Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Paul Reddick interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 72

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Paul Reddick joins me on episode 72.

Paul is a singer, songwriter and harmonica player based in Toronto, Canada. He rose to prominence with his band: Paul Reddick and the Sidemen in the 1990s. Paul describes himself as not a typical blues harmonica player, often using his sparse notes with heavy delay, while also making the use of complex patterns to build interesting rhythms. 

Paul developed his songwriting approach using the structure of poetry, and his insightful and thoughtful blues lyrics have earned him the title of the Poet Laureate of the Blues, including winning the Maple Blues Award for songwriter of the year for his album Sugarbird in 2009.

 
Links:

Paul's website:
https://paulreddick.ca/

Lyrics:
https://paulreddick.ca/lyrics

Styrmon El Capistan delay pedal:
https://www.strymon.net/product/elcapistan/


Videos:

Blue Eventide (Official Music Video):
https://youtu.be/GpYU91lmS2Y

Mourning Dove:
https://youtu.be/eOrFt-aCbXU

Luna Moth and Butterfly:
https://youtu.be/HwrF_cd38aY

Paul Reddick & The Gamblers - One More Day:
https://youtu.be/V1QF8LMeXT4


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_06:

Paul Reddick joins me on episode 72. Paul is a singer, songwriter and harmonica player based in Toronto, Canada. He rose to prominence with his band, Paul Reddick and the Sidemen, in the 1990s. Paul describes himself as not a typical blues harmonica player, often using sparse notes with heavy delay, while also making the use of complex patterns to build interesting rhythms. Paul developed his songwriting approach using the structure of poetry, and his insightful and thoughtful blues lyrics have earned him the title of the Poet Laureate of the Blues, including winning the Maple Blues Award for Songwriting of the Year for his album Sugarbird in 2009. Hello, Paul Reddick, and welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

Hi, Neil. Thank you very much for having me here.

SPEAKER_06:

That's a pleasure. So you're based in Toronto in Canada, yeah? That's right. Cool. And you're a singer, songwriter, and harmonica player, playing a combination of what, blues and sort of roots music?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I'd say so. I write all the songs that I play, and they're all based in blues, but not all traditional 12-bar or particular to a particular blues style so I guess roots is the word you use. So are you from Toronto originally? Yes I was born in Toronto but I grew up outside of Toronto from my primary school days through high school but I've been back there for 35 years or something like that.

SPEAKER_06:

So what's the music scene like there and the blues scene particularly?

SPEAKER_01:

Well there was a time when I was younger that there were a few dedicated blues bars and at that time the artists from Chicago would come through Toronto and play so I saw lots of people at various places but as the blues scene got older and etc etc there there actually aren't any dedicated blues venues in Toronto I tend to play at mixed alternative bars that I play in town where there are some blues bands but the scene is pretty good there are a number of blues acts that play and they find places to play in the city

SPEAKER_06:

yeah so I guess Toronto it's not far from sort of Chicago and kind of New York on the other side is it so it's must be quite a draw for the musicians from there too

SPEAKER_01:

I drove to to Chicago recently and it was about a nine hour drive and New York is similar. So we got all the Chicago guys coming up here on a regular basis when they existed. The ones that are there now don't tour as much. It's a rarity to have a And

SPEAKER_06:

what about Canada itself? Where does Toronto stand on the music map in Canada?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, there are blue scenes that exist in all the major cities. There's on the east side of Canada, Halifax has a pretty cool scene and a style. They're kind of probably more influenced by their proximity to Boston. Then to Toronto or Chicago, they've got a particular and pretty traditional blues style that's great. And then Montreal has some players, which are moving from east to west. Then Toronto, of course. Winnipeg, which is in the first part of the western plains of Canada, has an interesting blues scene and a few guys that are well-known. And then... Saskatoon is the next city where there's also a cool blues club. And then in Alberta, Edmonton and Calgary both have bands there and big festivals the blue scenes are somewhat insular to the city that we live in and occasionally people will tour in and out but i don't get a lot of bands from halifax playing in toronto or a lot of bands from edmonton playing in toronto you go there and you see them and they tour in their province in their region but not far not often nationally these days it's touring is cost prohibitive

SPEAKER_06:

so great so um say you're a you're a singer and songwriter is very important so we'll get on to that but also of course this is a harmonica podcast so uh What got you started playing harmonica?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I guess like a lot of people when I was a kid, probably 13, I actually just was at a family reunion and my uncle had a, there was a blues harp in a little blue plastic case. They used to come in and I was curious as to what that blue plastic case was. And I opened it up and somehow decided that I could play the thing. And I asked my mum to get me one. This was a Christmas party for Christmas and I got one and I could play, you know, jingle bells and, Stuff like that. By the end of the day, which I felt encouraged and kept practicing, I played just songs like that in the first part. Just played Oh Susanna and Jingle Bells and On Top of Old Smoky so I could find the positions of where the notes were. And then eventually I did have one blues record. I think it was the Segal Schwall Blues Band from Chicago.

UNKNOWN:

......

SPEAKER_01:

And I began listening to that and trying to play along. And then eventually someone told me about, you know, that you needed to have second position. I just began with that. And then someone at the music store, when I asked for records appropriate to harmonica, gave me double albums of Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Sonny Williamson and Helen Wolfe. And that set me on the course of my life.

SPEAKER_06:

Great. Any particular songs that really grabbed you?

SPEAKER_01:

All of them. I found all those artists amazing. I guess Muddy might have been my favorite as a singer and his songs, but I mean, really they're, they're all masterpieces and I consider every song

SPEAKER_03:

a

SPEAKER_04:

masterpiece.

SPEAKER_06:

So were you playing any other instruments? Sounds like harmonica was probably your first instrument, was it?

SPEAKER_01:

It is. And I don't play any other instruments. I, We had a piano in our house, and I would noodle on it, but for some reason the harmonica is the thing which I found natural and could play.

SPEAKER_06:

And what about the singing? Did you take that up after the harmonica?

SPEAKER_01:

I sang because I started a band in high school, like when I was 15, 16 years old, and no one else would sing. So I sang a little bit, and then when eventually I started a proper band in my 20s, it was the same situation, and I... just took for granted that I would sing. I had, in studying harmonica, not really paid too close attention to the singing part or the guitar or the drums or the bass. I mean, you hear them, but they weren't a thing that I was focused on learning. So I didn't really learn the lyrics to the songs, but eventually I began to sing and did covers when we were early in our career. But the singing part has become a big part of what I do. I love singing. I'm getting better at it as I get older.

SPEAKER_06:

Definitely, yeah, you've got a good gravelly blues voice these days,

SPEAKER_04:

I think.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, my voice does have some roughness in it, but not always, but it is nice to have that. It depends on the type of song where it... the volume of the song, how much air is going over your, your vocal cords. But I, I am pleased that it has that, it has some personality sometimes.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. It sounds great. And so when you started singing in high school, obviously then, then you were playing harmonica, you, you saw those two going together, obviously. And that was something, you know, did you feel that you needed to sing as a harmonica player to make you a, you know, more central to the band and you wanted to be a band leader or?

SPEAKER_01:

I think I wanted to be a band leader, and singing was something I could do, seeing as I was incapable. As I say, I'm guitar player dependent, and I'm lucky to play with great guitar players, but I guess singing was something that I could do.

SPEAKER_06:

So your harmonica playing, I think you've termed it as being judicious. You're quite selective with your notes. You don't overplay a lot of the time.

UNKNOWN:

piano plays

SPEAKER_06:

And I think you would describe yourself not necessarily as a blues harmonica player, yeah?

SPEAKER_01:

All the music I play, blues is my foundation. One, four, and five are tattooed in my brain as chord changes, although I force myself to look at the other numbers. When I started listening to Little Walter when I was 13, 14 years, and playing along with him. One of the things I remember wondering was, why did the musicians make the decisions that they did at that time? Like, why did they play what they played, let alone how did they play what they played? I was always fascinated and never had anyone to ask that question at that age. But I assumed that there was, because amongst those guys that I had, and there were others too, but Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Williamson and Little Walter and Junior Wells or whoever it might be, they played in such a distinctive style. They had really their own voices. When Junior played with Muddy and Walter played with Muddy, they played a certain way that made them seem similar, but there was still a uniqueness to what they did. And I think I felt, I don't know if the word is responsibility, but a compulsion to try to play my own way as well, to find the voice that I could play a solo, which I would be able to make the correct decisions. And so I've always tried to find a way to do my own thing within using the vocabulary that you glean from the pre-existing harmonica players, you know, the riffs and the licks. But I think one of the things that allowed me to be unique is that I believe that I suffer from some sort of maybe a learning disability or a Something very difficult for me to memorize things. And even to this day, I just made a new record. And to learn the lyrics, my memory is like Teflon. It's not like Velcro. So I did a lot of things which were... I would play something around what they were playing rather than what they were playing without knowing that it would serve me well in terms of developing a style. I mean, I can play blues harmonica style, but a lot of the songs that I wrote weren't specifically... of a 12-bar Chicago stylistically. To be a stylist wasn't something I was capable of doing or wanted to do. So the songs that I wrote and the way that I approached playing, I kind of avoided doing something that seemed familiar to me. I thought, I don't want to sound like Little Walter. I don't want to be my Little Walter. And so that allowed me to create my own style. And whereas I'm not a blues harmonica player, I would say I'm not one who is able to pull off a really great chicago style harmonic instrumental

SPEAKER_06:

yeah i think listening to you know music as i have been doing for the preparation for this you know it is it is quite a unique style you have definitely you know i can't i was listening sort of trying to think who you sound like and i don't think there are that many people who you do sound like you've got these you know you have have quite these kind of spacious sort of solos or you have sort of use of patterns which you use quite a lot as well so Just on that use of patterns, how you develop that.

SPEAKER_01:

I remember when I was young and had Sonny Terry records and listening to Sonny Terry play it and trying to learn what he was doing. It's sort of miraculous what Sonny Terry does. I found it very unpleasant to try to emulate the muscularly in the motion of your chest and your throat, his patterns that he did. And I think perhaps rhythmic harp playing may be unique to each person that plays it, depending on how they feel when they're doing it. So I would do kind of a variation upon a Sonny Terry theme to do, as I was playing in a bluegrass band when I was in high school, which is pretty rhythmic to play. You know, the mandolins or the banjos going chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk. It's all rhythmic. So I tried to create, you know, things to go on top of that. And in the soloing, we're largely rhythmic solos, probably based on my interpretation of the way that Sonny Terry would have played. That evolved through my life. It was something that I use and go to. And I like playing rhythmic patterns in quite a few songs.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah. And the patterns are, you know, just to explain kind of what a pattern is as well. So a pattern is like a sequence of notes, you know, like a repeated pattern that you might play over, you know, over some bars that maybe either sort of shifts the time a little bit between the bars, doesn't it? Or it kind of repeats the pattern in like adjacent notes, you know, different approaches, but it's that sort of thing, isn't it? So that's something that, you know, you use quite a bit, isn't it? So, you know, did you deliberately sort of practice specific patterns to put in there?

SPEAKER_01:

It depends on the song. I made a record a few years ago, about five years ago, and the title of the record was Ride the One, which refers to playing one chord, which is very common in blues. Bo Diddley or John Lee Hooker or Fred McDowell, just the hypnotic repetitions.

UNKNOWN:

.

SPEAKER_01:

And so on that record, when I wrote the songs, many of the guitar parts, I just said, this is the guitar part and you play that. It'll be played from start to finish, that repeating riff. And then it'd be another one to a counter part. And I wanted it just to be very repetitive. This song still has... goes through stages or gears for, you know, first, second, third year, or there are chordal inversions and things like that. But I like the, the effective repetition. So I suppose some of the patterns and as well, their habits, you know, there are a lot of fantastic harmonic players who are so technically sophisticated. I wouldn't say that I'm, I have a lot of tricks or do things, you know, in the high register that are, or whatever that are, showpiece type playing I tend to play pretty somewhat understated and play inside the song I'm not a really great narrative player all the time or a momentum player as compared to some harmonicas that I've seen

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah I think your use of harmonicas again that word judicious isn't it you make it fit nice with the song a lot of the time so let's talk through your music career the band you were associated with certainly in your early years was the Sidemen so Paul Riddick and the Sidemen yeah so was this your first sort of major band I think you formed in 1990

SPEAKER_01:

yes it was I was sitting in with bands in Toronto here and there and I lived outside of about an hour away but I met a fella guitar player at one of those at a gig and He and I got together. His name is Kyle Ferguson. He's a great guitar player, and we played two nights ago. We do a duo act, and he plays my band presently. We've been playing together for 31 years, I guess. We were given the opportunity to open up for James Cotton at a bar called the El Macombo in Toronto as a duo. We learned 10 songs, covers. We practiced really hard. and went and did the gig, and we opened up for Cotton, and we got a standing ovation, and it went really well. We didn't know what to expect, really. So we quickly put a band together, and then that band found great success. We played with tremendous energy, and our tempos were fast. Both Kyle and I had a tendency to really drive the grooves and drive the songs hard. And that made us very popular in Toronto for a number of years. We had a band that was really on fire. It wasn't something that we tried to create consciously, and we really took it for granted. Casually, we didn't have great aspirations to be famous or anything like that, but we were pretty successful. And when we listened to the old recordings, I get out of breath just hearing them. Kyle was into Johnny Winter at that time. He's not as much now. We did some Johnny, and we did Little Walter. James Cotton, Muddy.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, because obviously as you progressed, you started writing your own songs, it became very important. But with the Sidemen, again, I think one of your most popular songs was Smokehouse. And this is an example of you using a lot of delay in your harmonica. It's very common for you to use lots of delay when you're playing.

SPEAKER_01:

I have in the last few years. I did a harmonica workshop in Toronto one time, and the guy Sugar Ray Norcia said, was there and he said, I use a delay pedal, just a little bit of delay. So I bought one. They tend to enrich the tone of the note, but I think through the delay, there's a compound, like the note gets somewhat fattened up through being layered somewhat. I really like that tone. I also just like the way in which it creates space and landscape.

SPEAKER_06:

And so one of the big albums, probably the biggest album with Sidemen was Rattleback. And was this your last album with them? You were nominated for a Juno, which was the Canadian Grammy.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, we had made a record in 91, which was, we had a few original songs, I think three or four out of 10, maybe 15. And then we did another one called When the Sun Goes Down, which was also nominated for a Juno in 95. It was produced by Joe Louis Walker, which was an interesting experience. And then we made another one after that. But all those three records, the sound, there was something about the way they were engineered that never seemed satisfying. And I think at that time, there was a sort of preoccupation with close-miking things. I didn't think they sounded very good. I never liked it. any of those records. But then when we rattled back with a producer from Canada called Colin Linden, who now lives in Nashville, and he's very much associated with T-Bone Burnett. He played in Bob Dylan's band. He's one of the great blues authorities in the world and knows how to record music. So we all of a sudden had this record that sounded great. I went to him and asked him how to make a good sounding record cheaply. He said, well, hire me to do it, write all the songs, and I'll produce it. So I realized that this was an opportunity for me to make a great record, a great sounding record. And so I worked very hard on the songs for about four months. Every day, I wrote every day, and I re-entered listening to blues. I used the Alan Lomax Field Recordings, the Library of Congress Field Recordings, as my main source of music, blues inspiration, sort of as a way to avoid getting too close to little bolter muddy waters whoever and that record worked out to be somewhat changed my life because it was it was good and it was recognized and it was a great thing

SPEAKER_06:

a song off this album was a i'm a criminal which i believe was used for a a coca-cola commercial in the u.s that's right

SPEAKER_01:

so

SPEAKER_06:

So that got you some notice, did it?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. I mean, I was with a small record company and they didn't solicit this. I think whatever the ad agency was for Coca-Cola, they probably Googled songs about criminal because the premise of the commercial was a guy filling up his cup at a store off of a fountain. And then it overflows and he takes a couple of sips and fills it up again. So it's saying sip stealing is not illegal anymore. So they found me somehow, used it, but your name's not attached to it. So it isn't like a lot of people. That commercial ran for a year and was popular, and it was only played in the States. My only measure of its effect on recognition came from someone on YouTube put together... took the song from my album and put a little video together and it was seen a bunch of times and there was a few people covered the song and made videos of themselves covering it i made a lot of money from the commercial itself which was good enough but it didn't really translate into any kind of recognition

SPEAKER_06:

did this then lead you on to touring the u.s uh sort of on the back

SPEAKER_01:

that album was nominated for a thing called a blues music or wc handy award which now are the Blues Music Awards. They changed the name. So it was nominated as Best New Artist. An agent in Missouri contacted me and said, let's go. So I went, and they were good agents, and I played in the States for about three years all the time. I would go down for six weeks, come home for two weeks, go down for six weeks, come home for two weeks, and just played constantly everywhere. I went through quite a few different band members because of the amount of playing, but it was a lot of fun. I was playing small venues and some festivals, but it was just gritty old grinding. But I wanted to do that at the time and it was fun. But the commercial wasn't directly related to that. It may have even come up after that period of my life.

SPEAKER_06:

So was this the start of you, then your solo career and then moving away from the Sidemen, you're saying you were playing with different musicians in the US?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, prior to that Rattlebag record, we were just the Sidemen. But when I made the Rattlebag, My band, everybody had kids and stuff, so I kind of had to, and I did too, but the rest of them were more responsible than me, although my family's forgiven me now. So I had to find myself within it. And then after that, I've just been under my own name.

SPEAKER_06:

Sure, yeah. And then I think the first album you released under your own name was Villanelle.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. And that was also produced by, I continued to have a relationship with Colin Linden for three other records. I did one called Villanelle, one called Sugarbird, Then there was kind of a collection of greatest hits, which existed because my record company got a grant to help submit songs for potentially getting into films. And then I did a recording for a Johnny Cash tribute record. I sang a Johnny Cash song in which Colin did produce that as well. So we had a fruitful few years where he lived in Nashville, still does, and I would go down there and we would write and record in Nashville. So I made Villanelle was the first one, yes.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, and you mentioned the Johnny Cash tribute one there. So that's the Train of Love. That's right. Which you're playing a kind of rhythmical train approach to the harmonica. So that's a Johnny Cash song, is it?

SPEAKER_01:

It's a Johnny Cash song and it was to be a blues tribute. So I tried to base the rhythm of it on Fred McDowell. And at the beginning of the recording, you can hear us listening to the Fred McDowell sample, which we were looping, and then the groove kind of came out of that.

SPEAKER_06:

So the Villanelle album, starting from there, is this where you were writing your own songs on the Rattlebag album as well, were you?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I co-wrote the music with Kyle Ferguson, and the other ones I co-wrote with Colin Linden. What I would bring were the lyrics and also... a baseline or a snippet of something from which we would take that piece and flesh it out. With Colin, who's an encyclopedic musician and is a fantastic memory for everything I could say, I'd like this to be a combination of these two or three artists, like maybe some, you know, Sun House and some Blind Molly McTell and then Magic Sam. How would you collate those things into one sound? And he's capable of doing that. And we would take those things and sort of collage the thing together. I certainly wrote the lyrics. And during the recording of Rattlebag, I had bought an anthology of poetry called The Rattlebag. And that's what the record is named for. Anthology of Poetry. It's put together by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes in the 70s sometime. And I had never really studied poetry. But I read this book and thought... You know, these are songs. I didn't know what made poetry poetry, what the rules were, determine its content. So I got some books on that. And I began to write using poem forms and poetic techniques as a way of both enriching my writing process. And because the poem forms are in a certain shape, that would determine the musical shape, which eventually took me away from 12 bars into whatever it might be. That was an interesting discovery. really changed the way that I write and focused it more. And I continue to use that. The last record I made out of 10 songs, six of them are based on formal poem forms.

SPEAKER_06:

yeah and it's great saying your lyrics are available all to to download and view on your website yeah so you've got a kind of anthology of all your lyrics so it's great to hear that approach to songwriting as you say and then particularly sort of blues based music as well making them much more interesting i think sometimes you know people try to to apply poetry techniques sometimes it can come across you know as maybe a bit pretentious but that definitely doesn't happen with yours i think they come through great and the lyrics are you know are really interesting and i think you on sugarbird you you won a Maple Blues Award for Songwriter of the Year for that album.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. I don't enjoy intellectual music or literature or poetry. It's just not my thing. And so when you take the feeling and the sort of canon of blues lyrics and language and apply it within the formal sort of poem form thing, it helps you avoid sounding ridiculous. And so I just use the forms as a framework on which to hang and use what are pretty familiar feeling blues language and cadence. All these blues forms, they are invisible. I also try to make so when a person listens to the song, they're not going, oh, that's a villanelle. which is a poem form, or that's a this, or that's that, or he's using alliteration there, or he's doing this or that. You don't want that to be noticed. So I very much try to keep it sexy and not cerebral. I'm not that guy.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, definitely. But, you know, again, it's very effective. So I noticed your song Devilment is one I picked out. It's got some Macbeth type references to cauldrons and things.

SPEAKER_05:

That's something

SPEAKER_06:

you were going for, that you say you're not trying to Oh,

SPEAKER_01:

no, I don't. No, I don't. I never thought of that. But blues can be very inappropriate these days. Sexist and a lot of lines that are, you know, boom, boom, uncle of the lights isn't a very sentimental song. I think I was making the reference to someone being a witch without saying it straightforward. I'm quite conscious of the fact that I was echoing that kind of nasty sentiment, but doing it in a way that was a little funnier. almost commenting upon that itself.

SPEAKER_06:

Well, definitely, yeah, you should be applauded for your use of thoughtful lyrics. You've been described as the poet laureate of Canadian blues. Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that's just a record company trying to sell records, I think.

SPEAKER_06:

Do you appreciate that title?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I certainly do. I'm proud of, sort of took my lyrics for granted. A few years ago, someone came to me and said, are your lyrics available online? And they only existed once. on paper, pencil and paper, you know, in my linen closet at home, stacked up in books. And so I took them out and had someone who could type them all out and then arrange them in kind of on the page into shapes that poems are presented. And I was pleased by what I wrote. And recently I wrote a bunch of poems on Facebook, all 10 songs I wrote. took a photograph of a typed sheet of the lyric and talked about the lyric, I suppose I'm pleased with the way that it's worked out using that approach. So I guess to be recognized, I wouldn't call myself a poet. I've never written poetry. I write lyrics. So it's a bit inaccurate in that way. I don't write poetry. I read a lot of it. I enjoy it. It's a thing to read some of it. I like reading about poetry. I just got a book called The Architecture of Poetry, which talks about all those, the nature of why it works and what it is. But I'm not a poet.

SPEAKER_06:

But I think, you know, having read some of your lyrics on your website, I think they are definitely readable, which is, you know, you can just sit and read the lyrics and and enjoy them in that way, which is very satisfying, I think, for some. I think they're pretty good.

SPEAKER_01:

And even in just analyzing them for this social media thing to draw attention to my new record, there's a naturalness to them that I guess I should be proud of.

SPEAKER_06:

Here's a quick word from the podcast's new sponsor at Blows Me Away Productions.

UNKNOWN:

Blows Me Away

SPEAKER_00:

Hey folks, this is Charlie Musselwhite. If you're in the amplified tone like I am, the best and only place to start is a microphone from Blows Me Away Productions. Check them out at blowsmeaway.com. You know I ain't lying.

SPEAKER_06:

And so, yeah, so these albums you talked about, the Villanelle and Sugarbird, and definitely not conventionally blues albums, are they? There's a song on there, Block of Wood, which is probably your most traditional blues harp playing.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_01:

I was pleased on that song, Block of Wood, that I took the solo I did because I thought it was pretty authentic.

SPEAKER_06:

And then in your next album, Wishbone, there's a song on there called Dancing in a Dream, which has a low harmonica. So you quite like the use of low harmonicas, you know, again, quite often with delay to really sort of give that wide atmospheric sound.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I love the low harps. I have a song called Blue Wings, which when I recorded it, there was strings on it. I took the solo section, but I do a solo at the end in first position with a low A harp with a lot of delay. It's just this magnificent tone that comes out. It doesn't sound like a harmonica. It's just a beautiful, rich, deep sound.

UNKNOWN:

piano plays

SPEAKER_01:

I don't ever play F harmonicas or E flat. As high as I go is D. I find the higher notes make me want to squint a little bit, you know. I like to play to have the tone be warm, the low harps. I use them occasionally. I mostly play A harps and C and G, D, B and A flat and all the ones up there, like not E, E flat. But I do have a low F. So none of my songs are in the key of C or very rarely. When I sit in with other people, most of their songs are in the key of C. So I'll play a B flat or a C or the low F.

SPEAKER_06:

And then onto the album you mentioned, Ride the One, which you received your Juno Award for Best Blues Album in 2016. So has this been your most commercially successful album?

SPEAKER_01:

I don't think commercially successful is the term I would ever use for anything I've ever done. I mean, the Juno Award was nice to get. I beat out some stiff competition, which was lucky, but it's a great record. And it was produced by another Colin named Colin Cripps, and he did Wishbone, and he's one of the great guitar players in Canada. And it was successful, somewhat. I mean, I just measure the success of it by whether the songs feel good to play. live and whether people like them you don't often play all the songs off a record you know like off of that one ralph rattlebag i play about six still all those years i never tire of them off of ride the one i play about five but it was successful to me as an extension of songwriting that experiment with writing the one was an interesting thing

SPEAKER_06:

yeah and so one of the songs is shadows which has got a lot of harmonica on it's a real sort of driving harmonica

SPEAKER_01:

song

SPEAKER_06:

most popular song from the album on Spotify. So does that tell you something?

SPEAKER_01:

I still play that song and it's fun to play. Oftentimes when I record these songs, as with the last most recent record, they're put together and I don't spend months or years playing them live before we record them. Oftentimes I And with Colin Linden, we would write the song. The version on the album is the first time I ever had sung the song in my life. I'd never sung it before. And that's the version, like the first take was the version we did. And it was the same on some of the songs and all these records. They were born and it's like, oh, nice to meet you. And then as time goes by, you get to know them as you would your children.

SPEAKER_06:

Your most recent release, I think, is the Alive in Italia, which is a live album from Italy. I think it's been described as a love letter to Italy and your friends there.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I was, I guess about 10 or 12 years ago, I had an agent in Hamburg and he used a band called The Gamblers who were from a town east of Genoa called Chiaveri in northern Italy. There was some big ash storm or something in the sky where we couldn't fly for hours a week or so. So we weren't able to rehearse. And I showed up to a gig in Belgium somewhere, and they nailed it. Every song, we'd never met. We met at Soundcheck. They became instant friends, and they're still beautiful friends of mine. And I've been able to go over to Italy, usually every 14 months or so. COVID, of course, has interrupted that. But I've had a long and great friendship and musical relationship with these guys. And I produced a record for them one time. They're a great band. And so my relationship to going to Italy is always just lovely and musically great. And they're beautiful people, these guys and their families and their friends. And so I've been very fortunate to have developed a happy time there. We're playing a gig, our little couple of gigs. I did like a two-week visit there. And I was playing with another couple of fellows from Canada who have their own band. We just recorded one of the shows in a beautiful little town up in the mountains in northern Italy. And I didn't really even pay attention to the fact that we were recording. I forgot that we even recorded it. And then during COVID, the bassist Gabrielle said, I've got this recording. He sent it to me and we had it mixed and it turned out to be great. So we released it. It is pretty good.

SPEAKER_06:

It is really good, yeah. And one thing which is really great as a harmonica fan is there's quite a lot more harmonica on it because I think the songs are longer. You're taking sort of longer solos.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I play Harpo live. I play quite a bit. There's solos. We stretch things out. The recordings are somewhat clipped.

SPEAKER_06:

You mentioned you've been working on a new album. When are you planning on releasing that?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I recorded it about a month ago. Recorded 10 songs. We need to still mix them, which took us five days to record the whole thing. It takes five or six days to mix it. So that has to be done sometime next month or so. I'm not sure exactly. And I'm sort of negotiating record labels who might be interested and pay for things. And the decision to make release records, they often have an agenda and a wisdom. that goes beyond mine. I had originally figured I'd just record it and mix it and put it out as soon as it was ready. But I imagine it's going to be in the spring. My emphasis is going to be hopefully on focusing its promotion and its touring on Europe. And that might be after this summer, like it could be a long game, like till 24, 23, I'm working on doing a bunch of festivals in Canada, but I'm not sure yet. It'll be released next year, hopefully in the springtime.

SPEAKER_06:

Great. Well, hopefully I'll catch you when you're over in Europe. So you mentioned you touched on the financials there. It's a topic covered on this podcast quite a bit around, you know, albums don't make the money they used to do. So, you know, is that, you know, making you think twice about releasing new albums?

SPEAKER_01:

Not thinking twice, but being able to. Just because we came out of COVID and I had released the Italian record during that time. Even to promote that, we weren't able to do it properly. That's something I think the Italian record is still as yet to be properly promoted. And that may be next year if we tour Italy. I just, in order to support my applying for next year's gigs, I felt I should have a new record. So I didn't have any financing for it. And the one label did not finance. And in Canada, there is a government grant system which everyone uses to make their records. And it's kind of allows there to be a music industry here. And you can apply for recording grants, touring grants, writing grants. You don't always get them. It's still a lottery. And I had applied for a few and did not get them. So I just wanted to make this record. So I just went into a studio without any money, hoping that I'd find it somehow a month ago. And it was$5,000 Canadian dollars to make the record in five days. The mixing is another almost six. That doesn't include the manufacturing. Although whether to manufacture these days is a question. Although when you're doing festival gigs, people do like a souvenir CDs. I'm probably going to make some vinyl, but you know, it's going to be, they cost 15 to$20,000 to make a record in Canadian funds, which is a lot of money. And I haven't got any support. So I have recently been doing a crowdfunding using a thing called GoFundMe. But I've had it through creating this content about the songs that I got the 5,000 in the last month. to pay for the recording. And then I may continue to negotiate talking to other labels who they have pre-approval for the grant system. In any case, yes, it's very expensive and it's cost prohibitive. And I don't sell much merch or much hard copy. I've run out of it. I'm sold out of most of what I have and which is unfortunate. It's not like it used to be. We used to sell a lot of stuff, a lot of CDs. And now it just, people don't want them. They're It doesn't exist as technology, and Spotify has replaced that. Being a musician, I've never, with the exception of the Coke commercial, which was a blip, it's a pretty modest life. And so I'm used to it, and I don't question it, and I like it. I mean, despite each month paying the rent is always a bit of a gamble and a risk, each month I get to play five or six times, and I'm able to live the most beautiful life in the world playing music. It's phenomenally fantastic. It makes me... living in poverty seem okay. I'm making a line answer to the idea of making a recording. It is, I think for everybody, not the same as it might have once been.

SPEAKER_06:

But it's like a, you know, it's a marker, isn't it? Making a recording is something to work to. It also helps you promote you and get you to us, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's a beautiful process in itself and writing the songs and putting them together, it's really fun because it's so focused. It's an art unto itself. The recorded versions of songs, they are not like live, but you're allowed to control it so much and manipulate it and dress it up and make it fancy with this and that. So it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_06:

So another thing you do is you've created some really good music videos and quite well produced sort of music videos. You know, how have you put those together? Is that something you've used to promote yourself?

SPEAKER_01:

I had, in the process of promoting the Ride the One record, hired a small crew in Canada called Southern Souls. They show up and They set up sound recording and the film. They're good at what they do. And I have a little venue that I play at every week where I did some shooting in there. It's sort of an evocative little room. And did a couple of videos which sounded good and looked good. And then during COVID, I hired some other people to do this. I used to play at this gig every Wednesday night. And then it was gone. So I recorded, I think, six or seven songs in a day with my band in this venue. And it was well recorded and well mixed and produced. And then I would release them each Wednesday at the same time as I would have started playing. So it simulated our live show and wasn't a live stream, which tended to be a little sound-wise primitive. And I just wanted to get it all done to get the band together. So I did those videos. But they're pretty good. I hired the Southern Souls guys recently just to promote a new version of a band, which I was trying to hustle. And then when this record comes out, I'll make some videos for it. But I'm glad that I have them. They're pretty good.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, they're great. Yeah, I'll put links to them on the podcast page. People can check them out. Yeah, really interesting. And so another thing you've helped set up is the Cobalt Prize for Contemporary Blues Composition. Is that something that you've created? And now this prize is available to promote the growth and vitality of blues music.

SPEAKER_01:

One time, I think I was a bit drunk. I came home and I was sitting around thinking about blues music and thinking about what I do. And this would be about six or seven years ago. And I wrote... a little piece, which I called Blues is a Beautiful Landscape, and talked about the idea that as an art form, it's not just a collection of artists that exist, the iconic artists from which create what we think of as blues. And oftentimes, if you were a blues musician, you're going to play like B.B. King or like Little Walter or like R.L. Burnside or whoever, that you would go to an individual and having learned their Their songs or their style go from there, where I've tried to create the image of that whole genre as being a place from which they emerged. And I'm like, why don't we travel to that place from which they emerged? That's the feeling place. I'm not talking about an archetypal Mississippi, but a musical place. Those notes, the flat sevens, the blues notes, the blues feelings, the grooves, just the whole entirety of it, if it were to be an idea. And I used the word landscape. So you could think, I'm going to take this side road to this place no one has been. And I'm going to write from that place. And so I wrote that speech or that statement and put it on Facebook. And people liked it. And actually, there's a video of me saying it. The response was positive to the idea that one should be creative somehow or explore the idea. And so I considered having to encourage people in songwriting with a prize to write. address this idea and it's sort of a difficult idea to express like when i wrote the i wrote some sort of instructions as to what this is all about it's pretty abstract but the result was i had some money and i gave a thousand dollar prize for first prize and two lots of 250 for a second and third runners up and hired a jury to review these songs and hired a person to collate all the submissions And we got a hundred submissions of people who wrote songs specifically or had written songs they thought might suit it for this idea. And it was rewarding. And they were awarded a thing called the Maple Blues Awards, which is a Canadian blues award ceremony. I talked them into helping me present it. And it went on until COVID. And then during COVID, I had some trouble in finding the financing. So it's presently on hold, unfortunately, but I'm probably going to bring it back again. It was just to try and people do it naturally anyway. And I think the blues is to great extent, everyone's doing what I'm doing and exploring this and exploring that. Like I didn't mean to suggest that no one was doing it, but it was just a fun way of saying, why not?

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, no, good effort. Hopefully you can resurrect that. So, um, And some of your music's been used in different films and TV shows as well, yeah. So we talked about your Coca-Cola advert. You've been filming two If By The Sea and also the TV Dawson's Creek. You've appeared, so you've had some exposure there.

SPEAKER_01:

The people, the music directors of film and TV, that's a business in and of itself. And I've been lucky enough to have a few people who like my material and use me when they're making a pitch to film and TV to have used my material. And so I've been lucky. It comes along sometimes. The last one, I think, was a show called Hap and Leonard, which was a Netflix show. And they chose a song, I think the song Villanelle.

SPEAKER_03:

¶¶ Oh, sing your song, a love so

SPEAKER_01:

sweet. It's difficult. I don't often solicit that work. Because every time there's a new production, there's a new possibility. But the likelihood of it being a production which requires a blues song is slim. But it's still possible. So occasionally these things come along which have a bluesy film or TV bluesy feel and you're in the running. But it's always nice because they pay a bit of money.

SPEAKER_06:

So a question I ask each time, Paul, is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, you know, there's certain things. I tend to have my habits, of course, and I still enjoy what I, the vocabulary that I have seems to express things efficiently for me and satisfyingly. But I think to work out some new melodic parts or Just try to find things I haven't done before with the notes, new patterns that I could add into the existing vocabulary. So I think it would be a case of just thinking melodically as though I were playing on a piano. What if I go this note, that note? then where would we go from that? Just to expand my vocabulary that way. If it were to be something productive, the other thing I'd like to do is to just play rhythm harmonica until I've reached a meditative state from breathing that way.

SPEAKER_06:

You do play a little chromatic harmonica, don't you? There's a song called Luna, Moth and Butterfly where you play some chromatic, but it's mainly in the studio, is it?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, mostly in the studio. I'm not very good at, I find, micing them a little. It's like, you know, it's like pushing that big canoe around on a microphone. I've never been that good at it. I'm not super fast on the thing, but I can play it.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And I do play in third position on the diatonic harps a fair bit. I play in first, second and third primarily. I do use it when I'm recording, occasionally. I didn't on the last record and I should have because I did a song in third position on a C harp and I just didn't have it with me. Damn it. I love the sound of them though. To me it sounds like New York City on that thing, you know.

SPEAKER_06:

What brand of harmonicas do you like to play?

SPEAKER_01:

I play the... Hohner marine bands, the crossovers and marine band deluxe, and then the Thunderbirds or just low marine bands for the low harps. I've always played marine bands, but now they've improved them with the deluxe and the crossover. They're great. And I get them serviced so that I don't have to buy new ones so often.

SPEAKER_06:

And do you play any different tunings? No. No. What about any overblows?

SPEAKER_01:

No, no, I never have done that. I've never been particularly fond of the tone of that sound, although I love the stuff that's been played. And there's a guy in Canada, Carlos Del Junco, who's one of the great virtuoso of that. And it's thrilling to see someone play Bach on the harmonica, just that it can be done. I love it. But I still haven't finished with just the vocabulary I have yet. I'm just, honestly, the few notes that I do play... which don't include tunings or just the standard notes on the harp, however many there are. The dozen notes with the bends, I'm not done with them yet.

SPEAKER_06:

And what about your embouchure? Do you like to use tongue blocking or puckering or anything else?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm very much a tongue blocking player and that would be constant within what I do. I find that it both enriches the tones and puts you in two places at once. So you can move quickly and simply, you know, from here to there. I recently was typing out lyrics to my songs and I was typing with two fingers, but then when someone showed me how to type with four fingers, your fingers are all an inch away from the keys. And that's the same as tongue blocking. You can play quickly, like you can go, and more smoothly than if you just did it with playing one note at a time.

SPEAKER_06:

Equipment-wise, I mean, amplifiers, I was reading that you like to play two 1995 Fender Pro Juniors. Is that still your setup with amps?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I got those recently because I play a small gig and we play very quietly. And I saw on one of these online markets here called Kijiji, I don't know if they have that near, but, you know, stuff being sold. I looked up Pro Junior and there was this blonde Tolex Pro Junior. And so I bought it. And it was pretty cheap. And a friend of mine had some vintage tubes from the 60s and we switched them into it. And then I saw another one, the same color and same amp. And I bought that. So I pair them up. I use a delayed pedal called a El Capistan and it's got left and right outs. So I run the outs into the two small amps. Oftentimes you get a lot of buzz or you can get a polarity. And this little pedal totally eliminates that. And I set them as far apart as I can. When I'm on the stage, I'll put them six feet or eight feet apart. And it really creates a great stereo sound. And the volume of my band, with some gig exceptions, they managed to keep up quite well. And they got a real nice, rich tone. I used to use a Fender Bassman reissue, but I love these little things and they look good too.

SPEAKER_06:

So you don't use a big amp now, you use these two exclusively?

SPEAKER_01:

I do. I might need to use a bigger amplifier. Sometimes if I go to a festival, you know, they've got a backline. I'll end up using whatever they have.

SPEAKER_06:

Microphone-wise, I understand you like a sort of a Shure 57, sort of a clean sound. You don't use bullet mics.

SPEAKER_01:

No, I've been using a Beta 57 for quite a long time, and I play that through the amps. I have a little pedal... I think it's a company called Wolf. Lone Wolf. Yes, it's a little crunchy little pedal. They call it a blues octave or harp octave. It gives you some dirt. It gives you a real amp-y thing. I use that in conjunction with the... But that's the extent to which I might do go for that, you know, the sound of the bullet. But because I find that the rhythmic playing, when you go... I don't want it to go... Because of the way that the bullets... process. I mean, I love the sound of a bullet. I'm just not a little Walter guy and a traditional blues sound guy. It isn't a palette that I'm interested in applying to what I do. I'd like to just sound like it's an instrument, somewhat neutrally.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, and you mentioned using effects pedals and delay, which we've talked about using quite a bit, but there's a song of yours called Sideman Boogie, which has got quite an interesting effect on it.

SPEAKER_01:

Simon Boogie would have just been straight into an amp because I didn't use effects back then. I was just playing like a maniac, I think. I tried one of those sort of chord building things, a pod, where you could octave. I tried some octaving, but There was an artificiality to it that I didn't feel to me. I've heard them. They're super cool, though. Octave is a cool thing. But I just use the low harp instead.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, great. And you mentioned, obviously, you've got this album coming out. You're hoping to start. You're touring in Canada next year. And then after that, you're hoping to come across to Europe. Is that your current future plans?

SPEAKER_01:

That is. I mean, I'd like to do it all. I'd like to come to Europe sooner than... waiting a whole year and hopefully that'll work out that way. I like playing in Europe. I like playing in Canada too. When I'm playing in the States, I played in Las Vegas this late summer and in the States a few places. There's a very expensive work visa process to play in the States here. It's like$700 per musician. So it's kind of a drag. I just like, I like going to Europe. I love it there. So yes, that's the plan.

SPEAKER_06:

Great. Yeah. What are you planning to get to in Europe? Hopefully the UK is on that list. But since we've had Brexit, it seems to be those issues you say with visas and things seem to be getting more complicated.

SPEAKER_01:

The agent I had in Hamburg years ago, he was like, we're not going to Great Britain. I didn't understand what it was, but some kind of cost. But I'd like to go everywhere. I wish I could just tour. If I had my way, I would tour and never come home. I love it. I just love touring. I really have always felt that way. I love being home too, but there's something about it.

SPEAKER_06:

You usually use the musicians where you tour to rather than taking your own band,

SPEAKER_01:

do you? I had the Italian band. I'd like to bring my own guys with me. I have a woman that plays with me, my own band members. It depends on whether we get travel grants. I have been lucky enough to find great musicians wherever I've gone. Even within Canada, I'll very often take a guitar player and then get out west and hire a rhythm section.

SPEAKER_06:

And it's always great. So thanks so much for joining me today, Paul Reddick.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you very much, Neil. It's a great privilege to be on this program. And hello to all the people listening and harmonica players. Hope to meet you one day.

SPEAKER_06:

Thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast. And be sure to check out their great range of harmonicas and products at www.zydle1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zydle Harmonicas. Thanks to Paul for joining me today and also to Tom Ellis who once again provided some great research for this episode. Tom is writing an article on Paul which will appear in an upcoming Spa magazine. And thank you all for listening once again and thanks to Greg Heumann at Blows Me Away Productions for providing some sponsorship for the podcast. Over to Paul to play us out.

UNKNOWN:

Music