SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to How's Your Stool, the show where we pull up a stool and find out if things are really going not just the gig, not just the music, but what's happening when the apps and the lights get turned off. Because if you ask a musician how they're doing, you know one answer to the objective duel might get through. I'm your host, Dave Randall, and today I'm sitting down with this name Jeff's Mollywood. So let's get a duel sample. Well, here I am today, sitting down with Mr. Jeff's Mollywood. Jeff, thank you for coming out today. You're very welcome, Dave. Good morning. Cheers. Um, you've we've talked about what we're gonna do and what we're gonna talk about. So um uh just if you have any questions or anything, just let me know. Like a job application, right? What are your strengths? That one was easy. What are your weaknesses? That's the hard question. It's a long list. You mean moral or um all right. Well, um i it it's often the case with the people I have in. I've known who they are for many years, but I don't know much about more than than that. So um why don't you start telling us about you and w you know where you're from and all that kind of stuff, and and then we'll move into like, you know, how you got inspired to play music and be a musician.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

So yeah, I was uh born uh and raised in Santana Bellevue, uh and I still live in my childhood home. Uh and moved out for several years while I was uh uh touring and I was married uh the first time. And uh but I moved back uh pretty quickly. I didn't l I lived for a short time in Manhattan and I lived for a short time in Kirkland and I didn't uh I liked it, but I I think you can kinda take the boy out of the small town, but you can't take the small town out of the boy. So when I went back, you know, I I had actually owned a condo for a while after my uh divorce and I didn't like it and the polit politics changed and I lost value on the condo. So I was I went grumbling home to my mom's house for dinner one time, and I my mom says, You know, what's wrong with you? And I said, Well, I hate where I live. And I so my mom says to me, Well, why don't you come back and and live here? So I said to her, literally, like the words came out of my mouth like an explosion. God damn it, mom, I'm a freaking rock star. So she she says, she pulls one of these, she goes, Oh, oh, excuse me, Mr. Big Shot Rockstar. And I thought, ah, Jesus, what I you know, when you watch one of those uh Vietnam War movies and the guy steps on a landmine, you hear the clicking sound? That's how I felt. There was just no right answer. Oh shit. So, you know, it was kind of an it's an older house in St. Anne's that had been made into a kind of a duplex style, but it's a house. And uh so I said, Well, okay, mom, you know, it's I I could have used the hell because I didn't really have anywhere to live. I was just touring constantly, and the condo was just kind of a flop house. And so I said, Okay, well, how much would you charge me to live here? You know, and she says, Well, what did your uncle Simon charge us when we moved in? But this is like in 1970, you know. I said, Well, 90 bucks a month, and she said, Okay, 90. So I said, Oh no, what time can I move in? So, and I still live there. So I I didn't really leave the building for very long. Uh and I'm I'm still there, and I we fixed it up with my second wife of 35 years now. In case your the listeners think, oh boy, Jeff's changing wives an awful lot. No, no, so it's yeah, I'm still there, and that's uh where I'm gonna stay for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Well, St. Anne's is a great little town. If you can get past the college kids, uh it's uh I love them.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Uh you know what? We have two high schools, the CJEP and uh McGill University, and uh I'm one of the towns folks and there's a lot of us who just think that uh the kids bring vitality. I mean they they're I like kids. They can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but they're just making noise, they're blowing off steam. Yeah, I mean we were all young ones. Yes, we were. And I was one of the ones blowing off steam, so I can't really blame them, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Which makes me think of the first time I ever saw you play was 1978, John Abbott Beer Bash in the Centennial Center, yeah, upstairs, and uh yeah, somebody said that this Jeff Smallwood's band playing. I don't know who's Jeff Smallwood, and they go, Well, just have a listen. I'm like, You guys were doing um sort of prog more progressive rock than just your standard rock and roll. Like, remember you you were doing like foreigner Kansas sticks, and it's like, oh shit, that's top shelf stuff.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Yeah, we we were uh we all had gone through the same music program, and part of the part of the uh curriculum in that program was it was a high school program, and but this teacher was a real overachiever, his name was Ted West, and part of his curriculum was that the more senior you became in the band, we had a junior band, an intermediate, and a senior. There were concert bands, you know, and then he had a stage band one year it was called a jazz band. And but in order the higher up you got in school, you had to learn other instruments, so you had to learn to double. Sure. So and then you had to join the junior band as a senior and play your double instrument. So I played the Alto Sacks um uh you know in the junior band while I was a senior playing flute.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

That's a great idea. That you could well, I mean, I know uh uh if you go onto a university program, you usually audition on one instrument, but uh you you uh you have to cover them all and uh you know, uh learn all different the different modalities of the different instruments.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Uh yeah, that really helped me out in in I mean I was always fascinated by the different sounds that instruments made, even as a kid before you know I knew what an instrument was. Uh and it became uh uh kind of a staple of how I earned my living to be a multi-instrumentalist made you quite a valuable band member. And if you could sing, it was then it was like a little bag of gold that you could tote around with you, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Well, uh going back to to to your early age, like when did you what did you start playing first? I started and what inspired you to want to be a player and not just a listener.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

When I was a kid, uh I was uh I had asthma. Uh I was a kind of a scrawny kid. My brothers were I had two older brothers and they were these big robust athletic types. And my my dad was an amputee uh veteran from World War II, so he was at home a lot, and I had to stay home from school a lot because of my asthma. And my dad had brought me to the the doctor one day, and the doctor, of course, in sands was across the street. So I went over to Dr. Hackney's office, and Dr. Hackney says to my dad, uh, you know, Leonard, uh, you ought to boy that buy that boy a trumpet, you know, and work out his lungs a bit. And my father said, Well, how much does a trumpet cost? Yes, really. And and and Dr. Hackney said, I don't know, a hundred bucks maybe. And my dad said, Is there anything cheaper? So how about a kazoo? Well, it turned out really well because i uh when I was growing up, uh the two things that they you had to do as part of your curriculum in grade school was you had gym every day and music. And so the music program was recorders. And I uh so a recorder cost I think it was a buck fifty nine or two fifty-nine, something like that, you know, plastic uh alloys, I think it was the name of the instrument. We so everybody had the same thing, and we had a teacher named uh Andreas Kutmanis. And you might know that name. He was quite a uh um I I I don't maybe popular is not the right word. He was quite well-known uh music teacher on the West Island. And he uh he recognized uh certain talents in certain kids, like not all kids were gonna be good at math or good at gym or good at I mean, I wasn't very good at gym, so thank God I was good at something else. And it started there, and I recall you know, I would come home or I'd be at home, and my dad had a radio, uh, an old uh RCA, it was uh bakelite, brown with a gold dial. I've come to know that it was model X 551. And if anybody out there listening owns one, I would love to have it. And my dad, he he, you know, he's in his wheelchair, and one day he saw me kind of wheezing sitting around in the kitchen, and he said, Jeffrey, turn the radio around and reach in the back, but be careful. So I thought, okay, I turned it around and it's tubes, right? And it was hot. Yeah. And he had a pair of needle-nosed pliers back there, and I thought, even as a kid, I thought, why would you keep your tools in a radio? And he says, Okay, now reach in the front, and there was a hole there in the middle of the dial that I I thought was just a hole. And he said, Now reach in there and grab with the needle-nose pliers and turn. And this is the first time I'd ever heard music come out of that thing, because it all it did was talk. It all day. My dad had taken off taken off the knob, so we couldn't change the channels. What a devious Yeah, and he uh I and then music came out of it, and then he said, Turn it again, and then different music and different, and it was at and I re remember the moment when all of a sudden I heard, wait a minute, what is that sound? What what's and it wasn't some exotic, you know, ood or or uh sitar. These were just guitars and and pianos and violins coming out of the radio. And it to this day, when I do solo shows, I pick the repertoire from those songs that I heard in the first year of that radio. My dad died that year, of course. So so that's where it started. And this Mr. Goodmanis uh pretty soon zeroed in on five kids who were I don't want to use the word gifted, but they were quite able at playing this recorder. So he ended up getting uh well, I don't know where he got the money, but he he he got a bass recorder, uh two tenors and a soprano, a s uh sopranino recorder, and he said, Okay, Jeff, you're gonna play the sopranino now. And we have two soprano players, two tenor players, and a bass player. And now we had a recorder group. So he would teach all the other kids the regular stuff, and then he would teach this group all the Baroque stuff, and it was there that it started. And and to this day, I still play the recorder. Uh, I've used them on several albums. So that's a very long-winded answer to where it started.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Hey, the stories are great. Um, and uh what kind of music outside of your your uh studies, what kind of music were you listening to?

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Well, it was pretty quick. Um once I was able to develop a taste in music, not just the stuff that came off the radio, but I I started listening to um I guess I was fascinated more with the vocals, so it was a lot of uh Loggins and Messina, um, James Taylor, uh uh Crosby Stills Nash and Young. Yeah, Crosby Steels, Nash, and Young. And and it was I discovered in time it was all vocal harmonies that I was really interested in. And that in the end, that's what really sells a record. It's not kind of the guitar solo unless it's Eddie Van Halen. Then then you know a virtuoso. Yes, then a guitar solo can sell an album. But and it stayed that way. Uh so it's you know, then I got a little more sophisticated, you know, Manhattan Transfer and all these kind of things that were based on vocals. And part of that music program once I got to high school was that you had to sing in the choir. And this wasn't just any old choir, it was four parts. So you had basses, tenors, altos, and sopranos. Okay, and you sang in the choir. And if you wanted to get a mark in music, you had to sing in the choir. It wasn't like optional. And then if you wanted to get a really high mark in music, you had to sing in the madrigal singers. Oh my. So there was this What school was this? McDonnell High School. Mack High, really? Yeah, it was really a very uh demanding music program. Advanced music program. Yeah, and and a lot of guys, I mean uh um a lot of uh Rhonda Smith, bass player with uh came out of Mack High.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Yeah. Well, I was telling you before about this guy, Evan Smith, who recruited me.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

That's her brother.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

That's her brother, of course.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

And her brother Chris ended up teaching at me at uh is it to Vanier?

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Uh so they were a lot of uh Chris Savage came out of that program. I came out of that program, so a lot of uh, you know, well-known musicians came from that program. Now, granted, today, I mean he was a knuckle rapper, right? You couldn't I I don't think his teaching methods would fly today. He was uh very demanding and uh No snowflakes allowed. Well, that was kind of without saying the words, that's how it worked out. And so there was a lot of kind of fodder that came out of there with un uns unhappy students who just I suppose if you didn't uh fit into the mold and you weren't an overachiever, that you could feel a little, you know, singled out uh, you know, as not being treated preferentially and whatnot. But I'm I was one of those overachieving kids, so I kind of and I guess at the time when you were learning to play an instrument, if you have any kind of desire, you also have to learn your ego, how to control that machine too. And I suppose in high school your ego and and this overachieving side of you would run the show. And so I refused personally to be looked at and said, Well, you didn't get ninety-nine or a hundred on that test, and the hell I didn't. I'll do the test again. And he liked that. He liked that. And by the time some of us left high school, we were ready to play in in professional bands. Now maybe not bands that were playing the forum, but still we could function as working musicians, and uh, I did.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

So it was great. And and and what was your first application of that outside of school? So you've you've graduated high school. I was still in school.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Oh yeah, he had a band, uh I don't know what to call it, like a society band made up of uh uh two trombones, a couple of trumpets, uh three, four saxes, and a rhythm section. And he would pick his best musicians to play in that band. He paid us, I think, 75 bucks a night, and we would play the Whitlock Golf and Country Club, or you know, we played these kind of society gigs. I mean, he was getting a smoking deal, he was getting a lot of cheap labor, but we were working musicians. Right. And in high school I started a couple of bands, and the band that you talked about earlier that at the Centennial Center, we were in high school then. Uh huh. We weren't out of high school yet, so we were playing all that repertoire as high school kids.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yeah, it's I remember it struck me, you guys seemed really young for we were the uh quality of the music that you were playing. Because I mean I had been I was playing music by that time, but nah, no, I didn't take I didn't have lessons. It was uh strictly hammered out in the basement trying to figure it out on your own kind of affair. Uh so I recognized immediately when I heard your band that I was like, wow, like how do you get to that level?

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Like, and they're kids, really. Well, it's it's uh exposure, and it was the the fact that you all of us sit in the basement. I mean, we're literally in a basement now, and before I came here, I literally came out of a basement. So that's where we all learn to play.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Um, but the example we had every day we went to school, it wasn't just something you you hashed out in the basement wondering, gee, is this how it goes? We were being taught how it goes. Right. And we learned to sing in four-part harmony, and I sang in church choirs since the time I was eight or nine as well. So this the kind of spoon feeding uh uh and you know, musical education was all around us. Right. So to us, if you were s had a rock band, not one guy just sang, everybody sang. And if you couldn't, and that that followed me all through my career when I eventually became band leader for bands like Rock Was In, when I b became that band leader, I kind of interviewed the present band members and I said, Who can play more than one instrument? Raise your hands. And I think four out of six guys raised their hands and I said to the two, Thanks guys, but I only keep multi-instrumentalists unless you're the drummer or a pedal steel player. Those are the only people who can get away with playing just one instrument. And then I said, Of the four remaining guys, I looked at them and then they thought, Oh shit, what's gonna happen now? And I said, Who can sing? Three or four raised their hands and I said, Guess what? You either learn to sing, you don't have to sing well, you just have to learn to sing so that we can use your voice like glue. Because don't forget, I mean, uh, when I mentioned those earlier influences, the Eagles were like maybe the biggest one. And those boys can sing, and they're they're not all good singers. Yeah, you know, they do great harmony. There you go. So you need a couple of good singers and some glue in there. So that's uh that's how it worked. We with that sophistication actually came from an environment in a high school music program. You know, it wasn't we didn't dream it up, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

It's funny you talk about uh uh singing being important, and uh I was mentioning before the band I played in in the 80s being a 50s and 60s band. Um so the music wasn't terribly inspiring for me at the time, but our keyboard player Norm he he arranged all the vocals. He he just had a knack for it. He could chart out, you know, 50s and 60s, it's all four-part harmony. Yeah, absolutely. And to the extent we ended up doing um uh the song Come Go With Me, uh A cappella, because that was our that was our song, uh our rehear a warm-up song in the in the dressing room. Um, we said, Oh, fuck the instruments, it sounds better. But that, so as as I was saying, uh, who wanted to go see a 50s and 60s band in the 80s during you know the new wave punk, you know, music was all over the place. But people did actually, as it turned out, a little unbeknownst to me. So it also taught me a lesson never never judge it until you give it a try.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

I played in a 50s and 60s band at the same time, yeah. Very early 80s.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Yeah, there was another popular one. Sorry, I just you I couldn't remember it before Jet Black, wasn't it? Johnny Jet Black and the Comeback was their original name.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Yeah, and then they just changed it to Johnny Jetblack, then just Jet Black.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah. And remember, they were senior guys, and us kids, we were their competition.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

Well, Jack Perati was the leader of that band, and Steve Hughes was his keyboard player, and the band that I played in this 50s and 60s band was called The Private Eyes. Steve Hughes was from Johnny Jetblack and the comeback, and he bailed and started his own band, and that's how we ended. You know, we sound like Spinal Tap here, you know, talking about the band names, we became this and they became that.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Well, it's a it's a bit of a tapestry. I was joking around with uh Keith uh the other day, and I was saying, uh I mean it's a lofty mantle, but I I I'm starting to feel like the Alan Lomax of the West Island. You know, he's the documentarian. That's right. And like all these stories, like everyone, there's oh, there's a connection there. I think I'm gonna have to start a board up here. Yeah, red threads. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Like a crime scene, you know.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Who begat who? That's right. But that's more a biblical crime scene. A biblical crime. Well, it take it for what it is. So sorry, um you were playing these society gigs. Yeah. And um and then you you what was the name of the band that played at Centennial Center? Clearing. Clearing. I wouldn't have remembered. In fact, I don't no insult to you, but I don't know why I remembered your name because I didn't see you again for years later. Yeah. And uh and then I heard your name, and I'm like, oh, I remember that guy. I remember that band. I remember chasing a blonde girl around the beer hall while they were playing.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Yeah, on breaks, that's what we did too. Maybe it was the same girl. That's why none of us caught her. We were all changing the set chasing the same one.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Oh, to be young, dumb, and full of cum. Um okay, uh, so uh just when did you know you wanted to play music professionally? And when did you wonder on what maybe that teacher taught you about what you could achieve with music? And when did it dawn on you that I hey I could do this?

SPEAKER_00 21:22

I I don't know. It I don't think I think it was I don't think it was a plan, to be honest with you. I think it was just a wave I caught and I kept catching waves, and and I think the the thing that made it real like a realistic option for me was I I really gravitated towards the acoustic singer-songwriter guys. So the John Denvers of the World, Kenny Loggins, Jim Cena, uh Jim Croce, um you know, these kinds of guys, Bob Dylan. Um, and in my head, remember earlier I mentioned learning to mu to control your ego or to manipulate your Ego. In my mind, I was those guys. Like I wasn't imitating them, I was them. And uh I and I think that the fact that I was w playing this acoustic guitar and I I owned a 12-string acoustic guitar, automatically the people would say, okay, wait a minute, there's this guy who plays the acoustic guitar all day and he doesn't get tired doing it, so let's get him in the band. So it was just kind of a wave that I caught. And the fact that I would constantly try to get better at it, again, because I believed I was those guys. You know, if they weren't actually playing on the record player at the time, then I was the guy. You know, so um and I think that's necessary. You know, you have to when you're learning to cop, you know, getting your chops together, whether you're a drummer or whatever it is, you you cop, you copy everything you hear until you convince yourself I am that guy. And I think that it's part of what creates a good musician to be able to emulate and eventually modify and then create. Uh and so I I don't think I ever really had a conscious plan until I the phone started to ring. As opposed to me saying, I wish we could play the Centennial Center. You know, the phone rang with offers to play the Centennial Center, and I thought, oh god, you know, bands would start calling and saying, Hey, do you want to join this band? And I remember uh the first kind of pro band I got out of that weren't my high school friends, even though we were playing gigs, was a band called the Wax Pedestrians. And it was with Russ Williams and Marla Kaplan was in that band. These girl these people were about five years older than me at the time, and all of a sudden I was just like this kind of still a teenager playing now with kids in their 20s. They weren't kids anymore, they were grown-ups. And we were no longer playing the Centennial Center or the Church Bazaar. We were now playing uh, you know, uh uh these bars downtown, uh the the Peel pub before it was became the student hangout and naps and all these places we were playing now for money and at night, and it was like beer, and it's just like all of a sudden so it I didn't never really had a plan. It just kind of I caught these waves and doors would open, and I either foolishly or brazenly or or unknowingly walked through them. And and it just each one opened another door and another door. And the fact that I go back to all that multi-instrumental training and all the singing that we excuse me had done, it all served now. It it all made me an a more attractive employee, for lack of a better word. And pretty soon I was no longer an employee, but uh an active member uh creating or you know, writing songs and all from copping the John Denvers of the world and Jim Croachies, you know, and Paul Simons of the world. Yeah, you know, so I'd never really had a plan. The only real plan that I developed uh, and it was early on, I I always wanted to make my own records, and I thought, wait a minute, I got a job uh working with Luba at the time, and I was playing with of some pretty good uh traveling bands, and I realized that this is a far more stable way to earn a living, yeah, to play for established artists than to roll the dice on your own career as a singer-songwriter. Because by the time I was old enough to think, oh, I could be like really a singer-songwriter, recording artist, the police showed up. Uh and I don't mean to to arrest me the band, the police. You know, music had changed, uh uh Elvis Costello. Yes, I mean these the the the universe of music expanded so fast for me personally that I thought I can't I'll get buried in this. And if it doesn't work, like if my first album doesn't work, maybe the second one will. Back then you could still have a development deal. Today, forget it. But back then I but I consciously said, if this doesn't work, I'm done. So but there are so many other bands that I could play for. So then I started to really hone my skills as a multi-instrumentalist. I pulled out that alto sax, I started to practice, I pulled out my flute, I started to practice, I worked on my singing chops, I started to play every stringed instruments, but not the violin. I tried that and I sounded like two cats in a bag being swung over my head. So that's the only conscious thing I did was to try to uh perfect this or at least uh expand this multi-instrumental vibe that I had and to concentrate on getting those high, squeaky, you know, squirrely vocal parts, that makes you a real valuable asset at that point. Oh, the guy can sing like a bird and reel up high. We need that. But the rest was just a wave, wave after wave that I kind of hopped on and said, This is great, this is great. Like I wish I had had a plan so I could take credit for it, but I didn't.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

That's fantastic. Yeah. In the 90s, I uh I was out of music by this time and starting a family. And watching, I remember the the the epiphany came to me when uh watching David Letterman late night and you know uh the Paul Schaefer band, and they had musical guests on, or the the the who's who of of popular musicians at the time and pens, and and the Paul Schaefer band would back them up or be a part of the performance. And it struck me as like, wow, that is the gig I would have loved if I could go back and do it all over again, go to school, learn everything you did. But my my my idea, these guys come in in the afternoon, they rehearse, so they play music all day, and then they perform with some of the best of the best, and they, of course, were some of the best of the best, and they get to go home at night, have dinner with their family, and you know, sleep in their own bed, no loading in, loading out, and I was oh that's what being a professional musician is all about.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Yeah, there's a certain uh cross-section of of professional musicians that do that. I recall in around 2011 or twelve, after I'd been in the Rock was in band for about twenty years, and I was his band leader at that point, after you know, the famous story about who can sing and who can play more than one instrument. Um uh we had been touring uh quite a bit. We had gone to Europe, I don't know, maybe t ten, twelve times at that point for months at a time. And I got an offer to do um several TV shows at once. So Star Academy was one of them, uh direct de l'Univar, and I had already been doing a French language uh country show called um uh uh Country Centre Ville with René Martel, who was the hostess and then it changed over to Patrick Normand, who became the host, and it was called uh Pour Lemourde the Country. I had done that show for twenty-six years. Wow. So I g uh at that point, about two thousand eleven, Rock calls up and he says, Yeah, so we're gonna be doing this and we're gonna go on tour here. And I thought, you know, I said to him, you know, Rock, I got this offer to do TV and I I it the money was fantastic. And uh like you said, I was home. I I could rehearse in the day and be home, uh, you know, with my wife and and kids. And uh so he can't the phone was real quiet on the other end. Um I'm we're I'm still in Rock's band, by the way. I came back for the a reunion tour of L35 to celebrate our first million seller and uh uh there was this horrible kind of pregnant silence on the other end, and he says to me, He says, So you'd rather play on TV than play with me? And I said, No, as a matter of fact, I'd much rather play with you. But at that point, we were doing the Americana series of tours, which was really we were covering American quasi-country songs. And and uh I said, if we would go back to playing just your material, I might be inclined to stay, but I'm leaving for the money. That's it was flat out and and rock is a serious professional, always has been. And he he said, Oh, oh, I understand. Like he wasn't angry, I mean he was shocked at first that his own band leader is is leaving, but it wasn't out of animosity or it was just like this opportunity came and he you know, you you have to remember that musicians like me who make a living uh playing on other people's records, when if the million dollar check comes in, that's not my million dollars, that's their million dollars. I got a flat fee for doing the record. So they understand how the money divides up, and they understand clearly that if you have an opportunity, you know, Dave Randall, to go and make, I don't know, two, three hundred thousand dollars, and I'm only gonna pay you fifty. Fifty, yeah. He knows that where the kind of the which side of the bread the butter goes on. Yeah. So he was cool with it, you know. And then over the years, I still, you know, he'd play uh the Bell Center and he'd say, Jeff, I'm doing a bell center, you want to come and do a guest spot? My fans love you. And I'm like, sure. And then and then it came along several a couple of years ago. I was up in Quebec City doing the super francophate as part of the house band, and Rock was one of the guests. And he said, Yeah, Jeff, I got this concept. I want to do the LN 35 tour. And I said, Okay, 35th anniversary. He said, Yeah. And I said, Well, let's all of a sudden I said, let's, you know, let's bill it as the celebration of our first million seller. And he's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that. And then he said, Can you do it? And I said, Well, yes, I can. Um, but I need to tell you something. That if at this point I had already been hired by Salin Jong as a touring member of her band. Now, COVID had struck and her illness took over. So we hadn't toured for a couple of years, and I said, But if they call, yeah, uh you realize that I'm gonna unplug my guitar, drop the jack on the floor, and walk out the door, and you can keep the jack. So he said, understood. But I mean, it was fantastic, and it was only supposed to last, I don't know, three, four months. Two years later, it should have been LN37. And as a matter of fact, it lasted. They have one more show to do on the tour, and I'm gonna miss it.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

So I felt really terrible telling them, you know, I told them about a month and a half ago, I said, guys, I'm gonna miss the the Manowacy show. I I will be in in France at that point. And they're like, oh shoot. And I said, But we made it this far. You know, the danger was I was gonna have to leave after, I don't know, half a dozen shows, but we made it. So nice. Yeah, it was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

That is great. Well, uh, I I completely understand the the um notion of you know basing your career on working with other musicians, and and and you know, it's it's kind of a mature attitude, whether you have by design or not, because as you've probably witnessed, the burden on the vedette, the the the big star, is demanding. And I look at you know, you know, all stars, like from the Beatles to Olivia Rodrigo, and I'm gonna I I don't think I'd want to be the star. I wouldn't either. My my personality uh we talked about ego before. Well, ego is kind of a double-edged sword, it's it's what boosts you up, it's the it's the gets you out there and say, I I'm gonna do this and you're gonna like it and I'm good. But then it also brings the crushing when it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah, when that ego turns on you, yeah, that's painful. I mean, I learned a long time ago. I mean, any any artist who endeavors to publicize their work, whether you're a painter or a comedian or a musician, whatever it is you do, the moment you sell it, you you have to pull that ego out and sharpen that thing so it's a tool. In my case, I d I guess um there's probably a a small cross-section of people who will say, Boy, that guy was an asshole, um, you know, back in the day. And that's when you're learning to control that ego. And maybe control isn't the word, and I I tell people to this day, because every now and then somebody will say, Boy, you must have a big ego to be able to do that. And it's it's huge. However, it's so huge that when I get in the car after the show, I take it off like a suit, put it in the seat beside me, and do up its seat belt and talk to it all the way home. So that by the time I get home, the discussion's over, the ego is, you know, asleep on the Yeah, exactly. And and I think it's if you can, you know, maybe I I don't know that it's a particularly skill that I personally honed, but I think maybe it's the small town kid in me that realizes that wait a sec, I still, up until about three years ago, shoveled the neighbor's driveway. You know, I think if you I don't want to, you know, kind of tout my own hometown values, but I think growing up that way, we didn't have much money when I was growing up, and we were fine. It's just a I don't think my ego or or my friends on the block would have allowed my ego to precede me down the street. I think they would have said, hey asshole, what the Yeah, there's that. What makes you so special and that you can't shovel your own driveway or my my dad's driveway? And I'm like, oh shit. So I think that's the the the trick there, you know.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Well, it's it's uh remarkable for you and fortunate that you were able to tame that dragon, you know, uh because well, it's only in the past what 10 years, generously 20 years, that mental health has become, you know, at the forefront of our society. We recognize it, we acknowledge it. And for performing musicians, especially the stars, it's a it's a it can be a difficult uh landscape to navigate because uh you gotta be out there, you gotta look the part, you gotta, but then am I doing the right thing? The little voices that creep in.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Well, there you besides juggling the career decisions, like the am I doing the right things that you just mentioned, you know, when you you it is a double-edged sword. And if you can't uh I'm skipping around in my train of thought because I really wanted to latch in on what you said. You if you can't control that thing, um it will represent you. And if it represents you, it's no longer the music that represents you. I'd rather be I'd rather that I go to my grave and people say, I didn't really understand exactly what he was talking about all the time, but boy, they there was something about the guy, you know, something agreeable. Uh and I I I I uh an ego is uh it is a tough thing to manage. It really is. And you have to understand that as a performing artist, in like a musician, for instance, now I I've had the huge fortune of since the 1980 eighty-six of doing most of my work off a tour bus or a jet plane with a security detail. You know, my passport is one thing, but all that other stuff, the guitar is a very powerful passport. And people have to realize not uh to say that what we do is any more difficult than what people do, other people do. Uh like I wouldn't want to get in traffic every day to go to an office where I know I'm not gonna have a good day. You're working in the complaints department. Nobody's calling you to to congratulate you, they're calling you to give you shit, even though you didn't manufacture the product. But for us, you get out on stage, and and yeah, sure, the 10 or 15 years that you put in trying to perfect your craft to get to this stage, you go out there, those people paid money, they're screaming and yelling, they're digging it, their dreams are being fed, the ego is inflated to its max at that point. The noise, the yelling, the clapping, the cheering, the crying, the all that stuff, the lights go down, you walk off stage, you get on that bus, and you go from the highest high to the lowest low. All in the span of one day, and usually in the span of about an hour and a half. And once you get off the bus and you go to your hotel room, then it's a complete crash. And you have to realize that that's not one event, it's every day. Up down, up down. Something inside you, like the mercury in a thermometer, has to keep the temperature. And what does that is your ego. When you are crashing, your ego will pull you up. And when you're going over the top, your ego will hold you up. It's just you cannot let the ego represent you.

SPEAKER_03 39:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

So you need that tool, otherwise, that up and down cycle, that's what drives people to kill themselves. Or at least turn to drugs and alcohol. Yes, there's that too.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

And not just for fun, but uh No, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

It's uh I was gonna use the word medicinal, but you fool yourself into thinking it's medicinal, you know.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

My uh my GP doctor once had a uh a meeting with him, and he knew I was a musician, and he says, you know, uh back in the day, Eric Clapton, he was a big star, and he played to sold-out stadiums and and stuff, and I said, uh, yeah, yeah. And he goes, you know, but after a while it it wasn't enough for him, and so he turned to hard drugs and alcohol. And I'm like, dude, I play in a local band, not Eric Clapton. But I get your point, I should cut back on the alcohol.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

So uh that was him trying to convince you to cut back on the drinking?

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Yeah, that was his story, his his analogy to me.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

But yeah, right. I'd kind of miss the there's a little bit of a discrepancy between Eric and the rest of us, but point well taken, you know. Yeah. And it is a pitfall, you know, and I I don't it's not exclusive to to the arts of by any stretch of imagination. The average cop packs away as much alcohol as the average musician. It's unfortunately a simple remedy, as you put it. Absolutely. It is. It's uh you and and by the time you've partaken in enough of it, your I think it's your endomorphins have lost track that the north part of your compass doesn't quite lock in on north anymore, and you don't know exactly what feels good because you've anesthetized what's good. I know in my case, I mean I quit drinking nine years ago. Uh I'm a bit of an imposter, you know, people slap me on the back saying, Congratulations, but the math of it, you you know, from what the doctor told me after I checked out of the hospital, was I'm gonna give you a choice. Uh you should really cut back on your drinking. And I said, Well, do you mean quit? And he said, I do. I do mean quit. And I had been in uh in intensive care for eight or nine days at that point. Like I really it was over-the-top drinking for me. And he says, uh, he says, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna prescribe some Atavan to you.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Oh, wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 42:13

And I said, Yeah, well, why would you do that? And he said, Well, become to keep you calm. And I said, Well, you know, Doctor, I've been here for nine days now. Do I look uncalm to you? And he said, Surprisingly not. He said, You're one of the most calm uh, you know, alcoholics I I've ever seen. We're not drinking. And I said, Okay, here's the thing. Unless you've been putting alcohol in my veins for nine days, have I shown one symptom of withdrawal? And he said, Surprisingly not. And I said, Here's the thing. If you give me Atavan, I'm gonna take it as prescribed, and then one day when I have nothing to do, I'm gonna take two of them and see what that does. Then I'm gonna start chopping them up and dosing for fun. I said, Doctor, I am not an alcoholic, I'm an addict. And that's the bottom line. That's an interesting disc this the distinction there. And he and he says to me, he says, Well, I'm okay, maybe you're right. And I said, I don't think maybe. I I'm I'm not currently licensed to practice, you know, medicine in the province of Quebec, but I think I'm right knowing how I behave. And I said to him, he said, Okay, here's your choices then. I'm gonna give you two choices. You can come but see you, I'm gonna have to see you every six months from now on. And the tests I'm gonna run on you blood work, uh, uh endoscopic uh you know, cameras down your throat to check on all the repair work he had done. He said, You I'm I'm gonna have you come to my office and it's beautiful. And I'm like, Okay, your office is beautiful. Yeah, he says, Oh, I got a scale in there, I got a chair for my patients, there's a an examining table, and there's charts on the wall. I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, he's describing any freaking office. And he said I said, Yes, and he said And the other choice is what? And he says, the emergency room, you already know what that one looks like. And I thought, Oh shit, okay. And he said, I need to tell you something that you're not gonna want to hear. And he says, Most of the people who come in in the condition that you arrived in don't leave here. And and in my kind of naive, because I I see the world in in m in technicolor all the time. Like I'm a dreamer. I said, Oh man, they they have to stay here? He says, No, no, no, no, no. They die here. And I thought, choice number one it is, then doc, I'll see you in your office. It was that easy. I never got twitchy. Uh I I I I quit taking drugs years and years years ago.

SPEAKER_03 44:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:47

But the alcohol was and I and I drank alone. Like it wasn't social. I don't go to bars. I don't like bars. I don't go to parties and they're too loud. I would just drink alone. And this is that's problematic. It definitely is.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Um yeah, I I when when we started out when as young musicians, you know, you get a gig, you go out, you have some beers, and and uh it didn't take very long for me to realize I don't like drinking or being high while I'm performing. I it's it's like driving a car. You you lose motor function, and I realized I can't do the things I wanted to do because I had a few drinks. So it really didn't take long to not drink. Drinking was an afterthing, drinking and smoking was a was an after-gig thing. Um and then uh but it never meant it was never a problem for for me in those days. It was very all very social. Uh it was later after I got out of music and I went into the tech world and um after university, and it was the stresses of that that uh where I found I found um solace in the bottle. And uh, and like you talked, I I you know, I yeah, you go out and just socialize and you have a glass of wine or two or whatever, but I would take I would come down here and do my and drink and do my thing, and I just thought it was the perfect elixir to stir my creative, you know, motivations. Um and yeah, it it was fun, and I do remember it. And then but uh in all honesty, uh I I quit before something serious happened. I quit because I just it was my granddaughter's fifth birthday, and I said, you know what? Yeah, starting tomorrow, like her birthday was the next day. I was like, nope, no more for me.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

Just that yeah, it you in my particular case, like I said, I I don't I'm a bit of an imposter. I don't take any credit for for cleaning up. It's was it's a math. It's a question of math. Yeah. And and and alcoholics and addicts are fantastic mathematicians. They're always uh uh averaging out how much they can take and how much they can drink and still function. Yeah, it's constant. Yeah. And what made me in the kind of the end days of my drinking, I would sit there and calculate how much can I get into me and still get this thing done. And it just became this constant. If I had applied that kind of calculus to everything I did, I would probably be the millionaire I knew I would never be. So I but it was uh it uh it it stopped being fun. It's a calculation, and it was when am I gonna get caught? And it got to the point where I was making a deal with myself. I'd be sitting alone in my studio is similar to yours, you know, there's guitars there, and and I realized as soon as my liver starts to hurt, I'll stop, or as soon as I get a liver spot, I'll stop. But the bottom line of it was what made me start thinking about stopping was that every day was identical. When you're a junkie or an alcoholic or a drug addict or any one of these kind of afflictions that we we have, you your days are identical. You get nothing done. You dog paddle all day convincing yourself, I'll get this done tomorrow. And tomorrow is the same. And man, I spent I don't know how many days that way, surrounded by the tools of my trade and not touching them. Just sitting there, drinking. Yeah. I thought, oh fuck, you this is that's not gonna work.

SPEAKER_01 48:38

My thing would be to uh um bring up uh YouTube or something, and then I just start surfing hole.

SPEAKER_00 48:47

And the more you click with the right hand, the more you're pouring with the left. Exactly. Anyway, I'm done with that. And I I I don't uh like I really congratulate uh the 12-steppers, those guys who who have to go to meetings, not because they're forced to, but because they have to internally, you know, and they have sponsors and they have to help each other, otherwise they fall back into it. Those are the guys I really admire. Like, honestly, between you and I, in the last nine years since I quit drinking, I think it's twice that I've thought, oh man, this is a perfect day for a glass of whiskey. Why? Because I like the sound of the ice cubes in the glass, the sun is shining. It was, and it made me realize this was all ritual because I checked into rehab two years after I was dried out. And I I did it because I guess I wanted to know why. And at first, you know, the this the you know, teacher, the instructor, the monitor says to me, Well, why are you doing this? And I I told her, I just I wanted to find out why I put myself in a position like that. Because there's no trauma in my life. Well, that was fantastic. It was, you know, we didn't have any money when I was growing up, but it didn't matter. I didn't know. I didn't know we didn't have any money until somebody told me. And I was a lot older then, and I didn't give a shit then either. Fantastic part of live growing up on the West Island. Yeah, you know, and I grew up in St. Anne's, it was kind of scruffy, and you know, there was no money there when I was a kid, except unless you lived on Perot or Maple. You know, but the rest of us were just kind of making ends meet. My dad had died when I was nine, you know, right after the radio thing I told him about. Yeah. And so when I got into this kind of group therapy thing, for the first three weeks I thought, ah, these poor people, you know. And there was a cop, there was a judge, there was a couple of old ladies, it was there was a guy covered in tattoos who definitely looked like he was going to prison, and he was. He was gonna go before the judge in a week or something. I looked around and I felt sorry for these people. Oh, I don't I really don't belong here. These are these people are really sick. And then one day, three weeks into it, and I won't go on all day about this, but the the the monitor says, Okay, she had a basket with post- everybody had post-it notes in front of them, blue, all the same color with the same kind of pen. We discussed, I can't remember the topic, we discussed it, and they she said, Okay, write down the one word that you that you feel right now after this, fold it up, put it in the basket, and we'll talk about it after. So we've all folded our blue, you know, post-it notes and put our pens down, distributed the basket around, and somebody pulled out, and the girl across the table pulls out the first one, and she says, Shame. And I thought, oh damn, she got mine. I hope nobody knows it's me, you know. And we talked about it for a couple of minutes and then we passed the basket. And next one, shame. And we and then I realized six people around, I pulled out somebody else's. Shame.

SPEAKER_03 51:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 51:39

Eleven people wrote the same word. And it made me realize I do belong here. This is exactly where I belong. And it's the mechanics of it, whether you're an addict, a drunk, a sex addict, whatever it is, the the circumstance that that drives you there may be different. Not unique, but different. But but the trajectory is identical. They're all identical. And what happens is all identical. And that convinced me. And when I finished there, I said, you know, the monitor said, Okay, Jeff, is this is his last day. And you everybody they write you a card and they wish you well. And then she said, Jeff is off to tour the world with Zilline Dion. Like I was leaving on tour in about a month. And everybody looked at me and said, Why didn't you tell us? And I th I said, Well, you would have treated me differently. Like you would have you said, Oh, we forgive him because he's a musician, or because that's not what I came here for. I know I'm a musician. I w you know, maybe I want to know if that's what drove me to this. It isn't in the end, but you know, I I thought I do belong here. And I I think that therapy not that I would think everybody should go and hire a therapist, but I think if you there's an issue going on, all kinds of issues people have, you speak to somebody about it, you know. Speak to your friend. Yes. You know, speak to anyways going back to your mental health thing that you mentioned earlier. Yeah, speak to somebody. You don't have to go, I don't want to say, you know, crying to a therapist, but if you have to, go crying to a therapist. That's what they're there for. Absolutely. You know, go go go to your wife, go to your friend.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

And if you can't find the first one's no good because they're not all good, find another one. That's right. But if you've got something in your mind um that's really a burden, you should talk about it. There's no other way to deal with it.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

Well, I'm glad you mentioned the word burden because the first time I actually uttered the words, I got a real problem, I gotta fix this. Holy shit, man. I can still feel it now, this kind of it's like throwing off your backpack full of school books and realizing, oh, okay, Friday, it's it's you know, school's over. When you the first issue is admitting it to yourself. And and all that time, like I mentioned, when I'm alone in my studio, cracking that bottle of whiskey open, thinking, yeah, man, this is I'll stop this when this happens, I'll stop this when that happens. That's the beginnings of saying, I got a problem. But when you utter the words and you sit in a room with other people who utter the words, you realize, okay, this is proper. This is the way you deal with it. Right. You know, before you get arrested, and man, unproudly, I can't tell you how many times I got in that car and would never pass an alcohol test. Oh my god. Ever. Yeah. And it it's I'm not proud of it. Uh it's it, but I did it. You know, I did shows, not completely shit faced, but very close to it. And again, part of the calculation, how much can I get into me, have a good time, and still honor the ticket price.

SPEAKER_03 54:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:45

You know, you don't want to go out there and and and clam all over the joint. People paid money to see you play. And you're representing an artist. Remember, we'll go back to that thing I said. It's there's more money in and playing for other artists, but you've got to live up to the job. Sure, yeah. You do have a job to do. Yeah, they don't want to carry you. You're supposed to carry them. So if you're there falling all over yourself, it doesn't work. So there you go.

SPEAKER_01 55:10

That's uh I wanted to do um but anyway, congratulations to you. Thank you. Yes. The imposter. Uh there's an album there, I guess. Um you know who George Jones is. I sure do. He is a great country legend. And uh one of my favorite George Jones stories is he was uh a notorious drunk, and uh his wife was trying to throw out all the alcohol he had and took away his car keys, and and he he hops he hops on his riding mode, yeah. And the cops pull him over on the highways headed to town to buy more alcohol like five miles or something, like not like just down the road, it was like five or six miles.

SPEAKER_00 55:53

Uh he had to be drunk to do that. Do you know what they did to him? They um he wrecked his car outside of Nashville, I think it's Highway 405 or Highway 400, or Highway 40, I think. And he he wrecked his car and he was arrested for drunk driving again. And they took his car and they put it up on a post and a big sign with his face on it saying arrested for drunk driving. I mean, it was his billboard with his Cadillac all smashed up. I mean, apparently it might have worked, I don't know, but it was a real shaming of George Jones, you know, publicly. Like George Jones. Yes, he was good.

SPEAKER_01 56:34

Yeah, yeah. You know how I would discover George Jones was Elvis Costello released a song called Good Year for the Roses, which I I loved by Elvis, until I realized it wasn't his song. Yeah. And he found it because his dad used to play country music and stuff uh when he was younger, and that's where Elvis got his influence. And then I discovered George Jones, I'm like, oh like his version of Good Year for the Roses.

SPEAKER_00 56:59

I just well, George Jones. I mean, uh, who's the guy um I'm in a memory blank now? The dude with the cowboy hat, the big beard, uh sang a Tennessee whiskey. What's his name? Oh, um Stapleton, Chris Stapleton. Chris Stapleton. That's a George Jones song.

SPEAKER_01 57:14

Yes. You ever heard the original? Uh I have heard the original before George Jones. Yes, I had no idea. Everyone thinks it's Chris Stapleton. No.

SPEAKER_00 57:24

And it's quite different. Yes, it varies. I mean, George is a huge influence. And funny enough, when George Jones covered the James Taylor song Bartender Blues, everybody thinks that's a George Jones tune, but it's not. George Jones' record company told him, they said, you know, George, you're doing a good job singing this James Taylor song, but you sound like you're imitating yourself. Like it was really weird. You know, I read this in guitar player or something years ago, and I thought, what? And it's true. Like George, when he sings his own repertoire, I mean, it's just to die for. Strangely enough, when he sang this James Taylor tune, which is right down the bartender blues, I mean, you know, George sounded like he's imitating himself.

SPEAKER_01 58:07

It was the weirdest thing, you know. I wanted to ask you about being a band leader. Um I I've I've not had the chance to talk with a professional band leader, and I'm not comparing my experience, but I I'd like to know from you. Like, so I heard lots of stories about famous band leaders, like um uh uh James Brown, um, who's the country guy, Canadian country guy I'm thinking of, just that on the tip of my tongue, it'll come to me. They had reputations for being brutal band leaders and and very heavy-handed management, you know, and stories of James Brown, like, you know, if you if you hit a bad note, you weren't getting paid that night, type of type of thing. Get fined, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:02

Buddy Buddy Rich was famous for that. Yeah. Oh man, do you you've never heard the Buddy Rich tapes? Oh, dial them up after we're finished. Buddy Rich giving his band shit? Oh my god, it's brutal.

SPEAKER_01 59:14

So I now I I again I have no idea what it's like on the scale that you are doing it, but being a band leader, um I never wanted to be like that. I heard stories and I'd always think, do the guys think I'm like that? I I was the most not demanding I was the leader in the sense that I was the one who picked the songs, I was the one who booked the gigs, that that kind of stuff. Um, and sometimes they'd push back on me. Are you fucking serious? Like, I I'm doing a lot of work in the background and I'm paying you the exact same thing I'm getting paid. Why why do you think this is tough? And I like you don't know what it's like in the realm. What's it like? Okay, I always refer to it as herding cats, as trying to manage a group of musicians. What was it like for you to manage a whole orchestra of musicians?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:05

Well, in in that high school band, I'll start in the beginning. I became exactly the person you're talking about. I kind of ch chose the whole repertoire and I would force the guys into learning vocal parts. And in the end, you know, I was probably not that I would compare myself to the level of a Paul McCartney, but the same animosity that the other Beatles felt towards him, even though he was freaking Paul McCartney. Yes, my bandmates felt towards me because I was constantly pushing them, and we're all getting the same bread, and but the kind of big mouth arranger, you know, kind of ipso facto leader was me. Um I I I was probably not very polished at it. You know, when you're young, you want to get things done. Like they wanted to learn to drink beer, and I wanted to rehearse Friday nights. You know, so but the difference is when you like for instance with Rock was in, um you the difference in the band leaders you were talking about is they were the artists. They were, yes. What what Ronnie Hawkins, that's who I was trying to say. Oh yeah, right. Um the difference is that you what I was more like a musical director. So Rock was in was the artist, and he hires a musical director, and that's the guy who kind of runs the band. Uh handles the music, uh, depending on the scope of what your responsibilities are, he handles the hiring and firing of musicians too. Um I did that as well. Um, my approach was I I'm a guitar guy. I I'm not interested in in carrying a lot of uh S1000s and S1500s at the time. That's the samplers we would use. I didn't want anything on tape, I didn't want anything to rely on synths. If you want to bring a synth, no problem. You play it live. Do not program it because if we change the key, change something, I'm not gonna wait. Um so I was uh I had more of a hippie approach, and I remember telling guys uh when we changed an entire band one time, I think I kept one musician for a tour and hired all new ones. And I had a meeting with them and I said, guys, here's here's the way it's gonna work. I hired you because you're all experts. You clearly play the instruments that you're sitting behind far better than I do. So learn the record, but play something better. You will know when you have to cop exactly what's on the record. For instance, the intro to Ed N. You don't fool with that. If you're in the Eagles, you don't change the solo in Hotel California. Just leave it as it is. That's pretty good the way it is. So I would tell them change, do something better. All right. If you make a mistake, we're all gonna know, we're all gonna have the same laugh, and it's over. So don't be afraid of that. But the three things that have to happen, all right, and and I'm not gonna be angry if you change the party. You play something better, awesome. If it doesn't work, you'll find out. Um the three things that have to happen is A, you have to make that singer look, sound, and feel better. Those are the three things. That's the job. I don't care what you wear, maybe wardrobe will. You know, the stylist will. I don't care. I don't care what you play, but that has to happen, those three things. Vocally, you will stay in the same range no matter what. I don't ever want to hear anybody say, Did I sing the high part in that song? No. I sing the high parts in every song. You sing the tenor parts in every song. You just everybody knows where they're going and make sure the singer feels, looks, and sounds better. That's it. That's how I led the band. Everybody had fun, uh, we weren't shackled to computers. Now, granted, things are different today. When I was the band leader was in, it was really a hippie trip, you know, and everybody was happy and it was cool. Not that they're not happy today, but now when I came back to do the LN35 tour, the band leader was there, uh uh JS Bet You. He was the band leader and he kind of looked at me and I said, JS man, this is your band. All right, don't freak out because I'm here. I am just the acoustic guitar player now. Um now, granted, he was running the show kind of the way I ran it, but with computers too. Okay. So he had locked in. I think maybe I had left a bit of a legacy of this kind of vocal placement so that nobody's fishing for parts. We're not kids in high school anymore. There's no more fishing. You want to fish, do it in your own studio. Once you get here, make sure your parts are right. Right. And I think that's that held over. So it was great. Occasionally, you know, I chime in and say, JS, let's uh we used to do this ending on this song. It's a little more efficient. Let's try it. We try to go primo. Let's do it that way. So that's the way I led the band. Um JS is much the same, same kind of hippie vibe, but with more technology. You know, thank God, because I'm not a very technological guy. Um, but that's how it worked. It wasn't uh there was no shouting, no uh threats, no nothing like that. Uh some gigs are are much more high pressure. The Star Academy gigs, in which Scott Price was the band leader. He is also Celine's uh band leader. Uh so I've been working with Scott a very long time. It's the pressure of the gig so that there's no time to kind of fool around with your parts. You gotta come up with them quick, and you gotta make sure you lock them in quick. This is TV and we don't have time. You know, you have to get like you said, you get together in the afternoon, you rehearse showtime tonight, not showtime next week. So it's uh that's a little more of a pressure situation. When you're in a touring band and you have 50, 60 dates in front of you, there's plenty of time, there's weeks to Rehearse and you can modify your parts as you go. Like I said earlier, some can't be modified. Yeah. Most of them can. Yeah. And as an acoustic guitar player, I mean, there's a lot of jing-a-jing going on that you'd you'd be dumb to try to change. Just to just go jing-a-jing and keep it the way it is. Oh, I love that music directive. Just play Jing-a-jing. Yeah. I mean, that's you know, Scott has said to me, uh, what was the word he used often? Uh zing-a-zing. I'd say, Scott, what are you hearing here? Zing-a-zing joke. Thank you. But I mean, that's one of Scott's fantastic skills, and I learned this from him. Uh, him and Mark Boulie, who was the band leader with Rock was in a long time before I was the band leader. Mark would hire people, first of all, he there he'd hire highly skilled people at that level of the game, but he'd hire people that you don't have to talk to. You know their personalities, you know they're good on the bus, you know what they're gonna do live, you know that if they step on their own feet live, they'll know. Yeah. So you don't have to tell the guy. The guy will come up with cool parts. If it's not cool, you step in and you guide the guy. But otherwise, and that's Scott is the same way. And that's the approach I took with my guys. I you're experts. Yeah. I don't care what you play, as long as it's good. I shouldn't need to tell you what to do. Absolutely. If you step out of line, you'll probably hear it yourself.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:25

You know, you won't need me to say, by the way, you know, that beef flat. You know, that's not what it's about. It's about creating this sonic landscape that makes everybody feel good. And don't forget, there might be 20,000 ticket holders in there that paid 65 to 165 bucks for tickets. You better deliver the goods, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:46

Um did you um have you in your own time been working on any your original stuff?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:56

Yeah, I have eight albums out. Um I'm looking at your face. Um, three of them, four of them were actual hard copy albums when I was signed with uh Star EMI. Okay. So I was signed to an Indian Montreal and to EMI France. Uh I released four uh three albums, I'm sorry, with that label. Um, first album uh was uh the album I had a lifetime to prepare for. Uh the second album, um, I remember the uh president of the record company, his name was Andre de Cesare, and he's passed away since then. Andre was a very hard businessman, but he was a fan of mine. Um and I was working as a multi-instrumentalist for his artists.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:42

I had met several of the artists that I ended up playing for because I worked on their albums. I didn't know who they were till they arrived, but once they got no uh, you know, wind that this guy would do this all day and he can play all these instruments, they would hire me. So Andre says to me, he says, Jeff, I have a great idea. And I was just glad to have a record deal back then. Today it's record deals aren't worth much, but back then it was important. He says, We're gonna do an album in French. And I said, No, we're not. I think that's a terrible idea. But we did it, and I said, I need a linguist. I need somebody who's gonna write French lyrics that are based on what I wrote about that come out of my mouth naturally, because if you compare French singers like a Francis Cabrel or you know De Palmas or one of these other guys, they float or on they float on top of their uh music. English people sing in the pocket. Very rhythmic, very uh not percussively rhythmic unless you're playing in an R uh, you know, an RB band, but the James Taylors of the world, these are guys who sing in the pocket. The Francis Cabral's who's the kind of the James Taylor of France, doesn't. And I said, I can't sing out of the pocket. These French lyrics have to come out as if they were English. I've never considered it like that. That's what makes singing in French so hard for English people. Yeah. Yeah, never mind the pronunciation. You mean you can't come off sounding like a clown. But to me, it was the feel. Anyway, this record we released it and we did so much promo. And I it's strangely enough, my biggest hits, my only hits were off the French album. Oh wow. The French album is what paid for the house and the cars. And this is before we could afford teleprompter. So we'd go on stage, and if I if I drop a lyric, yeah, I would either break into a solo myself or point at the lead guitar player and say, solo. And some of these solos were long while I'm trying to write lyrics and trying to remember lyrics in my head. But it was interesting, and and and all that to say, we did three albums uh together. Um the second album, a third album, of course, was in English, and I knew something was going down that it you know that he wasn't promoting the third album as much as I thought. And he calls me into the office one day. And my relationship with Andre was I would come into his office, put my feet up on his desk, have a soda, exactly like you and I are doing now, and shoot the shit. And then we'd get down to business for five minutes, and then I'd go down into the studio and and then work for some other artist. And we had a deal. Uh, he said, uh, I'm gonna give you as much studio time as you want, as long as you use used tape and uh engineers in training. So I could go down to Star and I could book 15 hours of studio time and not pay for it. No. As long as I used boxes of tape that were already opened and engineers in training. So oh, for sure, man. I didn't give a shit. And those engineers ended up being the engineers on my albums because they were so good at it. And then they knew you. Yeah, of course. So we he calls me in for a meeting one day and he says, We're in the boardroom at this point. We're not in his office anymore. The boardroom had a table. It had to be 15, 16 feet long with chairs all along it. And he's way down at one end, and I thought, with a stack of papers. And I said, Andre, should I sit down at this end or can I come down there with you? He said, No, come down. Dave, he had tears in his eyes. And I said, Andre, what's going on? He said, Look, I don't know what to do anymore. I'm too big a fan. Uh I I I can't seem to sell records for you. And I like, I said, okay, Andre, look, are you done with me? He said, I am. I said, Okay, look, dry your tears, okay? We're friends and business associates. You know those three videos that you owe me? I said, forget it. Wipe them out. You know the two records I owe you? Wipe them out. Let's just forget it. He said, okay. And I said, You sure you're finished with me? He said, I'm absolutely sure. And I said, Okay, I'm not finished with me, though. All right. And I remembered clearly why I had du decided to work for other artists and not myself. And the moment was coming right there. And I said, I'm not finished with me, so I need my publishing back. And he says to me, He looks kind of for a moment, he says, Okay, I'll do one better. I'll give you the publishing and the exploitation rights and the master tapes. Wow. That's how big a fan he was. Wow. So he said, I'm gonna send uh one of the engineers down to the vault. You want to take the tapes home today? You can. Now those tapes represent hundreds of thousands of uh uh dollars in studio time. Sure. Never mind the physical cost of the tape. Right, right. He gave it all to me. But in the interim, while just before that meeting, I realized something was going down that and I had been touring in Belgium as a solo artist. And uh I had decided I had a do you remember the Roland uh what was it called? The eight um 808? No, that was the drum machine. Okay. The Roland uh VS 880 and the VS 1680. Remember those recording? They were like one box recording systems, uh digital.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:59

Yeah, I think I think I have similar up there. It's a uh a BR1180. Oh, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:05

Same idea. Zoom made one, Roland made one. I had been tr bringing this around with me, and I had a duo, uh a trio, I'm sorry, of guys that I had hired, but I didn't own enough mics. I wanted to record the tour, and I didn't own enough mics to record the band and the audience, because if you're gonna do a live record, you need to record the audience. So for eight shows I recorded the band, and then for eight shows I recorded the audience. Oh, good idea. And then of course I had to mix everything together, and I had to pick songs where I had not named the town. And I I decided I put this live album together, and knowing that something was going down with my own record deal with Star EMI, I produced this album called Live in Belgium and released it right after. As soon as my contract was done, I released the album, and it was really kind of low profile. There was a single, not even a gatefold, one page insert with my picture on the front, and it was almost a protest. It was no pretty boy shots that we were doing already. It was a picture of me in a lighting change. I almost looked demonic, but with an acoustic guitar. It wasn't like an axe or anything. And I decided because the sales of my three uh the two previous albums was going uh three previous albums was going so well in Belgium, I would give away live in Belgium. So I would tell everybody, if you buy all three of my albums at this show, I will give you a recording of this show tonight. So that's why I had no dates on the album, no show. It just had credits for the elements. They couldn't tell. So they would go and they would buy all my albums, and then I would give them this one. And you give a European a free CD. It's not like a North American. A North American will shamelessly say, Hey Dave, I love your new album. Think I could get a copy? They don't mean can I go to Sam the Record Man and buy it, they mean can you give it to me? Yeah. But in Europe it's different. They buy records, they consume music. Yeah. And so I would give them this album. And I had once I had done with I was done with Star Records, I'm gonna back up to part of the deal I made with them. I called the distributor and I asked them to delete my products across the country. And the guy said, What? You want to delete your entire catalog from every record store? I said, I do. And the guy said, That's suicide. I said, No. What suicide is happening is right now. I asked the guy, how are my sales across the country right now? And what are the returns? How many albums are being sent back? It was astronomically big, the ones that were being sent back, and the sales were minuscule. I said, That's suicide. So before you delete my products and flush me out of distribution, take me out of distribution. And they the guy said, Okay, and I said, and I want to buy my old stock back. So he said, Okay. So he said, I'll sell you per unit ten dollars a unit. Uh and albums at the time were about 22 bucks in the stores. And I said, No, I'll give you 50 cents a unit. Yeah. What are you gonna do with them anyway? Yeah. And the guy said, 50 cents, are you kidding? And he said, No, no, I'll do it for 18 bucks. And I said, 40 cents. So it I bought all my product back. I believe I paid 30 cents per unit of all of my product. And I said to him, You can make coasters out of them if you want, but I don't care. They're not selling. So I bought them all back and I took those units to Europe with me for those solo tours. Right. And I was selling them for 25 euros a piece. Wow. So now you can understand why the unit cost on live in Belgium was a dollar four per unit to manufacture. That included the the insert. So jewel box, printing, and the insert. $1.04. So I could afford to give them away because I was making 25 euros on a 30 cent investment. And I owned the masters. So it just, this is how cool Andre had been with me. So and my career is like that. When you developed those relationships, you remember I alluded to being this kind of hippie band leader. That's how I approached everything. You know, you were saying, boy, it's tough to get guys to come over. I was glad to come over and do this. To me, if you don't have these kind of face-to-face relationships with people, technicians, guitar techs, the guys who set up the monitors, if you don't acknowledge what they do, not by passing by and saying, Great job, Joe, but learn the guy's name. Ask him about his kids, develop a relationship with the guy so that if he needs something and he he needs it from you, you're not going to say, Oh, fuck, you know, Joe, I'm busy. I'm the guitar player. No, you you do what he needs. And if you need something, don't forget he's a tech. While you're playing live, if something goes wrong, you desperately need him. Yes. Desperately. So it was my relationship with the record company was the same. And my relationship with you, it will develop into the same thing. When we spoke the other day about the closing of Sieves, I was happy to do it. Like I'm nobody's saint, but this industry no longer functions on a star system where you can push people around. I don't know if it ever did, but it never did for me. Right. You know, I and I I'm gonna allude to that same thing. You could take the kid out of the small town, but you you know, for to me, sitting here with you in your studio is a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:57

Well, thank you very much. Uh, you're a very charming person. Uh I could see how you were able to develop those relationships with the people. And it's it's encouraging to hear you say that you know, everybody uh involved with the production is important and that uh you need to acknowledge there's there's a a few high-level celebrities I've heard mention, you know, they call out the crew member or whatever. Um and I've I've had a pleasant experience. Uh, you know, after stopping performing myself, I went more into the sound side. Just I don't know why I wasn't trained in that either, but I just I could do it. And I really liked uh working with the artists who would come over after, they'd come over to the sound booth after they're set and say, Thanks, thanks for what you did for us, you know. And I well, thank you, you know. What uh I I only have to work with what I'm given to work with. And but it was just uh it was just nice, and some of them young people as well, who yeah, it it's not a lost art yet.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:07

And it's just yeah, when we started uh this LN35 tour, we were working with a sound man I had never worked with before. I had seen him before working on some of these other TV productions, but this guy was Rock's live sound guy. And after the show, after the first, I'm gonna say first 10 shows we did, every show, I would ask him backstage when I we'd run into each other and say to him, uh, how are the dynamics? Are my solos coming up and down loud enough? It how about the like I would quiz him on how I was performing dynamics for him, not the parts, the parts are my business, but the dynamics are his business. And he would say they're fine. And he'd say, I know when to ride you if I have to, and I said, Okay, every night, ten times, maybe eleven times. I would ask him after eleven shows, how were the dynamics? What can be better? How's the other guitar players' dynamics? How are the backup vocal dynamics like everything when you develop that kind of a relationship with a guy? He knows that you're paying attention to everything. Yeah. And he's gonna now start paying attention to you because he understands that you understand where you fit in this thing. And it always helped me, you know, I I had the great luxury of becoming I I don't know what to call it, the confidante or the right-hand man or something of most of the artists that I worked with, and that's why I stay in their bands for 25 years. Is that you there's a sensibility being a singer-songwriter, you know what that singer-songwriter wants to achieve. You know when they want to open their mouth, when they want you not to play, just be because I wrote so many songs, and I take that skill and apply it to everything. Dynamics with the sound guy, lighting cues. You know, I always tell a guy, do you want to cue this? Where do you want me? Where do you want to spike this? It's a show, man. Yeah. And if you can get a relationship with all those people, then you're in business. You know, we we were touring years ago with Rock in in France, and for a certain time, there was a divide between technicians and musicians. You know, the technicians called the the musicians, you know, and they didn't know it wasn't a lack of respect, but there didn't there was no fraternization. And so we were it was one of the tours back in the early Americana series. Uh and there was a lot of money going around at the time. And I remember I said to our tour director, um, his name was Diego Rouge, a French guy. I said, Diego, uh, this is what I'd like on the ride or every night on the band's bus. And there was only five guys in the band. I said, I need uh three bottles of Jameson whiskey, three bottles of Bushmills whiskey, I need three bottles of vodka, I need 48 left beers, and the guy's like, What? I said, just do it, please. You know, we don't ask for much. I need all that alcohol. And the band looked at this and said, Holy shit, man, what's going on? Three days into the tour, uh now we were drinking some of it, I had cases of uh liquor, and I walked over and I knocked on the crew bus. Nice. And these guys very often had no hotels, and they were on a double-decker crew bus at 16 beds, not five, sixteen. Now these guys are packed in there. I knocked on the door and I had put down two cases of booze. And they opened the door, and I thought, I could tell by the way, they looked at me and what the fuck are you doing here? Don't you have your own luxury bus over there? And I said, Guys, I think you're doing a great job. I just wanted to bring you this. I know you guys don't have any booze on your rider, but we do. There you go. Holy smoke, they looked at this. We're talking a dozen bottles of rum, a dozen bottles of whiskey, a dozen bottles of vodka. There you go, guys, it's all for you. I did this every third or fourth day. Here you go, boys. Don't forget there's 16 of them.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:17

So it sounds like a lot of booze, but it's not. And that's how we develop that relationship. If you can do that, it just makes the entire process so much easier. You know, and the money was there, the booze was there. Let's let's have some fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:33

That's really nice to hear, you know, that that that acknowledgement of the team effort that goes into putting on a production.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:40

And to this day, I still communicate with them. I haven't toured with some of those guys in 16 years. Their birthdays come up, boom, happy birthday to me. How are you doing? And they remember. And this is this whole thing, because they'll remember you if you're an asshole too. And I'm I alluded to that earlier. I am sure there are people from back in the early days who still say, Boy, that small is a fucking asshole. And I wish I could change it.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:03

I doubt it, but I could, but it's well, you are a little pissed at him, so you made me an asshole. No, I I claim full responsibility for my for the badge.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:16

What have you got going for the rest of the summer, Jack? I'm leaving. Uh I have a show uh coming up next week with BSSR. Now, BSSR is a band that uh with uh Breen LeBeuf, uh, who of course uh from Off and Back fame, yeah, and he's got his own solo albums. Uh Reg La Chance, who is the former guitar player with Rock, was in until he was hired by Johnny Halliday. Okay. In France. Johnny is a gig was Johnny's passed away now, but he was like the Elvis of Europe. Yeah, I've heard of that. And uh so Reg went on to that band. And when he left Rock's band, like Rock was in shock. Reg is a professional rock star. And he said the same thing. You'd rather play with Johnny Halliday than me. And Reg said, No, I'd rather make the money.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:57

Yeah, really.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:58

And it was so and Rock said, Absolutely. So he's in the band, Breen LeBeuf, a guy named uh Phil Rose, who is our drummer, and I. Uh, and uh, we just we play a lot of cool covers and some of our own originals, some of the off and back repertoire. And we don't play much. You know, I think our biggest I think this year we're doing two shows. We've been around for 10 years. One some years we do 20 shows and some years two. And this is one of the two shows. So we're doing the Is that a public show? Oh, yeah, yeah. It's in Saint Andre Avalin for their country festival.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:30

Saint Andre Avalin, I know that town very, very well. Yeah, we're on the way to the cottage.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:35

We're gonna play there, and uh and then after that, uh rehearsals start uh for the two uh Celindion shows in Paris. Uh we're gonna do a couple of weeks of sh rehearsals here in Montreal, and then we'll s take a week break while the band goes to Quebec City to play the Francophate, which is a big television.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:54

Right, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:55

Then we're leaving the next day for France to rehearse for another ten days, and then the shows start. And the good thing about it is we're playing La Défense every show. So no buses and the hotel is walking distances.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:08

Oh, and so no setting up, tearing down all that. No. Nice. Yeah, it's really gonna be nice. It makes the shows also more stable. Like, yeah. But yeah, that sounds very I believe we'll do sound check every day anyway. Yes, of course. But we uh the atmosphere can change the dynamics.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:28

Yeah, so that there's the crew, it's much easier on them. It's much easier on us. But I mean, touring with Celine is uh it's pretty luxurious. We we we rarely play two days in a row. Uh there's very, very rare that we do a long drive and we always arrive at a real nice hotel, even though the buses are fantastic. Um so but on this run, the only bus we'll see is the one leaving from the airport to the hotel. Oh my god. It's gonna be a real luxury for us. Uh I don't know. Uh hopefully we won't treat it like a casino gig where you kind of go into autopilot. I'm sure not. I don't think we will. We're so happy to be back after all these years.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:07

Uh yeah, she's uh it's it's been a while since she's been out there. And she had a her Vegas residency, but well that lasted 16 years.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:16

Um I did not do uh any of that uh residency. I was uh session guy on her records. Um I was offered, or I wouldn't say offered, I was asked if by Scott, of course, who had become their band leader, if I would like to go to Vegas. And I refused it. Uh I was drinking too much, and I didn't want to fuck up the opportunity. Like I thought if I go there and and clam all over the joint, that's it. Yeah. My reputation as a side man will be torched. And Noah, our youngest kid, was still young at the time, and I had missed a lot of my other two kids growing up, and I thought, I don't want to miss this too much, so I'll stay home, clean up, take care of my son, and then by the time, you know, I told Scott, I said, Listen, when you guys, you know, put on your big boy pants and do a world tour, call me then. And Scott called, you know, Noah, I believe, was probably 14 at the time, 14, 13, or 14. He couldn't wait for me to get the hell out of the house, right? Oh, really? And Scott calls and he says, Remember that bullshit you told me about putting on our big boy pants and doing a world tour? Okay, big mouth, we're doing it. Do you want to come now? And I said, Absolutely. So that's how I became a touring member of that band. So we did two years of the world tour and then COVID hit. And it just slammed the brakes on, and we went, we were in New York City for about a week and a half. We were playing uh the Meadowlands, uh no, not the Meadowlands, we played Nassau Coliseum and the Meadowlands, yeah, we did. Um and uh it the the kind of COVID thing had started in New Rochelle, which is just north of the city. So we were warned, don't go to 42nd Street, don't take the subway, and kind of stay. And uh I have some friends who are cops in New York City, and they said, uh, you guys leaving the city anytime soon? I see all your buses are parked at Battery Park, and we were like, Yeah, we're leaving in two days. The guy said, Good idea. Because we're gonna start closing the the place down. So we we left and we were on our way to to Washington, DC. And strangely enough, there was a lot of news on the TV about this kind of COVID-19. Uh what was it called at the time? They didn't call it COVID, they called it something else. Anyway, we got to Washington, DC, and the place was strangely empty. And I'd never been to the city, so I don't know if it's like Ottawa where at six o'clock it looks like no one exists anymore. I don't know if it's like that anymore, but it used to be. And they uh we got there and we thought, holy smoke, this is weird. Where is everybody? And uh the next morning uh we usually get our day sheets, they come in the email at 8 20. But this day they came at 10 o'clock at night, the night before. So we came back after dinner, everybody had an email saying, okay, bus one and two are leaving for Montreal uh at 10 a.m. or nine a.m. Bus three and four are going to the airport, buses five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven are going to Texas. Uh this is when we thought, wait a minute, we're shit they shit canned the whole tour. It was over then. Yeah. And when we got to the border, the bus driver had been informed that they wouldn't let us off the bus. Uh-huh. Just bring all your passports to the front, present it in the front window of the bus next to your face. And so we did it, and they just waved us through the border, and that was it. We the tour was over. I mean, it was the weirdest thing. Sure. You know, so now we're all glad it's all the same band members. I think we're changing. I think we changed uh one violinist. So uh the whole band is back, and uh we're ecstatic. Like we're just thanking our lucky stars that we're still there.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:56

Wonderful, wonderful. And and and good for you that you're getting to go back out there and when are you back in town?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:04

Uh we'll be back in uh mid-October. Okay. Uh I'll probably pick up my shows. I do um Friday evenings at Studio 77. Yeah. Solo show all the time.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:15

Uh it's funny. You're you're going to France to play with Celine Dion. Yeah. And you're going to come back to Point Clair Village to play. Well, I'm I've I I know a lot of people who play down there, so I'm going to go check it out. Uh Keith was telling me that uh it's a very tip-friendly uh It is.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:34

The first time I played there, I I asked uh I had a pedal steel player named Kim Deschamp. Kim is the former pedal steel player with uh Cowboy Junkies and Blue Rodeo and whatnot. And I kind of dragged him out of retirement because I'm I I like pedal steel so much and I I whooped him, you know, in rehearsals to get. Come on, Kim. And um I these gigs don't pay very well. Um but they're pleasant to do. And uh I said to Kim, Kim, I don't I don't know how to feel about this tip jar thing. I've never done it. Like I my for once my ego had no idea how to deal with it. And I said, What what should I think about this? I mean, are we beggars or what what are we what is this? Kim said, No, that's that's how it works in most places. There's a tip jar. And I kind of got over the kind of well, wait a minute, I you know, like my mom, I am a rock star. Like, why am I playing for tips? But it it was it's great.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:33

You know, well it's pretty unique down there. Like, I don't think there's any other I remember booking acts at the at the Chateau du Lac, and a guy came in and asked, can I put a tip jar out? I said, You can put it out. I don't think it's gonna work. People don't aren't accustomed to that. But in the States, uh in Nashville, down in Texas and Austin, it's it's all tips. You don't you play for tips?

SPEAKER_03 1:34:54

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:54

Uh so that's kind of an interesting thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:56

So in October, you'll be back, and uh I'll start uh doing that again and I'll do some studio stuff. I have Susan A Glucark uh a Christmas tour coming up. Uh Susan is an indigenous artist, uh Inuit. I've heard her name, yeah. Yeah, she's fantastic. She had those huge hits in the 90s. And I I got into that to gig uh her drummer is a drummer that I had hired with Rock was in uh years before. He's the one who got one of the speeches about being an expert in your field and don't worry about making mistakes. Uh and he called me while I was doing the LN 35 tour saying, Hey, listen, man, uh we read to replace our guitar player after 35 years. Uh 30 years he'd been with the band, but he had uh developed a drinking issue. And he said, Can you join the band? And I said, Well, sure, I can finish the tour for you. And I went down for a rehearsal and I I met Susan prior to the rehearsal and I said, Look, I I know this this is a huge change for you, and I'm gonna try to make this as easy as possible on you. Um again, to try to make the artist as comfortable as possible. So we got into rehearsals and I had learned all the songs in Inuit. So when the backup vocals came, I knew them. Wow. And after one song, she kind of looked at me and smiled, and I thought, This is either good or bad. And she said, You know, I've been waiting for 30 years to hear somebody do that. And I said, Well, if you want to hear it again, we can do that song over. She said, No, we'll do the next one. So we did it, and and after the that one rehearsal, they said, Do you want to stay in the band? And I said, Sure. But that's the goal, right? I mean, to to fill that spot to make that singer feel absolutely, yeah. And it works good for you. Yeah, so I'll be doing that. After that, some door will open, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:47

I'm sure for you it will. Yeah, well, hopefully, you know, yeah. Excellent. Well, thank you very much for coming all the way out here to the armpit of Quebec. Just we're just frontier town, you know, the Ontario borders right there. Um thank you, David. It's a pleasure coming. I hope you have uh a wonderful rest of your afternoon. Thank you, you too. And uh take care. You bet, man. Alright, that's a wrap. Thanks, Jess Mollywood, for pulling up the tool and hanging out. If you like what you heard, go check him out. Support local music. Go to show. It's a merch and noise. Before we go, you can't do it.