July 5, 2023

Mike Stevens interview

Mike Stevens interview

Mike Stevens joins me on episode 89. Mike is a Canadian who made his name playing Bluegrass harmonica, performing with some of the biggest names in Bluegrass and playing at The Grand Old Opry over 300 times. Mike toured with Bluegrass legends, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, and recently played two songs on harmonica at Jesse’s funeral. Mike won the Canadian Bluegrass artist of the year for five consecutive years, and released a Bluegrass book with Hal Leonard. But Bluegrass isn’t his only genre,...

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Season 1 Diatonic Harmonica Bluegrass Or Old Timey

Mike Stevens joins me on episode 89.

Mike is a Canadian who made his name playing Bluegrass harmonica, performing with some of the biggest names in Bluegrass and playing at The Grand Old Opry over 300 times. Mike toured with Bluegrass legends, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, and recently played two songs on harmonica at Jesse’s funeral. Mike won the Canadian Bluegrass artist of the year for five consecutive years, and released a Bluegrass book with Hal Leonard.

But Bluegrass isn’t his only genre, also playing Americana, Blues, solo looping, soundscapes and even ballet and West African music.

Mike also tells us about synesthesia, a condition which means he sees music in colours and shapes, and how this has impacted his music. 

On top of all this, Mike has been a leading figure in bringing music to indigenous communities in Canada, distributing some fifty thousands harmonicas to young people.  


Links:
Mike’s website:
www.mikestevensmusic.com

Artscan Circle:
www.artscancircle.ca  

A Walk In My Dream documentary:
https://mikestevensmusic.com/walk-in-my-dream


Videos:

Playing at the Grand Old Opry with Jim & Jesse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YIpFQccOUo

Playing at Jesse McReynold’s funeral:
https://view.oneroomstreaming.com/index.php?data=MTY4NzgyMTYwMjI1ODU0MyZvbmVyb29tLWFkbWluJmNvcHlfbGluaw==

Playing with Matt Andersen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6iCgQoaViM

TED talk on Artscan Circle: bringing music to indigenous communities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-4uQoNq4M4

Blue Sky music festival presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7s-x9tMn6Q


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

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

or sign-up to a monthly subscription to the podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/995536/support

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

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS

Support the show

01:32 - Mike is from Sarnia, Ontario, Canada

01:38 - Drew on the music of nearby Detroit in his youth

01:56 - Father had a harmonica lying around and Mike picked it up and really connected with it

02:23 - Played a tremolo at first, before moving on to a Marine Band diatonic

02:52 - Didn’t play the tremolo seriously, was just making noises

03:15 - Mike has a condition called synesthesia, where he shapes shapes and colour when he hears music

03:53 - Synesthesia is like a “superpower for music”, providing a very visual way that Mike perceives music

06:14 - How Mike knew he had synesthesia

07:38 - Loved black string band music early on

07:56 - Didn’t learn any other instruments when young but maybe aspired to be a drummer

08:21 - Mike was first drawn to pre-war harmonica, with DeFord Bailey an influence

08:48 - Mike got into playing Bluegrass music when he answered an advertisement in the local paper

09:48 - Only got to play three songs in the first Bluegrass band he joined as they were embarrassed to have a harmonica player

10:01 - Joined another band who won awards, with Mike writing songs and leading the band

10:13 - How did the harmonica fit into the strings-heavy Bluegrass music

11:57 - Met the Lewis family Bluegrass band at a music festival, which led to Mike touring with that band without pay (but got lots in tips)

13:52 - How Mike started playing with Jim & Jesse McReynolds, a famous Bluegrass act

14:22 - Jesse told Mike he needed to play at the Grand Old Opry, the home of Country (and Bluegrass) music

15:33 - Mike’s first time playing the Grand Old Opry, having now played over 300 times there

16:19 - Mike’s gratitude to Jim & Jesse for giving him the opportunities they did

17:24 - DeFord Bailey was (probably) the first harmonica player to perform at the Grand Old Opry, and Mike’s respect for him

18:04 - DeFord Bailey was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame

18:13 - Mike was recently the only musician to play at Jesse McReynolds’s funeral, which Jesse originally requested 34 years ago

19:46 - The song Mike played at the funeral was ‘Jesse’s Request’

20:25 - Tips for playing Bluegrass music on the harmonica

21:26 - The rhythm is the critical part of Bluegrass, more so than just learning the melodies

22:11 - Mike may well have been one of the first serious Bluegrass players on harmonica

22:40 - Admires PT Gazell’s approach to playing Bluegrass

23:17 - Mike’s first album released under his own name in 1990: Harmonica, won the Canadian Bluegrass Record of the Year

24:02 - Blowin’ Up A Storm album from 1992: a change of direction as not entirely Bluegrass

25:53 - Mandolin cross-picking technique played on the harmonica

26:48 - Started the Mike Steven’s project in 1998, releasing the album Normally Anomaly

28:40 - Mike has long produced looping and soundscape material, including art exhibitions with Larry Towell

29:25 - Solo performances include looping

29:46 - The World Is Only Air: an album of original and Canadian fiddle tunes

30:15 - 2005 Old Time Mojo album with Raymond McLain

31:31 - Recorded two more blues-based albums with Matt Andersen

32:32 - Album with African percussionist Okaidja Afroso

34:28 - Gospel album called Life’s Road To Heaven

35:00 - Latest album, from 2021: Breathe In The World…Breathe Out The Music

37:10 - Has played with the Atlantic Ballet, composing a song which was choreographed for a ballet performance

39:54 - Name of ballet piece (36 Hours) came from a meeting a indigenous person in the Arctic Circle

41:55 - Founded Artscan Circle, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping youth indigenous communities in Canada, and has distributed fifty thousand harmonicas to these people

45:21 - Documentary made about Mike, called ‘Harmonica Crossing’ about his time playing at The Grand Old Opry

45:48 - Written a book: ‘Bluegrass Harmonica’, published by Hal Leonard, written from the car while touring

46:31 - Has won many awards, including Canadian Bluegrass artist of the year for five consecutive years

46:59 - 10 minute question

47:59 - Played Richter tuning for a long time and recently started playing Brendan Power’s Powerbender tuning

48:16 - Played Joe Filisko custom harps, then Joe Spiers

48:36 - Powerbender tuning made Mike approach playing the harmonica in a new way and adding overblows allows lots of different notes and chords

50:18 - Doesn’t just use Powerbender. Uses whatever gets the job done

50:38 - How Mike adapts to different tunings

51:02 - Doesn’t favour any particular harmonica manufacturer

51:27 - Lee Oskar harps are the only ones that function in the freezing temperatures of the Arctic

52:04 - Likes to play natural minor tuned harmonicas for the chords

53:09 - Does play overblows

53:13 - Doesn’t play chromatic, but wants a robust one that would suit his needs

53:41 - Recorded singing for first time on latest album

54:13 - Embouchre: uses both

54:32 - Amps: Schertler for acoustic, and different vintage amps

55:16 - Modelling amps

56:16 - Mics: Beyer M88, Shure KSM8

57:24 - Mike is having a documentary made about him next week

57:49 - Upcoming gigs and expeditions!

WEBVTT

00:00:00.034 --> 00:00:02.357
Mike Stevens joins me on episode 89.

00:00:03.057 --> 00:00:12.250
Mike is a Canadian who made his name playing bluegrass harmonica, performing with some of the biggest names in bluegrass and playing at the Grand Old Opry over 300 times.

00:00:12.891 --> 00:00:19.582
Mike toured with bluegrass legends Jim and Jesse McReynolds and recently played two songs on harmonica at Jesse's funeral.

00:00:20.065 --> 00:00:26.717
Mike won the Canadian Bluegrass Artist of the Year for five consecutive years and released a bluegrass book with Hal Leonard.

00:00:27.298 --> 00:00:35.213
But bluegrass isn't his only genre, also playing Americana blues, solo looping, soundscapes and even ballet and West African music.

00:00:35.975 --> 00:00:43.710
Mike also tells us about synesthesia, a condition which means he sees music in colours and shapes, and how this has impacted his music.

00:00:44.353 --> 00:00:52.911
On top of all this, Mike has been a leading figure in bringing music to indigenous communities in Canada, distributing some 50,000 harmonicas to young people.

00:00:54.112 --> 00:00:56.578
This podcast is sponsored by Zeidel Harmonicas.

00:00:57.039 --> 00:01:06.337
Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.zeidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zeidel Harmonicas.

00:01:26.626 --> 00:01:28.567
Hello, Mike Stevens, and welcome to the podcast.

00:01:28.968 --> 00:01:29.367
Hi, Neil.

00:01:29.769 --> 00:01:35.233
So you're talking to us from, well, you're from Sarnia, Canada in Ontario.

00:01:35.293 --> 00:01:36.394
Is that still where you're based?

00:01:36.575 --> 00:01:37.816
Yeah, I'm back home now.

00:01:37.835 --> 00:01:39.777
Sarnia is quite close to Detroit.

00:01:39.918 --> 00:01:42.039
You drew on the music of Detroit when you were young, did you?

00:01:42.500 --> 00:01:42.819
I did.

00:01:42.920 --> 00:01:44.602
We were really lucky living here.

00:01:44.641 --> 00:01:50.025
We got Motown and we got early blues just all over the airwaves on AM radio.

00:01:50.706 --> 00:01:51.748
You could hear it as a kid.

00:01:51.867 --> 00:01:53.870
It just creeps right into your soul.

00:01:53.969 --> 00:01:55.730
So yeah, very lucky to live here.

00:01:56.552 --> 00:01:58.774
So Or what got you started playing harmonica?

00:01:59.174 --> 00:02:00.796
Well, there was one around the house.

00:02:00.995 --> 00:02:03.718
My dad, I've never heard my dad play any music.

00:02:03.918 --> 00:02:08.122
He was in a marching band, apparently, played trumpet, but I've never heard him.

00:02:08.163 --> 00:02:10.465
But there was a harmonica around the house when I was a kid.

00:02:11.366 --> 00:02:15.750
And I picked it up, made a sound on it that felt really, really good.

00:02:15.790 --> 00:02:18.112
It probably sounded terrible, but it didn't matter.

00:02:18.133 --> 00:02:19.753
It just felt really good.

00:02:20.014 --> 00:02:23.217
I was really young, probably 11 or 12 years old at that point.

00:02:23.650 --> 00:02:25.671
Do you remember what sort of harmonica that was?

00:02:26.013 --> 00:02:28.716
Yeah, it was one that wouldn't even bend, I don't think.

00:02:28.836 --> 00:02:32.439
I think it was one of those concert double reed harmonicas.

00:02:32.639 --> 00:02:33.320
Like a tremolo?

00:02:33.561 --> 00:02:34.802
Yeah, like a tremolo, yep.

00:02:35.103 --> 00:02:39.187
At what point did you move away from the tremolo and to, I guess, a standard diatonic?

00:02:39.427 --> 00:02:51.361
I think probably five years after, ten years after, I just kind of searched them out or someone gave me one or a friend did or something and that would have been a marine band probably.

00:02:51.937 --> 00:02:52.318
Great.

00:02:52.337 --> 00:02:53.019
So that's interesting.

00:02:53.218 --> 00:02:55.762
So you played the tremolo quite a lot for five years, did you?

00:02:55.801 --> 00:02:58.223
Is that really what you based your early playing on?

00:02:58.525 --> 00:02:59.825
I kind of made noise on it.

00:02:59.885 --> 00:03:01.146
I wouldn't even call it playing.

00:03:01.206 --> 00:03:06.772
It just was like therapy more than anything and tried to imitate the sounds of everything around

00:03:06.812 --> 00:03:06.913
me.

00:03:07.193 --> 00:03:12.338
Do you think maybe that influenced you to go down a more melodic style of playing, which we'll get into?

00:03:12.799 --> 00:03:12.878
Boy,

00:03:12.919 --> 00:03:13.620
that's interesting.

00:03:13.659 --> 00:03:14.200
I don't know.

00:03:14.241 --> 00:03:19.006
For me, I didn't realize it at the time, but I have synesthesia, so...

00:03:19.425 --> 00:03:23.431
You'd almost qualify that as a learning disability in these days.

00:03:23.512 --> 00:03:27.818
But for me, I never paid attention in school because I was always distracted.

00:03:28.038 --> 00:03:30.181
Everything was making sounds in my head.

00:03:30.221 --> 00:03:34.227
And whenever I heard sounds, they were either shapes or they were colors.

00:03:35.127 --> 00:03:37.731
And I just assumed everybody had that.

00:03:38.231 --> 00:03:42.497
So even at that early age, I don't think I was thinking melodically.

00:03:42.518 --> 00:03:47.945
I think I was more trying to just play something that I was feeling at that time.

00:03:48.770 --> 00:03:51.534
Do you think that condition has helped your music?

00:03:51.594 --> 00:03:52.757
Is it beneficial?

00:03:53.137 --> 00:03:54.919
Yeah, it's like a superpower for music.

00:03:55.020 --> 00:04:04.757
It makes it really easy to be in recording sessions and kind of see what's coming next or chord shapes are all different colors.

00:04:04.937 --> 00:04:10.225
And, you know, if it's augmented or whatever it is, I see them as circles.

00:04:10.306 --> 00:04:12.669
So I'll see sort of the main chords.

00:04:12.866 --> 00:04:20.999
chord as a color and then I'll see variations of that chord as different colors sort of in the center shapes as well.

00:04:21.339 --> 00:04:24.204
It makes it kind of wide open in my mind to play.

00:04:37.281 --> 00:04:38.564
Yeah, fascinating.

00:04:38.605 --> 00:04:41.091
So it's like you visualise the music then.

00:04:41.151 --> 00:04:42.454
Is that quite a big part of it?

00:04:42.735 --> 00:04:43.939
Yeah, it's totally visual.

00:04:44.139 --> 00:04:44.680
Yep, it is.

00:04:44.740 --> 00:04:45.723
And you see it in your head.

00:04:45.764 --> 00:04:51.036
You see it in your kind of the top of my forehead is where I tend to see it.

00:04:51.649 --> 00:04:58.975
did you use that in a way that maybe if you learned some say music theory you could apply it like that is that you know do you able to apply it in that sort of way or

00:04:59.677 --> 00:05:25.463
no it kind of it became the opposite to music theory for me it made it makes it really really really hard to learn theory and I know that sounds like a cop-out and I have learned some I've learned enough to get by in sessions and and figure things out but it it's really painful I actually get headaches from it I actually you know I had to do a CBC thing one time and it was a review of Oliver Sacks' book on synesthesia.

00:05:26.024 --> 00:05:36.382
I was on one side of it and a buddy of mine who's a really famous musician in Canada was on the other side and we were debating this book and he comes from the theory background and I came from the synesthetic background.

00:05:36.682 --> 00:05:45.497
For him, when Oliver described it as their electrical impulses, this is what's creating this and And it's how it relates to music.

00:05:45.596 --> 00:05:53.007
And for me, it's just something way more spiritual and bigger and undefinable like the real music is.

00:05:53.127 --> 00:05:59.997
Those notes and intervals were, in my mind, it's just my opinion and I don't know anything really, just what I do.

00:06:00.016 --> 00:06:03.581
I think that was just designed to explain to somebody something.

00:06:03.906 --> 00:06:05.829
How to play something, you know what I mean?

00:06:05.870 --> 00:06:10.879
Like if you came up with a piece of music and you notated it all out, that's a way of describing what you played.

00:06:10.899 --> 00:06:14.146
It's not the actual music itself nor the inspiration for it.

00:06:14.987 --> 00:06:17.211
So at what point were you sort of diagnosed with this?

00:06:17.952 --> 00:06:19.035
How do they diagnose it?

00:06:19.596 --> 00:06:23.764
I was in recording sessions, realized everybody was reading and I...

00:06:24.737 --> 00:06:30.367
didn't have to read, I could generally follow through it really quickly and figure it out.

00:06:30.466 --> 00:06:32.711
And I thought everybody could do that.

00:06:33.091 --> 00:06:37.838
And so I started to talk to people and realized that, no, this is way different.

00:06:37.899 --> 00:06:40.923
It's a really different way of thinking about music.

00:06:41.324 --> 00:06:44.689
That probably wasn't until I was 20 years old.

00:06:44.709 --> 00:06:46.132
I can't define it.

00:06:46.392 --> 00:06:48.596
And the crazy thing, it's as simple as breathing.

00:06:48.615 --> 00:06:51.879
It's like I can't control any of it.

00:06:52.300 --> 00:06:54.283
And it's just there all the time.

00:06:54.322 --> 00:06:58.067
And it also means that there are constantly melodies going through my head.

00:06:58.107 --> 00:07:00.370
I'm sitting here looking at my cluttered table right now.

00:07:01.110 --> 00:07:09.119
I can build a rhythm, a structure based on the height of everything on my table and the depth of it.

00:07:09.379 --> 00:07:11.781
And then I can build a melody based on the color of it.

00:07:12.202 --> 00:07:13.624
So it's happening all the time.

00:07:13.684 --> 00:07:18.589
And I almost have to push it back and not just be in that all the time.

00:07:19.074 --> 00:07:21.117
Back to your harmonica then.

00:07:21.177 --> 00:07:28.930
So, as you say, you moved across to the marine bands when you were around 16 or so, were you, by this stage?

00:07:29.771 --> 00:07:31.213
Yeah, it probably was around that time.

00:07:31.975 --> 00:07:35.480
Is this when you started more seriously getting into the harmonica and, you know, you were listening?

00:07:35.540 --> 00:07:38.425
I believe that D4 Bailey was a big early influence on you.

00:07:38.485 --> 00:07:39.005
Yeah, I love

00:07:39.065 --> 00:07:40.208
black string band music.

00:07:40.288 --> 00:07:42.771
And somehow we got that in Detroit.

00:07:42.831 --> 00:07:43.612
I don't know how.

00:07:44.514 --> 00:07:49.853
I love the way that it wasn't, the way some people would describe as perfect music.

00:07:50.293 --> 00:07:54.348
It was just so powerful and so soulful and grooved so hard.

00:07:54.891 --> 00:07:55.653
I really loved it.

00:07:56.098 --> 00:07:56.377
Yeah.

00:07:56.759 --> 00:07:58.961
And did you learn any other instruments when you were younger?

00:07:59.000 --> 00:08:04.326
No, I think when I was a little kid, I used to put cardboard boxes up and pound on everything.

00:08:04.365 --> 00:08:15.456
My parents, I drove them crazy because I think I probably wanted to be a drummer and I just would drive everybody nuts, either pounding on tables or using pencils or all that stuff.

00:08:15.576 --> 00:08:19.800
And they're probably really happy that it was a harmonica instead of drums.

00:08:20.180 --> 00:08:24.925
And so was it the early sort of pre-war harmonica that really initially drew you?

00:08:25.185 --> 00:08:25.547
Yeah,

00:08:25.786 --> 00:08:25.846
it

00:08:25.906 --> 00:08:26.127
was.

00:08:26.528 --> 00:08:31.014
Yeah, it was the fatness, the colors of it, the way it was vocal.

00:08:31.095 --> 00:08:33.339
It was like that person's voice.

00:08:33.359 --> 00:08:40.870
It just, yeah, it still gets me.

00:08:44.556 --> 00:08:45.597
Yeah.

00:08:48.258 --> 00:08:53.384
How you made your name, I think it's correct to say, is in bluegrass music, yeah?

00:08:53.403 --> 00:08:56.427
So that's correct, is it, in your harmonica world?

00:08:56.847 --> 00:08:57.687
Yeah, I think so.

00:08:57.769 --> 00:09:05.777
Like, the reason probably any harmonica players would know who I was would be for my bluegrass stuff, which really I just kind of fell into.

00:09:05.817 --> 00:09:11.243
Yeah, I mean, obviously you do play different styles, and certainly as your career progressed, we'll get into that.

00:09:11.302 --> 00:09:13.446
But yeah, so what got you into the bluegrass then?

00:09:14.114 --> 00:09:15.274
I always loved bluegrass.

00:09:15.735 --> 00:09:19.860
Living in Sarnia here wasn't really the hotbed of bluegrass activity.

00:09:20.322 --> 00:09:24.648
Harmonica is the redheaded stepchild of the bluegrass world, or it had been forever.

00:09:24.687 --> 00:09:29.854
And there was an advertisement in the local paper that a bluegrass band was forming.

00:09:30.215 --> 00:09:34.360
So I decided that I'd answer that call and went for a rehearsal.

00:09:34.419 --> 00:10:12.748
And thankfully, they didn't get anybody showing up for the rehearsal so they had to take the harmonica player which was me i learned all the tunes they were doing i could actually play them better than they could i knew the melodies and and knew what to do but they were still embarrassed to have a harmonica player so they'd let me play like maybe three songs in a set and then you know i'd go sit in the corner so it was really weird but i persevered through that and eventually you know we played festivals and things i joined another band where they let me kind of write music and lead the the band a bit more and we ended up winning a bunch of awards and playing on major festivals and it just kind of progressed from there.

00:10:13.288 --> 00:10:15.250
So Bluegrass is very strings heavy.

00:10:15.311 --> 00:10:16.653
In fact, it's all strings, isn't it?

00:10:16.873 --> 00:10:18.034
There isn't even a drummer, right?

00:10:18.095 --> 00:10:23.961
So how did you fit into that scene with the harmonica and how were you received in the very strings based music?

00:10:24.621 --> 00:10:25.163
Well, you

00:10:25.202 --> 00:10:25.322
know,

00:10:25.363 --> 00:10:25.403
it

00:10:26.224 --> 00:10:26.644
changed.

00:10:27.125 --> 00:10:29.447
Initially, it was shocking to people.

00:10:30.068 --> 00:10:33.833
I approached it like a bluegrass band is like a giant drum kit.

00:10:34.466 --> 00:10:46.288
At first, I tried to figure out how can I push and pull in the context of these instruments rhythmically that adds something or that makes you feel differently.

00:10:46.308 --> 00:10:48.653
And that was the first way that I approached it.

00:10:48.673 --> 00:10:50.496
I didn't even think melody or notes or anything.

00:10:51.018 --> 00:10:52.701
So it was from a percussive standpoint.

00:10:52.821 --> 00:11:33.623
And then I slowly started to build patterns based on banjo and and on mandolin and then maybe incorporate fiddle lines and then distinctly try and do things that were the harmonica's strengths not try and cop melodies that sounded difficult on the harmonica but rather lean on what it can do and some of that is bluesy Other things are just that human vocal sound that a really great fiddle player can get as well.

00:11:34.604 --> 00:11:36.046
As you say, you kind of fell into bluegrass.

00:11:36.066 --> 00:11:41.594
So before then, you weren't really playing bluegrass songs or you weren't even really playing sort of melody songs.

00:11:41.693 --> 00:11:49.586
You know, you were still, you know, like we talked about, you started out in the early blues and then you sort of then picked up the bluegrass tunes from when you started playing them.

00:11:49.857 --> 00:11:52.363
Yeah, basically started to learn them as we went.

00:11:52.543 --> 00:11:56.532
And, you know, I talked about the other band where I could sort of lead the band.

00:11:56.591 --> 00:11:57.413
We won some awards.

00:11:57.432 --> 00:11:59.677
We got in a major festival called Carlisle.

00:11:59.898 --> 00:12:04.326
And that was one where Bill Monroe would play and Ralph Stanley and Jim and Jesse and the Lewis family.

00:12:04.346 --> 00:12:06.250
It was a huge festival, really wild.

00:12:06.331 --> 00:12:07.474
So we played that.

00:12:07.714 --> 00:12:09.135
And I looked pretty wild.

00:12:09.216 --> 00:12:12.099
I didn't look like a typical bluegrass person at that point.

00:12:12.740 --> 00:12:18.226
I went backstage after playing in the Lewis family, who are the first family of bluegrass gospel music.

00:12:18.726 --> 00:12:19.548
They're from Georgia.

00:12:19.908 --> 00:12:24.934
Little Roy grabbed a banjo, played Train 45, and he said, can you play fast?

00:12:25.014 --> 00:12:26.275
And I said, yeah, I can play fast.

00:12:26.716 --> 00:12:27.977
And he said, can you play this fast?

00:12:28.038 --> 00:12:34.066
And then he just tore off a Train 45 banjo tune, and I could keep up, and I could play it.

00:12:45.761 --> 00:12:48.725
So he got all excited and he said, okay, well, we're bringing you out on stage.

00:12:48.924 --> 00:12:50.326
So they brought me out on stage.

00:12:50.767 --> 00:12:55.471
He played that instrumental and I played it with them and people went crazy and they loved it.

00:12:55.951 --> 00:13:04.740
And we came back off the stage and little Roy came up to me and he said, look, if you agree to follow the tour bus all over North America, we're not going to pay you.

00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:09.244
But if you agree to follow the bus, I will plant you in the audience at the show.

00:13:09.264 --> 00:13:13.928
And then I'll start playing a banjo tune and I'll stop in the middle of it.

00:13:14.188 --> 00:13:16.643
And I'll say, you know, this tune needs harmonica.

00:13:16.722 --> 00:13:22.808
He said, that's your cue to jump up in the audience and say, I have a harmonica and then come up on stage.

00:13:23.749 --> 00:13:26.831
And, uh, we did that all across North America.

00:13:26.851 --> 00:13:29.514
My wife and I followed that bus for no money.

00:13:29.594 --> 00:13:33.817
So what ended up happening was, you know, I would do that and get on stage and play.

00:13:33.837 --> 00:13:38.121
Well, they'd pass the hat and I ended up making more money than the bands on the bill.

00:13:38.302 --> 00:13:40.063
And I got a booking for the next year.

00:13:40.563 --> 00:13:41.804
We it's all a leap of faith.

00:13:41.865 --> 00:13:44.187
We did that for probably well over a year.

00:13:44.287 --> 00:13:48.553
And that's how I met Jim and Jesse and how eventually I got on the Grand Ole Opry.

00:13:48.813 --> 00:13:51.899
Fantastic introduction in a great way, a great gimmick there to get you in.

00:13:51.958 --> 00:13:55.105
So Jim and Jesse you mentioned there, so this is Jim and Jesse McReynolds.

00:13:55.544 --> 00:14:01.635
So these were a very sort of hot bluegrass band at the time, yeah, and so yeah, how did you get playing with them?

00:14:02.456 --> 00:14:03.940
Well, I played a festival in Georgia.

00:14:03.960 --> 00:14:05.701
It was the Lewis Family Festival.

00:14:05.763 --> 00:14:15.111
My wife and I were camping in a tent and I just got done playing with the Lewis family and went backstage and Jesse McReynolds said, boy, would you come up and play a song with us?

00:14:15.513 --> 00:14:16.232
And I said, sure.

00:14:16.273 --> 00:14:22.619
And I was pretty nervous, but got up and played with them and, and I could actually fit in and it sounded good and people liked it.

00:14:22.938 --> 00:14:26.701
So afterwards he came up to me and he said, you need to be on the grand old Opry.

00:14:26.822 --> 00:14:31.365
Those words that nobody in a million years would ever think that they would hear.

00:14:31.385 --> 00:14:37.071
And then just probably, I don't know if it was weeks or a month later, I was at the Opry.

00:14:37.611 --> 00:14:49.017
So it again explain to people who might not know so the Grand Ole Opry is a the home of country music yeah it's a real mecca of country music and bluegrass is played there a lot as well yeah so tell us a bit about the Grand Ole Opry

00:14:49.378 --> 00:14:52.267
yeah I have deep love for the Grand Ole Opry.

00:14:52.826 --> 00:14:56.551
Oh man, how can I even describe it with the reverence that I want to?

00:14:56.571 --> 00:15:03.176
It just started out as this radio show that had real players.

00:15:03.355 --> 00:15:06.019
Like it wasn't slick and it wasn't about record deals.

00:15:06.078 --> 00:15:06.980
It wasn't any of that.

00:15:07.059 --> 00:15:08.480
It was a live radio show.

00:15:09.041 --> 00:15:14.986
And they had string band music and country music and everybody has been through there.

00:15:15.246 --> 00:15:18.690
Roy Acuff was kind of the king of the Grand Ole Opry.

00:15:19.009 --> 00:15:23.553
To get to play there is impossible It just is absolutely impossible.

00:15:23.674 --> 00:15:29.240
And it's the high point probably for any country music or bluegrass musician to get to do it.

00:15:29.301 --> 00:15:32.945
Bill Monroe is a member, you know, Jim and Jesse were members of it.

00:15:33.404 --> 00:15:39.211
So when it was my first time to play the Opry, I was so nervous, just could hardly stand it.

00:15:39.532 --> 00:15:44.596
Got up there, Jim and Jesse actually gave up their spot on the Opry to showcase me.

00:15:45.076 --> 00:15:49.662
And Roy Acuff was the host and it was on national television.

00:15:50.102 --> 00:15:56.850
We played and I got to stand And Roy Acuff came and stood probably a foot from me while I was playing.

00:15:57.291 --> 00:15:59.332
And my mouth just turned to glue.

00:15:59.373 --> 00:16:00.734
I don't even know how I got through it.

00:16:00.793 --> 00:16:04.038
It was this surreal experience that I still can't believe.

00:16:04.538 --> 00:16:06.860
And afterwards, you know, Roy talked to me.

00:16:07.000 --> 00:16:10.865
And, you know, now I guess I've done over 300 shows there over the years.

00:16:11.385 --> 00:16:13.648
But Roy became one of my biggest fans.

00:16:13.768 --> 00:16:18.633
And even when he was blind, you'd have people walk him out the stage to see me play.

00:16:18.813 --> 00:16:21.135
But I just can't repay Jim and Jesse enough.

00:16:21.135 --> 00:16:35.173
You know, think this first generation band with these, you know, basically strict rules around bluegrass would sacrifice the primo spot on the Grand Ole Opry time after time after time to showcase a harmonica player from Canada.

00:16:35.734 --> 00:16:37.416
It's just outstanding.

00:16:37.495 --> 00:16:38.957
I can never, never repay them.

00:16:39.479 --> 00:16:42.282
And so one of the songs you played there was Orange Blossom Special.

00:16:48.389 --> 00:16:48.830
Orange Blossom Special

00:17:00.961 --> 00:17:01.769
Yeah, that's one.

00:17:01.808 --> 00:17:06.184
When you play the Opry, you have five minutes.

00:17:06.529 --> 00:17:08.892
to knock the crowd on the head.

00:17:09.172 --> 00:17:12.535
And every major star comes out there and sings their hit.

00:17:12.775 --> 00:17:15.377
So there's a bit, you know, you've got some pressure.

00:17:15.458 --> 00:17:16.298
You better be good.

00:17:16.638 --> 00:17:19.902
It's not like you can let a show build up and ebb and flow.

00:17:19.981 --> 00:17:20.882
You have to nail it.

00:17:21.222 --> 00:17:24.506
And so that's why Orange Blossom had that kind of shock factor.

00:17:24.885 --> 00:17:26.507
And we mentioned Defoe Bailey earlier.

00:17:26.527 --> 00:17:27.728
And so he played there.

00:17:27.768 --> 00:17:30.550
Was he the first harmonica player to play Grand Ole Opry?

00:17:30.911 --> 00:17:31.731
I believe he was.

00:17:31.751 --> 00:17:35.134
I mean, there was Oney Wheeler with Acuff.

00:17:35.595 --> 00:17:36.496
I'm not sure about him.

00:17:36.496 --> 00:17:38.859
And I have deep respect for DeFord Bailey.

00:17:39.019 --> 00:17:40.501
Just unbelievable.

00:17:40.561 --> 00:17:47.833
We shared a dressing room with Bill Monroe and I'd always get Bill to tell me DeFord stories and Acuff to tell me DeFord stories.

00:17:48.634 --> 00:17:53.040
And Bill Monroe and I used to play a tune called Evening Prayer Blues that Bill got from

00:17:53.280 --> 00:17:54.222
DeFord.

00:17:58.950 --> 00:17:59.069
DeFord

00:18:04.961 --> 00:18:09.830
Deeford Bailey was inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame, I think, a few years ago, wasn't he?

00:18:10.112 --> 00:18:11.094
Yeah, it's wonderful.

00:18:11.134 --> 00:18:12.797
I'm so happy, yeah.

00:18:13.499 --> 00:18:19.128
And you mentioned, obviously, Jesse McReynolds there, and you were very close to him, and you're grateful to both of those guys.

00:18:19.170 --> 00:18:23.377
So recently, unfortunately, Jesse passed away, and you went to his funeral.

00:18:23.746 --> 00:18:24.287
Yeah.

00:18:24.527 --> 00:18:32.500
You know, the first record that I made in Nashville 34 years ago was with Jesse and a bunch of really great pickers and Bill Vorendik in the studio.

00:18:32.540 --> 00:18:35.105
And we recorded the last song.

00:18:35.145 --> 00:18:41.416
I did a solo piece and I walked out of the booth to silence and I thought, oh man, I really messed that up.

00:18:41.877 --> 00:18:45.924
And then after a long pause, Jesse came up to me and said, I have a request for you.

00:18:46.486 --> 00:18:48.710
I want you to play that song at my funeral.

00:18:49.026 --> 00:18:56.775
And so I instantly changed the name of the song to Jesse's Request and hoped that I would never, ever, ever have to do that.

00:18:56.875 --> 00:18:58.757
But yeah, I just came back from there.

00:18:58.777 --> 00:19:00.618
It was last week that I played it.

00:19:00.778 --> 00:19:14.134
And Jesse on his deathbed with all these, the biggest stars you could ever imagine, historic people in the room and everybody wanting to play on his deathbed, Jesse said that the only person he wanted to play at his funeral was me.

00:19:14.714 --> 00:19:16.836
So yeah, it was heavy, heavy.

00:19:16.998 --> 00:19:18.394
The It still is.

00:19:18.494 --> 00:19:21.218
I'm still trying to bounce back from it all.

00:19:21.238 --> 00:19:24.140
I'm reliving every memory from all those years.

00:19:24.320 --> 00:19:25.701
My wife and I both are.

00:19:26.061 --> 00:19:28.625
Yeah, that's quite an honor and quite a lot of pressure on you as well.

00:19:28.644 --> 00:19:30.006
How was it playing at the funeral?

00:19:30.247 --> 00:19:31.587
I barely remember it.

00:19:32.067 --> 00:19:36.232
I played one song for Jesse and I played one song for the McReynolds family.

00:19:36.252 --> 00:19:37.874
And I barely remember it.

00:19:37.933 --> 00:19:39.276
I know I was shaking real bad.

00:19:39.816 --> 00:19:44.580
But, you know, there's something to be said for music when words are really hard

00:19:45.241 --> 00:19:45.582
music.

00:19:45.857 --> 00:19:50.505
So you were kind enough to send me a link to your performance at the funeral, so you played Jesse's

00:19:50.525 --> 00:20:06.767
Request.

00:20:06.787 --> 00:20:13.876
Yeah, it was live-streamed, and of course all the, you know, full of big stars and legendary people, the history in that room was...

00:20:14.657 --> 00:20:15.782
It was mind-blowing.

00:20:15.843 --> 00:20:22.413
The direct connections to first-generation bluegrass and the grand old Opry and country music were all there.

00:20:23.175 --> 00:20:24.401
It was heavy.

00:20:25.442 --> 00:20:28.526
Talking a bit more then about, you know, bluegrass and the harmonica.

00:20:28.645 --> 00:20:32.230
I mean, obviously bluegrass is very, you know, melody driven.

00:20:32.250 --> 00:20:33.132
It's very fast.

00:20:33.532 --> 00:20:36.977
You've talked about rhythm being really critical to your playing and that and bringing it out.

00:20:37.017 --> 00:20:40.741
So, you know, what about some, you know, some tips on playing bluegrass and the harmonica with people?

00:20:41.423 --> 00:20:41.983
What I would tell

00:20:42.064 --> 00:20:46.569
anybody at first is don't think about the melody at first.

00:20:47.009 --> 00:20:48.832
Think about the rhythm inside.

00:20:48.912 --> 00:20:54.737
Listen to a mandolin chop, which a harmonica can do really, really easily and change pitch as well.

00:20:55.277 --> 00:20:56.438
Think about a banjo.

00:20:56.498 --> 00:21:02.584
Think about those patterns that a banjo roll does, but think rhythmically.

00:21:02.624 --> 00:21:03.984
That's the way to think about it.

00:21:04.105 --> 00:21:36.671
And even if you're not a super proficient bluegrass player, if you go in and know how to chop rhythm and how to add long lines and paint in that context that really fits and makes it feel right you'll do okay and then eventually start to work on your melodies because a lot of people it's just my opinion I think that a lot of people try and play bluegrass on harmonica and what they do is they memorize the melodies and that's wonderful but that is just not Bluegrass.

00:21:36.830 --> 00:21:45.959
Bluegrass is this incredible combination of different styles of music in this rhythmic pattern that you have to learn.

00:21:46.019 --> 00:21:56.367
It's almost like if you hear traditional blues done the right way with explosive dynamics and going down quiet and changes in the rhythm and the way it breathes.

00:21:56.748 --> 00:21:57.989
That's beautiful.

00:21:58.128 --> 00:22:04.894
And it's like bluegrass in that you can't just learn a melody over that and say that you're playing it.

00:22:04.974 --> 00:22:10.584
You have to get right in inside the feel of it and the groove of it and how it moves, you know.

00:22:11.424 --> 00:22:17.094
So were you one of the first, you know, kind of established bluegrass players on Harmonica and did more follow after you?

00:22:17.114 --> 00:22:18.355
I don't know.

00:22:18.415 --> 00:22:19.096
Maybe.

00:22:19.117 --> 00:22:24.605
I mean, I don't think there were too many that toured the world with first generation bluegrass people.

00:22:24.707 --> 00:22:27.049
And I did that for many, many, many years.

00:22:27.510 --> 00:22:29.054
Who knows what's first?

00:22:29.473 --> 00:22:31.597
I know I'm a lucky guy to get to do it.

00:22:31.809 --> 00:22:32.490
I feel lucky.

00:22:32.530 --> 00:22:37.238
I think there are a bunch of players playing it and probably some incredible players out there now.

00:22:37.278 --> 00:22:39.480
I don't really keep up with who's doing what.

00:22:40.041 --> 00:22:43.166
I remember somebody who did bluegrass really well was P.T.

00:22:43.186 --> 00:22:43.626
Gazelle.

00:22:43.707 --> 00:22:45.589
I always loved the way he approached it.

00:22:46.030 --> 00:22:51.999
He's a guy that could play melody, but he also understood the rhythmic aspect of a band like that.

00:22:52.339 --> 00:22:53.701
And I thought he was really good.

00:22:53.986 --> 00:23:04.884
But yeah, maybe, you know, I think with a first generation band, I played all the major festivals, played all over the world with these folks and Jim and Jesse and the Lost and Found and the Lewis family.

00:23:05.025 --> 00:23:06.748
And so, yeah, maybe, you know.

00:23:07.368 --> 00:23:14.622
So then getting into your albums and your releases, as you say, you played with various famous bluegrass outfits and then you started releasing your albums.

00:23:14.817 --> 00:23:15.398
own albums.

00:23:15.419 --> 00:23:16.740
These are under your own name.

00:23:16.881 --> 00:23:17.121
Yeah.

00:23:17.201 --> 00:23:25.510
So your first bluegrass released album was Harmonica released in 1990, which won the bluegrass recording of the year in central Canada.

00:23:25.590 --> 00:23:27.113
So you got that award.

00:23:27.153 --> 00:23:28.674
So yeah, tell us about that album.

00:23:28.775 --> 00:23:30.057
Yeah, it's crazy.

00:23:30.136 --> 00:23:33.902
That came to be, just got a bunch of friends to pick on it.

00:23:34.122 --> 00:23:41.769
And because I've been playing bluegrass so long, my friends were a lot of famous pickers, and we just went in and ripped it off in a day.

00:23:41.809 --> 00:23:48.175
We used Bill Vorndik, who is just an incredible engineer, just kind of played what we were playing on the live show.

00:23:48.217 --> 00:24:05.554
A couple of years later, 1992, you released Blowing Up a Storm.

00:24:06.114 --> 00:24:10.656
which was, I think, a really big album for you and a slight change of direction, was it not?

00:24:10.758 --> 00:24:11.602
Full on Bluegrass.

00:24:12.204 --> 00:24:13.290
Yeah, and it won...

00:24:14.049 --> 00:24:22.722
top selling record on pine castle records which is a bluegrass record label so a harmonica record was their their top seller

00:24:23.183 --> 00:24:38.205
yeah so on here you've got you know some harmonica sort of classics like whamma jamma and fox chase and summertime you've also got which i picked out which i enjoy which is ghost riders in the storm it's sort of a cowboy song so

00:24:51.233 --> 00:24:52.676
Yeah, Ghost Riders in the Sky.

00:24:52.718 --> 00:24:54.741
Yeah, I think Jim and Jesse sing on that.

00:24:54.843 --> 00:24:55.103
Yeah.

00:24:55.785 --> 00:24:57.669
And then you've got the song Blowing Up a Storm.

00:24:57.689 --> 00:25:00.055
Is that a song that you composed?

00:25:00.236 --> 00:25:01.077
Yeah, it's one...

00:25:01.778 --> 00:25:02.681
Jesse McReynolds...

00:25:03.074 --> 00:25:08.519
I think like me, he always had music going through his head constantly, constantly, constantly.

00:25:08.959 --> 00:25:14.183
You could stop him at any point during the day and he was always picking and he'd have some kind of pattern.

00:25:14.263 --> 00:25:21.690
So he was in the back of the bus, we were heading somewhere and I hear like four notes of this thing, cross-picking thing.

00:25:22.310 --> 00:25:23.811
And I thought, oh man, is that ever good?

00:25:24.132 --> 00:25:25.933
And I said, Jesse, I'm going to record that.

00:25:26.374 --> 00:25:31.459
So I got my recorder and recorded just that little brief chunk of it, just a few notes.

00:25:32.239 --> 00:25:36.085
And I took it home and built a song around it, gave it to Jesse.

00:25:36.566 --> 00:25:38.709
So yeah, that's where Blowing Up a Storm comes from.

00:25:53.932 --> 00:25:56.757
Great, so that's based on cross-picking from a mandolin, isn't it?

00:25:56.877 --> 00:25:57.117
Yeah, it is.

00:25:57.410 --> 00:26:00.354
Does that give it quite a unique approach then on the harmonica?

00:26:00.374 --> 00:26:03.196
And then maybe explain the cross-picking technique on the mandolin.

00:26:03.317 --> 00:26:04.900
Yeah, it's amazing.

00:26:05.339 --> 00:26:08.683
Jesse invented this cross-picking thing on the mandolin.

00:26:08.785 --> 00:26:11.847
I don't know how he does it, but he's the inventor of it.

00:26:11.929 --> 00:26:12.730
It's just amazing.

00:26:12.829 --> 00:26:15.573
It sounds almost symphonic.

00:26:15.874 --> 00:26:21.861
When he cross-picks on a mandolin, there are a lot of notes that ring that aren't deadened.

00:26:22.142 --> 00:26:25.445
And those notes that ring tend to create...

00:26:25.730 --> 00:26:28.796
interesting sort of harmony over the pattern he's playing.

00:26:29.037 --> 00:26:41.843
So when you take a harmonica and you learn those patterns without the ringing strings, they become modal in a really unusual way, just really unusual way.

00:26:41.923 --> 00:26:42.845
I just love it.

00:26:43.326 --> 00:26:46.792
I just worked out all that stuff on harmonicas.

00:26:47.617 --> 00:26:52.743
And then jumping forward a few years in 98, you formed the Mike Stevens Project.

00:26:52.784 --> 00:26:56.868
So this was the start of your own band for the first time or was there other ones?

00:26:56.888 --> 00:27:00.792
Yeah, there were other things that I put together, but that was a bunch of friends.

00:27:00.873 --> 00:27:05.097
It was a group called Laughing Sam's Breakdown, a wonderful band from the area.

00:27:05.157 --> 00:27:07.540
They had a bunch of traction.

00:27:07.580 --> 00:27:11.105
They were going to get signed to Madonna's label and other things.

00:27:11.746 --> 00:27:20.993
But around that time, George Gruen, the guitar guy, he was involved with the House of Blues in Hollywood.

00:27:21.694 --> 00:27:28.059
George asked me if I would like to play at the House of Blues opening in Hollywood.

00:27:28.400 --> 00:27:32.023
And he said that Aerosmith was going to do a surprise performance.

00:27:32.624 --> 00:27:37.248
And so I wanted to put a band together to be able to play that.

00:27:37.729 --> 00:27:41.030
So I started rehearsing Laughing Sams and they were wonderful.

00:27:41.612 --> 00:27:54.209
Well, It turns out that there's a guy, I believe his name was Isaac Tiger was the other owner, and he wanted a bunch of antique and famous instruments from George to put in the House of Blues in Hollywood.

00:27:54.709 --> 00:28:03.681
I think somehow George didn't want to put some of these super exotic, incredible instruments into the House of Blues in Hollywood.

00:28:04.481 --> 00:28:12.592
I ended up losing that gig because they didn't get along and I got caught in the crossfire of that one.

00:28:12.632 --> 00:28:14.753
But that's where that band came together.

00:28:14.794 --> 00:28:19.420
So then CBC asked me to record it and we went in the studio and recorded it.

00:28:19.779 --> 00:28:22.423
Yeah, so this is the album Normally Anomaly.

00:28:22.723 --> 00:28:22.923
Right.

00:28:23.084 --> 00:28:24.905
So this is quite an experimental album, isn't it?

00:28:24.925 --> 00:28:31.614
You've got quite a lot of effects on the...

00:28:34.465 --> 00:28:39.984
So what was your approach in this one?

00:28:40.321 --> 00:28:42.163
Yeah, well, I did looping forever.

00:28:42.203 --> 00:28:45.787
Even before I was playing bluegrass, I was doing soundscape stuff.

00:28:46.067 --> 00:28:51.711
One of my best friends, Larry Towles, a magnum photographer, I would always score his images.

00:28:51.751 --> 00:28:53.212
It's really crazy.

00:28:53.292 --> 00:29:03.001
He, you know, he was not a famous person at that time, nor was I by any stretch, but we always worked together doing these soundscape things around his images.

00:29:03.602 --> 00:29:08.666
And it turns out, you know, Larry has become this world famous, you know, magnum photographer.

00:29:08.787 --> 00:29:24.651
And we've even done performances for world press photo in amsterdam and played all over the world with me scoring those images so i was always looping and always using delays i was even using open reel tape machines back in the day and and working with effects so

00:29:25.452 --> 00:29:30.280
yeah and you still do that you do solo performances where you use looping is that something you still do i

00:29:30.300 --> 00:29:33.566
do yeah yeah i love it yeah so

00:29:46.753 --> 00:29:53.148
And then you did, in 2000, The World Is Only Air, which is an album of original and Canadian fiddle tunes.

00:29:53.810 --> 00:29:57.640
Yeah, that was with a great Canadian record label called Borealis.

00:29:58.382 --> 00:29:59.304
Yeah, I love that record.

00:29:59.344 --> 00:30:00.748
That one's a lot of fun.

00:30:03.294 --> 00:30:03.453
Borealis

00:30:15.490 --> 00:30:22.644
And then an album you did in 2005 is the album that you did with Raymond McLean, which is the Old Time Mojo album.

00:30:22.984 --> 00:30:24.347
Yeah, Raymond's like my brother.

00:30:24.367 --> 00:30:26.090
We played together forever.

00:30:26.172 --> 00:30:28.276
We met on stage at the Grand Ole Opry.

00:30:28.516 --> 00:30:36.152
You do a song which I've always thought would be good to do with harmonica, which is Julian Banjos, where obviously Raymond's playing banjo and you're playing harmonica.

00:30:37.134 --> 00:30:37.213
Yeah.

00:30:50.369 --> 00:30:51.791
Yeah, it just seemed to fit.

00:30:51.832 --> 00:30:55.638
It's always that dual and a real crowd pleaser.

00:30:55.919 --> 00:31:03.391
There's a great effect on another song I love on there, which is In the Pines, where you're playing harmonica in unison with these kind of hollering singing.

00:31:03.991 --> 00:31:07.678
In the Pines

00:31:17.698 --> 00:31:18.920
I love to do that.

00:31:19.160 --> 00:31:20.541
It's like another voice.

00:31:20.922 --> 00:31:23.865
That's something that feels good to me every time we do it.

00:31:23.925 --> 00:31:24.807
It never gets old.

00:31:25.228 --> 00:31:30.173
It's kind of like the Sonny Terry thing, isn't it, where he's whooping and hollering, but you're doing it obviously right in unison with him.

00:31:30.253 --> 00:31:31.115
It's really effective.

00:31:31.496 --> 00:31:34.779
And then someone else you're recording with is Matt Anderson.

00:31:35.340 --> 00:31:37.903
This is more blues, is it, at first to say?

00:31:37.963 --> 00:31:39.145
You're doing a couple of albums with him.

00:31:39.617 --> 00:31:43.403
Yeah, Matt's a great guy, wonderful performer and old friend.

00:31:43.542 --> 00:31:48.369
And the first record, Piggyback, we just got together and played.

00:31:48.410 --> 00:31:55.961
Then Matt got a residency at the Banff Center, which is just this amazing creative place in Banff, Alberta.

00:31:56.622 --> 00:31:59.945
And it turns out there was an award-winning engineer there.

00:32:00.086 --> 00:32:05.193
And Matt and I went into the studio and just recorded Push Record in a day.

00:32:05.506 --> 00:32:28.061
live i love the sound of that record there's no external reverbs or anything it's all stereo pairs hung inside the orchestral room and it was recorded without headphones or anything so i i really dig the sound of that right now

00:32:32.673 --> 00:32:39.042
And then another great interesting thing you've done is you played with an African percussionist, singer-instrumentalist.

00:32:39.304 --> 00:32:40.325
I'll let you pronounce his name.

00:32:40.786 --> 00:32:43.470
Yeah, Okaja Ofrozo from Ghana.

00:32:44.131 --> 00:32:46.875
And so you release an album called Canadafrica.

00:32:48.036 --> 00:32:58.090
Canadafrica

00:33:01.857 --> 00:33:02.723
I love that record.

00:33:02.765 --> 00:33:05.827
It's really unique and it was an incredible challenge.

00:33:05.907 --> 00:33:12.317
You know, I had to play with an instrument called a geel, which is a precursor to a xylophone.

00:33:12.396 --> 00:33:23.171
And it has these gourds that have holes in them and spider webbing, actual spider webbing as resonators on these gourds and these slots of wood that you play.

00:33:23.291 --> 00:33:27.616
And they're not really in tune for 40 to play with a regular instrument.

00:33:28.057 --> 00:33:37.842
And the rhythms that you play in this traditional music, the melody that you play, your Western ear hears first is not the actual melody.

00:33:37.922 --> 00:33:39.604
It's something way deeper inside.

00:33:40.084 --> 00:33:50.954
So it took me a long time to try and figure out how to do this stuff by playing all bent notes, basically playing microtonally on the harmonicas to do it.

00:33:50.994 --> 00:33:52.477
It was really great.

00:33:52.557 --> 00:33:57.342
And I knew I had it when Okai just said, it's perfect, it sounds like a bug.

00:33:57.362 --> 00:34:00.084
Are you using standard diatonics to play that?

00:34:00.545 --> 00:34:00.765
Yeah.

00:34:01.605 --> 00:34:01.726
Mm-hmm.

00:34:01.986 --> 00:34:09.932
great yeah so um yeah really interesting sound so i mean did you have to do anything particularly to you know prepare yourself recording that that music or

00:34:10.673 --> 00:34:28.469
no just get way inside it and not count it again that's where the synesthesia thing helps i never count and and i'm not thinking chords and structures it's all colors and shapes so it makes it really easy to play polyrhythmic and odd meter things

00:34:28.849 --> 00:34:39.625
definitely you did it you did a gospel album called life's road to heaven I talked about gospel harmonica a few times recently, and it's always worked so well, the gospel music and harmonica,

00:34:39.644 --> 00:34:39.844
doesn't it?

00:34:39.864 --> 00:34:40.706
Yeah, that was real nice.

00:34:40.746 --> 00:34:42.349
Got some wonderful players on that.

00:34:42.409 --> 00:34:44.193
Bobby Hicks playing fiddle on that.

00:34:45.014 --> 00:34:49.822
Yeah, that was a fun record to make.

00:35:00.769 --> 00:35:04.978
And then your latest album, I believe, is the Breathe In The World, Breathe Out The Music.

00:35:05.177 --> 00:35:07.282
That was released in 2021, was it?

00:35:07.882 --> 00:35:09.445
Yeah, that's the newest one.

00:35:10.146 --> 00:35:11.369
Yeah, I'm happy with that record.

00:35:11.409 --> 00:35:21.809
I think it's a step forward and sort of combines all of the styles that you were talking about kind of in one thing that grooves pretty hard.

00:35:22.369 --> 00:35:23.150
Yeah, definitely.

00:35:23.170 --> 00:35:25.454
Like you say, lots of different styles on there.

00:35:25.474 --> 00:35:28.619
You kind of got a kind of reggae song, like Little Bird, the one.

00:35:42.182 --> 00:35:51.800
Now, one of the interesting things about Breathe in the World, Breathe Out Music, that record is a tune called Put Your Phone Down.

00:35:51.840 --> 00:36:02.697
What I did was Art Horatian, the drummer, it's just the drummer and I, and I played Didn't tell him I was going to do this, but it was sort of an improv piece.

00:36:02.797 --> 00:36:06.224
We set up kind of a New Orleans groove that Art's playing.

00:36:06.905 --> 00:36:17.226
What I wanted to try and do is I wanted to thread this crooked fiddle tune through that pattern, but then keep moving it off the one.

00:36:17.601 --> 00:36:19.623
to create tension as it goes on.

00:36:20.063 --> 00:36:28.771
So every time I thread that fiddle tune through, you probably don't notice it unless you're listening to it, but I keep moving it off the one in really uncomfortable amounts.

00:36:28.831 --> 00:36:32.894
And I didn't tell Art because I wanted to see what his reaction would be to it.

00:36:32.934 --> 00:36:34.016
It's just a one take thing.

00:36:34.076 --> 00:36:34.717
We did it live.

00:36:35.177 --> 00:36:41.101
And by the last time I play it, it is so far off the one and outside that it's great.

00:36:41.202 --> 00:36:50.331
And Art just hangs in and keeps playing, even though it's this weird off meter thing until finally he just gives up and locks back in on the beat.

00:36:50.391 --> 00:36:52.353
That's why I love that tune for that.

00:37:11.376 --> 00:37:15.461
Another really interesting thing you've done is play with the Atlantic Ballet.

00:37:16.034 --> 00:37:17.076
Yeah, that was crazy.

00:37:17.096 --> 00:37:21.623
I did a thing for CBC, a fundraiser at a theater in New Brunswick, Canada.

00:37:22.023 --> 00:37:22.746
They heard me play.

00:37:22.786 --> 00:37:23.646
I did a solo thing.

00:37:23.666 --> 00:37:30.900
And afterwards, they came up to me and they said, boy, would you ever be interested in writing a ballet?

00:37:30.920 --> 00:37:32.081
I like them.

00:37:32.242 --> 00:37:34.306
And I said, yeah, I think that'd be really cool.

00:37:34.405 --> 00:37:35.527
I'd love to do that.

00:37:36.068 --> 00:37:37.871
So I was really busy that year.

00:37:37.931 --> 00:37:38.853
I was touring like crazy.

00:37:39.106 --> 00:37:46.793
And I kept getting these messages from the director of the ballet saying, you know, we're waiting for the music, you know, hope things are going okay.

00:37:46.873 --> 00:37:48.954
And, you know, I was feeling the pressure from it.

00:37:48.994 --> 00:37:51.237
And I got another email saying, you know, we really need it.

00:37:51.336 --> 00:37:52.336
You better do it.

00:37:52.898 --> 00:37:55.659
And I happened to be home just for like three days.

00:37:55.699 --> 00:37:57.541
And I thought, I have to do this.

00:37:58.101 --> 00:38:06.949
I looked at what they'd given me, the dance, and I just improvised this about 20 minute piece that had all different sections and everything.

00:38:06.989 --> 00:38:09.072
And I'd recorded it and I sent it off.

00:38:09.072 --> 00:39:09.516
to them and about an hour later I got a message back saying it's perfect we love it so I thought that's great so I continued on my tour it got to be time to play this live in front of an audience so we went in a couple of days early to rehearse it and there I am in front of the whole ballet and they're just these incredible athletes and they said okay well start the music and you know we've been working on it let's see how it goes so I start it you know it goes about eight seconds in and then director goes no no no no no stop stop stop and that's when I realized that they had choreographed every second of my 20 minute improvisation that moved everywhere went all over the place and so I started to have a flop sweat at that point and I laid out all these pieces of paper they played the recording and I watched them dance and I wrote out notes that were like six feet long going person with red hair comes out spins once from the left one leg goes up in the air.

00:39:09.556 --> 00:39:10.496
This does that at that.

00:39:10.858 --> 00:39:12.818
And just this big long sheet of paper.

00:39:13.420 --> 00:39:14.780
We were performing it the next day.

00:39:14.880 --> 00:39:20.005
So I stayed up all night looking at the performance of it and making my notes.

00:39:20.365 --> 00:39:24.389
And we were doing it in front of a live audience in a sold out theater and it's just me.

00:39:24.750 --> 00:39:28.813
So I moved my looping gear out there and my looping rig is just insane.

00:39:28.952 --> 00:39:31.496
It could blow up at any moment, but it sounds wonderful.

00:39:31.695 --> 00:39:40.423
So I have that on stage and I have my six feet of cheat sheets, all the curtains down and I'm standing there on stage with the dancers.

00:39:40.864 --> 00:39:50.219
Just before I went on, I had probably a pretty good shot of scotch for courage and stood there, the curtains open, and we started and it went off perfectly.

00:39:50.239 --> 00:39:51.780
I still can't believe it.

00:39:52.242 --> 00:39:54.565
Anyhow, that's my ballet experience.

00:39:54.826 --> 00:39:57.228
Wow, and this piece is called 36 Hours?

00:39:57.793 --> 00:39:59.414
Yeah, it's called 36 Hours.

00:39:59.474 --> 00:40:00.536
I didn't have a name for it.

00:40:00.936 --> 00:40:11.246
After I'd written it, I continued on to play this festival called the Rockin' Walrus Festival in Aglulik in Nunavut in the Arctic, high in the Arctic.

00:40:11.746 --> 00:40:14.288
And I was one of the only non-Indigenous people there.

00:40:14.327 --> 00:40:15.268
It was a huge honor.

00:40:15.809 --> 00:40:22.195
As I was getting off the plane, I was met by an elder named Abraham, short guy, about 80 years old, and an interpreter.

00:40:22.494 --> 00:40:27.559
And the interpreter said that Abraham would like you to play a traditional Ayaya song with him.

00:40:27.760 --> 00:40:33.385
Now, an Ayaya song is something that probably comes from his family and it tells a story.

00:40:33.485 --> 00:40:39.492
And in this case, it was about catching a giant walrus, tying it to an ice flow and how they brought it in.

00:40:39.512 --> 00:40:40.313
It's a true story.

00:40:40.434 --> 00:40:44.157
It goes back generations and a massive honor to play with him.

00:40:44.257 --> 00:40:50.184
So I sort of worked my way through it and went on stage with Abraham and it seemed to go well.

00:40:50.244 --> 00:40:53.126
We went back to a little room afterwards with the interpreter.

00:40:53.547 --> 00:40:56.650
I said to Abraham, you know, Abraham, I have no skills at all.

00:40:57.210 --> 00:40:57.711
I wouldn't lie.

00:40:57.711 --> 00:40:59.454
last 30 minutes out here.

00:40:59.534 --> 00:41:01.856
Something would eat me or I'd fall through the ice.

00:41:02.237 --> 00:41:08.065
Abraham looked at my feet and then he looked at my head and then he turned to the interpreter and he said something.

00:41:08.525 --> 00:41:12.030
And the interpreter said, he said you would last a day and a half.

00:41:12.632 --> 00:41:15.715
So that's why I called the ballet 36 hours.

00:41:34.849 --> 00:41:38.996
You're quite possibly the only person I've heard of having composed a piece for a ballet.

00:41:39.416 --> 00:41:41.880
I mean, it's great watching people dancing when you're playing, right?

00:41:41.900 --> 00:41:44.983
But to see ballet dancers dancing while you're playing, that must be incredible.

00:41:45.385 --> 00:41:46.706
It was really incredible.

00:41:46.967 --> 00:41:49.110
And, you know, it wasn't so strict.

00:41:49.150 --> 00:41:52.755
There was still some room for improvisation and the way they danced it.

00:41:53.235 --> 00:41:54.797
Yeah, it was really great.

00:41:55.458 --> 00:41:59.822
And so you mentioned there playing to the indigenous people in the Arctic Circle.

00:42:00.121 --> 00:42:09.951
So a thing that you've done is you founded Artscan Circle, which is about giving opportunities for indigenous communities in Canada.

00:42:10.190 --> 00:42:12.612
And you've done a TED Talk on this topic.

00:42:13.273 --> 00:42:16.235
And there's also a documentary called A Walk in My Dream.

00:42:16.295 --> 00:42:17.817
So yeah, tell us a little about that.

00:42:18.438 --> 00:42:26.445
It's a long extended story, but basically at the top of my career, I chose to do a gig for a Canadian peacekeepers.

00:42:26.525 --> 00:42:30.849
We were going to the northern tip of Ellesmere Island, which is near the North Pole.

00:42:30.889 --> 00:42:35.894
Then we were going to Bosnia just after the ethnic cleansing to play for peacekeepers.

00:42:35.994 --> 00:42:38.958
And, you know, we were being treated like big shots.

00:42:39.018 --> 00:42:50.550
We were flying in the belly of a Hercules aircraft and we stopped off for fuel in Goose Bay, Labrador, which if you're going to drive there, you know, it's like a thousand kilometer gravel road at the end of it.

00:42:50.590 --> 00:42:52.012
It's basically a flying community.

00:42:52.652 --> 00:43:00.005
And in that area, there's an indigenous community and in community called Cheshishi and there's Northwest River and Goose Bay.

00:43:00.327 --> 00:43:02.331
They wanted us to do a concert.

00:43:02.731 --> 00:43:09.527
So we were at a local movie theater and I'd heard a little bit about what was happening in this Innu community.

00:43:09.567 --> 00:43:14.157
They had, you know, low level flying and they've had high suicide rates and stuff.

00:43:14.277 --> 00:43:23.317
And When it was time for me to play my portion of the show, I dedicated a song to Sheshishi and talked about that a little bit.

00:43:23.818 --> 00:43:25.539
Touched a nerve with the audience for sure.

00:43:25.639 --> 00:43:27.760
Got an interesting response.

00:43:28.402 --> 00:43:34.387
Went back to the record table and a guy came up to me and said, if you sneak away from the military tour, I'll drive you out to Sheshishi.

00:43:34.987 --> 00:43:36.829
So I did do that and went out with him.

00:43:37.028 --> 00:43:39.972
And what I saw changed my view of Canada.

00:43:40.733 --> 00:43:44.215
I won't go into the whole thing, but it was quite something.

00:43:44.315 --> 00:43:51.824
And As we were leaving, we rounded a corner and there were eight kids with bags of gasoline to their face by a fire.

00:43:51.864 --> 00:43:52.804
They were sniffing gas.

00:43:53.445 --> 00:43:56.409
He stopped the truck and got out and played music for them.

00:43:56.568 --> 00:43:58.010
And it was a really powerful thing.

00:43:58.170 --> 00:44:01.032
They didn't tell me to screw off or go away.

00:44:01.074 --> 00:44:06.940
They actually started to ask me questions about my family and we had real conversations.

00:44:07.079 --> 00:44:08.702
So some of that got filmed.

00:44:09.242 --> 00:44:14.248
I promised to send those kids back harmonicas and books to the school and all that stuff.

00:44:14.608 --> 00:44:18.438
As I continued on the tour, that footage ended up going all around the world.

00:44:18.840 --> 00:44:23.432
And all of a sudden, I was the person that everyone wanted to talk to about this issue.

00:44:23.914 --> 00:44:29.342
So I thought, you know what, everyone has this maybe one chance in their life where the world will listen.

00:44:29.842 --> 00:44:40.112
So I shelved my career at that point and just started trying to figure out ways to connect ordinary people with these kids in this community to start to build partnerships.

00:44:40.813 --> 00:44:44.396
And what came to me was lending libraries of musical instruments.

00:44:44.476 --> 00:44:52.882
So I filled a transport truck full of instruments, got them up into that community and then went and did a workshop at the treatment center.

00:44:53.384 --> 00:44:55.284
And then it's just mushroom from there.

00:44:55.385 --> 00:45:18.875
And we built an organization that rotates musicians and artists through these communities in Canada and Alaska I think I've given out 50,000 harmonicas at this point and countless instruments and recording studios and we rotate indigenous artists now through all the communities and ongoing and we have many wonderful partnerships so yeah it's been great

00:45:19.376 --> 00:45:26.018
yeah fantastic amazing So there's been a documentary made about you called Harmonica Crossing by a guy called Brian White.

00:45:26.039 --> 00:45:27.860
Is that around this topic or something else?

00:45:28.161 --> 00:45:32.445
No, that one is about the Opry stuff and it was all shot on film, black and white film.

00:45:32.945 --> 00:45:34.248
Oh, there's so much footage.

00:45:34.547 --> 00:45:36.250
We talked to everybody.

00:45:36.309 --> 00:45:38.931
We got, that was at the height of the Opry stuff for me.

00:45:38.972 --> 00:45:41.894
So all the doors were open everywhere we went.

00:45:42.195 --> 00:45:45.278
Brian was a student filmmaker and that film was around somewhere.

00:45:45.298 --> 00:45:48.001
I haven't seen it in a long time, but it was shot on film.

00:45:48.769 --> 00:45:53.817
And you've also written a book called Bluegrass Harmonica, which is published by Hal Leonard.

00:45:54.318 --> 00:45:54.878
That book

00:45:54.938 --> 00:46:03.291
was written in the flurry of dates where, you know, we'd play four shows over a weekend and drive all night.

00:46:03.371 --> 00:46:06.255
We'd get no sleep for years and years and years, my wife and I.

00:46:06.735 --> 00:46:11.481
I basically wrote that book trading off driving with my wife in the car.

00:46:11.882 --> 00:46:16.670
So it's a sleep-addled harmonica book.

00:46:17.090 --> 00:46:19.612
a good place to learn bluegrass harmonica you think

00:46:19.931 --> 00:46:30.842
yeah I think so I mean it's just the way I do it I'm certainly I don't think I'm an expert or nothing I'm good at doing what I do being me but certainly you know there's lots of ways to approach it

00:46:31.262 --> 00:46:43.353
and we're just touching on some of the many awards if you want we've mentioned a few but an interesting one is that you won the Canadian entertainer of the year between 1990 1994 and then you had to you had to withdraw from the award to give somebody else

00:46:44.614 --> 00:46:47.476
a chance yeah that's that's crazy yeah yeah that happened

00:46:47.697 --> 00:47:03.409
yeah and then you won various other um metatorious service medal from the government of canada and the uh folk music on to ontario so yeah lots of awards so a question i ask each time because if you had 10 minutes to practice what would you spend those 10 minutes doing

00:47:04.371 --> 00:47:23.565
yeah what i would do is um I would try and clear my mind, pick up a harmonica and try and groove, try and connect with, I don't want this to sound new agey because it's not how I think about it, but it's to connect with music, to connect with what's happening and feel and groove.

00:47:23.684 --> 00:47:29.070
And it wouldn't be about memorizing and playing certain licks or practice things or anything.

00:47:29.530 --> 00:47:34.434
It's about trying to create a groove, something that moves me in that 10 minutes.

00:47:34.554 --> 00:47:36.016
That's exactly what I would

00:47:36.016 --> 00:47:39.244
Yeah, and obviously the harmonica's good at that, yeah?

00:47:39.684 --> 00:47:40.186
Sure is.

00:47:56.034 --> 00:47:59.237
So we'll get on to the last section now and talk about gear.

00:47:59.777 --> 00:48:06.663
I understand you played Richter tuning for a long time and then you discovered Brendan Power's power harps tuning.

00:48:06.682 --> 00:48:07.903
Yeah, power benders, yeah.

00:48:08.545 --> 00:48:09.925
So when did you start playing those?

00:48:10.726 --> 00:48:12.248
Oh, I don't know how many years ago it was.

00:48:12.608 --> 00:48:13.289
Yeah, it's been a bunch.

00:48:13.369 --> 00:48:14.329
It's all I play now.

00:48:14.550 --> 00:48:15.871
I mean, I still play everything.

00:48:16.311 --> 00:48:21.576
Originally, Joe Felisco built all my Richter tuned harps and Joe is just wonderful.

00:48:21.635 --> 00:48:24.097
His harps are still just over the top.

00:48:24.177 --> 00:48:28.603
But when I switched to power benders, Joe didn't want to work on the power benders.

00:48:29.242 --> 00:48:34.648
So I hunted around for somebody and landed on Joe Spears and he's great.

00:48:34.728 --> 00:48:37.972
He's building these wonderful power bender harmonicas for me.

00:48:38.032 --> 00:48:42.797
And what I like about it at first was that it erased all the muscle memory.

00:48:43.038 --> 00:48:54.170
So, you know, when you play all these bluegrass licks and have done this for a long, long time, you tend to rely on patterns that are really safe and you've done them, they're etched in your brain and you've done them a million times.

00:48:54.250 --> 00:48:55.592
And I didn't like that.

00:48:55.652 --> 00:48:56.672
I wanted to break out from it.

00:48:56.713 --> 00:49:03.579
So that's why originally I picked up powerbender harps is because, you know, they're like going down the stairs in the dark with a step missing.

00:49:03.619 --> 00:49:06.844
They shake you up a bit and you can come up with new things.

00:49:06.864 --> 00:49:22.280
Then I realized that if I set them up so that I could overblow every note on the harmonica, even the very top high ones, I could come up with all kinds of great, crazy, weird patterns and odd chords through tongue blocking.

00:49:22.360 --> 00:49:24.663
And I just started to really love them.

00:49:24.762 --> 00:49:27.496
So yeah, I've been playing them for quite a while now.

00:49:27.938 --> 00:49:43.371
I've interviewed Brendan and we did talk about the the power bend as you're playing yeah so just remind me and everybody else just says is that where the the top octave is changed so that you can bend the the draw notes as you can on the the lower notes on the top octave

00:49:43.431 --> 00:49:59.487
that's right yeah you can do those same patterns uh play them that way but also when you start to overblow if you set them up correctly where you can overblow you know the 10 hole overblow the nine hole overblow the eight hole like all the way through it you can really really create crazy patterns.

00:49:59.869 --> 00:50:05.382
A good example of it would be I do this really weird horn line and put your phone down.

00:50:05.422 --> 00:50:08.351
That's where I'm using the power bender that way.

00:50:18.369 --> 00:50:22.538
So you talk about you still using Richter tune harmonica as well and possibly other ones.

00:50:22.597 --> 00:50:23.760
So is that right?

00:50:23.780 --> 00:50:25.483
You're not exclusively playing the power band?

00:50:25.503 --> 00:50:25.523
I

00:50:25.784 --> 00:50:26.465
like everything.

00:50:26.505 --> 00:50:27.847
Whatever gets the job done.

00:50:27.887 --> 00:50:28.889
Same with brand.

00:50:29.309 --> 00:50:30.452
They're all different.

00:50:30.492 --> 00:50:33.717
They all have a voice and they all sound quite a bit different.

00:50:33.777 --> 00:50:37.666
So I'm open to anything that'll move me, you know?

00:50:38.081 --> 00:50:41.364
You know, it can be difficult, as you say, you have to spend time on the powerbender.

00:50:41.385 --> 00:50:46.329
So how do you move between the different tunings and, you know, the different ones that you're playing?

00:50:46.750 --> 00:50:47.789
It just kind of happens.

00:50:47.869 --> 00:50:50.592
If you do it enough, it just happens.

00:50:51.813 --> 00:50:53.074
Not as difficult as you'd think.

00:50:53.114 --> 00:50:56.677
You know, it was at first, but the more you do it, the easier it gets.

00:50:56.777 --> 00:51:01.822
And sometimes you may come up with something even better by making a mistake on one or the other, you know?

00:51:02.443 --> 00:51:04.744
So you touched on the brands then.

00:51:04.784 --> 00:51:07.186
So it sounds like you play the different brands.

00:51:07.206 --> 00:51:10.331
You haven't particularly got a favorite you're not endorsed by anyone or anything like that

00:51:10.572 --> 00:51:26.695
no i've never did an endorsement thing because i'm always gonna keep searching and changing and trying and i don't want to say that i play one kind when i might play others you know in a session or or or live so Oh, there is one thing, Neil.

00:51:26.715 --> 00:51:27.637
You know what's really interesting?

00:51:27.697 --> 00:51:28.557
I do play in the Arctic.

00:51:28.657 --> 00:51:32.302
I play a lot of times where it's minus 20 and minus 30.

00:51:32.684 --> 00:51:36.128
There's only one harmonica that will work at that temperature.

00:51:36.148 --> 00:51:43.699
And I generally use minor tunings, but Lee Oscar minor tunings, I can play those in the Arctic.

00:51:44.059 --> 00:51:50.849
Like when I'm writing music and inspired by something while I'm out, those harmonicas work at minus 20, minus 30.

00:51:51.068 --> 00:51:54.653
I know it sounds weird, but the others don't, but the Lee Oscars do.

00:51:55.425 --> 00:51:56.068
That's interesting.

00:51:56.090 --> 00:51:56.733
I wonder why that is.

00:51:56.753 --> 00:51:59.969
Because the brass reeds, aren't they, like a lot of the other harmonicas?

00:52:00.010 --> 00:52:00.815
Yeah,

00:52:01.115 --> 00:52:03.548
I have no idea why, but they absolutely do.

00:52:04.226 --> 00:52:05.867
So you mentioned tunings there as well.

00:52:05.949 --> 00:52:08.592
So you say you like to play lots of minor tunings.

00:52:08.773 --> 00:52:10.856
Do you use a lot of different tunings and which ones?

00:52:11.416 --> 00:52:15.983
Yeah, mainly natural minor because I love the chord stuff.

00:52:16.043 --> 00:52:21.992
I mean, I can get all that easily in fifth position in a powerbender, but I can't get the chords.

00:52:22.152 --> 00:52:31.385
And I love the rhythmic chordal stuff and I like low-tuned harps and I love low-tuned minor harps a lot.

00:52:31.650 --> 00:52:37.257
So do you use minor tuned harmonicas on minor songs or can you use them in different Context

00:52:38.539 --> 00:52:43.244
as well.

00:53:06.704 --> 00:53:08.851
Well, you know, so be it.

00:53:09.293 --> 00:53:10.639
And so you mentioned overblows.

00:53:10.659 --> 00:53:12.748
So you obviously do play overblows and overdraws.

00:53:12.907 --> 00:53:13.309
Yep.

00:53:13.409 --> 00:53:15.393
And what about any chromatic?

00:53:15.413 --> 00:53:18.556
I don't think I've heard you on any chromatic from the recordings I've listened to.

00:53:18.856 --> 00:53:19.958
No, you know what I'm looking for?

00:53:19.978 --> 00:53:23.043
I want maybe somebody out there that hears this can help me.

00:53:23.663 --> 00:53:35.077
I want a chromatic that I can be rough with, that I can use breath blasts and mouth percussion in a low tuning, but something that will take that and not cack the reeds out.

00:53:35.157 --> 00:53:36.460
I don't know if there is such a thing.

00:53:36.539 --> 00:53:40.686
If there was a chromatic that would do that, oh man, I would be all over it.

00:53:41.090 --> 00:53:42.391
What about in your singing?

00:53:42.431 --> 00:53:43.452
Do you do any singing?

00:53:43.871 --> 00:53:44.373
I do, yeah.

00:53:44.413 --> 00:53:46.815
I sing on the latest record.

00:53:47.094 --> 00:53:52.460
It's always been kind of uncomfortable for me, but it's just like standing there naked when you're singing.

00:53:52.500 --> 00:53:55.902
Playing a harmonica is easy, but singing is a different thing for me.

00:53:55.963 --> 00:53:58.385
But I'm going to start doing more and more of it, I think.

00:53:58.724 --> 00:54:06.552
Hard as diamonds Shines

00:54:08.172 --> 00:54:18.809
like a piece of gold Buried deep in the ground Like your cold black skin great and what about then your uh your embouchure are you uh tongue blocking puckering anything else

00:54:19.291 --> 00:54:32.034
yeah i'm using both all the time probably primarily pucker but i'm always always using both always you know some tongue blocking and and splits and things like that as well whatever whatever kind of gets me there

00:54:32.385 --> 00:54:34.007
And what about amplification?

00:54:34.307 --> 00:54:35.148
What do you like to use?

00:54:35.168 --> 00:54:35.188
A

00:54:35.568 --> 00:54:36.489
bunch of different things.

00:54:36.550 --> 00:54:38.010
You know, it depends.

00:54:38.311 --> 00:54:41.914
I've always collected really odd pedals and things.

00:54:42.295 --> 00:54:46.998
If I wanted an acoustic sound, I really like the Schertler amplifiers.

00:54:47.059 --> 00:54:48.019
They're really great.

00:54:48.099 --> 00:54:53.023
I've got a really old pair of those that are like a PA you could mix a record on.

00:54:53.103 --> 00:54:55.306
They're wonderful for harmonica.

00:54:55.666 --> 00:54:59.610
I mean, I've got a bunch of vintage amplifiers that I'll use on sessions and stuff.

00:54:59.650 --> 00:55:03.235
I also have a always working on.

00:55:03.275 --> 00:55:03.956
Yeah.

00:55:04.016 --> 00:55:07.326
And I also have preamps and things like I'm not hardcore.

00:55:07.346 --> 00:55:09.311
I'm always looking for something different.

00:55:09.411 --> 00:55:15.489
So, you know, an overdriven sound for me might come from overdriving a preamp or going through transformers or something, you know?

00:55:16.193 --> 00:55:18.878
Yeah, I'm interested in the modeling apps these days.

00:55:18.898 --> 00:55:19.918
They're getting

00:55:22.643 --> 00:55:26.768
better and better.

00:55:26.807 --> 00:55:42.168
Have you found one which really works with the harmonica?

00:55:46.242 --> 00:55:48.103
Head Rush does a really good job on it.

00:55:48.244 --> 00:55:50.367
Believe it or not, they're very, very clean.

00:55:50.447 --> 00:55:55.753
Neural DSP, the quad cortex is quite expensive, but it's going to be there.

00:55:55.813 --> 00:55:57.275
I'm working on that quite a bit.

00:55:57.936 --> 00:55:59.018
I've had fractals.

00:55:59.398 --> 00:56:00.820
Yeah, all kinds of stuff.

00:56:00.900 --> 00:56:07.447
It is there if you put the time in and work on it, but then you need full range amplifiers to play through.

00:56:07.547 --> 00:56:12.054
But my whole approach with those things isn't to emulate an exact...

00:56:12.481 --> 00:56:13.001
tube amp.

00:56:13.342 --> 00:56:16.445
It's to come up with your own sound that's really unique and powerful.

00:56:17.226 --> 00:56:18.507
What about microphones?

00:56:18.947 --> 00:56:20.208
Boy, lots of different ones.

00:56:20.449 --> 00:56:23.190
For years, I used a Beyer M88.

00:56:23.371 --> 00:56:30.277
That's if I've got it in a stand and back off it because they don't like plosives and I tend to use mouth percussion a lot when I play.

00:56:30.597 --> 00:56:41.726
If you wanted something that was really clean and no proximity effect and that sounds exactly like your harmonica and doesn't feed back, the Shure KSM-8 is just phenomenal.

00:56:41.867 --> 00:56:43.168
For my looping rig.

00:56:43.528 --> 00:56:46.012
I use a little Sennheiser.

00:56:46.032 --> 00:56:48.173
It's about an inch and a half long.

00:56:48.193 --> 00:56:53.099
It's a Tom mic that I bought many, many years ago and I just stick a volume control in it.

00:56:53.320 --> 00:57:01.748
I love that because it's got very unique proximity effect that you can use for, you know, vocalizing and sort of painting with effects.

00:57:02.409 --> 00:57:04.411
Yeah, so that's the live stuff.

00:57:04.472 --> 00:57:08.976
In studio, I've got a really great U67, a vintage one.

00:57:09.356 --> 00:57:10.478
I had a buddy work on it.

00:57:10.498 --> 00:57:13.222
It's got a really thin micron diaphragm So it's real quick.

00:57:13.764 --> 00:57:23.530
Got a couple of old Schepps small diameter condensers that are wonderful for capturing percussive room sounding harmonica as well.

00:57:24.130 --> 00:57:29.335
Just to finish off and final question on your future plans, you told me that you're recording a documentary next week.

00:57:29.635 --> 00:57:30.355
What's that all about?

00:57:30.615 --> 00:57:33.858
Yeah, there's some folks making another documentary on me.

00:57:34.119 --> 00:57:42.106
They've already followed me around through the Northwest Passage in the Arctic, and they're coming to the house to do more work.

00:57:42.246 --> 00:57:45.128
It'll take about another year, I think, while they put it together.

00:57:45.469 --> 00:57:48.871
Just a story on my quirky life, I guess.

00:57:49.431 --> 00:57:49.532
Great.

00:57:49.632 --> 00:57:53.215
And what about your upcoming gigs or anything?

00:57:53.235 --> 00:57:53.936
What else are you up

00:57:54.056 --> 00:57:54.096
to?

00:57:54.096 --> 00:57:54.797
Yeah, I'm gone.

00:57:54.817 --> 00:57:56.257
I'm going to be out for a couple of months.

00:57:56.619 --> 00:57:58.661
I'm actually home more than I ever have been.

00:57:58.701 --> 00:58:01.224
I've been doing some sessions and still playing.

00:58:01.784 --> 00:58:03.545
I'm going out the middle of August.

00:58:03.606 --> 00:58:04.967
I'll be gone two months.

00:58:05.307 --> 00:58:08.231
I head to New York first and then on to Greenland.

00:58:08.570 --> 00:58:12.576
I'm part of an expedition team and writing music as we go through the Northwest Passage.

00:58:12.916 --> 00:58:18.742
Then I'm doing an Alaska tour with a great blues musician named Mark Brown for a few weeks and then come home.

00:58:19.103 --> 00:58:22.626
Got a concert fundraiser at a theater here in October.

00:58:23.027 --> 00:58:30.998
And then I'm going to do a full band theater show in early January and play the new record from that.

00:58:31.297 --> 00:58:34.061
There's always lots of stuff, thankfully, going on.

00:58:34.121 --> 00:58:34.983
I'm a pretty lucky guy.

00:58:35.023 --> 00:58:37.025
So thanks so much.

00:58:37.126 --> 00:58:39.789
It's been great and really interesting to speak to you, Mike Stevens.

00:58:40.050 --> 00:58:41.492
Oh, thanks for taking the time, Neil.

00:58:41.512 --> 00:58:42.114
I appreciate it.

00:58:42.945 --> 00:58:45.672
Once again, thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast.

00:58:45.954 --> 00:58:55.860
Be sure to check out their great range of harmonicas and products at www.zydle1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zydle Harmonicas.

00:58:56.289 --> 00:58:58.311
Thanks so much to Mike for joining me today.

00:58:58.351 --> 00:59:01.233
What an amazing career he's had and continues to have.

00:59:01.574 --> 00:59:04.137
And thanks to Tom Ellis once again for helping me out.

00:59:04.617 --> 00:59:11.163
There's now an option to make a monthly voluntary subscription to the podcast, any amount you choose, entirely voluntary.

00:59:11.322 --> 00:59:15.186
He did help me out with the running costs of the podcast, so I appreciate anybody who wants to do that.

00:59:15.387 --> 00:59:17.809
You can find the link on the show notes and on the website.

00:59:18.128 --> 00:59:22.132
It's over to Mike now to play us out with another song from his latest album.

00:59:22.572 --> 00:59:24.534
This one's called Grumbling Old Man.

00:59:25.916 --> 00:59:26.255
Grumbling Old Man.

00:59:26.255 --> 00:59:30.429
Thank you.