Interview: Peter Holsapple of the dB's (1984)

Masters of a unique American pop/rock sound that garnered tem a great deal of critical acclaim for their two import albums, the dB’s are virtual unknowns outside of a few college radio markets across the country. “We received a lot of college radio airplay with those two albums,” says Peter Holsapple, the band’s songwriter and vocalist. “Songs like ‘Black and White’ and ‘Happen’stance’ were staples. When you have an import LP, though, and you’re taking it around to people, you don’t have the promotional ability that an American label, even a small independent, does.” This identity crisis should end, though, with the release of the band’s first American album, Like This.

Like This is a collection of various musical influences, produced by former Waitresses member Chris Butler. Listing influences as wonderfully diverse as REM, Jason and the Scorchers, Marshall Crenshaw, and the Gun Club, Holsapple says of the album “it’s an optimistic record for optimistic times.” With all eleven of the album’s songs penned by Holsapple, Like This represents a departure from the old dB’s style. Former member Chris Stamey, who left the band to pursue a solo career, wrote half of the band’s past material. Says Holsapple, “our focus has changed somewhat. We’ve tried to make it a diverse and yet as interesting as possible.” With six years of both on-the-road and in-the-studio experience already under their belts, of Like This Holsapple says “we got our sophomore jinx out of the way years ago, so this is our first third LP and our second first LP!”

The band acquired their recording contract after a two-year hiatus. “We had to take a break and look at where we were going, what we were achieving,” says Holsapple. During this break, Holsapple toured as an opening act for R.E.M., performing an amazing acoustic set. Because of these performances’s optimistic and upbeat nature, Holsapple dubbed this his ‘No Nebraska’ tour, an obvious reference to Bruce Springsteen’s somber recording of that name.

The dB’s will tour all summer and into the fall, not only to build a base for their audience (“I want people to say ‘Yeah, I want that album when it comes out!’” says Holsapple), but also to reacquaint themselves with the rigors of life on the road after such a long lay-off. “The power that this band puts out on stage is incredible,” says Holsapple, “it’s the hottest, cookingest little outfit I’ve heard in a long time.”

Interview originally published by Nashville Intelligence Report #24, October 1984

Also on That Devil Music: The dB’s Like This CD review 

Q5: Gwil Owen talks about David Olney & the Can't Steal My Fire LP (2024)

Nashville musician Gwil Owen was a longtime friend and collaborator with David Olney and the Executive Producer of the recently-released tribute album, Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney. The Reverend pitched a few questions to Owen about the album via email:

Q1. How did Can’t Steal My Fire come about?
David was my closest friend and we had many conversations about the fact that he probably wouldn’t get true recognition until he was dead and gone. One night we played a show together and met Regina McCrary. After she left Dave said, “we should get the McCrary Sisters to cut one of our songs.” I said, “what song of ours would they cut?” and Dave said, “Voices on the Water!” I always remembered that conversation and it was an honor to make that wish come true. When he died, I realized that I was the logical person to make this record and his family agreed.
 
Q2. How did you choose which artists to include, and did they select the songs they performed?
David spent a lifetime on the road, so he got to know a lot of his fellow songwriters, and I knew that he was greatly admired in that circle. I mostly focused on those that I also knew personally, as it made it a lot easier. Steve Earle, Dave Alvin, Mary Gauthier, and R.B. Morris all knew which songs they wanted to do, so of course I agreed to all of those; I chose most of the rest.
 
Q3. Were there any artists who you wanted to include on the album but couldn’t get?
The first artist who agreed to be on the record was John Prine. Tragically, he died of COVID just a month later, before he had a chance to record his track. 2020 was a year of heartbreaks. I spent a good while talking with Tom Waits’ people; he loved the tracks I sent him and set up a Zoom meeting with his record label. I thought for sure we had him, but in the end it didn’t work out. There’s also a never-released Johnny Cash version of “Jerusalem Tomorrow” that I couldn’t manage to pry out of Rick Rubin’s hands.
 
Q4. How would you describe David Olney’s music?
Dave was a master storyteller; he could work all the necessary elements into a song so skillfully that you never noticed the enormous amount of information he was giving you. Listen to “Illegal Cargo” for example. He also had a tremendous imagination; he thought of approaches and points of view that would never occur to most writers. Telling the story of the Titanic from the perspective of the iceberg is probably the most famous example of that. Just as important as all his technical skill and creativity was his tremendous empathy. He really cared about people, and that big heart of his is beating loudly throughout every single one of his songs.
 
Q5. What would you like listeners to know about Olney?
He made about 20 albums in his lifetime and there are great songs on every one. If you like this record, I encourage you to check out the songs as sung by the man himself.

Buy the album from Amazon: Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney

Also on That Devil Music: Can't Steal My Fire album review

Outlaw Country Legend Mojo Nixon, R.I.P.

I first met Kim Buie, the underrated Island Records A&R genius who guided both Drivin’ N Cryin’ and Tom Waits to some of the best work of their careers, while she was working for the legendary Enigma Records label. Mojo Nixon was one of the better-selling artists among the label’s impressive roster of punk, metal, and fringe performers, falling somewhere in between John Trubee and Zoogz Rift as one of the most original and unique musicians to make a record in America.

Kim turned me onto the first Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper album, 1985’s Free, Drunk and Horny, before she ended up moving from L.A. to Nashville for a job with Jack Emerson’s Praxis organization. I spoke with Mojo several times, usually while drinking beer at some Nashville bar. I came up with the Ed Anger/Mojo Nixon myth, a story that subsequently spread across the country, fueled partially by Mojo himself. This is the only interview that survived our many conversations, originally appearing in the November 1990 issue of Nashville’s The Metro music magazine.

Sadly, Mojo (nee Neill Kirby McMillan Jr.) passed away on Wednesday, February 7th from a “cardiac event” while on the Outlaw Country Cruise, where he had performed the night before. Nixon was 66 years old and enjoyed a full life as a beloved cult-rocker, occasional actor, radio DJ, and Americana iconoclast. Mojo will long be remembered for his contagious humor, quick wit, and rowdy, charismatic demeanor. R.I.P.

His origins are shrouded in mystery. From whence he comes, no one really knows…except for Mojo, and he’s not talkin’. Rumor has it that he comes from Pigfoot, Louisiana, while others say he grew up on the East Coast. Still others have said that he’s the long-lost twin brother of the Beat Farmers’ Country Dick. Yes, rumors abound, but one thing is for certain…Mojo Nixon and Weekly World News columnist Ed Anger have never been photographed together…but more about that later.

Mojo’s on his way to Nashville, you know, set to headline a massive all-ages show along with the Dead Milkmen and the Cavedogs. The enigmatic Mr. Nixon is overcome with joy at his impending return to the Music City. “I just wrote a song that I was thinking of pitching to Nashville,” says Mojo. It’s called ‘I’m Addicted To ESPN, The Total Sports Network Is My Friend.’” Does Mojo harbor aspirations towards becoming a Music Row songwriter and country performer?

“That’ll be when I start my stock car racing career,” says Mojo. “Eventually there’ll be some sign from above or below that the rock ‘n’ roll thing has run its course. Then I’ll move back to North Carolina, where I grew up, and begin racing stock cars and I’ll make my Nashville debut. But I don’t think that Jimmy Bowen will be involved,” he adds, “Jack Clement, possibly, but not Jimmy Bowen…”

Nixon will be returning to Nashville as part of a tour in support of his latest vinyl triumph, Otis, a “big, large, stupid slab of vibrating thingamajig,” says Mojo. “We recorded it in Memphis with Jim Dickinson,” he continues, “who produced our last album. I got…somebody described it as ‘The All-Gator Band’…I describe it as the first post-cowpunk supergroup, with John Doe (X), and Country Dick of the Beat Farmers, Bill (Davis) from Dash Rip Rock, and Eric (Ambel) from the Del-Lords. We just got down there and drank a few beers and just started rocking and rolling. We had a lot of fun!”

Otis is the first record Nixon has recorded without partner Skid Roper; a mature, fully-realized exercise in musical mayhem and lyrical madness as only Mojo can deliver. “I wanted to make a much more rock ‘n’ roll album than I had before,” says Mojo. “I made five albums with Skid and each one of those is much more advanced than the last. The first one was just totally primitive; we did it on a four-track cassette. We didn’t even know that we were doing an album…they were supposed to be demos in case we ever did an album.”

To be sure, that first Mojo and Skid disc, Free, Drunk and Horny, contained some Mojo classics, gems such as “Jesus At McDonald’s” and “Rockin’ Religion.” “Yeah, it’s got some ‘stream-of-consciousness’ on it,” says Mojo. “A lot of people say to me, ‘well, I like the first album’ or ‘I like the second album.’ I think that there’s a natural order to things. I had to do the first two albums to get to ‘Elvis Is Everywhere’ and I had to do the next two albums to get to ‘Don Henley Must Die.’ Sooner or later, this adding stuff will peter out and I’ll just go back to me and a guitar. It’s a process you have to go through and I don’t want to miss any of the steps. You know, sooner or later, I may have a hit in spite of my own stupid self!”

Mojo is known for tossing lyrical arrows at a wide range of targets. Otis pokes fun at or insults everyone from George Bush down to Don Henley. “There was some controversy even before the record came out on the Don Henley thing,” says Mojo of “Don Henley Must Die.” “My point is that rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be wild and crazy and free and fun and anarchy and sex and pandemonium and drive-in movie theaters with fake-I.D. beer! What the hell is Don Henley doing? Not that he’s not talented…but VH-1 is wide-open. Why not go there and stay?”

Most of the targets of Mojo’s musical missiles have been quite, shall we say…understanding. “They’re supposed to be funny, not hate-filled or anything,” says Mojo, “not even the most hate-filled ones. I don’t know Don Henley or Phil Collins or Sting…they might be good race car drivers for all I know, but it’s unlikely.” MTV’s Martha Quinn, an early recipient of a Mojo barb with the song “Stuffin’ Martha’s Muffin” actually brags about the encounter…

“Martha Quinn,” says Mojo, “I never talked to Martha but I just heard that she was on TV talking about the song just recently, says that she was the only VJ to have a song written about her.” Of others, Nixon says, “Debbie Gibson took it all in stride and Michael J. Fox…well, I’m not worried about him because he’s near dwarf-sized. What’s he going to do, hire somebody to beat me up? Get together with Prince and beat me up…a bunch of short guys whuppin’ up on me?!”

Mojo’s music is an eclectic blend of talking blues, old time R&B, and roots-rock. Says Mojo of influences, “the kind of John Lee Hooker, front-porch Delta blues thing is a big influence, as is Hunter Thompson’s ‘railing at the gods’ kind of thing, railing at the absurdities and injustices; and a lot of your basic rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm and blues stuff that I derived out of Otis Redding, out of the gospel church…”

“I was thinking the other day,” says Mojo, “that rock ‘n’ roll seems to have forgotten somebody like Roger Miller. I think that he won something like six Grammys. He’s a funny guy and also a musical guy. There’s a long tradition in country and R&B of people who were funny but musical, whether it was Jerry Reed or the Coasters or the Big Bopper…you could name a whole slew of them. The concept that these were novelty acts or whatnot…well, the Coasters went to number one, as did Roger Miller. Somewhere along the way, rock ‘n’ roll forgot this.”

Rock ‘n’ roll as a corporate entity has pretty well led to a cultural decline for, says Mojo, “the same reasons that the hamburgers at McDonald’s taste like cardboard compared to a hamburger at some Joe Bob’s hamburger stand that they run themselves. It’s a big business, a big corporate thing and they’re going for the lowest common denominator to sell the most units they can. They don’t give a flying fuck about whether it’s good or not!”

In a climate such as this, Nixon continues to deliver sincere, heartfelt, if decidedly non-mainstream discs to his adoring fans. Says Mojo, “I’m pretty much determined to have success on my own terms. People in suits recognize quickly that I have some talent that can be exploited, but none of them seems to have any clue as to how to do that. Until one of them does, I’m just going to keep doing what I do.”

As for the question of Mojo’s involvement with the pseudonymous Mr. Anger, well, let’s just check the facts, shall we. Ed Anger writes a column of patriotic, right-wing pap called “My America” in the Weekly World News tabloid, a column that many believe to be done with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Nixon has been known to comb the very same scandal sheet for song ideas, even going so far as to lifting headlines for song titles.

So how about it Mojo, what’s the scoop on you and Ed? “Some people think that we may be the same person,” says Mojo, “I’ve never seen me and Ed in the same room together! I’ve been pig-biting mad myself, you know.” The answer to this mystery? “Possibly aliens are channeling my energies and turning them into Ed’s column,” says Mojo. ‘Nuff said… (1990)

Q5: Kerry Landreth of Birdseed talks about music

Kerry Landreth is lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco rock band Birdseed, whose recently-released 10” EP Not Out of Time the Reverend found quite impressive, writing that “Not Out of Time is one of those rare treasures that will take 20 years or so for rock music’s critical cognoscenti to catch up with.” Comprised of singer Landreth, guitarists Jamie Goodyear and Mason Morfit, bassist Lane Murchison, keyboardist Brian Hetherington, saxophonist Peter Landreth, and drummer Scott Bell, Birdseed delivers “grown-up rock ‘n’ roll from an adult’s perspective, with lyrics forged in the crucible of life.”

After my review of Not Out of Time was published, Birdseed guitarist Mason Morfit got in touch. He kindly hooked me up via email with Landreth for the following Q5 interview and she graciously took time out of her schedule to answer a few questions about the best band that you’ve haven’t heard (yet).

Q1. What originally got you interested in singing and music?

I grew up surrounded by music – I lived in London during Andrew Lloyd Weber’s heyday and sang songs from musicals in my living room every night. I sang in an a capella group and a band at Exeter, and then in an a capella group at Stanford. Joining Birdseed was a joyful revisit of the things I loved most. I’d beaten breast cancer in 2010-11 and going through that was as transformative as you’d imagine. Except my version of taking the “cancer lesson” wasn’t to slow down, it was to speed up.

Luckily I fell in with the right group of musicians – we were all at a point in our lives where we’d lived enough to know what was important to us. And to our surprise and delight, we found we write great music about it. My cancer came back in 2015, which created a sense of urgency. Musically, things ignited. We started writing, recording, and playing live with a vengeance.

Q2. Who are your musical and songwriting influences?

Sheryl Crowe, Natalie Merchant, Ray LaMontagne, Fleetwood Mac, Eric Clapton, and J.J. Cale.

Q3. Why compile Birdseed's singles onto vinyl rather than CD, and why a 10" EP?

For the same reason we are writing music about people our age. It’s for the generation who grew up loving vinyl.

Q4. Why record and release singles rather than a full-length album?

We record them as soon as we write them (and inspiration only comes when it comes). We are so excited to share them with our friends that we can't hold anything back for a LP. Most of the fun is from sharing this stuff.

Q5. Has the band been approached by any labels, or would y’all prefer to keep doing your records yourselves?

We signed early to Bird Records because of how cool the Bird school and studio are. That place brought music to all of our kids. Most of them now play music and have been in bands. We are an independent group of people and independent label makes sense for us.

Related content: Birdseed’s Not Out of Time EP review

Q5: Willie Nile talks about Bob Dylan

Photo courtesy Conqueroo Music Publicity

 
Singer/songwriter Willie Nile is one of rock music’s lesser-known treasures, a talented performer and artist who has forged his own path to create an enduring career and a catalog of recordings that would be the pride of any musician.

The Reverend has long been a fan of Nile’s music and songwriting skills, from his 1980 self-titled debut and the following year’s Golden Down to more recent work like 2009’s House of A Thousand Guitars or 2016’s World War Willie (and a lot of great records in between). As I’m also a big Bob Dylan fan (no surprise), I’ve been particular enamored as of late by Nile’s recently-released tribute album Positively Bob: Willie Nile Sings Bob Dylan.

Nile provides the ten-song collection of vintage Bob with his own reverent but unique spin on the songs, making for an exhilarating and entertaining listen. I thought it would be interesting to get a little behind-the-scenes info on Positively Bob, and Nile was gracious enough to answer a few questions by email for this Q5 interview, providing answers that are as intelligent and enlightening as his music usually is. You can check out the Reverend’s review of Positively Bob here.     

Q1. What does Bob Dylan mean to you as an artist and as a fan?

I was a teenager in the ‘60s into all kinds of rock and roll and was knocked out by Bob’s music.  Nobody was writing songs like he did. They were interesting, funny, poignant, mystical, passionate, compassionate, sarcastic, idealistic, realistic, surrealistic. There was nothing remotely like it on the radio. It was really inspiring. He was one of a kind and single-handedly changed the conversation completely. He raised the bar for everyone, artists and listeners alike.

These songs opened up a lot of doors for me, and for a whole generation of kids. Discovering Dylan’s songs in the ‘60s was incredibly liberating; it made me realize that there were no limitations or walls that could not be scaled or knocked down. I started reading the poetry of the Beats, Walt Whitman, Rimbaud, and it was off to the races from there.

Q2. Considering the depth of the Dylan songbook, how did you choose the songs to include on Positively Bob?

When I got the invitation to sing four Dylan songs at a Bob 75th birthday concert in NYC last year I stayed up late one night and just looked at all the songs in his catalog. I wanted to see if there were some songs I could pull off that would be fun to play live. I went by feel and instinct. I grabbed my guitar and went through his song list and tried a few of them that I thought might work in concert and knocked out the arrangements pretty quickly. I didn’t want to force anything. If a song didn’t come together right away, I moved on to something else. They were such a blast to play live I thought it would be fun to do an album of Bob songs. They’re still so relevant and need to be heard. I just wanted to do them justice and bring some good energy in a respectful way.

Q3. What is your favorite Dylan album and why?

That’s a tough one because there’s a lot of great ones. Probably Blonde On Blonde. There are so many great songs on it, including 9 or 10 stone cold classics. There’s humor, sarcasm, beauty, depth, love, sorrow, madness, edge, you name it, it’s there, and it ends with the stunning “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” It’s the voice of a true poet and seeker at the top of his game, and it has that great mercury sound he spoke of. I love the live feel and excitement of the performances. It sounds so real and alive. It’s a high water mark in the history of music.

Q4. What's the hardest aspect of interpreting Dylan's songs?

The songs mean so much to me and after all these years of living they felt like old friends coming around to share some wine and talk about the world. It all happened very naturally in the studio so it wasn’t that hard. We didn’t rehearse. I just played a tape of the arrangement of each song I had recorded on my phone to the band and everybody brought their experience and appreciation of the songs to the table. We’d listen once in the control room, talk a little bit, and go into the studio and play our hearts out. 90% of it was all done in two days. We didn’t labor over it. Most of it is live. It was a labor of love I guess you’d say. If I’d had any doubts I wouldn’t have made the album. I think the key was in picking the right songs so maybe that was the hardest part. Once that was done it all just kind of fell into place.

I think the tallest mountain to climb was attempting “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” It’s such a masterpiece and more relevant today than ever. I wanted to do it justice. My first thought was what if we approached it like “Bolero?” There’s so much power in the lyric and in the melody. There’s nothing like it on radio today. When we cut it I just took a deep breath and went for it. The band killed it and I just gave it all I had. I was pleasantly surprised listening back to it. And to think he was only 21 when he wrote it! Way to go Bob!

Q5. Much of Dylan's music displays a blues influence, as do many of your songs. Will we ever see a Willie Nile blues album and, if so, what shape would it take?

I recorded a blues song on my World War Willie album last year, a song called “Citibank Nile.” I never thought I could pull something like that off but it sure worked out all right. I love how it came out. I don’t know that I’d do a full album of blues songs but you never know. I’m still learning and have a lot more to learn. Maybe one day I’ll get there and be able to do a full album of blues. I could call it Willie Nile Sings The Lookout World Here I Come Blues.

Randy Chortkoff Interview (2009)

 I heard the sad news today that blues musician, producer, promoter, and label executive Randy Chortkoff had passed away from liver disease at 65 years old. Chortkoff had been a mover and shaker in the blues world for decades, first as musician playing with his friends, later as promoter putting on shows in Los Angeles with some of the most underrated artists in the blues.

Randy was the founder of the Delta Groove Music family of labels, and over the past nine years he released an amazing number of critically-acclaimed albums by artists as diverse as Elvin Bishop, Rod Piazza, Bob Corritore, Candye Kane, Mitch Kashmar, Sean Costello, Ana Popovic, Mike Zito, Tracy Nelson, and many more.

As a musician, Chortkoff was the driving force behind the Mannish Boys, an all-star blues supergroup that recorded a half-dozen live and studio albums between 2004 and 2014 that featured talents like singers Finis Tasby and Sugaray Rayford and guitarists Kirk Fletcher and Frank “Paris Slim” Goldwasser, as well as guest stars like Kid Ramos and Junior Watson.

I had the opportunity to interview Randy by phone during the summer of 2009, and although the conversation was frequently interrupted, he had some great stories to tell. To say that Chortkoff will be missed by the blues world is an understatement, and this previously-unpublished interview displays his unwavering passion for the blues…  

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What got you interested in music in the first place?

I was interested music because in the junior high school that I went to and even prior, when I was in elementary school, I gravitated towards the soul music of the day. A lot of the kids would be listening to pop hits, so they’d be listening to whatever was popular – Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley – and I’d hear a James Brown song like “Please, Please, Please” and I just fell in love with it and wanted to go out and buy the 45 and play it over and over.

So I was always drawn to that and then later, when rock ‘n’ roll came into play and me and all my friends are listening to groups like the Rolling Stones…I wasn’t a huge fan of the Beatles…but listening to groups like the Yardbirds, early Fleetwood Mac, and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, I always gravitated towards the blues-orientated music. So I was bitten by the soul, blues, and R&B bug early even though I was a big fan of rock ‘n’ roll.

When did you decide to start playing music?

The British Invasion really affected me – some of the Rolling Stones’ records and the Yardbirds’ records, and a lot of the music that was coming out of England – Eric Burdon and stuff like that, and harmonica was being played so I got myself a harmonica.

Was the harmonica your primary instrument? Did you ever decide to play guitar or some other instrument or did you stick with the harp?

I pretty much stuck with the harp…to be really honest with you, I just never had the patience to sit down and learn how to play guitar or learn an instrument. As a matter of fact, even with the harmonica, I’m not like a lot of these guys around, the Cary Bells of the world. I’ve never been able to sit down and actually listen to and retain, and have the patience to learn songs from notes. So a lot of times, my harmonica playing is not as good as these other guys, it’s just basically my own style with a little bit of influences from what I’ve been listening to over the years.

I know you worked with harp players like Billy Boy Arnold and Cary Bell. What, if anything, have you taken away from working with those guys?

Being a harmonica player and being a huge blues fan, I realized after I got much older that my father had a big influence on me. He was a carpet layer, but he and his friend Abe used to go to all the jazz clubs on Central Avenue in Los Angeles and they were big jazz fans. They’d see people like Joe Riggs and the Honeydrippers, they were big fans of Louis Trema and Keely Smith, but the silver of them all was Louis Armstrong.

Somehow they got to know Louis Armstrong on a personal basis, and my dad became friends with Louis. So whenever Louis would come to town, and I was about 6 or 7 years old at the time, they’d come to our house and he’d bring his wife and he’d bring a couple band members and they’d have a big spread of food and then they’d put me to bed early and they’d do their reefer smokin’ or whatever. Listening to that music, and just having the influence of Louis Armstrong being in my life, it’s really that kind of cool thing. 

How did you get into production?

I’ve always had a band…even as lousy a harmonica player as I was, and still am pretty much, I always had the desire to play. So I put a few people together, a friend of mine who played guitar, somebody played drums, this and that, and we started jamming together. I’d promote these shows, usually on my birthday, at different bars and venues in Los Angeles and I formed my own band and I was lucky enough to have…he was a bass player at the time, Alex Schultz, and I was lucky enough to have Debbie Davies in the band, and then Alex switched his guitar and turned out to be a fabulous guitar player. So we played all the little local clubs in Los Angeles and the name of the band was Dirt Cheap. But I’ve been more of a promoter than an actual player. 

How did you come to producing the Billy Boy Arnold album (1993’s Back Where I Belong)?

Actually, before I produced the Billy Boy Arnold album, I had a band and I had some really great people that played with me, people like Rick Holmstrom, people like Cal David and, as I said, Debbie Davies and Al Schultz. We all lived in the same neighborhood and one night somebody brought this black fellow to one of the clubs we were playing and introduced him and he said his name was King Ernest and that he worked at the Los Angeles County Jail. He wasn’t a cop, he wasn’t a sheriff, he was just a worker. But he said that he was a singer and loved to sing, he sings in church every weekend, and he even made a few 45s back in the ‘60s and he was a big time soul singer in the mid-1960s in Chicago. 

So he sat in that night with the band and from that moment on, we became inseparable. I managed him for four years and I booked dates for us, I was kind of the bandleader and he was the first artist that I brought into the studio, the Pacific Studios in Culver City. I recorded a twelve-song demo on King Ernest, went out and shopped it and sold it to Jerry Gordon at Evidence Records and he put it out. My first recording and the first person I managed and toured with, and brought to Europe was King Ernest, which was in 1991 or ’92.

I was putting on festivals once a year in Los Angeles along with other smaller shows that I was doing just for fun – never for profit, because there was never any profit involved. I started putting on shows on my birthday and that would be the excuse for me to get all my friends together…Rod Piazza, Mitch Kashmar, Al Schultz…all the guys and girls that I knew from the Los Angeles area and they would come and play really cheap because I hardly had any money at the time. I decided to call it “A Tribute to Little Walter Hall of Fame” show, and I made up these plaques with 45s that I would have very inexpensively made and sprayed in gold and put on the plaques, and every year for ten years, I’d have anybody that ever played with Little Walter, was influenced by Little Walter, had recorded with Little Walter, anybody that I liked that I brought to Los Angeles for the show I would do annually. 

The first show I did on a big scale like that, I was introduced to Dave Myers, the bass player out of Chicago. I asked him if he could find Billy Boy and Dave said, “yeah, I know where he’s living, he’s driving a bus,” and he put me in touch with Billy Boy. I told him about these Little Walter tributes I was doing and I invited him to come to Los Angeles to participate in one of my first Little Walter Tribute Hall of Fame shows. In the middle of the show, I would have a break and I would give out these Blues Hall of Fame awards – they really weren’t anything, and they cost me only $20 to make, but to people like Jimmy Rodgers, Luther Tucker, Cary Bell, Lester “Mad Dog” Davenport, Gordon Leary, Matt Simmons, Junior Wells, James Cotton, etc, it was really a huge honor for them. It was the first time they had ever actually received something that they could put on their wall at home and be proud of. 

After Billy Boy came out and did the Little Walter show, we did three of them together, and he was great man…not only did he do all of his hits, but he performed Little Walter tunes for probably 70% of the show. I brought Billy out for that show and then I put together a tour with King Ernest and Billy Boy Arnold; we did the Waterfront Blues Festival with about 30,000 people, we did festivals in Canada, and we played three or four high profile clubs in the northwest and a club in Los Angeles and in San Francisco. It was really a fun tour and as soon as I got back I said, “Billy Boy, why don’t we make a record,” and he said “sure.”

He went back home to Chicago and then he came out again and we rehearsed with my band in my living room, and that was the second CD I ever produced. I went into Pacific Studios again and with my band – which was basically King Ernest’s band – which we called the Tail Draggers at the time. I recorded the first Billy Boy Arnold album that he had done in about 10 to 15 years and when it was done, it was a masterpiece. Not only did it turn out just really good and spontaneous, I got some incredibly great players to back him up, and I sat there with the engineer as he mixed the record so the harmonica tones were big and fat. On one song I had Lester Butler from the Red Devils sit in and play harp, and I had (guitarist) Rick Holmstrom, Rob Rio on piano, just a bunch of great people. I talked to Bruce Iglauer and he put out Back Where I Belong on Alligator Records. 

What motivated you to start a blues label?

Frustration really…I’d been producing these CDs, I produced Billy Boy Arnold, I produced King Ernest, I produced a great CD on Finis Tasby called Jump Children! I couldn’t believe how well that one turned out, probably because I used some of the best blues players in Los Angeles, and I sold it to Evidence, and I really enjoyed producing.
 
Then I produced two more CDs…one on Kirk Fletcher, an incredible CD. It has Kim Wilson (Fabulous Thunderbirds), it has Jennifer Magnus, Finis Tasby, and a whole array of great musicians. I also produced a record on Frank Goldwasser, who they refer to as “Paris Slim,” and spent a lot of money on that one, it was a great album there, but when I went out to try and sell them, nobody was buying, everybody passed on them. So I thought, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” Fortunately, I have a day job making motion pictures, independent motion pictures, and so I started the Delta Groove record label. I put out those two albums that nobody would buy...that was almost five years ago.

What did you want to do with the label once you got those two records out, where did you want to go from there?

I really didn’t have any plans on having a label; I just wanted an avenue to get these records out to the public so they could be heard and so I started searching for a distributor. So I really didn’t plan on it snowballing – I just planned on putting out those two records, having a distributor and getting them into record stores so people could hear them…

The Mannish Boys, 2014