Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Mark Hummel interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 36

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Mark Hummel joins me on episode 36.

Mark is a West Coast blues harp player who has put out some great harmonica songs in his catalogue of over 30 albums. 
A real connoisseur of the Blues, he has drawn inspiration from a wide range of the classic players.  Mark felt a particular affinity with Little Walter early on, and received a Grammy nomination for his 2013 album, Remembering Little Walter. This was part of the harmonica blow out series, where he has put together numerous tours featuring some of the best harp players around.
Mark has been a hard touring bluesman for over forty years, and has written a book about life on the road. He’s currently working up a solo show as he prepares to get back out to playing live gigs once again.


Links:
Website:
https://markhummel.com/home

Mark runs his own podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-hummels-harmonica-party/id1570061845

On YouTube:
https://youtu.be/n4ZDGZjLDwY
https://youtube.com/channel/UCWn89o4gUADSxuZbcH8XWJw


Videos:

YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVJHnGpgUkKWdPHfd1hHoYA

Harpin’ By The Sea workshop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGbxkW2lkVg

Ricky Cool videos on adapting saxophone solos or riffs for harmonica:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk87rhp596Q


Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

Support the show

SPEAKER_00:

Mark Hummel joins me on episode 36. Mark is a West Coast blues harp player who has put out some great harmonica songs in his catalogue of over 30 albums. A real connoisseur of the blues, he has drawn inspiration from a wide range of the classic players. Mark felt a particular affinity with Little Walter early on and received a Grammy nomination for his 2013 album, Remembering Little Walter. This was part of the Harmonica Blowout series, where he has put together numerous tours featuring some of the best harp players around. Mark has been a hard touring bluesman for over 40 years and has written a book about life on the road. He's currently working on a solo show as he prepares to get back out playing live gigs once again. So hello, Mark Hummel, and welcome to the podcast. Hi, Neil. Good to be here. You were born in the east of America,

SPEAKER_02:

but you moved to the west coast. My parents met in New Haven, Connecticut, and then we moved to, when I was about six months, they moved to California. I was raised in Los Angeles, and then I moved up to the Bay when I was about 17, 18 years old. So what got you interested in music in your youth? We had a lot of music, you know, just around us. I mean, you know, the babysitters and stuff that we had would play R&B in the car. I was raised in East LA, which is kind of the barrio, the Mexican barrio. And most of the Mexican-Americans listened to R&B back then, you know, and that was everything from Stax to Motown to some blues like Jimmy Reed or Slim Arpo. But it really wouldn't tell high school that I really kind of jumped in both feet into music. And that was mainly through the rock blues scene at the time. I got into it in 68, something like that. That's when I got into, you know, psychedelic music and jazz. Through that, I found the real blues. And that was just because I kept seeing Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf's names. And that made me curious because those were all the songs I liked, the ones that were penned by them.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean my wife. My mother-in-law, she's always there. So we'll just keep on

SPEAKER_00:

walking. I understand you saw a few players when you were younger. I think you saw Buddy Guy and Junior Wells first in concert, but then you saw some of the others. You like James Cotton. I know you're a fan of Paul Busfield.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I was pretty much a fan of anything harmonica at that point, especially blues harmonica in particular. But yeah, I saw Buddy and Junior first in 1968 and they were kind of doing more of a, I mean, that's when Junior was doing more of a James Brown kind of trip. So he wasn't playing as much harmonica So that didn't quite, I'm sure I'd love it now, but back then it was kind of, it went sort of over my head. I think I went to that concert to see Big Brother and The Holding Company with Janice and I missed both them and Albert King because they came on so late. It was like everything ran behind. It was like an all day thing. It wasn't really till 70 or so that I picked up the harmonica. And then I immediately went out and saw Brownie and Sonny at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles. And then I saw James Cotton there. And then I saw Charlie Musselwhite there. And yeah, I saw Butterfield play at the Troubadour. I saw all kinds of people, Muddy Waters at the Whiskey A Go-Go, B.B. King at the Pasadena Civic.

SPEAKER_00:

When we get into the blues revival stage, these guys were starting to come back and get gigs after a bit of a lull after the 50s.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it was definitely during the blues revival. The funny thing about Los Angeles growing up there was that I was pretty unaware of the actual how thick and heavy the blues scene actually was there because it was kind of relegated more to the ghetto clubs in South Central and kind of like jazzy places like the Parisian Room in South Central. You know, you could go see Louis Jordan, you could go see Charles Brown, Lowell Folson, T-Bone Walker, Big Jay McNeely, Big Joe Turner, Pee Wee Creighton, George Harmonica Smith, Big Mama Thornton. All these people were playing on a regular basis. But to be honest with you, I got into the Chicago blues really hot and heavy. I was kind of more interested in the out-of-towners, but in retrospect, I mean, I saw most of the people I just mentioned, but they weren't my central focus. It was a little... The L.A. blues stuff was a little too jazzy for me at the time, and I was kind of just locked into just straight harmonica and slide guitar. I didn't like horns at the time. I mean, and I really changed all my viewpoints on all of that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, it's very much, I think, you know, like me and a lot of guys, I think you were getting into that. the blues harmonica, isn't it? You just want that raw harmonica sound, didn't you, at that age? And that's kind of what you're obsessed with. And like you say, if it didn't have harmonica in the blues, I wasn't interested in myself. But like you say, quite a lot of the guys, those older blue guys, they did move out to L.A., didn't they? There's quite a good scene there.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, the South, there was a really strong Southwest blues scene. In other words, almost all the Texans moved to L.A. And a lot of the guys from, you know, like Lowell Folsom from Oklahoma and people like Percy Mayfield from Louisiana. Yeah, everybody was recording there and that was the reason because, you know, all the studios in the western part of the United States were in Los Angeles. So that's basically where everyone that was, you know, from that part of the country moved to was L.A. I just watched this documentary like yesterday again. I hadn't seen it for about 10 years and it just reminded me of what an amazingly rich scene was going in the 70s in Los Angeles. And like I say, I was gone by 74, I was gone, but I would come back and visit my parents. And so I did hear a lot of those same people. I mean, I saw George Smith quite a number of times in Los Angeles. I saw Clean Head Vinson. I saw Big Joe Turner quite a bit, Pee Wee Creighton. There's a number of people, Joe Liggins. There's a number of people I saw all the time. I didn't really realize how rich it was, I guess, in the sense of the horn-led guitar, based you know blues that was you know people like t-bone walker i mean i sure wish i could have seen him or lewis jordan god i kicked myself for not going to shows like that

SPEAKER_00:

you you know you're associated with the west coast sound yeah and obviously there's a lot of famous uh west coast uh blues harmonica players you know rob piazza and william clark and then kim wilson so did you not so become part of that west coast scene

SPEAKER_02:

oh i definitely was part of the west coast scene i mean you know guys like clark and rod i mean i heard about kim really early on they were all kind of devotees of george smith you know i followed george big time i remember you know trying to go hear people there was a club called rick's blues bar in venice beach and i remember trying to go there and i think by the time i actually was able to go and and check it out it was it had already closed sometimes my timing was just poor

SPEAKER_00:

but i can definitely hear influences your sound certainly some sort of rob piazza sound those guys were a bit older than you yes yeah

SPEAKER_02:

yeah i mean rod was definitely he was a lot of our senior I'd say Clark was closer in age. Kim was a little closer in age. You know, Musselwhite's definitely a senior. So, you know, I mean, I was definitely looking up to certainly Rod and Charlie because they were, you know, they'd been around for a lot longer than me.

SPEAKER_00:

But you say, you know, you were into the Chicago Blues. So did you sort of work on that, developing that West Coast sound in the more sort of swinging up tempo?

SPEAKER_02:

I really developed that once I got up here. That's the best way to put it. When I moved up to the Bay Area, I found out pretty quickly that if you're going to play blues, you weren't going to really meet Chicago-type blues players. You're going to meet guys that played in that more T-Bone Walker, Lightning Hopkins, Lowell Folsom, Big Joe Turner. That kind of style was much more what was happening in the Bay at the time. So that was eventually kind of what I adapted to because it was out of necessity. It was because there was really no one until I met Mississippi Johnny Waters and this guy Sonny Lane that started the Blues Survivors with me. And that was like 1976 or 77. Until I met them, there was really nobody to play with that played straight Chicago blues. It was guys like Sonny Rhodes, who was a guitar player and a slide, kind of a lap steel slide player later on. Or J.J. Malone, who was, you know, J.J. could kind of go either direction. He could play kind of more Chicago type stuff. But, oh, a guy named Charles Huff, Johnny Fuller lived here at the time. This guy, Cool Papa, that I worked with initially, you know, Little Joe Blue lived around here. So all these people, they're kind of more, they had a little bit more of an uptown flavor to what they did. In other words, they merged well with a saxophone, whereas, you know, you don't think of Chicago Blues as having a sax. But the fact is that, you know, Muddy and Little Walter both had sax players in their band. People don't know that.

SPEAKER_00:

You met some of these guys as well, didn't you? I think I heard you say you'd sat in or you'd done an opening for Junior Well. show and I think you knew James Cotton and

SPEAKER_02:

I knew James Junior I just opened for one time I didn't really I got to meet him and he was he was really nice he bought my record album off me and but yeah I mean that was that was a thrill you know it's a thrill when any of the older guys you know would patch on the back that was huge somebody like Albert King or Junior or Willie Willie Big Eye Smith or Calvin Jones guys like that you know when they would patch on the back that meant the world

SPEAKER_00:

yeah and they were quite open to the you Well,

SPEAKER_02:

they were. I mean, you know, when I first moved up here, the only place you could really play blues was in Black Club. There weren't really any white clubs other than the Fillmore or something, you know, where you had to be huge to play there. So, you know, there really were very few venues to play blues in except for Black Blues Clubs. So that's where I went. I went to, you know, North Richmond, where there were, you know, two or three blues clubs. There was Eli's in Oakland, a place called the Deluxe Inn that was a great place to play blues. great kind of juke joint place. And I was just jamming with friends and playing in bands and all that at that point. And for me, it was a real eye-opener because until I moved up here, I'd only played with guys my own age that were white guys or Mexican guys. And up here, it was like all of a sudden I was thrown in with black dudes that were 20 years older than me. So it was a real difference in getting an education in blues. And the thing I was thinking about the other day that was kind of interesting is it wasn't like everyone accepted you. Some people did and some people didn't. And there was horn players I remember were really resistant to kind of befriend a harmonica player. They thought harmonica players were pretty obnoxious. So, you know, it was usually guitar players and singers and maybe a piano player or something. But so it was an interesting deal because, you know, the people that would accept you were usually audience, older people from the South that were in the audience And they just liked seeing a white kid that was into blues. And there were, you know, there were a few of us, but not many. I mean, usually, you know, in those clubs, there'd be maybe either just me or maybe me and one or two other guys that were white musicians that were playing, but it was not very many.

SPEAKER_00:

And so, you know, you've obviously paid your homage to the classic harmonica blues players. I saw your Harping by the Sea workshop early this year in February, where you play through all the different styles of all the great players, you know, Big Walt and the first Sonny Boy, Sonny Boy, Little Walter, etc. So, you know, you go through and play all those styles. So, I mean, what do you think about that, you know, about, you know, just knowing that, you know, knowing that language that they played, obviously, and putting your own spin on it as well. I think that's very important.

SPEAKER_02:

For me, it was a necessary way to play because that was kind of how I built up a repertoire of licks. It was how I built up my technique. It was how I trained my ear to be able to listen. So, for me, it was a real necessity to be able to listen. able to kind of replicate the classic solos and the classic styles by these icons. Whenever somebody tells me that they got their own style and they can't name an influence, that tells me they probably can't play very well. You got to have something to build off of. I mean, everybody from James Cotton to Junior Wells to Lil Walter to Big Walter Horton, all of them had people that, you know, Jimmy Reed, they all had people that they kind of based what they did off. I know everyone's influences, you know, where they come from.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, again, I'll put a link if people haven't seen that workshop. It's really interesting to hear you talk through that and, you know, the influences that they had on each other. So it's also interesting that those classic guys, everyone listens to those, but there's lots of great players, you know, who've come after that, like yourself, for example. You know, there's loads of great players around, but everyone listens to those classic players, don't they? Right.

SPEAKER_02:

Good reason,

SPEAKER_00:

but

SPEAKER_02:

yeah. You know, and the thing is, I've always been drawn to pretty much Pretty much everybody from that era. In other words, I don't limit myself to just like, I'm just going to try to play like Lil' Walter. I'm just going to try to play like Big Walter. I listen to everybody. I listen to Jerry McCain, Snooki Pryor, Lil' Sammy Davis, Junior Parker, Buster Brown, Forest City Joe. I can name dozens of players that I listen to besides the classic guys. Sam Myers, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, going back a little bit to when you started. So I think you did the usual thing. You know, you kind of met, you started playing with some of your friends. Yeah, you were playing on some harmonic and I think a bit of guitar. And that's how you got started playing in bands at that stage. Was it in high school?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it was in high school that I started playing in bands. And, you know, back in that time, it was kind of like the main guys I was listening to besides, say, Little Walter and Sonny Boy were Paul Butterfield, you know, Muscle White somewhat, Cotton. But, you know, I was also listening to, say, Magic Dick from Jay Giles Band. or Lee Oscar from War. Like I say, the high school I went to was a lot of Mexican-Americans, and so they were real big on war. They were really big on soul music. They were big on rock, too. So there was a lot of rock influence in a lot of the musicians that I played with. So I was kind of the least rock of all my friends. I was the one that was really into the older styles of blues more than anybody else. But to just play, I had to learn If someone wanted to do a war song, I'd do a war song.

SPEAKER_00:

And were you singing at this stage?

SPEAKER_02:

You know, I was starting to. I feel like I put more emphasis on my harmonica playing. I didn't really think that much of my voice. And it took me a while to really kind of get a grip on how to sing properly and how to sing, you know, phrasing wise and in pitch and stuff like that. And so a lot of my working on singing was when I moved up here and hanging around with a lot of these older blues guys, that was a huge influence. I knew so many great singers back then. They were stone blues singers, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

Obviously, a lot of the well-known harmonica players, especially about the classic ones, a lot of them did sing. Yeah. What do you think about that, about the need to sing as a harmonica player? Oh, I think it's a necessity, yeah. And obviously, that makes you the band leader as well. You can choose the songs, nice harmonica-led songs. So is that something you really pushed then when you, so as you mentioned earlier, you got into the Blues Survivors, what, in the 1976? Were you you the lead singer in that band then?

SPEAKER_02:

I was not. That was the thing. I mean, I started that band with these older guys. These guys were like probably 20 years my senior. Mississippi Johnny Waters and this guy Sonny Lane. Actually, initially, it was a guy named JJ Jones and Johnny Waters initially. But JJ left pretty quickly and then Sonny filled in. And Sonny and Johnny went way, way back. They went back 20 years as friends. And Johnny was just an absolutely awesome Chicago blues singer. And he could sing You know, Muddy Waters, he could sing Jimmy Rogers, Otis Rush, you know, Little Walter, he could sing all these things. So my attitude was, I'd rather back him and sing just a little bit and get some experience under my belt before I tried to front off the band. So for the first five years that I was working with him, I only sang maybe, you know, a third or at the most half of the night, and then he'd be the featured guest. At the time, I don't think I was a very good singer back then. Took me a while. to really get to be a better singer. I'd say it wasn't really till the early 80s that I started kind of getting a handle on my voice. And even then, you know, I started taking vocal lessons and just continually working on it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, because it kind of holds a lot of harmonica players, you know, they feel that they should sing, but don't feel they've got a very good voice. Like you say, is it something that is crucial? You know, is it something that people need to push themselves to do?

SPEAKER_02:

I think they need to, you know, both take lessons for one, unless you're a golden thrower like Curtis Salgado or Kim Wilson or somebody like that, Sugar Ray Norcia, those guys just seem to have great voices from the get-go. Unless you're like that, I think you really got to put the time and effort into working on your voice. You know, instruction is really helpful. Having somebody that can kind of show you the path and warming up is really important. Getting your phrasing and your pitch together is so important. Those are huge. And knowing what you can sing. I mean, that's huge too. I mean, you know, I used to try to sing stuff that I had no business trying to sing. If I'm singing an Al Green song, it's like, you know, I thought I could do it or James Brown, but you know, I tried it for a while and then I kind of got rid of it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. But it's funny though, isn't it? As you say, that is something you really have to work out. I think a lot of people almost feel that you should be able to sing almost naturally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

That's a ridiculous thing to think. And I, and I mean, you know, the biggest thing for harmonica or voice or anything else is tape yourself. That was one thing I did for From the very beginning was I would tape myself and I would take gigs and I would take my practicing. And that way I knew what I actually sounded like, because until you know what you sound like, it's real easy to just BS yourself into thinking you're great. I mean, I'm learning guitar right now. Again, you know, I'm working on guitar. I've been messing around with guitar for years, but I don't touch it sometimes for 10 or 15 years. Now I'm really into it. And it's like one of the ways I'm getting better is to listen to myself play on a tape.

SPEAKER_00:

We'll get into talking around about your recording career now. You've done, well, I think well over 30 albums, haven't you? You've got out there some great output. You've got an album coming out pretty much every year since the sort of early 90s. So yeah, loads of great recordings. I've been checking them out over the last week or two before talking to you. And you're known as a West Coast player, as we said, but you also like to definitely delve into other areas, don't you? There's Delta Blues, obviously Chicago Blues, a bit of swing, a bit of jazz thrown in there. And more recently, you've gone back to sort of 19, 20 1930s which we'll get on later so you know what about the recordings over all these years how have you approached it

SPEAKER_02:

the main approach i've tried to have is to always come up with something that's a little bit different than what i did before i don't want to be one of these people that just kind of puts out the same album year after year and i've heard a lot of groups fall into that bag where they just kind of do the same record over and over and over i make a real point of trying to come up with new ideas that won't won't make the albums repetitive i I'm really into the acoustic thing over the last few years. I want to say in 2010, I did an album called Back Porch Music, and that was kind of one of the first acoustic things that I did. I even did some things on Heart of Chicago. I did three acoustic numbers. I mean, I've been doing acoustic stuff off and on for years, but now I'm getting more and more seriously into it the older I get, it seems like. For me, acoustic blues and the country blues, the delta blues, it gets into the source of what blues is. One of the things about me, I mean, I'm a harmonica player, yes, but I also am such a blues nut. I really, truly love all these different styles of blues, and I love jazz, too. I mean, there's all kinds of different types of music that I really am a fan of. For me, a lot of it is just kind of going back, and there's a musicologist in me somewhere, because I love that idea of tracing back where something comes from as close as you can.

SPEAKER_00:

I've seen some of your Facebook posts recently where you're talking about documentaries. Obviously, it's coming through very strongly, that love you have in the history. To me, African-American blues is

SPEAKER_02:

one of the real treasures of the United States. The way black people in this country have taken all the bad stuff that's happened to them and turned it into art, I think is just one of the most miraculous things in the world. What blues did is it was a language. You know, that was one of the great things about this documentary about LA guys, and it had Lowell Folson in there talking to Margie Evans and Lloyd Glenn. Lloyd Glenn was a piano player that used to play with Lowell. It was just amazing listening to this documentary where they were talking about how a lot of this stuff was code for, you know, how to describe things, whether it was problems with your girlfriend or problems with your boss or whatever. You know, at one point, Margie Evans says to Lowell something about, I never understood how, you know, blues singers would be talking about oh my lord you know and and the church would say that was blasphemy he goes well what else are you gonna say when you're looking at being just you know disrespected or or disgruntled you know what else you're gonna say you know who's the first person you're gonna you're gonna go to you're gonna go to god

SPEAKER_00:

that's your recordings again and the early stuff one of the ones i i heard from yours is uh from your 94 album lost in the shuffle

SPEAKER_02:

so

SPEAKER_00:

A lot of things you do really well through all your albums is really great harmonica instrumentals.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, I had a fascination with doing those instrumentals. And part of that is because when I first got into it, I mean, I did an instrumental record back a couple of years ago called Heartbreaker. One of the reasons I put that out is a completely instrumental album, because I remember when I first got into harmonica, even Lil' Walter, I didn't want to hear anyone sing. I just wanted to hear guys blow the harp. And I thought, well, I'll try to put out a record that's just, you know, harmonica instrumentals and see how that kind of response that gets. And the other thing was I did an album that was not just blues. It was very jazzy. It had some acoustic blues on it, some Chicago shuffles. It had a lot of jazzier stuff on it as well. That was kind of my modus operandi on that was to do something that was strictly for harmonica players.

SPEAKER_00:

Some great tracks on there. And you like this kind of play on that harp of ventilating that is a track. And you also do on that album Evan's Shuffle, which is one of my all-time My favourite track is Ghost Little World. I played that originally. So you do a great version of Heaven's Shovel. It's a great album, that one. Definitely recommend people checking out that one for lots of great harmonicas to listen to. Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And then we did the Lil Walter tribute thing on Blind Pig. And that was really fun to make that record, you know, with Charlie Musselwhite and Billy Boy Arnold, Sugar Ray, Narsha.

SPEAKER_00:

James

SPEAKER_02:

Harmon. Yeah, James Harmon.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, fantastic getting onto that. So this was an album of the year and best traditional blues album. So you won some awards this one and was Grammy nominated as well, wasn't it? It was, yeah. That was a big thrill. So was it your idea to put this together? Oh

SPEAKER_02:

yeah, yeah. It was from a tour. We had done a tour in January of 2012 and the tour had been Charlie and Billy Boy, Sugar Ray. And at the time we had Curtis on that tour, but then when Curtis couldn't do it, I asked James to do it. Curtis couldn't do it because Alligator wouldn't let him do more than two numbers or something. So, you know, he really wanted to do it, but Alligator wouldn't budge on that. So we ended up getting James to do it. And we did it like almost a year later. We ended up doing the album live down in San Diego instead of in the Bay Area because they had a really nice club down there that we could record at.

SPEAKER_00:

And so you, well, you did Blue Light on there, which is one of the ones you chose.

UNKNOWN:

... Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Blue Light's one of your favorite of his, is it?

SPEAKER_02:

Kind of chose that because, you know, little Charlie really liked that number and could play it really well. It was also one that had both chromatic and diatonic on it. That was the other reason I chose it. I mean, the funny thing is my set included quite a few different numbers. I had, well, I think I had recorded Rocker. I'd done I Gotta Find My Baby. You know, I did a bunch of other numbers on there. But unfortunately, the first set that we did that night got erased.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, dear.

SPEAKER_02:

By accident, this guy walked by that was one of the monitor guys and he unplugged the tape recorder and completely erased the set off the computer. So we had to do the second set. That's what ended up being the album.

SPEAKER_00:

Was the first set as good as the second set?

SPEAKER_02:

I thought the first set was better, but, you know, because we had a bigger crowd. It was, you know, on a weeknight. So there was a sold out crowd for the first set. Second set had about a half a house.

SPEAKER_00:

So you would have won that Grammy if you'd have done the first set. That's right. Exactly. There's lots of Little Walter songs dotted throughout your album. So Little Walter clearly is a massive influencer. I've heard you

SPEAKER_02:

talk. Oh, he was massive. Yeah. head around the rhythms that he did. For some reason, Lil' Walter was just much more easy for me to kind of figure out. I just had an affinity for his music. I mean, I was just such a Lil' Walter nut. I would literally go to sleep as a teenager with the records on, you'd take the spindle off so it would just play over and over and over, and I would go to sleep to those records, you know? They'd play for like four hours while I was sleeping. You know, that stuff's just really in my DNA, the Walter stuff. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

I always wonder that. Does that work if you listen to stuff when you're asleep? Does it seep into your

SPEAKER_02:

subconscious

SPEAKER_00:

somehow? guys together to record. Again, live shows, isn't it, in a similar vein? Is that where the idea of the Little Walter, remembering Little Walter album?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that was a harmonica blowout. They didn't want to call it that for some reason, but that's what it was. So, you know, what started you putting together these harmonica blowouts? I got the idea from a guy named Tom Manzolini, who did a thing called the San Francisco Blues Festival, and he did a show called The Battle of the Blues Harmonicas. And he started doing those, I want to say, about 1980, and he had me on the one in 1981, but then he never had me on another one. And it was kind of like I thought, well, if you're not going to have me on one, maybe I should start doing my own. And he stopped doing his. That was the big thing, was that I started doing mine on a real regular basis in 1991. And by that time, he'd really cut down on, he did his for about 10 years, I want to say, and then just kind of let it slide and kind of felt like he'd had everybody that he wanted to have. He didn't have Junior or Cotton, but he had everybody else. Guys like Sam Myers or Paul DeLay or Muscle White. Rod and Little Charlie's bands played almost every single one.

SPEAKER_00:

So often maybe people are a little bit protective about themselves and maybe don't want other harmonica players because it's like competition. But you've sort of gone the opposite way and you've gone, yeah, let's get all these guys together. So were these really successful shows? People like seeing the different harmonica players?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they were successful from the very beginning. I mean, the very first time I did a show was in... 91 at a little club. This was on a Sunday of Martin Luther King holiday. And so the next day was a holiday. So we had about 150 people show up on a Sunday night. And the club owner basically said to me, hey, you know, let's do this every year because this came out really good. So that was kind of what we started doing was doing it every year at his club. And then I'd add more clubs to it in different cities and towns. And it went from Berkeley to, you And gradually it just got bigger and bigger and it got to be longer and longer tours. You know, eventually it just became at least a 10 to 14 day tour up and down the West Coast. And we'd go all the way from San Diego up to, say, Vancouver, Canada. So that was the way it got going. And then eventually I started doing East Coast tours with it, you know, Midwest tours with it, occasional European things. So it just kind of grew on its own.

UNKNOWN:

Music Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

And you think this was down to the popularity of the harmonica? Obviously, a lot of the players are well known as well, but there's quite a dedicated audience to sort of get those harmonica fans out all the time, was it?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it was really important to have names on it. That's one thing I think a lot of harmonica players don't understand, that just because you're a good harmonica player doesn't mean people know who you are and that they're going to come see you and pay money to see you. And when you've got a$20 or$30 ticket, you know, or sometimes up to$50, you've got to have people that the audience recognizes. You know, in other words, it's It's got to be, say, a John Mayall or a James Cotton or Charlie Musselwhite or, you know, it's the old timers that seem to have the biggest pull.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so fantastic. Well done with that. And so a song you're well known for, as part of the intro, is Creeper Returns, which is a James Cotton song.

SPEAKER_02:

No, that's actually, Creeper Returns is Little Sonny.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh,

SPEAKER_02:

is it? Okay. That's what creeper means.

SPEAKER_03:

The

SPEAKER_02:

midnight creeper, right. I think James Cotton even called one of his.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, my babe, isn't it? She don't stand in that midnight creeping. Right, exactly. And another song I really love of yours, Mark, and I entered the National Harmonica League in the UK. We had a competition which I entered, and I won the blues category playing your song, Harmonica Party. Oh, really? And I remember the judge saying, they had everything, that song, and all the variety of the different things. So, yeah, really.

SPEAKER_02:

well thanks yeah you know that's another one of those as rick estrin calls them eruptionals i took everything but the kitchen sink in that you know i put parts of the creeper in it i put parts of rocket 88 i put parts of whammer jammer i had all kinds of stuff in that one you know and the story on that one is it's not live oh is it

SPEAKER_00:

not because there's like a little intro at the beginning isn't which is like the people talk

SPEAKER_02:

yeah what it was was i brought in a bunch of friends and i had them clink glasses and talk real loud

SPEAKER_00:

ah because i was going no ask because one of the comments i always notice on that is one of the guys says terrible service and i was always thinking well if recorded this in the club it's not very good advert for the club no that was me and then i think at one point i go these guys are really good yeah that's superb yeah oh that's good to hear because i listened to that song also yeah great and uh you mentioned blues chromatic earlier on you put you definitely play lots of blues chromatic i've got a song i'll put on this never know more from the retroactive album for example so

SPEAKER_02:

I love blues chromatic. Yeah, I mean, I just love chromatic in general. And one of the reasons I got, I think, more and more into chromatic was that so few harmonica players really play in other keys. In other words, they just, most harmonica players tend to play everything in third position in D or maybe E flat with the button in, but they don't really use the button. They don't know how to play, you know, they only play minor. When they play third, they don't know how to play major. You know, I play in G, I play in C. I'm trying to learn things in all the keys, you know. For a while, they're like, when I did Never No More, that's got a, that's on a B flat and the key of C. So I'm still playing third position, but I'm using the button a lot to make it more of a major, major sounding third than a minor. So I'm like raising the flat of third on that.

SPEAKER_00:

And an album you did in 2016, you seem to have a lot of success in your more recent albums. You got a music award. It's the Golden State Loan Star Review. Great song on there, Walking With Mr. Lee, which is an Another great one of yours.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, now that song is not mine. That's one, again, by a sax player, Lee Allen. wrote that song and it was kind of a minor hit back in the 50s. Yeah, I just heard that song. I actually bought the 45 of that back in the 80s. I'd listened to it and the drum on the original really reminded me of Juke. The guy's got a bunch of slap back on the hi-hat and so it really reminded me of the drum beat on Juke. And the more I listened to the song, the more I went, man, this would really go well on the harmonica. And so I just learned all the licks and started doing it like that.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a bit like Charlie Musselwhite Exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

And I mean, there's been a lot of jazzier tunes that I've kind of adapted from saxophone songs. There's one from a long time ago I did called Joe Meets Peewee that I took from Joe Houston and Peewee Creighton songs. I took these two songs and kind of melded them together, you know, and they were mainly sax lines and a couple of guitar lines, you know. So to me, that whole thing of kind of being creative with borrowing melodies from other songs, is it's always a good thing for harmonica for harmonica players to look outside of just their instrument i mean little walter did that the whole time and and and actually all of those guys did that james cotton and big walter horton george harmonica smith they all took saxophone parts and worked them out on the harmonica so that it sound or sunny boy williamson i mean you know rice miller he he was doing that you could just hear it

SPEAKER_00:

yeah there's a friend of mine in the uk called ricky cool who's doing that he's putting out some youtube videos at the moment doing specific Specifically that, he plays in that sort of swing and plays some saxophone and he's doing exactly that. And your most recent album is the Wayback Machine where you're doing these sort of recordings from the 19, well, the feel at least of the 1920s and 1930s. That was something I kind of

SPEAKER_02:

sort of stumbled on and I don't mean stumbled on the music because I'd been listening to that music since I started almost. You know, some of the songs I was, you know, I'd been doing, you know, off and on for years and some of them I just kind of got into in the last five years. Back in about 2015, we did a blowout that was kind of centered around the Bluebird sound. This is when I was playing with Little Charlie. The Golden State Lone Star Band was initially a project that I came up with when I started already. I'd been working with Little Charlie Beatty for about a year when I started that band and called Anson Funderburg to come in on it. And we tried it out and it went well. So we just did it from like 2000 I think it was 2012 or the end of 2011 through, you know, 2016. So I'd been using Charlie Beatty on all the blowouts. And I think he might have come up with the idea of doing kind of a Bluebird older style kind of tribute to guys like, you know, the first Sonny Boy and Jazz Gillum. I was doing already doing a Jazz Gillum song, I think, with him and Tampa Red and Big Maceo and Bill Brunzi and all these all these different old timers that were from that era. That was kind of the impetus when I did Wayback Machine. And it's really an old style of, you know, there were guys like Washboard Sam that kind of would do the thing with all with the washboard and little symbols and stuff like that. And so he kind of did this kind of almost his own version of that. And that's all we do in that group. I mean, we do pretty much all that pre-war stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

It's great for the harmonic as well as kind of lots of high end stuff, which is good for variety. But A real standout song is that breathtaking blues.

UNKNOWN:

MUSIC PLAYS

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, now that's in fourth position. And Breathtaking is a Rhythm Willie song. It's his adaptation of St. James Infirmary. So like, that's another guy I really want to get into his, that Rhythm Willie stuff, because man, he was such a great harmonica player in first position. But it's a really different way to, like, for example, if you're playing Jazz Gillum, you have to tongue block all your blow band. And I remember when I was doing that 2015 blowout that Estrin was on, me and him were both learning how to play that blow band. band stuff and it was like it was a bear learning to play like

SPEAKER_00:

that

SPEAKER_02:

it took some doing because i'd always lift those blow bands

SPEAKER_00:

yeah no it's definitely uh tough that style isn't it you know a lot of people who can play quite well you know when you try to do that sort of style it's like well this is quite different isn't it it's quite a believe me man you can mess up real easy so a thing that comes through very strong with your albums and you're playing is you know that it's tough being a uh being a blues musician you're probably being a musician uh in general but it's up in a blues musician it comes through quite a a lot of your songs talk about this. You know, what's it been like being a gigging, touring blues musician for all these years?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I mean, I've been doing The road for 36 years or something, it's far from an easy life. You look at anyone that does the road, whether they're traveling in their own Learjet or if they're traveling in a van like we are, no matter what you're dealing with, it's a hard way to make a living because you're dealing with living in hotels, you're eating in restaurants every night, you're in a different place every day, you're not getting as much sleep as you would at home. It's a total adapter that you're doing with your life to live on the road. There's a certain toll that it takes the older you get. Your music history is littered with guys that have died in car wrecks or airplane crashes or whatever. It's a strange way to live your life.

SPEAKER_00:

And on this life on the road, because you've written a book called Big Road Blues, so yeah, that's all about your life on the road, yeah, and all the tough living that involves.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, especially in the day, I mean, the funny part of it that nowadays, I don't even know if that's ever going to come back. I really don't. I don't know that bands playing on the road is something that's going to continue going on. Because the way I see it is with COVID and with nightclubs at half capacity, or even if they become full capacity again, they've gotten used to musicians basically working for free almost on donations and working for the tip jar and doing their online live streams from their clubs for tip. Why are they going to start paying bands to play again? I don't know that they will. I mean, I've always gotten guarantees when I play. You know, I'd get an amount of money that I knew I could pay the guys. And so I just don't know what the future holds for touring musicians at this point.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and there's a lot more as well as, you know, all the stuff over the last year. But, you know, a lot more people are doing solo shows, aren't they? A lot of stuff at home, doing recording at home. You know, this idea of a band is becoming less and less.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I mean, I'll tell you, I'm learning to play with a harp rack and play guitar. You know, I'm not fooling around. I'm like, you know, I'm looking at it like, hey, you know, this might be the future. Maybe from now on, it's just me, me and my guitar and my harp rack. You know, I feel really fortunate that I've had a career and I feel really fortunate that I've had the chance to play music on a real regular basis on tour back when there were blues clubs. I mean, there's not blues clubs anymore. The blues club thing is a thing of the past from what I can see.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So the blues

SPEAKER_00:

survivor, is the blues going to I

SPEAKER_02:

don't know. I mean, it's hard to say. I mean, I think it'll survive because there's young musicians that are playing it, but I think it's got to grow an audience that's that same age group.

SPEAKER_00:

Part of the thing about the blues is it's really popular with musicians because, you know, go to any jam, you know, there'll always be some blues. There's quite a lot of blues jams going on. The musicians like the blues, but, you know, it's almost like they're half the audience, isn't it? I

SPEAKER_02:

mean, you know, that's kind of the reality. I mean, you know, the funny part of it is, you know, I do my blues harmonica blowouts all the time. You know, I mean, I do them every jam. And I do, like I say, attend a 14-day tour. The weird thing is I've noticed that it's not the harmonica players necessarily the ones supporting it. That's kind of disappointing to see that that's how it is. You know, people got to support other musicians. Musicians got to support other musicians. Until that happens, I don't know what's going to happen with the scene.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, well, let's hope it has a big rejuvenation soon when things open up. A question I ask each time mark is um if you had 10 minutes to practice you know uh what would you spend those 10 minutes doing and this is a kind of question about you know i guess how do you structure your own practice and you know what do you see is the most important things to work i

SPEAKER_02:

mean i'm always changing what i practice i'm getting a larger and larger kind of practice repertoire together i mean now i'm playing guitar like at least 45 minutes a day i'm playing racked heart 45 minutes a day i'm playing sunny terry stuff say 15 minutes a day chromatic maybe 15 15 minutes a day I mean earlier during the pandemic I was playing a lot more chromatic and Sonny Terry stuff but because I'm playing the guitar now with the rack that's kind of my main focus you know recently I've been getting into playing just with a track like a backing track thing where I can blow like fast shuffles with the backing track that's the kind of stuff I'm practicing now building a repertoire solo if possible but I mean you know I love playing with other musicians you know we've been doing these online things, these live streams and stuff like that. We're doing another one of those on the 1st of May, like a little Walter tribute thing with Aki Kumar and Gary Smith.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So, I mean, what about playing on the rack? I've played that a little bit myself, but I always feel the harmonica, it's different playing on a rack, isn't it? You're not holding it. You don't have as much control. And the way that you play, you know, you're a very full-on, very energetic player. So how are you approaching

SPEAKER_02:

it? Well, on the rack, I'm just trying to kind of do what I do when I'm playing with a mic which is just playing, say, Jimmy Reed style or Big Walter style or whatever with the rack. That's kind of what I'm doing. But the really tricky thing with rack playing is getting your guitar in sync with where your harmonica is or playing the high note Jimmy Reed stuff and not having the rack move on you, things like that. It's a real trying thing, being in sync with yourself and being in sync with the harmonica and the guitar being. But I love it. I mean, I'm really enjoying doing it.

SPEAKER_00:

Getting on to the last section now and talking about gear. So you're a Seidel endorser. Yes. So which Seidel harps do you like? I

SPEAKER_02:

play the 1847, the wood comb ones.

SPEAKER_00:

What made you become a Seidel endorser? Were you playing them? Well,

SPEAKER_02:

actually, Muscle White kind of turned me on to them back in 07. And he just said, hey, try one of these. He gave me one and I started playing it. And he asked me what I thought. And I said, man, I really kind like it. I'm getting into playing on these and he goes, well, call him up. I'm up here to get you an endorsement.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, because he endorses them as well, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so he was able to get me hooked up with him and man, it's fantastic because I think me and Charlie are the last guys that get free harps. So that's pretty awesome, yeah. I've had a great relationship with those guys.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, they're doing great and really helped push on the quality harmonicas, haven't they, when they came along? I think it made Hohner up the game, didn't it, when they came along?

SPEAKER_02:

It really did. I mean, to be honest with you, the way I ended up going with them is I said, well, why don't you send me a set of harps and let me see how I like them. And so I put the side L's in my harp case and I had honers in there and I had side L's in there. And I'd play the honers for a while. I go, these just aren't as loud. They're not getting the kind of compression that the side L's are getting. And so I just found myself just gravitating to the side L's all the time. And that's what made me just go with them. I wasn't interested in playing the honers after that. a while but they did improve them for sure

SPEAKER_00:

yeah are you playing the chromatic from them as well

SPEAKER_02:

you know i have some of the chromatics but i'm pretty much still a honer guy on chromatic seemed to me i was playing the 12 hole ones and i still play those from sidle but the 16 holes seem to be the honers

SPEAKER_00:

yeah so you mainly play 16 hole chromatic do you

SPEAKER_02:

well i do both i mean you know if i'm playing a b flat those are pretty much always 12 and what about uh any different tunings i'm not really a tunings guy i mean i'm more More of a position guy. I mean, you know, when people, you know, talk about playing in a minor key, I'm always going to play third position or fourth position in minor.

SPEAKER_00:

And what about any overblows?

SPEAKER_02:

I don't really overblow. I mean, I can do it barely. But frankly, that's kind of how I started playing chromatic is, you know, I was playing chromatic way before overblows were even used. So I just figured I'll stick with the chromatic. I like just having the sound difference between a chromatic and a diatonic. Yeah. you know, because the tone is different. When I hear guys playing, you know, the overblows, it's real impressive to me, but it's never been something that really made me want to learn that sound because the tone is different.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. It's very much a difference. And again, I play a lot of chromatic and diatonic too. So I'm like you, I sort of think, well, I'll just play it on the chromatic rather than, but you appreciate that they do get very sort of fluid lines doing the overblows, don't they?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I can do, you know, pretty fluid stuff in third. And when I played Creeper Returns, that's in third. The original guy did it in second. And what embouchure do you use? Well, I'm using all tongue blocking. Other than some blow bend stuff on the high end and some triple tonguing on the mid-range, everything is tongue block.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, like you're saying on the Wayback Machine album, you forced yourself to tongue block that. You weren't tempted to try and pucker that stuff at the top end there.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I mean, the only reason I pucker the blow bends is if I'm doing, say, Jimmy Reed's style. Like for example, in the rack, I tried to do tongue block blow bends on the rack because everything from nine down I could do, but I could not get that like on an A harp. If I was doing that on a rack, trying to get the 10 blow to get that blow bend there on the 10 on an A, it was really a struggle. So it just made more sense to really lift those. But if I'm playing like holding the harp, then I still do, you know, the blow bends, tongue block If I'm playing like that, you know, Rhythm Willie or Jazz Gillum style, I'm still, you know, tongue-blocking those. If I do Jimmy Reed, I don't tongue-block Jimmy Reed because I don't think he was doing it. I think he was blowbending while lipping.

UNKNOWN:

¶¶

SPEAKER_02:

And same with little Walter. I think little Walter blow bent and big Walter. I think those guys were, I mean, you try to do like say hard hearted woman and try to tongue block your blow bends like that. I can't get it up to that speed. I can do it, but it's not that fast.

SPEAKER_00:

And what about amplifier wise? I know you, you did have a sunny junior ample. Is that what you're still playing?

SPEAKER_02:

Nah, I ended up selling my Sonny's. So I kind of got back into playing on a hand-wired basement. It was a basement kit is what I ended up buying from this guy. That amp sounds great. It sounds really good. And I still got an original 59 that is just unbelievable. But I've also found some other old amps. Like I found a Silvertone with 212s. It's just an amazing amp. I think it's like a 1437 or something like that. It's just a great amp.

SPEAKER_00:

You have you got a small lamp as well you take out

SPEAKER_02:

yeah i got a bunch of small lamps i got a princeton that i use i got an airline that i use i got one called a hurricane that's one my friend uh my late friend uh rock bottom turned me on to a long time ago and gave me this little lamp called a hurricane that's got like one eight and it just sounds killer it's it's been one of my favorite amps for like 25 years you know

SPEAKER_00:

so have you just discovered the amps that you like as you sort of tried them rather than sort of going for a particular make or a model

SPEAKER_02:

yeah i'm just always changing my mind on on amps i mean i got a concert i got a the basement the real basement and the basement kit and the uh i mean i had a magnetone i sold that you know i just kind of go through amps i mean i i was playing meteors for a while and i really liked those for a while i get tired of one sound all the time i got to change up my sound

SPEAKER_00:

it's good as i say the different albums you need a new amp for all your different albums don't you can get a different sound on them

SPEAKER_02:

well i mean the one i go back to all the time is the original bass basement on the albums because that thing sounds killer yeah it sounds so good i mean that's the album really for the last say 20 years that's been my main amp for for recording i think that golden state i did on the silver tone i did the one with walking with mr lee that's on the silver tone yeah most the albums on electrify have been um have been the basement

SPEAKER_00:

your microphone of choice these days

SPEAKER_02:

the way that usually works for me is that again i kind of don't like one sound all the time and And every room sounds different. So a lot of times what I'll do, I notice guys like Clark and Kim Wilson would always travel with a few different mics. They'd have maybe five different mics or something that they could get the sound of the club to match. And I found that was a really smart idea. So I started carrying at least three mics in each harp case. And that way I can match both the amp and the room and everything like that. I've got a few that are my favorites. Generally, I almost always use CMs or CRs and usually old ones like Black Label or whatever. And I'll put them in a static shell. I'll have my friend put them in a static shell. I got a real good harp tech, mic tech, a guy named Mark Overman that does mics for me. Yeah, I mean, he's made a number of custom, you know, JT30 shells with CM or CR elements. I do use, you know, Great Human did one biscuit mic for me with a really good cr in it you know i've got a t3 that that that popular one that people seem to be using but i don't use it all that often because it because it's got a brush element and the brushes are really easy to break and they're really you know sensitive to heat or or cold so on the road that kind of thing is a little nerve-wracking you know

SPEAKER_00:

and uh do you use any effects pedals

SPEAKER_02:

no i used to a long time ago i used to use a delay a real simple delay uh pedal but for an echo pedal but you know I just found that you know straight in is usually how I like to play.

SPEAKER_00:

Recording wise do you use any particular setup or do you leave that to the studio?

SPEAKER_02:

Well I mean one thing I kind of picked up on a long time ago and I think Rusty's Inn might have helped me with this idea was when you're recording in the studio to not just have one mic on your amp and don't have it necessarily just close but have one close one maybe three feet out or two feet out and then another one maybe five feet out. Or the other thing is recording in a hallway is a great idea for ambient. So yeah, those are setups that I've tried a number of different times. There was a point there where we used to record out in Pacifica and I'd always put the amp in the garage. Kit Anderson's where I do most of my recording now. A lot of times I'll put the amp in the washroom or in the hallway, put a couple different mics around it. Yeah, but you want something to try to give it an ambient sound. That's really important.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I've heard that from talking about quite a few Monica recordings to get that. People talk about recording in the bathroom and to get that reverb and natural reverb. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So last question then. Obviously, it's been pandemic time and I see you've got a couple of shows on your website. You've got the one on May 1st, as you mentioned, about the Little Walter Birthday concert. That's an online thing. And the May 16th gig, is that a real gig?

SPEAKER_02:

That's a real gig. That's outdoors. And that's a place we play in Berkeley called The Back Room. And they got, I think me and Bob Welsh did one. one back in, I can't remember if it was the beginning of November or the beginning of December, we did one there. And it worked out real nice. You know, I mean, it was, you know, people paid 20 bucks or something each and we had a nice turnout. We're going to do that again. And then we're also doing the spa in August, but that's going to be online as well. I don't mean to sound so negative, but I don't want to put the cart before the horse with all this because I just don't know what's going to happen. And I am booking the blowout for January 2022 and crossing my fingers that that all works out I just don't know what's going to happen so

SPEAKER_00:

I'm kind of hoping that people are going to they've all been locked up for a year so they're all going to be desperate to go out so there might be a big

SPEAKER_02:

oh that's what I think yeah

SPEAKER_00:

but it might only last for a few months is the danger yeah but at least that first few months it's like yeah everyone wants to go out and enjoy themselves and yeah so I'm hoping that that's going to be a real boom time me too maybe everyone's used to staying in and watching Netflix now instead and that's

SPEAKER_02:

it I think people are going to be very hungry for live music as soon as it's safe. I just think people got to be real smart about what they do and don't do. I think the idea of people jamming into a nightclub is a real bad idea right about now.

SPEAKER_00:

And next year, I know you're supposed to be coming over to the UK to play at the Harping by the Sea event in Brighton. Right. Get down to that for sure and hopefully see you there in person. I'm really excited about

SPEAKER_02:

that. That

SPEAKER_00:

was so much

SPEAKER_02:

fun.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, it's always a great weekend now with Richard and the guys. So thanks so much, Mark Hummel, for joining me today. Well, thank you, Neil, for having me and it was a pleasure. That's episode 36 wrapped. Mr Mark Hummel, take us to that harmonica party.

SPEAKER_03:

Thank you.