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Let's create. alone,

4:01

but there was something deeper. It's clearly the

4:03

reason I'm sitting here talking to you now.

4:05

I mean, I

4:07

love the Beatles. I don't think I've ever been

4:10

a Beatle obsessive like a lot of people

4:12

are. I mean, I've taken the time as a

4:14

professional to sort of learn what I need to

4:16

learn on a lot of levels, songwriting wise,

4:18

musician wise, record making wise. But

4:22

they hit me hot and heavy and they

4:24

just kind of opened the door. It's like

4:26

Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, it

4:28

literally felt like my world went from black

4:31

and white to color and they provided something.

4:33

They provided a visceral energy. They provided a

4:35

focus like I wanted to hear Beatle

4:37

tunes before school, after school. And then of

4:40

course they opened the door to all music

4:42

for me really. But

4:45

I didn't have, there was zero template to

4:48

be a professional musician, particularly professional popular

4:50

musician, let alone a rock and roll

4:54

roots music musician of which that

4:56

term obviously didn't exist. We would

4:58

have called it folk music or

5:00

something. So I slowly

5:03

started playing guitar and honestly and truly

5:05

this is kind of makes me kind

5:08

of a weirdo, but I

5:10

graduated from college and I bought an electric guitar

5:12

my senior year of college. So I'm 20 years

5:15

old. It's my first electric guitar.

5:17

I had an acoustic guitar. Do

5:19

you remember what the acoustic was? Yeah, it

5:22

was a, my dad, we

5:25

shared the cost of a Gibson J 50.

5:27

So it would have been like a 1968

5:30

J 50, which was then stolen like

5:32

my sophomore year in college. So then I didn't have

5:34

any guitar for a year. And

5:37

then I bought a Gibson 335 my senior

5:39

year in college. And the

5:42

thought there was I met a couple of guys who played.

5:44

I was not a good

5:46

musician or anything. I started

5:48

playing with these guys, graduated

5:51

from college, literally clues as to what to do.

5:53

Oh, what am I going to do with my

5:55

life? You know, should

5:57

I go to law school because that's some kind of

5:59

vague expectation. of a profession or... Anyway,

6:03

I decided to take a year off and

6:05

play music with these guys. And as I

6:07

say, that year has now literally turned into

6:09

a half century. So it was a good

6:11

year off. It really was

6:13

like the best year off anybody could take.

6:16

And then, you know, man, I just got really lucky. I

6:19

fell in with some older,

6:21

really good seasoned musicians. I

6:24

must have had kind of an intuitive

6:26

feel for the thing, a certain innate

6:29

musicality, which I believe I did have.

6:32

It took a while to figure out how to get

6:34

it out and how to use it and how to use

6:36

it in professional situations and in sideman

6:38

situations and guitar solos

6:41

and songwriting and then ultimately playing on

6:43

recordings, you know, it's a process. And

6:45

then, you know,

6:48

lucky me in the New York area, there were a

6:50

lot of musicians and I'd always

6:52

written songs and basically by

6:56

the early 80s, I had fallen

6:58

in with Sean Colvin and Jim

7:00

Lauderdale. And we

7:02

wrote songs, not

7:05

the three of us together wrote songs with Sean

7:07

Colvin, wrote songs with Jim Lauderdale. And, you know,

7:10

seven years later, I ended up producing

7:12

both their debut records. And

7:14

all of a sudden, I was a record producer, you

7:17

know, there had been one

7:19

little moment in there. So

7:21

I was making my living. So let's get back to your guitar

7:23

thing. Like, oh, how did you start

7:26

playing guitar? I was making my living as a

7:28

guitar player, I would say from 1977 to 1987 till I

7:32

produced these records. So for 10 years, I

7:34

did the sideman thing and it was starting

7:36

to move into the session player thing. And

7:39

what was that like? Was it a union

7:41

card? At that point,

7:43

you definitely had

7:46

to be in the union because all record dates

7:48

were union dates, right? And then there was a

7:50

very, very thriving jingle scene here in New York

7:52

in the 70s and 80s. And that was a

7:54

lot of bread and butter for a lot of

7:57

people, including myself. Okay,

7:59

you have... I have to say, any famous jingles you

8:01

play on? God, I can't, I just, I'm sure I

8:03

have my mind, I mean,

8:06

all your major brands, I think at one

8:08

point or another, I played something on. I

8:10

can't pull up any. You can't recall the Frosted Flakes, I can't even.

8:13

No, yeah, I don't think I want to. But,

8:16

you know, I was never really happy doing

8:18

that. You know, I was

8:21

never really happy being the Sidemen, Session

8:23

Man thing. I mean, I have total

8:25

respect for cats who can do it.

8:28

I think that's a real art form and some

8:30

guys do it now that I hire Session guys,

8:32

I mean, there are guys who really do it

8:34

well and it's way beyond their

8:36

abilities as instrumentalists. It

8:38

has so much more to do with taste

8:40

and refinement and self editing and

8:43

awareness of everything going on around you.

8:45

But at some point I had a

8:48

little epiphany when I was writing with Sean Colvin,

8:50

which was, it's

8:52

interesting you should point out, so you're hearing me play

8:54

guitar and you're like, God, I can't pin, I can't

8:56

pigeonhole this guy, right? There's all these things going on.

9:00

That didn't quite work for the Session guy

9:02

thing. You had to kind of hone in

9:04

on contemporary guitar styles

9:06

and I was never really interested in doing

9:08

that. So what did they

9:11

want to hear? Well, you know, you had

9:13

to sound like all the hit records, basically,

9:15

right? For the most part, I'm talking about

9:17

the 80s primarily here because by the 90s,

9:19

I was sort of out of

9:22

it, even though I started, did sort of playing on records, but

9:25

that was through my record production.

9:28

Other people, whatever, Jackson Brown, Bruce

9:30

Hornsby, Willie Nelson, I mean, I started playing

9:33

on other people's records, but that was after

9:35

I had become a producer. The

9:38

epiphany I had was with Colvin because we had

9:40

tried to write songs for quite a while and

9:43

they were okay, they were like well done, but

9:45

there was something missing. And

9:47

the thing that was really missing was the

9:50

two of us just being the two of

9:52

us. And part of

9:54

that was this kind of tacit

9:56

understanding of Facebook. letting

10:00

go of being commercial and

10:02

sort of embracing your

10:04

eccentricities, embracing what makes you different

10:07

and weird, and embracing and being

10:09

aware of your limitations, and

10:11

a kind of a way in

10:13

which you take your limitations and try

10:15

to nudge it toward being a style

10:18

and a voice, and hopefully that's

10:20

compelling and different and filled with emotion and

10:22

soul and stuff. I

10:24

can't say that it happened quickly like

10:26

that, but it definitely did for both Colvin

10:29

and I, and then we started writing much

10:31

more interesting tunes. It's interesting you

10:33

say you push your

10:35

limitations to come up with a

10:37

style. Most people would think you push your

10:39

strengths to come up with a style. No,

10:42

no, it's interesting. Well, I mean, I

10:44

think so maybe to articulate it clearly,

10:46

it's making your limitations your strengths. It's

10:49

taking the things that make you different, that

10:52

are quirky, that are stylistic, but you like

10:54

and you feel are expressive, and they're saying

10:57

something that feels totally connected to you, and

11:01

then you turn them into the hand

11:03

that you play, right? Instead of trying

11:06

to sound like these four guys, or

11:08

write songs like these 20 guys, or

11:10

produce records like these guys,

11:12

you kind of try. It's a process.

11:15

Very few people get it on the first thing, but there

11:18

are elements of it in the first Sean Colvin record

11:20

I think it's called Steady On, which is

11:22

a record I noticed a lot of musicians like, like

11:24

Sarah Geroze, who we were talking about before we

11:27

started, I said that that record hit her hot

11:29

and heavy. And she's not alone. I've heard this

11:31

from a lot of younger people. So there

11:34

was something weird and quirky about it. It didn't

11:36

sound like everything else. And so I think

11:39

that was sort of the

11:41

liberating moment for me, where

11:43

I could let go of

11:45

self-imposed expectations, stylistic musical expectations

11:47

that I had thought

11:49

were around, because New York was also a

11:51

really competitive town. A lot of good musicians,

11:54

a lot of people making records, a lot

11:56

of people with big egos and big opinions,

11:58

let alone record companies. And

12:02

so I just nudged toward this quirkier,

12:05

really eclectic thing where I feel

12:07

like everything I do is informed

12:09

by lots of different things. And

12:12

really my guitar playing, it's informed

12:14

by so much. I

12:17

mean, it's kind of endless. Can you tell

12:19

me a few of the things that were

12:21

really formative for your guitar playing?

12:26

I knew you were gonna ask me this. It's

12:30

so vast that I don't think I

12:32

can really comprehend it. And there are

12:35

times where I try, I recognize, like

12:39

I'll play a little solo guitar

12:41

for you at some point. And

12:43

I recognize that for me, part

12:45

of that piece

12:49

is coming from Roy Kuder who left a big

12:51

imprint on me. I

12:54

mean, there are so many musicians and not

12:56

necessarily guitar players who just had,

12:58

who left an imprint on me. I

13:00

mean, there was just, there endless number

13:02

of guitar players. I

13:04

mean, all the guys who played on records, the

13:07

Beatles, I had two

13:09

particular session players that I really looked up to

13:11

who made lots of records in the sixties and

13:13

seventies. And I was looking to become friendly with

13:15

both of them. One was

13:17

Reggie Young, the great Reggie Young who

13:19

played the incredible guitar intro on Drift

13:23

Away by Dobie Gray. If you haven't heard that in

13:25

a while, listen to that. The

13:28

other one was Hugh McCracken who played

13:30

on Aretha Records, played on Brown Eyed

13:32

Girl. He played on Ram

13:34

by Paul McCartney. He played on Double

13:36

Fantasy by John Lennon. So

13:38

those guys sort of showed me

13:41

a way to a collecticism. And

13:44

they were also minimalists. So I was, oh,

13:46

so this will be a good conversation. I

13:48

was always drawn to minimalists. I

13:51

mean, I loved Hendrix and I like big

13:53

powerful, lots of big

13:56

note, big sound guitar players. I always liked

13:58

it, but I was never that interested. I

52:00

don't consciously, although it doesn't sound like a bad

52:02

idea. I have a very comfortable setup, so I

52:04

have my own recording studio, so very

52:07

comfortable there. Yeah, no

52:09

reason to wander out. And

52:12

for you guys now, what's

52:16

the signal between

52:18

you or the phone call?

52:21

What is it that says, we got to make a new

52:23

record? That's

52:27

a good question. Well, quite

52:30

often, the contract, like

52:34

Roseanne is still on a major label, so

52:36

she actually owes them a record and we

52:38

talk about it all the time, but we're

52:40

not on the same page.

52:45

I'm in the position of, oddly enough, as a

52:47

session player, I never

52:49

wanted to be the guy I had to wait for the phone

52:51

call, but in some ways as a producer, I have to wait

52:53

for the phone call. Sometimes for

52:56

artists, sometimes I'll call an artist and

52:59

say, hey, what are you doing? You want to try to

53:01

write a song as a first step? We

53:04

don't even have to think about making a record. Let's see if we can write

53:06

a song. Like

53:08

I say, or the phone call, or somebody calls you

53:10

and says, hey, you want to produce William Bell? And

53:13

you can't wait to get started. After

53:17

this last break, we'll be back with more

53:19

of Bruce's conversation with John Leventhal. The

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with Delta, they're putting 5G into the

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