Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast
The podcast is sponsored by Seydel harmonicas. Check out their great range of products at www.seydel1847.com.
If you would like to make a voluntary contribution to help keep the podcast running then please use this link: https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour.
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Contact: happyhourharmonicapodcast@gmail.com
Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast
Todd Parrott interview
Todd Parrot joins me on episode 80.
Todd is a gospel harmonica player who was inspired to play harmonica after first hearing it in church. He went on to join the church band and has gone on to develop a heavenly tone on the instrument. Todd listened to a lot of country harmonica and was influenced from several players from that genre, including Terry McMillan.
Todd released a self-produced solo album, Songs From The Harp, where he learned to play several instruments to accompany his harmonica playing, as well as using other musicians. He is also a sought after session musician, appearing on albums from numerous recording artists.
Todd has run the Carolina HarpFest harmonica camp and is a regular at the annual SPAH event. He makes use of alternative tunings, makes his own combs and is an overblow player.
Links:
Todd’s website:
http://www.toddparrott.com/
Carolina Harp Fest:
http://www.toddparrott.com/carolina-harp-fest.html
Joe Spiers Custom harmonicas:
https://spiersharmonicas.com/
Hohner Golden Melody live launch stream (23/02/23):
https://www.hohner.de/en/community/news/news-details/product-launch-event-livestream
Videos:
Playing with Buddy Green at SPAH:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvN9XsOEdWA
Playing Amazing Grace at SPAH:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ2kom7jv6g
Todd reviews Joe Spiers custom harps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzrEg97RzLI
Todd playing a Golden Melody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZj5hCsx8vo
Reviewing Brendan Power’s Slip Slider harmonica:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7vZCgf8Zc4
Demonstrates harmonica with 7 draw tuned down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hUCd03PDAM
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
Todd Parrott joins me on episode 80. Todd is a gospel harmonica player who was inspired to play harmonica after first hearing it in church. He went on to join the church band and has gone on to develop a heavenly tone on the instrument. Todd listened to a lot of country harmonica and was influenced from several players from that genre, including Terry McMillan. Todd released a self-produced solo album, Songs from the Harp, where he learned to play several instruments to accompany his harmonica playing, as well as using other musicians. He's also a sought-after session musician, appearing on albums from numerous recording artists. Todd has run the Carolina Heartfest Harmonica Camp and is a regular at the annual spa event. He makes use of alternative tunings, makes his own calms, and is an overblow player. This podcast is sponsored by Seidel Harmonicas. Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Seidel Harmonicas. Hello, Todd Parrott, and welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks so much for having me, Neil. Great to be here.
SPEAKER_00:So you're speaking to us, I believe you live in North Carolina in the U.S.? Right,
SPEAKER_01:right outside the
SPEAKER_00:Charlotte area. What's the music scene like around there?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think there's probably more music in the Raleigh-Durham area than there is in Charlotte. There's, of course, a nice blues society here. But other than that, it's not quite the same as it is in where I'm from originally, Raleigh-Durham, because of all of the colleges and universities. There's just a lot of stuff happening, especially in downtown Durham these days. But Charlotte, yeah, not kind of slim pickings here, at least as far as I know.
SPEAKER_00:You're a, you know, largely a kind of gospel harmonica player, other types as country and other genres, which we'll get into. But yeah, it's great to speak to someone, I think, probably for the first time from that sort of gospel kind of angle. So I think you first heard harmonica when someone came into church playing it. And that's how you first discovered you wanted to play harmonica.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, but prior to that, my father always listened to country music, and so I would hear harmonica on the television with Boxcar Willie and all of the country artists that he would listen to. And then my grandfather would give us harmonicas because he played a little bit, but I was never really into harmonica until I heard it first when this guest speaker came because they were announcing that he was going to play the French horn, which we all know what a French horn is. It's nothing like a... harmonica. And I think they were thinking French harp. So as a 13 year old kid, I was thinking French horn. This guy's going to come and pull out a French horn and play. I got to see this. And so when he showed up, it was actually a harmonica. And so I was fascinated. And he was with us for maybe two or three nights. And He was selling harmonicas, and I kind of went and bought one. My mom told me not to do so, and she said, don't waste your money on that harmonica. But it was my money, so I went ahead and bought the harmonica, and then it kind of just stuck.
SPEAKER_00:Great. Do you know what sort of harmonica was that?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. Actually, back then, it was a Wong Silvertone Deluxe, and I still have that in Chamber Wong. He used to work for Hohner. He and his brother Frank. And when they left Hohner, they started their own company. Some of the harmonicas were really good during that time. And some of them were really bad. It just depends on luck of the draw. But I got a good one and it played really well. And then I moved very quickly to Hohner. And I think my first Hohner was probably a Blues Harp or maybe an American Ace. One of the two. I may have bought them at the same time. That was the old one. blues harp before the ms series and then after that we quickly moved to marine bands because there was a music store in town that that carried marine bands and so i got an a a d and an e and then i was really hooked
SPEAKER_00:great and this first one you got the chamber one that was a diatonic
SPEAKER_01:it was a diatonic key of c diatonic and it played great and i still have it and every once in a while i'll pull it out and play a few licks on it's just kind of nostalgic but
SPEAKER_00:That's great. I'm sure there's probably not that many people who have their very first harmonica. I definitely don't. So yeah, it must be quite nice to have that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's pretty beat up, but it plays well.
SPEAKER_00:So this guy then, he was, you heard in church, the kind of first time you really discovered. Was he playing church music on the harmonica?
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah, yeah, just with the church musicians. And you know, with church musicians, especially back then, it was all just volunteer musicians. No one really got paid to play music. Nowadays, churches have a whole team and they have a music director and sometimes a staff of musicians, but it was still really good. The music was really good. And I think he was playing an F harmonica. It just was fascinating because I'd never seen harmonica up close and live like that. So it really caught my ear. And I thought, man, that's really cool. And I'd always thought prior to that, harmonica can't be too hard to play. This is just as a kid, because I would think, you know, you don't have to press any buttons or You just move up and down, which we know it's more to it than that. But a lot of that is true. You know, just moving around the harmonica, you can get what you need. I had no idea about bending notes or anything like that, but I was kind of curious, I guess, about harmonica. And then when I saw that, I had to take the plunge.
SPEAKER_00:How old were you when you got this first harmonica?
SPEAKER_01:13 years old.
SPEAKER_00:And so after you'd heard this, and obviously, again, he was in a church band, right? So how did you start discovering harmonica music? Or how did you then progress to learning harmonica?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I really didn't have access to any of the blues guys or blues records. So I had to pretty much just play whatever I could get my hands on. I was kind of like a scavenger going through the radio and going through my dad's country music. tapes at the time cassette tapes and listening to players like mickey raphael because that was who you found a lot like with all the willie nelson albums Johnny Cash had some harmonica.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so you listened to a lot of country players then. That's the sort of music you had access to. So I know that a player that really influenced you was a guy called Terry McMillan.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:I
SPEAKER_01:was pretty much a scavenger. My dad had all the country stuff. My mom had gospel music. My sisters did too. My siblings were all much older than me. So I would go through their records and their music. But when I found Terry McMillan, yeah, that was kind of... cool find. I was like, wow, what a great tone. He played on everybody's records. He was on everything. He was on all of the big country label production records. And he was also on the mom and pop stuff, independent labels. Even one of my high school teachers said, you ever heard of Terry McMillan? I said, oh, yeah. He said, well, he played on one of my records. And this was just a school teacher who did music on the side. But I guess he went to Nashville and made an album and Terry McMillan was there. So he showed up all over the place. So Terry McMillan, Buddy Green. I was given a Buddy Green cassette as a birthday present and totally fascinated. Just fascinated. After that, Charlie McCoy, believe it or not, a kid on the school bus. gave me a Charlie McCoy cassette called One for the Road. That was the name of the album. And that was my first introduction to Charlie McCoy. And again, I was blown away and kind of blown away that this kid on the school bus would have a Charlie McCoy cassette in a time when everybody was into metal bands and big hair and all that stuff. This kid, for some reason, had a Charlie McCoy tape, but I'm so glad that he did. That was just a very happy coincidence. So those three players... are mostly what I cut my teeth on. There were other things along the way. You found other players here and there, but I didn't have access to Little Walter or Sonny Boy or any of the great blues players. So I never really got into that style as far as tongue blocking and that sort of thing. But I still think those players were great. I wish I would have had access to other things, but in a way, I'm kind of glad that I took the path that I did because it kind of shaped my sound.
SPEAKER_00:Definitely, yeah. I mean, absolutely going to say that. It's really interesting that you're coming from that angle because the vast majority of harmonica players obviously started with blues or at least were heavily influenced by blues. So yeah, it's great and it's giving you that sound, as you say, which we'll get into more as we carry on talking. You also play keyboards and organ now as well, don't you? So did you start learning that afterwards? Afterwards, yeah, because I
SPEAKER_01:didn't really play anything before harmonica except maybe a recorder in elementary school. All the kids were kind of made to play the recorder. So that was it. The harmonica was my first instrument. And then my mom played piano and my dad bought her one of those fancy pianos that where you Push the button and the whole band just takes off playing. It was one of those Yamaha keyboards with all the bells and whistles in. I started playing piano just because my brother was playing boogie-woogies and stuff like that. And I got him to show me, hey, what are you doing here? And he didn't really play, but he showed me what he was playing. Then I was able to learn the boogie-woogie, which gave me my 1-4-5. And I didn't even know what 1-4-5 meant, but that was a 12-bar blues. And so we would, on this piano, record the basic boogie-woogie, and then we'd go back on another track and record high piano licks and go on another track and do something else. It was just more of a joke than anything else. We would just play it back and laugh because it sounded like we were really doing something. It was multi layers of piano. But from that, I started messing with the piano and then using my harmonica to look at the piano chords and sound things out. So I never really started with piano to try to be a piano player. I still don't consider myself a fluent piano player, but I do know a lot of chords and I do understand now when I hear a piece of music, the chords that are being used. And so it helps me know what notes to choose if a diminished chord comes across.
SPEAKER_00:From this stage where you started playing harmonica with your brother and the keyboard and you're learning piano, how did you progress to start playing more harmonica music? What were you playing with church bands or other things?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, just playing in church because I was really just playing melodies. I didn't know anything about improvising. Other than what I've heard other harmonica players do on these records, if they took a short solo break. But as far as like a 12-bar blues solo, I had no idea how to do that. I was just playing melody. So if I played in the church, it was just to come up and play a solo. They thought it was really cool that a teenager like me was advancing with the harmonica. It was kind of like a novelty. So I would come up and play melodies, basically.
SPEAKER_00:Were you learning those melodies from written music or by ear?
SPEAKER_01:Just by ear, just from other things that I could find. Buddy Green, even Terry McMillan had a gospel project out. I think that didn't come out until 92. So prior to that, it was mainly Buddy Green and just whatever I could find to mimic. There were a few other gospel players at that time. And back then... People would just give you cassettes of people. It was kind of weird how it all came together. But I started playing also with like accompaniment with other groups, little quartets and groups just within the church. I mean, I was too young to go playing gigs and things like that because I was 13, 14. And I think one of the first things I did too when I was around 15 was played on some radio commercial that... this guy was doing for his father-in-law's restaurant. So I just went to the local music store and that was my first recording experience. But yeah, I never really played a lot of gigs. It was mainly just songs. And then my brother did play blues on the guitar. So he would play the 12 bar blues and tell me to play something. And I said, well, what do you want me to play? I don't know, just jam. And so I kind of learned that just from playing with him and just playing licks that I'd learned from these gospel records and maybe play a warble or something like that over the 12 bars. Just by ear, just pick things out.
SPEAKER_00:Great. Do you have a copy of that recording, your first commercial recording?
SPEAKER_01:No, I wish I did. I can't even remember the name of the restaurant. I think it was in Florida. This guy that had this recording gear at the music store that was in the Raleigh Durham area. I think his father-in-law had the restaurant in Florida. So I don't even know, but it was something like the commercial went something like, Oh man, my band's got the blues. We're on the road and we're hungry. We can't find a good place to eat. And so it's like a slow blues. And then he says, I know let's go to whatever the restaurant name was. And then the music picks up and everything kind of kicks in high gear. And I just thought it was a funny, idea for a commercial. And the harmonica worked out well. And by that time, by 15, I guess I had a little bit better handle on how to play blues licks. I was always around music. So, you know, being in the church and hearing lively music and hearing choirs and listening to the choir director teach the parts. And I just kind of had a good ear and a good feel for music because of the way I grew up. So the harmonica was... I didn't learn overnight, but it came probably a little bit faster for me just because of that. And having my mom there to help me with what key something was in or she'd play piano and let me play. I do have some recordings of that where I had been playing maybe four months, six months, one year. So they're kind of funny to go back and listen to now, but.
SPEAKER_00:They weren't too bad. So it sounds like the church was a great place for you to learn. You know, you were performing in front of people and I'm sure a very supportive group as well. You're playing. Is that a really good environment to learn in?
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah, I think so. Again, all the musicians were volunteer and all the singers were volunteer. So they weren't too critical of my bad notes. They just thought it was cool because it was harmonica. But then, You know, at other functions, youth camps and things like that, I would get asked to play and there'd be a bigger audience. So I got invited up to play at things like that. And a lot of times when people hear you play, they would want you to sit in with them. You know, these singers and musicians, hey, we're doing this song tonight. Can you play harmonica with us? And I had no idea what to play at first. I was like, well, sure, but... What do you want me to play? Oh, I don't know. Just play whatever. So it was kind of like just stepping in the water, being pushed in the water. You got to sink or swim. But very quickly, I learned because of the records I was listening to. I was very much influenced, of course, we already said by Terry McMillan and Buddy Green, but these guys played on records. So I learned licks. And with Terry McMillan... He had a handful of licks, probably more than that, but he had several licks that he would transpose and transplant into different songs. He had a system, and I learned very quickly how to take those licks and adapt to other songs and put fills in there. I wasn't really good at soloing, but I was good at playing fills.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I was going to
SPEAKER_01:ask you about that. That's what I really enjoy doing still today a lot is just playing fills, but that's kind of how... I progressed with just playing with this group and that group. Can you play this song? So I'd have to listen to this song and learn it. But as far as joining a band, no, I never did anything like that when I was young. It was just, again, just rolling with the punches and trying out different things. But that was a good experience because I had to learn quickly. A lot of times I had to learn these things quickly. Yeah. Later, the piano helped greatly. I know we talked about the piano, but that helped greatly because I knew the chords. I knew where we were and I knew what licks would fit over those chords for the most part. Curve ball every once in a while may throw me off, but for the most part, I knew what to do and how to get around
SPEAKER_02:those changes.
SPEAKER_00:So one thing I was going to ask about that. So you're obviously listening to, it sounds like, mostly country music and country harmonica. So how did that adapt to gospel and what the similarities and things you could use there?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, it's very similar. Country and gospel. A lot of times, even at the spa conventions, we will combine country and gospel into one jam or into one seminar because a lot of the gospel is country-style gospel or southern gospel, as they call it, which I was never really a big fan of southern gospel. Some of it is okay, but the harmonica work is what caught my ear. So I didn't care what it was. If It had harmonica in it. I wanted to hear it and learn it. And then, of course, with gospel music, then you have contemporary style pop, I guess, if you want to call it that. You have choir music, which is more of a, that's its own thing. If you think about the Blues Brothers, where they go to the church and James Brown is the pastor there.
SPEAKER_00:I've seen the lot. Yes. And
SPEAKER_01:they're singing that song. Let us all go down to the old landmark or let us all go back to the old landmark, you know, that style. But harmonica fits well in that because you just play blues league. So there's really just two ways to approach it. If it's a country style song, gospel or country or whatever, or if it's a pop song, you're going to play happy notes is what I call it, you know, which most people would say major pentatonic or major scale stuff. And if it's a bluesy gospel song, or a bluesy country song like Folsom Prison. You can use notes from the blues scale. Sometimes you can use both. Folsom Prison's a good example. You can use country Charlie McCoy style licks and bluesy licks. So there was really just two ways. It really didn't matter about the style. It was more about the feel of the song and what it needs. Just like an interior decorator, I guess, could come in and look at the room and decide what type of curtains and what type of pictures to hang on the wall. After you've played so many songs, you kind of get a feel for what it needs. And if you listen to the chords and the melody, if you played with Ray Charles, you definitely want to play bluesy licks
SPEAKER_00:yeah so great so i don't know you said you haven't necessarily sort of been with touring bands or anything so you know how did your music develop because obviously you have gone on to record with other artists and we'll get onto that shortly so you know so how did you you know how did you progress from playing with other people and things
SPEAKER_01:well you know for many years just i just uh played harmonica but had a normal life you know this was before youtube and and before the well not before the internet but before youtube and sharing harmonica i just had a regular job and i would play harmonica on the side but i think i think youtube really even though i haven't posted anything in a long time i think that really exposed me to the harmonica world and just to other musicians i get a lot of calls and have through the years i've gotten a lot of calls to do sessions for people and i don't really know how they have found me. It's kind of funny how it works, but that's a good question.
SPEAKER_00:Well, your great playing is one answer to that, Todd. Thanks, man. Again, it's really interesting because it sounds like you've kind of developed in many ways in your own sort of little bubble. Like you said, the internet's obviously a big part of that and you've listened to other players, but it's really interesting and people have discovered you and you've done quite a lot of session work and everything, haven't you? You've also got an album out which you released yourself called songs from the harp. So what year did you release that one?
SPEAKER_01:That came out right at the end of 2014, December of 2014. But I worked on that for a long time because I played many of the instruments there. So yeah, that was a very long process. A lot of work went into that. And that's kind of like a collection of songs that I played through the years. One of the songs on there, Unclouded Day, was the first song that I ever played When I got up and played my first solo in church. And that was also a song that my mom would play. For me to practice, you know, just to try to learn how the song went. And so I put that on the record and put a little bit of a saloon style as best I could piano, because that kind of reminds me of the way my mom used to play. So I did that just as a tribute to her, sort of. So we both kind of laugh about that. But that was the first song that ever played. So I wanted to put that on the album and And then some of the others are just, you know, I'll Fly Away. And Amazing Grace, gospel songs have pretty much... Everybody knows or plays if they go to a harmonica convention, you'll hear those songs played. I just wanted to put my own version out there.
SPEAKER_00:Great. So talking more about the process, you say you'd finished it in 2014. So when do you think you started this? Or was it a case of just knowing those songs for a long time? Oh,
SPEAKER_01:probably around 2011, maybe. Some of the stuff that was on there were tracks that I had recorded from several years prior. And they were just sitting on a hard disk recorder. And then we took them and put them in Pro Tools and redid some of them. And so some of the tracks from the Train song, drum track on that was that was me just playing with the brushes but we put that into pro tools and made it sound a little better and i redid things but yeah it was really just amazing that the project came together as well as it did
SPEAKER_00:yeah but you'd obviously made a decision that you wanted to get together a collection of songs which you were calling an album so yeah so oh yeah and it sounds great so is this your your only single your only solo album so far
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so far, yeah, that's the only one. And I did that because I was doing a lot more. At the time, I was doing a lot more playing out in churches. I would just go in and either do an entire set or a lot of times just go play two or three songs as a part of their Sunday morning service. And then I would sell CDs. And I've been doing that off and on since probably 2001. Even when I was working just a regular job, I would go out and play on the weekends. But I never really got into much playing with the band. It was always just kind of solo work.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I've got to say for everyone listening, it's a fantastic album, some fantastic playing from Utah. So I definitely recommend people to check it out. Obviously, there'll be links to your website and everything to find it. But you say you played a lot of the instruments yourself. What were those other instruments?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the keyboard, piano, organ, bass, guitar. on all of the songs except for one. And then drums only on the train song. I can play drums, but I'm not a drummer. So I only played on the train song. And that was just with brushes and tambourines and stuff like that, percussion instruments and things. But I don't consider myself to be a fluent anything except for harmonica. So the other things I worked really hard to try and make it sound as good as possible.
SPEAKER_00:So, yeah, again, how did you go about approaching learning these different instruments to record with? Well, just through the years,
SPEAKER_01:playing piano and having a piano with all the bells and whistles on it where you could play multi-track, record multi-track, piano, bass guitar on the piano, you know, just set it on a bass guitar setting. There was drums on the organ. So I spent a lot of time, besides playing harmonica, I spent a lot of time analyzing songs and listening to what all the parts did, the bass and the organ and the keyboards and the drums. And on this piano that I had, a lot of the demonstration patterns or rhythms, like there was a boogie woogie on there, there was a bossa nova, there was all kinds of things. And it would be like the full band playing, but it had faders and you could isolate each instrument and listen to it. So I spent a lot of time doing that and then trying to play piano chords myself or listening to records and trying to figure out chords. I was really fascinated with chords. And then I started playing bass guitar probably, I don't know, sometime in the late 90s. But that was just to fill in because the church where I attended needed a bass player. So I started just playing bass. And so I kind of had a good feel for what everything was supposed to do and how it was all supposed to gel together. But I still don't consider myself uh proficient in any of those with the record i just took my time and punched in if i needed to i would play the bass guitar line but if i missed a note i could go in and fix it you know very easy to do these days
SPEAKER_00:have you got other musicians playing on the album as well
SPEAKER_01:oh yeah i got brent mason on four tracks now brent mason is a nashville guitarist who plays on all the country records but i was able to get him because everybody's doing sessions now in their home studios the industry has changed a little bit so it was as simple as just contacting him and when he heard the songs he said yeah i'll be happy to to play on this stuff so that was fantastic to get brent mason and then on one of the songs jesus hold my hand which is another old hymn the same guy that wrote i'll fly away wrote jesus hold my hand so On that track, I got a guy named Herb Shuker. He played drums for Randy Travis for many years. Now, I didn't necessarily ask for him. That's something that Brent Mason organized. But Brent Mason got Herb Shuker. And then Gary Lunn, who's another phenomenal Nashville session player, plays bass. And so the three of them did the acoustic guitar, the electric guitar, and the bass guitar, the chorus. tracks for that song i put a little bit of piano on there and then some of the other parts like the fiddle and the banjo and the dobro there was a guy in pigeon forge who's a fiddle player and he he played the fiddle and he knew the guys that did dobro and banjo i think they all at one time worked worked at dollywood or something like that so they they were excellent with that type of style and i must say on that song too mike caldwell who we recently lost he was a dear friend that was his arrangement he arranged jesus hold my hand because i wanted it to have a really country sound and he was a pro at that so and i even credited him in the album cover inside the the cover for his arrangement of jesus hold my hand so rest in peace mike
SPEAKER_00:yeah fantastic yeah so some some great songs on there you've mentioned a few there but uh picking a few out myself so you've got a few different styles haven't you got that the great speckled bird which is country harmonica and then you've got since uh i let my burden down which has got more of a distorted tone a bit more of a sort of rock feel so quite a different few different genres and a solo harmonica piece i need the every hour so
SPEAKER_01:And I need the every hour. I asked permission from Buddy Green to do that because that's kind of similar to the way he did it on his album. But I said, man, this is such a great sound. Would you mind if I did that and put my own twist to it? He said, oh, yeah, go ahead. These songs are perfect for harmonica. So he had no problem with it. So yeah. Thank you, Buddy Green, for that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, great album. So you've got plans to make another one?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I would like to do another one, but I think next time I would probably go somewhere like Nashville and let them track everything. I don't want to do anything next time but play harmonica, maybe do a little bit more vocal stuff. I'm not a vocalist either, but I think it would be fun to do some songs on the album that are similar to what we were talking about with The Blues Brothers and James Brown. In fact, that song, Let Us All Go Back to the Old Landmark, is really a great song for a choir and for harmonica. You can do some really cool stuff. So I'd like to do some stuff like that on there and just see how it turns out. I think it'd be really fun. But yeah, no more one-man band stuff for me. I'm going to have to get some
SPEAKER_00:musicians. I'm sure you learned a lot, though, doing it that way. So it was worthwhile. But yes, hard work, as you say. Going in enters playing with other people. So you play with a guy called Bill Tripp, and that's all country harmonica, yeah?
SPEAKER_01:Bill Tripp is a guy who's probably in his 80s now. And he was probably close to 80 when he did that project. But he wanted to do something that was like old country. He wanted it to sound like an old 70s country record. And so he got me to play on that project. That was a lot of fun. And a few years ago, gosh, probably 10, 12 years ago now, I played with a guy named Mark Miller. There was a group called Mark Miller and Traveling Shoes. And the way that came to be is Buddy Green actually played harmonica on that record. It was a Blind Willie McTell tribute album. Got the gospel songs of Blind Willie McTell. And they wanted Buddy Green to play these dates with them and he wasn't available. So he gave them my name. So that's, that's how I got down to Atlanta for several gigs. And from that, you know, every thing that you do, every gig, every time you go play someplace, it's like, it leads to another gig. Most of the time. I guess that's why people say play any chance you can. Play, play, play. Yeah, definitely. Don't pass up a gig. So, you know, and then we played at the Blind Willie Blues Festival and that was a lot of fun to play live. It was an outdoor festival. So, yeah, Bill Tripp and a lot of the session stuff that I've done has just been from folks who have heard me here or there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So just picking out a couple of the people you play with. So there's an album with Sarah Renner.
SPEAKER_01:I don't really know Sarah Renner personally. That's just a project that someone got me to play on, but I really enjoyed that. That was more of a pop style. I don't know what you would call that. So I had to use a few different diatonic harmonicas, a low F sharp, regular F sharp. And I think I played a part on there in 12th position on an A flat. With the seven draw tune down. So whatever works, you know, to get the sound that you're looking for. And Leslie Beaver is a local artist here, and she does more of a contemporary gospel type style, I guess you would call it. Some of it's quite bluesy from time to time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and then there's another album with Gabrielle Bello. This is like an album of Stevie Wonder songs.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Gabriel is a fantastic saxophone player and he had a Stevie Wonder tribute band where he put on the full costume and everything and did the Stevie Wonder tunes. I think it was called Natural Wonder, but he's a great saxophonist and I got him to play on my CD and then he wanted me to play on his album. And so the song that I sent you there, Have a Talk with God, is a Stevie Wonder song that had harmonica on it, but he had a certain sound that he wanted. So he said, no, don't worry about doing the Stevie Wonder thing. This is kind of what I want you to play. A lot of times with these sessions, they're very specific about what they want. And a lot of times, they will have you play everywhere. And then they edit and may sometimes cut and paste your harmonica licks. They will just mix out what they don't want. So you kind of never know for sure what the final product is going to sound like.
SPEAKER_00:And so, yeah. And so you play with other people, as you say, you just pick your name up and you don't always know where, but like you say, playing with different people and never turning down a gig is a, is a good way to do it. Yeah. And you've mentioned Buddy Green several times. Clearly he's someone that you know well, and you, there's some live recordings with him on YouTube. You've got a recording of you playing I'll Fly Away with him. Oh, at Spa. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. At the Spa convention.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And you do a lot of teaching of harmonica and also run harmonica camps, yeah?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I do more teaching nowadays than... than ever before on Skype and Zoom and also with Tomlin Leckie. I worked for him in his harmonica school a few hours a week doing feedback and coaching. Of course, COVID interrupted us a little bit, but I had something called the Carolina Harp Fest that I did 2018, 2019, and then we had to postpone 2020, but we did have that in 2021 at the end of the year, basically. So I didn't do anything in 22, but I'm hoping to do another one in the fall of this year. So as long as I can get all the details and get the building secured and all that sort of thing. So we'll see. I really would like to do another because it's a really fun event. Lots of jam time. Jams during the day and at night. So a lot of people come to this event because it's so much fun. We give everybody a lot of time to play.
SPEAKER_00:That would be in Carolina again, would it?
SPEAKER_01:right it would be right here in the charlotte area
SPEAKER_00:and you've been certainly involved in other harmonica workshops as well you've got various ones listed on your website so that's something you're still like you say picking up after covid is that starting to pick up again you're going to be teaching at other harmonica camps
SPEAKER_01:yeah well right now i know i'll be at spa i don't know if i'll be teaching a seminar at spa but i'll certainly be teaching with uh felisco's teach-in i am supposed to be teaching in canada if we can get that worked out i've got to look at a few other details at the Shared Harvest event. There's the Helen Harp Fest in Georgia that's coming up in May. There's an event that's kind of being organized for Florida, the Paradise Coast event. That's with Jerry Fierro. And I'm not sure of the date on that one, but I get invited to a lot of these things. And again, I never dreamed I would be going and teaching and doing harmonica workshops and things. It just all happened. I kind of blame it on YouTube and just putting stuff out there. And from going to spa, if you've never been to a spa convention, everybody needs to go at least once because there's not any other event where you have talent from all over the world, all in one place, all of these different styles.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:From country and Cajun harmonica, blues to bluegrass and chromatic and diatonic. It's just a really cool thing to experience. And I think spa has been really good for me. I haven't been to one spa convention yet to where I didn't leave with some other type of benefit.
SPEAKER_00:This year, it's the 60th anniversary, so it's a special one this year as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I always leave there with a new lick, a new student, or something. It's just a great experience, so I try to never miss them. I don't think I've missed one since 2009.
SPEAKER_00:Question to ask each time, Todd, is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?
SPEAKER_01:I've had 10 minutes to practice, which is often when I'm waiting in the car for my wife. I like to try and play in other positions. So third position major is something that I practice a lot. with the backing track just to kind of see how everything lays out there's some really really cool licks and things you can do in third position major and i would say also other unusual positions one thing that i like to do is play on country tuned harmonicas and play them in sixth position it sounds really weird but there's a lot of stuff you can do In sixth position, just from the harp being country tuned, which is really a bad name because country tuning has nothing to do with playing country music. It just gives you the major seventh note of the scale. So your five draw is raised to half step. And that opens up not only second position melodies, but sixth position minor melodies. So a lot of the songs that you can play in third position are You can try them in sixth position on a country tune harmonica, and it's quite remarkable the things that you can get and the sound that you can get all the way up to hole nine on the harmonica. So that's another thing that if I have time to just sit and practice, I'm going to jam. I'm not going to really run through scales, but I'm just going to try to play something in context with the backing track, even if I don't know the chord progression. That's kind of fun, too. Put on a backing track. And there's several of them that are not 12-bar blues. And just see what happens. Where are the juicy notes? What are the chords? Oops, I have to avoid that note. Oh, that sounded bad. I'd rather work that stuff out in the car practicing than on the stage. You know what I mean? And that helps you just in general with your ears. Putting stuff on the radio and just trying to play along with it. That's how I'm able to sit in a lot of times and practice. adapt just because i do that all the time all the time that's that's a fun challenge
SPEAKER_00:and so one thing i definitely want to talk to you about you've got a very fast fluid style and you play a lot of top end stuff on the harmonica as well so You know, how would you say you worked on that and you developed that style of playing?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I started to tune the seven draw down. And when you tune seven draw down a semitone on a C harmonica from B to B flat, it opens up the top range of the harmonica to automatically sound bluesier because on a regular harmonica, seven draw sitting right there in the middle of everything. That's a major third. It's going to give you a nice sound for country. It's going to give you a nice sound for John Popper style licks or sugar blue style licks. And I like some of that stuff, but if you want the top of the harmonica to really sound blue scale-ish, you know, or minor pentatonic scale, the seven draw being tuned down just helps that be a little bit more fluid without having to stop and play the six overblow. So when I started tuning like that, then that opened up a lot of other possibilities because it's not just the seven draw being tuned down, but your seven blow is now bendable. Seven and eight blow are bendable together. So you can play seven and eight blow, bend them slightly, and then draw seven and eight draw, and that gives you a cool sound, especially on the lower harp.
SPEAKER_00:Nice, yeah. So are the country-tuned harmonicas you're playing, are you tuning down the seven draw on those? No, not
SPEAKER_01:at all, no. That would be really weird. That would be really weird. I guess you could do it if you needed it for a certain tune, but no. I tune the seven draw down, though, for... second position playing
SPEAKER_00:so on a standard richter tuning you draw it you're tuning down the seven draw
SPEAKER_01:down the seven now i still have regular harps and i like a regular tuned harp so i'll say this when i was talking about third position major i don't tune the seven draw down if i want to play in third position major i want just a regular harp i could still use one with the seven draw tune down but i would rather just have a richter tuned harp third position major But for second position and for some things in third position, having that seven note tuned down just opens up a lot of stuff. Then I got into custom harmonicas from Joe Spires, and that opened up overblow and overdraw capabilities, which I could always pass over those notes before, but with Joe's harps, I can really lean into them and push them.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Did you do any sort of work on harmonicas yourself before you started using Joel's harmonicas?
SPEAKER_01:No, I really didn't do much work. I would tune harps and maybe gap a little bit. But as far as being a customizer, that's one thing I am not. I can do some homemade stuff, you know, if... I want to try to make a harp play better, but I would never try to call myself a customizer. I'd much rather just play. But tuning is quite easy to do. So I enjoy that. And I've done that for years. And the seven draw being tuned down was something that I started doing in around 2000 because I had a friend named Pete Elder. And he's still around. He's not on social media or YouTube. He should be. Fantastic player. But he called and left me a message one time and played a lick and ended the the voicemail, uh, on, I think it was on an answering machine at the time and he ended on the seven draw and I called him back. I said, what are you doing on my answering machine? And he told me about that tuning. And so I said, well, let me try it. And I tried it and it stuck. And so a lot of people call that, put my name on that tuning, but I want to say I didn't invent that tuning. Johnny Mars and several other players have been tuned in the seven draw down. So even though some people call it parrot tuning, it's not, uh, It's not my tuning. You know, I think I've got stuck with it because I've popularized it, but I didn't invent it. That's for sure. But it is great tuning.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe I would talk to Zydle about, you know, getting that available as a harmonic. It might be an option.
SPEAKER_01:Well, no, but I'm a Hohner endorser, so that probably wouldn't be. But I think the guys at Seidel are great folks. There's some nice folks there and they make a good harp. Also, I just got comfortable and accustomed to golden melodies of all things. I still play crossovers and stuff, but I like the golden melodies.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:which they're getting ready to release a new golden melody here in a few days. They're going to have a live event and introduce that. And I've played the prototypes and I've played the production model. So it's a good harmonica. It's a little different shape, but yeah, I got really used to the old style golden melody. So I don't know how that's going to work, but I've got several of them coming. several of them to keep, to hold me over for a long time if I want to keep playing the old one, but we'll see what the new one does. And it did play very nicely. I played it at spa.
SPEAKER_00:So great. Yeah. So as you say, your owner and Dorsey, you play the golden melody and crossover. So you do a few, um, I saw you doing a video on the Brendan Powers slip slider harmonica. Is that something that you still use?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. From time to time, the slip slider is a really cool concept. It gives you bendable notes. I use it more for the blow bins, uh, because you can really lean into them pretty hard when you slide. It actually slides the reed plate over, and he's actually improved that design since that initial video. Now he has like a little switch on the bottom, and I've got a couple of those that I'm still experimenting with. I think that those are really useful for melodies. You need to blow bend five blow. That's usually what you need to use in certain melodies, which it sounds a whole lot better than the four over blow. It sounds better if you can just bend the five blow. Some players do that with a valve. So P.T. Gazelle uses half-valved harmonicas and does a good job with that. But the slip slider, yeah, it's a really cool thing. But most of the time I'm just using regular harp. And
SPEAKER_00:I know something you got into was making customized combs. Is that still something you're doing?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I have several of those. I probably have about 1,300 of them in stock. They're all crossover Marine Band Deluxe combs. They'll fit a regular Marine Band also, but you have to– with a regular Marine Band, you'd have to drill the actual reed plates because they're put together with nails. But these combs that I have will fit the Deluxe and the crossover just fine. They just– drop in and those are all different colors i haven't really put up a website or anything for them i'm not trying to put up a big business of selling combs or a store anything like that i just wanted to have combs for the crossover and for the golden melody and i'll probably do sidle at some point but i just have them i like having them for different harp events for my students so
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_01:As of right now, if anybody wants a comb, they just usually message me and I send them a video or take a picture of the colors. I've got all kinds of colors and I can make any colors that I want because I actually custom make the material.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. No, I've got a few combs. It's nice to have the combs. And I say that the colors are great too, aren't they? So yeah. So into a few sort of technical questions about playing. So obviously you've talked about playing different positions. You're an overblow player, right? So you definitely use overblows. I mean, how extensively would you call yourself an overblow player?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm pretty proficient with overblows and I can play them pretty solidly. However, I did not get into overblow playing to play like Howard Levy. though I really love a lot of the stuff that he does. He's a genius on the harmonica, but I can't play like that. I can't play jazz. I can't wrap my head around that stuff. So that was not my goal. What drew me to the overblows was YouTube. Because I can always pass over the overblows. But when I heard Jason, Carlos, and even Howard on certain things pushing the overblows around, and I realized that that was an option. That's what kind of drew me to custom harps. And so I'm using the overblows and overdraws to mimic or to duplicate licks from the low end of the harp up high. So your six over blow takes on the role of your three draw half step bend, and you can push it around. Your seven overdraw is like your four draw bend, and you can push it up to the same note that would be eight draw. You can bend it up. Eight overdraw takes on the sound of five draw. You say, well, nine draw gives you that note. Yes, nine draw gives you that same note as eight overdraw, but you can't do anything with it. Eight overdraw, you can push it around. You can bend it a little bit, just like you do five, and it just keeps going. Yeah. Hole nine is like six drop in and then hole 10, you start over again, which gives you the same sound as seven overdraw or as four drop in.
SPEAKER_00:So you're not necessarily trying to play overblows to play chromatically. You just really like you're saying, emulating what you can play in the lower octaves and, you know, just giving you that freedom to play the notes that you want. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. And what about your embouchure? What do you like to use?
SPEAKER_01:You mean like tongue blocker?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm a pucker player.
SPEAKER_00:You've gone, I think. Yeah. I'll start again. Last time. Yeah, just talk about your embouchure.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, I'm a pucker player, lip pucker, which I don't really like the term pucker because it implies that you need to pucker your lips tight like you're puckering for a kiss or for a whistle. And that's really not the case. You really want to keep your lips soft and relaxed and your embouchure relaxed like an opera singer would say. So that's kind of how I approach that. Now, I can do tongue blocking. I'm not very good at it, but I can do it. Cause I have to teach it sometimes, but yeah, I'm not a proficient tongue blocker. Like the blues guys. Cause or like Dennis Grunling or Joe Felisco is phenomenal with the stuff that he's doing tongue blocking. So I don't do that.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:but I can do some of it. And I use not only octave splits, but interval splits where you're playing the single, you're putting your tongue in the middle note and playing the two on the sides, which is on the, I need the every hour, which is first position, but that also works well in second position. If you play the interval splits like that, you can get some pretty cool sounds.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Stuff like that. Sounds nice, yeah. So that's the same type of interval split that I played on. You know, but in second position. So it sounds kind of mean in second position. So I do some of that, but...
SPEAKER_00:Do you play any chromatico-monochro at all?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, no, not really. I have a couple of them, but... And I can play a melody, but no. I just never could... really wrap my head around it i guess if i really loved it enough i could sit down and and figure it out but i love to hear a good chromatic player don't get me wrong i really love to hear a good chromatic blues player like johnny sansone or william gallison the stuff that he plays is just phenomenal so uh and also bill barrett fantastic so
SPEAKER_00:And what about when you're using amplification, do you just use a clean sound, the PA, or do you use any amps at all?
SPEAKER_01:Every once in a blue moon, I will have to amplify. And I do have a Lone Wolf Harp Train 10 amp. I've got several of the Lone Wolf pedals. But if I'm just going to play one song, I don't need to carry around an amp. So I have the Lone Wolf. I think it's the Harp Attack. And that's fantastic for playing through the PA. And I have an old, old Horner Blues Blaster that has a really old element in it. Greg Heumann took a look at it, and he said, I got one of the good elements before they
SPEAKER_00:switched. I had one of those original ones back in the 90s. Yeah, it was great. So microphone-wise, what do you usually use?
SPEAKER_01:Vocal mic, I don't really care. Just whatever they have. But for amplified playing, I've got that Blues Blaster, and I've got a Bulletinie. And then I've also got a Greg human SMD ultimate 58. Yeah. So I like that when I'm doing my own gigs, if I'm setting up my own system, because I like the volume knob, but yeah, A lot of times if you're going in someplace to play a couple songs like I do, I don't have time to, oh, let's set up a special mic. I'll just use whatever they have because I'm playing acoustic anyway. I'm not playing amplified. So I can get by on any vocal mic. It doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00:So fantastic. Thanks so much for joining me today, Todd Parrott. Yeah, Neil. Thanks for having me, man.
SPEAKER_01:It was great talking with you.
SPEAKER_00: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. Many thanks to Todd for joining me today. Don't those gospel songs sound amazing on the harmonica? Check Todd out at the Spa Festival in August 2023, at the next Carolina Heart Fest and other Harmonica camps that he mentioned. Thanks for listening and once again thanks to Robert Sawyer for another donation to the podcast. Please check out the website at harmonicahappyhour.com and the Spotify playlist, all linked from the podcast page. I'll leave you now with Todd playing us out with his version of This Train is Bound for Glory.
UNKNOWN:This Train is Bound for Glory.