Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Rob Paparozzi interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 77

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Rob Paparozzi joins me on episode 77.

Rob is based around the New York area where he started out playing in blues bands before quickly adding the chromatic to his harp arsenal. He took lessons with Robert Bonfiglio and then had Toots Thielemans giving him tips over the telephone. The versatility afforded to Rob by playing both diatonic and chromatic allowed him to enjoy a tremendous career on the session scene in New York, playing with many famous names including Dolly Parton, Randy Newman and Whitney Houston. He’s fronted the Original Blues Brothers Band for over twenty years, released a Paul Butterfield tribute album and his own Grammy nominated album.


Links:

Rob’s website:
http://robpaparozzi.com/

Blue Moon Harmonicas:
https://bluemoonharmonicas.com/

Videos:

Rob’s YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/chromboyx

Tommy Morgan playing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDv0nLlUxDs&list=RDEMkbeA-8Dfp9SMty0FJvHNpA&start_radio=1

Rob performing with Dolly Parton:
https://youtu.be/RILd7USxBMc

Rob performing with Randy Newman:
https://youtu.be/4EmF3Xxlxg8

Electric Butter: Walking By Myself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdaabsUn-PQ

Rob’s My Music Masterclass videos: https://www.mymusicmasterclass.com/premiumvideos/rob-paparozzi-harmonica-masterclass-videos-1-2-3-bundle/

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_04:

Rob Paparazzi joins me in episode 77. Rob is based around the New York area where he started out playing in blues bands before quickly adding the chromatic to his harp arsenal. He took lessons with Robert Bonfilior and then had Toots Thielmans giving him tips over the telephone. The versatility afforded to Rob by playing both diatonic and chromatic allowed him to enjoy a tremendous career on the session scene in New York, playing with many famous names including Dolly Parton, Randy Newman and Whitney Houston. He's fronted the original Blues Brothers band for over 20 years, released a Paul Butterfield tribute album and has his own Grammy-nominated album. This podcast is sponsored by Zidel Harmonicas. Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world, at www.zeidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zeidel Harmonicas. Hello, Rob Paparazzi, and welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_03:

Hi Neil, great to be

SPEAKER_04:

here today. So you're Rob the Honey Dripper, Papa Rosie. Where's the Honey Dripper come from? Obviously there's a famous song. Is that something you played a lot?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it was a famous song back, I think Joe Liggins had a little hit with it back in the 50s or something. And when I joined the Blues Brothers 20 plus years ago, they said, what's your moniker? And I said, I don't even know what that is. But they said, well, you know, Matt Guitar Murphy and Steve the Colonel Proper and Blue Lou Maroon. So you need to have a moniker. You can't just be Rob Paparuzzi. So I said, okay, well, I had this newsletter called The Honey Dripper that I would, you know, plug my gigs. And I said, why don't we, I'll be The Honey Dripper. And they said, okay, fine. That was the only one I could come up with. And it kind of stuck. It's a lot to say. I mean, I remember Steve Cropper on stage with, you know, Rob, The Honey Dripper, Paparuzzi. It's like, wow, that's a mouthful.

SPEAKER_04:

So you are joining us from, I think you're living in New York now. and you're originally from New Jersey, yeah?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I'm still in Jersey. I'm only across the river. So I'm about like a 40 minute car ride and a half hour train ride into New York City. But I've always been on the Jersey side. And we recently moved, still in Jersey, but close to both of my kids who are equidistant from where I live.

SPEAKER_04:

And so, and you've got Italian ancestry and hence your name. So I think both your parents were Italian, yeah?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, they both were Italian. My mother was Italian American from New Jersey and the States here. And my dad came over as an Italian prisoner of war during World War II and met my mom somehow in his prison travels. And they got married back. They went back to Italy after the war ended. And then they came back and started a life here in the States.

SPEAKER_04:

So you're mainly a harmonica player and a singer, yeah? And I think it's probably fair to say that you've made most of your career as a session musician. Is that right?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it turned out that way. It started more with me playing in bands. You You know, at age 15 and figuring out that I was going to do something. And then I sort of was, yes, designated as the lead singer and the harmonica player because that's kind of what I was doing best at the time. So I was doing that. And then years later, yeah, found out about the session work in New York City and all that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah. So we'll get into that. Before then, you know, talking about how you started out playing harmonica, I think you started about age 15, was that it?

SPEAKER_03:

About age 14 or 15, yes.

SPEAKER_04:

And then you were playing diatonic to begin with.

SPEAKER_03:

Diatonic to begin with. Didn't even really look at a chromatic for another five years, you know, when I saw one in the store and said, oh, geez, that's a lot more money. I wonder if I should buy one of those. And at around age 20 is when I said, let me buy one of these things.

SPEAKER_04:

I mean, you're definitely one of those... rare breeds which is you know i think equally accomplished on the diatonic and chromatic would you say that yourself so

SPEAKER_03:

It ended up that I fell in love with both eventually, and I saw not a whole lot of difference. I mean, there was obviously a difference with the button and the positions of everything. But I said, as a harmonica, it's really the same instrument, and I'm going to keep that philosophy. And by doing that, it made it a lot easier to transition to the chromatic.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. And I know you had, you know, you had a good scene there with the chromatic plays and you had

SPEAKER_03:

Chamber Huang and Robert Bonfilio. You had some lessons from both those guys, didn't you? Robert Bonfilio. He teaches. I don't have time to teach every day. I just do these seminars. Sure enough, yeah, I looked up Bonfilio and he said, yeah, come on, if you're serious, let's do it.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, two great teachers. And you also had some, at least some conversations with Toots Tillmans when he was in New York as well, yeah?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, after I, you know, I mean, I was learning how to read with Chamber and Robert Bonfilio. I realized that, you know, this is all great, but I'm not really a classical musician because I kind of learned blues And I didn't really know how to read music that great growing up. I'm just learning it now at age 20, you know. Eventually, maybe a year or two after that, I had to join the union a couple of years after that. And I had to join the union in New York City. And they gave you this book, which was, you know, a union directory. And I just flipped it through and I went to the harmonica section and Robert Bonfilio was in there and whoever else was in there. And I saw Toots Thielman and it had his phone number. And I'm saying, oh, my gosh, I wonder if I could call him. home. A pretty nervy thing, but you know, it's in the union directory. So I'm a fellow union member. So I dialed the number. He was living in Yonkers, New York, a little suburb of Manhattan at the time, because he was still doing a lot of work in Manhattan and going back and forth to Europe. I called and we started chatting and he said, you know, I don't teach, you know, I'm too busy. You know, he had that Belgian accent. He goes, I'm too busy to teach. He goes, but if you want to be phone buddies, let's do that. You for him to teach me on the telephone, you know, and that's what we did.

SPEAKER_04:

Great. So what sort of things did you learn from Toots then?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I picked his brain a lot, mostly because it was hard, you know, on the telephone, but I would ask him questions about his tone and his playing and how he did things in the studio. And then also what he would practice. And he gave me information. Like he said, Paparazzi, the first thing you got to do is stop listening to me. And I said, well, what do you mean? You're Toots Thielman. You're like the harmonica Jedi as far as I'm concerned. He said no. He goes, well, where do you think I learned how to play all this jazz stuff from? And I said, I don't know. He said, well, you need to start listening to the masters, Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. And, you know, the light bulb went off. He's telling me, stop trying to copy me because I got it from these guys, you know?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, amazing. So how long did these conversations go on with Toots?

SPEAKER_03:

You know, depending on his schedule, sometimes we could have a nice long hour plus conversation. Other times, you know, if he was busy, you know, he would cut me off or whatever. And then we stayed in touch and he would send me postcards from around the world. He had had a stroke once and I checked on him to see how he was doing. So we were kind of, we were a little bit more than phone buddies and maybe correspondence buddies. And I would also try and go out and see him live anytime he was playing in my little neighborhood area, New York and New Jersey. So he kind of knew who I was. And then I reconnected with him. Fast forward, we had a harmonica summit here by the late Chris McCulloch, a great harmonica player and crazy guy that left us too soon. And he decided to have a harmonica summit. So I reconnected with Toots physically when they had the summit. Maybe it was around the turn of the century. They were bringing Toots Steelman out to Minneapolis because he had some jazz gigs out there and they were going to team him up at this harmonica summit with Howard Levy. So I ran into Toots Steelman at the airport and I started chatting with him there about him jamming with Howard Levy. And he was a little confused about what he was supposed to do. And he, no, I heard of this guy, Howard Levy. And, you know, and I said, well, you're going to play with him. them so you know that's the deal and uh we talked about overblows because i said toots you know you were doing overblows before howard levy and he's going he goes you maybe he goes but i didn't know that's what they were called you know and we had these conversations so that was my connection with toots and i continued to go to hear him live right up until he stopped playing out a lot he was an amazing guy right

SPEAKER_04:

fantastic yeah well you're very lucky to have that connection with him and lots of jealous listeners so yeah So when you were learning from him, were you trying to learn jazz from him specifically or was it more just general chromatic technique?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I mean, I kind of knew that I wasn't a jazz player. You know, I mean, I just wanted to play harmonica. I kind of committed to all kinds of music years before that. You know, after my blues bands broke up and, you know, I realized that I really didn't know how to communicate with other musicians. That's why I wanted to learn how to read music. And jazz was a cool thing. I just didn't and how deep I would be able to get into it. So I didn't really study with Toots to become a great jazz harmonica player. I just wanted to pick his brain as just a great harmonica player and maybe bring back some of that stuff to my harmonical world. As I did the same thing with studying Larry Adler off of his record. I went to see Larry live once and also the great Tommy Morgan, who was a session player from California. I loved all these guys and I would be happy to be just a little bit of every one of them, you know, if I could, you know.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, I think that's great what you've done. As you say, you know, we're getting again to your session work shortly, but giving yourself a real all-rounder approach there. As you say, I've been able to play the diatonic really well, the chromatic really well. You know, you do play jazz songs on the chromatic, but it's probably like light jazz, it's fair to say, isn't it? So... But, you know, it's a great approach you're having. It gives you that all roundness, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And it kind of helped me in the studios too, because I was getting calls to do session work and all kinds of stuff. I realized that it's not so much being a specialist, you know, a bluegrass or a blues or a jazz or classical specialist. The studio thing wasn't about that at all. It was about, you know, we just need a harmonica player that can do this particular job on this particular day. And I said, you know what, I'm up for that challenge. It sounds Yeah. And so

SPEAKER_04:

did you consciously decide to play chromatic with a view of doing session work or did you learn, did you pick up the chromatic before you even thought about that?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, no, it was before that. I mean, the session work came because I lived so close to New York and eventually I realized that there's sessions, you know, and they need players of all different styles. So that came later. I picked up the chromatic because I realized even, you know, I mean, I had first listened to Bob Dylan and John Lennon with the Beatles and that was my frame of reference for, oh, there's harmonica on record, on hit records, you know, and eventually my ears said, geez, I don't I don't know if he's using a diatonic on that. It sounds like it could be maybe that chromatic thing. That's when my fascination for the chromatic started coming about. It wasn't through jazz. Then I heard about Larry Adler and Tuck Steelman a little after that. And then I said, okay, well, there's this world of chromatic out there and it could be used on pop. And it probably could be used on, it can be used on jazz and whatever, or classical. So yeah, that was my interest. Let me just learn this thing. At first it was terrifying because it was so different, as most our players realize when they first pick it up. It's like, you know, the only thing in common is that you breathe in and out, right? And then everything else is different.

SPEAKER_04:

You know, obviously most harmonica players play diatonic, but you'd give some words of encouragement to say that, you know, they should tackle the chromatic as well, yeah, and give them that versatility to be able to play you know the different styles of music and the different approach of the chromatic yeah

SPEAKER_03:

yeah and any way you can do it you know if you're starting like like me you know on diatonic and it's like so many players did um maybe coming from the 60s with the you know the rock and roll stuff and the blues stuff you you put a lot of time in on that diatonic and you and maybe even started to learn a little bit about well the first second and third position okay so there's this blues world out there but if you put a transitioning over to the chromatic, you can bring some of those diatonic chops over. And if that works, at first, you're terrified about reading the notes. Don't even worry about that. Just say, what can I do the same on the diatonic that I can on the chromatic? You start saying, okay, there is a little bit of a second position thing. There's a little bit of a first position, but it's just wider spacing and maybe a little bit different layout. But when you go to the middle of the diatonic on hole number four, you know, you've got a C scale, right? On on a C harmonica, and that's where the chromatic starts. That's when I realized, okay, there are similarities, and even in the tuning, maybe not on holes one to four on the diatonic, but once you get up to hole four on the diatonic, that's the same as the chromatic. I tried to find those similarities.

SPEAKER_04:

So great. So as well as the chromatic and diatonic, you also play some piano as well,

SPEAKER_03:

yeah? There's a city way down on a river Where the women are Is that

SPEAKER_04:

something you'd learn at this early age as well?

SPEAKER_03:

yeah around so around that same time around well i was 15 i picked up the harmonica and i would start to noodle with my brother's guitars when they weren't when they weren't home i'd up their guitars and try and teach myself a little bit of guitar because my two older brothers played guitar matter of fact the harmonica was was my older brothers and he just left it there on the shelf and that's how i first discovered the harmonica he had one laying on the shelf and when he went out i took his harmonica too you know

SPEAKER_04:

and was that a marine band

SPEAKER_03:

it was a Marine band. Yeah, he was into Dylan and peace rallies and he had this harmonica, you know. And I said, well, you know, they always tell me not to touch their guitars, but who's going to know if I touch that harmonica? I'll just kind of wipe it off when I'm done. And I started playing with that. And then about two years later, at age 17, I started working. I was going to high school and I was working at a men's clothing store and I saved up a little money. And I knew my mother played piano by ear only. We didn't even have a piano, but we went over other people houses or a place that had a piano, she could sit down and play like 10 songs. That was it. But she sounded like a real piano player for those 10 songs. And then after that, you'd say, hey, Ma, where's Middle C? And she just would like freak out. I have no idea, you know. So I said, you know what? I'm going to buy a piano. So I saved up about$700 working at this clothing store. And I said to my mother, who was a secretary, you know, I said, can you go out on your lunch hour and see if you, you know, that music store across the street and see if they have I have a piano. I have 700 bucks. She went out and found a Kawaii Upright for 700 bucks, brand new, brought it home. She wouldn't play it unless she was inspired when she really was. And I sat down there and I just, same thing with the harmonica. I taught myself just noodling out notes and little broken chords. And that's how I learned piano. Never took piano lessons, never took guitar lessons. Later on, I found a guitar teacher and I started to get a little serious on the guitar, but I felt that knowing a chordal instrument, I can maybe bring some of that back to my harmonica playing. And sure enough, it really did help.

SPEAKER_04:

You mentioned that you, you know, you're playing in blues bands when you were younger. That's the first thing you did on the diatonic. So you had a period of that, I think one from like 1967, you were playing in local blues bands. Yeah. Playing in what the psychotic blues band, I think I read.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. I mean, that was sort of my first official band. I had a couple of junior high school bands and then the psychotic blues band was the band that one of my brothers, my older brother who was playing guitar, he realized that I could sing and start playing harmonica and stuff. So they, their singer was having some problems. At the time, I was kind of doing lights for them. I was kind of running their little light show, you know. They were the Psychotic Blues Band. They did blues and R&B, and so they were a little bit older than me, and they offered me the job as a singer and harmonica player. So the Psychotic Blues Band became, in 1967, my first band. They had horns, and we were doing blues, basically.

SPEAKER_04:

Did you

SPEAKER_03:

support Bruce Springsteen with this band? We came to hear this band. And also, we did some shows opening up for his band. He was a little bit further down the shore area. I was a little bit up north. But somehow, through mutual friends, our paths crossed. He would come up to where I lived in Linden, New Jersey. And he would come and hear my band and sit in with my band. And then I'd go down there and we'd do some shows in Asbury Park opening for him. But he wasn't famous at the time. He was just a local guy that everybody kind of liked down Yeah, so that's the connection with Springsteen.

SPEAKER_04:

Did you carry on playing with him as he did get more famous?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, you know, it's funny. I kind of dropped the ball on that. When he came up to hear me one day, I was doing some stuff with my guitar and a little harmonica rack. And he said, man, he goes, Rob, he goes, I love what you're doing with that harmonica on the rack thing. He goes, you know, and I love what you're doing on the harmonica. You should come down to this place called the Student Prince. And I'm doing like a blues kind of jam every Tuesday night. You know, you should just come on down. And, you know, it was a little far at the time. you know, I'm saying to myself, I should, you know, but I never went. And then two years later, I saw him on the cover of Time and Newsweek. And I said, maybe I should have went to that gym.

SPEAKER_04:

Maybe, but you play with plenty of other great people as well. So, you know, you've done okay. It all worked out. Great. So, so yeah, so you, you're in sort of playing with blues bands for a few years when you were, what is this kind of early twenties? And then when did you get into the session work and how did that all start?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, yeah. So, so blues bands throughout the rest of my end of my 11th, 12th I graduated high school and then I went into college. And in college, I kept playing in the blues bands. And then that started falling apart. You know, the bands, everybody's kind of going in their different directions. So around maybe 1974, 75, I get out of college and I realize I'm still enjoying playing my harmonica and the music thing. Maybe I should start playing other kinds of music. So that's when I started branching out, taking the lessons a little more, studying with Bonfilio, learning how to read. And then what I did is first branched out from the music, went from the Yeah, exactly. wedding bands at the time, a lot of the guys were getting old. They were becoming old timers like I am now, right? So they, you know, we want some young people to be playing at our wedding, you know? So then I realized, well, I had to learn more than blues if I'm going to play. And then my brother who was playing guitar, he kind of was sort of my leader, right? He said, well, if we're going to start a wedding band, that's cool, but you can't play harmonica in a wedding band. Nobody wants to hear that. I said, well, what am I supposed to do? And he said, well, you know, you play a little piano, right? Let's get you an electric piano He bought me a Fender Rhodes piano, and I became the piano player in his wedding band that had no knowledge of this beforehand. And then eventually, I'd sneak my harmonica in and play a song at the wedding that we were playing at. And I said to my brother, I said, you know, I really don't feel comfortable on this piano. Harmonica is what I love. And he'd go, yeah, I know, but you know, you got to get the job done. I said, but I don't want to play piano anymore. So we hired a real piano player. And then And I went out in front of the band and I sang and I played my harmonica. And that's where I wanted to be, right? So now I had to learn like wedding band, like popular music and sing it. And also, but now I have my harmonicas next to me. I didn't have to be buried behind this piano. And now the phone is starting to ring a little bit more with people wanting me to come and maybe do it. The freelance thing started. You didn't have to have a set band anymore, right? Things were changing. The 80s were coming in. So I started getting calls as a singing harmonica player. There was a band, some young, great jazz and rock players that were studying at William Patterson College in New Jersey. There was a band called Blood, Sweat, and Tears. They had hits, you know. Spinning wheel. Big band. David Clayton Thomas was the singer. And they were kind of living in the New York area at the time. He would go and recruit these young players because he wanted to keep the Blood, Sweat, and Tears thing going, but he needed people that could play rock and jazz. He would go get some great players from the local colleges. Well, these guys knew me and And they said, hey, Rob, you know, we've been out playing with blood, sweat and tears, and we would like to just play some blues, you know, when we get back home during the week. And why don't you come and join us? And I said, OK. And they said, we're going to be playing at a jam session in New York. We'll be the house band and then people will come up and jam with us. So this is now we're up to around 1980, 85. I was already just starting to get some calls for session work. So I was really coming into the chromatic and the diatonic thing and really putting time in on it. the harmonica, getting serious with it now for all styles of music. I even got a call to play in a Broadway show called Big River. The music was written by Roger Miller. Now, this was around 1981, 82. Now, I had just bought a house. I was married. I got married around 1974. I was still in college. But we decided to have a kid around 1982. And my wife was pregnant. And I got called to play in this show, Big River. And I think I was still studying with Robert Bonfiglio. And I said, well, what does it entail? And they said, well, you'd have to come in. And I said, well, I just started this job, like this day job, you know, because I got a mortgage to pay, you know, because the music thing was great, but it still was seat of your pants kind of thing. And you didn't have a steady income. So they said, well, you have to be here every day, nine to five until the show opens. And then, you know, the performances are mostly in the evening. I said, well, I'll have to turn that down. And they said, what do you mean? Turn it down. You're a harmonica player. You know, it's a Broadway show. We're offering you a gig, you know? And I said, I said, yeah, but that's not really what I'm going to be doing. So I had turned it down. But I was starting to really get serious about the harmonica and getting some calls to work a little bit in New York, maybe get called to play on a little jingle if they needed harmonica. My name was starting to get around that I was a harmonica player that could

SPEAKER_04:

read a little bit. I think you did go back to Big River, didn't you, later on and do some shows?

SPEAKER_03:

Turns out the show, you know, they hired somebody else and then they called me again and said, look it, the harmonica player was this guy, Don Brooks, who was a great country blues harmonica player.

SPEAKER_02:

He rode like me

UNKNOWN:

Yeah, boogie

SPEAKER_03:

And he had worked out on the road with Well and Jennings and Judy Collins and Jerry Jeff Walker. And he settled in New York and then he became the guy that they ended up using on the harmonica. And then he called me up and said, I could use a sub. We got a hit show here. And he goes, they really like you over there. And I said, is it in the evening? And he goes, don't worry about the matinees. He goes, I'll cover those. He goes, just come on over and do this show. And that's what I did. And I ended up doing a whole bunch of business. Yeah,

SPEAKER_04:

great. So we'll mix up you playing in different bands and then the session work you did. So as you say, you were getting more session work. I've got you playing with the Hudson River Rats through the 90s. That was your band through the 90s, yeah?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. So around that same time that I was subbing on Big River on 85, 86, 87, they called me to do that Hudson River Rats where this was the band from Blood, Sweat& Tears that wanted me to front them. And I said, well, what are we going to call it? And they said, well, we all live around the Hudson River Rats. River, so let's call it the Hudson River Rats. And that became another New York scene where I would go over every Wednesday night and front this band. I had no idea that there was people out in the audience like Carole King and Cindy Lauper and Phoebe Snow and even Clayton Thomas. They wanted to just play some blues because they were maybe doing sessions during the day. And at night, they said, wouldn't it be fun to just go out? Hey, this is a crazy, great little blues band. So they would sign up. And after we played our set, they would come up and they'd have to be called up by our host, this guy, Jeff Kent, who was kind of put it all together. But if they came up, they couldn't just come up and play any song. They had to pick a blues song because, you know, it's a blues jam. I remember one night, place got crowded. It was like, it was like turning into a scene. And I remember one night, Julian Lennon came up to, he was waiting on line to go to the bathroom. And I was waiting on line and he comes up to me and he goes, I want to come up and play a blues. He goes, is Johnny B. Goode a blues? And I said, it certainly is. And you're John Lennon's son, so you have to come up. And he did. He came up and did Johnny B. Goode. And-

SPEAKER_04:

was

SPEAKER_02:

cool

SPEAKER_04:

so obviously this helped you meet a lot of the people you play with you mentioned cindy loper there so that's one of the people you've recorded with i did a song called broken glass with her

SPEAKER_03:

I think in the early 90s, I got a phone call to come and play. Maybe she remembered me from the jam. I don't know. Yeah, I went and played on one of her records called Hat Full of Stars, and it was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_04:

So I'll run through some of the illustrious names you play with, and pick up on some. You played with Dolly Parton, and you performed with her on The Late Show.

SPEAKER_02:

From the coal mines of Kentucky to the canals...

SPEAKER_03:

She came up from Nashville to promote a new record. So we did a bunch of TV shows with her.

SPEAKER_04:

You played with Randy Newman.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, Randy Newman. We did a little thing down at the Kennedy Center. I was in part of the house band. And he was supposed to just play a solo song. Now, I mean, I was a big Randy Newman fan. He had no idea I was such a fan. But anyway, he was over on stage behind his Steinway piano, and he was going to play a song from a famous movie. We were roasting Steve Martin, the comedian that was part of the show, as everybody was going to come out. Paul Simon would come out and do a song for Steve Martin. And then Randy Newman was going to do something from a movie called Parenthood, where Steve Martin was in it. And So he was getting ready to play this song solo, and he's looking over at the band during the rehearsals, and he comes over to the band, and he says, you know, I was going to play this song, fellas. And he goes, solo? He goes, but I'm thinking maybe I could use some of you guys. Now, we had like a fiddle player and a tuba, like a roots band, because Steve Martin was a banjo player, you know, so they wanted a roots and a harmonica. So he says, yeah, give me the fiddle and the clarinet. And then he looks down and he goes, and give me the harmonica, too. And we went. up on stage and we rehearsed a tune and we did a

SPEAKER_00:

tune with him.

SPEAKER_03:

He was kind of funny. I mean, he's always like very sarcastic and he said, he goes, you know, guys, this is a pretty important show here. He goes, I'm going to need at least 80% from you guys. We did it and it was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_04:

Fantastic, yeah. And then you've also played with Whitney Houston as well. How did that one come about? So

SPEAKER_03:

the Whitney Houston one was a little different because I didn't get a call from Whitney Houston per se. I got a call from Warren Hill from the Fugees who was producing... a song on the new Whitney Houston comeback record. It was around 1997 or eight or something like that. My daughter took a message and left it on the kitchen table, said Lauren Hill or something. And she said, dad, are you, are you playing with Lauren Hill? And I said, I don't even know who that is. And she said, well, that's Lauren Hill. You know, she's like famous, you know? And I said, well, it says I called them back and they said they want me to come and play on this on a Whitney Houston song tonight. She goes, if you're going to go play with Lauren Hill, I want to, come you know so she did it I said well go do your homework and she did and we went and did this session but the session was for Whitney Houston who had already laid down the vocals and they wanted to add harmonica it was an old Stevie Wonder song called I was made to love her and they were changing it to I was made to love him and they wanted to add chromatic harmonica so so was a pretty cool session and my daughter was thrilled that she got to have some chinese food with lauren hill

SPEAKER_04:

fantastic yeah and you know and then the list goes on and on you played with all sorts of great people and you know you played with a big band that moan in you played with james goldway who's the irish flute player and so lots of different variety we talked about all the different genres you like to do so really coming through and uh and all the people you play with there

SPEAKER_03:

I was thrilled to get these calls. I really couldn't figure out why I was getting the calls because we had some great harmonica players in town, you know, in New York City, you know, Bonfilio and William Gallison and Hendrik Merkens had come in from Germany and just some great players, blues and chromatic. And I was getting the calls, I think, because I was willing to just go in and do whatever had to be done and not specialize in one style of music. And I think that worked to my advantage. that I could just go in and play on a movie soundtrack or play on an artist's record and be a team player.

SPEAKER_04:

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

SPEAKER_01:

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_04:

So as well as all this session where we mentioned that obviously you played with different bands and you've released a couple of albums. 2009, you released the Utrechtian Soul. This is a sort of area of Italy, yeah? So it's kind of your Italian soul, this album. And this was Grammy-dominated, this album, yeah?

SPEAKER_03:

It was. It made the first round. It didn't get all the way to the end. But yeah, around that time, I had realized that I had been playing on all these other things and I really needed to make a record that was a little more representative or make a record, but that was representative of what I wanted to do. And I wasn't really a songwriter, so I didn't have like these great original songs. I said, you know what, I'm going to make a record of 15 or whatever it was, cover songs that I always wanted to do and arrange them my way and play harmonica and sing and do what I do. And that became Etruscan Soul. The name Etruscan Soul was kind of, yeah, from my father's roots in Italy before the Romans were the Etruscan tribe. You know, the Romans were crazy, but the Etruscan were a lot more into the arts. And as I read up on them, I said, you know what? Maybe I have more of an Etruscan soul than a Roman soul, you know? And that hence became the name of the record.

SPEAKER_04:

You've got a fantastic band with you. You've got a horn section, backing singer. So these are people you all knew from working on the scene there, was it?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I tapped into that. I realized that I had met some, you know, I'm in New York area. So I tapped into some great players and I asked them to join me and most of them did. And I was thrilled.

SPEAKER_04:

One thing I really like about the album is, again, we talked about the variety material you do two songs that you do ticket to ride the Beatles song which you play you know the harmonica over and I just listen thinking this is great you know why don't more people do this and kind of play a pop song you know on the harmonica and it just sounds fantastic so

SPEAKER_03:

yeah and and i and i realized that you know and like you said not enough people are doing it you know they they'll play a blues song or they'll play a jazz song but why not just play pop music on it because you can i mean it's not that limited and there i was playing you know a beatles song in basically second position blues thing no overblow nothing fancy and there it was it was like right there

SPEAKER_04:

exactly and that's what i was really thinking listen to it works so well i mean yeah yeah because you're playing on a diatonic it sounds a bit bluesy but it It just works so well, doesn't it? I'm thinking this, you know, we've got to hear more songs like this. Fantastic. You also do Strange Brew on there by Cream. You know, this is a bit more of a rock song, right? But it works in a similar sort of way, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, it does. It does. And I had gone to see Eric Clapton and Cream at a local high school here back in like 68. That also was a big influence on me too. And then I realized that why not try and play some of these songs on harmonica? I'm always interested in trying to get people to use, right, as a session guy that I became to use harmonica on more stuff. Don't just stereotype it and say, it's got to be the cowboy Ennio Morricone movie, or it's got to be the jazz Tootsie Omen, or it's got to be the this or that. Why not just get arrangers and composers interested? That was kind of my goal is like, let's get this harmonica out there now. It's time to make it a bona fide instrument.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, definitely. And another one I want to pick out from there is Peg of My Heart, which is a famous kind of harmonica band song. So you're playing this on diatonic, right? Not chromatic, which is, it's more traditionally a chromatic song. So what made you choose to play it on diatonic?

SPEAKER_03:

What made me choose to play it on diatonic was, I know you're a member of the UK harmonica, right? Yeah. And I was a member of Spa, which was the American version of that. I had joined it back in the seventies when most harmonica players didn't even know, young guys like me at the time didn't know what it was. But I said, this is an organization that, you know, loves harmonica. Let me become part of it. Well, when I went to become part of it, uh, The late Danny Wilson invited me. I realized that there was a lot of older players at the time playing chromatic, and they really didn't have a lot of respect for the diatonic guys at the time. And I would get into these little bitty arguments with guys. I had like a little correspondence thing going on with this guy, Eddie Manson, who was this great classical session guy from California, chromatic guy. And he compared the diatonic to the penny whistle. And he goes, yeah, that's like a toy. And I said, wait a minute. No, it isn't a toy. You know, we'd get into these philosophical conversations. things about music. And then I realized that this is a great organization, but they're into that Peg of My Heart thing from the 50s, that harmonica band thing. So I said, you know what? What if I did what Charlie McCoy did and just kind of made it into a country tune diatonic? And then I played Peg of My Heart. And that's when I decided to learn it to make those guys

SPEAKER_04:

happy. You're right. There was a big division there, but hopefully you helped to cross that divide and bring the people together between the two

SPEAKER_03:

institutions. I think it helped. Later on, there was guys like Joe Felisco that joined and mad cat and i think that helped bridge the gap because you know otherwise the harmonica was just going to die in the world of peg of my heart you know

SPEAKER_04:

yeah so then after after this album you did a an album which is a sort of tribute to paul butterfield called electric butter i think you released in 2015 so

UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04:

So this is with the Ed Palermo big band, yeah? So obviously Paul Butterfield was a big influence on you.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, Butterfield was a big influence when I was learning the blues stuff. I went back to the Chicago Blues Masters via Paul Butterfield because after I was listening to Bob Dylan and John Lennon and Brian Jones on the pop music, you know, the Beatles and Stones and all that. My mother owned a candy store too, by the way. And there was this guy who came into the candy store back when I was in high school and he had the first Paul Butterfield record under his arm. And he was kind kind of like an artsy, kind of a tough guy. But he had this Paul Butterfield. He goes, hey, I think you and your brothers would like this record. Why don't you check it out? Now, I had no idea. I'm from New Jersey, what Chicago blues was. And Paul Butterfield was second generation. He had a half white, half black blues band. And they were playing stuff from the Masters, from Little Walter and Muddy Waters. And that turned me on to that music. So Paul Butterfield's music was important to me. He was sort of doing like what the Stones were doing in the UK Right. They turn in the world onto. And also, you know, who was the other guy in London, too, that there was a real blues aficionado? Cyril Davis. that they probably would have never heard before. And that's kind of like fast forward to turn of the century when I got a call to go play with the Blues Brothers. At first in the 80s, when the Blues Brothers movie came out, I figured this is like a joke. They're making fun of the Blues. What are they doing? You know, comedians. And I didn't get it. But when Steve Cropper called me and he asked me to come out in front of this band, but when I went out, I did it because it was Steve Cropper. He was the colonel. I had to go play with these

SPEAKER_04:

legends, right? So exactly. So just to explain this, so this was the original blues brothers band and steve cropper was the guitarist in the movie yeah yeah so so this was all after the movies had all finished and um you think you know obviously john belushi had died and dan akroyd had given it all up and everything yeah at this stage

SPEAKER_03:

yeah john had died and dan akroyd still and judy belushi owned the name of the band and dan akroyd sanctioned the bank because look at guys i don't want to come out and do gigs in europe and asia you know i'm busy making movies so he sanctioned the bank hey go out and do your thing so they needed a front man and that's how I got the call to go do this thing. But I realized when I did go out into the world and now I'm doing these concerts all over the place, there was young kids, my grandkids age and generations of people that now knew this music, which happened to be blues and R&B, that never would have ever heard this music without that movie. And so I got down off my high horse and said, oh, you know what? I get it. And I'm going to go out and I played with these guys. And I saw the smiles on the people's faces as they all left the concerts. And this was every place from, I mean, like Ronnie Scott's all the way to Japan. I mean, people were moved by this music. And that band was their little link.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, fantastic. And so you weren't like a Blues Brothers tribute band, though. It was just you as a singer. There wasn't like two, you know, there wasn't like the Elwood and Jake Blues Brothers thing.

SPEAKER_03:

No, and there's some really good ones out there. But I never would have personally done that. I didn't want to join a tribute band. But when I saw it was The original guys are who was like Matt Guitar Murphy. And I said, you know what? These guys are the real deal. So let me bring what I can to it.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, no, fantastic. And obviously you were playing harmonica with these guys as well.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

They didn't know I was a harmonica player, even. I said, yes, I can sing these songs, Steve. I know these songs. And I said, you know, I play harmonica. Well, we don't really need a harmonica player at this point. You know, we just need you to sing these songs. When I went to take the first gig, we were in Poland or something. And I went to take out my harmonica on She Caught the Katie, which was their first big opening number. And at the rehearsal in the afternoon, Blue Lou Marini said, no. He goes, Rob, you don't play harmonica on this. I said, what do you mean? Taj Mahal wrote it? And Dan Aykroyd played harmonica on the movie. And they said, yeah, but now we made it a trombone solo. And he said, you could play at the end of the song over the one chord. And I just kind of gave him a dirty look. And I took the harmonica and I put it in my back pocket. And I said, nah, I don't play over the one chord. And they said, oh, well. And then the next night we were playing at some fancy revolving stage in Monaco, right? And I was kind of still nervous. It was my second show. So I'm warming up for the show. And the way I would warm up is I'd pull a harmonica out of my bag and just play, even though I wasn't playing it in the show. And Steve Cropper walked into the dressing room and he goes, Eddie, Eddie Floyd was our special guest. He goes, come in here. He goes, listen to what Rob's playing on that harmonica. And he goes, we got to work that into the show. And then after that, I started playing harmonica and singing.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, fantastic. A fantastic gig to do. How long were you playing with those guys and touring around?

SPEAKER_03:

Probably from around turn of the century. So I would say around 2000 to around the present. And we haven't had much since the pandemic hit, but over 20 years.

SPEAKER_04:

A great gig. Wow. Just finishing off on your music career. I think you've got a latest band, Paparazzi's Juke Joint. Is this your latest band?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. So everything kind of morphed over the years after I did my little records at Truskin Soul and Electric Butter. I realized that now I have a lot of stuff that I could call from in my career. That became Paparazzi's Juke Joint, where whoever you hire me with, maybe a two-piece, three-piece, four-piece, up to a 10-piece band, we're going to call it Paparazzi's And it's just going to be all the music that I've always wanted to play. And I'm going to entertain you for a night.

SPEAKER_04:

And going back a little bit to the session where you touched on, you know, you've done movie soundtracks. You've done a song, a movie called Tom Hook, which is a Walt Disney movie.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

done TV shows you mentioned advert jingles you know you've been on the David Letman show with Dolly Parton so lots of TV work and also quite a lot of movie soundtracks as well yeah

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. You know, all of a sudden when you become a guy that's on call, then you never know where the calls are going to come from. You know, I would get calls from, let's go play behind George Jones on the Letterman show or culture clubs coming into town. They're doing a comeback and they need a harmonica player. And you become this on call kind of a guy. It's pretty interesting. You never know what the gig is going to be about.

SPEAKER_04:

And you also do some teaching of harmonica. You've got this My Music Masterclass where you've got, I think it's three videos, which are available online by your website. I'll put a link onto the podcast page for those.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. The teaching thing kind of just became a natural thing because that's how I had learned. You know, I found a couple of guys like Bonfilio and Toots on the telephone. And I always felt like, you know what, if I ever get a chance, I'm going to try and help other harmonica players from whatever information I can use. I started getting calls from the Turtle Bay Music school where I learned. And they said, you want to come and teach here? And so back in the 90s, I was teaching there. And then I turned it over to Dennis Grunling, who was in the area, who was a great player. And I said, why don't you take over? I'm not going to be teaching anymore. But then Fast forward now, right, to the new century and even the pandemic. We've all had to reinvent ourselves, haven't we, with podcasts and teaching and Zoom lessons. And I started teaching online even. I mean, I was teaching from my house and people wanted to come over and study with me. And I would tailor make my lesson to the student because harmonica is such a diverse instrument and everybody plays different styles.

SPEAKER_04:

Fantastic. Yeah, and you're still teaching now on Skype and things, yeah?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I'll teach online. A little less now since the pandemic ended. And I do some stuff from the house here for locals that people want to come over. It's a great way of keeping the great players and the young players interested in this instrument.

SPEAKER_04:

Definitely, yeah. Well, you've got definitely a wealth of experience to share. So a question I ask each time, Rob, is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_03:

You know, it really, I'm not a very disciplined player and I'm not proud of that. I wish I had had more discipline to do with some of the great jazz and classical players do. So I'll sit down and work on whatever I'm into at the time, if it's a piece of music. Matter of fact, last week, my brother moved down to North Carolina. He plays with a keyboard player down there. They sent me a track of Blue Zet, which is a famous Toot Steelman song, right? And they said, would you want to play on this? You know, I never really even played Blue Zet. So that's what I was working on. So I work on whatever is on the table. And if it means practicing some scales so I can jam on a tune or whatever, that's what I do. I remember when I got a call to play with the New York Philharmonic to do Henry Mancini's Breakfast at Tiffany's, I wanted to work on that classic chromatic sound. And I wanted to sound like the guy george fields who was a session player from california back then and i worked on that for weeks getting my tongue blocking chromatic plan to try and sound less like toots and stevie and more like this sound that we had remembered from this movie so i just practiced whatever's on the table

SPEAKER_04:

so so we'll move on to the the last section now uh rob and uh talk about gear so first of all your harmonica of choice is a is a big river hona harmonic here which is probably quite an unusual choice. What made you choose this as probably on the cheaper end of the scale? But I know you do some modifications, don't you?

SPEAKER_03:

So for diatonic, when I started out, obviously in the 60s, they only had the marine bands and the quality control was pretty ugly back then. You never knew what you were going to get. And that's all you had. You didn't have all these models like crossovers and golden melodies and special 20s. You only had that. So I learned on a marine band, as all these other super duper models came out years later, I've tried them, but I found that since I learned a different way, I played on some pretty leaky harmonicas back in the 60s and 70s. I learned to push my air a little differently through the harmonicas. So what might be a good harmonica for you, since you learned on maybe a great, like a crossover that really sings for you, you know, for me, that might not work because it would clam up because I'm maybe pushing a little more air in a different way. So for me, the Big River, Price Point was sort of like a modern day Marine Band. that Horner was going to now make a modular harmonica out of that you could change the plates on. So for me, at price point, I'm using a load of harmonicas and that was going to work for me because it was the right price. So I went with the Big River for that reason.

SPEAKER_04:

And now you're selling these custom Big River signature harmonicas, which are using the Blue Moon Combs, which are made by Tom Halchak.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, if you open up a Big River, you realize that the cover plates are nice, the reed plates are really nice, but the weakest link is that little molded comb. It's a really cheesy comb. And that makes the harmonica play not so well, maybe leak and whatever. So I found that when people started coming out with combs, there was a guy, the first guy was this guy, Mark Lavoie. Back in the early 90s, he came out with this thing called the Lavoie comb. It was a titanium. And that's when I realized that, okay, now we have the option. So fast forward to Tom Halcheck and Blue Moon Combs. He was making all kinds of materials, plastic and synthetic and metal and whatever, aluminum and anodized aluminum. I found if you just replaced it, take the Big River and replace the comb, you've got a great instrument. Buy the cheap Big Rivers and then add these combs or let Tom put them together because Tom Halcheck and we have a lot of customizers now out there, which is great. We never had this when I was coming up. And these guys can tweak your harmonica the way you want it. Your overblow, you're a wet player, you're a dry player, you're a hard player, you're a soft player. So that became an option.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, great. I have a couple of the Blue Moon combs myself, which I bought a good few years ago now. But yeah, they're excellent combs. Yeah, so good stuff. And then on chromatic, you're also playing honers. I think you're playing the 270 mainly.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I pretty much stuck with the honer harmonicas. I had a short love affair with Suzuki and I went over to Suzuki because they were really getting into things at the time. I wasn't so crazy about their diatonics, but their chromatics were really nice. The serious and the fabulous. And I started adding some of those to my kit. And then honer got better again and I went back because that was the company I started with. But I always found that the Stockowner 270, before the Toots Hard Bopper and all that, was a great instrument. You know, square holes. I mean, it was a little, it wasn't like a fancy looking thing, but it really always held up really well. Problem is, is that, you know, with the chromatic, they use these pear wood combs and eventually comb was going to crack so that even if the reed plates were still good, you've got a cracked comb and now you're back to square one. And they weren't so modular that you could just pop off the reed plates. You kind of had to know what you were doing. I still do play the chromatics. I play the 270s. That's my choice. But I have a guy in San Francisco, Steve Malerbi, who had worked on all of Norton Buffalo's harmonicas. He had done some servicing for Stevie Wonder. And I don't like working on my harmonicas. I'm not very handy, especially the chromatic. Now, diatonics, I'll take them apart and I'll tune a couple of notes or I'll make it into a country tune. I could do that because diatonics don't have all the moving parts that a chromatic does. So I went with this guy who's a pretty good tech and he does a good job for me before we leave the chromatic thing I should also mention the chromatic deluxe model is it has the round holes and that's a great and it has a synthetic comb so I added started adding some of those to my kit

SPEAKER_04:

talking about different tunings on the diatonic you mentioned you play country tuning earlier on so do you use many different tunings

SPEAKER_03:

I don't use many. I do like the country tuning because you don't have to change too much of your technique. You just have that one major seventh on the fifth hole draw. But I'm open to other tunings. I did some workshops with Todd Parrott, who's a great player, and he has his Parrott tuning where he takes the hole seven and tweaks that. And then guys like Brendan Power have done amazing things with the tuning layouts. And then you have that Patty Richter tuning where you take hole number three because holes two, draw, and three blower, the same note on the diet. So you can kind of make that an A note instead of having to bend the, you know, on a C horn. So I don't mess around with them a whole lot. I don't want to get too far away from relearning all these tunings. So I stick with just the country tunes and then I've learned how to do overblows and the same thing with the chromatic. I don't retune anything. I'll buy different keys.

SPEAKER_04:

And what about your embouchure?

SPEAKER_03:

I would say 50% pucker and 50% tongue block on all my playing on diatonic and chromatic. It's a back and forth constantly. For me, I'm also very big on telling players not to buy in to the theory that you get bigger tone with 100% tongue blocking. That's a fallacy, in my opinion, after 50 years of playing.

UNKNOWN:

.........

SPEAKER_03:

The tone comes way further back in your throat than it does with your front of mouth embouchure. You can have a full, full tone as a pucker player or a tongue block player. There's a lot of factors that go into tone. So anytime we have harmonica players that say, oh, if you're not tongue blocking, you're doing it wrong. I totally disagree. You may not agree with me, but I feel I have a pretty good tone and I've made it work by using both of the You should learn them both and keep up with them both. Yeah. And then there's certain licks that sound like really good with tongue blocking and certain effects that you can get. And then, of course, corner switching where you're playing out of both sides of your mouth is the ultimate in tongue blocking. And, you know, and there's that too, if you're playing bigger interval leaps and jumps and stuff like that. But there's also things on pucker that you'll never be able to get that speed as a tongue blocker because of the armature of the puckering. You can move faster. and do licks that you can't do as a tongue blocker.

SPEAKER_04:

And so equipment-wise, what about microphones and amps? What do you like to use?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, mics and amps are interesting because we've also added so many options like we did with harmonicas themselves. I helped the Audix company develop what Mike called the Fireball a couple of years back. I really like that microphone. It's not a bullet mic. For Chicago blues, you might want to use something like an Astatic or a Shure or a Bulletini. Jason Ritchie developed up to 57, the short 57, into a Jason Ritchie model, which is a really great mic. So I'm all over the map with that. I don't have one favorite. If I had a go-to mic, it would probably be the Audix Fireball with the volume control, because I go for a cleaner sound. If I want dirt, I'll get that from the amp or my throat. A bullet mic is great, but the problem with a bullet mic is it gives, you know, since I play a lot of different style music, not just Chicago blues, it's going to make it sound like a guitar player would sound if he stepped on a distortion pedal and left it on the whole performance to me that's what a bullet mic is it's one sound and that's it and it's great is if you're just playing classic chicago blues it sounds great for the whole set

SPEAKER_04:

so you're playing a lot through a pa then and not so much through amps

SPEAKER_03:

no i mean not not so much that this microphone works great through pas but i'll use this audix microphone through i i like playing through a fender ramp i'll use a fender blues deluxe and i'll plug right in You know, I have the converter plugged so it's quarter like a guitar jack. And I plug right into the Fender Blues Deluxe, which has 112. But I don't like modifying the amplifier for harmonica. I feel then you're starting to do what you did with the bullet mic. I want that amp to sound like a Fender amp. I don't want to start modifying the tube swapping and all that stuff. I want to plug into it. And if you tweak it right with your knobs and your bass and treble and master volume, you can get a little dirt from that amp or plenty of dirt from it. And then also do the rest from your cupping. So I do like playing through amps, but I like having the variety of changing the colorization from tune to tune. And I can do that with an amp and with a mic like that. And it doesn't feed back.

SPEAKER_04:

And so final question, just about your future plans. I see you've got some things lined up for 2023. You've got a Van Morrison tribute coming up in March. You've got a Shanghai Jazz and there's a Hartfest in May. So you've got plenty of things coming up later this year.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff. I haven't gotten any tour calls for the Blues Brothers and who knows what the future brings for that. But I've got little projects that I do like the Van Morrison tribute and the Bob Dylan tribute. And I teach, I'll continue teaching from home, playing local gigs at my Shanghai Jazz Club. And I'm being more selective as I'm older now. I just turned 70. So I don't want to just go out and play really loud, rock'em, sock'em gigs anymore. I want to do stuff that I want to do. So it looks like a good mixture ahead.

SPEAKER_04:

So thanks so much for joining me today, Rob Paparazzi.

SPEAKER_03:

Thanks. Great being here, Neil, and good luck with the podcast. Proud to be part of it.

SPEAKER_04:

Once again, thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast. 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 so much to Rob for joining me today. What a career he's had and well deserved with his great playing on both diatonic and chromatic harmonicas. And thanks once again to Robert Sawyer for making a donation to the podcast. And thanks all for listening. Let's sign off now with Rob playing us out with She's Too Good For Me. That cannot be true, Rob.

UNKNOWN:

No.

SPEAKER_02:

Little girl's too good for me, yeah