Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Son of Dave interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 33

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Son of Dave is originally from Winnipeg, Canada, where he enjoyed pop chart success for ten years with folk-rock band Crash Test Dummies. He then moved to London and pursued a solo career.
After two albums he decided to quite literally go it alone and become the all singing, all dancing solo performer that is the Son of Dave act. While doing so he quite possibly invented a brand new genre of harmonica, incorporating beat-boxing and loop pedals to compliment his strong rhythmic harmonica style of playing. His catalogue of albums are littered with songs he has composed by dreaming up melodies on the harmonica.
Son of Dave has thrilled audiences around the world with his cartoony Bluesman persona, dragging his suitcase fulls of tricks behind him. His one-man show has got to be seen to be believed.

Select the Chapter Markers tab above to select different sections of the podcast (website version only).

Links:
Son of Dave's website:
https://sonofdave.bandcamp.com/


Videos:
Son of Dave's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu5UgKvTbjsw2VfDfTQXSfQ

Black Betty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlDH8zDLHxw

Crash Test Dummies: The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLt60MUv7AU


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
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

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SPEAKER_00:

Son of Dave joins me on episode 33. Originally from Winnipeg, Canada, he enjoyed pop chart success for 10 years with folk rock band Crush Test Dummies. He then moved to London and pursued a solo career. After two albums, he decided to quite literally go it alone and became the old singing, old dancing solo performer that is the Son of Dave act. While doing so, he quite possibly invented a brand new genre of harmonica, incorporating beatboxing and loop pedals to complement his strong rhythmic harmonica playing. His catalogue of albums are littered with songs he has composed by Dreaming Up Melodies and the Harmonica. Son of Dave has thrilled audiences around the world with his cartoony bluesman persona, dragging his suitcase full of tricks behind him. His one-man show has got to be seen to be believed. Oh, and he's had his Covid jab now too! And welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks for having me in. First of all, we'll start with your name. Your father really is called Dave, yeah?

SPEAKER_02:

He is. He is Dave. It was the 70s. I grew up calling him Dave rather than Dad. I think I started calling him Dad sometime in my 20s. And it came up from some people calling me son of Dave, yeah. But man, I've been over here 25 years. Do you know what? I went for the COVID shot just yesterday. They've given me a shot of asthma for the win. I had a form that I had to sort of look at and fill out. And it told me my age on the top of the sheet. It said, you're 54 years old. And I thought, they've got that wrong, man. I'm 53. Then I looked at, you know, well, they've got the birth date right. They must have done the math wrong. And I sat there and I did the math. And I did the math like three or four times. And I realized that I've just celebrated two 53rd birthdays in a row, I think.

SPEAKER_00:

I lost count. Well, so you've had your COVID jab. How was that? You might want to encourage people to get out there and have the jab. Any bad side effects so far?

SPEAKER_02:

No, none at all. I encourage people to go out and get it and also to buy Microsoft products.

SPEAKER_00:

So you, as you say there, you're originally from Canada, from Winnipeg in Canada. What was it like musically around Winnipeg when you were growing up? Winnipeg, well,

SPEAKER_02:

it's a smallish city in the prairies in Canada. It's a long drive to any other city. You're going to drive for eight hours to get to another city, and that's not a nice one. You might get to Minneapolis or something in 10 hours. That said, even the vaudevillians used to come up to Winnipeg. They weren't used to these long drives, and they would come up to the... vaudeville theaters in winnipeg it had it was it saw its chaplains and buster keaton's and and uh and and all all the folks that were doing vaudeville come up and then it saw its share of musicians coming up from uh as they would tour across the northern united states the american musicians it it also got its um its players come up from chicago when the when the blues thing was happening now you know not all it it trickled up when i was a kid there were blues bands in town, and they would have been, you know, maybe my sisters. They were walking around with bell-bottoms and bare feet. And there would be guys, yeah, a little older than them, already playing in the bars. I guess that's when, early in mid-'70s. I don't remember that far back. And the blues scene was already kicking off in Winnipeg. Winnipeg then also developed, around that time, it developed a folk festival called, imaginatively enough, the Winnipeg Folk Festival. It was a pearl festival. It was the best festival in Canada for decades. I mean, we had Pete Seeger and Bill Monroe. I mean, it all came through there, all the great hippie acts. But for the blues, I twigged on when I heard James Cotton, and it was maybe 76 or 78 or something. He

SPEAKER_00:

played at the Winnipeg Festival.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, the big stage of the folk festival there. I don't know, 4,000 or 5,000 people who feel just... absolutely transfixed and dancing her hineys off. He played that 100% Cotton album. Fever, Boogie Thing, Creeper. I had a harmonica. I used to noodle on it. I could play a couple sort of jigs and reels and, you know, follow the little fold-up instructions that came in the box. And my dad showed me a couple of things. I didn't know its pure sexual power until I saw Cotton do that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, I saw James Cotton play, yeah, a high energy act and loved a lot of his songs, yeah. So he turned you on to harmonica, like you said, you had one, but he's the one who really sort of got you interested and then you started playing blues then, did

SPEAKER_02:

you? Yeah, as a kid, yeah, and then I just found anyone that was playing it at the festival, I'd go and seek it out. I started with a handful of records only. There was 100% Cotton, a Sonny Terry, Brownie McGee compilation, and then I had a couple records by John Hammond Jr., I just fell in love with his vibe. One or two others. And then that was it. You know, I kept buying records, but all kinds of music. But I wouldn't buy blues records. I would hear it in the bars. And by the time I was a teenager, I was going in the Sunday jams. They'd sneak me in. They'd get me on stage. And I could play with these guys. All the classic blues songs, I heard live versions of. That was it. It wasn't played on the radio. in Winnipeg. You know, we had Rock FM and you wouldn't hear much. You had to go to a record shop and maybe ask around. I could get it, but I just sucked it up by hearing it and playing it in mostly a live situation after just having two or three records. This shines through now because I have a complete lack of discipline and knowledge. I don't know who did what, and I can't attribute any lick to any player. I'm a bum, I'm telling you. I don't understand this stuff because I never did my homework. Maybe 10, 20 years ago, I started collecting singles, slowly piecing together a bit of a knowledge about these players and and the evolution of harmonica.

SPEAKER_00:

But it's interesting, people learn in different ways. So you say you learn not such from records, but going to jams and jamming in bars and playing along with other people and obviously hearing some harmonic and playing along with some records. Yeah. Did you learn any other instruments when you were young? Have you been sent for piano lessons or anything like that?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, again, my natural lack of discipline, I taught myself some guitar and mandolin. rudimentary stuff. And right away, it was all about having fun and playing bands, writing some songs, not really knowing what I was doing. And then going to college, then the summer, the band that I was sort of playing with, a weekend band, started to write some really good songs, and that took off. Kept me on the road for 10 years playing with them. Still not doing the right kind of homework

SPEAKER_00:

so this is crash test dummies that you're alluding to there yeah so a successful canadian folk rock band you know we're pretty well known yeah so you had a successful career with those guys and i think you played what guitar mandolin and harmonica with that band as well yeah

SPEAKER_02:

yeah that's right i'd try to stick the harmonica wherever i could get it in it worked well for the first record or two uh and then afterwards it was i was a bit of a sore thumb in the band because uh you know the other the other players had everything covered, so I'd do odd bits here and there, and they were kind enough to keep me on for the four records and ten years of the high time of that. When I'd go home, I'd work on my own insane kind of blues recordings and stuff, and I made a couple of quite unusual records on my downtime, but there was a lot of touring.

SPEAKER_00:

in quite a unique position as a on the podcast in as a harmonica player having been in what was quite a commercially successful band i don't know how commercially successful but i'd certainly heard of crash test dummies in the uk when i was younger so i mean you were then in the sort of full-blown music industry yeah with uh proper record labels and uh proper and all that yeah so there was that was an advantage to you i will get on to maybe you'd quite like getting away from that side of things but how was that you know working in the sort of full-blown music industry

SPEAKER_02:

um It was dynamic. When it was over, I started completely at ground zero again. There was no connections left over. The music industry was changing, crashing. It was quite bizarre. I mean, I have a few friends that I kept, associates, comrades, colleagues from back then. Some people that I can still ring up and maybe get a job from and that kind of thing, or who can help me with a little PR or something. But really, it was starting from the bottom up, absolutely. I wouldn't go out and get a gig using the name of that band to bring fans in. It was just not like that. I was just the harmonica

SPEAKER_00:

player from that band. Would you say your main instrument was the harmonica of that band? Because I know obviously you did play mandolin and some guitar with them as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's right, mandolin and guitar. And I was doing lots of percussion. It was an old little percussion station I'd built for it. So yeah, I was pretty much an entertaining guy on stage right. A really, really good gig to have. I'm very lucky to have it. A lot of it is about entertaining an audience in front of you. I did my own share of vaudeville and stuff. I used to play in a medicine show in my younger years, 18, 19. I was in this horse-drawn wagon. The side would fold down, and we'd go out and crack people up. So I love all that stuff, and I was studying theater since I was a little kid. So just having it up on stage is my first go-to talent. The big band took me 10 years, and a little longer than I foresaw, sort of playing someone

SPEAKER_00:

else's songs in a way. How did it compare working in a kind of commercial band like that to working in the sort of one-man band that you're in now?

SPEAKER_02:

There was a lot of money to be made. We sold 8 million records or CDs back then. Wow. So it was the height of that stuff. A lot of people were making a lot of money in the industry. Like I say, I saw ridiculous opulence. But we were not an opulent band, and I made enough to get a little flat income. In London. And then there was a few years where I was living off that money.

SPEAKER_00:

And some still comes in. So you moved over to the UK and to London in 1998. Why the decision to come to move to London? I fell in love when I stayed.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, I fell in love with the place and the people and the opportunities. It was still an older feel to London then. And I loved being able to just get on it. a train or a short boat ride and be somewhere in Europe. It was brilliant.

SPEAKER_00:

I believe you started out just busking in London. Was that a sort of decision then? You wanted to continue your music as your one-man band and you just decided to just bus for fun and they decided to pick up on it? So what was the decision there? I

SPEAKER_02:

started out making two really fancy and bizarre records with bits of studio gear and and things that I'd pieced together and buddies

SPEAKER_00:

I'd hired to help engineer it. So this is your Wild West show album in 1999. That's your first one.

SPEAKER_02:

Right, and an album called 01.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and 01 in 2000, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

That's right. And so I made those, but I realized I tried to tour them briefly in Canada and it was, you know, there's 20 people showing up and we had a tour bus and great musicians and it was, you know, The 20 people, their jaw would drop, but it's just shoveling money out a window. It's just ridiculous. I realized, wow, I'm really starting from the beginning. I got to scale down, man. So back here, I went busking, like you said. That's right. Back here, I just went. I realized I've got to start all over again. What do I want to do? I want to make music to make people. How can I do that? By going into the studio? No. I should just go out on the street and do it and busk like I did when I was a teenager. And that gave me great

SPEAKER_00:

joy. So those first two albums, just to touch on briefly, the Wild West show and the 01 album, like you say, you had a band in those. You've got other instruments on there. You've got singers on there. So these were albums that you sort of produced, did you? And you wrote yourself and composed them?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

I've always been one for writing a song and experimenting with recordings. But yeah, it came time to really sink or swim and find a way to be useful rather than dropping off demo tapes. It was a bit of a reckoning, like I have to do something very realistic to make myself useful. And let me try this. I'll take... microphone a little battery operated amp a bullet mic out there with a shaker and just hit the street and uh i quickly thought okay i'm playing harmonica and and singing and stuff people are looking at me odd and it just came to me just start thumping some beats into the microphone and and as soon as i did mix that with with the harmonica the uh It's just rhythmic. I wasn't thinking in terms of hip-hop or anything. I was just trying to put some more rhythm and punch into it. As soon as I did that,

SPEAKER_00:

coins come into

SPEAKER_02:

the

SPEAKER_00:

box. You've potentially invented a new genre of harmonica. Were you the first to do this beatboxing harmonica together that you're aware of?

SPEAKER_02:

There were probably 20 guys doing it at exactly the same time. But we were unaware of each other. As far as I know, I was certainly the first to be recording it. Right after that, people said, come and play at my club, just these open nights where you get up and do three tunes. So right away, I screwed the tunes together, and I got myself a cheap little looping pedal to run the beats underneath it. It grew really fast. Within a year, I was doing a full set and into the studio. to do it. So I think I was the

SPEAKER_00:

first to record this stuff. Yeah, no, I'm fantastic. I think you can definitely take the pride in inventing this genre. Your live show, I want to make this comparison between your live show and your albums. We'll get into your sort of solo albums now, which it sounds like from the old two. But when you're performing, you're sort of layering up the sounds with the loop boxes and you're doing lots of kind of wailing, kind of a great sort of effective minimal lyrics. At what point did it develop over time about you using loop pedals and things like this and layering up your sound in that way?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, the loop pedal came pretty early on there was busking where you can only do so much to get in and play a set you know to hold people's attention for half an hour to an hour or more to hold them attention I knew I can't do that without some cheap box you know and it's either drum machines or other musicians so I figured the looping pedal so right away I was incorporating the loops in there

SPEAKER_00:

When you started out working solo and using the loop pedal, was part of that decision was, you know, you wanted to work solo so you had complete control or was it more to do with the fact that you could take what little money was available from the gigs to if you just work solo? I can't say that the more for me

SPEAKER_02:

attitude wasn't just about keeping the money. It wasn't just about having full control either. It was just a natural thing to do. People loved it, and I had fun. And yeah, I'm free to make people chuckle in between tunes, and I don't have to play the same set list, and I don't have to play the song the same way twice. It's real freedom. But it also comes with... Fear, fear like I had not had before. And still, I am nervous before every concert, like really nervous, sick, nothing like being with a band. It didn't have those kind of nerves, no.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, you're up there completely by yourself. You've got to entertain the crowd by yourself for your set. You know, that's a pretty daunting experience, isn't it? So how do you do that?

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know how I'm going to do it, but once you're up there, it comes pretty easy. Yeah. We all know repetition and practice. I don't have to be thinking too much about the pedals or that, and I know the shape of each tune. And I know there are little places in each song where I can stretch time or change things around, keeping myself amused, keeping myself fresh, and then the audience gets that too.

SPEAKER_00:

It's probably worth now just giving an overview of what sort of gear do you use in your shows to make your sound?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, there's a microphone in front of the face, which is a normal vocal mic. And then there's the handheld mic. And that goes into loop and octave pedals so that you can hum bass lines and loop up beats, which you're making through the... And once the loops are going, then you can play over top or add more or less. The most important thing that I found, you know, other than just showing off with that stuff and jamming with myself it's all about the song and always was so the songs and the melody you can impress people with a jam for about 15 seconds 30 seconds and then you need something that's important or feels important you know and that's that's where the song and the melody comes in

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I remember when I first saw you, I was really kind of blown away by that. You're up there by yourself, and it's amazing what you create, the atmosphere, and you're layering it up. But back then, when you started using loop pedals and stuff, and I'm not so sure, but around the year 2000, I presume that was reasonably new technology at that point, was it?

SPEAKER_02:

The loop pedal was pretty new. I think they were selling them to guitar players so that they could noodle along with themselves.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So you were cutting edge.

SPEAKER_02:

So I didn't know anybody else was using them. Yeah, I was the first one of the early people on it. I think it actually suits beatbox so well.

SPEAKER_00:

So is beatboxing something that you already did or did you develop it as a part, you know, when you decided to start putting it into your act?

SPEAKER_02:

The beatbox was, it just came to me while I was trying to, like I was saying, I wasn't into beatboxing at all. It just happened as a natural thing to be doing

SPEAKER_00:

while I was playing harmonica. It's kind of like the Sonny Terry thing in a way, with the whooping between. Is that where you sort of maybe got the original idea about the music?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and other people have played me things. They've played me old Sonny Boy recording as well, where he's clicking and then like...

SPEAKER_01:

You

SPEAKER_02:

know, so... It wasn't totally unheard of. It comes naturally. But I think there's a thing about the boom. I don't want it to sound like a drum machine. I don't want it to sound like a hip-hop record. I want it to sound human. So that's why I go boom, boom, boom. Because it's a human sound as opposed to something that imitates a drum and bass record. You know, the stuff that actual beatboxers do. I use it my own way. I try to use it like just a rough kind of a little blues band behind me.

SPEAKER_00:

So when you did start realizing that, you know, you were going to start using beatboxing, did you go to like beatboxing university or something then? Did you actually kind of try and study it properly or was it just a case of kind of picking up whatever worked for you as you went along?

SPEAKER_02:

There's a through line here, and that is that I lack discipline in every respect. In the long run, I'll end up having some skills and knowing some stuff, but it ain't through sitting down and properly doing the homework. So I just learned one sound, and I'd get one sound, and then it'd last me six months. It was just my kick, snare, and hat. It's just learning kick, snare, and hat. It's just... After a year or two, I learned a new snare sound.

SPEAKER_00:

That's good to hear for someone like me. I'm quite anal. Yeah, I feel I have to go away and study things. Yeah, but it's always quite a nice, you know, I think a lot of people get hung up on that. You know, they feel they have to go and learn stuff. Yeah, but it's like you're saying, you're just kind of doing it as you go along. Maybe that's the better way to do it. Yeah. And people kind of stop themselves doing things in a lot of ways, don't they? Because they feel they're not ready for it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Or they're more polite than I am. Because, you know, before I know how to do something properly, I'll I'll have it out and air it in public.

SPEAKER_00:

So you've got a very distinctive image. You wear a fedora hat and you've got a big wide-shouldered business suit on. And you've got quite a wacky persona. Your album covers, you've got these kind of cartoony kind of things. So what about that image that you developed? Is that something you did from early on?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that just comes organically. You start to wake up in the suits. They just appear.

SPEAKER_00:

The

SPEAKER_02:

life turns into a cartoon. For

SPEAKER_00:

the audience's entertainment. Again, it shows you need that image, don't you? You've been very successful. You've got that one-man act. You've got the image. I think the image is important to that, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

Like any good blues man knows, you want to look a little bit sharp so that people can distinguish who's working and who's not. Who's there just to have a good time and who's actually working. at the office

SPEAKER_00:

so yeah i'm working i better dress up yeah i mean i agree you see a lot of bands that are in the sort of t-shirt and jeans and you sort of think yeah you know having an image and looking better is important yeah so so great so moving on a little bit more into your recording so we talked about the first two recordings you did and then when you did the o2 album was that a uh a solo album or at least more of a solo album than the first two That was the record where there

SPEAKER_02:

was a... When the one-man band thing started, isn't it? Yeah, that's when the beatbox and harmonica... I took that into a studio with a great fellow I met. And that's where we started to... That's where I started to do that. The sort of most... A lot of it live off the floor, and some of it was multi-track and overtub, a mixture of the two. And since then, I've done the same thing. Also, to keep people's entertainment, keep them focused all the way, listening through a record, 10, 14 tracks. That's difficult if you're just going to sit there with a guitar and sing. It can be done, and it has been done, but the listening experience... When you don't have much to look at, if you're carrying on with your day and just listening to a record, you know, you want to keep people's attention and give them a little more to listen to. And when you don't have so much to look at and the wise cracks between songs, then you've got to throw a little more at it. And that's why in the studio I take more liberties than I do with just the one-man band show. And some songs will be... Quite layered up and more complicated. And I love all that stuff, to be honest. I like writing songs and I like recording. I love it.

SPEAKER_00:

On that album, are you the only musician on there? Or did you have other musicians? And on your later albums, too. First album, I think I

SPEAKER_02:

had a lady singer on a couple of songs. I think Devil Take My Soul was on there. And that was, of course, with Martina singing the chorus with me. Subsequent albums... It's usually me. I'm quite selfish and I play a lot of the stuff. But depending on the record, we're nine, ten records in now. And sometimes I love to have a lot of players on an album and sometimes not.

SPEAKER_00:

A song on the O2 album is the Devil Take My Soul, which was featured in a film, as we like to say over here, or a movie, Americans might say. Was it this one from this album? Because I know you recorded it on another album as well. So this was a movie with Robin Williams in, yeah? So quite a big movie.

UNKNOWN:

Devil Take My Soul Devil Take My Soul

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they put that in a Robin Williams film. It's not folks' favorite Robin Williams film. I don't think it got too good reviews. I took it as quite an honor anyway. Yeah. I've had songs go into TV shows and films, not frequently enough, because that actually... pay some bills. It's good. And it reaches people. So it's lovely. Everybody, everyone wants to sink

SPEAKER_00:

as

SPEAKER_02:

they call it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. We'll touch on the big one later on. We'll save that for people to hear about which TV show you did appear on. But on that O2 album, you do, you do quite a few blues songs, you know, pure blues songs. You do Manish Boy where you're singing this kind of nice high pitch singing, your usual funny take on the song. And then you've got Crossroads rolling in. So quite a few blues songs on that one.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Those

SPEAKER_02:

are two traditionals that I did on there, and I really took liberties with them as I was doing back then. I don't think I'll be so rude now with... with songs that are so holy in a way. I did really take

SPEAKER_00:

the mickey. I think you're modernizing the blues and giving it to a modern audience. So let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know. I don't know. I'm not so sure. It was just, it was, it was odd. It's my way of doing things in, in a playful way. I don't know about so modern. I don't think you could play that to anybody and think, yeah, that sounds really modern, you know, because it doesn't, it sounds just odd. It's, beatbox and strange rhythm. It had a more modern, almost drum and bass rhythm, you know. Yeah, that's I guess modern, but a more syncopated or stressful beat that a lot of people were hearing in maybe drum and bass or jungle, but When you hear it like that, when you hear it just put in these really human terms, it doesn't sound expensive. It still sounds like folk music in a way. And that was my idea, that you could just give a new life to it and just do it differently.

SPEAKER_00:

You talked about, you know, you're interested in producing albums, going into the studio. Do you think you took some time from, you know, when you were in the crash test dummies, you know, is that something you were able to draw on to help? You know, you're playing different instruments that you're playing rhythmically, playing percussion, I think, or did it help to develop your abilities?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. All the other instruments have been key. I kicked myself because I never, I didn't learn piano or touch the thing really until a couple of years ago I realized, That's really what I was missing. I can play guitar and I can even write good lines on it, but I never love it. I think it needs to be back in the band and do its thing back there. It needs to go... It has that little sort of cheeky sound, but I don't think it should be front and center very often. No, near as often as it was for... 30 years. It had its time. Now, that doesn't mean that the harp needs to be hogged in front of center. What needs to be front and center is the song, eh? And the music as a whole. And things can do their little voices in there. So I like playing and writing the guitar part, but I don't love it. And I don't like to compose a song. I don't like to write on the guitar either. Because it inevitably takes you down these... roads that aren't even well-beaten paths. They're like eight-lane freeways. They're just, everybody goes that way. It's full of traffic. As soon as you start doing a riff on a guitar, it sounds like 20 other recordings or styles you've heard. So it doesn't inspire me so much.

SPEAKER_00:

But what about the harmonica, though? Because obviously your harmonica features very heavily, particularly in your show, but on your albums as well, and it's very central to the rhythms that you're playing on there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's right. So I was writing many records worth of stuff. I was writing it starting on the harmonica because you start with a three-note riff and then you improvise a melody on top of that. You just pick it up and... Whether it's that or...

SPEAKER_01:

Do

SPEAKER_02:

something twice. Does it catch you? And once you have this little melody curving along, it could even be three notes. It's one of the first Son of Dave one-man band tunes that I wrote was like that. I put the same notes on the bass almost, and the harp does that, and it's just completely hypnotic. And then a similar melody forms in the vocal over top of that. Then you carve out parts, not 12 bars, but you carve out verse and chorus and break down middle eight or whatever happens after that, verse and chorus, chunks of songs, so that you're returning to a bit that people can sing to or that people can hum. 12 bars is great for people playing together and 12 bars is great for some some songs, but it doesn't lend itself so well for people to either sing along or... Yeah, it's different. The 12 bars is a

SPEAKER_00:

particular form to itself. you write lyrics to your songs as well. And usually your songs are quite often sort of punctuated with you kind of doing these repeated phrases, which again, is that sort of quite rhythmic, hypnotic sort of approach that you have, meaning you're building up these rhythmic layers. But also you can be quite political in what you're saying, maybe partly like you keep buying it, for example, on your recent singles. And is that something you've got in mind to try and make statements? You wrestle with it, don't we, eh?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I like to say often there's five kinds of blues songs. There's the drinking song. There's the fighting song. There's the making love song. There's dancing. You know, just shaking that thing and moving it. And the fifth is something to do with... Corporations wanting to control the voice of media in order to bend people's opinion against cooperating and collective thought and organizing themselves in order to keep from being underfunded, underpaid. The last one is either the protest or it is also the essence of many blues songs and many songs. That last one is the trick. To do it without using political and big words is a trick. And I quite often just have a song that follows one of the first four categories, and then the second or third verse will deal with the fifth category.

SPEAKER_00:

I think you do it in an effective way, though, because a lot of these songs which try to make a message, you know, they're a bit overt, they're a bit in your face. Where you do it very subtly, it's just a little punchy line. Thanks. I

SPEAKER_02:

wasn't sure if anybody noticed.

SPEAKER_00:

So your album, 2008 or 03, you had an 01, an 02, and an 03. What was that naming about? I wasn't sure how long

SPEAKER_02:

I could go with it, eh? So I just started counting them. And then I realized after three, journalists are going to get really...

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and so on that 03 album, you did Low Rider, which is a real classic from war, and Lee Oscar playing on a monochrome there.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I've raided every tomb. I've desecrated every shrine. Lee Oscar, I met him in the 90s when I was in Los Angeles. I think he was out in Pasadena or somewhere, but he drove in because we'd spoken on the telephone and he drove in and gave me a box of his harps, you know, on the agreement that I'd played his harps and And they were great harmonicas, and I was already all over them. And he brought me the little set of tuning things, his toolkit, and that blew my mind. I can open it up and actually fix the damn thing? So, so good. And what a gent, what a sweet guy. And I said, okay, come on into the gig. It was a really big gig we were playing. Come on into the gig, and I'll take you backstage. And he goes, nah, I don't like all that schmoozing stuff. And he just took off. Yeah. So he was a private person. quieter guy with who had already done his a lot of his his fun wasn't going to waste his time in there he's just real nice to me and i played his harps i played his harps for a bunch of years

SPEAKER_00:

yeah i know he's a nice guy i've had him on the podcast yeah obviously he's done very well business-wise with the harmonica so do you do you customize your harmonicas then uh there you got the toolkit is that something you do i

SPEAKER_02:

can knock out the bits of food i can tune a reed back to pitch if it ain't broke. And I can sort of tweak it for some very rudimentary overblowing. That's as far as I've gone. Customize is, I don't know, customize, no, I don't do that. Now, Sadal, great guy from Bertram, he called me up five or ten years ago and said, love it, let me send you a couple of harmonicas. And bless him, he sent me some cool stuff because he knew right away that i was playing the low keys and uh most of my tunes are in low just because it it works more of a like a rhythm instrument if it's not it's not tweeting it's not like a you know it's like one man band with a voice and trumpet it's not no you want it just a little lower so you want you want it around the voice or below the the voice to keep keep rhythm, like working like a rhythm instrument. So he knew I was playing the lower keys, and he sent me a couple of those, and they were just fine dandy. And they can fix the reed plates. You can take the reed plate off, send them in, and they'll repair them for relatively cheap. So to bless them, they've been my harmonica allies for a good many years now.

SPEAKER_00:

Getting on to the big song we were talking about. So you had a song which featured in season three, episode 11 of Breaking Bad, which is Shake a Bone. Yeah. So how did that come about?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's really weird. And I put myself through the agony of watching that whole series. I'm not sure you want to dedicate so much of your life to watching it. I did it because they told me my song was in there. I didn't know when. Right. I didn't really do the research. I could have just jumped in. fast-forwarded to that scene and listened to the song in there. But I didn't. I just started the beginning of series and watched until there's Jesse and Walter in their camper van, like an action montage of them cooking meth. And then my song is playing, and I was looking around the room like, why have I left a laptop on or something? Why is my work interrupting music? my programming and it took me a few seconds to realize oh god my song is playing in the actual television

SPEAKER_01:

show

SPEAKER_02:

so They seem to like it. People seem to like it. To me, it seems really strange. Why is my work going on while they're cooking meth? Were you outraged? Was I outraged?

SPEAKER_00:

No. Again, I was very honored and grateful. Well, that song has got by far the most hits for you on Spotify with over 1.5 million plays on Spotify. So that sort of exposure from a big TV show like that, did you see the benefits of that?

SPEAKER_02:

It gets passed around on Spotify. Yeah, it stretched the streaming audience far and wide. You know, I have one fan in every town now.

SPEAKER_00:

So did they contact you and specifically ask for permission to get your song? I

SPEAKER_02:

don't know how that one came through. There are people that shop the music, that do sync, and they'll take it and shop it around. And it may have come through... through one of those agencies that works with label services. It's not like a label, but it was... Everything's changed since the old days where you'd have a record label, you'd work 10 years until you were almost... drop dead, and then they'd give you a Cadillac and throw you out on the street. You'd sleep in the Cadillac. That sounded fine back then, but now it's very complicated and difficult. The label services will do certain jobs for you. You pay them. At one point, there was someone shopping songs around in Los Angeles in the early days of Netflix. Yeah, great. They might have

SPEAKER_00:

brought that one up. Well, you've been immortalized in Breaking Bad, cooking meth. You know, everyone's going to associate you with that forever to come. Did you know the program Preacher? No, I never saw that. I was aware you were on that one. But yeah, go and tell us about that

SPEAKER_02:

one. Yeah, that's wild. It's a hilarious, wild, crazy thing. After the comic called Preacher, the opening episode ends with my song Voodoo Doll. They played almost the whole song at the end while these... two bad characters that are walking up to a house is really nice. So yeah, I love it. That one, I got it. I understood why the music really matched the scene.

SPEAKER_00:

So you got Blues at the Grand in 2013. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

more players on there, drums, lady vocals, great horns, organs. It was the idea of putting the blues band into the Grand Hotel. So blues at the grand. And it was a more grand production. There was my little idea there. And I had some other themes running throughout it. It was a lot of work. And I had a really good producer friend that I've been working more with lately who helped me all the way through it.

UNKNOWN:

So

SPEAKER_02:

Big grand production, and it wasn't something that I could really tour. There's only one or two songs I can sort of play live as a one-man band. I tried to put a band together for it, and we played in Paris at the Duc de Lombard, which we had a residency for three nights at a jazz club there that's really top of the line. But even that was, you know, shoveling money out a window right away. When you're trying to actually pay grown-up musicians and put them in a hotel... These guys are great players, and they're my friends. They're going to get paid well. So right away, I just dug a debt to make that record because I wanted to, and I love it, and I just love the art, but I can't tour it. I've got to keep on with the one-man band show. To be honest, people like the one-man band show more.

SPEAKER_00:

So your album, Explosive Hit, this is all covers, yeah? And you're doing songs which are well-known songs like Black Betty.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, Black

SPEAKER_02:

Betty.

UNKNOWN:

Oh, Black Betty.

SPEAKER_00:

That's what the gig is, eh? At some

SPEAKER_02:

point in the set, you need to play something that makes everybody go... They dragged their honey onto the dance floor to dance. Oh, God, here we go. You got to do it. And so I built up a number of these over the years, the tunes that people recognize, either, you know, blues lovers or just pop music lovers. So there's one by Daft Punk. There's ACDC. There's Soul Finger, like you say. Pump Up the Jam is on there, man. Everyone's uncle busts a move to Pump Up the Jam. And I built up a number of these over the years. And so I thought, okay, that's it. It's time to make the cover's album.

SPEAKER_00:

So then your next album, which has got a great name, Music for Cop Shows, I think inspired by your love of the famous 1970s American cop shows, that was back to doing your own stuff, yeah? A decision to go back to your own music.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and I needed another sync. I needed the money to come in to keep making records. So I thought, okay, I really need a sync. I wish my tunes would be picked up for television shows. And when I think of television shows, I think of the television shows I watched in the 70s, eh? So, you know, like old cop shows, you know, Sanford and Son and Quincy and the Rockford Files. So music for cop shows. Yeah. So I started writing these catchy harmonic. I thought I'm just going to write a bunch of instrumentals. And I did. I was like four, three or four instrumental things. And I was really digging it. But inevitably, I just think, well, maybe I'll just put a couple of words in there. and then the words would start growing and the lyrics would come. So it ended up being a lot of songs with a little more melody happening on the harmonica.

SPEAKER_00:

You've got blues organ in there, which I'd almost describe as a proper blues harmonica song.

UNKNOWN:

. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

That's an instrumental, the blues organ, that's right. Lots of organ in there, that's a real sort of, almost a Booker T vibe with harmonica in there. Yeah, me and Jimmy, who I made the Blues of the Ground with, me and Jimmy co-wrote that

SPEAKER_00:

one, and we had a blast. But since that album, which was released in 2017, you've released singles, yeah? So have you made a decision to release singles rather than creating whole albums? It's been a number of singles,

SPEAKER_02:

yeah, a bunch of them. Now, there's two reasons for that. One, nobody puts out albums anymore. It's a Spotify thing. It's a frickin' algorithm thing. People stop buying them at shows. People are listening to one song at a time by a band. I started out just stalling for time and enjoying making tunes with different producers and friends, co-writing or writing it all myself and just doing it in different ways. So... It's been a while. To get to the point, I have two albums under my belt now. Lockdown year as well. It's been a learning curve. I'm recording so much at home. I wrote a whole record on piano. There's harmonica on almost every song. But it's sort of written on the piano. That doesn't mean I can play piano well. I had to hire a guy to actually play it better than me. But I wrote all the tunes on a piano. I think it sounds like 1973, kind of like Dr. John, a little bit Tom Waits, a little bit...

SPEAKER_00:

Billy Joel. Yeah, I look forward to what everyone's coming out with over the last year when everyone's been locked up at home. And hopefully we get all these great works coming out. I'm sure we can put your name to that list. And your most recent single, which is out at the moment, or you've been promoting, is What a Life.

SPEAKER_02:

That's right. There's three singles I made with Tim Gordon.

SPEAKER_01:

Butter for the winter, get you in a tight spot. You know you gotta keep it locked. Wanna ride?

SPEAKER_02:

Devil Take My Soul, and Ain't Going to Night Town was another one I did with him and a few others. So I've also been making

SPEAKER_00:

music with him. An important part of you is about your touring. You're always touring, and I think you played all around, obviously in Europe and Canada and USA, but also in Australia, South Africa, Uganda, Japan, Cuba. It's taking you around the world, this music. It does. I can

SPEAKER_02:

sort of travel a long way and do a couple of shows and come back. Because I'm one guy. So luckily, I take the train to most shows all over the UK and France and Belgium. Or I can take an airplane over to Germany and take trains around there. So I love the European experience in that way.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I think you probably play yourself down on what I've heard you talk about your own harmonica playing. But I think it's very effective what you do. You know, you do it and you've got, you maybe invented the genre, as we said, about sort of beatboxing harmonica, layered looping harmonica. But it's very effective what you do on harmonica. What do you think about yourself as a harmonica player?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I'm always humbled when I hear other people play other harmonica well. I'm always astounded at how tight they are, how well they can improvise, how much control they have, the overblowings and everything. The tone that they get, the gear that they use. I'm always a bit ragged. I'm trying to do too many things. I'm trying to mix and write the guitar line and help out or do the artwork. I'm just in a god-awful process of actually self-promoting. There just ain't enough hours in the day for me. I can't imagine some people... They're doing it their way, and for decades they're going to be focusing on their one instrument and master it. I think what I use it for is great rhythm, harmonica playing, and then to find those hooks and melodies. That's what it's for, and it gives that vibe. And I think Lee Oscar, I heard him. Was that one on one of your podcasts, my friend? It might be. What would he say? He was talking about he's good, and it was always good, a talent for coming up with a melody. Yeah, he did say that to me, yeah. That's right. I was listening to him talking to you about that. He was always good at coming up with a melody that adds to the song or makes the song sometimes. Sometimes you don't want to stand out with a big one, but just have a little thing in there to pull you from one section to another. And I realized, yeah, oh, my God, yeah, that's what I've been– trying to do. And you've got to decide, that melody, is it to be sung or is it to go on the harmonica? Does the harmonica play something like the horns or should it play a rhythm supporting chordal part? What should it be doing? It shouldn't just be given blues licks. It's like having another voice that sings melody.

SPEAKER_00:

You've done a few workshops. You recently were at the Harping by the Sea workshops in Brighton, well, online, but you've been in there before. You do any more sort of workshops, things like that?

SPEAKER_02:

I did theirs, their online workshop, and I'd been down Harping by the Sea. I'd been down to do the actual event a few years ago live too. So that's the twice. I'm really late to the game. I never knew harp players other than the few guys that were in my town. I didn't play the blue circuit. hardly ever do play the blue circuit, so had no contacts. It's been since maybe the last 10 years that I start to realize there are great harmonica players out there, and they've heard Son of Dave music. And that's like, oh, wow, what an honor. That's cool. What I've been doing lately, Neil, is try to also make some songs without the looping pedale or without any... having to layer a bunch of instruments or have a band. Just voice and harmonica and a rattle. There'll be a couple of those that I'll put out in the next year. I've written a few like that, and that's a joy. I realize it's a lovely format. Just the harp, just the voice, and you time things back and forth, and you can carry the attention and carry a song like a singer with a with a guitar or a piano. You can do it if you have the right bits. And of course, the other songs on the record will be covered with bells and whistles and all farm animals and everything.

SPEAKER_00:

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

SPEAKER_02:

This is part of my problem is that I quite often sit down thinking I'm going to practice and I'm going to be a better harmonica player and a better person and I'm going to really do this. But what you ought to do is arpeggiate. So I start arpeggiating and within a very short time, I find a combination of four notes that I like or something. And then I'm right into the Just naturally, I start writing a tune around it, and out comes the dictaphone, and I'm writing a song. And I never end up practicing harmonic sometimes. Not never, but I usually end up... It ends up turning into a song. It just always evolves that way, rather than me...

SPEAKER_00:

We've already talked about you play saddle harmonicas and you're a saddle endorser and you have been for a few years now. So obviously you play saddle harmonicas exclusively. Any particular type of saddle that you like?

SPEAKER_02:

I do the 1847. Started with the white plastic combs on there and then I got the wooden ones. lacquered combs, and they're just fine with me. They seem to be lasting for years and years. And I use the stainless steel reeds, eh, which last longer. So I play

SPEAKER_00:

stainless

SPEAKER_02:

steel reeds, which stay in tune.

SPEAKER_00:

And obviously you play the low harmonic because you're playing the side, these low range that they have. They've got this ultra low range as well now, haven't they? Is that something that you're using?

SPEAKER_02:

I haven't needed to go, no, it's not quite that low. I mean, the low B flat or low A is... That's about as low as I need to go.

SPEAKER_01:

It's

SPEAKER_00:

around vocal range. That's nice. You do play some chromatic harmonica, don't you?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, there might be one on each record that I try to use that stiletto and... Caledonian Street, I liked that.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you

SPEAKER_01:

have

SPEAKER_00:

a favorite key of

SPEAKER_02:

diatonic? It has a lot to do with the pitch of your voice, the range. I tend to play a lot of low D, low D flat, low C, and then back up low E flat, low F. It's mostly in that range. That way I can hit like the two or three octaves of voice. It's about... That's a low C. So, you know, that's as low as you can go, or I can go right now. Yeah. You can get two or three octaves out of your voice if you're lucky, and you don't want the harmonica to be

SPEAKER_00:

around there in the middle. And embouchure, are you puckering or tongue-blocking?

SPEAKER_02:

I was amazed when I found out that people actually debate and argue about that, or that they care. I mean, why wouldn't you do both? Whatever, there's a slight different effect.

SPEAKER_00:

Just on equipment, on amplifiers and microphones, obviously you're pretty portable carrying around. Do you just use a house system or do you use particular amplifiers? Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

man, because I got to carry 30 kilos of pedals, harps, percussion, clothes, merch, snacks. All on the train. Yeah, flashing lights all on the train. Because of that, I hope they got an amp for me. So for a lot of years, it just, it weren't working because the amps sound terrible with harmonica. And then I figured out, Duh, get the pedal. I got a Long Wolf pedal. And that helps a twin, a Fender twin, for instance, to sound a lot better. It overdrives it in the right way. And so you can take the usual guitar amps that they have at gigs, and the pedal will help it sound more like a harp amp. Otherwise, and still, I have little amps, like a little transistor 15-watt Vox amp. amplifier that's lightweight and tiny you can drag that around and again it's not going to cut across a band but when you mic it up it does the job and it sounds nice and I've recorded tons with that thing

SPEAKER_00:

So last question then, just around your future plans. You talked about you're planning to get two albums out and hopefully getting back out playing again soon. Have you got any gigs lined up now? Man, gigs are lining up. Now you've had your jab. You've got the jab passport

SPEAKER_02:

to get out playing again. I wonder how that's going to go with the jab passport. There's a couple of gigs coming up even within the next two months if all goes as planned and plenty showing up for September and October.

SPEAKER_00:

Great. Well, it'll be great to see you getting people back out playing again, yourself included. So thanks so much for joining me, Son of Dave. It's been great to speak to you. I've been very lucky to be asked

SPEAKER_02:

to come onto your podcast, which with such an all-star stellar lineup of incredible players. So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00:

Son of Dave, flippers that soul thing.

SPEAKER_01:

Soulfinger! Soulfinger!

UNKNOWN:

Huh!