May 8, 2021

Will Galison interview

Will Galison interview
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Season 1 Chromatic Harmonica Jazz Chromatic Session Musician

Will Galison joins me on episode 38.

Will first picked up the chromatic harmonica when studying guitar at the Berklee College of Music.  He quickly realised he had an affinity with the instrument, and after spending a day with Toots Thielemans he knew the chromatic instrument was what he wanted to do.

Will went on to record numerous albums under his own name, including a successful collaboration with Madeleine Peyroux. He has been an in-demand session player for numerous years, with credits performing with the likes of Barbara Streisand, Carly Simon, Donald Fagen and many others. On top of all this he has recorded a version of the Sesame Street theme tune used on the TV show. With interests ranging from jazz, to pop and classical, as well as playing some mean diatonic,

Will really delivers a pocketful of soul.


Links:
Will's website:
https://www.willgalison.net/

Takin It Back With Barack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJW67YfLWgs

Odysseus Fantasy:
https://www.willgalison.net/odysseus-concerto

Beethoven Spring Sonata:
https://www.willgalison.net/beethoven-spring-sonata

Will's Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/will-galison/

Hal Leonard Jazz Standards tutorial:
https://www.halleonard.com/product/1335/jazz-standards

Hal Leonard Pop Songs tutorial:
https://www.halleonard.com/product/1090/pop-classics

HarmonicaUK Virtual Chromatic Weekend:
http://harmonica.uk/HUKBlog/chromatic-weekend/


Videos:

Odyssey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPC-fh3jysw

Beethoven Spring Sonata:
https://www.willgalison.net/beethoven-spring-sonata

Toots Thielemans playing Undecided:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMTmKwosSi8

Pocketful of Soul:
https://www.willgalison.net/pocket-full-of-soul

Skylark with Sean Harness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KylY3vQv8Y4&t=105s


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

01:15 - A native New Yorker but has been in Costa Rica over the last year

02:49 - Piano was first instrument played as a youngster

03:20 - Started playing guitar next

04:33 - Been playing soprano saxophone over last year, which is much easier to play than chromatic harmonica

05:54 - When playing diatonic harmonica always thinks in key of C

06:47 - Fluidity playing on diatonic compared to chromatic

07:26 - Will started out playing on diatonic

07:46 - Picked up chromatic when attending Berklee School of Music at age 17

08:34 - Discovered Toots Thielemans

09:22 - Got first gig after only two months of playing chromatic

10:06 - The young Will accompanied Toots Thielemans in New York as he played recording sessions

11:24 - Toots described Will as the “most original and individual of the new generation of harmonica players”

11:58 - Stevie Wonder was another big influence on Will

12:12 - Will was shown the music scene in New York by a clarinet player

12:55 - Eivetz Rednow album by Stevie Wonder is one of Will’s favourites

13:59 - Will’s first album ‘Overjoyed’

15:50 - Bagdad Cafe film soundtrack and hit song ‘Calling You’

17:18 - Also recorded Calling You with Barbara Streisand

18:02 - Will’s album ‘Calling You’

18:56 - ‘Midnight Sun’ album with a German jazz group

19:29 - ‘Love Letters’ album with Australian singer

19:48 - ‘Got You On My Mind’ album with Madeleine Peyroux

20:42 - Will’s approach to accompanying a singer

24:05 - Song for Barack Obama 2008 election campaign

26:37 - Will did all production for his 2011 album ‘Line Open’

28:10 - ‘Odysseus Fantasy’ album sees Will playing classical music

31:41 - Beethoven Spring Sonata and classical chromatic harmonica

33:56 - Intrigued by new harmonicas companies which are springing up

34:20 - Will has played on Sesame Street, including a version of the theme tune

35:41 - Two tuition books with Hal Leonard

37:15 - Value of transcribing

39:01 - Did some recordings for karaoke tracks

39:19 - Toots used different keyed chromatics on some songs

41:10 - Appeared at UK NHL festival in 2008 where immigration hold-up led to a visit to The House of Commons

42:59 - Will is appearing at the 2021 Virtual Chromatic Weekend festival

43:11 - Pocketful of Soul song

46:59 - Ten minute question

48:34 - Will’s harmonicas of choice

50:07 - Embouchre

51:05 - New models of chromatic being manufactured

52:21 - Amps and mics

55:30 - Future plans

WEBVTT

00:00:00.034 --> 00:00:02.658
Will Gallison joins me on episode 38.

00:00:03.359 --> 00:00:07.628
Will first picked up the chromatic harmonica when studying at the Berklee College of Music.

00:00:08.169 --> 00:00:15.865
He quickly realised he had an affinity with the instrument and after spending a day with Toots Teelmans, he knew the chromatic harmonica was what he wanted to do.

00:00:16.405 --> 00:00:22.557
Will went on to record numerous albums under his own name, including a successful collaboration with Madeline Perrault.

00:00:22.690 --> 00:00:30.283
He has been an in-demand session player for many years, with credits performing with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon and Donald Fagan.

00:00:30.844 --> 00:00:35.713
On top of all this, he has recorded a version of the Sesame Street theme tune used on the TV show.

00:00:36.155 --> 00:00:44.109
With interests ranging from jazz to pop and classical, as well as playing some mean diatonic, Will is the all-round harmonica player.

00:01:11.073 --> 00:01:13.765
Oh, hello, Will Gallison, and welcome to the podcast.

00:01:13.784 --> 00:01:14.287
Oh, hello.

00:01:14.326 --> 00:01:15.531
Thank you very much for having me.

00:01:15.912 --> 00:01:19.004
You are a native New Yorker, or at least you live in New York.

00:01:19.329 --> 00:01:20.191
Yeah, very native.

00:01:20.271 --> 00:01:21.871
A fourth generation, you could say.

00:01:22.212 --> 00:01:23.853
But at the moment, you're in Costa Rica.

00:01:23.873 --> 00:01:24.373
Is that right?

00:01:24.555 --> 00:01:25.135
Yes, I am.

00:01:25.174 --> 00:01:26.736
And any story behind that?

00:01:27.016 --> 00:01:28.358
Well, yeah, there's a long story.

00:01:28.397 --> 00:01:29.698
I'll give you the short version.

00:01:29.739 --> 00:01:33.621
I came down last March to do some research about something.

00:01:33.742 --> 00:01:36.504
And I was just here for about a week or 10 days.

00:01:36.584 --> 00:01:40.188
But during that time is when COVID hit New York very badly.

00:01:40.388 --> 00:01:45.152
I was with my girlfriend and we decided to stay for a few weeks to see if things got better.

00:01:45.171 --> 00:01:45.772
They didn't.

00:01:46.052 --> 00:01:46.653
They got worse.

00:01:47.034 --> 00:01:52.640
So I stayed in an eco community for about five months, a place called Pachamama.

00:01:52.819 --> 00:01:55.022
Very interesting place, and we played a lot of music there.

00:01:55.042 --> 00:02:00.847
Then I've been staying in a town called Nosara for the last six or seven months, enjoying it very much.

00:02:01.228 --> 00:02:06.353
I'm going to go back to New York very soon because things are getting better, and I'll get vaccinated when I get there.

00:02:06.394 --> 00:02:10.778
So music-wise, you said that you're able to get into the music scene there.

00:02:10.838 --> 00:02:12.941
What sort of music are they playing in Costa Rica?

00:02:13.542 --> 00:02:18.888
Well, this was, I guess you could say, a village or an eco community, they call it, with...

00:02:19.247 --> 00:02:20.449
Not so many Costa Ricans.

00:02:20.508 --> 00:02:23.772
It was a lot of Israelis, Germans, Americans, Brits.

00:02:24.372 --> 00:02:25.615
And they were just doing projects.

00:02:25.675 --> 00:02:27.817
They had a broadcast that they did.

00:02:28.037 --> 00:02:30.680
There's a network of related communities.

00:02:31.061 --> 00:02:33.302
We rehearsed and did a show for that, which was fun.

00:02:33.383 --> 00:02:35.925
And I did a couple of shows on my own of my own music.

00:02:36.286 --> 00:02:43.153
I mean, there's no gigging because like everywhere else in the world, restaurants and cafes and venues are limiting capacity.

00:02:43.433 --> 00:02:46.776
But I found people to play with and managed to keep my foot in it.

00:02:47.057 --> 00:02:52.043
So back to your early life, you you started off, I think, playing the piano when you were a youngster.

00:02:52.263 --> 00:02:52.943
That's right, about

00:02:53.003 --> 00:02:53.745
seven years old.

00:02:54.004 --> 00:02:56.668
Not very willingly, I might say, but I did enjoy it.

00:02:56.927 --> 00:03:11.804
Yeah, I think that helped to develop my ear because being very ADD, I wasn't particularly good at reading music and I would fake it by just playing back what I heard, which went into some fairly complicated Mozart stuff, you know, not beginner stuff.

00:03:12.024 --> 00:03:13.126
I was no prodigy.

00:03:13.205 --> 00:03:14.887
I was doing everything by ear.

00:03:15.268 --> 00:03:19.431
Despite my reluctance to practice, I somehow made it through.

00:03:19.551 --> 00:03:25.138
And then when I was about nine years old, I became aware of the Beatles and the monkeys and all that stuff.

00:03:25.177 --> 00:03:27.221
And I thought, why would anybody want to play the piano?

00:03:27.520 --> 00:03:28.622
The guitar is the way to go.

00:03:29.022 --> 00:03:30.783
So then I started playing guitar around that age.

00:03:31.104 --> 00:03:33.586
And of course, and you still play guitar now, as you mentioned.

00:03:33.606 --> 00:03:33.907
I do.

00:03:34.168 --> 00:03:35.229
Yeah, I still study.

00:03:35.269 --> 00:03:37.371
It's a terribly difficult instrument.

00:03:37.852 --> 00:03:45.360
Non-intuitive, you might say, I find, insofar as there's five different ways to play a middle C on it, you know, five different places on the neck.

00:03:45.479 --> 00:03:51.907
So every phrase you play, you have to make a decision as to how you're going to because there's a dozen different ways of doing it.

00:03:52.127 --> 00:03:57.812
I also have trouble visualizing it in the same way that I would visualize a keyboard, for example.

00:03:58.133 --> 00:04:01.276
And when I play harmonica, I do picture a piano keyboard.

00:04:01.556 --> 00:04:04.419
The piano and the harmonica, for me, have the same

00:04:04.760 --> 00:04:05.401
geography.

00:04:05.681 --> 00:04:07.302
Yeah, a lot of people may like compressing, don't they?

00:04:07.342 --> 00:04:10.447
That linear layout of them, very similar.

00:04:10.806 --> 00:04:12.468
Do you play any piano at all now?

00:04:12.908 --> 00:04:12.968
I

00:04:12.990 --> 00:04:14.010
have a nice piano at home.

00:04:14.290 --> 00:04:15.391
I use it for composing.

00:04:15.412 --> 00:04:19.055
I find it gives me more possibilities than guitar when I'm writing songs.

00:04:19.055 --> 00:04:19.415
songs.

00:04:19.716 --> 00:04:24.841
You know, I write small pieces, jazz type things, and I use the piano for that.

00:04:25.122 --> 00:04:32.589
It's always good for me to return to the piano just to, again, to reinforce that map, which is what I see in my mind when I play the harmonica.

00:04:32.911 --> 00:04:40.999
Actually, this year, I've started getting back into saxophone, which I played in my 20s and 30s, and then I dropped it for some reason.

00:04:41.519 --> 00:04:49.468
And just before I went to Costa Rica, thinking I was going to come back in about 10 days, I picked up the soprano, which I had, again, just played for a few years.

00:04:49.769 --> 00:04:50.610
I really enjoy that.

00:04:50.670 --> 00:04:52.851
It's kind of the same register as the harmonica.

00:04:52.872 --> 00:04:56.855
I must say it's a much easier instrument than the harmonica is.

00:04:56.956 --> 00:05:03.043
It really made me appreciate how difficult the harmonica is in terms of phrasing and just agility.

00:05:03.103 --> 00:05:09.709
You can learn something on the, I can at least learn something on the saxophone in a few hours that it would take me a week to learn on the harmonica.

00:05:10.151 --> 00:05:13.413
In saxophone, they like to say you're wiggling your fingers.

00:05:13.634 --> 00:05:21.682
You have to adjust your embouchure, but I think my experience with the harmonica has given me a lot of sensitivity in terms of mouth position, etc.

00:05:21.862 --> 00:05:24.346
So I think the embouchure comes fairly naturally to me.

00:05:24.625 --> 00:05:31.312
But to play something on harmonica, you have to move the horn, you have to breathe in or breathe out, you have to have the button in or out.

00:05:31.432 --> 00:05:33.014
And those are three factors.

00:05:33.314 --> 00:05:45.869
The devil in playing the harmonica is being able to play phrases legato when it's a physical impossibility to play a legato phrase when you're blowing in and out, because the air has to stop at one point in order to change direction.

00:05:46.088 --> 00:05:48.911
So do you make that comparison to the chromatic harmonica specifically?

00:05:48.911 --> 00:05:51.535
specifically rather than the diatonic because of course you do play both

00:05:51.754 --> 00:06:28.454
yeah no i was thinking more of the chromatic harmonica when i play the diatonic harmonica in fact i always think of the harmonica that i'm playing on as being in the key of c which i think is pretty typical so i imagine it as a kind of slightly altered map the same way as i play the chromatic harmonica when i do overblows and bends you have to superimpose that map onto the onto the general map but i but in a certain sense i'm always playing in in the same few keys you know whether it's first position, second position, third position, 12th position, whatever you might do on the diatonic, even if I'm playing a B flat or an A flat harmonica, I imagine I'm in the key of C.

00:06:28.494 --> 00:06:32.538
Otherwise, it would be too complicated because I'd need 12 maps, if you understand me.

00:06:33.178 --> 00:06:38.584
I assume not many musicians, I don't know how Howard Levy pictures when he plays, but probably in the same way.

00:06:38.625 --> 00:06:42.189
He probably imagines that he's playing on a C instrument because it's overwhelming otherwise.

00:06:42.488 --> 00:06:46.413
Yeah, and of course, I've had him on the podcast, of course, he's a piano player too.

00:06:46.653 --> 00:06:51.098
It's an interesting comparison, isn't it, as you say, that that fluidity on the chromatic harmonica.

00:06:51.439 --> 00:06:52.699
I mean, I play both myself.

00:06:52.779 --> 00:06:59.266
The fluidity is a lot easier on the diatonic than the chromatic, but I think the chromatic is your main harmonica of choice, isn't it, instrument-wise?

00:06:59.526 --> 00:07:00.427
It's what I'm known for.

00:07:00.487 --> 00:07:04.973
I'd say I'm a better chromatic player than I am a diatonic player, although I like playing the diatonic a lot.

00:07:05.093 --> 00:07:12.641
But the fluidity is there if you play in certain keys and, you know, if you're trying to play an F sharp on a C harp, it's not going to be fluid at all.

00:07:12.942 --> 00:07:14.884
In my experience, it's not going to be fluid at all.

00:07:15.223 --> 00:07:19.649
You have to really manipulate every note and your intonation's funny and Your phrasing's funny.

00:07:19.949 --> 00:07:25.375
But yeah, if you're playing in second position on a diatonic, you can fly along in certain phrases.

00:07:25.774 --> 00:07:26.817
You started on the

00:07:26.877 --> 00:07:27.677
diatonic, didn't you?

00:07:27.697 --> 00:07:28.478
I think when you were younger.

00:07:28.517 --> 00:07:29.459
Yeah, I did.

00:07:29.478 --> 00:07:30.920
Never got deeply into it.

00:07:31.100 --> 00:07:39.870
I found it fun that for some reason I hadn't, as many people do, I had an intuitive sense of where the notes were and so I could play melodies and that kind of struck me as magical.

00:07:40.011 --> 00:07:41.651
I had no idea what notes I was playing.

00:07:41.733 --> 00:07:46.197
I wasn't thinking of the piano at that time, but just playing folk tunes and blues things.

00:07:46.297 --> 00:07:50.262
And it was when I was 17, I went to Berklee College of Music for guitar.

00:07:50.541 --> 00:07:53.564
I did want to play the saxophone at that time, but I couldn't afford one.

00:07:53.704 --> 00:07:57.730
So I walked into a music store and I saw a chromatic harmonica for the first time in my life.

00:07:57.870 --> 00:08:01.394
It was a 260, in other words, a 10-hole honer.

00:08:01.634 --> 00:08:05.117
And believe it or not, it was about$15 to buy at that time.

00:08:05.158 --> 00:08:06.658
That's how old I am, 1975.

00:08:06.718 --> 00:08:10.062
So I thought, okay, this I can afford.

00:08:10.142 --> 00:08:15.367
And I was really thrilled by the idea that as far as I knew, nobody else in the world was playing this thing.

00:08:15.408 --> 00:08:21.555
And I was learning the jazz theory on guitar, which I was finding very challenging on guitar for the reasons I said before.

00:08:21.595 --> 00:08:28.062
And here was a little wind instrument, which is what I wanted to play, which had a more logical layout to me than the guitar did.

00:08:28.281 --> 00:08:30.605
Guitar is perfectly logical, it's just more complicated.

00:08:30.904 --> 00:08:36.291
It was then that I was starting to play chromatic, and the people at Berklee said, oh, you must love Toots Tillman.

00:08:36.390 --> 00:08:37.631
And I said, Toots who?

00:08:38.052 --> 00:08:38.773
I had no idea.

00:08:38.813 --> 00:08:43.437
Then I bought some albums at that time, there weren't CDs yet, of Toots, and I was blown away.

00:08:43.499 --> 00:08:52.711
And I immediately said, okay, I'm going to do that, because it was just so cool that somebody could be playing with people like Joe Pass and Oscar Peterson and, well, later, Jaco Pastorius.

00:09:06.433 --> 00:09:13.559
Part of the appeal, I must say, was that as far as I knew, there was Toots and there was Stevie, but that was the universe that I knew at that time.

00:09:13.820 --> 00:09:16.802
And of course, there was no internet, so I didn't have access to other people.

00:09:17.003 --> 00:09:21.886
And I just started applying the guitar theory that I was learning on guitar to the harmonica.

00:09:22.268 --> 00:09:29.094
Weirdly enough, within about two months of playing, a piano player asked me if I would play with him at a gig, a weekly gig.

00:09:29.453 --> 00:09:33.136
So I think I got five or 10 bucks an evening, but that was a thrill to me.

00:09:33.177 --> 00:09:45.269
I was playing, I knew a handful of tunes and I've always had a good idea so i was able to translate you know pretty much play melodies you know but of course i had to like everybody else learn learn the different keys and you know that's that's how it started for me

00:09:45.490 --> 00:09:51.576
so you think that's what drew you to the chromatic then is that that love of melodies which are you know sort of come easier on the chromatic than than the diatonic

00:09:51.897 --> 00:10:05.551
oh yeah no i i was into jazz at that time and i i had no idea that there was a creature such as howard levy or anybody else who played jazz on the diatonic yeah chromatic was what i knew at that point i didn't really touch the diatonic for quite a while after that

00:10:05.991 --> 00:10:09.294
you met toot stillmans when you were quite young didn't you in new york

00:10:09.495 --> 00:10:39.607
yeah i did around that time i i forgot exactly how i got the introduction i think it was through a guitarist named wayne wright i told him i was playing harmonica and he said oh you should meet toots i said you know toots sure it was one of the most thrilling days of my life actually i was about 17 maybe 18 i walked with toots as he played sessions along broadway there were about four or five studios between 59th street and 34th street And I think he did five or six sessions that day.

00:10:39.648 --> 00:10:41.970
He even played diatonic on one session.

00:10:42.049 --> 00:10:45.533
And I thought to myself, he's not very good at diatonic.

00:10:45.553 --> 00:10:49.597
But all the other things he aced, he was not a ferocious reader either.

00:10:49.738 --> 00:10:53.201
I think, you know, I came away feeling that he really did this mostly by feel.

00:10:53.501 --> 00:11:03.273
I mean, he was obviously a very intellectual musician and knew his theory, but I think he was more likely to improvise and, you know, play something around the melody than read strictly from the paper.

00:11:03.753 --> 00:11:06.255
I was just so, I mean, that just made me swoon.

00:11:06.255 --> 00:11:09.879
moon, you know, the idea of playing that kind of sessions day after day.

00:11:10.159 --> 00:11:14.024
I don't know if he did that every day or every week, but there were five sessions.

00:11:14.063 --> 00:11:16.826
He was pulling in a lot of money and making great music.

00:11:17.107 --> 00:11:23.674
Anyway, as a young kid, I was really intrigued and really impressed and it strengthened the idea that that's what I wanted to do.

00:11:24.075 --> 00:11:26.197
So he said some good things about you, nice things.

00:11:26.236 --> 00:11:30.261
He said you were the most original and individual of a new generation of harmonica players.

00:11:30.381 --> 00:11:31.482
Was that a little bit later then?

00:11:31.523 --> 00:11:33.384
Did he sort of keep in touch with him?

00:11:33.966 --> 00:11:34.285
Oh, yes.

00:11:34.346 --> 00:11:34.907
Yeah, we stayed in

00:11:34.947 --> 00:11:38.770
touch until pretty much until he died, I went to his funeral in Brussels.

00:11:38.910 --> 00:11:43.014
I must say, I'm delighted about that quote and it stood me in good stead for many years.

00:11:43.215 --> 00:11:45.837
You know, I mean, I'm no longer the new generation of harmonica players.

00:11:45.878 --> 00:11:47.759
I'm becoming the old generation of harmonica players.

00:11:48.041 --> 00:11:57.630
I think there were some other very good harmonica players around, but I think that many of them were trying to imitate the sound of Toots and the phrasing because he was the one guy going.

00:11:57.811 --> 00:12:02.655
I was just as interested in Stevie Wonder as I was in Toots as far as sound and approach.

00:12:02.937 --> 00:12:12.066
It's funny, you know, I'm an American kid growing up in New York City in the 60s and 70s, my musical mind was formulated by listening to the radio.

00:12:12.386 --> 00:12:19.274
And then I had a friend, I should mention, still a great friend of mine at 83 years old, a clarinetist, and he played jazz.

00:12:19.653 --> 00:12:21.956
He used to take me at the age of 11 or 12.

00:12:21.976 --> 00:12:28.203
He was a shop teacher at my high school, but he was a wonderful, he still is, a wonderful jazz clarinetist, completely an ear player.

00:12:28.384 --> 00:12:31.626
But he had studied with Benny Goodman a little bit and got a beautiful sound.

00:12:31.787 --> 00:12:49.326
And he used to take me down to Greenwich Village when I was 11 or 12 to these bars where I probably should shouldn't have been allowed in, he would be playing with these wonderful, you know, veteran jazz musicians who had probably played with Ellington and Basie and all the other greats, you know, and I got a bit of an education that way, mostly just listening and getting into my head.

00:12:49.446 --> 00:12:50.967
So he's always been a big influence.

00:12:51.008 --> 00:12:52.028
His name is Brad Terry.

00:12:52.288 --> 00:13:05.202
Yeah, so jazz was, you know, what I was focused on, but I loved, somehow I found this record called I've It's Red Now, which is the, you probably know it, it's the Stevie Wonder record, which he made when he was 18, which he plays just chromatic harmonica.

00:13:05.243 --> 00:13:08.166
I think he also plays a drums and keys on the album.

00:13:08.506 --> 00:13:10.229
Yeah, that record had a huge effect on me.

00:13:10.288 --> 00:13:11.730
He played the song Alfie.

00:13:30.673 --> 00:13:31.714
The Burt Bacharach song.

00:13:32.033 --> 00:13:34.917
which is one of the most beautiful melodies, I think, in pop music.

00:13:35.057 --> 00:13:37.739
He just played it so beautifully, so soulfully.

00:13:37.778 --> 00:13:44.144
And to me, the harmonica sounded like a cross between a violin and a soprano sax when he played that.

00:13:44.404 --> 00:13:46.706
I recommend it totally to anybody playing harmonica.

00:13:46.927 --> 00:13:49.708
It's his name, Stevie Wonder, spelled backwards.

00:13:49.788 --> 00:13:53.111
So Ivitz is Stevie and Red Now is Wonder.

00:13:53.413 --> 00:13:58.437
But it's definitely worth listening to, to see how gorgeous the harmonica can sound in the right hands.

00:13:58.996 --> 00:14:01.078
And then getting on to your own recording career.

00:14:01.158 --> 00:14:11.030
So was it your first solo album overjoyed which is a stevie wonder song yeah so obviously showing your influence of stevie wonder there with that early album from you i adore stevie

00:14:11.071 --> 00:14:44.820
wonder maybe 20 years later i think his bass player nathan east made a an album with overjoyed and stevie played harmonica on it it's a wonderful song for harmonica in the original key e flat and it was a good idea for me to play it i just loved the song so That record was very slickly produced.

00:14:45.301 --> 00:14:48.462
I realize now what great musicians I had on that album.

00:14:49.004 --> 00:14:53.368
Legendary studio musicians, but also performing musicians from that era.

00:14:53.788 --> 00:14:56.590
A guy from Japan had seen me play and he liked my playing.

00:14:56.649 --> 00:15:00.413
So it was on Verve, but through Polydor in Japan.

00:15:00.714 --> 00:15:04.677
And that song, Overjoyed, you won some Apollo nights, didn't you?

00:15:04.697 --> 00:15:06.359
Some, I think, 2012 with that song.

00:15:06.379 --> 00:15:07.019
Yeah,

00:15:07.038 --> 00:15:08.341
that was much way, way after.

00:15:08.380 --> 00:15:11.163
In fact, I didn't play any of those songs for a long time.

00:15:11.682 --> 00:15:43.197
When I finished that record I really didn't like it I was I was very upset with the arrangements I thought they were corny and old-fashioned and and I didn't listen to it for about two or three years and I made another album which I also didn't like this is my character but because I'm a perfectionist in a way but it's interesting you know sometimes you look back at the work you did many years ago and you say hey that wasn't so bad I you know I was on to something at that time so I listen to that record now and I appreciate my playing but I also really appreciate the other musicians and the arrangements I don't think that record may a huge splash.

00:15:43.558 --> 00:15:49.392
Maybe it sold 20,000 copies, but occasionally somebody writes me a letter and says, you know, I used to have that album and I loved it so much.

00:15:50.114 --> 00:15:54.663
And before that, was it before that you recorded the Baghdad Cafe, which is a film soundtrack?

00:15:54.744 --> 00:15:56.388
Yeah, that was a couple of years before that.

00:15:56.447 --> 00:15:57.450
I was in my 20s.

00:15:57.710 --> 00:15:58.692
I mean, it was one of my first...

00:15:59.522 --> 00:16:04.005
recording sessions doing a movie, although I may have done the Untouchables before that.

00:16:04.086 --> 00:16:06.567
But it was a very humble experience.

00:16:07.828 --> 00:16:09.210
Bob Telson is the composer.

00:16:09.250 --> 00:16:13.433
It was in his home studio, which was a respectable studio.

00:16:13.653 --> 00:16:20.941
And he played the whole thing on, I think it was called an M1 Korg, which was sort of the go-to synthesizer at the time.

00:16:20.980 --> 00:16:28.346
And he played me the track and he said, this is for this little movie by a German director and it's really nothing.

00:16:28.386 --> 00:16:33.110
I think he was, to some degree, agree trying to lower my expectations on how much I was going to be paid.

00:16:33.412 --> 00:16:47.445
Had I not been bought out, if I had gotten royalties from that, I would be very rich at the moment, or I would be fairly wealthy, because that song became, as you probably know, a number one hit all around the world, except in the United States, really, called Calling You.

00:16:56.193 --> 00:16:56.413
Calling You

00:17:06.690 --> 00:17:08.471
But it stood me in very good stead.

00:17:08.491 --> 00:17:11.193
You know, I was paid 150 bucks or whatever it was for the session.

00:17:11.413 --> 00:17:18.099
But I did recognize that it was an exceptional song, even though it was all done on one synthesizer with a singer.

00:17:18.259 --> 00:17:21.082
And then it was covered by Barbra Streisand.

00:17:21.143 --> 00:17:22.182
I played on her album.

00:17:22.423 --> 00:17:23.825
That was a thrilling experience.

00:17:23.865 --> 00:17:30.109
You know, I was in this enormous soundstage where they had actually done the music for the film The Wizard of Oz.

00:17:30.330 --> 00:17:30.931
Loved that movie.

00:17:31.270 --> 00:17:38.481
So there was this, you know, old-fashioned, huge soundstage in Hollywood And there was a 90-piece orchestra.

00:17:38.903 --> 00:17:46.126
So the very opposite of it being played on one mediocre synthesizer, this was played by a 90-piece orchestra with a full orchestra.

00:17:46.347 --> 00:17:47.150
And she was singing.

00:18:02.273 --> 00:18:06.018
I made another record for Verve Polydor in around 1993 or 1994.

00:18:07.900 --> 00:18:09.481
Again, a lot of great musicians on it.

00:18:10.022 --> 00:18:11.324
It was called Calling You.

00:18:11.684 --> 00:18:14.567
And there was a few good, really interesting tracks on that.

00:18:14.929 --> 00:18:19.314
Yeah, that was a more adventurous record than Overjoyed, which is more of a smooth jazz record.

00:18:19.574 --> 00:18:23.238
There's a few tunes that I'm quite proud of from that second record.

00:18:23.778 --> 00:18:24.619
Jocko's tune.

00:18:33.122 --> 00:18:34.173
Bye.

00:18:37.089 --> 00:18:41.053
And I did one of my own songs called New Samba.

00:18:41.374 --> 00:18:42.555
Yeah, there were nice arrangements.

00:18:42.914 --> 00:18:52.403
I did a version of Stevie Wonder's Lately, but I had a number of compositions on that record where on the Overjoyed record, I only had one of my compositions, which is called As Close As We Can Get.

00:18:52.784 --> 00:18:56.346
Yeah, then I made other records over the years in less formal circumstances.

00:18:56.626 --> 00:19:03.932
I was playing with a German jazz group, wonderful group, which does all kinds of international music, world music.

00:19:04.394 --> 00:19:09.346
The core of the group was a sax player, bass, accordion and guitar, Midnight Sun.

00:19:26.529 --> 00:19:29.071
And that was done very informally in Germany.

00:19:29.112 --> 00:19:32.434
And then I did a record called Love Letters with an Australian.

00:19:32.494 --> 00:19:37.799
I had four or five trips to Australia where I sort of began to have a little bit of a name.

00:19:37.880 --> 00:19:41.103
And I was playing mostly with this singer who played jazz piano.

00:19:41.182 --> 00:19:43.625
And we would tour around Australia and play.

00:19:43.644 --> 00:19:44.405
That was a lot of fun.

00:19:44.746 --> 00:19:47.587
We made a record of mostly Cole Porter songs called Love Letters.

00:19:48.128 --> 00:19:53.573
And then probably on to your, maybe your most well-known album with Madeline Proulx, Got You In My Mind.

00:19:53.913 --> 00:19:53.993
As

00:19:54.074 --> 00:20:05.325
far as I know, somewhere around three 300,000 copies have been sold of that, including downloads, because now nobody buys CDs, but it's sold a lot.

00:20:05.506 --> 00:20:07.748
Still get a check every year from it, amazingly.

00:20:08.087 --> 00:20:16.196
That record came to be because I had met Madeline, she was playing on the street in New York, and I just recognized that she was a great talent.

00:20:16.596 --> 00:20:26.167
And I lost track of her for a couple of months, then I saw her again playing at a little bar on Bleecker Street, and I brought my harmonica and guitar and accompanied her, because she was just playing...

00:20:26.448 --> 00:20:28.589
standards, but with no soloist.

00:20:28.790 --> 00:20:33.816
So jazz standards are actually very, very brief if you don't have a solo somewhere in there, right?

00:20:33.875 --> 00:20:36.578
You know, the tunes are about maybe a minute long.

00:20:36.959 --> 00:20:37.359
That was fun.

00:20:37.380 --> 00:20:42.164
She was playing guitar and singing and I just thought, wow, this is somebody important.

00:20:42.525 --> 00:20:50.093
And I think it's something, you know, you talk in a second about playing with a singer because it's something you've done a lot and something a chromatic harmonica player does very well, doesn't it?

00:20:50.192 --> 00:20:51.795
So what about playing with a singer like that?

00:20:51.994 --> 00:20:53.237
Oh, that's a great question.

00:20:53.436 --> 00:20:55.759
I think that's very much maybe what I do best.

00:20:56.059 --> 00:21:01.944
You have to listen to the lyrics, you have to listen to the singer, you have to listen to the rhythm section and find your way in there.

00:21:01.964 --> 00:21:13.875
It's almost like skiing down a slalom trail where you have to avoid other skiers and ice patches and rocks and you have to come in and just play a tasteful little line here and there.

00:21:13.895 --> 00:21:16.157
I love doing that, especially with a good singer.

00:21:16.198 --> 00:21:18.779
Yeah, I've worked with some great singers.

00:21:18.859 --> 00:21:21.041
I've worked with Carly Simon and...

00:21:36.834 --> 00:21:47.266
Barbra Streisand and Ruth Brown and Peggy Lee even.

00:21:47.306 --> 00:21:48.469
I played on a record of hers.

00:21:48.670 --> 00:21:49.772
I think it was her last album.

00:21:50.306 --> 00:21:51.946
I've only got you on my mind album again.

00:21:51.967 --> 00:21:54.490
You play a little bass harmonica, don't you, on Shoulda Known?

00:21:55.049 --> 00:21:55.369
Yeah.

00:21:55.770 --> 00:21:57.311
Representing a frog, I think, doesn't it?

00:21:57.571 --> 00:21:59.354
It does sound quite a lot like a frog, the bass

00:21:59.394 --> 00:22:03.196
harmonica.

00:22:03.277 --> 00:22:12.865
When I was

00:22:14.027 --> 00:22:19.731
producing that song, what happened with that record, by the way, is it's a long story that maybe some of your listeners know.

00:22:19.811 --> 00:22:20.813
I don't want to get into it now.

00:22:21.252 --> 00:22:24.016
We made a seven song album, Madeline and I.

00:22:24.355 --> 00:22:30.001
I wanted to make it into a full album, but at the time you could make a seven song CD and sell it for 10 bucks.

00:22:30.021 --> 00:22:32.025
And we did at our gigs.

00:22:32.484 --> 00:22:44.897
But it turned out that there was another agenda at play and that Madeline and her lawyer were intending on using that album produced by me as a demo for getting a big record contract with another company.

00:22:45.179 --> 00:22:50.865
They misrepresented to that company that Madeline was the only owner of that record, which was wasn't the case.

00:22:51.105 --> 00:22:52.145
We were co-owners of it.

00:22:52.365 --> 00:23:00.013
And so when I made motions that I wanted to put it out, you know, in official release and distribute it, things went very ugly, very fast.

00:23:00.414 --> 00:23:06.401
I was in court for quite a while defending my right to sell the record and to dispel rumors that I had done something wrong.

00:23:06.682 --> 00:23:07.663
I finally prevailed.

00:23:07.702 --> 00:23:17.973
In fact, I did better than prevail because Madeline, I guess she saw that she had done the wrong thing and she was beginning to have a very lucrative career herself and she gave me sole ownership.

00:23:18.034 --> 00:23:19.976
So now it belongs to me, which is nice.

00:23:20.175 --> 00:23:33.054
Thank you.

00:23:40.609 --> 00:23:42.230
But we did seven songs.

00:23:42.310 --> 00:23:55.001
And then when Madeline wasn't available to make a full CD, I think one of the reasons that she did seven songs was that she and her lawyer figured I couldn't put out this as a commercial album with only seven songs.

00:23:55.083 --> 00:23:56.544
But if we had 11, I could have.

00:23:56.624 --> 00:24:02.509
So I surprised them by, I think, doing four pretty good tracks, which I added to the album.

00:24:02.588 --> 00:24:05.171
And that got you on my mind.

00:24:05.932 --> 00:24:14.059
Another really interesting thing you did, you did a campaign song for Barack Obama in 2008, taking it back with Barack, which is great.

00:24:14.099 --> 00:24:18.023
And there's a YouTube video, which I'll put on the page of the podcast.

00:24:18.084 --> 00:24:19.645
I think you co-wrote the lyrics as well.

00:24:19.665 --> 00:24:20.646
It's quite political.

00:24:20.727 --> 00:24:22.368
So how did you get involved with that?

00:24:22.608 --> 00:24:23.650
Yeah, I wrote the lyrics.

00:24:23.869 --> 00:24:29.756
I think I gave my nephew credit because he was about 10 years old and I thought it was a nice thing to do.

00:24:29.817 --> 00:24:39.006
But I was excited about Obama, as many people were at that time, and thoroughly disgusted with the war in Iraq and Bush.

00:24:39.326 --> 00:24:49.445
I've always been fairly It was just one of those things, you know, it comes, as you may know, from a Louis Jordan tune called Take Me Right Back to the Track, Jack.

00:24:49.987 --> 00:24:54.896
And somehow in my perverse mind, I twisted that to Taking It Back with Barack, Jack.

00:25:06.753 --> 00:25:10.076
And

00:25:11.577 --> 00:25:17.182
then I came up with a whole lot of rhymes for the sound Ack, which is what makes the song charming.

00:25:17.623 --> 00:25:19.865
Put it together, I got a wonderful band.

00:25:20.105 --> 00:25:27.051
That video is actually lip-synced, if you will, because we recorded it in studio to get a good sound, but it looks very authentic.

00:25:27.231 --> 00:25:31.134
And those are pretty much the guys that played on the song, except for the bass player.

00:25:31.414 --> 00:26:09.515
But yeah, and then I was lucky to find this really professional, high-level videographer who was a Barack Obama fan too and she did the session took a few hours and about a week later I'm walking down the street after I put it up on YouTube and somebody says hey aren't you the taking it back with Barack guy you know which is pretty funny and it ended up getting something like 800,000 hits which is you know at that time was a lot of hits now things are getting a billion hits the biggest thrill about that is that my brother happened to be in touch with David Axelrod who was the campaign manager, I believe, for Barack Obama.

00:26:09.535 --> 00:26:11.376
He's somebody you see on CNN a lot.

00:26:11.717 --> 00:26:20.205
Somehow my brother got a copy of an email from David Axelrod to either him or to a mutual friend where he said, oh yeah, Barack got a real kick out of the song.

00:26:20.467 --> 00:26:29.135
And then I learned that Barack Obama's sister was using it, projecting it on a big screen and using it at fundraisers in Hawaii and other places.

00:26:29.175 --> 00:26:33.079
So I like to think that I had a little bit of a part in getting him elected.

00:26:33.461 --> 00:26:34.040
Oh, definitely.

00:26:34.060 --> 00:26:34.181
Yes.

00:26:34.362 --> 00:26:35.343
Well, it's a great song.

00:26:35.403 --> 00:26:48.696
It's really got a great feel about it yeah and uh and then uh i think he did a completely self-produced album in 2011 line open you played harmonica guitar you compose lyrics and you sing i think i'm you're the only singer on the album i think are you

00:26:48.977 --> 00:27:10.000
well every song is a vocal song yes i think i have harmonica snuck harmonica in on every song maybe there's a couple that don't have it either diatonic or chromatic um i didn't want to make it a harmonica album but it felt like that was something i could do and i could present myself with and it would give me some uniqueness a little bit the way Stevie Wonder, you know, uses harmonicas in his songs.

00:27:10.279 --> 00:27:13.042
You know, they're not always a soloistic instrument, but they play a role.

00:27:15.286 --> 00:27:32.986
And I co-produced that with a guy named Steve Gabori, who's music director for Cyndi Lauper.

00:27:33.218 --> 00:27:35.500
and somebody I had played music with many times.

00:27:35.519 --> 00:27:42.846
And it took a long, long time to make because Steve was always on tour with Cindy, so I could only work on it when he was back in town.

00:27:43.207 --> 00:27:45.208
But that was really my labor of love.

00:27:45.388 --> 00:27:52.213
The other albums I produced that got you on my mind, and I was pleased with that, but that was done really only in a few days as well.

00:27:52.734 --> 00:27:59.059
This one I really worked on, and I made a lot of decisions and judgments, and Steve was super helpful.

00:27:59.201 --> 00:28:00.582
I mean, I couldn't have done it without him.

00:28:00.922 --> 00:28:03.183
But it was sort of my most personal album.

00:28:03.183 --> 00:28:03.604
I think.

00:28:03.664 --> 00:28:06.488
And I was just in the stage where I was writing songs.

00:28:06.647 --> 00:28:08.650
So actually, I'm quite proud of that record, I must say.

00:28:08.690 --> 00:28:10.511
Maybe most proud of that record of all my...

00:28:10.991 --> 00:28:14.615
And then you're playing, as well as playing jazz and pop very well.

00:28:14.635 --> 00:28:16.278
I think you do pop songs great.

00:28:16.317 --> 00:28:18.400
And that's what I really love to hear in chromatic.

00:28:18.420 --> 00:28:24.487
I think a lot of people go down the line of playing jazz and classical, but pop works fantastically well, of course, as Stevie Wonder's demonstrated.

00:28:24.787 --> 00:28:26.909
But you have done quite a bit of classical.

00:28:26.929 --> 00:28:35.258
And in 2019, you did this Odysseus Fantasy, which is with a It was great.

00:28:35.317 --> 00:28:35.337
I

00:28:37.980 --> 00:29:00.965
was massively impressed listening to that one.

00:29:03.087 --> 00:29:05.269
trying to be a virtuoso jazz player.

00:29:05.431 --> 00:29:09.295
Yeah, I think you've got to devote your life to it, and just jazz if you're going to do that, haven't you?

00:29:09.315 --> 00:29:09.835
You do indeed,

00:29:09.914 --> 00:29:10.816
yeah.

00:29:10.935 --> 00:29:14.420
I love playing jazz, but anyway, I had broader interests.

00:29:14.759 --> 00:29:20.165
So I was so impressed by this, and she said, oh, that's a composition by my friend Karim Maurice.

00:29:20.426 --> 00:29:21.807
So I said, wow, I'd love to meet him.

00:29:21.847 --> 00:29:23.430
Maybe he could write something for harmonica.

00:29:23.650 --> 00:29:27.114
So I did meet him and played with him a bit, and he really liked my playing.

00:29:27.433 --> 00:29:29.415
And we started working on this project.

00:29:29.635 --> 00:29:37.285
He wanted to do a whole suite of pieces, illustrating various adventures of Odysseus in the Homer epic.

00:29:37.464 --> 00:29:38.786
And I love that idea.

00:29:38.965 --> 00:29:48.316
And the first thing I did is listen to Ian McCullens narrating the entire, you know, every night I would listen for a couple of hours to the Odyssey, which is a wonderful thing to do.

00:29:48.576 --> 00:29:49.458
Got really into it.

00:29:49.798 --> 00:29:52.721
And the first thing we did was a video of the first movement.

00:29:53.121 --> 00:29:58.567
I must say that I'm much more pleased with that video and the way I played on that than what happened with the album.

00:29:58.727 --> 00:30:02.991
You know, sometimes you go into the studio and you're nervous or you're tired or you're...

00:30:02.991 --> 00:30:04.816
And you don't play as well as you want to.

00:30:04.855 --> 00:30:08.924
There's a very nice video, which was beautifully filmed of me playing with the orchestra.

00:30:09.286 --> 00:30:11.390
And that performance, I stand behind.

00:30:11.611 --> 00:30:14.758
And funny, because that was more of a spontaneous performance.

00:30:14.817 --> 00:30:18.285
But I didn't feel like I really aced it in the studio.

00:30:18.326 --> 00:30:20.108
Then I brought it back to New York.

00:30:20.450 --> 00:30:31.019
I had the background tracks, and I spent two months re-recording, to my most perfectionist standards, all the seven pieces in the suite.

00:30:31.239 --> 00:30:35.623
But by that point, they had already mixed the ones that I had recorded in France.

00:30:35.982 --> 00:30:43.869
I put the versions that I had done in New York, where I really felt I nailed it, and I worked on it.

00:30:43.990 --> 00:30:45.951
I had to sculpt it, in a sense.

00:30:46.913 --> 00:31:04.808
But it was with, unfortunately, a version of the orchestral background that was not mixed professionally so it's a little bit crude sounding but the performances are much better and they're on my website and Odysseus Fantasy you can hear my preferred version with unfortunately a less polished orchestral sound

00:31:25.698 --> 00:31:26.378
Oh, interesting.

00:31:26.419 --> 00:31:26.598
Yeah.

00:31:26.618 --> 00:31:27.579
Well, people can check those out.

00:31:27.759 --> 00:31:29.040
I mean, I thought the album was great.

00:31:29.300 --> 00:31:33.664
I mean, I'm sure to your ears and you practiced it a million times, you know, it's, but yeah, it sounds great.

00:31:33.704 --> 00:31:40.171
And yeah, no, I think I probably did listen a little bit to the ones on your website as well, but yeah, I listened more to the album on Spotify and I thought it was good.

00:31:40.191 --> 00:31:40.411
Yeah.

00:31:40.451 --> 00:31:47.356
So, and you've done other, you know, there's also a Beethoven spring sonata on your, on your website, which is, which is great as well.

00:31:47.396 --> 00:31:49.317
So, you know, you definitely like your classical playing as well.

00:31:49.358 --> 00:31:49.499
Yeah.

00:31:49.798 --> 00:31:51.760
Well, I started getting interested in that.

00:31:52.000 --> 00:32:28.339
I learned the Bach cello suite that everybody plays at the Prelude which incidentally I've heard some Chinese young people playing recently on chromatic like Cy Young who's terrific and boy he nailed it he did it in the original key and I corresponded with him and told him that I had tried to play it in the original key but the low notes and the harmonica wouldn't respond well enough and he said yeah he had that problem until he bought a very expensive custom-made harmonica from a company called Cremona and he said then then those notes would speak in a way that made it possible.

00:32:28.480 --> 00:32:30.964
So I played it in C where it's composed in G.

00:32:31.285 --> 00:32:35.250
Yeah, I learned a bunch of other Bach violin pieces and didn't record them all.

00:32:35.711 --> 00:32:39.999
But then I heard the Beethoven and I thought, wow, I just as a challenge, could I possibly learn that?

00:33:00.609 --> 00:33:05.434
Now for a classical player like Psy or Tommy Riley, they do that all the time.

00:33:05.474 --> 00:33:10.259
Of course, learning Kareem's piece was a big effort for me.

00:33:10.480 --> 00:33:12.102
There's a lot of difficult stuff in there.

00:33:12.142 --> 00:33:15.605
And so I felt like I was primed to learn some more classical.

00:33:15.746 --> 00:33:20.951
And I would like to revisit the Spring Sonata because I think that's a really good vehicle for harmonica.

00:33:21.192 --> 00:33:26.718
It's interesting, violin does so many things well that the harmonica can't do.

00:33:27.041 --> 00:33:36.630
If I had started all over from the beginning, I probably would have chosen the violin just because it's such a universally expressive instrument and you can play any kind of world music on it almost.

00:33:36.971 --> 00:33:44.317
And it's just so versatile in terms of phrasing where the harmonica is very constrained, you know, but the harmonica sounds like a harmonica.

00:33:44.737 --> 00:33:48.760
And to the degree that people like the sound of a harmonica, it's the only thing that does that.

00:33:49.181 --> 00:33:52.243
And I thought it had a certain charm with the Beethoven.

00:33:52.284 --> 00:33:56.027
And so that's something when I get back to New York, I'd like to continue.

00:33:56.548 --> 00:34:01.792
I'm in true by these new harmonica companies that are coming out and improving the instrument.

00:34:02.073 --> 00:34:11.023
I've always tried to improve the instruments myself by doing various procedures on the harmonica to make them more airtight, et cetera, and make the reeds more responsive.

00:34:11.143 --> 00:34:16.228
But now there are some companies that are really putting serious engineering into improving

00:34:16.289 --> 00:34:16.809
the instrument.

00:34:17.170 --> 00:34:24.137
So going on, you know, going from classical, another great thing you did, which I'm very jealous of, you played on Sesame Street.

00:34:24.496 --> 00:34:26.438
Yeah, I did a lot of sessions for them.

00:34:26.478 --> 00:34:30.483
There was a wonderful studio in new york where they used to record called nola

00:34:30.844 --> 00:34:33.186
and that's that's a new york program it's based in new york isn't it

00:34:33.507 --> 00:34:40.934
it was yeah it still is but now i believe it's become a corporate entity and it's a very different animal than when i was involved

00:34:41.195 --> 00:34:41.275
yeah

00:34:41.576 --> 00:34:59.661
i adore that show and and of course toots played the original theme song yeah and then on the 25th anniversary probably in the 90s i think it was toots couldn't make it and he was on tour or something so they asked me if i would do that and i played and and i don't know how many years they played the version with my harmonica playing.

00:34:59.721 --> 00:35:03.614
It was a more of a salsa kind of Latin version, very cool.

00:35:16.226 --> 00:35:16.927
That was a thrill.

00:35:17.246 --> 00:35:22.711
I probably did 10 or 20 other sessions with them for skits, you know, for the little Muppet things that they did.

00:35:22.931 --> 00:35:26.574
And it was a really, really nice group of people, and they're always wonderful arrangements.

00:35:26.894 --> 00:35:29.277
It was just really fun being associated

00:35:29.317 --> 00:35:29.677
with that.

00:35:30.117 --> 00:35:35.101
For me, you've made it as a chromatic player, because like you said, Toots played the theme tune for that, which is so great.

00:35:35.121 --> 00:35:38.184
You know, to play on that is fantastic as a chromatic player, I think.

00:35:38.425 --> 00:35:40.686
That's a pinnacle for me, Sesame Street.

00:35:40.927 --> 00:35:47.793
You've also had some instructional books with Hal Leonard, where you played all the tunes for that, a a jazz one and a pop standards one.

00:35:48.213 --> 00:35:54.820
Yeah, Hal Leonard asked me if I would do a book or two and I took it very seriously and I did the very best I could.

00:35:54.920 --> 00:36:07.514
I kind of fashioned solos that would be accessible to, I didn't want to make it just for beginners because there are plenty of harmonica books for beginners, you know, with diagrams of how to play Susanna and stuff like that.

00:36:07.534 --> 00:36:13.922
So I thought, well, I didn't know of any, I'm sure there are other books with more advanced playing, but I thought I would play at a high level.

00:36:14.181 --> 00:36:16.143
I mean, nothing that a good player couldn't play.

00:36:16.143 --> 00:36:18.708
and something that people could aspire to in any case.

00:36:18.889 --> 00:36:23.777
And I wanted it to sound good as an album, regardless of being an instructional album.

00:36:23.878 --> 00:36:24.057
So...

00:36:40.001 --> 00:36:42.403
They gave me the background tracks.

00:36:42.483 --> 00:36:43.824
I didn't record that with the band.

00:36:44.166 --> 00:36:52.333
And I, in my home studio, again, kind of sculpted solos that made sense and had a continuity and demonstrated certain principles.

00:36:52.532 --> 00:37:03.121
And I wanted to write with each piece a few paragraphs about what I did, how I conceived the solo, what were the techniques involved, tongue blocking, etc.

00:37:03.262 --> 00:37:04.422
But they didn't want that, so...

00:37:05.043 --> 00:37:07.666
All your playing's notated, is it, in the books?

00:37:07.865 --> 00:37:09.748
Yes, then I had to notate it, which was...

00:37:09.967 --> 00:37:11.570
You didn't say so yourself, did

00:37:11.989 --> 00:37:12.050
you?

00:37:12.070 --> 00:37:15.414
Yeah, I had to listen to them and transcribe all the solos.

00:37:15.693 --> 00:37:20.358
Transcribing is a very important thing for students of jazz and music to do.

00:37:20.639 --> 00:37:21.440
And I've done some.

00:37:21.500 --> 00:37:24.804
In fact, when I was 15 or 16, I had a wonderful teacher.

00:37:24.824 --> 00:37:26.746
His name was Betjeman.

00:37:27.246 --> 00:37:30.710
He was the son of the poet, of the British poet Betjeman.

00:37:30.969 --> 00:37:33.233
He was a music teacher, a very advanced musician.

00:37:33.432 --> 00:37:36.797
And we listened to Charlie Christian's big band arrangements.

00:37:36.836 --> 00:38:03.505
He was a guitarist who played with the Benny Goodman big band for a few years and is considered sort of the father of electric guitar and i transcribed every part from that that big band you know an 18 piece band and well yeah charlie's solo and then a bunch of smaller group stuff from benny goodman septet so i i really love that i have done some transcribing in my life it's difficult to do but it was it was interesting trying to transcribe my own solos and uh yeah you should be able to get your own

00:38:03.664 --> 00:38:05.327
but yeah what did i play there then

00:38:05.367 --> 00:38:13.416
there was the pop one um yeah which again apologies to hal leonard if you're listening But I felt it was kind of neither fish nor fowl.

00:38:13.476 --> 00:38:14.376
It was the first one.

00:38:14.416 --> 00:38:20.563
They just said, here's a bunch of jazz tunes, pick ones, the ones you like and record them, notate them and we'll put the book out.

00:38:20.623 --> 00:38:21.925
And I was proud of that book.

00:38:22.224 --> 00:38:24.447
The second one, it was like, well, here's what we want you to do.

00:38:24.608 --> 00:38:31.594
We want you to do the Midnight Cowboy theme and the harmonica part from Love Me Do and Bluzette.

00:38:31.835 --> 00:38:41.786
And I'm thinking, Jesus, if somebody needs a book to play the, you know, the harmonica part to Love Me Do, they're never going to be able to play the blues, you know, Yeah.

00:39:09.775 --> 00:39:29.925
did because they couldn't get the original tracks obviously for karaoke so they redid the the whole rhythm section except for the vocals and i don't know i did about 10 of those and at one point a french company asked me if i would do a karaoke, do the harmonica part of Toots playing La Vie en Rose, French song, and then they modulate to the key of E major.

00:39:30.105 --> 00:39:32.867
And Toots plays this ripping solo in E major.

00:39:33.007 --> 00:39:35.710
For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how he was doing it.

00:39:35.769 --> 00:39:46.599
You know, certain runs just didn't seem to fit on the harmonica, but I soldiered through it and I managed to put a good approximation of his solo on the karaoke track.

00:39:46.858 --> 00:39:54.626
It was at his funeral, I was talking to a bunch of other harmonica players who were there and one of them mentioned that Toots used to play different key harmonicas.

00:39:54.907 --> 00:40:04.777
And if he came to a session where there was something that, you know, didn't sit nicely on a C harmonica, he had no shame in pulling out a B harmonica or an E harmonic, you know, chromatic.

00:40:05.077 --> 00:40:10.402
I realized at that point, I went home and tried to play it on the B harmonica and I realized, okay, that's how he did it.

00:40:11.264 --> 00:40:17.971
You know, because it's the key of F on a B harmonica, which is much easier to play jazz on than the key of E major, which is...

00:40:18.411 --> 00:40:19.773
I never realized Toots did that.

00:40:19.813 --> 00:40:21.014
I always thought he played a C.

00:40:21.054 --> 00:40:22.255
Yes, it's a good insight.

00:40:22.255 --> 00:40:29.168
In fact, there's some wonderful videos of him playing in the early 60s on a TV show where he does Undecided.

00:40:37.346 --> 00:40:46.914
Undecided

00:40:46.974 --> 00:40:47.675
does very quickly.

00:40:47.954 --> 00:40:53.719
It's wonderful because he's just absolute genius.

00:40:53.980 --> 00:40:57.043
But I was trying to figure that out and I realized that he was doing that on a G harp.

00:40:57.302 --> 00:41:02.148
And apparently one of his records he did on a B flat harmonica, which he did with the tenor player.

00:41:02.307 --> 00:41:09.373
So he had no compunction about using a different key harmonica when that would make the resulting sound better.

00:41:09.755 --> 00:41:11.496
And I have seen you play, Will.

00:41:11.516 --> 00:41:15.581
In 2008, you came to the UK and played at the NHL Festival in Bristol.

00:41:16.021 --> 00:41:16.222
Yeah.

00:41:16.342 --> 00:41:18.943
Yeah, so you had a bit of a problem in integration as well.

00:41:19.224 --> 00:41:26.813
Roger Trowbridge was telling me the story about how you had troubles getting through customs, but eventually got through with the help of a UK MP.

00:41:26.972 --> 00:41:29.795
And you got to visit the House of Commons and House of Lords, yeah?

00:41:30.036 --> 00:41:32.458
And I'll tell you, his name was, do you remember his name?

00:41:33.059 --> 00:41:33.880
Very unusual name.

00:41:34.460 --> 00:41:35.262
Lembit Opik.

00:41:35.442 --> 00:41:36.943
There you go, Lembit Opik.

00:41:37.264 --> 00:41:40.047
The prologue of that story is very funny.

00:41:40.086 --> 00:41:45.833
After I had played in Bristol and had a wonderful time, I went back to London to go back to New York.

00:41:46.152 --> 00:41:50.498
He invited me to the House of Lords, I guess the Parliament building, to have lunch with him.

00:41:50.577 --> 00:41:55.163
And had I known more about British politics, I would have recognized everybody around there.

00:41:55.202 --> 00:41:57.606
I was in a very high-level company at that point.

00:41:58.005 --> 00:42:05.934
And at one point, we run into a guy in the hall, and Lambert says, Oh, David, this is my friend Will Gallison.

00:42:05.994 --> 00:42:07.215
He is a great harpist.

00:42:07.215 --> 00:42:10.139
harmonica player, one of the best, blah, blah, blah, whatever he said.

00:42:10.500 --> 00:42:12.902
And the guy said, oh, very nice to meet you, shook my hand.

00:42:12.961 --> 00:42:15.985
And then we walked away and he said, well, that's the minister of defense.

00:42:16.025 --> 00:42:25.775
It just struck me like, you know, what does a harmonica player, you know, have in common with the minister of defense?

00:42:26.295 --> 00:42:27.297
I felt a little bit...

00:42:27.958 --> 00:42:29.760
Because Lembit did play harmonica himself.

00:42:29.960 --> 00:42:30.900
That's right, yeah.

00:42:31.242 --> 00:42:32.762
But he sure saved my butt.

00:42:32.943 --> 00:42:35.025
They were dragging me to the airplane.

00:42:35.206 --> 00:42:37.128
I mean, I wasn't putting up a fight, but...

00:42:37.168 --> 00:42:51.784
they had two burly guys with their hands on my arms and forcing me to walk quickly down the hallway to get on the airplane back to New York when London faxed a note saying, oh, we can guarantee that Mr.

00:42:51.844 --> 00:42:54.527
Gellison will not be paid for his services.

00:42:54.766 --> 00:42:55.286
And that was good

00:42:55.306 --> 00:42:57.510
enough for them and they let me into the country.

00:42:57.869 --> 00:42:59.351
Yeah, it was a work permit thing, wasn't it?

00:42:59.371 --> 00:43:01.614
And so I'm with the NHL, now called Harmonic UK.

00:43:01.653 --> 00:43:06.199
You're appearing at this year's Chromatic Virtual Weekend and that's at the end of June.

00:43:06.219 --> 00:43:20.208
I'm going to link on to that so yeah people can come and check out your your workshop there as well so i just want to quickly mention another song you did which is a real fun one is the pocket full of soul which you play in a diatonic harmonica and you're singing it's all about the harmonica being a great instrument a pocket

00:43:25.099 --> 00:43:26.240
full of soul

00:43:26.581 --> 00:43:26.621
so

00:43:26.849 --> 00:43:57.637
and let me tell you I'm a one man traveling band every place that I go I got the music in the palm of my hand and when I feel it coming on I just sit back and let the spirit take control you know I plug into the socket when I play my little pocket full of soul I used to sit around and hope I never thought that I would come to anything I wish here on my road.

00:43:58.557 --> 00:44:08.829
And you could say that my step had lost its spring, so I collected all my dough and went and bought myself a shiny new tent hole.

00:44:09.769 --> 00:44:16.297
And now I take it like a rocket when I play my little pocket full of soul.

00:44:16.317 --> 00:44:22.063
Well, I tried picking up the piano, but the piano was too heavy for me.

00:44:22.603 --> 00:45:02.590
I tried the slide trombone, I tried the saxophone, but they never fit So if you're feeling kind of low And there ain't no one around to keep you company And you got no place to go And where you're at is just the last place you should be Take a pointer from a pro It doesn't matter if you're young or you are old better put it on a document and buy yourself a pocket full of soap

00:45:22.594 --> 00:45:27.257
I did that just as I've done many songs, just for fun of it on my little home studio.

00:45:27.737 --> 00:45:30.280
But in this particular case, I had two guest artists.

00:45:30.300 --> 00:45:33.523
Well, I got the drummer, Chris Parker was the drummer.

00:45:33.583 --> 00:45:40.449
He played in many, many famous bands and James Taylor and with a group called Stuff, which was a great funk band in the 90s.

00:45:40.610 --> 00:45:41.811
So he happened to be a friend.

00:45:41.831 --> 00:45:44.913
So he played on, I gave it to him and he afterwards put the drums on.

00:45:45.173 --> 00:45:47.775
And then I had Lou Marini.

00:45:48.076 --> 00:45:49.117
So in the Blues Brothers, right?

00:45:49.217 --> 00:45:50.438
He was in the Blues Brothers, right.

00:45:50.637 --> 00:45:52.500
And he is a buddy too.

00:45:52.559 --> 00:45:56.744
I mean, I'd done some Sesame Street sessions with him, and he lived in the neighborhood.

00:45:56.905 --> 00:46:06.215
So he came by with all his saxophones and played baritone, tenor, and alto, and did this wonderful, totally off-the-cuff saxophone, kind of classic saxophone background.

00:46:06.394 --> 00:46:12.360
And then I called up Lisa Fisher, who's famous for being in a movie called 20 Feet from Stardom.

00:46:12.782 --> 00:46:17.407
She sang with the Rolling Stones and one of the great background singers, one of the great singers.

00:46:17.847 --> 00:46:20.949
And she was kind enough to come and put the background vocals on there.

00:46:20.989 --> 00:46:23.693
So I was in very good company with that track.

00:46:23.934 --> 00:46:26.476
I mean, it is a great fun, as I say, a great harmonica song.

00:46:26.715 --> 00:46:33.903
Oh, I know why I did that one, actually, because there was a movie that came out called Pocket Full of Soul about harmonica, which apparently I'm featured in.

00:46:34.385 --> 00:46:40.731
So this movie came out, the director, producer of the movie asked harmonica players if they would make a theme song.

00:46:41.012 --> 00:46:46.036
And it was one of a few times in my life where somebody's given me a project, you know, write a song about this.

00:46:46.356 --> 00:46:51.322
And of course, the phrase Pocket Full of Soul is a catchy, nice sounding phrase.

00:46:51.362 --> 00:46:52.463
So that's why I wrote the song.

00:46:52.463 --> 00:46:53.244
in the first place.

00:46:53.565 --> 00:46:59.231
And it didn't get selected, but Mad Cat Ruth wrote one, which I haven't heard, but I'm sure it's very good.

00:46:59.672 --> 00:47:04.177
A question I ask each time, Will, if you had 10 minutes of practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

00:47:04.217 --> 00:47:09.021
I think on harmonica and any instrument, really, I'm doing it now with the saxophone.

00:47:09.302 --> 00:47:14.768
Well, with harmonica, the big challenge is making things fluid, legato, and sounding like they're not chopped up.

00:47:15.208 --> 00:47:20.213
I practice arpeggios a lot, up and down in all the 12 keys.

00:47:20.773 --> 00:47:22.976
Maybe you could do, no, you probably couldn't do in 10 minutes.

00:47:23.436 --> 00:47:24.197
Well, let me put it this way.

00:47:24.257 --> 00:47:35.829
I've never been a very systematic practicer, so it's very nice when I have a piece of music, a jazz standard, which I need to learn, or in the case of the French, the Odysseus piece, something like that.

00:47:35.889 --> 00:47:37.492
It's nice to have a goal.

00:47:37.592 --> 00:47:55.972
If you're just sort of between things, and one thing I do, which is kind of a warm-up, is I play a augmented scale, a whole tone scale, that is, starting on a C and just going up, because that scale happens to be in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out, right?

00:47:56.833 --> 00:48:04.581
So it gets your lungs moving in a controlled but very quick fluttering manner.

00:48:04.641 --> 00:48:08.085
So it kind of increases your speed and accuracy.

00:48:08.445 --> 00:48:12.710
So that's one little thing I do, for example, before I play a gig sometimes.

00:48:12.849 --> 00:48:15.833
And you can get pretty arcane on the harmonica.

00:48:15.853 --> 00:48:20.338
There's some jazz harmonica players who have taken it into pretty out there realms.

00:48:20.998 --> 00:48:22.320
I'm more of a melodic player.

00:48:22.320 --> 00:48:31.108
So it's important for me that I can play all these seventh chord arpeggios up and down in every key, the semblance of fluidity.

00:48:31.389 --> 00:48:33.532
So that might be something that I would practice.

00:48:34.092 --> 00:48:35.793
So yeah, so we'll get onto gear now.

00:48:35.833 --> 00:48:38.396
First of all, talking about the harmonicas that you play.

00:48:38.456 --> 00:48:42.340
So I have seen at one point you were endorsing Suzuki Chromatics.

00:48:42.420 --> 00:48:43.402
Is that still the case?

00:48:43.523 --> 00:48:44.844
I'm not sure, to tell you the truth.

00:48:45.043 --> 00:48:52.271
I met with them a few years ago at NAMM, and they wanted me to sign my image and my endorsement.

00:48:52.271 --> 00:48:54.614
endorsement in a very general kind of way.

00:48:54.695 --> 00:48:56.536
And I said, well, what do I get in return?

00:48:56.556 --> 00:49:00.240
I said, you know, I would like to get one of those new bass harmonicas that you make.

00:49:00.300 --> 00:49:02.523
And they said, no, no, no, that's too expensive.

00:49:03.224 --> 00:49:04.105
I was a little put off.

00:49:04.605 --> 00:49:06.146
So I didn't sign the thing.

00:49:06.567 --> 00:49:08.648
I had endorsed Hohner for a while.

00:49:08.909 --> 00:49:11.913
I think both Hohner and Suzuki have done great work.

00:49:12.373 --> 00:49:16.358
Sometimes for recordings, I'll use a Hohner because frankly, this is important.

00:49:16.458 --> 00:49:19.860
I like the sound of the Hohner Reeds more.

00:49:20.501 --> 00:49:21.923
And I can hear it on a recording.

00:49:22.224 --> 00:49:26.307
But the Suzuki reeds last, I would say, 10 times as long.

00:49:26.688 --> 00:49:30.452
I've replaced hundreds of reeds in my life and I just got tired of doing it.

00:49:30.873 --> 00:49:39.081
And I decided I would play the Suzuki's because they were more comfortable to play and I wasn't afraid of breaking the reed every time I played.

00:49:39.262 --> 00:49:44.987
And maybe because I play hard, you know, some people I'm sure can play a honer their whole life, but I would practice hard and I would play hard.

00:49:45.128 --> 00:49:47.471
And if I wanted to squeeze the note, I would squeeze the note.

00:49:47.731 --> 00:49:50.094
So I started playing the Suzuki's.

00:49:50.353 --> 00:49:51.856
I mean, the Suzuki's sound fine.

00:49:51.916 --> 00:50:06.751
And if you play them through a good mic with a good eq and a good reverb it sounds perfectly nice the and the difference is that the suzuki reeds are made of phosphor bronze and the uh honers are made of some kind of brass alloy and for whatever reason they sound richer

00:50:06.771 --> 00:50:10.516
and talking about what about embouchure do you use on the chromatic

00:50:10.916 --> 00:50:24.170
i like tongue switching and that's a big part of my playing and that was a a lot of that i was improved by my playing classical it's really pretty necessary when you play the beethoven or the bach and it makes certain for is much easier to do smoothly.

00:50:24.510 --> 00:50:25.911
Of course, Toots never did that.

00:50:26.052 --> 00:50:27.733
And as far as I know, Stevie never did that.

00:50:27.773 --> 00:50:30.876
So you can play perfectly wonderful harmonica without doing that.

00:50:31.077 --> 00:50:36.784
But I felt that it really helped me in many ways and enabled me to do some things that maybe Toots wouldn't go for.

00:50:37.264 --> 00:50:50.657
But on the other hand, sometimes just whistle position or spit position, whatever you want to call it, you know, pursing your lips for certain kinds of bending, for example, that you get more of a grip on the note when you can do it that way.

00:50:50.818 --> 00:50:56.284
So I'm constantly switching between between, I don't know what you call it, spit position and tongue switching position.

00:50:56.505 --> 00:50:57.045
Yeah, I haven't heard it

00:50:57.105 --> 00:50:58.266
called spit position before.

00:50:58.327 --> 00:50:58.806
I like that one.

00:50:58.927 --> 00:51:00.949
I call it puckering, but I like spit position.

00:51:02.070 --> 00:51:03.052
I don't know where I picked that up.

00:51:03.132 --> 00:51:05.213
And like a good New York one, I think, probably.

00:51:05.233 --> 00:51:05.333
Right.

00:51:05.655 --> 00:51:08.577
Yeah, I wanted to mention a couple other things regarding gear.

00:51:09.157 --> 00:51:11.820
There's a Chinese company called Wills Make.

00:51:11.880 --> 00:51:12.561
Have you seen them?

00:51:12.922 --> 00:51:13.061
No.

00:51:13.342 --> 00:51:14.023
You might look it up.

00:51:14.184 --> 00:51:16.987
Wills, like W-I-L apostrophe S, Make.

00:51:17.226 --> 00:51:21.751
And they're doing some really inventive stuff with chromatic harmonicas.

00:51:22.032 --> 00:51:23.112
He's out of China.

00:51:23.172 --> 00:51:26.436
He's an engineering student and he's an expert on machining.

00:51:26.737 --> 00:51:37.228
And they've made beautiful harmonicas, which are mostly around a thousand bucks, but some of them have an ebony or wooden cover plates and some very innovative designs.

00:51:37.307 --> 00:51:43.215
I haven't actually played one, but if they play anywhere as good as they look, then there will be something.

00:51:43.255 --> 00:51:48.239
And then there's this other company that Cy Young told me about called Cremona, which I'd like to look into as well.

00:51:48.280 --> 00:51:51.804
But those harmonicas are very expensive, more like 3000 bucks.

00:51:51.923 --> 00:51:54.806
But But boy, I mean, Cy Young is a tremendous player.

00:51:55.086 --> 00:51:57.889
Yeah, and I mean, it's very popular in China, isn't it?

00:51:57.949 --> 00:51:58.891
The chromatic harmonica.

00:51:58.911 --> 00:52:01.273
So they're obviously very innovative with what they do.

00:52:01.534 --> 00:52:01.713
Yes.

00:52:01.773 --> 00:52:02.876
Have you heard this little girl?

00:52:02.896 --> 00:52:03.976
There's a little girl who's

00:52:04.036 --> 00:52:05.018
about nine years old.

00:52:05.579 --> 00:52:10.443
I'm forgetting her name, but she tears it up on both the chromatic and the diatonic.

00:52:10.503 --> 00:52:11.284
It's really scary.

00:52:11.445 --> 00:52:12.226
It's scary, isn't it?

00:52:12.246 --> 00:52:12.905
How they do it at that age.

00:52:13.126 --> 00:52:21.295
If you ever want to be dissuaded of doing anything in life, just go on YouTube and find an eight-year-old Chinese kid who can do it ten times better than you ever will, you know.

00:52:21.735 --> 00:52:24.918
I'm one about equipment wise amps and microphones what do you like to use

00:52:25.079 --> 00:53:20.130
yeah I've gone through a million little little amplifiers because you know you don't want to lug a huge part of the charm of the harmonica is that you can put it in your pocket so you don't want to lug a stack of marshals around and one might one amplifier that I found that does very nice things for the harmonica is ZT makes an acoustic amplifier it's very tiny it's about seven inches by ten inches by seven inches or smaller than that it has a little six inch speaker inside and it just does something nice to the sound to me sometimes it really sounds just like a louder version of the harmonica like somehow it really replicates the sound very faithfully i use that and uh there's another company shirkler and i tried one of their amps at a nam show and i thought it was really special it's got a wooden cabinet they've got they've got different sizes but this one i think had an eight or a ten inch speaker And that I thought was really special as well.

00:53:21.052 --> 00:53:21.914
Microphone-wise?

00:53:22.476 --> 00:53:30.231
Well, Mike, I've been using Greg Hoyman's Sawed-Off 58, if you're familiar with that, with a volume control.

00:53:30.452 --> 00:53:35.161
And I found the volume control, I hate playing without it now because it's just really useful.

00:53:35.425 --> 00:53:45.041
I like the way that fits in my hand, and I prefer the 58 to the 57, both for sound and the way you can hold on to the ball of the 58.

00:53:46.503 --> 00:53:51.853
But for recording, I kind of got obsessed and bought a bunch of fairly high-end mics.

00:53:52.333 --> 00:53:57.603
There's a track on Got You On My Mind, which is called Flambe Montalbanese.

00:53:57.882 --> 00:53:59.425
It's that French...

00:53:59.809 --> 00:54:00.952
accordion sounding song.

00:54:01.291 --> 00:54:03.936
I always thought that was the best harmonica sound that I've gotten.

00:54:31.681 --> 00:54:39.025
And I asked the guy what microphone he used, and it was a Neumann 54, which is a rare microphone from the 60s or 50s.

00:54:39.045 --> 00:54:49.500
The Beatles used it actually on a few records, but it just smooths out the, it's got a nice high end, but it smooths it out in such a way that you don't get anything harsh from the harmonica.

00:54:49.800 --> 00:54:57.246
And that's a lovely microphone, but I think they're, I bought it for about a thousand bucks, but now they're like four or five thousand dollars, so good luck to anybody who wants to get

00:54:57.306 --> 00:54:57.447
that.

00:54:57.467 --> 00:54:59.027
It's crazy how much those microphones cost.

00:54:59.128 --> 00:55:05.112
I've got my little home studio and I keep looking at these really expensive microphones and how much these microphones cost.

00:55:05.152 --> 00:55:06.894
It's crazy, isn't it, how much they cost, some of them.

00:55:07.315 --> 00:55:07.775
But I think there

00:55:07.876 --> 00:55:07.976
are

00:55:08.036 --> 00:55:11.338
some lower end ones that are, you know, very good.

00:55:11.518 --> 00:55:15.583
And some of the mics, like a rare if you want to get real technical, R-O-D-E.

00:55:15.822 --> 00:55:19.987
Some of their mics are too high end, too much high frequency response for me.

00:55:20.148 --> 00:55:29.538
But other ones, if you replace the tubes, because these are Chinese made harmonicas, if you get better tubes, you can improve the sound of the microphone a lot.

00:55:29.918 --> 00:55:32.101
Final question now, Will, and thanks so much for your time.

00:55:32.121 --> 00:55:33.702
But just what about your future plans?

00:55:33.722 --> 00:55:35.224
Like you said, you're heading back to New York.

00:55:35.264 --> 00:55:37.385
I know you play with Sean Harkness.

00:55:37.445 --> 00:55:39.427
Are you going to go back to play with him and any other plans?

00:55:39.748 --> 00:55:45.315
Yeah, I think Sean is just a tremendous musician and guitarist and we had a really good chemistry.

00:56:11.297 --> 00:56:18.925
I mean, the last I played with him was a few years ago, but I would definitely like to pick that up again, maybe add a bass player and a percussionist or something like that.

00:56:19.224 --> 00:56:19.625
Yeah.

00:56:20.085 --> 00:56:22.648
And I would like to get back into playing some more classical.

00:56:22.668 --> 00:56:25.489
I don't know if I have the chops to...

00:56:26.090 --> 00:56:32.757
Well, I think if I give myself time to practice, I can be somewhat on the level of the people who are playing classical.

00:56:33.456 --> 00:56:34.297
That appeals to me.

00:56:34.338 --> 00:56:36.159
Again, I like playing jazz.

00:56:36.539 --> 00:56:37.900
It's just a really tough world.

00:56:38.240 --> 00:57:07.632
You go out and you play from nine to four in the morning and you get paid 50 bucks and yeah it's a labor of love isn't it to be very honest i i like to play in central park with a bunch of very good musicians who are between jobs or sometimes they just do that and i love playing in the street i find it gratifying and you get a big crowd and you get to play so i get a portable amp and i play with a little ensemble in the park make a little money but it's it's a lot of fun and you and you're in the open air and it's quite pleasant

00:57:07.992 --> 00:57:45.773
well it's great to hear you still love to play so thanks very much uh will guys for joining me today well thank you yeah man and thank you for doing the podcast it's great that's it for episode 38 thanks again for joining everybody and thanks once again to Will Gallison to showing us and taking us through his very varied and exciting career he's done loads of great things with the instruments remember Will will be appearing at the Harmonica UK virtual chromatic weekend later on in June this year so be sure to come along and check out his workshop and gain some more insights from So now it's over to Will to play us out with Jealous Guy.

00:57:52.641 --> 00:58:08.862
Jealous Guy

00:58:12.961 --> 00:58:13.373
Thank you.