Glenn Worf Interview: Mark Knopfler, Brent Mason, Buddy Guy, Bob Seger

hey everybody this is craig garber welcome to everyone loves guitar and we're going to show some love to the rhythm section today with glenn wharf he's an incredibly talented and very successful session player bass player really good guy he's had a hell of a career uh i want to thank couple of quick messages one i want to just thank our mutual friend near z for connecting us thank you nier and also make sure you go to everyonelovesguitar.com forward slash subscribe to subscribe to the audio and the video of the show if you're watching us on youtube uh hit the subscribe button and that little emoji that looks like a bell that helps us out a lot with the recommendations on youtube and thank you alrighty tell you about glenn born in dayton ohio moved around several different states because his dad was in the air force he eventually settled in madison wisconsin which he regards as his hometown in the late 60s and early 70s i mean this guy looks 35 but believe it or not he was actually around uh there was a great music scene up in madison and being near the university of wisconsin chicago gave glenn tons of exposure to endless types of live shows and musical genres which he soaked up he started his nashville career as a touring basis but within a couple of years he quit traveling to concentrate on studio work there were very challenging years early on but eventually caught on and he's been incredibly lucky in the breath and sheer amount of recording he was able to get in on he's also a super talented guy was easy to get along with which is a great recipe he's worked with many iconic country artists like willie nelson george jones emmylou harris george strait allen jackson jerry douglas allison krauss leroy parnell who we had here on the show kenny rogers the nitty-gritty dirt band randy travis brent mason who we had here steve warner who is on the show reba trace atkins and again mac macanally we had here on the show and many others you also work with a lot of rock and pop artists like mark noffler bob seger don henley sheryl crow mary chapin carpenter buddy guy joan baez aaron neville and others and his career high watermark has been recording and touring with mark noffler since 1993 he's played on every single solo novel album and mark is one of uh glenn's dearest friends writers artists and favorite musicians uh he won a uh glen won a grammy as co-producer for miranda lambert country album of the year and he's also received many academy of country music awards as bassist or co-producer of the year as well on the personal side glenn and his wife are high school sweethearts they have four kids and five grandchildren man thank you so much i so appreciate you coming on the show glad to be aboard man glad to be with you uh you originally started out playing guitar but you said you had somewhat of an epiphany in san antonio when you were 14. i was curious if you could talk about what happened and what were you doing in san antonio at 14. well yeah it was in 1968 and they had uh this event um called the hemisphere which was sort of like a scaled-down version of the world's fair i guess oh yeah man understand it and my parents god bless them were very very good about getting my brother and i out for all kinds of adventures when we were young for whatever reason they chose to take us down there that year and uh i should give you the back back story a little bit in that i you know i played a little bit of drums in the uh in the school band marching band that kind of stuff and i did play just a tiny bit of guitar but i was was frightfully naive and ill-informed anyway fast forward they take us down there to san antonio and uh we're marching around in the middle of july or whenever it was and i spot this sign for an outdoor concert and i was very excited about that asked my folks we could go and they said sure so my brother and i ran into the little outdoor pavilion and uh took seats right up on the front row there wasn't anybody in the in the audience yet we were well before showtime anyway we sat i made sure that i sat down right in front of the biggest amp on stage not realizing that it turned out to be the basin and i remember it was a uh offender duel showman i didn't know that at the time i knew it was a fender it had these two big 15-inch jbl's glistening in the sun i just looked at that i thought this is going to be fantastic anyway the band came out and it was sort of a uh a poor man's herb albert and the tijuana brass cover band that was kind of what their main thing was anyway they come out start playing and and and again the guy that's plugged into this giant app is a bass player and i was so naive i didn't even know what a bass was i remember looking at thinking it's only got four strings the epiphany came in what it was doing to my stomach and my rib cage because every time he played a note it spanked my gut and i just remember thinking i don't know what this is but i've got to do this i've got to i've got to do that and i will tell you the funny part of this story and and and that literally was it was in that moment that i'm going to find out what this instrument is what kind of guitar that is whatever and that's what i want to do and i did when i got back home to madison i eventually bought my first base and and that was the thing that kick-started that whole adventure the funny bit of this story is that many years later after i moved to nashville i was doing some sessions uh with some pals of mine we were on a break in the studio and and i mentioned that story and the drummer listened intently and then what was over he said wait a minute tell me that again and i told him the story again and he said san antonio 1968 hemisphere poor mounds herb alpert tijuana brass i said yeah yeah yeah he said that was me playing drums holy he's one of my dearest friends god rest his soul he died a number of years ago but a wonderful drummer named tommy wells he was kind of one of the guys in this town for a long time anyway wow man i got goosebumps that's pretty well i know yeah that's a nice story and i said i suspect you're then partly guilty for for me becoming a bass player because i'm sure part of the concussive sound i was hearing was actually his kick from as well you know but anyways one of those happy little stories yeah man thank you for sharing that i'm sorry for your loss that's a great story um so you knew right then and there you like you were just moved to the level of this is what i got to figure out how to do for my life well or at least move to the degree that i really wanted to know anything i could find out about it i again i was so naive at that point uh my parents both played a bit of piano my mom was a a wonderful singer although she only ever very occasionally would sing in church or something like that but they both played the piano there was always music on the house in the form of their very limited record collection and and they had the radio on a lot and they took us to a lot of shows that kind of thing but it was not a musical household so again i was really uh i was just i didn't know anything about making a living in music i didn't know the people could do that or certainly how you would do that but it did spark my interest i had a very emotional connection with music as i realized now very very early age and there was something about it that that literally resonated with me it just again i didn't know a person could make a living at it or how you would set about doing that but at some point the lines began to blur and i you know i did eventually realize this is what i want to do that's a really cool story uh your dad being in the service what was was he supportive of you know your your passion about music and your desire to actually play for a living well to first of all to be clear he was only in the service uh for the first couple years of my life he was in the air force and when he got out of that we moved back to western kansas where he's from originally we spent several years out there then he wound up a circuitous route but he wound up becoming a professor at the university of wisconsin oh wow uh he was uh he's retired now but he was uh a plant pathologist studied plant diseases and did a combination of teaching and then going out into research in the fields and working with farmers and golf courses and civic city communities that were you know combating various plant diseases around the world and my mother was a full-time school teacher elementary school and both of them like i said did not come from a a musical background both of them came very much from a farm background they were both raised on farms and that's what they knew neither of them obviously chose to stay on the farm but my point is that music was was that came out of left field to them that was something that yeah nice to have a hobby great that you enjoy it uh but not at all uh conceivable to them that somebody could or should try that for a vocation that said they were always very very supportive of me and i like to tell a story on my dad and i don't know that he would swear that it's gospel truth but for many years after i had moved down here and had my family and and was had been working full-time in the studios for years i think there was always a shadow in my dad's mind that this was really going to be sustainable i think he still felt like it could all fall down at any one point and then the first time i got called to play on the monday night football theme the old hank williams yeah sure when that happened he he had something tangible to hold on to also my boy playing all that's him played on monday night football you know and i think from then on he was like okay i think this is going to work out but again they were always very very supportive i can't begin to tell you how supportive they were and how grateful i am to them for that even though they had no understanding of it and to make it worse for them my younger brother followed me down here a few years after i did and he he got into the business too he was a wonderful drummer he's long since gotten out of that and gone into the uh he's a flight nurse in the vanderbilt air rescue helicopter he's been doing that for many many years but it must have killed my parents to to lose both sons to this really bizarre way to make a living yeah but you and your dad like everybody in your family did things they wanted like what like that's a pretty unusual path that your dad followed post retirement of air you know he got into plants and he really like got into it in a high level and yeah that's pretty cool that you all followed your passion well it is and again that's a credit i think to to not only to my parents certainly for most to my parents because they were the those kind of people they were very encouraging they were very hands-on kind of parents but same time they knew when to let go and let us explore what we wanted to explore and my my brother had very different hobbies and interests than i did growing up and they they uh they completely embraced whatever we wanted to try to do and let us go for it encouraged us and the other thing as we'll say going right along with that is being from a farm background one of the things i learned and my brother has learned uh from my parents we we both inherited a great i think uh work ethic um you know if you're a lazy farmer you are going to be in big trouble and so that was instilled into both my brother and i along with the the freedom to explore what we wanted to but the the uh sort of the sense of responsibility that if you go into something um you better roll up your sleeves and go to work at it if you want to make anything out of it i certainly owe that to my parents and grandparents that's cool man i think work ethic is probably the most important trait that someone has because you tell a lot about a person when they have a good work ethic people with good work ethic are usually also honest you know they're reliable they say yes it's yes you know there's a whole other slew of following traits that work ethic sort of drives you know no questions and and and and what you touched on that comes with that that is really crucial not just in in the music business but any business i'm sure is is just the dependability yeah man if you say you're going to do something then i mean if you committed to it then you have to show up and deliver yeah and and you have to do it on a timely fashion and if you don't do that whatever your chosen occupation is you know i don't care if it's just playing touch football every friday night if you're late to the game you've let your team down and after a while people gonna say nice guy talented whatever can't depend on him not reliable yeah our business is way too competitive to forgive any of that so right you're right with a a work ethic there has to be a good dependability factor that accompanies it yeah man totally uh okay so you have this experience in san antonio for the next four or five years you start playing with a bunch of local bands but you decided you needed some formal music instruction which i give you a lot of credit for uh up until then you're pretty much self-taught so you snuck this i need you to explain this one you snuck into the music program at university of wisconsin eau claire how did that happen and also i guess you just answered it my question was what made you that determined to do whatever you needed to to accomplish is you know that pursuit of excellence which is work i think basically but how did you sneak like tell me this whole story man that's pretty well i'll i'll i'll tell you that story um i should give you a bit of background what what you touched on in in my bio i i've always felt that i was incredibly fortunate to be [Music] living in madison wisconsin at that point in my life because it really was an incredibly robust music scene for what is a relatively small town i think when i was growing up there was about a town of about 150 000 people but we had all kinds of local heroes there that were either in school or or i mean either at uw there in madison or just living in the community but uh we had boss skaggs was there uh oh wow miller was there uh ben sidrin uh wow a lot of there were some heavy heavy guys that clyde stubblefield was one of the local icons that lived in madison until he died you know james brown's drummer yes he was there holy smokes oh yeah and it was i mean it was it was a rich local community incredible musicians uh curly cook on guitar and and uh oh gosh i'm going to leave a lot of people out that i shouldn't but you know again because of because of that huge university there and the state government there and we're you know an hour and a half two hours from chicago maybe a little more than that but anyway so on in the middle of the week we would have all these great blues guys coming up luther allison from milwaukee and buddy guy and otis rush and all you know all those guys and and we would also have all kinds of great country artists and we're seeing merle haggard and conway twitty and and loretta lynn and you know on and on and on they all played in the madison area so it was a great place for a kid to absorb live music and by the time i graduated high school i was playing with a number of guys that were really excellent musicians most of them were a year or two older than me and and i remember just thinking this this is great this is what i want to do i don't know how to make it work but i want to be in a band and i want to make this the way that i make my livelihood and but it was a very hard scrabble existence at that point there were a lot of clubs all over the place live music was a huge huge industry at that point even just on the local club scene so i was working with guys my age or a couple years older often much better musicians than i am but again i began to kind of bump into that thing i was talking about where i felt like um you know some some of the greater musicians that i worked with were also strung out a lot of the times or drunk or both or or just wouldn't show up or you know would miss a gig things like that and after getting my heart broken several times by trying to get a band together and off the ground i began think maybe i need to think about just going uh going solo in the sense of of depending only upon myself and i'm not an a solo artist that's never been an option for me i don't have the right kind of voice or a good enough voice i always wanted to be in a band i thought well maybe the next best thing would be to become an accompanist uh a side man and uh it was at that in that process of of of revelation i guess if you won't call it that i began to see some of my own uh shortcomings which is about all i could offer people at that point was a willing hand and a whole bunch of shortcomings and i realized i i've never had any real formal training so i tried to get into the university of wisconsin in in madison and richard davis the great jazz bassist was the uh in residence there and and i didn't have a resume i've never taken any private lessons i've never studied you know uh they took one look at my so-called resume and said no thank you were you playing only upright or were you playing electric no i've never played upright at all okay so you played like okay great but i thought okay you know maybe i can find my way into this music program well they weren't built for a guy like me uh i don't i don't say that in any ugly fashion that's just sure that's not how they were structured but uh at that point the uh the um the university of wisconsin had merged with the state school system which used to be two separate things and they set up all these different satellite campuses around the state and they would assign a handful of majors specialty schools in each one of them and i had been hearing about this music school in eau claire wisconsin so literally about a week before the the semester was to start i sent in an application i can't remember the process but again i had no kind of resume but i think i got a call back or or perhaps a letter whatever said come up for an interview so i went up to eau claire not knowing a soul not knowing anything about music in the form of how to get an education in it and i had a meeting with the head of the music department a wonderful man named dr rupert holman who was a classical violinist and he was a head of the music department and i'll never forget i sat down in his office he looked at my quote-unquote resume all i all i had listed was played a little guitar played a little bass that one was actually playing a little pedal steel guitar which he didn't know what that was don't blame him he said you've never studied with anybody you've taken a few lessons here and there but just a little bits and pieces you don't play an instrument that we teach here in our program and he said honestly i can find nothing here to make me say that i should let you in our school but he said something tells me that i should take a chance on you so he said i'm going to take a chance on you and he said i'm going to put you on probation he said you will need to pick an instrument that you can study or an area you know voice or theory something that you can study and apply yourself to and i'll put you on probation we'll take it a semester at a time we'll see how you get on here and i looked through the list of instruments and i thought well i remember they had string bases in the uh orchestra room at my high school and i i probably at one point walked up next to one pulled on the e string a moment and said no way no interest in it but i thought this is as close to anything that i'm going to get so i said i'll i'll take the string base i'll take that up and they had a wonderful teacher there that would drive over from from the twin cities a guy named james clute and uh he has launched he had launched a good many astonishing uh professional string basis both in the classical and jazz world and interrupt you once please interrupt you one second i looked him up when i was uh you know going through your your stuff and man there was so many like very warm and loving testimonials or you know about how he had influenced all kinds of people throughout their lives it was really nice guy yeah and again he launched several uh probably many more people than i know uh it was sort of their entryway into becoming a professional bassist scott pingel the the principal basis with the san francisco orchestra he's from my hometown too actually much younger than me i've never met scott i'm a huge fan and james was his first heavyweight teacher james got him trained to the degree that he felt like he could help and then hooked him up with other teachers and uh another guy named craig rifle was a long time dear friend of mine he's retired now but he spent 40 years with the detroit symphony and equally great jazz bases a lot of guys and there are other people too that was the magic thing about being in eau claire at that time they had a a jazz department that was headed by a guy named dominic spira a great educator great trumpet player and a wonderful percussion teacher named ron keiser who actually wound up becoming kind of a mentor to me as well the thing that all these guys had in common and even my professors that turned out to be from a world away from me that really couldn't understand what i was up to all these people were so kind to me and i guess they saw something because they most every one of them almost every one of them reached out to me and said come by my office later in the afternoon or before i go home let me sit out the piano and show you a few things let me show you what what it is we're talking about they recognized that i could barely tell you where middle c was and didn't know how to read music but they they i god love them for it they spotted something and they bent and broke the rules to get me in there and to keep me in there once they got me now i will forever be indebted to them i only stay there a little over two years and then i decided i needed to go back out into the music community find out what it was like to make try to make a living full time as a musician and i also recognized i didn't want to teach and i was not going i was not destined to be a symphonic player or professional jazz basis [Music] but the best thing that i learned in those little over two years those people exposed me to so much gave me some wonderful habits and essentially taught me how to teach myself going forward how it gave me enough information that i could keep going what do you think these people saw in you that they were willing to make the investment you know i don't think that they would have seen anything remarkable in me i think they saw some talent but not any inordinate amount there were all kinds of kids in that school that were way more talented than me and certainly light years ahead of me musically and but i think they they were just they were genuine educators i think they wanted to help people i'm sure there were some people on that campus in the faculty that maybe weren't of that bent but i don't remember any of them i remember having anybody like that most everybody i had seemed very enthused and if they picked up on the fact that a student was genuinely interested and willing to do the heavy lifting of practicing and studying i think they were that was enough for them to give more of their time and i'm you know i'm hoping they saw some talent i'm guessing they must have but i'm hoping they saw a willingness on my part and who knows maybe they just felt sorry for me because i had no i'm serious because i had so little training and some of these kids came to that school they were pretty fully formed that was just a touching pad i remember there was a great great legendary jazz penis named lyle mays who who went to school there briefly and i remember you know playing in a few little impromptu jazz ensembles with this kind of thing and this where's this guy and he he's he spent i don't know 15 20 years uh with pat metheny in in that that group you know uh one the guy was from another galaxy and those guys were not uncommon on that campus i think again my professors saw me as a green kid but but they must have sensed the drive though man i think they do yeah you don't invest cause it's easy when you i'm sure you've done the same thing mentoring other guys when they first come in through nashville when you see someone that's like even if they're misguided but they're hungry and they're willing to do the work that's those are the people you want to help well that's that's true and you know one of the things about trying to get better is that you you have to be you have to be willing to fail yeah you got to be willing to land squarely on your backside quite possibly in front of people that you're trying to impress that's part of the process i think of getting better and that's part of what i learned in that that school you know and again i suspect that that they recognized that i was willing to do that because i was uh pretty much almost from the beginning there when i when i got into the school and got myself a little apartment and eventually a house that i shared with with other music majors i was out three to four sometimes five nights a week playing in little local bar bands rock and roll bands country bands jazz groups theater gigs whatever i could get my hands on and i'd come dragging into i always had an eight o'clock class and i always always always and uh and i know my professors could see that i was getting a little tattered but i think they like the fact that this kid is he's so hungry for this that he's out there playing clubs at night and yet eight o'clock in the morning he's sitting there yeah man ready to get some information from me and i think that that made them feel like that what they were doing was appreciated yeah i gotta call a quick timeout and tell you something here before i forget it's one of those little feel good stories feel good to me anyway but but i'm gonna back up to my teacher james clew and i did not keep up with james after i i left school uh and i must have broken his heart every time that he came in because i was again it was light years behind every other student he had he knew i was a complete day one beginner with him and again i'm sure i must have tried every bit of that good man's patience anyway um a number of years ago i was on tour with martin author i was in boston for we were based out of boston for a week and i was staying in a hotel not far from berkeley school of music there was a string base shop there at the time and i walked down there one day fell this found this beautiful base i went down and played it every single day just killed me so great and it was getting near the end of the tour i thought well i really would like to buy this thing but i've got to go home when the tour is over i'll sit down with my wife because it was a lot of money and i'll talk it over with her you know so a few days after we finish in the boston area tour ends i get home i talk with my wife and she very astutely said this is not a hobby if you feel you need to do it go for it so i called the shop and they said glenn i can't believe it we sold it yesterday okay so that's i'm making a long story out of it i i don't mean to but that set me off on a jag i started looking for others made by this maker and the maker was a man named uh prescott uh and he he's kind of known as the uh sort of the grandfather of string bass builders anyway i found a string bass up uh for sale in in uh by private individual up in iowa and i drove up trying out bought it immediately brought it back to town and when i got back to nashville i got looking inside there was a repair sticker inside the base dated 1979 and it said uh uh restoration done by uh sam colstein and son new york well i know barry colstein who is sam colstein's son i called him up i said barry i bought this base and and a prescott base and uh and and it's got this sticker in it from your dad's shop and you probably had your hands on this thing would you mind going through your dad's records tell me who the previous owner was at that time he said no problem a couple days later i get an email from him and he says yes and in fact i knew that that base did come through congratulations it is in fact you know prescott base probably dated about 1825 1830 something like that wow he said at the time of restoration it belonged to a gentleman named james clute wow this is that base holy s how cool is you must it was my teacher's base and if you talk about destiny man yeah yeah wow yeah and you know i'll tell you this um i uh i ran into edgar meyer not too long after that maybe six months later and edgar and i haven't known each other a long time i can't call him a close friend but he's never slapped me any time he's seen me so i guess anyway i told him that story and edgar is a very mathematical guy in every sense of the word a beautiful guy but very very mathematically inclined very practical and he's listening to him and he's nodding his head and i finished the story and i'm expecting him to kind of react like you did he says well in all likelihood what happened is that when when you were studying with james the sound of his instrument uh left an imprint on you and then when you heard that same sound all these years later you responded to it that's why you bought it and i'm thinking that's probably right but that's not what i want to believe that's not what you want to hear man you want to hear my connection or whatever you know right the universe lined this up and it was meant to be you lost that base and then you went on a jet you know what's funny though uh you know i had i think you know i had richard uh bennett on the show recently now he told me a similar story and now i maybe he was in spain where he found some guitar and he said ah man this is it was like i think maybe an old dangelico or maybe it was in new york it was in new york it was an old angela a really old and uh he said i need to go home and talk to my wife and he said you guys were relentless you all swarmed on him like flies on poop like no man you've got to get this you've got to get this it was so funny and but how your story happened it turned out to be good that everybody didn't get on you to get the base then because look what happened well and and the funny thing is i think that i've often wondered about the base that i missed there in boston but this is the one that came my way yeah and i told and i was a lead conspirator in that effort to get richard bennett to buy that instrument now i told him i said you know my wife told me that this is not a hobby and your wife will tell you that too and right and i told him i said you know this old abraham prescott calls to me in the middle of the night sometimes and i will get up out of bed and come out here and play it that's really cool you should have an instrument uh you're one of the greatest musicians i've ever known and you should have an instrument that wakes you up in the middle of the night calls you like a siren on the shore and says come spend some time with me and i said this instrument clearly does that for you it did yeah so yeah i was i wasn't showing but i was i was a proud co-conspirator when he finally threw down for that thing and he told me and has told me many times since he said you were so right that's the instrument that does speak to me like no other well when i asked him what's your favorite guitar um that's what he said i'm pretty sure that's what he said was just number one he said there's nothing like it so yeah you all did him a good service yeah yeah um so you quit you mentioned you quit school after two and a half years you moved to nashville how'd you get work once you got down here well there's a little uh well one little at the time there was there was a several year chapter in between the two uh between my uh leaving eau claire and winding up in nashville and i played in a bunch of no-name lounge bands traveling all across the u.s you know made a made a living at it but but i remember um again i had glimpses of things to come and they weren't all good visions if you will um i would be you know sharing a room with whatever musician in whatever band i was with and i would sneak out of the room to uh sit outside or someplace and and try to do a little practicing or if we were sitting down at a club somewhere go back over the club and try to practice you know while all my pals were sleeping in and i remember thinking you know one of these days i'm going to wake up i'm going to be 40 years old and waiting for the maid to come clean my room and there's nothing wow anything that's leading to anything better it really disturbed me but that led me to make up my mind that i needed to pick a a music center and go somewhere and just dig in and see if i could make something happen and i i won't bore you with the various choices or the deliberations i went through but i looked very seriously at la in fact that's where i was intending to go uh i never really considered new york it was just too far away i didn't know anybody up there didn't know that lifestyle was so frightfully expensive obviously yeah and i looked at chicago and new orleans and minneapolis and atlanta and other cities but nashville's the one that made the most sense and i always loved country music and uh i thought you know i know how to i know how to play this stuff and that sounds cheeky to say that but i played a lot of it and i knew you know i had a pretty good idea of what of some of the subtleties involved that a lot of guys would would blow right past so i thought nashville makes sense and i moved here and again i didn't really know hardly anybody there was one guy that uh a brilliant keyboard player that lived here at the time named alan steinberger he was crucial in talking me into coming to this town he said forget la he said you need to be here he said in a few years time half of la will be in nashville they'll be living there go ahead and move to nashville we'll get established and i came here really wanting at that point kind of more interested in being a steel guitarist but i met a lot of bass players in the short visits that i had here and one thing i i realized was that there was a sense of community here that i wasn't likely to find in l.a some of these other bass players said hey you know there's no such thing as enough work but if you wind up here sometime give me your number and if if i got something extra i can't get to it i'll try to help you out and i thought i won't find that probably in new york or l.a i've interviewed people all over the world nothing is like nashville for that no no nothing i have never you know whether it's guitar bass anything people are so like hey man i can't make it you want to get this gig right and it always it often leads to something else a permanent you know i mean so that was really fortuitous really good it was and but that said i didn't hold any high hopes i had i mean no i don't think unrealistic hopes but i i had a little bit of money saved and i moved down here and ironically my buddy that pretty much single-handedly talked me into moving here alan steinberger within six months or whatever of my arrival he packed up and moved to l.a and a brilliant career out there so yeah i won't kid anybody those first few years were grim they were really really tough and my wife and i got married about a year after i'd moved down here she got pregnant almost immediately we hadn't planned on that but that's what happened and i was way behind the eight ball we had big-time medical bills and and uh i had no job all that kind of stuff but but uh eventually i caught on uh doing some road work and uh did that for several years and but i always knew that you know i i have made the move down here to try to get into the record business and i need to do whatever i can do to make a stab at that and if it doesn't work then then we'll go back home we'll go back to wisconsin i'll go to work in the local music store or the hi-fi shop or something i didn't know what but i i just i gotta i gotta see this through i gotta go for it and so i eventually uh quit the road at least in the sense of any kind of full-time work and committed to just trying to do studio work and i recognized fairly early on that i was not probably ever going to catch on with the iconic session team of that era because those guys had been here at least a generation before i came in yeah you mean like the reggie young kind of guy reggie but i'm i'm thinking about the guys that even predate him the the basis in that era or bob moore just the king kong daddy of them all in this town in my book uh henry schulecki um uh joe zinken there were a lot of a lot of great bass players a lot of younger guys than me that had already been here for a while that were doing a fair bit of the studio work and my my point is i recognized i thought you know these guys are so established they have their relationships they have their loyalties they have producers and artists they've worked for for many years they're not gonna call me they're not gonna why would they call me when they've got all these guys that they've been friends with for so long that are so good at what they do and ironically within uh right about that time that i tried to quit the road i i kind of got gut punched because willie weeks moved here joe ostern moved here david hungate moved here and a wonderful basis buddy of mine named larry paxton moved here all right about the same time and they all had terrific records they were they were my heroes you know not only were they amazing bass players they already had they were already marquee players they had very successful careers in la or wherever they had lived prior to that and so the moment they moved to town bang all sudden i've got a whole nother echelon of players that are here doing the work along with the guys like i say that were sort of the uh the original nashville icons i left out so many god norbert putman was another great great bass player that was here at the time and mike leach i mean these are these are king kong daddies you know so one one of the things and maybe the most important thing again that i recognized was that i'm gonna have to find my own way in i'm not gonna work for the great producers of that era at least not starting out and what i started doing is i would just go out and and we call it networking now but back then it was just going out going to writer's nights and thankfully there were a lot of those in this town at that point and i would hear some songwriter whose songs i liked and i would approach him or her at the end of the evening and say hey i really liked your song and you know i'm here in town and i'm looking for something to do if you ever need a bass player if you want to do a showcase or you have a live gig or or you know a publishing demo or what if i never help you out well those people were approachable because they were starving like i was and as those people began to infiltrate the system get it get a record deal get a publishing deal as a songwriter or some of them became publishers themselves and or producers they called me we all started out sort of together and we all had nothing we all came from nothing but we all kind of rose up as a as a crop would and and uh a lot of those guys i have worked with ever since then and uh as as they got successful i got successful and vice versa so that was a a slow and often very very painful process and i will say i don't really know what it's like now it's a very different town yeah the record business is entirely different than it was when i moved here and to make matters worse la new york detroit philly austin uh chicago you know on and on atlanta all those great record centers that were maybe not you know quite as big as la in new york or even nashville but those all have very viable recording scenes and by and by most of those have disintegrated and and the players have had to empty out of those towns and they've come here yeah it's a very very i can't even imagine how competitive it is now for young players where you even start or how you even start i don't know and and to be honest with you you uh asked or mentioned that that maybe i've sometimes mentored people i haven't really done a lot of that and the main reason that i have not mentored very many people is that i don't know what i would do for them i do occasionally get inquiries from people how can can you help me out can i take you out for lunch i buy coffee i'm struggling i'm trying to figure out how to get something going here and i'm like i said earlier i'm 66 years old i've worked now with three different generations of artists and and and occasionally with what would be the beginnings of a fourth generation but i'm not well connected now with the youngest producers and power brokers and even players and artists so i don't know how to help anybody i can't introduce people yeah to people that i don't know you know uh so i have not done a lot of mentoring i i try to be brutally honest with anybody that wants advice um but i i can't there's not a lot more steering that i can offer than that you know um you know there's three things that you did that really um i certainly didn't have the wherewithal at that age to do them and the one is to realize that i needed to get some lessons the second one was i don't want to be 40 years old when the maids coming in this hotel i need to do something and then when you got to nashville approaching these songwriters and saying hey if i can help you let me know i like what you're doing um where the hell did that come from man those are pretty into those are very uh good intuitive things that re i mean to to make those to come across those thoughts as a young person like that that's really impressive well i i don't feel like i can take a lot of credit i mean a lot of it it's just just plain and simple uh good fortune and maybe combined like i said with a good work ethic and some good instincts along the way one of the things that i've been very fortunate is i've always loved working with singers and and and the thing i love perhaps the most within that category are singer songwriters i've always been a song guy and i pay a lot of attention to the lyrics as much as i do the melody you know and i used to do some songwriting on my own maybe that's why but i i'll tell you this when i was a young pup very young and we were living out in western kansas and i remember my grandfather's place his farm was was about 50 miles from dodge city kansas and we had gone up to dodge city one day and and we were headed back he lived outside of town called garden city kansas and we were headed back there i must have been about five or six and uh i remember sitting in the back seat in my parents car and the radio was on we had a speaker in the back and there was a big black evil looking thunderstorm blowing up as it only came out there on the prairie yeah just evil looking thing and i'll never forget frankie lane i didn't know who he was at the time but he came on singing ghost riders in the sky now anybody doesn't know that song this won't make any difference to you but it was it was terrifying and i remember turning around and gripping the back of that that seat cushion the back seat looking out the back window at this massive thunder cloud bearing down on us and hearing him singing about the ghost herd in the sky and and the ghost riders and i swore i could see him him singing that through that rear window and see the faces of those guys and i remember being terrified but i also remember thinking why is this song affecting me so much i've never forgotten that and that is a really crucial thing to me it's that connection to the song itself and that emotional connection i think that that was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me is that i somehow another developed this love intense affection for songs themselves and you know many of the artists that i have the the most fun recording with are tremendous writers you know boxing look at knock flirt they don't get you don't become anymore so many better than him man that guy's king songwriter let alone even get to his guitar playing and i funny when i first got here i i that one of the communities that welcomed me most readily was was the jazz community and i i would go out playing in lots of little quartets and quintet septets uh here in nashville and you know didn't make any money i mean no money that hasn't changed they were the only community that would would welcome me and then they did and i pretty quickly fell in with a bunch of those guys and some of them are still friends of mine thankfully to this day but my revelation in doing that was i didn't move here to be a jazz player if i was going to be a jazz player i should go to new york because that's where they are or possibly los angeles but i also recognized as much as i love playing with these guys nothing moves me like the human voice the instrumentalists that most move me are the ones that sound most like the human voice and that's my connection again the song the human voice that's what makes me want to pick up a bass and get in there with them and i and that's i've been lucky because that put me in touch via a very very long circuitous route that put me in touch with the people that i still work with and still revere today and that's been the the biggest bulk of my career have been you know commercial musician to be sure but but working with really gifted artists that are great writers or if not that at least great interpreters of great songs yeah man i think you just made a real lucky break for me just to have that love of it i also think you have some intuition there that you got from somewhere that allowed you to make some pretty good decisions for in difficult situations so you know yeah you know i i was listening the other day to um an interview on public radio and it was with terry gross and she was interviewing the the women's soccer star um um is it megan rappano i kind of should remember yeah i think it's megan is her first name but anyway it was a brilliant interview and something she said really hit me she said you know i had to find my own way i mean i she said obviously she's become a star in that world but she said i'm not the fastest athlete out there i don't have the best skills i have to be sure i am a good athlete but i had to find how to make my game out of what cards i was dealt with talents i was given which is i'm not the fastest i'm not the strongest i don't have the best footwork whatever and i'm sitting listening to that and thinking yeah i can relate you know i always i don't have music store chops i'm not a virtuoso player um and we could we could take that into a whole nother thread that that i spent a lot of time thinking about but one of the things i recognized is that that there was a place for me if i kept my ego out of the way and could truly accompany somebody i i had some kind of a gift for that and i can't explain why but i've i've been around myself long enough to know yeah that that was sort of my gift i i wasn't the flashiest player i didn't have the biggest tool kit i didn't have that many quivers i mean that many uh arrows you know but i could i could work with a singer and figure out what he or she was trying to say and try to play the right note at the right time for them without ever trying to uh turn the spotlight towards me let the light be on them but but make them sound better and um that i think is the thing i'm most fortunate musically to to have had it's just the definition of a great size person yeah yeah definition of a great side person i mean you know yes that's what it's all about yeah and i mean i'm to this day i'm just blown away by um i mean there's so many astonishing bass players on this planet you know and most of them do things i could never in a million years do and i'm not in any way shape or form putting myself up there with them as far as what they can do but we each have our own gifts and and and if you're lucky you find you figure out what you can do and how to develop it and and again if you're really lucky you make a living at it uh tell me the top knee jerk reaction top three sessions you've done and why oh ooh i know tough question that's a good one well i i will tell you one that that that is so impactful to me when when i i had my quote unquote session career up and running i was working pretty much every day but i was doing a lot of music that to be very honest i did not like it was not very good music there's plenty of it i was making a living paying our mortgage paying for the grocery bills for our four kids and all that but i wasn't feeding my soul so i started again i went back to the songwriter community i started playing with a number of different writer pals in mind and all of whom as it turned out wound up getting record deals and i will play in their band when we do live shows locally little showcases or gigs whatever the nature would be play on their demos and when they got record deals once again they pulled me right along with them one of the the most crucial ones for me turned out to be my dear friend kevin welch who is from oklahoma originally lived here a long time and he lives down outside of austin texas now kevin is a brilliant songwriter he got signed to warner brothers back in the day and uh he was adamant that he wanted to use his band to back him up in the studio which was a little uncommon in those days quite uncommon oh yeah because the producer has these are my session guys yeah and just with with great reason you know because their their name is on the line they're responsible for bringing in a record that the label will approve and they only have x amount of money and time to do it why would i roll the dice on a complete unknown but thankfully uh the producer was it was a guy named paula worley who's a great musician himself just a fantastic guitarist and a brilliant producer and he came out and heard us and he did a couple sides kind of test sides with it another producer palomind used another rhythm section he cut a couple sides on kevin wells anyway long story short uh paul worley the label said we like what you're up to go make the record so he brought kevin's band in we did this record and that record came out and i don't know what it ever sold maybe 10 000 copies maybe maybe half that maybe twice that but not a lot not a lot of records but it was a songwriter's record and the band was was so for that era so fresh so unlike anything else and that little record wound up on so many turntables within the the songwriter community and that opened so many doors oh yeah one record and i got a cold call out of the blue one day from bob seger holy crap this would have been about 19 i don't know 91 92. it wasn't from bob himself it was from his producer he said hey bob wants you to uh come to the studio and uh overdub some bass uh on a new record would you be willing to do that are you kidding yes twist my arm yeah to go over there come to find out after spending a couple days there with bob he had that kevin welch album and not only did he have it he knew every note i had played on it wow and he would he'd let me have free rope i'd go out there and just play whatever i thought was appropriate on his song and sometimes he really liked it sometimes not so much but more than once he'd say hey glenn you did this you did this one note right here on this this particular song with kevin welch and i'm like my god this guy knows that he knows he knows this record that well and when he would illustrate that i say oh yeah i i okay now i see what it is i understand what you want me to do that's crazy man so many places and opened so many doors and part of it too i must say had some of it had to do with one of the bases i owned at that time still own it it was a very very early steinberger and we suspect it might be the first fretless steinberger that ned ever made because oh very early serial number i can't remember what it was but in the two or three digits anyway um and the the position markers were off they weren't in the right place so i had to kind of ignore where the dots were on the side of the neck to play in teams that's hard and i i always prided myself when i played fretless i very rarely gave away the fact that it wasn't previous i didn't do a lot of sliding i let the bass just growl and it had a sound that almost sounded like a synth that base also got me a lot of work from that record and other sessions that i was using that bass on so that record and that base opened a lot of doors because it was a sound some people in this community had not heard so i got to throw a lot of light there on my buddy kevin welt and uh i will tell you another i don't know if this fits into your question but i i i did a chunk of a record years ago with patty griffin down in austin and i just gotten in from the airport and flew in i don't remember i might have brought one of my electrics but they provided everything else and including a string base that was in pretty rough shape and she wanted to do this song just just patty and myself vocal and string bass and it's a bass i don't know it's an old k or epiphone or something like that and it had a horrendous rattle in the top something very unfriendly sounding and she said i want to cut this song i just wanted to be just you and i and uh i'm thinking okay um now in a situation like that can you tell her hey this bass sucks without saying it like that this bass sucks no i just thought you know this is they rented it this is my dance partner right they've got to make something happen and the only way i could do it patty was we did it in a house that she rented and and she was in i'll say the parlor and i was saying the old dining room or library or something in this little house you know not in the same room with her but the only way i could get the bass to not rattle when i played it was to essentially lay down i didn't lay all the way down on my back but i i grabbed an old lawn chair or something that was laying around and i found that if i laid most of the way the down most of the way down not completely horizontal but uh laid i think it was my right leg over the top of the base and pulled the mic i could play a note and the bass wouldn't rattle and also and i realized i think she asked me to count it off if i remember right and i counted it off just thinking we're going to run it through and also i realized no there's no running it through with paddy she gives it all away every time she sings and i thought she's going for it you know and uh and i remember that so vividly just thinking god help me how am i gonna it's not wasn't a complicated song per se but uh but but laying down with your leg over the face ain't really normal trying to screw anything up and thinking this is probably going to be the record however this turns out and and it was and they wound up adding a drummer later on i can't remember they might have added a bit of piano to it but anyway i'll never forget that just and and the reason being again recognizing she was going for it she didn't know about my miseries she didn't want to know right uh that was my job to deal with that stuff she's she's a pure artist and she's giving it away like i say on this vocal performance and i had to you know man up and and uphold my end of the bargain and i never forgot that it was it was it was great for that you know what wow and then i guess if i'm gonna say a third session i know i'm gonna leave a lot of really great ones out and i don't mean to do that but but because of the overall arc of what it has meant in my career i would say working with mark noffler and once again he he uh he heard me with kevin welch get out of here bluebird cafe and this would have been about 1992 i suppose something like that and uh we're playing at the bluebird cafe it's a packed house and which is not hard to do it's a tiny little place right and we finished the first set and i'm walking to the men's room and and i see this hand stuck out from the row of bar stools up at the bar and the hand is attached to mark noffler that's cool great playing mate i just i love what you're doing really great you know i i was tongue-tied i mean i was so unexpected to see him and i just you know i told him what a but a fan i was of his and uh you know made small talk for a minute and then i just thought i'm not gonna burn a hole in this man's evening i just left it let him be thanked him and went on my way and then a few months later i got a call from his producer saying hey mark would like you to come play on a song would you be interested absolutely man do you have a kevin welch wing in your house you should have a wing named after him man oh my god that is cool again i mean the thing of it is um he had no commercial success he did as the years went by i think he got a chris stapleton cut last year that's probably going to pay some bills for quite some time i would hope he's had some commercial success here and there with his songs being picked up by other artists but he's you know he's one of these guys that's kind of unfortunately a little under the radar but he's a great songwriter and he moves people when they hear his music and that's what appealed to me way back when uh that's why i threw in with him and you know it was lucky i mean part of it was a good instinct on my part just to just to recognize i like this guy's music he's he's the real deal um but anyway yeah there's a lot of seeds that that that floated off into the musical atmosphere and and took purchase someplace because of that album and and other albums that i did i'm sure that i know i'm leaving out but that you know in in those days i i would guess it's still this way now but in those days your calling card was uh what had you played on and who was hearing it and there were guys that were going around town uh very very heavily promoting themselves which i was never inclined to do uh i always thought you know that's that's that's my calling card i have business cards printed up like everybody did in those days but you know you if if somebody heard something and it turned their head around a little bit like wow what's that that was probably going to lead to more work and i very much owe kevin for that and and everybody else that was kind enough to drag me in the studio with with them and take a chance you know how did you uh get the gig with working with buddy guy and is there any like lessons or funny stories that you can well i i owe that entirely to a friend of mine a great producer slash songwriter named tom hambridge who is his buddy's producer and has been for a long time he's a wonderful guy he's a great songwriter great drummer and uh and he's he's i don't really know his history with buddy i don't know how many albums he's done but he's done a number of them and was kind enough to let me play on a few tracks here and there and uh i will say uh i had a particularly nice moment on the last record we did which would be probably close to a year ago now i'm guessing or was it this is going to sound dumb but might have been two years ago i think it was i think and the way things are now with this empty space in our life yeah no kidding how the hell you what is your frame of reference to recall it's just it's just prairie in every dimension it was about a year ago when we were tracking the stuff that i was involved in and and again i had done a little bit of work with buddy and uh he's a lovely lovely man and and it just such a soul daddy and uh i think he had been around me enough by that point that he was relaxed and we had a lot of great chats on the couple days we were together anyway the last song we did um and i couldn't tell you the title i don't know and i don't have the record so i i can't even go back and find it at this point but anyway we did a track together and buddy was sitting on a stool as he usually does when he's playing guitar and and i remember we were i was doing something on the base it was slightly left of center but i looked over at buddy to see if this was registering number one number two if he liked it or not and he was smiling at me and nodding his head anyway we got in the song and we and that as it turned out to be the take and that was the last song that i was involved in so i put my base down afterwards and i walked over to him while he was still sitting there i said buddy i said we're all just trying to walk in your footsteps that's all we're trying to do and he put his guitar down and he pointed his finger at me said not you baby you've got your own footsteps that's pretty cool thank you thank you thank you you know that's a moment yeah yeah yeah so uh yeah i i hope wow to get to work with him again because there just are no people like that left on this planet you know somebody that worked with and was a part of all that great music yeah from chicago back in the 60s 70s and early 80s still going for that matter he's still bringing it he can still play i've seen him like probably four or five times and he's a different buddy guy every it's a different dude who shows up every day every time they're like yeah you know just a different personality or he is but man he's he's he's a champion for a lot of people he's he's one of the guys i don't again i don't claim to know the history i wound up doing a day of tracks a few months ago with this in my view brilliant young guitarist kingfish oh yeah chris christone or something like that yeah yeah yeah man he really is they all say he's an old soul he's an ancient soul in a young man's body and i think buddy had a big deal in saying we've got to help this kid out yeah that's cool that kind of person is it's not all about him it's about spreading it around helping other people you know that's cool man yeah how about willie nelson how did you wind up connecting with willie in any funny stories about well i i don't have a deep connection with willy i've worked on a number of albums with him through the years um some of which he was not even there for or they'd hire a stump singer and then go get his vocal on it later um i i don't know that i have any i don't have any profound stories from working with him and it's not like we're close friends or anything but but i will say i have great reverence for the man and and part of it is that he is a guy who has lived his life so that he could make the music that he wanted to make yeah and he's obviously he's an icon he's internationally famous but he never set out to be what people wanted him to be he set out to be what he wanted to be in the hope that people would like it and man did they ever took him a long time to catch up to him but they did and i think that's maybe i would say as an observer and and certainly at a very limited degree as a participant in some of the tv shows i've done with him and some of the records that i that i played on with him he's his own man yeah always has been and uh never tried to be never tried to chase a trend he is a trend in and of himself he just has always been his own man as best i can tell and i think maybe that's one of the best lessons you can take away from him whether you know him or not um that there's an awful lot to be said for having a vision of what it is you want to do and sticking to it and he is that guy he's done that you know is there any other uh artist that comes to mind where you want to talk about the session there there's a special feeling or it was fun or it was nutty or it's anything that comes to mind well they're again they're so i've been so lucky there's so many great artists and and and uh uh i i mean anybody i name i'm gonna leave 20 more out that should be named as well but uh well i'll i'll say this uh i did a record back in september with alan jackson and a lot of people maybe don't know who he is anymore unfortunately but he's he's a great songwriter again songwriter and artist and i was fortunate enough to play on the vast majority of his records but i'd miss the last one or two and and he's not on the radio much anymore i don't suppose and i think it had been quite some time since he made a record so anyway long story short he they wanted to get as much of the original recording band back together to do this new record which they did there were a few folks that were not able to join but most of the original guys were there so that in itself was like a family reunion that's cool and uh allen's very quiet guy uh probably you could say shy a man a few words no matter what and uh and the first thing he did when we had everybody out in the room with the headphones on he got on the mic and said guys i said it's great to see you guys again it's been too long it's really great to have everybody back and he said thank you for being here he said you know i'm not trying to get anything on the radio i just want to make some damn good music and uh and i want to i want it to be heartfelt i want it to be real that's why you're here let's have fun and you could say that about in my view any of the great artists and i've been lucky you know working with emmylou harris through the years and and george strait who was one of my favorite song interpreters in the world and george jones and merle haggard i mean these people were as good as they were as good in their craft as frank sinatra was in his sure or or billy holliday was in hers and these these these people know what they're doing and they can access something in their emotional toolkit if you will that most singers cannot you know so again i picked that particular story about allen but you could say it about any of those people there are those people that recognize that they are doing something from their heart they are giving you a piece of who they are when they either pick up the pen and put it to paper or when they step in front of a microphone they're giving a piece of themselves away and that fires me up more than anything else in the world to to get to accompany somebody in that moment i you know and from my personal experience once you do that there's no going back no once you yeah man once you decide i'm gonna do this because it makes me happy it's like cocaine man i mean that's it you're in a good way though it's like i'm not i can't do anything for any other reason yeah and i learned that from this show to be honest with and from talking with all of you guys the inspiration that you all have had and it's changed me in a dramatic way yeah yeah yeah it's a very different thing now i want to believe that it's not gone forever but it's it's gone into something that's not quite what that was yeah i've done i've been brought in for you know individual tracks here or there with some of the young artists and and i was not pleasantly surprised when they didn't didn't even come over to say hello yeah or anything and i don't know what kind of world they operate in you know everybody now so layered up if they have any success they're laid layered up with multiple managers and promo people and handlers and and uh and you know i don't expect a kid to do his or her homework and necessarily know who anybody is that's working for them but but the real pros back in the day did you know well man it takes nothing to walk over to somebody and say hello thank you i appreciate it yeah or or even if they weren't going to sing even if they just happened to show up at the studio and you're there over dubbing you know in my view we play music for the the human connection yeah it's not everybody plays music for that reason but i do yeah and so if there is no human connection in the music that we're trying to make then then that is music that i would just soon not be involved in sure back to what you were talking about again being lucky enough to play with so many people who did give you everything they had when they sang or when they wrote or both um you know what what what a marvelous thing to be able to uh try to contribute a little piece to that to be a collaborator for a moment you know even if in a relatively insignificant way glenn uh is there any if you had to go back and give young glenn advice assuming that you would have listened anything you would have told yourself to do that would have made your life easier business personal music anything well i don't think about that as much as i used to i used to mourn the fact that i felt uh that i squandered a number of years playing in those no-name bands i'd be easy to look back on that and say you're wasting your time and there were a lot of mistakes i made once i came here because i wasn't hip enough when savvy enough to uh to know better you know to know a better way to uh get involved in more meaningful work but i i've let go of that i don't beat myself up over those mistakes because number one i've been incredibly fortunate i i mean i'm beyond measure i've just been so lucky and and i recognize that and um so you know when i was a kid playing in a in a club in some non-existent town in nebraska or whatever and wondering how in the world i was ever going to connect that dot to the the dot that i live in now um i can't beat myself up for that and i i don't if if i could reach back to that kid and say anything it would probably be along the lines i i might have improved things if if i had gotten to that place earlier where i let go of worrying about the commerce worrying about making money and and just really tried to find people who were doing it for heartfelt reasons and maybe if i had maybe if i could tell the young version of me to make those alliances earlier in your life maybe they would have panned out even greater than it did i i don't know i don't lose a lot of sleep worrying about because it is what it is yeah and as i said i've been incredibly lucky but uh again i it took me a long time to figure out that um my instincts are worth listening to for to me for you of course and to maybe if i could have listened to those instincts at an earlier age maybe that would have been better than the route that i took that's one thing nafler always says uh he always said you gotta everybody's got a little voice inside and you gotta listen to that little voice you've gotta listen to of course that's what he's part of what makes him so great was he was listening to his little voice from a very early age but even then he you know he had a lot of detours before he finally committed to what ultimately launched him you know uh so yeah yeah maybe i would give myself that advice and i'd probably be too bone-headed to understand it that was a great answer man i really appreciate that that is the uh yeah well i'll tell you what i'm i'm you know not to overshare but but my wife and i have endured some health challenges on her part major league ones our life is very different in the last seven years than it used to be and um you know we've we've had a hell of a learning curve that we are still trying to um be graceful in in learning our way around it but a a great novelist pal of mine wrote me a beautiful email after my wife had her stroke seven years ago and he said look man he said you may feel that you're at the end of your career maybe you are at the end of your career maybe this is going to take away your ability to to continue your professional life but he said you are not at the end of your natural life and as cliche as as it is he we just said you know just look around and look for the beauty around you because it's there every day and i that kind of crystallized something that was beginning to bubble in my own mind but his his words really helped crystallize it i would say that to anybody i would say it to myself at 16 years of age at 14 years of age in san antonio at whatever stage i would say that's that's as important as it gets just try to find the beauty that's right there in any given moment and if we're lucky enough as musicians we can find a bit of beauty and share it with somebody else and that's what we ought to be doing yeah for sure yeah when you look for that your whole like uh i had someone on the show recently and they said something like look if i want to have a good day i can have a good day it's just how i'm looking at things yeah and that is so powerful and and when you can do that um and as you said find the beauty it really takes a lot of stress away yeah yeah i i you know i'll i'll i'll use this to say something that i would like to say and it's just a it's a theory that i have i i i did a base webinar a while ago that victor wooten and steve bailey put together with uh some other bass player pals of mine and i threw it out there then i thought about quite a bit before i said it and a whole lot about it since then and what i threw out there in that i'll throw out again which is that i i my own theory is that there are sort of two parallel lines of how to make music and one of them i think of as being mathematical by that i mean you need to have a working knowledge of how to make music that does not mean you have to be formally trained but it does mean that you have to train yourself to whatever your instrument is to put your finger in the right place at the right time to play what you think is the right note and if that involves endless years of study learning a very uh learning very dense harmony like in the form of jazz or classical music then that's that's the mathematical side you've got to understand how these things how these harmonies work and if you're an accompanist you need to understand what your function in that is whether you are playing in a string based section in the cleveland orchestra or you're the bluegrass bass player down at the station in in nashville on a tuesday night you need to know how the music itself works and you need to know your place in it what you need to be able to contribute to that so that's the mathematical side and i have spent a great deal of my life studying harmony practicing things skills that i don't necessarily use much anymore i don't hardly ever have to sight read but i spent a lot of time learning how to do that um training my ear literally ear training and that still goes on all those things not so much sight reading because i there's just no i just don't get called to do those days but the other that side the mathematical side i still keep my hand literally in that in my head in that and but the other side is at least as important or in my view more important and that's what i think of as the mystical side and that's the side that you cannot get from a classroom or a video online you get it from playing something and watching somebody else react to it or actually before that playing something and reacting to it yourself why does this note make me feel this way and this one that is also part of the same chord doesn't make me feel anything i don't know if this is making sense no it's totally making sense man well this is where i'm at with my musical life now is is and and i have been actually for many many years and didn't know it but but trying to balance between the mathematical side of understanding on an intellectual level you know a certain scale a certain time signature a certain rhythmic figure trying to make friends with that stuff trying to understand that that's the acquisition if you will of the skill set that is more mathematical in nature then the other side is decide why when you play something does it evoke a feeling either hopefully to begin with in yourself and then hopefully in whoever will listen and i have learned that uh that that really matters uh and and that's one of my favorite things about playing with martin author all these years i can converse with him on the intellectual side the historical side of music i can talk about the notes in any given scale i can argue with him that this perhaps would be a better bass note this time around on this verse than it would have been on the first verse and he can have that argument and and completely back it up with me from his perspective because he is that kind of musician but at the same time we both recognize all right so we do it this time and we don't do it on the next verse or whatever why is there an emotional payoff we both can recognize it it's probably the musical foundation of our musical friendship is the fact that we both recognize these things when they happen we hear the value the beauty in it but we couldn't tell you necessarily why that happens but then we take it out in front of an audience and play it and i look out there and i see tears running down the cheeks of grown men who maybe don't even speak english as their native tongue probably don't in a lot of instances that's the mystical side yeah and the reason i'm throwing this out into the community as it were is that i've known so many musicians that fell pretty hard on one line or the other i've known so many brilliant musicians that operate all with pretty much all within the mathematical side they they will not blow they won't blow it they'll play the right note they know they know their scales they know their key signatures they know how to play time they know what the appropriate note choices are as a bassist within any given chord but they don't move me and they don't move anybody they get hired living i've known a lot of those people yeah and i sit there and go man you got such technique you got such horsepower you got such knowledge but you never you never break my heart and that's really in the guitar community i think even more so because so many people are wrapped up especially now like with youtube and about the shredding and i never listened to that stuff nothing i mean i admire the talent i could never do that but yeah what's the emotional i mean i'm listening to music to have an emotional payoff not you know to to marvel at how fast somebody me personally you know and yeah so i totally get that man yeah you know i i this uh it's probably been 10 or 12 years ago now a buddy of mine took a group of us players from here in town up to his high school alma mater it was a private school that he went to back east and they had a very well-funded music program in that school and we were up there for the weekend doing this on campus seminar with these kids and he got me up early one morning said wharf you've got to come with me i'm going to go to a composition class and i want somebody there with me so i went and there were five or six students and they were all bless their hearts are all nervous as can be because they had all gone into their computer lab and and had done some compositions and we were there to listen to their compositions so we did each each student submitted one piece of music there were no lyrics or no vocals it was all instrumental stuff and some of the stuff was quite intriguing to me some of the sounds were really interesting there were places that i thought that's that's kind of a neat little moment there but again to be fair they're high school students i don't know anything about their profession or not professional their educational training to that point but we listen to everything and uh and one of the things that i asked them after we listened i said do you guys what do you think about when you are composing are you thinking just about the sound and obviously you've got the whole galaxy of sound at your fingertips now in the form of midi files and and computers so there's any any conceivable sound or or marriage of sounds is available to you guys i said what's going through your head are you just totally searching for sounds or are you trying to express an emotion or both and not one kid in that room none of them were thinking about trying to express an emotion you're kidding me i'm not kidding and that was really shocking to me yeah that's but again weird they're young kids and and there is literally a world available to them as you as you mentioned everything's online now when you and i were kids i remember i'd go hear somebody in a club or a live gig of some sort and the bass player or the pedal steel player whoever i was focusing on uh might do something to just kill me oh man i gotta remember that i gotta remember that gotta remember that have i got it yeah okay i think i got it well i didn't have any way to record it and i couldn't revisit it on youtube right so i would go home and pick up my base or sit down behind my steel guitar and say i think that's what he was doing i think that's what she was up to whatever of course the beauty of that i didn't recognize at the time was that it was automatically mine yeah because it went through my filters of trying to perceive what he or she was up to and then the time it took to get back home and try to remember it which i'm sure i didn't remember correctly and then it would automatically become a little bit of my interpretation well the world doesn't operate that now that way now i mean it's all available online and my it it's not a fear it is a concern that i have but i think of those kids in that high school setting i was talking about i hope one or two of them at least found out later on that oh you know this stuff should make me feel something and should make somebody else feel something it's not just about the mathematical side it's not just about the knowledge it's about the emotion that music should in my view oh i agree you know i think not to sound like an old man but this is the cause you're talking to an old man it's okay yeah but this is the because i i uh you know my kids are 30 28 and 20. and i don't know how they relate to other kids their age but my oldest two the 30 and 28 year old they're very emotional with me they communicate they can share feelings um all the things that i'd want in a relationship with a with a with a child my daughter is not as forthcoming and she grew up where five girls would come here and they're all on their phones none of them talking to each other in the room and that blows my and i think that's responsible for some of that because the connections you can't get emotions out of this in my opinion i mean you can tell somebody i love you or what but by and large you know people text because they don't want to be bothered right you know it's like fast and easy i don't have to share anything you get the message or not and it's right i like connecting yeah yeah we're in the connection business you know i make a yeah i call people and i'm like hey uh i know you didn't you're probably looking for me to text you but i'm kind of old school can we just get a i want to gauge somebody but do i want to work with them do i want to do business you know i can't get a text to make a decision i can't you know and i think that's some of you know again i know i'm sounding old or we're sounding old but i think that's responsible for a lot of this well it is and you know obviously in the midst of this pandemic the wheels have come off all bets are off we've ended totally you know in every way possible we've had to rethink things and we're not done with that any part of it yet um i i feel like you know there's a a fear and i'm heading into it myself i told you before we started the interview i had a pro tools rig here at home and i did a handful of overdubs for palace of mine songwriter pals and mine and then i got busy probably back out touring and whatnot and and let it go and just you know i still have the rig but it's it's desperately out of date so i'm i'm in the process of updating and and i will probably be back online at some point in some form or another i don't do social media at this point maybe i will as a means of connecting uh to the the recording community as it were but uh i i've never aspired to be one of these guys that that does his work from home i've always loved playing with other musicians now at this point i recognized there's good music to be made and perhaps the the way that we for any number of reasons not lisa which would be the pandemic we need to make it remotely yeah and if that's the case then maybe i'm gonna i'm willing to explore that and see if there's something i can offer uh to whatever the musical community is in this day and age and maybe maybe there's something meaningful i can still be part of that way i'm still doing uh live sessions here in town not not near as many and everybody's being very cautious and you know wearing masks and being socially distant all that kind of stuff if they're not i don't begin to take part in them but my hope is that that you know maybe i can make good music in both idioms in in a home studio and still hopefully live again someday and hopefully certainly in a in a regular recording studio with other human beings my concern for the generation that doesn't know anything about life before the internet is that while there are endless opportunities to get your music heard or to hear other people's music or share knowledge share ideas that's all good there's still nothing in the world like being in a room with another human being or two or three or nine or a hundred whatever ensemble you might be a part of and making music together oh yeah and uh you you mentioned my dear pal near z that kind of hooked you enough look you and i up he's he's one of the most gifted musicians i've ever known and he's one of the most passionate musicians i've ever known and every time i play with him something completely unexpected comes out for both of us and we almost never talk about it we just sit down and play and he'll throw something out a little idea that because that's what he is and i'll throw something out because that's what i am and we grab hold of each other musically and and go someplace that neither would a neither of us would have gone to on your own in his studio and me and mine it happens when we're together and uh so again i'm not saying that great music can't be made one person in front of a keyboard or genius music that has been made that way i'm just saying it's not the only way i hope we get back to the opportunities to make music with other people i also hope when the pandemic comes to an end as i trust it will that young musicians will find a way to do that and i know a lot of them are particularly seems that there's a healthy vibrant acoustic music scene young bands that are playing great music together and they recognize they have to do that together that doesn't work one man at a time it has to be done together in the moment and and it's not unique to acoustic music it's it's universal but i do hope that that there will become an awareness um that music in my view anyway should make a person feel something oh god yeah and you know maybe something you don't like and maybe the next person does that that's immaterial but it it you know if it just if it's technically correct but doesn't have a teardrop in it then we need the mystical as you said yeah glenn tell me your uh that was really good thank you man it was a that was good that you shared that uh tell me your top three desert island discs just for this minute just for this minute because of course i could change intensity well i will tell you one that will always be there um the the the the band called orleans back in the day i remember them i was lucky enough to to get to play with those guys for a short while it was kind of an ill-fated chapter of theirs but uh their bass player lance hoppin is is an old pal of mine and and one of my base heroes he's just one of the most marvelous bass players i've ever heard and most people don't know oven but he's as funky as can be and he always comes up with great bass parts and always picks notes that you would not expect to hear just marvel but anyway they made a record back in the day i think it was i think the album was called waking and dreaming and it's just an absolute jewel awakening i think that's what it was called and uh great vocals great songs great grooves i would definitely i would i haven't listened to it in several years but i would take that with me in a heartbeat all right number two number three yeah and another one might be and again i'm going to leave a million out um i uh i i joni mitchell did a record a number of years ago in london with a symphony orchestra and uh i believe the name of the album was both sides now um but i could be wrong about that but anyway it's uh in my view a really special album um it's it's some of her songs but also she cuts some some standards um and the great chuck berghofer was playing bass on it and the bass sound and the bass playing is just glorious but uh i i i can picture the the man that was the conductor and a ranger and i cannot think of his name got a mental block but genius at both and and uh anyways a marvelous record on both sides now it it it it sounds every song sounds like her heart is just absolutely breaking and um i don't know if it was or not but it to me again just a very very evocative record and very different from you know obviously she's been a very eclectic artist but but as best i know this was sort of a one of i've never heard her do anything else like that and uh it's one i i get out at least uh at least a couple times a year and go back and revisit so that would that would certainly be in the in the top three and then i don't know after that go i mean i'd i'd have to have some sly in the family stone on iowa uh got to some james brown you know i mean after that anybody's guess you know there's uh i'd be happy with some great old sons of the pioneers records or any number of great things out there very cool uh it's a tough question what do you like most about yourself wow i know that's always a tough one you ever thought about being a a police detective you know what i have man as i've gotten older i've thought about a lot of things i i might have enjoyed and that is one of them actually yeah you've got i mean that'd be a hard twist from where you're at but but you ask some some really good great questions oh man thank you that's real insightful gosh i don't know [Music] no um wife is telling me i'm a good friend you're a good friend well that's that's part two of the question what would your spouse or partner say that they like most likely that's what she just you're a good friend a good friend uh you know i i would say one of the things that i've been gifted with and i'm glad of it i don't take any claim or you credit for it it just seems to be something that i was given i can hear both sides of a story and maybe part of that is is being brought up in my early years in an agricultural setting small town rural america and then later on being exposed to the biggest cities in the world and recognizing that as i say folks is folks folks is folks man that's it that's that's interesting that you could hear so you're good with not letting everybody air there you know you could see both points i i try to i mean i certainly have my own knee-jerk reactions and and i can be quick to anger and and and uh i'm not not afraid to let somebody have it if i disagree with them uh you know on some kind of a moral issue so to speak sure um there are a lot of things that are out there in our society right now that i have not enjoyed um hearing yeah nutty world yeah but again when i get right down to it i i i have my own political leanings uh for what it's worth they tend to lean left but but i have a lot of family members and dear friends that lean right some of them way over to the right and it's tempting sometimes for me to just write people that off that i don't agree with but i think that's a that's that's a that's the wrong thing to do and so i try to be i try to put myself in somebody else's somebody else's footsteps like buddy guys said you know and just uh and and recognize that we each have our own life experiences and and those form to a great degree along with our dna and whatever else they form who we are and somebody else may have a very different life experience than i do and he or she uh i might completely disagree with them but they might not be wrong you know and that's the first time there's there's there's there's always two sides to almost any story that's the first answer that's the first time someone's given that answer it's interesting well you know my wife mentioned a minute ago that you're different i look at my own collection of friendships that i've been lucky enough to have in my lifetime and they're all over the place some of them uh you know one of them used to be an auctioneer another one uh you know used to be a fighter pilot i mean again we all have our different uh life experiences and and uh i've often marveled at why i can't take any two of my friends and bring them together and form a friendship between them yeah man it's like they repel each other it's like and i'm looking at both see the beauty in each i see the beauty in both of you why can you not see it the two of you within each other but again i i don't know where that comes from maybe from my upbringing maybe it's partly dna i don't know but i feel like i got lucky and i try to be cognizant of that and try to be more forgiving and more tolerant and and recognize that there i got plenty of faults myself and and people could throw me out without a second glance sure um just as easily as i could anybody else you know it's funny i don't know if this ever happened to you over the course of your marriage where you're like your wife says oh we're going out with my friend and her husband and it's like man relationships are not transferable no just because you like her does not mean i'm going to like him and i'm probably not going to like him and he's probably not going to like me but you know i'll go along with this because yeah yeah i've seen times where i tried to you know professionally tried to hook people up and sometimes it works and sometimes it works professionally but not personally yeah they can they can function well together in a professional circumstance but they don't they don't have any in any blood in common there's no vibe yeah you can't yeah you can't create that either no you cannot create that yeah tell me uh something or someone you miss from your childhood oh uh well gosh i'm in the the endless list um my mother passed away and of course last year and uh i'm sorry yes sir well thank you i'm not i mean she was 88 years old so she had a great life and no regrets there i miss my dad's dad my grandfather he was a west kansas farmer all of his life and adult life anyway and i spent so many days uh with him that's the one with the the big thunderstorm yeah yeah yeah yeah i was very close to him he was like a second dad to me and he he just uh he was just the most laid back guy very very intelligent uh but in a very non-threatening way you know just uh very maybe i got some of that you know ability to see the good in people from him because he could do that he could he could always find something good in somebody that makes your life easier he gave me a lot of great life advice that i didn't realize i was getting at the time and uh i've always missed him i always will you know and my my memories of of uh that part of my life uh are among the things i treasured the most you know thanks for sharing that man uh you have any non-musical superpowers i don't even have any musical superpowers [Laughter] you know um this may sound weird that's a weird question it's a good question it's a good question i don't i do not have any superpowers i've got um what i've and i don't know where it comes from but i've got a pretty i will say what i think is an above average sense of direction that's true and my wife is saying that's true honey i heard but i you know i've been around a lot of the globe and sometimes in a town only once and uh i used to jog a lot so a lot i used to see things very up and close i can't do that anymore and i haven't run in many many years but i have this ability to i have some spatial sense of how things connect within a city and if i've been someplace once i tend to remember it although i'm not aware of it until i'm until i see it again or until i'm somewhere in the general proximity of it and that has saved me so many times whether it be in paris or london or uh you know rural oklahoma could find my way around because i'd say all right i know where this i know where the sun is if it's nighttime uh and i can see the stars i i know which way is north um but i also have this ability to to sense where i am and how to get back to the hotel or something or how to get from here to someplace else and uh you know now we've got gps it's not really not that impressive not that impressive anymore [Laughter] so many times you know in the middle of the night driving along a highway middle of nowhere and and come up across a road close sign unexpectedly and and i think all right well i've got to go right or left i'll i'll go i'll go right and then i'll i'll uh i'll make another left and i'll make another left at some point and have some some internal compass that more often than not will lead me back to where i was trying to go in the first place you know and again i can't take any credit for it it's not something i've ever worked at um yeah that's just one of those intuitive things yeah yeah the only other thing that i might have i remember reading an interview many years ago with the actor harrison ford and he's evidently was a pretty darn good carpenter and he he made the comment he said i've got perfect plum now that what the world is sad and and did a little reading on it's like some people have perfect pitch yeah i do not have good relative pitch but not perfect pitch but he said i can look at i can look at anything and i can tell you if it's if it's plum if it's straight up and down and i got a pretty good eye for that but it doesn't it doesn't do a lot of good maybe when i'm trying to straighten up my wife's pictures on the wall the occasional carpentry project i may take on around the house in the way of home repairs maybe it comes in handy there but for me not a real musical skill but it does seem to be there well this thing spatial sense is heightened that's the first time someone's answered that as well you got a bunch of firsts today man uh you have any hobbies outside of music i do i don't do them as much now i'm pretty much uh if i'm not working i'm most the time taking care of my wife and and unfortunately we do have a couple of wonderful counts that are our caregivers that i can hire that allow me to get out and even tour if that comes about or even just go out for a morning of work all that point being that that uh i don't drift off into my hobbies as much recently because i'm involved in caretaking my wife sure but uh i've always been a bit of a history buff i love reading i love reading period uh and a lot of it seems to be historical in nature although certainly not all of it so that's a big one and i do i've always enjoyed little minor woodworking projects and i've have flirted from time to time uh with you know being one of these guys that late in life gets into furniture making or something like that but the hard reality is i've decided not to do that number one because i don't think the world needs another crap carpenter and because it's not a uh i have too many carpenter panels that are missing digits oh yeah have a a broken finger that they never really did any more than stick back on and lost the use of and i think you know there's still music i want to play that's probably not a great first choice for me yeah as a bass player so i so you know i've got a garage with quite a few hand tools in it but i stay away from the the big power machinery and all that for the most part smart man hey two more questions two more questions glenn and i can't thank you enough for your time and uh your sincerity most important lesson life's taught you ah again a fantastic question thank you the lesson that i think i have learned and i hope i have taught my kids is there's absolutely no reason to have a conventional life um unless that's what you aspire to and uh you know somewhere along the way um a lot of miniature decisions were made on my part to become a musician and become a musician that i've ultimately wound up being i i could have done better i would like to have done better and i'm still working on getting better always will i hope but um you know a lot of my buddies looked at me when i was in high school and i was making the the the noise about wanting to do that and they were headed into you know ultimately studying law or medicine or something else real estate whatever managing a restaurant whatever they chose to do some of them went on i think a handful went on to brilliant lives within those professions but i've run in so many of those guys in the handful of class reunions i went to and most of them came up to me and said man you did it i so envy you you've got this big profound life and of course they only see it from yeah they see that you're on stage they don't people i don't know about the drudgery and the heartbreak and the boredom and anguish and everything else that any of us has to go through but but i recognize yeah you know i guess that's so in that i i've largely lived the life that i wanted to live i mean i've got to do what i wanted to do for a music i mean i mean for a living i got to play music for a living i still adore it um when it's when it's great music there's nothing better to me in the world in terms of what i aspire to do i have a an incredible wife i have incredible children and now wonderful grandchildren and uh i'm grateful for those things um i can't take hardly any credit for any of that i just got lucky and that's what i was given um so again back to what i used to try to tell my kids is just i don't want you to be a musician i don't want you to be a lawyer or a fireman i don't want you to be anything but what you want to be but whatever you want to be i want you to be good at it and and and have a joyful life and even if that means you take on a a career or a job that you don't necessarily find that much joy in um a lot of people do that but they have joyful lives outside of their work and their work allows them to have those joyful lives and if that's what works for them go for it you know that is such a great thing to tell your kids man well it really really it's like you can't get more supportive than that yeah and again i guess that i could i could give back to my parents because they did not stand in my way when i told them i wanted to be a musician they didn't understand it they were very concerned about me and they did tell me well you know maybe it'd be a good idea to go ahead and go to school and get a degree in something else so you got something to fall back on i went for none of that but they still came with their blessings and and uh i'm sure said their prayers and i got lucky i just got lucky you know yeah well you make your own luck too sometimes yeah i agree with that i agree with that noffler always says that what does he say it's a great point of citizen and i've never heard anybody else say it he said everybody gets a shot and i thought for a minute really he said no i mean he said everybody in my view he said everybody gets a shot question is whether you are ready for it when your opportunity comes yeah wow that's i'd never thought about that before but i think she's right i think so yeah anyway last question biggest change in your personal biggest change in your personality over the last 10 years and how much of that change has been intentional and how much is just a natural part of aging well as i said before i'm 66 i didn't freak out when i turned 30 i didn't freak out when i turned 40. i didn't freak out when i turned 60 but somewhere between when i turned 50 and when i turned 60 i began to hear the clock ticking it's there yeah and um that's not a bad thing that's a good thing because i think there are a lot of people in this world i mean let's face it i mean there are millions and millions of people who through no fault of the fact that they were born in a certain place at a certain time have [Music] extremely difficult lives but all they can do in today's time is hope to find some clean water and something to eat i i say that all the time just the simple fact that born in this country in this time period what a miracle that is and what things were afforded as opposed to being born in somalia or someplace like that you know right right and we have to recognize i mean yeah millions and millions and millions of people caught in that horrible predicament um and i'm grateful for the fact that i'm not one of them um [Music] and i'm also you know i try to be cognizant of the fact that okay i'm i'm i'm crowding 67 years of age and how many years left do i have period how many years left to have to play music how many years left do i have to to be a husband to be a father grandfather a son my dad's 90 years old and i talk to him every other day how many how much longer am i going to get to do that i'm very lucky to have this awareness of how lucky i am yes definitely man having that awareness of your own good fortune and at the same time having an awareness of the fact that that uh we're only here for a very limited time and to try to make it count if we're again among the fortunate ones that don't have to just get up in the morning and go seek shelter or water yeah or food or whatever you know um i'm grateful for that awareness that comes with this age that i have become you know and uh and again uh trying to see the beauty in in in in things that are right there in front of me that that when i was younger i would not have recognized i wouldn't have seen it i would have looked right past it or or not heard it or smelled it or tasted it whatever the case may be thank you man i really appreciate that um yeah let me tell people i wish i had stuff to promote for you but i don't have a lot so i want to tell people well that's my fault i appreciate it uh if uh if if you're looking at hiring glenn for some tracks you know the best thing to do would be to shoot him an email uh at glen g-l-e-n-n wharf w-o-r-f mac.com all i would ask is that you uh you know send them a link to something that you're looking for you know what made you call them or whatever you know why do you think you guys are a good fit whatever just talk to the guy and so you can he can get a feel for what's going on what you're looking for and he could respond normally and appropriately to you and you can reach him again at glen wharf g-l-e-n-n-w-o-r-f mack.com um he's a real badass we didn't really talk much about his playing but this guy has had a tremendous career everybody on that knofler gig is like oh they're they are it's like the greatest it's like the all-star team man well it's they are by far the greatest group of players i've ever ever played with that's awesome any one of them just just ridiculously great and and uh and i've always have have felt that uh you know if i had to pick one thing that was with without a doubt the uh the the best thing that happened to me in my professional life it would be joining mark all those years ago that's awesome it is like going to the all-star game it really is that's phenomenal i hope to god you guys start touring and i hope you come to down here man because i would love to see you guys i mean yeah it's it's uh i can't imagine the show it's interesting to say the least because once again he's i mean he's the only artist i know that he will go out on any given evening on stage and not play all his hits i don't know any other artist that has the courage to do that but yeah big chestnuts that he has more or less let go of because he's like i recognize that my fans want to hear that but we've also created all this other music in the years since that people also have grown very attached to him and uh [Music] and he won't play sultan's swing well actually we did we put that back in the set that's left one of his biggest hits and uh you gotta admire somebody yeah but you gotta admire somebody has that kind of artistic courage to say i'm over here now i'm not over there anymore but man he's got so many great songs like it'd be impossible not to be satisfied i mean if you don't hear the sultans of swing or what you know or money for nothing and there's so many great so many greats and we the guy just as a player is just a beast little i mean that's a rare com you know uh gilmore is like that but he's totally a player you know but and i was thinking about him when you were talking about the guy that always picks the right notes but it is hard but it is heartfelt man yeah yeah there's a you know noffler gilmore is a you know a handful of these guys but they're you know yeah very very few very precious you very much man hey listen uh i have tons of questions that uh i would have loved to ask you but i want to take up all your time thank you for everything man you're such a nice guy everybody thank you for uh for all the great insightful questions and and uh for doing what you do uh richard bennett had had raved to me uh when i talked to him last he raved about the time he spent zooming with you and near near zeela like i say he he's the guy that first told me about you and he said i think you should check this guy out he said i hope it's okay i gave him your name and phone number and he said but i think you know this is a guy that you should consider doing an interview with well if if you approve if you approve then i probably should pay attention to this thanks that's very complimentary thank you i appreciate that i'm working on taking compliments i'm better at it and now i just say thank you i don't say don't say that don't say it you deserve them and i'll tell you the only one that i've listened to of yours was one that you did i have no idea when you did it but was with uh neil jason oh yeah bass player i love that i mean i'm a big neil jason fan always have been but uh that was that was great so i'll be checking you out you know i did that about a year ago yeah it was right it was like a few months before covid came it was a few months before that so i'll be checking you out there you go man i have i've had so many it was funny man like i i had to work my way up from white belt to black belt with guitars but once i got in and i just got automatically put out to all the black belt bass players and drummers i didn't i didn't have to start over and i've been really fortunate about just some lovely guests and you know uh i think i mean i think the universe is you know telling me i'm supposed to be doing this so and i'm happy doing it so it's working thank you glenn hey hang on one second we'll wrap up let me just say goodbye thanks for everything man i really appreciate it absolutely everybody thank you so much for listening if you enjoyed this please share it on your social media channels we appreciate your support thank you very much to glen morph again if you want to check out glen if you're interested in talking with him about hiring him to play on your muse on your uh on your record or do some tracks it's glen wharf g-l-e-n-n-w-o-r-f at mac.com and uh most important especially nowadays man remember that happiness is a choice so choose wisely be nice go play guitar or your bass and have fun till next time peace and love everybody i am out brother thank you so much

Channel: EveryoneLovesGuitar

Views: 2,578

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: qrF0NW_TNKU

Length: 141min 50sec (8510 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020