WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hi and welcome to the working songwriter.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The show where today's best songwriters come to talk shop.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Joe Pug.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Each episode here, we host a distinguished guest and we ask them to go deep on their inspiration on their process, on the general ups and downs of making a life in music.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, whether you're a grizzled veteran, in litigation against Suno for illegally sampling your catalog or else a scrappy upstart.
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[SPEAKER_00]: sampling the hum of a recently built data center behind your house.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is your show because ultimately, it is what every writer seeks most in iron-tired excuse to put off actually writing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This week's show is brought to you by Bandzougle.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Built by musicians and four musicians, Bandzougle is an all in one platform to build a beautiful website for your music.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm old enough to remember when you had to pay somebody called a web developer to get a website made.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, if you enjoy this podcast, if you'd like to help it remain a viable endeavor for me, here's a couple of things that you could do to help.
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[SPEAKER_00]: First, you could become a subscriber to the vault.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What is the vault?
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[SPEAKER_00]: The vault is a private members only section of my website that hosts every single episode of the working songwriter ever recorded.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Additionally, the vault has every single album I've ever recorded for streaming in for download.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's also an archive of all of the enthusiast digest newsletters there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Go to jopugmusic.com slash fault, become a subscriber today.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's about the price of a nice cup of coffee every month.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'll end all the harassment there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that you enjoy this week's episode.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Our guest this week is one of the godfathers of modern roots in Americana music, originally from Toledo, Ohio, Gary Larus moved to Minneapolis as a young man in the 1970s and immersed himself in a twin city's music scene that punched way above its weight culturally.
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[SPEAKER_00]: His group, the J-Hawks, would release a string of critically acclaimed and nationally beloved albums.
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[SPEAKER_00]: One of Laura's main gifts is his ability to contribute to the music of a wide array of other artists.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He's contributed to the recordings of Counting Crows, John Hayett, Lucinda Williams, Roger McGwin, the Wallflowers, the Black Crows, Nicol Creek, and a host of others.
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[SPEAKER_00]: As a member of the J-Hawks, he's appeared on the late show with David Letterman and Conan.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He's recorded for what sounds like an anthology of record labels.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Twin Tone, American Recordings, RICO Disc, Lost Highway, 30 Tigers, Rounder, Sony, and New West Records.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Over the years, he's appeared at Farm Aid, Stage Coach, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and Willco's Sky Blue Sky Festival.
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[SPEAKER_00]: all music calls him one of the premier songwriters of his generation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The bluegrass situation our host network has written about him as a musical Swiss army knife.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Pitchfork has written that he and his musical partner in the J. Hawks, Mark Olsen, saying like they were born joined at the throat.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's an immense honor to have him on the show today.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I got a chance to catch up with him a few weeks ago to hear about his musical journey so far.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Gary Loris, what an honor to have you on the working songwriter podcast when we started this show 10 years ago, it was for someone like you that we had in mind or such a legend and we thank you so much.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She knows that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's how they're every day.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he then mode me 50 bucks to say that at the same time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I followed your music for so many years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I did not know until getting ready for this interview, though, that you're originally from Toledo, Ohio.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What did music look like for you and your household and around Toledo, growing up?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was born in Toledo and lived there until I moved to go to college to University Minnesota.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So my first 17 years was spent in the Middle East.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Musically, you know, it's kind of a miracle that I'm a musician because my dad had a tinier.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He would not, I don't remember him ever listening to music.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My sister, you know, who's five years older, love her, but she wasn't like a rock person.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Never has been, never will be.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She loved things I co-port her, every Berlin.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I love that stuff too.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, in our record collection at home, we had the old hyphi, and it would be like a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,
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[SPEAKER_01]: a lot of kind of stereo testing records like I don't know why.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And just funny soundtracks for the music man and things like that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But my sister had three records that would be considered
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[SPEAKER_01]: Chad and Jeremy and cabbages and kings and she had the stones flowers and that was the only thing that was anywhere near Rock and Roll growing up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: However my mother was a lover of music and insisted to pursue my sister and I took piano lessons so for age 6 to 14 I took piano lessons and my mother loved her Andy Williams and any baby as she'd called and
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Cruner's not your pericomo, but she also really loved Ella Fitzgerald.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So my mother had the musical year, but I don't remember any of them ever really putting an album on it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was just listening to her radio.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so, but at age 14, but I was captivated by music right away.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I didn't, I had listened to a radio station called C.K.L.W.
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[SPEAKER_01]: a motor city, which was out of Detroit, Windsor, and that's where I got my music from, because it was a 60, so it was Detroit.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of low town, some solo solo music.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of Beatles, Stones, Kings.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I remember vividly listening to the Stones and the Beatles and the Kings.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And for some reason, Bill Widdlers, C.K.L.W.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The Motor City.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then at age 14, another knowing I was an introverted shy kid, thought maybe I should learn how to play guitar because in her mind it was a folk world where I would go to parties and play folk songs and I'd become really popular.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it actually kind of paned out because we're going to be now in the legend and I had my way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: above my pay great.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So when did you realize music was going to be something more than just you know kind of an infatuation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Lots of people are into music and dig it when they're young and they don't go on to end up doing it for a living.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very strange living to make you would even go to school for for architecture and so it seems like music wasn't like the original original
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[SPEAKER_00]: For you, when did it start to look like it would be something different for you?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Not until I was like 26 or so, really late.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very much a late bloomer.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I was too shy to be in a band and play with anybody in Toledo except me with my neighbor across the street a little bit.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Who was obsessed with the band, yes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, you had a less Paul.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Or my first band I was in, which wasn't really a band little Christian trio at church
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[SPEAKER_01]: was in my class, he had an SG and I played in a classical guitar but thought that was cool.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't know, I always, music came really easily to me as opposed to everything else in life, sometimes it could be hard.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It just seemed like, well, I just, I can learn these songs easily.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I love music, but it was always kind of on the back burner.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I barely practicalize that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I want to,
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[SPEAKER_01]: maybe someday I could do it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I know that's what I'd like to do, but I don't see it clear path.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to go school.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I know I'm good at math and drawing and I love architecture.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I went to school in architecture, but always with the, you know, in the back of my mind,
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[SPEAKER_01]: playing music.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So when I was in college at the University of Minnesota ran into some guys and elevator carrying some albums and we became friends and found out that his friends, they were in a British rock cover band.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I joined that, and it was all for fun, you know, we play it like three, preach shows real legitimate shows.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was more like a hobby for them, but I was, it's my first taste of being a band.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then from there, it started to be, you know, then I got into songwriting, but it really was only in my early 20s.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I did that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have an electric guitar until I was probably.
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[SPEAKER_01]: 18 or so, so not in a band till as 26 or so, and you know that the J-outs thought it was 30, so so about, but you know, I still continued to work as an architect Especially in that historic restoration, but as I joined a band called safety last, which was a rockability band In Minneapolis, I started
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[SPEAKER_01]: going back between working as an architect and also maybe I was waitering, waiting tables was a way to kind of tour a little bit more have flexibility.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is a long answer.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1991, there were the crossroads of, I was offered a scholarship to go to the Columbia University to study historic restoration, get my graduate degree.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We were also offered a record contract with the African-American Rick Rubin and that was kind of like, I followed my heart, you know, and for better or for worse, most areas I think I made the right choice, but that's, uh,
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's the story, I guess, long-winded, it is, you know, I think, well, long-winded is what podcasts are for.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That is the format that we're in.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we're after here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I want to get some pie.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I want to do my own podcast.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to, I want to, just nothing to it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I want my life to, I think she's the funniest person I know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: there's nothing to it and it would be a great one.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think anytime that someone moved to Minneapolis could be in a spacious time to move there musically because there's always just such great music coming out of Minneapolis it's such an underrated like under the radar wonderful music down.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But it was particularly auspicious when you move there in the 80s.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like there was a lot of different music coming out of there that would become very influential.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Can you kind of speak to that what you were seeing on the ground?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure there were several different scenes of music coming out of there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What do you remember the most in that sense, culturally?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean when I moved there in the 70s, I had to go to school.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't in the band at first, but I went to a lot of shows.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There was a great club.
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[SPEAKER_01]: of the Longhorn, where I'd see local bands where I got to see the Boom Count Rats and the Bozcox and the Stranglers and the Clash, who were at a Bozcox show in a little club, and because I was a big English punk rock fan.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So before I ever knew how to banjo, as I was all about, Brith.
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[SPEAKER_01]: pop and British rock and punk rock in our rock.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We were really when I cut my teeth out of it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So there was a great club and I go see some bands.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's a band called The Suicide Commandos, who were kind of a little before when the scene got really known in the 80s.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The late Steve almost thinking of him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But
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[SPEAKER_01]: But then, you know, by the early 80s, there was definitely, it seemed like everybody was in a band.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and there was definitely a scene, there was a, there was the rock scene.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot of rock music, there was kind of a folk scene, roots, bluegrass kind of scene.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That was an in an area called the West Bank in Minneapolis, which is a,
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[SPEAKER_01]: On the other side of the river part of the University of Minnesota and that we were the first band to kind of bridge between a rock scene and the focusing we went over to the West Bank and we were kind of kind of just kind of rebellious we're kind of crossing into sacred territory but at the time everybody's in a band
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[SPEAKER_01]: especially by the mid-80s when we came to became a band.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, everybody was in a band.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, there were the replacements.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And he was screwed over.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so, um, and banks and Toiland, and us, and a million other bands, and a lot of them that were really cool, that people may never know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Run Westy Run was like the cool, stuages, doors, stuages band, that Craig Johnson came.
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[SPEAKER_01]: who played with us and plays in the golden smile.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then there was also Prince in the time and all that all going at the same time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it was kind of like a lucky break that I ended up moving to a place.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I moved to Minneapolis because it was a big, I had gone to 12 years of Catholic school, all day out of school.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I was going to go to Notre Dame and I pulled the plug on that last week.
16:17.052 --> 16:18.693
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, I want to go to a big school.
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[SPEAKER_01]: architecture, I sister lived there in her husband, so I just happened to stumble upon the right place at the right time in the 80s.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When you were in the middle of that, I mean, you just named a murderer's row of other bands in your cohort.
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[SPEAKER_00]: At the time, did you realize something special was going on, or was it only in retrospect you could look back and be like, man, that was a great group that we were a part of?
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[SPEAKER_01]: and newsweek about Minneapolis scene in 85 or 86.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was pretty, and there was something in the area.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I also had a great club, which was called First Avenue, a seventh-grade entry.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And all the elements that create a scene, like you say, why were there so many great bands from Minneapolis, but maybe not that many from Pittsburgh or another, I mean, I love Pittsburgh,
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[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of it is just a had a cool little record company called Twentone and it had a cool write some cool radio stations and had cool clubs and a cool record store or a call on a call or a folk joke opus which was where you know the placements were hang out and it's like a clubhouse and you go there to get all the cool records all those things contributed to creating a scene and everybody knew each other you know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: that is wild.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I've heard you talk so far about, you know, the British rock that influenced you and all that, but you are very identified now as one of the people that brought kind of roots in Americano music to the forefront.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There wasn't really a word for it when you began doing it in, you know, the mid-80s.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When did what we would now call roots music?
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[SPEAKER_00]: When did that start to enter your musical lexicon?
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[SPEAKER_01]: It is ironic that I've become known as this Roots Americana Godfather in a way, but I really grew up and still my sweet spot is British.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, whether it's the jam, the clash, or it's the kinks, and the stones, or all those pretty things, and zombies, and I love anything and everything British.
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[SPEAKER_01]: at our house, BBC is always on whether on TV or radio.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We kind of almost make it feel like we're living in England.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, if we could, we'd probably live in England.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I found in when I was playing with that British rock cover band, Schnauser, is the name of the band.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We intentionally picked the weirdest stupidest thing because we were really very serious about being a household
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[SPEAKER_01]: My friend, Jay, was the lead singer, came down one day and vividly see, because we practice in his parents' basement, and came down the stairs with this record in his hand, shaking goes, you got to hear this, and I'll never forget that visual, and it was Elvis Sun Sessions.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I came obsessed with Elvis and that record.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that record was kind of the gateway to me learning about, huh?
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[SPEAKER_01]: classic country and western swing and fat's waller and building row and then getting to a soul music and all green and James Carr and all those beautiful genres and bluegrass country.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I already said that blues.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and folk.
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[SPEAKER_01]: All these things that I hadn't really listened to.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I hadn't really been in doing fan up to that point or in kneeling on fan.
20:15.020 --> 20:16.241
[SPEAKER_01]: I was all brittle at the time.
20:16.721 --> 20:22.025
[SPEAKER_01]: So that kind of came later for me.
20:22.125 --> 20:29.711
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's why I feel like a foundation of my song writing and a loud J-Hox music is almost British.
20:31.420 --> 20:53.369
[SPEAKER_01]: pop or rock music as far as, but then it has added a mixed into it around top of it as all this, what I found was the soulful element that sometimes was missing from pop music from soul and the deeper stacks and storytelling.
20:54.009 --> 20:56.510
[SPEAKER_01]: So kind of all mixed together, but it started
21:01.472 --> 21:21.490
[SPEAKER_01]: American music and for me it was good because I was never going to be able to I loved to have a stronger the clash by I was never going to be that guy on stage I couldn't write but I can identify with singing with the American accent and softer deeper kind of music on that deeper but
21:22.554 --> 21:22.814
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
21:23.735 --> 21:31.322
[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned in your own words kind of coming late to being in a band kind of a late bloomer there, you know, 26, late 20s.
21:31.683 --> 21:36.227
[SPEAKER_00]: That must also mean that you came late to a certain degree to songwriting.
21:36.367 --> 21:38.950
[SPEAKER_00]: What was it like beginning to compose your own stuff for you?
21:39.150 --> 21:44.695
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you take to it like a duck to water immediately or were there things you had to learn to get up to speed?
21:46.003 --> 21:47.404
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it came pretty quickly.
21:47.424 --> 21:56.673
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember when I first started recording myself, I had like a Phillips reel to reel in Minneapolis and late 70s.
21:58.034 --> 22:02.638
[SPEAKER_01]: And I heard my voice recorded first time and I really, I was, I liked it.
22:02.718 --> 22:12.707
[SPEAKER_01]: I liked my voice and I was like, I had a roommate in John Olthe, the late John Olthe who was not really in musician, but he was creative and smart guy.
22:13.968 --> 22:15.369
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was my roommate for a while.
22:15.389 --> 22:19.973
[SPEAKER_01]: We started writing some songs together because he knew this band called Safety Last.
22:20.053 --> 22:22.414
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were looking for some songs.
22:22.474 --> 22:31.321
[SPEAKER_01]: So you know, I dabbled and you know, and then I kind of splitter off on my own as generally a profile songs.
22:31.381 --> 22:39.387
[SPEAKER_01]: But it seemed that it came to me pretty naturally and I didn't do a lot of studying of it.
22:39.447 --> 22:40.428
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have it.
22:42.300 --> 22:45.302
[SPEAKER_01]: composition degree or anything.
22:45.322 --> 22:59.788
[SPEAKER_01]: But you have just from listening and you know my first songs were very much copying other people's songs and changing them, you know like you do to learn how to write.
23:00.088 --> 23:07.552
[SPEAKER_00]: When you first began, was it a very intense period where you just composed and composed a bunch or did it did it slowly ramp up over time?
23:08.693 --> 23:29.006
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was, once I got the bug and I had my little recording studio, pretty humble, wasn't pro tools, I was bouncing tracks, you know, so to me, like, the Beatles used to when you only had four tracks, bounce them, bounce them down to one track, a freeing three tracks so you could make more room.
23:29.587 --> 23:30.267
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course wouldn't.
23:30.727 --> 23:33.689
[SPEAKER_01]: And I still, I just posted an old song of mine.
23:34.330 --> 23:35.891
[SPEAKER_01]: I have some of them, in fact,
23:36.939 --> 23:38.140
[SPEAKER_01]: along with my band camp.
23:38.180 --> 23:43.944
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't give a plug on thinking of I have a Please do go patreon.com slash garylorus.
23:44.625 --> 23:53.372
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's where I share some archival things, new things, songs I'm working on.
23:54.312 --> 23:57.335
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll photos what I'm doing.
23:59.718 --> 24:10.722
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, so Patreon, P-A-T-R-O-N-D-I-C-O-N-D-I-C-O-N-D-I-C-O-N-D-I-C-O-N-D-I-C-O-N-D-I-C-O-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D
24:59.131 --> 25:09.478
[SPEAKER_00]: Though he's originally from Toledo and has made his home in Canada for many years, I think it's fair to consider Gary's music a cultural export of the Twin Cities, at least in part.
25:10.118 --> 25:15.782
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of my favorite poets was, for a time, the poet laureate of Minnesota, Robert Blie.
25:16.463 --> 25:23.367
[SPEAKER_00]: His poems can be dark and detailed and evocative, not unlike many of Gary's and the J-Hawks songs.
25:30.502 --> 25:32.223
[SPEAKER_00]: We are approaching sleep.
25:33.143 --> 25:37.205
[SPEAKER_00]: The chestnut blossoms in the mind mingle with thoughts of pain.
25:38.265 --> 25:44.288
[SPEAKER_00]: And the long roots of barley, bitterness as of the oak roots staining the waters dark in Louisiana.
25:45.129 --> 25:48.610
[SPEAKER_00]: The wet streets soaked with rain and sodden blossoms.
25:49.531 --> 25:54.093
[SPEAKER_00]: Out of this we have come, a tunnel softly hurtling into darkness.
25:55.273 --> 25:56.174
[SPEAKER_00]: The storm is coming.
25:57.035 --> 26:08.865
[SPEAKER_00]: The small farmhouse in Minnesota is hardly strong enough for the wind, darkness, darkness in grass, darkness in trees, even the water in wells, trembles.
26:09.825 --> 26:19.834
[SPEAKER_00]: Bodies give off darkness and crescentimums are dark and horses who are bearing great loads of hay to the deep barns where the dark air is moving from corners.
26:21.025 --> 26:22.906
[SPEAKER_00]: Lincoln's statue and the traffic.
26:23.587 --> 26:33.895
[SPEAKER_00]: From the long past into the long present, a bird, forgotten in these troubles, warbling, as the great wheel turns around, grinding the living in water.
26:34.755 --> 26:47.805
[SPEAKER_00]: Washington, continual Washington, in water now stained with blossoms and riding logs, cries half muffled from beneath the earth, the living awakened at last like the dead.
27:01.022 --> 27:09.527
[SPEAKER_00]: Take me to that moment that you referenced earlier, that crossroads, as you described it, either graduate school or take a record deal.
27:10.368 --> 27:21.955
[SPEAKER_00]: What did it feel like for you, you know, it's 1991, I think George Traculius heard you guys and offers you this deal, you know, major label deal.
27:22.595 --> 27:29.900
[SPEAKER_00]: What did that ride feel like when you make the decision to knock out a graduate school and step on the show business train?
27:30.820 --> 27:32.260
[SPEAKER_00]: What did that feel like?
27:35.201 --> 27:41.342
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel as I remember it feeling pretty confident about the choice I made.
27:42.202 --> 27:52.424
[SPEAKER_01]: Now when you're sitting in the back of a van one day and just trying to think, what if I never would have met my wife, I wouldn't have this life that I love.
27:53.804 --> 27:57.105
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember going really having to ring my hands that much.
27:57.385 --> 27:58.065
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I knew.
28:00.017 --> 28:05.940
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew that music came more naturally to me than visually, you know, as an architect.
28:06.880 --> 28:14.784
[SPEAKER_01]: Architecture was something I could do, but I didn't feel like I was gifted in that area as I was in music.
28:14.804 --> 28:21.587
[SPEAKER_01]: So I followed my heart and it was exciting because we had been a band for six years.
28:24.729 --> 28:33.940
[SPEAKER_01]: I could always go back to school somehow if I really needed to but how many times to get a major level record deal.
28:34.608 --> 28:34.908
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
28:35.489 --> 28:36.309
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and that's just it.
28:36.329 --> 28:45.115
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you guys, you were talking about that scene and have everyone knew each other and you have twin-tone there in the cities, but it's not twin-tone that you're worth with this major label.
28:45.195 --> 28:55.301
[SPEAKER_00]: Was there talk a little bit about the difference between the work that you had done up to that point and then, you know, sounds to me like you had been playing Triple A ball and you got called up to the big leagues.
28:55.341 --> 28:57.142
[SPEAKER_00]: Was that a big difference at that point?
28:58.703 --> 28:59.484
[SPEAKER_01]: Huge difference.
28:59.784 --> 29:01.005
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I can tell then,
29:02.117 --> 29:06.759
[SPEAKER_01]: As much as I loved Twintone, it was, you know, it was, you can only go so far.
29:07.700 --> 29:12.042
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were actually almost broke up a couple times.
29:15.144 --> 29:23.048
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was the only one who really had done some touring before the J-Ox, with safety last.
29:23.308 --> 29:28.451
[SPEAKER_01]: And then as we toured, blue-earth, I was determined
29:30.808 --> 29:34.134
[SPEAKER_01]: just get on the road and play a lot when you didn't have a record to remote.
29:34.174 --> 29:34.835
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember that.
29:36.758 --> 29:39.182
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was a really, you know, it was a funny time.
29:39.222 --> 29:40.364
[SPEAKER_01]: Blue Earth was a record.
29:41.095 --> 30:00.645
[SPEAKER_01]: that was a bunch of demos that we made for other record companies, because we came onto the scene and pretty quickly, in the 8586, we had an audience, and there was a bit of a buzz, and then there was a few record companies that were kind of sniffing around
30:11.015 --> 30:12.778
[SPEAKER_01]: before you even deaf American came on.
30:13.439 --> 30:18.306
[SPEAKER_01]: But they always, they couldn't click and handle on what our music was because it was different.
30:18.426 --> 30:21.350
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, they went a lot of bands doing what we were doing.
30:21.370 --> 30:22.752
[SPEAKER_01]: It definitely didn't have a name to it.
30:23.874 --> 30:25.316
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we don't always have somebody.
30:28.470 --> 30:41.638
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody in the, at the record company was a fan, but they were usually kind of an underling and they'd be like, I got to talk to my boss and, but they can't, the labels would give us a money and they said, well, we need to hear more.
30:41.718 --> 30:42.899
[SPEAKER_01]: So can you do some demos?
30:43.879 --> 30:47.622
[SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, nothing really happened.
30:47.642 --> 30:49.743
[SPEAKER_01]: So Twin-Tone agreed to put out
30:53.790 --> 30:55.411
[SPEAKER_01]: but we did overdubes on them.
30:55.512 --> 30:58.494
[SPEAKER_01]: And we took them to another level and made it a record.
30:59.455 --> 31:12.046
[SPEAKER_01]: And then nothing really happened, 8788, 88, 89, 90, kind of wanted the willingness of bed playing, but we all had jobs until, you know, George.
31:12.986 --> 31:28.384
[SPEAKER_01]: heard Blu-Earth playing in the background as he was talking to Dave Ayers who at the time was working at Twintown but had known George because he was a little George and Dave had worked at A&M together.
31:28.444 --> 31:29.505
[SPEAKER_01]: So they stayed in touch.
31:30.086 --> 31:32.729
[SPEAKER_01]: So you know, Pismet or whatever,
31:33.803 --> 31:38.207
[SPEAKER_01]: the joint heard it over the phone and immediately was struck by it.
31:38.267 --> 31:47.797
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he was looking for his version of the birds, you know, they had, definitely American had their stones with black crows.
31:47.877 --> 31:51.440
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were going to be like the birds, I guess, or the eagles or whatever.
31:51.861 --> 31:52.822
[SPEAKER_01]: They thought we could be.
31:53.894 --> 32:11.471
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, he flew to Minneapolis and saw his play, and immediately he, we were pretty taken by Kenyan because George is an incredibly charismatic and charming and funny and interesting character.
32:12.172 --> 32:16.136
[SPEAKER_01]: And to have this guy come in after being kind of
32:19.032 --> 32:29.867
[SPEAKER_01]: left in the desert to all of a sudden have this guy who was a big, was excited and I'm going to take you to LA, we're going to make records and it's pretty hard to resist.
32:30.790 --> 32:31.250
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll bet.
32:31.450 --> 32:36.052
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and it's even in the name of the record that would come out of that Hollywood town hall.
32:36.733 --> 32:43.696
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think part of it was at Packard Room, which is where you would expect the Minneapolis band to record an album.
32:43.736 --> 32:45.836
[SPEAKER_00]: But you guys went out to Los Angeles to do it.
32:46.317 --> 32:52.539
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you kind of just speak to the heading nature of, you know, all of a sudden you're in Los Angeles recording record?
32:54.840 --> 32:55.781
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a lot of pressure.
32:55.901 --> 32:58.482
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I remember the local paper came out and had somebody
32:59.083 --> 33:01.144
[SPEAKER_01]: covering the story because it was kind of a big deal.
33:02.364 --> 33:19.372
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, we did all in Hollywood except for some overdubs and some B-sides that were done after the fact in a pack or in a cannonfalls.
33:21.005 --> 33:49.709
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean also we drove our stuff out there a lot eight, and you know it was in the van We stayed in we shared rooms There's being an old son and and permanent in Kenny, Calam and we It was terrifying, you know, it was like this is a big chance and So they put us in the this Studio that wasn't really you know, it wasn't the
33:51.709 --> 33:58.093
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't the fanciest studio, it's seen better days, but it was a great, at one time, pretty famous studio.
33:58.393 --> 34:05.537
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called Hollywood Sound, but before that was called Wallyhider 4, which is where they did some bird stuff, they did Grand Parsons Records.
34:05.898 --> 34:06.878
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, nice.
34:06.898 --> 34:12.021
[SPEAKER_01]: And the big room was where we did the basics.
34:12.041 --> 34:15.924
[SPEAKER_01]: And then around the corner was the smaller room, which we did overdubes in.
34:16.964 --> 34:19.586
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, we, uh,
34:21.483 --> 34:31.375
[SPEAKER_01]: It was tough because we were under the gun and our drummer, Kenny, Kelly Ann, got thrown under the bus a bit and looking back.
34:32.550 --> 34:57.586
[SPEAKER_01]: because George was a very particular about tempos and things like that and you know whereas the rest of us can always overdog and trick things you know Kenny was the one who had a late-own the basics and George after a number of had our how-long we had to tell Kenny he
35:01.420 --> 35:19.720
[SPEAKER_01]: really hard for us, it was hard for Kenny, and to this day, it's not our proudest moment, but at the time, we couldn't really say screw you George, you know, he was our A&R guy and our producer, and Kenny took it as a gentleman,
35:21.213 --> 35:35.180
[SPEAKER_01]: And I ended up was vindicated because he ended up playing on the over some of the overdubs and B-sides and ended up playing a Joe Henry's next record, a short man's room, and did a great job, and Kenny's too and just fine.
35:35.720 --> 35:36.741
[SPEAKER_01]: I stand touch with him.
35:37.862 --> 35:45.445
[SPEAKER_01]: So then we had to bring in audition drummers, and we brought in Bill Bateman from the last years.
35:45.645 --> 35:46.146
[SPEAKER_01]: We brought in
35:47.958 --> 36:08.950
[SPEAKER_01]: Bill Jim Kelper, famous Jim Kelper play, wow, I guess, a guy named that Spencer who was our old drummer, back in Minneapolis, who was also had a music house and out in L.A., who had left the band at the band and to pursue his business.
36:10.391 --> 36:15.014
[SPEAKER_01]: And Charlie Drayton, Charlie Drayton is the guy who played
36:16.453 --> 36:30.777
[SPEAKER_01]: You know there were Steve Jordan and Charlie Drake and they both played an expensive wine house with Keith Richards and they kind of switched off sometimes Charlie would play drums and sometimes Steve would play drums and Charlie would play bass.
36:30.837 --> 36:35.338
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway chose a great drummer and he came in and he was the winner.
36:35.458 --> 36:37.758
[SPEAKER_01]: He was great and he was
36:45.785 --> 36:47.946
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where George wanted to go.
36:48.126 --> 36:57.370
[SPEAKER_01]: So we being polite Midwesterners, who had not had a record deal, and we kind of followed what George said.
36:57.430 --> 36:59.591
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was probably the best thing for the record.
36:59.651 --> 37:02.932
[SPEAKER_01]: It tried to play great, but it was tough for us as a band.
37:04.332 --> 37:07.114
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, Kenny was vindicated in the long run.
37:07.134 --> 37:11.055
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a great drummer and ended up continuing playing with us.
37:11.455 --> 37:15.217
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that worked out, but at the time it was tough.
37:16.299 --> 37:27.733
[SPEAKER_01]: And the rest of the record was, I would say, what was interesting about it is that it sounds, we were clearly hard to make it sound live, but it was mostly overdoped.
37:28.474 --> 37:30.797
[SPEAKER_01]: And no matter what we did, we were never going to sound.
37:31.938 --> 37:35.463
[SPEAKER_01]: Super tight, we're just kind of, you know, let's probably the charm, I guess.
37:37.625 --> 37:39.966
[SPEAKER_00]: But what were some of the things that you learned?
37:41.067 --> 37:46.850
[SPEAKER_00]: What were some of the tools or maybe even tricks that you learned from working with George Proculeus in the studio on that?
37:49.071 --> 38:00.958
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think to take it, be able to take it.
38:03.435 --> 38:08.198
[SPEAKER_01]: He was kind of brutal in a way, but in a funny way, it's hard to explain.
38:08.559 --> 38:17.945
[SPEAKER_01]: George was before I go to do a guitar take, it'd be very typical for churches to say, don't embarrass me or something like that.
38:18.025 --> 38:27.031
[SPEAKER_01]: Just kind of things that I found I used later in life when I was pretty saying, it kind of would get me pissed and I would go,
38:30.220 --> 38:42.183
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're going to have a solo crank it up, you know, we blew a bunch of speakers in the control room when I'd be doing my fuss almost because he's like, let's get excited.
38:42.223 --> 38:44.544
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's, a lot of people when they record.
38:44.584 --> 38:46.024
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, oh, you don't want to hurt your ears.
38:46.044 --> 38:49.005
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got to listen to it in a low level too.
38:49.065 --> 38:54.066
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're really judging it correctly because when you turn it loud, everything sounds good.
38:54.186 --> 38:55.667
[SPEAKER_01]: But George was like, crank it up.
38:55.787 --> 38:56.787
[SPEAKER_01]: We're getting excited.
38:58.771 --> 39:03.859
[SPEAKER_01]: To this day, I learned, I thought that was a valuable lesson to learn.
39:04.734 --> 39:05.214
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
39:05.635 --> 39:15.000
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to, before we get to your latest record here, I have one aspect of your career that I'm just personally very interested in because I love the band so much.
39:15.380 --> 39:22.764
[SPEAKER_00]: I was hoping you could speak a little bit to your time working, producing the Sadies who were just a band that I love so much.
39:23.144 --> 39:27.287
[SPEAKER_00]: How did you meet those guys and what was your working relationship with them
39:34.623 --> 39:40.225
[SPEAKER_01]: they uh... just from touring somehow they ended up on bill with us and they toured with us
39:41.850 --> 39:44.251
[SPEAKER_01]: and found love at them.
39:44.271 --> 39:49.072
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean they were everything you'd want in the back of that eye of your thing.
39:49.692 --> 40:03.775
[SPEAKER_01]: I could play Pink Floyd, Pink Floyd kind of pipers at the gates of dawn kind of stuff and then they'd switch into more appony spaghetti western things into crazy psychedelic stuff into
40:09.076 --> 40:31.881
[SPEAKER_01]: So I completely admired them and we hit it off and over time we stayed in touch and when it came time to We were making a record they asked me to produce it so I did there were two records like a little mixed up which one happened first one in Toronto and another one in Spain but
40:32.993 --> 40:35.336
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was a tough one to work with them.
40:35.436 --> 40:36.778
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll tell you why a couple of reasons.
40:37.239 --> 40:38.240
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't want to mess with them.
40:38.821 --> 40:41.965
[SPEAKER_01]: They were like, they were showman.
40:41.985 --> 40:43.547
[SPEAKER_01]: They were so exciting and fun.
40:44.308 --> 40:46.471
[SPEAKER_01]: But they wanted to work harder on their vocals.
40:46.572 --> 40:48.174
[SPEAKER_01]: They wanted to be more serious about.
40:49.391 --> 41:14.085
[SPEAKER_01]: songwriting, and I didn't want to take away what's exciting about the Sadies, which is they were crazy fun, but what they could get for me is maybe honing the harmonies working on their vocals and helping with the songwriting, and so it was a funny, as fine, it was a tight rope to walk a bit, figure out how to keep what they do.
41:15.714 --> 41:18.916
[SPEAKER_01]: but also have them grow a bit.
41:19.416 --> 41:27.059
[SPEAKER_01]: But we did it, I think I explained in a coproduced it with my friend Pocka logo and both records, I think, they turned out great.
41:27.419 --> 41:32.882
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was so devastating when Dallas passed away.
41:32.902 --> 41:38.084
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just shocking and every year that anniversary comes up, I think it's in February.
41:38.144 --> 41:39.825
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just so sad.
41:39.865 --> 41:40.565
[SPEAKER_01]: I know there's some new
41:41.405 --> 41:45.446
[SPEAKER_01]: thing he did with Richard Perry, I think it's a guy's name from Arcade Fire.
41:46.286 --> 42:00.130
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I didn't know, but they did a record together that came up with this and, uh, but there's still talk, there's still one's while I talk, I talked to, I staying contact with, um, with Travis.
42:00.771 --> 42:03.891
[SPEAKER_01]: Travis, I was like, my good friend, uh, what's his name?
42:05.032 --> 42:08.413
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, there's been talk about doing another record together,
42:12.576 --> 42:28.634
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but it hasn't happened yet, but I'm so proud of him that they have continued on and I've gotten up and played with them a few times and played Dallas's gear is set up and it was so honored here at seven.
42:28.674 --> 42:30.857
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, once a month I'll perform one of their songs.
42:31.912 --> 42:51.666
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they they did find that mark though that one of the things I've always loved about them as a band is I love the song writing thousand cities damned tunes like that but then you go see I think it's called a thousand cities damned and around an earth where a person's life is worth how many people in the nation yeah that one and uh
42:52.286 --> 42:55.748
[SPEAKER_00]: But then also, like you mentioned, they weren't above being showmen.
42:55.768 --> 43:07.754
[SPEAKER_00]: When you would go to a sati show, they were like almost set pieces that they would come to different parts of the show that would just bring down the house, and I missed that from bands these days to a certain degree.
43:07.834 --> 43:10.836
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the showmanship aspect that they would bring to bear.
43:11.857 --> 43:12.357
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you.
43:12.377 --> 43:15.919
[SPEAKER_01]: They're all country-tric where one of them would get behind the other end.
43:16.670 --> 43:35.146
[SPEAKER_01]: and do the fingering of the guitar and that kind of showman kind of stuff kind of old traditional kind of because they're you know the dad and their uncles were part of the good brothers and so they have musical education growing up but I think there's a song
43:46.995 --> 43:48.597
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell her what I said or tell her.
43:49.738 --> 43:59.070
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that's a good example of what I saw from the cities which was unlike anything I've ever seen with any other band.
43:59.510 --> 44:00.752
[SPEAKER_01]: Was the writing process?
44:00.912 --> 44:01.232
[SPEAKER_01]: Because
44:02.949 --> 44:20.483
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't necessarily, I'm sure they did at some point, Dallas, but in general, they would sit down and they'd have this musical vocabulary that was without even talking, and they would write kind of instead of having the melody and the words, sometimes they would just have
44:22.033 --> 44:24.775
[SPEAKER_01]: the music that would kind of come together and they keep building it.
44:25.355 --> 44:31.880
[SPEAKER_01]: Most people are at an abnormality and a working lyric and they start playing around with the chords.
44:32.460 --> 44:34.702
[SPEAKER_01]: They kind of did it at the opposite, at least when I saw them.
44:36.283 --> 44:38.604
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes, Dallas would say, what do you think of the song?
44:38.985 --> 44:40.065
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what it is.
44:41.046 --> 44:43.087
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't have a melody or words yet.
44:43.107 --> 44:43.568
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
44:45.049 --> 44:46.450
[SPEAKER_01]: But teller what I said is like,
44:48.372 --> 44:55.404
[SPEAKER_01]: one of my favorite songs of all time by anybody, and they wrote it for the very collaborative with each other.
44:57.283 --> 45:06.970
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was especially, Travis was kind of mad, picker, and traditional, you know, a little bit more.
45:07.351 --> 45:09.892
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to take past them because they both did both things.
45:10.012 --> 45:18.459
[SPEAKER_01]: But that also was the heavier, super, like carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
45:19.748 --> 45:33.306
[SPEAKER_01]: a very detailed talk and knew a lot about gear and we weren't interested about tubes and echoing units and everything, mixing boards.
45:33.346 --> 45:36.410
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was just a big heavy thinker.
45:38.397 --> 45:46.162
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was between the two of them, they were brilliant, but I know they're still making great music, which is, they are, they are indeed.
45:46.663 --> 45:51.406
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, before I let you go, I do want to talk to you about this most recent record of your dark country.
45:51.446 --> 45:53.627
[SPEAKER_00]: We've gone through and talked about all these different people.
45:53.687 --> 45:58.371
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, the newest record is Sanctuary Park, which is the one that's coming up.
45:58.391 --> 45:59.632
[SPEAKER_01]: Dark history is the solo.
45:59.932 --> 46:01.713
[SPEAKER_01]: I love talking about that too, but I...
46:02.042 --> 46:05.483
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you'd be remiss if we didn't talk about the album coming out.
46:05.723 --> 46:14.045
[SPEAKER_00]: Indeed, please talk to me about sanctuary park then because dark country, which I was just listening to early this week, was a very, was a solo affair pretty much.
46:14.065 --> 46:20.866
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you had an Eleanor Whitmore, was on it in a couple other people, but how does it contrast to this latest one that's coming out?
46:22.146 --> 46:28.048
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, it's a love, both in a way, love letters to my wife, but dark country was definitely
46:30.595 --> 46:36.680
[SPEAKER_01]: very personal love letter to my wife and a new life that I found and loved.
46:38.302 --> 46:50.092
[SPEAKER_01]: It started off just me in a guitar and I thought about having a little combo and going to a studio and as I waited around trying to figure out how I was going to do that.
46:51.979 --> 47:02.567
[SPEAKER_01]: I just started playing the songs in my home studio and I found that that setting was appropriate for the songs.
47:03.468 --> 47:10.934
[SPEAKER_01]: So just kind of over, of course, of time I have some nice gear here and I just made it at home.
47:11.434 --> 47:17.880
[SPEAKER_01]: And even the cover was done by my wife and I and she's on the cover and
47:18.928 --> 47:24.430
[SPEAKER_01]: in our house, you know, like we can kind of say a very homegrown kind of record.
47:26.471 --> 47:35.834
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but this sanctuary park, which just comes out out of this way, although there's two singles out now.
47:37.974 --> 47:39.655
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a true studio fair, you know.
47:41.730 --> 47:49.735
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a full band with a real producer, not that I wasn't a real producer, but Bob Ezren is a legend.
47:52.762 --> 48:12.866
[SPEAKER_00]: in a whole, a real legitimate studio with paint machines and, does it feel good after, you know, self-producing something like dark country, does it feel like a weight off your shoulders to hand over the producer mantle to someone else, someone else convinced them to see them.
48:13.026 --> 48:13.786
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
48:13.946 --> 48:21.588
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it's so nice to not have to run the show because the last couple, you know, the last record, so it's so, and some of our other ones.
48:22.826 --> 48:42.012
[SPEAKER_01]: I was basically the producer, and it's hard because, you know, like on this record, I could just concentrate on the songwriting and like performing not about, because when you're a producer, it's not just twirling knobs and placing mics.
48:42.492 --> 48:49.354
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all about time management, but we got to get done, what's where we at, how many
48:52.195 --> 49:14.263
[SPEAKER_01]: and it's like running out, it's like running a business project, you know, and also it's about keeping the other players, the players up and involved and knowing how to speak to them, to encourage them or to criticize them, there's a lot of psychology involved, and to have
49:21.103 --> 49:21.523
[SPEAKER_01]: vital.
49:21.643 --> 49:28.508
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was such a joy for me to be able to, because we could still contribute, of course.
49:29.489 --> 49:44.960
[SPEAKER_01]: But just to have somebody, the go-to person who could help me sift through the songs, pick the right songs, pick the right takes, tempos, keys, sounds,
49:46.412 --> 49:52.077
[SPEAKER_01]: and then to take it and knowing it was in the hands of somebody who loved the project and would do the best for it was.
49:53.024 --> 49:59.547
[SPEAKER_01]: was so comforting and thrilling at the same time.
50:00.207 --> 50:05.430
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm glad it found good hands and congrats on the impending release.
50:05.590 --> 50:07.430
[SPEAKER_00]: We're so thankful for your time.
50:07.450 --> 50:09.531
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for coming on the working songwriter.
50:09.832 --> 50:12.633
[SPEAKER_00]: And let me know when you want to get that other podcast off the ground out.
50:13.093 --> 50:15.334
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be happy to be a sounding board for that for you.
50:15.454 --> 50:17.215
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah, we'll be there.
50:17.735 --> 50:32.419
[SPEAKER_01]: We already have a name, I'm kind of theme, and now we just have to get it, get it, go have nice mics, and I have nice gear, so I think once we get settled in our new place maybe we'll start something.
50:32.579 --> 50:34.320
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing to it.
50:34.620 --> 50:38.781
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's nothing to it, you'll be fine.
50:38.801 --> 50:40.862
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for coming on the show, I appreciate it.
50:41.522 --> 50:42.362
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, thank you, Joe.
50:58.597 --> 51:00.878
[SPEAKER_00]: This week, I was brought to you by Banzugl.
51:00.918 --> 51:07.862
[SPEAKER_00]: By musicians and for musicians, Banzugl is an all-in-one platform to build a beautiful website for your music.
51:08.282 --> 51:16.506
[SPEAKER_00]: Use promo code TWS, the initials of our podcast, TWS, to get 15% off the first year, for any new subscription.
51:17.346 --> 51:23.529
[SPEAKER_00]: Gary Leris's latest album is entitled Dark Country, Available Everywhere Music is Sold or Strained.
51:24.170 --> 51:27.091
[SPEAKER_00]: If before, we meet again, you sit down to write, please remember.
51:27.625 --> 51:34.931
[SPEAKER_00]: an expensive drug habit is not a song, a compelling Instagram account is not a song, and most importantly reverb is not a song.
51:35.391 --> 51:39.535
[SPEAKER_00]: So let all that take care of itself and for you just keep your eye on the song.
00:15.168 --> 00:16.989
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi and welcome to the working songwriter.
00:17.249 --> 00:19.989
[SPEAKER_00]: The show where today's best songwriters come to talk shop.
00:20.510 --> 00:21.910
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Joe Pug.
00:22.570 --> 00:32.433
[SPEAKER_00]: Each episode here, we host a distinguished guest and we ask them to go deep on their inspiration on their process, on the general ups and downs of making a life in music.
00:32.893 --> 00:42.116
[SPEAKER_00]: So, whether you're a grizzled veteran, in litigation against Suno for illegally sampling your catalog or else a scrappy upstart.
00:42.696 --> 00:46.520
[SPEAKER_00]: sampling the hum of a recently built data center behind your house.
00:47.141 --> 00:55.170
[SPEAKER_00]: This is your show because ultimately, it is what every writer seeks most in iron-tired excuse to put off actually writing.
01:00.295 --> 01:02.096
[SPEAKER_00]: This week's show is brought to you by Bandzougle.
01:02.516 --> 01:09.661
[SPEAKER_00]: Built by musicians and four musicians, Bandzougle is an all in one platform to build a beautiful website for your music.
01:10.141 --> 01:14.264
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm old enough to remember when you had to pay somebody called a web developer to get a website made.
01:14.784 --> 01:17.366
[SPEAKER_00]: It would always be some guy named Maine Frame.
01:17.986 --> 01:27.688
[SPEAKER_00]: who drove an Accura from 1993 with a mint-condition spoiler, and who was always trying to sell you terabytes of social security numbers that he pirated from the dark web.
01:28.248 --> 01:33.450
[SPEAKER_00]: And old mainframe, which charge you about 1,000 bucks for a website that would be obsolete in six months.
01:33.890 --> 01:34.870
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's the future now.
01:35.010 --> 01:36.850
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys, that's not how it works anymore.
01:37.190 --> 01:38.771
[SPEAKER_00]: We're allowed to have nice things now.
01:39.271 --> 01:41.031
[SPEAKER_00]: One of those nice things is band-zool.
01:41.532 --> 01:43.972
[SPEAKER_00]: For over 20 years, band-zool has made it easy
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[SPEAKER_00]: Everything you need is already built in.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Music players, images, text bio, video embeds, a gig calendar, and press quotes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The new EPK plan starts at just $6.95 per month, and the working songwriter podcast listeners can go to bandschool.com if you're trying it for free for 30 days.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then use the promo code to TWS EPK to get 10% off the first year of any new EPK plan subscription.
02:23.213 --> 02:29.977
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, if you enjoy this podcast, if you'd like to help it remain a viable endeavor for me, here's a couple of things that you could do to help.
02:30.618 --> 02:32.839
[SPEAKER_00]: First, you could become a subscriber to the vault.
02:33.359 --> 02:34.080
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the vault?
02:34.140 --> 02:41.144
[SPEAKER_00]: The vault is a private members only section of my website that hosts every single episode of the working songwriter ever recorded.
02:41.924 --> 02:46.067
[SPEAKER_00]: Additionally, the vault has every single album I've ever recorded for streaming in for download.
02:46.667 --> 02:51.673
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also an archive of all of the enthusiast digest newsletters there.
02:51.713 --> 02:54.836
[SPEAKER_00]: Go to jopugmusic.com slash fault, become a subscriber today.
02:55.256 --> 02:58.920
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about the price of a nice cup of coffee every month.
02:59.181 --> 03:00.722
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'll end all the harassment there.
03:01.083 --> 03:02.865
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that you enjoy this week's episode.
03:20.833 --> 03:38.105
[SPEAKER_00]: Our guest this week is one of the godfathers of modern roots in Americana music, originally from Toledo, Ohio, Gary Larus moved to Minneapolis as a young man in the 1970s and immersed himself in a twin city's music scene that punched way above its weight culturally.
03:38.865 --> 03:44.011
[SPEAKER_00]: His group, the J-Hawks, would release a string of critically acclaimed and nationally beloved albums.
03:44.771 --> 03:50.357
[SPEAKER_00]: One of Laura's main gifts is his ability to contribute to the music of a wide array of other artists.
03:50.858 --> 04:00.848
[SPEAKER_00]: He's contributed to the recordings of Counting Crows, John Hayett, Lucinda Williams, Roger McGwin, the Wallflowers, the Black Crows, Nicol Creek, and a host of others.
04:01.669 --> 04:05.673
[SPEAKER_00]: As a member of the J-Hawks, he's appeared on the late show with David Letterman and Conan.
04:06.413 --> 04:09.837
[SPEAKER_00]: He's recorded for what sounds like an anthology of record labels.
04:10.097 --> 04:17.544
[SPEAKER_00]: Twin Tone, American Recordings, RICO Disc, Lost Highway, 30 Tigers, Rounder, Sony, and New West Records.
04:18.324 --> 04:26.011
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the years, he's appeared at Farm Aid, Stage Coach, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and Willco's Sky Blue Sky Festival.
04:26.752 --> 04:31.073
[SPEAKER_00]: all music calls him one of the premier songwriters of his generation.
04:31.793 --> 04:38.054
[SPEAKER_00]: The bluegrass situation our host network has written about him as a musical Swiss army knife.
04:38.795 --> 04:46.456
[SPEAKER_00]: Pitchfork has written that he and his musical partner in the J. Hawks, Mark Olsen, saying like they were born joined at the throat.
04:47.256 --> 04:49.817
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an immense honor to have him on the show today.
04:50.217 --> 04:54.658
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a chance to catch up with him a few weeks ago to hear about his musical journey so far.
04:59.909 --> 05:13.242
[SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Gary Loris, what an honor to have you on the working songwriter podcast when we started this show 10 years ago, it was for someone like you that we had in mind or such a legend and we thank you so much.
05:14.003 --> 05:14.543
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much.
05:14.563 --> 05:14.824
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
05:14.844 --> 05:15.184
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
05:15.224 --> 05:15.724
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
05:18.547 --> 05:19.128
[SPEAKER_00]: She knows that.
05:19.248 --> 05:20.168
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how they're every day.
05:20.528 --> 05:24.191
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he then mode me 50 bucks to say that at the same time.
05:24.211 --> 05:28.454
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
05:29.014 --> 05:30.775
[SPEAKER_00]: I followed your music for so many years.
05:30.855 --> 05:37.159
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not know until getting ready for this interview, though, that you're originally from Toledo, Ohio.
05:37.199 --> 05:41.262
[SPEAKER_00]: What did music look like for you and your household and around Toledo, growing up?
05:42.755 --> 05:49.519
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was born in Toledo and lived there until I moved to go to college to University Minnesota.
05:50.379 --> 05:53.681
[SPEAKER_01]: So my first 17 years was spent in the Middle East.
05:54.821 --> 06:01.745
[SPEAKER_01]: Musically, you know, it's kind of a miracle that I'm a musician because my dad had a tinier.
06:01.805 --> 06:05.307
[SPEAKER_01]: He would not, I don't remember him ever listening to music.
06:06.397 --> 06:14.068
[SPEAKER_01]: My sister, you know, who's five years older, love her, but she wasn't like a rock person.
06:14.168 --> 06:15.530
[SPEAKER_01]: Never has been, never will be.
06:15.550 --> 06:18.354
[SPEAKER_01]: She loved things I co-port her, every Berlin.
06:18.374 --> 06:19.936
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I love that stuff too.
06:21.321 --> 06:38.323
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, in our record collection at home, we had the old hyphi, and it would be like a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,
06:39.024 --> 06:45.528
[SPEAKER_01]: a lot of kind of stereo testing records like I don't know why.
06:46.009 --> 06:52.693
[SPEAKER_01]: And just funny soundtracks for the music man and things like that.
06:53.574 --> 06:57.776
[SPEAKER_01]: But my sister had three records that would be considered
07:06.643 --> 07:15.708
[SPEAKER_01]: Chad and Jeremy and cabbages and kings and she had the stones flowers and that was the only thing that was anywhere near Rock and Roll growing up.
07:16.728 --> 07:34.378
[SPEAKER_01]: However my mother was a lover of music and insisted to pursue my sister and I took piano lessons so for age 6 to 14 I took piano lessons and my mother loved her Andy Williams and any baby as she'd called and
07:35.392 --> 07:40.654
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Cruner's not your pericomo, but she also really loved Ella Fitzgerald.
07:40.674 --> 07:46.656
[SPEAKER_01]: So my mother had the musical year, but I don't remember any of them ever really putting an album on it.
07:46.676 --> 07:48.117
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just listening to her radio.
07:49.037 --> 07:54.559
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, but at age 14, but I was captivated by music right away.
07:55.280 --> 08:01.182
[SPEAKER_01]: And I didn't, I had listened to a radio station called C.K.L.W.
08:02.010 --> 08:11.819
[SPEAKER_01]: a motor city, which was out of Detroit, Windsor, and that's where I got my music from, because it was a 60, so it was Detroit.
08:11.839 --> 08:16.563
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of low town, some solo solo music.
08:16.603 --> 08:19.345
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of Beatles, Stones, Kings.
08:19.485 --> 08:23.089
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember vividly listening to the Stones and the Beatles and the Kings.
08:23.649 --> 08:27.132
[SPEAKER_01]: And for some reason, Bill Widdlers, C.K.L.W.
08:27.152 --> 08:27.833
[SPEAKER_01]: The Motor City.
08:29.587 --> 08:46.140
[SPEAKER_01]: And then at age 14, another knowing I was an introverted shy kid, thought maybe I should learn how to play guitar because in her mind it was a folk world where I would go to parties and play folk songs and I'd become really popular.
08:46.861 --> 08:54.327
[SPEAKER_01]: So it actually kind of paned out because we're going to be now in the legend and I had my way.
08:56.713 --> 08:57.833
[SPEAKER_01]: above my pay great.
09:00.254 --> 09:07.676
[SPEAKER_00]: So when did you realize music was going to be something more than just you know kind of an infatuation.
09:07.776 --> 09:13.337
[SPEAKER_00]: Lots of people are into music and dig it when they're young and they don't go on to end up doing it for a living.
09:13.357 --> 09:22.560
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very strange living to make you would even go to school for for architecture and so it seems like music wasn't like the original original
09:23.420 --> 09:27.488
[SPEAKER_00]: For you, when did it start to look like it would be something different for you?
09:29.010 --> 09:32.311
[SPEAKER_01]: Not until I was like 26 or so, really late.
09:32.591 --> 09:34.091
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very much a late bloomer.
09:35.171 --> 09:43.253
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was too shy to be in a band and play with anybody in Toledo except me with my neighbor across the street a little bit.
09:43.954 --> 09:45.714
[SPEAKER_01]: Who was obsessed with the band, yes.
09:46.014 --> 09:48.715
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, you had a less Paul.
09:49.415 --> 09:55.216
[SPEAKER_01]: Or my first band I was in, which wasn't really a band little Christian trio at church
10:00.117 --> 10:06.100
[SPEAKER_01]: was in my class, he had an SG and I played in a classical guitar but thought that was cool.
10:06.620 --> 10:13.462
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't know, I always, music came really easily to me as opposed to everything else in life, sometimes it could be hard.
10:14.002 --> 10:18.024
[SPEAKER_01]: It just seemed like, well, I just, I can learn these songs easily.
10:19.344 --> 10:23.726
[SPEAKER_01]: I love music, but it was always kind of on the back burner.
10:23.946 --> 10:26.107
[SPEAKER_01]: I barely practicalize that.
10:26.147 --> 10:26.687
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I want to,
10:28.472 --> 10:30.033
[SPEAKER_01]: maybe someday I could do it.
10:30.153 --> 10:33.095
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that's what I'd like to do, but I don't see it clear path.
10:33.255 --> 10:34.516
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to go school.
10:34.536 --> 10:39.038
[SPEAKER_01]: I know I'm good at math and drawing and I love architecture.
10:39.759 --> 10:46.423
[SPEAKER_01]: So I went to school in architecture, but always with the, you know, in the back of my mind,
10:48.175 --> 10:48.856
[SPEAKER_01]: playing music.
10:49.356 --> 11:03.613
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I was in college at the University of Minnesota ran into some guys and elevator carrying some albums and we became friends and found out that his friends, they were in a British rock cover band.
11:04.661 --> 11:13.788
[SPEAKER_01]: And I joined that, and it was all for fun, you know, we play it like three, preach shows real legitimate shows.
11:13.808 --> 11:17.911
[SPEAKER_01]: It was more like a hobby for them, but I was, it's my first taste of being a band.
11:19.032 --> 11:27.498
[SPEAKER_01]: And then from there, it started to be, you know, then I got into songwriting, but it really was only in my early 20s.
11:28.799 --> 11:29.680
[SPEAKER_01]: I did that.
11:29.720 --> 11:32.302
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have an electric guitar until I was probably.
11:33.442 --> 11:56.937
[SPEAKER_01]: 18 or so, so not in a band till as 26 or so, and you know that the J-outs thought it was 30, so so about, but you know, I still continued to work as an architect Especially in that historic restoration, but as I joined a band called safety last, which was a rockability band In Minneapolis, I started
11:58.395 --> 12:07.643
[SPEAKER_01]: going back between working as an architect and also maybe I was waitering, waiting tables was a way to kind of tour a little bit more have flexibility.
12:09.404 --> 12:10.225
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a long answer.
12:10.485 --> 12:23.896
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1991, there were the crossroads of, I was offered a scholarship to go to the Columbia University to study historic restoration, get my graduate degree.
12:24.507 --> 12:39.538
[SPEAKER_01]: We were also offered a record contract with the African-American Rick Rubin and that was kind of like, I followed my heart, you know, and for better or for worse, most areas I think I made the right choice, but that's, uh,
12:40.624 --> 12:48.671
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the story, I guess, long-winded, it is, you know, I think, well, long-winded is what podcasts are for.
12:48.912 --> 12:50.273
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the format that we're in.
12:50.293 --> 12:51.334
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we're after here.
12:51.374 --> 12:52.515
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I want to get some pie.
12:52.535 --> 12:53.716
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to do my own podcast.
12:53.736 --> 12:56.419
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to, I want to, just nothing to it.
12:56.479 --> 12:59.882
[SPEAKER_01]: I want my life to, I think she's the funniest person I know.
13:00.502 --> 13:02.744
[SPEAKER_00]: there's nothing to it and it would be a great one.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think anytime that someone moved to Minneapolis could be in a spacious time to move there musically because there's always just such great music coming out of Minneapolis it's such an underrated like under the radar wonderful music down.
13:20.618 --> 13:23.481
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was particularly auspicious when you move there in the 80s.
13:23.501 --> 13:28.505
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like there was a lot of different music coming out of there that would become very influential.
13:28.525 --> 13:31.488
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you kind of speak to that what you were seeing on the ground?
13:32.128 --> 13:35.211
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure there were several different scenes of music coming out of there.
13:35.811 --> 13:38.313
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you remember the most in that sense, culturally?
13:39.955 --> 13:44.739
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean when I moved there in the 70s, I had to go to school.
13:45.279 --> 13:47.461
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't in the band at first, but I went to a lot of shows.
13:47.481 --> 13:48.442
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a great club.
13:49.173 --> 14:07.164
[SPEAKER_01]: of the Longhorn, where I'd see local bands where I got to see the Boom Count Rats and the Bozcox and the Stranglers and the Clash, who were at a Bozcox show in a little club, and because I was a big English punk rock fan.
14:07.184 --> 14:12.888
[SPEAKER_01]: So before I ever knew how to banjo, as I was all about, Brith.
14:13.768 --> 14:17.552
[SPEAKER_01]: pop and British rock and punk rock in our rock.
14:18.072 --> 14:20.534
[SPEAKER_01]: We were really when I cut my teeth out of it.
14:20.554 --> 14:23.377
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was a great club and I go see some bands.
14:24.037 --> 14:33.346
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a band called The Suicide Commandos, who were kind of a little before when the scene got really known in the 80s.
14:33.426 --> 14:36.388
[SPEAKER_01]: The late Steve almost thinking of him.
14:36.448 --> 14:36.589
[SPEAKER_01]: But
14:37.301 --> 14:44.065
[SPEAKER_01]: But then, you know, by the early 80s, there was definitely, it seemed like everybody was in a band.
14:44.285 --> 14:49.989
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and there was definitely a scene, there was a, there was the rock scene.
14:50.169 --> 14:57.454
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot of rock music, there was kind of a folk scene, roots, bluegrass kind of scene.
14:58.254 --> 15:02.157
[SPEAKER_01]: That was an in an area called the West Bank in Minneapolis, which is a,
15:03.627 --> 15:22.694
[SPEAKER_01]: On the other side of the river part of the University of Minnesota and that we were the first band to kind of bridge between a rock scene and the focusing we went over to the West Bank and we were kind of kind of just kind of rebellious we're kind of crossing into sacred territory but at the time everybody's in a band
15:23.502 --> 15:26.784
[SPEAKER_01]: especially by the mid-80s when we came to became a band.
15:28.265 --> 15:29.826
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, everybody was in a band.
15:29.846 --> 15:31.147
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, there were the replacements.
15:31.207 --> 15:31.947
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was screwed over.
15:32.447 --> 15:42.253
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, um, and banks and Toiland, and us, and a million other bands, and a lot of them that were really cool, that people may never know.
15:42.413 --> 15:49.297
[SPEAKER_01]: Run Westy Run was like the cool, stuages, doors, stuages band, that Craig Johnson came.
15:50.993 --> 15:53.435
[SPEAKER_01]: who played with us and plays in the golden smile.
15:54.196 --> 16:00.580
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there was also Prince in the time and all that all going at the same time.
16:01.361 --> 16:06.304
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was kind of like a lucky break that I ended up moving to a place.
16:06.925 --> 16:11.868
[SPEAKER_01]: I moved to Minneapolis because it was a big, I had gone to 12 years of Catholic school, all day out of school.
16:11.908 --> 16:17.012
[SPEAKER_01]: I was going to go to Notre Dame and I pulled the plug on that last week.
16:17.052 --> 16:18.693
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, I want to go to a big school.
16:19.907 --> 16:27.912
[SPEAKER_01]: architecture, I sister lived there in her husband, so I just happened to stumble upon the right place at the right time in the 80s.
16:28.813 --> 16:35.337
[SPEAKER_00]: When you were in the middle of that, I mean, you just named a murderer's row of other bands in your cohort.
16:35.718 --> 16:43.743
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time, did you realize something special was going on, or was it only in retrospect you could look back and be like, man, that was a great group that we were a part of?
16:50.097 --> 16:54.901
[SPEAKER_01]: and newsweek about Minneapolis scene in 85 or 86.
16:55.461 --> 16:58.664
[SPEAKER_01]: It was pretty, and there was something in the area.
16:59.124 --> 17:05.229
[SPEAKER_01]: And I also had a great club, which was called First Avenue, a seventh-grade entry.
17:06.029 --> 17:17.298
[SPEAKER_01]: And all the elements that create a scene, like you say, why were there so many great bands from Minneapolis, but maybe not that many from Pittsburgh or another, I mean, I love Pittsburgh,
17:18.506 --> 17:46.302
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of it is just a had a cool little record company called Twentone and it had a cool write some cool radio stations and had cool clubs and a cool record store or a call on a call or a folk joke opus which was where you know the placements were hang out and it's like a clubhouse and you go there to get all the cool records all those things contributed to creating a scene and everybody knew each other you know.
17:47.702 --> 17:48.382
[SPEAKER_00]: that is wild.
17:48.943 --> 18:03.008
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I've heard you talk so far about, you know, the British rock that influenced you and all that, but you are very identified now as one of the people that brought kind of roots in Americano music to the forefront.
18:03.068 --> 18:07.190
[SPEAKER_00]: There wasn't really a word for it when you began doing it in, you know, the mid-80s.
18:08.230 --> 18:10.431
[SPEAKER_00]: When did what we would now call roots music?
18:10.451 --> 18:13.012
[SPEAKER_00]: When did that start to enter your musical lexicon?
18:14.060 --> 18:26.668
[SPEAKER_01]: It is ironic that I've become known as this Roots Americana Godfather in a way, but I really grew up and still my sweet spot is British.
18:27.328 --> 18:41.076
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, whether it's the jam, the clash, or it's the kinks, and the stones, or all those pretty things, and zombies, and I love anything and everything British.
18:42.357 --> 18:45.780
[SPEAKER_01]: at our house, BBC is always on whether on TV or radio.
18:46.160 --> 18:51.063
[SPEAKER_01]: We kind of almost make it feel like we're living in England.
18:51.103 --> 18:53.024
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, if we could, we'd probably live in England.
18:53.044 --> 19:01.310
[SPEAKER_01]: But I found in when I was playing with that British rock cover band, Schnauser, is the name of the band.
19:03.332 --> 19:10.496
[SPEAKER_01]: We intentionally picked the weirdest stupidest thing because we were really very serious about being a household
19:12.156 --> 19:31.370
[SPEAKER_01]: My friend, Jay, was the lead singer, came down one day and vividly see, because we practice in his parents' basement, and came down the stairs with this record in his hand, shaking goes, you got to hear this, and I'll never forget that visual, and it was Elvis Sun Sessions.
19:32.260 --> 19:36.668
[SPEAKER_01]: And I came obsessed with Elvis and that record.
19:36.969 --> 19:42.018
[SPEAKER_01]: And that record was kind of the gateway to me learning about, huh?
19:42.795 --> 20:02.391
[SPEAKER_01]: classic country and western swing and fat's waller and building row and then getting to a soul music and all green and James Carr and all those beautiful genres and bluegrass country.
20:02.411 --> 20:04.252
[SPEAKER_01]: I already said that blues.
20:05.353 --> 20:06.414
[SPEAKER_01]: and folk.
20:07.195 --> 20:09.396
[SPEAKER_01]: All these things that I hadn't really listened to.
20:09.436 --> 20:13.919
[SPEAKER_01]: I hadn't really been in doing fan up to that point or in kneeling on fan.
20:15.020 --> 20:16.241
[SPEAKER_01]: I was all brittle at the time.
20:16.721 --> 20:22.025
[SPEAKER_01]: So that kind of came later for me.
20:22.125 --> 20:29.711
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's why I feel like a foundation of my song writing and a loud J-Hox music is almost British.
20:31.420 --> 20:53.369
[SPEAKER_01]: pop or rock music as far as, but then it has added a mixed into it around top of it as all this, what I found was the soulful element that sometimes was missing from pop music from soul and the deeper stacks and storytelling.
20:54.009 --> 20:56.510
[SPEAKER_01]: So kind of all mixed together, but it started
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[SPEAKER_01]: American music and for me it was good because I was never going to be able to I loved to have a stronger the clash by I was never going to be that guy on stage I couldn't write but I can identify with singing with the American accent and softer deeper kind of music on that deeper but
21:22.554 --> 21:22.814
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
21:23.735 --> 21:31.322
[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned in your own words kind of coming late to being in a band kind of a late bloomer there, you know, 26, late 20s.
21:31.683 --> 21:36.227
[SPEAKER_00]: That must also mean that you came late to a certain degree to songwriting.
21:36.367 --> 21:38.950
[SPEAKER_00]: What was it like beginning to compose your own stuff for you?
21:39.150 --> 21:44.695
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you take to it like a duck to water immediately or were there things you had to learn to get up to speed?
21:46.003 --> 21:47.404
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it came pretty quickly.
21:47.424 --> 21:56.673
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember when I first started recording myself, I had like a Phillips reel to reel in Minneapolis and late 70s.
21:58.034 --> 22:02.638
[SPEAKER_01]: And I heard my voice recorded first time and I really, I was, I liked it.
22:02.718 --> 22:12.707
[SPEAKER_01]: I liked my voice and I was like, I had a roommate in John Olthe, the late John Olthe who was not really in musician, but he was creative and smart guy.
22:13.968 --> 22:15.369
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was my roommate for a while.
22:15.389 --> 22:19.973
[SPEAKER_01]: We started writing some songs together because he knew this band called Safety Last.
22:20.053 --> 22:22.414
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were looking for some songs.
22:22.474 --> 22:31.321
[SPEAKER_01]: So you know, I dabbled and you know, and then I kind of splitter off on my own as generally a profile songs.
22:31.381 --> 22:39.387
[SPEAKER_01]: But it seemed that it came to me pretty naturally and I didn't do a lot of studying of it.
22:39.447 --> 22:40.428
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have it.
22:42.300 --> 22:45.302
[SPEAKER_01]: composition degree or anything.
22:45.322 --> 22:59.788
[SPEAKER_01]: But you have just from listening and you know my first songs were very much copying other people's songs and changing them, you know like you do to learn how to write.
23:00.088 --> 23:07.552
[SPEAKER_00]: When you first began, was it a very intense period where you just composed and composed a bunch or did it did it slowly ramp up over time?
23:08.693 --> 23:29.006
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was, once I got the bug and I had my little recording studio, pretty humble, wasn't pro tools, I was bouncing tracks, you know, so to me, like, the Beatles used to when you only had four tracks, bounce them, bounce them down to one track, a freeing three tracks so you could make more room.
23:29.587 --> 23:30.267
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course wouldn't.
23:30.727 --> 23:33.689
[SPEAKER_01]: And I still, I just posted an old song of mine.
23:34.330 --> 23:35.891
[SPEAKER_01]: I have some of them, in fact,
23:36.939 --> 23:38.140
[SPEAKER_01]: along with my band camp.
23:38.180 --> 23:43.944
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't give a plug on thinking of I have a Please do go patreon.com slash garylorus.
23:44.625 --> 23:53.372
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's where I share some archival things, new things, songs I'm working on.
23:54.312 --> 23:57.335
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll photos what I'm doing.
23:59.718 --> 24:10.722
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, so Patreon, P-A-T-R-O-N-D-I-C-O-N-D-I-C-O-N-D-I-C-O-N-D-I-C-O-N-D-I-C-O-N-D-I-C-O-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D-I-N-D
24:59.131 --> 25:09.478
[SPEAKER_00]: Though he's originally from Toledo and has made his home in Canada for many years, I think it's fair to consider Gary's music a cultural export of the Twin Cities, at least in part.
25:10.118 --> 25:15.782
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of my favorite poets was, for a time, the poet laureate of Minnesota, Robert Blie.
25:16.463 --> 25:23.367
[SPEAKER_00]: His poems can be dark and detailed and evocative, not unlike many of Gary's and the J-Hawks songs.
25:30.502 --> 25:32.223
[SPEAKER_00]: We are approaching sleep.
25:33.143 --> 25:37.205
[SPEAKER_00]: The chestnut blossoms in the mind mingle with thoughts of pain.
25:38.265 --> 25:44.288
[SPEAKER_00]: And the long roots of barley, bitterness as of the oak roots staining the waters dark in Louisiana.
25:45.129 --> 25:48.610
[SPEAKER_00]: The wet streets soaked with rain and sodden blossoms.
25:49.531 --> 25:54.093
[SPEAKER_00]: Out of this we have come, a tunnel softly hurtling into darkness.
25:55.273 --> 25:56.174
[SPEAKER_00]: The storm is coming.
25:57.035 --> 26:08.865
[SPEAKER_00]: The small farmhouse in Minnesota is hardly strong enough for the wind, darkness, darkness in grass, darkness in trees, even the water in wells, trembles.
26:09.825 --> 26:19.834
[SPEAKER_00]: Bodies give off darkness and crescentimums are dark and horses who are bearing great loads of hay to the deep barns where the dark air is moving from corners.
26:21.025 --> 26:22.906
[SPEAKER_00]: Lincoln's statue and the traffic.
26:23.587 --> 26:33.895
[SPEAKER_00]: From the long past into the long present, a bird, forgotten in these troubles, warbling, as the great wheel turns around, grinding the living in water.
26:34.755 --> 26:47.805
[SPEAKER_00]: Washington, continual Washington, in water now stained with blossoms and riding logs, cries half muffled from beneath the earth, the living awakened at last like the dead.
27:01.022 --> 27:09.527
[SPEAKER_00]: Take me to that moment that you referenced earlier, that crossroads, as you described it, either graduate school or take a record deal.
27:10.368 --> 27:21.955
[SPEAKER_00]: What did it feel like for you, you know, it's 1991, I think George Traculius heard you guys and offers you this deal, you know, major label deal.
27:22.595 --> 27:29.900
[SPEAKER_00]: What did that ride feel like when you make the decision to knock out a graduate school and step on the show business train?
27:30.820 --> 27:32.260
[SPEAKER_00]: What did that feel like?
27:35.201 --> 27:41.342
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel as I remember it feeling pretty confident about the choice I made.
27:42.202 --> 27:52.424
[SPEAKER_01]: Now when you're sitting in the back of a van one day and just trying to think, what if I never would have met my wife, I wouldn't have this life that I love.
27:53.804 --> 27:57.105
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember going really having to ring my hands that much.
27:57.385 --> 27:58.065
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I knew.
28:00.017 --> 28:05.940
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew that music came more naturally to me than visually, you know, as an architect.
28:06.880 --> 28:14.784
[SPEAKER_01]: Architecture was something I could do, but I didn't feel like I was gifted in that area as I was in music.
28:14.804 --> 28:21.587
[SPEAKER_01]: So I followed my heart and it was exciting because we had been a band for six years.
28:24.729 --> 28:33.940
[SPEAKER_01]: I could always go back to school somehow if I really needed to but how many times to get a major level record deal.
28:34.608 --> 28:34.908
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
28:35.489 --> 28:36.309
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and that's just it.
28:36.329 --> 28:45.115
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you guys, you were talking about that scene and have everyone knew each other and you have twin-tone there in the cities, but it's not twin-tone that you're worth with this major label.
28:45.195 --> 28:55.301
[SPEAKER_00]: Was there talk a little bit about the difference between the work that you had done up to that point and then, you know, sounds to me like you had been playing Triple A ball and you got called up to the big leagues.
28:55.341 --> 28:57.142
[SPEAKER_00]: Was that a big difference at that point?
28:58.703 --> 28:59.484
[SPEAKER_01]: Huge difference.
28:59.784 --> 29:01.005
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I can tell then,
29:02.117 --> 29:06.759
[SPEAKER_01]: As much as I loved Twintone, it was, you know, it was, you can only go so far.
29:07.700 --> 29:12.042
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were actually almost broke up a couple times.
29:15.144 --> 29:23.048
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was the only one who really had done some touring before the J-Ox, with safety last.
29:23.308 --> 29:28.451
[SPEAKER_01]: And then as we toured, blue-earth, I was determined
29:30.808 --> 29:34.134
[SPEAKER_01]: just get on the road and play a lot when you didn't have a record to remote.
29:34.174 --> 29:34.835
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember that.
29:36.758 --> 29:39.182
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was a really, you know, it was a funny time.
29:39.222 --> 29:40.364
[SPEAKER_01]: Blue Earth was a record.
29:41.095 --> 30:00.645
[SPEAKER_01]: that was a bunch of demos that we made for other record companies, because we came onto the scene and pretty quickly, in the 8586, we had an audience, and there was a bit of a buzz, and then there was a few record companies that were kind of sniffing around
30:11.015 --> 30:12.778
[SPEAKER_01]: before you even deaf American came on.
30:13.439 --> 30:18.306
[SPEAKER_01]: But they always, they couldn't click and handle on what our music was because it was different.
30:18.426 --> 30:21.350
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, they went a lot of bands doing what we were doing.
30:21.370 --> 30:22.752
[SPEAKER_01]: It definitely didn't have a name to it.
30:23.874 --> 30:25.316
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we don't always have somebody.
30:28.470 --> 30:41.638
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody in the, at the record company was a fan, but they were usually kind of an underling and they'd be like, I got to talk to my boss and, but they can't, the labels would give us a money and they said, well, we need to hear more.
30:41.718 --> 30:42.899
[SPEAKER_01]: So can you do some demos?
30:43.879 --> 30:47.622
[SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, nothing really happened.
30:47.642 --> 30:49.743
[SPEAKER_01]: So Twin-Tone agreed to put out
30:53.790 --> 30:55.411
[SPEAKER_01]: but we did overdubes on them.
30:55.512 --> 30:58.494
[SPEAKER_01]: And we took them to another level and made it a record.
30:59.455 --> 31:12.046
[SPEAKER_01]: And then nothing really happened, 8788, 88, 89, 90, kind of wanted the willingness of bed playing, but we all had jobs until, you know, George.
31:12.986 --> 31:28.384
[SPEAKER_01]: heard Blu-Earth playing in the background as he was talking to Dave Ayers who at the time was working at Twintown but had known George because he was a little George and Dave had worked at A&M together.
31:28.444 --> 31:29.505
[SPEAKER_01]: So they stayed in touch.
31:30.086 --> 31:32.729
[SPEAKER_01]: So you know, Pismet or whatever,
31:33.803 --> 31:38.207
[SPEAKER_01]: the joint heard it over the phone and immediately was struck by it.
31:38.267 --> 31:47.797
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he was looking for his version of the birds, you know, they had, definitely American had their stones with black crows.
31:47.877 --> 31:51.440
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were going to be like the birds, I guess, or the eagles or whatever.
31:51.861 --> 31:52.822
[SPEAKER_01]: They thought we could be.
31:53.894 --> 32:11.471
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, he flew to Minneapolis and saw his play, and immediately he, we were pretty taken by Kenyan because George is an incredibly charismatic and charming and funny and interesting character.
32:12.172 --> 32:16.136
[SPEAKER_01]: And to have this guy come in after being kind of
32:19.032 --> 32:29.867
[SPEAKER_01]: left in the desert to all of a sudden have this guy who was a big, was excited and I'm going to take you to LA, we're going to make records and it's pretty hard to resist.
32:30.790 --> 32:31.250
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll bet.
32:31.450 --> 32:36.052
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and it's even in the name of the record that would come out of that Hollywood town hall.
32:36.733 --> 32:43.696
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think part of it was at Packard Room, which is where you would expect the Minneapolis band to record an album.
32:43.736 --> 32:45.836
[SPEAKER_00]: But you guys went out to Los Angeles to do it.
32:46.317 --> 32:52.539
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you kind of just speak to the heading nature of, you know, all of a sudden you're in Los Angeles recording record?
32:54.840 --> 32:55.781
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a lot of pressure.
32:55.901 --> 32:58.482
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I remember the local paper came out and had somebody
32:59.083 --> 33:01.144
[SPEAKER_01]: covering the story because it was kind of a big deal.
33:02.364 --> 33:19.372
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, we did all in Hollywood except for some overdubs and some B-sides that were done after the fact in a pack or in a cannonfalls.
33:21.005 --> 33:49.709
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean also we drove our stuff out there a lot eight, and you know it was in the van We stayed in we shared rooms There's being an old son and and permanent in Kenny, Calam and we It was terrifying, you know, it was like this is a big chance and So they put us in the this Studio that wasn't really you know, it wasn't the
33:51.709 --> 33:58.093
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't the fanciest studio, it's seen better days, but it was a great, at one time, pretty famous studio.
33:58.393 --> 34:05.537
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called Hollywood Sound, but before that was called Wallyhider 4, which is where they did some bird stuff, they did Grand Parsons Records.
34:05.898 --> 34:06.878
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, nice.
34:06.898 --> 34:12.021
[SPEAKER_01]: And the big room was where we did the basics.
34:12.041 --> 34:15.924
[SPEAKER_01]: And then around the corner was the smaller room, which we did overdubes in.
34:16.964 --> 34:19.586
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, we, uh,
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was tough because we were under the gun and our drummer, Kenny, Kelly Ann, got thrown under the bus a bit and looking back.
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[SPEAKER_01]: because George was a very particular about tempos and things like that and you know whereas the rest of us can always overdog and trick things you know Kenny was the one who had a late-own the basics and George after a number of had our how-long we had to tell Kenny he
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[SPEAKER_01]: really hard for us, it was hard for Kenny, and to this day, it's not our proudest moment, but at the time, we couldn't really say screw you George, you know, he was our A&R guy and our producer, and Kenny took it as a gentleman,
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I ended up was vindicated because he ended up playing on the over some of the overdubs and B-sides and ended up playing a Joe Henry's next record, a short man's room, and did a great job, and Kenny's too and just fine.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I stand touch with him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So then we had to bring in audition drummers, and we brought in Bill Bateman from the last years.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We brought in
35:47.958 --> 36:08.950
[SPEAKER_01]: Bill Jim Kelper, famous Jim Kelper play, wow, I guess, a guy named that Spencer who was our old drummer, back in Minneapolis, who was also had a music house and out in L.A., who had left the band at the band and to pursue his business.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And Charlie Drayton, Charlie Drayton is the guy who played
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know there were Steve Jordan and Charlie Drake and they both played an expensive wine house with Keith Richards and they kind of switched off sometimes Charlie would play drums and sometimes Steve would play drums and Charlie would play bass.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway chose a great drummer and he came in and he was the winner.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He was great and he was
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's where George wanted to go.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So we being polite Midwesterners, who had not had a record deal, and we kind of followed what George said.
36:57.430 --> 36:59.591
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was probably the best thing for the record.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It tried to play great, but it was tough for us as a band.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, Kenny was vindicated in the long run.
37:07.134 --> 37:11.055
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a great drummer and ended up continuing playing with us.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so that worked out, but at the time it was tough.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And the rest of the record was, I would say, what was interesting about it is that it sounds, we were clearly hard to make it sound live, but it was mostly overdoped.
37:28.474 --> 37:30.797
[SPEAKER_01]: And no matter what we did, we were never going to sound.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Super tight, we're just kind of, you know, let's probably the charm, I guess.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But what were some of the things that you learned?
37:41.067 --> 37:46.850
[SPEAKER_00]: What were some of the tools or maybe even tricks that you learned from working with George Proculeus in the studio on that?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think to take it, be able to take it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He was kind of brutal in a way, but in a funny way, it's hard to explain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: George was before I go to do a guitar take, it'd be very typical for churches to say, don't embarrass me or something like that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Just kind of things that I found I used later in life when I was pretty saying, it kind of would get me pissed and I would go,
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[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're going to have a solo crank it up, you know, we blew a bunch of speakers in the control room when I'd be doing my fuss almost because he's like, let's get excited.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Let's, a lot of people when they record.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, oh, you don't want to hurt your ears.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You've got to listen to it in a low level too.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So you're really judging it correctly because when you turn it loud, everything sounds good.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But George was like, crank it up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're getting excited.
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[SPEAKER_01]: To this day, I learned, I thought that was a valuable lesson to learn.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
39:05.635 --> 39:15.000
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to, before we get to your latest record here, I have one aspect of your career that I'm just personally very interested in because I love the band so much.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was hoping you could speak a little bit to your time working, producing the Sadies who were just a band that I love so much.
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[SPEAKER_00]: How did you meet those guys and what was your working relationship with them
39:34.623 --> 39:40.225
[SPEAKER_01]: they uh... just from touring somehow they ended up on bill with us and they toured with us
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[SPEAKER_01]: and found love at them.
39:44.271 --> 39:49.072
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean they were everything you'd want in the back of that eye of your thing.
39:49.692 --> 40:03.775
[SPEAKER_01]: I could play Pink Floyd, Pink Floyd kind of pipers at the gates of dawn kind of stuff and then they'd switch into more appony spaghetti western things into crazy psychedelic stuff into
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I completely admired them and we hit it off and over time we stayed in touch and when it came time to We were making a record they asked me to produce it so I did there were two records like a little mixed up which one happened first one in Toronto and another one in Spain but
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was a tough one to work with them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'll tell you why a couple of reasons.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't want to mess with them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They were like, they were showman.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They were so exciting and fun.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But they wanted to work harder on their vocals.
40:46.572 --> 40:48.174
[SPEAKER_01]: They wanted to be more serious about.
40:49.391 --> 41:14.085
[SPEAKER_01]: songwriting, and I didn't want to take away what's exciting about the Sadies, which is they were crazy fun, but what they could get for me is maybe honing the harmonies working on their vocals and helping with the songwriting, and so it was a funny, as fine, it was a tight rope to walk a bit, figure out how to keep what they do.
41:15.714 --> 41:18.916
[SPEAKER_01]: but also have them grow a bit.
41:19.416 --> 41:27.059
[SPEAKER_01]: But we did it, I think I explained in a coproduced it with my friend Pocka logo and both records, I think, they turned out great.
41:27.419 --> 41:32.882
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was so devastating when Dallas passed away.
41:32.902 --> 41:38.084
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just shocking and every year that anniversary comes up, I think it's in February.
41:38.144 --> 41:39.825
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just so sad.
41:39.865 --> 41:40.565
[SPEAKER_01]: I know there's some new
41:41.405 --> 41:45.446
[SPEAKER_01]: thing he did with Richard Perry, I think it's a guy's name from Arcade Fire.
41:46.286 --> 42:00.130
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I didn't know, but they did a record together that came up with this and, uh, but there's still talk, there's still one's while I talk, I talked to, I staying contact with, um, with Travis.
42:00.771 --> 42:03.891
[SPEAKER_01]: Travis, I was like, my good friend, uh, what's his name?
42:05.032 --> 42:08.413
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, there's been talk about doing another record together,
42:12.576 --> 42:28.634
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but it hasn't happened yet, but I'm so proud of him that they have continued on and I've gotten up and played with them a few times and played Dallas's gear is set up and it was so honored here at seven.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, once a month I'll perform one of their songs.
42:31.912 --> 42:51.666
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they they did find that mark though that one of the things I've always loved about them as a band is I love the song writing thousand cities damned tunes like that but then you go see I think it's called a thousand cities damned and around an earth where a person's life is worth how many people in the nation yeah that one and uh
42:52.286 --> 42:55.748
[SPEAKER_00]: But then also, like you mentioned, they weren't above being showmen.
42:55.768 --> 43:07.754
[SPEAKER_00]: When you would go to a sati show, they were like almost set pieces that they would come to different parts of the show that would just bring down the house, and I missed that from bands these days to a certain degree.
43:07.834 --> 43:10.836
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the showmanship aspect that they would bring to bear.
43:11.857 --> 43:12.357
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you.
43:12.377 --> 43:15.919
[SPEAKER_01]: They're all country-tric where one of them would get behind the other end.
43:16.670 --> 43:35.146
[SPEAKER_01]: and do the fingering of the guitar and that kind of showman kind of stuff kind of old traditional kind of because they're you know the dad and their uncles were part of the good brothers and so they have musical education growing up but I think there's a song
43:46.995 --> 43:48.597
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell her what I said or tell her.
43:49.738 --> 43:59.070
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that's a good example of what I saw from the cities which was unlike anything I've ever seen with any other band.
43:59.510 --> 44:00.752
[SPEAKER_01]: Was the writing process?
44:00.912 --> 44:01.232
[SPEAKER_01]: Because
44:02.949 --> 44:20.483
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't necessarily, I'm sure they did at some point, Dallas, but in general, they would sit down and they'd have this musical vocabulary that was without even talking, and they would write kind of instead of having the melody and the words, sometimes they would just have
44:22.033 --> 44:24.775
[SPEAKER_01]: the music that would kind of come together and they keep building it.
44:25.355 --> 44:31.880
[SPEAKER_01]: Most people are at an abnormality and a working lyric and they start playing around with the chords.
44:32.460 --> 44:34.702
[SPEAKER_01]: They kind of did it at the opposite, at least when I saw them.
44:36.283 --> 44:38.604
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes, Dallas would say, what do you think of the song?
44:38.985 --> 44:40.065
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what it is.
44:41.046 --> 44:43.087
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't have a melody or words yet.
44:43.107 --> 44:43.568
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
44:45.049 --> 44:46.450
[SPEAKER_01]: But teller what I said is like,
44:48.372 --> 44:55.404
[SPEAKER_01]: one of my favorite songs of all time by anybody, and they wrote it for the very collaborative with each other.
44:57.283 --> 45:06.970
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was especially, Travis was kind of mad, picker, and traditional, you know, a little bit more.
45:07.351 --> 45:09.892
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to take past them because they both did both things.
45:10.012 --> 45:18.459
[SPEAKER_01]: But that also was the heavier, super, like carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
45:19.748 --> 45:33.306
[SPEAKER_01]: a very detailed talk and knew a lot about gear and we weren't interested about tubes and echoing units and everything, mixing boards.
45:33.346 --> 45:36.410
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was just a big heavy thinker.
45:38.397 --> 45:46.162
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was between the two of them, they were brilliant, but I know they're still making great music, which is, they are, they are indeed.
45:46.663 --> 45:51.406
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, before I let you go, I do want to talk to you about this most recent record of your dark country.
45:51.446 --> 45:53.627
[SPEAKER_00]: We've gone through and talked about all these different people.
45:53.687 --> 45:58.371
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, the newest record is Sanctuary Park, which is the one that's coming up.
45:58.391 --> 45:59.632
[SPEAKER_01]: Dark history is the solo.
45:59.932 --> 46:01.713
[SPEAKER_01]: I love talking about that too, but I...
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[SPEAKER_01]: No, you'd be remiss if we didn't talk about the album coming out.
46:05.723 --> 46:14.045
[SPEAKER_00]: Indeed, please talk to me about sanctuary park then because dark country, which I was just listening to early this week, was a very, was a solo affair pretty much.
46:14.065 --> 46:20.866
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you had an Eleanor Whitmore, was on it in a couple other people, but how does it contrast to this latest one that's coming out?
46:22.146 --> 46:28.048
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, it's a love, both in a way, love letters to my wife, but dark country was definitely
46:30.595 --> 46:36.680
[SPEAKER_01]: very personal love letter to my wife and a new life that I found and loved.
46:38.302 --> 46:50.092
[SPEAKER_01]: It started off just me in a guitar and I thought about having a little combo and going to a studio and as I waited around trying to figure out how I was going to do that.
46:51.979 --> 47:02.567
[SPEAKER_01]: I just started playing the songs in my home studio and I found that that setting was appropriate for the songs.
47:03.468 --> 47:10.934
[SPEAKER_01]: So just kind of over, of course, of time I have some nice gear here and I just made it at home.
47:11.434 --> 47:17.880
[SPEAKER_01]: And even the cover was done by my wife and I and she's on the cover and
47:18.928 --> 47:24.430
[SPEAKER_01]: in our house, you know, like we can kind of say a very homegrown kind of record.
47:26.471 --> 47:35.834
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but this sanctuary park, which just comes out out of this way, although there's two singles out now.
47:37.974 --> 47:39.655
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a true studio fair, you know.
47:41.730 --> 47:49.735
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a full band with a real producer, not that I wasn't a real producer, but Bob Ezren is a legend.
47:52.762 --> 48:12.866
[SPEAKER_00]: in a whole, a real legitimate studio with paint machines and, does it feel good after, you know, self-producing something like dark country, does it feel like a weight off your shoulders to hand over the producer mantle to someone else, someone else convinced them to see them.
48:13.026 --> 48:13.786
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
48:13.946 --> 48:21.588
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it's so nice to not have to run the show because the last couple, you know, the last record, so it's so, and some of our other ones.
48:22.826 --> 48:42.012
[SPEAKER_01]: I was basically the producer, and it's hard because, you know, like on this record, I could just concentrate on the songwriting and like performing not about, because when you're a producer, it's not just twirling knobs and placing mics.
48:42.492 --> 48:49.354
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all about time management, but we got to get done, what's where we at, how many
48:52.195 --> 49:14.263
[SPEAKER_01]: and it's like running out, it's like running a business project, you know, and also it's about keeping the other players, the players up and involved and knowing how to speak to them, to encourage them or to criticize them, there's a lot of psychology involved, and to have
49:21.103 --> 49:21.523
[SPEAKER_01]: vital.
49:21.643 --> 49:28.508
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was such a joy for me to be able to, because we could still contribute, of course.
49:29.489 --> 49:44.960
[SPEAKER_01]: But just to have somebody, the go-to person who could help me sift through the songs, pick the right songs, pick the right takes, tempos, keys, sounds,
49:46.412 --> 49:52.077
[SPEAKER_01]: and then to take it and knowing it was in the hands of somebody who loved the project and would do the best for it was.
49:53.024 --> 49:59.547
[SPEAKER_01]: was so comforting and thrilling at the same time.
50:00.207 --> 50:05.430
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm glad it found good hands and congrats on the impending release.
50:05.590 --> 50:07.430
[SPEAKER_00]: We're so thankful for your time.
50:07.450 --> 50:09.531
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for coming on the working songwriter.
50:09.832 --> 50:12.633
[SPEAKER_00]: And let me know when you want to get that other podcast off the ground out.
50:13.093 --> 50:15.334
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be happy to be a sounding board for that for you.
50:15.454 --> 50:17.215
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah, we'll be there.
50:17.735 --> 50:32.419
[SPEAKER_01]: We already have a name, I'm kind of theme, and now we just have to get it, get it, go have nice mics, and I have nice gear, so I think once we get settled in our new place maybe we'll start something.
50:32.579 --> 50:34.320
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing to it.
50:34.620 --> 50:38.781
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's nothing to it, you'll be fine.
50:38.801 --> 50:40.862
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for coming on the show, I appreciate it.
50:41.522 --> 50:42.362
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, thank you, Joe.
50:58.597 --> 51:00.878
[SPEAKER_00]: This week, I was brought to you by Banzugl.
51:00.918 --> 51:07.862
[SPEAKER_00]: By musicians and for musicians, Banzugl is an all-in-one platform to build a beautiful website for your music.
51:08.282 --> 51:16.506
[SPEAKER_00]: Use promo code TWS, the initials of our podcast, TWS, to get 15% off the first year, for any new subscription.
51:17.346 --> 51:23.529
[SPEAKER_00]: Gary Leris's latest album is entitled Dark Country, Available Everywhere Music is Sold or Strained.
51:24.170 --> 51:27.091
[SPEAKER_00]: If before, we meet again, you sit down to write, please remember.
51:27.625 --> 51:34.931
[SPEAKER_00]: an expensive drug habit is not a song, a compelling Instagram account is not a song, and most importantly reverb is not a song.
51:35.391 --> 51:39.535
[SPEAKER_00]: So let all that take care of itself and for you just keep your eye on the song.
