Carl Verheyen

Ladies and gentlemen , season five of Chewing the Gristle is indeed upon us , a convivial conversation fest between myself , gregory S Caulk , esquire and a variety of musical potentates from hither and yon , brought to you by our friends at Wildwood Guitars and our friends at Fishman Transducers , of course , both of which I've had long-standing and continuing relationships with

, and I'm very grateful for their continued support in this endeavor to bring you Chewing the Dog on Gristle . We've got a bunch of fun guests , some you have heard of , some maybe not so much . It'll be a little bit of discovery and a little bit of chaos all rolled into one . Thanks for tuning in folks .

Now , without any further ado , let's chew some gristle . Ladies and gentlemen , boys and girls , this week , on Chewing the Gristle , the amazing , legendary axeman hailing from beautiful California , carl Verheyen . You've seen him in Supertramp . He's done a million sessions , been all over the damn world , rocking people's brains .

This week , chewing the Gristle , carl Verheyen , ladies and gentlemen , boys and girls , we convene once again for another edition of Chewing the Gristle , with yours truly Gregory Cochrie here , with the immortal and powerful Carl Verheyen , guitar player , extraordinaire sessionsman , super trampsman , world-travel traveling guitarsman and one heck of a nice fellow .

What the heck's going on , carl , how are you ?

So one of these days we have to do a concert together . That would be magnificent .

But I've reached a certain age in my aging process . To where I'm going , you know what . I'm going to do this my way and I'm going to do it right Instead of , instead of , killing myself . I've got a guy who's now he is called a back liner , ah , and he , he drives his own truck , his own sprinter , with all the gear , and he goes there .

And he drives his own truck , his own Sprinter , with all the gear , and he goes there . And the first time I ever met him he's a 24-year-old guy , you know . He takes a picture of my massive wall of sound mega rig , sees how it's all plugged in , then goes over and sees how the drums are set up , takes a picture of that .

So that was , you know , that place , spirit of 66 ? Yeah , so that was the first gig on this tour a year and a half ago . He takes a picture of everything . Second gig he goes . I showed up for sound check . Everything was set up , guitars were in tune and he goes I hope you guys don't mind I sound checked the drums for you , holy .

So you know what that means You're hired for life , right . So so the way I'm doing it now is I have a sprinter with a tour manager taking me to have coffee , check in , nap , whatever I need to do , and he's taking care of all that . So did I make money ?

Not too much , but the American tour that we just did up the West Coast , which is kind of something I do every year , that cleaned up , that was a good one , excellent , yeah .

And how it all came about , folks , is , I was playing this thing called the Orcas Island Music Festival and because they could only put us up one night on Orcas Island , I stayed in the little town of Mount Vernon and in the Wyndham Hotel there's a poster saying Greg Cox coming . And it was you . And it said you know the presented by this guy .

So I called you last year and said hey , I want to . I want to play the Lincoln theater . All my friends say it sounds amazing and it's a great place to play . So we did , and thanks to you , and I just want to tell you how much I appreciate it .

We could do kegger parties , backyard parties , we could do high school proms , we could work all the time in a band doing dances and everything , and then and then , um , yeah , and then I met . I met this guy . I was .

I had a five night a week gig singing and playing my acoustic guitar , you know , like Van Morrison , joni Mitchell , um , uh , jackson Brown , that kind of era , early 70s . And this guy came in and goes hey , I like the way you play . Kid , you ever want to get together ? He was an older dude and I said , yeah , I'd love to . How about tomorrow ?

And I found out he was a pretty well-known jazz dude in the town . So he and I got together the next day day and he put some music in front of me and the first chord was an f major , seven , right . The second chord was a d minor , seven , flat five . And I just kind of my head exploded because I'd never .

I go well , oh , now this is only audio , right ? Nobody's going to see , that's correct .

You could put it on the bottom , of course , the seventh type is cool or on the bottom . This is my favorite voicing . Of course , this is the one all the chord books give you . This is nice . If you want the root on top , this is nice too . But it's an F minor six , so any F minor six that you know will work .

Anyway , it showed me that I pretty much know nothing . I could play Stairway to Heaven , I could play the solo of Crossroads , I knew all these folky tunes , but I really didn't know much more than that . So at that point I go , I need to get out of here .

You know , I need to go learn something and I had met a girl that was living in Boston , so I moved East and did um , I did a cement , a semester at Berkeley , just the accelerated semester , and so I was gone about a year .

Okay , just the accelerated semester , and so I was gone about a year because I also had the amazing fortune to go on the road with Max Roach , the father of American Drum .

Just three gigs subbing for a guy , but that was an amazing experience , of which I , when Berkeley ended and you know I can't just waste my time here I moved back to LA and just started working and then , after about three years of living south of here in Orange County , where there was a lot of jazz work and I was totally had the blinders on , I wanted to

play jazz . You know , at that point , after three years of that , I moved up to LA proper . I moved back into LA area , north Hollywood , which is where all the studio guys were and a number of my friends were really starting to break into the studio scene . And then I remember like my first session was Happy Days .

And then I remember like my first session was Happy Days oh , no , kidding , yeah , my first I had joined the union to play at Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm , you know , to work with like Martin Mull and Elvira and all this stuff , right , as a teenager kind of guy or maybe early 20s .

But yeah , I was playing around town and somebody spotted me and said , hey , can you play on this session ? It was Happy Days , then Laverne and Shirley , and then that just turned into an onslaught of TV and movies and radio jingles and then people's record dates and stuff like that . So you know , I had this bad .

You know , all I ever wanted to do is what you and me do now , which is have my own band tour the world bringing joy to the people . Sing my tunes , play my tunes , shred when needed and , you know , have a good time all the time . So I consider the studio career a massive detour , you know .

But one day I did this session for this female vocalist and the engineer was a British guy and he liked my sounds and I liked what he was getting , and so we exchanged numbers , went home last night and I got a call from somebody named Norman Hall , which translates to Norman Hall Right , he was like the front of house engineer for Supertramp and they had

auditioned 18 guys and they were looking for a guitar player . Could I come down tomorrow morning and audition ? And I did . I said sure , and I wasn't really a fan . So when I showed up at the studio , I go guys , I just have to apologize , I really don't know any of your music .

And they go we don't want to play any of our bloody songs , let's play the blues . So we ended up , you know , we ended up playing Willie and the Hand Jive and I sang some blues and played some stuff and by that night I was hired , so as a side man .

So I was hired for a few tunes , a few years as a side man , a few tours , and then in the 90s they made me a member , so which was a better profit sharing situation , you know .

But the lead singer got cancer and , although his name is Rick Davies and he's a real mentor of mine , I love him . He's a really great guy . You know , the show not only must go on , but must be the same , no matter if it's Madison Square Gardens or Moncton , new Brunswick .

It doesn't matter he's going to be , it's just going to be the killer , full blown super tramp experience , you know , with the lights and everything . So anyway , that that that was , um , yeah , it's . It's a shame it's over , cause I got , I grew to really love the guys and love

that . I really grew to love the catalog of music . It's , it's different than you thought it was . I mean , because you , you always heard this sort of english dance hall music on the radio . Right , take a look at my girlfriend , all that kind of stuff . Right , there's a lot of prog involved , totally , yeah , yeah , crime of the century and stuff .

And they were big taller fans , jethro tall fans and everything .

It would be like for weeks and they would run the entire set in the morning and in the afternoon they'd run the entire set again and everything was just so .

They go , no , no , we want you to do his solo . And I go you know what ? I can take the time , I can write it all out and I can learn it note for note . But it's an okay solo , but why don't you let me play like he starts it and play like he ends it and let it live and breathe every night . I promise it won't suck .

I'm going to be going down on the ego ramp and just rocking and the leader of the band , rick , goes , we'll give it a go . So I did that . And he goes okay , you're good to go right . And so that was done . The next one that I had to they wanted note for note was you know , goodbye , stranger . Oh yeah . And that one starts with a wah-wah , right .

So I said I'll start it with that and then , uh , then let me go and I will cue the ending by doing that up an octave and it'll give it a go . So I did it and you know the drummer did not like being cute . He wanted it to be . You know x amount , you know 64 bars or whatever it was . But if I just felt like going I wouldn't look behind me .

You know X amount , you know 64 bars or whatever it was . But if I just felt like going I wouldn't look behind me , you know , I wouldn't look , I wouldn't look at them . But , um , so some nights it would be so magical that you know , you know cause .

You know , with those big stadiums and arenas you know we were using in ears , but I would take one out and get up front and hear the mains . God , that is the biggest thrill of a lifetime .

And in the beginning I had a pretty big rig back then too , but I'd be like 30 feet away from my speaker's cabinet , so getting feedback and sustain was not going to happen . So I a combo amp . It was a jim kelly combo . Oh , I love those jim kelly combo yeah , yeah , so there was um .

So I had I had two jim kelly's and I think a marshall in an , in an amp rack and an effects . This is in the bradshaw years where we all had bradshaw right , and then two but four , 12 .

So there was an ego ramp that you that was grading , you know like metal grading , and I had a Jim Kelly down there tilted back pointing up at me and I'd walk out there and my guitar tech would come up underneath me and go , you know okay , and take it off standby , and I could just hold a note and I'm feeding back through that . Oh , awesome , cool .

So then I applied that concept on one of my records in the studio where I was in the control room . You got to try this I'm in the control room and I've got a speaker out to something in the room , right , and it's being mic'd .

But I also had a 112 cabinet in like the mic closet and when I wanted to play this high B natural on the 19th fret , you know , just hold a B way up there and have it sustained I just would nod to the second engineer and I say open the door . So he'd open the closet door and I'd get feedback with that .

Awesome , you can do that in the studio , otherwise you're out there bleeding , you know , Right At that volume that's going to make it do that . But it really needs to be a guitar cabinet , because I tried it with an NS-10 , you know studio monitor . It just didn't not the sonic girth we need as men .

And I was in the store and I was in my I don't know , I was probably 23 years old or something and I I walked into the store and I look on the . Uh , there was just one of these stores . They just piles of crap everywhere you know , amps and guitars everywhere . I loved it .

It was one of those old school , just like you know , everything on top of each other , mayhem type of a music store . And I looked down and there was a Jim Kelly combo with the cover on it and I looked down , I go , how much is that ? He goes ? Ah , 400 bucks . So I bought it . Right , I'd never even heard it , I just bought it .

And it was one of the , the two channel . Uh , exactly with the with the . Uh , um , uh , the power , soak power tape power 10 degree .

Well , it offended him until later , later down the road , you know , when we met again . You know , a few years later he goes yeah , I see what you were talking about and you were right that that's , that's what I should be going for , isn't that wild ? Yeah , he's still around , jim Kelly , great guy .

And then years later he started he did a couple years back , maybe 10 years ago now he started making amps again and , uh , I ended up getting one of the the single 12 combos , but it was just the single channel one .

And then for the distortion I'm using a Dumble Overdrive Special and a Marshall 100 watt , kind of a wet dry situation . You know , the Marshall is power amp in only and so using a Friatt power station it's really a complicated rig .

But over in Europe the rig that I keep there is two Fender Twins for the clean side right , and the dirty side is a Marshall and a little rack-mounted power amp . So I'm getting tired of these Twins because really sound great at when you crank them to four , right .

But I have a background singer babe and she's standing right in front of it and it's just killing her . The clean sound kills her more than the crank tone . Interesting , I don't know why .

At the Buck Owens Crystal Palace , which is a 600-seater fantastic place , every year I have a special guest . We've had Sonny Landreth , we've had Jerry Douglas oh nice , he was killer on his electric slide and it's got a B3 and two drummers and two guitars . So it's an Alban Brothers type of thing , right ?

Yeah , yeah , we actually do the memory of Elizabeth Reed , but we do it at Christmas . So we do these insane Christmas medleys in the style of oh wild . So there's the yes medley , which is Christmas carols , but with yes tunes interspersed , it's like a six-pager , right . And there's a Birds medley .

When I bring out , there's a birds Christmas where I bring out my Rickenbacker , and you know . So then we did a Tom Petty one and yeah , anyway , it's a fun thing

. Every year there's a special guest . So one year I was going up there I think it was with my band and the promoter is a really good guy . He called me in advance and he goes .

You know , there's a guy up here who's been to all 96 Guitar Master Series concerts because there's one a month and he goes you and your band is his favorite and I go , oh , that's great , I'd like to meet him .

And he goes and he has a dumbbell that he wants to sell you and I said well , you know , thanks , but that's way out of my wheelhouse , you know , because John Mayer just paid 150 grand , right , exactly , yeah . And another buddy of mine sold one to Joe . Hey , bless you , my wife goes by and sneezes real loud .

Anyway , I heard Joe Bonamassa paid to my friend , you know , a big boatload of suitcase of money , right , and yeah , that's a little out of my wheelhouse and I already own a close to 50 amps . I'm , you know , I tell my wife 20 , but you know there's way more .

So he goes , no , he's a huge fan and he wants you to have it for 5 000 bucks and I go , that's impossible . I said that's pretty much impossible , so I kind of about it . So then we did the concert and I'm doing the selfies with the punters , you know , and I'm doing the selfies with my great fans and signing stuff .

And the promoter comes over and goes hey man , you want to meet the Dumble guy ? So I go , good night everybody . Hey man , you want to meet the Dumble guy ? So I go , good night everybody . So I go meet the guy and he's a sweetheart of an old geezer , really good guy .

He pulls out his phone , he goes yeah , it's an Overdrive special , you know , and I've really only taken out of the house about three or four times and I was good friends with Alexander Dumble and he built it to me for me about 12 , 15 years ago . And so I go well , how much you want for it ? And he goes $5,000 .

And I go do you realize you could get 50 to 100 times that money ? Or you know , 50 to 70 times . He goes listen , you need the amplifier , I don't need the money . He's like bawling me out . So I go God , what a the amplifier . I don't need the money . He's like bawling me out . So I go God , what a lucky bastard am I .

So I had to fly to Dallas the next morning so I couldn't take it home right away . So that was a Friday , saturday , sunday , so Monday morning he calls me . Still want the amplifier . I go , buddy , I will be right up . And then I told my wife , carol , I said , honey , if we don't like this we can trade it in on a Ferrari .

Yeah , exactly , you know , cause it's that valuable . So it took me a little while , greg , to tame it . I mean you just don't need pedals . But I love pedals . I love the textures you get of the different three or four different distortion pedals . I can get the Klon tone or I can get a real thick , saturated sound or more of the Zen drive tone .

You know , you can get these different things . So I ended up working with it for quite a while before I started playing it live , because it was just too thick , too much . You really don't need a pedal , especially with a , with an SG or a three 35 or something any humbucker .

You can turn it way down to the sound of the room . It has an effects loop in it so I can put a sexy reverb pedal in there , Got it . The main thing I like it for it has line level out . And the line level out can go into my lexicon PCM 41, .

You know delay , so I don't have delay before the distortion before and then that goes to a power amp , Got it . So you get . You get a wet , dry thing , because the wet side is the delay side , although it's got plenty of love , you know , crank tone mixed in , and the dry side actually has a reverb on it too . So it's really a glorious sound .

I mean , I'm thrilled to play it , man .

You know , the third button is your tuner , but I put it this way in my pedal board and use what he calls the Verheyen mod , which is it's clean , it's dirty . You never have to look down and find the other button , perfect . And so it's switching between the two clean amps , boom to a whole different rig . The dumbo marshall rig got it to me .

That's super organic because , if you think about it , there's no channel switching , there's no midi crap , where everything cuts off . It's now like the delays and reverbs of my clean sound hang in the air while I've switched and played a single little line . You know right .

So in other words , you could be doing a groove like um , you can go with clean , right , right , and that is the button and you hit . You hit the button and play that lick and then you're back to here , hit it again .

So my foot , basically my right foot , just huffers over that button and anytime I think of a line to throw in with distortion and all its delays hang in the air , well , and back to the clean , super organic . Yeah , it's a manly . It's a manly approach . It is , however , however , my tour manager's getting real tired of lifting all that .

You know he's over it , you know so . Every tour he has a dark day or he goes . Yeah , I'm not gonna do this next year . Yeah , yeah , ask me in six months if I ever want to do this again .

But I think that I've made a decision early on that the sound of the cvb , the carl verheyen band , is going to be god's playing . You know whether he played that , whether he showed up that night or not , and it's just gonna . You know , it's gonna be a really wonderful guitar sound that I'm inspired by .

So now I don't have to use the two , four by 12 side by side , although I did at the Lincoln Theater . I could also do it with two , two by 12 . So we have a little club here in LA called the Baked Potato . You know it . That rig won't fit in there .

So I take two , two by 12s , and the same rig , same rack , same pedal board , same four heads , but so the outside two are going to be clean , the inside two , but they're single 12s and it sounds amazing for a small place like that .

If you're gone for four of the weeks , right , exactly , I had to bail on that . Then I just got real tired of the MI thing . It just became monotonous and tedious . I was doing open counseling , like Scott Henderson and Alan Hines .

I came out one day and they were towing my car away . The cops were towing my car in Hollywood . I had plenty of money in the meter , but after I'd parked there they decided to put up things saying no parking after 12 noon . I was there from 11 on and they're towing my car away and I go .

You know I don't need this anymore , I'm done so and I picked up the straw that broke the camel's back . Yeah , yeah , and I was doing this sessions that summer .

I was producing this guy's record at village recorders , which is one of our big temples of tone , you know , in the Fleetwood Mac room , and I had 20 days in a row , 20 days with Monday through Friday there , so I was going to have to sell out the next four weeks . Anyway , I just go , I'm out . But I love to teach . I'm sure you do too .

It's a beautiful experience to pass it on to the next generation somehow .

And the college thing is weird because you got people that are maybe they don't know what they really want to do , so they're going to music school , or maybe their parents are paying for it or whatever the case may be . But man , you know , you're just not used to people not being totally into it , and when you're into it it's it's because we're all in .

And I said , buddy , you just need to go to your bedroom and get some guns and roses records , like we all did , and learn , learn that stuff . It's not rocket surgery , right ? So anyway , man , I , I , I'm the same thing , see . The other thing is I don't know about you , but it's probably the case I've really not had any other jobs .

I've been playing the guitar my entire life , except for summer to pay off a Les Paul . I was a box boy in the Safeway market , but the rest of my life it's been playing the guitar . So my goal in teaching that kind of thing is here's how you make , here's what you need to know to make a living . The college kids they're just going to .

You know marking time . You know mom and dad will send me to college . I don't want to go to real school , so I'll go to music school , and you know , see if I can be a rock star , right ? So anyway , yeah , that's a weird situation that . So that's why I kind of bailed on that whole program .

One thing led to another , and the school where he went up in Minneapolis and the twin cities , they kind of made me an offer . I couldn't understand where they . You know I only had to be there two days a week kind of doing a survey of guitar styles , and it was both a written and , you know , musical example type of a situation .

And then my son went to school for free and then I was , you know , full time two days a week . It was like I had to do it . So , and this was your drummer son , correct ? Yes ?

You know putting this stuff together and you know you go up and you , you know , and I , there was stuff , I and you know you'd go up and you know , and there was stuff I learned that I didn't know before . Like one of the things I found out about when I was doing , like you know , the country blues segment , was that they had this thing about .

You know , back in the day people were buying , you know , stella guitars and overtones from the Sears catalog .

Yeah , and that was when parlor guitar was the thing , the Sears catalog , and that was when parlor guitar was the thing , and it was mostly women that played parlor guitars , like in the late 1800s , early 1900s , and so they would learn these songs in open tunings like Sevastopol and Spanish Flandango or whatever it was , and so they would have that sheet music in

the guitars that they were sold . So the thought was is that these people down in the plantations and the blues folk when they got these guitars , they would open them up and there was this thing of tune your guitar to this open chord . And then they took their glass bottles and started doing it . So because we're like , you know what I mean .

So I was like I never even knew that .

I was like , just do a single page paper on what this , on what you learned or what you know of this particular segment , of whatever we were on at the time , and they came in and none of them had done the work and these are all like upperclassmen , and there was only like a dozen of them in the class and I remember just saying to him I go , guys .

I don't know if you understand it , but this business is almost impossible to succeed in under the best of circumstances , and none of you motherfuckers are the best of circumstances yeah , yeah , and none of you guys are going to succeed .

The guy was awful , he couldn't , he couldn't play a C chord , you know . So it's like he got everything together except for oh yeah , I better learn to play too .

And I remember I was talking to somebody who was teaching at Berkeley , at the time and I said , guys , I just I'm not , I'm not okay with this . You know they're paying all this money to go to this school and it's yeah , it's my job to kind of perpetuate the delusion , you know Right right , you're an enabler , exactly and what you are ?

He said something very interesting he goes . You know , I had the same problem and then a guy that had been teaching there for longer than he had said look , he goes , we're all here , and all those other students that really can't play , they're all here so that the one or two that actually have a chance can get their stuff .

And Jocko was flying up from Florida and Pat , you know , I sat down and hung with those guys , talked to them and when I first sat down with Jocko at a table I said , man , you just play so amazing , just so

different . You're bass playing . Where are you coming from , man ? I mean , where are you thinking ? And he goes . I come from Florida , man . I listen to a lot of the Island Cats , I listen to James Brown . I was on the road with Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and I'm doing this and he goes .

And then Bobby Columby , from Blood , sweat and Tears , marched me into Epic Records . We went to the top floor . He said play a little amp , play the bass for the guy . And he got me a record deal . And my record's coming out Hancock , I'm going to have Sam and Dave .

Hubert Laws and he's just a guy in a bar , you know , power rapping at me and I'm thinking , yeah , right , I don't know about this . Yeah , Three months later there's that Jocko album with Herbie Hancock and Sam and Dave . I'm going dude , this is so cool .

Now you've all heard of the one , four , five chord . Everybody goes . Yeah , he goes . Okay , every chord can be harmonized . There's a two chord , it's a D minor , there's a three chord , it's an E minor . So he stacks them up and shows us you know , the minor minor , seventh major , seventh , G7 , the harmonized scale .

Then he goes your homework , get yourself that . Well . Then he said this is no flats . The first one is F , one flat , then two flats , then three flats , four flats , and then you start with five sharps and go four sharps , three sharps , two sharps , one sharp , nothing . You're back the circle of fifths or fourths .

In that case , get yourself some 12-stave music paper and write out all 12 keys and harmonize all 12 keys by tomorrow . So smart-ass Verheyen in the back row goes excuse me , why do we need to do that ? Isn't the sixth chord always going to be a minor and he goes . Okay , what's the sixth chord in B flat ? And of course I had to go .

Let's see b flat c and he , you know I had to count up to the g and I'm going to be fine and he goes and you should instantly know it's a g minor seven and you should know that the g minor seventh is the two in f and it's the , it's the three and e flat and you know's so and it's the sixth in you know .

So he was just like it was an amazing , like revelation . And then many , many years later well , actually , probably only about four years later I had a gig in Laguna beach playing this club called the white house , and it was a jazz club , excuse me . And my band played four nights a week . And it was a jazz club , excuse me .

And my band played four nights a week . And then they had a big name act like Larry Carlton or Dizzy Gillespie or Carmen McRae or or I remember the , the Jazz Crusaders . They had them come in the weekend Friday , saturday , sunday , so one weekend it's going to be Joe pass , solo guitar . So of course I live there , cause I could .

I could play four nights a week , eat there and then get in free the other three nights , right , if I dug the band . So I'm there in the front row watching Joe pass , and after the show I said , is it ? I said , joe , I know , I know you're staying at the Ben Brown's motor hotel . Can I come by tomorrow and get a guitar lesson from you ?

I'm a serious student of the guitar . I'll pay you anything you want . He goes yeah , 50 bucks , 10 o'clock . I mean this is back in the 70s , right ? So I got 50 bucks . I am there at five minutes to 10 with my Gibson 175 .

And I walk around the corner and there's Joe with his two sons and they all have fishing poles and they're heading to the beach across the street Right . So he sees me and he goes ah , for Christ's sake , I got to teach this guy boys .

And I go Joe , I'll come back at three , I'll come back tomorrow , we don't have to do it , no problem , I'll come up to your pad in LA . And he goes no , come on , you know . So we go into his bungalow . There were little individual bungalows and , oh my God , I mean , there's cigarettes , butts in cereal bowl , milk , you know , squished out .

There's pizza from two days ago , there's it's a disaster beds unmade and of course there's the one chair . So I gotta move everything out of the way , sit on the bed . And he goes I'm not really a teacher . Uh , why don't you tell me you know , why don't we play a tune ? And you tell me , you know , stop me when there's something you don't know .

So I said , okay , how about what's new , which is a tune I knew and that he played , played the night last night . So he goes okay , what key ? And I go C , of course the key it's in he goes listen , if I know a tune in one key , I know it in all 12 keys and that's the one thing I learned , because every five minutes was , dad , can we go play ?

I think I bailed after about 45 minutes but I reflected on that and it's like you know he can play somewhere over the rainbow in B or E flat or A flat . You know his brain works that way and you know it was a really interesting thing , kind of tied in with the Berklee thing of knowing your harmony To this day .

I really love to analyze Paul Simon songs , elton John songs , brian Wilson tunes and analyze like wow , that was so hip , how he got back to the one chord after this bridge that went up a minor third .

And then you realize , like you know , a lot of the stuff McCartney and Lennon were doing was , you know , same stuff that Jerome Kern and Cole Porter and those dudes were doing a few , few decades earlier . You know those modulations for the middle eight and stuff .

Of learning standards by heart , cause this is one of the things where , you know , I went to school for for music and it was technically uh uh , you know , for jazz , but I at the time , especially I I just wanted to know how to play over changes and I wanted to be literate in terms of being able to write and read music at a , you know , quasi-professional

level . But you know , for me what was such a drag is and again , this is this is really on me but a lot of the jazz educators I experienced were the kind that weren't , you know , the guys that were out gigging all the time and were very accepting of all musical styles .

They were more the academics that if you bent a string , you were somewhere between Satan and yeah , you were slapped . Yeah , exactly , and it was like , unless you played like a 175 with flat wound strings and had a polytone amp , you were a dick , you know . Right yeah exactly , and so I was kind of .

It wasn't until like a while later that I actually wanted to learn jazz and learn more standards .

And then one day I know exactly where I was the corner of Laurel Canyon and Riverside Drive . I'm driving in my little white station wagon and I'm flipping through the radio station and this Joe Walsh solo comes on . It was in an Eagles tune called those Shoes . Oh yeah , that one that goes Wow , wow , boat , boat . Anyway , his solo .

On that I had to pull the car over because I just went . My God , man , the state of rock guitar has come so far since I left off with early Aerosmith and stuff and I think this is amazing .

And it felt to me like the heavens open and a beam of light shone upon me that says you must learn everything you dig , whether it's Albert Lee or Albert Collins or Albert King or , uh , bb King or Alvin Lee . I mean I dig , I if . If you dig it , you must learn it , and it , it . It brought me full circle to my youth , to where I wanted to know .

You know , all the Dwayne Allman stuff . You know , I wanted to , I just wanted to , I just wanted to , I just wanted to have . If I , if I dug it and I enjoyed it because it made me wake up and go , man , I can play 26 choruses on Stella by Starlight , which is cool , but it's really not the music of my people , you know .

I mean , I love Chet Atkins . What am I doing here , you know ? So I had a real revelation that happened like in an instant to where I went home and said , all right , I'm done with jazz gigs . And that's when the whole studio world opened up to me . I began to , and a perfect example was you know , we're talking about specialists , right ?

I got a call to play on this record and the guy says country record , I just need you to bring a telecaster and one of your fender amps . And I said , well , you sure it's going to remain country . Should I maybe have my cartage deliver my trunk or whatever ? And he goes yeah , go ahead and throw that in .

So I get there , and there's another guy there with a telecaster , fender amp , a cowboy hat , the yokes on the shirt , the belt buckle and the boots , right . So the tune starts going and he's playing all the right Tele country stuff and the guy goes can it rock a little bit more ? This is a little bit too old-fashioned .

So I just put my Tele down and got a Strat and put a little hair on it and he goes yeah , that's the direction , and let's even more . Pretty soon it was les paul with crunch chords and we cut , we cut . You know a pretty rockin version , you know , like that you might hear on a keith urban record or something , right , so the next day .

So they called me back for tomorrow , next day , the guy with a hat gone . It's because he was a specialist and that's all he could do , right , you know ? So that that you know you're a player that can play all styles of music . You can play country and blues and rock and all kinds of stuff , and that's why you , you make a living .

You know , if you are just , you know who's , there's guys that you know really think they're going to be the next Stevie Ray Vaughan . But man , that guy is once in a generation , right , you know , once in a lifetime we're not going to see another Stevie Ray Vaughan come out of the woodwork . I don't think . Right , you know there hasn't been one yet .

That is a fact . He's been gone a while , he's been gone a while .

Anyone who was older than I was that had any kind of influence on me . They said would you please persuade him not to do this for a living ? So I had to talk to you .

My dad , you know , had instilled in me , like , well , if you're going to do this thing , you better be the best that you possibly can , or else you're going to be working at a car wash . Not that there's anything wrong with working at a car wash , but , um know , and so I think that was one of the reasons . I mean I had the . But to your point

earlier . It's like everything I dug I wanted to learn and there was a . Everything led somewhere .

You know it's like if I I really loved , you know , creamier or Clapton and Hendrix , and then I read well , who is Albert , who is this Albert King guy and who's this Albert King guy , and who's Muddy Waters and who's BB King and who's Otis Rush , and so I got into that .

And then , by the same token , I would see oh well , there's George Benson and Grant Green , and Charlie . Christian and Wes McGarrett , okay . And then when I heard Albert Lee playing with Eric Clapton , on that Just One Night live record .

So so the ego takes over and it's like I gotta know that if I dig it , of course , right , exactly . So um , there's some guys that are gonna be like , like my buddy , guthrie Govan . I've done a bunch of . That guy has tapping down to a level that cause I gave up on it in the eighties .

I went , you know , I don't really like the sound and I don't really like the melodic thing that it does . It's basically calisthenic thing . He does it so well . I thought , man , I should get into that again . And then I tried it and I went nah , I'm the same way , you know , it's like yeah , the the tapping thing .

With the tapping , yeah , you can get some different cool intervals and you can do things that you can't do with one hand , but it doesn't have the same emotive quality as that greasier shit . You know ? Yeah , exactly yeah .

You know , it's so amazing how there's just a universe of different possibilities . Totally , yeah , you know so . So that's one of the that's one of the things . Now , I know some incredible piano players and there's , you know , in the studio . I'll go up to one of them .

Go , just play me a G chord , bam , and this guy will sound completely different than that guy on the same piano . So , but it's a lot more of a subtle thing . You know , like , like , there's a Nashville guy actually he's retired now a guy named John Hobbs .

I used to do a ton of sessions in LA with him and , uh , you know he was tight with Brent Mason and all those guys and produced a lot . His G chord sounded completely different than my buddy Jim Cox or Mike Langer , some of the studio guys out here . It was really , really a revelation .

Now , on guitar , you know the difference between your touch and my touch is huge to tell the difference , you know . But piano is another world , man , another thing . Anyway , yeah .

Okay , and Albert and I are doing it this year , and then , believe it or not , my band has been offered to play a festival at CERN . Oh nice , you know the Large Hadron Collider .

So but , um , yeah , there's , there's a club down south , the belly up , we're gonna do that , and you know just a handful of things . And then I always do the the bakersfield fundraiser . This year my special guest is elliot easton .

And one year we did the O2 arena , but many of the tours we just did five days and one of the early tours that was the Prince's Trust concert .

You've done all this homework right . So I said well , I learned rhythm too . Anyway , she kind of moves on . He comes along , and I had read in the London Times that his 50th birthday they had baked him a sheet cake in Houston , texas , the size of a basketball court , a gigantic cake .

And you know , I know I'm not supposed to say anything or reach to him or anything , but you know , he , he , he's , he's asked me how I'm doing or whatever , and I go . I just have one question what was it like with that giant sheet cake ?

So he puts on this Cockney accent and goes well , I wanted to put on me knickers and wait out into the middle of it , you know . And I go oh man , with the frosting between your toes , and you know that'd be so cool . He kind of had a little humor , hang right .

So , then the doors open and we go into these royal cocktail lounge room and we're all giving champagne and he comes to me and he's a close talker . He's like in my face , right . But I'm kind of leaning back and I noticed that david gilmore is here , roger daltrey's here , tina turner's here , brian adams is here .

That's all the spotters I could get , right , right , and he's talking to me and I'm thinking to myself you may be the future king of England , but that guy's in the who . I got to lose this guy , you know . So I grabbed our champagne , I go , I'll get us some more , and I went and put them down and went over and talked to Daltrey for a while .

It was really funny , really good that is humorous .

And he goes well , we'll have to work out your work pyramid , cause this was going to be the last tour . The last gigs on the tour Got it and work permit ended right , so they couldn't get it together . Oh , couldn't get it

together . I did make one rehearsal , you know , which was really fun , playing those tunes with him . Oh yeah , yeah . He kind of was phoning it in on the rehearsal , not really going for it , but I still . It was like you're the guy that sang substitute .

Yeah , that's so wild , I know , man , what a life absolutely lately I've been playing with this guy with stewart copeland , oh cool , yeah , doing his thing called police deranged for orchestra , cool , which he's .

Uh , he's a great writer , you know , and he's taken all the old police outtakes and you know things that they taped over and everything and he's put together kind of orchestral versions of the tunes , with me on guitar , armand Sabuleka on bass and him on drums and three female vocalists . Wow , it's really cool , it's really fun .

I've only done it about four or five times and I I'm hoping he calls again from from you know his management calls , because you can really tell , like , where the good symphonies are , like seattle killer , you know , quebec city , canada killers and some of the other , some of the other towns .

Yeah , these guys are not that good , you know , interesting , yeah , so anyway , but he's a hang , he's a real hang with a lot of stories .

So they put a microphone , stand in front of me and I told , I told the road manager , hey man , I don't do any of the vocals . And he goes , he goes , he goes , just do this , yo , yo , yo yo , and you won't have to wear a mask . So I go , you're on my team . Not that I wouldn't do it .

If you've got to do it , you've got to do it , that's right I understand , the gig was outside so we didn't have to worry about it , but that guy was like gunning for me Anyway .

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