Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Tony Eyers interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 45

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Tony Eyers joins me on episode 45.
Tony is an Australian who first picked up the harmonica while studying at Yale in the US. Returning from America he started a successful blues band in Adelaide.
He also plays baroque recorder, and has been part of an ensemble for 25 years, which has helped shape his sound on harmonica.
In the mid-90s he became interested in playing fiddle music and developed the Major Cross tuning for the diatonic, now available through Seydel.
Tony has several successful harmonica teaching websites, including the Harmonica Academy.
And also has his own harmonica trio for which he has released numerous YouTube videos, where he maintains the great tradition of comedy in the harmonica ensemble.


Links:

Teaching website:
https://www.harmonicaacademy.com

Spanish version:
https://armonica.com.es

Harmonica Tunes website:
http://harmonicatunes.com/

Recorder teaching site:
https://learnrecorder.com

Major Cross Harp Tuning:
https://www.seydel1847.de/major-cross

Taiwan tour in 2010:
http://harmonicatunes.com/tony-eyers-taiwan-harmonica-tour/

Tony Eyers trio formation story:
http://harmonicatunes.com/tony-eyers-harmonica-trio/


Videos:
Jim Fitting:
https://youtu.be/sGpBxepQx7Q

Tony Eyers Trio - Jerusalem Ridge:
https://youtu.be/cEWJtrPAtLw

Tremolo playing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWr2qusnfu8

Tony Eyers Trio with button accordions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYhG5FnjRGA

Tony’s Fifties Busking trio:
http://thefifties.com.au/watch/

Tony explains Major Cross tuning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fn6nfMAbuA


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_01:

Tony Urs joins me on episode 45. Tony is an Australian who first picked up the harmonica while studying at Yale in the US. Returning from America, he started a successful blues band in Adelaide. Tony also plays baroque recorder and has been part of an ensemble for 25 years, which has helped shaped his sound and harmonica. In the mid-90s, he became interested in playing fiddle music and developed the major cross-tuning for the diatonic, now available through Seidel. Tony has several successful harmonica teaching websites including the Harmonica Academy. Tony has his own harmonica trio for which he has released numerous YouTube videos and maintains the great tradition of comedy in the harmonica ensemble. Hello Tony Errs and welcome to the podcast. Hello Neil, nice to be here. You're joining us from Sydney, Australia today. That's right.

SPEAKER_00:

Spring's about to start here and it's 6pm in the evening. So what's the

SPEAKER_01:

harmonica scene like in Australia?

SPEAKER_00:

Fairly widely spread, as Australia is. So there are good players, but we don't run into each other very much. Most of them are in Melbourne and I'm in Sydney. I'm fortunate in that I live around the corner from Jim Conway, who's probably Australia's best love player.

UNKNOWN:

MUSIC

SPEAKER_00:

80s he toured with brownie mcgee and had his own bands which got gold records uh jim's had ms since the late 1980s so he doesn't play anymore but he's a national treasure and i'm very glad to know jim

SPEAKER_01:

great and so you mentioned brownie mcgee there so you you saw sonny terry play in the 1970s i understand

SPEAKER_00:

yeah uh 74 maybe it was 1975 they came to australia and toured they were on the news as soon as you heard them on the tv and i remember hearing them they were so wonderful that we had to see them play. So we went to see them in the Adelaide Town Hall. That's the first time that I can remember hearing the harmonica played.

SPEAKER_01:

And did that inspire you to go and dig out other blues harmonica records?

SPEAKER_00:

No, it didn't. So at that stage, I was very much, I guess, in the glam rock phase of my life. I listened to Slade and Elton John and Australian bands like Sherbert. So no, not at all. I In fact, I probably didn't even know what blues was. And, you know, at that stage, sort of as a 16-year-old, music wasn't in my life, or at least not as a player. You know, I was a competitive swimmer. That's sort of what my life revolved around. I wanted to play. I remember that clearly, but at that stage I didn't.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, competitive swimming, that involves getting up ridiculously early in the morning, doesn't it? And swimming for several hours, as I understand.

SPEAKER_00:

It did, yeah. So I'd train 13 times a week. And in peak training, I'd swim 16 kilometers a day. So I won an Australian title when I was 16. So I was serious about it. I didn't leave room for many other things, really.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm sure it put your lungs in good shape for playing the harmonica later. So when did you start picking up the harmonica? Well... The swimming

SPEAKER_00:

got me a kind of a scholarship to Yale University. So in 1975, I showed up there as an undergraduate, which is the experience of a lifetime for any young person. And the thing about Yale is... that it changes you. And it changes you because of the people that you meet. And when I was there, I met Jim Fitting. He was a classmate and became a friend. A wonderful, wonderful player back then and now. You know, he plays with Session Americana. Prior to that, he played with Trita Wright.

UNKNOWN:

MUSIC

SPEAKER_00:

Jim was just so wonderful that, you know, you'd watch him and just want to do what he did. It's just the sound that he had, the physicality of how he played. That, I guess, got me interested. It wasn't until the end of my second year at Yale when I'd finished swimming. I actually took a year off and went feral, you know, groomed my hair and hitchhiked around the place and did all those young person things. And that's when I actually started playing the harmonica.

SPEAKER_01:

Did you take a harmonica on the road when you were hitchhiking around?

SPEAKER_00:

I did. And I can't remember when I got one, but I remember being able to play Click Go The Shears, which is an Australian folk tune, which takes a bit of mobility around the harmonica. But I remember going to music festivals. At that stage, I was 19 and I was desperate to be able to play. And I remember trying to sit around campfires and trying to play and just sounding horrible. And being convinced that I didn't have any music in me. And then I went to a festival in New Zealand. I hitchhiked around New Zealand. And there was a... A moment there which changed my life. I was hanging around a campsite with people playing and someone had a cigar box full of harmonicas and they explained the thing of music keys and the thing of second position and the fact that if you played in the key of E, I didn't know what a key was, you had to have a harmonica in the key of A. And the thing which changed my life is they gave me harmonicas to play and I could play. And it was like this huge light bulb went on and there was a stage there which we got on. There's a festival at about a thousand people. So literally the day or the day after I started playing, I was on stage and I sort of, in a sense, I haven't gotten off. My life changed in that day. I was immediately obsessed, even though I had no money whatsoever. I went out and bought myself a set of harmonicas and played them continuously. Immediately decided that I was wonderful, as young people do, and was probably a thorough pest. I was very fortunate, though, that I got back to Australia. I'm from Adelaide, even though I live in Sydney now. And very early on, I fell in with fine players. So my brother is a fine musician. And then a few years later i formed a blues band so really the people that i played with taught me how to play just through osmosis

SPEAKER_01:

you were the harmonica player in this band

SPEAKER_00:

so i sort of progressed i actually went back to yale and finished my degree i studied electronics and worked in dc for a year as a programmer but i fell in with some good musicians there as well and so i just experienced the joy of music and i guess i was good enough so that people like what i did and then i In my early 20s, I got done with the United States because it was too cold. So I came back to Australia. And then someone gave me a cassette tape of the Hollywood Fats Band. It's just every now and then, and everyone's had this experience, you get a recording that changes your life, and that did.

UNKNOWN:

MUSIC

SPEAKER_00:

So I just had to form a blues band, and I was lucky to have this friend, James Tysard, who was already a bass player. So we had sort of the makings of a rhythm section. And the thing which I was good at, and I'm still, I guess, good at it, was organising things and running around. So I got us a gig and then got us another one, which turned into a three- or four-year residency. So through that, because I had regular money each week, I was able to hire the best players in town. We called ourselves the Full House Blues Band. You know, when I played and particularly when I sang, people enjoyed watching really just because I enjoy it so much.

SPEAKER_01:

So you were the main singer with this band?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, I was the singer. And, you know, I was the band leader because, I mean, the singer generally is. And, you know, we played, I don't know, we had 150 people each week. Bikeys used to come to our gigs, which I loved because back then they loved blues. I mean, I don't know what they listen to now. Yeah, and the 1980s, particularly in Australia, was the golden age of pub rock. You know, music was played in pubs and if you went out, you'd go to somewhere where there was live music. Yeah, back then, finding a place to play and getting a residency, so much harder now. But back then it could be done and the whole music scene grew out of it and I was part of it.

SPEAKER_01:

So obviously this is a blues band, you mentioned that. So was blues your inspiration? We'll get on to, it's not, you know, you play other sorts of music now.

SPEAKER_00:

Back then it was, you know, I was a blues player and fortunately there was a guy in Adelaide called Greg Baker who was older than me, a very experienced player, and he took me under his wing and introduced me to Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters. I didn't know who any of these people were. And I remember at that stage, so we're talking, I guess, early, late 70s, early 80s, you could buy these double albums which were essentially reissues of chess and they're on the chess label of, you know, the classic Little Walter cuts, the classic Sonny Boy Williamson II cuts. I had the classic Muddy Waters record, which everyone gets, you know, from the 1950s, A Howling Wolf. And I listened to that stuff and listened and listened and listened. You know, I listened to a lot of blues and I guess absorbed it. Looking back, I mean, you don't get your time back, but I wish I'd actually studied a bit more of how these people actually played.

SPEAKER_01:

And around this as well, shortly after you started playing the harmonica, you started playing the Baroque recorder. I

SPEAKER_00:

actually played recorder in primary school and then gave it up, but always had one around and I could play green sleeves. I think even when I backpacked, I might've had one in my bag. But then when I was still in America, living in Washington, DC, I went to a secondhand record store and got this album of Andreas Segovia, you know, the classical guitar player. And it just blew my mind. So it's him playing Bach. And so I spent the night six months just listening to Bach played by him over and over and over part he sort of redid the cello suites and the violin partitas for classical guitar and he was the first classical guitarist and the greatest so I had to play that music and you know I figured I couldn't play guitar or get up to his step but I figured I had a head start and recorder so I started playing recorder and started listening to Baroque music started listening to Telemann who sort of hit me in a always been part of what I do. At some stages I studied it and I did grades. I did grade seven recorder. So that's always been part of my makeup and what I do and how I think about music.

SPEAKER_01:

And you've been in an ensemble playing baroque for I think 25 years or so. You took this up a little bit later, performing in recorder, but yeah, you were always serious into

SPEAKER_00:

that. I mean, the thing with recorder and sort of classical instruments, you can jam, although classical players don't tend to. But I was lucky to find music partners, particularly in the 1980s, this lady, Jane Elliott. She was a really good flute player and she took me under her wing. So we played duets together. Then I moved to Sydney in 1988 and met my Baroque soulmate, Amanda Muir. She went to the Royal College of Music in London. I met her at sort of an open music day and plucked up the courage to ask her if she wanted to do duets, and she did. And we've played together ever since, and she's a wonderful player. She plays Baroque flute. She's a soprano. So in 1995, we formed our Baroque band. Yeah, we own a harpsichord, and, you know, the players are conservatorium graduates, and we've had people coming and going over the years. But, yeah, that's what I've done sort of as almost a separate room for It's one of my music rooms, I guess you could describe it like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so how do you think your recorder is playing as an influence, your harmonica playing?

SPEAKER_00:

Probably in the way that I do recordings, the way that I do arrangements. In terms of, I guess, precision, with Baroque music, you have to be precise. totally precise. You know, I mean, obviously with the recorder playing in Baroque band, I read music. I mean, I don't for the harmonica. And yeah, I'm playing with conservatorium graduates. So it's got to be right. And it's very complex, intricate music. And so through that, so that's sort of filtered into my harmonica playing. I mean, I don't play like a Baroque player. I don't sound like a Baroque player, I don't think. But the recorder sensibility and the training I've got through that side of the music life, I think has had quite an influence on the way that I play.

SPEAKER_01:

So you don't read music on the harmonica, so you don't play these pieces on chromatic harmonica yourself?

SPEAKER_00:

No, no. So I don't play chromatic harmonica at all. Over the years, whenever I meet a really good, and they have to be really, really good chromatic sight reader. I get out my Baroque recorders and do duets, and we don't have anyone in Australia, at least as far as I know, and I'm pretty sure I'm right about this, who could do this, but people like Susan Sauter and Rocky Locke from Hong Kong, you know, the Judy Harmonica Ensemble people who I've met over the years. So playing Baroque recorder with chromatic harmonica is something I've done from time to time, and it sounds wonderful, but I don't get to do it all that much.

SPEAKER_01:

You have a book of Baroque scores, which is available on your website, yeah?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, that came out of being actually at Spa, and I guess we could get to talking about Spa at some stage, but... You know, I bring my scores and put them in front of players and, you know, they read them for better or worse. And so after Spar in 2017, I think I got back to Australia and thought, well, look, not a lot of the chromatic players know about this music. So I went online and found sort of the classic Baroque duets and put them together in a PDF. You know, if you Google Baroque chromatic harmonica, you'll find it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I'll put a link onto that. It'll be interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

The Baroque period, and we're talking about the early 18th, century, particularly in places like London, but also Paris, I guess there was this really strong movement of good amateur players, particularly playing recorders and flutes. So there was this tremendous market for music for them. And people like Telemann, Guamortier met that market and made a lot of money from it. So there's, I guess, a canon is the classical word of good quality Baroque duets. So, you know, I got the best ones and put them together and that's what's in this pdf book that i made

SPEAKER_01:

so good stuff yeah so we'll we'll move on from the baroque recorder then so uh back to your harmonica so so as you say you played with this full house blues band as you got to the 90s you started getting uh you know work started uh taking over a little bit and you um you took a little break from playing

SPEAKER_00:

well i guess a better way of describing is i had a break imposed upon me so i started a phd in 1990 had kids my marriage came apart you know in the early 90s and it often does when you're a PhD student and you know the stuff that I had going on in the early 90s meant that I could not run a band so I really had to put the harmonica to one side and I remember feeling really resentful that there was this thing that I loved so much that I couldn't do because this PhD and anyone who's done a PhD knows that it's this long black cloud which hangs over your life for about four or five years and until you finish it and it goes away and you can call yourself Dr. S. I mean, I kept playing recorder through that. And I play harmonica a bit, but I finished that in 1995. And that's, I guess, when I really emerged as a player and sort of re-engaged with the harmonica.

SPEAKER_01:

You heard Brandon Power playing some fiddle tunes and that inspired you to pick up.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that sort of, that came a bit later. So, you know, I wanted to play harmonica. I'd sort of been hanging around blues bands and weaseling my way onto stage. and I mean harmonica players are good at that but I remember one night in particular I was at this there was this gig and there's a guy that I knew it was his show so I figured he'd give me a spot and he did but I remember there were a couple of other harmonica players exactly the same as me and I remember one guy got on stage and I looked at him and I thought you know what he's better than I am I mean when you get older I mean I'm in my 60s now you don't care about that stuff but I was in my 30s and that didn't sit well with me so you You know, I wanted to get better. I knew that I couldn't run a band because I still, I mean, I was a single dad half the time and I had a job. I was a university lecturer. So I went to a bluegrass festival and suddenly there was this door opened of music that I could engage with in that with bluegrass, it's a jamming culture. And I know you interviewed David Nadich a while back and I listened to your podcast and David talks about this a lot. In fact, you go to festivals and there are excellent, excellent people there just standing around playing bluegrass and acoustic music. And I'd played it before. I'd lived in America 15 years before. So I saw a way forward. I didn't have to run a band. All I had to do was show up to festivals. And, you know, there are good festivals in Australia, not as many as in America, but good ones. And I could play again. And I loved the music and particularly loved the fiddle tunes. So I sort of was on a mission to engage with this music. And it became clear very early on that I had to learn the tunes. And Bluegrass has got a core repertoire of about 30 tunes. And I had to learn them. and had to really nail them. And actually the guitar player from the blues band, who was actually a bluegrass player, I remember, he was staying with me in 95, he left me a tape of the classic bluegrass tunes and I started learning from them. And that's where Brendan Power came in because someone said we should listen to him. And anyway, I remember sitting in my office, University of Wollongong one night, supposedly working but not, early days of the internet, and I searched him and I found an MP3 of the Drunken Landlady from his New Irish Harmonica set. I didn't know if you could actually play this music on harmonica. And it was just so wonderful. I remember just punching the air just as the sound came through. And it was, yes, this music, it could be done. Here's someone doing it. So, and I got to know Brendan and actually I met him in Australia not long after. I've been in touch with Brendan over the years. We actually shared a hotel room some years later at the Asia Pacific Harmonica Festival. So, you know, Brendan has been part of the musical life and, you know, I've gotten to know him. I'm very glad for that.

SPEAKER_01:

So then you were introduced into the world of fiddle tunes, as you say, and bluegrass and... So you're well known for the invention of the major cross tuning. At what stage did this come out?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, this came sort of fairly early on. So the thing with bluegrass, it's kind of like a bluegrass festival. It's kind of like a school playground. You get to play with the group that matches your level. And there are fairly strict unwritten rules about who you can play with and who you can't. And I wanted to play with the very best people. I was ambitious, but I had this double bind because firstly, I had to get good enough and I had to learn the repertoire. But I also then had to overcome the natural, and I've got to say in some cases, justified resistance that bluegrass players have to harmonicas just because so many blues players have wrecked their jams and not known what they're doing. So I had to work doubly hard. I was trying to learn these fast tunes and bending and it wasn't really working out. And I remember being at the National Folk Festival and watching the button accordion players And I just sort of had this, I guess, epiphany, I suppose, for this tuning called Major Cross. And it's quite similar to the Lee Oscar Melody Maker Tuning, where essentially you play in second position, but the whole harmonica is tuned to a major scale. And my innovation was to apply it across all the holes. So Lee Oscar applies to eight holes, I apply it to all ten. And so I came home and I tuned one up and just this light went on. Suddenly I could play all these tunes. And so I made myself a set of these harmonicas and it's myself to work you know i remember you know sitting with a metronome you know for months learning the scales essentially applying the techniques that i've done for baroque recorder to become fluent with this tuning because i mean the thing with the tuning is people come up with tunings and you know some they give them names but it really doesn't matter at all unless you create music with it So it's not coming up with a configuration. Well, that's part of it, but it's actually putting it to work and saying, hey, this is what it sounds like. So it's sort of been my thing for the last 20 years. I mean, I play the regular diatonics as well, you know, for blues, because they work better than major cross. But, you know, for fiddle tunes, major cross works really well, all for me at least.

SPEAKER_01:

So do you bend any notes on this one, Monica? Do you play all the notes straight?

SPEAKER_00:

I play almost all of the notes straight, which is the whole idea of it. I do bend one note. I mean, I bend notes for expression. The thing with the major cross tuning is the major scale. So to get a flat seventh it's a bit like country tuning the draw five is raised to semitone so you can bend it down to get that note I use that one fairly often but the rest of the time I don't which means that you know I can play you know again referring to David Nadege he said he plays chromatic harmonica for bluegrass because of the evenness of the tone for myself it's the same thing you know all of the notes have the same timbre I guess with major cross you don't get that different sound that you get with bending

SPEAKER_01:

so I play you I like to play tunes myself. So I use a Paddy Richter tuning to do that. And it's what I'm used to. So yeah, looking into, you know, yourself and I haven't tried this major cross. So yeah, it'd be interesting to give that a go.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, Paddy Richter is a wonderful innovation. That's one of Brendan's. And it's because that's designed for first position, which is something I've actually gotten into just in recent years. And I really, really like it. And if I'd been playing first position back then in the 90s, I probably would have adopted Paddy Richter. But it's sort of the same idea. So, you know, you can wail up and down these tunes without having to bend notes. Just play the notes in the way that other players do.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I think you made that important distinction there, don't you, that Paddy Richter's really mainly first position, whereas your major cross is the second position, isn't it, which is obviously what most people are used to playing blues.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, actually, it turns out I came up with a tuning, and a lot of the time I play it in second position, but a number of things popped out of it which I hadn't really planned on. One is there's three other positions. So third position... is because of the retuning a major position for in the bluegrass world are called modal tunes like redhead boy and salt creek essentially where you go from an a down to a g that kind of thing so And then there are two minor positions. I guess, what, fourth position and fifth position, which lie different. And both of them are very powerful. And you can roar through tunes like, for those of you who know the bluegrass repertoire at all, things like Jerusalem Ridge in, I guess, what would be fifth position. But, you know, the notes sit in different places. So, yeah, I've become, yeah, I'm fluent with major cross. I've been at it for 20 years. I should be. And I use four positions. The other thing about it, and I actually did realize this until quite a few years after I'd come up with it. It's got all of the triads for all chords. So if you think of the seven scale degrees, there's a triad for every chord. They don't sound that great on the higher harmonicas, but on the lower harmonicas, they sound wonderful. So that's, yeah, just something else which falls out of Major Cross.

SPEAKER_01:

So do you mainly play the tunes in second position or?

SPEAKER_00:

It depends. If for the minor tunes, I'll play either fourth or, hang on, fourth or fifth position. Yeah, So, no, I use the other position quite a lot.

SPEAKER_01:

So this is now a harmonica which Seidel produced. So how did all that come about?

SPEAKER_00:

I guess one of the things is sort of backpedalling a little is that I became known because of a recording that I did back in 2003. Using this tuning and a lot of help from a brother who runs a recording studio, you know, he got me to put the work in so that it came out right. And by that stage, I'd gotten quite a few miles under the belt. Wow. I've sent this CD around because there aren't many in this style, you know, sort of bluegrass Irish style. It became known. It's called Black Mountain

SPEAKER_02:

Harmonica.

UNKNOWN:

.

SPEAKER_00:

So I became known on the scene and I introduced myself to P.T. Gazelle and got to know him. And actually through various things, I'd become a judge at the Asia Pacific Harmonica Festival and got to know P.T. there. And he's a Seidel endorser and his, you know, his Gazelle method harmonicas. And he, a lot of ways, he's the face of Seidel. I write for the Harmonica World magazine. I started doing that in 2008. And I did a profile on PT about his harmonica, and not a profile on him. I'd made myself a set of his harmonicas, that's right. So I talked about him. And so he contacted me and said, hey, look, would you be interested in hooking up with Seidel? I'd been in touch with Seidel, but hadn't really thought about how we could, so I did. And I had a long talk with Lars, the president. Seidel's a small company. He's only about 35 people. And what he wanted was to link my teaching site to Seidel, which I did. The thing with Seidel is that they have something called the Harmonica Configurator or Harp Configurator, where you can come up with your own custom tuning. So Seidel is the company that produces custom tunings much more than any other company does. So I thought, well, look, I've got this major cross-tuning. It's a big change. You've got to change seven reeds. And so people have expressed interest, but unless they could retune it themselves or get a customizer which is expensive. So I suggested this to Seidel and they said, yeah, sure. And then I said, well, maybe we could make a separate page for it on your site. And they said, well, look, we'll do more than that. We'll create a major cross model and give it its own comb. So it was a light blue comb. So this is in 2017. And I've got to say that's the proudest day of my life because there's a harmonica with my name on it. I've got my own model. Fantastic, yeah. I'll probably mention this two or three times before we're done, but... And it's based on the Session Steel, which is sort of their intermediate model, but it works very well. And the thing I really like about the Session Steel Major Cross is that it responds very quickly to light breath pressures. So I guess it's a very well-sealed harmonica, which means that I can play at the speeds that I want to with this Session Steel Major Cross model, and it responds in the way I like. So yeah, I'm very happy with it. So yeah, I'm part of the Seidel family. They kid me out with Seidel Harmonicas because I was going to a festival, I think Spa. And, you know, Lars said it when I said, was there anything you need? I said, well, look, Lars, I'm going to this festival. I'm going to be a Seidel guy. I guess I should have a bag full of Seidel Harmonicas. And he said, yeah. So, yeah, I've got a bag full of Seidel. Yeah, I love them. The 1847, which is their premium band. It's a very strong and wonderful instrument. I play tremolo as well. And they make a very nice Asian tremolo. They call it the skydive.

SPEAKER_02:

So that's

SPEAKER_00:

sort of a longish answer about how... I got into.

SPEAKER_01:

No, fantastic. Yeah, like you say, very proud to have your name in the harmonica. So the Session Steals are really good harmonicas as well. So do you know how well it's, any idea how well it sold this tuning through Seidel? Oh, they're pleased with it. Let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, it hasn't turned anyone into millionaires, but they're pleased with it. So I'm a Seidel endorser, but, you know, having my own model. So I'm part of the family. And being part of the family means essentially you get what you're put into it and so when i i've been to spa you know 2017 to 2019 you know and they have a stand there and they're very well organized in this way so i get this little patch on the stand with my harmonics and i stand next to pt gazelle which is a great honor in itself and so i i take the trouble to put out videos with the major cross tuning so i've got this group i guess you could call it the tony ellis trio and you know i'll make a point of putting up you know fairly regular regularly just demonstrating what the major cross sounds like you know sort of played in my style just this traditional american tunes mostly

SPEAKER_01:

well whilst we're on the subject of the tony earth trio this is a uh a great thing i'll put some uh some links on to the podcast page so this trio consists of three dubious looking characters in in different disguises yes yes just and just to make this clear for people who haven't seen it yet this is all you yes

SPEAKER_00:

well look now we can we can run this either two ways I could maintain the pretense that it's myself in the middle and these two clowns on either side. Yes, yes. The way that I got into this... was sort of a bit of a backstory. I was a judge at the Asia Pacific Harmonica Festival from 2008 to 2014. And that didn't come about because one day someone in Asia thought we've got to get Tony Ayres. I was running a teaching website in China at that stage, which was doing quite well. So I was known. And so I basically contacted the committee and was invited. So I did it four times. And it's really the experience of a lifetime. It's the world's biggest harmonica festival. It's about 2,000 contestants. And And it's all competitions and a wonderful sort of feeling. And the standard of playing is phenomenal. And it's mostly harmonica groups. I've never heard a harmonica group before. And, you know, trios. So there's one time when I judged the junior trios, that's like up to age 18 or something, and there were 43 entrants. So, you know, this idea of harmonica trios was in my head. So I got myself this instrument called a Juan Cordet. I've got it here. It's sort of got this sort of sound. I don't know how this will come out of it. you sort of get the bass and the chord at the same time so i got myself one of those actually retuned it to the way i wanted so that was sort of the the rhythm part and which then had two other lead voices and so the way that i do recording sort of came about from the cd black mountain harmonica which i did where i created these harmonica arrangements and i haven't heard too many other people doing i think charlie mccoy's did it a bit where you have two harmonicas playing either in unison or playing harmony parts throughout the whole recording and so it's a style which I wouldn't say I've invented it but it's one that I've used a lot and sort of because I'm in Australia and don't have the players at hand that you would in other places yeah this has sort of become my thing so the Tony Ayres Trio is recordings of these arrangements which I guess come out of my Baroque background playing trio sonatas and so you know we make these videos and I've been doing them for about 10 years I think it was about 30 of them. You know, some of them have had 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 views. And I put them up every month or so. There are some serious harmonica players who watch them. You know, Paul Davies, a previous spa president. I think P.T. Gazelle said he watches them. So I put a lot of care into recording them. But there's also a thing of harmonica comedy, which is a thing of the American trios from the 1950s. So, yeah, there's a bit of that as well.

SPEAKER_01:

No, they're great. They're a great watch. And I love that. I love the fact that you're doing these because, you know you want to produce this music in a harmonica trio on an ensemble but you know you can't find a place so you just do it yourself yeah i like that approach tony i think that's that's the way to do it i tried to get a uh an ensemble together which happened for a little while but it kind of you know commitments it kind of it fell apart so yeah that's fantastic so yeah they put a i said put the links up it's a it's a great thing to watch and it's a lot of fun as you say so So yeah, talking a little bit more through your recording career, you mentioned this Black Mountain Harmonica, which is your first album. This is an album of tunes and you've got various bluegrass classics on there, Billy in the Low Ground and Alabama Jubilee and Whiskey Before Breakfast. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

that sort of came about through sort of thinking, can I do a CD? Am I good enough? I was doing a lot of busking at that stage, and I still do. So I thought, yeah, having something I could sell. And so one of the things that's worth mentioning, it's sort of a big part of my development, is this program called Band in a Box, which I got into in the late 90s, and I still use it a lot. It's, as the name says, a piece of software which produces a band of pretty much any style. You just type in chord charts, choose the band, the speed, the key, and off you go. And the bands are fantastic. So I've been practicing with Band in a Box for the last two So when I did this CD, I'd sort of done a bit of recording before that, and it was pretty rough. But I thought, look, I'll give it another go. And my partner, who's now my wife, was in England for six weeks. So I thought, well, here's a chance to do something. You know, I'm putting in a lot of time without ignoring my partner. So I did these backings and chose these tunes, you know, the ones you mentioned, the bluegrass and Irish stuff, which is the stuff I've been playing. Also some slow ones by O'Carroll and the Irish sort of 18th century composer.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

So I did the band in the box settings, recorded these things, and then took it all to Adelaide, where my brother runs a recording studio. He gave me a day where I brought in my friend John Bridgeland, who has actually introduced me to bluegrass and played in a blues band from the 1980s. He laid down some tracks. My brother laid down some more, played some piano. A guy called Darren Mullins played piano. My brother did some percussion. He even did a banjo solo. I don't think he took it all that seriously. just because it was me. But what he did do was he said, look, listen to your cuts. Even though there weren't any mistakes, they're really not good enough. It's not interesting. You're not saying anything with the notes. And I really thought about that. So he produced the backing from it. I went back to Sydney and recorded the whole thing again. And this is how I record now. Quite often, the first take, I'll have 50 goes at it until I'm happy with it. Because every note has to say something. And, yeah, you can put expression on and things like articulation. So when I record stuff, I put an enormous amount of effort into getting it just right and that's what my brother taught me. So anyway, I redid the tracks and he mixed it and he's got a full-on studio. We've got it professionally mastered. I've got a friend in Australia. tokyo who's an architect and he did an album cover for me so i had a professional looking product and sent it out around the world and got very positive responses around the world so that put me on the map as you know someone who's you know one of the players to be considered for this style and so the you know the tony is trio went on from there and actually i haven't done another cd except we're in lockdown now so i'm actually then this time i'll do it i i've chosen a dozen of the tony is trio tracks and i'm re-recording them and that that will be a cd you're the first to hear it now but hopefully it'll be out by the end of the year

SPEAKER_01:

an exclusive that's what we like to hear on the podcast yeah there we go you make a good point though that's really showing the value of recording doesn't it and going through that pain of getting something really right and that you know how it really wants it to sound and showing the value of that doesn't it

SPEAKER_00:

well i guess also the thing is and you know there's stuff that you can do in terms of articulation about it's really a thing of every note the way he said is every note has to tell a story so i'll do a track and i'll listen to it and think look, is there any emotion in that? Is that interesting? And even if all the notes are correct, I can tell that, no, I don't like it. So I've got to keep at it. So over the years, I've gotten better, I think, at doing the arrangements and doing the harmonies. And when I do the harmonies, I use sort of my Baroque skills of just playing them until they're right. Another thing, back in the 1980s, I spent a number of years in singing groups, classical singing groups. And there, there's a thing of when you're in a section as a tenor, There's this thing of voice blending. So your voices have to sound like one voice. So your voice can't stand out. And I remember drawing upon that when I did my recordings, and I still do, because I do a lot of unison parts. And the unison parts, if you put the effort into and know what you're looking for, they sound like one part.

SPEAKER_01:

So, yeah, so you've got this album. You've also played in another Australian band called The Lawnmowers. So we were...

SPEAKER_00:

The cutting hedge of bluegrass we were. They got going about 2003. They were friends of mine. I just got on stage with them one day and never left. We did some big festivals, the National Folk Festival, the Port Ferry Festival. We did a couple of CDs. We would just go like the clappers. Yeah, we played bluegrass and other stuff as well. So, yeah, I was with them for five years and just loved every minute of it.

SPEAKER_01:

So you mentioned that you're out there busking. So you've got a busking trio now. You like to get out and play on the street busking.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. So what I started doing to practice was sitting out in the streets. And I'd make a bit of money and... When I had my CD, I'd sell a few CDs. And I like it. So I've been doing that. And that's how I've practiced for the last 20 years or more than 20 years. You know, I'll go out a couple of times a week, play for a couple of hours. So that's really a good way of running through his repertoire. And, you know, to be honest, I'm not going to get too many gigs playing old time tunes. Then, yeah, in the last year, because of COVID, you know, the only place you can play in the streets, I've started up a blues trio, which sort of returned that music after 30 years.

SPEAKER_01:

When you're playing the tunes, Busking, are you using backing tracks? I

SPEAKER_00:

did for a number of years. And then I went through for a few years, I'd use a loop pedal and use my rhythm harmonica. And just in the last four or five years, I've started playing guitar with a rack. And I'm really, really enjoying that. So I've gotten good enough on guitar so that, you know, it stands up. So that's what I do now. I also play button accordion. So I do that as well. You're playing harmonica on a rack with that as well. Yes. It's actually one of my harmonica students put me onto that. He said, look, can you play the accordion and harmonica on the rack at the same time? I said, no. Then after the lesson, I thought, well, can you? It turns out that you can. So you have to play first position. I can't use my fancy major cross tuning. But yeah, because the accordion's laid out the same as the harmonica. So yeah, that's something I do, which I enjoy an awful lot.

SPEAKER_01:

So talking a little bit about playing harmonica on a rack. So, I mean, how do you approach doing that?

SPEAKER_00:

Firstly, you've got to have a good rack. And Seidel have come up with a great one. It's called the Gecko, designed by a guy called Peter Farmer in the US. And then Seidel sort of took it on. And it's just head and shoulders above anything else. I mean, Hohner have got a good one called the Flex Rack. But the Seidel one, it's got a magnetic holder. So you just pop the hammer and take it off. You can adjust it. It sits exactly where you put it. You take it off, it goes back exactly where it was. That makes a big difference. I mean, you've got to have some skills on guitar but you know just playing basic rhythm just sort of keep at it and to start with keep the harmonica very very basic

SPEAKER_01:

yeah but it's that skill of doing the two things at the same time isn't it patting your head and rubbing your stomach

SPEAKER_00:

so I've gotten to be quite fluent so these days and for a number of years I've played the fiddle tunes with the harmonica so I mean the fiddle tunes I mean they're complex tunes but because I've been playing them so long you know I can sort of switch my brain off and concentrate on the guitar and yeah that's a very satisfying thing to do.

SPEAKER_01:

so we'll move on now to talking about your teaching we've touched a little bit on on the website so you've had a very successful teaching website for some years started out by creating the harmonica website in in china which has some success and that went on to become uh the harmonica academy website which you still run now yeah

SPEAKER_00:

well that's right so so my career has been teaching and my first degree was engineering uh and i worked as an engineer for a few years yeah but teaching is my thing so that's been my career teaching engineering telecoms so So teaching and putting together curriculum is something which I've had a lot of experience with. In, I think, 2005, I had an assignment in China teaching engineering at Zhengzhou University. And I hit on the idea of setting up a Chinese language harmonica website and got a partner who did translations. And we worked very closely together for a number of years. We actually called it Harmonica University. And for a number of years, it did well. We had our own harmonica brand and stuff. Then out of that came Harmonica Academy, which I launched. in 2008 and back then there wasn't very much around I mean there's a lot now you know Dave Barrett's got his wonderful sites and others as well and so the thing that I was able to do it's an involved site there's 80 lessons it's a big site you know it's a paid subscription but I was able to create these lessons and I mean my business back then and to an extent still is is writing you know I mean I supervise PhD students so you learn how to write you know and doing one yourself likewise so I can write well so you You know, my lessons are clear. And also because of my teaching background, I was able to break it into chunks so that you're not hit by a lesson which just blows you away. And so I guess the innovation then still is, I suppose, is to have what's basically a textbook harmonica book like you could buy in a shop. But instead of the CD, the sound samples are right there with online players. So Harmonica Academy's got a thousand players. So it's like I'm sitting next to you and you press the player and go. And so that form has worked quite well. So it's been going for 13 years now, and it still does quite well.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, the approach is that you have clips of the songs that you're teaching, for example, Ode to Joy, and then you're sort of broken down into sections.

SPEAKER_00:

Ode

SPEAKER_01:

to Joy That's

SPEAKER_00:

how you learn, isn't it? Yeah, and I divided the side up. So half of it's blues because most people want to learn blues, but the other half is tunes. And quite, you know, 40 lessons on how to play tunes, and I don't think anyone else does that. I could be wrong, and I'd be quite happy to be shown wrong, but I don't think. You know, most of the teaching is for blues, and as I've said, there's wonderful blues stuff with Dave Barrett and others as well. So, you know, I guess it's like two courses, well, actually three courses because there's tremolo lessons there as well. I don't think anyone's got any online tremolo lessons. But anyway, but the idea is that when you teach harmonica, you show a little bit, like a little bit of a riff. or tongue doctives or something like that. So I'll describe it, but then immediately you press a button, you hear what it sounds like. So that's sort of the idea.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, fantastic. Yeah. And you've also got a Spanish version, is it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I had Spanish friends and they, I remember one day, this is 12 years ago, they said, why don't you do a Spanish version? So I thought, why not? So I hired a translator. So it's harmonica.com.es. And then what I, I've got this site called Harmonica Tunes, which is my first site. It's been up since 2003. And it's, but it's a whole bunch of articles about harmonica, you know, what harmonica keys are. It's got the music. It's got, you know, some things for harmonica tabs and So it's sort of a harmonica information site. And so I've got a German version of that, mundharmonikalearning.com, a Spanish version, and a Portuguese version. So I hired the respective translators to create these different language versions.

SPEAKER_01:

And also you have a playing recorder teaching website as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so that's something which I've not taught recorder. I mean, I've studied with this teacher, Hans-Dieter Nikats, in Sydney back in the 90s, and he is so good and made me realize– this immense gap between what I could do and what he could do and what he knew. And that's something that in the harmonica world you don't often get. I mean, you do if you attend any event where Howard Levy's playing. But this thing of being... shown just how little you know. Not in an unpleasant way, it's just part of the process. So I'd never taught recording. But then in 2014, my eldest son said, Dad, why don't you make a recorder version of your harmonica? I said, I'd never taught recording. But then I googled and there was nothing. And there's still nothing. For some reason, the recorder world hasn't cottoned on. There's this lady, Sarah Jeffries, who's put together this great YouTube series. But no one seems to have an online course. So backing in 2014 I was able to buy learnrecorder.com so I applied the same principle I kept it just to intermediate stage so the idea is to take a beginner up to intermediate stage it runs on an iPad so the idea and it's music scores because record that's what you do but the innovation there is you get the music score on your iPad or computer screen and then underneath it there are once again these online tracks that you can press to hear in this case how the recorder goes so that site by was along quite nicely.

SPEAKER_01:

you felt that you know teaching is often a great way to learn as well so you felt you've got a lot of benefit from your own playing from doing these teaching websites

SPEAKER_00:

yeah well certainly when i did harmonica academy that for that one i mean the recorder one i stopped at intermediate stage but with a harmonica one when i put it together i've been playing for 25 years and i i'd made a name for myself of sorts as a bluegrass player so you know i put pretty much everything i could do into that i've yet to put anything in major cross harmonicas and that's something which i should do so it was all sort of first position and you know second position third position you know standard harmonica so that because i thought well look someone who can really play might look at this site one day and i think anyone who creates a seat teaching site has the same kind of thing you know i i did the best i possibly could which meant that it was ended up being a huge huge job putting it together you know it reminded me of when i finished my phd thesis you know the final things of getting harmonica academy together but it came together and you know it It's done okay.

SPEAKER_01:

So talking about all this teaching, then a question I ask each time is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_00:

I guess I'd spend the 10 minutes learning a new tune. So in recent years, I've gravitated to old time music. Your strength is your repertoire. So building the repertoire. So if I had 10 minutes, I guess that's what I'd do. I guess one other thing I do, and I'm actually doing this now because I'm preparing myself to do this recording. There's a scale exercise I learned from a recorder teacher. It's called the Han scale. It's basically a major scale exercise, and I do that to a metronome. So yeah, a scale exercise to a metronome or learning a new tune.

SPEAKER_01:

And how do you approach learning tunes?

SPEAKER_00:

So for me, learning a tune is mostly playing old-time tunes now, which is sort of a particularly American music form.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_00:

So I'll find a recording of it. And quite often these recordings are on YouTube of just videos from festivals. And YouTube's got this wonderful slowdown function. You just hit settings, you can slow it down to halfway. So I'll just learn it bit by bit. Because I've done this a lot, you know, I've become good at figuring out what's happening. I'll learn them either on the major cross-harmonica or sometimes I do it on accordion. All these tunes have a structure. It's called an A-A-B-B structure. So you learn the A part and then you find quite often that a big part of the A part is in the B part. So yeah, there's learning the tune and then takes quite a while to assimilate it in that you can sort of play it at will or play it when there's a group of players and you're leading the tune. And in order to do that, you have to know it really well. And you just do it by playing the tune over and over and over. And this is where my busking comes in. So, you know, I'll just go into the street next day and with this new tune and run it and then put it into my practice and I'll be playing it a few times a week. So after a month so the tune becomes sort of second nature.

SPEAKER_01:

So you're definitely an advocate of learning tunes by ear rather than using the dots.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely, yeah. So my Harmonica Academy course, you know, there is a notation that I use, and you only have to have that, but I make the point, I mean, you never see a harmonica player with a music sound and a piece of paper, at least not for diatonic players. A little bit of a side thing, but this is something I did want to mention. I said that when I was at Spa, I played Baroque duets, with my recorder, with chromatic players who could sight read. But last time I went, I had this extraordinary experience with firstly, Jason Rosenblatt.

UNKNOWN:

So

SPEAKER_00:

And then after that with Boaz Kim. So Jason, he's a Canadian player, Boaz is an American. These guys played diatonic harmonicas with overblows and they read Baroque scores. They sight read Baroque scores and played them beautifully. I mean, you know, people say overblows, they don't sound. Not these guys. They sound like oboe players and good oboe players. So I just wanted to get that in and a shout out to Jason and Boaz, you know, just what fine players they are. and just what a unique experience it is playing. Yeah, because I'm a good recorder player. Yeah, and I know these pieces well. So to be able to sit down with diatonic players who sight-read them and just play them beautifully was, you know, it's why I go to these big American festivals and meet players like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's great, isn't it? Like you say, overblows, you know, quite often accused of not kind of sounding that great. But yeah, it's getting to that level now, I think, isn't it? Some of these players are able to get it.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, look, I mean, I can't even do overblows. And I guess because of the alternate tunings you know, I mean, that's the path I've trodden. So, I mean, I admire anyone who can do them. And, you know, there are people, I mean, last time I was at Spa, Carlos Del Junco was there. No, but he's phenomenal. You know, like someone from Mars, good. He's that good. You know, you see, I mean, Howard Levy, of course, and, you know, others as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. So, yeah, we'll talk through gear now. So, talking about what harmonica you play, we've already said you're a Seidel endorser. You just play the Seidels and you're playing, obviously, the major cross. You're playing stand the tuned diatonics as well?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I do. So any blues stuff, and so this blues tree I've got going, I use the Seidel 1847s, just, you know, standard tuning and Richter tuning.

SPEAKER_01:

And you also play tremolos, of course.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. So I play the tremolos and play the Asian style tremolo, which is tuned somewhat differently to... Actually, I think the Irish players play them as well. And the idea with the tremolos, you have two reeds. And with the Asian tremolos, they're tuned basically exactly together. And as I said, Seidel make a nice one. They call it the skydiver.

SPEAKER_01:

Does that take a lot of re-tuning? Because I mentioned one of those reeds slightly goes out of tune.

SPEAKER_00:

For some reason, the tremolos don't go out of tune. With tremolo, each slot has its own, just a single reed. So I've actually never had a reed fail on a tremolo. Remember, they just don't seem to in the way that... eventually a diatonical fail could take several years you know harmonica manufacturing has moved on I mean I think with my siders I've had them for about five years and I think I've done one reading or maybe two

SPEAKER_01:

and as the keys because you're playing tunes a lot on these you're sticking to the sort of tune friendly keys

SPEAKER_00:

well that's right yeah so D and G and A and occasionally C just while we're on gear a shout out the Audix Fireball 5 that's my go-to mic quite PT because uses one as well and quite a few other players but yeah for an acoustic player who cups the mic in their hand which I do so most of the time I want to clean so I'm playing blues now which is a wonderful return to something I did 30 years ago and playing guitar in the rack which means that the harmonic has to be in a rack I want that Chicago sound so I'm using Greg Hyman's racket which I actually bought from Greg himself at Spa and it's his bulletini mic which is you know being recognised as one of the mics in the bullet style and It's a smaller size, but it's incorporated into this plastic holder, which you put the harmonica into, slide the harmonica in, and then you get the equivalent of cupping your hands. There's a magnetic strip on the bottom, which Greg supplies, which then sits on my Seidel stand. And so, yeah, I can get that Chicago sound using. So this is definitely a piece of gear that I use. I mentioned the Seidel Gecko rack, but Greg Hoyman's racket harmonica holder, definitely a piece of gear that I recommend. So my first career was electronics. You know, I worked as an electronics engineer for a couple of years and then went on to other things. But just this year, because I'm playing in this band where I need valve amplifiers, I've started making them from kits first and then from– so I've made myself a 1957 Fender Deluxe, but also I've made– so Randy Landry from Lone Wolf, he came up with a design which I think is now the Harp Trainer, but there's a precursor to that. 12 watt single ended harmonic line. And I've made myself one of those and it sounds fantastic.

SPEAKER_01:

Great. Yeah. So you're making your own tube amps as well. Superb. When you're going for a clean sound, then I take it you're playing through the Audix Vibe or what, into a PA?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so say if I'm on stage somewhere, I'll just, I mean, sometimes I just plug straight DI with this mic. An amplifier, which I started using and highly recommend for acoustic, I mean, I play my guitar through it and sing through it, the AER series of amplifiers, but fantastic acoustic amps. They're expensive. I've got mine secondhand, mine's the Alpha, which is the bottom of it. It's this 40 watt amp, very cool. compact and just wonderful. Yeah, so that's a terrific, terrific Acousticamp. When I use it, because I run my guitar through it and it's fantastic with guitar, as you'd expect. And so then when I plug the harmonica into the other channel, the second channel, because I got the cheaper version with only one set of tone controls, there's actually too much treble. And so it got this slightly gritty sound. And so I use a separate EQ pedal and just wind off some of the tops and then I get the sound I want. an amp which is designed for acoustic guitars. And whenever we get harmonicas, we're sort of pushing the boundary, I guess.

SPEAKER_01:

And final question on gear. So when you're recording in the studio, do you have any preference for which microphones you use to record

SPEAKER_00:

with? Yeah, so I use my Audix Fireball. I cup it. I've also got this mic which my brother got me to get. I'm looking at it now. It's called an MXL. I think it's a Chinese mic. Wasn't that expensive? But it's one of these big phantom-powered cardioid mics And then I use a Focusrite 2i2, which converts it to a USB thing. And yeah, they're a fairly standard bit of gear.

SPEAKER_01:

So final question then, Tony. So what about your future plans now? What are you planning to do with, I think Australia is still in lockdown, isn't it? But hopefully that'll be ending soon.

SPEAKER_00:

These days, I just want to play. So I said I'm creating this CD, which is essentially the Tony Ayers Trio. And actually, yeah, one of the things I want to do is there are a number of around not many recordings. So I want to create this thing. I mean, it's just my stuff, but I want to contact the various trios around the world, basically, or larger groups. And I know a number of them and just send it to them. So I don't know if they'll like it or not, but I guess to make some contact and sort of do that. But really these days, I just want to play. You know, I'm in the 60s now. I'll go to as many as I can. When this COVID thing ends, because I was going to America every year for spa and actually going to another festival called Galax, one of the great bluegrass old time festivals because it's the week before spa. So, yeah, going to festivals, playing, in short, playing music. That's what I want to

SPEAKER_01:

do. Fantastic. Well, great to talk to you, Tony, and all the great stuff you've done and getting out there and doing it yourself, your own tuning, building your own amplifiers, recording your own trio. You know, it really shows that you want to get out there and play and, you know, like you're saying, enjoy yourself and get yourself heard.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I mean, it's a real honour.

SPEAKER_01:

And thanks all for listening again. That was episode 45. And just over to Tony to play us out with his trio playing Great

SPEAKER_02:

Out.¶¶¶¶