Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Jason Ricci interview: part 1

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 93

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Jason Ricci joins me on episode 93 (and on episode 94)

In part one: Jason tells us how he started out in a punk band, with his bandmates suggesting he take up the harmonica. Of course, he took to it quickly, to become quite possibly the leading diatonic harmonica player of his generation. 
After initially developing his blues playing via the classic players, Jason moved to Memphis and developed his signature fast licks under the guidance of Pat Ramsey. Then, after getting into jazz and a brief flirtation with the saxophone, he started playing overblows, inspired by Howard Levy and the more blues based approach of Adam Gussow. 
Jason moved from Memphis for stints in various places, including Florida and jail, before settling in Nashville where he really made his presence known with his band Jason Ricci and New Blood.

To be continued...


Links:

Jason’s social media links::
https://mooncat.org/
https://www.instagram.com/jasonricci93/
https://twitter.com/jasonricci93

Patreon page:
https://www.patreon.com/jasonricci

Tip Jason:
PayPal.me/jasonricci

Bandcamp:
https://jasonricci.bandcamp.com/


Videos:

Jason's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/jasonricci

Baby Scratch My Back with the Nick Moss band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSGrzkcdiM0



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

or sign-up to a monthly subscription to the podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/995536/support

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_00:

Jason Ritchie joins me on episode 93 and on episode 94. In part one, Jason tells us how he started out in a punk band with his bandmates suggesting he take up the harmonica. Of course, he took to it quickly to become quite possibly the leading diatonic harmonica player of his generation. After initially developing his blues playing via the Classic Players... Jason moved to Memphis and developed his signature fast licks under the guidance of Pat Ramsey. Then, after getting into jazz and a brief flirtation with the saxophone, he started playing overblows inspired by Howard Levy and the more blues-based approach of Adam Gussell. Jason moved from Memphis for stints in various places, including Florida and jail, before settling in Nashville where he really made his presence known with his band Jason Richie and New Blood. 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_00:

Hello, Jason Richie, and welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, Neil. It's a pleasure. Great to get you on. Something that I've wanted to do for some time, of course. So, This is episode 93, and I understand the number 93 has got some significance for you. You've got it tattooed on your neck, and you also have some social media links ending in 93. So what's with the number 93? It's like old occult

SPEAKER_01:

numerology from a type of numerology called Gematria or Gematria. The Greek words love and will add up to 93, and it goes back to an old... Alistair Crowley quote, love is the law, love under will, right? And so that was stuff I was into for a long, long time. And I'm into different stuff now. I've evolved, I think.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

to something a little more simple. But yeah, I'm stuck with the 93 on my neck. And the tattoo artist told me, he goes, you know, he goes, if after I do this, he goes, for the rest of your life, every single day, somebody is going to ask what that means. Are you ready for it? And I was like, yeah, I'm ready. And I, you know, I, of course I, I wasn't really ready.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it could be a lot worse than the number 93 on your neck.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I could have done something worse, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so yeah, we'll get into that, your cult influence on your lyric writing later. Yeah. So you were born in 1974, a year after myself. So does that mean you're not the hot young thing anymore? That definitely means I'm not the hot young thing. Great. Yeah. So you're almost at the ripe old age of 50, which I reached myself earlier this year. So it's great. Congratulations. So you were born in Maine, in Portland, Maine. That's right. The epicenter of the blues, Portland, Maine. And playing, originally you joined a punk band when you were sort of 14. Yeah. That's how you first got into music. Yep. I understand you were the singer in the band and the kind of harmonica was suggested by them that you take it up. It wasn't something you chose yourself. That is factual. And so, well, how did you develop that relationship with the harmonica? Did you kind of quickly bond with it and say, yeah, this is for me or?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I mean, I had already been playing guitar, but they didn't want me to play guitar in the band and I wasn't good enough to play guitar in the band. So even in a punk band, but my guitar teacher also played harmonica. So one day I was going up the stairs and I heard him playing and I was like, Hey, can we do that? Like, This week or next week or something. And then, yeah, I just right away took to it a little better than guitar. And I felt like I could emote better. Guitar was always a vehicle for songwriting for me. And it still is, right? It was never how I wanted to express myself musically. I just wanted to sing and scream and strum it at parties and stuff. Yeah.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So when you were playing harmonica in a punk band, how did the harmonica fit into that music? Not well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it was a novelty, you know. Yeah. Like with Battle of the Bands, you know, the critique would say, love the harmonica. Surprised by the harmonica.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

From there, you got into playing the usual kind of traditional blues harmonica stuff. That's how you initially learned.

SPEAKER_01:

That's true. In New England, where I grew up, and later when I went to college in Boise, I was around a lot of mostly older men. Some women that were very, very serious about knowing the history of this music, in particular, the early chess recordings and chess recordings in general, but also just all the Slim Harpo and Cotton and Little Walter and T-Bone Walker and Freddie King and B.B. King and Albert King and all of that. It was all prerequisite. Albert Collins, Greg Growing up in New England with Ronnie Earle's influence coming out of Boston and bands like Sugar Ray and the Blue Tones, Sugar Ray Nortia and Roomful of Blues.

UNKNOWN:

Out of my mind. Out of my mind.

SPEAKER_01:

There was a tremendous focus and influence on all of those early artists. Magic Sam is one I forgot to mention, but a lot of that stuff was heavy duty, Portnoy being not far away, all of that stuff. All those people were very, very vocal to me as a young guy about, look, this is what you listen to, and that's it.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you know, it's a good grounding, of course, to get all the rudimentaries of the blues harmonica down, yeah. I think so. I wouldn't change a thing. And then I understand your mother was quite into blues as well and she took you to blues concerts and she got you that grounding as well. Was that around Boston too?

SPEAKER_01:

It was in Maine, yeah. I started traveling to Boston when I got my driver's license. But she brought me to my first four or five blues shows in Maine. It was Cotton, Muscle White, Buckwheat Zydeco from down here in New Orleans, and a couple of others.

SPEAKER_00:

And so what age did you start getting really seriously into the harmonica?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I would say that I was starting to get serious about it when I was 17 or 18, where I started to play harmonica at parties instead of guitar mostly, just like little hippie parties. And I started studying, trying to play like Big Walter on certain songs and Little Walter on others. And Alan Wilson was an early influence, Butterfield. And then right around the time... that I was about 19 or 20, music was competing for time with college. So I was employed already, which was not a decision. It just started happening. I started getting gigs. I would go to jams and bands would hear me and then I would get hired. And then I was out late at night and I wasn't studying. And this was happening more and more and more and more. And this was in Idaho, which is the middle of nowhere in the United States. But incidentally, that's where John Namath was at the time, too. He was born there. And we kind of came up together. in that scene. And anyway, I moved. I moved to Memphis and that was in 95. So I would say that was the year that things became really, really serious because I made a decision to relocate, quit college, get a regular job waiting tables, follow Pat Ramsey. I won contests right away. Like as soon as I got down there, I started doing great, you know, musically, not personally, but you You know, I was doing well. Yeah, that was it. 95, I would say, was the big jumping

SPEAKER_00:

off point. You went down there specifically to study with Pat Ramsey, did you? Or did you just meet him when you were down there?

SPEAKER_01:

I was passing through one time on my way home from Idaho to Maine driving. Decided to go down to see what Beale Street was like because I had heard about it. And so I just stopped in. It was a Tuesday night. I heard Billy Gibson, the harmonica player, playing.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And I walked into the club. I wasn't old enough to be in there. I didn't get carded, which was good. Billy was like my age, which at that time was really rare. And really, if you look back at that time period, there was really Billy, Dennis Grinling, and me, and John Namath. And maybe there were a couple others that didn't really make it. You know what? The name Rob Stone comes to mind, too. But anyway, at any rate, there was only a handful of us young guys. So I talked to Billy, and I just told him, I said, you sound great. And I love that number. And I've never heard anybody do that live. Kim Wilson had just covered it on Tiger Man. He said, well, if you think I'm good, well, wait till you hear the next guy. And that was Pat Ramsey.

UNKNOWN:

So

SPEAKER_01:

So when Pat got down, I went and spoke to him and I told him, I said, I'm going to go home and I'm going to landscape and I'm going to get enough money. And I'm just going to move back here and come to every single gig that you do. And that's exactly what I did.

SPEAKER_00:

So Pat Ramsey, the influence was his approach to you, to playing guitar. faster licks you know was that what really attracted you was that style attracted you at that stage

SPEAKER_01:

yeah I wouldn't say it was so much the speed but the note choice combined with the speed because I mean obviously Coming up in my generation, I had heard John Popper and I had heard Sugar Blue and I had even heard Howard Levy. It was the choice of blue notes. So, you know, for the musicians out there that are listening, I'm talking about flat thirds, flat sevens and flat fifths. So in cross harp, that would be the three draw half step bend sequentially, two draw double bend and the four draw bend. So mixing in those things into fast playing hadn't really been done at that level other than Howard, but Howard hadn't done it in such a blues way. It was a revelation. And as Jack Nicholson said to Dennis Hopper, it was a devastating shock to my antiquated system, you know? And so hearing somebody play fast, which I was told by my heroes was definitely something you don't do. You know, I was told very specifically by very famous, established harmonica players that are mostly still with us today, don't do that. But I don't think they had heard Pat. And I think if they had, they'd have been scared. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. Yeah. And so Pat played with Johnny Winterman. Is that who you were seeing him play with down there?

SPEAKER_01:

Nope. That was in the 70s. And he was still doing some gigs, but he was playing under his own name. He was still doing a few gigs, maybe once every couple of years with Johnny Winter. But Johnny Winter was using different harmonica players because his management was choosing the harmonica players. And that's my understanding anyway.

SPEAKER_00:

I could be wrong. And including your good self later on when you appeared on one of his albums. I was

SPEAKER_01:

very, very privileged to be part of that. And if it hadn't have been for Pat, there's no way that Johnny Winter would have picked

SPEAKER_00:

me. Yeah. And that's the album which won a Grammy and you played on one of the songs on that album.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Some big names in that, wasn't there? Eric Clapton and so on. Did you get to meet the other musicians or were you sort of recording your own separately to those?

SPEAKER_01:

When I recorded the record, actually, everything was scratch except for me. So the harmonica was the only thing that remained on the track. So it was scratch vocals from another artist, not Johnny Winter, scratch guitar from another artist, not Johnny Winter, scratch drums and scratch bass from musicians that didn't end up on the track. up making it on the record so it was very very difficult to play over it because there was zero inspiration and the scratch tracks were uh marginal

SPEAKER_00:

and that so yeah so johnny winter actually was added afterwards and your harmonica was that's right right

SPEAKER_01:

i was the the first thing that remained on that track i did get to hang out with johnny winter that day And that was it. I didn't get to meet any of the other cats.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's a good insight to a Grammy Award winning record and how they put it together anyway. It's very different than people

SPEAKER_01:

think often. You know, sometimes it's what you think. you know, you're in a room with all your heroes, but, but other times, most of the time it's fairly lackluster. Yes. Surprisingly difficult.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. So we can talk a bit more about fast playing and we don't want to dwell too much on it because you certainly don't just do fast playing, but obviously you're known for that, you know, very soulful as well, very tasteful and all that great stuff as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thanks.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I mean, so when you started learning with Pat, did you, you know, I've, you know, I've read about how you, you know, you practice scales and patterns and you would do that. Obviously, like you say, with blue notes rather than sort of major scales and pentatonic scales. Obviously, that's something specifically we're learning. Were you learning, you know, particular sort of rhythms like, you know, playing 16th notes and that sort of thing? You know, how did you approach the fast playing? Because it is something that a lot of people hear it and think, wow, I want to be able to do that too, yeah?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. When I came to meet Pat and stuff, Pat wasn't much different than the old blues guys, meaning that he didn't, or wouldn't say what he was doing. I can tell you he was certainly not very aware of things like scales and certainly not arpeggios and those types of things. And he would balk if you brought up such names. And so I was sort of the same. So what I would do is I would go and listen to Pat and then go home and try to play what I heard that evening from memory. And finally, Pat put out a record, which was the first record under his own name called It's About Time.

UNKNOWN:

It's About Time

SPEAKER_01:

And once the record came out, I could then pause and play and rewind. They were these little, I would say some of them are breathing patterns and some of them are not, but a lot of... And a lot of like really methodical like... A lot of that kind of stuff. So it was just really kind of mechanical way of moving around the harp. All that kind of stuff. That's

SPEAKER_00:

very much like the solo that you play on Delta Nova.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, yeah. I mean, Pat's influence, that's one year into me knowing him. It's already seeping in. I would say that still, if there's a skeletal influence that is X-rayable in my playing, it's Pat.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I love him so much. I miss him terribly, Neil. I really do. Ha ha ha!

UNKNOWN:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

And we all need those wise heads. Yeah. So great. So as you say, you released that album Down at the Duke a year after you met Pat. Yeah. And so that was early on. And you also released an album before that, which is called Jason Ritchie. Right. The first album. So these are both down in Memphis. Yeah. Is your Jason Ritchie album available? I couldn't actually find that. I don't know. I'm sort of glad they're

SPEAKER_01:

hard to find. Yeah. Truth be told, I think I was prematurely recorded. As a matter of fact, I can make a comment on that. the current state of the music. I am glad that independent, the internet and the ability to press CDs and make CDs is available to all artists. And we've certainly seen some amazing talent come out of that. However, on the other hand, I think there's something to be said for some sort of label gatekeeping and an artist sort of proving themselves for a time period before getting recorded. Now, I'm not speaking Mm-hmm. was beyond qualified to record when he did. Had there been the ability to self-produce, self-publish, unquote, so to speak, I think we might have heard some substandard William Clarke, right? Or some, let's just say, unrealized, right? And I think that's the case with many

SPEAKER_00:

of my early recordings. They were put together independently where they went through a record level. You signed later to a more major record level, yeah. That's right. But again, I mean, Down at the Duke, I think there's some great playing on there myself. Again, Delta Dips, another one I really love on that album. So I wouldn't knock that early playing too much.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

No. And I think I learned from the process too, quite a bit. Like, you know, listening, having to listen back to your own music, it's like, can be painful in a good way, you

SPEAKER_00:

know? Yeah, sure. Yeah. One thing I just wanted to jump back to is that I believe you almost took up the saxophone instead of the harmonica. What stage was this? That

SPEAKER_01:

was in 98. So I, uh, was just getting out of jail. It wasn't really a jail. It was like a mandatory rehab where the doors were locked. Well, you could leave, actually. You could walk out of there, but there would immediately be a warrant issued for your arrest. So you're doing rehab time instead of jail time. And then there's a catch with that, too. If you failed in there or left, you would then serve your full sentence. So I was staring down 12 years. And the rules were very, very strict. So it was hard to make it through there. So I had made it through nine months of there into a one year and a day sentence, followed by five or six years of probation after that, and was moved to a work release program. When I got to the work release program, I had a boombox Yeah. that was given back to me, that was checked with my stuff prior to me being incarcerated. For the nine months that I was incarcerated, I didn't hear music or was not allowed to play harmonica. They did briefly give me the harmonica back to do a show for the governor, along with some other guys who did like poetry and singing and stuff. And I was allowed to practice like an hour a week for that show for like four weeks leading up to it. But for For a whole year, I didn't hear or play any music, no TV commercials, no radio, nothing. And I think that was a good cleansing for me and something that made me appreciate music better for the rest of my life to have it taken away. I think we take it for granted. And I don't think I've ever taken music for granted since then. So when I got to the work release program, I had this boombox that had been sitting in storage for nine months. It was infested with cockroaches, by the way. Cockroaches live love electronics. They like to get in there and hang out. So I'd be listening to it and they'd come out and crawl down the headphones and be on my face and stuff. That's how much I was into the music. And so anyway, there was a radio show that came on from midnight until six in the morning. I had to be to work at like eight or nine in the morning, waiting tables. The show was called China's Jazz and Blues Hour. Or no, just show because it would go from midnight until six in the morning. So it certainly wasn't an hour. But there was this old DJ, China Valas, who had been around for, I think, 40 years at that time. He's since passed away. And I was exposed to Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker and Ben Webster and Duke Ellington and Sarah Vaughan and Lester Young and Toots Thielman's harmonica players. And I fell in love with this thing they call jazz. And in a way that, you know, it was reluctant at first, it was the closest thing to the blues. And then later it became, well, gosh, this, if this is not the coolest stuff I've ever heard. So I really wanted to be able to play that music and the diatonic limited, you know, the C harmonica or B flat harmonica, whatever, whatever, even with the bends down bottom, it wasn't going to accomplish it. I couldn't even play blue monk or, simple standard tunes that displayed any form of chromaticism so i became disillusioned with the harmonica i started experimenting with overblows right around that time trying to get it i think blue monk was the first number i was after so And then I got a saxophone and I got into that briefly. But then I heard UFO Tofu by Howard Levy. And that's when I decided to get serious about the overblows and not double on harmonica and have sax be my primary instrument, but just go after harmonica 100%. I sold the saxophone later for gas money from a gig in Nebraska to try to get to Colorado.

SPEAKER_00:

So there's a lot of comparisons made between the saxophone and harmonica. You know, a lot of harmonica players kind of want to say they want to sound like a saxophone, right? So is that something you were aiming for, you know, playing jazzy lines or?

SPEAKER_01:

No, I think I was just aiming for the melodies. I didn't care what instrument played it, whether it was Stefan Grappelli on violin or, or Wes Montgomery on guitar or anything like that. And I hear a lot of harmonica players say oh i listen to saxophone players and then they play right and it's like who who did you listen to yeah because that doesn't sound like a harmonica lick to me you know I think it's a nice thing to say. I think it doesn't matter what instrument. It comes down to arpeggios and getting inside of chords and scales too. But like, you know, I think the blues player that I've heard that sounds the most like a saxophone is probably Dennis Grundling.

UNKNOWN:

So

SPEAKER_01:

And also some others, Carlos Del Junco, people that have played chromatically either by using different positions or overblows, but amplifying it. I think when we amplify it, we get more of that sax kind of sound. But I mean, it's arguable. I mean, I think, you know, on chromatic and stuff, we hear like William Clark on The Boss starting to sound like a B3. B3. And, you know, things like that. So I don't know. I don't know about all that.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a harmonica. Great news that you focused on the harmonica for all of those harmonica fans, of course. God bless you all. So going back to, you know, going on to the overblows topic then. So you mentioned Howard Lever there, the king of the overblows. I know Adam Gusso was a big influence on you early on. I think, was it what you first heard, the overblows, being used more in a blues context?

SPEAKER_01:

Right. That's where I got interested initially. But, like, I just didn't think I could do it. And I didn't have the motivation to do it until I heard China's jazz and blues show. And that, cause it took a lot of, you know, you have to, I think you have to really, really want those notes to get into overblowing. I actually think that's more important than the physical technique. I think hearing them and knowing where they're not and, and really sort of wishing that you could, Or, you know, I would say needing, needing to play it for the purpose of emotional self-expression. You know, that's really what I think it takes to do it. I encounter a lot of students that want to learn overblows, and it's almost like they want a karate belt, like they want to be able to say, I'm an overblower. And the ones that seem to take to it really, really well are are the ones that have a love of music that needs that to happen. And when they have an emotional connection with a major seven and they need that in cross harp, that's when you learn how to do it, I think. You know, the exception to that, I think, is children that are learning harmonica that don't know and nobody has told them that overblows are hard.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

They seem to learn it pretty quick, whether they want it or not.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So, I mean, so your use of overblows, I mean, you know, some people will say that overblows, the sound of them, you know, kind of jumps out as being differently. I certainly don't hear that with you and some of the other good overblow players that you've mentioned already. So, I mean, how much percentage wise would you say you're using overblows if you can put it in that way?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, gosh, I don't know, Neil. I don't think, I mean, I can certainly play without them. Without thinking about it, if I'm in a genre of music, like if I'm in Little Walter mode, like sometimes, well, frequently I have to play traditional blues and I want to. I love it. And so if I'm like, like recently I played with Bob Mark Olin and John Primer and I fill in for Dennis occasionally with Nick Moss when Dennis can't make a tour or something.

UNKNOWN:

Music

SPEAKER_01:

You know, in those kind of contexts, I don't think of overblowing. And now every now and then I hear one, you know, before it happens, like, you know, I'm playing and I hear the lick I want to hit and I'll allow it in. You know what I mean? Because I think it's necessary because it feels right. But mostly when I play in those types of contexts, I just don't think about them. I pretend they're not there, sort of. I don't know how I do it, but I think it's just from listening to all that little Walter stuff. Like, for example, when I listen to Kim Wilson or Gary Primich or any of my favorite traditional harmonica players that are alive today, like Steve Mariner.

UNKNOWN:

¶¶

SPEAKER_01:

Right. I don't ever think, well, boy, they would sound better with overblows. It never occurs to me. But when I'm playing by myself or when I'm just playing music in general, particularly New Orleans music, I also don't think about them when I hit them. I see it as any other note on the harmonica, mostly. I sometimes still get nervous about the seven overdraw or the nine overdraw in third position. I might use that. I still get nervous about them coming up, but mostly I hit them.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But yeah, I don't think about it. When I pick up a harmonica, they're just going to come out unless I've made a decision ahead of time that I just want to play like in an old

SPEAKER_00:

way. I mean, that's what we want, right? We want it all to be natural and to come out without thinking about it too much, right? I mean, that's when it's good. But

SPEAKER_01:

yeah, like I knew right away, like I was never going to have the The background, musical background that Howard had coming into it.

SPEAKER_00:

And

SPEAKER_01:

I was a person that was scared of theory and scared of math and scared of arpeggios and chords and leading tones and diminished things and all these types of words. They scared me and I didn't like them. And initially, I tended to just try to make them really sound good. I wanted to bend them. So these little wavers. So I'm kind of, you know, adjusting the pitch in and out of being in tune, going sharp and flat and on pitch. And I noticed that they could be very effective for blues playing. And I really couldn't tell the difference between like a six draw bend tonally and a six overblow.

SPEAKER_00:

really sounded pretty similar to me what about when you were you know going back a little bit to the sort of fast playing when you're practicing the fast licks we i take it you were practicing these kind of chromatic runs including the overblows as part of those

SPEAKER_01:

yeah definitely it wasn't long after i learned how to set up a harmonica you know that was key especially in the 90s and early 2000s you know up and i would say up until like around 2011 or 2012 when Hohner and Suzuki and started making really good harmonicas because prior to that, you'd have to work on them a lot. So once I started working on them and adjusting the action or offset, as harmonica players call it, you know, the reed offset, that was when I was able to start playing not only fast, but bending them as well and putting them in seamlessly and practicing the scale techniques. Right. And all that kind of.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And all of that different stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

But if someone, you know, he wants to emulate your sound and obviously they can also have lessons with you. We'll get onto that later so you can really tell them what to do. But if someone who wants to emulate your sound, would you say they can't do that without doing overblows?

SPEAKER_01:

I would say that you could get pretty close by, you know, to some of it by just studying Pat. But yeah, I mean, you're not going to get the real, the like modern blues and jazz influence. that I have in my playing without that. But rhythmically, you can certainly get some of my styles because there's places rhythmically where I definitely have, I think I differ from Pat quite a bit. I think that was the influence of bebop, you know, where Pat would play.

SPEAKER_03:

And

SPEAKER_01:

I would...

SPEAKER_03:

And

SPEAKER_01:

that just like, it wasn't a decision. It just sunk in just from listening to hundreds of thousands of hours of Charlie Parker, you know, just, just loving the way, not because I wanted to learn how to play like Charlie Parker, just because I loved how happy it made me and sat at the same time. Like it was, it's just the most remarkable musician I'd ever heard still to this day.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I mean, he's certainly got the reputation about being the best improviser ever, right? It

SPEAKER_01:

was so

SPEAKER_00:

beautiful. And

SPEAKER_01:

joyful,

SPEAKER_00:

joyful, very joyful. Yeah, I've spent my time listening to Mr. Parker as well. Good. Did you learn from the Charlie Parker Omnibook? No, I still can't read music. Right, okay. Right, so going back to your timeline, so as you say, you left Memphis and went to Florida. As you say, you spent some time in your rehab center, and then you came out of Florida, and then you were touring a lot, playing a lot. You're kind of learning the trade there as well, yeah? You missed one thing.

SPEAKER_01:

I left Memphis, I went and played with Junior Kimbrough R.L. Burnside and their kids. Then I went to Jackson, Mississippi, which is where I got in trouble. I went to rehab in Florida, got out of Florida. I spent I got out of jail, spent three years playing with a band called the Knuckle Busters down in Florida, and also Keith Brown, who is in France now. He's like a Kev Moe kind of guy, acoustic guy. And I was in a little trio with him, a house band at a famous club that's since gone called the Bamboo Room. And then I relocated briefly to North Carolina, where I worked at a treatment center as a detox clinician, and And then I got the job with Big Al, which put me in Nashville, where I remained for 10 years, 11, 10 or 11 years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And so I think, is it in 2002, you formed the band with New Blood?

SPEAKER_01:

Maybe then, maybe a little earlier. Yeah. Where were you based then? Nashville. I stayed in Nashville after I left Big Al.

SPEAKER_00:

Great. And so I've got it here that you didn't release an album between Down at the Duke and then your first album with New Blood, I think in 2001. Is that right? You had a bit of a gap between releasing albums then? Yeah. I mean, I was in rough shape, you know? Yeah. You were busy of the things. Okay, great. So then you formed New Blood, which you had a great successful time with, you know, you released a lot of albums with Ed.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

you

SPEAKER_00:

toured i think you toured like 300 days a year i've read for 10 years that's right you know what was that like um i

SPEAKER_01:

mean The beginning of it, I think, was the time of my life. Some of the happiest times I've ever had were back before the band was popular at all. And we were just kind of a bunch of kids in a Ford Econol line with dreams and sharing hotel rooms and sometimes no hotel rooms and oftentimes no hotel rooms. And we would camp and sleep on pool tables or at people's houses. And I think we were young and naive and it was still a lot of fun and really exciting then you know uh life happens our our drummer got deported and uh he's from argentina and uh We got signed to a record label and got on a bigger booking agency. And there was now money involved in BMI royalties and songwriting credit and festivals. And I think as wonderful as that was, and it's a necessary part of evolution, the naivety was starting to go away. And it became a job and it became serious. And there were fights and creative differences and girlfriends and boyfriends coming into the mix. and changing around dynamics. And then, of course, me and mental illness and addiction later resurfacing after 12 years sober, finding myself in 2010 back on drugs. Yeah, it was an amazing 10 years, Neil, and we had a lot of fun. And I think that's when I really made my name. And so I wouldn't change a thing. It was a wonderful, wonderful time period. I have so much affection for all of the musicians that played in that band, but namely Todd Edmonds, Sean Starsky, those two, the guitar and bass player. We had lots of drummers.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and you created some great music as well. And the first album I ever heard you was on the Blood on the Road album, which was a really great album. Some very memorable songs on there, such as My Head's a Bad Neighborhood definitely springs to mind. That whole album was recorded in six hours. Really? Yeah, it's a great album, that one. Love that one, yeah. So, you know, so what about some of those lyrics on there? Obviously drawing on some of your personal experiences, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, my head is a sick and twisted place You write most of

SPEAKER_00:

the lyrics?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I've always been into writing lyrics. I think I've, you know, in some ways the harmonica's kind of overshadowed you know that that's been the thing that's meant a lot to me on every record is making sure that i write stuff that means something to me i was always a fan of important lyricists and tried to i thought a lot about music from the very beginning it was always lyrics and my wife is the same way too much so really but yeah

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I mean, as you say, the harmonica overshadows it, but definitely the full package is, you know, is the band and the sounds that you're creating. The lyrics are a big part of it. You know, they're often quite dark and, you know, it's definitely a modern take on blues, right? And it's not all blues that you play, but that's obviously really important to you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I think I, being a white person and, you know, having lived with Junior and an RL and, and, and spent a lot, a lot of time immersed in black culture to the point where there were periods of time, sometimes as long as six or seven months where I didn't even see another white person or, or the only other white person I saw was Eric Deaton, you know, who is now with that, the black keys and, and another band called Afro Sippy, but he was really the only other white person I saw, but I think it became apparent. very apparent to me being with those guys that it was really important to be yourself. You know, we weren't going to be them. And that was really, really clear, like living in that environment. And I think there's a lot of white people that write songs or sing songs that were written by black people that don't really understand what they're singing about. And also, On a lighter note, I think some of the lyrics are just antiquated. I don't want to be on stage saying, I bought my baby a brand new choo-choo toy, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. You know what I mean? It's just not who I am and what I'm going to say when I get up there. And I think that if more... Modern blues musicians, both black and white, wrote better lyrics that I think that this music would speak to a younger generation.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

and you were pretty successful in New Blood, right? You know, you were headlining at festivals. So I take it that was part of it, that you weren't just a kind of old, you know, you weren't emulating kind of old style blues. You were, it was new, modern, you were saying something.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Back then, everything was mostly, there was only a few modern artists and they were really rocky, right? They weren't like we were rocky, too. We had a rock influence, but we also had a heavy duty jazz influence, too. And I would say punk, too. You know, so like there was that. Right. And but there were I mean, we were listening to a lot of Sun Ra and and also New Orleans funk and a lot of that kind of stuff, you know, so.

SPEAKER_00:

an album you did with, uh, with new blues is done with the devil, which is, uh, inspired by your interest in the occult. So, so again, some, uh, some lyrics about there, this one, the, uh, blues music award for best blues rock album in the,

SPEAKER_01:

in it was nominated. It didn't win, but thank you. We'll say, we'll say it. What?

SPEAKER_00:

So, uh, song on there is, is, you know, going back to the, to the jazz, uh, influences you Afro blues is on there and you, you quote my favorite things in your diatonic. Yeah.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And then we did Sun Ra's Enlightenment 2.

SPEAKER_00:

And then you do a song on Down That Road, which is Harmonica Caprice No. 1, which is obviously pointing towards a kind of classical music influence. So did you have any sort of classical music influence? You say you didn't really read music. Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, a fascination with the violin. So I fell in love with violin music. During that time period, I took a kind of a hiatus from jazz. And just for my own pleasure, it's important for me to listen to music that I don't think about how would I do it. I think that the people that don't play music have a sort of wonderful childlike ability to hear things without thinking about what are they doing or how would I interpret this or could I do this or how long would it take me to learn how to do this or how come I can't learn how to do this, but I, I, I, I. is the thought process. So, I mean, when I initially started listening to jazz, it was just for pure joy of loving it. And then that ego, which is a necessary thing, and I'm glad it came in, but that, you know, could I do this started coming in. Like, I love it so much. Can I do it? So classical music was originally an escape from that constant, you know, study mode of, it was like, this is music I can listen to without thinking about how can I do it. And so, you know, I think I had seen a documentary about this New York violinist named Nadja Sonnenberg called Speaking in Strings. And she was sort of like me. She was kind of outspoken and a little crass and not really liked music. But more than tolerated, like booked everywhere in the classical music world. And I related to her personally. And then I just started kind of falling in love with the violin because like when they would bow the violin, like when a really good classical violinist is bowing in a certain way. It doesn't sound like there's a bow at all. It sounds like the sound is coming out of nowhere. There's no vibration. It's almost like a theremin. And I fell in love with that. And then, of course, later, the double stops and the actual bowing sounds of it. But then from her, I traced back to Oistrakh and Heifetz and started listening to more you know, established violinists. And then that led me into like Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Bach, and then my very favorite of the Romantic period composers, Sibelius. So when I finally discovered Opus 47 in D minor, Sibelius' violin concerto, by that point I was lost in it and it was irreconcilable. So then next thing you know, Paganini, right? And that's where you're going to go if you're a violin nut. And so I started listening to the Caprices.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_01:

which were solo violin pieces later. Of course, in the beginning, you were not allowed to play them without a piano or a harpsichord because they were considered too self-indulgent sort of by many. And they sounded too much like exercises to people. They thought they were cold and reptilian. And I could certainly see how people would think that, but the amount of soul that goes into it just in sacrifice alone, the ability to play that, I think negates any standard Or coldness that one would think if you just listen to the music without thinking about, oh, is this too many notes or does it sound like an exercise? If you just listen to it and stop with that voice in your head that's making you judge it, usually out of fear, I find that voice comes into play. Fear and anger are the predominant emotions that come in judging things as good or bad. I think it's important for people to listen to music as much as possible. I'm a fan of free jazz as well. And I think that's a music that many people find unlistenable. And what I enjoy most about it is it forces me to stay in the moment. There's no predicting what's going to happen next, either harmonically or melodically or rhythmically. And I enjoy that unpredictability.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, definitely. Well, it's interesting you should mention the violin. So during the pandemic, I started learning to play the violin and I've been going for violin lessons. It's hard. It's really, really hard. Really, really,

SPEAKER_01:

really hard.

SPEAKER_00:

I got one hanging on the wall, Neil. But I mean, I don't do it like, I mean, I've done it enough to pass my grade. I did a grade three, but I don't practice it like low. So I don't really practice it enough to get really good at it. But it's like, it's so hard. Yeah, it's so hard. But yeah, I mean, it's interesting that someone like you, and I'm probably surprising to harmonica players that you would draw on those influences and people might expect you to be a full-on harmonica nut, right? But it's great to hear that you have those other influences too. They're important.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah, I think the greatest thing to come out of that was I started realizing what arpeggios were from listening to Paganini.

SPEAKER_00:

So when you did your harmonica, Caprice, was that something that you wrote down or did you sort of just come up with it by ear?

SPEAKER_03:

I

SPEAKER_01:

was just practicing. minor triads. And then I, and then not accidentally, then I just tried blowing in third position, four draw, five draw, six draw. Then I just started blowing four blow, five blow, six blow. And then that, you know, that contrast between the minor triad and then the major triad was emotionally stimulating. So then I just found the B flat minor triad after that, and then the other one, and that's how it got written.

SPEAKER_00:

So you also do a on your latest album, which we'll get onto a little bit later, but I just mentioned now on St. James infirmary, you sort of go into a classical thing at the end of that for quite a long time. So, you know, it's still something you're interested in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I'm going to keep recording Harmonica Caprice on every record because it's growing. Like, I never stop working on it. It's not written yet. It's just being, it's an exercise. Like right now, like when I record it again, there'll be more octaves. Like... You know, so like going all the way up and stuff like...

SPEAKER_03:

and

SPEAKER_01:

oh man i'm messing up but anyway like you know just experimenting with uh getting all of the harmonica involved in that instead of just primarily the middle octave The easy octave.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So, Matt, we expect you're going to release a solo harmonica album of Caprices. Oh, no.

SPEAKER_01:

Like a

SPEAKER_00:

Paganini

SPEAKER_01:

thing, yeah. No, I'm not that good. I'm just having fun. That's all I'm doing. Yeah, and it's a good way to practice because it's a good way to think. Like, hey, imagine going up. Like right there, I went up and then down.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So I'm going up on one and down on the other, but there's a million options. I could go. Right. So like, you know, it's just endless. It's endless. Right. It's endless.

SPEAKER_00:

And it sounds great as well. You know, throwing that in, like you say, on a song like that, it just, it sounds fantastic. Yeah. And a nice variety than the usual, you know, harmonica sounds. Right.

SPEAKER_01:

There's so

SPEAKER_00:

much to work on. Yeah. Yeah. It's endless. Yeah. I never, yeah, it's

SPEAKER_01:

endless. I'm never not inspired. I'm never in a place where I'm like, oh, what do I need to do next? Or I'm never in a place where I'm satisfied with what I'm doing, ever. I'm always searching. Always, always, always.

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. That's the end of part one with the interview with Jason. Part two will be out in a week's time where we hear about Jason's career, Pulse, New Blood, his new band, Bad Kind, and other acts he has performed with as well as the usual gear section. Thanks again for listening to the podcast. If you haven't heard much of Jason before, first of all, where the hell have you been? Then please check out the Spotify playlist where you can hear most of the tracks that I've been using this episode. And be sure to tip Jason. The link is on the podcast page. Now let's hear Jason play us out with the song Ode to Billy Joe from the City Country City album.

UNKNOWN:

Ode to Billy Joe