Jon Gindick Interviewed
The Harmonica Interviews presents…
Prologue: When I first started to play harmonica years ago, and I started to look for information, mentors or any kind of resources online, the name I kept seeing was Jon Gindick. I began to read about his Jam Camps and his books and thought "how cool would that be, to go to a place where everyone was all about playing the blues harp!" I saw his video's on YouTube. "whomever he is, he is really dialed in to the community" I thought. Little did I know then how far reaching Jon's positive influence was within the harmonica community & how much his Jam Camp's are respected. Between his books or his Jam Camp there are few people in our community Jon hasn't touched in a positive way. I have met many performing harp players who credit Jon's for giving them the courage, and the skills foundation, to get up and play! When Jon's new recording came out, I thought it was a great opportunity to chat with Jon and talk about his album, his Jam Camp's and his musical vision.
I hope you enjoy reading this as much as Jon and I enjoyed talking...
H411: I thought your new album, “Come Back as Music” coming out presented a good opportunity to talk to you.
JG: Well cool, I like talking about it
H411: I’m sure…after the first initial impact, the album then started to grow on me? I find myself humming the tunes when I am not listening to it. When did you start working on it…how long of a process was it?
JG: Well thanks! I’ve probably got 30 or 40 songs. Some of the lyrics where actually written 20 to 30 years ago and some of them where written in the last few months. But I wanted to make a CD...well, actually I had made one by myself, but now I wanted to make a new one with just guitar, voice and harmonica. Then I met, in my neighborhood…a producer…a guy who produces with dance music for Dancing with the Stars - a master musician and a wonderful guy - he lives like three blocks from me. I told him I wanted to do an album one day while we were hiking in the mountains. So I came over with my guitar and played my songs for him. (In his mind) he heard a full orchestration, he heard the drums and bass. I told him some interesting things when we first started out: You see, to me, horns music is too big for the speakers….especially blues music, amplified blues harmonica. I haven’t heard it done well very often. I can’t do it. When I try to amplify the harp it seems to just change the character for the worse…
There is one album that I think is just exquisite…a Nora Jones album…and I told him I wanted to make my album like a Nora Jones album…an album you could first live with, that’s just as comfortable as an old pair of shoes. He even discussed calling the album “Nora” because he never lost sight of that. As he was building my album, with all these different parts…his name is Ralph Carter...he would just try all these different parts. I kept on waiting for the album….he wasn’t charging me so it was fine with me…and despite wanting that Nora effect, I'd be saying "more. we need to make it more aggressive". Of course, what I didn’t know is that he’ll add that in another layer. The recording process is really long and difficult the way he did it. From 30 years ago to finally, through incredible circumstances, finding a guy who could bring everything to life in exactly the way I would want it. So that’s kinda’ how the album evolved; that’s what happened.
H411: Now that it’s come out, what feedback have you gotten from students and some of the people you’ve known for a long time?
JG: People are falling in love with it. It is getting radio play on alternative radio stations, and many freinds have told me they play it over and over. It's sonically listenable, the songs are great, the voice is character, Ralphs orchestrations and performances are astounding, as are the great LA musicians we brought in. I put four of the songs to video on You Tube and got 10,000 hits the first few weeks. Christelle Berthon, Sugar Blue, Randy Singer, Adam Gussow, Todd Parrot, Richard Hunter, Joe Filisko and many other top peers gave the album great and truthful blurbs that meant so much to me because people have always taken me for a teacher instead of an artist. Getting artist recognition has meant a lot to me. One of the things in the album is its transparency, you can hear every instrument. You can hear it on every piece of equipment hopefully. That’s the goal of good mixing. Being transparent is a huge thing, so that it can be enjoyed…and that comes through in the feedback I get.
H411: Do find a lot of harp players saying “I can jam along with this”?
JG: Yeah! That wasn’t planned you know (laughing) I would rather people say “those songs changed my life! (more laughing). A big part of it was the evolution of the singing. I didn’t trust my own voice as recently as four or five years ago. As a matter of fact, I didn’t like performing, I just wanted to back people up in the band. Jam Camp changed all that. It made me want to be more like the great coaches I brought in, so I started performing but then I realized I may not want to play as many notes as impressively as some of the great players of today and that it would be better to bring me, the whole me to the process. I realized I could sing and thought “that’s what I can bring to the table too…singing”…so I started taking singing lessons. My teacher, she taught me a few things…she taught me to smile when I sing, and that really helped. She would also simply sit there, listening to me. As I sang - simply by the look on her face - I could tell how I was doing. She told me a singer sings everyday so I made it become like another instrument…like the harp. And like the harp, I sing every day, going back and forth between the harp and voice.. Humming is another incredible tool to building your voice. So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of year. It’s also direction I am trying to push Jam Camp, towards a total musicality with voice included, as the harmonica. Harmonica, more than another other instrument, really emulates what we are trying to say with our voices. It’s really been wonderful for me.
H411: Has singing influenced your playing?
JG: Yes. One way is that I have a better ear now. Between singing and harp playing…you build each one. I am much more comfortable in my own skin singing and playing. I am up there telling a story, not worrying about how "great" I am, or what anotherharp player would do.
Yeah…it’s helped (Laughing)
H411: Have you performed any parts of your album live yet?
JG: Yes. I have performed them a lot on harp and guitar with bass player, Matt Rodela. Anybody who comes to Jam Camp will hear me do "When We Die, We All Come Back As Music." Now I have an ensemble, The Jon Gindick Band and we have rehearsed and performed the CD as part of our live show. Anyone who has led their own band knows how humbling that is. I’m in with some really good guys…we have the CD…they stand behind my music. I really wanna’ make the most of it in a comfortable way, do some shows and have some fun with it.
I feel like I have a message when I'm on stage, something about being a flawed, horny and musical man in a flawed, horny and musical world. I even have started a new religion that I call ReinVibration, the spiritual belief that when we die, we DO come back as music. It's great to have a band and songs that can help you express your deepest beliefs. It took a few years to get to this place.
H411: So there’s Ralph on keyboards and Matt. Who else is in the band?
JG: Chuck Cavorese, who is a slide guitar player and a great guitarist in general & Louie Bussard on drums. These guys, they’ve played with people like Ray Charles and Etta James.
H411: Let’s go way back. Let’s go back to when you wrote your first book. What made you decide to even put it together?
JG: When I finished college, I wanted to be a novelist. I holed up and wrote. Then a friend said to me “write a harmonica book”…I had been giving harmonica lessons to make money…he said write a book and I will illustrate it, though he never did get around to it. I submitted the book and no one got back to me. It’s a horrible process, the publishing business is so slow. One company lost my manuscript. I ended up self publishing, kinda’ Ben Franklin, in 1977. It had legs right from the start – you could tell right away - though it was crude, it got people started reading. It was finally picked up and distributed by the company that had lost it originally. I did, however, retain rights, which is so important. As a writer or musician, retaining rights is critical so when they stop marketing, or if they don’t perform in a certain way you can have recourse.
H411: Because you’re stuck, right? If you don’t retain rights?
JG: Exactly. A company can impress you with who they are and then sit on your project and keep access from the outside world and push other project they get a good cut on. Not every company acts that way every time though. Eventually I got with a big company that sold a million and a half of my books; “Country & Blues for the Musically Hopeless”. I retained rights with them too, so now that the book is out of print, I am able to come out with it again, completely revised! Something we hear all the time in the music business when artists sell away their rights and then they’re not developed (the artist) and end up sitting there for years and years without a project. A record deal could be the worst thing that happens to an artist.
Anyway, those books started selling and I advertised in Rolling Stone in 77’ and 78, I started a mail order business, made cassettes that went with it. My influences where the ‘Idiots Guide To Volkswagen Repair’ there was a lot of homemade books in those days, and that’s what mine was. I WANTED it home made, I wanted it to have a feeling that a friend of yours had made it for you. I wanted to make it as unintimidating as possible. I know how to read music…or I did at the time…but using that musical staff as it related to the harmonica, it wasn’t useful to me.
H411: Your other book, “Rock n’ Blues Harmonica”. That’s the book…when I bought it a long time ago… that really knocked 3rd position home for me on a gut level as well as putting I IV V in a context that made it really easy to digest.
JG: I’m glad to hear that…
H411: I really began to understand and dig 3rd position as a result of that book…it’s 2nd position’s sexy sibling.
JG: That makes me really glad. Rock n’ Blues – I just revised it and I did a whole bunch of stuff on 3rd position. You know, it’s such a goofy book, I wrote the text with all the cave boys and all that back in 1984, back in hippy days. It was really ambitious to try to put fiction together with music instruction. I know the book is not for everybody, even though it sells really well, but not everyone wants to be distracted in that way. That’s part of what I was trying to do, get people out of that focused intellectual thing and use techniques like story-telling to hit the subconscious. So when you say you understood these things on a gut level, it tells me it succeeded as it got you out of your head by wrapping up in stories and giving you examples.
I discovered that 3rd position – in the course of Jam Camp – is huge when it is when amplified. It just seems to cast aside any limitation as far as what we can do with a band. That’s what makes 3rd position really sing. It’s almost like a new mission of mine to get new people playing more 3rd position. It can solve so many harmonica problems. For example, my buddy Al wanted to play "Sunshine of Your Love" but realized he had to overblow notes in the IV chord. I was able carve it out of 3rd Position for him, because in 3rd Position, you express the IV chord by playing 2nd Position. I always thought 3rd was for minor keys, but it great on major keys too. Beginners should keep in mind that 3rd lets you hit a lot of blue notes without bending or overblowing. I wonder if it should be taught first instead of 2nd position.
H411: I have found the 6 draw just wails….it’s so damn soulful when bending it.
JG: It does. Another great thing about 3rd position is its really great for octaves from top to bottom of the harp. The cross over in 3rd is different from 2nd position. For me, 2nd position the harp kinda’ stops at the 6 draw…it’s ok with me I’m not that into the high tones. I can go up there but I always feel like I am showing off…it’s an unnatural thing for me. I have no such limitation in 3rd positions, I can go all the way up to 10 blow and all the way back down. The problem of course is below 4 hole and mastering the bends you’ll need.
(we spend a few minutes discussing what got me into harmonica playing….)
H411: Have you experience the same thing other players experienced early in their careers when the old pros would basically tell you to figure it out yourself?
JG: TOTALLY! That was my opening. Not that I was a professional player, I saw a lot of those guys and I picked up on the attitude, although not so much anymore. That’s my opening because I’m like “Let’s Jam!!”(laughing). It’s so cool to share it (playing). I see it at SPAH, SPAH has this really great open feeling to it. People now really want to share and they really want to upgrade the image of the harmonica. At the same time you gotta’ keep (expectations) low so people can feel like they can learn to play and they don’t have to be great musicians or extremely talented to start to play, then you gradually seduce them into how deep it is and how some of the world most talented musicians do it on the harmonica.
H411: It a wonderful instrument in that someone can pick it up and with very little work can start sounding musical, and then come to realize that its simplicity is what makes it so wonderfully challenging. I have been surprised at how open other players have been, though I understand it’s not always been that way. But nowadays there is so much material out there it seems silly to try to keep it to yourself..
JG: (laughing) When I started I was the only accessible guy. It gave me a certain quick advantage. Especially with the “Musically Hopeless…” book, which came out in 84’ and was selling 100,000 copies a year in book stores and toy stores and in markets, and it resonated with people for that reason, it was accessible. It was my opening.
H411: When did you start playing harp?
JG Working in a packing house in Exeter, CA, in 1965…Beatles…Love me Do. High School, I wanted to be in a band. I didn’t start playing cross harp until college, I was trying to play Paul Revere and the Raiders. I didn’t know blues…it didn’t really reach me then, not in the way that other people described…I liked pop music better. I would hear blues, but I didn’t feel it that much back then. I didn’t make an effort to study blues, to learn blues and learn songs and appreciate it until I realized that THAT’S where the expertise in harmonica was. Once I realized that there were layers and layers of expertise & technique and the way you studied it was to study the blues, then I got into it long and hard. Then I started to appreciate song writing in blues songs. I had to learn to appreciate it. I’m not one who likes loud guitars or loud electric anything, including harmonica. I had to learn to appreciate the skills involved with making (electric) music in order to make music the way I hear it (unless I am the one playing it). That’s been an important part of my evolution; to have the confidence to make music the way I hear it and to put it out into the world. Music has taken me so long, a lifetime of technical skills, to put my music out there.
H411: Before your first book you were performing?
JG: I was performing. I came out of folk music. I had a girlfriend who was a fabulous singer. We would do Buffy St. Marie, jug band music…that was the kind of music we were listening to in college. I’d go back and hear Mel Lyman play harmonica…he was my hero…it wasn’t very good by today’s standards. So I thought I was good too. I shudder to think how I sounded by today’s standards. We played in clubs and as a duo. Still I debated do I do harp or do I do guitar. I like doing both at the same time. It’s hard to give that up. You can hit those rhythms like BOOM hitting those notes at the same time and if you’re someone like Jimi Lee you can harmonize with yourself in ways that are very hard to do.
H411: He’s an amazing talent.
JG: Jimi is unbelievable! If you asked me who my biggest influences where, for contemporary players it would be Jimi Lee for his total musicality – singing, guitar playing, harp playing and soulfulness and Dennis Gruenling who is an incredible harmonica musician. I’ve never met someone who does the things he does with the instrument.
H411: Many harp players admire Dennis for being so far outside anything anyone else does. What is about Dennis’s playing you admire so much?
JG: How big it is. How perfect it is, how passionate it is. That’s his playing but I also admire the man who developed his style. The workman like and scientific way he went about it, exploring a position, charting each position. Apparently he was doing this as far back as high school, though I don’t know the whole story. He is just so passionate about it. I never thought I could make a living paying harmonica. I didn’t take it seriously in that way, I just wanted to play. But Dennis has created his own style. I have him on video doing a Kim Wilson’s “Tough Enough” and his eyebrows are moving in different directions (laughing). It’s amazing to watch!
In a better world, these guys would be better compensated for what they bring to everyone.
H411: True words. When did you do your first Jam Camp?
JG: 2002. There have been 35 or 40 of them now. I’ve lost count.
H411: What inspired it…the Jam Camps?
JG: First, the book that was supporting me was dropped by the publisher, so I was desperate to come up with something…I even considered getting out of the harmonica business and becoming a teacher. I opened myself to new ideas. I had been to some harmonica seminars and noted that the hierchy was unchecked. Great people, great instructor. It was like good players where on one side of the room, with the new players on the other room. A separation. Now that’s going to happen naturally but it shouldn’t happen amongst harmonica players, but that’s what I noticed. Maybe 5 or 10 years go by before I started my own. I know that I would be inclusive if I ever did one.
Now remember, I used to teach with 15 to 20 people where I would have everyone play in front of everyone and we would all be supportive and applaud and encourage each other. That’s what I brought with me to the Jam Camp. Now, I was totally intimidated when I put on my first one, I am astonished the first one came off it’s a miracle anyone came back (laughing). I’ve found when all else fails get everyone included, make them feel at home, get their feedback, get them talking. It’s no fun to listen to someone talk. It’s fun to talk with them and its fun to play. So I tried to concoct a balance. So why should anyone come to my Jam camp…players, coaches. I came up with a promise that everyone is going to get to a next level, and it may not necessarily be about playing harmonica. It’s going to be getting to another level, whatever that level is. A lot of people who have come…many coaches have gone on to teach on their own, put on their own workshops, to perform. Campers have gone on to create bands, singing, big part of the harmonica communities, bottle of blues microphone creator was influenced in lots of ways by the jam camp. You begin realize that the Jam Camp is really much bigger than just playing the harmonica.
H411: Share a couple of moments at Jam Camp that stick in your mind that were really special, that stand above the rest.
JG: It’s hard in the moment to specify any specific moment. It has become one long moment Jeff. One feeling where everyone in such a good mood that this harmonica community forms. Maybe I’m not quite answering the question. The hero at Jam Camps may not be the best players. Often times it’s one of the least experienced players who have reached through whatever their handicap may be…physical, attitude, fear…and doing it. One person after another who is trying their best, getting better and better. Having been immersed, now they are doing, they are making sounds that they like. You hear it; they feel it and everyone senses there’s been a transformation.
H411: Like the confidence courses we used to do in the Army. It was the terrified personnel who gutted through that really had a breakthrough. It’s great that you’ve created a safe environment.
JG: The idea has become really become bigger than me. With the upcoming Jam camp I am looking into more rhythmic emphasis. It’s something we really don’t talk enough about as harmonica players. It seems like all people want to talk about is equipment and overblows, when really it’s all in the phrasing. It doesn’t really matter what note you play but how you phrase it.
H411: You said it yourself, when you’re in the right key and the right position you really can’t hit a wrong note – you’re safe.
JG: Yes, particularly as a learning platform. As everything shifts into focus, you start looking and feeling at the music more structurally. You become aware of the chord progression a band is playing and how you can do the same thing on harp, acknowledging the IV and the V in some way. But I think if you are thinking chord progression instead of just saying things in phrases, you may be making harping much harder than it needs to be.
H411: The player has to stay in the pocket, be a part of the band…
JG: There is the Hero Harp player….everyone wants to be him…like a devil saying “I want to play how someone else hears music”. Then there's the supportive harp player the guy who really listens and looks for ways to amp up the music…horn parts where you will add depth and feed into the rhythmic intervals. As a harp player you decide when you come in when you add a note or a phrase….adding depth. Simply by adding the right note you can take a mundane song and give it life. The biggest mistake I make as a player is playing too many notes.
H411: Do you sense yourself playing too much, like “I got to back off”.
JG: Noooo, it’s more of an emotional thing, like I was just phony. Like I feel like I am showing off. I don’t worry about anyone hearing, except maybe the band and even then they rarely noticed. It’s like when I learned the 6 hole overblow. I started using it for a couple of weeks. No one heard or noticed or said a damn thing. It was just a note I was throwing in because I could. Not that it was worthless but it wasn’t that big a deal. Just serve the song. That’s the supportive player’s motto.
H411: Do you find, in Jam Camp, that is THE most common mindset that needs to needs to be re-adjusted with new players.
JG: Yeah, and it’s not just new players, it’s almost everybody, it’s how they breath and place the instrument in their mouth. The new mind set I bang into their skulls is that music doesn't come from the instrument; it comes from the body. I try to get them connect to their throats and use a technique I call "clicking" where I get to articulate precisely on the inhale, using the "K" consonants. It makes you play from your throat. It’s a technique I’ve been using for the last 10 years or so. Often, when people come in they are playing from their mouth. Adjusting the mindset from paying from the lips to playing from the front of the throat.
H411: You find you have to dial them back…slow down?
JG: Yeah, quite a bit. I call it the “curse of the wondering harmonica player” where students wonder from note to note. Also teaching just phrasing, where the pauses is built in, like a pause in the music…which is really big in question and answer. It really helps divide everything up. If you listen to the question and answer format in music, it’s everywhere. There is no good music that, in some way or somehow, doesn’t have the question and answer thing going on. It could be a change in volume; it could be something very subtle. To start off (humming a phrase) then you exhale, you breath and then you answer - in some way - and then you breath. So working in the exhale, you can balance your breathing while working in a pause is one of the techniques I use. When people hear good harmonica playing they think that it’s this intensely physical thing, you know (waving his hands around), so one of the things I’ll do (when teaching) is play I’m playing really hard, like fireworks in the mouth, but then I’ll take my mouth away and show that really I’m just doing little thing. So yeah, I do dial student back when I teach.
My philosophy is if you can’t make one note musical, then you can’t make music on more notes. SO, learn how to do it on one note – which brings in the rhythm, the percussion and the phrasing. One of the philosophies of Jam Camp is: Do the simple things well. What I find is that beginner's eschew the simple for the complex, and they never create a foundation.
H411: I am frequently asked, in my facebook forum, “who did you listen to when you started playing” or “who influenced your playing”. For me, it always comes back to Junior Wells, in that he didn’t play a lot of notes, per se, but what he played was wonderfully simple and wonderfully passionate.
JG: Yeah. (About being passionate). Though I haven’t listened to everything Jason Ricci’s plays and even though some of his music is not always in my old fart taste, I also think he is one of the most sincere players around. He genuinely feels the music with all those damn notes in it. It’s how he feels it. He’s not trying to be Jason Ricci, he IS Jason Ricci and that’s the way he feels it. I think John Popper is a fabulous harmonica player. I don’t always like the music he plays to because it’s so over the top, but HE’s over the top…. the way he plays man….it’s fabulous! That’s because, in my opinion, he’s sincere.
H411: On the way home from NYC last night, was listening to Jason and to some Billy Gibson…
JG: He’s great!
H411: ...and I understand what you mean about someone being who they are, as both of those artists are just that – honest and within their own styles and not letting their obvious virtuosity get in the way of expressing the feeling they want to convey. They leverage it (their expertise); they use it as a tool to draw out their passion, to say what they need to say.
JG: I like that word: tool, in this context. The techniques are not the point of the music, any more than the wrench is the point of the car. For that matter, the music is not the point of the music any more than the car is the point of the car. Creating community and personal development is the point of music. Communicating! So that's another mind set we correct and balance out at Jam Camp. Even music is a tool. Of course saying it doesn't make is so. Where is becomes evident is the 5th day of Jam Camp and everyone is best friends as well as a better harp player.
One thing, when players are trying to make a new technical thing as part of their style. It takes a while to learn to make it fit in and not just making that new technical thing the point. I mean, there was a time where I was playing everything in 3rd position (laughing) even when it didn’t deserve or merit 3rd position (laughing again). We’re all in the process of learning; the most fun is when we are learning new stuff.
H411: Good stuff! Switching gears, was your original book completely unfacillitated?
JG: You look at the pages of the book, you open it up and there’s a spread. How that spread hits the eye, all the white space, all the illustrations, how big the type is – totally determines whether or not it’s going to get into the subconscious, which is part of our goal at the beginning; to get into the readers subconscious.
Because I am a writer, every word was gone over - it really mattered to me. I was trying to fuse arch with instruction. But yes, I did get help. I had someone help edit it – help me get rid of extraneous words, gave me some tips on fiction writing. He was one of those old editor types you can’t find anymore. I found a great illustrator who I paid $100 for some classic illustrations of cartoon of guys kicking harmonicas in frustrations. I hired a girl to assist with physical layout. I published 2000 copies of the book, which were in boxes that I had my mattress on, so as I sold the books, my bed would get lower and lower (laughing).
H411: Where did you originally sell them?
JG: The Library Journal gave me great reviews, so I sold to libraries. The world seemed hungry for this (kind of book). Now the world is more categorized, you know, like MUSIC STORES.
I was tremendously enthusiastic, especially when the book came out, and actually went door to door in neighborhoods full of strangers to get people to buy them. How could they not love it? And they sold. Then I went music store to music store. And they sold there. It grew from there. Then I put an ad in Rolling stone magazine and I sold mail order along with a cassette and a harmonica for $13.95. I’m still in the mail order business, mailing these products every day. I’m probably going digital here shortly…
H411 You anything new in the works?
JG: “Country Blues Harmonica for the Musically Hopeless” was my best selling book, which is out of print. That’s the reason I was able to do jam camps, because people know me from that book. It’s been out of print for 10 years. Actually, since then I have learned so much, technique-wise and how to teach people, so I’ve put together a new 73 minute CD for the book that’s worlds better! It might make people realize that harmonica playing is harder, though I’m not sure.
H411: It’s a tough instrument. I believe you said something to the effect of “because there are so few notes, what makes the harmonica difficult is have to work around that limitation”.
JG: Yeah, it’s a hard instrument because it requires unconventional ways to play it. Eventually you teach yourself…. you buy books, watch You Tube videos, come to Jam Camp and over time you get this open feeling in your throat. More important, you find out who you are.. More importantly though, it’s you…you get this feeling in your throat. You find out what kind of riffs you like and timing you like. You develop your own ear. I don’t think you can be a blues or jazz improvisational player if you don’t get away from tabs or books. Eventually it’s YOU.
One of my Jam Camper’s…a smart guy… chimed in in the middle of a class, "So, the harmonica itself is like the strings on guitar. It's the body that produces the sounds." That was well put.
H411: I went to a small clinic facilitated by Steve Guyger – a great guy - where he showed how he will play with the mic pressed against his throat and plays, giving the harp a whole different sound…
JG: Wow…
H411: Emile D’Amico, a fabulous chromatic player out of Philadelphia, who was there, stated “that proves where the sound really comes from…it come from your body”.
JG: What did that sound like?
H411: Really interesting! When he did that while playing the chromatic, it sounded for the world like a clarinet. But it goes to what you’re saying, you play with your body.
JG: and…taking it one step further…you’re playing with your memory and imagination.
H411: So when do you hit the road Jon? Get out there and start gigging?
JG: Well….I don’t know man… hit the road? You have to travel and do this? (laughing).We’re gonna’ have some more practice. It's a new project and we are still polishing the stone. I don’t want to only go into bars and play, unless it’s the right kind of environment, for putting on a show. That’s what I want to move towards…more than gigs, putting on a show…
When I go to a bar and a band is playing really loud, I can’t hear anyone, I can’t talk. To me, going into a typical club is really an un-communal experience. I don’t like it. I don’t want to do a show in a club when people only come to drink rather than come to also hear the music. I might also have to find unconventional places to do it…Libraries are pretty fantastic, people come to listen to the music.
Running a band is a whole other level of personal development and leadership. You get to know people in the most wonderful way. So how soon? Mid summer.
(Right before publishing this interview, Jon updated me on his band status: “Well, the Jon Gindick Band is playing next Friday Night at J's Tappas in Ventura California. We will perform "When We Die, We All Come As Music," as well as blues standards such as "Keep It To Yourself" and "I'm Ready." We also do harp driven pop-jazz standards like "Fly Me to the Moon." Our first gig, not long ago, I swear there were times when half the band was playing the bridge and the other half was playing the verse, and yet these guys are so good no one that I asked could tell.”)
H411: How did you come to teach B.B. King to play the harp?
JG: (Laughing) Well, B.B. asked me (John, being obviously facetious, is laughing)… You sit down next to B.B., you just start to have this feeling of well being. There is something about him that he emits. In the last 15 years, I’ve met and sat with B.B. twice for an hour, but he would still remember me, he’s that kind of guy. He’s a fabulous personality; so friendly and open. It was an amazing experience for me, getting to know him a tiny little bit.
The way he plays guitar, play in third position, it’s like how he plays his riffs. Then I realized that a lot of blues is minor key riffing over major key music.
H411: Well Jon, I think that’s a great ending to a great interview. I really appreciate you spending so much time with me. It’s been really wonderful.
JG: Thanks Jeff, it was great talking with you.
John still live in the Malibu area. His album is for sale on all the traditional places, including his website as are his books.