Jeff Carlisi Interview, .38 Special: “Ronnie Van Zant’s mom made the best ham sandwiches, ever...”

hey everybody this is craig garber welcome to everyone loves guitar and man i've got such a cool guest uh a guy that if you're a baby boomer you have no doubt been entertained by jeff carlisi for years and years uh he's a tremendous player obviously one of the founders of 38 special lead guitar player and uh i'm so excited to talk to him a couple of quick announcements number one i want to thank doyle dykes thank you doyle for connecting us our mutual friend also if uh you you want to subscribe to the show go to everyonelovesguitar.com forward slash subscribe if you're watching this on youtube hit the subscribe button that little icon that looks like a bell that helps us with the google algorithm and thank you for that all right quickly jeff carlesi lead guitarist an original founding member of 38 special he was responsible for so many of the band's great signature guitar solos and licks and he was also co-writer of many of the band's top hits including my personal favorite 38 special song if i'd been the one from tour de force in 1983 jeff was with the band from 74 to 96. he's originally from queens new york man but he grew up in jacksonville florida he was inspired to be a musician after seeing the beatles on ed sullivan as many guys that age group were early concerts that inspired him included include second coming which was dicky betts and barry oakley allman brothers and of course other classic rock bands of that time he grew up and played in bands with most of the members of the original leonard skynyrd and 38 special prior to forming 38 special graduated college in atlanta with a degree in architecture however a recession delayed hiring in that industry so we went back to jacksonville and joined 38 specials a founding member isn't it weird how stuff like that happens all the total course of your life it it really is and uh i've told people many times that uh first of all thanks for having me on the show it's my sincere pleasure but i've told people that uh you know i could have just as easily been uh sitting behind a t-square frank lloyd wright and there's a there was a book that came out several years ago tremendous book especially if you're having trouble sleeping but uh fountain head no it's called outliers oh yeah it is it's got you know the 10 000 hour uh rule and and uh but one of the things that i realized from reading it was uh that be it the industrial revolution excuse me or uh bill gates and paul allen being born during the computer revolution and a lot of that the timing of when you're going into higher education determines what your future might be yeah in my case in 1974 i i loved playing music but i was planning on being an architect and had the economy been great and people were building uh i would have been an architect but because of that um interest rates were at 16 percent so the guys that i grew up with some of the guys donnie van zandt don barnes called and said well we know you're out of school we've got a real serious effort we're putting together we want you to join the band yeah why not and as they say the rest is rest is history man let me finish a little bit more about 38 special because some stuff people might not know the first two records were actually not very successful by record industry standards but and i guess this is the days where the record companies said hey we're investing in you and and you know we're willing to put up some money that third album though rocking into the night earned them their first top 40 single and sold 250 000 records and as jeff said the rest is history between 81 and 84 38 special had three million selling albums those are wild eyed southern boys special forces and tour de force add to that several songs that receive near constant play on rock radio which we're rocking into the night hold on loosely caught up in you and if i'd been the one uh and although jeff's playing is rooted in blues his style of playing is super unique and distinct and it's really packed with energy man and these that was one thing you did that was real not trying to blow smoke up your ass but um you really had like a lot of power behind what you're doing man and you really could feel that as a listener and that's what always attracted me to to your plan well well thank you i think a lot of that came from i mean was everybody the whole band and we grew up like everybody else was learning in the 60s were products of the 60s and the beatles and the stones and and uh the yard yard birds and then the soul music and uh along comes jimi hendrix and cream uh which was a guitar player that was a real revelation all of a sudden the the blues which before we even knew what the blues was it's like well they're playing this stuff called blues but they're playing it on 11 you know and so based on the influences that we all had uh there was always there were power there was power behind it the bands were powerful bands that we gravitated towards mountain uh yeah the almonds skinnered and so we played with that aggression and i think that that for the most part especially bands like skinnard that's that common thread that and when they took the stage and played it was no holes barred and uh your hair was blowing back it was so we always even though we had success with more of a pop genre of southern music however you want to define it yeah it it wasn't light it was powerful and it was played with conviction not totally different yeah as individual as a guitar player individually and collectively as a band yeah i i then it was always like it would have been impossible to listen to you know a solo of yours or anything the band's doing without like just getting up and moving you know you guys were always that kind of band you know which was why you listen to music man to feel something i'm just getting goosebumps now i'm thinking about some of the stuff uh all right your parents bought you a gibson melody maker as a kid which is a pretty cool first guitar and yeah you joined your first band in seventh grade but you're pretty much self-taught so my question is how the hell would you get so good i haven't yet see that's a guy that's a guy that's about learning man well actually uh i went to school with a guy named terry cosgrove uh he was two years older than i was and when i decided i wanted to play guitar um my mom knew his mother and she goes mrs cosgrove's son plays guitar he could give you lessons excuse me so i would go over and terry just had a way of teaching that was easy to understand he taught you what you needed to know but yet made sure you practiced what you had to practice or as larry carl would say play what you love but but practice what you play what you love but practice what you must yeah that's cool and uh so and actually years later when i would give some kids some lessons i would use the terry cosgrove technique um and it's like you know looking at the fingerboard there's there's one fret between an e and an f and one fret between a b and a c and then there's two between everything else and you know that whole uh uh ideology so i guess i i don't know how long it was three four months or so and finally terry said hey do you want to be rhythm guitar player in my band a band called the summer suns because the little business cards and uh i was like absolutely uh dumbfounded i said god yes so that was my first experience he took me under his wing and then i progressed from there i had a band after the summer suns the marshmallow steam shovel that's such a sixties name the most steam stuff the rare came about my dad who's a great guy very funny guy and just a dreamer but uh he was watching the old um uh i guess was the tonight show with uh steve allen sure and steve allen was a great musician in his own right did this thing how did these rock bands come up with names and he had these two like chalkboard scrolls you know and and just names uh written across and he just randomly spin both sides and see what came up and it's like marshmallow steam shovel my dad okay that's the name of your friend son probably the best name the band after that which was my favorite name of any band ever it was the doomsday refreshment committee and on the back funny there was a kool-aid picture with the the classic kool-aid uh guy on the yeah the picture like picture with the uh the frost on the on the uh picture and out of the top of the kool-aid picture was a mushroom cloud the doomsday refreshment committee uh and that was the first band that really really started getting into um to blues the keyboardist whose band it was uh was a few years older than us and turned us on to he was the first guy told me that bb king is was from america and really was one of the fathers of the blues really i thought it was queen you know yeah of course but that's what really started learning that education that you know of course years later with alexis corner and the stones and that the whole thing but uh that was a pretty cool band and then my last band in high school which was kind of an offshoot or lead into 38 special was a band called sweet rooster uh which had donnie vanzant and myself and 38's original bass player ken lyons uh in the band kevin elsin who later on went on to to work uh with skinnard i was actually on the plane when it went down but uh i just spoke to him the other day um very fortunate went on to to work and produce records for journey after that mr big uh the band europe oh wait a minute he was on the plane yep yeah and he survived he survived i mean holy crap yeah i mean i remember uh the night that that happened we were actually rehearsing and our road manager came into rehearsal with a look on his face that you never want to see again and uh we all just kind of silently went home and listened to see the reports coming in and what have you and of course uh ronnie vanzant steve gaines lost their lives the two pilots um dean kilpatrick and cassie gaines uh all friends of ours but you know the bittersweet part of it is that a lot of people lived because the plane crashed because it had no gas so there was no fire oh wow i didn't had no clue on this yeah i i had actually flown on that airplane a few weeks before i might have even been a couple of months and i remember knowing a bit about aviation because my father obviously i noticed that the starboard engine was pouring some black smoke we're just doing a we were flying from boston to springfield mass it was you know 35 minute flight and thinking man that's things really running rich well um you know looking um looking forward you just realize well they were having problems with uh the engines with the magnetos and they had decided this was the last trip that they were going to take on that airplane an airplane apparently which aerosmith had turned down they just said this thing's junk uh wow and uh anyway uh they uh yeah they just let it let it run out of fuel i don't understand how you let an airplane run out of fuel i don't care how rich you're running it yeah you but anyway uh what's what's done is done and uh as a result because there was no fuel on the plane there was no fire so uh that's why so many people survived they had injuries obviously i mean alan collins gary rossington um billy kevin i mean they have everybody on there but there were no other fatalities other than those six um i often well not often but a couple of times a year listen to steve gaines solo record and what a talent that guy was incredible very good scary good well it's amazing how uh their third guitar player was always so good but added a completely different dimension to what allen and gary did and you know alan and gary we grew up together in the sense of we'd known each other since we were probably 14 years old or so allen lived just down the street he was one of my heroes he's one of my best friends but a hero of mine too a guy could play man yeah play and uh you know they were they were such an influence on all of us as a band even before they were little skinner when they were the one percent and what have you and a lot of times they would play music at a teen club somewhere and we'd think it was something they wrote and it was music that a new band that they had discovered um for example free right or the illinois speed press um um you know we we had a lot of the same influences as far as the the stones and and whatever but you know they were as a lot of people said and it's true skinner was really more influenced as by english music than the almonds for example yeah i totally agree with that yeah the almonds were i mean obviously blues and country and everything else but more of the west coast kind of jam sound the grateful dead and whatever and skinner was more you know straight in your face um english style rock and roll band uh lyrical content obviously was songs about the south which was ronnie was a brilliant uh poet and songwriter um but you know going back again to um how they were able their work ethic was incredible which is one of the things 38 special learned uh but also uh the way they structured songs and you know obviously prior to steve gaines um we just lost him recently my dear friend ed king yeah who was obviously the author of doctor uh one of the co-writers and came up with that great riff and ed was always um you know just one of these uh one of these guitar players we just go how did you come up with that or what a perfect part i knew ed for well during skinnard's recording of the first album pronounced where ed was the bass player in the band leon had left and i thought ed was a bass player for a while and he did a couple of guitar parts in the studio and he said no i'm not a bass player so i suck at bass because yeah and then i found out he was in the strawberry alarm clock i didn't i didn't know that man that's interesting ed king was in the strawberry alarm clock that's cool and that's how later on they met skinner was doing some club dates and um strawberry alarm clock had gotten back together and it become more or less a blues band and uh he and ronnie became friends got connected and when leon left um ronnie called in and said hey come down and play bass with us um and then you know everything leon came back and ed became the third guitar player but the whole time he was a guitar player and i still listened to that first record or you go to youtube and those what are they called isolated tracks yeah go go listen to the bass part on free bird there's tons of isolated track free birds it'll blow your mind and that was ed it especially on the outro you know obviously during the the song went against the outro uh if you listen to and he plays bass a lot like a guitar player would play bass as opposed to because he said man when leon came back all of a sudden there was this foundation that solidified everything but if you uh if you listen to give me three steps there's no way that song would have the character it does with a real standard bass part i mean he plays it just like he's playing a guitar part anyway ed was uh honored to know him and gave me some great advice over the years and always acknowledged that we were probably the luckiest people in the world because in this business there are a lot of really good guitar players out there a lot of really good singers a lot of really good songwriters and it's kind of like the planet the moons the stars and everything have to line up yeah you have to work hard but to get your shot and like ed said he said if i had never met ronnie vanzant you'd have never heard of me since that was that was the magic that happened for me musically um and to make it in this business you know he says we should be grateful for which we obviously we are but he was he was i didn't think um when he left skynyrd uh they went back to a two guitar band i didn't think he could be replaced or that somebody of that personality and musical character could ever fill those shoes and sure enough steve gaines comes along and his sister cassie said you got to hear my brother play and yeah yeah yeah your brother and he came up on stage one night big show i think i might have been in tulsa and they just i think they did t for texas if i remember correctly and uh it just blew them away and steve obviously great guitar player and didn't do what ed did stylistically of course you don't expect and actually added that whole different dimension which ronnie endeared that there's another voice now there's another guy that can sing yeah it was um i guess to this day well forever it'll be a tragedy of what happened to that band because they the sky was there was no limit um would arguably have been the greatest rock and roll band this world has seen yeah and if anybody got to see them in any one of those um permutations be it with ed king or with steve gaines or whatever pre-1977 uh it was a frightening experience of how good it was um and god bless gary you know for carrying it on and um over the years we've lost other members billy and leon um and uh it's the music that lives and um but boy those early days maybe i'm giving my age away but uh oh man it was some great stuff it was some phenomenal stuff and you were a part of it and you were right there watching the other people being a part of it well i was actually you know in school at georgia tech um i guess i was in my junior year when they were recording um um pronounced the first skinny record so i was at the studio all the time that was my first um introduction uh and contact with studio one and the atlanta rhythm section people that worked out there and they were just you know they were friends of mine so i'd go out and hang out did you ever have like uh like you're sitting in school to become an architect and it sounds like you're actually pretty committed to doing that but man this it was almost like you had this double life and then like you're this total 100 all-in musician yeah like i said before i mean i i i almost didn't have any choice because i couldn't have gotten a job as an architect yeah it would have been very very difficult um economy was in bad shape that was right before the gas shortage yeah remember that man you'd like well i got to get gasses wednesday or something like that right it was odd and even and stuff like that so uh again and it got worse after that um it really didn't start getting better until the reagan era you know when ronald reagan came in yeah so the decision was easy it wasn't a decision saying well i'm just going to be a musician the decision was i'm going to take a couple of years and play some music with my friends okay and see what happens you know and with a mindset that i would go back to the real world uh but once i was in a band again playing music and all of a sudden you know it was a team and we believed in ourselves even though it was quite a long ways away yet before we defined ourselves i was hooked i didn't see i actually i didn't see myself going back what i thought about was i wonder if the day comes when i have to go back right and and for for years craig i would go do radio interviews and go hey we understand you got a degree in architecture well that's great because you've always got something you can pull back on i'm gonna fall back on we sold 12 million records 20 million to date but you know i don't think i'm falling back you know yeah right that's kind of funny yeah um that's funny man yeah so hey you gave me uh some topics that were either meaningful or nostalgic or influential in your life and you're playing so i'm going to mention some of them if you could share you know why these things mean so much to you that'd be great um barry bailey who's the guitarist for the atlanta rhythm section yeah um i hate using the word underrated um sometimes i think well yeah they use underrated because he didn't wreck cars or fall off the stage or you know that's just a joke but um again going back during those early years of skinnered at studio one and i got to meet rodney mills who eventually became our producer and rodney was the engineer for the atlanta rhythm section now i had actually the very first time i saw barry bailey uh he came into a club that skinner was playing where skinner was playing in atlanta called finocchios and it was a very dangerous rock and roll club you either got stabbed or shot if you were you know oh i mean it was like one of those you never noticed it but it was that kind of deal and uh but it was a great rock and roll club and barry came walking in one night and um and he uh sat in i said oh that's the guy from the atlanta rhythm section and he just played great and years later a few years later not even probably within the same year at that point in time when skinner was recording i went out to the studio to see rodney and he was um just he and barry were in the control room and rodney actually ended up he pretty much produced barry's parts with barry okay buddy who is the band's producer and songwriter whatever but after they cut the basic tracks uh rodney worked hand-in-hand with with barry and i sat there and listened to him and just was amazed um for you know for my money he put everything in the right place his tone was great he phrased things like whoa you know uh so that was kind of the first light bulb um that went on and going i'm kind of understanding how you can do it not that i'm gonna be able to play like that um of course i ended up buying a guitar just like barry's thinking well if i got a guitar like that i could sound like um but we'll we'll get to that later so yeah he was he was absolutely phenomenal and in a very understated way he could he could play melodically and then just rip your head off he was the master of putting harmonics in the right place you know uh once a lot of our players learn how to do harmonics they put them everywhere they'd start one two three bro harmonic and go on but uh yeah one of the and he you know he goes um barry goes um way back in um early days of um um who was he played with back back when the candy men uh who were part of the atlanta rhythm section who backed up roy orbison i think somebody told me that barry had gotten a an offer from leslie west to play with him i'm trying i can't qualify that but been a real mentor to me uh without him probably ever knowing it i mean how did i start if i wanted to listen to some of his stuff what would you suggest oh gosh i mean just any rhythm sex elena rhythm section record and especially in the first three or four you listen to um large time um champagne jam joking um you know i mean so many songs justine which is a an instrumental on uh um i think probably their first record back up against the wall um but uh i think large time i mean just it's just the coolest guitar riff and the way he plays it and joking but those are the those are kind of the aggressive real um in your face songs but they're not going to let it bother me tonight um that's a great or spooky yeah i mean guitar solo and that alone yeah that's a beautiful track imaginary lover um some so many great atlanta rhythm section songs um even later ones like alien just great playing everything he did was i mean i i can't say there was any one song i went and bear you disappointed me on that one you've done something shouldn't let me play though great great player thanks let's talk about next dan hartman and for people who don't know dan hartman he is a singer and a multi-instrumentalist he's also a songwriter with edgar winter who wrote free ride but he also wrote james brown's hit living in america yep so talk about dan dan uh as you pointed out was a bass player in in uh edgar winter group and wrote some of those early songs later on after we knew him uh the james brown tune and also um uh what was the street um that's the street this the movie that had a song called um i think it was called streets on fire that he wrote um anyway uh wrote a lot of songs incredible now this was 1976 i guess late 76 when we first met with him and i had never personally experienced a musician that was so multi-talented in the sense of all the instruments that he played uh and what he did and uh so in a nutshell we did the first two records and as you pointed out they were not successful records uh on a m records with dan but it wasn't dan's fault by any means we learned a lot from dan um on how to approach making a record um edgar winterlud just down the street he'd come over and hang out and do some sack solos on a couple of our tunes talk about a talent holy oh yeah but he had uh white trash down with jerry mcroy and all those guys it was white trash what a band man yeah and um johnny even came by one night he came in and they were so like edgar was all slicking up town and green sparkle tennis shoes and stuff and johnny was all leather and chains and sits down on the floor with a bottle of blue nut puts a couple of bottles of blue gun down let's jam blue nun yeah it was great i had a fire bird back then that i pulled that out and um of course did i have a camera no uh shows me how that wasn't on the top of everybody's mind back then no it was you just didn't think about it and if you think about it you were too embarrassed to start taking pictures i mean i think about all the bands that we've either opened for or that opened for us and i was my hobby was photography yeah i just didn't do it the greatest i'm gonna tangent for a second the greatest photographic essay i've ever seen is um 80 84. golden earring was our opening act and um what a band they where were they from like sweden or something uh they were dutch they were from okay netherlands yeah and uh yeah and uh so this the singer i don't recall his name really nice guys but they had a heavy heavy broke and very difficult to understand and and uh well we know we all got along and he came up to me uh one day i think it was a sound check or backstage before the show and uh said hey how you doing you know good and he pulls out one of those styrofoam clown noses you know the red yeah odd thing to pull out yeah that's pretty nice man cool too much and he's like handing it to me you know and what do you want me to do with this and finally he could you know gestures put it on put it on your nose well okay so some weird dutch custom that you don't know about i didn't know what was going on man it's like i don't want to be rude you know it's like a little awkward but yeah yeah but i all right i put the clown nose on and he whips out a polaroid look and i said why [Laughter] and he gestures i go to the dressing room and he's got a you know the old uh trunks the old foot locker trunks you know latches and then the thing in the middle black with the gold corners and all that he's got one he pops this thing open and he must have a thousand polaroids if not tooth i mean it's just wow cool and he's got also a um an album a photo album in there with all this stuff like his polaroids pulls out the photo album and he starts showing me here's clapton with the red nose here's jeff beck with the red nose here's all these every rock star that he's ever you know been in touch with people you didn't know and enormously uh successful and famous people and the the rub or the tie was that they all were wearing the red nose that's hilarious man and i thought it was brilliant too i said could you imagine a a museum an art museum display of you know filled with famous people with the red nose on yeah totally and it made everybody the same yeah i'm looking at it's like oh my gosh look who it is look who it is and he had been doing this you know for for years uh what was their hit twilight zone was that what it was called light zone and yeah that was a great song that was great when and uh oh gosh what was the other one um it'll come to me there was another one that they had that was their second hit i believe um radar love radar love yeah man they're great tracks great really good in the day that was one of those uh i had a guy on the show one time i don't know if you know uh plays oh man i'm having a brain fart um toby keith's guitars i can't think of his name off the top of my head but he's he was telling me a story that he was in the dressing room one day and leslie west was there and they were talking and he was saying about man i'd love to write uh this guitar player said i'd love to write a song i'd love to write a hit song and leslie goes you only need one but that was like that golden earring you know they had those two hits and back in the day you can like you know fund your retirement with two hits like that you know that's correct anyway um the tangent back to dan hartman um it was a great two years we recorded up in westport connecticut he had a home there with the studio in it it's called the school house beautiful westport connecticut yeah and the the main part of the house where we recorded in and you could record in any room you could record in a bathroom if you wanted because the ambience of the tile would you know create a natural echo chamber but there was a large room and it was called the schoolhouse because during the revolutionary war george washington and his troops would come there to chill out uh pretty interesting yeah it was an old school house and i got a i took plenty of pictures of that place that's for sure but yeah it was really neat it was a great experience and we learned a lot from dan quite frankly as a band we were pretty green not in the sense of our playing skills but stylistically in what we were doing yeah we were still trying to to be we're doing a little bit of marshall tucker a little bit of skinner a little bit of almost a little bit of charlie you know everything that every other southern band was doing we tried to wrap up into one and it's kind of like oh seen it heard it done it and you didn't you're not even doing it as well as those guys did um our second record with dan we broke out of that a little bit but uh still um didn't didn't really have the right direction so we didn't know what our future uh held and we decided um that we'd part ways with dan and record company might have been behind it too says you know after two records but let me think about it two records that sold uh one sold 20 000 copies the other sold 30 000 copies to today's times or even 20 years ago yeah gone after the first one yeah sure we were very lucky once again very fortunate to be with a m records which was you know the last of the great independent record companies and real music people um jerry moss and herb alpert that's right is that me yeah it must be important it was loud as sorry about that no it's all right time to put on a red nose yeah yeah right and they um you know they stuck with us i mean they gave us a third chance and that's really when when things changed uh fortunately um we we i remember calling rodney mills and saying uh okay we're gonna go somewhere else we want a really good sounding record so rodney must be the guy that can do it because we love the way the atlanta rhythm section records sounded and coming back down south called rodney on denzel rodney's how'd you like to engineer our next record and he said well jeff i was actually kind of thinking about producing it oh didn't think about that so then it was like all right shift gears go back to the record company convince them that um this is what we need to do and that was difficult because here's a band that had absolutely no track record and done two records and the same thing and we're saying we want this guy that's never produced a record in his life other than barry billy's guitar parts to do a record uh to produce our record and so they says well we we you need to talk to some other other producers and we did we talked to um i don't even remember years later we greg ladani that was later um [Music] we'll get to that um but anyway we talked to a couple of other people and finally i think fortunately i think the record company just said whatever you guys want to do just go do it and this will probably be the last one what we did um uh record with rodney was in producing the third album and that record was actually in the can getting ready to uh get mastered when all of a sudden our manager calls and i get a tape through the mail of a song by this band survivor that we had never heard of before and we listened to turn that uh you probably got your messages on there it's my wife's computer oh yeah it's it's the messages you gotta disable it let's see messages or maybe turn it off on the bottom i don't i'll end up sending you to hell and back no i don't worry about it man yeah so um um so survivor so survivor so we get this uh as jim in your interview with jim peter talked about john kolodner who was an a.r man who knew our manager mark spector who was had recently left a m records um we knew him through a m and he believed in in us a lot and really helped us get through that period of the post stan hartman into the new period um doing demos and what have you and he sent this tape with a song called rocking into the night so i remember i listened to it that's pretty catchy went straight over to don barnes house we sat and listened to it and uh he goes man that's a cool song and uh really felt there was something special about it but you know we didn't know so let's show it to the rest of the band but they i have to honestly say the rest of the band didn't seem too excited about it and obviously i mean donnie vanzant was singing all the songs at that point in time and uh i think don had saw one or two on a couple of the hartman records but uh he didn't like it uh he didn't care for the uh the melody and just said i don't know i don't feel it so was it had to do maybe with the fact that it wasn't your song that you guys had no because we had done some covers before i don't think um we were i don't ever remember us being it has to be us matter of fact uh certainly later on we realized how valuable collaborations were and how fruitful they they could be um but uh so he said uh i said to don i said well i think you could sing it because yeah he said i think i probably could so we went back up to studio one with the band to cut the track and um everybody else went home don and i always stayed later because either we were doing guitars or whatever before anybody came back to sing and he sang the song and obviously we had held up on on mastering the record because we we realized it was we had to have a hit or we had to have something that was going to make a difference um so he's saying we were very pleased with it getting kind of excited the band came back up and you know all of a sudden some of the other members of the band said well donnie's really our singer we think he should sing it we said he didn't like it and so basically we did we gave him a shot to sing it and because of the range and stylistically or whatever um you know what don had put down was um you know was was really the the answer right the song was going to do anything so um songs added to the record went out and boom all of a sudden uh we've got a top 40 single and uh we're on the radio can you imagine that on the radio that's all right and um um record company was happy all of a sudden rodney's got a gold star on his forehead because he's this rookie producer right made a great sounding record um the whole attitude of the band the way we were playing was everything changed at that point in time the guys that were a little reluctant to cover this cover rocket into the night once it came out and it did well did they swing around oh yeah absolutely any time yeah when you hear yourself on the radio and somebody sends you a check yeah [Laughter] or you're playing for five thousand people instead of five yeah yeah it's easy to change your attitude and everybody and it's always been i mean 38 special was always you know like the three musketeers of the six musketeers you know all for one and one for all and we're all a team cool which was which was great um but there are in any type of marriage or or business or what have you um there are conflicts there's egos there are things that get in the way and you have to work through them um it's one of the things that um when we're talking about the the business book that i wrote was in any la any uh walk of life um sometimes you got to be brutally honest and make a decision that might hurt some feelings but it's for the betterment and the good of everybody yeah if you don't make that decision then everybody loses sure and the band understood that so yeah that was that was fine in the beginning it's like thank goodness it's like we're not in the unemployment line anymore and i remember you know we were jacksonville heroes and don barnes and i would stand in the unemployment line between the last uh dan hartman record and that dark sunglasses ball caps pull really low what if somebody sees us man it's like um it was it was rough for a while uh but we kept pushing we kept believing in ourselves and came through so that was that was a breakthrough record and then that was our um our our relationship with um in our friendship with jim federick which of course led to us going and meeting him for the first time up in uh in chicago and the very first song we wrote was hold on loosely was he always so uh man he's so grounded that guy for a guy who i mean he's probably written more hits than and you know anybody i've met everybody i've had on this show um and he's like just like man he's just enthusiastic he just wants to play music he's like a total you know he's family he's just like a mellow dude yeah he uh i mean a lot of that comes from and you said you hit the nail on the head with his enthusiasm and years later as we became friends and and collaborators he was the guy that kind of made you realize oh well this this can be easy or this can be fun yeah and yeah it can be fun and if nothing comes of it you had fun and we'll see you next next month or next week or whatever and there was never any it's like you you go in he goes what do you got yeah it doesn't matter what do you got oh it's got a lot of chords in i don't care give me more chords about you just so pumped up and just so excited about it and you know in the early days you'd be a little inhibited maybe to to to show somebody to put your cards on the table and he would just get so enthusiastic about it and make things start to happen that you go oh wow this is great and as the years went by every time we wrote a song it was always that same attitude so that's that's tribute to him as not only as talent as a songwriter but just his enthusiasm to make making music it's it should be fun it's not a it's not a lab experiment you know it's man you are that is so like hit the nail on the head and and i've learned that through doing these interviews and talking to you guys and it's changed my life because i don't turner 57 did too but um i don't do anything that's not fun anymore you don't have to you don't have to man i mean you know and it's been such a huge change in my personal life from adopting an attitude from guys like you and peter rick and like why the hell wouldn't you well exactly i mean sometimes you just don't know at the time and you don't you know the older you get the more it teaches you about wow i shouldn't have wasted that time back then being miserable about something yeah yeah you don't get paid extra for that yeah right exactly you know it's not like we get tuition misery pay hey man here you go no everything is miserable yeah well and you know and as as as we became more and more productive when i say we jim myself and don it gives you motivation to keep working harder and to all of a sudden change your direction of how you're um how you're writing um it's just since i mentioned uh and you mentioned it earlier hold on loosely which was kind of the real breakthrough song for us uh in the sense of really putting us on the map i mean rocking into the night helped get the uh the gears going but um oh hold on loosely it was explosive man that was on every radio station everywhere yeah what a cool thing like i could imagine you guys are driving from one state to the next i'm like holy it's still on well and now i mean somebody said the other days i still here hold on loosely you know at least once a week just casually and sometimes you know three times a week song's 40 years old yeah that's pretty freaking cool man so obviously the music still feels good the message is still relevant and that's what songs are all about yeah human nature is the same as as we uh as we progress as as as man progresses um some of those messages will be the same forever and ever and so yeah but we went up to chicago and um as jim said in the interview you know his wife karen brought out some nachos for us sitting around and like so we had just met him and he says we got a great job on rocking into the night i was uh really pleased with it and said how come you guys didn't do it he says well i think it was ron nevison was their producer and from what i understand he didn't like the song didn't think it was right so they let it go and um so thank you very much yeah that's what i'm thinking man like so anyway we finally get started he goes what you got and uh and i had the the uh the riff yeah and don had the title and prior to going up there we were on we were touring i'll never forget we were in a hotel room don came by we're sitting up on beds opposite each other and i said what do you think of this and he started just scatting a melody and i don't even know if he had the title at that point i don't think he did he just started scouting melody and then came up with the title hold on loosely which is brilliant title yeah yeah as jimmy knowledge so the next thing you know we start writing and jim's like boom he's flat out in fifth with no downforce and he's full speed ahead and uh so he would um very very prolific and fluent lyricist and he would something he would have to get away sometimes he would he would jot notes down and we um as you said uh if you clean too tightly you might lose control what do you think of that yet he finally get kind of a road map and he goes all right you guys just hang out i'll be back and he just disappeared somewhere with his note in his notebooks and hang on i'm going to [Laughter] you folks out there this is jeff carlesi answering his daughter's text [Laughter] see how it's different from whatever oh i typed out a real nice thing and i think i hit close instead of send oh well yeah so um uh so he says he goes hang out i'll come back so we're walking around um it says this is he lived in um lagrange at the time had a nice little small house um not where he where he lives now where his studio and everything is yeah this was in uh 1980. and uh some walking around him going through his uh his basically a music room and he had a piano and some other things and their pictures on the wall and there's this picture of this guy playing a guitar singing into a microphone he's got these big uh mutton chops and i'm just going to man i wonder who that is and jim comes back finds okay he says uh i think i got something and uh i said hey hang on a second i said who's this because that's me i said really you got to be kidding yeah that was me and um actually one of my first bands um and i said really what was the name of the band he said uh the odds of mine i started laughing oh yeah right and he goes no i mean it's marge why what i said uh dude there's already been an eyes of marge you know i'm i'm your vehicle i'm sure you've heard it because yeah that was me yeah i'm going he was in the picture he was 18 years old yeah he was a kid man i didn't know he's saying it i remember the song uh and i was just like yeah right there's there's already been a nights of march and sure that's so funny yeah and he told us the story of that and how vehicle came about listen that a great story man i was so fascinated by that man and and talk about a series of events the guy brings in a pamphlet about anti-drugs or something like and he turns that into the start of a career that has been going on for 50 years prolifically yeah it's cool too because he's got with the exception of i think one or two members that i think one of them has passed away and uh but he has the original ides of march back together he told me that yeah they tore up in chicago area yeah yeah exactly so anyway um we go back and uh he's got you know a whole thing laid out and we're we write the bridge and everything and i'm looking at don and going this is great how cool is this you know this is weird got a song here man and uh and all of a sudden jim's sitting there and he just kind of gets pensive for a minute and takes his pen his notebook and just puts a big axe through everything what are you doing man what are you doing because it's not right yet he rips the page out crumples it up throws away i'll be back that's kind of scary yeah well and i'm thinking man this is great and he's just all of a sudden just no way boom um booked uh finally got it and and a great song and it's again just kind of digressing for a second um people wonder where ideas come from um and songs and styles and whatever and quite frankly at that point in time we realized we needed and we had started to more so on the rocket into the night record but we really needed to go in a different direction no guarantee that it was going to work but guaranteed that if we kept doing the same thing over and over again uh we we would fail it wasn't going to work yeah so well the beauty of that song is that is such an unconventional song where you have your the guitar melody line is totally unrelated to the song melody line and how you guys came that is that's not common in rock no it is well and again the first the very first inspiration for the song musically from gave me the idea for that riff was the song the uh cars tune just what i needed just what i needed yeah yeah okay so people got the cars really and so i remember the first time i heard just what i needed on the radio i i hated it i didn't get it i didn't understand it i thought it was quirky and and goofy and two new way for me whatever that was like 77 78 or something like that yeah probably yeah yeah right in there 70 and i couldn't hit the the button soon enough to set it off yeah and it was kind of like listen to this guy i don't mind you sit uh hanging around wasting all my time time it's like what is easy doing you know so a couple of days i'd be riding around uh here's that stupid song again that move it finally i heard it was a little bit further down the line and it was like the chorus and um make a long story short after about i don't know a week 10 days or so of hearing this song quite a bit on the radio i could not get enough of it i could not get enough of it and i realized the simplicity of the song for me as a guitar player was with the eighth eighth notes and just had that group well if you go and compare and i used to do this at radio stations they say could you play something on the air i said well i'm not one to sit there you know by myself and do some doyle dyke solo performance but i said i i demonstrated how just what i needed was played okay and i segwayed as i was playing it right into hold on loosely and i said it's all the eighth notes and i said i was probably the best i remember i was probably sitting on the couch one day at home you know watching tv with a guitar and drool pouring out of your mouth right just going ding ding ding ding ding ding ding yeah playing eighth notes and then ding ding ding ding does it sound like the cars no nothing like them influenced by the cars yes that's is it a way to just take the blinders off and and pull something in and make it your own yeah so that's where that whole style came from which which um evolved into caught up in you as well another eighth note thing it was it was what people call the signature sound and uh other songs as well so yeah it was we were very lucky we hit on something and that perfect storm came together where we we unbeknownst to us met jim peterick through a third party got together with him had some cars influenced ideas a great lear i mean a great melody and title that don had and next thing you know lovely song uh and the relationship continued for the next uh two records anyway the special forces that had caught up in you he and don wrote chain lightning and jim and i wrote fantasy girl and uh other ones um he ended up on um tour de force which had uh if i've been the one one of your favorite songs oh what what tell me about that song can you i'd love to hear it the uh it was one of those songs that some some songs you labor over you you uh it takes you it takes you months to finish it or to bring it to fruition that was a song that basically in 20 minutes it was done and we initially started i started writing it for donny and the melody was something that he could follow [Music] down down and following the guitar melody um and so don and i started working on it and um he developed parts of the song and basically um we had a melody and pretty much all the chord structure done in in 20 minutes simple i mean i gotta be honest with you that's i didn't have a good childhood whenever that song came on it it gave me so much hope it really did i'm and i'm not just saying that that song made me feel so good it just was like man tomorrow's gonna be a better day and i don't know why but there was something about that song that always touched me man but uh donnie um worked on lyrics with uh at the time a fellow musician who was actually our stage manager at the time uh larry steele and um yeah um song was written very quickly and it was uh it felt it it's one of those songs you wish could have could come together like that you know all the time the funny thing about that is when the vid i don't know if you remember the video the horses going through the week oh yeah yeah yeah okay okay so the i guess what you call the heroine in the movie was this girl um we went we had to go up to um alberta canada to film that to a little town called pincher creek and the reason why is because in north america wheat is harvested from south to north and the only wheat that was left anywhere was in canada well that's it yeah i think that's so cool that these things like you get to learn from this you know it's kind of cool so um they we went up there it was you know beautiful beautiful place and they had uh uh the horses it was a working uh ranch where these um what do you call wranglers i guess uh the guys who oh they mean the ranch hands or something yeah yeah i think they call wranglers anyway so they the director would say we want the horses to run this way and i remember saying uh uh you guys just ignore them you know it's like 80 000 pounds of mass and just the norm you know because if one of them veers or heads towards you just just go like this it'll spook them you talk about being nervous i mean yeah like over here but uh anyway so we're filming the thing with the girl uh who was the the heroine in the movie was um a girl named julianne phillips so song's out uh it's a hit i'm sitting at home talking to a friend um on the phone you know watching tv news was on and muted and all of a sudden i see our video pop up on i think it was cnn or something pop up on the screen i'm going hey man hang on hold on our videos on you know we're famous in something well that was when julianne phillips announced she was marrying bruce springsteen oh man and she was uh what was that uh sisters she was in a tv show i think sisters later on she was you know just an actress that they that uh the producer picked to be in our or the director picked to be in our video and then later on so i'm sitting there all excited i'm turning the tv up and and uh all of a sudden it says yes she's she's very well known for her appearance in a 38 special video uh so it was all about her and that she's so cool she was marrying the boss but you know we got some press from it yeah i think it's about us and it's like no it's about her that's cool though come on eddie i got some stuff on cnn well i said we had her first um in if you're comfortable in in 1996 you left the ban i was just curious what was the final trigger that prompted you to leave you know it so many things and people say out of diplomacy he left to spend more time with his family and this and that it was winding down and i've i've never been one to say uh it was his fault or it's because of him it's like it takes two to tango sure and the band was uh somewhat fractured at that time we didn't have any of our original drummers anymore um we had a uh when don uh departed in 86 87 i guess that's when max carl and danny chauncy joined the band um and uh you know which which was a great time and we had a song second chance and max carl was probably one of the greatest vocalists ever uh certainly that i've had to work with a great songwriter really good period of time but don came back danny stayed and things were just everybody was drawing lines in the sand and there were things about me that somebody didn't like and it just started spiraling and snowballing and i think that also was combined with it was a tough time for the band because all of a sudden we're into the 90s grunge is taking over yeah in our career posted dan hartman uh era but all the studio one days with with rodney um we never had the record label come by and check to see what we were doing uh if they did they had to be invited by us uh that was our our sanctuary and they never questioned it and we just kept delivering good product then all of a sudden um you know we went from a m records to um i guess rock and roll strategy which had second chance on it was the last record on a m a lot of the folks that worked at a m that were our friends went to charisma which was a subsidiary of virgin records we did a record called bone against steel with max one of my favorite records that we've done not typical 38 special but just as far as uh songs and playing but it was not accepted um and the next thing you know you know the record company is wanting to come in they want us to submit demos uh that caused stress on everybody you know yeah we used to be way up here you know and now now they're asking us for demos what's going on is this how the world uh works so i think that contributed to well it's his fault or i want to go in this direction but he does it you know i can't give you the definitive reasoning um it's just the season and the season was over yeah i think that's probably the best way to put it and um and that's okay um yeah i look back it's obviously painful it was just like it was painful for mccartney for the beatles to break up sure uh it was painful because for close to 30 years of my life i've been in this band and all of a sudden for whatever reason it's over what i realized later on the old expression of one door closes and opens another and i had these um opportunities to do so many other things to to become a member of the rock and roll hall of fame uh band with liberty devito and working with paul shaffer and will lee and ricky brewer rob arthur uh and playing oh gosh i guess for a period of about eight years i guess backing up i'll just give you a few of them sam the sham mitch ryder ronnie spector uh russell thompkins jr um tone loke that's funny oh yeah i mean just and um and on and on uh uh dr dr hook um what's his name uh passed away treat her right roy head uh just playing these classic songs that you grew up learning to play your instrument yeah some of these songs and being up there with the art salmon domingo cemudio is his real name that's funny i didn't know that domingo that's funny yeah one of the funniest uh sharpest people i've ever met you cannot out one line him you cannot outraise her cut his wit he is just an amazing guy and gave us a lot of um insight to the the pharaohs and i didn't realize it but uh they were a blues band yeah i didn't know that yeah they were a blues band um i think a lot of them were military sam was in the air force i believe and dwayne allman played on on a uh sam record wow and he told me stories about that but anyway they were a blues band and he said we'd play these clubs uh you know the usual thing five sets a night till two in the morning and and he said we had this thing that we played all the time we just called it the groove and it was the music to wooly bully so i was like [Music] and they just play that and jam on it so he said uh it was about it was late at night he said the the band's dragging butt and just tired and and uh so he said i had to pick him up he said i turned her i said hit the groove and the band started playing it and he said on the spot he came up with the lyrics to wooly bully wow and uh he said they were cracking up and just like man that is that's hilarious they were you know like a shot of adrenaline in the arm and i had the opportunity i said by the way speaking of that what did don't let yourself be l7 or don't be l7 what does that mean i never could figure it out and he said he said elsa oh let's see there's a square don't be a square yeah that's so funny i've never heard that before um so he said um a few days later a few weeks later uh one of the record company guys i knew came by and said uh hey you guys got anything uh and he said just as a joke we played wooly bully for him and he just immediately said that's a hit and they recorded it and it was the first song in 1965 to to go to number one that was not a british invasion tune interesting yeah so i mean you hear these stories man it's just like you know is it serendipity is it higher power i mean is it just right place you know it's just amazing it's yeah exactly and the stories are just fascinating yeah there's thousands of them out there really that's how that happened i had no idea yeah and when he when we got the uh the set that he was going to do his music director said sam's going to do woolly bully little red riding hood and crossroads [Laughter] so we get to the the sound check the rehearsal um and uh sure enough you know we rehearse wooly bully and a little red riding hood next thing you know sam puts on a strat and takes out a slide and he does like a taj mahal version of crossroads that's pretty funny and it was like and that's after that i found out because i've been a blues player all my life that's what the pharaohs were all about you just heard uh the hits that were on the radio the novelty song so to speak that's crazy man yeah really neat person deep person but yeah um playing um jenny take a ride and double the blue dress with mitch ryder come on man yeah i'm playing those in a band in 1965 66 whatever i'm standing there playing with mitch ryder playing all of jim mccarty's guitar parts and everything it's just like whoa doesn't get any better than this let me ask you something you mentioned the hall of fame uh again if you're comfortable why the hell do you think you guys have been excluded well okay uh first of all to whatever extent you're comfortable first of all um there are a lot of people still waiting yes to be there before we do uh in that i mean uh doing something groundbreaking with music i mean we were a good band and we sold a good amount of records but i could never say we were groundbreaking with music um yeah but is that the criteria well it with so many of these award type things it's it's a popularity thing more than anything else one of the problems and i was up there when you may have remembered when guns and roses were getting inducted and axel rose apparently said unless my band as they had already broken up and axel owns the trademark guns and roses so he had a whole new band that he was able to call guns and roses but it wasn't slash or any of those other guys and he said unless my band that i have now gets in and gets inducted i'm not showing up i remember made the news i got up in the morning and washington people were outside talking about this and whatever so the rock hall said or the hall of fame said tough sorry it's you know it's the people who who performed that body of work yeah which makes sense right exactly um then there was some controversy from even some fans saying that some of the nominees that year i think heart was one of them um that whether you liked them or not they certainly uh women in rock music they revolutionized that they became successful and all that so a lot of the dissension and nothing against guns and roses but they didn't have a big enough body of work just because they had one record that sold more records than any other first record out of a box uh out what was appetite for destruction i correct that does didn't qualify them to be uh inducted that early whatever an opinion so with the hall of fame first of all the hall of fame it's it's a lot of committees as a lot of organizations man just saying that listening to this it's like a lot of committees that means a lot of and that well it's true it's true it is man it's just and i'm telling you uh people that have it's almost like lobbying in capitol hill people fans i know they were fans of skinnard's it took them forever to convince them to get to let get skinned inducted into the hall they have to go they have to write letters they got to do um it's like electing a candidate exactly so it goes this committee this committee this committee and then they realized well the fans were going well that's not fair what about us you know what you got a good point so they said we're going to now they may have changed since but at the time they said we're going to let the fans have a vote so they gave the fans a 10 vote in the greater scheme of things well that's kind of it's nothing man nothing yeah yeah um so again i got to be realistic and no matter how fair the process is or whatever i really can't i mean i would graciously you know we got inducted to the georgia music hall of fame um because of our work and recording in georgia but there are a lot of people out there that deserve to be in there it's also been deluded and you've heard this argument that it's the rock and roll hall of fame right hip-hop artists or whatever yeah and that's that's a tough one because you know i can kind of understand where like run dmc or beastie boys sure qualify but then you say but those guys or or and i'm not saying hip-hop but other genres of music sure um but does drake maybe not yeah right you know yeah so it's it just gets diluted and um i've always said i said you know you'll be uh watering daisies on my grave before we get in but that's all right you know yeah yeah it's a fan yeah man and you don't need that at this point in time in your life and your career that that you know that you know you're validated you know i am yeah and some of those things that you know we were saying earlier that just make you um if you're looking for an accolade or something to satisfy your worth um the easiest thing is you know to do it through your music and and for example but i guess it's been about five years i did this um this show was a convention out in las vegas uh with a band that i knew and i was brought into to um supplement the band if you would and i brought in my good friend jeff adams who's the bass player super talented cat um with mickey thomas the starship okay sings like a bird plays bad anyway he's dear friend matter of fact i met him through ed king ed king put together a project in nashville called deep south there was jimmy hall myself ed dean daughtry from the rhythm section um good talent there man yeah it was killer band and uh it lasted about six minutes but anyway but uh met jeff through that we've done brought him into the hall of fame band and we we do a lot of stuff together so jeff came to do this as well i said well why do you guys need us because well because the guest is going to be one of the musical guests is going to be paul rogers i said get out of here i'm going to get paul rogers you know this and uh sure enough paul uh did the show and i was like a you know kid in a candy store it's like um well obviously all bad company tunes with the exception of all right now which was a free song and i'll be honest with you i know when i was going to go out and meet paul rogers i uh i brought free records i took all the records out of the sleeves lps stuck in my suitcase and at soundcheck we did a few songs and once he finally realized okay we don't suck is that paul do me a favor and he was i'll never forget and since then i told him about this i had uh free's very first album was a record called tons of songs that had walk in my shadow and and whatever and the reason that was one of those bands that we heard skinner played the music first before we ever heard free okay and said man you guys just write that no man that's just band call free they were fantastic man yeah i'm unbelievable same thing with the illinois speed press which was paul cox i wrote that down i'd never heard of those guys i've got to check that remind me of after this i'll tell you about the speed press and what okay so special about them um so um paul's looking at uh at tons of saab's record album and he goes i'll never forget he goes how do you know about this i said dude this is this is my education and uh i said growing up you know we heard this from skinner the first time i loved that band loved that band and uh said yeah well they taught us we taught each other and i said uh we were at skate land in 1969 where you guys played you know and uh with andy frazier and paul kossoff and and simon or whatever so i said the reason why i play the stuff like i play it is because that was the education i got i understand this that swagger or whatever you know whatever you want to call it and he said funny but he was just seemed like he was like really he said i understand if somebody heard about bad company and knew about bad company but free just seems like paul kossoff was just a genius man it was incredible years later when bad company made their comeback sans paul um uh with brian howe singing they were opening for us and we became very good friends me and mick ralph's beautiful beautiful person so sad um you know that he can't play now and i heard he's getting along pretty well though i'll consider all things considered uh after the stroke um yeah that's right he had a stroke yeah yeah um but uh and simon would go out and play golf with us and just really and we'd uh we ride on each other's buses and whatever and simon and i were up all night on the bus playing acoustic guitars playing every free song that's so cool man yeah and it was just like it was it was so cool so um again um did the show and if you go to the the videos of paul at that las vegas show or on my website on jeffcarlessy.com under i think it's under jeff's videos or whatever um the um so uh recently um i got a call from none other than paul and uh said i know you know we're not touring or anything with this coveted but i got an idea of a song so would you mind putting some ideas down so i said nah be glad to that's awesome i didn't know how i had baptism by fire i learned garageband in about four minutes you know four minutes and three days yeah right but it was it was fun so we've uh just since that's i guess the point is it's it's um that kind of acknowledgement saying you know yeah man that's that's happening you know you don't need a bunch of committees you know paul rogers calls you up and says hey man can we do something together that's pretty freaking validation man yeah it's it's it's good so that's that's all i need you know um and uh not that you even need it but it's nice it's real nice yeah and hey i learned a lot from really great and when i say great guitar players um people that i could never even envision doing what they do technically or whatever doyle dykes is an example finger style playing or you know or tommy emanuel or this new kid uh billy strings yeah just crazy stuff and these 20 year old phenomenal blues players like uh yeah so the thing i've noticed about um those really really good players is they have so much admiration respect for other players and what they do i mean doyle dykes is a perfect example says jeff you know what you do is is you're such a fine player going what are you nuts you know it's like i appreciate steve morris said to me one time he goes he came up he said how do you do what you do that guy is a freaking nature and he's so humble he is and i i i was almost like are you making fun of me yeah because he's like yeah off the charts yeah five-time voted best guitar player magazine whatever obviously and i said what do you mean steve he goes i didn't write those songs like that you know and all of a sudden i realized wow there's another aspect that he wants to know wants to learn about wants to know how to do it and he's he's amazed or he's um he doesn't have that skill set right yeah and he loves that yeah he spent a lot more time maybe you know studying different forms of music or scales or whatever uh so you realize it's just not enough time that you find out what you want to do um you know what you want to be and and there's all these little benchmarks in your life i mean as far as style of guitar playing you know brian may was a big revelation for me the very first time i heard queen on the queen 2 record and when people say you know where did you get your melodic style of playing well from brian may well you don't sound like brian may of course not don't want to sound like brian may i mean it's that's he does his thing but it's the attitude of uh you could sing his solos when the singer was finished singing and you start playing you take off with a that's what i chose to do and that was that i get it yeah you structure those things to work in and out of vocal melodies and that creates something different than nobody else is doing um so but it's all those those players that are just so really good andy timmons is another one yeah and he's pretty amazing yeah amazing guy he asked me he was when i had my uh the company camp jam for the the summer camp for kids he did a master class and uh he'll never he goes hey jeff he said you got to show me something from hold on loosely i said really because yeah he says i said i bet it's that triplet uh figure that um in the solo because yeah i said all right i should i'll show it to you but you got to show me how you do it first and uh yeah i remember in high school man i was trying to figure that out so he does this thing and i i don't even know what he yeah he's pretty he's like steve morris kind of yeah yeah i mean it was like and i said man i said i can't even fathom what you're doing look it's actually you're going to be disappointed it's not that hard you know and i i showed him and he just went wow that's really cool and he said play the intro i said well come on man he goes no he said he said there's nothing like no matter how simple it is the guy that invented the part that played the part first time to watch him do it it was like in the movie uh it might get loud uh oh with jack white and uh jimmy page yeah and judy page and then uh the edge yeah and the edge of jack white has jimmy page to play a whole lot of love and it was like that was the same thing it's to watch you know you remember the first time you heard draw down that sound and everything to watch the guy actually do it yeah a whole lot of love piece of cake can we play it like that no no no jeff tell me uh knee jerk reaction top three experiences you've had musically oh good question well i i just talked about one playing with paul rogers certainly certainly one i mean not only because as a kid you know i followed his music and obviously such an iconic uh rock singer but i remember being on stage for the seven songs we did and i had a a monitor just blasting with just his voice in it right next to me and i mean the hair was standing up on my arms and it fueled me to make me play even better and more aggressively and almost you know assume a character that could have been caught off who knows you know yeah not not not comparing myself to them with just that no no that vibe man it's it was an experience a great thing man it was one of the the highlights uh you know experiences um maybe not necessarily playing but i remember uh getting our very first gold record at a m and herb albert was there to um to help present it to us and it was just it was pretty cool you know you think all your life let alone make a record uh yeah to get a goal record that is a very significant accomplishment so that sticks in my mind um and again i guess you'd probably i'll probably think of a million things after we finish this but i think all the uh uh and not anyone in particular but those experiences at the rock and roll hall of fame yeah playing behind these guys that were heroes of mine whether it was sam the sham or mitch ryder or denise williams and ronnie spector and all these rock and roll heroes to be able to play behind them and play their music with them and help be a part of dishing up a great band those were memories we all still talk about it um we the rock hall stopped doing the gala which is when we did those it was a fundraiser in the spring and we miss it because we really did our homework worked really hard and had this this relationship um that got us very very tight and i have to add one more thing as far as a special moment was my the opportunity to uh be in a band with benjamin orr your car's influence yeah and uh that happened uh with uh the band big people which was um liberty devito derek st holmes uh myself pat travers and how do you know dave a motto what did you where did you play with dave uh we toured uh oreo and 38 did a lot of shows together okay okay we just hit it off and and uh he's a great guy and a really good player greg a really good player great guy and next time you talk to him uh just say jeff carleasy has a question for you uh have you gotten any better i would run into dave at um at the namm show all the time and uh i tap him on the shoulder i'd say hey man you got any better you know it's funny he called me for about something this weekend and so i owe him a call back so i will talk to him this week and i'll tell him that yeah we had a good time by the way in the background is that um one of those blues uh pb blues it's a pv delta blues it's a great amp i got one it's a good i mean people say like you know old vintage fenders this thing crushes it this is like from 2000 it's great 15 inch speaker yes sir yep 30 watts 15 man oh my god i mean you can't get a pedal that that has tremolo like that it's fantastic man yeah and this is my other one here i got the jc m800 you can see it which dave amano was down microphone oh i'm sorry uh oh there you go there you go wow amato was down here and he was like guitar shopping and uh he said you gotta get this i said man i don't need a marshall and then he waited till uh we we we hang out a lot when he's here so he knows my wife he goes and is like after the after arya played he goes you gotta get please have craig get this and so my wife says craig if dave's telling you to buy this amp you should buy it i'm like uh okay you know you know i don't want to buy to i don't want to i don't have a lot of equipment but you know still i i didn't but she was like go get them like okay great so a motto got me forced me to get that which is sorry down so i'm all set between the two of these hey i want to ask you one question i want to talk about some of your gear uh what were some of the low points or dark periods you've had to deal with in life and how did you get through them um in life or just or music i mean whatever you choose well um losing my father um because he was he was my hero and um um just uh you know a real believer uh a real supporter as my mother was too but my father was um as i said you know his dream was to fly airplanes so he was a dreamer and um how unusual is that though a guy in the military to support his kid playing what an open-minded guy yeah oh absolutely and i don't know whether it's unusual you know uh it's funny i remember my parents um i must have been probably around nine years old that came to me and said you want to play a musical instrument we think you should maybe take up a musical okay i'm i'm in but you got my well your your cousins play piano and i said all right so they take me down to a piano teacher and uh she goes well first thing she does i'm sitting there nine years old and she goes uh i wouldn't suggest you buy a piano i'm thinking what's going on here my parents well why not because well because if you lose interest then you're stuck with a very expensive piece of firewood so they said well what do we do she reaches down behind her desk and puts his case pulls out the melody maker it's an accordion oh it's a co oh my god no monkey no organ grind yet and um so i took it home and and um you know she gave me some lessons i don't i'm sure that was a basic scale you know and for nine years old i mean the things are heavy and you got to do this and what would i recommend that would that's like one of those things she had an accordion to get rid of or something you know i mean exactly i mean who recommends accordion to a nine-year-old kid you've seen the you've seen the uh cartoon um uh it was like a um larson cartoon and it shows heaven and hell and in heaven you're you go to heaven you're an angel and you've got a harp and hell you're playing an accordion yes that's exactly right man or the or the uh air the airplane that's uh getting ready to crash and it's too heavy and stewart says we've got to get rid of any unnecessary weight and this guy in the front row with his accordion and he's like yeah man that's exactly right um anyway um the uh it didn't last long what it did teach me was like i could play by ear so i'd go home and come home after school and i'd turn on the cartoons and i would listen to um cartoons and i'd pick out the themes you know and i'd figure out some different things yeah this is pretty cool you know and i come back next week show me what you learned so this went on for a while finally i said this is a deal breaker um i'm not into this so they gave it back well then the beatles show up on ed sullivan and the look of the uh and sound of an electric guitar was like that's it it wasn't the hair it wasn't the screaming fans it was an electric guitar it was cool so my dad uh his brother-in-law family they all played guitar and he had this i still actually have it um is an old black acoustic guitar didn't you have a name on it it's just a black acoustic guitar and man i took that thing to bed with me and i woke up with it in the morning and i came home and i played that thing and and my fingers bled uh stuck with it and taught myself i think i had a melba book and taught you how to hold the plectrum yeah anyway so so dad you know finally uh actually was i was just getting ready to take lessons from terry cosgrove the guy i mentioned earlier and i went down to fred paulus the local music store in jacksonville or a couple of them did you know doyle back then i didn't know doyle until um i was just out of college okay because i think he grew up literally on the other side of the tracks in jacksonville yeah he was uh uh he didn't live close by he was uh i think he lived south down and uh close to middleburg uh which doesn't mean anything to you but it was it was uh i'll tell you the doyle story in a second but anyway i got that melody maker and um uh had a gibson apollo amp which was basically gibson's version of a twin i think it was 90 watts had 212s that thing weighs like 6000 pounds yeah man i had a gibson like that i had to get rid of it just it's ridiculous the heaviest thing i've ever you know picked up um but anyway it served me well um believe it or not my next amp after that was a uh a marshall plexi oh man you're not messing around third one in town alan and gary got the first two i know that's nice man you know who's got you know greg uh martin i don't know i know who he is uh we plexis and amato's got like 30 of them literally i hate those guys [Laughter] but the uh you know in guitars looking back um [Music] for i think from from the melody maker uh i went to uh i got a firebird three well let's talk about let's talk about tell me your main go-to guitar back in the day and what other what other two rounded out your top two and has that changed the main guitar back in the day yeah back in the where people knew me day the back in the the heyday of 38 speech all right so um people knew me day that was clever they're um there are two guitars basically that were the major part of my life during the 38 special years um and people would see me and basically know me for playing the explorer uh the custom-made explorer which was i'll tell you that story and would find out and we would be surprised that i didn't use that guitar in the studio very often so which you use and i said well on all those solos um i used a um late 69 gold top deluxe which was because of barry bailey once again uh matter of fact william mosley from vintage guitar magazine did a great article a year or two ago called southern gold where he profiled both our guitars was that pa was that i'm sorry um p90s in that or was that there you go wow so these are the what they call the mini humbuckers yeah man that is in great shape have you ever no no it's exactly as i bought it um how the hell did you keep that such good i mean that's that that was there when i when i got it um this guitar literally did not go on the road uh okay only in the studio and again i mean i i can't tell you enough about that i was i walked into basically a pawn shop one day and saw this it's 300 bucks and i said that's guitar barry plays you know again well if he can get that sound right yeah we all learned years later it's all in the hands but still these were not you know when i had a um i guess in 1970 in high school uh i had a when this guitar came out that was the the custom which was the black les paul um with the humbuckers the big humbuckers and um how much is that a heavy guitar jeff yeah you know it's a it's a a nine pound lesbo typical of give or take an ounce or two um and nobody really wanted these and so i got the uh the black one which i wish i still had it too but it had the fretless wonder frets i had to get refretted and but it was an ebony fingerboard so i didn't get this until years later and again seeing uh what a beautiful guitar man it's just such a i cannot believe 69 that guitar is uh 51 years old that is amazing man that that's in much better shape than me that's for sure so it um ed king always years later told me and he said i bought a lot of guitars without ever plugging them in pick it up just see if it rings if it's a good piece of wood this guitar this it's just natural sustain and resonance is perfect i was bound and determined to use it in the studio um i didn't have this yeah i didn't have this on the first two records when we did the dan hartman records i didn't get this until started working at studio one so maybe that's the magic well it's it's a you know what you're absolutely right i mean i'm not kidding that no no here it is it's a combination a lot of things the guitar i was playing through um i still have all those answers an old pv mace i don't know if you remember the i don't they were uh you talk about another heavy amp 212 um six six l sixes wow solid state preamp i mean that's blasphemous it's like what that's weird yeah and you could take the tone controls and zero to ten hearing a change you know i mean really that it had a certain sound skinner used to skinnard got him first and we played through some of theirs and really liked them and then we bought our own and then pb said hey we understand you guys are using our apps we'd like for you to to uh we'd like to send you some so we that was the beginning of our pv endorsement deal but the amps were they had a sound about them so i used this through a pv mace a 412 marshall bottom with celestions that was actually barry bailey's cabinet that was at the studio all the time so when we go in i just plug into that and um i had a uh oh an mxr 10 band graphic equalizer okay his writing was called the noise machine because as soon as you'd have to gate it and whatever else but we kind of set a curve to uh to enhance some of the inadequacies of of these pickups which was minor but um it was a little boost on the mid-range because they were a little thinner and lighter in the in the mid-range than a humbucker was anyway is that what you played hold on loosely with the beginning loosely caught up in you fantasy girl solos um and many more um the um that's great man that's really cool it worked and you know again combination of the old harrison console that was at studio one that thing just had a magic sound to it the way rodney turns the knobs the way he you know there's so many things but i go back and i listen to those records now and i'm going great guitar but my friend peter crowd came over and played at one time and he just again before even plugging it in he said wow this thing just you know you could smell the sustain you could smell the sustain i like that man um and he ended up buying one too so uh yeah so this is it this is the guitar uh i use the explorer in the studio on certain tracks but all the all the hits um solo and uh yes all rocking into the night was on this hold on loosely fancy girl [Music] um and some other songs too the only other guitar i used in the studio that was uh actually your your song uh if i'd been the one um that was a 335 which was um a 59 wow yeah uh i bought it right before we did that record about a year before the record um in atlanta i was i've always been a big larry carlton fan but i said yeah i had a 67 335 i didn't have it anymore i wanted another one and uh there was a collector music shop there had some couple of sunbursts um 2500 bucks i think this was in 1983. that's a lot of money in 1983 man exactly so 1983 and uh uh so the guy so let me show you something else just wanted to show it to me pulls out this brown case and opens it up and it's a blonde 335 and i'm going whoa what's i didn't i'd seen the cherry ones and sunbursts and he goes yeah they didn't make too many of these and pick it up and there's the neck on those um were mahogany the bodies were maple so the neck looked like it was put on um if you've ever seen one before but the on the blonde 335s the mahogany necks actually i can i'm going to grab my new one yeah it's perfect uh i'm waiting for you to pull out an accordion here man [Laughter] see jeff your destiny would have been totally different exactly oh that's cool how that looks yeah yeah so see and that's the way they originally were 58 and 59. so that's a 59 no this is not this is a custom shop they built for me about 10 years ago wow copy of my 59 i sold the 59 people go oh gosh how can you sell the 59 so the same people that said that were the same people who said how can you pay three thousand dollars for a guitar yeah yeah which i did he used it a tremendous guitar um again didn't tour with it um kept it and under the bed sometimes in a bank vault or whatever but sure use it in the studio and finally a friend of mine called one day said man those things are really going up and uh i said how much goes up probably he'd probably get about 12 grand for us well that's pretty good but yeah and um make a long story short i ended up 10 and it's probably been close to 20 years 15 to 20 years i sold the guitar for close to 30 thousand dollars good for you man right and so somebody says oh how could you sell that guitar how could you you can't play a 30 000 guitar man i'm sorry you know it's it's like don't even look at it you know it's like plus it's 30 grand that ain't a bad check well no exactly you know and it's not the guitar that makes the player uh i missed it it's not like you got a shortage of like that's you know there's no shortage of guitars in carlysi world so those paf replicas sorry those are paf replicas these are actually um uh duncan um antiquities yeah okay antiquities yeah um which i've had great luck with those are great pickups yeah i like them a lot so anyway it's a great guitar it feels really pretty good uh and it's new i mean it's it's i can have you know i can enjoy it and have fun with it totally man guitars are for playing that was the next thing you know it's like oh wait a minute what are you doing this is a counterfeit and he goes no that's the way they were made it looks cool thanks for showing me that i didn't know that yeah yeah okay so uh now let's talk about your explorer man yeah so so when skinnard would come up to atlanta to play clubs this was in 72 before they even before they uh started recording um they'd i said hey we got to get a setup done or we need to get it intonation set on the guitars or where do we go so i said well there's a guy here in atlanta that wasn't a real common business back then to have to be a luthier oh really yeah i mean it was very few people knew how to do anything with a guitar other than string it interesting and um so there was a guy his name was jay his real name was jay reinus r-h-i-n-e-s-s but for some reason he used for his guitars the name j ryan r-h-y-n okay and through the music stores oh yeah the guy you need to take it to is this guy so i've been out there a few times and alan and gary needed some work done on the guitars and so they started taking when they were in town taking the guitars over to him and getting them set up and and what have you so jay was making um mostly acoustic instruments back then um acoustic guitars beautiful acoustic guitars i mean rivaling gallaghers and things like that and uh arch top uh mandolins those are difficult just well yeah and the cool he was like this this it's a little short guy he was old he was probably back then if i was 24 he was probably 40 or 45 years old man that's still 12 years younger than i am now well he's playing he's playing um all this big big band swing stuff uh thing really really cool and he was like this i was calling he's like santa's one of santa's elf's gone just yeah and um he uh uh had a scruffy voice yeah um and uh he's let me show you some of the other stuff i've made here and you bring out these these beautiful instruments well he couldn't afford the tooling to make them as a factory would as gibson or or epiphone or martin or anybody so he devised these tools out of his invented inventiveness for example to sand the sides of a of a dreadnought guitar he took a washing machine agitator motor and put a sand belt on it so it'd go up and down and spin and he'd sand the edge of the guitar wow he would to replicate the perfect arch top of a mandolin he had this this like tie rod system with a rolling ball and then a cutter on the other side that he would trace a mandolin and it would replicate uh jesse's and then he also as a side he made uh compression uh not compression concussion rifles like flintlock guns like old civil war guns pistols and stuff where you and his spare time like what the hell this guy's pretty talented man and he rifles the barrel he had he was getting ready to uh sell a patent to remington or winchester or one of those things he was this mad scientist but his passion was was guitars so he started making um some electric guitars and they may have been good but they were just but ugly they were god-awful ugly and um just like like this cutaway scroll type thing that that looked ward should have been at the top of a corinthian column or something these are things and uh he kept saying hey let me make here guitar sometimes says oh i'll think about it jaya so alan allen and gary allen collins and gary washington they had um i guess it was probably it was either right before or right but probably right after alab sweet home alabama came out and uh they had a few uh a few bucks in their pocket and they wanted new guitars well gary was always gary was like the paul kossoff of skinner you know and he wanted a les paul and alan was the clapton right right and he wanted an explorer and alan and i both played firebirds when we were younger um alan went through a bunch of fibers but he wanted an explorer so they went up to george groons and they each up in nashville for people listening yeah yeah and they each bought a guitar of their choice allen bought an explorer paid four thousand dollars for it and gary bott um affectionately named bernice is 59 burst um for 3 500 wow so my reaction to al now this is 19 wait a minute 3 500 bucks yeah for a 59 burst yeah god what a steal yeah jim patrick bought one for in 1980 for five thousand dollars he sold it in the mid 80s for 20 000 thought he did well the the real he could have hung on to that another 20 years but another zero you know the the uh if i still had that 335 it'd be an 80 000 guitar now yeah it's so rare one of 60. um you just don't know i mean you never buy something when it's the lowest and you never sell it when it's the highest that's just what happens you can't beat yourself stock the guitar or whatever and like george gruen said people ask me that time what do you think this is going to be worth one day i don't know buy it because you want to enjoy it and play it and whatever if you're asking me to buy something for an investment wrong guy to ask yeah and it's easy in hindsight to say oh i should have done that or i should have done this or i shouldn't have stole that yeah yeah of course so anyway so yeah back in the in the uh mid 70s uh early to mid 70s collector guitars vintage guitars they were starting to go up i mean a 4 000 guitar when you could buy a brand new one at a music store for hundred dollars uh eight hundred even a thousand dollars was a lot of money and in today's dollars that'd be what uh uh four grand would probably be about eighty five hundred maybe yeah yeah something like that yeah so um anyway and and and the introductory guitar you can get a good guitar you can get a good strat for 1200 bucks if you can get a used good use strap for 700 bucks man and even you know what i mean some of that you know the whole guitar market thing the vintage guitar market quite frankly started in the 70s when gibson and fender were no longer making good instruments they were making junk oh so as out of necessity i needed to get a good instrument i had to go buy something that was old exactly oh that's interesting i remember going down in jacksonville down to on bay street where all the pawn shops were they could see stuff lined up old guitars being a a navy town all these sailors come in and hock their guitars and firebirds and strats and whatever les paul jr's galore but that's why you know the strats were being made with the three-neck bolt pattern of course now today because hendricks played one at woodstock now those are valuable they're still junk um and then you know japanese got involved in buying them and collecting them and then the frenzy got so crazy that you had these these guys that were bond brokers and whatever in new york that never played a lick in their life going hey buy me some collectible guitars i'm gonna we need to invest yeah it was like when uh comic books at a certain point in time these guys are doing the same thing you know guys with more money than sons so i took it out of the hands of the enthusiasts and and uh it's been cyclical it's gone up and down but um right now it's you know who who would have ever thought that a a sunburst could sell for half a million dollars or whatever so anyway i wanted an explorer really really bad and so uh jay ryan said he said i can build you one just get me get me the shape and get me the then we'll go from there so i went to allen and i remember i said alan um i had all my supplies you know my architectural supplies from from georgia tech still had tracing paper and i had the whole thing you know so i'm going to go ahead and just draft out this diagram and do all the measurements and everything i said let me uh let me trace your guitar and he goes why so i'm jay ryan's going to build me one and he goes just take it take it where just take it to jay just take it out there let him and i'm going man i i can't take your four thousand dollar guitar yeah and he's like why because it's for that take it bless his heart as i took it out there nervous wreck and jay did all the measurements and traced it off i brought it back to allen in one piece and i would go out i was living in atlanta still at the time i was out of school and he'd call me up and he says come on out and check it out see what you think so far so i'd walk in he'd hand me the neck what are you supposed to do with that yeah and he goes how's that feel i don't know there's no strings on it it's all rough hewn on the back it hasn't you know it wasn't finished it was because i feel feel too thick down here i guess man how the hell do you know maybe whittle you know maybe whittle a bit more down here and and what have you and um uh i'd go back out and anyway before you know it finally have a guitar so here's the result there you go man that's a beautiful guitar man look at those inlays yeah so i'll i'll point out some things yeah the back is that active oh no okay that's for the switch okay i thought that was for active pickups or something no no this is i'll explain those the electronics in a minute yes um you can probably see the man the that is beautiful uh quilting yeah it's that's uh burl maple um now he explained that when you take maple um depending on how you cut it across the grain it will either be burl or bird's eye which is a tighter or fiddleback which is you can see the side yeah yeah see he wanted originally to make it all fiddleback but he said the way the wood the piece of wood ran this is all one solid piece of maple that is so cool that quilting on that is gorgeous man honestly you got a better deal with the quilting than the well it was great and again now i'm going he's he's saying this is what we're going to do okay whatever whatever so he finally um he said i got a a situation we got a problem i said uh what is it he goes well there's a finishing check i guess when the when the wood dries that sometimes the wood just has a check in it that uh it's not a structural problem it's just cosmetically so the finishing check went and actually oh i don't know if you can can you see that line right there yes okay that's i mean it doesn't look like anything it just looks like that's the end of the finishing check but it ran all the way down the guitar okay so he said we got to figure out some way to disguise that oh so that's how you did the quote pick guard well so i said ignorantly i'll just screw a pick guard on to it you know and he looked at me like you can't do that to a piece of art yeah and i'm going okay so what do you suggest now that says a lot about the guy right there yeah yeah so came back out uh the next week he had probably four templates just cut out a paper shapes of of pick guards and he said which one you like and i said uh i don't know and he put him down on the on the guitar and this is the one that i came up with and that we both agreed fit the shape of the guitar so i said what are you gonna do with that well this is back when you had really good brazilian rosewood which is what the neck is and he said i'm going to right route out i don't know it's a six just a probably a sixteenth of an inch of rosewood he said i'm going to route out um and inset the rosewood into the finish and then lacquer the whole thing over and it'll that it's so man i've never seen a guitar like yeah so there's no there's no height to it it's flush you know to the top um pickups didn't have the birds um yeah those are so cool man he had a guy a guy named devon vogue was his name that worked for him and he just loved cutting out abalone and inlays and what have you and so uh now again i'm none of this i'd love to take credit for some of these designs but you know he just said now we're gonna have hawks flying down the fretboard and they're gonna each position is gonna have wings in a different okay whatever you say and so he did this you can see in the first position um the wings start to open yeah that's right and then you get down to the man how clever is that that's a smart thing to do because you can keep the consistency of the the image of the bird yeah and then you get up to where the dust is and uh yeah there it is and can you imagine how what it took to do each one of those and it just absolutely that's really incredible workmanship headstock um he said um he tried he tried to talk me into making this a hawks head uh like with a beak and everything and i said i can't go yeah but he did make it it's it's larger and a little more pointed than a regular explorer i guess that it's like an like an old it's like an ibanez and some to some extent yeah he just said it's he said those explorer headstocks that they were they were demanded diminutive and were easy to break if you he said i'm gonna make it a little uh a little sturdier there uh which he did and then you can see he had looks like hieroglyphics it had the worst yeah uh that says oh it's put wrong it's let's say r h y and e yeah this is r h y and e um but i guess is this reversed image no it's i see it right rhy and e yeah okay um are you getting rain man because we're getting like just terrible rain from that storm we're too far west it was supposed to come here but i saw this morning where it's nailing you guys well yeah but south florida got actual flooding i i just hear the rain out there it's us it's not it's not i don't think it's i mean this morning it made a hard turn to the right so it said sarasota tampa yeah going across the state to um to uh where mom lives in saint augustine yeah i saw it going across there uh so uh the pickups the time uh they're dimarzi well they still are um this was dimarzio just really started um and uh those are the same pickups you've had in there since you purchased that except for uh several years later the background went out went bad but so this is this is what dimarzio called a uh super distortion okay and these were the first and i didn't realize until recently that that gibson included cannot make twin white bobbum bobbin uh pickups replacement pickups because dimarzio has the patent on the twin white bobbins that's interesting i did not uh i'm trying to those are emgs on my les paul i'm trying to think if they offered the two white options i don't think they did yeah that most of uh you can have the zebra the split coil yeah right but apparently dimarzio got the plan so it's weird how they own the patent on that why didn't they get the patent on the other you know what i'm saying like yeah the back pickup uh the original one went out years i mean uh years later and it this is a what they called a dual sound so in one position you asked about the switch yeah okay what position it's a full super distortion uh and the other it's a coil reverse so it thins it out a little bit and and brightens the pickup uh so it's the same pickup that it replaced it was just and i don't know if you can tell but the original ones have black um pole pieces okay yeah interesting this has uh chrome or silver i don't know um yeah the top one is black still on the yeah yeah but they it sounded exactly the same uh original bridge this was the shaler or shallower they worked real well they were you couldn't lose the saddles because they were on the the screws that went all the way through the piece um and um the the one yeah the volume the treble volume control is a boring spot so it's just um it's super smooth the roll off um the i guess would be the or the taper on it uh it's got that 10-7 cut you know a lot a lot of times depending on the the pot it'll be a gradual thing where you have to get down to two or three to get the volume low enough whereas the old gibsons uh you just go down to seven and there'd be a nice cut okay and um and the rest of them are i don't know whatever jay put in it i did the only part i changed was the uh the trouble pot what what did you play that on oh gosh i played it on uh played it on robin hood i played it on some rhythm tracks uh that's a good track robin hood man yeah it really is um and you know i don't remember specifically uh other than robin hood i can't say that there was any one particular solo that i played on this that would be memorable if anything but with that jeff sorry did you tour with that oh this was my guitar this was your touring guitar yeah that's what i thought yeah pictures if you go back um you know back when you were known [Laughter] pictures this was it that's cool so how'd you play it live but not in the studios i i don't know i you know i don't really have an answer other than i was determined to use the gold top because barry used or it just had that sound but but live on stage this was it the only time i ever put this down is if i broke a string which i'm very very rarely ever did um but the one time i'll show you this this is great can you see this i just saw that i just looked at that now it's like a little like a little gouge or little rough spot well what happened uh i'm running across the stage on a show and one of those things where all of a sudden you realize you your feet are gonna catch up to oh man and then it turns into a sand pecking paw film motion and i know i'm going down so the all i could remember first of all you know it happened from time to time people would fall down on stage and we always had a rule in the band that if it ever happened everybody else would fall down too so you wouldn't be embarrassed oh that's cool yeah look yeah but guess what so nobody did it that time [Laughter] so i go down and it's like as soon as you hit all of a sudden you're back in real time so it's like [Music] you're sliding across stage and all i i remember pulling the guitar to me like this just because i didn't want the neck to hit first yeah and went down and it um it um smashed the uh pickup selector switch into the wood slightly and the back pickup sprung out and wedged itself against the strings so i'm trying to re gain my composure and in the meantime i sound like jimi hendrix on third stone from the sun [Music] and uh anyway um the guitar was out of commission uh until i got back home i had to use i think i was using not this gold top but another one that i had um and um but you know it all got back together just fine and um what did you pay for that guitar when you purchase it oh uh good question i mean if you're comfortable if you don't have to no no no no uh one million dollars that's a good value man you probably can't sell that unless it's like a fan because it's so custom but what a good value man i uh that's i've had some crazy offers for it you have i have just because it's the only one of its kind it's the only yeah uh and that it's wow um i had the pickups so that wasn't part of the seven hundred dollars um i'm trying to think of that's a custom guitar jeff you can't get a custom and that is really i mean there's a lot of effort put into that way above and beyond a oh yeah i mean one bird alone is worth seven hundred dollars man if you had to buy that today that's 25 grand yeah uh if you could find someone to do it hard to tell on here but uh because it's got binding but the thickness of the body is not as thick as an explorer as a as a karina explorer which would have probably been i'd say maybe eighth of an inch thicker maybe even a quarter yeah thicker i mean they were explorers are pretty thick and the reason for that and it was jay decided this was because this is maple and it's a lot maple's a lot heavier than carina okay and he said you would you wouldn't be able to put this thing on your shoulder for more than half an hour if this was that thick a piece of maple and he said let alone get a piece of maple so uh he decided he wanted it to be maple that wasn't my choice either i mean it just all came together to be perfect is it heavy uh it's it's heavy but it's uh it's less ball heavy okay maybe ten pound not you know yeah so what it's typical for that era yeah yeah absolutely um i'd say this is slightly lighter so you got those two guitars just right there you're good to go man those are some pretty cool freaking guitars i mean you know uh did everything uh either on record or on stage with these two and uh they're still here uh you know over the years when i wasn't this thing's in a flight case first the the the road crew affectionately called it the dining room table because light case so this guitar is definitely a 10-pound guitar and then with the flight case it's probably that's another 10 or 12 pounds yeah so it's uh you don't put this in the overhead on an airplane you know it's like you got a crew or a truck so both of these guitars the les paul probably has not seen the light of day um since the last record i did with 38. better than wow so you do you played at home at all you don't even take it out at home just don't take it out at all i've got the 335 i've got a um a uh less a tv less fall special uh i've got yellow yeah i love that car is that handy is that close by uh i think i can get it i love that i'd love to see it man that is the cool that is such a cool gibson man stand by wow okay so is that a is that like an original what year is that it is it it is except gibson did something i saw larry carlton play in one of these and um um i just said yeah gotta have one but i um it's it's a les paul standard no it's a special oh it's a les paul special okay and it's got the two p 90s okay gp 90s but it um the gibson did a um because intonation was really not too good on it so they put um a tuna matic okay normally issues had a stop and um it altered it but it just you know much much more playable uh this guitar sounds great thank you for pulling that out i just think that is the coolest looking i mean i love that tv and you know i i think they make them now in that color and i've been tempted but i think it's uh well they do but they vary um matter of fact jim federick we did a show together um a couple years ago and he said man i wish mine was that color and i said what do you mean he said mayan's um more yellow this is that kind of greener the the the tv yellow yeah the tea yeah yeah even now you'll see them and some of them are almost like pure yellow which is like what that looks weird or some of them are or are darker this is uh this is the color i like yeah uh i'm trying to think what it's called they make them not on a standard uh uh they make a a lower level les paul a junior no uh it's a les paul but it's uh man i can't think of it i had i bought one with p90 this is a black one it was just it's oh is it a newer guitar yeah studio yeah that's paul studio yeah and they make them the studios in that but man the quality it was like playing a cheap cheaper guitar to be honest it just didn't wasn't didn't sound like a standard the custom shops making some pretty good ones still as a matter of fact um a camera would chop it is has a a less a single cut les paul junior tv it's a wow it's a custom shop but it looks cool it's kind of like man i like i need another guitar like i need a whole net some guitar from guitar poor yeah yeah um but uh man i'd love to pair it up with this yeah that's cool and i love taking this one out and playing it you know this is uh is that rosewood or ebony it's a beautiful neck yeah i love dark necks yeah it's just um i don't clean my necks very often you know a lot of people put they take up oil let the olive oil soak in be a good italian show you another one can you still say that i don't know [Laughter] thank you for bringing that one out i appreciate it this is the other gold top i was referring to which is nothing special it's a it's a again a 69 uh solid body not pancake oh man that's really cool looking well again uh i might have even been the same uh pawn shop that i bought the deluxe i paid 350 for this that's nuts man this thing god it weighs a ton this this might be close to 11 pounds i mean that's hard man that's actually hard to to wear 11 pounds i got a really wide thick padded strap for it but anyway the guitar sounds amazing when i bought it i knew um that you know it was it was a the big headstock you can see where got worn away on that the way they did the uh the uh the logo it was a decal backpack in inlaid so but i couldn't figure out what the deal was with the pickups and i mean as far as well they just looked you know they looked aged they looked in other words humbuckers they didn't these these guitars in gold tops didn't come with humbuckers they were they were deluxes oh okay so that was routed what what happened well i didn't know so i just for curiosity took the pickups um out and um they were paf's so and it was it looked like factory routing and so i'm going i don't know what's really going on here so i've taken it to a bunch of people and talked to some folks at the factory and they said the only thing they can think of is when gibson started reintroducing the les pauls in the late 60s the first gold tops actually had white p90s just like the les paul special but they were white peanuts quickly changed those to the mini humbuckers and then the other guitar they had was the les paul custom which was the black beauty that was at humbuckers and the block inlays and the frontless wonder that's so the only thing they said is it's possible that gibson either somebody did a really good job of routing it and put pafs in it or gibson had leftover what do they call new old stock yeah that's probably what it is and they said they there was a new the new body that had the the larger cutaway here the big head stock but the hardware they had said ah throw some you know grab a box of p ah we got some opas you know so that's pas in there but it's a humbucker cover that is really weird that's i don't think i've ever heard that well paf's were you know were humbuckers the the uh um uh the covers were were not chrome they were nickel that's why they wore and tarnished like that okay so you can see i love the way they those covers look yeah now craig craig chiquisso and another guitar i have um uh that had a paf in it uh craig chiquito gave me some nickel plated covers that he had a long time when we were touring the early 80s with a starship but these are like wait a minute usually if they were newer pafs which stood for patton applied for uh pickups they were chrome covers so they would either pee the chrome would peel off or they would still be chrome but the nickel ones would age like this and tarnish and get kind of dull anyway um sounded guitar and this is actually the guitar that i used when i did the show with with uh paul rogers okay the rock yeah that's cool here the the things you can tell just how great this sounds so when i quit touring with 38 special and i was doing a lot of jump on an airplane and fly somewhere this was the guitar i just took and put it up in the overhead was it weird when that when you first left like not weird that you weren't doing it anymore but weird that you were doing something else like it would take a while to get used to that exactly interesting um because i'm trying to think chronologically first thing i did uh after a 38 special i went out and i was did some some dates with uh with brian howe who had left bad company and um but it wasn't it was like maybe one weekend and then maybe the next month i'd do a couple more and um you know it was kind of fun and that that led to um big people and that happened as as an accident actually michael cartelloni who is currently the drummer and skinner and before that he was the fogarty's drummer and he was in the damn yankees um he he moved to atlanta um he was dating a girl that that i knew and he said i'm living in atlanta now and let's get together or whatever so he said uh why don't we you know he said i got nothing to do he said let's put a band together and do something on the weekends or you know maybe we can go have some fun that's all called derek st holmes who was a buddy of mine he lived in atlanta and said maybe he'd be interested so then there were three so mutual friend of um uh michaels and derricks came by and joined us and said well you guys ought to really think about rounding this out and make it something bigger than than just going out and having some fun on a weekend so it means get another guitar player bass player whatever so we we started uh mulling the idea around and uh charlie brusco who was um managing skinnard at the time and we had known him he he managed the outlaws years ago and um the um we got with him he said who who do you who who are some people that that you like or that you think might be good for this project so the first guy that i came up with as far as bass players was ben or because i had become such a huge heart fan by then and derek knew how to get in touch with elliott easton he saw call elliott and get ben's phone number and the cars were defunct at this point in time and then i think derek himself said how about i wonder what pat travers is doing i said i haven't seen him in years we did some shows together so the next thing you know we've got a band they're they're in ben says yeah i'm come he was living in vermont at the time because i'm in and um pat was in so we get to the first rehearsal i'll never forget um or where were you rehearsing man because everybody's all over the place well they all came to atlanta because there was a studio in atlanta uh crossover communications that had big rehearsal facilities and and uh derek was there and michael was there so three of us were there so you're basically talking about two people coming in so um and pat was living in orlando at the time so he wasn't that far away yeah he's still there i think i think he is i think he is so um so first day i remember ben coming to my house somebody uh picked him up at the airport and i opened the door and there's benjamin orr and all his glory and just whatever and and uh i said guys that's in your bed or and he goes so i've been told partner he was a character um and we went and michael on the first rehearsal michael carloni said guys i got something to tell you um i've been offered an audition with skinner here we're going this guy that came up with this whole scheme you know and now you're leaving well i'm not going to get i haven't gotten the gig yet or whatever i said don't worry michael you'll get the gig yeah and uh so i mean it was like total depression yeah i'm sure and uh and pat turns around and goes ah don't don't sweat it i said don't sweat it away i'll call lib. uh okay lib who he goes liberty devito i said right you're gonna call liberty devito and he's gonna come down here and do this thing because yeah he'll love it he'll love it and liberty was living in orlando at the time oh okay so that was pretty convenient but that's how he and pat knew each other all right so um so pat goes over in the corners talking on his cell phone he's comes back he's in what do you mean because yeah he said he just got off stage at madison square gardens with billy and uh just happened to catch him told him who was in the band he goes yeah count me in that's pretty cool next weekend there it was and now we had a band so um uh leading up to to your question we rehearsed uh our first show was in nova scotia there was a big oh my god a festival or something yeah big festival big three-day festival at the uh can-am speedway or something it was it was uh let's pick a place as far away as possible for our first gig we had to fly from atlanta to bangor maine and then from there connect anyway but big shows easy top and and nazareth and um and so on so on three day festival and and uh we were on the show so we played and i talked called my wife and talked to her afterwards because what was it like i said be honest with you it was like i've never been in another band it just felt wow so that was wow so that was the right place for you to be at that time absolutely and now you know we have been together now probably see april may june it was probably been together about four months rehearsing so we got to know each other but that first gig it was like it was just completely natural that's cool yeah and then we did uh that had to be like uh stress relieving oh huge yeah i'm sure huge it was like it breathed new life into you yeah um it was a new family um everybody got along great um we hadn't even started all we were doing were our own songs so we would do three cars songs you know 338 special songs some nugent stuff uh derek thank you yeah yeah um uh i'm not even sure if we were doing any billy joel at the time um and uh and pat travers we did of course boom boom i told him about the life i said damn pat i said all my life hold on loosely was a closing song i said not anymore man yeah man that's a great song matt and i worked real well together it was a lot of fun and um so we had not even we were just beginning to explore new ideas as far as writing together and unfortunately we never had the opportunity because within a year ben was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and um you know lost him um october of 2000 yeah 52 years old and what a what a talent as liberty all said he goes he's the rock star of the band but he was natural he was just he didn't try he didn't have to try he had a voice that was just unbelievable and he'd just step up to a microphone and just have this this glow about him you know what i'm saying it was just magical um it's cool your reaction to uh because i hear this all the time to certain people like when you open the door it's like holy you're benjamin orr it's like your hero and even though like there there are people he might be looking at you as oh my god right it's so it's so cool to hear that i never get jaded i mean it's just um i'm a fan yeah and it was really cool and that was that was the beginning of a new adventure for me uh and we were all obviously devastated for ben but yeah we learned a lot of lessons that last summer he'd already been diagnosed you know check this out that you know doc doctor says you got three or four months god man i cannot imagine and and we are not knowing what to say let alone uh how to ask the question and finally it's kind of like well before we could say anything ben said well start booking as many gigs as possible i'm going out um the way i came in you know doing what i love and it was uh so inspirational we took a lot of care with him he went out there and um sang like a bird uh talked to people about what was going on fans of his from whether they were cars fans or you know whatever and uh i'll never forget i think it was in minot north dakota by the way if you ever want to know what the slogan is with the minot north dakota slogan is it's why not my not i can't i can't make that up uh why not and it was a it was a big again outdoor show and we had played and um i guess it was quiet riot rudy sarzo came up to me another really cool guy i had rudy on the show a long time ago he's a pretty deep pretty deep guy yeah and he um he uh came up to me and there was somebody else playing i was on the side of the stage and he said hey jeff i said hey rudy how you doing man a long time and he goes what a cool project he got going there he said is that ben benjamin orr from the cars i said yeah ben had lost some weight and whatever so he didn't look well but he was still performing very well and i said yeah man he got uh he got dealt a bad card and i told him i said he's this was probably in july he said he's probably got a couple of months he says what do you mean to live i'll never forget rudy looked down and just kind of pensively looked down at the ground and said man he does a couple hours ago during a sound check i was screaming at the monitor man because i couldn't hear my monitors and he said that's it no more and it really is yeah you know yeah man health is yours and your families that's what it's all about man yeah and the other thing too is i mean ben could have easily i probably would have done i've crawled in her hole and just disappeared until uh you know until i went away but no let's go out and let's rock and roll and that was just like so you had some good things going your transition was not painful it was very organic absolutely absolutely it was not painful the the only pain came in was immediately afterwards where guys that i've lived 35 years of my life with you know on top of high school you know or beyond 38 special they're gone now uh yeah and and i don't have that band anymore which is which i have been in at that time half of my entire life i was in that band half of my life in that band and it was it was gone but i got over pretty quickly um and really the the real turning point was um was that first show with with big people yeah and then of course when we lost ben we were all devastated we stayed together in our friendships but we were never able to uh to to put it back together i mean ben was just something very very special and uh but because i had made um friends with with liberty and he called me one day and through him and the rock and roll hall of fame invited me to become part of that band and and oh that came from liberty that's cool and for liberty yeah because he uh he i guess i approached him from this is what i remember he said they approached him to be the music director and he said i'm not the right person for that uh and i think he said you need to get i think that's how will he got okay and so he said but also there's a guitar player which was me that he said um he said ricky bird will be great but needs jeff to and that's when ricky and i became such good friends and ricky's just uh i said the funniest jewish guitar player i know this class he could do it he could do a stand-up in the uh cat skills it's pretty funny uh he he's really cool but he's one of those just um he's steve marriott um keith richards um all rolled into one um and um so he brought that side of it and i brought maybe a little bit more of the structure of the uh as ricky said because how do you know more than two notes uh so it was great and then you know again all the people that we backed up uh yeah will left to uh pursue um the fabfo project and then rob arthur became the uh who's peter frampton's keyboardist okay became the music director and rob and i still do a lot of stuff together so that was another you know really um at that point in time people would always ask me hey you gonna you gonna get back with the guys they're playing at the casino and biloxi no man it's been that was then this is now that was yeah a different phase i've started a company i did camp jam for eight years uh for the kids the rock and roll hall of fame thing um charity events it's like there is you can have another life without and i was just surprised how many people not necessarily musicians but fans just could not let go of the past oh man people can't move forward with anything i mean i'm not i don't want to sound uh mean but people are you know most i heard this a long time ago i wish i could take credit for it most people are born and then they spend the next 50 years looking for a place to plug their umbilical cord into i mean you know it's very hard for people change is like a dirty word for most people you know and if you're like a business owner which every musician is a business owner that's if you got to be used to change that's you're you know if you're not you're in a heap of because you know i couldn't agree more yeah i couldn't agree more jeff tell me your top three desert island discs no particular order and just for this minute okay i i know one of them um god i probably you know after we do this i go oh man why didn't i tell him that one uh definitely we talked about uh the dire straits on every street yeah just to me one of the uh just a perfect album from from the journey it takes you through to the sounds the playing uh i just i just love that record uh i know he's he's one of the best songwriters around in my opinion yeah um absolutely um okay you know there's so many you could say are you feeling the pressure i'm seeing this yeah i have to say because he was such a influence on me and and um that a night at the opera queen yeah right at the opera um another record that i just are amazed uh i am amazed every time i listen to it um such a i mean i'm a brian made groupie sometimes uh even ordered one of his guitars hadn't gotten it yet two and a half years it's like are you serious yeah what a great problem to have you know imagine being that company holy exactly but um yeah that one that one's a a special record and then um dude pressure's on now man yeah i know i know i'm just trying to think of records just kind of grabbed me and went whoa i mean it's easy to say sergeant peppers or you know things like that um i'll tell you what it's going to be a toss up um it'll either be these are as east and west as you can get of each other jerry reid's greatest hits which had the claw and uh georgia and i mean uh tupelo mississippi flash and all the great he's a wizard man yeah um and then the other one that would be a toss-up would be mountain climbing by mountain by mountain it had mississippi theme for an imaginary western uh for yazger's farm that theme for an imaginary western is one of the greatest songs in the history of rock in my opinion well absolutely true and you know another one of those um uh light bulb moments for me when i talked about uh hearing brian may and the influence of playing melodically and well leslie west i don't know if back in the back then i don't know if they still use the term at all but guitar players used to say if somebody played with like real stuff he's so tasty he does the tastiest stuff you know that was and that was i think because of leslie west that's when that phrase was coined but it was like there's a guy that could just rip your head off with you know with one lick or play the most beautiful melodic solo um i used to for those of you guys out there that are are mountain fans uh i'd love for you to to write into craig and uh vote which is your favorite solo theme for an imaginary western or free osgoods farm both on the same record great and they're just like i go back and forth ed ed king and i always had to you're crazy you're crazy it's it's theme for an imaginary west i know it's good man dad but check this out play back and forth leslie was such a tremendous player in that that record um really you know again never get tired of listening to it yeah and his tone i went to one of my early concerts was a mountain show of course felix papillardi and where'd you see that in jacksonville oh wow my very first concert the jacksonville coliseum was dave clark five dave clark five that's so funny man killer band great band uh mike smith still one of the greatest rock and roll singers um and dave's uh dave clark i mean what a businessman he became uh anything about those guys read about him man that guy clark yeah they were british originally yeah yeah so i thought yeah i'm in pieces bits and pieces um and then um that's how i saw the rascals there i saw a mountain and uh and i remember back then it was so great to go to a concert because nobody hid their amps nobody you know disguised them off stage or baffled them the lights would go dark and you just see pilot lights glowing that's so cool so cool so cool and um all of a sudden the spotlight hits leslie and all 380 pounds yeah the big dude yeah with the junior down below the belt line and uh he just looks around looks the crowd spotlights on him everybody's like yeah cheering and as a guitar player you'll appreciate this he reaches down and he turns the volume up on the junior just cranks up doesn't play anything just turns it up when he does you hear the speakers go and you go oh my god this is going to be something that's pretty cool yeah you could just hear the power of the speaker's jump uh from the surge going through it and then he's he played uh he played some licks and uh it was just memorable and uh it was a cool band man it was a powerful band yeah i mean as guitar players go three three guitar players that i've seen that i would say um had fire had sparks flying off of them uh had fireworks uh for me was leslie west being one alan collins being two and duane allman there was just this magic about those guys in the way they played and you knew that they were feeling everything they did and you tried to learn from that they all did it with different styles dwayne was not flamboyant but he just had a way about him i'll never forget the first time uh before live at the fillmore came out they played in jacksonville and that's basically where they formed i mean you know that the allen brothers yeah excellent and i heard them play statesboro blues at the jacksonville beach coliseum but it was just like yeah i can't imagine what that must have been like uh there he was uh he was matched with that whole band you know the original allman brothers just none better skinnered when they were on uh scary frighteningly good but those guitar players they were just um it's like and well they all have they all played uh less uh gibson's too didn't they oh yeah yeah absolutely yeah that's interesting yeah i mean dwayne there's pictures of dwayne uh playing a strat at muscle shoals but yeah and the almonds either he played slide on on the les paul or the sg or the st yeah um alan always played well allen played some later on played some strats and whatever for uh with the three guitars to but mostly ed king took that role yeah at that point i think actually allen started going to strats more with steve gaines but yeah he was a gibson guy firebird an explorer gary was as far as long as i remember knowing gary uh les pauls um and leslie played the junior how did that guy you know that's a perfect example how did he he played this little tiny guitar with one pickup well i just read an article fairly recently on how he got that tone because everybody just wondered what yeah and uh of course everybody goes oh man p90s i gotta have a p90 pickup that's that's the answer well p90s have their own sound and they're real cool pickups and have gotten very popular but it's a combination of a lot of things well i read an article and i don't don't quote me on it because i don't remember exactly how it happened but he went to a gig and they were supposed to from what i read supply the amplifiers and they used um at the time they used sun amps or they were just starting yeah right right and they got mixed up and they got him a uh sun coliseum pa had with speakers back uh sun just like custom-made pa uh stuff and sun did as well and i didn't know that sun was the manufactured in mississippi and i think meridian which is ironically where people yeah and uh anyway it was a sun coliseum head and he said there's a couple of things if you go on youtube and there's some guys that got sun coliseum heads and they play through them with a junior and whatever but apparently the way the preamps worked on those coliseum heads or the mic inputs or something gave a different sound than a standard because i had played through a 200s before and they made great bass amps but they were really clean sounding guitar amps loud but clean well that was the answer it was and so once he realized hey check this phone out he played through the coliseum the the uh pa heads i'm going to look for that because i look yeah check that out google that and uh or search for that uh and it's like oh now now i know nobody knew and nobody used i mean pedals were few and far between yeah yeah hendricks used a fuzz face um you know on a wawa but yeah there weren't any booster pedals back racks nobody had that yeah exactly so uh yeah that's how he did it we asked you what was the when you guys were on fire i know it wasn't the way it is now with people so nuts about celebrities but what was the most challenging aspect of being in the limelight because you were in the limelight for quite some time and pretty let's just say i had a uh 1986. okay um our opening act is bon jovi uh-huh slippery when wet just came out and um great guys to work with we had it we had a blast and um had fun you know we'd have poker games and just just great guys to hang out with tico and i would go play golf and some of the other guys and hang out just just really and we always treated other bands with respect you know it wasn't like you just get a red light or a blue light you know you you're gonna get as much as possible and that included huey lewis in the news it's our opening act in 84. wonderful guys so we came back from a gig somewhere we're back at the hotel a lot of times we most of times we wouldn't take limos they were expensive and usually fans would follow you back or whatever so we'd take them we'd pile into a van and we'd get back so come to the lobby of the hotel elevator doors are opening up we're going in and these girls are just flat top speed oh my god they're screaming and everything and they pile into the elevator before the doors closed and they're all out of breath and everything is oh my god oh my god you guys are you really 38 special are you 38 special kind of very yeah we yes we are yeah do you know where bon jovi's staying oh man yeah oh i think the wind out of your sails yeah so uh we probably had more of those moments than we had the uh uh beating beating away the fans uh on a hard day's night um so but you know we we had we enjoyed our fans and we enjoyed talking to them and very few of them ever really um disrespected your time or your privacy that's cool yeah i was gonna gonna have that but we you know we weren't looking for it well you said something a minute ago that was very interesting he said we weren't taking limos they were too expensive so somebody and they don't know if it was you or the collective you know brain power of the band said hey we've worked our asses off we don't need to piss this away what was that collectively or was that yeah i mean we had really good accountants uh too that were very pragmatic about uh giving us advice on what to do with whatever money we made but you listened well that's everybody's got an accountant that tells them don't spend money yeah you listened and you know and everybody in the band had their had a choice to do whatever they wanted to do some guys maybe listen more than others but at the same time as far as the corporation went and what we would do on the road uh there were things that just uh yeah and you would find out that you got a limousine somewhere and found out you thought that the record label got it for you you know that yeah so you figure out how the business works and you know quite frankly our our accountants uh they uh were the the stones tour accountants they did the elvis presley estate i mean these guys knew what they were doing sure so they taught us everything about um what you could do to invest your money in um an ira or keo or whatever and explaining how you know back then we're at a 50 tax bracket and explain the concept of you know for every dollar you put away the government's going to subsidize half of that and it's like some guys didn't understand it some guys did but all in all we were lucky and a lot of what we learned too craig was we came a little bit later than the years of excess if you want to yeah um and we were at the tail end of the southern rock movement we were the new you know we were we went into the 80s and had our success but we also learned from experience of playing with with bands and artists prior to that watching them either completely blow their money or getting so screwed up they could barely walk on stage no matter you know and i'm not going to mention names it doesn't matter you don't have that but you know what people said hey did you guys party yeah we partied we had our fun and whatever but we were very very uh i don't even say cautious but just practical about when you could do that we had a job to do yeah and i'll tell you what it's hard enough getting up there and not getting your fingers caught in the streets so you want to be pretty um pretty lucid and you also owe it to your fans um that's a really um you know that goes back to work ethic but that's you know that's a great attitude work ethic wise man you know i mean and we learned a lot of that from skinner i mean ronnie um but they had so many drug issues didn't they who skinner yeah well i mean yeah they're not looking for like gossip you didn't have to respond to it no no i mean there was a period of time here let me just actually the side of all that yeah a lot of bands did drugs a lot of bands drunk drank too much and and whatever and uh the one thing that that uh and i've written about it and i've talked about it but one thing i would like to tell um tell folks out there um you read so much about ronnie vanzant being this wild drunken redneck rebel that all he wanted to do was fight and uh you know beat your ass and uh it's the farthest thing from the truth um that's great uh alcohol this is as he told me one time he said no he said i when he quit drinking he said i i'm allergic to alcohols really because yeah he said i break out in handcuffs every time [Laughter] right hey but at least he was cognizant of that well and made a choice and alcohol and ronnie didn't didn't get along well but he was also he was a man that um stood for his beliefs and um you know there's things written well they grew up on the wrong side of the tracks they grew up in shaney town or whatever you know what i went over to their house because i was a kid growing up when i was playing in a band with donnie and everything i never once said to my mom hey can you take me over to shannytown you know it was it was maybe a little bit more of a blue-collar neighborhood but his parents were were good people his mother made the best ham sandwich i've ever had in my life and whatever but it was you know there was somewhat of a tougher neighborhood and ron and you know uh lacey van's aunt their father was a golden gloves boxer oh wow yeah so a lot of it came from from from that but his legacy now two things ed king once said because if you ever want to understand what ronnie vanzant was all about take any six skinnered songs doesn't matter just just pick six throw in a hat shake em up and listen to him and you'll know what he was all about and there are songs uh about the real world about racism or or social uh injustice justices uh uh about the environment um he has so many things he was he would on the road he would get up in the morning a lot of times and he'd read a newspaper front to back he was one of the most not only street wise but knowledgeable people where do you where do you come up with these songs you get it from somewhere yeah input and uh yeah and so um so backing up we're at uh i'm in college uh i'm at georgia tech i'm in my june almost at the end of my junior year and skinner was in atlanta and they were recording and i had become i've been going out there to the studio and had become um pretty good friends with al cooper oh wow yeah and that was pretty cool you know it's like because al cooper produced their first record yeah first first and second record and to this day though to me those are the best-skinned records al cooper understood that band and heard them playing at pinocchio's and put it all together so um the um we became friends and al cooper turned all of us onto little feet for example he goes you ever heard a little feet no who's that oh man and he took us down to this club in atlanta richards they were playing got us a table eight feet from the front of the stage with lowell george and whatever we're just going oh my goodness yeah so it was cool being around him and i got a chance i wish i'd asked him more but had a chance to ask him questions about bloomfield and and doing the super sessions super sessions oh my god what a so he excuse me um i go out to his house a couple times he had a record collection it must have been four or five thousand records on the wall uh one two three probably five shelves high all the way across and uh so he got to be uh got to be friends and he called me one day and he said uh i'm putting blues project back together and um he said i'd like you to play guitar but i'm going oh my gosh you know again al cooper is asking me right something yeah and uh i said let me think about it and i was like just i couldn't sleep i couldn't i had a year a year of school to go i was going to be a senior and get my degree and i'm done and it's behind me and i couldn't ask my parents it would have been fair i mean that they would have probably said son it's your life and do what you want but here they've sent me put me through school for three years and i'm gonna just go nah you know finish it or whatever and uh i i literally was getting sick to my stomach to try to figure out what to do or what to say to him who did i call ronnie vanzant and uh he was uh they were in town and i called him and he said this is almost verbatim and like i said i've talked about this so much told ronnie what was going on i said what what should i do and he said uh he said listen to me real closely he said you're getting something that i never had a chance to get it wasn't any anybody's fault except my own and he said that's an education i chose not to get one and uh he said you're getting one you finished that education he said after that you got the rest of your life to do anything you want to do and i know you that you will be the best you can possibly be at that and so he said you and i'll never forget he said you tip your hat to mr cooper meaning southern gentleman yeah thanks but no thanks and then it was like it was like this elephant being lifted from my shoulders like somebody gave it somebody that i respected that much gave me the thoughtful was that i mean the way he laid that out i mean anybody else was said ronnie would have said hell yeah man go for it you know rock and roll party no no he just he just very methodically no que he just said and he started off with you listen to me right now uh that is so cool yeah so i said you know what that's his legacy to have the wherewithal to give that kind of advice and you know i mean first of all al did a project with uh did a blues project record and i think that lasted about three months and it dissolved and i thought about that could have just yeah behind the power curve it would have caused a lot of and i didn't do it it didn't happen and uh and i think it was probably the best advice i would have to say it was absolutely the best advice i ever got from anybody in my entire life and just the way he delivered that was so thoughtful about it was about you yeah that's really cool thank you man for sharing that yeah i mean um that was uh he was a very special cat and that's why a few years later well actually a few years it was only that would have been 73 somewhere two years later um it was so special to record um four walls of rape i wanna i wanna talk i wanna ask you three more questions and that's one of them you wrote a beautiful ballad one night late with ronnie called fal four walls of rayford and i just wanted you to talk about that that is uh you know i had people write me in and said hey if you ever get jeff carlisi i'm at multiple people and but i'm asking this for me because it's a beautiful ballad man tell me about that well um we were actually down on riverside avenue just um downtown jacksonville uh skinner there was a uh it was a what do you call a sandwich shop and they bought it it was out of business converted it and built a little eight-track studio that was their rehearsal place and they could record and um uh we had the space next door which we used to rehearse and ronnie loved country music and big merle haggard fan and whatever he always wanted to do some side project doing um some country music and he'd written a song called when you when you got good friends like these and um so he he got a collection of both bands i think larry jones from our base player played bass steve brookins played drums don barnes played guitar and i believe i believe alan collins as well and i played pedal steel oh i sort of played pedal steel i i played when i was in college and and uh so i had the basic fundamentals you know the real simple stuff but i played on this thing and we all got together over in the studio and recorded the song i think it was re-released on one of their um silver and gold records or whatever later on with uh some changes made to it but anyway so everybody's leaving going home and i'm getting ready to go out to the car and ronnie said uh do you have to leave right now no what's up and he said i've got this uh idea uh i'd like i need some help on i'd like you to to work with me on it and i said okay cool man just that alone what a lesson that is when a guy like that says i need help there's a lot of yeah exactly um but it was like yeah sure um and uh i said um uh first of all ronnie ronnie was a real patriot um he respected uh um he and charlie daniels were such good friends and they would spend hours just sitting face to face talking i mean and you know charlie just up until his death uh talked about how good a friend ronnie was but ronnie was a true patriot he respected my father for what he did he um [Music] he was definitely more from the conservative milk but the military was important in this country was really important to him and so a lot of his sentiments were based around that and he i said what do you have and he said well it's about a a vietnam vet comes back from vietnam and he uh he can't get work um we've heard the story a million times and he's uh trying to feed his family and they convict him of robbing and stealing uh he's saying you know i've never stolen a dime and if you um you know if you shoot me down put my medals in the ground with me and he was a he fought for his country he believed in the lord jesus christ it was a very moving moving uh story and um so he asked me to state because ronnie and i were both way into raikouter and that whole kind of country blues type of folk blues i don't know what you call what you know rye was certainly a historian of all of that style of music and um and i was playing it uh playing a lot of that style the slide anyway um so he's he's going over the lyrics with me so i can get the feel of and he's singing wear them four walls of rafi closing in on me doing 40 years all night late four to five hard labor for armed robbery anyway he's going through it i'm listening to the story and he gets about um i don't know a couple of verses in and he stops and uh just kind of stares the ground gets pensive and quiet and uh i'm not saying anything i'm just you know wait for this and finally i said i said did you forget the lyrics and he said yeah they'll come back to me in a second they'll come back to me and i i said just like out of i don't know it was i don't want to call it ignorance it was just out of why don't you get you where's your notebook get your notebook and look at the lyrics and i said that i said something why don't you look at your notebook or get your notebook and he looked at me like i had just landed from the planet jupiter or something and just had this look on his face i don't write anything down wow i went whoa that's a songwriter you know and i remember being out the hell house when they were rehearsing and uh the uh he would sit there the band be playing if he liked what they were doing he'd go like this keep going keep it going and then ed king said i remember when we did saturday night special all of a sudden ronnie gets up we're still playing and he comes up and he starts singing the song yeah it was sad um and rodney always said he goes if if a song's not worth um let's see if the song's not worth remembering then there's no then there's no point in writing the words down if you're going to forget anyway uh but that's wow it was like so all i mean it took my breath away it's like oh my gosh and and again verified years later ed said the only time ronnie ever wrote a song down lyrics down as if they needed it for the for publishing sheets or for the liner notes on a on a uh a record sleeve you know if they were going to put the lyrics but he just he just remembered all the songs they lived within it that songs lived within him and wow so anyway it came back to him and i looked over i got the the gist of where he wanted to go with the song and i looked in the corner and uh gary's dobro was sitting in the corner studio everybody else had gone kevin nelson was still there the the band's engineer so i picked up the dobro and did an arrangement uh with ronnie and we went out in the studio um kevin just dropped a microphone between the two of us um a neumann whatever two stools facing each other and um ronnie had a bottle of jack daniels and said take a sip take a swig you know he took one we ran it down um you know a few uh clams here and there trying to figure out the thing and i don't know probably probably took us five takes or so and no punching in or anything like that it was live yeah we just did it and uh um it was it was really really special um years later it came out um on one of the post crash plane crash records and i was glad that the song came out but i was so disappointed because tom dowd had taken it and he put overdubs on me billy put a piano part on and uh gary put a guitar part on and and it you know what ronnie and i did that intimacy um was was lost but yeah i was hey but it's on youtube somewhere i'm pretty sure here's what happened so uh i was still you know grateful and whatever and said boy it's too bad people can't hear what we did that night so i'm playing um i don't remember what year it was but we're 38 um sometime in the probably very late 80s maybe even early 90s and i'll never we were in wichita kansas and this uh kid comes up to me after the show comes up back behind backstage or as we're leaving miss crazy mr carly's here uh hold on a sec uh stop to say hey how you doing he goes man i want to thank you for four walls of rayford and i said oh yeah that was very special so i wish he could have heard the original uh version i said and he said no no that's what i'm talking about as i really want you know the original version now you haven't heard the original version original version and i'm explaining that over dubs and he's like getting more and more out of it i mean it's if he could have probably got listen to me and he finally convinced me because no the box set just came out the original version of the way you and ronnie recorded it is on the box the skin and box set and man the next morning next time we got to wherever i couldn't get to a record store fast enough and buy it and um and i was so uh i was so pleased and uh since then i've gotten you know people i know emails liberty devito said that's one of the coolest things i've ever heard it's so pretty man it really uh was special so yeah that was um that's definitely one of the music highlights of my life uh recently i mean literally last week um there's an auction house in houston called uh backstage auctions and uh a friend of mine said hey did you know that kevin nelson's auctioning off a bunch of tour jackets and stuff and includes a a quarter inch uh reel of that says four walls of rayford demos and i'm going you got to be kidding me so i went and sure enough he's there's a reel and i have like i called the guy he says on the thing it says demos plural four walls of rayford those other four tracks that you did well i didn't know whether it was it was exactly in other words i didn't know whether it was maybe that other song that played pedal steel on plus rayford uh whether it was the other four or five takes yeah that took and uh so i called my friend kevin i said kevin what was on that and he got i don't remember and i said well it says he goes here you call the guy he goes do you want that he said i'm giving it to you if i'd known you wanted i said yeah yeah another yeah so and the the the reason why is because if it if it uh if it had been that there might have been some dialogue between me and ronnie between takes he just left the take you know yeah oracle purposes so i put a bid on it immediately and with a stealing on it and i called the guy and he goes uh we don't know what's on it i said what do you mean you don't know what's on it you say that it's well that's what kevin said and he said you play all this stuff because well we can't play that because uh this is my preparation because we can't play that because it's a uh it's a 10 inch reel it's an ampex 10 inch reel a quarter inch tape i said what do you mean you can't play it the studios in houston that'll have a yeah it'll play it it's not any big deal and i called rodney mills and he said i got what i got one of those machines in my basement and he said we've even got facilities to bake the tape if if it needs to be baked because you know when they get gets old the oxide starts falling off and he said if you win the bid he says we'll take care of it for you anyway make a long story short the guy said yo if you win the bid i said well you got to understand i said if i win the bid and it's just the one mix that i already have and he goes well then you can talk to kevin and you can get your money back from us and whatever long story short i didn't win the bid uh someone else got it i'll never know whether it was anything else on there at all uh yeah it's confident you couldn't find out who who won it or yeah i don't i mean i didn't even pursue it i could probably call the auction guy and he could ask the guy who won it uh which he may just keep you know keeping it for posterity um the thing about it um we were trying to when i was talking to kevin uh it could have possibly been in other words the other song they recorded on their 8-track machine and then mixed it down to a to a two track but with rayford there would have been no reason to use eight-track tape for one microphone hanging between me and ronnie you just go straight to get the levels balance the the dobro with the vocals and send it straight to a two track so it might not even yeah so so who knows what it is it might have been all four or five he said i may have used a piece of the eight track he's i have no idea uh so you and me will never know yeah people out there only the only guy that might know is the guy who won it and if he played it if he played it no but anyway uh good great story man yeah it was uh that was a special moment i've always uh like i said with ronnie that was a highlight and then of course uh the advice he gave me to stay in school that was so cool changed my life could have changed my life for the worse but it was for the better yeah all right two more questions best decision you ever made listen to ronnie ah and last well i have another do you regret not sticking with accordion [Laughter] uh biggest change in your personality over the last 10 years jeff and how much of that change has been deliberate and how much is just a natural part of it hang on let's go back to the accordion really good question dad probably half and half i don't i don't know um definitely as you age things change because your priorities in life change uh things you've learned things that um that uh are not as important to you as they once seemed just from experience and that comes with age um there are things that i have constantly and to this day i constantly have to just okay enough and it can be like we're talking about before uh dwelling on the past for whatever reason or dwelling on the future um you know the one thing um i don't have a lot of regrets uh as far as the what-ifs what if i hadn't given this a shot or um you know one of the greatest who knows anything could have happened in my career in music um i would have eventually had to say i i gave it a shot but at least i did without wondering what might have happened but uh you know it worked out and um i have uh a lot of friends that um musicians that are still working at it and that's great um but i don't know it's i don't spite him for you can't just say i'm going to give up music because music is a part of your life whether you made it or not but they may also not have opportunities to do anything different or to reinvent themselves but i do have musician friends who have reinvented themselves and taken their music and done something else not necessarily being a major touring act and selling millions of records but still staying productive in the music field and doing something um so it's um yeah so so your big change your primary change is learning to stay in the present more is what i'm hearing yeah yeah absolutely one day at a time yeah and you know one of using all the things that i've always learned never give up um but yeah staying in the present today is now tomorrow's another day yeah tomorrow comes i'll deal with it so far so good yeah um and definitely not not looking back it's always find it okay to set your goals for the future if you want to set goals but what's happened in the past it's happened yeah man that's a waste of your time i agree with you all right i found it so here it is did i send you this we'll play for free we'll stop for money no you did not that's pretty funny man yeah and then so i did um uh anyway i did a uh a greatest hits uh of of popeye the sailor man with your accordion yeah with the accordion and it was uh uh extra virgin olive oil you can make up you should do like 48 special you know it's like you and an accordion or something like that something wacky like that what was one of the songs uh uh wimpy burger in paradise uh is it brutus or bluto important questions man people want to know yeah absolutely um anyway but i i thought that was great i got us found the sticker somewhere like we'll we'll play for free we'll stop for money yeah there you go jeff uh let me just uh tell people first of all thank you for everything man i really appreciate all your times and really very generously uh likewise uh you wrote a book called jam a business book about 10 years ago you want to talk about that in case people want to uh get when i did uh when i had the camp jam company i did a talk usually on the friday night concerts and address the audience and the parents and whatever and talking about the value of of music and i said uh i said that that to me music playing music or being in a band specifically being in a band was one of the greatest team building skills you could have and the reason why is uh you always think of team building in the sense of sports of course football team baseball team you know you're working together but i said when you're in a band that's a team and when you're up there you count to four and your game begins nobody's shouting out go to the a go to the sea you know uh you're using your eyes and your ears and you're watching and you're listening and that team is creating a product uh that's very uh tightly uh well-oiled machine so to speak or we hope it is anyway without an assorted clam thrown in here sure there i said um we don't if we drop the proverbial ball when we're up there playing we don't get third quarter we don't get overtime we don't get time out uh sorry folks let's uh fix that we we lose on the world stage yeah so when we rehearse and we when you get to that level of uh doing major concerts or even if i don't care if you're playing in a club for for 30 people you're doing the best you can and that four or five six members or whatever uh watching and listening and so the the somebody approached me after and he said so you ever thought about doing a book i said yeah yeah i'm doing a book i said uh what the groupies backstage and you know all that it's been done who cares no no no i'm not talking about that i'm talking about more of a business book a lesson in life your story your what you learned uh in rock and roll at your level and how it can be applied to business and it peaked my interest i thought that's not a bad idea because there are a lot of analogies and similar excuse me similarities so i said yeah let's give it a shot um i like i'd like to take credit for sitting down and writing this whole book by myself but it was done through a lot of discussion a lot of interviews a lot of things that i did did right but um it was kind of unique because it has some great funny stories about the early days of the band and the later days and like i said before those those brutally honest stories where you have to make a decision for the will for the benefit of everybody in the well-being of anybody even if it hurts some feelings uh and that happens in business uh too yeah so there are examples of of how that happens in music and probably more time than people realize um and how in business it might behoove a lot of people if you spent a bit more time listening to everybody else instead of dictating uh what you should do yeah you've got a there's a leader of a band there's a ceo of a company uh there's somebody that's steering the ship but when you have a team around you if you watch them and listen to them chances are you're going to be more productive and get further so that's what that's what the book's all about and funny thing about us as uh the publisher said we'd like you to do an audio book i said oh okay so i said now we can hire somebody to do it but they generally do better if the author actually totally yeah so i said okay and they said now if we hire somebody to do we pay them but if you do you don't get paid yeah funny how that works yeah that's for business yeah you're teaching about business yeah i know yeah anyway so i did that the funny thing about it is um there was a point in time and i think it was somewhere right around like three hours four minutes 37 seconds where all of a sudden your tongue didn't work anymore you couldn't read and then i remember i get to this point and i'd say i'm sorry give it give me another one and the more i try it'll be because that's the time that it happens to everybody go home start back tomorrow yeah took me about three days to do it it was it was fun to do and it's weird though doing something like that you're reading your own words back to you uh back to yourself yeah and uh and you're trying to um to put enough emphasis to sound like it's what you were really thinking and saying at the time and it was a good experience i i'm glad i did what it did and yeah how many people have written a book well exactly yeah exactly i'd like to do another one uh more in the context forget about a side thing but more in the context of what we just the interview that we just did talking about um those little things that no matter how big a fan you were of 38 special or of jeff carly's whatever you'll never know some of these things these are hidden things that are special um and be it stories about ronnie some of my favorite music growing up i don't know whether uh i mean there'll be a few people i guess that would care but i think would be what's the term um [Music] not what is the term not lethargic uh when it's good for you uh it's not lethargic for sure oh like uh catharsis yeah because yeah yeah it sounds like like lethargic yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so i get that i totally get that yeah and it'd be fun to kind of you know relive in it and uh i guess one of the things i had some great pictures over the history of from me with my first with that with that uh melody maker all the way through 38 special in the publishing oh that's cool so now we're not going to use any pictures looks like oh man no they should have put some pictures in there man for sure i'll share with you the book is called jam yeah jam uh amp your team rock your business and you can get it on and on amazon or is it is there a link to it on your site um there might be but yet on amazon if you put in jam every team rock your business um you can get it uh on ebay okay you might even be able to get it at goodwill there you go jammed by jeff carlesi c-a-r-l-i-s-i and also uh if you want to go to jeff's website he's got a lot of history about himself and 38 special and a lot of his guitars on there yeah early early days well a lot of uh the history of 38 special from uh recording at dan hartman's um to um the actually even before that my college days uh some of my early bands uh all the early all the bands leading up to 38 special that i was in so it's just kind of a fun thing is it true you can get a signed jeff carley ct square a sign jeff carly's what t-square you know those things that they measure you know a friend of mine i went to college with years later uh he invited me down he lived in atlanta and he was working for an architectural firm and we we were in high school together and in college together so he says he had been to some shows he said i'd like to invite you down by your lunch you can see how architecture has see what you're missing as you're going back to playing madison square garden i said you know that sounds great you know had a good time and i went down there and i walked into this room there's all these drafting tables and uh said where's your t-square we don't use t-squares anymore and it was all these wired automated things to and it was like yeah and that's why when uh when uh after a few years when radio uh djs or anybody would say hey you know it's great you've got that degree in architecture you've always got something to fall back on i'm going dude man i'd have to go back to school again and learn all over again that's a long time ago yeah generally after someone sells 12 million records you don't usually worry about falling back it's like at that point man it's well yeah exactly but you know it's uh my college experience was phenomenal um you really learned to be independent uh to meet new people a guy that i actually played in a band with uh called plasma he was keyboard player guy named steve goldman and uh i finally through internet and schooling and searching and everything uh reunited with them found oh that's cool man yeah and he was he was a smart guy he was a physics major and which uh i i actually i almost became a physics major but i was god that's way out there good with uh withdrawing uh so i went with architecture which i'm yeah well physics is way out there anyway uh so uh reunited with steve and and i he had a website where he was uh doing a thing called the young composers challenge and it was uh with the orlando uh symphony and they have a contest every year for young students to to score symphonies uh do it either a a uh a string quartet or a full 80 piece oh wow and they get scholarships and these are i think the age range was 12 to 16. and some of these kids it's like unbelievable um but anyway so a guy contacted me that interviewed him and he wanted to talk to me about he goes steve goldman told me about what happened to you you played in the band together and you did pretty well i said you got in touch with steve goldman i said give him my number so called and and uh the whole time i'm thinking he stayed in music and just gotten this classical thing well um basically on your computer you've heard of raid random access he he invented the software for basically how all computers store information now and uh he sold the company for like a quarter of a billion dollars or whatever wow i said so do you consult right because not sold it all got complete cash went back to music yeah exactly good for him that's awesome man really cool guys so that was fun uh and we he's a huge beatles uh not only fan but historian uh so we we talked about quite a bit and uh i shared my stories going to liverpool uh oh that's cool that's nice man me playing the cavern club well i i i went just um um to um to go uh and take a tour and go to john's house and pause paul's house and see the cavern i wasn't performing uh by happenstance i got uh through a contact i got to have lunch with colin hampton and len gary who were two of the original quarry men oh that's cool man yeah and then while i was there at the cottage which was where uh john's sisters grew up john's sister half sister julia shows up and the tour guide says this is john's sister it's like are you kidding me that's pretty wild oh it was great i'll send you i'll send you a picture there's a documentary now uh something about john and yoko on netflix it's pretty good i think i might have seen it yeah it was pretty nice like george harrison was in there for a little bit it was it was kind of like just like a not a love story but it was like their story wasn't it was just a nice happy sort of thing so yeah don't get me started listen uh thanks for everything hang on one second let me wrap up i really appreciate your time it's been great talking to you and uh being so so straightforward and cool with everything and if i can help you with some suggestions of other people that i think you'd enjoy talking to you just follow i will hang on i'll ask you for that right now man uh everybody thank you so much for listening if you enjoyed this please share it on your social media channels we appreciate your support thanks very much to jeff carlisi for all of his time and candor uh if you're interested in jeff's business book that he wrote it's pretty interesting it's called uh jam and uh just look up jam and jeff carlisi because there's a big sub headline with it you'll either get jelly or you'll get a business book so it's the business book and uh also if you want to see a photographic history of a lot of the stuff jeff's done go to his website jeffcarlissie.com c-a-r-l-i-s-i and most important man especially nowadays remember that happiness really is a choice so choose wisely be nice go play your guitar and have fun till next time peace and love everybody i am out jeff thanks so much brother i appreciate everything anytime

Channel: EveryoneLovesGuitar

Views: 24,845

Rating: 4.9638338 out of 5

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Id: mznrjCVN6E0

Length: 226min 52sec (13612 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 26 2020