March 14, 2021

Steve Baker interview

Steve Baker interview
Apple Podcasts podcast player badge
Spotify podcast player badge
Castro podcast player badge
RSS Feed podcast player badge
Apple Podcasts podcast player icon Spotify podcast player icon Castro podcast player icon RSS Feed podcast player icon
Season 1 Diatonic Harmonica Blues Harmonica Harmonica Author Harmonica Customiser

Steve Baker moved from his native London in his early 20s to become part of the vibrant music scene in Hamburg. His brand of punk folk won him recognition and he was soon a regular on the German session circuit, as well as collaborations in various bands and duos, with his best work coming working alongside Chris Jones. 

Steve has long been a consultant to Hohner, and was instrumental in the development of the modern incarnations of the Marine Band: the Deluxe and the Crossover, as well as other Hohner innovations. He has released a body of instructional material and helped set-up the Trossingen festival and the Harmonica Masters Workshop, which runs in the same town three out of every four years.

Select the Chapter Markers tab above to jump to different sections of the podcast.

Links:
Steve's website
http://www.stevebaker.de/news_en_6.html


Videos:
YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqsgaR1LVVqVT7u_Ud5jpEQ

Tutorials videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5dC3pKSfIt4vSp9RT75I_KHaULc45e7u

The Baker Family Live in Lockdown:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5dC3pKSfIt6AFZyMJtYBF55-e2aH9SkX


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

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

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

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

Support the show

01:18 - Steve was born in London before moving to Germany in his early 20s

01:33 - Early influences were Duster Bennett and Paul Butterfield

03:13 - Also learnt guitar at same time as harmonica and made a connection between the two

05:01 - Blues scene around London at the time

06:03 - Started long association playing with guitarist Dick Byrd

07:16 - Formed own band, No Mercy, in 1975, and has worked as a professional musician ever since

09:45 - Invited to play in Germany in 1976, and stayed there as conditions for musicians is better than UK

11:44 - Went to Arken in Germany at first

13:09 - Have Mercy had four harmonica players in the line-up, including Rory McLeod

14:03 - Have Mercy band may well have been the first of the Folk Punk genre

14:49 - Went to the great music scene in Hamburg

15:28 - Played with Tony Sheridan for ten years

17:03 - Did lots of session work in Germany and played in a band called Tuff Enough

19:18 - Played with Abi Wallenstein through the 1990s

19:43 - Started playing with Chris Jones

21:56 - Gotta Look Up album with Chris Jones contains Double Crossed and Blue song

24:25 - Steve has spent a lot of his career playing as part of a duo

24:53 - Has played with a band in recent years and is now playing acoustic only material

26:35 - Played with Dick Byrd for 40 years

28:21 - Has made lots of melodic recordings on harmonica

29:41 - Has used the major seventh tuning extensively on his recordings

30:47 - Two recent albums with full Live Wire band

34:46 - Steve has created several well known harmonica tuition resources, including the play along tracks

35:23 - Playalong tracks were popular in China, and Steve was invited to China as a result

37:06 - Playalong tracks are part of a Blues Harp app available on smartphones

37:45 - Steve helped set-up the Trossingen festivals and how became a consultant for Hohner

40:45 - How the Harmonica Masters Workshop came about

43:01 - Received SPAH Pete Pedersen Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 for longstanding work in harmonica

43:41 - Steve was involved in re-designing the Hohner Pro Harp, and the CX12

45:39 - Steve Baker Special harmonica from Hohner

46:59 - Been involved in development of the Marine Band range: Deluxe and Crossover

51:12 - 10 minute question

52:00 - Embouchre and difference in tone from tongue-blocking

54:06 - Chromatic

54:55 - HB52 Harp Blaster mic, which Steve also helped develop

57:15 - Marble is Steve’s amp of choice

58:07 - Future plans

WEBVTT

00:00:02.113 --> 00:00:08.103
Steve Baker moved from his native London in his early 20s to become part of the vibrant music scene in Hamburg.

00:00:08.804 --> 00:00:20.705
His brand of punk folk won him recognition and he was soon a regular on the German session circuit as well as collaborations in various bands and duos with his best work coming working alongside Chris Jones.

00:00:21.185 --> 00:00:31.980
Steve has long been a consultant to Holner and was instrumental in the development of the modern incarnations of the Marine Band, the Deluxe and the Crossover, as well as other Holner innovations.

00:00:32.500 --> 00:00:43.716
He has released a body of instructional material and helped set up the Trossingen Festival and the Harmonica Masters Workshop, which runs in the same town three out of every four years.

00:00:45.177 --> 00:00:45.277
Music

00:01:07.682 --> 00:01:09.963
So hello Steve Baker and welcome to the podcast.

00:01:10.325 --> 00:01:11.786
Hi Neil, it's good to be here.

00:01:12.287 --> 00:01:17.572
Well thanks so much for joining me today, it's great to have you on and your distinguished career in the harmonica which we'll get into.

00:01:17.612 --> 00:01:23.558
Starting off a bit about your background, so you were born in London in England before moving across to Germany.

00:01:23.578 --> 00:01:28.564
So how was it growing up in England and what got you into playing harmonica in England or did that come later?

00:01:28.605 --> 00:01:33.209
No, I started playing when I was 15 or 16.

00:01:33.750 --> 00:01:36.933
Probably the first harmonica I heard would have been Bob Dylan.

00:01:37.506 --> 00:01:56.126
But a friend of mine who had the first harmonica that I ever took into my hands in South London where we lived, he lent me, when I got one for myself to learn to play, two records of Duster Bennett, the first Duster Bennett LP, Smiling Like I'm Happy.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.

00:02:08.289 --> 00:02:11.794
And the first Butterfield Blues Band LP on Elektra.

00:02:12.175 --> 00:02:19.764
And these are two like seminal white blues records, which I basically absorbed and taught myself to play from.

00:02:19.805 --> 00:02:21.486
He lent them to me for several months.

00:02:21.646 --> 00:02:27.914
And at the end of it, I could play all the tunes on the Buster Bennett record, you know, some attempt at playing them.

00:02:28.415 --> 00:02:30.237
Yeah, so that was my sort of...

00:02:30.562 --> 00:02:52.093
start in playing but as a self-taught musician because then of course there weren't any teachers they didn't exist and I didn't know any other harmonica players there was one other harmonica player at my school Chris Turner who founded the group that I later joined at Mercy you couldn't really you know learn off anybody so everyone was self-taught

00:02:52.225 --> 00:02:54.669
Duster Bennett tribute concerts still go on in London.

00:02:54.709 --> 00:02:57.651
Have you ever managed to come and play in any of those or see them?

00:02:57.731 --> 00:02:58.032
No,

00:02:58.171 --> 00:02:58.473
I didn't.

00:02:58.772 --> 00:03:00.875
I haven't played in Britain virtually since I left.

00:03:00.975 --> 00:03:06.701
I've done about half a dozen shows in Britain in the last 40 years because you don't get paid.

00:03:06.822 --> 00:03:08.343
And I'm a professional musician.

00:03:08.403 --> 00:03:08.984
I like to get

00:03:09.044 --> 00:03:09.764
paid.

00:03:09.784 --> 00:03:12.268
So was the harmonica your sole instrument back then?

00:03:12.328 --> 00:03:14.310
Did you learn any other instruments as a youngster?

00:03:14.850 --> 00:03:17.493
Yeah, I learned guitar parallel to it.

00:03:18.050 --> 00:03:29.819
It was amazingly useful to me because I had the opportunity to observe a few other guitar players because there was a lot more guitar players than harmonica players around.

00:03:30.200 --> 00:03:32.241
So you could, you know, watch people's fingers.

00:03:32.883 --> 00:03:40.689
I just learned to hack out chords on the guitar starting when I was about 17, about a year after I started playing the harmonica.

00:03:41.310 --> 00:04:05.319
And I taught myself the notes to find the notes of the chords that I was playing on the guitar on the harmonic And were you focused on learning

00:04:05.379 --> 00:04:06.262
blues at this stage?

00:04:06.818 --> 00:04:07.838
Not on the guitar.

00:04:07.938 --> 00:04:08.780
No, not at all.

00:04:09.300 --> 00:04:16.225
I was, you know, playing Bob Dylan songs or, you know, whatever, the Grateful Dead, all kinds of stuff.

00:04:16.446 --> 00:04:26.795
But with the harmonica, I listened to a lot of blues because at that time in Britain, there was the wonderful institution of the record library.

00:04:26.875 --> 00:04:35.442
And I used to go down to Peckham to the record library and take out, you could take out four LPs, I think, for a period of two weeks.

00:04:36.043 --> 00:05:03.372
And I got, you know, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, the Sonny Boys, Walter Horton, all this kind of classics of black blues chicago the blues today these sort of vanguard lps and i listened to a lot of that and also they had jazz records so i listened to things like sunny rollins and stuff like this because it was all just sort of interesting music though i never really became a jazz musician

00:05:03.711 --> 00:05:08.935
around london at this time was a quite a good blues scene did you say see dustin bennett play yourself

00:05:09.137 --> 00:05:15.221
yeah i saw dustin bennett in the lyceum probably about 1960 Two or three, something like that.

00:05:15.723 --> 00:05:17.464
And I used to go to a few gigs.

00:05:17.545 --> 00:05:39.048
For me, one of the real seminal starting points, which inspired a lot of what I subsequently did, was going down to Studio 51 in Soho on Sunday afternoons and seeing Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts, who were absolutely marvelous band, who later had some hits as Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs, I believe.

00:05:39.127 --> 00:05:42.992
But originally, they were a blues band, and they were anarchic and funny.

00:05:42.992 --> 00:05:53.908
And they were in the middle of a scene of people like Sammy Mitchell and these sort of British country blues people who used to play there.

00:05:54.149 --> 00:05:56.673
And that, for me, was very inspiring.

00:05:56.793 --> 00:05:58.855
I started going there when I was about 17.

00:05:58.956 --> 00:06:02.661
We actually booked them for the school dance when I left school that year.

00:06:02.682 --> 00:06:04.985
There was gigs going on.

00:06:05.538 --> 00:06:08.821
But I didn't really start playing myself until a bit later.

00:06:08.901 --> 00:06:19.870
I started playing myself probably with a guitar player, a great guitar player, Dick Bird, who also came from London and came over here with me when we left.

00:06:20.250 --> 00:06:26.456
And we used to play the odd sort of folk club, floor spots and stuff like this.

00:06:27.297 --> 00:06:30.639
And I would go to gigs, but not specifically blues gigs.

00:06:30.699 --> 00:06:46.555
I did go to a few specific blues gigs, like there was a big concert concert in the Royal Festival Hall, I remember going to probably about 1970 with Champion Jack Dupree and Ainsley Dunbar and the Groundhogs and people like this.

00:06:46.836 --> 00:06:50.480
And I saw a few of the touring Black American artists.

00:06:50.540 --> 00:06:56.485
I got to see Arthur Crudup, the guy who wrote That's All Right Now Mama, which was Elvis' first hit.

00:06:56.786 --> 00:07:00.571
I got to see him with the Climax Chicago Blues band.

00:07:01.011 --> 00:07:13.413
But it was a hideous spectacle because he was terrified he hadn't performed for You could actually see the managers in the wings filling him up with whiskey and then literally pushing him onto the stage.

00:07:13.994 --> 00:07:15.637
But I went to gigs whenever I could.

00:07:15.918 --> 00:07:24.898
And as soon as I started playing them myself, which was about 75, I joined a band, a jug band called Have Mercy.

00:07:25.185 --> 00:07:28.548
And we were like North London street musicians, basically.

00:07:28.569 --> 00:07:29.750
We had a couple of gigs.

00:07:29.949 --> 00:07:38.416
We played in Bungie's Folk Club, also in Soho, and the Old Swan in Kensington Church Street, which was an Australian pub.

00:07:38.798 --> 00:07:39.838
These were residencies.

00:07:39.899 --> 00:07:41.160
He went down once a week.

00:07:41.459 --> 00:07:51.668
But we were a bit too crazy, really, for them, because we were actually playing what later would become defined as folk punk, I suppose.

00:07:52.069 --> 00:08:00.500
You know, we were like a bunch of crazy young guys who were playing jug band music and blues, but foaming at the mouth and rolling around on the floor.

00:08:00.802 --> 00:08:03.266
Bungie's Folk Club didn't really like us.

00:08:03.627 --> 00:08:06.031
We turned up one night and there was another band there.

00:08:07.052 --> 00:08:12.000
So at this point in 1975, reading on your website, is when you turned professional, yeah?

00:08:12.021 --> 00:08:14.565
So you've been a professional musician ever since then?

00:08:14.886 --> 00:08:15.166
Yeah.

00:08:15.807 --> 00:08:19.093
And you were able to sustain a reasonable living then when you were young?

00:08:19.713 --> 00:08:20.916
Not really.

00:08:20.997 --> 00:08:21.377
No.

00:08:21.398 --> 00:08:22.841
I mean, in London, it was dreadful.

00:08:23.341 --> 00:08:25.607
And it still is for most people.

00:08:25.706 --> 00:08:28.072
I think we used to get with Have Mercy.

00:08:28.151 --> 00:08:31.238
This was the band that I started off playing with.

00:08:31.338 --> 00:08:38.193
We used to play, like I say, these two regular weekly residencies and we got paid 10 quid.

00:08:38.529 --> 00:08:40.051
a five-piece band.

00:08:40.631 --> 00:08:44.674
And then we would go and play the Portobello Road, the market, on Saturdays.

00:08:44.794 --> 00:08:48.519
And there we used to make good money because we had a really clear system.

00:08:48.558 --> 00:08:54.144
We would have one or two attractive girls with drawstring bags who would go around.

00:08:54.183 --> 00:08:57.365
As soon as we started playing, they'd start shaking down the crowd.

00:08:57.567 --> 00:08:58.707
And we drew big crowds.

00:08:58.748 --> 00:09:02.431
We used to stop the traffic so the police would come within about 10 minutes.

00:09:02.490 --> 00:09:06.594
You had a very small window of opportunity to actually make any money.

00:09:06.934 --> 00:09:08.216
But we did pretty well there.

00:09:08.495 --> 00:09:15.475
We sort of scraped by, but we were all basically on the dole and squatters, you know, in Camden Town.

00:09:15.495 --> 00:09:22.778
I was born in London in 1953 I was born in London in 1953

00:09:36.162 --> 00:09:49.465
When we got invited in the summer of 76, To come to Germany, we jumped at the opportunity because one of the band had already been there and said, oh, you can get paid.

00:09:49.485 --> 00:09:58.432
So we went and were pretty much instantly, I wouldn't say successful, but we realized you could make a living.

00:09:58.493 --> 00:10:00.835
People loved us and they were willing to pay us.

00:10:01.716 --> 00:10:07.740
So it took about three weeks to decide to cash in the return ticket and not go back.

00:10:08.181 --> 00:10:13.336
Germany especially is full of musicians from from all over the English speaking world.

00:10:13.818 --> 00:10:14.684
They all come here.

00:10:14.705 --> 00:10:18.770
They are flocking here and they have been for the last, ever since I came.

00:10:19.071 --> 00:10:20.172
I mean, longer than that.

00:10:20.312 --> 00:10:22.754
Because it's like the promised land.

00:10:23.274 --> 00:10:29.559
I know so many Americans and Australians and Canadians are saying, oh, I'm thinking of relocating to Germany.

00:10:29.639 --> 00:10:30.721
Can you help me get gigs?

00:10:30.941 --> 00:10:32.783
I say, no, stay where you are, man.

00:10:32.842 --> 00:10:35.304
I want to keep the gigs that I've got.

00:10:36.206 --> 00:10:44.352
It is kind of attractive certainly for musicians because not only, it's not a question just of money, it's a matter of respect.

00:10:44.732 --> 00:10:46.434
And that is the biggest single thing.

00:10:47.115 --> 00:11:13.650
If you can say here I'm an artist and you're good people will respect you for it instead of treating you like a beggar and that is incidentally also one of the things behind the current scare in the British music industry because of course Brexit is going to make it very very difficult for British artists and associated with artists who work with British crews to tour in Europe.

00:11:14.211 --> 00:11:20.961
If you're really a big act and you play big venues in Britain, then it's not, of course, the same issue.

00:11:21.201 --> 00:11:35.761
If you're an independent act playing clubs, especially in the blues field, it's a lot more interesting to be able to come to Europe and enjoy the respect that you gain as an Anglo musician.

00:11:36.001 --> 00:11:36.222
Great.

00:11:36.243 --> 00:11:39.034
So you moved across to Germany in 1975, as you said.

00:11:39.054 --> 00:11:39.095
76.

00:11:39.115 --> 00:11:39.154
76.

00:11:39.215 --> 00:11:42.850
So you basically didn't come back.

00:11:42.990 --> 00:11:45.441
Did you go to the Hamburg area then?

00:11:45.889 --> 00:11:51.335
No, we went first of all to Aachen because the guy who invited us, he saw us playing.

00:11:51.394 --> 00:11:54.317
He saw Have Mercy in Bungie's Folk Club.

00:11:54.837 --> 00:11:58.660
And we were named at that time the Have Mercy Jug Band.

00:11:58.961 --> 00:12:02.144
And this guy was a pre-war blues expert.

00:12:02.203 --> 00:12:06.248
He was an academic, a German academic from the Technical University in Aachen.

00:12:06.427 --> 00:12:10.731
He was a very knowledgeable guy about everything regarding pre-war blues.

00:12:11.272 --> 00:12:14.394
And he heard us and he said, boys, you are fantastic.

00:12:14.475 --> 00:12:15.855
You must come to Germany.

00:12:15.855 --> 00:12:16.605
You know?

00:12:16.865 --> 00:12:18.346
And we said, yeah, that's right, mate.

00:12:18.386 --> 00:12:18.967
We'd love to.

00:12:19.288 --> 00:12:22.910
And then he actually sent us the tickets, which we just couldn't believe.

00:12:22.951 --> 00:12:25.013
We thought this is like too good to be true.

00:12:25.153 --> 00:12:30.337
And we went to Victoria Station on the appointed day and got on the train and went to Aachen.

00:12:30.738 --> 00:12:32.219
And Aachen is a lovely town.

00:12:32.278 --> 00:12:34.822
It's on the border of Belgium and Holland.

00:12:35.302 --> 00:12:43.509
And so we stayed there for a couple of months, but we were basically living on our friend's floor and nearly destroyed his marriage.

00:12:43.668 --> 00:12:48.775
So finally he kicked us out and said, why don't you go to Hamburg That's where the Beatles started.

00:12:49.157 --> 00:12:49.638
And we did.

00:12:49.697 --> 00:12:54.586
And we instantly met a booking agent who fixed us up with work.

00:12:55.107 --> 00:13:07.493
Gained, you know, first of all, local notoriety, because at the time there wasn't really any local blues acts who could either sing as well, play harmonica as well, or play...

00:13:08.033 --> 00:13:12.437
with the crazed intensity that we brought to our music.

00:13:12.518 --> 00:13:20.725
Because like I say, I claim, have mercy, we're the only band that ever worked regularly with three harmonica players at the same time, the only one ever.

00:13:21.284 --> 00:13:26.049
Three harmonica, well, we actually had four, but Henry Hagen, the singer at that time, didn't play.

00:13:26.110 --> 00:13:28.211
But Rory McLeod was a member.

00:13:28.772 --> 00:13:34.557
And some numbers we even did when Henry played harp, we did a version of Bye Bye Bird with four harmonicas.

00:13:35.076 --> 00:13:42.909
So basically, I would say we were the only band to feature music Multiple harmonicas are playing at the same time as well, not like trading solos.

00:13:42.970 --> 00:13:45.855
We had arrangements for four harps, three to four harps.

00:13:52.169 --> 00:13:52.350
All right!

00:14:05.025 --> 00:14:17.283
And we also, I would claim, invented folk punk, or punk folk or whatever it's been subsequently titled, because that was the era in London where punk music was emerging.

00:14:17.504 --> 00:14:25.355
We recorded our first LP in February 77, in the same two-week period where The Clash recorded The Clash in London.

00:14:25.475 --> 00:14:27.578
It was that energy of the time, you know.

00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:32.105
That struck a chord here and it enabled us to basically...

00:14:32.514 --> 00:14:38.198
get an audience and earn what, for our standards, was a load of money.

00:14:38.599 --> 00:14:43.764
The blues scene in Germany then was, maybe you were starting this out, there wasn't a big blues scene, was there not?

00:14:43.823 --> 00:14:45.585
Is something you maybe helped get going?

00:14:45.826 --> 00:14:48.707
We were part of it, picking up momentum.

00:14:48.748 --> 00:14:58.817
I wouldn't say we started it in any way, because you have to remember that we went to Hamburg, and Hamburg is the town where British beat music was actually invented.

00:14:59.037 --> 00:15:03.561
You can say Liverpool, of course, but the fact is that the clubs in Liverpool shut at 11.

00:15:04.081 --> 00:15:04.883
And on St.

00:15:04.923 --> 00:15:07.024
Pauli in Hamburg, they don't shut at all.

00:15:07.284 --> 00:15:20.820
All of the bands, not just the Beatles, but all of those people from the British beat music scene from about 1960 onwards came to Hamburg regularly to play residencies of several weeks.

00:15:21.279 --> 00:15:23.942
The gig was like you start at 8 p.m.

00:15:23.982 --> 00:15:27.466
and play till 4, who used to go for the music to the clubs.

00:15:27.726 --> 00:15:30.110
But it was a very exciting scene.

00:15:30.389 --> 00:15:38.384
And I played for about 10 years with Tony Sheridan, who used to have the Beatles as his backing band before they were famous.

00:15:38.765 --> 00:15:41.410
The Beatles played their first recordings with Tony.

00:15:41.972 --> 00:15:42.975
And I knew him well.

00:15:43.034 --> 00:15:46.663
I played in his band and with him in a duo right through the 80s.

00:15:47.323 --> 00:15:49.489
There's an album with you live at the Rias, isn't there?

00:15:49.528 --> 00:15:50.490
Yeah, yeah, that's right.

00:15:50.630 --> 00:15:51.072
That's right.

00:15:51.513 --> 00:15:51.933
Yeah.

00:15:52.322 --> 00:15:54.326
Alexis Cornyn was in that band as well, yeah?

00:15:54.607 --> 00:15:55.570
Well, it wasn't a band.

00:15:55.610 --> 00:15:56.592
It was a radio show.

00:15:56.653 --> 00:15:58.096
Reus was a radio station.

00:15:58.116 --> 00:16:00.241
It was radio in the American sector.

00:16:00.823 --> 00:16:05.976
It was a propaganda station to broadcast to East Germany from West Berlin.

00:16:06.337 --> 00:16:14.508
Tony got invited on to play a show with Alexis Corner, who he'd heard of but had never met, and the other way around the same.

00:16:14.989 --> 00:16:28.225
He didn't want to get in the situation of being interviewed by someone asking him about his glorious past with the Beatles and asking Alexis Corner about his glorious past with the Rolling Stones.

00:16:28.905 --> 00:16:34.933
So he got me to come along as sort of musical grease to make it easier to jam.

00:16:35.234 --> 00:16:37.076
And we just sat up all night and jammed.

00:16:37.176 --> 00:16:38.518
That's where that record was made.

00:16:39.197 --> 00:16:40.078
It was a live radio

00:16:43.543 --> 00:16:58.119
broadcast.

00:16:58.139 --> 00:17:00.522
So was this your next band following the Have Mercy?

00:17:00.865 --> 00:17:02.167
and you played with Tony Sheridan.

00:17:02.326 --> 00:17:04.930
It was one of the things I did at that time.

00:17:04.950 --> 00:17:07.751
I realized that you need to diversify.

00:17:07.771 --> 00:17:13.057
I had already started getting, by the end of the 70s, the first studio jobs.

00:17:13.696 --> 00:17:15.939
And the next 20 years, I did a ton.

00:17:15.959 --> 00:17:18.240
I still get the odd one, but not very much now.

00:17:18.280 --> 00:17:28.230
Since the new millennium, there's less because the whole structure of record companies and making records has changed and the budgets have changed.

00:17:28.569 --> 00:17:30.832
But then Hamburg was a big studio.

00:17:30.832 --> 00:17:34.655
And all of the major labels had their own studio.

00:17:34.875 --> 00:17:40.762
I'd managed to get studio work playing on various different German records.

00:17:41.303 --> 00:17:43.305
Anything notable from those studio sessions?

00:17:43.645 --> 00:17:48.069
I played for James Last once, who was a big MOR name.

00:17:48.250 --> 00:17:53.695
And I played for a producer called Dieter Bohlen, who was a sort of Euro pop god.

00:17:54.076 --> 00:17:56.058
And he produced all kinds of people.

00:17:56.219 --> 00:17:58.741
I got to play for Bonnie Tyler.

00:17:58.781 --> 00:18:00.784
I met Al Martino.

00:18:00.784 --> 00:18:04.867
He was a contemporary of like Dean Martin and Sinatra and stuff like that.

00:18:04.907 --> 00:18:06.589
So I got to play for a few people like that.

00:18:06.630 --> 00:18:10.294
But mostly it was German artists who your listeners probably would never have heard of.

00:18:10.554 --> 00:18:12.936
But they were reasonably well known here.

00:18:13.116 --> 00:18:22.366
And that was quite useful because it helped me strengthen my connection to the Hohner Company, which started very shortly after we arrived in Germany.

00:18:22.666 --> 00:18:23.808
But I was doing a lot of things.

00:18:23.848 --> 00:18:24.710
I was in studio.

00:18:24.750 --> 00:18:26.030
I was playing with Tony.

00:18:26.211 --> 00:18:31.277
I had a band called Tough Enough from about 81 onwards, several years.

00:18:31.676 --> 00:18:45.491
I played with a German singer-songwriter, a political singer called Franz Josef Degenhardt, who was a big figure in the German political music scene, because 1968 in Germany and Paris was the revolution.

00:18:45.592 --> 00:18:46.972
It wasn't the summer of love.

00:18:47.193 --> 00:18:51.798
And this guy was one of the sort of bards of the left-wing political scene.

00:18:52.058 --> 00:18:55.982
And I played with him, parallel to playing with Tony and parallel to playing with Tough Enough.

00:18:56.103 --> 00:19:05.534
So I had all these kind of different things going on, which made it possible for me to survive because otherwise just doing one thing you couldn't really do it you know

00:19:06.082 --> 00:19:09.468
So as you said, you played in various bands and got by.

00:19:09.488 --> 00:19:13.875
And then you started playing with Chris Jones in 1995.

00:19:14.296 --> 00:19:18.082
Chris was the most significant act that I ever worked with, I would say.

00:19:18.281 --> 00:19:27.477
I spent most of the 90s, the first half of the 90s, I played with a really great Israeli-German singer called Abbey Borenstein.

00:19:27.657 --> 00:19:29.140
Brilliant guitar player and singer.

00:19:32.445 --> 00:19:32.605
Oh, oh, oh

00:19:45.442 --> 00:19:49.286
Then I met Chris, and so I was playing parallel with him.

00:19:49.766 --> 00:19:51.989
We just had a magical relationship.

00:19:52.148 --> 00:19:58.935
He would play something, and I would play something, and we'd realize that we were playing exactly the same notes at the same time.

00:19:59.256 --> 00:20:00.897
It was just sort of like telepathy.

00:20:01.398 --> 00:20:09.126
Musically, first met, really, I suppose, 94 on the Frankfurt Music Messe, the trade fair that was there every year.

00:20:09.866 --> 00:20:10.928
And I was there for Hohner.

00:20:11.028 --> 00:20:12.029
I used to go every year.

00:20:12.609 --> 00:20:15.974
They asked me to get someone along to play some live music with.

00:20:16.055 --> 00:20:19.339
And I'd met Chris and I thought, oh, that'd probably be a good idea.

00:20:19.359 --> 00:20:22.064
And I got him along and it just took off.

00:20:22.183 --> 00:20:23.085
It was unbelievable.

00:20:23.425 --> 00:20:24.467
We stopped the traffic.

00:20:24.547 --> 00:20:26.971
We had these huge crowds gathered around.

00:20:27.050 --> 00:20:31.497
People just like open mouth because there was something magical about it.

00:20:31.998 --> 00:20:35.903
And at the end of that, I said, look, Chris, we have to record this.

00:20:36.503 --> 00:20:37.546
This is extraordinary.

00:20:38.114 --> 00:20:40.611
And he said, yeah, but who's going to pay for it?

00:20:40.772 --> 00:20:41.518
And I said, I will.

00:20:41.921 --> 00:20:42.303
And did.

00:20:42.817 --> 00:20:51.164
We never really, unfortunately, basically, we were just starting to get, you know, the success that our music, I think, deserved.

00:20:51.486 --> 00:20:57.971
When he became terminally ill and died, it was very sad because that was, we'd just done our fourth album.

00:20:57.990 --> 00:21:02.775
And after the third live album, Smoke and Noise, that really took off.

00:21:02.835 --> 00:21:11.663
And amazingly, it still sells because it's got a lot of the first versions of songs from Chris's solo album, Roadhouses and Automobiles.

00:21:11.982 --> 00:21:12.784
We did those versions.

00:21:12.784 --> 00:21:42.185
That was really pivotal for me because we made four albums together that have, I think, really stood the test of time.

00:21:42.498 --> 00:21:48.478
and are a tribute to also his brilliance because he was an unbelievable guitar player and singer.

00:21:49.026 --> 00:22:08.662
yeah yeah so as you say four albums from some 95 to 2005 and some uh some good tracks and the live one as you say they're the uh the smoke and noise one the the 2005 one the gotta look up which is your final album together that's your song i know you most for which is the double crossed and blue maybe uh that's the song you're more strongly associated with

00:22:08.922 --> 00:22:09.202
yeah

00:22:09.603 --> 00:22:13.150
but what about double crossed and blue it's a third position song how did you come up with that one

00:22:13.634 --> 00:22:19.583
I wrote it when I was doing the first volume of Blues Harmonica Playalongs in about 97.

00:22:20.424 --> 00:22:33.384
And I came up with a chord sequence of just substituting a couple of chords so it wasn't quite a normal 12 bar and played it on Blues Harmonica Playalongs Volume 1.

00:22:33.404 --> 00:22:35.528
And people really liked it.

00:22:35.628 --> 00:22:39.134
And I started doing it at workshops from the playback.

00:22:39.266 --> 00:22:50.695
Chris really liked it, and we just decided to record a version of it, do it a bit better justice, because on the original, on Blues Harmonica Playalongs, I was just basically jamming.

00:22:50.836 --> 00:22:58.261
In fact, the track that you hear, the harmonica track, was a pilot version, which I did in the control room while the band was playing the backing track.

00:22:58.403 --> 00:22:59.903
Then I realized I couldn't top it.

00:22:59.983 --> 00:23:01.164
I tried and failed.

00:23:02.365 --> 00:23:04.367
So I took the pilot version.

00:23:04.567 --> 00:23:20.192
But after a while, I kind of figured out a few more things that I'd like to do, and And the latest version is on my first solo album, Perfect Getaway, from 2018, where there's a great band version, which I think really nails the tune.

00:23:20.546 --> 00:23:21.247
Yeah, I

00:23:22.708 --> 00:23:23.469
was going to mention that.

00:23:23.489 --> 00:23:25.730
It's nice to hear that sort of full band version, isn't it?

00:23:25.770 --> 00:23:29.413
Because I think the stuff you were

00:23:29.453 --> 00:23:47.308
doing with Chris was that mainly duo stuff?

00:23:50.511 --> 00:24:13.066
Violet vocal on and then me putting a harmonica on and then we would fiddle with it basically and if I reached a point where I thought oh no this is actually how I want to do it then I'd re-record the harmonica and then we put the final vocals on it and any overdubs he did a few guitar overdubs and stuff like this but we never really did any band recording at all.

00:24:27.266 --> 00:24:29.888
Yeah, I think that duo format works really well with the harmonica, doesn't it?

00:24:29.909 --> 00:24:30.970
It gives it plenty of space.

00:24:31.049 --> 00:24:36.797
Rather than having to compete in a big band, obviously the band's good as well, but the duo stuff works really well with the harmonica.

00:24:37.238 --> 00:24:45.386
I spent about 20 years, I think, probably, from the mid-80s till Chris died, only playing in duos, really.

00:24:45.666 --> 00:24:48.049
I had the odd sort of band gig going on.

00:24:48.089 --> 00:24:52.756
It was too loud and, as you say, it missed the space.

00:24:53.375 --> 00:24:54.637
So I love that.

00:24:55.009 --> 00:24:59.580
Though now I'm doing more stuff.

00:24:59.621 --> 00:25:04.050
I'm kind of having worked with a band for the last three or four years.

00:25:04.412 --> 00:25:07.077
I'm getting back into playing acoustic stuff.

00:25:07.358 --> 00:25:11.689
And I've been doing some things with Jeff playing upright bass.

00:25:12.162 --> 00:25:14.284
and my wife playing cajon

00:25:14.844 --> 00:25:20.229
and there's some videos of you isn't there during lockdown and yeah I've got a clip onto one of those

00:25:20.568 --> 00:25:46.531
yeah I play guitar on most of them because I didn't have a guitar player you know but I've got a great acoustic guitar player Robert Carl Blank who I'm going to be doing some stuff with and we'll do that I think in a probably anything from a trio to a quintet depending on what's you know what the gig fee is sort of thing because I love playing the songs that I wrote for bands, I love playing them acoustically as well.

00:25:46.913 --> 00:25:52.618
Because basically after I decided to start making solo records, I wrote a lot more.

00:25:52.679 --> 00:25:54.641
I've been writing a great deal in the last years.

00:25:54.961 --> 00:25:57.242
Are you going to be playing guitar more in these outfits then?

00:25:57.403 --> 00:25:58.644
No, well, some, a little bit.

00:25:58.684 --> 00:26:00.105
I'm not a good enough guitar player.

00:26:00.165 --> 00:26:07.534
I love playing the guitar, but I know too many really, really, really good guitar players to have any illusions about my capabilities.

00:26:07.854 --> 00:26:11.817
I write the stuff on guitar, so I know exactly what I want it to sound like.

00:26:12.130 --> 00:26:25.914
I'm going to be doing some recordings probably in about 10 days, starting in about 10 days, where I'll play some rhythm guitar myself, if I can just put it down first to have the thing how I want it.

00:26:26.174 --> 00:26:28.419
But for performance, I'd rather not.

00:26:28.519 --> 00:26:34.289
I'd rather get a proper guitar player than I can play harmonica, because one thing I'm not ever going to do is play rack hard.

00:26:34.625 --> 00:26:39.593
So going back to your recordings a little bit, you mentioned Dick Bird went over to Germany with you.

00:26:39.613 --> 00:26:41.695
So you did an album with him, I think, in 2008.

00:26:41.737 --> 00:26:43.358
Is that the only one we did with him?

00:26:43.719 --> 00:26:45.020
I did another one before that.

00:26:45.080 --> 00:26:49.288
We had a record called The Mudsliders that we did round about 2000.

00:26:49.307 --> 00:26:57.179
And I mean, I worked with Dick basically for probably easily 40 years because we met when we were both 18.

00:26:57.799 --> 00:27:02.567
I got him in to have mercy and he came over here with me and with the rest of us.

00:27:03.107 --> 00:27:04.130
And then we...

00:27:04.546 --> 00:27:07.588
played together on and off for decades.

00:27:07.669 --> 00:27:12.732
He played on the second and third volumes of my Blues and Monica play-alongs.

00:27:12.992 --> 00:27:14.934
He was in Tough Enough at the beginning.

00:27:14.954 --> 00:27:25.824
I had another band within the Mudsliders with Angela Altieri, who was a great singer and washboard player, used to play with the Silver King Band, Rock Bottom from Florida.

00:27:26.305 --> 00:27:34.511
So I had a lengthy association with Dick until he gave up music in about 2012, 13, something like that.

00:27:34.511 --> 00:27:39.200
sad really because he's a fantastic fingerstyle guitar player uh and great singer

00:27:39.721 --> 00:27:46.833
yeah and i like that uh that king kazoo song it's nice you've got a harmonica and kazoo sort of a duo thing going on which is nice

00:27:59.201 --> 00:28:07.992
I like that record, but unfortunately it never really went anywhere because Dick wasn't that active doing anything to promote it.

00:28:08.453 --> 00:28:13.579
You've got to have input from both sides if you're going to make a go of anything.

00:28:13.779 --> 00:28:20.269
You can't just have one side doing all the work and the other one just waiting for the gigs to come in.

00:28:20.308 --> 00:28:21.190
That doesn't really...

00:28:21.538 --> 00:28:22.500
function like that

00:28:22.842 --> 00:28:34.622
so good and then um there's a recording you'll be playing knights in white satin as a sort of melodic uh single is that something you released uh you know to get that sort of melodic side out or

00:28:49.281 --> 00:28:50.463
Someone suggested it to me.

00:28:50.483 --> 00:28:51.486
I've always played like that.

00:28:52.027 --> 00:28:57.454
And if you listen to my recorded work, I mean, a lot of the stuff with Chris is very melodic.

00:28:57.474 --> 00:29:00.721
Most of the studio work that I did was playing melodies.

00:29:00.901 --> 00:29:02.042
I've always played melodies.

00:29:02.163 --> 00:29:09.996
And that's why also I'm not really a very typical blues harmonica player, because I've always played other styles of music, because you have to.

00:29:10.135 --> 00:29:13.402
If you're going to do sessions, then you have to play what they want to play.

00:29:13.761 --> 00:29:15.463
So I've always enjoyed that.

00:29:16.105 --> 00:29:19.608
I played loads of country music on records.

00:29:19.709 --> 00:29:27.958
I've never had a country band, but I've played I don't know how many country music sessions, loads and loads for German country acts.

00:29:28.558 --> 00:29:39.811
That's something where in the end, if producers want harmonica on a record, they either want wavy bends or they want melodies.

00:29:40.633 --> 00:29:43.381
And so you have to give them what they want, you

00:29:43.721 --> 00:29:43.801
know.

00:29:43.821 --> 00:29:50.140
Yeah, and you did a workshop recently, the Harping by the Sea in the UK, where you were talking about the major seventh tuning, yeah?

00:29:50.160 --> 00:29:52.306
So that was your melodic playing coming in for that.

00:29:52.673 --> 00:29:53.134
Oh, yeah.

00:29:53.375 --> 00:30:05.164
I mean, if I look back on the studio work I've done, I discovered that tuning in 85 and immediately fell in love with it at the same time as Natural Minor.

00:30:05.664 --> 00:30:10.789
And so I started figuring out ways to use it.

00:30:11.029 --> 00:30:18.977
And the studio work really helped because producers don't know anything about the harmonica and couldn't care less about its limitations.

00:30:19.497 --> 00:30:22.339
All they want is that you play the melody that they've written.

00:30:22.640 --> 00:30:34.492
And a lot of these melodies and a lot of the songs that I was playing on were very strong, major key things with a strong dominant chord with a major third, which is the major seventh in the tonic.

00:30:34.932 --> 00:30:36.494
And you've got to be able to play that.

00:30:36.795 --> 00:30:38.916
And if you don't, then you're not playing the tune.

00:30:39.298 --> 00:30:49.348
So I probably used the major seventh tuning on at least 50 to 60% of all the studio recordings I did since the mid 80s.

00:30:49.949 --> 00:31:05.366
And so getting onto your recent albums, your two solo albums the first one in 2018 and then another one the year after with your Livewires band yeah so a full on band I think you've written the songs for these you've composed all the songs and you're also the main singer in the band as well yeah

00:31:05.948 --> 00:31:31.913
I've always written songs and round about 2016 I realised that I was never going to get to play them with the other people I was playing with because they weren't really interested and I wanted to find out if I could and So I booked a studio and I engaged musicians well in advance and just went for it.

00:31:32.034 --> 00:31:33.957
I just thought, I'll see if I can do it.

00:31:34.617 --> 00:31:39.144
Got great people to work with, you know, good studio, excellent conditions.

00:31:39.809 --> 00:31:41.972
I found that it actually worked really well.

00:31:42.432 --> 00:31:48.259
And so having made the record, I realized I would have to put a band together to play it live.

00:31:48.740 --> 00:31:57.030
And so I got a live band because the people who played on the first album, I couldn't afford and weren't available when I needed them.

00:31:57.652 --> 00:32:00.615
So I got a band of people from the Hamburg region.

00:32:01.517 --> 00:32:07.723
And, um, Started playing gigs and realised that, you know, I mean, it's a steep learning curve.

00:32:07.924 --> 00:32:15.094
I've had to really learn an awful lot because I had no experience of fronting a band and no experience of being a lead singer.

00:32:15.294 --> 00:32:18.198
But it's been a very enriching experience.

00:32:18.637 --> 00:32:19.980
There's quite a mixture of tunes on here.

00:32:20.039 --> 00:32:21.721
It certainly isn't just a blues band, is it?

00:32:21.741 --> 00:32:25.787
There's different genres on there with a few blues songs in the albums.

00:32:27.930 --> 00:32:28.029
MUSIC

00:32:33.826 --> 00:32:44.157
In the stuff that I write.

00:32:44.321 --> 00:32:48.327
I'm kind of recycling the stuff that I grew up on.

00:32:48.788 --> 00:33:05.614
So there's tunes which are very clearly like, if you like British beat music, and there's stuff which is maybe slightly reminiscent of stuff like the band or sort of, you know, it's kind of 70s music, a lot of it, because that's when I grew up.

00:33:06.114 --> 00:33:11.919
In the end, the stuff that you hear in your formative years is what stays with you.

00:33:12.480 --> 00:33:15.862
So that was what I found myself writing.

00:33:16.303 --> 00:33:17.503
I didn't have a plan.

00:33:17.523 --> 00:33:18.203
You know what I mean?

00:33:18.285 --> 00:33:19.365
It's just how it happened.

00:33:19.625 --> 00:33:23.689
And also, I made a very clear decision right early on.

00:33:23.888 --> 00:33:28.973
I'm never going to do blues covers unless they're songs that I absolutely love.

00:33:29.394 --> 00:33:31.736
I'm never going to get up and play Sweet Home Chicago.

00:33:31.836 --> 00:33:52.002
I mean, it's a brilliant song, but there have been about five million versions and no The problem with blues as a white people's retro oriented genre is that there are a few really good songwriters and there's a tiny repertoire of standards.

00:33:52.242 --> 00:33:54.767
It's about 30 songs that everybody plays.

00:33:55.307 --> 00:33:57.009
And I just thought, I'm not touching them.

00:33:57.410 --> 00:34:00.294
If I haven't got anything to say, I'd rather not say it.

00:34:00.314 --> 00:34:09.485
I would rather just simply take the risk of trying to do my own stuff, even if I crash and burn.

00:34:09.826 --> 00:34:13.590
You do one-drop blues, which is a real reggae sort of thing there.

00:34:13.610 --> 00:34:14.692
That's an interesting one.

00:34:18.717 --> 00:34:22.461
MUSIC

00:34:31.489 --> 00:34:32.313
Yeah, sure.

00:34:32.353 --> 00:34:33.197
I love playing reggae.

00:34:33.298 --> 00:34:34.081
It's brilliant.

00:34:34.344 --> 00:34:37.920
And I grew up with it, you know, so that's like something dear to my heart.

00:34:38.369 --> 00:34:40.952
Yeah, and the harmonica works well in it as well, doesn't it?

00:34:40.972 --> 00:34:47.057
I had Errol Linton, who does that kind of blues reggae thing a few episodes ago.

00:34:47.177 --> 00:34:53.483
So we're getting on now to talking about your teaching, and then we'll get on to talking about your Horner Association.

00:34:53.523 --> 00:34:56.465
So you've put lots of tuition material out there for harmonicas.

00:34:56.485 --> 00:34:57.427
You're well known for it.

00:34:57.467 --> 00:35:03.532
You wrote the Harp Handbook in 1990, and then the three-volume series of blues harmonica play-along.

00:35:04.052 --> 00:35:14.101
They were one of the things that a lot of people turned to, because there weren't that many sort of things around then so uh you managed to sort of you know get onto that and you know a lot of people use those didn't they

00:35:14.322 --> 00:35:42.396
yeah i mean the the place where they were most successful believe it or not is china but i never saw a penny for it they were just nicked they were just you know illegally uploaded but an entire generation of chinese harmonica players play my tunes and i was invited there to the canton harmonica festival in 2019 to play and give you know work I was the star guest, which was quite amazing.

00:35:42.576 --> 00:35:52.375
And they put on the Steve Baker Cup, which was a harmonica competition where people played my tunes from those harmonica play-alongs books.

00:35:52.635 --> 00:35:59.568
And that was incredible because some of the people who took part were utterly brilliant kids.

00:36:00.001 --> 00:36:04.166
Tansy Liu, she's about nine, and she just is incredible.

00:36:04.525 --> 00:36:09.670
And also older people, where basically that was the stuff they all learned from.

00:36:09.871 --> 00:36:15.074
So they would play my songs, which is a huge honor, which I'm really deeply touched by.

00:36:15.114 --> 00:36:32.936
Unfortunately, the distribution of those books is poor, and I have to find some way of simply digitalizing them and Bach directly, because unfortunately, the publisher won't sell outside of Germany because of the you know, the difficulties of mailing stuff out and all that.

00:36:33.358 --> 00:36:38.074
So a lot of the time people can't buy them, which is sad because I think they're very good.

00:36:38.402 --> 00:36:39.902
All available on your website

00:36:39.922 --> 00:36:40.063
though?

00:36:40.443 --> 00:36:41.063
Not really.

00:36:41.083 --> 00:36:46.608
I've got links to the publisher and you can write to them, send them an email and order stuff.

00:36:46.869 --> 00:36:52.333
But they've been singularly unsuccessful at marketing anything outside the country.

00:36:52.534 --> 00:37:03.603
Like I say, I basically need to take the stuff back and market it myself because it's a sad waste that it doesn't really sell in significant amounts because the quality is high.

00:37:03.784 --> 00:37:08.367
But I just played stuff that I liked and there's a ton of great material there.

00:37:08.367 --> 00:37:13.657
And I didn't notice that your play-along tracks were part of some blues harp app.

00:37:13.777 --> 00:37:15.501
Is that something you were involved with?

00:37:16.021 --> 00:37:18.586
Yeah, that's from the same publisher.

00:37:19.528 --> 00:37:27.786
When the whole idea of that kind of app became popular about seven or eight years ago, They suggested it.

00:37:27.887 --> 00:37:29.347
And I said, yes, of course you can do it.

00:37:29.608 --> 00:37:34.432
I've probably earned like about 100 euros from it since they released it.

00:37:34.472 --> 00:37:40.498
The way to do stuff like that is probably just to market it yourself and digital.

00:37:40.518 --> 00:37:41.838
And I need to get onto that.

00:37:41.898 --> 00:37:47.083
But I just had so many other things going on that I haven't really managed to organize that.

00:37:47.744 --> 00:37:48.565
You're known as a teacher.

00:37:48.585 --> 00:37:50.405
You taught at various workshops.

00:37:50.447 --> 00:37:55.570
And of course, you're famously associated with Trottingen, which I think, did you help set it up in the first place?

00:37:55.630 --> 00:37:58.574
I think the first one in 1989 knowing you were involved from the start, weren't you?

00:37:58.634 --> 00:38:04.862
Yeah, I was at the World Harmonica Festival because I started working for Hohner as a consultant in 87.

00:38:05.702 --> 00:38:12.110
Well, I've been an endorser since the Have Mercy days and they'd heard of all the people I was playing with.

00:38:12.150 --> 00:38:15.434
You know, for them, they were big names, Roger Whittaker and people like this.

00:38:15.494 --> 00:38:18.237
This was, you know, for Hohner was...

00:38:18.722 --> 00:38:23.452
what they could relate to, whereas blues was a foreign language to them.

00:38:23.472 --> 00:38:29.447
And they got me to play for them on the Music Mesa, 85, the first time.

00:38:30.369 --> 00:38:34.057
And I went there every year for, you know, ages and ages.

00:38:34.137 --> 00:38:35.561
And 87...

00:38:35.905 --> 00:38:49.916
I met Lee Oscar, and Lee told me his story about how he approached Tonya in about the mid-70s when he was Billboard Artist of the Year with two platinum albums, his solo albums, after he left war.

00:38:50.418 --> 00:38:53.764
He said, you know, those guys, they should hang on to people like you.

00:38:53.945 --> 00:38:55.869
And I took this to heart.

00:38:56.193 --> 00:39:01.847
And I thought out a consultancy concept and pitched it to them, and they took it.

00:39:02.268 --> 00:39:04.092
And so I've been working for them ever since.

00:39:04.313 --> 00:39:14.318
And one of the first things they got me to do in 87, Jim Hughes put on the World Harmonica Championships 1987 in Jersey.

00:39:14.530 --> 00:39:19.297
a huge undertaking, and he sunk his life savings into it and lost them, I fear.

00:39:19.577 --> 00:39:25.588
But Hohner sent me there as an observer, you know, and I kind of sat on juries and met a load of people.

00:39:25.929 --> 00:39:36.085
And this was a very crucial time in the inception of the modern harmonica scene because it started to articulate itself for the first time.

00:39:36.106 --> 00:39:38.750
The National Harmonica League came up in Britain.

00:39:39.231 --> 00:39:40.753
Overblows had been...

00:39:41.250 --> 00:39:46.521
Recently discovered by more people than just Howard Levy or one or two other people.

00:39:46.842 --> 00:39:52.797
So there was a whole upswing of interest and communication in the scene.

00:39:53.157 --> 00:39:58.309
A lot of the people that I met in Jersey were basically involved with that.

00:39:58.690 --> 00:40:02.876
That led to Hohner deciding this was too good to miss out on.

00:40:03.077 --> 00:40:11.092
And they decided two years later to put on the first World Harmonica Championships, it was called then, in Trussingen.

00:40:11.291 --> 00:40:13.976
And I was closely involved with the organization.

00:40:14.338 --> 00:40:17.123
And that went on every four years after that.

00:40:17.603 --> 00:40:20.251
And the next one's Meant to be this year.

00:40:20.291 --> 00:40:21.672
We shall see what happens.

00:40:21.791 --> 00:40:26.556
We're still planning on it, but it's November, so God knows what will be happening then.

00:40:26.677 --> 00:40:27.077
We'll see.

00:40:27.257 --> 00:40:31.280
But at the moment, the state of planning is that we're still intending to do it.

00:40:31.481 --> 00:40:36.927
And so I was kind of involved with harmonica festivals from an early stage.

00:40:36.967 --> 00:40:46.456
I went to Spa for the first time in 91, and I was doing a lot of Hohner workshops in music retailers right through the 90s.

00:40:47.376 --> 00:40:54.900
And about 2000, I got invited to teach on the Schondorf Guitar Days, which is in South Germany.

00:40:54.940 --> 00:40:57.742
It's a very reputable guitar event.

00:40:58.103 --> 00:41:00.885
And I was their first harmonica instructor.

00:41:01.385 --> 00:41:10.054
And that was the first time I taught at an event over several days with a class where you just came in day after day and could go into stuff in depth.

00:41:10.556 --> 00:41:12.878
And I realized this had huge potential.

00:41:13.498 --> 00:41:28.148
After the second time, I approached the cultural office of the town of Trossingen, because, of course, I had the connections through my job for Hohner, and asked them if they'd like to put on a similar event there.

00:41:28.168 --> 00:41:29.469
And they said, yeah.

00:41:29.871 --> 00:41:38.043
And we did it the first time in 2003 with me, with Joe Felisco, with Brendan Power, I think, and with Carlos Del Junco.

00:41:38.284 --> 00:41:41.269
And it was basically immediately successful.

00:41:41.697 --> 00:41:47.947
And so we've done it three years out of four ever since, because every fourth year has been the World Harmonica Festival.

00:41:48.007 --> 00:41:51.813
And I basically took the slot in the other three years out of four.

00:41:52.173 --> 00:41:57.161
So we've done 2003, 4, 5, and then 7, 8, 9, and then 11...

00:41:59.650 --> 00:42:01.211
You can figure it out.

00:42:01.472 --> 00:42:04.998
Like three years, and then every fourth year was the World Harmonica Festival.

00:42:05.239 --> 00:42:07.581
It's really been amazing fun to do it.

00:42:07.922 --> 00:42:12.268
And we've got the most fantastic people who come, not just the instructors.

00:42:12.349 --> 00:42:18.659
It's really about the students, and I think it's one of the coolest gatherings of people that I've ever been part

00:42:18.679 --> 00:42:18.719
of.

00:42:18.739 --> 00:42:21.943
Yeah, so this is the Harmonica's Masters Workshops, isn't it?

00:42:22.023 --> 00:42:23.246
Yeah, right.

00:42:23.547 --> 00:42:25.550
I've got a date for Whitson.

00:42:25.730 --> 00:42:26.893
The Whitson holidays.

00:42:27.012 --> 00:42:27.393
Wait a minute.

00:42:27.634 --> 00:42:29.117
It's going to be 2022.

00:42:29.257 --> 00:42:44.893
Well, the Harmonica Masters workshops in Trossingen, the 15th to the 19th of June, because we've had to move away from the autumn dates because the conservatory in Trossingen wants them for an accordion event or something like that.

00:42:45.186 --> 00:42:48.492
Well, it'll be nice and warm then in southern Germany.

00:42:48.731 --> 00:42:49.193
It's lovely.

00:42:49.273 --> 00:42:50.996
It's very pretty countryside as well.

00:42:51.076 --> 00:42:52.579
It's like high leisure value.

00:42:52.639 --> 00:42:59.911
So, you know, come to Trossingen in June and then you can have a lovely holiday in the Black Forest or go down to Lake Constance.

00:43:00.152 --> 00:43:01.235
France is near.

00:43:01.375 --> 00:43:02.376
Switzerland is near.

00:43:02.536 --> 00:43:03.197
Nice area.

00:43:03.362 --> 00:43:15.623
And so from your great history of teaching and education and playing, you received the Spa Award in 2019 for longstanding work in harmonica, the Pete Pedersen Life Achievement Award.

00:43:16.505 --> 00:43:17.827
It's a huge honor.

00:43:18.027 --> 00:43:19.230
I knew Pete Pedersen.

00:43:19.362 --> 00:43:21.003
And he was a great guy.

00:43:21.224 --> 00:43:22.927
He was a really delightful man.

00:43:23.067 --> 00:43:26.791
And he was the fourth harmonica he played.

00:43:26.831 --> 00:43:33.420
I saw him performing live with Jerry Barad and the harmonicas in 87 in Jersey, which is when I met him.

00:43:33.481 --> 00:43:41.831
So to get an award, a peer award in the name of someone like Pete, who was one of the greats, is a huge honor.

00:43:41.851 --> 00:43:43.134
And I'm very grateful for it.

00:43:43.521 --> 00:43:49.577
So getting then to your association with Hohner, which you touched on there, since 1987, you've been a consultant to them.

00:43:49.617 --> 00:43:53.686
But not only that, you've been very involved with developing some of their modern harmonicas.

00:43:53.746 --> 00:43:59.661
But going back, the Steve Baker Special harmonica, which is something that I bought and I think quite a lot of people bought back then.

00:43:59.721 --> 00:44:01.746
Was that the first harmonica you were involved with then?

00:44:02.146 --> 00:44:16.358
The first thing that got me to do was a improved version of the ProHarp, the ProHarp 2, which was around for a couple of years in the late 80s, where I got them to make it in natural minor and country tuning.

00:44:16.538 --> 00:44:24.144
And I got them to punch out that little thing that goes through the middle of a Special 20 and ProHarp comb, the old ones.

00:44:24.184 --> 00:44:26.447
The Special 20 comb is still like that today.

00:44:26.487 --> 00:44:34.481
And I got them to punch it out to improve the airflow and improve the tuning and got them to to offer a couple of alternate tunings and stuff.

00:44:34.523 --> 00:44:34.603
So

00:44:34.644 --> 00:44:46.255
that was, I had a great pro harp, and I know a lot of people talk really fondly about the pro harps, because at one stage, the pro harps were really great, and I remember having a few, which is like, these are brilliant, but then they changed them.

00:44:46.416 --> 00:44:49.739
But yeah, there's that period where the pro harps were really great harmonicas.

00:44:50.039 --> 00:45:19.793
Yeah, but it was a difficult time because the reed gap, the air gap tolerances were poor then, and they didn't really significantly improve until about 2005, no, 2003 maybe, because it needed expensive retool which they eventually did under the influence of Rick Epping, who's instrumental in improving the specifications of the tools and also setting up the read profiles, which we use today.

00:45:20.494 --> 00:45:23.317
I was involved with all kinds of developments.

00:45:23.416 --> 00:45:29.922
I was involved with the development of the CX-12 chromatic, for example, which I still think is a brilliant development.

00:45:30.903 --> 00:45:40.932
So there was a whole series of developments where I was more or less closely involved, less with chromatics, more with diatonics.

00:45:41.762 --> 00:45:51.012
And the SBS diatonic was one part of that because I thought out the tuning in the mid-80s and got them to make it.

00:45:51.231 --> 00:45:52.454
And it's a great idea.

00:45:52.574 --> 00:46:02.083
It's just that that form is so unwieldy that it's really hard to play and I stopped using it because I like to be able to enclose more tightly with my hands.

00:46:02.724 --> 00:46:03.005
Yeah.

00:46:03.585 --> 00:46:08.110
So for people who don't know, it's basically, it's got an extra low octave on the bottom end, doesn't it?

00:46:08.411 --> 00:46:09.371
Yeah.

00:46:10.072 --> 00:46:14.835
So was that the kind of, precursor for the low harps that we're seeing now?

00:46:14.875 --> 00:46:16.356
Because we see the low harps pretty common.

00:46:16.376 --> 00:46:19.362
Obviously, Hohner have got the Thunderbirds, Idle have got their low harps.

00:46:19.983 --> 00:46:20.784
Not really.

00:46:20.884 --> 00:46:22.847
Hohner always made low-tuned harps.

00:46:23.447 --> 00:46:28.976
Rice Miller, Sunny Boy 2, had a whole set in all the keys.

00:46:29.737 --> 00:46:39.791
And I know because I interviewed John Mayall in the late 80s that he had a complete set in all the keys that Sunny Boy wrangled for him from Hohner UK.

00:46:39.871 --> 00:46:40.893
They always made them.

00:46:41.858 --> 00:47:00.818
And the SBS just used that as a basis and retuned it.

00:47:01.179 --> 00:47:05.242
You've been involved with the Marine Band Deluxe and Crossovers as well.

00:47:05.262 --> 00:47:07.365
Well, that's my life's work.

00:47:07.746 --> 00:47:16.057
That's really, for me, the improvements to the Marine Band series is something that I fought for for years.

00:47:16.358 --> 00:47:21.806
Because I've been friends with Joe Felisco since 1991, when he was a young lad.

00:47:21.827 --> 00:47:31.722
And just starting out in the world of harmonica customizing, I had instruments that he built for me from about 93 onwards.

00:47:32.422 --> 00:47:34.505
And then I met Richard Slay.

00:47:35.074 --> 00:47:41.282
and other early customizers and acquired a lot of their instruments.

00:47:41.641 --> 00:47:51.956
And I realized that there was some really major improvements that you could make to the physical construction of the Marine Band harmonica.

00:47:52.456 --> 00:48:31.224
And of course, the crux of a lot of the work that those guys did did was the reed work was um narrowing the reed slots and adjusting the offset curve and all this kind of stuff but if you simply seal the cone open up the covers make them more stable and louder and assemble the whole thing with screws then you already have a vastly superior instrument and i pushed for that over a period of years from the mid 90s onwards and hona there was a lot of opposition Hohner USA was opposed to it and said, why do you want to change the Marine Band?

00:48:31.266 --> 00:48:32.967
Just make it as it is, but better.

00:48:32.987 --> 00:48:34.648
I said, well, that's what I'm trying to do.

00:48:34.929 --> 00:48:47.719
Because you can't ignore these groundbreaking pioneers like Felisco, like Richard Slay, and the others who were basically inspired by them, Jimmy Gordon, all the rest of these people.

00:48:47.820 --> 00:48:51.862
Now there's countless people who have been inspired by their work.

00:48:52.103 --> 00:48:53.545
I just said, you can't ignore this.

00:48:53.625 --> 00:48:55.467
You can't see this as competition.

00:48:55.686 --> 00:49:02.378
These people are not competing with It's like saying that someone who tunes up BMWs is competing with BMW.

00:49:02.438 --> 00:49:03.039
Of course they're not.

00:49:03.460 --> 00:49:05.465
So it was a long battle.

00:49:05.505 --> 00:49:14.885
But finally, I managed to convince the powers that be at Hohner that it was viable to assemble a marine band with screws.

00:49:15.297 --> 00:50:13.251
and to seal the comb and to improve the covers and went through a whole load of tests from about 2003 2004 and the marine band deluxe was the first result of this which came out in 2005 wasn't perfect at the beginning there was some screw-ups with the sealing and of the comb but this fell together with the improvement in the reed plates which rick epping had brought about of tightening up the tolerances and so for the first time you really had a great out-of-the-box harmonica that played beautifully and could be disassembled with a screwdriver and was you know easy maintenance and all that that went down very well and then I started thinking about comb material and talking to a lot of people of course because I you know through that work I and through the workshops and all the rest of it.

00:50:13.391 --> 00:50:15.764
I knew harmonica players from all over the world.

00:50:16.289 --> 00:50:21.695
And I suggested to Hona, why don't we try bamboo as a cone material?

00:50:21.735 --> 00:50:26.318
The managing director at that time was a Taiwanese, Arthur Chang.

00:50:26.358 --> 00:50:29.961
And the Chinese had been using bamboo for, you know, thousands of years.

00:50:30.501 --> 00:50:32.443
So he was easy to convince.

00:50:33.105 --> 00:50:38.929
And they started building prototypes using bamboo laminate for cones.

00:50:39.269 --> 00:50:42.353
And I tested a bunch of different bamboo laminates.

00:50:42.932 --> 00:50:45.454
And finally, we decided on one.

00:50:45.896 --> 00:50:53.806
And that That was the crossover, which, like I said before, it's been the most important aspect of my work for Homer.

00:50:53.967 --> 00:51:01.719
The culmination of my life's work was having them make the crossover because I think it's the best harmonica, the best diatonic harp there is.

00:51:02.340 --> 00:51:03.181
Yeah, I mean, me too.

00:51:03.222 --> 00:51:04.503
That's my harmonica of choice.

00:51:04.563 --> 00:51:06.106
And so I'm very grateful for you making that.

00:51:06.126 --> 00:51:06.927
It is fantastic.

00:51:06.967 --> 00:51:09.050
You know, it modernizes that, the Marine Band, isn't it?

00:51:09.090 --> 00:51:12.014
Which obviously is traditionally what all the great players used to play.

00:51:12.034 --> 00:51:12.916
So yeah, it's fantastic.

00:51:13.016 --> 00:51:13.978
So yeah, well done for that.

00:51:14.402 --> 00:51:22.231
So a question I ask each time, Steve, and going back to your instructional material, if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend that 10 minutes doing?

00:51:23.032 --> 00:51:34.005
I think probably hand positions and tongue block rhythm, because how you hold is of great importance to how you sound.

00:51:34.947 --> 00:51:39.300
And if I just want to play something that is a warm-up.

00:51:39.619 --> 00:51:51.972
Then I think that playing tongue-blocked rhythms and figuring out how to enclose to get the sound where you want it is a very good way to spend your time practicing.

00:51:52.293 --> 00:51:59.661
But you could equally well say you practice scales or you play your favorite licks or whatever.

00:51:59.740 --> 00:52:00.601
I don't think it matters.

00:52:00.681 --> 00:52:02.043
I think the main thing is the play.

00:52:02.443 --> 00:52:04.346
So you're a tongue-blocker mainly, are you?

00:52:04.673 --> 00:52:05.635
No, not really.

00:52:05.775 --> 00:52:08.760
I started off exclusively puckering.

00:52:09.221 --> 00:52:19.757
And then because I saw the insert in the harmonica boxes, which suggested that you contort your face into this ridiculous shape and play with your tongue.

00:52:19.777 --> 00:52:21.018
And I thought they've got to be kidding.

00:52:21.659 --> 00:52:22.902
So I never even tried.

00:52:23.181 --> 00:52:27.608
And I, as a self-taught player, simply puckered everything.

00:52:27.628 --> 00:52:31.235
But I learned early on to play intervals, octaves.

00:52:31.695 --> 00:52:33.197
So that is tongue blocking, of course.

00:52:33.666 --> 00:52:42.239
And not just two-hole blocks, but also one, two, three, and even four-hole blocks to play big intervals.

00:52:42.681 --> 00:52:43.585
Then in about...

00:52:43.905 --> 00:53:17.557
late 90s probably about 97 i realized because i did a acoustics test in the acoustics lab at hona and i compared playing the same note with a pucker and with a tongue book and i realized that what the tongue blockers have been saying all along is true that the sound is different because what happens is if you play with a pucker then if you look at the overtone spectrum the overtone series which you can see on an oscilloscope then if you play with a pucker the The fundamental is quite strong, but not that strong.

00:53:17.699 --> 00:53:24.771
And then the first two or three overtone fractions, the octave, the fifth above that, the next octave, are really powerful.

00:53:24.831 --> 00:53:25.711
They're really strong.

00:53:25.873 --> 00:53:28.016
And that makes the sound bright.

00:53:28.257 --> 00:53:34.987
Whereas if you play with a tongue block, you strengthen the fundamental and you weaken the next few overtone fractions.

00:53:35.088 --> 00:53:38.034
So the sound is more round and fat.

00:53:38.273 --> 00:53:42.550
and fundamental because you've got more of that root note of the whole thing.

00:53:42.570 --> 00:53:43.413
It's louder.

00:53:43.592 --> 00:53:47.849
That forced me to start learning to tongue block single notes.

00:53:48.353 --> 00:53:50.777
And I've struggled with it ever since.

00:53:50.898 --> 00:53:54.664
And I now tongue block probably about, depends what I'm playing.

00:53:54.704 --> 00:53:56.206
You know, I switch all the time.

00:53:56.487 --> 00:53:56.927
I switch.

00:53:56.967 --> 00:54:00.193
So if something's too difficult to do with a tongue block, I'll pucker it.

00:54:00.793 --> 00:54:04.820
And if something doesn't make sense with a tongue block, then I'll pucker it.

00:54:05.081 --> 00:54:08.045
And if something sounds better with a tongue block, I'll tongue block it.

00:54:08.606 --> 00:54:09.969
You do play some chromatic, don't you?

00:54:09.989 --> 00:54:12.893
I've got some recording you playing some chromatic.

00:54:29.826 --> 00:54:30.467
I used to.

00:54:30.847 --> 00:54:32.568
Throughout the 80s, I had to.

00:54:32.628 --> 00:54:43.478
When I was playing with the German political singer I accompanied at that time, most of his music demanded the chromatic, and I used to play a lot of chromatic, but never really that well.

00:54:43.838 --> 00:54:49.742
And I can't say that I have the emotional connection to the instrument that I have to the diatonic part.

00:54:50.003 --> 00:54:56.248
And obviously you're a Horner and Dorsey, so you're playing Horners, and the crossover, as you said, is your diatonic choice.

00:54:56.668 --> 00:54:59.751
And I see on your website you're talking about...

00:54:59.791 --> 00:55:04.380
HB52 heart blaster microphone from Horner is that your microphone of choice now?

00:55:04.865 --> 00:55:05.226
Yes.

00:55:05.507 --> 00:55:26.003
I mean, I was very closely involved with the development and the physical dimensions are based on my own custom mic, which was made for me by a friend from a Harley Davidson blinker, the shell, and with a Fender Telecaster volume knob on the back and an XLR socket and exactly those dimensions.

00:55:26.143 --> 00:55:29.907
So basically I provided them with the physical dimensions.

00:55:30.447 --> 00:55:38.815
Then the developer at SE Electronics, Tom Stube, who did the, he's a brilliant microphone expert.

00:55:39.056 --> 00:55:57.036
He analyzed the frequency spectra of a whole bunch of popular vintage microphones, beloved of harmonica players, and built an element from the ground up that duplicated those characteristics and put it in this shell, which was based on my mic.

00:55:57.315 --> 00:55:58.177
I think it's brilliant.

00:55:58.356 --> 00:56:01.099
I got the first one October 2019.

00:56:01.280 --> 00:56:05.844
It was a pre-production one, but I got to therefore play it on a bunch of gigs.

00:56:05.925 --> 00:56:08.467
I played three months of gigs on it before the lockdown.

00:56:08.608 --> 00:56:10.449
The sound is beautiful.

00:56:10.550 --> 00:56:12.952
The handling is perfect for my purposes.

00:56:13.373 --> 00:56:17.978
And there's a number of features which you don't have with comparable microphones.

00:56:18.318 --> 00:56:32.793
There's a wonderful American microphone builder who's a good friend and whose name I therefore won't mention, who makes a popular microphone of a similar size, but that has not got the angled back XLR connector.

00:56:32.954 --> 00:57:17.521
The HB52 has got that feature which was on my mic and that means that it doesn't get in the way of your hands so you get a much better enclosure for example you know there's some very good features of that mic and Tom Stubich the developer also took an absolutely top line potentiometer for the volume control it's a born pot as good as you can get and it gives you a totally linear volume increase so it's not like the fender complex where you turn it up and up and nothing happens and you get to two and suddenly it's really loud and then it only gradually gets louder from there on up it's with the hb52 you've got a linear from zero to a hundred so virtually a linear scale and so that's very practical

00:57:17.581 --> 00:57:20.545
fantastic and what about amplifiers what's your amplifiers of choice

00:57:21.045 --> 00:57:36.742
i use marble amplifiers i've used fenders all my life as an electric player and i've got a couple of fender amps i've got a custom bass man but it's too heavy without a roadie i'm not going to carry it to a gig and it's too loud i But I have two Marble amplifiers.

00:57:36.842 --> 00:57:45.532
Marble is a Dutch company that makes excellent handmade amps with hand-wound transformers and all this sort of stuff.

00:57:45.751 --> 00:57:50.137
And I have a Marble Max for small gigs and recording.

00:57:50.356 --> 00:57:57.483
And I've got a Marble Blue Sonic, but with one 12-inch Weber speaker, not the two 8-inch that the standard version has.

00:57:57.503 --> 00:57:59.467
And that's what I use with the bands.

00:57:59.666 --> 00:58:00.226
Killer amp.

00:58:00.467 --> 00:58:02.028
I've never needed one this louder.

00:58:02.329 --> 00:58:04.592
Yeah, a lot of people are really liking the Marble amps now.

00:58:04.592 --> 00:58:17.565
days oh they're great they're great okay and then so final question so what about your future plans now obviously uh hopefully things are opening up a little bit gig wise you've got some gigs on your website you were hoping to get out playing soon and i think in april and may

00:58:18.045 --> 00:58:58.657
uh um no most of them have been cancelled now uh it's it's rollback at the moment i'm hoping that in summer we'll be able to play a game and so i'm not expecting too much but what i'm looking at is now starting to record some acoustic versions of my new songs because I've been right I've got a half a dozen new songs and just see how that works out and then try to parallel to the live wires to also play some gigs in this acoustic lineup because I love playing acoustically and if I had the choice I would never use an amplifier or a microphone or a PA ever again.

00:58:58.697 --> 00:59:00.820
Thanks so much, Steve Baker, for talking to me.

00:59:00.840 --> 00:59:07.969
You've been instrumental in developing the harmonicas that a lot of people play and, of course, the instruction material as well, so it's been a real honour.

00:59:08.269 --> 00:59:09.090
Thank you very much.

00:59:09.210 --> 00:59:11.273
It's been a pleasure talking to you, Neil.

00:59:11.815 --> 00:59:12.876
Thanks so much, Steve.

00:59:12.936 --> 00:59:14.998
Players out with Double Crossed and Blue.

00:59:20.025 --> 00:59:20.126
MUSIC