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JP
Jones
2002 Radio Interview with Dan Herman
http://www.radiocrystalblue.com
Love the 'Tiger Woods' [track 13, Salvation Street] production! A paean to arguably the most accomplished golfer
of this generation. Do you have a golf game?
Do I have game.... is that the question? Well,....I do have a set of clubs, but don't
play much these days. I spent a couple of summers at Franconia Golf Course in Springfield, MA,
when I was a kid, caddying and playing some. When I was 15, the last year I played regularly,
I was just starting to break 80, but haven't seen much of that since. Tiger
Woods, as it appears on the CD, was thrown together almost as an afterthought. The production gave me fits, as it
wasn't really a live performance with the guys, but pieced together as I made up the song-- I
prefer doing everything live, especially when the musicians don't know the song yet.
Woods is without question the best golfer in the contemporary competitive world, for whatever
value you place on that. Golf is the most mystical of games-- I think Alan Watts might
have said that. Anyone who feels that to be true should read Michael Murphy's
Golf in the Kingdom-- a wonderful little book
With over 300 recordings to date....it would seem your very purpose is to write...as you put it 'life
and death'. Did you know coming into this life you'd be a songwriter?
I don't really have any idea how many "recordings" I've made-- well over 300, but I
think you're referring to a line somewhere about how many songs I've made up. As far as
knowing what I'd be coming into this life.... my memory doesn't really go back much before I
was born.... truth is, I don't see myself as a songwriter, except in a loose sense. I don't have
any idea what I really am. I don't have any idea what we are, us human beings. All I know is
that the one supreme drive in all of it is the need to create. So one of the things I
do is make music. God, am I thankful I can do that.
People reading your lyrics, especially those with NYC connections as I will feel a sense of
poignancy from your words. Example from 'Salvation Street' title track:
'today I carry a prayer for everyone we meet / saints and sinners all around us
earth under our feet / Nefertiti smiling and my vision is complete '
Tell us more about that Egyptian/middle east/NYC connection if you can.
All the songs on Salvation Street were written
before 9/11. The CD was mastered on the 4th and 6th of September. On the 14th I began a
series of shows at The Big Kahuna in Bridgton, ME. It was impossible to play some of my
material then. My guess-- and it's only a guess-- is that some part of me tunes into issues in our
world that are beyond my own knowing and that this comes out in my writing. On the afternoon
of Sept. 11 a friend in NY emailed me a line, one line, a line from a song called Atlantis
Revisited--"and the winds came up and blew it all away." I was horrified to realize that when I
wrote that song back in the 80's, I was seeing the WTC in the back of my mind somewhere. I
wept hard on and off for the next few weeks. I didn't have anything like that in mind when I
came up with Salvation Street. Only the sense that there is a place in all of us where we
transcend our regional/religious factionalism and are redeemed in our celebration of life.
Reconciling those differences that sometimes seem so huge, so important, so intractable, offers
a vision that completes an otherwise impoverished view of what it means to be
human. Nefertiti is the name of the wife of an ancient Egyptian King. It means "The beautiful
one has come."
You mention on your site you've shared billing
with BB King, "Boss" Springsteen and other luminaries. Did you get to trade licks with them
on stage? Any of them captured in audio?
No, only opened the show. The BB King
reference is inaccurate. He was playing the
blues room at Pall's Mall (in Boston), while I
was next door in the larger room, opening for
Little Feat. I remember Lowell George cursing
Warner Bros. for not offering more tour
support. I was blown away by Little Feat at the
time-- I had never seen anything like it. It
seemed as if they were hardly moving, hardly
playing their instruments at all, and people were dancing on the tables, literally. I was absolutely
blown away by Richie Hayward on drums. I met Bruce Springsteen the first time while we
were both recording our first (and for me, the last) album for CBS. I came to a session at 914
Studios in Nyak, NY, and he was running over time and asked me if I'd mind if he finished. I didn't
know him at all then, but was happy to oblige. Later we met again briefly in Providence, RI,
where I was opening the show. His manager only booked gigs where he was the headliner.
All I remember then was this little guy with a secret smile and an obvious sense of confidence.
I was green, a kid, with a long way to go in discovering who I was in the panoply of the
music biz.
John Hammond Sr. had quite a rep for his
dominant personality, perhaps even conflicts of interests in his music dealings. What sticks out in
your mind of 'being discovered' by him?
My "being discovered by John Hammond"
sticks out as one of the sorrier moments in my
contacts with the official music industry
establishment. Whatever Hammond's "failings"
might have been, he was a giant to me. Here
was a man who put Louis Armstrong in the studio with white cats, got Bessie Smith recorded,
"discovered" Dylan and Springsteen, etc., etc. When he came to my house to hear me play, he
made comments like, "Never close your eyes while you're singing," and so on. I had no idea
what to make of it. He asked me to play my most "ambitious" piece. I quickly thought of a
12 minute song called Crossroads Where I Stand, then played
By a Thread instead. If he wanted ambitious, then I figured the shortest song I had
written that put it all in two and a half minutes
was the way to go. Later he wrote saying that I deserved to be in the studio and he was going to
schedule some sessions as well as get me booked into Mike Porco's Folk City on 3rd
Street in the Village. I met Mike Porco and he was agreeable. I was pumped. Time passed and
nothing seemed to be happening according to plan, so I responded with an angry letter of
disappointment to John Hammond(!). Had he forgotten? Was he serious? Hammond was
insulted and washed his hands of the whole matter. I thought I was being strong, forthright.
Like I said, green.
That was in 1975, I think. Today I'm impressed
that I even got a chance to meet the man. And grateful that he saw something of value in what I
was doing.
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