Delbert McClinton Interview: Bypass surgery & Music Biz can’t stop him - He Wins AND Gets the Girl!

hey everybody this is craig garber and uh man this is an honor and a privilege to have delbert mcclinton with us today um this is so cool and i'll tell you why in a second first i just want to give a shout out and say a big thank you to our mutual friend kevin mckendree kevin you're the best thank you for connecting us and also make sure you go to everyonelovesguitar.com forward slash subscribe to uh subscribe to the show and if you're watching us on youtube hit the subscribe button and the little icon little emoji with a bell on it that helps us out a lot all right quick in a nutshell for delbert because we got a lot to talk about he's originally from lubbock texas been performing since 1957. he's been awarded the feed the peace award for his support of causes throughout texas and the country he was inducted into the texas heritage songwriters hall of fame he's had four records hit number one on the blues charts one at number two and he won four grammys he's been on saturday night live multiple times he's been featured on austin city limits seven times and he's appeared on pretty much every other national television show out there uh if you're not familiar with delbert's music you need this because you'll you can look forward to great roadhouse blues soul country songs with plenty of swing and groove horns he's got a soulful voice as they come and he plays a great harmonica lead as well and man ultimately to be honest with you just his music makes you happy it's impossible to not start moving when you sit down and you hear a good deal man yeah man now delbert will be i this blew my mind and i told you this when we first vote he'll be 80 in a couple of weeks your birthday's a couple of like few days after mine uh and in 2020 this year which was his 63rd year of performing he got his fourth grammy this one for best traditional blues album which was tall dark and handsome which is his 26th record an album that many people feel is the one of the best if not the best album of his career he also received the americana association's lifetime achievement award for performance and he celebrated the 26th annual sandy beaches cruise which he started let me tell you now why this is such a treat for me i've had four people that have played with delbert for many years on the show i had bob britt guitar player james pennebaker guitar player and kevin mckendree i just mentioned and rob mcnelly who used to play with delbert i have a lot of people on the show and everybody pretty much talks for the most part favorably of the artist they work with but all four of these people talked favorably of him as a human being and they all said that in many ways he changed my life he saved my life he changed the path of my career i wasn't happy and i worked with delbert it really got me back into music when you hear a lot of comments like that and you don't hear them often that's why it got me so excited because this guy's a good person you can see we're doing an interview about him you wanted to make sure you give credit i mean that's a good guy so anyway thank you for your time i'm looking forward to this and i really appreciate you man uh you've been a blues and soul musician pretty much your entire career i was curious if that's what you grew up listening to in your family as a kid well you know you put it to put it in perspective i was born in 1940 so uh i i soaked up all the music from the 40s all the big band stuff all the the trio stuff all the stuff that was on the radio in the 40s and that music uh it was during a time of of the worst world upheaval in modern times of world war ii the music was so incredibly uplifting all of it was for such a ragged time in our our history the music i don't know i i i crawled around on the floor as a little kid listening to all that and uh and i i'm still stuck in the 40s i'll listen to 40s radio that's cool yes sirius xm 40s junction that's what i listen to and and the the music that i i listen to still a lot of it comes from the 40s early 50s uh when so much was going on musically and changes were happening uh from in the early 50s when rock and roll well first it was it was before it was called rock and roll i think it was it was uh it was uh bb king and those guys from from the four uh uh post-war blues men or post-war music period but uh i i uh i just you know i that that's that's the music that that runs through me all day every day and it sustains me you just brought up something interesting you said well that was the worst time in history comparing this um the vibe or how do you compare that to all the this is a pretty bad time right now it's pretty negative how do you well look at the two they said they're not comparable really uh in in the in the in the uh in the way that that uh that that it has effect i mean you know the the condition we're in right now has this horrible effect on every on the ones that believe it's really happening uh so you know it's it's hard to put anything together that's together that's going on right now and have it make any sense yeah but uh but the music from world war ii was consistent for four years of the worst war and in our history modern history yeah so uh there was there was a unity everybody uh was uh was lifted by that music right now i don't see much to be lifted about because we're we've got a mess going on yeah man and uh i've been holed up for six months and i've never gone more than two or three weeks at most without doing show and uh i don't know uh we'll see is it it's not much of an answer but man nobody knows where it's going right now we know i don't want to talk political because that's that's that's that's absurd no i agree so it's just you know to try to complete compare what i'm saying about the music of the 40s with what's happening today i don't know how to put that together i get that yeah i get that and there's so much on the uncertainty is really weird well that's it the uncertainty well the uncertainty of that war was was was you know so but the difference is people were united then they're not united now everybody's everybody's everybody's looking for a way out of yeah man yes so and we don't have and we don't have one not yet yeah man maybe never this may go on you know it's a it's a it's a uh awkward time for everybody and and people's livelihoods have been jerked out from under them yeah that's the big problem and too many people are pretending that this just isn't going on and that you know i don't know you know enough of that yeah man i didn't mean to ask you to go down that rabbit hole just preparing the time frame uh early in your career you worked in a bar band called the straight jackets where you were basically the house band and you you all backed up blues greats like sunny boy williamson the second howlin wolf money waters lightning hopkins and jimmy reed and as i understand it because this was back in the 50s when they had sort of whites only clubs segregation yeah these these artists could only play in certain clubs on certain nights is that how that worked well not exactly uh like i said this was during segregation when uh you know uh blacks and whites were kept apart uh because of ignorance yeah uh so you know these these uh these players would come in they play like with jimmy reid he'd come to this was all in fort worth texas where i grew up uh those guys b.b king uh uh sonny boy uh all of the early rock and roll black guys that came from the blues background pushing it together with the invention or or the uh evolving of rock and roll first before it was rocket roll it was it was uh it was uh post-war blues and uh street corner guys singing on street cars harmonies and uh all of that evolved into and to rock and roll and and now it's gone from from chuck berry to check battery so you know it's it's uh it's it's it's such a wide range to try to define that uh it would take forever to dig into all the nuances of of the evolving of uh of american music from the 40s to the 60s a lot of things happened a lot of things changed tell me some of your fondest memories of those times when you're backing up those bands and maybe if you have a couple of funny or interesting stories about working with some of these guys well i think one of the most memorable uh things about that time for me was getting to to meet jimmy reid uh sonny boyle williamsons lightnin hopkins uh freddy king b.b king uh howlin wolf on the job training from these guys you know which was just phenomenal uh i i came from a time when uh things meant so much uh where everybody in the world wasn't in a band you know yeah um i uh i i had a i was in a band first band i was ever in called the melo fellas and none of us could play everybody was half-assed uh but we were having fun we uh we had my one of my brothers was in the band it was his guitar that i mostly learned to play on he bought a guitar because a friend of his had a guitar and uh so we had a from the time i was uh 15 years old 14 15 we had a guitar in the house and uh my brother and i that was that was in that band it was it wasn't a band it was the first time anybody ever here's what we had in the band the drummer had a snare drum and a high hat bass drum no ride symbol uh he uh he went and bought a bass drum because we were gonna open the show at uh at uh uh uh the the sportatorium in dallas first time jerry lee lewis oh wow we were we were one of three opening acts on that show and uh we added another guitar player which means it was me my brother his friend who the first who got was both interested in guitar and his brother was none of us could play not really it was uh i mean we thought we'd work but looking back on it nobody could play lead guitar nobody could really play much more than three chords on the guitar but we were in the game you know and it was a big deal to us because we knew we we didn't know any more than the fact that this is what we wanted to do and we were kind of involved so uh jerry lee lewis played at the supportatorium and and uh i remember the sportatorium was a place in dallas where the main thing they did was had wrestling matches so when they would have a music venue they'd take the ropes down and the corner posts down and make it make it a stage so i'm standing jerry lewis jerry lee lewis is on and and being part of who played i was still backstage so i was very able to stand right there at the stage where and watch him you know i was i was looking at him and i was looking at him kind of almost profile and i'm watching everything he did and uh and uh it was it was so exciting i mean to see jerry lee live at that time was badass i mean boy he came in and he commanded everything uh but i was watching him and he stood up and he's banging on the piano and with his right leg he kicked that piano stool and it goes right about up missed me by about 10 inches because i was standing right there and uh that was one of the biggest thrills of my life i'm both getting kicked in the head by the piano student from jerry lee and there's been a million million little things like that and uh tell me another one you said there's been a million little things tell me another one man these are good okay well the first joint i ever smoked in my life was with sonny boy williams at mother's place in lawton oklahoma we would play with sunny boy friday and saturday in fort worth and then a lot of times when we played with him he would take us to play with him the next night sunday night in lawton oklahoma at these black clubs right so we were the only only white guys in this black clubs and uh i knew right then that the on-the-job training was was happening to me and and i couldn't get enough of it on the break in the bathroom at mother's place sonny boyd passed a joint and uh life changed what year was that oh god sometimes maybe 61. so you you were 21 then 41 that's you smoked your first joint with sunnyvoy that is hilarious man that's a pretty memorable first joint man i don't think anybody it is holy crap that is a very cool story man you got to give me a couple of more this is great man oh man i don't know uh well i remember one night with playing jack's place and we had jimmy reed and buster brown fannie anybody okay and uh of course uh i was a singer in my band so when those guys were on stage i was just there you know well uh on my birthday it was november the 4th and and uh jimmy reed and uh and buster brown were playing well all the way to the gig since it was my birthday i didn't drink at all still don't drink much but but that's you know here there uh i stopped on the way to the gig and bought a pint of wild turkey only because i could you know show them my id and walk out with it well when uh my first wife and i split up and god i don't remember what year now 10 years after we got married something like that uh that bottle of uh of wild turkey half of it was still sitting under the sink in the bathroom i got drunk missed the whole show miss missed uh i i spent i spent that show in the office on the couch because i went in the i went in the dressing room before the show and then here's jimmy reid and and buster brown they're passing a fifth of old granddad i'm sitting in the middle of them with a harmonica and i'm just hanging on every word they say and double hitting that bottle as they pass it back and forth i'm sitting in the middle i missed the whole show [Laughter] lesson learned you know it's funny why does everybody buy why i think i bought wild turkey when i turned 21 drinking ate why does everybody buy this stuff it's horrible man that's the first thing we buy well it's because if you're gonna be tough drink the toughest stuff oh terrific man it's terrible what is 101 proof is that what it is 101 turkey 101 i can't remember but anyway uh i thought if i was going to drink you know i was going to be a grown man able to buy it i'd buy the hardest stuff i could find and and that's definitely turkey was then is now yeah man you know they still they sell half i just happened to realize this when i saw it turkey has a has a bottle that's like half a half pint okay which means uh half pints about this tall this one's about this tall and uh it's more than enough and uh i've never done well drinking all i've ever done with drinking a show my ass yeah if i if i start drinking you can bet your ass i'll show my ass yeah so so i don't i don't do that anymore what what was the biggest beer you know i'll have a beer yeah i like a red beer i don't drink just really i like a red berry with tomat a beer with tomato juice really yeah i've never heard that man i have to try that beer with i will give it a go i need that beer and tomato juice so let me ask you how did hanging around those guys what was the biggest were the biggest like musical lessons you took away that influenced you probably the rest of your career well the lessons that i took away from it was their plight okay go ahead uh these guys would come to town and we'd have to we'd pick them up to go to the gig and they were staying in a hotel downtown fort worth that was the new gym which was a black hotel you know the people it was before before people started making some kind of sense about that you know and uh so it was uh it was so obvious to me but it was obvious to me long before that when i was a kid growing up in lubbock the first racial thing that i remember was being in uh in sears sears yeah in downtown lubbock with my mother i was a little guy and i remember the water fountains one said white one said color cute god man and i asked my mother about that and i don't know what she said but she didn't really give me an answer you know just kind of oh well that's you know we we don't we don't drink from the same fountains you know with with no explanation so uh you asked me what what i got from that those guys the plight of black performers at that time they got they got screwed every which away from sunday it was uh it was obvious that they lived in another world and so uh learning to play the blues and being exposed to the blues the blues is you know you mention blues to a lot of people and they think of oh these down and out saddle bangs [Music] you know into the abyss and the only people that could do that in in my opinion that could that could play that music it came from their soul yes it wasn't like patty page and i'm not degrading patty page but you know clickity click white white marshmallow music and yeah and uh white music and until well the only person that i really really thought was something white entertainer was uh hank williams i still do still do nobody to compare with hank williams there's nobody to compare ray charles there's nobody to compare with uh oh god there's a great album called a percy mayfield called person bayfield and his tangerine band and it's out print but tanzarine was uh casually records was ray charles's label and percy mayfield was was uh ray charles his favorite artist and uh percy mayfield wrote hit the road jack and and and the like so uh it's uh percy mayfield and his tangerine band that's ray charles's band with ray charles playing keyboards and percy mayfield doing his songs which i love all of them and i love him uh these people play music that is vital absolutely vital because well i guess to to to to get a close-up on that just listen to bb king play oh i have my whole life yeah freddy king inside you know it's uh it's uh it's such an honest honesty uh and it had to come from somebody as as repressed as black people yeah that's why it feels so strong is because it's so real not all of them and especially today the the last thing i ever want to hear is another guitar shredder [Laughter] i've got all of that i can take man yeah i agree with you i i had a i had a thing happen to me that that uh well happened to me i overheard this uh some time back years ago not not years and years ago within the last seven years i heard uh i don't remember where i was or what who was doing this but uh somebody finished a performance and it was a young girl and her father standing within range of me hearing and this little girl she couldn't have been more than eight or nine years old and when this person finished their song she looked at her daddy and said just because he can do that doesn't mean he should wow from an eight or nine year old girl yeah and uh and it's it's the most it's how true is it yeah 100 man oh man gets our masturbation is just too much my favorite could uh go ahead sorry no that's all um freddy king can you tell me anything about him i love that guy just melts me man i mean anything he does i knew freddie i worked with freddie a lot i went to freddy's funeral oh yeah and i'll never forget it i remember that preacher saying be ye ever so ready and it was a moving experience and then there was an acapella solo it was all beautiful and all these women just crying some of them fainting it was it was a serious situation the funniest thing though was when we went to the cemetery freddie junior was driving freddie's cadillac and you know how graveyards are laid out in squares you know you know yes sir well we were all at the gravesite and freddie junior was all the way over on the next aisle he turned and drove across the graves over to where we were all at freddy's so it was it was just it couldn't be anymore anything more than hilarious because it's just yeah you just don't do that but anyway you know little millions and millions of you know one of the things you could say about your music when you listen to it and i'm not blowing smoke up your ass it is honest music it feels good you know it does yeah would you say a lot of that or the confidence to do that for you maybe even came from listening to those guys or the inspiration yeah well not just those guys like i said growing up in the 40s you know there was a well the the first time i turned got turned on to black music by that i mean uh charles brown you know my mother's youngest sister back when i was about nine eight or nine years old she had all those records you know all of that better bb charles brown uh the honey drippers all of that uh all of that stuff from the late 40s and 50s that that eventually turned into uh or or gave birth to rock and roll i don't know i don't i don't know it all just one thing fed another you know but the music blues music as i was saying a while ago it's not blue's music is uplifting it's not just i got to blue you know it's it's a release it's a release from the blues yeah man to to to let it all hang out and and to do what bb king could do with his fingers that's the blues not brown was a good friend of mine clarence kate mouth brown uh and uh when i first got turned on the gate mouthbound he was a deputy sheriff in new mexico i didn't know that that's interesting yeah he always carried a gun and his badge with him even up to when he died he used to come he's got his own booth at uh house of blues in new orleans in their restaurant he's got a booth that's uh signified as his gate mouse booth and every time i played the house of blues he'd come out we were i'll tell you i tell you when i met him i met him at a uh an outside concert in in louisiana and i couldn't wait to get there because i knew he was there and i never met him and uh when i got there i got to asking anybody you know if the gate mountains he's over there man with a bull whip and i went over and he was out there practicing popping his bull whip [Laughter] and uh when i got a break i introduced myself and told him guys how much i liked it and uh he uh he signed a record and gave it to me said to delbert my buddy [Laughter] but every time he would come to the house of blues and i was playing i remember one night uh we were getting ready to play and and he was in the dressing room we were shooting the breeze i said she won't come out and play one he said i didn't come here to save your ass you got your pistol with you and hit show he always has pistol with him and had his his his badge with it that's funny they really pissed me off more than anything ever was when uh uh katrina yeah well he was already real sick and he was uh he was in i think he was in uh oh god that he was somewhere in texas just out of louisiana and he was you just died and uh when katrina hit it hit his place and took every bit of memorabilia his guitars everything and washed him away trying and some idiot who had been taking care of him or this is the way i heard went to his deathbed and told him that he had lost everything man you know that's it it's amazing what people will do to be a part of something yeah it's pretty crazy man and and maybe not realizing what they've done but in order to be a part of it here i'll give you the worst news i don't know i don't know i i'll never forget that but uh yeah that's sad man yeah in uh in 61 when you cut hay baby with uh bruce channel i think wasn't it i said 61 i don't know yeah okay right 61. whatever i read maybe 62. let's call it 62. you know well i can be wrong uh that is such a fun cool song and that went to number one and your harmonica playing on that is like iconic it's very memorable like maybe someone doesn't know the name of the song but everybody that's a baby boomer has heard that song man right and it crops out you're like uh what i was curious about is you're playing sounded so free on that and i was wondering what was going on in your life at the time was it were you having a good part of your life to be that open and just it's impossible not to like no i was i was 21 or 22. uh i was going to change the world had no doubt about it that i was going to change the world along with many others uh but you got to put all this in perspective for it to make sense in fort worth texas in 1962 or 61 whichever it was it was not a hub of music it was there was one well there was two people but only one that mattered that was that was recording anybody and there's a guy named major bill smith and he was a piece of work i read about him oh god he was a piece of work but he was the only guy that was taking people in the studio and i met him because he hung out at the studio uh it was a studio in the basement of kfjz radio okay and they were they were the music hub of the city but they also had this recording studio and the uh the engineer there guy named bob sullivan passed away about three years ago i learned so much from him because he used to be he used to be the sound engineer on the louisiana hayride okay which was a big big deal kind of like the grand ole opry only in louisiana it was louisiana hayride and uh he had the best stories he had the best story for example he he told me i forget the artist but he said you know every night somebody would would come to him before their performance and and slipping ten dollar bill or something said turn the volume up on the applause on my you know always some kind of inside jive and uh and it was it was funny and he had another guy i'll tell you major bill this is the way to do better i spent a lot of time with that studio because like i said bob had all the stories i needed to hear about the inside of something music and so uh i was in there one day visiting with him i had i had a job every time i ever had was something a smart monkey could do because i i don't want to work you know so i get these jobs i had these jobs like driving a hot shot delivery truck for a breaking clutch company or something where i was out all day in a pickup delivering and didn't have to with anybody yeah so a lot of time i go go down to the studio and spend an hour hanging out with bob you know and listen one day i was in there and a major bill the door slung open to the studio and he said hey bob put me down for 10 o'clock saturday morning bob says all right made sure you're bringing in he said i don't know i'll find somebody this is the way he that's the way he he did and uh so i had met him so he would call me to get players together for his new artist right and uh and one of these days uh it was bruce chanel and bruce and i hit it off immediately he lives about a mile from me and we're still the best friend that's cool man that's a long that's that's a long-ass time man that's well you know 60 years we experienced that together hey baby is half the soccer teams in europe that's their rally song have you ever heard that yeah i didn't know that wasn't the people singing hey baby at the same time bruce got invited to germany several years ago to lead him in the singing of hey baby man that is awesome yeah it's it's unbelievable that song is is the song for multiple european soccer teams it's the craziest thing in the world but it is what it is and uh anyway uh uh that one day it was bruce chanel came in to record and uh that's saturday at 10 a.m oh okay this is just for some random day okay yeah yeah so that day you know he i've got together some guys to um back up majors artists you know and it was bruce and and like i said bruce and i hit it off and he sat down and started playing hey baby and what i played on the harmonica just came first time first take well actually we took two takes and got it that's amazing man it is but bruce is bruce is one of these guys that he don't need anybody else he can play and sing and that's all you need you know i mean uh he can accompany himself and sing his songs and uh there was nothing difficult about it for me he started playing songs and i immediately hear this riff in my head instantly which is something that happens a lot for me but uh he started playing that song and i started playing that part and within a few minutes we had it and we cut about three or four other songs that day and when we got through major bill he wanted to put out the single as dream girl which is the flip side of hey baby right and we all said you're out of your mind i said this is a hit uh oh what's the guy's name huey moe qemo and bill smith major bill smith were bargain basement colonel tom parker hey seed guys uh so they were always kind of in competition and the major he sent uh uh uh who'd i just say julie mo hey baby to listen to and and he offered him five hundred dollars for half half of it right there that's when the major knew he had a hit that's funny oh it is it's a it's it's it's hilarious that's a funny way of that's like a funny litmus test way of testing out something you know send it to your competitor if he wants a piece of it and you know it's good exactly right that's clever man it is clever but uh really is but you know that's the way things were going back then it was a whole different life oh god back then it's hard it's hard to put some things into words that make any sense of the time and place and people uh what was the um you said fort worth wasn't a big music town where was all the music happening back well i was in texas once again let's put it in perspective uh there weren't venues as we call them today there were beer jobs right and uh that's the place where you find live music out on the jacksboro highway or the weatherford highway all those highway beer joints place where you you can bet somebody will get stabbed that night right uh so uh that's that's that's all that's all there was for somebody to go make music in was beer joint yeah and uh there were lots of them lots of them uh so in the 70s man you moved out to l.a and if you're comfortable because it's a funny-ass story if you could tell the story of how you how you decided to move out there and then and then once you got there what you do what you do for work but tell that story if you're comfortable please that was true well i was uh i was my first marriage was was turmoil the whole way through uh the same old story to young people uh yada yada get married and uh it goes nowhere because you're too young and stupid sure and uh it's horrible but that's what happens that's the way we live and uh i was separated and i was playing a beer joint there in fort worth one night and maggie shows up girl i've known for forever since high school and i hadn't seen her in years i hadn't seen her in three or four years but she showed up at the beer joint that night star club place we were playing and uh she was she was had just gotten a divorce had some mad money and uh we hit it off that night we reconnected and with with an upgrade you know that's the first time i've heard it put like that that's good well i've known her and i've known her you know her boyfriends and stuff you know we were all grew up together but we'd never had a magic hat well it happened that night and uh so we started running wild together you know and it was it was as as wild and fun a time as you can imagine that idiots can have together you know you know scared of nothing uh uninformed about most things but you know that old man and woman thing it got a hold of us and uh glenn clark was a friend of mine he's he's about eight nine years younger than me he and uh we've been playing together in fort worth and and he took off and went to california this was about i don't know a year or so before i went and he went out there and he was staying with ray clark no ken but uh ray had a place in topanga canyon that was north cyber hill it held everything into panga canyons on the side of the hill uh so uh those guys ray and and and and glenn both kept calling me and saying man you need to come out here you need to come out here and my life was such a mess anyway and maggie had just come in in my life and she had like i said some some divorce money and a 66 chrysler imperium and uh i said hey you won't go to california she said hell yeah so that's what we did uh and i didn't have any money and uh uh so it was the getting out there and all was kind of on her her dime you know i was but you know they didn't matter then because uh we were we were having a time and that's all that mattered you know just let's let's keep this going well we went out to california and uh i remember we got there early one morning and we called ray from the from the pacific high coast highway at the entrance to topanga canyon he came down to get us i hadn't seen ray in years he had hair down to his shoulders and he was he was a dancer i mean he was a real rhythm a guy as a drummer he was a better dancer than he was a drummer right so so we were all going to stay you know he's going to put us up well their house is on the side of the hill and the downstairs room had a dirt floor oh my gosh out of a storage area or whatever well and they were on septic tank all of that out there so septic so uh they had a mattress that would flew on the put a sheet on the dirt floor put that mattress on it and that's where me and maggie were gonna spend the night sleep that night well i don't know and when we got there let me go back a little when we got there everybody went and took a shower and uh at that point nobody had told us that using it too much causes it to overflow a septic yeah so somewhere in the middle of the night i got up to go pee oh and the mattresses is in sewage oh yeah my clothes my shoes everything so uh we realized this wasn't gonna work so we went uh soon after that i we did stay there for a while after that cleanup but it was it was an adventure right you know we were hungry and we were willing to do whatever it takes and uh well i was 30 years old how did things work out when she got out there what'd you do for work well i'm about to stay we uh we eventually went and found an apartment in venice and i don't know how much you know about california don't know much well venice isn't there i don't know really what it's like now but at that time that's where all the bohemians lived and the junkies and the and every kind of weirdo there was okay so we found this apartment i don't even remember the real name of the place but it was called methadrean manor [Laughter] and you could walk the first thing somebody told us is never walk around on the roof barefooted because there's rigs laying everywhere oh man and we didn't realize what a dangerous spot we were in and we walked around at night like we owned the place and it every night there would be red flashing police lights right out there on the street below us because there's always some kind of mayhem going on you know that that place we we we rented we had four locks in the door inside it was painted black floors walls and ceiling that's weird well it's another time yeah and uh so uh everything went pretty well until uh it took me a little while to find a job and uh maggie kind of had all she wanted of it and moved out okay well let me tell you what how we were living in this this apartment there were two rooms and a small kitchen the front room uh glenn took that for his area maggie and i took the other room and we took the doors off of this double door closet the clothes is about you know what three four feet three three feet deep we shoved our mattress that we got from somewhere up in there and then hung shears across the door so we could have three feet of privacy you know we'd get in there on our mattress and we'd get all the way into the the closet where we were i don't know this deep yeah into an alcove well when she left she was you know she finally left and uh she broke my heart uh the only time in my life i ever had a woman break my heart really broke pretty good i i was but within the hour after she left i sat there on that mattress and wrote two more bottles of wine so uh you know i got that from it yeah that's cool and um it's funny uh to have your heart broken like that you go through or i went through the for example we go into santa monica to wash our clothes we go this you know washington things and i think about her and every thing i did i remember oh you were really heartbroken man yeah oh well i was man i i never experienced anything like that i remember standing outside that washington smoking a cigarette i smoked back then and there was this like the red baron this biplane you know was flying over that park there in santa monica and i could i was positive that maggie was in that plane with that pilot and they were having a good time oh wow that's i saw her everywhere but i got over it it's amazing that you wrote two more bottles of that turned uh tragedy into you know travesty exactly well that's that's played that event has played a role many many times in my life you know uh i have never uh what's the word i've never doubted my ability uh regardless of what went on it was just a temporary setback as far as i was concerned i never lost the love for making music and i knew that i could do it and i knew that i could succeed at doing it but it took a while but uh you know living the life at the end of the 70s that's when that came out that was the number one hit that emily harris covered how did you get that song to her i didn't give it to her i don't know who got it to her really yep you just got like a phone call one day or something or how did that well no i realized when it came out and hey this she's doing my song but but you know i uh i didn't have any inside knowledge of the music business and i was in a bar band how the hell could that song of i mean like who did who did somebody hear you pl i mean how would that have happened well because i put it out and it was a local uh local hit back to major bill smith he was the only guy that i recorded with when i was living in texas and he stole everything from me that you could steal from somebody who didn't know the rule so you know took all the publishing um uh and uh so you never got paid on all that early stuff oh no no oh man hey but it's i'm not the only one you know i know i know it's happened to me the point i'm trying to make is that i had no pull whatsoever with any record company or with anybody in the record business i was in a bar band making records for major bill and i thought everyone we made was going to be a big hit they weren't but he was the only connection i had to the music business so and all i wanted to do was record i didn't care about anything else i just wanted to record some of my songs and so in doing so uh he took he took everything he could and and that's the way that goes yeah no i've heard this from so many people it's horrific it's really tragic to hear this man well it is but it's uh it's just it's you know people are man sometimes yeah man i'd rather i'd rather live with dogs than people sometimes yes anyway you can't do that so when that song broke what did that do for you in terms of like opportunities and also from a confidence standpoint well it made me feel great but once again i knew no nobody in the record business i didn't know anybody had heard record company that put that song out uh in fact before i heard it somebody else heard it and said hey family has recorded us all yours that's how disconnected with recording industry i was yeah so that didn't really do anything for like career career-wise or opportunity-wise just because you were so far removed yeah wow uh talk about uh more of this unscrupulous record label stuff in the early 80s i read this i couldn't believe it you get hit with a tax bill of almost 300 grand and you're making 18 grand a year and uh a lot of people would have quit the business at that point and i would love to know the conversation or the conversations you had with yourself during that time period that kept you going because that's serious commitment well uh again this was at the time of my second divorce and uh all the upheaval you can imagine that goes along with that was going on sure so you had the second you had you're going through a divorce while this then you get hit with this 300 000 tax bill yeah oh man when it rains it pours i guess yeah but uh not only was i getting a divorce uh my wife now came into my life well she had already was already in my life she and i had been having an affair for a couple of years right what a time of time i'd go to new york and i was anywhere close she'd come out of work you know uh and uh she saved my everything she's uh she's my best friend and she's the smartest woman i've ever known so she came in uh during all of that she was living with me before our divorce my divorce was filed from the oh it sounded like a sleazy bunch of bastards no you don't you know what man it happens happens anyway uh they came along and said sell your house or we'll sell it for you guy a guy a uh a uh uh an accountant in austin uh this was before wendy came along wendy's my wife uh this accountant in austin uh was handling my affairs monetary affairs and he put got me in a tax shelter that he thought by the time it came due i would be making more money i was looking pretty positive in some ways then you know i was making records that nobody ever heard but the people that did like them so it was you know uh so uh wendy came into the picture and we got rid of this accountant well when we did he paid off his friend the lawyer that i owed some money to and wendy hired professional legal people and got this thing resolved but not before i lost my house uh and anything else i had to take it i had an idiot call me one day and say i just heard one of your songs on the radio who do i see about collecting for that i know y'all get paid played on reddit that kind of you know god that's horrible man one of the one of the things that probably helped me through all of that was my my ignorance my ignorance and my determination uh i like i have a credit graduating high school and in english and uh i don't know i i did not do well in school at all uh especially in math right they have the reason i chose music business is because all you gotta do is count to four that's a great quote but you got to do it right you know yeah you got to do it right anyway uh my ignorance of the reality of uh social being was zip i was concentrated solely on me and i i i guess that was i guess i guess you could say i was selfish unintended but selfish because the music came first and everything i did but elba don't you think to be successful as a musician and i've heard this from so many people they say if you have a plan b you might as well quit now because you you're gonna get some version of all the you got maybe not that much but you're gonna get heaped on it on well you know it in looking back on it like i said i was i was not a very smart guy in the ways of of business right of any kind so uh all of that just rolled off my back you know i never really was aware of the import of it or are the ways of it sure and so i never thought about doing anything else but music ever i've had a lot of jobs stupid jobs just to to make a living but i was also playing five six nights a week in a beer joint right and uh you can't make any money in a bar band but you can play five or six nights a week and that's all i need to do that's all i wanted to do and i would take anything you could throw at me as long as i could play music and it's always been that way that was such an honest answer that you gave me my ignorance and my commitment that was really cool thank you man that was freaking honest the answer but how you guys well it's true you know i can look back and see myself as the dumbest son of a there is well i wouldn't know about i wouldn't go that far man well i'm not anymore but at some point in time i was so uneducated about uh the matters of being an adult yeah uh i'm not sure i'm an adult yet in uh 92 you won your first grammy for good man good woman with bonnie ray at that point in time were you sort of now entrenched in the music industry by that time yeah you were dead what year was that you know 92 92 was i entrenched uh i was way far ahead of where i was after the irs took my house when wendy left new york she had an apartment in yonkers she sold her apartment came to live with me and uh with all this irs stuff that i had i lost my house so she took what money she got from her uh her apartment selling her apartment and uh bought a bottle an apartment in nashville uh well we kind of decided that that would be the thing to do because i had to get out of my house yeah and so we said well what the hell you know i said well let's go to nashville you know maybe i can make something happen in nashville and so uh she she bought that place in nashville and and uh and we moved here and uh i didn't have any success in the music business as far as monetary success until 93 i was 53 years old and made a little money and uh and learned a lot and and uh became even more inspired by wendy's hand at at navigating life all of the things that i know nothing about i can remember my first marriage i can remember how detached i was every year when we would go to this man that we to do our taxes i have no idea what that is none whatsoever how to do that uh so being over there in that man's office with my first wife who did know something about that i felt like the world's biggest idiot because i just didn't understand a word they were saying about anything and it's still that way i i don't i don't uh i don't i don't comprehend that world at all but you got someone that hooked up with someone that cares about you and doesn't like i said wendy saved my life she came along and saved my life and and recharged me and uh i started writing more so when i moved to nashville uh first thing i did was get in touch with an old friend of mine who used to be in my band 100 years ago he was already living in nashville had been there for years seven six seven years i got in touch with him and uh that's when i started songwriting collaborative songwriting uh and uh we did really well at it you know we uh we've written 30 plus songs together and they're all on those records from from the 90s forward and uh i don't know man you know i just i've always been so incredibly determined to prove to myself that i can do this nobody else just to me right uh and i learned what i do from people like ray charles people uh hank uh hank williams people who can articulate simplicity and make it profound and uh i knew i knew that i could do that but uh it took it it it's taken this last record the one with just one of grimy on is best performance of anything i've ever done it's a great record you got a great band it is a great record and i do play with a great band so i'm i'm going to be 80 years old in a few days a few weeks but uh i want for nothing and that's a damn good place to be oh yeah um i want to talk touch on something you just said when you in the song if i hock my guitar you got a lyric in there says these days i can do without a lot of things and when we first spoke a few weeks back you mentioned to me i don't have to do anything i don't want to do and i've read that quote or something very similar that you had said a few different places online so this is like obviously pretty important to you and if you're comfortable sharing if you could tell me the importance of that to you the importance of that view yeah the importance of you know how you how why is that so important to you now it's it's obviously means a lot that you don't have to do anything that you don't want to do pretty much like you just it's a great deal i love music obviously uh but i've been doing it a long long time and uh i love to play music but i hate the hotels i hate the hotel i hate being isolated in a hotel and i hate having to go travel yeah i love the bus i love traveling in the bus but i prefer to stay home now yeah uh and and if if the world ever gets right side up well then i can go i can go and do shows at my leisure you know i don't have to go do it yeah i fortunately am in a place where i don't have to do it and it makes it a lot more fun when you don't have to do it so you've proved to yourself you got this thing down now finally absolutely yeah all right i i am solid that's cool man that's really important that's really important it is it's very important and and uh man i'm just i'm good you know i'm solid tough question tell me the top three experiences you've had musically oh god just knee jerk reaction yeah well one of them was what i told you about that jerry lee lewis saying that was sure ah uh i don't know uh mother's place in lawton oklahoma was a big deal that's that's burned into my my memory with a smile what was so special about that huh what was so special about that well that's when i've smoked a joint with with with sunnyboy yeah that's a memory i'll take to the grave you know uh have you paid it forward have you like found some young musician to get him high just smoke his first joint with you oh i'm sure i have but i i can't recall that's never been a priority of mine to to go and turn anybody on to that that's uh that's a world unto itself and you're either into it or you're not sure sure uh who's my place here um if you had to go back and give your younger delbert advice assuming you would have listened what would you have told yourself oh god i don't know i don't know because my life has been my my marital life has been chaos since 1959. up until wendy came along sure two very unfortunate marriages uh and and and uh in the first marriage i was the biggest uh uh uh i guess you'd say i didn't take marriage seriously and that was a cheap a low life disregarding my wife sure doing what i damn well please and living the life of a male the the the the thing you get couple of things that you can you can take to the grave with you is if you wanna oh if you play in a band you get women period yeah just the way it is uh you can carry a guitar case around and whether you play or not you could have a woman before she knows she's been had just because you're carrying a guitar case around that's true and i i know i know people that have lived that way uh if you're in a band women present themselves to you right on every level do you have a favorite song that you wrote i probably do but depends on the mood i'm in as to which one it is sure um your arrangements you're are they're really well done and i was curious like how did you learn how to arrange music like that because that's you know especially with your current band you have so many tools there to use and you put them together really well how did you figure out how to do all that i think the biggest biggest reason i can give for that is listen to ray charles it's perfect if anything's perfect it's ray charles and his arrangements but then frank sinatra in those arraignments real people playing real instruments at the same time not stuff flown in from put together a piece at a time and re-tuned which is what goes on today i heard i heard a girl on tv no it's been a year or so ago she was uh she was standing up for this young girl who got caught lip-syncing you know and she said she was trying to to make this girl look better and she says well you know that's just what i said i wouldn't even consider going on stage without autotune oh my god now the first thing i thought was where's the reward yeah you know well a lot of people use auto tune in their life and auto tune is yeah so it's all it's hard to wade through anything to find the reality of something without having to dig through unless you've been directed in the right direction and i think i was yeah i know i was so as far as arrangements i i i could put horn arrangements to the home of the city i hear it everywhere there's a song going on all the time in my head there's an arrangement going on all the time in my head and i learned that from people who do that so well that's cool uh a few years back i guess around 2014 uh you had bypass surgery and it all worked out thankfully i was curious what kind of changes changes in how you think about life did this bring about and how did you take these changes and then turn them into new or different behaviors well first of all i didn't have a heart attack i uh we were we were in uh fort lauderdale florida and uh we arrived early in the morning and our rooms weren't ready at the hotel yet right so we went uh we went out to the outdoor venue so my crew could unload all of the equipment and get everything ready for the night's performance well uh i'd been having this feeling like i was having heartburn and uh that morning while we were i was in the bus and the crew was was loading stuff in i started feeling really weird uh none of the none of the signs of the heart attack just really weird to the point that i uh i walked back up to the front of the bus and i told guys i said told my road manager i said i think i need to go to the hospital and so that started you know [Music] and ems showed up somebody called them and they showed up they checked me out couldn't find anything wrong and said well what you need to do says you need to go to uh the emergency room and uh get checked out and i thought about that for a minute and i was thinking that's about a 2500 ride and so i said no like they wanted to take me over there i said no thanks i turned to the promoter of the show i said did you give me a ride over to the emergency room so he took me over there and they found i had a a 95 blockage in the main order and the next day they cut my heart out and i had a triple bypass i had a triple bypass that it all went so well because for example i remember uh some other person i know that had a heart surgery was talking about where they take the vein out of your leg they take a vein out of your leg they have so much trouble with that and it it gave them a hard time for months but it didn't bother me at all when they took that out and on the third day after heart surgery they kicked me out before they told me you know they want you up and at them right away yeah right so um i uh they they finally told me well it's one of the things they did that really made me feel good you know when you're trying to recover from that they give you this little thing to blow and you got to keep a little ball in the middle for so long well i had no problem doing that because i sang right and i had lung power and so when they were before they let me go the the doctor that checks on that had me blow that little thing he took it from me and tossed it in the trash he said you don't need this oh cool the last thing they did before i left was handed me a big heart-shaped pillow and said this is going to be your best friend for the next eight weeks and it was uh because having your chest torn open and malibu it it it causes a lot of pain yeah i got in the bathtub once and couldn't get out my wife couldn't even help me get out i finally got out but i thought i was going to bust everything over doing it holy last time i got in the bathtub during all of that but uh you have something like that happen to you and you go through for me i went through this period of melancholy that was that was just really awkward because uh it's it's a psyche that uh i wondered if i could ever sing again i wonder if i could still do it i wondered a lot of things uh but when i got better i found that my voice was better than it's ever been completely better than it's ever been and uh that's what i got from it also the last night i'd been chewing nicorette gum for going on 30 years i quit smoking but i was addicted to the gum sure well the night before my surgery was the last piece of gum i cheated oh that's great and uh i don't know man i'm just a lucky guy that's great wow uh tough question tell me what you like most about you what i like most about me yes sir [Laughter] from this side there's not a whole lot to be real proud of i don't know the thing i like most about me is my tenacious need for this it's uh it's i i think my career has has made me a selfish person to a lot of people uh because i picked this over over that yeah but uh i did what i had to do had to do you know there there's things i i can only speak for myself but sure the only thing i've ever had to do is make music i can't not do it what would your wife say she likes most about you she thinks i'm devas devilishly handsome of course [Laughter] that's a great answer those are her words that's a great answer she's a keeper i think right ain't no doubt about it tell me your uh best childhood memory best childhood remember jeez man i had a great childhood i had a wonderful job and i grew up in love with texas yeah tell me about it the hub of the planes it's uh it's so flat out there that if you look real hard you can see the back of your head [Laughter] that's one of the one of the things they say about coming from west texas uh uh i remember reading a book once talking about the texas plains it's it's a story about uh oh hell i can't think of this name now anyway uh a pioneer guy from from the texas charles goodnight the good night trail he was a cattle man and uh he's one that started all those cattle drives and all but he uh he was a guy he he wrote a mule from missouri when he was seven years old he became a texas ranger he became this that and the other biggest cattle man in in in texas he uh sort of discovered palo duro canyon which is uh a miniature grand canyon right in the middle of the hub the planes i mean you don't see it till you get there and then well it was a it was where the last indian battle was fought i think it was general mckenzie in the us army who who anyway the point the thing i was going to get to is when when the when the spanish came across that country and during the discovery of you know uh the spanish conquistadors and all the spanish explorers uh they named that area the uh uh llano estacado which means the staked planes and by that they mean it was so flat out there that they had to pile buffalo or or hammer a stob in the ground with a flag on it as part of reference because you could go on for days and it's just flat all the way over into new mexico and all of west texas it's just flat so without without those kind of landmarks that's uh that's what it was like at that time on the planes and growing up in lubbock i can understand it because it's just flat it goes over forever the only place there were two places in lebanon to go to have a family good time one of them was mackenzie park which was a small canyon uh and it was uh called uh the ranch the oh what's it called in spanish it was a place where indians and spaniards used to trade people and things canyon de rescot i think i can't remember exactly but uh it was a park and uh there were cliffs in the canyon with caves in them and we as kids we ran all through those caves all and it was always a place where the indians were so uh and then the other place was buffalo lakes which was in another canyon outside of level and it was a big lake not a big lake but a lake it's where i learned to swim but my daddy took me on his back out to this uh platform in the middle and we got up on it and he grabbed me by arm and leg and threw me in and that's why i learned to swim what did you what kind of work did your dad do he at that time we lived in lubbock he was uh he was a city bus driver when he got out of world war well he uh he hurt his back and training camp broke his back in training camp and so he spent i don't know how long uh in a army hospital in alexandria uh louisiana i remember uh i must have been five years old uh my mother and i took a train down there to visit him in the hospital i was a little guy like i said five years old and they had german prisoners there and we they big whacked in intense army tents uh and it was the most exciting thing i'd ever done to see these prisoners you know and and there was armed guards walking all night long and around our tent and the whole area uh and that was uh that was the furthest i'd ever been out of out of texas was riding the train down to and i remember a guy in the room with my dad had built this model of a like a cessna it was about oh about this long and he gave it to me oh so anyhow you remember things like that when you're little right well you do you know uh and uh i was gonna say something else i forget what it was oh i remember the when when the war was over my grandmother lived in a house close to downtown lubbock and the tallest building in lubbock was the lovelik hotel i don't know it's 10 or 12 stories and the the the the night that the war was over my whole family was down there at my grandmother's house watching they were shooting fireworks off of the top of the level hotel everybody driving honking their horns uh people in uniform walking the streets and i was sitting out on the wall by the sidewalk of my grandmother's and these three soldiers came walking by and they they might have been drunk i don't know they were really happy and it was it was just really not much happened in love of texas yeah i'm gathering that was a big deal but when they when they came by me one of them took his tie off and put it on me ah that's cool they kept walking i don't know whatever happened to it but i thought it was cool you know uh i don't know little things you know you dig around you can find find a lot of little things that that make changes in your life you know were your parents supportive of you getting into music because that was kind of on the outskirt they were not it was on the outskirts back then yeah i remember my mother wrote me a letter once and mailed it to our house because she was worried about me i was a lousy student at school i like half credit graduating high school yeah i think i already told you that anyway uh i don't know what i was telling you letter that your mom wrote oh yeah because she wrote me this letter because she said it was the only way she could get me to be still long enough to talk to me and i'll never forget my dad telling me son if you don't get that high school education you ain't gonna amount to a hill of beans i can hear him saying it right now and and i wanted to please my parents you know but uh i was mediocre all the way through school in most things uh the one thing that i did it was in high school and the the yellow jackets were the football team at this high school right but and so the the jacket journal which was the school paper comes out every three months you know just and for the christmas edition of the of the jacket journal they wanted everybody in english class to write a poem a christmas porn and uh mine won and i was the dumbest guy in class but my porn won it was it was christmas to the blind and i can't remember an hour but uh the last line is and uh he'll have a more beautiful christmas than you and i and well wait wait his ears will be filled with christmas cheer and yeah yeah and he's the one filled with christmas cheer and we're the ones who are blind anyway i wonder ah first page front page on the jacket journal i've got it somewhere that's cool so that was writing lyrics that's why you won well i wrote poetry before i was a singer yeah so as you can as your career develop your folks around when they to see you become successful my folks were not around to see that i'm sorry ah me too but that's the way it goes yeah yeah my mother worried worried my daddy worried they both worried that that i was a lost cause i mean they didn't love me any less sure but uh they didn't think blues music was very advantageous for me to be involved sure which was pretty normal thinking for back then well it's true you know yeah well i'm happy that you proved them wrong i think a lot of people are happy who's had the biggest influence on you musically and personally but i'm assuming personally is probably your wife the biggest influence musically yeah man i don't know who i could i i could name several people and and leave out several more you know uh i've been influenced by just about everything i've ever heard yeah it's either registered with me or registered as something that that doesn't move me not that it's not valid it just doesn't move me yeah sure well and uh i like music that moves me yeah you know i've always stuff there's there's two kinds of music there's music you like and music you don't like right yeah i can't see why somebody wouldn't how would you like music that doesn't make you feel something i don't even i don't get that well you know i'm completely lost with music today uh it's all so much pandering yeah it's it's just it's the reality of it is is not there but then again i'm an old guy in a new world and uh a lot of people will listen to me and look at me and like well he's so out of touch well i am out of touch with a lot of stuff i i ever since mtv came along the music has gone down and it's more about wardrobe malfunctions and pretty little girls girls pretty little girls are always going to win out over old guys yeah that's the truth i don't care what they're doing it's uh so you know uh ain't that the truth yeah um you have any hobbies outside of music oh well i don't know if you call it a hobby uh besides reading because you look like you read a lot i do i love to read uh i i fancy myself a armchair archaeologist anthropologist that's cool i love that and i've always have and i've got books on it you know and uh i want to know who what when where why and how so you're curious dude i'm very curious dude yeah barry how did you get into archaeology and anthropology detail out of me i just i i just uh i'm just i'm fascinated by people grow up thinking that they learned everything there is to learn at school it's anything as far as archaeology and anthropology you don't learn anything in school in high school you learn what a crow magnet was and whose bones these were and what kind of animal was this you know but uh i love i love the history of south america uh mexico uh ireland uh all of the ancient ancient stuff you know like you know you go to school in texas and you know you you hear that uh nothing happened until jesus came along that's kind of what they teach you know yeah and i'm not a religious person yeah and so i like to go back a couple hundred thousand years of to to to human activity and like look at ball back in uh and uh where his ball back is in there oh that's the middle eastern country i can't remember which one it is but they they've got these blocks that have been cut out that were weighed 300 tons who did that yeah man that's who did that right and uh there wasn't any caterpillars contractors yeah how did that hello and it was here way before christ yeah but you know as i grew up the history since christ has just has been about it you know briefly hit on this and that and the other but uh man there's an awful lot of unanswered things and uh and i don't like for anybody to tell me what to think i think for myself and so a whole lot of the stuff that that i learned in school about the world is uh very inadequate lessons yeah i read this quote one time it said something like school isn't designed to teach you to learn it's designed to teach you to obey well that's that's that's that's very there's some truth in that that's viable you know remember you you you'll learn that with with anything you know the way the way you well that's how that's how how we live as as human beings is somebody has to be the boss yeah and a lot of times it's the wrong person a lot of times it's the right person right now we're living in a time where the wrong people are doing things and uh it's really screwed up it is it is a messy place yeah yeah yeah hey tell me the favorite place you traveled because you've been all over the world i've got a home in mexico and that's my favorite place to go uh i live in a a 400 year old spanish colonial city called san miguel de allende and it suits me cobblestone streets the the mexican people they're so joyful they there's there's some kind of celebration in mexico every other day that involves everybody it's music it's dancing it's camaraderie and and and and decency young people in mexico and in this town they have two two school things a day you go to early school and you go to or you go to lake school and these kids are all dressed immaculately and the most beautiful children they're just beautiful and uh everybody's involved i remember when i first first got that place in mexico i met this guy who was kind of a a can-do guy he can you know get this or that for you as far as knowing who to sing about whatever and he's told me once he said everybody in mexico has a tail that means that everybody goes or nobody goes so when there's an event it includes everybody everyone it's it's never segregated it belongs to everybody and that's a beautiful thing to see i feel safer in mexico than i do here how did you get turned on to mexico at that level when i was in school i guess this is where my anthropology archaeology goes back to my plan was to graduate high school get a job buy a jeep and go discover mexico well i didn't make it it took me about 60 something years to go to anything mexico that but it's always fascinated me uh mexico has it's uh it's beautiful the people the people are fantastic uh and of course there's the horror but the horrors everywhere yeah especially now yeah it's uh just this year the murders in this country have just gone way out of control out of control's enough to work they just it's it's it's everybody's pissed off and everybody's mad yeah and uh i don't know it's a scary place it's a scary place you know it's weird because i thought because of covid that the people that were healthy would be mellower you know maybe have a little more gratitude but man people are angrier than ever now it's really weird well it's because i'm an american i've got a right look at these look at some of these people i'm an american i don't have to wear a mask i'm an american that's infringing on my rights as an american well those kind of people that feel that way are really lost [Music] really out of touch with reality uh in my opinion sure sure you know uh you you you read the karen report every day you don't want to care no what is that oh man when we're not doing this say tell google the latest karen report the karen nuts are these privileged white women and ken is the privileged white man that do the most ignorant stupid things all right i'll google that today the karen report i'm not heard you know what man i got to tell you i have not watched news this is a choice of ignorance in 35 or 40 years because well i can't i can't stop dipping into it at least once a day uh i just can't believe the ignorance yeah that's why i stopped watching it it was too depressing well it is it is depressing but it's it's a it's a it's a it's a catch 22 for me you know i i uh i've got to wear i don't want to turn the tv on in the morning because i want to find something that makes me feel good yeah that's why i stopped watching it yeah well i know but it's still there baby i know and it's still going on and it's getting worse and i don't know what to do i don't know what to do uh uh i don't know i watch animal videos man nobody it's really it never i never watched a video of like a deer playing with a little pony and got upset so i just watched that sounds ignorant i'm okay with that honestly i am my favorite show on tv is naked and afraid what is which what is that now you've not seen naked in a fray i don't watch much tv either sorry man no i don't either but if i do it's a reality show where they take a man and a woman and drop them off in the most unbespoke uh the most hostile places on the planet naked they they they stop and get out of the truck take all their clothes off put them in the back of the truck and they meet at this particular point where there's two little bags hanging where they've got the two or three each one of them is is allowed to bring when somebody usually brings a machete and somebody a fire starter or somebody will bring a net or something and they got to do 21 days in the wilderness and feed themselves holy it's it's uh and they're naked yeah naked and afraid like totally naked like not on no underwear nothing nothing absolutely nothing man you got to be pretty ballsy to go on that show well you do and and you'll see you know but i mean my wife said no that's all it's because you know the people there filming them well there are people that are feminine but they don't intervene in anything unless it's an emergency they have a medical person with a set but all you really see is these two people trying to and so all the people that do this are people who are sure they can handle it so that's like people who know how to to rub their hands together and make fire you know yeah yeah survivalists yes i find it uh i find it distracting from the reality from all the other going on uh and they're bad actors because they're not bad actors but bad actors on tv they're everywhere yeah oh and it's it's it's it's it's it's like it's like people stealing something from you so yeah yeah it's like you know i if i'm reading a book and and if somebody says something's just stupid i'll throw in the trash right i'm not going any further with with that kind of yeah it's funny because people don't think you can do that but you could do whatever you want yeah because i'm the same way if i'm reading something i'm done done over if i'm watching some you know i hate when you watch a movie and it doesn't end and it's just a waste of time i feel like i got two hours robbed from me exactly i hate that feeling i hate it hey i'm gonna ask you two more questions dilbert and i cannot thank you enough for just being a real cool straight shooter um first changes first question is what has been the biggest change in you and your personality maybe over the last 10 years and how much of that has been intentional and how much of that if any has been because of aging i don't know a lot of good things have happened to me in the last 10 years i've become a better human being which is important to me i have i have discarded a lot of baggage that's unnecessary and uh since my heart surgery i've been quite happy i i feel like hell i feel like i'm 50 again you know so uh life's good i got i've got no complaints about my reality other than what somebody is is screwing up in our government and so that's pretty cool when it comes down to it yeah i've got nothing else to fight with that and the last question is um what are the most important things you've learned through life that keep you happy and lower the amount of stress you have to deal with just for you not blind for one thing i can remember when i when i told myself i'd stop lying to myself i didn't do it but i put it in my head anyway and i worked toward it and i'm much better at it now uh just being aware of the fact that you're stupid is when we win because once you realize how stupid you are that means will help now i can learn and and and i i i don't know i just i i i think for myself i keep my own counsel and uh and i'm happy with that well i think you're far from stupid and i think most of the people that are self-deprecating like you are extremely talented and bright and just very i agree i agree i agree with all of that but i've also been very stupid in my life who had that but the the the thing that starts putting an end to that is the first thing that i ever really learned was that i don't know anything yeah ain't that the truth none of us i know so uh from from that point of reference uh since i've since i've realized that everything's better well man uh i can't thank you enough again you lovely guy really a privilege to talk with you i i cannot tell you how much i appreciate how direct you are and it's really nice so thank you well thank you very good i appreciate it man it was uh it's uh fun interesting good and uh is any chance you're gonna be on naked and afraid once kovid's over oh baby not me i will watch tv for that you need to watch it because the bugs eat these people alive and you know some of the things that i mean it's real you know they eat caterpillars and anything because they have to and it's uh you know it's a good way to see people who can handle it and people who can't have it right right hey let me when i was when i was 30 years old i would have jumped been first in line to go do something like that really well yeah because i was young and i thought i could you know yeah do anything especially and i used to love to go camping you know when i was a kid and and of course i never had to shoot something to eat but being outdoors and and being confronted with the with the reality of being outdoors has always been uh something that that draws me so that that show you get to sit in your comfy chair and you get to watch a couple of people get tormented for 21 days and come through it you know and somehow there's there's some gratitude in there you know i'm gonna do this i'll google the camera report i'm gonna take baby steps with this stuff google care report first and i'll move on to naked and afraid okay hey let me tell people where to find you uh first of all if you have not checked out delbert's latest album this is it man you need this all right it's called tall dark and handsome it's a great record he's also got a book which i didn't get to read one of the fortunate few and is there going to be another book coming out is there another book coming out at some point no but then that was coming out in paperback okay so one of the fortunate few check that out uh and go to his website delbert.com and uh he's just an awesome guy man check out his music if you're not familiar with it and uh you you'll be happy any any final words no man you know just uh keep on keeping on right on well hang on a second let me wrap this up and thank you for everything i mean that from the bottom of my heart well thank you i i had a good time i enjoyed it likewise everybody thank you so much for listening if you enjoyed this please share it on your social media channels with your friends we appreciate your support many many thanks to delbert mcclinton i can see now why all these guys love you man you give them the real deal no you know you want good music and that's what it's all about and that's what musicians want man none of this other kind of they got to deal with man and you look out for your people i could tell that too uh so and thank you for that and most important especially nowadays man remember that happiness is a choice so choose wisely be nice go play a guitar and have fun till next time peace and love everybody i am out brother thank you so much delbert thank you

Channel: EveryoneLovesGuitar

Views: 2,873

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: everyone loves guitar, guitar podcast, delbert mcclinton interview, delbert mcclinton, delbert mcclinton tall dark and handsome, texas music, red dirt music, delbert mcclinton everytime i roll the dice, delbert mcclinton giving it up for your love, delbert mcclinton shaky ground, delbert mcclinton im with you, delbert mcclinton why me, delbert mcclinton one of the fortunate few, delbert mcclinton sending me angels, delbert mcclinton two more bottles of wine

Id: Z9HbDsVqIKI

Length: 123min 38sec (7418 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020