Mas Palermo sits down at the Willie booth Part 1

Hey, it's Bob Pickett. We are on our way to the legendary Broken Spoken. Come on, let's get out the truck and head inside.

And damn you're round of it.

Come on, it's going side. Getting ready for another tale from the Broken Spoke? Get ready for some more tales. Tales from the Broken Spoke. Bob Pickett, Monty Warden Send at the Willie Nilson Booth B two at the Broken Spoken Mony. I'm going to have you introduce her guests, because you guys are like brothers. I mean, just watching you guys banner back and forth before we hit the record buttons.

You know I had never met this man come till this morning.

Come on, No.

One of my dearest friends of thirty five years, great record producer, hit songwriter, hell of a drummer, hell of a drummer, amazing player, just amazing arrangement. This is mos Palermo, one of my dear friends.

Most you agree with that intro. I think he forgot a few things.

But you know what was so cool is is I'll say this, uh, and you were talking about this for moscot here virtually no on, no online presence of any kind, like if you google him, you will find much.

It's a race. What is that?

You know, I'm just not I have had I have the glasses I see behind the drums, as Moni Morden says, you know, no one loves the spotlight more than mos Pelermo.

Right, so it's really you know, I like to be in the background. Well, let me tell you you're moving to the foreground right now.

And that's what's so cool because Moss has been you know, instrumental literally uh and in my success and in the success of Dangerous Few. He produced both our records and our current album, Jackpot is on the charts right now. But he uh, instrumental in the early career Charlie Robinson and a lot of people don't know that Moss was Charlie's very first drummer and is really responsible for the launching of Kelly Willis's career, and virtually no one knows

Working the door, doing some chapel gigs. I think here and there right right.

And so it's just interesting where you particularly with someone like Charlie, who's you know, we missed so much and who's beloved, and Kelly, who has such an amazing career and one of the best voices. And somebody that people are probably wholly unaware that who has been certainly not responsible for their talent, but there's responsible for people hearing them. Is Mos Palermo.

How did you guys first meet? That's one thing you didn't mention. Well, oh wait, okay, what kind of story is this? Well, and you had to be a young kid, but I just moved to Austin.

He was in nineteen twenties, probably eighty six or eighties. So yeah, so I'm nineteen.

Pre wagoneer days and early early wagoneers.

Yeah, so take it away.

You know a friend of mine, we were living in DC at the time, a friend of mine, Sean Mensher, had moved down here. That's all, as well as the band the Neptunes. I don't know if you remember, Yeah, Pete, Pete Gordon.

And the in Neptunes is what we called them.

I did not.

I didn't, hey, guys. So, so I came down and visited my friend Shawn. I was working for fedexit time and trying to figure out how do I get to Austin because that's where I wanted to be, you know, the Roy Brothers and all the music that I love.

And this is the late eighties, early nineties, this is yeah eighties probably.

Uh.

So I came down here and visited and uh and the Wagoneers were playing at what was it called then Emo's something Ravens Raven's garage, right, yeah, Roger, Yeah yeah, Roger. So Sean brought me out there and he's like, man, you got to meet these guys. They're great, They're nice, they're the nicest guys in the world.

The singer in particular, the nicest guy.

I told money all about you. He wants to meet you, blah blah.

So they they're playing their set, they take a break, they're walking down and Sean stands up and stops mony goes, hey, this is Moss pl Aermo And I said, hey, man, nice to meet you.

Michaels, Hey, nice to meet you. And he walked off and that was it.

Wow Sonny, so he goes he goes, wow, that that's the nicest guy in the world. But what Sean failed to recognize was immediately after we got off stage, I think it was a three a three set gig. So after this the first break, the drummer and I proceeded to have one of the biggest fights we ever had in our lives. And this guy, you know, he's just like looked like a lerch or Herman Monster. That's all this guy in the room, and and he's just I'm just writing his faces like a little chi wabba. I'm

I think you know you're looking for a new drummer.

After that, Oh man, I should have but uh, anyway, so like I think you were there again with Sean. Might have been Pete Gordon and uh, and I just went hey man, and then and then I said I've heard a lot about you, and and then Moss went very kind of I'm not gonna give you anything because we met the other night at Ravens, like, oh yeah, hey man. So from that our friendship was born and uh and and we just hit it off and and uh and it was really cool because the Wagoners were

Yeah, tell us what happened.

So when I came down and I met you know again Wagoneers, this band that's our age that are like a talk of the town and stuff, and we're like, well, this is the place we need to be right up there. We were kind of entrenched in the Rocket. There was a big rockabilly scene in the DC area, so all our mentors were these old rockabilly guys and we kind of it was mainly Kelly and I were talking about, well,

We're going to go down there. You know.

It was great and they're like, oh, we're going down there, let's go. So all of a sudden it was all of us moving down here, which lasted six months.

Maybe is that it was the name of the band again, Kelly and the Fireballs.

Great band name, yeah, that had been a couple other band's band name fifteen.

Lewis, the Fairy Day Fireball right right.

Well, and also the Fireballs from Clovis.

I'm thinking watch also at the same time.

But what I remember was like Moss was a great drummer, like in a very I don't know how to say it, just a very lyrical drummer, because he's a songwriter and like everybody else, probably in the face of the earth. One note of hearing Kelly's voice, Kelly was nineteen eighteen then I guess she was eighteen, right, that'd be about right, eighteen or nineteen uh and.

Just yeah, so yeah, nineteen Yeah.

Her voice was was as there then as it is today. I mean, she's certainly more refined and you know all that, and much more mature, but just that voice just I don't know, it was like hearing Patsy Climb for the first time, or Emmy new Harris or something, but I equate it to that where you just go, oh, I'm hearing a voice I'm gonna hear for the rest of my life. And so just immediately you knew, okay that

They're not polished or what.

No, they just didn't have They just you know, it's talents derived from God. And sometimes the day you're born, you get blessed and sometimes you don't.

You know, were you the leader of the band, Yeah, okay.

Yeah, that was kind of I was just starting to write. But more than that, I just kind of had the vision of what we were we should be doing, and that's kind of what happened too. We came down here, you know again, the Wagoneers is kind of you know, country than what we were used to, and we started we were thinking, you know, Kelly was especially Kelly was like, I want to go more in that direction, and the other guys were like, well, we want to go more.

Then I quit.

She walked out and I was sitting there with my high school buddies and the band had just broken up. Wow, six months after being six months after being in Austin, and by that time we'd already Another huge influence on us was Evan Johns, who had moved down here. He was playing with the Liverroy Brothers at the time. He was also represented by Carlin Major, and he walked our demo over to her office. So we'd already met with Carlin. She'd already gave us some tips on what we should be working on.

One of them was new band. One of them was a new band.

She told me what she said she said, and Carlin talked like I've always said, if the penguin from Batman had and a chick, it would sound like Carling. So she said, she said, honey, you're you're You're such a sweetheart. I'm not going Okay, what is it okay, here we go. You need to tell those guys they're terrible. Well I'm in another bed. No, I'm not gonna do that. No. Yeah, they could hear it from you. No one wants to hear that, and nobody can hear that. They'll just they'll

Yeah.

And at the time, Monnie's drummer was playing with actor David Keith, who just made this horrible movie down who had been kidnapped or so anyways, Uh so I started playing with him, like I read at that same time as I think I was already playing with him when the band broke up. But that was you know, lucrative at the time and and busy, and you know, who doesn't want to have actor David Keith come play their clubs so he could go wherever he wanted.

You know.

We get moving up to Memphis and did the Elvis Memorials show with the big you know, just because he asked. You know, so uh that that worked out and kind of transitioning me from being a working stiff.

So wait a minute, you worked with with with Keith? Oh yeah, so you're part of the band. What's he doing now, He's not you never hear from the guy.

No, he's he doesn't have an online presence. Uh. Our bass player at the time, Benny Guardle of Bennie, Uh, talked to him a little while ago. So he's still around.

He just well, I was sitting right, he was in the role right in front of me, same timeframe, late eighties. Ye, John Mellencamp at the Iarwind Center. Oh yeah, and David was standing up man, he was enjoying the show. And yeah, he was in town. He was music, he loved.

Music and a great cat thing.

Was an officer and gentleman. That yeah, yeah, that's the way.

Yeah.

When I tried to tell to people who he is and I mentioned a few things, Everyone's like what and I go.

The guy him, Oh yeah, So I mean he'd also done fire Starter, Great and Hell, which is just kind of mad. But anyway, so what that's that's interesting. Yeah.

So those guys were going on the road. So that's kind of how I backed into that gig. Tom said, hey, you should have this guy playing That was Michael Ramos was playing.

Keys, and uh who was playing guitar?

Wouldn't Murray?

No, Murray, Yeah, took over, but it was Johnny X was guitar first. That's who we had the video. He rented out the A c L studio and produced his own A c L show.

Yeah right, yeah, I had a song on that.

Yes, yeah, link Line and Sacred Well you had a song on his album.

Well he's project. Yeah, I forgot about that.

You haven't seen the check for it lately.

It's on the ever Benny puts all that. He's like, he's taken clips from that and put that's right, you can find your song.

But like I remember, like when the Wagoneers got signed, uh and we were you know, like mass said we were, we were a buzz band. It was just like absolutely uh A and M Records very first country act since Graham Parsons and before that They're Want and only country act had been Whalen. So it was a it was a big deal. And and so all of a sudden, what we discovered was virtually every A and R department descended on Austin to go sign another you know, the

The first two albums? Really yeah, yeah, Uh, well it's funny.

When we moved down here, I probably had only two songs that I had written that we were doing right, of course, the first batch of songs that you write that are never get out of the incubator.

But uh, they had they had the thing in them though exactly.

Yeah, something I go, oh, that's what I need to do. Yeah, So.

I came down, Like the first song I wrote down here was when I was sleeping on the Neptunes floor trying to find a place to live, and I wrote River of Love, which ended up being.

On Yeah, I remember that song certainly, Yeah, on.

Kelly's first record. So I think you know, we got signed within I think a year sixteen months of being here or something like that. Uh, so by that time I had written I guess I wrote half the six six songs that were on that first record, and you had two cuts.

To on the first and Paul Kennerley, I think that's the album.

That's the album. Yeah, So it was, uh, the showcase was at the Continental Club to that album.

I remember, yes, yes, in fact, the Continental Club is we were playing the Continental Club one night and Nancy Griffin showed up. Uh.

And back then there was a.

Payphone in the corner of the club, okay, and we were on stage and she picked with the phone. She called Tony Brown at mc A and she said, you got to hear this, and she held up the phone.

So that's how Tony got involved. That's how that's how Tony first got involved.

Yeah, and then he came down and saw played the home wall and he walked up to Kelly and said, well, I'm either going to sign you or marry you.

And man, and.

Did you know that he that Tony had picked with Elvis at that time?

That time, I knew he had been working with all the stuff that I liked that was coming out.

Of Nashville, right, yeah, most, but you didn't know he'd picked.

I had no idea he'd played with Elvis at that time. I bet he had some great stories for you, didn't he did, He didn't share any with us right now, it's no I can share that's so.

Great the best stories about Elvis. You go, am I going to stop the microphone? Oh, I can't tell this story.

So the pay phone. Interesting. Yeah, with the late great Nancy Griffith. Wow, Mass never knew that story at all.

And I'll just say this about about Nancy and about really Austin particularly at the time, is she's on MCA. She's a chick singer on mc A and still and and and you would think they would go, oh, I'm gonna never tell the hit of my label about another

So you were immediately accepted here in Austin.

Yeah, and we did not trust these people, and yeah, we got here, but he was so nice and we're like, what do these people want from us?

To borrow money?

Yeah, we weren't used to that kind of camaraderie up there. It was you know, every man from So.

The first time you moved in here, how long did it take for you to get comfortable with? Very very quick.

I mean once we figured out there's no ulterium. This is the way the people are in the music scene. The music cats were all pulling forth, like he said, wagoneers, find found our bass player, you know, Nancy Griffin called Tony Brown. It was just the community was you know, Evan John's handed our demo tape to Carl and it was everybody was sticking out their hands say and hey, what can I do for you?

You know honestly, and it's like be like Kelly needed some gigs, Well great, should just open up every wagon eear show. I mean she probably opened thirty wagon ears show or something road trip yeah up north, And it was just h and really that was I think that was like our first East Coast run where every show was sold out and was like, oh, you know, and it's just but it's just wild that everybody just just

Yeah, I think it's possible. You just got to get it back down here. Enjoying the conversation so far. Oh, there's a lot more to go. Part two of our conversation next week on Tales from the Broken Spoking. Listen tell you friends about the podcast. I'll love it too.

Tales from the Broken Spoke is recorded live at The Broken Spoke in Austin, Texas, hosted by Country Radio Hall of Fame broadcaster Bog Pickett and Monty Warden, recorded mixed down and produced by Mike Rivera