Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

David Barrett interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 118

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David Barrett joins me on episode 118.
David is based in San Jose, California, where he took   lessons from Gary Smith from age 16, in addition to learning from great harmonica recordings. He started teaching harmonica himself from age 18 and has become one of the foremost harmonica educators around, with his BluesHarmonica.com website an invaluable resource. He ran the School of Blues for twenty years and has written over seventy instructional books, DVDs and CDs.
David has four albums to his name, including two albums where he has collaborated with other harmonica players. These albums showcase his dedication to playing blues harmonica, where he has crafted harmonica parts from his lifelong study and love of the art form.

Links:

Website:
https://www.bluesharmonica.com/

School of Blues:
https://www.schooloftheblues.com/

Hohner profile page:
https://www.hohner.de/en/david-barrett

David's tuition books:
https://www.melbay.com/AdvancedSearch/Default.aspx?SearchTerm=david+barrett

Videos:

David's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@bluesharmonicateacher


Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
--------------------------------
Blue Moon Harmonicas: https://bluemoonharmonicas.com


Support the show

SPEAKER_02:

David Barrett joins me on episode 118. an invaluable resource. He ran the School of Blues for 20 years and has written over 70 instructional books, DVDs and CDs. David has four albums to his name, including two albums where he has collaborated with other harmonica players. These albums showcase his dedication to playing blues harmonica, where he has crafted harmonica parts from his lifelong study and love of the art form. 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:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Hello David Barrett and welcome to the podcast. Hi Neil, thanks for having me on. You're based in San Jose in California, yep? Yeah, the greater Bay Area. Yeah, so you're in that great west coast US harmonica scene there. So have you always been based around there?

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, pretty much born and raised in this area.

SPEAKER_02:

You saw some of the great harmonica players around there. I mean, I know that you had lessons with Gary Smith and you know, so what were your influences around that great area for harmonica?

SPEAKER_05:

I started when I was 14 years old. My greatest influence influences and still are my greatest influences are recordings. Local public radio stations would play blues from midnight to four o'clock in the morning and so as a teenager that was my primary influence was recordings and then I went to a blues festival when I was 16 and Gary Smith performed and that was my very first time actually seeing live blues harmonica. That was pretty fantastic so I saw the musicians after their set were going out the side gate to get their barbecue after their set. My plan was to plant myself there and wait for Gary to go out. When he came out, I said, You know, I told him who I was, and now I've been playing harmonica, and I'd love to take lessons. And he actually first said no, and then I begged and pleaded him and asked him again. He says, okay, I'll give you lessons. So I took, I think, nine, maybe seven to nine lessons with him, and as a stupid kid, I thought I learned as much as I could from him, though there was a lot more I could have learned from him. After that, he did take me out to some of the local blues clubs and invited me to play some of the local blues blowouts, so... He was and still is my greatest influence on the harmonica besides recordings.

SPEAKER_02:

So interesting that Gary Smith didn't want to teach you. So he didn't give lessons generally to other harmonica players then?

SPEAKER_05:

You know, he said he would get one or two students, and what they would do is they would start, and they wouldn't practice, and then they would just, you know, take a lesson or two and stop. My begging him to give lessons, please, Mr. Smith, I'll practice. Those lessons were great, really. Up to that point, I'd only been puckering, and all these sounds that I was trying to mimic for a couple years on recordings, I did my best to mimic them, but I didn't know that there was actually a different embouchure that was being used. So he really opened up a whole world for me. I audio recorded, I brought my boombox into each lesson, and that was really important. I know that I would have only gained maybe 10% of what he had to teach if I didn't record it, and then just spend the month going over and over and over what he taught, not only playing what he showed me, but also trying to copy what examples he was playing for me. Nothing was written down, so it was all by ear. And actually, when I started teaching when I was 18, I always provided recordings for the students, still to this day.

SPEAKER_02:

then you did play some trumpet and saxophone was that before you took up the harmonica at 14?

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah so I started in third grade and around seventh or eighth grade played a little bit of trumpet so saxophone up to that point and I wouldn't say that I was good it was just something that I did it was an elective in in school but it wasn't until the harmonica and actually very specifically when I heard blues for the first time that really ignited me so I just went to the local music store bought a harmonica a lesson book of Phil Duncan lesson book published by mel bay and that taught the basics of folk tunes and such and then a couple months later i saw the movie crossroads and wow hearing john duke logan playing a lot of the harmonica work frank frost some cemetery stuff on there as well so And I took my little tape recorder and put it up to the speaker of the TV and recorded all the harmonica parts, and that's when I figured out they're doing stuff that I can't do, and I think this harmonica might come in different keys. So I went back to the local music store, bought some more keys, and that started my education of blues harmonica. And I mentioned before the local nonprofit radio stations, colleges basically would play blues from midnight to 4 a.m. on Friday night and Saturday night and there was a Sunday afternoon show. So I'd stay up till midnight, put a tape in there, record it, flip it over 45 minutes later. I'd set my alarm for another 45 minutes. Sometimes I would wake up, sometimes I wouldn't, and I'd put a fresh tape. And I spent my weekends as a teenager going through those tapes and finding anything that had harmonica on it and tried to learn it.

SPEAKER_02:

So I think that's quite common for people of our age. I think we're similar age that, you know, we would learn from records, get hold of whatever harmonica records we could and learn from that. Whereas now with your, you know, your great teacher resources that you've done, you're obviously not teaching that way. You know, you learn from sort of records and learning them by ear and some teaching, obviously, with Gary Smith. So what do you think compared to how you teach now where you've got very, you know, a rigorous sort of schedule for how people learn compared to, you know, how you learned when you were younger?

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, very different. Blues is an oral tradition. Listen, copy, try to use. So, you know, Developing the ear is still, of course, the most important thing. As an educator, I want to provide as many tools as I can to have the student be successful in what they're learning. And especially nowadays with online education, I can give them video recordings, audio recordings, PDF study songs, and eventually I'll move them as soon as they're capable to copy in the grates. So I am spoon-feeding the student the material that works for most people as a student advances I try to do lesson lesson written form it's kind of funny to watch them in the lessons because they kind of look at me like well you're going to write this down but I'll play a simple lick and then I'll just look at them like okay it's your turn to figure this out and I'm thinking in my head come on this is only three notes you can do it so little by little what happens is I force the student to do more and more by ear I think some Sometimes that exploration of a small idea over a long time is very beneficial. I don't think most people are patient enough or honestly want it as much as, say, I did or you did, for example. And they might not put that same amount of effort that allowed us to be successful because it just takes a lot of work. I've heard in your past interviews, and I want to say thank you for your podcast. It's very inspiring to listen to all these great players. It's inspiring to me. and my students, that things didn't come across our path very often, whether it's something we figured out or we heard a little nugget of someone kind of mention something. It wasn't like fully explained. It was just like, yeah, you got to put your tongue to the right. And I'm like, okay, well, what does that mean? And you would explore it. And there wasn't any hurry. You just kind of worked on it and tried to absorb it into your playing. For me as a teacher, Especially in the past, I've tended to give students too much. And it was simply because I wanted to give them value. I want to give them as much value as I can for their time. Obviously, they took time off for work and their family and paid money to attend the workshop and fly down. I learned over time that I got to be careful not to teach with a fire hose, that I need to give them smaller chunks to work on and allow that to absorb into their plane. So I'd say now it's important for players, now that we've moved from a model of scarcity to abundance and actually confusion it's important that you moderate your own digestion of material and and kind of put blinders on and say okay cool this new technique or this song or whatever you're working on give yourself some time to not only learn the song but take the licks out of the song and put a jam track on and try to put those licks and surround those licks with your improvising your own vocabulary so that these new ideas will show up in

SPEAKER_02:

your improvising. coming out and you know different ideas you're not playing the same thing I think that really crafting the way you've really looked really deeply into a lot of these players has really benefited so you know what do you think about that kind of crafting solos as you have

SPEAKER_05:

you know early on it was basically a way that I was teaching it just felt natural that if I'm teaching a technique then I'll show the students some licks and then I'll show them how to take those licks and put them into phrases I've always done transcriptions so learning from the greats that's an an essential part, especially, again, of the folk music style. You've got to learn from the greats. But in my books, that format worked out really well. And I might just do a one-chorus example of these ideas in context. For a period of time, I moved away from it and was doing more things purely from transcriptions for a number of years. Actually, Joe Felisco and I had a good conversation about this. At that time, he'd been teaching pretty much solely with transcriptions, and I'd been teaching solely from examples that I've written, and we had some good conversations about this, and I kind of started moving towards what he was doing. What I liked about teaching from transcriptions is it wasn't my opinion. It was, this is what they're doing, and I'm going to teach you what they're doing, and it's up to you on how you want to utilize their approach, their licks, their techniques, etc. And actually, Joe started moving into writing study songs, which he still does today. I did that probably for a good five, maybe even ten years, and then when I decided to do blues harmonica dot com it gave me the opportunity you know up to that point I'd written many many books for Mel B publications and it gave me an opportunity to rewrite how I approach my teaching so my buddy Tony Wilder he took lessons from me for a while he said that he gets the most gratification from learning songs because it's empirical you know you work on the choruses the licks and the song and by the time you're done you got a song you can play at a jam session you got something you can play for somebody and I noticed that with students as well, so I decided when I started writing material for bluesharmonica.com, I'm going to kind of do the opposite. I'm going to write a full song of which you can then pull the licks out and then use that in your improvising, for example. And my focus was to make each chorus, each 12-bar blues, equal about two weeks' worth of practice. So if a song has four choruses, that's about a couple months to learn the song. So it gave me a great vehicle to teach students, give them something that they can play at a jam session when they're done. But also, most importantly, the main reason why we write study songs is the most difficult thing about being a harmonica player is once you're able to do basic when the Saints go marching in Kumbaya on the harmonica, you learn some techniques, some bending, some tongue blocking, whatever it might be, is that when you feel like, okay, now I'm ready to start studying this little Walter song or Paul Butterfield, the learning curve goes way up. So actually the upper beginning, lower intermediate, that's where most harmonica players stop because what happens is that in a professional player, there could be four to seven techniques in one lick that they play, and that's very difficult to teach and even in a song that might have most of the song is pretty approachable by an upper beginning to lower intermediate player there's always going to be licks that they cannot play I can show them ways but there's always something kind of nagging on at them that like I but for me to play the song I want to play it like the original to give them great songs I hope with my you know skill set as a writer hopefully great songs when they listen to it that they're like wow wow, that's a cool blues harmonica song. That's what I want first, is I'll play them a song and say, what do you think? I want them to go, wow, that's really cool. Okay, well, I'm going to show you that next. So it inspires them to learn the song, but also I can moderate those banging your head against a brick wall moments of nothing, everything's going to challenge you, but nothing's going to stop you from being able to play this song. So you have your stepping stones to success instead of all these little points that could lead to failure, at least from a motivation standpoint Now, for me, when it comes to songwriting, I actually had written a lot of books and recorded a lot for those books. It took me a lot of years before I recorded my first CD. I felt like I didn't have anything to offer that the other great blues harmonica players out there were already doing. It kind of dawned on me one day that, you know, what I can offer is my songwriting skills because I don't sing. So I have spent a lot of time in studying and writing instrumentals for myself and for for my students. And understanding how phrasing works and how you can develop that phrasing over what is two and a half minutes to five minutes, how do you keep the listener's attention over a long period of time and taking what is in some ways a limited instrument and not making it sound limited over that, again, two to five minute time range? To me, improvising, songwriting, soloing themes, ways to keep that interest, that's very fascinating to me

SPEAKER_02:

yeah and so this first album you mentioned is called Serious Fun released in 2003 with the John Garcia band so on here there are about four or so instrumentals right so all written by you crafted in that way yeah so you know you've been quite careful what you've done you're not just improvising them right

SPEAKER_05:

Correct. Yeah, there's definitely improvising in there, but there would be a head, maybe a second head, hook. You got to be careful, in my opinion, to not write too much. I'd say the majority of players have songs that they do work out note for note, phrase for phrase, because the song kind of wants to be that way. So I allow the song to go where it wants to go. But a lot of times in the blues, what we do is we start with the groove, something that either is not in your current repertoire so that, you know, that's how you keep a set interesting and is with different grooves and then from there you try to write a hook something that permeates the entire song or a head which is if it's a 12 bar blues it's 12 bars maybe you play it twice and then you're off to soloing and then probably the guitar or piano and then you come back to the head I'm careful not to write too much for two reasons one I don't want to give too much direction to the other musicians because I want them to bring what they have to bring that's why I hired them that's why I'm playing with them I want them to bring their own voice so That's one thing, and then you have to allow room for what our music style is, which is it's an improvised music style. So you write the head, you have the groove, you know generally what impact it's going to have on the audience, but you allow the inspiration of the moment, the musicians you're playing with, the venue that you're playing with, to allow the solos to turn into what they want to turn into at that moment.

SPEAKER_02:

So you mentioned earlier on that you started teaching at the age of 18. So did you make a decision early on to, you know, really push into the education side? And was that partly based on the fact that so you could be a full time musician, harmonica player and, you know, and have that supplementary income? You know, what was the thinking of that?

SPEAKER_05:

You know, it was pretty organic. I was asked to teach. I was playing jam sessions and jamming with everybody that I could at that time. And what would happen is I'd go into local music stores and I'd go in to buy harmonicas and they would ask, hey, have you ever thought about teaching? Because we get people all the time asking for harmonica teachers. My first thought was like, I don't know how to teach. I'd have no idea how to approach that. So I didn't really take it seriously. But after two or three times of them mentioning it, I thought, why not? I wanted to do anything and everything having to do with music and specifically blues and harmonic. So I decided before I went into my senior year of high school, so I guess 17 or 16, that I did want to do music, but I wanted to be a performer. At that time, Stevie Ray Vaughan was very popular. I was thinking I wanted to be the Stevie Ray Vaughan of the harmonica. I took whatever classes were available at my high school. One was choir. One of them was AP music theory. I did not belong in an advanced placement music theory, but the instructor let me in, and I was the literal dumb blues harmonica player in the class. So this was kind of part of my plan of just doing anything that had to do with music. Then I started writing material just because, like, okay, well, What am I going to teach them? So I wanted to write something down so that they can look at it and we can work on it. I started in Gilroy at Porcello's Music and then I quickly went over to the Music Tree in Morgan Hill and then I looked around at other places and then San Jose was Showcase Music Institute. Bruno at Showcase Music Institute, he is a vocal instructor, a serious musician, had a great band and he had a vision of this being specifically a teaching institution. I decided I'm going to do, each month, I'm going to do a workshop on a specific technique on the harmonica. And I spent a lot of time writing and thinking and exploring in my own mouth what was going on to create these sounds and recordings. And my thought was, you know, after a year, maybe I'll have a book and I could use that for my teaching. Maybe I'd shop that around to different publishing companies. So after a year, I had what I called Building Harmonica Technique. I sent it off unsolicited. I didn't know that... That was not the norm to five of the largest publishing companies. And Mel Bay, I was fortunate that Mel Bay did pick up that book. And then it then led to Classic Chicago Blues Harmonica. Then Mel Bay, Bill Bay, who I've always worked with at Mel Bay, pretty much gave me a full open opportunity to write whatever I wanted to write.

SPEAKER_02:

Here's a word from my sponsor. Looking for a new harmonica? Or maybe you just want to replace the replays on an existing harp? Theharmonicacompany.com Thank you very much. So that's right, so the book you released was the first real focused blues harmonica book.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, that I'm aware of. I wasn't aware of Steve Baker's harp handbook at that time. I would say that's the first serious book on harmonica. It wasn't focused on blues harmonica. Deciphering what us as blues harmonica players use, like tongue blocking slaps and other techniques that blues harmonica players use. It was a general harmonica book, but I'd say that was the first serious one. I wasn't aware of it.

SPEAKER_02:

So you decided to focus heavily on blues from the beginning. Very much your bluesharmonica.com is you know focused on blues harmonica that's obviously a decision you made yeah

SPEAKER_05:

yeah it was pretty simple just because that's what I play and that's what I love blues harmonica has always been the the most popular dominant style anyways so as a private music instructor I of course have students who want to go in different directions whether it's country or pop or even a little bit of chromatic and I'm happy to help them with it I let them know that hey this is not my specialty I can probably help you out a little better than what you could do on your own but simply put i've just always followed my goosebumps and still to this day even if i wasn't teaching and this wasn't my income i'd still be doing something with blues harmonica every day i transcribing and just research i just i just love it

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, your focus is on the traditional approach to blues, I think, isn't it? You know, tongue blocking and the Chicago blues, you know, you're not going into kind of modern techniques of overblows and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_05:

No, again, it's just following my goosebumps, though I highly respect players that do that.

SPEAKER_02:

So picking up on the School of Blues then, I think you started this in 2002. So this was specifically a school for the study of blues music and possibly the first one in the world doing so. So what was the setup here? This was a sort of in-class thing, was it? And it wasn't just harmonica, right? You had different instruments, guitar and bass and things, yeah?

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, one of the music stores that I taught at, I ended up managing that store for about six years, and what I would see is students would come into their little cereal box of a teaching studio, walk to the back of the store, take their private lesson, and then walk out. And I thought, what a shame that these instructors don't team up and help give their students the opportunity to play together. You know, some people, they just want to play music in their home, and they're totally happy with that, but a lot of people would have loved to have had the opportunity to get together and play with other like-minded people. So the reason why I started School of the Blues was, one, as a kind of a central place to do my business. At that time, I'd been doing a lot of workshops over years, and I also sold products on my website, my own books, but also I used to manufacture products for the harmonica. So that gave me a home base, a place to teach my private lessons, but also bring in other people, like-minded teachers like myself, guitar, piano, piano, voice, bass. We didn't have drums on site because of just space limitations. So at the core, they were private lessons in the individual studios that I built. But the next step was the key thing for me was to give students an opportunity to play together. So once a month I would do a harp night and that would be students sitting around in a circle and we would jam and that would give them a first comfortable step among friends, just jamming, playing to a jam track, getting comfortable playing in front of other people. Then they would quote-unquote graduate, or whenever they feel comfortable to do so, they could play at our monthly jam session. The jam sessions, first of all, were the instructors backing the students. And it actually ended up being a real popular show, even though I didn't mean it to be a show. And it was packed, and students, little by little, started to feel uncomfortable to play. The advanced students loved it but the beginning students were terrified of it so actually I talked to the club and said hey can we come in on a Sunday like in the afternoon when you're closed and that made all the difference in the world gave the students an opportunity to play and not be in front of an audience and gain that experience we eventually moved to another place and that other place I chose it because it didn't have a stage I didn't want it to be you're up here playing down to there and have all this intimidation factor so we do our monthly jam sessions and then we also had house bands So every six months, as instructors, we'd sit down and say, okay, who's ready for this? And we would create two bands of the various instruments, and we'd walk them through a six-month training program of what it meant to play in a band, from picking songs, charting, what it meant to run a jam session, because the students, these house bands were students. providing backing for the other students. So I'd tell my students, say, hey, this band is not a professional band that's going to look down at you if you make mistakes. These are other students who have made those same mistakes, probably will be making mistakes when you play. So I wanted to try to make it as low pressure as possible. So from the harp night to the jam session, student concerts every six months to being part of a house band, and then eventually, if they keep doing it, then they become local blues musicians in our area. So that was one of the great things as the years went on to see our students become local, influential harmonica players, or not harmonica, all instruments, different instruments, professional players in the Bay Area.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so great stuff. And you also released an album with the School of Blues all-star band, We Are the Blues, in 2007.

UNKNOWN:

......

SPEAKER_02:

That was your second album?

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, at that time I designed a Blues in the Schools program for the Monterey Bay School District. It was through the Monterey Bay Blues Festival. And part of the program was to... We went into the studio and recorded a whole bunch of blues standards. It was live in the studio. I think it was... from load in to out of the studio. I think it was in there, record, mix, master, and out in like seven hours. So it was a very, very fast process. But actually, it's one of my favorite albums. just has a nice feel to it. But what we did then is we would go to the local school and do a history of the blues in an assembly type of thing, and then we'd tell the kids, hey, whoever's interested in learning more about the blues and playing the blues, let your teacher know, and then we would come back later and we'd work with these individual kids in ensembles, put them in ensembles, and we would take the songs that we recorded on that CD and say, you guys choose which ones you want to do, and We would help them chart it out, and then they would actually get a chance to perform on a special stage. And the best band of the different schools actually got to play on the main stage. And I remember one of the guitarists, we were walking in the back of the stage going up, and he's pointing at Buddy Guy's guitar. He's like, that's Buddy Guy's guitar. So that was a really cool experience. So We Are the Blues came from the song selections that we wanted to show the kids. No one would know listening to the CD that we chose those songs. for a specific purpose because they're all just great blues standards.

SPEAKER_02:

So another great album that you released, which I had and I listened to a lot when I was younger, is the History of the Blues Harmonica Concert. So this is a live concert that you recorded with Joe Flisco, Dennis Gruening and Kinya Pollard, where you're covering different parts in the history of the harmonica with Joe Flisco playing the pre-war.

SPEAKER_00:

southern pacific

SPEAKER_01:

and

SPEAKER_02:

you playing the chicago blues can you playing sort of butterfield and dennis playing more modern stuff so a really great album and i know it's something that you deliberately made a decision to try and emulate the records as closely as possible you know you weren't trying to put your own slant on it so and i thought it was really educational myself listening to it getting all these different songs and styles so i really love that album and you're playing on it you know you do some uh some little walter stuff um some junior well stuff

SPEAKER_01:

so

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Tell us about how you got that one together, that concert and the album.

SPEAKER_05:

Thanks. Yeah, my goal was to recreate the experience of going to see these great harmonica players live. So at my harmonica masterclass workshops, there'd be concerts in the evening time. So my idea, I contacted Joe and said, why don't you do the pre-war stuff, and then we'll talk a little bit about the players, their importance in history. I'll do the post-war. Now, of course, Joe could have done all the post-war. He could have done the whole show. But, you know, I wanted to play too. I

SPEAKER_02:

think you're right. Those little introductions to each song is brilliant as well, because exactly that, you're giving the information about the song and the player. So that's really great too, yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

Thanks. Yeah, yeah. Again, I'm an educator first and foremost. I want to, you know, share the love of this great music and these players. Now, for me, yeah, my goal was really to do a recreation thing. I wanted to play as much as I could, note for note, technique for technique, and then try to embody that player and that energy. I think now if I was to do it, I probably wouldn't have done it that way because a recreation thing is one thing, but I've kind of learned that you want to hear the personality of the person playing it, not just copying something from recording. So if I did it again, I probably would do the head, you know, opening chorus pretty close to the original and then maybe stray a little bit in the second chorus maybe a little more in the third then kind of showed what i had to say in that song still playing within the style of that player but i think from an educational standpoint it's what i wanted to have so

UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

So moving on to the fourth album that you did. So you clearly like to bring other players in. You know, we have the guys you talked about in the history of the blues harmonica. And so you released It Takes Three with Gary Smith. Of course, you had lessons with him when you were young. And then Aki Kumar. And so you've got the three of you playing on there. So three generations of South Bay blues harmonica, as you call it. So another collaborative one where you do some songs together, such as Rocket Ride, where you're playing together. So yeah, another great album for the harmonica fan.

SPEAKER_05:

Thanks. Yeah, that's my favorite album and probably represents me best as a player and as a songwriter. And Gary's been doing these multiple harmonica ideas for many decades. The thing that Gary would say is, you know, I would work out the parts and I'd send the material to the guys, but they would come to the gig and say, ah, I didn't have time to learn the parts. And one day I said, let's do an album. Let's get together. We would get together, I think it was every other week, might have been weekly at the School of the Blues because he lives close to School of the Blues and let's work out tunes and you know me I'll practice it and at that time I had a lot of music writing experience so I could maybe even take it to the next step or at least a different step and we were thinking about who that third player would be and then Aki came to mind because you know Gary was my teacher and I was Aki's teacher so that was kind of a fun thing besides just being a great player so the whole idea was to write horn style parts for the harmonica and we practice and really do it justice because like rocket ride gary smith played all the parts in rocket ride and then charlie muscle white plays an amazing first position solo in there but it's gary playing those parts so there's something different about having different players play the parts because of all the different timbres and stuff that they bring It was just a fun project. We all just split the cost of the project. We got the musicians we wanted to play with. We had a blast doing it, and I think it's a great representation of the West Coast blues harmonica sound.

SPEAKER_02:

And then so you're also a Grammy-nominated blues harmonica player playing on John Lee Hooker Jr.''s album All Odds Against Me.

SPEAKER_03:

¶¶ I ordered them to shoot first and then dial 911

SPEAKER_05:

John Garcia, he's passed away now, but he was a musical partner of mine for many years, and he was John Lee Hooker's senior bandleader. For about six years, he would go on the road with John Lee Hooker, and basically it was his job to go to a new town, rehearse the pickup band, and then they would play that night. When John Lee Hooker Jr. started playing, he called John his inheritance. He says, you played for my dad, please play for me. So John did a lot of the arrangements and stuff for the song, so that was my end since I played with John a lot. And also, the type of stuff that he plays is a lot more adventurous than the standard 12-bar stuff. And because of being a teacher, I'm more familiar with moving outside. I'm not like a jazz player who can really go outside, but for the average blues harmonic player, I can deal with some of the stuff. And actually, there's kind of a funny story. I wasn't available for the first recording date, so we hired another local blues harmonic player, a good local blues harmonic player. But John Garcia came into the school and says, oh, Dave, it was horrible. He couldn't do it. And he said, just the chord changes, he couldn't play it. And he says, Hooker's gonna be giving you a call to set up another time. So he called me up and we worked out a time and I said, send me the song ahead of time and I listen to it and it's got all these chord progressions all over the place and like his father he didn't stick to a structure and I remember going into the studio you know I worked on the song like for an hour or so because it's it was so complex I go into the studio I record it in one take and they're having a party inside the recording booth and I said don't you want me to you know do another take and like no no no come on in they were so happy because the other guy they had to spend a couple hours with that it sounded you know, good the first take that they were patting me on the back and I was trying to let them know that, hey, the other guy couldn't do this because he didn't have the same amount of time or experience with all these non-12-bar blues chord stuff.

SPEAKER_04:

Hey, everybody, you're listening to Neil Warren's Harmonica Happy Hour Podcast, sponsored by Tom Halcheck and Blue Moon Harmonicas out of Clearwater, Florida, the best in custom harmonicas, custom harmonica parts, and more. Check them out, www.bluemoonharmonicas.com.

SPEAKER_02:

As well as these albums and obviously all your teaching, you also do other things. You did workshops for a long time and now, I know you don't do so many now, but you teach at the Harmonica Masterclass Workshop in Trottingham. You also go to, you're a regular at Spa and do some writing for magazines previously and things. So very active in all that side of things and doing the workshops,

SPEAKER_05:

yeah? Yeah, I started doing the Harmonica Masterclass Workshops in 1994. At that time, I just wanted to give my students an opportunity to learn from other players since the Bay Area had and still has a lot of great players. And with basically no advertising, we got 85 people, I think. I realized, like, wow, this is a good opportunity. And it got pretty big pretty fast, and that was really exciting times. At that time, I only had two books out, and what I feel is the golden age of blues harmonica education kind of started around that time, started building up at that time, and players were hungry. They were coming from all around the world to these workshops, so it was really exciting. It gave me an opportunity to work with, just like you do in the interviews, a chance to speak to and play with and work with my heroes of harmonica. So that was a great thing. I did that for about 20 years. As time went on, it became harder to fill seats, you know, YouTube, that, you know, information became more available to people. So people would be less likely to travel to these type of things. And it took a lot of, took a lot of work, you know, to do one large workshop was about six months of work. And that meant six months of not writing, which has always been my focus. So as time went on, I started doing less of those. And then, yeah, doing the spa festival and our spa convention, and then Steve Baker's Harmonica Masters workshops. It's always been a great pleasure to work with them and be around other great educators. When I'm teaching, I'm in my own room teaching the students. What I love about these events is having the opportunity to sit in the round table discussions and gaining experience from the other teachers. It's always great to do those.

SPEAKER_02:

Another thing on your bluesharmonica.com website is you do interviews with great players, a bit like this podcast. Generally, you sat with them in the same room and it's a video film so there's I think you said about 50 of those available so people can definitely check those out if you if they subscribe to your website yeah and so yeah what about those interviews

SPEAKER_05:

so I started recording material for bluesharmonica.com in 2007 it released November of 2009 so during that time I was writing and recording material enough to have you know material to launch and then I spent about 5 years just pretty much day and night. Anytime I wasn't teaching, writing and recording material for the site, and I still do material for the site to this day, but a great thing about the website is it gave me the opportunity to basically fund to do these interviews. I've always thought that if you think about the video footage we have of the great blues harmonica players, they don't come from the U.S. They come when they did the tours, like the American Folk Blues Festival tours. And And it's just a shame that the great legacy of this American art form, we have nothing except the recorded music, of course, but no video recordings. And for the most part, I mean, there's some interviews out there, audio interviews, we don't have a player sitting down and talking about their art, whether it's their music or, you know, if you want to get geeky about it, what they actually do on the instrument. So to me, it was really important to help provide this legacy. I mean, what would you give to have a video recording of Big Walter Horton sitting down with a harmonica nerd like me talking the music and the harmonica with them for a couple hours? We were talking about this earlier about, you know, long format interviews. Some of the interviews, I think the Magic Dick interview went for like four hours I'm not cutting that out who am I to say what is important you know that what he's talking about and my opinion is it's a legacy thing so it stands there and if someone wants to go through the whole thing fantastic so actually my first interview I just got my cameras I didn't even have any lighting I was doing a workshop in Austin Texas and that's where Gary Primich lived I was thinking I probably shouldn't do it because I haven't really tested the equipment out but I'm like I'm going to be there and Gary was my guest star and so after the workshop we went into the hotel room and we did the interview and unfortunately a month later he passed away. Of course, it was horrible to lose a friend and a great harmonica player, but I was so glad that I got him on recording because now harmonica players can, or blues fans in general, but harmonica players, can sit down for an hour and a half or whatever length that interview was, hear what Gary loves about the music, how he approaches the music. So again, for me, doing the interviews, it was fantastic because I always learned a lot. It was great to learn about those players. So those interviews have always been very important to me on the website.

SPEAKER_02:

So a great resource and hopefully supplementing this which is much more short and concise so yeah for some great long format and great detail then definitely turn to David's interviews and get some great in-depth interviews so that's fantastic so good work there. So you being such a prolific harmonica educator I'm interested in your answer to the 10 minute question David so if you had 10 minutes to practice what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_05:

In general if I'm talking to students I just say pick one thing you know 10 minutes is not much time but if it's focused it can be very productive thinking about and i'll talk about my perspective like what what am i working on uh right now but i always tell students that you know when you're working on a study song or or some some song you want some serious sit down listen copy listen copy so you want a good half hour or more to dig into that but there's a lot of techniques in the harmonica that benefit greatly from intermittent practice is to have five minutes here 10 minutes there it's better to have a chunks throughout the day instead of sitting down like if you're working on bending it's not very good to sit down and work on it for a half hour your tongue gets kind of dumb after about 10 minutes so pick one thing and dive into it for me personally like right now I'm working on my blow bending in a tongue block I can do it and I can use it but it's not as good I first learned it in a pucker so if I'm up there playing some first position stuff and I'm flying around I might switch to pucker if I'm staying in first position I want to get better at it and get faster at it. So I'm working on my tongue blocking, bending on the high end right now. So that's something I would work on. Before that, 1-6-2-5 progressions. I like to do a little bit of the jazzy stuff, not jazz itself. I'm not a jazz player. That's a whole different skill set. But there's a lot of great blues, especially the West Coast jump and swing blues style, or ballad stuff that might have some other progressions. And typically, it's like a six chord and a two chord. So I really wanted to own that. So So I'd spend some time working on the 1625. So yeah, just pick one thing that you can't do well, that you want to do better, and just focus on that for 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_02:

So let's get into the last section now and talk about your gear. So harmonica-wise, I think I understand you're playing Horn and Marine bands customized by Joe Flisco. Yes. How many of Joe's custom harmonicas do you have? How many do you need?

SPEAKER_05:

Well, I've got a full set of all the keys and low harmonicas And then I have my travel set, which is a duplication of my most common keys, which for me, that'd be low F, G, A flat, A, B flat, C, and D. So when I go on the road, I'll take a little zippered pouch of harmonicas. And that's it. And of course, they play amazing. And I'm very happy and blessed to play those. So thanks to Hohner and especially Joe for working on those for me.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so Joe is the pinnacle of customized harmonicas quite possibly. So, I mean, how good are these harmonicas?

SPEAKER_05:

Oh, they're great. I've had many times where I've just sat looking at the harmonica and playing it and just being like, man, this is fantastic. The big thing about playing a custom harmonica, I don't think a lot of people know this, is that you can play softly. The idea is, obviously, it's more efficient with air, it's less leaky, it's easier to bend, etc. But the big benefit is that Joe allows me to play better more impactful music because it gives me greater dynamic range so I can play really ultra quiet soft so that I can do what I think Walter was doing is you turn the amp up and you play at around 40% of your capable volume when I do my workshops I'll play through an amp and it sounds loud and powerful and I'll just pull the mic away and everyone's so surprised that I'm playing pretty much at a whisper quiet volume as my normal volume so it gives me that great dynamic range. So the big thing that I'm thankful for is that the harmonica plays consistently from reed to reed. You know, if you pick up a harmonica out of the box, typically there'll be one or two reeds that you use the same breath pressure on and they won't sound. So to be balanced

SPEAKER_02:

and then to be able to play soft... Interesting point, because I always feel myself that playing the harmonica softly is a real test of the fact that it's a well-performing harmonica, that it responds straight away when you're playing, especially at low volumes. So yeah, it's really interesting you should say that. So given the fact that you're a specialist blues harmonica player, do you play any different tunings at all?

SPEAKER_05:

I don't. I've definitely explored all of them. I think they're interesting. And for me personally, again, what excites me is that traditional Chicago blues things so I I stay with the standard tuning though I've explored them and thought about them it gets down to the vast majority you know almost all of the music out there is on the standard diatonic harmonica now if I played a style that benefited from having a harmonica that's been modified then I would use it but it just happens to be my style is perfectly suited for the standard diatonic so I think you don't have to be bullheaded about staying on the standard diatonic because that's just the way it's always been done. Serve the song. So if you have a tuning that works best for your style of music, explore it and see if that works well for you.

SPEAKER_02:

What about positions? Do you sort of play the standard three or four or do you go beyond that and try and get anywhere near 12?

SPEAKER_05:

No, just first, second and third position. I'd say second position like everybody. That's my most comfortable. A close second is third position. I've put a lot of work into third position. I love it. I'd say first position would be my weakest you know I teach private lessons online and I have what I call my performance groups and these Friday performance groups we do these deep dives and in October we're going to start a deep dive into first position and it's going to be I've been doing a lot of transcribing and we're just going to fully explore the post-war players as well as some of the pre-war stuff because some of those players were really masterful I think it's somewhat of a lost art form a lot of players like myself can play the classic, cliche blues first position licks. But when you listen to players from like the 30s up to, you know, like the early 60s, man, they can really, really play the entire range in first position. So I look forward to going even deeper into first position. That's the wonderful thing about the harmonica. It can do so many things. I've devoted my life to teaching blues harmonica and playing and understanding blues harmonica. And there's still so much more that you can do on this instrument.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm sure I know on your bluetonemonica.com you've got you know videos obviously around tongue blocking you highly recommend tongue blocking with the techniques and the advantages that it brings so I think you're predominantly a tongue blocker but with some pucker yeah

SPEAKER_05:

yeah I stay in a tongue block primarily I will typically pucker hole one though I do tongue switch for hole one depending on what I'm playing that would be putting your tongue to the right instead of the left and then I do tongue block my blow bends in second position and And generally, if I'm going to be playing with a lot of control and I'm just going to stay up on the high end, I just haven't put as much practice in my tongue blocking on the high end to feel as confident as I do in a pucker. So I'll pucker those. But I'm little by little changing that over to all tongue block. I teach students tongue blocking from the beginning because you've heard it in your interviews and I definitely heard it in my interviews. Again, we're speaking of classic Chicago Blues influenced players. They all wish that if they didn't start with tongue block that they did because there's problems that arise like, okay, when am I going to switch to tongue blocking? And in the past, because I learned to pucker at first because that's just what was taught and then I learned tongue blocking later. I used to teach pucker in the beginning, teach them how to bend in a pucker and then add tongue blocking for the exclusive tongue blocking techniques like slaps, pulls, flutters, octaves, etc. And what happened is a student would get up to about the four year mark typically. At that point they're studying songs and they might play like Cotton's Creeper for example and that main hook right there cannot be done in a pucker and it includes some bending. So what happened is they would run into some road blocks, if they're playing their own personal style, mixing the two is not a problem. And there's plenty of great players who do that. But the thing about tongue blocking is there isn't anything in a pucker that you can't do in a tongue block. And there's a lot of stuff that you can't do in a pucker that you can do in a tongue block. So from just a numbers standpoint, it makes perfect sense to have tongue blocking be the primary embouchure. But one thing that tongue blocking doesn't do as well is the speed of articulation. I think Jason Ricci is a perfect example of he wants to play very very fast, articulative passages, and that's perfect. If you want to play Junior Wells, you know that, there are times where you do need to switch embouchures. So I think all players should explore whichever embouchure they want to, but at least for blues harmonica, it makes the most sense to make tongue blocking your primary embouchure.

SPEAKER_02:

And chromatic, you do play some chromatic, don't you? Talk about third position.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, I play traditional blues chromatic, third position exactly. heavily a tongue block style. You know, blues is a textural style, not typically single notes. So you're slapping the notes, so you've got a chord that precedes the single note, two note combinations, octaves, fake octaves, you know, where you're doing a split where your tongue's in the middle and you're getting a different interval, maybe a sixth or a seventh. It's that big textural sound of chromatic that I love. I've never practiced it very much. Actually, I first went into the chromatic just because I had students who wanted to learn it. So I have some songs that I play and I can fool people that I can improvise on the chromatic well. But I don't tend to play it too often because I'm more inspired to play on the diatonic. So usually when I play the chromatic, it's something I've worked out and I can execute it well. I wouldn't really call myself a chromatic player, though, where the diatonic, I can play songs I've worked out, but I can also fluently improvise.

SPEAKER_02:

So talking about amplifiers, what do you like to use? Typically when I'm playing

SPEAKER_05:

shows with loud bands, it'll be a bassman. I had Mark Overman years ago dial in a bassman for me. Skip Simmons has made me some Masco amplifiers that are 17-18 watt range that I'll use in medium-sized gigs. You know, a bassman's got four 10-inch speakers, 45 watts, And like a Masco ME18, that's 18 watts, and I'll use a 210 cabinet, again, that Mark Overman built for me. That's great for medium size stuff, and Brian Akamine has made me a whole bunch of small amps that I'll use for recording and, you know, when I'm teaching, I'll typically use those small amps. I love the classic amps. The Bassman is great for live performing, but I really do love the classic PA heads because of... They look great and they sound phenomenal. I don't think you can play a better amp for recording.

SPEAKER_02:

Microphone-wise, you like the CR elements, I think.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, I like the older Shure bodies from the 1940s, typically brown microphones, and with an early black label CR. There's plenty of great white label ones as well, but I think if you have to choose one, the CR is going to be predictably really nice for the type of stuff I do. I do have some elements... that are brand new, Husky Harmonica mics has an element called the Red Devil. That one sounds fantastic. So that's the only mic element I've ever played. Greg Heumann has a really nice one too, but that one specifically, it's the closest one that comes to the CR element I've ever played. So actually when a student asks for a classic type microphone, I typically tell them to get that element because it really sounds good.

SPEAKER_02:

And effects wise, I know you use a bit of delays. your main um your main pedal

SPEAKER_05:

that's all i use yeah just a little bit of delay i think and that's probably more of a west coast thing you know you listen to rod piazza and and and players like william clark for example and there's usually a pretty good echo on there a little bit of reverb in the studio but live i'm just a microphone into a tube amp

SPEAKER_02:

a little bit of delay

SPEAKER_05:

and i'm good

SPEAKER_02:

to go And then just final question then, just about your future plans. What have you got coming up?

SPEAKER_05:

You know, since COVID, I've been doing, I've always done a lot of writing. I've done a lot of transcribing. But as we were all locked down, I really dug even deeper into transcribing. I probably transcribe a couple hours every day. I do a lot of teaching, probably more than I have in a long time. So private teaching online, along with bluesharmonica.com, you know, people are on the site and they submit recordings for our review and such but I do a lot of private teaching pretty much every day and then I do performance groups and for the performance groups I really like doing like this what I was mentioning the first position deep dive I love doing deep dives and researching and transcribing so for me what's new is I think I'm just going to keep doing a lot of this as we get older we kind of learn what we like to do the most and though I love doing the workshops and I love performing I love even more doing these academic deep dives and sharing my findings with the students. So a lot more of what I'm doing now.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, no, it's great. The transcriptions, have you thought about maybe publishing them? It'd be great. I was often thought to have like a huge resource that you could go and, you know, be able to get these from different people, you know, and just have a great resource of transcriptions. Have you thought about doing more with them?

SPEAKER_05:

Well, unfortunately, there are companies who own the print rights. So I cannot ethically and most likely legally provide those for sale. If I found out the companies that own the print rights, some of the companies, the problem is they have a policy of not licensing out. So if you do a transcription book for Hal Leonard, for example, who owns the print rights, the majority of the print rights from what I'm aware of, a lot of the early classic Chicago stuff, especially like the chess stuff, if you want to do that, you have to do it through Hal Leonard and they already have some books. basically I do the transcriptions and I use those with my private students and that's another reason why on bluesharmonica.com you're not going to find anything on there that's someone else's material everything I've written is original but it's steeped in that blues harmonica style I do have some artist studies like you said you mentioned before that what I will do is I will take I will write songs in the style of an artist even using some of their licks but create something new with it and that's a great way to teach an artist how to and to be concise about it, and not have to worry about the print rights. But I do have some songs that I actually transcribe, like Blues for Big Nate, Jerry Portnoy. Well, he's still alive, so I called Jerry and said, hey, I want to cover this song. Are you okay with me doing that? And I pay him money, not a lot, but enough to respect him and his music. And so I transcribe that song, and I teach that song. So anything that's someone else's material, I've contacted them and got their permission, and I paid them to use So, unfortunately, as much as I feel these transcriptions are really, really valuable, but it's not something I can share.

SPEAKER_02:

And then just a last interesting fact about you. I understand you're a black belt in Taekwondo. Is that right?

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, I did that for 11 years. So I got my third degree black belt in Taekwondo and a first degree in Kung Da Kwon.

SPEAKER_02:

So thanks so much for joining us today, David Barrett.

SPEAKER_05:

My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. And I look forward to hearing the next artists that come up because, again, it's... It's really inspiring to me, and I know the students really gain a lot from it. So thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_02:

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 David for joining me today. He really is one of the most knowledgeable people about blues harmonica out there. You could do a lot worse than signing up to his bluesharmonica.com website and check out his in-depth video interviews, which are also available there. Or even better, get some private lessons with him. The next episode will be out in three weeks as I'm taking a holiday. I'll leave you with David playing us out with a song from the favourite of his own albums, Blow Blow Blow from It Takes Three.

UNKNOWN:

It Takes Three

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you.