was on the first one. I had to pull the first gig because my bass player was sick, and I wasn’t gonna go up and risk it with a new guy, because they are very intricate parts. So I pulled out of that first gig, and I know that John Lennon was in the audience and was a bit pissed off, because although they’d come to see Jimi, they’d come to see what I was doing as well. And they were friends. So the next week I went and did it, and it went down a storm. And I know that Paul was in the audience. So was my friend Marianne Faithfull, and a lot of other friends. So they all gave me the thumbs up on that. Jimi Hendrix even said to me “Oh great man, I like your guitar player!” And I said “I’m the guitar player, you twat!” He was out of his head though, this was at the Speakeasy. So I’ve got that quote, and I’ve even got a nice link to his site because of that quote. I didn’t put it there, but somebody else did. I was very friendly with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell anyway, that’s how I met Jimi in those days, and was quite close to him in a way.
The Stones, The Animals, Yes, all those people, we knew them all from gigging with them, clubbing with them, or partying with them. So I’m at our offices, living in the back room in Mayfair, in these posh offices we used to have, and Marc Bolan was getting a deal set up with the Moodies’ ex-manager Tony Secunda, whom I had not fallen out with even though we never made any money, but he was still a good manager, it wasn’t all his fault. I was still hanging out with him, and he was helping me with this Electric String Band. He helped me put “Say You Don’t Mind” together, which was a hit for Colin Blunstone, but I wrote it for the String Band.
I couldn’t afford to put the Electric String Band on the road all the time, apart from which, the musicians are always busy doing concerts around the world, you know, classical concerts. So anyway, Marc Bolan gives me this guitar, and we became really good friends.
And then Paul gets on the phone and says “Hey, do you want to put a band together?” So I was on the plane the next day to Scotland, and that was that. Because I was looking for something to do, I wasn’t actually looking to get into a band with somebody, I wanted to do my own thing. But because I knew Paul so well, and I knew that we got on well, I thought it would be good.
But ten years later, I got a little bit tired of it. I wanted to get out there and do my own thing again, but that’s just natural, you know. I really enjoyed it for the time I was there, most of the time. I had a lot of personal problems because of being away from home; there’s a lot of other things like family problems that you have by being in a big band like that – you just don’t get to see your friends and family that much. It tends to be a bit of a lonely life. I had a great time with Paul and Linda and that side of it, but it was like a 24-hour job, you know?

I saw your Wings Over America Show at the Olympia in Detroit. It was a fabulous show. What was it like for you on that tour playing massive arenas? Did it feel like you were cut off from the audience?
We’ve spent our lives being very close-up to audiences – in other words, playing small places, bars, clubs, etc. We went on to doing theatres – that’s as big as we ever got with the Beatles, and on the Chuck Berry tours. But we never did a big arena gig. I think the only arena gig I ever did was the Wembley Arena because it was the New Musical Express Pollwinners Concert. But even the Beatles hadn’t done that until they went to America. So we went on to those big stages – we set up our own, it took five hours to set up our stage and lights and all that stuff. And everywhere we went was the same set, same crew, same show, and it gets to become really smooth and easy. But the audience reaction in all the different cities around the world was the same. Because the show took them there, you know, took them on the journey. It was a great feeling. Of course, we didn’t even know what the lights looked like from the audience’s point of view, until we saw the Wings Over America footage. And then it was like “Wow, that’s great, I would have liked to be in the audience for this one!” But you do have a close relationship with your audience because they’re all as one, if you know what I mean. You can’t see them all, but the vibe that’s coming off the audience, you feel like you’re part of it. You’re not up there trying to get people to clap, or at some of these silly gigs where the audience is miles away from you. We just had such a great fan base that was dying to see the show, and enjoying it, that you feel very close to the audience.

Wings was a great band and you wrote some great songs with them like Time to Hide and Mull of Kintyre. What do you view as your greatest achievement with Wings?
Songwriting-wise, obviously Mull of Kintyre, because you know, it was written in Scotland. Paul and I were having breakfast, he played me the tune and I said “That’s a hit!” We hadn’t gotten the words for it yet, it was just a line. And the thought of doing it with the Campbeltown Pipe Band was great, we knew it would be a fantastic experience. We wrote the song in one key, the next day we went up on the side of the hill and sat and wrote the words and the verses, and the tune, and put it all together. But when we got the pipe band in, we had to transpose into another key to accommodate the drone of the bagpipes. That’s what gave it the lift, where the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, you know? So that was the biggest hit in England, ever, until Live Aid came along. We did all the Christmas shows, and it was just the three of us. So that was a huge thing for me, to be involved with that. A lot of people think I sold all my rights on that – I didn’t sell all of my right on that, I sold some of them, but that’s because I kind of figured that it was more Paul’s song. I did a deal where I kept some of my stuff and gave him some of his stuff back. It was one of those kind of parting things that we did. But I really like that song, I love the way it came out, and it used to go down so well, especially in Scotland, can you believe it? Billy Connelly came backstage at the Green’s Playhouse in Scotland and said “That’s a great song, laddie, but I don’t like the words!” So I looked at him and said “Thanks a lot, Billy!” He thought they were a bit schmaltzy, I suppose. But it was a real compliment for him to say he liked the song, because he’s a real Scotsman, and real down to earth. To have a Scottish hit written by two guys who weren’t Scottish is quite an achievement, believe me. You know what the Scots are like!
“Time to Hide” I kind of wrote on my own. A lot of the other songs, I would go to Paul with an idea, and he would add to it, or he would come to me with an idea and I would add to that. I can’t really remember a lot of who did what on a lot of those songs. Some of them are vivid memories and some of it is a complete drunken haze. But we had such an understanding of the work process, it just came easy. He was full of ideas, sometimes too many bloody ideas. A lot the stuff I would say “I think we’ve done enough on this song”. And then we’d be halfway through a song, and the next day he’d come in with another song because he’d gotten bored of that one. He was a really prolific writer. You had to be on your toes all the time with him, but I learned a lot from it. It was very easy to work with him on songwriting. Easier than anybody – I mean, I’ve never really written with anybody else except Mike Pinder, and that was pretty easy too - we were all experiencing life at the same time, we just shared the same views on music. We were very influenced by all styles from reggae to...me and Paul went to see UB40 a couple of years ago, the last time I saw him in England, because we loved reggae. We were into soul and into all sorts of music. We had exactly the same musical tastes and influences.

What are your views of the Music/Recording Industry as it exists today?
It’s a lot like it used to be in the early days; everybody’s trying to be an independent. When we were with Decca, they really didn’t do anything except distribute. We did all the work, we took all the people to them. We even took our own PR people, and managers, everything. So it’s kind of an indie thing again, and I like it. What I find lacking in a lot of modern music, especially with the younger people, although they are very influenced by the old music, which is a compliment to us, they cut their teeth on drum machines and stuff, and all that music in the 80s seemed to be a little bit too – “anyone can be a musician if you have a drum machine” syndrome, you know? Although some of them were really good at it, a lot of them, including the engineers, didn’t know enough how to program a drum machine to make it sound like a drum kit, and it became another form of music , a more sort of disco style thing. And then of course it went back to everybody emulating the 60s and 70s, getting into bands again, Led Zeppelin kind of led the way, and we led the way, for bands to go out and play live. And so now everybody’s got a mixture of everything out there, so this is really one of the best times there has been for a while for music, because everybody’s playing live again, which is fantastic. There are so many good musicians out there, which lends itself to too many tribute bands, which is a bit of a problem for me, because I’m kind of tired of tribute bands, but I have seen a lot of them who are really good. Some of them don’t get the chords quite right, but it’s a tribute to the music, so I allow that. But I like to go out and see an original band or original artist, doing their own thing. That’s what turns me on. There are a lot of talented people who go out there and do tributes or whatever because they want to work, but again, at the same time I think deep down, everybody wants to do their own thing. And that’s what I’m seeing, there’s a lot of new songwriters around, and I love that.
I’m actually a judge on the Song Wars competition - that’s being put together by Mike Pinder from the Moody Blues and Ed Ulibarri from Roland Music Corps. I’m a part of that, so we’re encouraging songwriters because we like that art, it is an art as far as I’m concerned, and performing is another art. I think there’s a very across-the-board bunch of music out there that appeals to all kinds, and I’m glad about that, because music shouldn’t have boundaries. I love rap. We were doing “rap” in the old days, you know, the old blues ad scat stuff. You might get eras where rap and hip-hop became the thing, but it’s all based on everything that’s come before, it just turns into another version of what came before. Music is a very, very strong power, and the more people that are in it, the merrier.

Joe Boyd, an iconic English producer (Nick Drake, Fairport Convention) wrote a book entitled White Bicycles. Boyd writes that you were one of the great voices of the era (immortalized by your vocal on Go Now) and that you never got the recognition you deserved. I agree. What’s your view about this?
What is “deserved”? As far as I’m concerned, it was my own fault – I didn’t really do anything solo-wise after that. Apart from the Moodies album, which wasn’t a hit in those days – it’s become a cult album now, but it wasn’t a hit until they went on to do Nights In White Satin and all that. So I didn’t really have a direction as far as a soloist, I went with Paul. So I didn’t follow a solo career. If that’s what he’s talking about with recognition, that’s fine. But then again, that’s my own choice, I should have made the choice to do more, but I didn’t. But it’s always a compliment when people say you have the voice. Because I don’t work as much – the voice is an instrument, you have to use it a lot, you have to practice a lot. I’ve had a lot of throat problems over the years because of that, because I don’t work it a lot – you have to keep working at it. Every now and then I’ll go through a period, like right now for example, where I just spend hours and hours practicing vocals, practicing guitars, practicing keyboards, and re-learning a lot of my old songs. And it’s a great feeling when you get better and better every day. Andrea Bocelli will tell you. He practices every day, voice exercises, because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be as good as he is. But Joe Boyd, I always rated him anyway, he was a great guy, he knew so much about the business in those days, he was one of our crowd. To this day I still get his members letters from his website. A lot of people did think that I would go on -and I did, with the Electric String Band, I did start to put together my own identity as a singer, and wrote all the songs. But it only lasted a year, like I say, I just couldn’t afford it and wasn’t getting enough success as it, because I wasn’t doing it in enough places, and couldn’t get these guys – I mean, they were all from the music academy, so how could I have them on call all the time? So… it kind of fell through because I didn’t have the cash to do it. And that was the problem with the Moody Blues all getting ripped off. I didn’t have the finances to really put something together and keep it together like you need to do. So when the thing with Paul came along, I thought, not only am I looking forward to working with Paul, I need to make some money as well. So that’s what I did.

Do you have any current projects?
I do – and one of them is twenty years old – Arctic Song. It’s an ecological piece that nobody wanted to know about twenty years ago. Except I did stage it once at a place called Stonyhurst College with 12 year olds, and it went down a storm for two weeks with them and their parents. But I’ve had that around and now I’m rehashing it, I’ve got it all finished and done. Sixteen songs, all about different areas of the world that need help with ecological problems, saving the animals and all that stuff. I’ve always been a kind of ecologist, if you know what I mean, although I’m not a fanatic, I’m a realist. For example, I know that vegetarians can’t make it living in the Arctic, because nothing grows there. The word “Eskimos” means meat-eaters, and they have to be meat-eaters. So it’s one of those things, it just generally covers all the world’s problems of surviving, and what’s happening to the ecology. And we were talking about global warming, and the tilting of the earth’s axis, and ozone layers years ago. In fact, we wrote this in 1988. And before us there was a Gaia Foundation that was trying to get it out there to everybody and nobody would touch it with a barge pole. But now I’m going to be putting it on at the University of Las Vegas in the summer, I’ve got the Monmouth Music Academy with the band The Cryers, they’re going to be doing it. Lincoln Park Center, and the Carnegie Mellon College in Pittsburgh, so I’m really buzzing on that, I’ve got all that going. And then I’ve got this album to finish, which I’m about halfway through. But apart from that, I just want to do more gigs, because I know that the more gigs I do, the better I get, and then the more I can perform when I’m writing and putting things together. You can’t just go into the studio, unless you’ve just come off the road, you have to be at your best before you go into the studio, otherwise you don’t get the performance. There’s an old story that you could never record Little Richard because he was great on stage but crap in the studio, so they took the studio to the stage, and that’s how they got him. But that’s basically all I’m doing at the moment. There are other things – I work with about 4-5 different bands who know my material. I’ve got a band in Boston that does every song I’ve ever done, and I’ve only ever done one little short tour with them, years ago. I like to do different things, I don’t like to be tied down to one thing anymore. Ten years in one band was enough, and it was great, but now I tend to work with a lot of different people and a lot of different lineups. That’s why I like to do solo stuff, trio, four piece, five piece, and big occasions where there’s a lot of people on stage doing special nights or albums, or Bangladesh concerts, raising money for different charities, you know, that kind of thing.

Any special plans for this solo performance?
I like to sit down with a guitar and an amp, plug a proper electric guitar – I’ve got my Ed Roman guitar which he built for me, he’s a friend of mine in Vegas, and he’s one of the biggest, best guitar builders in the world, his company. And I love his guitar, and that’s why I’m endorsing it. I also use Carvin Guitars, which I endorse because they have a guitar which is acoustic electric and I can use that for all my acoustic stuff, so two guitars basically, electric guitar and acoustic, and then I might even bring my Spanish guitar along, or get hold of one, because I like to do some stuff on Spanish guitar. And keyboards, do some songs on keyboards, and like I say, just cover the whole…you know, a few Moodies ideas, a few Wings things, and a lot of my own original material and just, kind of, not talk too much, but give a few stories out there of how songs came together. It depends on the audience, you know – if they’re all falling in their beers, then I stick to the fast stuff, and if they’re listening, then I get the chance to do something a little bit more serious. I do like to do a couple of the Arctic Song songs, and I like to do things like a song I’ve got called “Food For All”. It was a song I wrote for the Philadelphia homeless people years ago, before Bruce Springsteen did his version. I like to be a little bit of a preacher in the pulpit when it comes to some songs, but at the same time I like people to have a good time, communicate with the audience, and that’s it. And if they start making too much noise, I tell them to shut up! It’s all about the feedback that you get from the audience, as to how you enjoy the gig, I believe, or how it all comes together.

How would you like to be remembered?
I’ve always kind of been a bit of a recluse in some ways, because I like to spend a lot of time with music, writing, and that’s what I do. I’m a little mad professor in some ways. But I want all my stuff now to be out there, that’s why I’ve just put this new website together, that’s what we’re doing as we speak today, we’ve put a new website up at www.dennylaine.com. I’m going to get all my music out there to everybody. I just want to be remembered as a songwriter, who said things to help people. I’m a very helpful person, I have a lot of faith and hope. I’ve been a rock n roller like everybody else, I’ve made a lot of bad choices, been involved with booze – not drugs, so much, you know – we’ve all been party animals, gone off the rails once in a while. But basically I’m just really a musician, a writer and a performer. That’s all I want to be known for. I’m spending a lot of my energy now promoting and marketing myself, more than I ever did. So I just want to get those lyrics out there. I really want to be remembered for my lyrics now. Not just for being in certain bands, but also for the things I’m trying to say.

January 10th, 2010

The Tosspints
Present
11 Empty Bottles

I’ve learned never to underestimate the Tosspints. As soon as I think I know their bag, they come out of left field throwing musical knuckleballs that left me scratching my head. In 11 Empty Bottles the Tosspints reach down deep to tell a story of such abject misery that I had to listen to it with my headphones on and the volume muted. The resolution of the sorrow comes with self knowledge and acceptance. It is the only way out of hell. It helped that the band has a collective appreciation of dark humor that gives the disc its humanity.

Welcome to 11 Empty Bottles, a ragged punk symphony that reaches toward a spiraling netherland that few want to travel. The music is nothing less than revolutionary. The Tosspints primitive sound poems battered my brain and annihilated my senses. I was disturbed by its terrifying images of fallen humanity and I was totally blown me away by their stark honesty. Zak Zuzula writes most of the songs while the chief cook and bottle washer brother Don seems comfortable in the back seat, gazing out the window. However, his presence is clearly significant and his songs and singing are the highlight of disc…with two crucial exceptions (both sung by Don) Zak’s Death is a Funny Thing and Johnny Johnson’s incredible I’ll Give You Nothing. Let’s get started…grab a Guinness, hunker down and don’t forget to fasten your seat belt.

I’m Fucking Drunk rumbles like an earthquake, it opens that disc with a frantic speed like Bowles ditching Holmes at Daytona Beach. Zuzula does not mince words or spare feelings. He paints a vivid picture of despair with a quality of nouveau realisme . I’m a Fucking Drunk contains a strange paradox in which an ugly truth may prove to be liberating. Young Girl, Bad Idea is like a Shakespearean comedy with equal measures of tragedy and humor cloaked in punk rhythms. The tongue-in-cheek tension is between the Apollonian and Dionysian – music and poetry versus ecstasy and intoxication. The song is a winner with a well conceived hilarity wrapped around a time-worn sexual paradox…should I or shouldn’t I…it wouldn’t hurt… just this one time. Underneath this potent froth is a serious issue.

Satan’s Little Whore is an emotional train wreck. Johnson’s sloppy drum riffs set the pace and they couldn’t be more perfect in creating a musical landscape of despair. This is how a broken heart speaks to you. Nothing is rehearsed. Zuzula reaches down to the fifth circle of hell where he can find no joy in the universe. And he lets his anger spill out and froth without any editing. It ain’t pretty.

Land Far Away is Zak’s 4thinstallment of the first suite of songs on the CD that describe the events that lead the protagonist to go ff to war. It offers a refrain of the themes of infidelity and betrayal that crushed the spirit of our protagonist and led him to sign up with the military and bid adieu to family and friends and the familiar. It provides a neat segue to Soldier’s Song, an honest portrayal of a young man’s fear and loneliness in the trenches fighting someone else’s war. Johnson’s brutal drumming keeps a breathless pace that signals the urgency in the lyric…”Let me go home, Lord I want to go home”.

Death is a Funny Thing is one of the best songs on the CD. Johnson pounds the bass drum like a heartbeat in a short story by Edgar Alan Poe while Don Zuzula plays an incredible nuclear powered rhythm riffs like Townsend in ’72. Zuzula takes each verse, every phrase and reaches into the core of his being. He is paying witness to a friend’s dying. The tension builds into a crescendo and as the song races to its conclusion Zuzula’s voice erupts like a volcano.

The Wreck of the Medusa is an epic punk symphony with tempo changes, minor chords, strong lead singing, echoed vocals and whispered pleas. The song is inspired by an actual event in 1816 that was immortalized in a painting by Theodore Gericault. The sinking of the Medusa was a turning point in the revolt against the Bourbon Monarchy and became the catalyst for the French Revolution. Zuzula molded this epic tale like a sculptor molding and shaping diverse tonal elements into a cohesive and remarkable sound. This is an historical piece that is unrelated to the basic concept of 11 Empty Bottles. But somehow it fits-in quite nicely. The refrain echoes the similar themes about death and war…”Don’t let me die this way.” It is a masterwork!

I Couldn’t Do It alone riffs along like Lotte Lenya doing Kurt Weill on speed. The sound is a sonic firestorm. Everything – the guitars and vocals are up front in the mix and HOT – giving the song and incredible emotional valence. It’s loud and cacophonous…explosive - the sound of a heart breaking. Lyrically sophisticated, the song tells the story of a soldier that makes a promise that is impossible for him to keep, to bring his comrade home safely. This is very difficult to listen to. It’s like watching No Country for Old Men with one eye shut and your head averted.

My Own Sinking Ship. Johnson’s speeded up shuffle offers a counterpoint to Zuzula’s steady full-bodied baritone. The dark humor in the lyric is a beacon of light and hope in an otherwise drastic message. The la-la-las in the chorus are like a tongue in the cheek, offering respite from an unrelenting ennui and a sense that life is like a sinking ship. He’s gotta learn to swim real fast. Great Fun.

Almost Home is a bare acoustic ballad just Don Zuzula and his guitar, honest and down home. It’s a story about longing and maybe just a few regrets. It’s about life on the road as a musician where life can be a series of a minute at a time, sitting back and watching it all go by. Every moment on the road gets him closer to his goal. This is a song you can listen to over and over again… exquisite.

11 Empty Bottles and 1 Beer, 1 Shot 1 Memory are companion pieces that reprise earlier themes of infidelity, booze, loneliness. In the first song the singer is nearly mad with grief. The second piece reveals the singer’s growing acceptance for who he is and his uncertain future.

Sing to Kill is a classical tone poem about courage and integrity. Zuzula’s imagery is a fascinating evocation of something ancient and true from English prison ships, ocean moons, skin so faire and light, and van diemens land. He paints his songs in broad metaphorical strokes about our modern empire and speaks directly about his hopes to control his own destiny and live the life he chooses. The Rebel’s Life.

I’ll Give You Nothing is the sleeper on this CD. John Johnson’s sole contribution may be the finest song on the disc. It’s deeply ironic and breathtakingly open and honest. Don Zuzula sings it masterfully as if it were his own:

“I won’t have the ending you’ve been waiting for all your life
The one where we ride off with everyone waving
The one where my life is still somewhat worth saving
If you take me under your wing
But kill every thought I’m left to sing
I’ll give you what’s inside of me
I’ll give what’s inside
I’ll give you nothing”

With this disc the Tosspints are moving away from the “Celtic” part of punk to fashion their own unique sound, a mixture of hard rock, baroque tone poems, and acoustic folk layered by reoccurring themes that reach an imperfect but very human resolution as the disc ends. This is revolutionary music that borders on dadist truth. Don Zuzula offers this story as an example:

While stationed in the sands and heat of Iraq, Don was part of a armored truck division. Each driver would spray paint a patriotic phrase on his vehicle for inspiration. Many of the phrases were typical of the spirit of the times. Phrases like:
Death to Al Qeada or Fuck the Taliban

Don wrote…No Fat Chicks

Peace
Bo White

December 27th, 2009

The Avery Set
Live @ Pit & Balcony
December 21st, 2009

It was a chilly night with just a dusting of snow to make the roads interesting. I was grousing a bit…“why did they have a damn show on a damn Monday…don’t they know I’m tired on Mondays…Mondays suck. I just get back to work and there’s all this crap to do and I haven’t had any “me time” on the weekend…and – anyway - weekends suck too ‘cos I have these unrealistic expectations that I might even enjoy myself and have a good time or something.”

So I get to the show and pick a seat in the back and put my head down so I can be left alone and nobody will talk to me and I can enjoy the show and write about it. Lo and behold Andy Reed and Donny Brown plop themselves down right behind me. It pissed me off ‘cos they are two of the nicest guys in the world and both of them are incredibly gifted musicians. They pulled me out of my turtle’s shell and made me talk, smile and even laugh.
DAMN THEM.

I gradually softened and got ready for Chris Zehnder and the Avery Set. I knew Zehnder from before when he played White’s as a teenager…never met him but I observed him from afar. I knew the kid had talent. The Avery Set has something going, they were more rootsy than pop and Zehnder’s thoughtful lyrics belied his tender years. He was all about family and roots and how his independence fits into the family story – dig his song Redwood Family Tree.

I was really looking forward to this CD Release party. I reviewed Returning to Steam for Review Magazine and had an intimate knowledge of its contents. I listened to the entire disc at least a dozen times and I knew every song by heart. I was waiting with badly bated breath wondering if Zehnder can pull it off.

It was the same rush I had when I first saw the Kinks at the Easttown Theatre in Detroit. It was December 1970 and the Kinks were several years past their British Invasion heyday. I looked at them as an oldies act that somehow resurfaced with a great LP - Lola and the Powerman. I listened to their new groove incessantly until that fateful winter’s day when I finally got top see my heroes up close and personal…
It was a daunting task to feel comfortable hanging out at the corner of Harper & Van Dyke. The neighborhood had an ominous appearance of violence and decay, a by-product of urban renewal and greed. And if you ventured beyond the glow of the Easttown's neon lights, the night turned pitch black and echoed muffled footsteps and disdembodied voices. There were elemental worries about safety. Security guards frisked us at the door looking for weapons, not dope, pills or booze. Indeed weed was abundantly present in the smoky haze that clouded the auditorium. Finally the Kinks came on, introduced one at a time like they were in the NBA. The tension mounted as Ray Davies stepped up to the microphone. And then…then…the Kinks... sucked - BAD. But I loved them anyway. They were just too odd and charming to hate. Ray Davies punched up Top of the Pops and let me know about Harry Rag, Big Sky and Waterloo Sunset. He sang about Victoria and his brother Dave sang Strangers, a beautiful song informed by a selfless utopian vision. They sang the entire album and more, even giving a nod to You Really Got Me and Dedicated Follower of Fashion. It was a thrill to hear Davies sing the songs that I played everyday for a month on my little modular stereo.
THAT is how I felt about the Avery Set show.

Chris Zehnder did the entire CD and more, the sound was intimate, not too loud yet crisp and full and the performance was exquisite. Zehnder sang like a man possessed of the spirit and his multi-instrumentalist bass player Jacob Johnson shone pure like the North Star on a cloudless night. Longtime stalwart drummer Jake Bartlett proved invaluable laying down the beat and handling the tempo changes. That cat was in the pocket.

The opening song Salt Mines found Zehnder in great voice. It’s a treatise about independence and the invisible chains that limit us at the same time they keep us safe. Gotta Move quickly followed, a logical extension of the themes in Salt Mines. Zehnder’s unique emotive style of singing is irresistible. Nobody sounds like him (except for maybe Bright Eyes).

The Avery Set proceeded to blow everyone’s mind with the minor chord landscape of Stranger; the rock & roll two-step rhythms of Wishful Thinking (from the first CD) and the cool chicken pickin’ shuffle of Hello Georgia, a good-time, smile away winner. The guitarist Brandon Harris played his ass off on this track.
Zehnder’s Bible Belt has a Sweetheart of the Rodeo vibe that recalls the Byrds’ You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere. Jacob Johnson proved to be a master on the upright bass on Goose Down Misery, a country two-step that swings. Zehnder’s voice smiles despite the dark message of the song - a contrast that works remarkably well.
The waltz-time country emo of Hole in My Head shows how Zehnder’s sound and style defies easy description. This music is so good it doesn’t need to be put in a particular bag. Johnson’s solo on the upright bass was simply incredible.

The Avery Set’s masterpiece, Set My Weight on Me, has Zehnder sitting on the piano bench next to Johnson who plays the simple yet elegant piano riff. Zehnder’s vocal is simply astounding
The aforementioned Redwood Family Tree is inserted near the end of the show. Two States passion carriages a nirvana-like quiet/loud musical construction that gives the song an emotional contrast of tension and release and when Zehnder sings “hold me close” you can sense that it is as much emotional as it is physical. It was a pleasure to hear the Avery Set nail Queen’s rockabilly anthem, A Crazy Little Thing Called Love - a perfect fit to the rhythmic rootsy vibe of the show.
Johnson makes his upright bass sounded like a cello in the magnificent Wandering Shoes. Soul in Song ended the night. It’s a folk protest song that decries the “suits” who attempt to restrict you and encourage conformity. The Avery Set encored with a rollicking American Girl from the Petty songbook. Just for kicks.

This was a superb show, lovingly produced and presented and thematically cohesive. It was a memorable night of music for an adoring hometown crowd. Chris Zehnder and the Avery Set proved to be a formidable musical aggregation worthy of national attention.
It doesn’t get any better than this

Peace
Bo White

11/29/2009

The Avery Set
Returning to Steam

No price is too high for the privilege of owning yourself
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Make no mistake. Returning to Steam is the embodiment of Chris Zehnder’s artistic vision. Music informed by personal discovery and the preservation of a youthful perspective. Through an inspired loneliness Zehnder comes face-to-face with a felt sense that his life is no longer the sum of other’s prescriptions. In this body of music Zehnder acknowledges that he and his world have changed. The original Avery Set disbanded. Brant became Charlie and sat in with the 78s and learned full well that Whitey can sing like Waylon but he’ll never be a Honky Tonk Zero. For Chris all these Michigan memories exact their own brand of revenge especially in those quiet Nashville moments when aloneness is his only muse.

Zehnder’s music is part of an internal dialogue, a dialectical conversation to create music as a means of taking care of himself while still giving it a universal message. Zehnder discovered his greatest strength is also his Achilles heal. His search for identity can be a very lonely journey… as it should be. How could it be otherwise?

Zehnder’s legacy is more than a family name; it is the story of his elders; the heroes and the villains, the success and the failures and the unique Bavarian individualism and self-reliance that has been handed down for generations. It’s in his blood. Yet Chris Zehnder refuses to follow those footsteps. Instead he took the fork in the road and stuck it in the rear-end of a dead chicken, well seasoned and delicious and never looked back. Sure, he could make a good living following his father’s vision and taking over the family business but he wasn’t born to follow. He was born to make music. Zehnder is one of those rare people who have learned in the early phases of his journey about the inherent emptiness in the acquisition of wealth.

This is one of the most cohesive bodies of music I’ve heard in a long time. It is a near masterpiece with its world class writing, superb singing, overall musicality and attention to detail in production and instrumentation. The players on this disc are MONSTERS. Drummer Jake Bartlett has been playing with the Avery Set for over 5 years and knows every nuance, tempo shift, and accent that Zehnder throws his way. Jacob Johnson is an extraordinary multi-instrumentalist. He plays the incredible stand alone piano scales on Set My Weight on Me and that cello sound on Wandering shoes is Jacob playing the standup bass with a bow. Together they are a first-rate rhythm section, tight in the pocket and able to create powerful crescendo and decrescendo effects in songs like Blown Away.

Zehnder is like a dancer that goes deep inside himself and allows his body to respond to the music in its own way. He steps outside of the circle of imperfect connections and returns to the stream of his youth. He closes his eyes and sees a world that is completely unlabeled.

And the music he creates is pure and beautiful.

Wandering Shoes opens with a moody cello followed by Zehnder’s circular acoustic patterns that create movement. The music and lyrics co-create an overall meaning of the song. It is a modern folk/blues shuffle that points to the glory and adventure of the road. This kind of music is subversive as it represents freedom of thought and expression. Zehnder writes about his longing and restless spirit and a terrible sense of losing his muse, feeling uninspired and disheartened:

“I roam this mighty country
I stand motionless in the Great Lakes
When I conquer you
I’ll be delivered from these blues
And I can throw way these wandering shoes”

Zehnder’s song repeats the theme of longing and with each repetition he goes deeper inside himself beyond the normal and rehearsed way we conduct our lives or sing our songs.

Gotta Move is another travel song, an adventure without a road map. Spin the bottle and follow the neck. A soft whispered intro segues into a powerful electric lead trills using the bass strings for a deep-end sound that underscores the urgency in the lyric;

“Dripping Heat in a dusty room
I’ve gone and burned my bridges in the wind
But she’s a friend I cannot lose
So I’m putting on my hat
I got to Move
She don’t like it
But I gotta Move”

Bible Belt is an irresistible country rocker with cool cat rockabilly guitar and a walking bass line. Zehnder does country-emo on this cut. He almost screams the lyrics. Zehnder sings with such an emotional intensity he pulls you into the dark nasty of mid-Michigan, you can almost smell the rot. His lyrics are a rebel yell that underscores his tangled emotions.
“Say Goodbye to the good times

Buckle down for a damn long ride
Put down the moonshine pick up the red wine
Find yourself a trophy wife
BUT I WON'T!"

Blown Away and Stranger are about different aspects of loneliness.
Stranger is written from the perspective of the reptilian brain –
Can I eat it? Can it eat me? Can I have sex with it?
Zehnder shakes off the blues like you do the rain but it ain’t that easy. Sometimes it feels rather desperate:

“I don’t care if it breaks my heart
If I lose my mind
I’m finding love tonight”

Stranger evokes the sadness and longing in being alone…

“Take this empty seat
It never stops reminding me
Of the vacancy…

Stranger, Stranger
Don’t walk away
Lend me your ear
Tell me your name
Are you lonesome, lonesome
In the flashy parade
Thousands of eyes
But not one can relate”

Goosedown Misery is an existential bump and grind wrapped into a country two step, a wall of sound filled-in by a powerful Hammond B3 background and syncopated be-boppin’ guitar trills up front. Zehnder’s lyrics contrast music and poetry with ecstasy and intoxication. He is really speaking to the tension between individualism and wholeness:

“Spare my soul from sleep tonight
Before these dreams replace my life
Please, Please
Give me rest with reckless highs
A picket fence and a faithful wife
Please, Please

Zehnder’s motivation is imbedded in a deeply held belief that we all end up where we belong - our own made end.

Hello Georgia is a country shuffle fueled by some sweet circular chicken-pickin’ country licks by Brandon Harris (a standout player throughout). This is the tune that anchors the themes of this CD – travel, the joys of youth. Zehnder sings it with a tongue-in-cheek irony while that insistent shuffle beat has your toes tapping and chair dancing. Zehnder’s favorite line is a gem:

“Hello Georgia I have yet to meet your friend Carolina
When you’re lonely do you peel away the border?
Go swimmin’ in the warm Atlantic water?
Skip across the islands south of Florida?”

Hole in My Head has an almost hymnal quality. It’s a country waltz with keyboard and guitar combine to create a baroque musical landscape. Zehnder’s tortured faltering reading provides a powerful emotional valence to the lyrical content:

“Silence alone, you put a hole in my head
The lion was kept in her cage
Avoiding the war does it always mean peace?
My how the madness is great
Don’t ask me to lie; never ask me to lie”

Salt Mines. Harris serves up some tasty rockabilly guitar, riffin’ like Bill Kirchen doin’ Don Rich, diesel fueled and bottom heavy. This is exuberant honky tonk boogie-woogie at its rockin’ best. The joyous tongue in cheek refrain is guaranteed to put a smile on your face. We’ve all been there:

“Blowing up the salt mines
Help me rig the dynamite
A perfect plan to be free again
Tell me when the boss is gone
Light the fuse and we can run
Far away from this awful place”

Soul and Song is the conscience of this disc. It neatly captures Zehnder’s celebration of youth and artistic vision while he rejects those who would attempt to suppress creativity. This song has an impressive energy. This is a no nonsense Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe stomper thrust from the rockpile with a brutal force that is both rebellious and joyous. The suit in the song represents any form of authority that stifles original music in favor of big hooks and trite devices, and sells disposable music, quickly forgotten or confused with the next big cliché. The chorus reveals the depths of Zehnder’s anger:

“Dug my records up from the riverbed
Found my guitar dusty in the tool shed
Screaming like a preacher to his crowd”

Two States Ago appears to be a song of travel and escape. It is. But it’s also a metaphor for internal discovery, casting fate to the wind and navigating through uncharted personal boundaries. At some level we all realize that we must face our fears in order to reduce their power over us. Zehnder’s searing vocal gives urgency to the lyric.

“C’mon
Cross the border
Where we’re going, I don’t remember
But I got you and you got me”

‘ Set My Weight on Me is the centerpiece, the heart and soul of Zehnder’s vision. This is a modern spiritual wrapped in a simple sepia-toned piano riff, unfettered and unadorned. Beautiful. Chris Zehnder’s masterpiece.

“Time has me troubled as it starts gaining speed
It demands something better than the life that I lead
I trained like a soldier to fit in the mold
That was cast on my body on the day I was born”

So this is it. A moment of truth. Many others have come before Chris with a similar longing. It’s a common irony that we find our deepest problem and fall in love with it. Loneliness is a problem for Chris but it’s also his strength and his muse. He’s in that golden moment of awareness in which the clarity of his vision creates opportunity. And as he prepares for his show at Pit & Balcony, Chris’ mind wanders back in time. He can smell the air of the home he was born into. And return to steam.

Perhaps it’s a long shot. But you never know…

In the late fifties ‘Ol Mack Vickery was performing in Pontiac playing some sweet country blues at the Drayton Inn, gaining notoriety and getting’ laid on a nightly basis. He had this phenomenal cross-eyed guitarist by the name of Wild Bill Emerson who played left handed and set his guitar on fire years before Hendrix. By the early sixties Mack Vickery and the Driving Band featuring a very young Dick Wagner on rhythm guitar took the nubile and willing coeds at Michigan State University for an extended spree of Dionysian delights and debauchery. As a result, the collective GPA of the class dropped precipitously during the spring semester of ’62. The point of all this is that Vickery summoned up the courage to give up this lucrative gig in Michigan and move lock stock and barrel down to Nashville. He worked the clubs down Printers Alley sold some songs and eventually became a sought after writer, penning hits for Jerry Lee Lewis, George Strait, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and others.

Dreams can come true

Peace
Bo White

11/11/2009

John Krogman Live @ Pit & Balcony
The Real Dear Mr. Fantasy
October 29th, 2009

It seems to me that the staid and stuffy Pit & Balcony is a perfect fit for a rock & roll show. It has a sepia toned charm that is quite…comfortable. It’s like that modest house you grew up in, a little beat up and rough around the edges. But it was home and it provided the landscape for all your growing pains and all those necessary losses such as moving away and getting older. The Pit is like that raggedy old house, despite its pretensions - it ain’t Broadway for sure and it’s more Full Monty than bourgeois, at least sometimes.

The Pit seats at least 200 people and it was jammed. It was a homecoming of sorts for the AHHS class of 1974 - undefeated in football, unparalled in audacity and proud of it. It was one of the most cohesive graduating classes ever to grace the halls of Arthur Hill. They and their coaches created a tradition of sports excellence that actually began several years earlier when Krogman and many of his buddies learned their chops with the Pickles, a local football dynasty created by John Picard, a driven if not demented youth football coach who broke the mold by yelling, screaming and hitting kids back in an era when the rest us were being coached by our mothers… ’cos our dads had to work - one income families. Imagine that. The most compelling memory I have of the class of 1974 is that the girls were drop dead gorgeous (and taller than me) and the guys were casual cool and not in a hurry.
It had to be a once-in-a-millennium genetic blip.

But just as many of us were there for the music – those wondrous Krogman anthems that fueled our dreams and fantasies back when we were young and single and stayed up late, way past 9pm. In some respect Krogman’s big band performance gave us all sense of legitimacy. We were right about him all along. It was more than youthful indulgence, dammit. Krogman’s music had substance and melody and lovely hooks that you could sing-a-long with, dance to and make out like a rabbit looking for its bunny hole. And it holds up well, even after thirty years. The very idea of John Krogman matters. And his recent resurgence validates us almost as much as it does John Krogman. His long career mirrors our own struggle and reminds us of our regrets. If only I would have…

Ultimately Krogman’s music cradles our collective memory around a certain period of time when we were teetering on the cliff-edge of discovery and finding our balance.
The world was ours.

This concert went a long way in bringing us back together to celebrate ourselves and each other and honor the career of one of our greatest minstrels.
Roll over Beethoven give Dick Wagner the news!

The outrageously talented John Vasquez opened the show to a polite yet warm response. But he is the future. We want what’s ours. Bring on Rockin’ Johnny…

When it was Krogman’s turn, the boomers in the audience crowed their delight. Like having a conversation in the kitchen with an old friend, members of the audience would speak directly to Krogman - kid, cajole, crack an inside joke and make obscure references. Krogman would roar back like a barrel-chested curmudgeon - and then smile and wink and nudge us just a little… “I’m really a teddy bear.” This was a love-fest between old friends. And the good vibe came showering down in waves. John was smiling a mighty smile, never seen him smile so much. It must have been glued on or something. . I’m not saying he was over-the-top excited but he had more facial tics than Harpo Marx on a Stelazine highball. The show was certainly not staged or choreographed. This was the real deal not a Hanna Montana or Paul McCartney concert where every note and every conversational aside is over-rehearsed. It’s like when someone asks how you are and you say fine and you drift into sports talk. B-O-R-I-N-G.
It is refreshing to hear great music performed with a warts and all spontaneity that scaffolds authentic emotion.

John opened the show with a homegrown song entitled Timothy Williams, a little acoustic ditty about freedom from rules and letting it all hang out. Krogman drew his inspiration from a Manwich commercial that posits there are no rules when you scarf down that sweetened gooey burger – just slop it down and let it drip from your grubby little paws you pre-pubescent microscopic monster-kids. Mom won’t mind. After all it’s Manwich!! Great tune. To this day Manwich is a comfort food for me like BBQ chips and chocolate.

Early on Krogman acknowledged Neil Young as his musical inspiration and credited his old friend John Van-Benschoten as a guitar mentor. He then proceeded to CSN&Y us with a straining Don’t Let it Bring You Down, rough and ragged just how I like it. But it’s when he dusted off his anthem Red, White & Blue that Krogman hit his stride. He slowed it down with a soft quiet intimacy, his husky tenor revealing a startlingly human dialectic between peace and patriotism, a passionate testimony to the obscure genius of John Krogman.

His colorful rendition of Don Mclean’s Vincent reveals his neural synaptic connection to Van Gogh. John knows the pain and struggle of the creative process. A creative block is pure hell, like a raging migraine that will not let up or give you a moment of peace. This is one of Mclean’s most lyrically descriptive compositions. And Krogman is singing in colors, painting pictures with words and music. Brilliant.

Before John delved into the full band Sling that Mud show, he surprised all of us with a gentle stirring rendition of Cat Stevens’ Father and Son. A Perfect song for the occasion.
Then…the house ROCKED with a big fat sound that took my breath away. It was similar to the body experience I had in 1970 when the Guess Who opened with Bus Rider and Kurt Winter’s slide tore it up.

From the delicious funk of Soft and Sweet to the rock & roll of Raymond Jones, Krogman delivered a sonic blast of sound that was irresistible – machine gun drumming, power riffs, and horns doing Hendrix in reverse without overpowering those trademark Krogman hooks.
Krogman is digging it, swaying back and forth crouching low and air-guitar jammin’ like he was back at the Hill during the lunch time frolic. He even DANCED. No crap. This cat was inspired. It is a curious paradox that a man who professes to see things in black and white can design a pure spectrum of colorful imagery in his minimalist musical anthems - even with the darker pieces such as Sling that Mud.
Krogman dedicated Sinatra Hours to Link Wray, the cat that invented the power chord. This is electric horn-based Chicago blues at its best. It rocks hard.
Shadows of Night contains one of Krogman’s more obscure references, He tells the story of being fired by the Pub and feeling PISSED and wanting to write a song like Tom Waits, a fearless writer that few truly understand.

For me this was a sentinel event for Saginaw. One of our greatest singer/songwriters was given a closer look from the perch of an historic backdrop.
John Krogman’s creativity and his contributions to Saginaw were finally acknowledged.
He is our Dear Mr. Fantasy
This was his night …and ours

Peace
Bo White

10/15/09

John Krogman’s Primordial Earth Songs
aka
Sling That Mud

I’ve known John Krogman for a few years now and I’ve been attracted by his active creative force and almost frightened by his intensity. This cat is all body and heart and his music reflects his masculine energy. His minimalist lyrical style is tell-it-like- it-is, straight to the point without obscure references or metaphors that don’t let you in on the joke. Krogman’s gritty scratchy cool is part of his mystique. People that experience Krogman’s music or performances are naturally drawn nearer and want to be close to him. But he can lose more people and friendships in the span of a solstice than I’ve had in my lifetime. It’s like Jim Perkins once told me, “I don’t form bands because I don’t like people.” We laughed and of course he exaggerated but there is a kernel of truth underneath his statement that resonates for many of us. Including JohnKrogman. I can dig it. I believe in peace and love but I don’t trust people easily.

Holding this long-awaited disc in my hands is, for me, like the first moment I laid my trembling sweaty mitts on the Bossmen’s Anthology CD (1964-67). It took my breath away. I loved Dick Wagner’s primitive country-laced jangly pop music. I put it on the changer, receptive and open and let the music take me back to Daniel’s Den – Baby Boy, Take A Look My Friend, Here’s Congratulations….ah
Now, some may see Wagner as the true mystery man at times arrogant and distant but I see another side, one that is generous and even loving. Rockin’ Johnny lives a similar paradox. He’s plain spoken, does not mince words or suffer fools gladly. But there is always something more like Krogman’s long abiding friendships with Stewart Francke and John Van Beschoten, his love for music. John is a true minstrel whose soul needs to express itself in song and music. John Krogman has found his time and place with Sling that Mud. It may be long overdue but it’s here and now. Listen and rejoice as one of our greatest singer/songwriters has crafted a forum for his muse. Listen….

Soft and Sweet is reconfigured with an old blues progression stolen back in the mid-sixties by the Newbeats for their pop classic Bread & Butter. Producer Stewart Francke plays it straight and true adding lazy horn trills and honky tonk piano. This is rockin’ 12 bar R&B played by some of Detroit’s best and brightest. Krogman is writing about someone we all know. If you look close enough you can see her toughness is her vulnerability. She smokin’ cigarettes, drinking whiskey and riding it hard yet never really hiding her capacity to love well.

Curtis Road is a fired-up mid-tempo rocker, a song with big riffs and a bigger beat. Curtis Road is a metaphor about longing… a wish for a better life, as a tired soul leaves the sparkle of a Bavarian tinsel town only to return to the dirt and grime of the wet nasty – where it gets real. The heavy load is a metaphor for the fear and ennui evoked in a dying city. The minor chord on the bridge gives the music-scape a sense of foreboding. From my perch I’m not sure which city is more frightening.

Sling that Mud is a Louis Jordan Big Band swing and jive. It jumps out and slugs you in the chest and dares you to want more. Krogman’s voice is filtered and thinned out like it’s a radio broadcast giving you the skinny on things that don’t matter like whose doin’ who and what Travolta said on the stand. The music bomps and rolls but the lyrics reveal a darker message – how people talk smack and defile reputations. It is a universal message. We’ve all been there – on each side of it. This mud activates our own internal critic and a judgment you believe (at least partially) to be true about yourself….its a heavy load to carry. The sinister organ and the moaning horn riffs give it a B-movie horror classic vibe. Boris is watching…oooh

Sinatra Hours is a Francke composition, a big band number with a walking bassline and a modern sound that is more bluesy than ‘ol blue eyes swing. It rocks and rolls and it took me home and made me like it. The cool windy city Chicago sound is front and center. The almighty hawk swoops down to fashion a paranoid vision of mistrust and infidelity. This overarching suspicion kills the singer’s peace of mind. It begs the question where have you been. You’ve been nowhere. It’s just the illusion of betrayal, balling Mick and Keef while singing Love in Vain. The sumptuous full bodied guitar trills speed it up. The urgency in the coda reaches fever pitch until it all collapses in exhaustion… whew.

Shadows of Night. This is a Krogman oldie that has aged like a fine wine - a 1945 Red Bordeaux versus a 1970 Ripple. I prefer Ripple. Krogman is doing a straight 12-bar blues with a lyrical theme that recalls youthful extravagance, being just a bit naughty. His husky tenor is huskier now from years in the bars and jook joints. 3 or 4 sets a night. 7 nights a week, mixing originals with the covers, use those classic rock gems by Fogerty and Young to hook the audience then give ‘em Shadows of Night, Come on Down and Into the Sunset. They’ll never know what hit them. And before you know it your songs become anthems.

Live Without Love is a song that exposes John’s most vulnerable side and his most ambivalent lyrical framework. Krogman questions love’s influence on his life…even its very existence. We covet it, pursue it, even pine over it. Then it turns out to be such a disappointment. The ride is a let down and you put the blame on yourself. But you go back to her anyway. When love dies and falls away you may fill up with regret and longing fall into this cold emotional black hole that sucks the life right out of you. But you come back for more. You do not want to be alone… ever. It’s like that primal existential aloneness that a baby experiences in her crib. Alone. Crying in the dark. And not knowing if momma will come and pick her up.

Raymond Jones is a clever take on Beatlemania. What would have happened had this English bloke Raymond Jones had never entered NEMS Department store and sauntered over to the record department and asked about this German 45 rpm entitled My Bonnie by this unknown group The Beatles? This was indeed a history altering event. NEMS was owned by the Epstein family and their wayward son Brian was charged to take care of the records division…he mucked up just about every other assignment, couldn’t do too much damage here. Yet Brian Epstein’s natural curiosity led him to find the aforementioned record and learn more about these oddly-named Beatles. Raymond Jones turned on the world. The rest is history.

The Right One is a mid-tempo rocker with a REM vibe, a jangly Happy Shiny People riff and a variation of the message in Everybody Hurts…Hold On. Krogman’s voice is a wonder, always has been. His singing has an immediacy that is palpable. He is the instrument of his message. It’s between him and his audience, it’s out front like no other instrument can be. Few voices could capture the wordless searching of those who are lost and lonely. But Krogman hits the pocket like Unitas threading the needle. Krogman gets it. The ringing guitar break at the end of the song brushes the musical landscape with a felt sense of pain and awakens the body to the tension. This is something that isn’t “figured out” or analyzed.

Tears of a Clown. This old Motown chestnut is actually John’s tribute to his former band The Flies. They would do it at their shows but would rearrange it dramatically into a cool Ska beat with choppy rhythms and syncopated vocals. Back in the day, John and the Flies loved the Police and the English Beat and The Point, a great Ska band that frequented old town. The Flies would play downstairs at the Fordney Hotel in the Old Town Saloon (formerly the Gaslight) and incorporated all of these influences into their act- pop, punk, reggae – anything was grist for the mill. The Flies did a similar Ska workup by combining the Beatles’ Rain with Rankin’ Full Stop by the English Beat. It was magnificent.

Red, White and Blue closes the disc on a thoughtful and heartfelt note. The tempo is slowed way down from the ’93 version by Johnny & the Boomers (though he’s been slowing it down for years) to great effect. It helps color the ambivalence about doing what’s right when moral issues of right and wrong are uncertain. This is a Desert Storm era song that is both patriotic (I’m ready, ready what I gotta do) and anti-war (I’m hoping to shoot no bullets). It’s a clear-eyed patriotism that considers the human cost of war and it ain’t the rich man paying. A mournful pedal steel underscores the weariness of the message. When will it ever end?

Peace
Bo White

10/16/09

Mandi Layne & The Lost Highway
Drunk in Love
It’s been sometime since the local country scene broke free from its lethrgy and came up with something new. Mandi Layne is a fresh face with a rootin’ tootin’ country rock style that will get you starting out tapping your toes and before long you’ll be dancing, drinking shots and hoopin’ amd a hollerin’ like a young and almost skeltal Johnny Cash doing white crosses and black bennies and staying up days on end just to take it all in. I haven’t heard anthing this exciting since the iconoclastic Charlie Klein and the Honky Tonk Zeros wrote about Hank Williams and told the real story. But Layne…she’s into something bigger. Bigger choruses , bigger hooks and a big rich sound. Kudos to Andy Reed who divined a way to merge Owen Bradley’s vision of modern country music with the style and craft of Phil Spector. Reed is adept at layering sound and building a rich aural landscape that envelope the music. But Mandi Layne and the band deserve much of the credit. They possess spunk and energy and youthful confidence. They have something real that cannot be denied. Layne’s got “it” - an almost indefinable star quality, certifiably hot – an amalgam of Avril Lavigne attitude and the look of Jennifer Love Hewitt. Oh, mama… Let me take you for a ride to new Virginny where the mist the apple blossoms kiss your face and the slight southern breeze brushes your hair. Listen to Mandi Layne and the Lost Highway….

If You Ain’t Wasted opens the disc like a sonic thunderstorm. The fiddle and slide trade off riffs like gun shots. It’s like Duane and Dickie doing Whipping Post or the Black Crowes going seriously country. Layne’s vocal is soulful and nuanced. She’s at once both fresh faced and naughty but hasn’t adopted the worn resignation of living life on the edge and experiencing bottomed out misery. She’s still in control and having the time of her life. When she says “Bring it on Boys” she means it.
These cats can play

Hell Hath No Fury (like a woman scorned) is a countrified salute to Alanis Morissette’s masterpiece (of a woman scorned) Jagged Little Pill. Layne pulls no punches in her exacting vocal tribute to Morissette’s unique stylized intonations. The quietude of the music swells into a loud, angry and powerful statement. Cobain would be proud! There are several tempo changes and the guitarist Barry Forster is brilliant, sounding more like Hendrix than Willie.

The title tune Drunk in Love is quite intoxicating. Great metaphor- eh? But Layne sings it sweet and straight like Reba on a greatest hits tour or Shania doing AC/DC. I love the line “like a warm shot of whiskey lay me down”- don’t quite know what it means but when Mandi sings it, I just say, “ooh, baby, make it a double”. But don’t get fooled by the metaphor, Drunk in Love is a cool love song.

Star of My Life borrows from the Bon Jovi play book with the hook coming straight outta You Can’t Go Back. The lyrics convey the dialectic of a life lived to its fullest - sometimes sad; sometimes funny – but always packed with a lot of action. Right on! The well conceived bridge recalls our ghosts from the nursery…“I keep hearing my daddy’s voice, the bigger they are; the harder they fall. I like the stop/start at the end with that classic countdown...
1-2-3
I NEED YOU
The guitarist plays it like a modern day Thurlow Brown, the cat that showed Levon Helm (The Band) all those bar chords, diminished and augmented things going up and down the neck like nobody’s business!

Brown Bottle Blues is a mid-tempo ballad with minor chord riff. The fiddle and jangly acoustic creates an emotional landscape that holds both longing and the triumph o f the song. The lyrics tell a story about choices. In the end the singer chooses an empowered voice over her lover.

The Simple Side of Life is a perfect companion to Brown Bottle Blues. It’s a minor chord classic that is reflective yet powerful with great close harmonies and a rockin’ Van Halen guitar riff. The protagonist is a little older now and a little bit wiser. The song starts out stark and quiet, a tempo picks up and the instruments buildup and quiet down to accentuate the message – to get back to the simpler pleasures and to remember who we were when we started…when you and I are all we had to do. This is a song about values and integrity and loving honestly. Not easy in this day and age of instant celebrity and mass hypnotic narcissism.

The Biker Song is an elegant up-tempo shuffle (love them shuffle beats) that’s guaranteed to get you off your soggy wrinkled rear-end and up on the dance floor to do the Tennessee two-step and shakin’ it like a jackhammer manhandling a construction worker and he’s liking it. To hell with line dancing, express yourself and do your own thing. The road is a perfect metaphor for the longing in the song. The singer is a risk taker…she got the look and the moxie to explore unchartered waters – to be OK with not knowing. It was pure genius to insert That’s All Right Mama in the coda. I bet Elvis is smiling at the sincere tribute. Excellent song.

NBD is a straight out rocker with a bit of an early Eagles feel. Layne is singing about our necessary losses – like a older sibling coming to terms with the birth of his baby brother and not having mom’s love alone or the loss of innocence (at around age three) when you discover you are a boy and your best buddy Sheila is a girl…yeech – or in this case getting over a failed relationship. Dig the name dropping from New Kids on the Block to AC/DC and Rainbow Brite. She says getting over all these things are no big deal. But when I look back…I’m not so sure. I don’t covet the past but these memories sure can fill me up.

Chinese Monday is a fantastic title that hints the intimacy in the lyric. It’s a modern love song with a husky vocal, echoed and sensual, that suggests intimacy at the same time she signals uncertainty when she is alone. The fear of abandonment – an existential aloneness like an infant crying in her crib, never certain her cries will ever be heard. But this is an adult tangle of love, sex and intimacy, more than a synaptic connection…it’s the meeting of souls.

Greg Kervokian sings like a sober Dickie Betts on Friends & Lovers. He trades off lead vocals with Layne and when they harmonize, the results are exquisite. The stylistic vocal approach has just the right nuance and intimacy to convey an understated libidinal urgency – like magnet to steel. So… we cross the line between friendship and romantic love. But if you been long-time together, married or otherwise you know deeply and certainly that lovers become friends and perhaps it’s this quality of deep abiding friendship that can sustain us when the heat has gone.

She’s Gonna Get a Life is a lush mid-tempo ballad about crossroads and courage. This is the perfect vehicle for Layne to display the power and range of her incredible pipes. It’s never easy to change your life, even if it is necessary or even the right thing to do. This song’s ending question is really a statement question… life begins at the end of the rainbow - down I-75 south to Tennessee. More pop than country, this could be a big hit on adult contemporary.

Runaway With Me is a modern slap dash rockabilly that would fit perfectly in a Social Distortion set list. This tune is irresistible. From my perch this has all the makings of a hit – great hook, lyrics that are joyful with just a tinge of melancholy, perfect close harmonies – a well conceived and skillful performance! Fiddles, barrel house piano and guitar trills tell the story. This is a sing-a-long crowd pleaser anthem of the highest degree.

The closer Straight to Hell is a close cousin to the aforementioned Runaway with Me – is a mid-tempo country outlaw waltz, perfect for line dancing, drinking PBR and screaming HELL YEAH. When Layne sings “I’m going straight to hell – just like mama said” she’s stepping outside her pain and finding her empowered voice. I love this song. It’s bold and defiant and it’s a slap in old mama’s face. That old cracked template ain’t gonna push her around anymore. No shame in the pain. Her soul is free. This is another classic by Mandi and the boys. Instantly memorable.

Check out Mandi Layne and Lost Highway on MySpace and for Pete’s sake buy this CD…it’s the best new music to come down the line in years.

Peace
Bo White

.

10/17/09

The Sights

The Sights are an almost legendary band that hit the Detroit scene about the time that Jack White was getting his stripes. Everything was up for grabs and fame was just a drumbeat away from that lucky break. The scene was exploding with talent and once again the industry looked toward Detroit for the answer. The Sights were part of it all. The had the chops but somehow their brand of power pop rock & roll fell from favor and rootsy garage gained ascendance. They performed with the Zombies and hit New York like a sledgehammer. They were so close. But as partnerships dissolved and personnel changes erupted, the Sights lost their muse and for a moment leader Eddie Baranek lost his energy and the band folded...briefly. Eddie granted this interview as the Sights prepared for a tour of regional clubs and a return to the recording studio

• Welcome back from your brief respite from the scene. Why did you decide to resurrect the Sights?
Because it is fun as hell and I love this band. I am addicted to playing live. I was in the backseat for a few years playing in other people's bands-- bass, drums, lead guitar... which was fun, but didn't fulfill me. I'm back with The Sights to show people real rock 'n' roll-- not manufactured myspace age crap that is passed off as rock 'n' roll.

• I’ve listened to your catalog of music (and YouTube) and I love your melodies and harmonies. And I really love your production style. How did you achieve that big high fidelity sound on How Do You Sleep or Circus?
Thank you, Bo. Your words mean a lot. Our sound is achieved from years of being a record dork, obsessing over 45s and LPs by bands that are forgotten or looked over. We take pride in our music. We don't just record something in our bedroom and throw it up on our myspace, hoping someone will clean it up. The song is first, and within that is the melody. You don't whistle a drum machine beat.

• Close the Door is magnificent it starts out like an obscure song by the Move (Lightning Never Strikes Twice) and the transforms into a full frontal sonic assault like the Kinks on steroids. This seems to be a stylistic approach…complete with instruments going in and out of the mix, tempo changes, heavy metal guitar trills and screaming organ – that mixes well your minimalist tendencies like the sparse Lennon-esque arrangement on Someone Like You. Is this a conscious dialectical approach to song craft?
Uh, err... I think the main theme is that we don't think about it too much. Just let the song come out of you and let it happen. But you did bring up The Move-- their BBC sessions influenced me greatly. The Kinks-- classic songs.

• I really loved your song Joanne, a great Nazz hybrid that pays homage to one of my heroes Todd Rundgren. You take his riff, build upon it and make it something different. I think you are a wizard as well. Is Rundgren an influence? How so?
The Nazz were one of the best 60s U.S. bands doing British-styled power pop. Love the Nazz, but I'll pass on solo Rundgren. As for the wizard bit, well there's a joke in there...

• The Detroit/Ann Arbor nexus has always produced great artists from Jack Scott and Motown to Bob Seger Kid Rock and the White Stripes. How do you explain it?
I've been asked this question a million times. And The Rationals, Alice Cooper, SRC, The Gories, Fortune Records, etc... there is no bullshit in this city. People see right through posturing.

• You broke into the scene about a year after the White Stripes. Did you perform with them? Did they influence you in any way?
That is correct, we were all part of this big group of record geeks. We were drawing from a similar well in that I feel we all shared a distaste for what was current. We existed in this tiny bubble called Detroit-- no worries about doing a showcase for label reps or any of that crap. We just wrote songs, played rock 'n' roll, you know?

• I read that you’ve been inspired by such classic and diverse artists as the Zombies, Big Star, & the Stones. What was it like for you to perform with the Zombies in 2005 @ St. Andrews Hall for Little Steven’s Underground Garage franchise?
Actually, I had met and opened for the Zombies back in 2000 in New York City, on my first trip there. This rock 'n' roll world I live in has afforded me the opportunity to meet a lot of my heroes-- Pete Townshend, Ian 'Mac' McLagan, etc.

• I was at that show and in my eyes it was a tremendous achievement despite the fact that neither the Sights nor the Zombies are “garage” rockers. I like the incongruence between primitive high energy rock and Beatlesque pop (I love both). Was it hard to find a groove performing on the same bill as the Gore Gore Girls, Mooney Suzuki and the Woggles?
Well, you bring up a love of mine as well. The Sights originally began with the idea of trying to blend hard with soft. For example, I loved the pop songs and energy of The Jam but I also had wishes to fit Nina Simone in there. All the while, I was looking to shove some Traffic on top and see what happens. Having the Zombies on a bill with The Sights makes perfect sense to me: songwriting, harmonies. We've played shows all over the U.S. with the Gore Gore Girls, Woggles, and Mooney Suzuki, so it really wasn't that hard to fit in. But you have picked up on some key ingredients of The Sights: blending high energy rock 'n' roll with pop songwriting. Sometimes people concentrate on only one area of sound, like rocking hard. But they lose the fact that a song isn't just a guitar riff through a Big Muff pedal. So when you listen to their songs, you realize they are shit.

• I heard so much about your dynamic live performances yet you seemed a bit subdued on that show…was I missing something?
Haha! Sounds like I must have been missing something!

• I saw a few Detroit folks in the audience that night - M.L. Liebler and Willy Wilson – who’ve performed or brought artists to White’s Bar. They are huge supporters of live music. Have they helped you in any way?
Funny, I will be seeing M.L. in two hours because he is teaching at Wayne State in Detroit. I am assisting him in one of his classes. M.L. is a Sights supporter and fan. He tirelessly supports the arts, writing, and culture in this city. He is a great example of a rock that will always be here championing our town, god bless him for that. Willy Wilson was a big supporter of The Sights since day one. He used to work at Car City Records in St. Clair Shores where I grew up. When I'd walk in the store he would hip me to certain events around town. When we started The Sights I was 16 or 17 years old and didn't know a damn thing. Willy would recommend things by saying "hey there is this festival in Hamtramck...(Blowout)" and we ended up playing the second Hamtramck Blowout and many after. I am blessed because I have had great people supporting The Sights and what we're about.

• I’m glad your back. What is it like to re-establish yourself in the talent-rich Detroit scene? How have things changes or remained the same?
Well, when we started in 1998 we were always the little brothers of the scene. The Dirtbombs, Detroit Cobras, Greenhornes, Hentchmen, Stripes were all older than us. It seemed like I could never get older, no matter how hard I tried! So now I find myself checking out groups and realizing these bands are younger than me. I gotta be honest, I don't get a lot of what is coming out of Detroit these days. A lot of drum machines, pre-recorded noise, etc. What happened? You can't afford to pay your drummer? But that said, there are some moments in Detroit I am digging; bands like The Readies, Lightning Love, Serenity Court, The Barrettes.

• Have you signed with a label? Are you writing new material? recording? Whose producing?
Always writing. Even if there are no plans to record, one must always be writing. But I'm not a discplined guy who says "I will write 15 songs in the next 15 days". I don't sit down and say "today I will write a song about lunchmeat". I like to let the writing dictate itself, don't like to force it. That sounds so cliche, like I'm being sent a divine lyrical pamphlet from God, but it's true. But yeah, we've just finished recording our 4th record. Jim Diamond, who has recorded all our previous records, is at it again. It sounds fucking amazing, and I am very pleased. Lyrically, it is a very honest record, which is scary as well.

• Any last words or comments?
Our 4th record will be out in the next few months. Buy it from the band. We like money.

10/14/09

The Sue White Interview
I’m NOT Retiring; I Just Want a Party

It seems like I’ve known Sue White forever. Though we share a common surname we are unrelated…still I like to think of Sue as a sister. Someone I can always count on. I love and admire her and count her as a true friend. But her legacy is much broader and influential than her influence on me – though former Beatle Pete Best would never have come to White’s Bar without Sue’s quiet back room negotiations with his California agent. In an era in which karaoke and cover bands trumped the efforts of out most gifted and original musicians, Sue continued to write about them and support their unique muse and creative impulses. Sue’s contributions to the local music scene are undeniable. For over 30 years, Sue was part of a cultural vanguard that included people like Frank Patrick, the visionary owner of Daniel’s Den; Bob Dyer and Dick Fabian- the scene-making jocks from WKNX; Dick Wagner the legendary guitarist/singer who began his career in Saginaw clubs, Bob Martin, the iconoclastic editor/owner of Review Magazine, and Eddie Kurth of Bay Music – a historian of the first degree. I believe Sue has never been given enough credit. Now it is her turn in the spotlight.
We love you Sue!

When did you discover you had a knack for writing?
I remember writing – and enjoying writing – in Mrs. Stearn’s English class at Shields Junior High, these dark, haunting stories that she must have dreaded to read.But more telling, I always had a book in my hands. I knew that the ranger stations at campgrounds had a library! Still love to read, and in my experience, the people whose writing I admire most also are voracious readers.

Sue, when did your career path crystallize for you?
It was when I went back to Delta College to study for a job in the medical field that a professor there, Bud Alberda, really directed me toward writing as a career. Jim McGinty was another professor who encouraged me, and so did Joan Ram, who ran the journalism department there. Joan sent me and another student to an internship interview at The Saginaw News, and the editors chose the other girl. Then, a short time later, they hired me! Proves you shouldn’t get too worked up about the bumps in life, huh?And being star-struck, and in love with Steve Perry from Journey, I asked if I could cover the band if it came around. The News said they’d have to see if I could write entertainment, and sent me to cover Iron Maiden. I was hooked for life! (For the record, I still haven’t met Steve Perry.)

Did anyone influence or inspire you to write?
Bud Alberda was really the turning point. Since I went back to college as an adult, with two kids already and a third soon on the way, I was overwhelmed and not at all confident. Somehow he saw something in there and brought it out.

When did you discover your own unique voice as a writer? Do you recall a particular piece that you completed, sat back at the rewrite and said to your self, “I got it. I finally GOT it”!
Ha! Does that ever happen? I keep writing and tweaking and rewriting stories until the editor takes it away from me, which explains how long and rambling some of them become.But I was fortunate in having two good editors, Ken Tabacsko and Janet Martineau, who allowed their writers to have a voice of their own. The rest came from being honestly interested in what I was covering, a double-edged sword because if I wasn’t interested, it was the devil to write. More often, what happens is that I’ll come across something I wrote years ago and think, “Dang, that was good!” and then I feel bad because whatever I’m working on at the time never measures up to it.And if I was really tired when I wrote something, like after coming back from a late, late concert and meet-and-greet at Joe Louis, I never knew whose voice was coming through.The next morning, I’d wake up and read that I played the clarinet! I was in band, but played the sax – after that incident, I always printed out the reviews and read them again the next morning, before deadline.

Did you always work for the Saginaw News? How long did you write for the News? Did anyone mentor you?
After writing for The Delta Collegiate, my first published story was in a weekly – I covered my Brownie troop’s visit to a dairy farm! Then I did some freelance work for the Midland Daily News before I was hired at The Saginaw News, 26 years ago. As for mentors, you really learn something from everyone that crosses your path, don’t you? It’s hard to single one person out, though I always loved Betty Hansen’s columns, and met with her to sound out my dreams. We met at Sullivan’s North, and I was waiting for her in the family dining room. My waitress asked who was joining me and then told me that Betty usually went to the more upscale restaurant in that complex.Sure enough, she was there waiting for me! What a neat lady … she left The News before I was actually hired but she opened doors.

What was the best advice or counsel you received from a colleague, mentor or supervisor?
Make sure your nouns and pronouns agree. Still have trouble with that … you can probably see examples above. Another is realizing that backstage is a touring performer’s personal space and you need to respect that. You don’t walk into the room any more than you’d walk into their home without an invitation. And some things, you learn by experience. It doesn’t pay to argue with the security guys who are bulldogs in protecting that space. If you have a good reason to be back there, just go find someone with the authority to make it happen. It helps, too, to behave yourself so that you are welcome around the next time. Bad behavior might get you a quick scoop but you better hope you never need another one! Larry Grover, who handled security at the old Saginaw Civic Center, taught me that one. I’ve learned so much from so many people, and I’m still learning.

What was your favorite era or time @ the Saginaw News? Why?
It was probably in the 1980s, when we were swept up in the whole amazing world of entertainment for the first time. The 1990s were great, too, when I finally had a feel for what I was doing. Or lately, catching up with old friends and still having fun discovering who’s new.There really isn’t a favorite because each brings something new to the plate. I’m loving what we’re doing right now, blogging from the SYS Fest, for example, and in effect covering the day as it happens, from a laptop on site.And the videos that are coming out of “Catch the Muse with Sue at the News” are fun, too, with the focus on the bands and including live performance shots. I’ll tell you when life is really good – sitting out back at White’s Bar, with Stewart Francke on stage and Pops cooking up some barbecue to the side. That’s the day I just sat back and thought “Geez, I’m being paid to do this!”

Who was your favorite editor? publisher? Why?
Ken Tabacsko, my features editor, hands down. He was the one who hired me, allowed me to grow in the job and became a good friend in the process. We had the happiest corner in the newsroom…Gunnar Carlson was another favorite … he was the paper’s editor when I came in, and he believed in me. That makes a lot of difference; I wish managers everywhere realized the power of an encouraging word. You’d fall on the sword for those people.Rex Thatcher by far was my favorite publisher. We were talking about him again the other day, how he really pulled us together as an organization and made us all feel as if we were part of its operation. He was pure class. We have a good group of people calling the shots right now. Jodi McFarland, Carol Zedaker and John Hiner have a lot of vision; you get swept up in their enthusiasm. When I was still in the newsroom, it felt like being on the team that plays harder when it’s shorthanded. And I still get to do the work I love, writing about the musicians, the people around here who make a difference, the arts …. Life is good!

What are your views of the changes and current status of the Saginaw News?
If we can survive the transition, I think you’re going to see what is possible … very exciting times! We post a story on mlive.com/Saginaw, our readers create a dialogue through the comments, we join in, and we can throw in videos such as “Catch the Muse” to fully capture what we’re talking about. It’s been interesting, too, to see what it has brought out in different people. Jodi McFarland is a good example … as community editor of The Saginaw News, she is dancing fast, orchestrating the coverage as the business reinvents itself almost daily. It’s been fun to watch her take ownership of the post.As with all businesses going through these times, you wonder in hindsight why we didn’t see earlier the changes that might have prevented the downsizing, etc., but maybe nothing would have prevented it.We’re certainly not alone in this!

What do you think about dissemination of information through internet? Has it totally co-opted and changed the way we gather information and learn in a negative way – are we too plugged in?…or is this a positive thing? Can this explosion of info-minutiae be harvested for the common good? Can hard copy survive – newspapers, books, magazines and journals?
Wow. I think the Internet is firmly in place, just as surely as the first cars took over the roads. It’s not going to go away, folks. The big trick now is to set ourselves aside, as a news providers, from the flood of information – and misinformation – that comes from people with an agenda or without a clue.I love the Internet for plugging in lyrics and coming up with a song title – my personal challenge – and hearing the bands on YouTube before I interview them. And you can’t ignore the way the doors it opens for musicians, to put themselves and their music out there for the world instead of depending on a major record label to do it for them.But as you point out, the explosion of info-minutiae calls for someone to step forward and sort through it for us. It’s going to be interesting to see who does that and how they do it.Then there’s the billion-dollar question – how do you make it pay?And I don’t see hard-copy completely disappearing any time soon, though it will become the vinyl of the print world. People still love to sit down and read something, but I have a feeling the immediacy and widespread availability of the Internet will make it the primary source for news.

We all know you as an entertainment writer but you’ve done much more. What is form of journalism do you prefer?
It sounds so cliché, but I love people. That includes entertainment, getting to know the people making the music and the teachers who are so great in the classroom that their students take the time to write about them in the Crystal Apple Awards and the lady who crochets a new afghan for every family who moves into a Habitat for Humanity house. In reading back over that, I realize that it’s the passion for life that intrigues me. There’s a new fellow at work, Michael Wayland, who’s working on the “Catch the Muse” videocasts and he was just saying the same thing, that we have this wide variety of musicians already taped, from polka to hard rock to good listening music, but it’s as if they all come full circle, to the same love of music.It’s the same way with my favorite stories … they’re all about people who love life. (And a fortunate side effect – it’s catching!)

You’ve met and known a lot of famous people. Who are your favorites? Any bummers? Do you have any unusual stories about the rich and famous (rock stars)?
Oh, the stories! My friends joke about who I’ve kissed lately …. I do seem to get a lot of hugs and kisses. One of my first was a big kiss from Jon Bon Jovi, and then I told him how my sister would kill for one of those.That was years ago … he was opening for Ratt at the time, I think. Then a few months ago, my granddaughter saw Bon Jovi on TV and said that was the man she wanted to marry some day.Without thinking, I told her that I had kissed him before, on the lips, and that was the end of her crush. Apparently, the image was too cruel to imagine.Speaking of Bon Jovi, I remember sitting with songwriter Desmond Child in the lobby at WIOG, and he pulled out his guitar and played “Living on a Prayer” for me. While Bon Jovi performed it as an anthem of sorts, Desmond wrote it in a far more reverent sense, performing it that day like a hymn. That’s a moment I cherish, even more than a kiss. I met Paul McCartney, my own schoolgirl crush, and afterwards, you wouldn’t believe the number of people who argue with me about how tall he is! We were right there, standing nose-to-nose, yet fans will pull out those old bubble gum trading cards and show me that it says he’s six-foot-whatever. Roy Orbison was the true gentleman, and he’ll always be one of my favorites. We spoke a few times. So is Roger Daltry from the Who … met him twice, and the first time, I stood there speechless. The second time, I decided to figure out ahead what I was going to say, and I bring up a guy who unknown to me had been recently convicted of crimes against children in the Far East.After the thunderclouds cleared from his face, Roger was very charming again. He’s really great. And when he stood behind Pete Townshend during that pornography probe, I knew Pete was innocent. I had seen for myself what Roger thinks of those kinds of people! Comedian Sam Kinison was always special to me. We would talk for hours about religion and life in general, deep discussions with a very intelligent, spiritual man. One time, we were on the phone for four hours, and when he came to Saginaw, he had the guys from the hosting radio station take him to a flower shop and he bought me a dozen red roses. I still have them, dried, in a little wicker basket. I miss him a lot.Another comedian I love is Steven Wright. He’s a genuinely nice guy. Same with Larry the Cable Guy, who is very intelligent. You don’t have the success he’s had without some smarts.Talking about religion, George Carlin and I had a long discussion on the same topic before his last show in Saginaw, and in the end, we amicably agreed to disagree on our beliefs. Soon after, he died, and I always wondered if maybe our conversation gave him something to think about. God works in mysterious ways.There weren’t many creeps through the years, thankfully. Axl Rose comes to mind; he was not very nice. What I’ve found interesting, too, is that the people who cling to the last shreds of their fame sometimes are the most arrogant. It’s not always the case, but often …Then you have the Rolling Stones. I went to Detroit with my little sister to pick up my press credentials, and while the Detroit papers had camped outside the hotel for days, hoping to get a few words from one of the guys, we stood in the hall with Bill Wyman and talked for a long time.It was years later that the reason for our good luck popped into my head. My sister, about 16 at the time, looked like a blonde, blue-eyed Barbie doll, and Wyman was notorious for dating and marrying girls hardly out of their teens. And I haven’t even touched on Alice Cooper feeding my kids candy corn on his tour bus, Ted Nugent calling my mother-in-law to give his condolences after my father-in-law died, so many more …

Can you tell me about the most memorable concerts you covered? How was it that a particular show resonated for you? What did it mean to you?
There was a Billy Ocean concert years ago, and I can’t remember much about it now but at the time, I thought life doesn’t get any better than this so it must have been good. Kissed him, too.The big country and rock show, This Country’s Rockin’, at the Pontiac Silverdome really meant a lot to me. We had full access so we were backstage with people like Steven Stills and Graham Nash. And everything got backed up, so we were in the front rows at 4 a.m., watching Carl Perkins close the show with “Blue Suede Shoes.” I just remember how cool that felt, feeling the euphoric second wind that comes that late, listening to a legend. It was sweet. I went to the first Farm Aid concert, too. Talk about ground-breaking! We had full access again, and I was sitting next to Martha Quinn from MTV in the front row of the press tent and Mary Hart from “Entertainment Tonight” was behind us. It was so wild, the people we met that day, everyone from Johnny Cash to John Mellencamp and Tom Petty and, again, Jon Bon Jovi. It all seems kind of surreal now.Watching Morgan McMillon and Richard Baskin win the Apollo Theatre award in New York City was another unreal experience. They were so full of wonder and anticipation, and when they hit the stage, they just exploded. It was a beautiful thing to see.And I remember one of the Nick Andros scholarship benefits when this great collection of local musicians came together and jammed. We have so much talent around us, right here in Saginaw.Oh, and Stevie Winwood at the Midland Center for the Arts. Anyone who was there knows why … he’s a master guitarist. So many great concerts … so many great people!

Did you develop any long lasting relationships with any artists in which you keep in touch through letters or email?
Alice Cooper sent Christmas cards for years. For years, my kids thought Uncle Ted (Ted Nugent) was their biological uncle.But what has developed more is an easy bond where, when we get together before or after a show, we get talking as if we’d never been apart. That’s really cool …

Of all the great local bands you’ve covered through the years, which ones standout the most for you? Were there any bands that you thought would make it to the big time but somehow became sidetracked or lost their focus like the Frost or The Paupers?
Favorites? It’s whoever sparked the memory at the moment, and believe me, these past few months, the memories are flooding back.I was talking to Brian from Silverspork the other day, and we were talking about the photo shoot we did years ago from the top of the News building. I love those guys. Sharrie Williams, oh my. That’s probably the story that gives me goosebumps every time I think about it. Mary Washington called me about a single mother living at the projects whose sons were involved in her theater project. She said the mom – Sharrie – started coming around, too, so Mary put her in the play and she told me “You wouldn’t believe the talent this woman has!” The rest is history, of course, but to follow Sharrie down that road has been incredible. We’ve become good friends through the years, too, and she means a lot to me.The guys in the Mick Furlo Band … I remember going to lunch with them one day early in my career, to Zorba’s, and they were all dressed in these very cool greatcoats, and I was hoping someone I knew would drive by and see me walking with them. They looked like something off an album cover … I was so in awe. I even remember what I ordered for lunch … lemon-grass soup. And look where they’ve all gone. If you haven’t seen Mick as Keith Richards in Voodoo Lounge, get to it quick! Mike Brush is such an incredible talent, not only as a performer and songwriter himself but what he brings to anything he joins, and the work he’s done with young people through the years. Loren Kranz is a favorite, too. I tease him about being Saginaw’s Michael McDonald because he pops up everywhere, but the truth is he makes everyone he joins sound better. Donny Brown is the same way … I still listen to the Nick Andros compilation he produced, and he made the local groups sing on that recording! Matt Besey, first as the wonderkid and more recently watching his interaction with Drew Pentkowski. Steve Eckstorm, a friend from Harlet days who has always stayed close.Question Mark – I just love him, and Bobby and Frank Lugo. Brent Grunow, who you’ll see billed as Brent James soon, was another I first met in Ocean Sol, at a concert where the band members’ mothers brought all their table lamps to serve as stage lights.Look how far they’ve come.
And remember Mach? James Owen? Billy Howell? I’ve been so blessed to meet so many great people. Marty Viers, all the way back to Cornbread Jam.
Bo, we could write a book about the great people we’ve seen come through here.
Bo - "Let's do it!!"

What are you doing now?
Typing.

I heard that you are working with Larry McCray. What’s it like for you to be changing gears? How does it feel to open yourself up and begin another phase in your life? Is there a big learning curve?
It’s very, very exciting. I had a sense, when the changes at The News were first announced, that everything I had done to this point was just training for what would come next, and I didn’t even know what would come next then! Two things have helped in working with Larry, remembering what I really appreciated in a good publicist and knowing how to talk “reporter.” The hardest part is balancing what I want to do, photo shoots, etc., with others’ priorities. I want to jump right in and do it all!And I’m working with Ricardo Verdoni, too, on his video projects. That’s been fun, and a totally new experience.There’s always something to learn, and I hope that never changes. The best part of my whole career has been never knowing for sure what each day would bring, and that’s still the case. Now I have the best of two worlds … I still write for The News, as a freelancer, so I can cover the scene I love, and I have ventures that open a new future to me. And I’ve very careful that the two don’t cross … you won’t see me writing a Larry McCray story for The News now.People have always said they appreciate my credibility and I don’t take that lightly.

Let me tell you that you are fabulous and your gentle love and kindness is a true inspiration. Any last thoughts or comments?
I’m not even sure how to put this in words, but the truth is that I’m the fortunate one, and I have a feeling most of the others would tell you the same thing. To start with a love of music and then to be allowed to immerse yourself so completely in the scene, even when you can’t carry a tune in a bucket and people would pay you to stop playing the sax, is unbelievable. My grandfather was a Big Band drummer, and more importantly, he loved music. His fingers were always drumming out a rhythm to whatever I was playing at the time. And there’s so many times through the years that I’ve wished he was still alive and could be there and get into the conversations you have sitting on a bench in the dimly lit backstage. When Robert Plant came to Saginaw years ago, he was alone onstage, just playing his guitar for himself, and I was the only one in the arena, sitting high up in the seats, staying really quiet so he wouldn’t notice me and kick me out.Then he saw me, smiled, nodded, and went on playing for himself. It was like we both knew what this is all about. That’s what the greatest of the local bands have done for me, given me the nod, let me in the circle and share that with everyone else. I’m the lucky one; God has blessed me with an embarrassment of riches in the friends I’ve made, including you.

LETS PARTY!!!!!

With Warmest regard and love
Bo White

An Unenlightened Materialism
And the Quest That Doesn’t Satisfy

Sports is the last unscripted form of entertainment in America –Jim Bouton

Ronald Blum’s headline registered an almost mild indignation “Steroids different from other cheating in baseball”. It’s a syndicated piece that’s long on statistics but short on heart. Blum’s minor effort was prompted by the 50 game suspension of Los Angeles Dodger superstar Manny Ramirez - guess Manny just being Manny doesn’t work anymore. Seems that Ramirez was caught using HCG during compulsory testing in spring training. Oops…this is a multi-million dollar mistake for Manny. He is truly a modern superstar and it seemed possible that he could match or surpass some of the records established by Bonds. This flagrant error in judgment just may cost him an otherwise well-deserved spot in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.

But what does it say about professional baseball, or even more importantly, what does it mean to you and me. For the baseball establishment, the epidemic of “juicing” is a voice it swallowed fifteen years ago and it made them choke and sputter and genuflect solemnly about a return to values. Commissioner Bud Selig and Players Association head Marvin Miller (and others) vowed to rid MLB from the scourge of steroids and performance enhancing drugs. Both sides rode the fence yet presented the illusion of having control and understanding of the problem - and following some vague set of rules. Though this attempt at self-regulation seemed almost sincere it soon became clear that it was clearly disingenuous. There was more at stake…money, lots of money. For me – as a fan – it felt like I was the proverbial prodigal son wishing to come back home and smell the air of the house he was born into. But the house is in disrepair and the air is stale from decay. Baseball had changed. It wasn’t the new stadiums or modern uniforms, it was something intangible –the integrity and character of the game itself.

It just doesn’t hold up that juicing, engineered excellence and multi-million dollar salaries could be more than a footnote in the history of Major League baseball. It seems cut against the grain of my understanding of baseball and my experiences playing the game…the smell, the feel, the voices that once resonated brilliantly no longer seem real. There was humor – irreverence. Baseball was actually FUN. Like Casey Stengel falling asleep in the dugout and waking up in time for the 7th inning stretch and charming the press afterwards with pearls of wisdom such as, “I never make predictions, especially about the future.” Yogi Berra was always quotable. During a game when the Yankees were taking a beating, he exclaimed, “It gets late early out there”. After a particularly tough losing streak, Yogi told the press, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” Political correctness had not yet subdued Mickey Mantle’s drinking, Jimmy Piersall’s jumping into the stands for a donnybrook. In 1962 a Detroit Newspaper published a photo of Reno Bertoia standing just outside the dugout – GASP – smoking a cigarette!!!

In 1971 Detroit Tiger superstar and future Hall-of-Famer Al Kaline turned down a $100,000 contract citing that he didn’t have a very good year in 1970 and didn’t deserve the raise. I remember professional baseball players like Vic Wertz coming into White’s Bar on the off season making a few bucks stumping for the hospitality industry. Baseball was the bread and butter of the workingman athlete – but nobody got rich (except for a few of the owners). Today’s professional athletes are the new centurions, modern gladiators that fulfill the promise of a consumer society and keep us happy and distracted - except when things go wrong - and for Major League Baseball things have been wrong for a long time…

I recently read Howard Bryant’s Juicing The Game, a brilliant treatise on drugs and power in professional baseball. It was published in 2005 but it reads like it was released yesterday. Bryant links Professional Baseball’s ongoing struggle with juicing to the malaise that overtook our national pastime in 1994 and the role of Marvin Miller, the head of the Player’s Association since 1966. Miller had changed the playing field of professional baseball by his skilful negotiation strategies and hard won labor disputes that put player and owner as equal partners for the past 25 years. But in 1994, the owners’ goal was to break the union and regain control of professional baseball. It is important to note that when Miller began representing baseball players in 1966, the minimum salary was $6000. From 1947 to 1966 the minimum had been $5000 - twenty years without a significant pay raise. With Miller’s arrival and ascendance all that changed and he became known as one of the most powerful men in baseball history, heading up the most powerful union on earth. In 2009, the minimum salary for a major league ball player is $400,000; the average salary is $3,240,206. These are impressive numbers that represent not just Miller’s successful negotiation strategies but the growing animosity between the owners and the union. Miller was riding the crest of a wave, that is, until the strike of 1994. His greatest strength was also his Achilles heel.

This proved to be Major League Baseball’s sentinel event, arguably more destructive than the 1919 Black Sox scandal and the cocaine scandal of 1985. The baseball strikes of 1972, 1976, 1980, 1981, and 1985 registered only minor blips on the radar screen of public opinion. But the 1994 debacle shook baseball to its very core – no playoffs and no World Series. The public, already growing bored with the pace of the game, were changing allegiances to the more fast-paced sports such as football, hockey and basketball. Baseball was old and tired and the younger generations no longer saw it as our National Pastime. To them it was just another sport – and a rather boring sport as well. The Major League Baseball establishment realized that they would have to do something to get fans back into the ballparks. So things happened, new hitter-friendly ballparks were constructed, the bats were made of harder wood, the size of strike zone was reduced. It was felt that home runs and high scoring games would be more exciting for the fans. So, the owners seemed to tacitly approve the juicing era, avoiding regulation of performance enhancing drugs yet making public statements to the contrary. As all hope for a 1994 World Series faded, President Clinton signed the Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act (DSHEA), a bill that would offer consumers greater choice of medicinal products and shifted the burden of proving product safety from the manufacturer to the FDA. This resulted in the growth of an almost unregulated multi-billion dollar supplement industry that produces muscle building products that would soon become popular with athletes across the globe.

The seeds of the juicing scandal were planted.

Baseball was always known as a skill sport. When I played baseball for Arthur Hill High School in 1969 and 1970, weight training was strictly forbidden. It was the culture at the time that posited weight training would make you less flexible, impair coordination and reduce bat speed. This was the mantra handed down from professional players to college campuses and then to high school athletes. However, in the late sixties and early seventies professional players began to embrace weight training and strength building even though it was forbidden by club policy. You may remember Detroit Tiger catcher Lance Parrish in the 1980’s. He was strong and he lifted weights openly. He was considered the exception to the rule. Generally, baseball never considered that muscle-building supplements would be useful to ball players, that, in fact, they felt it would not enhance a player’s skills.

Brady Anderson would change that perception dramatically. He was one of the first players to use creatine, a dietary supplement that had been used for years in power sports such as football and weightlifting. It became an ideal aide for baseball as it enhanced adenosine triphosphate or ATP that is produced naturally in our body and is responsible for quickness, going from inaction to action. This was especially important in enhancing speed and strength, elements essential to a good hitter. Anderson was a relative unknown until his astonishing performances that stretched unabated from 1992 to 1996. In his first year using creatine, Anderson raised his batting average by 40 points, hit 21 home runs and scored 100 runs (he hit only ten homers in the previous four seasons). He was an anomaly, a leadoff hitter who hit home runs and struck out a lot. He was no Maury Wills. He was an out-of-phase template for later leadoff hitters such as Ricky Henderson. This was Oakland A’s Billy Beane’s inspiration for his Moneyball Philosophy, in which you focus on a player’s undervalued traits (e.g., strength) in order to gain a competitive edge when most organizations favored the five-tool player (run, throw, catch, hit and hit for power – these types of players were rare and very expensive).

But for a moment let’s step back to 1983, Jose Canseco was a skinny 185 pound 19 year-old going nowhere in Class A ball. He wasn’t even on anyone’s radar for being a potential major leaguer let alone the swaggering rookie of the year phenomenon in 1986. Canseco’s life-altering sentinel event was his demotion to a lowly farm team in Modesto Oregon. It was here that he embraced steroids. By 1985, he weighed 230lbs and could run like a deer and hit for power. He was what some pundits called a 40-40 player – 40 home runs; 40 stolen bases. Canseco became a superstar celebrity, shaking the moneymaker with Madonna and hangin’ tough and loose in Manhattan.

The Juicing era had taken legs and as Canseco later reported, most everyone was doing it to some extent. Sure, he may have been exaggerating. After all, he fell hard from his self-proclaimed pedestal as his abilities declined too quickly. He was reduced to a limited role in baseball and he grieved the loss of his glory days. He was ridiculed and shunned by his former teammates and the press especially after the 2005 release of his incendiary and vindictive book Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant Roids, Smash Hits and How baseball Got Big. He blew the whistle and named names – big names. By now you’ve heard them all.

The markers for what was once attributed to baseball’s renaissance are now symbols of its rot
• Barry Bonds 762 home runs, 7 time MVP. Bonds is facing criminal perjury charges.
• Roger Clemens 354 wins, seven-time Cy Young winner. Clemens is being investigated for perjury.
• Mark McGwire 583 home runs. His evasive testimony during a House of Representatives subcommittee investigation forever tarnished his reputation.
• Alex Rodriguez, one of baseball’s greatest players tested positive for steroids in 2003. A recent book claims that Rodriguez is a long term user and has lied about the extent of his drug use.

Sports broadcaster Bob Costas was quoted in a syndicated piece shortly after Manny Rodriguez suspension. “Everyone sees what happens with steroids. Great players became superhuman. Good players became great. Marginal players became very good. It’s a huge difference maker. It’s a career changer. It’s a career extender, and in the era of big money, many players see it is worth the risk because there were tens of millions of dollars to be made.” So is that what it all comes down to…greed? What about MLB’s fascination with the record books or the Hall of Fame? Does juicing diminish the accomplishments of these great athletes? Does it require a footnote next to their record performances?

Perhaps it just points out what we already know. Playing baseball does not necessarily build character. And if you accept the premise that baseball is merely unscripted entertainment then maybe those wonderful accomplishments listed in the record books don’t really matter. We can still marvel at the excellence of these incredible athletes. We can thank them for the memories and the good times. We might just as well enjoy professional sports for what they really are… Bread and Circuses.

Peace
Bo White

Deconstructing Rothbury

Only in its second year, the Rothbury Festival is gaining a reputation as one of THE major summer music events in Michigan. It’s no wonder with heavy hitters like Bob Dylan, The Dead and Willie Nelson headlining the event with over 60 other acts, many of whom are stars in their own right. This year’s attendance was estimated to be about 36,000 with a paid attendance of 33,700. There’s gold in them hills, brother.

After following MapQuest directions to a “T”, my son Ryan and I were hopelessly lost for what seemed to be an eternity until a kindly native pointed the way. I followed a burgeoning traffic jam into an empty non-descript field not sure I had reached my destination - there were no signs , banners or billboards that proclaimed this modest field to be the mighty Rothbury. But it was indeed the entrance to the soon-to-be legendary site. I was pumped and primed and ready to go. But much to my dismay I soon discovered that my campsite was not in a campground but in a muddy field and we were shoe-horned into a small area, within feet of at least 12 other small tents and sleeping bags. It housed 14, 000 automobiles and 500 RVs - very intimate - the kind of squeezed intimacy you reserve for laboratory rats - gimme some cheese ‘cos I don’t care. I’m here for the music and I’ll commune with my brothers and sisters in the spirit of peace and love. I’m letting my freak flag fly - ‘cept… I’m the fly in the freak sherbert. I stood out like Mommar Khadafi kneeling at the synagogue. Freaks would walk by and NOT offer me any acid or dope. That’s how straight I am. I’m just too transparent - every ounce of my being looked and smelled and walked straight. Don’t they know that 35 years ago I was cool and got stoned and turned on?

Hmm…so after I arrived and unpacked I called Bob Martin from Review Magazine. I knew he was at Rothbury on a Press Pass. I dialed and it went into voice mail…
“Hey Bob…this is Bo. Just got in. I’m in the back over by this huge Grateful Dead banner…only one on the grounds. Give me a ring and we’ll hook up. Oh…by the way, don’t do the brown acid. Peace…Bo”
He never called back.

No matter. I was busy planning a busy itinerary, at least four bands each day – Jackie Greene, Son Volt, the Black Crowes and the Dead on Saturday; Toots & the Maytals, Willie Nelson, Ani Difranco and Bob Dylan on Sunday.

In the meantime I was diggin’ the Peace & Love vibe. Flags and banners proclaiming peace on earth, tie-dye and body painting, nudity and altered states of consciousness …right next door to an ATM. The jewelry dealer plays loud funky jams and Ahli Babas has all the latest in Grateful Dead raiments. Wormtown, Pure Funk and Family Silver take credit cards and various food vendors gladly sell you a $4 cup of coffee but don’t pinch you for cream and sugar.
That’s just the licensed vendors.

In thge midst of the muddy campground free-form capitalism prevails, everything is for sale and the prices are better. Coffee, beer, tacos, omelets – no problem. Hash, coke, columbian, mollies, rolls, headies - anything goes. Buy some jewelry and get a free beer or a lighter. Rothbury and Grateful Dead T’s were only $10, half the price of the licensed vendors. A caste system seemed to evolve almost immediately– the wealthy and entitled had huge campers and RV’s. Some had back stage passes; the middle class sites were neat and clean with expensive tents and rigging for showers. The ghetto was sleeping bag-on-the-ground dirty. The inhabitants did not bathe and were drinking PBR doing speed and smoking cheap dope. They would stay up all night, never sleeping, greeting the morning red-eyed and incoherent, screaming obscenities and selling anything that was not nailed down. They never seemed to budge from their perch or attend the shows.

Guess Peace and Love has a down side.

Somehow I landed feet first amongst all the mirth, mire and mayhem.
Couldn’t miss it; Couldn’t ignore it.

I had to walk through it every time I wanted to see a show or use a shower or a portable toilet. It took 30 minutes just to reach the gates to the festival, another 20 minutes to find the stage. It was a good workout and proved to be physically exhausting especially in the relentless summer heat that kindled and sparked throughout Rothbury on July 4th. Shade was at premium and it could only be found in its cooling glory at Sherwood Forest, a section of tall pines filled with hammocks, soft music, eco-friendly sculptures and otherworldly lighting. It was HEAVEN. We would use it as a respite, a temporary reprieve from the uncompromising sunshine and heated-up air.

July 4th was a glorious day for music. Jackie Greene opened my day with an energized set. I first get to know Greene through Sal Valentino, the legendary singer of the Beau Brummels. They did a Dylan tribute CD a few years and that’s when I discovered the absolute truth of ISIS, the goddess/harlot we all desire but never possess. Greene opened the show with Don’t Let the Devil Take your Mind, a throbbing insistent rocker with big hooks and great vocals. Greene’s got it all – a fantastic singer with good pitch and tone and a fine guitar slinger. This is one of the best jaw-dropping super-sonic openers since I saw the Guess Who open with Bus Rider in 1972. From the soulful “Farewell, So Long Hello” to a funked up version of the Beatles “Taxman” and the blues rockin’ closer “Like a Ball & Chain”, Jackie Greene displayed a superstar talent. He stole the show! I haven’t been this fired up about a band since 1971 when the Eagles played Pine Knob and I sat behind Glen Frey’s father. It was an absolute hoot and the Eagles were still young and full of piss & vinegar, rocking their asses off - not like the lame show they did at Tiger Stadium 20 years later, going through the motions and selling cars and joining Bob Seger in a musical purgatory so deeply self-indulgent that it reaches down to the first five circles of hell. The Heat is On is every bit as good as Shakedown.

And I mean it.

Son Volt was also one of the musical heroes of the event. The leader Jay Farrar helped ignite the alt-country movement with his band Uncle Tuepelo. His show was a countrified tour-de-force with a big full rockin’ sound provided by the prominent use of pedal steel and lap steel, fiddles and organ. The aural landscape is breathtaking and Farrar’s vocals are strong and central to the mix. I didn’t know his music prior to watching his performance but one of the highlights for me was Cocaine and Ashes, Farrar’s tribute to Keith Richards. It seems that when he heard that Keith cut some cocaine with his father’s ashes and then snorted them, Farrar was inspired to write a song about it - a son’s oddly compelling gesture of love for his father.

The eagerly anticipated Black Crowes performance drew a big crowd and the opening was electric with a percussive groove like Santana doin’ Soul Sacrifice at Woodstock. Good vibe. The Robinson Brothers are a compelling presence. Chris is a fine soulful singer with good range and brother Rich is an exceptional guitarist (influenced by both Nick Drake and Duane Allman – whew). The band is expert at creating tension in the interplay between instruments – guitar, drum and organ and building excitement through soft or quiet musical interludes followed by a thunderous roar of guitars. There is a harder edge to their sound and more improvisation. They won the crowd over with familiar songs such as Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution and Jealous Again but my favorite was a new song, the rocking I Ain’t Hiding. Still…it seemed that I couldn’t quite connect to the Crowes. Maybe it was their soulless formulaic proficiency and the lack of spontaneity that got to me. Like a metronome, no one missed a beat. Ultimately, the Black Crowes undoing was having nothing new to say.

The Dead ended the night and what a night. The Odeum was packed with barely an empty yard of grass visible underneath the sea of people standing throughout the performance. It was spectacular though it started slowly with a pointless meandering jam that segued into Sugar Magnolia. The myth may be greater than the band but the performance was electrifying. Especially for those who altered their consciousness. It is what you believe it to be. So what’s the buzz about? It’s about the buzz, stupid. As is typical for the Dead, the singing is often off key. And when they harmonize, different voices go sharp and flat at the same time. Cool effect. And I loved it. Warren Hayes proved to be the linchpin of the Dead. He can do it all. He is a fantastic guitarist and a strong singer who does not drift off key, a splendid replacement for the much loved and missed Jerry Garcia. Other notable songs include the wondrous crowd pleaser Friend of the Devil, I Know You Rider, Loose Lucy (with a great Haynes vocal) and Morning Dew. It was a good show despite the mythology. I hope we hear more from the Dead.

Sunday July 5th. Get up at 6am. I’m cold from the overnight chill. Coffee. I need coffee. I’m still dressed shoes and all. I get up and walk toward the sun. As my eyes regain their focus and as I look around I gradually realize that I’m not alone. There must be hundreds of people milling about…maybe a thousand or more – they are roaming the site, most are intoxicated or wired on something. Several young men are dirty and disheveled, some are shirtless. A few young men and women who are holding fresh cans of PBR stop to vomit and continue their aimless driven journey. Several women are squatting out in the open to relieve themselves, portable toilets just a few yards away. Some are talking to themselves; some are singing. Some approach me and begin talking an incomprehensible language. They have been up all night without sleep. There is a group of all night ravers and coma-brain road cannibals pounding congas and loudly chanting, a young woman is straddling a giant inflatable phallus with the inscription “Ice Cold Herpes”. She is dancing somewhat rhythmically, curiously lacking the intended erotic tension. I just look at them and turn away… and pick up my pace. I’m a bit frightened by these sights and sounds. I see these young men and women, not much more than children amble away in red-eyed pursuit of an American illusion- this communal spirit of peace and goodwill.
I believe it still exists. But you have to look hard for it… real hard.

Toots & the Maytals opened up the day @ 1:45pm. Toots is the cat that coined the term reggae. Toots is a consummate showman who uses every trick in he book – drops names, makes dedications, uses call and response, sing-a-longs, shameless self-promotion, and sincere insincerity directed to the audience e.g., “you are so beautiful you look so marvelous…you make me want to SING”. But he’s the real deal. He has the crowd eating out of his hand with “Reggae Got Soul”, Funky Reggae, and a funked-up reggae-fied version of John Denver’s Country Roads. The crowd is dancing and throwing Frisbees, digging the mellow rasta vibe. He sings, “You know who I am; I wanna know who you are”. He is a master of improvising much like British blues rocker Eric Burden. Toots dedicates “Peace in Jamaica” to Willie Nelson and at the end of the song he proclaims “You all are my friends.”
And I believe it, all of it.

Willie Nelson is like your favorite old chair. It’s broken-in and comfortable, looks a little ragged but that’s OK. And if you kicked it to the curb, you’d sure miss it. Willie may be past his prime but he’s still a skillful acoustic guitarist and his sister is one of the best pianists in country music. He pleased the crowd with all those great hits - On the Road Again, Whiskey River, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, Mama Don’t Let your Sons Grow Up to be Cowboys, Always on My Mind and so on. Willie is definitely comfortable in his own skin. He can do country swing, blues and jazz…anything. He just can’t sing like he used to. Listening to Willie is like having a good conversation with an old friend.

Let me tell you about Ani Difranco. She is GREAT and wonderful and has energy and spunk and is willing to speak her mind. She also writes fantastic songs based in the new realness with a type of clever lyricism that finds multiple truths through paradox and metaphor. She is a fountain of dialectics that can tease you toward accepted wisdom only to debunk it in her very next breath. She is a new age folky who can talk about politics, power and injustice without flinching. She can be wistful, even melancholy then smash your preconceptions with a wicked sense of humor. She is an expert at kidding in the square – using humor to reveal a deeper truth. She pokes fun at those who find themselves hungry while they’re eating their words. Difranco is a known artist yet still somewhat obscure. She introduced her song “November 8th, 2008” with the rap, “I love Barack Obama. How the fuck does someone become Barack Obama? He inspired us to become citizens once again and taught us that a world gone mad can grow sane. You’ve risen like the phoenix.”
Truth and political commentary in the same breath…so refreshing, like spiritual altoids.

Difranco could just be the new Dylan.

Speaking of Dylan…this rock god deserves his name. He is a pioneer bold and gutsy. So what if he went back to his roots - 12 bar blues, jazz and grizzled folk. His set could not possibly have meant much to the thousands of teens and young adults in the crowd. They did not seem to know Dylan nor did they seem care to know him. They wandered up and down the hilly amphitheater talking throughout the show and passing around the hash pipe (generously), grinning knowingly and almost ignoring the music.
One day - I can hear it now - they will say to their grandchildren, “Yeah, I saw Dylan…he blew me away.”

But my experience of Dylan is different. I knew his work from 1964 onward but never quite understood him. Yet as the years past I started to appreciate his intelligent convoluted lyricism and primitive approach to rock n’ roll. I began to listen and hear at least part of his message. Tonight I listened to an entirely different musical landscape. Dylan’s new songs spoke clearly and plainly about our unspoken primal fears of aging and death and even worse, when age mutilates what we have been. And in his next breathless growl Dylan smashes those wordless spiritual longings to bits. He is not going to limp through life. He is going to dance! Like gazing at a mirrored reflection, I can somehow see myself through Dylan’s hoarse half-spoken truths. Much of his set consisted of recent material from Modern Times, songs like Rollin’ and Tumblin’ Spirit on the Water, and Nettie Moore. And I loved his re-worked version of Tangled Up in Blue. I did not know what to expect of Dylan …is he another past-his-prime pioneer like Willie or a grouchy old dog on his last bark and snarl? Both and neither. As a rock icon on par with the Beatles and the Stones, Dylan is supposed to deliver something wonderful…meaningful.
And he did.

So here’s to Rothbury, a festival that didn’t quite live up to its hype yet provided us with a glorious dusty dharma. I can’t say I enjoyed the experience but I am sure glad I went.

Peace
Bo White

The Whitey Morgan Interview
Once Your Down in Texas Waylon is still the King

Whitey Morgan is one of them true believers. He’s a country rocker in the tradition of Waylon, Hank and Willie. You know the type, a purist with a vision, a shoulder walking straight talking dude who sure as hell wouldn’t want to be called a dude. He’s more comfortable onstage than when he is alone, especially when his guitar needs to be re-stringed and his muse dried out for the night. 150-200 gigs a year. Whitey would never admit it but sometimes he gets tired - too tired…but too wired to sleep, mind’s full of thoughts, lyrics, chords and longing. There is a price to being Whitey Morgan …

As a child growing up in Flint, you were certainly influenced by its post industrial sprawl in terms of what is right and good; what is of value and what could be discarded; violence and racial attitudes; trust and respect for government. Can you speak to how Flint helped to scaffold your musical vision and talent?
I could talk about what it was like growing up in flint and talk about what I think about Flint and its roots and demise for hours. If you meet me, just get me started on it and I will bore you all night. But I can’t really claim that it is ever directly related to anything I have written. I’m sure that others would disagree about what affect it has on my writing. As far as vision and talent, it was traveling to other states and seeing where this music can take me and the respect I have received from people that I look up to that pushes me to be better every day. Which in return gets me outta Flint most of the year. Don’t get me wrong, I am proud of where I come from. Like I said just ask me on any night in a bar. I will tell you how great Flint once was and how there are still things that I love about it. Mainly Halo burger and Big Johns come to mind right now, although it is lunch time.

I heard that your grandfather was a good country guitarist. Did he teach you how to play? How did he influence you?
He is and will always be my biggest influence. He taught me my first G chord around the age of eight. G is still my favorite key to sing and write songs in. He also had a great singing voice. I still try to sound just like him.

How long have you been playing professionally? Where did you get your lucky break?
I don’t really know what playing professionally is. If it means that you don’t have to worry about bills anymore, than I'm not quite there. But close. I don’t think I've had a lucky break yet. I do have a lot of people that work hard and still put up with the bullshit that comes with being in a hard working band. I guess I’m lucky that they stick around.

In one of your early shows at the Machine Shop, you opened for country rebel David Alan Coe. Can you tell me about that gig?
The crowd was great that first time we opened for him. I still have people tell me that was the first time they seen us. As for Coe, I never got to meet him. We are going on our 7th time opening for him in Pontiac this October. I did talk to his guitarist Jon that first night and we still talk quite often when we are both out on the road

How did you come up with the moniker of Whitey?
I would say the first time I got called Whitey was at Cody Elementary in about the 3rd grade. It was a mostly black school at the time and I played basketball every recess. I would always hear “we'll take whitey on our team” or “white boy”. It continued throughout the years. When it was time to pick a name for this country thing, it just worked.

How do you come up with ideas about songs? Sometimes it sounds like you write as if you are standing outside of yourself and observing your life, and commenting about what its like to be Whitey Morgan, almost as if Whitey is an alter ego.
That’s pretty accurate actually. Before I ever write a word, I always come up with the idea of what the song is about and who is singing and from what point of view. Without that, I would just start writing words that have no direction and I end up throwing the song out. I took throwing out a lot of songs before I figured that part out. But it’s different for everyone I guess. I guess it is an alter ego, its fun to be Whitey sometimes.

I can hear the “Waylon” influence in your singing style and your songs. When did you first get hooked on Waylon Jennings? How did he inspire you?
Actually, Waylon kinda came to me later I guess. I was so obsessed with Merle Haggard, Hank Williams and Jimmy Martin in my early country days. When I tried to write like them it just seemed so forced for me. But when I started diggin into Waylon’s 70s stuff, it just clicked to me. He had such a stripped down approach to arranging and chord structure that I just grabbed onto it right away. It came natural to me, and he was just so damn cool.

You played with the Waylors a few years back in Nashville in a Spirit of the Outlaws show. What was that like for you?
It was unreal !!!! It was at a time when all I listened to was Waylon’s live double disc that had just been released. I was so into all the players on this recording. I got to meet my hero, Richie Albright. Waylon’s right hand man and long time drummer. To me it was as good as meeting Waylon himself. He and Waylon were the ones that created that outlaw sound, that by the 80s everyone had copied. I had so many questions for Richie, but the answer I got most of the time was “Hell, I don’t remember most of that stuff Whitey”. But sometimes he would give you a story so detailed it was like it had just happened the day before. It was truly unreal.

You have some great players in the 78’s – Leroy is a fluid guitarist that matches speed and dexterity with tonal brilliance. Jeremy is a rock solid bassist that lays down that serious bottom that holds it all together. Can you comment on your band?
Well, the sound we have now, did not come easy. A lot of hard work and around 150 shows a year developed that sound. I’m damn lucky to have all of the 78s behind me, on and off stage.

I heard that you are a fantastic drummer. True? Where did you learn the drums…who inspired you as a drummer. Do you look for a drummer that has your sense of time and dynamics?
I would say I was a solid drummer. I don’t play anymore, but I do miss it sometimes. It was just something that I picked up somewhere when I was in my teens. I look for a drummer that is solid and understands that drum rolls are not my favorite thing to hear. Keep it simple and in time please. haha

I notice that you have an almost brutal tour schedule for this summer. In fact, on the day of your gig @ White’s Bar you are also performing at the Ann Arbor Arts Festival. How is it that you can summon up the physical stamina and energy and emotional balance for such a demanding schedule?
It’s easy to play, its harder to not play. I wouldn’t have it any other way.I can’t wait to play 200 shows next year.

How did you hook up with the Deadstring Brothers?
We have had a lot of mutual friends for quite a while, telling us how great the other one is . We finally met up about a year ago and it’s been great. We both have a love for great music and being on stage as much as possible.

Rockin’ With The Deadstring Brothers
A Little More Ronnie and a touch of Keef

What can I say? The Deadstring Brothers are like a musical Nirvana. Often compared to the Exile on Main Street Rolling Stones and the latter day Faces, the Brothers stir up a wondrous elixir of 70’s British Rock and hybrid Country Outlaw music. I just can’t get enough or ‘em; They evoke a feeling in me that I haven’t had since 1971 when I put together enough scratch to comp me and my buddies tickets to see the Faces. But then, at the last minute , I caught a serious case of mono and lost 20lbs in the span of a week. I went anyway. And when I returned home, high from the intoxicating fever-pitch energy of true rock ‘n’ roll, you know what I told my folks…them cats can ROCK! Well, brothers and sisters, I’m preachin’ the gospel truth the Brothers rock like Sasha Grey insisting on another take till she gets it right. Just take a listen…

It seems that you are sure living the life of a working musician, releasing brilliant music yet struggling to breakout of the regional scene. Jim Dickinson, an enduring musical genius from Memphis once said that the best music is never recorded and if it is recorded, it is never released, and if it is released it is never heard. This seems especially prescient today. How does this notion relate to your experience?
Well, I think that if you work hard and treat people right good things happen. I never really had some grand vision of success for the band. I’m a musician not a self promoter, never wanted to be a star. Love playin’ music and that’s what I get to do, don’t really get much better than that.

How can you get that lucky break when you make music with integrity, sonic masterpieces such as Sacred Heart or Tennessee Sure Enough yet the market covets music that is so immediately nameless and disposable?
I don’t believe in luck or lucky breaks, just hard work and playing music every night! I do appreciate your compliments though.

Is Masha, still with the band? I love her voice and her nuanced delivery. She has a soulful Bonnie Bramlett vibe.
Masha has left the band but still sings on the recordings and does the occasional gig with us as well. Bonnie Bramlett is one of the best singers ever and we all love her.

Kurt, your vocal style is influenced by Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley and Nick Cave…not too shabby. Do you agree?
I don’t really think I sound a bit like any of those guys, though I am a big fan of them all.

Your music is a sonic wonder. How did you craft such a dynamic sound?
We have our own studio which allows us to work on music the way we want to, without anyone givin us any shit about it. It’s mostly all vintage gear from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s hence the tone that is that whole vintage rock thing.

A previous interviewer stated that your sound is full and rich and sounds great blasting out of your car window. I agree. Who produces you and how did you get such rich tonal perfection?
I produced everything up to the new record, which I co produced with my studio partner Dan Currie. He’s pretty must a vintage gear man as well and we just dig the tones from the 60’s and 70’s.

Detroit always has such great bands and you certainly rank up there with the best. Do you compare yourself to or are you inspired by other local/regional actssuch as the Forbes Brothers,The Muggs, Larry McCray, Whitey Morgan, Howard Glazer, Doug Deming, or Kim Wilson?
I’m a real big fan of Whitey Morgan & the 78s. They are some of my best friends as well. We all share a lot of the same influences.

How did you hook up with Whitey Morgan?
We just started going to each others gigs and from there hanging out and from there doing gigs together. They are my favorite live band out there these days and probably always will be. Ain’t no one even coming close to that true out law sound and they have three of the best guitars players around. Honestly they just put all the so called country bands to shame

Two of Detroit’s best bands - The Deadstring Brothers and Whitey Morgan & the 78’s are performing @ White’s Bar on July 16th. Advanced tickets are for sale on their websites. Tickets are also available at White’s Bar on the day of the show.

Peace
Bo White