Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Michael Rubin interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 95

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Michael Rubin joins me on episode 95.
Michael moved to Austin as a young man, initially as a blues player. He found that by diversifying the genres he played on harmonica he became much more in demand in the vibrant music scene in Austin. He added to t his versatility by playing different types of harmonica, including plenty of chromatic in addition to the diatonic being his main axe. Michael has also recorded on bass harmonica and the harmonetta.
Michael has gigged and recorded with numerous outfits, with styles ranging from blues to pop, African music, reggae and old time country gospel. Michael released his first solo album in 2022, I’ll Worry If I Wanna. On here he demonstrates his full range of harmonica mastery, including a solo playing in all twelve positions. 


Links:
Michael’s website:
https://michaelrubinharmonica.com/

I’ll Worry If I Wanna album:
https://michaelrubin.hearnow.com/

SPAH tribute to Bob Herndon (great Harmonetta player):
https://www.spah.org/content.asp?contentid=62

Mike Caldwell:
https://www.countrythangdaily.com/mike-caldwell-unleashed/

Album with Christopher Cody Meacham:
https://christophercodymeacham.bandcamp.com/album/ol-time-waddies-blues-2019-lp


Videos:

YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@michaelrubinharmonic

List of YouTube harmonica lessons:
https://michaelrubinharmonica.com/pageVideoArchive.html

Peg O My Heart on Harmonetta:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xfqJNhLoTA

Sophisticated Lady on DM48:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaSKBZqijnU


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 

Support the show

SPEAKER_02:

Michael Rubin joins me on episode 95. Michael moved to Austin as a young man, initially as a blues player. He found that by diversifying the genres he played on harmonica, he became much more in demand in the vibrant music scene in Austin. He added to this versatility by playing different types of harmonica, including plenty of chromatic in addition to the diatonic being his main acts. Michael has also recorded on bass harmonica and the harmonetta. Michael has gigged and recorded with numerous outfits, with styles ranging from blues to pop, African music, reggae, and old-time country gospel. Michael released his first solo album in 2022, I'll Worry If I Wanna. On here, he demonstrates his full range of harmonica mastery, including a solo playing in all 12 positions. This podcast is sponsored by Zeidel Harmonicas. Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world, at www.zidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zidel Harmonicas. Hello, Michael Rubin, and welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Neil. You were born in New Jersey, but now you're living in Austin, Texas.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I got here in 93. And then I left in 98 and I came back early 2000. A

SPEAKER_02:

great blues town, I'm sure. But before that, I noticed reading your biography that you like to say that you're conceived in Memphis. Right. Infused with the spirit of the blues then.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's my little joke, but my parents did live in Memphis at least six months before I was born. I'm guessing I was conceived there.

SPEAKER_02:

You might have heard some of the Memphis blues in the womb, eh?

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. And they took me to Woodstock, actually. My parents went to Woodstock when I was in the womb. I have an idea that I saw Butterfield, but who knows?

SPEAKER_02:

Great. So you moved around a lot. And obviously, like you said, you ended up in Austin, Texas, which is a many fine harmonica player base there. So what took you there ultimately?

SPEAKER_00:

I definitely came here for music. I had done a year in New Orleans. You know, it wasn't that New Orleans was bad. I was just 21 years old and looking for more adventure. So I had looked around. I had met Clifford Antones. for Lantone, brought like 30 famous blues players to California when I was in college. So I shook his hand and said, I'll play your club one day. And then there was this guy named called Stubbs. He ran a barbecue joint in Texas. And one day I was at a food convention in California and I met Stubbs. And then I had seen Austin City Limits. I saw a W.C. Clark show and I thought that guy was really soulful. And then I knew about Steve Ray Vaughan and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. So it sounded good enough for me. And luckily, when I moved to Austin, it was a very inexpensive place to live. So I was able to get an efficiency apartment and not have a real job and no health insurance and top ramen and was able to make it. I did have various jobs throughout. I'm not saying I never worked real jobs, but pretty much I was able to make it as a musician really early on. And that was my point of being here.

SPEAKER_02:

Fantastic. Yeah. And that was entirely as a harmonica player and singing as well?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. If you can call it singing, my joke is as a singer, I'm a real good harmonica player. I played electric bass for a while. and I played some piano and melodica. Got real serious about mandolin for around 10 years. It's always been harmonica has been my main thing. No question about it.

SPEAKER_02:

So Austin obviously is known for Texas blues. Is that the brand of blues you're getting mainly in Texas or is it much broader than that?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think that when you really look at Austin music, it's very much Texas blues. It's really about guitars bass and drums and vocals harmonica is kind of far down the road but still included but you're not going to hear a lot of saxophone you're not going to hear a lot of piano that doesn't mean that horns and piano aren't played in texas i could list a bunch of great players but in terms of the overall sound it's very guitar bass and drum it's not as much variety as as like New Orleans, you know, where they really, you know, they focus on the piano and the horns and the drummer. You know, the drummer is very important in New Orleans music. And I'm not saying the drummer isn't important in Austin, but it's not the same thing. You know, we have this thing here called the Texas Shuffle. If you listen to a lot of early T-Birds, you'll know what I'm talking about. And on my album, the song Beer Belly Baby is a Texas Shuffle. It's the main thing you're going to hear here.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, how does that fit with the harmonica in general, that scene? As you say, it's trio bass, but there's that space for the harmonica as well, is there?

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. I mean, if you look at the history of Austin, we've had some great harmonica players. Kim Wilson, Gary Primage, James Gotten lived here for a long time, Paul Osher lived here, Jimmy Lee. There's definitely been some people come through Austin. Oh, there's a guy, not a lot of people know about this guy, I highly recommend, Lewis Cowdery. And I think Louis is in Kansas City now, but excellent, excellent harmonica player. So there's definitely harmonica players, but when I first moved here, my first decade, I was really focused on being a blues harmonica player. And although I got work and had some bands with some people you might have heard of, I found that a lot of bands were like, well, we could have three pieces in the band, and each split$100 for the night, and we'd each make$33. Or we could have four pieces with a harmonica, and we'd each make$25. I think we're going to go for three pieces. We need that$8 each. And I think what they were missing, what they didn't You know, in my opinion, if you have a good sound, an artistic sound, tip jar is going to be bigger, the percentage of the bar is going to be bigger, and the harmonica player could rock the tip jar during a song. So I actually think it was kind of short-sighted of them, but it was harder to really become a part of the working scene. Everybody loved me to sit in, but to really become part of the working scene, it was harder. When I finally opened up to playing other styles of music, that's when I really started making a lot more money as a performer.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, no, it's an interesting point. I mean, first of all, obviously every band needs a harmonica player. We know that on this podcast for sure. But it's a really interesting point you make there about, you know, a harmonica player often seen as sitting in, right? You might play, they might want you for three or four songs, right? But so yeah, talk about more about that transition to, you know, becoming a fully pledged member of the band.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Before I gave up on being a blues player only, I did have some blues bands where I became more of the leader. I might not have been the singer, but I was what I called the push, the guy who was making things happen, right? I was a part of a few blues bands that were working like every night. for a month to many, many years. But it was really my doing. And then I went to New York for a gig. And when I came back, somebody introduced me to the Curville Folk Festival, which is around two hours west of Austin. And it's an 18-day long festival where people camp out in tents. And yes, there's music on the stage. But what's really going on is people are playing music in the campgrounds 24 hours a day. And that's really where things broke for me. People really became aware that I could do a wide variety of music. And that's when I started getting hired all the time.

SPEAKER_02:

And were you playing this on mainly diatonic? I know you talk about you playing other harmonicas, but was it was your focus diatonic then?

SPEAKER_00:

I've always been real serious about chromatic. I think chromatic is appropriate. for certain styles of music that the diatonic harmonica doesn't quite reach. I would probably play like 70% diatonic and 30% chromatic. You know, a lot of people, they play chromatic in the key of D and they stick to the basic little Walter George Smith stuff. But I really took to it as a fully chromatic instrument. I like to play a lot of different styles of music on it. You know, I love the diatonic, don't get me wrong. I mean, there's a sound, you know, You can't get that sound on the chromatic. Now, you can get some ugly sounds on the chromatic, and I really like that. But that particular sound on the diatonic, you know, I think if I was on a desert island, I would choose that sound. But what I think about, the chromatic really is able to achieve what I think about without a lot of histrionics, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02:

so yeah no really interesting the point you made about how you managed to become a sort of band leader or at least the push as you called it

SPEAKER_00:

yeah one thing i like to say is that you don't need to create a whole band right away you need to find a musical partner i have this saying that says people don't follow leaders People follow followers. And so if you find one other person to play music with you, and then you go around town, and you're always showing up the two of you, after a while, the other musicians are going to say, what does that guy know about Michael Rubin? Why does he like Michael Rubin? And the other instruments just start falling into place. So once you get a band together, then there comes the question of, is this band about playing once a month? Or is this band about working all the time? And if this band is about working all the time, then somebody's got to do the work. And so a lot of band members really appreciate when somebody decides to do the work. And so to me, yes, it's great if you can be a singer. And I love singing. But the fact that I was willing to get on the phone and try and get us some gigs and that I was... doing the money at the end of the night and that I was putting up the posters and all the grunt work. I wasn't the only guy doing it, but I was grunting pretty hard. That was appreciated and it got me a lot of work.

SPEAKER_02:

And what about your approach to selecting the songs and the place of the harmonica in the band as well?

SPEAKER_00:

So everybody in a band has a position. It's kind of like a baseball team. So quite often, the lead singer would be writing the set list. This could be problematic because to me, the set list has to have a wave, right? It has to maybe start off strong and then slow down and then get strong again and kind of take the audience on a little journey. But it also has to have variety. I think a lot of the band leaders that I've worked with over the years struggle with the variety element of it. So, for example, let's say I play some Stevie Wonder's Chromatic. I do that on three songs in a night. Those three songs should be separated. But to a lot of band leaders, they're writing down the songs and they remember one of the Stevie Wonder songs. And they say, oh, well, I remember this other song and I remember this other song. And so they put those three Stevie Wonder songs right in a row. And so sometimes I would have to get involved and say, hey, these songs are really similar. We have to separate them. But other than that, I generally would let band leaders take care of that on their own.

SPEAKER_02:

And then you also mentioned, you know, the versatility, you know, you became very versatile and that's something I Definitely, you know, I'm right on board with that. And obviously lots of different styles of harmonica players on here, but I love that myself, right? Playing, you know, harmonica is known for blues. It's very impressive. It's very loud and brash, but there's so much more it can do. So, you know, what about that versatility and playing different styles?

SPEAKER_00:

It's always been important to me to be able to play pretty much everything that has come before me on the harmonica at a professional level. So I'm not the best country musician, Charlie McCoy style player in the world, but I'm professional at it. I'm not the best blues player in the world, but I'm professional at it. I'm not the best Toots Thielman guy, but I can do it, right? So every style, that harmonica that has come before me, I want to be able to do it because if I'm in the studio and the guy says, can you do that Stevie Wonder stuff? I don't want to be the guy that says no. I want to say, yes, sir. So this doesn't mean that I'm not working on my own style. I'm very interested in coming up with something unique that I'm doing that other people are not doing. But I also want to be able to help other people achieve their vision. Music is not always about what I want. It's sometimes about what they want.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, no, I agree with you. You definitely got a unique style. We'll get onto that when we talk about your album later. But so you were doing this, obviously you were getting session work then. And this was a part of the, you know, you wanted to be able to play a range of different styles to get the session work.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. I think my ability to play different styles really helped me get session work. And, you know, and when they found out I could read music, you know, there was a time when I was doing sessions all the time. Everything took a big slowdown when I had children. I'm not going to kid there. That really changed everything. I really had to shift from a performer to a teacher. I still do about four to six gigs a month. I used to do a gig a day.

SPEAKER_02:

On top of this versatility, I mean, we touched on obviously playing diatonic and chromatic. You also play bass harmonica and record bass harmonica and also play the harmonetta as well. So, you know, you like to play the different harmonicas. You used all these in sessions and recordings.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And if you want to hear my bass work, there is an album by a band that I was in for a while called the Susquehanna Hat Company. The album is called For the Love of the River. And it's very creepy music. all your favorite instruments, a banjo, accordion, violin, and bass harmonica, and a man and a woman who both sing. And it's all original music. It's the kind of music you might want to hear on Halloween. And, you know, you get a sense for what would the bass harmonica do if it were the bass player in a band.

UNKNOWN:

Oh,

SPEAKER_01:

So

SPEAKER_02:

what made that band want a bass harmonica?

SPEAKER_00:

You know, I was friends with those guys. It was almost like the universe wanted that band to happen because one day I was in my house and I'm very domesticated, right? Like, you know, I'm just here all the time because of my kids. And one day I turned to my wife and I said, I can't stand it. I got to go out tonight. And I went to a club and outside of the club were my two friends who were just sitting there talking. And I sat down and it turned out that they were forming a band. And I said, well, you know, if you'd ever consider, you know, me joining, you know, I play bass harmonica. You know, I thought it was just a joke and that, you know, I was going to wind up maybe playing regular harmonica for them. And they said, oh, that sounds real good. And that's how that started. So

SPEAKER_02:

you'd already, you know, you'd already were very proficient on the bass harmonic before this, or did you have to, you know, get down to it?

SPEAKER_00:

I had been working on it for around two or three years, but I will say the speed at which I improved by joining a band, it really helped me improve. Like before then, I kind of would say that I was fooling with the bass harmonica. And as soon as I got in the band, I learned real fast.

UNKNOWN:

So

SPEAKER_02:

I have a bass harmonica, and I spent a few years ago, I spent some time learning it, and I played in a sort of orchestral-type trio for a little while. But yeah, I've kind of dropped it since then, just because of the practical use of it. But I do love it. I think it's got a great position in the kind of acoustic setup. I'd love to play some, but you had like a mic sort of designed for it and things, didn't you, to get it working?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Nowadays, I would probably use the Suzuki mic, which, even though I have a Hohner, it fits a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, cause I mean the problem with the bass harmonica I always found is it's just hard to amplify cause it's so low in the mix, isn't it? But did you find that, you know, in an album that was fine cause you'd probably sort the mix out, but I think live it's quite difficult. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, one thing I did first off, I got lucky in that the bass harmonica that I had put the low reeds in the center on both of the harmonicas, you know, it's two harmonicas attached by a hinge and on a lot of the honers, it'll be high on the top and low on the bottom. And that puts, it kind of screws things up for amplification because you're not getting the same frequency going into the mic. I'm not sure if I'm being clear, but in any case, my harmonica lucked out and the low pitches were in the center on both harmonicas. And so it was much easier to amplify. And then I put it into a Galleon Kruger bass amplifier. And that amplifier could be plugged into a PA system. So you played electric bass as well, you said. Did that help? I did play electric bass, and it helped me understand the bass harmonica for sure. But if you know a little bit about chord theory, you could figure out the bass harmonica fairly easy. It's not rocket science. If you have a C major chord and the notes are C, E, and G, if you find that C and you find that G and just go back and forth between them, you're halfway there.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, I found that when I played it, I played simpler lines than a bass guitar would play just because the kind of responsiveness of the bass harmonica isn't brilliant. At least my one isn't. So did you find that you played reasonably simple bass lines on it or did you get more sophisticated?

SPEAKER_00:

It depended on the song. I definitely... could get more sophisticated. I think you're right. I think it's the simpler, the better. Sure,

SPEAKER_02:

sure, yeah. So that's great. And do you still play the bass harmonica now?

SPEAKER_00:

Not very much. It sits on my desk and I bring it out to show students.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Great. Well, we'll throw in the different harmonicas. We might as well pick up on the harmonetta. So I talked about harmonica quite recently. So this is basically a good way to play chords, right?

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. You can play any chord on a harmonetta. It's really amazing. So there was this guy, Bob Herndon, who was like the best harmon and a player that ever lived. And he would be at spa playing the harmonetta. And so spa is a harmonica convention in the United States. It's probably the biggest convention of the year. So I would go to spa and I would see this, you know, I mean, it's fantastic. It looks like a typewriter that you're blowing into. And I would ask this guy all kinds of questions. And finally, you know, the next year I showed up with a harmonetta and he gave me like, Three hours worth of free lessons. He was a very nice guy. He passed away, but super genius. So I took a lot of his ideas and I went from there.

SPEAKER_02:

So you've got some YouTube videos of you playing harmonica. Does it have much more practical use in a band setting or recording?

SPEAKER_00:

All of these orchestral harmonicas, they look really cool. And so if you ever want to get the audience excited... know bring out a chord harp and everybody goes crazy right but in terms of actually playing them to me it's more about studio work i'll show up at a studio to do some basic diatonic work and i'll try and say to them hey you want to learn something about harmonica you know and i'll bring out these other harmonicas and Oh, bass harp. We got to get a song with bass harp. Well, that's great. That'll be another$100. Okay. And so it's kind of like McDonald's. Would you like some fries with that?

SPEAKER_02:

Great. So let's get on to your recording career now. I think one of the first bands you let me know about was Fosco Jones.

UNKNOWN:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, so this was not the first album I did. Probably the first album where I was in the band was a band called Scarecrow, which is an acoustic duo like 30s and 40s blues. It's very hard to find that. But Fosco Jones, I think I sent it to you by email, and I'll be happy to send anybody by email because you can't find that. So just send me a message, michaelrubinharmonica at gmail.com, and I'll send it on over to you. Yeah, Fosco was a great singer-songwriter. and a fantastic showman. And we met, and he was already ready to make an album. So we practiced all day for a month, and then we made this live album, and then proceeded to have a pretty successful band for a couple of years. I really love the album. You know, I don't have the technique that I do today. That was back when I was in my early 30s. I'm 53 now. But it definitely had a spirit, a vibe that I really like. So I recommend that album.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, always good to get that raw playing when you're younger. There's certainly some energy in that, isn't there?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Michael Rubin on the harmonica, y'all!

SPEAKER_02:

And then, so yeah, moving through your career, you played with a well-known blues singer called Ruthie Foster.

SPEAKER_00:

Ruthie and I worked together for around a year and a half. Got to do some real big gigs with her. You know, she's famous. And recently she put out her latest album. On the album, she called me to do one song. It's called Love is the Answer. So if you go to YouTube or any streaming service, you should be able to find it. And it's got some, you know, real nice basic Stevie Wonder chromatic, but it's well done and that's what they wanted. So happy about that

SPEAKER_01:

one.

SPEAKER_00:

And Ruthie, you know, is a fantastic singer. And one thing, you know, that I really think, you know, I love singing, but there are people who, you know, singing is, is their main thing in life. And, uh, it's real nice to be able to work with amazing singers.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, absolutely. They live some music so much, doesn't it? Yep. And then you did an interesting, uh, work with an interesting band called Dr. Sick of the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So the album was called Six Pack and there's another band named Six Pack. So, uh, If you look us up on YouTube, you may see, you may wonder where I am. And if I'm not there, it's probably not my six pack. Yeah, so Squirrel Net Zippers is a famous band that he is now playing violin, guitar, and singing for. But before he joined the Zippers, we had a band for around six years. There is an album out, but it would be very hard to find. It's called Thrash Folk. Everything we did had kind of a punk rock edge to it. It was a very entertaining band.

SPEAKER_02:

It's interesting you should say punk rocker. So can Jason Ritchie. Last time he played in a punk rocker band. Yeah, he didn't think the harmonica fit so well in that sort of music. How did you deal with it?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, one thing I did, everybody in the band was jumping around like a monkey. And what I would do is I would dress up in a suit. And I would stand on the side and look as bored as humanly possible until it was my turn to play, at which point I would jump around like a monkey. And then I would go around back to looking as bored as I could. So that was my shtick. And some audience members didn't understand it. They would come up to Sick afterwards and say, hey, you know, that guy's not very professional. you know and but those who got it loved it i think uh punk harmonica works real well and uh give a shout out to a local punk harmonica player in austin texas walter daniels who is a hell of a nice guy and always supporting me so here's a shout out to the to walter so

SPEAKER_02:

And then you're playing a sort of pop rock band, Kalou James, five years with him.

SPEAKER_00:

That was very radio friendly. Kalou is actually, for real, a Nigerian prince who moved over to Austin to become a singer. He's a fantastic singer-songwriter. And he's still out there and they're actually doing very well. We worked together for around five or six years. I'm on three of his albums. It was a great showcase for me. It was almost like... situation like war or something where you had a pop band but it really featured the harmonica it wasn't like i was just kind of there i was really featured so that was that was a lot of fun Don't do any Nigerian music. We definitely had some songs that were based on African ideas. For me to say that it was actually authentic sounding, I'm not sure because Kalou was the only Nigerian in the band. And so I wonder, like I was in a reggae band for a long time called Mr. Brown. We actually had like a saxophone player from Burning Spear. It was a great band, but you know, How authentic is that stuff? I don't know. All I know is that the audience loved it.

SPEAKER_02:

Another band you've been in for a long time, I think 17 years, is with the McMercy family.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep, so that's an old-time country gospel band, five-part harmony singing, and we've got a couple albums out, and I kind of do my Charlie McCoy imitation. So that's another band where authenticity comes into question, you know. I'm not religious, and most of the band is not religious. I don't want to speak for everybody, but we love gospel music, so, you know, To me, just the question of what is religion and who has the right to sing these songs and do the themes of Christianity, forgiveness, loving one another, personal resurrection, where you decide to make a U-turn in your life and live a more morally correct life for the rest of your life. Can somebody who is not religious approach these themes and do it from a nice place? And I think the answer is yes.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I had a few, well, a couple of gospel harmonica players on recently. And yeah, harmonica works great in that sort of music, I think.

SPEAKER_00:

I love it. I love it. And I think some of the strongest players, you know, we've got Charlie McCoy, Todd Parrott, recently passed away, Mike Caldwell.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Mike and I traded lessons for a long time. Just before the end of his life, he was taking chromatic lessons from me. He was a fantastic chromatic player. I wish his stuff had gotten out there. Buddy Green and I are great friends. It's just a wonderful world of gospel harmonica that I wish more people would get involved in.

SPEAKER_02:

Are you playing a certain tuning to play gospel harmonica?

SPEAKER_00:

Actually, I only use unusual tunings on one song on those albums, and there's a minor song where I decided to use a double low F. But as you may know, it's very difficult to bend the lower pitches on a double low harmonica. And so... What I did is I used a tuning called equal third tuning. Other than that, I love country tuned harmonicas, and I do use them on my own personal album, but that's more in a blues setting than a than the standard gospel setting.

SPEAKER_02:

So you've been with a few of these acts quite a long time, 17 years with the McMercy, five years with Kalou James. So you're in a few bands at the same time, I take it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So right now I'm with the McMercy family band and Dylan Blackthorne. And Dylan has an album out that's streaming called Small Flames. Dylan used to run a band. Actually, I guess we're still around because he just hired me for an official gig. called That Damned Band, but I think he wanted to go under his own name for a while. And Small Flames album is a great album. It's very cacophonous, and it's very spooky music. And the harmonica is around 80% of the songs, and there's not a lot of harmonica, but I'm very excited about the harmonica that is there. It's really effective. It's one of my favorite albums. Recently, I was with a guy named Christopher Cody Meacham. Chris and I worked together for around four years. He moved away recently. He still sends me tracks, and I record them in my own room. So I'm on his latest album. But the album that really, I think, really shows off what we did together is called Old Time Wadis, W-A-D-D-I-E-S, Blues, and a Wadi is a Cowboy. Personally, on that album, there's a version of the song St. James Infirmary. I don't know if you ever heard of the chromatic Argentinian player Hugo Diaz.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, he is my all-time favorite chromatic player, and I was not aware of Hugo. And I played this solo on the album. And I don't know if you know Greg Iser, a great American player who lives in Spain. And Greg said, oh, I love that Hugo Diaz stuff you're doing. And I said, who? And he showed me. And I was just so amazed. And I'm not saying I'm anywhere near what Hugo Diaz is doing. But stylistically, I think they're cousins at least.

SPEAKER_02:

So when you're playing with these different outfits, are you playing mainly diatonic, chromatically mixture, anything, any other bass or harmonetta or anything?

SPEAKER_00:

So every now and then, I know with Kalou, there's some songs I did on bass. On the Small Flames album, there's some harmonetta. There's some other instruments, but mostly it's diatonic and chromatic. I love both of them.

SPEAKER_02:

And then getting on excitingly to your first debut album, which you release in... 2022, I'll

SPEAKER_00:

Worry If I Wanna. But mostly it's songs with lyrics, and they tend to be funny lyrics, perhaps because Rick Estrin was such an influence on me, I kind of woke up to funny blues. But I don't think stylistically I'm just coming from Rick. I really like Bryce Miller or James Harmon, Mose Allison. But I think even outside of the blues, guys like Dave Bromberg or Jonathan Richman or somebody was talking to me about Randy Newman the other day. And I think there is that I, you know, at least was inspired by Randy. And I think, you know, my humor kind of says that fart jokes and highbrow jokes can exist in the same song. And mostly I am just concerned about whether or not it's funny. And this does not mean that the lyrics don't have seriousness underneath them. There are many themes that run throughout the album. And if you were to really think about the lyrics, you would see that there's serious stuff going on in the songs, but it's funny on the outside.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, sure. Well, I understand you like to read some literature, so you've got some sort of literature themes in this album.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah. You know, I think the main theme in the album is identity and independence. You know, it starts off with a song called I'm a Little Rabbit, which is kind of an unusual brag in a blues situation. And I think for me, it was kind of a response to kind of macho blues, like I'm a man or hoochie coochie man. You know, I kind of looked at it and I said, well, What if I was something not so macho? What if I'm a little rabbit? How about that? Even the title song, I'll Worry If I Wanna, is very much a statement of independence. Don't tell me what to do. I'm going to do what I want. That's one thing that I think keeps running through the album. You

SPEAKER_02:

do a song called Kama Sutra Girl. I understand you play multiple positions in the harmonica as a testament to that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so Kama Sutra, as you may know, is a book from India about sexuality and about different positions And so I figured it would only be fair to play all 12 positions during my solo on that song. There's two solos on that song. The first solo is on a bass chromatic harmonica. And then in the middle is the all 12 positions solo.

SPEAKER_02:

So when you're playing all 12 positions in one solo, that's obviously on one harmonica then?

SPEAKER_00:

No, no, no. The song is in the key of D. And so what I did is every couple of bars, I switched harmonicas. I think I just went counterclockwise on the circle of fifths. So I think I started on a D harp in first position, then I went to a G harp in second, then a C harp in third, F in fourth, all the way around.

SPEAKER_02:

You do that in one take, or is that many takes to get at that?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, no. That's my secret. No, I did not do that in one take. If I wasn't using an amp and a microphone, I might have been able to. But the sound I wanted used an amp. So I definitely played one harp and then we stopped it and I played the next. And I remember writing that solo because it really is written out note for note. Not that I couldn't improvise in any position, but to really make something that worked, I wrote it out. You know, it was an idea that I didn't think was going to pan out. You know, I was like, oh, I got to do this, but it's never going to work. And so I spent a long time trying to figure out a way to really make it an exciting solo so that it wasn't just a trick, that it was musical and fun to listen to. Hopefully I succeeded. I like it.

SPEAKER_02:

Do you think you can tell that you're changing positions? Or does it almost sound like you are just playing one harmonic? Because it sounds very different in different

SPEAKER_00:

positions. I think you can tell if you're a harmonica player. I think if you're not a harmonica player, you may be kind of like, well, he's really moving from low to high a lot here. You know, but I think if you were a harmonica player, you could tell that it's different harps.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, here's a clip of the song so people can judge for themselves.

UNKNOWN:

Oh, Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

A nice effect you get as you impersonate a chicken on Go Milk Your Cow.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, if you really look at really early harmonica, like pre-war harmonica, there's a lot of barnyard animal imitations. So I felt I was kind of in the tradition there.

SPEAKER_02:

Definitely, yeah. There's not enough barnyard impersonations in harmonica.

SPEAKER_01:

What do you think about it, chickens?

SPEAKER_02:

So you've got quite a unique approach to playing the harmonica. It definitely sounds different. How have you worked

SPEAKER_00:

that up? It was very important to me to be able to help other people to achieve their goals. Because I knew I'm doing a lot of sideman work. And so one of the things that I set out to do was to at least be professional at every style. Beyond that, it was very important to me to come up with something unique on the harmonica. It's always been a goal of mine to say something different. And I have a joke, which maybe is not such a good joke, that says if it came down between sounding good and sounding original, I'd rather sound original. So hopefully I do both. To me, the harmonica has kind of three things that it does really well. It can knock the ball out of the park, you know, the home run hitter. It can be very beautiful. And it can do weird stuff, kind of the mad scientist stuff. So I work real hard at being able to do all three. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

great. So interesting. You've got a great album cover on this album. I'll worry if I want to. So tell us about that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so the album was drawn. I'm a cartoonist, but I didn't draw this. But I sent the basics to my friend, Dan Grissom. He's in the McMurcy Family Band, but he is also quite a famous artist. He's done poster work for Metallica, Wilco, Weird Al Yankovic. You know, if you go to Austin, his work is everywhere. He's got murals all over the city. So in any case, on the album cover, it says, I'll worry if I want to. And then it's a cartoon of me doing yoga, but I'm pulling out my hair. And then in the background are two other guys doing yoga that are dressed as hippies and one of them is starting to get a little a little annoyed because i obviously am drawing attention to myself with all my worry it's a fun album cover real fun

SPEAKER_02:

yes a good stuff and you sing i think all the songs of vocals on here yeah

SPEAKER_00:

yeah you know i worked real hard on singing but you know i actually really fall in love with my singing i i enjoy it uh i think i have charm Obviously, I'm not a traditionally strong singer, so not only did I take many, many lessons over the years from a variety of teachers, but if you were to see the work that went into the album before I walked into the studio, if you were to look at my little recording button on my phone, you would find for every song that you hear on the album, there's around 100 recordings of me singing that song and trying to listen for the happy accidents of, hey, that didn't sound so bad. What did I do there? Maybe I can imitate it. Or, hey, I thought I was sounding okay there, but I'm really not. And cutting that out. A lot of carving of the wood went into every song that you hear.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's great. It really shows you have to work at your singing, doesn't it? As hard as you do your harmonica playing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I mean, you know, there are people who just are natural singers. And that's wonderful. And I'm real glad that they have that gift. But for the rest of us, we have to really, really work at it. And one thing I've kind of come to the conclusion, and this really helped me in my singing, is that my voice is a musical instrument. And by that, I mean, there are kind of strings attached. And if I pull on the right string in the right way, the right sound will come out. And so having the approach that it's not that I can't sing, it's that I haven't learned to control my instrument yet. It really helped give me the courage to continue trying to figure out how to pull those strings. Moving on, another

SPEAKER_02:

great thing you've done is you played in a Broadway show called The Civil War.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. That was a great experience. When I was 28 years old, I received a phone call. They were going to do the show in Houston for three months before they went to New Haven for three months and then New York for three months. And they wanted Texas players because they didn't want to pay for New York players to fly out to Houston and give them a place to stay. So I auditioned. And at that point, I really couldn't read music. You know, I knew where the notes were, but that's about it. I didn't understand timing. They could tell that I struggled with reading music, but they really liked my playing anyway. And they gave me the gig and I had two weeks to prepare. First off, I had to get rid of my apartment and move to Houston. And then I had two friends give me... reading music lessons. So two hours worth of lessons. And then I just spent eight hours a day reading music. And when I showed up, I was definitely the worst music reader in the orchestra, but I could do it. You know, maybe we practiced for two weeks and then the show started. It was by the same guy who did Jekyll and Hyde. And it was a very well-received in Houston, except for the book. I don't know if you know what the book means. It's basically what the characters say in between the songs. And then we did New Haven, and it was very well received, except for the book. And so when we went to Broadway, great reviews, except for the book. After a very short time, we were nominated for Best Musical for the Tony, and then we lost, and then we closed. So the whole experience took about a year of my life. But I really feel like it was two things. Number one, I feel like I learned that in a high-level professional situation that I could rise to the challenge. And that was great to know. And the second thing was, one time I showed up to the show around five minutes before the show started. The conductor said, today the singer can't make it and the understudy can't sing it in the regular key. So today we will do this song in the key of A. Well, I understood how to transpose from one key to another, but I didn't understand enough about reading music that knowing, for example, the key signature showed one sharp meant that we were in the key of G. I didn't understand that. And so I raised my hand and I said, what key are we in now? And you could have heard a pin drop. The entire orchestra looked to me as if to say, what kind of idiot is sitting in this orchestra pit with us? Now, once they told me we were in the key of G, it was very easy for me to play the song in the key of A, and that was not a problem. And it was on a chromatic. I mean, I actually transposed. I didn't just pick up another harp. But it was a big wake-up call for me. That was like the big alarm. I'd always had a natural tendency to understand theory better than the average harmonica player, but that was the wake-up call. So I was around 30 years old. when it really became clear to me that I wanted to understand theory. And basically what I did is I went around to all my musician friends and I said, what's important to understand about theory? Yeah, good way to do it. So

SPEAKER_02:

you've got a really good YouTube channel. You've got lots of videos, lots of tuition videos, and it shows in the theory. You cover lots of the different bases, looking at the basics, the bends, but you also look at major scale progressions, modes. So you're covering, obviously, theory is an important part of the teaching that you do.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I've got a lot of videos on YouTube. My channel is called Michael Rubin Harmonic, because at the time, YouTube would not let me put an A at the end of it. It just wouldn't fit. But if you go to my website, MichaelRubinHarmonica.com, there is a link to all my YouTube videos that pertain to theory. It puts them in order. So, you know, at the first video, you learn that 1 plus 1 equals 2. In the second video, 2 plus 1 equals 3. And by the 30th video, you understand that 10 times 10 equals 100. So, yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

so you do lots of teaching. You've taught at various camps. Obviously, at Kerrville, you mentioned spa. You've talked with Jason Rich and John Gindig.

SPEAKER_00:

If anybody wants to work with me, I'm happy to do it. Just send me an email, michaelrubinharmonica at gmail.com, and we can do online lessons. So

SPEAKER_02:

the question I ask each time is a 10-minute question. What would you spend 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_00:

Right now, what I'm focused on is if each chord has, let's say, three notes, like a C major chord is C, E, and G, I may take one of those notes, E, and find different ways to approach it. So I may get to that E from an F note or from an F sharp note or from an E flat note. So I'm kind of surrounding the notes the the chord tone and there's many ways to do this so that's basically you know what i'm spending my hours doing is it's just getting real good at this method it's called enclosures you know it's not like i wasn't aware of enclosures for years but i'm getting real serious about it now

SPEAKER_02:

okay so let's move on to talking uh the last section about gear so um Before we dive into other sorts, seeing there's a video of you playing the DM-48, the MIDI chromatic. So is that something you're still playing?

SPEAKER_00:

You know, I don't play it very much. If you really want to hear somebody who's going deep into it, I recommend Jason Keen. I enjoy the MIDI chromatic and audiences loved it, but band leaders did not. Perhaps artistically, they don't like the idea of MIDI. What I love about the DM-48 is that you can practice with headphones on. So that's wonderful.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And there's the video of you playing Sophisticated Lady with some ghostly tone on there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. There's three tracks on that. And so I'm playing the melody, the bass and the chords.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

What's

SPEAKER_00:

your choice of a diatonic? My main diatonic is the Special 20. And if I want it to be set up for overblows, I go to Joe Spears. And my main chromatic is the Suzuki Sirius. Mostly I don't use a standard tuned chromatic. I use a bebop tuned chromatic where instead of four blow being C, four blow is B flat and with the button in it's B. And it just enables you to get more combinations of notes. And you've also created a couple of tunings. It's true. The main one, I guess you can look on my website in the information page is called the get picking harp. So one day I was watching a guitarist and he was playing a bass line. And a melody. So I said, I wish harmonica could do that. And he said, well, what would it take to make that happen? So I thought about it and I invented this harp. It's a tongue blocker's nightmare. I mean, the amount of histrionics that your tongue has to go through to make this stuff work. So I'm not very serious about it, but it was fun to invent something.

SPEAKER_02:

And you got Pat Misson

SPEAKER_00:

to

SPEAKER_02:

make

SPEAKER_00:

that for

SPEAKER_02:

you. Yeah, Pat made it for me. That's right. And you mentioned overblows. So I think it's something you obviously play this song in 12 positions. It's something that you spent a lot of time, you know, really working.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I got real deep into overblows for around seven years. I chased the, you know, can you play one harmonica in any style of music in any key? You know, I'm real glad I did it. because it taught me a pile about music. I'm not so interested in it now. If I want to play in unusual positions, I tend to do it on the chromatic. But I will say that, you know, let's say I'm playing with somebody and they do a minor song, and then the next song is a minor song, and the next song is a minor song. After about the third minor song, I start playing in eighth position just to keep myself sane, you know? And what about your embouchure? What are you

SPEAKER_02:

using?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I use all three methods, puckering, tongue blocking, and u-blocking. I find u-blocking is especially good for high note blow bends on the diatonic and also for blow bends on the chromatic. I'm deep into bending on the chromatic, and I don't think a lot of people go that far into it. To me, although obviously tongue blocking enables you to get sounds that you can't get any other way, I feel like both puckering and tongue blocking work. inspire me in different ways there are certain tones that i only think about while puckering i can make those tones while tongue blocked but i never think to do it right and the same thing with certain timings there's certain ways that i would play a solo with rhythm that i would think about tongue blocked but i wouldn't think about puckered so to me that's more what they're for And what about amps and mics? So mostly I use some stuff I got from Dennis Grunling. I use a Sure Bullet mic shell with a modern Japanese crystal inside of it. And then I use a Gibson GA-40 amplifier. I think it's an original from 1958. And that's what's the amplified harp on my album. I also have a Supra that is very loud and great tone and weighs around two pounds. So it's a great amp for smaller gigs.

SPEAKER_02:

Final question about your future plans. You got plans to record any more albums?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the next album has been, as far as I know, written. I mean, I may surprise myself with a song or two. I, you know, had a meeting with the producer. We're going to make some demos so I can practice playing and singing. And that's coming up soon. So the fantasy is that by the end of 2024, there'll be an actual album out. And I have a larger fantasy of around five albums out of my own music by the time I'm done. Maybe more. Who knows? And then I tell myself that when I retire, if a harmonica teacher could retire, is I would like to run my own band and be the leader of the band.

SPEAKER_02:

And can people see you gigging around Austin, anywhere else?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm playing the Curvo Folk Festival in the afternoon, I think one or two o'clock with the McMercy Family Band on Sunday, October 15th, the day after the eclipse. And then the McMercy Family Band is going to be in Louisiana on Saturday, October 28th at the Black Pot Festival. I think we're early in the afternoon, but I'm not positive. And then on Sunday, the 29th, hopefully I'll be able to drive back in time. David Rose, who is an Austin artist, is having a CD release party. And not only am I performing with him, but the second act that night will be that damn band. So if you want to get out October 29th, I don't even know the details. But if you send me an email, michaelrubinharmonica at gmail.com, I'll let you know where that is. So that's some upcoming gigs.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's great stuff. So it's been great to speak to you today, Michael Rubin. Thank you, Neil. Thank you so much. Once again, thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast. Be sure to check out their great range of harmonicas and products at www.zydle1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zydle Harmonicas. Thanks to Michael for joining me today, and also thanks to Robert Sawyer and Andrew Vidgen for the donations to the podcast. It really helps me out with the running costs. I'd also like to thank an unsung hero of the podcast, my dad Frank, who helps me with some set-up experimentation whenever I call on him. Thanks, Pops. It'd be great if you could leave a review of the podcast in your favourite podcast player, or via the podcast website at harmonicahappyhour.com. Thanks all for listening again. We'll finish now with Michael playing a solo from the title track of his album, I'll Worry If I Wanna.

UNKNOWN:

I'll Worry If I Wanna