Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Steve Guyger interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 82

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Steve Guyger joins me on episode 82.

Steve is from the Philadelphia area of the US and he absorbed the blues harmonica players when he first got into playing, with John Lee Williamson a big early inspiration. Steve was also great friends with the late Paul Oscher, making  three albums with him. Steve also teamed up with the legendary Jimmy Rogers, over the course of fourteen years. 
Steve has released five albums under his own name, with a great mix of diatonic and chromatic blues.
Steve’s long-standing band is the Excellos, who   are still performing more than forty years after their formation, and Steve is due to play in a Jimmy Rogers tribute in Switzerland with Dennis Gruenling and Nick Moss sometime soon.


Links:
https://severnrecords.com/artist/steve-guyger/

Blues Harmonica DVD on Hal Leonard:
https://www.halleonard.com/product/821042/blues-harmonica

Dennis Gruenling website:
https://badassharmonica.com/


Videos:

Steve's YouTube Music channel:
https://music.youtube.com/channel/UCkeHm0xNz2csT5fc4zP-84A

Paul Oscher playing bass harmonica on The Things I Used To Do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIPIrMNiR3M

Live concert with Excellos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50DvEI8VUlQ&t=3576s

I Can See By Your Eyes song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgJ9lFhEa00

Rock This House (live at Austrian Blues festival):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THqRX2PYBdQ

Sammy Lewis playing in 5th position:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyKLRO2x6uE

Snake Oil live performance (outro song):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IrQkiHJVdc


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

Support the show

SPEAKER_02:

Steve Geiger joins me on episode 82. Steve is from the Philadelphia area of the US, and he absorbed the blues harmonica players when he first got into playing, with John Lee Williamson a big early inspiration. Steve was also great friends with the late Paul Osher, making three albums with him. Steve also teamed up with the legendary Jimmy Rogers over the course of 14 years. Steve has released five albums under his own name, with a great mix of diatonic and chromatic blues. Steve's long-standing band is the Excellos, who are still performing more than 40 years after their formation, and Steve is due to play in a Jimmy Rogers tribute in Switzerland with Dennis Grunling and Nick Moss sometime soon. 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.

UNKNOWN:

Music

SPEAKER_02:

Hello, Steve Geiger, and welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

Neil, it's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you. So you're talking to us from Philadelphia in the US?

SPEAKER_00:

North of the city. We're in a little area called Bucks County. I'm more closer to Trenton, New Jersey than I am to Philly. And is that where you grew up? I'm actually still living in the same neighborhood in the same house that I grew up in.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, fantastic. So what was the music scene like around there and what got you interested in blues?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, if you know the one record I have, a CD that came out on Severin called Radio Blues. Yep.

UNKNOWN:

Radio Blues.

SPEAKER_04:

That

SPEAKER_00:

radio sits on my bed stand now. The one on the cover, yeah. Yeah, I confiscated that in about 1957, 58, because the family was out watching TV and I wanted to listen to the radio. It was all AM. And I was zooming in on it. And I would, you know, catch a song, I'd like it, and I'd listen to it. So that's how I got into music. I was like that all the way through. I still am.

SPEAKER_02:

So I believe that when you first started getting interested in music, you were into singing.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I was really into doo-wop, you know, the vocal group stuff. And, you know, started in the 40s, the vocal groups, you know. I guess little Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers.

UNKNOWN:

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Bye.

SPEAKER_02:

So you were singing then, that's how you started out in music, was it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I was absorbing all that, you know, that stuff from back then in the 50s and early 60s. In the late mid 50s, there was a lot of great disbalanced singers.

SPEAKER_02:

I think then your first instrument was that you played guitar before you picked up the harmonica.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we were doing like a school play and this girl sat down and she was playing guitar and I said, well, so I got interested, but I don't know, me and the guitar, we're okay, but we just never connected like the harmonica. I started that when I was about maybe 12. I took lessons for a while. I still know most of that stuff, the rudiments. But my sister-in-law, when I was 17, maybe 18, she was dating my brother. She handed me her father's harmonica. And within two years, I started just catching on. I was starting to hear guys at school and people were playing. And then when I went to college, I met a buddy of mine, John Gunning, that we're still real good friends today. We were in a class together in college, and I found out that he was really into this stuff. So I grabbed him on the way out and he goes, well, meet me at this gas station on Friday night. So I did. So he was pumping gas there. He told me to watch the gas station. He went back to the neighborhood right behind him, came back with a portable record player with all these albums, which I had no idea. I didn't know anything about this stuff. I was listening to Muddy Waters originally. They used to come on this one rock station we had that would play blues. The original version of I've Got My Mojo Working that Muddy did. So I used to hear that. I didn't even know who Little Walter was. I didn't know any of these people.

SPEAKER_02:

You were playing the harmonica at this stage, were you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I was doing more like country blues without even knowing it. I did a lot of train stuff and things like that, you know. And then all of a sudden, everything started to change after that, after I heard this stuff. And then I'm out buying records.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I read somewhere that Blue Midnight from Little Walter was a real big one for you.

SPEAKER_00:

That blew my mind. I didn't even know the harmonica could sound like that.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_00:

You know, I mean, I got turned on to George Smith, you know, Little Walter, Big Walter, both Sonny Boys.

SPEAKER_02:

Picking up on John Lee Williamson's Sonny Boy the First, Billy Boy Arnold in his recent biography described you as the one who can really sing and play like the first Sonny Boy.

SPEAKER_00:

It was a book about muddy waters and a bluegrass player. And then Muddy Waters, they did a whole thing on Muddy, because if you didn't go through Muddy's band, you weren't considered a real blues musician. But in this book, Muddy said, if you didn't learn how to play like John Lee, Williamson, you weren't going to get this stuff right. And that was like a billboard saying that in big letters. That was like the gospel right there. I took it to heart. I started buying every record I could find on John Lee. And I bought all the blues classics by, was it Chris Statowitz put out? Then I would listen to anybody that was playing any of his songs and see what what was going on with all that. I just totally absorbed myself. My one guitar player that I work with, he's also one of my favorite harmonica players, Richie Scalise, can also play a lot of that stuff too.

SPEAKER_02:

Which ones of the John Lee albums would you really point people at?

SPEAKER_00:

Gosh, there's so many different songs that he did. You know, the first one was Good Morning Little Schoolgirl.

SPEAKER_07:

Don't find the ones that I'm loving And I ain't going to let my airplane down

SPEAKER_00:

You know, stuff like that, Sloppy Drunk Blues, which actually was recorded originally, if you didn't know this, by Ida Mae Mellon in the late 20s. You know, Scrapper and Blackwell did a version of that, and John Lee did too. He did one called Bring Me Another Half a Pint. And then, of course, you know, he did the Sloppy Drunk first. Then he did Bring Me Another Half a Pint. And then Jimmy Rogers, of course, with Little Walter blowing harp, you know, did Sloppy Drunk Blues. I don't know how many times I played that with Jimmy.

SPEAKER_02:

So what do you think it is about John Lee's style that obviously he's kind of the precursor to all the big players in the 50s, wasn't he?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, in the 50s, he definitely was. I mean, everybody was influenced by him because he was really the guy that was out there. Jazz Gillum was also a great harmonica player. I can't play any of jazz stuff. To me, he's harder for me. Great singer, great songwriter. I take nothing from Jazz Gillum at all. I mean, I respect his playing and everything he did musically. But John Lee just had this thing that people seemed to like more. You know, the Good Morning Little School Girl, Shake the Boogie, whatever the songs were. Sugar Mama. You know, you can tell like towards the end, like in the late 40s, like when he did New Morning Blues. You could tell that he was amplifying, even if he wasn't amplifying on air. He was starting to play less chordal stuff and more single notes. Of course, we never got to see him. He passed away in Well, he got murdered, actually, in 1948, so at the age of 34. It's crazy. Really, he was still in the height of his career to me.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, from 1937 when he put out Good Morning Little Schoolgirl right up to 48, you know, his stuff was just, you know, and you could tell with the different guitar players because they were playing electric behind.

SPEAKER_02:

So Paul Osher is someone that you were really good friends with as well. Yeah. So sadly he passed away in 2021. So I think he was part of your development as a player as well. Reading that you actually initially learned some harmonica from his guitar player. So, you know, what about your relationship with Paul?

SPEAKER_00:

You know, as things went on, I had a job that I was doing. I hated up in Trenton because I swung shifts. You know, every week I'd be on a different shift. Well, I broke my wrist right after that in 75. So I was off. Well, first I met the guy, Richard Scalise, about two weeks before I went to see Paul. I used to go to Philly and pick up this newspaper from New York. They always advertised all the people playing up in the village and stuff like that. So I had a pretty decent car so I could drive up there. And Paul used to play at this place called Barber's My Way in Brooklyn, where he was from. So one Tuesday night, I went up with a buddy of mine, and we found a place. You know, Paul was there. You know, I introduced him. I did one number. I did like that Muddy Shuffle, Little Walters.

SPEAKER_02:

Evan's Shuffle.

SPEAKER_00:

And so that's what I did that night. Ola Dixon was on drums. Paul was on piano most of the night, which kind of blew me away. I thought he played just a moniker. Nah. I mean, he played piano that night, played some harp, not much. And then at the end, his guitar player, Frankie Bedini, Paul took the guitar from him and he started playing guitar. So it really kind of blew me away. And Paul was teaching me stuff right then about leaving space in between the notes, you know, your timing. So I got a lot out of Paul that first night. But when I got with Frankie, Frankie called me one day and said, where you been, man? We haven't seen you. So I started going up and hanging out with Frankie. And he lived in Queens, which is kind of further out from Brooklyn. And I used to drive by Paul's house because I knew where Paul lived on Flatbush Avenue. So I would go up and hang out with Frankie. I didn't know Frankie played a moniker. And the guy was a monster. I mean, he could do, you know, he could play like Junior Wells or Cotton or any of the other guys, you know, Little Big Walter and all that stuff. But he also could play, you know, like the Sonny Terry stuff. So then one day we went over to the Bronx and and met this guy, Gene Plotnick. Now, I don't know any of these guys, you know, until, you know, everything's all new to me. So I listened to Gene and Frankie playing, and I said, come on, do something. Gene goes, you know, play bass. So I started trying to learn to play the bass on the harmonica, even on the diatonics. So that became an interesting concept. Gene asked me to play Walter's Boogie one day when I was up there. And so I play what I thought was Walter's bookie. And then he goes, now go home and learn it. Well, I was pretty depressed driving home two and a half, three hours back to my house. But I'll tell you what, I told Gene about 20 years later. He says, man, that was one of the best things anybody ever said to me.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Because I went home and learned this stuff. And, you know, that's what you just sit there with the record.

SPEAKER_02:

So you had a long association with Paul.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah. I used to go see Paul constantly in New York. I would sit in with him, do a couple of numbers and, you know. You released three albums with him.

SPEAKER_07:

I'm going home,

SPEAKER_04:

baby.

UNKNOWN:

Woo!

SPEAKER_07:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised, you know, that Paul, you know, wanted to do that stuff with me.

SPEAKER_02:

Were you playing all the harmonica on these albums or were you swapping it with

SPEAKER_00:

Paul? On the one on Paul played some stuff. He played the bass harp on the things I used to do.

SPEAKER_06:

But

SPEAKER_00:

Paul can play any I mean, he could play accordion. I think he even played saxophone and probably even trumpet. I think anything that guy picked up, he could play around with and get it going. I didn't know he knew country blues. And I was over Frankie's, you know, up in Queens. I'm coming back and I stop at Paul's and Paul's sitting on the bumper of his car. He goes, so you're trying to learn this stuff, huh, for Frankie? And he starts playing the same stuff. When I left there, I says, what doesn't he know? I actually, my buddy Lou Erlanger, who does a radio show, he's from up in New Hampshire, right on the border of New Hampshire and Connecticut. He's got a really, I have a great CD that I, actually a cassette. I got to get it back off of Lou. I recorded it on Paul back in the mid-70s. And Paul's playing unbelievable on this thing. His harmonica is just like... The sound quality is great, too. You know, we wanted to put that out.

SPEAKER_02:

And so, of course, Paul Osher was Muddy Waters' harmonica player for a time as well,

SPEAKER_00:

wasn't he? Yeah, he was the first, actually, the first white guy in his band, Muddy's band. But he didn't have anybody before that. You know, Paul Butterfield was around, but he never went on the road with Muddy.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So did you know Paul when that happened, when he joined Muddy's band?

SPEAKER_00:

No, I didn't know Paul back in the 60s. I met him in 75. That was the earliest I met him, Paul.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, sure, yeah. I mean, you knew another of Muddy Waters' harmonica players than Jerry Portnoy.

SPEAKER_00:

Jerry and I are really good friends and... I used to tell Jerry, he says, if I couldn't figure out a song, like an instrumental, like off the wall or something, I'd come and I'd hear you play it. And I'd say, okay, now I got it. I could figure out what I wasn't doing right or something. Yeah. Jerry and I, you know, we, we stay, we stay in contact.

SPEAKER_02:

And so you used to hang out and play around with him as well. Did you in the, back in the day?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yeah. I used to go watch Jerry a lot. You know, every time he was with Muddy.

SPEAKER_02:

So then moving back to yourself then. So I think your first band was the Excelos.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, actually we had a, I played a band called Rock Bottom. I, I named that group from Little Walters Instrumental. It was a bunch of guys from my area, Steve Crismar, Barry Brown, Danny Bending on drums. We had a saxophone player that came in, Bobby Michaels. I just played with him on Sunday in my neighborhood at a club. So, you know, that was the first one. It was another one. I had a band called the Blues Rockers. In 1980, I was hanging out with Ola Dixon and Danny Russo in New York at Dan Lynch's, you know, the Bill Dicey rant. And I used to go see Bill Dicey. Bill was a really good harmonica player, played guitar. I'd heard that he also played drums behind Sonny Boy, Rice Miller. And I guess the late 50s or early 60s. And I think there was another guy too. He might've played with Slim Harpo.

SPEAKER_02:

So the band, The Xellos, when did they come into it?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I started going up to Boston to rehearse. I used to pick Ola up and go up there because she lived in the Bronx. And on my way up, I'd go up there. And the guitar player, George Lewis, we wanted to get a band together. And that's what we... he named it the Xellos. I didn't know much about Xello recordings. I was just strictly into the Chicago stuff at that time. I was very kind of ignorant to other styles of blues that was out there. You know, you had your Detroit stuff, which was very close to Chicago, you know, the different players out of there. But that's what we did. We named it then. And that was 1980. Are

SPEAKER_02:

you still playing with these guys? I've got a concert of you playing them in 2021.

UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, it changed over the years. I mean, different guys would come in and go. But basically, like Sunday, we did a gig. We had Brian Bissese. We used to call him Brian B on guitar for a long time. A few other guys. That was the mainstay. You know, different guys would come in, you know, in and out. But that was the mainstay with that. Brian on drums. Ola Dixon was still in the band. You know, we got a couple other guys named Chet Woodward and Randy Lippincott. Chet played drums. Randy played drums. and he played bass. We recorded back then. We never put the stuff out. A couple of songs that I, we went up North Jersey and recorded some stuff and recorded five songs just one day.

SPEAKER_02:

Is this still, I mean, is this just a part-time band now? Is this your main band, still the XLLs?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yeah, that's the only band I've really ever played with in my area. Like last Sunday, this past Sunday, we played together. Now we got a guy named Rich McPherson. He goes under the name of Filthy Rich. Richie Scalise is still in there playing guitar. John F. Kennedy on the drums Gary Phillips on the bass and Bobby Michaels on tenor and myself.

SPEAKER_02:

great yeah so you're still going strong after 40 years that's a good achievement

SPEAKER_00:

yeah

SPEAKER_02:

another amazing thing you did is that you played with Jimmy Rogers for getting on for sort of 14 years or so

SPEAKER_00:

yes it was on and off 14 years yeah

SPEAKER_02:

yeah so from about 1980 is this yes 1980 so just explaining to people if they don't know who Jimmy Rogers is so Jimmy Rogers was part of the headhunters of the great band of Muddy Waters in the what the early 90s late 40s early 50s where so Muddy Wall Jimmy Rogers and Little Walter. So a lot of those really early classic, amazing Little Walter songs with Muddy Waters or with Jimmy Rogers on that.

SPEAKER_00:

And Jimmy was not to be messed with on the harmonica either, which I found out through James Cotton. Cotton told me, I think this was like in 1997, I went down to see James play in this little place in Philly. James went off. He said, if Jimmy had stayed on a harmonica, it would have been Little Walter and Jimmy. That's how much Cotton thought how good Jimmy played a harmonica. I only heard Jimmy tune up with one of my harps in 1981. They were monsters, you know, those guys. All that stuff that they recorded back then, you know, there's only one recording of Jimmy playing a moniker. And he actually re-recorded that song for Chess back in, I think, the mid-50s. You know, he played a monocle on that one. And it's pretty much like he was giving Snooki Pryor and Little Walter their styles.

SPEAKER_02:

So, yeah, have you got any good stories about, you know, Jimmy Rogers with Muddy Waters and Little Walter, that outfit they had back then?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah. You know, the stuff that they did back then was just crazy. When they walked into a club, that was about the end of the band that was there. Jimmy was actually playing a moniker before Little Walter got in.

SPEAKER_02:

Tell us a story about how you managed to hook up with Jimmy Rogers.

SPEAKER_00:

I tried to get with Jimmy in 1973. I wrote him a letter. Living Blues put out an article on Jimmy. Number 13, with Victorious Bivy on the front and Johnny Ace on bass. I was so into Jimmy at that point. Jim O'Neill, who ran Living Blues, I wrote him a letter to give to Jimmy. So I had about a month or so later, I get a letter back from Jimmy's wife, Dorothy, who I became very good friends with years later. So she was all excited that I was going to move to Chicago. And, you know, I figured I'd move out there, take lessons off of Big Walter. I'd be in like Flint, you know. I didn't do that. I did finally get to see Jimmy, but that was in the mid-70s, you know, playing in Chicago. You know, he'd have like, you know, different harmonica players up there. There was a guy from New York that played with him, Joe Burson. He passed away a long time ago. And then Big Walter would come in and sit in, especially on songs that Big Walter played on. I mean, that was nuts, you know, to see that. You know, I really didn't get to hang out with Jimmy in the 70s that much. He was either doing different stuff here or there. He didn't play the local circuit that much, you know, in Chicago. But when we got together in 80, we were playing up in Camden, Maine at a place called Mr. Kite's in Chicago. We were talking about it on the stage. We were rehearsing a little bit, you know, to get the sound up. And I said, you got this? He says, yeah, I got it. And Jimmy goes, we'll see. So that kind of like scared me a little. So I had to pump it up that night, you know, pump it up. So, you know, we played and we got along really good. I knew his songs and I just backed them up. One night we were at that place called in Boston, called the Tam O'Shanter in Brookline, Boston. And Coco Taylor's band there, Jerry Portnoy's there, a couple other harmonica players, I think Barbecue Bob and all these guys that was with Jimmy before I got with Jimmy, Barbecue. We're doing a song and we end this thing and Jimmy leans over to me and goes, give me an E, quick, quick. So I blew an E note on the A harp and he goes, kick something off quick, quick. So I kicked the sensitive metal off, Neil. And I said, damn, it's too fast. But I had to go with it. In the middle of the song, I hear this like yelling. I looked over and Jimmy's coming over to mic stand at me with his guitar. It was like the exorcist. I mean, I'm looking at this guy and we're all of a sudden now we're face to face. And he's playing this stuff on the guitar that I never heard before. And I don't think I ever heard since. The bottom stuff that he was playing behind me. And we played and nobody wanted to go near the stage after that. And we finished that song and Jimmy leaned over to me and starts chuckling. He goes, that's the way I like to back you up. And all I could think about was what were they like back in the 50s, him, Muddy, and Little Walter, when they're playing together. That's all I could think about. He never did anything like that again. I heard him playing some great stuff over the years, but that thing he did that night was just poof.

SPEAKER_02:

Did you go touring with him? Did you go outside the U.S.?

SPEAKER_00:

We did Europe. We did almost a month in Europe. Originally, we started coming into Scotland. We did Scotland for two days, went up to Ireland. Came back, we played England, and I don't know. We played just about everywhere around there. We played Switzerland, Sweden, all these different places.

SPEAKER_02:

Was this in a band or was it a duo?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, it was a whole band. A whole band came over from Europe. At that point, we had Richard Scalas. He was playing bass. Little Jimmy, his son, was playing second guitar. We had Ted Harvey on drums and Piano Willie on piano. So that was the whole band. You know, it was like, it was great. We went, we were over there for quite, you know, I was amazed.

SPEAKER_02:

Great experience. So you played on and off with him until he passed away in 1998. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

actually about 1994. I kind of like, you know, we kind of like, he had different guys in the band that I wasn't that crazy about. So I, you know, I would go and see him every now and then, but that was about it. We didn't play that much together anymore.

SPEAKER_02:

So he started his solo career after when he'd stopped playing Muddy Waters. He played That's Alright with Little Walter playing harmonic, which is a very iconic song.

SPEAKER_05:

I know you don't love me no more, but that's alright Every night then I wonder Who's loving you tonight get away

SPEAKER_02:

man he also played probably a lot of people's favorite harmonica blues harmonica song which was walking by myself with big walter

SPEAKER_00:

big walter you know i was funny you know he had good rock and charles I was driving, and Jimmy was sitting in the front seat, and we were talking about all kinds of stuff. And Jimmy brought that whole situation up. And he goes, little Walter said, man, Walter was supposed to be in California at the time. Walter came back and says, man, I wanted to be on that recording. And Jimmy goes, I didn't want him or Big Walter. I wanted Charles, because Charles played that song with Jimmy on the stage. before they recorded it. Charles knew the song.

SPEAKER_02:

This is Walking By Myself.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I mean, I thought Walter, Big Walter, you know, it's classic to me. His harmonica solos were classic.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Was Jimmy not happy with that recording then?

SPEAKER_00:

I think he still was, but I think he just thought that Charles would have done better.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's interesting, isn't it? Again, such an iconic harmonica song. Almost Big Walter didn't play in it, as you say, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I think what Big Walter did on there was beyond. Oh,

SPEAKER_02:

yeah, it's amazing, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And, you know, they had to go get Big Walter. Supposedly, he was painting houses. I think he actually played in that stuff. I'm not sure, in his painting outfits.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, he probably had bits of paint on his overalls.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, or something, you know, because Charles skipped out and, you know, they were in a panic because they were recording and they needed to get these songs done.

SPEAKER_02:

So moving on to another story about you hanging out with the greats, Steve, as you have, some great stories. So tell us a story about how you took your mother to see Muddy Waters show.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah, that was in 1975, I think, 1975. See, I didn't know my mom was listening to the stuff that I was playing. One day she come by, you know, she goes, play this song, you know, by that guy, that minor one. And I'm thinking, thinking minor. I said, I know what you mean. I'm ready. So I put it on. The minute I dropped the needle on that album, my mom's face broke out in a big smile. That's the one she goes, that's it. So I guess it was about a year later. It was actually the first time I got to see Muddy. He was playing in a sort of club called The Main Point in Bryn Mawr, PA. on the west side of Philly. My mom followed me out. I had never seen Muddy before. There was a guy named Jesse Graves opening up, and I'd played with Jesse, so I knew him. So I went down. Muddy was right there, and we started talking about different stuff. And we were playing in different positions on the harmonic, and Muddy started laughing about it and says, yeah, we tuned the E string down on I'm Ready. And then I asked him, I says, you know, that's my mother's favorite song. She's here with me. Could you play that tonight? So I was it. I went back upstairs. I'm sitting with my mom. We're listening to the band and everything's great. And Buddy's up there singing. He does Hoochie Coochie Man, which is on that album I had sale on, was just before I'm ready. I don't know how that happened, but it did. My mom's hit me in the arm. That's one off the record. And I said, okay. I'm having a lot of fun watching my mom be all excited with this stuff. All of a sudden, Buddy looked out at the audience with the most sincere look I ever saw. And he just said, I don't know who this young guy is. He came here with his mother, and we're going to do a little song I recorded back in 1955. He started that, and my mom just had tears down her eyes. And that was it, and that was great.

UNKNOWN:

Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha!

SPEAKER_02:

Let's move on to your albums then, Steve. So obviously we talked about you releasing a few with Steve Osher. So I think you've got five albums out in your own name. You mentioned Radio Blues earlier on, but the first one was Last Train to Dover in 97. Was this the first album you released?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I know the first one was live at the Dinosaur.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, Steve Gomes, Steve Ramsey, Steve Freund, Dave Maxwell, and myself. And we never played together before. We had never dealt with that. When we got up on that stage, that was the first night we ever, we had rehearsed a little bit intermittently between everybody. I don't know, you know, I knew who Ramsey was. That was it. You know, I knew Dave Maxwell from playing, you know, from him playing with, you know, Paul Osher in The Village. And that was about it, you know, and I knew everybody. knew Gomes a little bit. You know, Steve Freund I actually knew because he was also in New York when I first started going up to New York in 75. So, Live

SPEAKER_02:

at the Dinosaur, your first album, that's obviously a live album. So, The Last Train to Dover is a studio album. I think, was this album in memory of William Clark?

SPEAKER_00:

It might have been. I think that I put it out for that. I met Bill over the years and Bill and I became pretty good friends after. He was actually touring the South with us. Not with us, but When I was on the road with Muddy back in like, when I went back on in the early 90s, early mid 90s, you know, we just became really good friends after that. And Jeanette said that Bill doesn't usually sit and watch harmonica players, but he did with you. I was all pumped up from being in Memphis, never been there before. And I just got fired up from all the, just the atmosphere, you know, going to WDAI where B.B. King did his first DJing, you know, just that whole scene down there. Because that's where it really all began. you know, all the electric Chicago stuff, you know, Wolf, Sonny Boy, they all came out of there, all them guys. And then they gravitated to Chicago. To me, you know, Memphis was a melting pot, you know, from all the areas that surrounded Little Rock, Arkansas, all that, you know, all those different areas.

SPEAKER_02:

And on this album, you've got a song called Philly Shimmy, which is a harmonica instrument.

UNKNOWN:

......

SPEAKER_02:

that one that you wrote?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I would just come up with different stuff. Sometimes I would make them right up at the time. You know, I don't know. It's just some kind of gift I have that to be able to do that, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

And something else that's really interesting on this album is you do a version of John Henry where you're playing it on chromatic. I don't think I've ever heard it on chromatic.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I don't know what got me into that. Well, you know, I started hanging out with little Sammy Dave When I met Sammy, the first night I met Sammy, I'd heard about him playing with the different guys I worked with. And I went to see him. I wanted to kidnap him and bring him back to my house and hang out with him because that's how heavy he was. He could sing all kinds of different stuff, like from the 50s, you know, different music. And his blues stuff was just, you know, he knew the stuff. It was amazing. Sammy started getting me into playing on chromatic instruments. you know, a little different, you know, because he was doing different stuff. And I remember being in Chicago, I guess this was in the early, early 80s. And I was hanging out with a guy named Big Bad Ben Murphy. And Ben was a guitar player who originally played a moniker behind Jimmy Rogers in the 50s. And he could still play because he took my harp and started playing juke, which I think everybody in the band could play at the time. One of the guys who used to hang out with us back then, he said, man, you got to learn to play juke on a chromatic. So, you know, years later, I started trying to do that, you know. And I got pretty good at that. And at the same time, that's when I picked up playing John Henry on there. I used to play that for Paul. Paul used to like it, you know, so I said, good, this is a good way of doing it. Not diatonic, you know, playing on chromatic.

SPEAKER_02:

Fits well on there, doesn't it? Because there's not too many bends in that song, so it does fit nicely.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. You just have to use a slide on a couple notes. I have to practice before I play it on stage now. I haven't done it in a while.

SPEAKER_02:

Did I see somewhere that when you were younger, you sort of played classical lessons on chromatic? Is that something you did?

SPEAKER_00:

I took lessons. I found out about a guy that was in Northeast Philly named Forrest Scott, and he was a classical harmonica player. He knew nothing about blues or any of that stuff. He knew country, but blues he didn't know much about at all. But his classical playing was phenomenal. I mean, he could Bach, Beethoven. I was just talking to somebody about that the other night. He could play the Flight of the Bumblebee just like, you know, as fast as you can imagine. So I learned a lot of stuff about, you know, tonal things off of him and, you know, the ins and outs of the chromatic, you know.

UNKNOWN:

So

SPEAKER_02:

And on your next album, I believe, which is Past Life Blues, I think you released in 99, you've got a sort of George Smith song on there called Monkey on a Limb. You're playing chromatic on that one as well.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I did that song because my brother bought that album, Not of the Blues, and I'm not remembering the title. It's one he did on Chris Stachwitz, not Chris Stachwitz, Mike Lidbetter. He had the Blues, Blue Horizon albums, and he recorded this one on Durham Records for George Smith. That was one of the songs that stood out to me. I learned every song on that record. My brother bought it for me in 72 at Christmas, 71 or 72. Yeah, I think. And I just ate that record up. Yeah, I love it. And he also, you know, it's what he's playing. He's playing in sixth position on that. They're in C minor. And what you have to do is you have to blow the open C note, push the slide in, and then you're in sixth position there. And that was it.

SPEAKER_02:

Great stuff, yeah. And then you played with a guy called Richard Farrell, and that's a duo. Were you playing acoustic harmonica in that? Come on!

SPEAKER_01:

Come on!

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. Me and Richard did that. In fact, we just talked the other day for the first time. He's in Spain. He does a lot of stuff over there. He plays with different guys. I think he's been doing a little bit with Victor Puertes out over there. Great musician. Victor plays about every instrument, I think. I did some gigs with him when I was on the road with the guy from France who brought us over.

SPEAKER_02:

I've got you doing a Sonny Boy 2 style on there, Rice Miller style, and a song called Cool, Cool Place to Go. Yeah, so...

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a great, great, great song. I caught that off of that album that Chris put out of Sonny Boy's, all his stuff on trumpet. If he hadn't done that, I don't know if anybody would even have heard

SPEAKER_03:

most of that

SPEAKER_00:

stuff. You know, most of his early stuff, you either could find the 45s, or 78s. I wind up buying a lot of 78s of his stuff off a guy up in Massachusetts named Victor Perwin. And he had him and my buddy Larry that was hanging, took me up there. You know, I had spent, I don't know how much money that day buying stuff off of this guy. And he goes, did you show him that the Sonny Boy stuff is on trumpet? I panicked, you know, I said, so I didn't even have any money. I had a Sunday guy check, you know, I took it home. And I'll tell you, hearing that stuff on 78s, what a, what a difference. It's more like it's right there. I actually have Blue Lights by Little Walter, where there's no reverb in the beginning when he starts off on the chromatic there. It's not there. They didn't put it on. I don't know how they got it on the 45 and stuff, but they did.

SPEAKER_02:

And then the album you mentioned earlier on, Radio Blues, you released in 2008. Radio

SPEAKER_04:

Blues

SPEAKER_02:

Is that the last album you put out?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Sad to say, David Earl, yeah, the owner has about 30, 35 songs of mine sitting down there of stuff that I recorded about at least 10 years ago now, if not longer. Somehow I have to get it off him. I guess I'll have to do one of those GoFundMe things and get some money.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Well, here we go. We can start it right here, Steve. We can start a GoFundMe to get your next album out with some great cuts.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I really do got it. But I got enough there for... I did a record with Dave backing up this other musician, this woman singer. And we were out eating and I said, Dave, why don't you just put a double record out on me? I thought he was going to choke on his food, you know, at the time. But I figured we got that many songs.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And I write a lot of different stuff. I never know when I'm going to write something. It's not like I could sit down like Neil Sedaka or any of those guys and sit down and start writing songs. Stuff just comes to

SPEAKER_04:

you.

SPEAKER_00:

And you got to be ready to write the stuff down or you lose them. Some of the stuff, like when you were talking about Past Light Blues, that's the reason that I called that that, because I had written some of those songs back in the early 70s. And I Can See By Your Eyes, I wrote that. That was like one of the first songs I ever

SPEAKER_07:

wrote.

SPEAKER_00:

I was walking my dad's dogs down in the woods behind me, and this song came to me. I just kept it. For some reason, that song stayed with me, and we finally got to record it on there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so you're writing the lyrics as well, because you're a singer, of course, as well. You always sing with a band, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I do the best I can with my vocals. Some days are better than others. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

so in 2010, you released a book and DVD instruction called Blues Harmonica through Hal Leonard.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Yeah, that was because of Tom Radeye. I used Billy Flynn on that. Billy's a great, great guitar player, and he's also a great harmonica player. And that's like one of the things that, you know, when you think about it, when you think of Little Walter, he had Lewis Myers. Well, Lewis was a great harmonica player. Anywhere Little Walter would go on that harp, Lewis knew what was going on to back him up. You know, the same with me with Richard Scalise. Rich played a harmonica. We used to do our duo together. And people say, who's your favorite harp player? He says, well, he's sitting next to me. So I'd take the guitar and do my little plunking on the bass lines and Rich would play. So then they didn't say anymore. And Billy Flynn was the same way. Billy's a great harmonica player. That's what he started off on. And so we did that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, great. And I think that's still available to purchase.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, yes, it is. In fact, I just got a little tiny bit of money from them. Hal Leonard. I have not heard from some of the other companies, but that's the way that goes.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, no, great. So it's great to have that out in the end as well. You say you played in Europe, so I've got a nice clip of you playing at the 4th Austrian Blues Festival. You're playing a Big Walter song, Rock This House.

UNKNOWN:

......

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, you toured around Europe a few times and other places, have you?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yes. Well, we started, like I said, I played Scotland, Ireland, England. I played Switzerland, Latvia, Estonia, Sweden, Norway. I played France, Germany. I went to Russia and played. I went over there with the guys from Finland. Tommy Lehner is a great, great musician. He plays drums, guitar, and harmonica. And he's great at all three of them. In fact, he actually plays a little bit of piano too. And he's real good in one key. It's the only key he can play in, he says. But he does real good at it, you know.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

But that, you know, we went to Russia. I played in Brazil. There's a lot of great, great musicians down in there, too. Really amazing. You know, Mexico, I played one time with Dennis Grunling. We went down for a couple of days. It was really nice.

SPEAKER_02:

It's taking you around the world, the harmonica. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

A question I ask each time, Steve, is if you had only 10 minutes to play, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_00:

Very early on, I was in college for a little bit, and we had an art teacher named Frank Miller. I didn't know Frank played flamenco guitar, and he was a monster at it. He did a seminar, and the one thing that took me out with him is he flipped the guitar the opposite direction, He taught his students, whatever you play with the neck on your left side, flip it over and play with the neck on the opposite side. That always stuck in my head. So I said, if I want to learn something on harmonica, flip it over. So I would play juke. I started learning juke, I guess, in the late 70s. I started getting into this. It might even have been in the 80s, but I can't remember. So I started playing the opposite direction and trying to learn how to do that stuff. Because a lot of those guys played upside down. Little Sammy played. I'm not sure. I think Jimmy Rogers, if I'm not mistaken, actually played upside down, even though he played guitar, you know, straight up. He didn't play left-handed. You know, he used his right hand for strumming and left hand for...

SPEAKER_02:

That's the first time I've heard that, Steve. Someone's saying that they'll turn the harmonica around and play it the other way around as well. Do you think that teach you a lot?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it teaches you what you know. And I always thought if I ever had a stroke, I'd be one up. I won't have to stop playing. I'll be able to keep playing the opposite direction. But I haven't perfected it all the way. It does. You have to change everything. I tongue block. So laying the tongue on the aperture of the harmonica, you have to change that and and different stuff, you know, so it's pretty interesting. Once you start to hear, then you can go with it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I'll have to give it a try. I imagine that's quite difficult to begin with, is it?

SPEAKER_00:

Ah, yeah, it's a little crazy.

SPEAKER_02:

I will give that a go afterwards and see how I get on. I'll let you know.

SPEAKER_00:

I could probably do that for you. I did bring harmonicas with me.

SPEAKER_02:

If you want to quickly illustrate it, then cool, yeah, go for it.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_04:

I'm

SPEAKER_00:

playing it upside down now. Now here's the bass up the right way. Back over. Great. Sounds great. Yeah. And you know, if you notice the tone is a little different when you flip it over. Yeah. It's strange, you know?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it is a little different, yeah. No, that's amazing. That's a good ability. I'll be trying that out. You'll be cursing me. I'll probably

SPEAKER_00:

get these phone lists.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I'll move on to the last section now. We're talking just about gear. So first of all, the harmonicas you play, I believe you're a Horner and Dorsey and you play marine bands, yeah?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I used to be. I'm not too much anymore. I did go with Ben's harmonica when that was there in Brazil for a little bit. They flew me down and they were giving me harmonicas, so why not, you know?

SPEAKER_02:

But generally, you played the Marine Band for a long time, have you?

SPEAKER_00:

Marine Band and Old Standby. They're the only two I really... I used the Blues Harps a little bit. They were okay. We had another company here. They were from Union, New Jersey. That was a harmonica company. Sugar Blue used to get his harps from the sky. I can't remember it.

SPEAKER_02:

That's great. What about chromatics? What chromatics do you like to play?

SPEAKER_00:

I use the 12 holes, mostly 64s. I like the older ones, you know, with the wood, you know, combs, you know, the 64s and the small one. But the problem with them is, and I know why they went to that plastic base, because the wooden ones, if they, in the wintertime, you had to watch, they crack. If you didn't keep moist, you know, some kind of humidity going on because they would shrink up, the wood would shrink. And then all of a sudden you got a harp and it doesn't set. You know, it was a great harmonica through spring, summer and fall. And then all of a sudden now it's done.

SPEAKER_02:

And what about playing different positions on harmonica? Do you like to use different positions?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I basically will play first, second and third. I like fifth position. And what is the guy's name? Sammy Lewis. He was from Memphis. He did a 45 called You Lied to Me. And that was basically kind of like just a regular shuffle. That was on the one side. The flip side is Somebody Stole My Love. He plays in fifth position on that.

UNKNOWN:

You Lied to Me

SPEAKER_00:

And that's pretty amazing because he plays great on it. And to me, that was like the first time I ever heard anybody playing amplified, you know, a blues harmonica in that position. I mean, it just stands out. He uses the same harmonica. He used a G for the, you know... you know, when they were playing in the key of D and then, you know, he went up and played it when they were playing in the next one.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, fifth position is great, isn't it? It works really well. Yeah. And so do you play any overblows at all?

SPEAKER_00:

No, I don't do overblows. Basically, I'm not a fast player. I don't consider playing a lot of notes. You know, what is that? You know, when I got with guys like Paul and stuff, it says, say what you say and mean what you say. Like you listen to Rice Miller. And he's, to me, is probably the best at this whole stuff. He's calling and responding to himself when he says something. You know, when you take a solo, you're supposed to say something. Like when I'm playing behind, when I was playing behind Jimmy Rogers or anybody, you know, I want to emphasize what Jimmy was saying there. That's what I'm doing. Like when you listen to the 50s saxophone players, you know, playing behind the doo-wop groups. That's what they would do. They were in any style of music back then. You know, that's what they did. They didn't go off and play like 60 million notes. You know, you're sitting there and you're, you know, I look at it and it says, well, where am I supposed to go now? You know, I don't even remember the song I was singing. And that's just the way I look at it, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

And part of your sound is, you've already mentioned you're a tone blocker, yeah? So part of your sound is coming from being a tone blocker, yeah?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. When you listen to Rice Miller, you know, like here, real quick, here's some Sonny Boy.

UNKNOWN:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

That would be like an intro to him. And that's the stuff he would play behind what he's doing on the harmonica. You know, Sunny Boy, that stuff he would do.

SPEAKER_02:

Very nice. Very nice, Steve. Very nice. Moving on to amplifiers, I believe now you use a friend of Princeton, is it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's the one I have for pretty much my duo stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Is that the 65? That's a kind of smallish amp, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it suits. And, you know, we're not playing as loud that much anymore, you know, which is great, you know. And I actually, that's what I had to use my 410 concert that I had. I don't know what happened to it. I went and turned it on earlier before all the guys got there. And when I went to turn it on again, it just wasn't out working. So I don't know what happened. Luckily, I have my Princeton right there. It's not a reverb. I don't have a reverb one. I wish I did. Is it an original one

SPEAKER_02:

or

SPEAKER_00:

is it a reissue? No, it's an original. It's early 70s. So it wasn't the black, what they call blackface. It's a silver. silver that was right around and the early silvers were pretty close to the way the black ones sounded you know

SPEAKER_02:

yeah and and so you prefer a kind of fender ramp it's not been customized for harmonica or anything you just prefer those fender amps to you over these kind of purpose-built amplifiers

SPEAKER_00:

yeah i i also used to the gibson skylark with the one with the one i think it's an eight inch or ten inch little tiny amps i recorded my first record on seven records on that with one of them You know, the past life blues. That's what I use. It's a really small amp. Here's one thing that Jimmy Rogers told me. It's funny. We were playing in D.C., And we were getting ready to go both into our hotel rooms. And Jimmy started telling me, he says, you know, we use all the same stuff you guys use. You know, the microphones, of course, the same harmonicas. And he says, but we use smaller amps because they didn't have those big amps back then. That was the only difference between what we did back in the, he's talking about back in the 40s. Now, you know, he used to back up John Lee. Jimmy used to play guitar behind John Lee Williams. And he told me John Lee would get a little, you know, tipsy. and drinking, and he'd pass out, and Jimmy would take over the harmonica, and the place was going nuts. And then Sonny Poole would get mad and wake up and grab the harp out of Jimmy and go, back to Qatar, he goes. And Jimmy was laughing about it, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And talking about microphones, I believe you source your microphones from Dennis Groenling, who, of course, has a fantastic harmonica and microphone business, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, Dennis has got them, you know. I think he's got the monopoly around the world, doesn't he?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

he certainly does i've got one of his uh so yeah he's uh he does a great job i don't know where he finds them all but yeah he does have some uh some great mics yeah

SPEAKER_00:

me neither i'm amazed you know i used to be able to see him everywhere i mean i don't know if you ever heard of a harmonica player from toronto named the king biscuit boy he recorded some stuff back in the late late 60s very early 70s I went to see him in New York. I only met him once. He opened up for Electric Flag at the bottom line in 1974. And he had an aesthetic. I didn't know where you got him. I didn't know anything about him. And he looked at me. He says, you really like this microphone, don't you? I said, yeah. He says, here. And he gave it to me. I had it for years. I'm not sure where it's at anymore.

SPEAKER_02:

That was a crystal then, was it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And it had a sticker on there. It didn't have like the little rivets, you know, to keep where it was made at, you know.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So that fell off. That's why I couldn't remember which one it was. But it was actually made in Canada. Estatic had a company in Canada, which is pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_02:

So do you prefer crystals?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I used to use the other ones, the ceramics.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

But

SPEAKER_02:

yeah, so a bit of both, but yeah, cool, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I hate to say it, but we used to buy them all day long for 15 bucks.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I know, it's crazy, isn't it? It's insane. And you play on Dennis Groening's Little Walter tribute album, don't you? I Just Keep Loving Him. Yes,

SPEAKER_00:

yes, we do

SPEAKER_02:

a couple

SPEAKER_00:

of numbers together.

SPEAKER_02:

So that was back in 2008, I think. Yeah, so you played with Dennis, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. We stay in contact quite a bit, you know. He's a great guy, great player.

SPEAKER_02:

Do you use any effects at all, any effects pedals?

SPEAKER_00:

No, no. What you hear is basically what I do. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

so no reverb or delay even?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't think that there's a need for that. There may be. I mean, sometimes, you know, if you're playing something like Blue Lights,

SPEAKER_04:

you

SPEAKER_00:

know, you want that echo sound. That hollow sound that they got. It basically, as the doo-wops groups would say, I'm looking for an echo. If you've ever heard that song. See, what happened is, you know, they used to sing on the streets a lot. Then all of a sudden, they found out, wow, I go in the hallway, listen to this sound. I go in the subway, listen to that sound. And all of a sudden, everything opened up. I sing better when I'm in a bathroom in a club where it has that echo sound. The song is basically, I'm looking for an echo, an echo to a sound. And that's it, you know?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

My voice is a little messed up today, so I'm not going to, I don't know what

SPEAKER_02:

happened. No, super. Yeah. So, so yeah, just final question then, Steve, and great to speak to you. So about your future plans, what are you doing? Have you got any gigs coming up? Are you still getting out and playing?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, yeah, we're out playing. I'm waiting for my passport to come back because I'm supposed to come to Switzerland and play with Nick Moss and Dennis and those guys. We're doing it. We're supposed to be doing a tribute to Jimmy Rogers. Ah, great. I'm in contact with Richard Farrell and he's thinking about trying to get me out there.

SPEAKER_02:

When, would that be

SPEAKER_00:

oh god i don't know you know when we'd be doing it and i still talk to you know all the different guys i play with you know got a herbie dunkel you know from austria tommy leno i you know we keep in touch yeah then my buddy in france and pascal de mars was the drummer yeah he booked us you know a lot yeah and all these different guys over there and there's a lot of them and i find that most of the musicians in europe can play this stuff great i really haven't heard many guys who couldn't pull it off

SPEAKER_02:

yeah we love it we love it all around the world yeah

SPEAKER_00:

yeah it really is it's amazing

SPEAKER_02:

so thanks so much for joining me today steve geiger thank you once again thanks to zidel for sponsoring the podcast be sure to check out the great range of harmonicas and products at www.zidel1847.com or on facebook or instagram at zidel harmonicas thanks to tom ellis for once again helping me with the research for this episode Tom is currently writing a detailed article on Steve, which is due out in May 2023, so watch out for that for more great info on Steve. Also thanks to Kathy, who helped set up the interview with Steve. Apparently Kathy likes to hum along to Steve's harmonica playing. We should get that on record. My exciting announcement today is that the podcast passed the 50,000 download mark last week, so thanks so much for everyone who's listening and making those numbers what they are. Here's to the next 50,000. So remember again to check out the podcast website at harmonicahappyhour.com and the Spotify playlist where most of the tracks referenced can be heard. Now let's finish with Steve playing us out with a live version of his instrumental Snake Oil. Snake Oil