Luke Nelson

Speaker 1 00:00:02 Welcome to Chicago Musician. I'm your host, Shawn Stengel. My guest today is a potential EGOT winner, although aren't we all potentially EGOT winners? But if anyone could do it, it's my guest today. He's a multi-instrumentalist writer, teacher, performer, influencer, a product of his time, a transformational figure, an enigma within a conundrum in the middle of hemiola. It's time to start peeling back the onion that is Luke Nelson. Speaker 1 00:00:43 As I ofTen say, there's a lot to unpack as we curate this inflection point in season two, episode two of Chicago Musi. . . you know what? I never say ofTen. There's certainly nothing to unpack. I hate that. That's become like the laziest interviewer phrase: "Oh, there's a lot to unpack in that statement." And 'inflection point'?? You think we've overused that enough?!! And 'curate'. I'm going to curate your ideas and my ideas, as we ofTen do here, while unpacking. . . And when did ofTen become acceptable?? Isn't that the sort of things that nuns beat out of us with rulers? "It's not ofTen, it's often. The 't' is silent." Now everyone says ofTen. Kids have no education in grammar or English, or writing or, or kind of anything it seems like. So they just all just read often and said ofTen, and now ofTen is what people ofTen say for often. It's often!! It's even Offenbach, sometimes. All right, enough for the rant. Let's get to our guest. Speaker 1 00:02:08 All kidding aside, Luke Nelson really is a multi-talented guy. I've known him, his wife, Sharon, and their daughter, Grace, for more years than I'd like to say on the air. And rather than being a triple threat, Luke is actually more of a octal threat. A neunal. . . threat? Deca, like a deca threat. That's cool. He's a deca threat. He's a multi-instrumentalist, as I said. He plays a lot of instruments well, uh, bass, guitar, piano, banjo, accordion, ukulele. He said he's a Uke playing a uke. He's of Ukrainian descent, so of course he's crushing that coveted Ukrainian Hawaiian demographic. He's a prolific songwriter/composer. He has been a musical theater music director, uh, actor on stage and screen. He's a jazz nut, aficionado, a college professor. During his time in Chicago, he had an enormously popular band called Luke In the Cool Hands. He has his own YouTube channel, Nelsongs TV with tons of newer, original material. You know what, there actually is quite a bit to unpack here. So let me get out my suitcase and we'll get going. So my guest today is Luke Nelson. He's an old friend who's young!!! <laugh>, but a longtime friend and an intriguing, intriguing human being. Welcome Luke. Speaker 2 00:03:56 Well, thank you Shawn. Nice to be here and nice save on the 'old' thing. Speaker 1 00:03:59 That was great. That's right. I didn't really save it. It's recorded. Oh, okay. But anyhow, thanks for coming. I've wanted to interview you for several seasons, even though there's only been 1.1, but I don't know how to redo the remote versions yet. Speaker 2 00:04:11 So I traveled all the way out here from Connecticut just so I could be on this podcast. Speaker 1 00:04:16 And tax deductible. Speaker 2 00:04:17 Ooh, did you hear that, IRS? That's tax deductible Speaker 1 00:04:20 If you say it out loud, it's true. Speaker 2 00:04:22 Okay, I appreciate that very much. Speaker 1 00:04:24 So I think why you're kind of a perfect guest here is you have a pretty good Chicago footprint, even though you haven't lived here for, what, 42 years? Speaker 2 00:04:36 Uh, 42 years next May. No. It's hard to believe, but I moved 25 years ago this November, Speaker 1 00:04:43 25 years. Speaker 2 00:04:44 Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not sure if I still qualify as a Chicago musician, but, the 10 years I spent here, I sure was. Speaker 1 00:04:54 Yeah. So let's talk about this because in my intro for you, I was saying you're a multi-instrumentalist, a teacher, a performer, a writer, um, many other '-ers'. So when I met you, let's go back ‹sound of time travel› to I think the late eighties. Our connection initially, like most of my career connections, is Pump Boys & Dinettes, Speaker 2 00:05:21 Correct? Yes, that's right. And when I came out here, Pump Boys was the show of shows. It was the Talk of the Town still. And my friend Scott Wakefield, with whom I'd done Pump Boys previously was out here. He was playing 'Jim' at that point. And even though I came out here without a lot of plans originally, I knew at least that Scott was here. I'd have at least one friend. Speaker 1 00:05:44 Where did you come out from? Speaker 2 00:05:45 New York. I was living in New York, as was Scott, and we did a production of Pump Boys down at the Asolo Theater in Florida. Right. With Mary Launder. Okay. And Mary said, "You should move to Chicago." And and I thought, yeah, that sounds possible. So I knew Mary and I knew Scott was gonna be here, and I knew pretty much no one else. And once I met Scott, I went to see the show and won the air freshener. Speaker 1 00:06:13 Of course!! The Raffle! The Pump Boys Raffle! Speaker 2 00:06:16 You win an air freshener if you're, you know, a friend or just lucky. Speaker 1 00:06:20 Speaker 2 00:06:21 Super lucky! And I was both. So, um, yeah. So, through Scott, I met you and Tom and Malcolm. My first batch of Chicago friends who are still my Chicago friends. Speaker 1 00:06:33 And Jenny and Dale, the Steel Magnolias who lived down the hall for me. Speaker 2 00:06:37 Right, where I'd go visit you at the hotel. What was the hotel? Speaker 1 00:06:41 Belmont? The Belmont, Speaker 2 00:06:41 Of course. The Belmont. The luxurious Belmont: Speaker 1 00:06:45 Actor housing and Retirement Home. It was an interesting mix. Speaker 2 00:06:48 Indeed. Probably hard to tell the difference for some. Speaker 1 00:06:51 Well, I didn't know for a while that I lived down the hall from Dorothy Loudon who was doing driving Miss Daisy. I just thought she was one Speaker 2 00:06:59 of the retirees Speaker 1 00:07:00 Just way funnier than the rest of them. Right. Speaker 2 00:07:03 More talented. Yes. That's where I would come visit you. And you and I worked on a show for Scott that we did at the Roxy. Speaker 1 00:07:11 Oh, we were "the Belmonts". Speaker 2 00:07:13 We were the Belmonts, yes. Speaker 1 00:07:14 The backup band. You and Jenny and me. Speaker 2 00:07:16 Right. So I got to know you very well. Speaker 1 00:07:17 That was sort of our first interaction? Speaker 2 00:07:20 Our first professional interaction, for sure. Yes. Speaker 1 00:07:23 I don't know if it was professional. Speaker 2 00:07:24 Well, I'm giving it the benefit of doubt. Okay. Many, many dollars. Speaker 1 00:07:27 The Roxy. The Roxy, yes. Okay. But that appears later in your story too, because isn't that where the Cool Hands started? Speaker 2 00:07:34 It was where we really, uh, yeah. Where we first got our legs for sure. Speaker 1 00:07:38 Yes. So Luke had a band called Luke and the Cool Hands. Fabulous. But how would you describe them? Speaker 2 00:07:44 Uh, beautiful, wonderful, talented and lucky that I'm part of them. It doesn't really describe them at all. Speaker 1 00:07:50 I don't get it. Okay. That sounds like the Taylor Swift backup dancers as far as I can tell. Speaker 2 00:07:55 Yeah, I guess it does. Um, Speaker 1 00:07:58 But country swing jazz? Speaker 2 00:08:00 It started as a simple idea. I was a big fan of Western music. I'm from Connecticut, so it makes sense that I would love cowboy music. Speaker 1 00:08:10 "Western" Connecticut! Speaker 2 00:08:11 Yes. My father loved Western music. My grandfather, I don't know, we were a bunch of Swedes from Connecticut. My grandfather used to play 78s of Elton Britt and Rosalie Allen. And my dad loved Ernest Tubb and Gene Autry. So it's sort of in my blood. And I was never able to really flex those muscles as like "a thing to do", cuz who am I to be playing cowboy music? Anyway, when I got to Chicago, not long after I met you and some other great musicians, I met a woman named Sandra Julian. She was married to Ollie O'Shea at the time. Speaker 1 00:08:45 Another Pump Boy. Speaker 2 00:08:46 We started chatting and I told her my love of Western music and she said, 'well, I wanna put together this girl group. Is there any way they can like, do some cowboy songs?' And I said, 'well, of course' cuz I just came to Chicago, so any idea was a great idea, right? And I remember that first Christmas I took a train home to Connecticut. . . Which was the really the dumbest thing you'd ever done. Not the dumbest by far. Speaker 1 00:09:13 But probably the longest thing you ever did, though. Speaker 2 00:09:14 Yeah. It was almost a whole day to get home. I went to Washington, I had to visit the Capitol before they'd let me on a train to New York. It was crazy. Speaker 1 00:09:20 I mean, that was before Amtrak became the streamlined bullet train dynamo that it is now. Right. Speaker 2 00:09:27 So I remember sitting on that train with a yellow pad and a pen going, okay, I'm gonna write some cow girl songs. Like, wouldn't that be cool? Instead of Sons of the Pioneers, I'd be like, daughters of the Pioneers. And um, I remember I wrote my first Cool Hand songs on that train. I I remember writing High Stepin was the very first song I wrote. Um, and like three or four and sort of, and it's like, I'm gonna do this. Cool. Anyway, that's where the idea started. When I came back, Sandra Julian ran the show. She said, I've got, I've got the, the other singers. Um, my, my husband or boyfriend at that point, boyfriend at that point plays Fiddle Ali Oche, uh, here, I'd like you to meet this guy Gary Bristol. I was like, Gary Bristol. I met him in New York. He and I played at Folk City with Jim Juan and, and, uh, a guy named John Foley. So all of a sudden all the pieces were just delightfully falling into place. And I thought, this is where I need to be right here. And she really was responsible. We met at her house for rehearsals. She got the ball go going. That started the Cool Hands. Speaker 1 00:10:26 And who were the other two girls? Wasn't there a Roxanne? In Roxanne. Roxanne, sorry. Speaker 2 00:10:32 Roxanne Asaf, who was lovely and great and had this wonderful sense of humor. And, um, Jude Lush was the third, and Jude didn't stay long because she really wanted to have sort of her own jazz vocal career. And That's great. And so she was replaced with my friend that I met in Florida that I knew was here. Mary Launder. Speaker 1 00:10:52 Okay. Wow. Speaker 2 00:10:53 So Mary came in, it was the three of them, and it was very much in the style of more traditional, what they would call a singing cowboy group where you had three-part or four-part harmony, a fiddle, a rhythm guitar, an upright bass, and focus on the singing. That's what we were at first. Right. And we played the Roxy, we got gigs at the Roxy, um, for, you know, we'd be there pretty regularly and sort of developed our, our act, our shtick. Speaker 1 00:11:21 Then in Chicago, the Roxy was on Fullerton, I think. So sort of just west of DePaul, you know, it's like a major shopping mall now or something there. It's all built up Speaker 2 00:11:31 And there's a sentimental attachment to that club. A lot of people really love it. I know there were, um, that there are, like on Facebook, there's a Roxy page and things like that. So, um, Facebook is a thing that older people are using for social media just to, so people know what I'm talking about. Speaker 1 00:11:45 I think I remember it. Yeah. Speaker 2 00:11:47 Right back Speaker 1 00:11:47 In the, I mean, I'm totally TikTok now. Speaker 2 00:11:49 Yeah. Oh, Speaker 1 00:11:50 Nash, even that's passe, isn't it? Speaker 2 00:11:52 Yeah, probably. Yeah. I just do threads. It's the only thing I pay attention to. Speaker 1 00:11:56 <laugh> this week. It's all I'm on. Speaker 2 00:11:58 Yeah, Speaker 1 00:11:58 Baby. Um, uh, so, so to backtrack a little bit, so our Pump Voice Connection, this is a show that got me into show business from LA to Chicago. If you listen to any of my podcast, you've heard it ad nauseum. But the weird thing is for you and I, we've never done the show together. Speaker 2 00:12:18 No. I guess we haven't. Right? We never have No. That Yeah. Speaker 1 00:12:21 Everyone we've done it with, we've done it. It sounds like an orgy going on here, but, um, pump Oise is pretty inbred. Yeah. Like Foley, Bristol from your New York Days had done Pump Boys here in the Chicago production at a certain point. Speaker 2 00:12:37 Absolutely. Speaker 1 00:12:37 Right, right. They weren't in it when you came to town, but, um Right. Speaker 2 00:12:41 And then after it, I did it with other people, uh, Ollie and then Sandra, I did it with them. Uh, Speaker 1 00:12:46 Mary Launder fed into the Chicago cast eventually. Right, right. Speaker 2 00:12:49 Yeah. But, uh, yeah, it was very much a and the circles very small. At first, it seemed like there were only a dozen people in the world that could ever do Pump Poison Day not Right, right, right. So you'd get a lot of calls, it's like, we're desperate for an Eddie, can you please do Eddie? And then eventually it was like Eddie, we got a hundred Eddie's. Um, but that's how I met Scott and John. I did the show with them down at, uh, Sarasota. Um, which was my second, or that was my third production of it by then. Right. Um, uh, so, uh, when I came out here, I did not do it at the Apollo. I, uh, Speaker 1 00:13:22 But when they did it at the forum Yes, you did it down there, but you were LM by then. Speaker 2 00:13:29 Right. And I've been many. Speaker 1 00:13:30 So how many instruments do you play? Because Eddie played bass. Right. Lms, the piano player. Speaker 2 00:13:34 And I was just in Eddie for the first four productions, three productions. I was just Eddie. And then, um, and then I didn't really get in on the Apollo, but when they're talking about Remounting or doing a new production down at the forum, I auditioned for LM and uh, Eddie was taken, Malcolm was music director and Eddie Malcolm Speaker 1 00:13:54 Rule. Speaker 2 00:13:54 Malcolm Rule. And so there was no way to be Eddie cuz he was the music director. But, um, they auditioned me for, uh, lm and that was my first lm. And then after that I did a couple more LMS playing the piano and High Hat. Really got pretty good on the High Hat Speaker 1 00:14:09 Just for those who don't know how could you, if you're listening to my podcast, but Pump Boys is a a six person musical where all of the actors are also the musicians. So it's really hard to cast mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so once you've learned it and done it and succeeded on any level, regional theaters from across the country, call you and just offer you the part because it's impossible. Almost all the parts are impossible to find the person who can do it. Right. Speaker 2 00:14:34 I mean, LM plays the piano, but he also sings and he also plays the accordion and tap dances and cowboy boots. Speaker 1 00:14:40 Right. It has to be somewhat funny and engaging Speaker 2 00:14:43 And Yeah. So ideally it gets a ideally <laugh>. So it is a little particular Speaker 1 00:14:48 Yeah. But much to our advantage. I made a living on it for most of the nineties, you know? Speaker 2 00:14:52 Absolutely. I got the cowboy boots to prove Speaker 1 00:14:54 It. I got equity, you know, I invested three years of Pump Boys and boom, you're whatever. So, but back to the Cool Hands then. So all those connections take us to the beginnings of the Cool Hands. Speaker 2 00:15:08 Right. Speaker 1 00:15:09 And, and you guys, it was cool. I remember going to the Roxy, it's what, 50 seats max? Oh gosh. Is it bigger than Speaker 2 00:15:16 That? Gosh, if you squeeze them in. It was pretty small little club space, uh, at the performance space. Yeah. Felt very much like they opened a couple closets and there you were. Um, as my memory, uh, if it serves me right, Speaker 1 00:15:28 Same time as when our friend Darren Stevens was in a group called The Four Hours, four Guys standing around around singing. Yes. And they played the Roxy. That was their regular, Speaker 2 00:15:36 Which is how I'm pretty sure how I met Darren, that he came to see us. We went to see him and they were there regularly. We were there regularly. Speaker 1 00:15:42 Yeah. It was a fun room of, oh yeah. So, um, so then let's talk about how did you, so how did the, what was the next incarnation then of the Cool Hands? Speaker 2 00:15:53 Well, that version of it was probably the most cabaret ish, um, version of The Cool Hands. There was shtick, there was more shtick involved. Uh, we used to do things with the where, uh, the cool Hands would all play harmonica and then use the harmonica to fix their lipstick through as a mirror. I mean, Speaker 1 00:16:13 Like, hilarious, hilarious, hilarious stuff. Speaker 2 00:16:15 Hilarity ensued throughout, but it was less, uh, and we did a lot of covers. I wrote arrangements, stuff like Tumbl and Tumbleweeds. Oh, right, right. Uh, a great song by, um, by Patsy Montana and the Prairie Rambler's called, there's a Man That Comes to Our House, which was a huge hit. Didn't write it. Um, but as we played, I kept writing more songs and, and couldn't leave it alone because that's me. I can't seem to leave projects alone. I keep tweaking 'em and changing them. And, um, at some point, um, we, I don't know how it happened, but we decided I, I'll blame Gary Bristol cuz he came up with all the good ideas for the band, um, to be more of a band, get a drummer and modernize it, and sort of take it out of its sh sticky lovely sh sticky, um, cabaret act and try to make it a band that's just a band. Well, Speaker 1 00:17:07 Cowboy music was already a little bit, a lot old-fashioned. Speaker 2 00:17:12 Right. But also at, at, by the time we were doing this country music was having another one of its, uh, Speaker 1 00:17:20 Rev Revivals or Revivals Resurgence, or Rev, Speaker 2 00:17:22 Yeah, just Resurged as a thing. The clubs, like Bub City opened where they had line dancing. Okay. People were buying cowboy boots again. You know, it was big. So it made sense that we could then be a real band, a band people could dance to. And we just needed to add a drummer and sort of update our sound a little bit. Um, get rid of sort of the tumble when tumble tumbling tumbleweeds, uh, and focus on just more like, like band music. So I'd written more and more songs. Um, we used to meet at Gary Bristol's house and we modernized the sound. We brought in a great drummer, Michael Spero, Mike Spero, great player. And we made it more of a, more of a band. Same vocals up front, still vocalists in me, but, uh, had a, had a big beefier band sound. Speaker 1 00:18:10 Okay. So now another host Segue. So you wrote all the songs. How did you become a songwriter? Speaker 2 00:18:19 Oh goodness. Speaker 1 00:18:20 What is that? I mean, that's a deep dive backwards here, but like, yes. Let's go back to what got you into this whole world. Speaker 2 00:18:27 Okay. I'll do the best I can without hypnosis therapy. Speaker 1 00:18:30 Yeah. You don't need dates, just sort of your own impressions. It can be like Fox News, just sort of fuzzy facts and not really reality based Speaker 2 00:18:37 Writing songs has, I've written songs always My sisters say I used to write songs when I was five or six years old. I'd be in the back of the car and they'd point to something and say something and I would make up a song about it. I don't remember doing that. I remember a couple, I wrote a song about a department store in our town and I made up a song about fried clams, um, early on. So I was always making up songs. When I first got my hands on a guitar, which would've been my sister's guitar, I didn't wanna learn the John Denver songs she was singing. I immediately thought, oh, this is to write songs on. And I started writing songs. So, um, since forever. So. Speaker 1 00:19:13 So you just, did you just teach yourself guitar? Speaker 2 00:19:16 Yeah, I would ask my sister to show me a couple chords or whatever, but, um, yeah, I would just, I would just play the guitar when she wasn't around cuz she would've killed me. Um, and then, but right away from the beginning it was like, this is for writing songs. This isn't just for playing, to me it seemed dumb to play someone else's songs cuz they're playing those songs. Um, so I started writing and then, you know, it's always been part of what I've done. When I used to do little shows at my church in junior high school, I wrote the opening song. I wrote the closing song, I wrote the funny song in the middle. So I've always written songs. There's not, I didn't go get trained in it. There was no point when I said I wanna write songs. It just to me felt like that's what you do. You write songs Speaker 1 00:19:57 And you still do it. Speaker 2 00:19:58 I, uh, do Speaker 1 00:20:00 You have any, can you pull any number out of the air of how many you've written? I mean, it's thousands, Speaker 2 00:20:07 Well I dunno if it's thousands. It's over a thousand. Uh, back in 2000 in the year 2000 I was living back in Connecticut and everyone was talking about that. You know, all of the things that, you know, such a momentous time. And I decided, um, I'd been back in Connecticut two years. We moved back in 98. Um, did I do the math right? Um, and I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to write a song a day as just to, just to see if I can do it. Every day. I'm gonna write a song. And I, and, uh, and so I started and that year 2000, I have it all in a three wing binder. Now, by the end of the year, I'd written about 440 songs more than one a day. Cuz some days song, you know, as a, I was writing one song, another would just pop out and I would just have to write that song. Speaker 1 00:20:51 How does that feel? I, it never happened to me. I don't know, it just, a song just popped out. Speaker 2 00:20:55 I ha it doesn't always happen. But when you're writing a song a day, you sort of get into it to, to me at least. You, you just sort of, you're listening more and you can hear them. And there it is. Oh, there's another one. Um, I could go months and not write a single song, but when I'm in songwriting mode, they can, they can just fly. Not, I would say fly out, but I can, I can hear them better. Oh, here's another one. I can start that one. I've had some songs just fly out of me. Nice. Um, so by the time I finish that and I said, okay, that's about 440, 450 songs. And I did sort of a rough math. I thought, okay, I've now hit about a thousand, at least a thousand. So I certainly wrote more than 500 before that point. Right. Speaker 2 00:21:34 Um, so since then I went through a period where I didn't write songs. When I was teaching full-time teaching, I've devoted all of my creative energy to teaching and I would write arrangements and things for the school, the bands and choirs. They only performed my charts. So I, I wrote all of 'em, but I didn't write, sit down and ever write a song. Um, but then some years ago I started writing songs again. Um, and so I'm writing songs again now, but I certainly haven't written hundreds since then. So I'm probably still in the 11, 1200 range for songs. Speaker 1 00:22:09 Still impressive. And can you, could you remember most of them? Oh Speaker 2 00:22:15 No, no. I don't remember. I don't remember any of them. Oh, okay. Uh, my problem is, I mean, I remember some of them, but as, and people are always, you know, surprised, it's like, oh, sing that one. It's like, I know, I have no idea how that song goes and I do know how it goes, but sometimes I'm writing them so fast and moving on to the next thing. If I haven't performed them in a band, like Cool Hand songs, I can sing. I did 'em night after night. Right, right. But the songs I wrote for my last album, I need them in front of me because I'm writing the next album. And, um, and I don't write them, generally speaking, I, the last five years I'm not writing songs to perform them, which probably seems weird, but I've told people I don't consider myself a, you know, a singer-songwriter has become such a thing in the last 20 years. I consider myself a nons singer songwriter. Like I'm a songwriter first. Like, that's the part that I care about. I don't write him to then, Ooh, I'm gonna go to that club and I'm gonna sing him. I write him cuz I just wanna write the song. I'd love someone else to sing them or do something. But that is my goal. The end game for me is song done. What's the next one? Speaker 1 00:23:21 That's cool. So let's go back to Young Luke. Yes. He's playing his sister's guitar writing songs. Right. What's the natural progression then? Did you go to school for music or did you high school, did you become, how, tell me. Speaker 2 00:23:36 Um, high school was me often, uh, skipping classes and going to the practice room and sitting there and writing songs at the piano usually for, for girls that I wish would listen to them and fall in love with me. Okay. But instead, so that's why I wrote a lot of songs cuz that never happened. Um, Speaker 1 00:23:53 A piano. Did your sister have a piano too that Speaker 2 00:23:55 You learned? We never owned a piano. Uh, I never owned a piano of any kind until I was in Chicago. And I, and I wanted to play LM at Pump Boys and I thought, gee, I better get a piano. I never owned one. I would play the piano. Speaker 1 00:24:09 So how did you learn how to play piano? Speaker 2 00:24:11 Um, I would run to the piano any chance I saw one, I took, I took drum lessons as a, as a middle schooler. Well, Speaker 1 00:24:18 That'll do it. Speaker 2 00:24:19 Yeah. Uh, and I, Speaker 1 00:24:20 It's a percussion instrument, you know. Speaker 2 00:24:22 Right. And I remember running out of my drum lessons to this old upright at the front of the music store and just playing on that and the music teacher saying he should be taking piano lessons. And my parent, my mom or whoever saying we don't have a piano. Ah. And somebody, uh, offered to give us a piano at one point, a big old upright and it wouldn't fit in the doors of our tiny old a hundred year old house. So Luke didn't get a piano. Speaker 1 00:24:49 Wow. Yeah. Speaker 2 00:24:50 Okay. So I figured that out on my own. Speaker 1 00:24:52 So then, but did enough music happen to you in high school that made you go off to music school? Speaker 2 00:25:00 Yeah, I, um, I was writing, I was writing, uh, charts for the jazz band to play in high school. Our high school jazz band played a song of mine writing with the Wind. Um, and I was writing musicals for, uh, my church group to put on reviews and things like that. And so by the time college came around, I wanted to be a music major. And I went to our local, uh, university, which is right in my hometown. My mom worked there and they said, well, we only have music ed or classical performance. Do you play classical, uh, classical instrument, which I didn't. Um, so, uh, they wouldn't accept me. And at that point there was no, I was ever gonna be a music teacher. That's just, I couldn't imagine being a music teacher. Right. Um, cuz I was gonna be a star. Speaker 1 00:25:48 Oh, oh, I see. Speaker 2 00:25:49 You know, so when Speaker 1 00:25:50 Did that come in the star part? Speaker 2 00:25:52 Uh, when I picked up my sister's guitar, I think. I Speaker 1 00:25:54 Think. Okay. All Speaker 2 00:25:54 Right. So, um, so I wasn't ama I was a theater major Speaker 1 00:26:00 At that same college, Speaker 2 00:26:01 At the same school. It's like, well, I'm going here, mom works here. Okay. It's in my hometown. I could bike to work to school. And, uh, became a theater major and, uh, which was great. And made immediate friends with amazing bunch of, uh, theater. Many I'm still friends with. Um, but during that time I started talking to some of the music majors and got to know some of the music professors and convinced them to let me, to let me design my own music major. I wanted to be a composition major and the school didn't have one. Okay. So I said, can we design one? And they said, sure. So I met with a guy named Newt Stewart, who was just a wonderful, talented, uh, bass player, comp conductor. Really great guy. And he and I wrote the school's music composition and Theory, theory and composition major. And I, and I was the first one to be one. Speaker 1 00:26:50 Very cool. Yeah. And did you, so you got a degree in composition music Speaker 2 00:26:54 Theory and comp from Yeah. From that school. Speaker 1 00:26:56 Is it an unnameable school? Speaker 2 00:26:58 Uh, central Connecticut State University. Ah, Speaker 1 00:27:01 Yes. Speaker 2 00:27:01 Nice. Um, so yeah. And, uh, and, and we made a theater minor, so I still did a lot of theater. Speaker 1 00:27:08 And so we know that both of those degrees lead to immediately immediate riches, obviously, and a career guaranteed for the rest of your life. Right. Where did it lead you? Speaker 2 00:27:17 Um, I leaned a lot towards the theater side of things. I was, I'd written a musical with one of the theater professors while I was there. Um, so there was always a lot of theater. And a very good friend of mine, one of my best friends in college who's also composer, we decided we're gonna move to New York City right after we get outta college. We're gonna be Rogers and Hammerstein or Rogers and Hart or whatever, ginger Rogers something, and move to New York City and, uh, take that town by storm. As you know, uh, composers, we were working on a show together. Um, and that's what we did. We moved to New York. He moved there sooner than I did. Um, but then I eventually met my, my way down to New York as well. Speaker 1 00:27:59 Had you been there much in your life up to that point? Speaker 2 00:28:02 I used to visit my friends who had graduated college and moved down there and stayed with them far more than they wanted me to. Speaker 1 00:28:08 <laugh>. Speaker 2 00:28:09 Lot of couch sleeping. Yeah. Lot of going to, uh, you know, t tk ts for probably the first, for the two years before I moved myself down there. Speaker 1 00:28:18 Yeah. Back when you could get a TK Ts ticket for 1250. Speaker 2 00:28:22 Right. See two shows in one day. They're only 20 bucks Speaker 1 00:28:25 Not for 1,250. Speaker 2 00:28:26 Right. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:28:27 Yeah. It's kind of insane. Someone just told me that the cheap seats for Sweeney Todd are 200. The obstructed, obstructed balcony seat is $200. Wow. Who can go Wow. Just to witness singing, murder and, and and such. Speaker 2 00:28:43 Right, right. Speaker 1 00:28:44 Okay. So you moved to New York. Yes. And then what happens, because I don't remember when your Broadway musical debuted, did it? Is there a date yet? Speaker 2 00:28:55 Yeah, that didn't quite work the way, uh, I had thought it would, Speaker 1 00:28:58 The way most people think. Right. New York will occur. Um, what happened? Speaker 2 00:29:02 Well, um, I uh, I had a great first month in New York. I moved down to New York and I knew people there, so I immediately, again, count, you know, uh, relied on their sofas until I could figure it out. And I stayed, uh, on a sofa, uh, with a friend of mine who lived, uh, in Brooklyn named, uh, Frank Mastro. And, um, he put me up for a month and thank you to all of you who are now listening, of course. Who, who really went above and beyond. And then, um, my friend Mark Benninghoff and Mark is a very interesting, first of all person unto his own self. But our relationship has always been really interesting. He was, uh, he came to my college and, uh, auditioned, uh, came in like we were like juniors by the time he showed up as a freshman. I remember all the other theater guys were like, ah, God, who's this punk? Speaker 2 00:29:53 And after his first audition, we were terrified. He got every role. He was so good. He got every role. He was a skinny little guy who came in and they were doing streetcar. And all of my friends who had been working out for years showed up in their muscle tees and Sure. They were gonna walk away with it. And this scrawny little kid walked up there and showed them how to audition. And, um, he was, he was wonderful and a great guy. And he, and funny, funny, and he and I got along cuz he liked to create and make stuff up. And we made some little, um, homemade movies together, wrote some songs together. And then we lost touch. He let, he was one year there cast in an off-Broadway show and off he went. And then we didn't see anything of him. But when you move to New York or Chicago, you think, okay, who do I know? Speaker 2 00:30:36 Do I know anybody? Do have any connections of anyone I could like, just call on to go get a cup of coffee and just so I don't feel alone. Right. So I found him, he was living in New York. He was, you know, staying at a, a great place with his girlfriend and her mom. And we reconnected. And the day I went to see him, he gets a phone call from his agent, uh, for an audition. And, um, he's writing stuff down and he writes down Pump Boys and Dinettes. And he gets off the phone and I said, what was that? He said, oh, I've got an audition. Uh, tomorrow I gotta go in for summer stock. They're doing a bus stop. Pump Boys and Dinettes. It's like a, a, um, up in Sharon, Connecticut. And I was too stupid, not not to know better. And I said, can you call him back? Speaker 2 00:31:19 Can I go audition? Cuz it was Pump Boys. I'd seen Pump Boys on Broadway. I sat in it with Frank Mastro, actually the guy I was staying with in Brooklyn. And I watched that show and thought, this is on Broadway. I can do this. I probably can't do cats, but I could do this <laugh>. Um, and so I begged him to call the guy back and Please, can I go audition? And he'd said yes. And I went the next day with Mark and auditioned and uh, Don Scardino was the director and he auditioned us and uh, and I got it. Mark didn't, but they cast me for the whole summer. Oh, cool. You know your classic summer slot. Right, Speaker 1 00:31:58 Right, right. Repertoire. I was not repertoire just one after another. Speaker 2 00:32:01 Right? No, they did bus stop and Pump Boys and Rep. Cuz it's kind of the same set. It's a diner. Okay. They made it work and, but I was, because I was there for the summer, I was building sets. I did the children's theater when they did bus stop, I played guitar for Offstage for the scene where they sing, um, that old Black Magic. I was the offstage guitarist. So, uh, I played banjo, they did one more time. And, uh, I learned how to play the Ragtime banjo and I played banjo in the pit. So it was a summer of work. I'd been in New York a month. I thought this is easy. Speaker 1 00:32:30 That's right. Speaker 2 00:32:32 Um, it wasn't, Speaker 1 00:32:32 I just auditioned Speaker 2 00:32:33 And Right. One audition and I'm doing summer stock, started my equity, you know, uh, application. But, um, what ended up happening for the next five years was I'd get cast in a shell leave town, my lease would run out, move back home, put all my stuff back in my house, come back from my gig, go back to New York, find another apartment I've lived at. So I lived in five different places over five years in New York and all my work was out of town. Speaker 1 00:32:58 Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2 00:33:00 And that was the fifth year of that when I was in Florida. And Mary said, why do you keep paying New York rent when you're working everywhere, but come to Chicago and you won't pay New York rent and you'll work there. So that's how I ended up in Chicago. Speaker 1 00:33:13 That's pretty good. Yeah. Speaker 2 00:33:15 Pretty Speaker 1 00:33:15 Good. So we're gonna take a little break now, but when we come back, you've brushed sh brushed shoulders with some pretty big names in the world of jazz and beyond. And I wanna hear, I I can't see the path, how that happens out of what you've told me so far. Speaker 2 00:33:36 Well, you know, Paul McCartney told me to never name drop, but Speaker 1 00:33:40 Yeah, me too. Yeah, that's what he said. I mean, he didn't say it exactly like that, did Speaker 2 00:33:44 He? He didn't say it to me actually, Speaker 1 00:33:46 No. Or ever. But, um, okay. But so we'll be back with Luke Nelson right after the interval. Speaker 2 00:33:55 This is when I get my, Speaker 1 00:33:56 This is when you get it. Yeah. Okay. But I have to like, do Speaker 2 00:34:02 I move the microphone? Yep. Speaker 1 00:34:03 But I'm going to, I'm gonna turn this off and then we're gonna figure out how to record this. The best possible way to Oh, you, he's way ahead of me folks. He's really, but, uh, um, we've never done the interval before live and in sequence. And yet it may, it may happen this time. I'm intrigued to know if this were the interval, what would you play? Speaker 3 00:34:29 Do I just play anything? Speaker 1 00:34:31 Two notes? Speaker 3 00:34:32 Can we, can we make this a little, uh, mathematical? Can we each think of a number? I'll add those together and I'll play that interval. Speaker 1 00:34:41 Yes. Speaker 3 00:34:42 Okay. A a a single digit number Speaker 1 00:34:45 Seven. Four. Speaker 3 00:34:48 All right. So we all know what that is. That is the magic 11th, which is the same as a Yeah. So let me see if I could play that in an interesting way. Speaker 1 00:35:11 Yeah, I mean, that was more than two notes. Speaker 3 00:35:13 Well, you didn't say how many times you just said an interval. Speaker 1 00:35:17 So after some high jinx fisticuffs illusions to some sort of cash payment, even discussions of a sharp 11 cord, I decided to let Luke stick with his original double interval performance. Because of course the interval is sponsored by no one knowhow. So what's the difference? Ugh. We're back with Luke Nelson. Oh, this is funny. It's not funny. I'm sure it's troubling for you in a sense. <laugh>, I googled you last night and it's fucking hard to find the right Luke Nelson. Yes. Yes. There's Lucas Nelson. Mm-hmm. Son of Really? Mm-hmm. Speaker 2 00:35:54 <affirmative>. I'll talk about that in a minute. Speaker 1 00:35:57 But, but like, you're buried and I'm like, I know where to look for you. I know you have Nell Song's, tv, YouTube channel with like great videos and all kinds of stuff in there, but I'm like, how many layers it that's really challenging. Speaker 2 00:36:14 It is. The whole Lucas Nelson thing is interesting because even if I put in Luke Nelson, l u k e Nelson, um, and maybe list one of my songs, I still end up 20 to 30th. Speaker 1 00:36:26 Yeah. Speaker 2 00:36:27 Choice down underneath all of these songs by Willie's son Lucas, l u k a s. Speaker 1 00:36:33 Yeah. I kept searching and saying, must say Luke right in the search. Right. And I'd get Lucas Nelson. Yes. Willie Nelson's son. Speaker 2 00:36:40 Right. Yeah. And, um, the, I I'm working on two albums right now and the, the, my next album coming out is called The Original Luke Nelson because I was Luke first. And um, uh, I just, yeah. So that's why it's really just so people who are out there thinking, who's this guy who's trying to be Lucas Nelson? I was actually there way be, I checked the dates Speaker 1 00:37:02 You were there first. Speaker 2 00:37:03 I was there first. Speaker 1 00:37:04 Well, we're gonna list links on the podcast for your website and Speaker 2 00:37:09 Wow. Speaker 1 00:37:09 Okay. Your home address and cell phone number and stuff like that. Speaker 2 00:37:12 Yeah, my s s n all that. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:37:13 Yeah, that's, oh yeah. Well it's already up there. It's one of the teasers. Oh, good. Can you match this social security number to the, um, so we, we left you somewhere in New York Speaker 2 00:37:25 Okay. Speaker 1 00:37:25 And about to move to Chicago. Yes. But I know that you have a very cool, or had a very cool relationship with John Hendrix from Lambert Hendrix and Ross and I, for the life of me. Can't figure out where that occurs in this continuum. I mean, so tell us your connection and then how you got there. Speaker 2 00:37:49 It's, um, I'm not quite sure how it happened either. Um, I will say this, um, when I was in college, uh, one of my dearest friends, uh, a a guy named Rob Rello was, uh, was the biggest jazz fan to this day that I know. And he knew Jazz inside and out. And, uh, Hartford, Connecticut had somewhat of a local jazz scene. And they would bring artists to town to perform for what was called the, what still is called the Hartford Jazz Society. And they'd bring in pretty big names cuz we were so close to New York. It was pretty easy to do and we'd go see them. And we were huge fans of that kind of music. Um, being a writer, I so admired what John Hendrix could do. Having written all of those lyrics and as a songwriter, lyrics mean a great deal to me. Speaker 2 00:38:38 And, um, great lyricists to me are very admirable. Um, so John Hendrix, one of the greats. And so we went to see John Hendrix perform. He was, he had just decided to put an act together again after, after years of years, Lambert Hendricks and Ross as an, as an act had stopped sometime in the early sixties, I think. Um, this was called Lambert, uh, John Hendricks and Company. And it was made up of his family. It was his wife and his daughter were singing in it. And, um, and a guy named Bob Gerland. And the four of them were performing sort of bringing back the sound of Lambert Hendricks and Ross. And so John was back out performing that music and uh, this was one of the first times they did it cuz I remember the other people, they were saying, wow, you know, we're making requests. And John saying, uh, we're not ready for that one yet. Speaker 2 00:39:24 We're not up to that song yet. And we met him that night. We stuck around for autographs and we were huge fans. And both my friend Rob and I are also, um, sort of collectors of old jazz records. And we made John an offer. He couldn't refuse being a guy who puts lyrics to every classic jazz song. We said, what are you looking for? We've, we'll, we've got it or we'll get it. And he said, well, you know, there's some Count basic. This was long before internet. Uh, I said, there's some Count Bassy tunes. I, I'd love to put lyrics to. I I haven't found 'em in years. It's like, we got 'em, we'll send 'em to you or we'll get 'em. And he was, he was just taken with that. And John being the most kind sweet guy in the world just opened up to us and we became friends and we started doing that. Speaker 2 00:40:06 He's like, here's my phone number anytime you got some stuff. And uh, and over the years he'd come back to town. This was my college years, couple years of him coming back. We got to know him better every time we'd see him. We had in those days cassette tapes, Uhhuh, anyone listening, this was a little tiny plastic box that had magnetic tape in it, you could actually record music on. Whoa. So, uh, we'd make him cassette tapes of Thomas Edison made that right. Right after Right after the cylinders came. Yeah. The cassette tape. Um, so we would make cassette tapes for him and he would be, you know, grateful to us and we would be thrilled that we're doing something for John Hendricks, one of our heroes. Um, when I moved to New York, again, you talked to anybody you could talk to and I contacted John, said, I've moved to New York. Speaker 2 00:40:51 And, um, I had met some other jazz musicians along the way who came to visit as a fan only. And then John said, we're, um, he said, uh, I'm doing a tour of the South. I put a whole new show together, a tribute to Nat King Cole. We're gonna travel in a van. It's me and the family and a trio. Would you like to be our road manager? And I said, John, you know, I know nothing, nothing about being our road manager. He said, yeah, but used one thing that you do have, I trust you and I I gotta be able to trust my road manager. Wow. I said, okay, as long as you're okay with the fact that I know nothing about this. And he said, yeah, yeah, you'll be cool. I'll teach you what you don't know. And so, um, I did, we got a van and the, it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, the eight of us got Speaker 1 00:41:40 In one Speaker 2 00:41:40 Van, one giant van with the drum set with an upright bass with the trio and four singers and me driving. We hit, we hit the road and did a tour of the, a ridiculous tour that took in everything from Florida, Clearwater, Florida up to um, Minneapolis in that area. And I drove it all and it was, uh, just a ridiculous thousands and thousands miles tour that we did that was, we finished a concert, I would run the sound and lights for the concert, pack up the van, shove everybody in it. They all fell asleep. I drove all night to the next place, put 'em in their hotel, get in my hotel room, three hours of sleep, go to the venue, set up, do the less lights and sound check. Speaker 1 00:42:26 So you're the crew and the road manager driver. Speaker 2 00:42:29 I'm everything. Yeah. I'm doing everything. Getting them, getting them restaurant food, taking care of every part of this with this band on tour. And uh, and it was awful and wonderful and I was exhausted beyond words. And uh, and it was frustrating and we all screamed at each other at times cuz it was hard. Oh. Speaker 1 00:42:48 And packed in a van with, Speaker 2 00:42:50 With, with the seven of us. And eventually John and his family flew to venues. They had enough of that, they would just fly to the next place. And I traveled with the, with the band and I got to know them really well. And they were three just wonderful guys that I got to Andy McLeod on Bass, Clifford Barber on drums, and a very young Danilo Perez on piano. Danilo, Speaker 1 00:43:11 That's how you know him. Speaker 2 00:43:12 Yes. Danilo John had yanked out of Berkeley before he graduated and took him on tour because Danilo was so talented we couldn't wait for him to finish school. Speaker 1 00:43:22 I just weirdly remember when you were here in Chicago, you went to hear Dlo Perez. And I didn't even know who he was, but I'm like, how does he, how does he know these people? Yeah, yeah. Danilo, I didn't know that one. Was that Speaker 2 00:43:35 Involved? Involved? We were, we were roommates. Okay. I was roommates with Danilo, which was fabulous. He was, uh, Danilo Perez, if you don't know and you ought to, is one of the great jazz pianists. He's from, uh, Panama. And, uh, I only tell you say that part because every place we went was too cold. Florida was almost warm enough. But Minnesota was, uh, I would come back to our hotel room and the hotel window looked like he was in a terrarium. All the shower was on full, the heat was on as high as it could be. And he'd be in his coat, Speaker 1 00:44:04 In his defense. Minnesota's too cold for me. Right. And I grew up in Northern Minnesota, so Right. He's, he makes sense to me. So singing his praise. I wanna go back though a couple steps, which is tell people who Lambert Hendricks and Ross were what they, why they're so seminal in this world. Speaker 2 00:44:25 Yes. Forgive me for explaining Well cassette tapes, but not them <laugh>. Speaker 1 00:44:29 Yeah. I, I know kind of mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but not enough. Speaker 2 00:44:34 Um, Lambert Hendrickson Ross was a vocal group, a jazz vocal group that started, um, sometime in the, around 1950 or so. John Hendricks is from Toledo, Ohio, and was a jazz vocalist. He was actually studying to be a lawyer, um, but was a jazz singer from very early on. When he was a little kid, he used to sing with Art Tatum. He'd show up and be like, this novelty young little John Hendrix. And so John eventually realized he needed to pursue a career in music. He moved to New York and he met a guy named Dave Lambert. Dave Lambert, uh, was a jazz singer as well. He had a vocal group. Dave Lambert was one of the first to have like alar sort of like six to eight vocalists that would sing, uh, jazz, uh, harmony, jazz versions of standard tunes. But Dave Lambert was also a scat singer. Speaker 2 00:45:21 He'd scoop up duo, but IBO with a guy named Buddy Stewart. They had a duo act called Lambert and Stewart. They actually, uh, recorded with Charlie Parker and did some tunes with him, like Hothouse and Dele and songs like that. So John and Dave were a great combination. And Dave said, look, John, you write all these great lyrics, let's put a vocal group together and we'll do your songs. It's called Vocalese. If you put lyrics to, uh, to established jazz or any kind of musical solos or songs that don't have lyrics, they call that Vocalese. Not i s e like Rock manino, but e s e Speaker 1 00:45:55 Like John. Give me an example. Can Speaker 2 00:45:56 You, um, some of them, you, you, you, you might know if you know any of the Brazilian songs like No More Blues, those are the vocal songs that John put English lyrics to American lyrics. But, um, he put lyrics to all the Count Bassy songs, all the phonies monk songs, um, dizzy. He was screaming next to Op, who was being in Monk was Stomping. Suddenly he had walked Bud and then they got into something. So all of that is John. He wrote lyrics to every Monk song. Monk said to him, you're the only MF that I'll allow to write lyrics to my music. He was good friends with Monk. Wow. Um, and Speaker 1 00:46:33 As, as in Thelonious Right. Friends of mine who have no idea. Right. Speaker 2 00:46:38 Uh, so John has written hundreds, hundreds of lyrics to anything he could get his ears around. Uh, which is why he was delighted that we could send him music because he was, he couldn't stop. He wrote songs for Lambert Hendricks and Ross and they started making records. The first record record they made was Singer a song of Bassy, which are all Count Bassy arrangements. They originally intended to hire a group like Dave Lambert used to have and cover all the parts. Cuz John, unlike most vocal vocalese writers, he didn't just write, uh, lyrics to the melody. He'd write to every part of the arrangement. Mm-hmm. If the, if the trumpets had a thing, they're gonna, he's gonna write lyrics to what they're playing while he writes lyrics to what the saxes are playing. At the same time, he, he just could conceptualize the whole band as vocalists. Speaker 2 00:47:22 So that was the plan was to record this like, or chorus of jazz vocalists. They auditioned, auditioned, auditioned. They didn't like anybody until Annie Ross showed up. The, uh, Annie's uh, um, showed up and sang and they fell in love with her voice and decided that the three of them would do all the parts. So their first record is all over dubbed. They each sang like four different parts. Um, and that was their first record they made as Lambert Hendricks and Ross. And then after that they just recorded, John would simplify it down to just the three of them singing different parts. At the same time, Annie also wrote a Vocalese writer. She wrote songs like, uh, my analyst told me that I was right outta my head. She wrote Twisted and Jackie. Um, but she told me later, cuz I did get to talk to her, that once I said, why didn't you write, continue writing. Speaker 2 00:48:11 Yours are so wonderful. The Twisted is brilliant. And she said, once I met John, I couldn't do it. I was like, why? She was just so enamored by what he could do. Hmm. Um, and they had a career for 10 years or so, I don't know, maybe not quite that long. And then, um, Annie, who was also in musical theater her whole life, um, she, she left the group. She something, she got, I think something happened and she left the group. They continued on without her fur a year or two. And then Dave Lambert one day stopped along the side of the road to help a guy change a tire and a car hit him and killed him. Speaker 1 00:48:46 Whoa. Speaker 2 00:48:47 And that was the end of Dave and the end of the group basically at that point. And John did some things on his own for a while, but never that kind of stuff. He just became a solo jazz singer. Hmm. So that's why when he came back with his family and did the company, that was quite a big deal. Speaker 1 00:49:02 Okay. That's, I mean, to say that they were groundbreaking and seminal and important in that genre is an understatement. Right. Speaker 2 00:49:11 Indeed. Right. And people to this day, if you're a jazz singer, it's very likely you're singing his words at some point. Like I said, he did some, he did a lot of the Bossanova songs. Um, it's hard not to sing John cuz he's, he's, he's so prolific. His stuff is, he's written in ivory genre of jazz. Speaker 1 00:49:30 But some of this has bled over into your cool hands writing. Yes. I can think of a few songs where it's, it's either super fast lyrics or you're basically Vocaling or it's your own version of Yes. Uh, impossibly a number of of words in one phrase that you sing. Uh, the Speaker 2 00:49:52 Right I'm, uh, highly inspired by, by, uh, John and his music. And having spent a great deal, John, John and I got to be close, and I hate to sound like I'm name dropping, but we called him Uncle John. He's come to our house many times and he, he taught me a lot. He, we had a lot of time together, just the two of us. And, um, before the tour, after the tour, we did another tour together on the west coast. We flew out to LA and we did a week out in la uh, two weeks out in LA where he didn't need to bring me at all, but he was like, you were, you killed yourself on that tour. You're gonna come out to LA and have some fun. You're just gonna have a van and we're just gonna drive around, you know, California for two weeks. Um, but we spent a lot of time together and yeah, there's, uh, I've actually written several Vocalese. Um, I have an album's worth of, of I vocal used a bunch of, of country songs, Speaker 1 00:50:45 <laugh> that Speaker 2 00:50:46 I, that I call Vol Cowles. Speaker 1 00:50:48 Of course. Speaker 2 00:50:48 Of course. And, uh, and I had took a couple of like, monk songs that I put Western lyrics to, and I thought, I always thought at some point if the Cool Hands continued, we were gonna do that album. Speaker 1 00:50:58 That's very cool. Ah, that's, and by the way, it's not name dropping when you're actually in the game. I mean, you're, it's not like you just met him once and then you reference him. That was a important relationship in your life, very important to the end of his life. Right? Speaker 2 00:51:14 Yeah. John passed away some years ago. I'd, I'd moved back east and was in touch with him and I'd see him and then his, and then Judith, his lovely wife, she passed away. Um, she was, and uh, John and I would still stay in touch and he'd still be performing now and then, although not as much. And, uh, at the, yeah, I, yes, I would go down to visit John in the last, last months and go visit him. Um, great story. He was, his, his daughter Aria, who I knew pretty well, she was on tour with us, was, was living with him at that point in his apartment. He still had his apartment down, way down, uh, and um, west End. And, uh, he couldn't leave the apartment. He really was not, not that well. And I came down to visit and Aria meets me at the door with a smirk and I say, what's up? She goes, um, you know, I had to dress him in his best suit. And I said, why she goes because he was like, Luke's coming, Speaker 1 00:52:13 <laugh> Speaker 2 00:52:14 And, uh, Speaker 1 00:52:15 Amazing. Speaker 2 00:52:15 So John still wanted to get all dressed up cuz Luke was coming. He treated me so well always. And just, I, I dunno how someone could love someone as much as he did. He was just wonderful. Just so wonderful. Speaker 1 00:52:26 So tell me then, how this influenced you once. So let's keep morphing with the cool hands because mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I mean, when you were here in Chicago, the Cool Hands were a big deal. People loved them. I loved going to Cool Hand's gigs at the Beat Kitchen eventually. Yeah. At Shuba Shuba. A lot of different sites. And you had a, a solid devoted following. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, Speaker 2 00:52:50 I guess. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:52:51 But let's get out of this Sandra Julian era and more forward. So we get to the, was it next? How did Alice Kerwin get here? Speaker 2 00:53:02 Uh, Alice, well, I couldn't leave it alone. As I said, I just kept wanting to tweak it and I felt like I'd found many ways. I've sort of felt like I'd found my idiom. I'd found the thing that I was, that not anybody else was really doing. You know, you kind of always wanna do that. What's something I'd come up with that might have its own little following that fits me? And this felt like it. I love this kind of music. I was making it more jazzy all the time, or kept getting jazzier and Jazzier. Um, and, uh, as we became a band, um, at some point, Alice Kerwin, uh, saw us. Alice is a great singer. She was here in town and she was from Connecticut originally herself. And she saw the cool hands and we became friends. And at some point in talking about how I wanna take this in a different direction, I wanna try something different. Speaker 2 00:53:51 Uh, it probably was a time where, I don't know if we were playing a lot or not, but she and I met and talked and she at some point just said, I just gotta be frank with you. I wanna be a cool hand. I want the, I wanna be in this, this is the band I was meant to sing in. And she said, right now I'm in a, I'm in a vocal group called The Pumps, which was a popular vocal group in town. She said, but this is what I really wanna do. And so, um, there are a little minutiae along the way, but basically the long story short, or maybe it's too late for that, um, Alice became part, part of the Cool Hands. Mary was one of the cool hands. And then another, and we had a couple of other singers for a while. And eventually it settled down where it was Alice, Mary, and me. And we no longer had three vocalists. We, uh, yeah. Cause I don't consider myself one of them. We had two vocalists and me. Right. And I say that because, well, more than half the songs were, were sung by Alison Mary. I wrote mostly for them to sing. And I only sang a song if I felt like I, it would sound wrong coming from them. Speaker 1 00:54:54 Right. Well, you have your own signature Luke songs. Speaker 2 00:54:58 Right. Because they were Speaker 1 00:55:00 With her, with them in the background. Speaker 2 00:55:01 They always sang on everything. Right? Yeah. But most of the songs, many of the songs I didn'ts on at all, it was just the two of them rocking out up front. Speaker 1 00:55:08 And did you, how many of the, like the trio songs, could you transfer into duo songs? Speaker 2 00:55:14 Well, the songs were also evolving. And the song, the band becoming more Jazzy, it started to have a little bit of like a Manhattan transfer vibe to it, where it was really about this tight three-part harmony in front of a real cooking rhythm section and some great soloists. And at the same point in time, I met some great soloists, met Don Steenberg, who was the perfect foil for us, because Don is a great jazz mandolin player and also plays fiddle and guitar. So he straddles that line between country and jazz, which is where we were. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So he was, he was made for the band. But we all, I also met Brad Good, uh, trumpet or extraordinary, Jeff Newell. Speaker 1 00:55:50 Right. So for a certain incarnation you had Luke in the Cool Hands and the little big horns. Speaker 2 00:55:56 Right. With Jeff Newell, who's six four and Brad Good. Who's maybe five four, I don't know. <laugh> playing Trumpeted Sacks with us. Right. This was probably the, the biggest the group had become. And for me, that was where it really started to, to hum really had fun. And we sang, we sang harmonies. So just three of us singing up front. Uh, bass player Glen played bass, but he also, Glen De Michael also plays Pedal steel guitar. So on the more country songs, he'd switched to Pedal Steel, I'd play bass. So it was real, it was really a thing. And around that time, we got an offer from Shuba to play there every Monday night. So we had sort of a house gig. Right. Which was fabulous cuz I was, I could write new songs every single week and we could try out new material every week. So by the time we were doing that, we were up, we had 50 or 60 cool hand songs. Speaker 1 00:56:40 Yeah. And it was a, you guys were the most fun live of any Right. Because you could Speaker 2 00:56:47 Really, it was most fun for us on stage. Speaker 1 00:56:49 You could really play the room and the songs were up and fun. And if the room was up and fun, it got even. Right. It was the, it was really fun. That Speaker 2 00:56:57 Was a great gig. And it did afford us a chance to, for me, a chance to really figure out how I wanted this to work. And it, and it was, uh, it just continued to evolve that way. And Speaker 1 00:57:07 You have a number of CDs. How many? Speaker 2 00:57:10 Two, two official CDs with the Cool Hands. The first one was just called Luke In the Cool Hands, which we self-produced in 94, believe it or not. That's back in the other, uh, millennium. Yes. Um, and uh, and that was while we were playing at Cuba's. We released that record. And then four years later, the year I actually left town right near the end, Brad Goods, uh, Brad Good had a, was making jazz records on a label called Sunlight. And he came to me and said, let's do a record together. Speaker 1 00:57:40 Oh, that's how that came together. Speaker 2 00:57:41 They want me to make another record. I don't really have one in me right now. Let's do it together. And we decided to use Mary and Alison me to sing, but Brad's band to play it. So we didn't use my group at that point. And, um, my group, the Cool Hands was never my group. Um, but we used the Brad Goods quintet to play it who did not know our songs at all. Speaker 1 00:58:04 Okay. Speaker 2 00:58:04 Um, and we recorded it. Brad and I met a couple times. Brad wrote a couple of the, the horn arrangements. He had three horns, trumpet, trombone and tenor. And I wrote the rest of the horn arrangements. We picked the songs we liked cuz Brad had been playing with us. He knew the material and, um, rearranged things a little bit. And, um, the, the record label owner said, if you're gonna do that, that's okay. But you have to do at least a couple standards because radio stations aren't gonna play songs. They don't know if we're gonna get airplay. You gotta, they've gotta be able to recognize the title. So do a couple of old standards, you can do 'em Cool Hand style. Speaker 1 00:58:40 So that's how you got, um, what were the ones on? What did you do? Speaker 2 00:58:45 We, uh, we did Don't Fence Me In. Speaker 1 00:58:47 Don't Fence Me In. Speaker 2 00:58:48 And we did, uh, Moonlight Serenade. Speaker 1 00:58:51 Oh, nice. Speaker 2 00:58:52 Uh, which was a real departure to try to make that sound like cow song, but it kind of worked. And then we recorded it over the course of a couple of, a couple of weeks we record. He brought in, uh, um, uh, uh, an engineer from LA who was fabulous. Great guy, van Cop, I think his last name was. And, uh, and we recorded all the band stuff first. And I sort of conducted the band without the singers there. Wild. I wrote all the charts and we pulled an all nighter and, uh, recorded all of the band stuff, um, in a studio downtown. And then over the course of the week, we brought the singers in and added in the vocals, uh, with Brad, sort of, uh, when I was singing Brad was in the booth, sort of being my ears in the booth, sort of co-producing it. Speaker 1 00:59:33 Yeah. Love that album. Speaker 2 00:59:35 I love that album too. And, uh, Brad plays great, the band. It's stunning to listen to it. And here are times where you can't imagine that the band wasn't responding to the singers. We just got so lucky with some of that. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:59:48 Very cool. So now, as much as I hate to, let's leave Luke in the cool hands Okay. A little bit for a while. So you're at the height of your fame in Chicago and you move away Speaker 2 01:00:02 Yes. Speaker 1 01:00:03 For lots of reasons. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> family and friends and stuff. You end up on the East Coast where you still are. Yes. And you become more, you at some point went and got a master's degree in education, right? Speaker 2 01:00:18 Music ed. Yep. Yes. From, uh, from bu from Boston University while I was teaching. Yeah. We moved back sometime in the late nineties. Things started to, um, dissolve around Luca, the Khans. It seemed like everyone was moving. Um Oh, right. Alice Kerwin moved to Los Angeles with her, uh, lovely husband, Mike. Michael Butler. Murray, they're out there now. And, uh, Brad Good. Got a gig in Ohio and he started teaching at a school in Ohio. I can't remember exactly where. And, um, my wife and I had a, had our lovely daughter, grace. And when, uh, and we just decided, um, for whatever reasons to, to go back to where she and I were both from my wife and I, uh, Connecticut, we moved back to Connecticut. And, um, and, uh, I got a, not long after being there, someone said, oh, they're looking for a music teacher at a school. And it was pretty funny since I'd gone to college and swore I'd never be a music teacher, but I was back in Connecticut and aside from playing some ragtime gigs and jazz gigs here and there, um, I wanted, I needed something. So I did that and realizing that there was a lot I needed to learn. I looked into where I could get a master's in music ed. And, uh, I did that not that long ago, actually. It took me a while to finally get that done. And Speaker 1 01:01:38 I remember though, after you did it and you started teaching, you were surprised how much you loved it. Speaker 2 01:01:46 Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, I was lucky enough to, I was brought into a school that really had no music program and they said build it. And so, um, not unlike me building my own major in college, and it played and Speaker 1 01:02:01 Your own band in Speaker 2 01:02:02 Chicago. Right. I guess. And so it kind of played into my creative side. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I don't know how much I would've loved it had I gone to a school where they said, okay, here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna do this and here's your charts and, you know, uh, every year they need to learn these songs for this, whatever. Um, they really said, build it however you wanna build it. Um, and the students were fabulous and getting to work with students that were eager to learn about this music, and I could continue to be creative. We, I wrote all the, the charts for the choir. I wrote charts for the jazz band. Um, this Speaker 1 01:02:34 Is what I tell friends, and I don't even know if it's true, but it's my version of what I perceived you were doing. Okay. If you were relatively small school. I said, Luke told me he had a cellist, a decent clarinet player, and a guy who sort of could play flute and, and a guy who could play some piano. And he arranged the entire Christmas concert for that ensemble. You know what I mean? It's like whatever you had, you wrote charts for. Speaker 2 01:03:00 Right. It was a small school and it was that, I mean, um, yeah, you had to deal with what you had and it was often far less, uh, that would've been easy. <laugh>. It was the harp player, electric guitarist, trombone and ukulele group that was probably one of the trickiest groups to, to write for. But um, yeah, so it, so my need to always be reinventing things and trying to find new ways there, it was right in front of me. So it was fun and the students took to it and it was, and that part of it was all great. Speaker 1 01:03:31 And it really paid off later in your career when you and I joined forces to do a production of Cabaret Speaker 2 01:03:39 Oh my. Yes. Speaker 1 01:03:40 With no actors, no bands, no resources, and barely anything else. And I was ready to jump off a cliff and you were like, no, come on. I've done sound of music with no Nazis and one nun, you know, I, we can do this. Right. Like, you could handle any variation. You're like, there's a way to solve this. Speaker 2 01:04:00 Well, you do. I did learn a lot of that. And I learned, um, yeah, I, I, I, it was, it was a great experience because it, it, um, it's humbling at times, which is, you know, kind of my whole life has been. But just that idea of, alright, this is what you've got, work with it. Can you do it? It'd be easy if to walk in a room with, you know, everybody already know in the part. Professionals, what do you do when no plays, you know, this instrument and you need that instrument. So, but Speaker 1 01:04:30 You need 35 minutes of a Christmas program. Speaker 2 01:04:32 Right, right. What so you, um, so yeah, I, and I, I kind of like, I, I feel like that's something I'm, I'm designed for. Speaker 1 01:04:40 The challenge sort of gets your juices flowing. Yeah, Speaker 2 01:04:44 Yeah. And just that sense of like, it's gonna be good, it's gonna be good. We're just gonna make it good. Whatever it is, we're gonna make it good. They're gonna be proud of it. Speaker 1 01:04:52 That's a great attitude. I wish I could, you know, I wish I could like, you know, package that up and sell it. <laugh>. That's what I do here. This is all about commerce. So speaking of commerce, yes. You've made some movies in your life as an actor. Talk about like, how many lives have you had in one life? So let's go film for a second. Speaker 2 01:05:14 Well, that's, uh, you know, because I was, uh, I think of what would've happened if I hadn't become a composition major in college, if I just stayed with theater, it would've been very interesting because I have always done theater since I was a, a, a youngster. I always would be in the, wherever I could get into a play or whatever. And I wrote, and I've always written plays and things like that. Theater's always been a big part of me. And when I came to Chicago, um, and New York, uh, I would pursue both music and acting full. And, um, and that's a tricky thing to do because what ends up ha you think, oh, two total fields, I'll have twice as much work. But what Alex and inevitably, you've already taken the music gig when they offer you the theater gig and you've already taken the theater gig when they've offered you the music gig. So you're saying no a lot Speaker 1 01:05:57 And well, if you're lucky, right. You're saying no. Right. Speaker 2 01:06:01 But Speaker 1 01:06:01 What I found, cuz I do sort of the same straddle, is it just confuses people. Yes. Speaker 2 01:06:06 Oh, and then they, you were an actor, they stopped Speaker 1 01:06:08 Calling you. Yeah. They don't know where to put you. Speaker 2 01:06:10 Right. It's like, oh, last time I called you, you were doing theater. So I'm, you know, sorry, you can't do that tour with us. Speaker 1 01:06:15 Well, just a side note, I, I toured a lot in the nineties. You sure did. Did. But I stopped, like in 99 I left cats and I decided to stay in Chicago. I still have people to say like, oh, you're back in town. <laugh>. Yes. So I've had a big impact. Let's pause for one second. Speaker 2 01:06:35 What did I say? Speaker 1 01:06:38 Oh, had to solve, solve a dog problem. If you're a loyal listener to Chicago Musician Podcast, I'm talking to my brother Randy now. Um, hi Randy. Then you'll realize there's, there are dog issues every now and again on mic, if not on camera. So, but back to Luke. So <laugh> No. Cause I wanna hear at least That's right Luke. Uh, he was not the dog issue. Just, just for my loyal listener. Okay. Um, so I know you did tv, you did the Untouchables in Chicago. Right? Speaker 2 01:07:13 Can I just talk about that for a minute? Yes. Uh, I mentioned earlier about Mark Benninghoff and my friend who was in New York that got the audition. So what makes, uh, and I said he's a very interesting, uh, individual, but also he and I have had an interesting relationship. We met for about a year in college and then disappeared. And that was it. I thought I'd never see him again. And then bang, I find him in New York and I get cast and he and I hung out in New York together for a while and then disappeared again. And then I go to Chicago and, um, I'm auditioning for shows in commercials and all that. And I'm getting my, you know, like one out of every 10,000 auditions I get one. Right. So that's reason to stay. Right. Um, and I get cast in, uh, I finally, I didn't have, uh, my agent finally got me a TV audition, auditioned for a show called The Untouchables that was filming in Chicago at the time. Speaker 2 01:08:03 And, uh, it was an episode, very strange episode about Nazis. And, uh, and it's, and the guest star on it was Hollis Resnick. And I was auditioned to play, uh, a role opposite her. I did get that. So they gave me a smaller part and um, and I get to the set and who's there, but Mark Benning Hoffen, he's also in this episode whom I haven't seen since New York lo many, many years earlier. He was also on that episode and I saw him, we ended up walking into the makeup trailer at the same time or something out of Speaker 1 01:08:39 The blue. Amazing. Speaker 2 01:08:40 He at that point was living in Minneapolis. He, uh, he's done a lot of stuff at the Guthrie. Okay. And, uh, and so we reconnected and we had a great time talking cuz when you're on a set, you spend most of your time sitting around talking. And so we caught up with each other and, um, I just had a, had a wonderful experience seeing Mark Benninghoff and out of the blue. Um, and I was a small part. I ended up, I don't think I had a line. I, one, I had one scene with the line, which ended up getting cut. And then another scene, I was just supposed to walk out a door and I of course couldn't help but like do a little ad lib, but that's in. But it was a, just a very weird episode. Mostly you see a photo of me that's like the biggest part. But, um, with Speaker 1 01:09:25 Tomm Amanda's, right? Was he No, not which Amanda's was Elliot Ness. Speaker 2 01:09:30 Oh gosh. I don't know. But he wasn't an had nothing to do with my storyline. No. I mean eventually he probably did. But I was working in some laboratory where the Nazis wanted to infiltrate. Nice. So all I knew were the Nazis. So you Speaker 1 01:09:42 Didn't oh, you didn't get to hang out with Hol Hollis then either? No, no screen time with her. Speaker 2 01:09:46 No, Hollis was, uh, she saw my photo. She was sitting in a restaurant where she sees my photo <laugh>. That's, that's that was it. No, I spent, I didn't get to see her ever. I, what days she shot. But I did that, I did a couple of commercials. Um, not a ton of work because again, I was also doing music pursuing that. Um, and I don't know, what if I had just done one or the other. But Speaker 1 01:10:08 You've music directed more than a few shows here in Chicago. Speaker 2 01:10:12 Yes. Yeah. I had some great experiences doing that for sure. Um, Speaker 1 01:10:15 Always Patsy Klein, that's one of our cross-reference right points. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2 01:10:20 Off. Yeah. That was great. Patsy was great and Alice Kerwin was in that and Hollis, Speaker 1 01:10:24 Right. Check out episode one of season two of Chicago musician for more about Patsy Klein. We could go on and on. Speaker 2 01:10:30 Right. And, uh, yeah, bill Harrison played in the pit. And Mike Michael Butler Murray, I brought him in. He played guitar for that show. Right. And that's where he started dating Alice Kerwin. And now they're out in Los Angeles having been married for 35 years. Next May, I don't know Speaker 1 01:10:44 How long. Oh, that's cray cray. Long time. And Sarah Underwood, who then did it when I directed it up in, uh, peninsula Players. Right. With Dawn. Right. And Dawn who was also in Speaker 2 01:10:54 Your production. Right, right. Megan McDonough was the first Patsy when we first did it. Right. And then it moved to the Apollo and that's when Hollis took over Patsy and uh, I forget who else was in there. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That was a great experience. Bill played bass. I and I played piano. What Speaker 1 01:11:10 Else did you do in this town? Um, that song of Singapore, Speaker 2 01:11:14 I did Song of Singapore, which everyone bashes. It seems to be fun to bash. I actually enjoyed it a great deal. It was a fun experience cuz it was a very different role for me. Um, Speaker 1 01:11:23 But you weren't the MD of that one, were you? Speaker 2 01:11:25 No. Okay. No, I wasn't. Um, but it was a fun, it was a fun experience, but clearly doomed from the start. We knew it was kind of doomed. It was kind of a, a bit of a cheesy, it was only gonna work if they could figure out how to make, cuz it was cheesy parody is always tricky to begin with. And, and this was a cheesy parody. Um, what I liked was that most of the singing, it's a show set in the forties in Singapore or late thirties, I guess. Most of the singing is four part harmony, tight vocal arrangements. And the vocal arrangements were actually done by, um, I, I, uh, uh, a gentleman who did a lot of Manhattan transfer vocal arrangements. So somebody who loves Lamber Hendrickson Ross. And by default Manhattan Transfer. I was delighted to I to get to sing that kind of tight four part, sometimes five part harmonies where you're singing minor seconds with somebody for the entire song. I loved the challenge of that. So for me that musically it was, it was a fun experience. Speaker 1 01:12:20 That's, do you know what, um, violist call a minor second. <laugh> Unison. There Speaker 2 01:12:28 You go. Thank you. Speaker 1 01:12:29 There you go. Sorry. Violist friends if I have any Speaker 2 01:12:32 Yes. Not anymore. You don't, Speaker 1 01:12:34 I mean, any friends <laugh>. Just the Violas. Okay. So, and then I know it's not, you know, hip to talk about Woody Allen anymore, but you were in a Woody Allen film. Speaker 2 01:12:45 Yes. Yeah. When I moved back east, uh, I had to try to figure out what life looked like, cuz I knew it would be very different from Chicago, where this is the city. I love Chicago, ev everything about it. And moved back to, I wasn't close to New York, but I was meeting people and um, uh, playing some music here and there. And, um, somebody introduced me to somebody and next thing you know, I was getting, uh, I would get occasional calls from two different casting, um, agencies in Boston. And uh, one day they, uh, they sent me a, uh, um, they said they wanted to look at me for, uh, they were looking for somebody to play a piano teacher for a Woody Allen film. And you know what this is like, if it were like a construction worker, you're like, okay, if you say so, but it's a piano teacher. Speaker 2 01:13:34 I am a piano teacher. Right. So you just assume I've got this, you know? Right. I've got an in. So, uh, I sent my, I sent in my stuff and they liked me and it was like, okay, it's between you and this other person. And they went with this other person. They wanted, whaty wanted a, a woman. So he had a woman piano teacher for, for, uh, the, the lead character. But they said, but would you be willing, it's shooting in Newport, what do you do in this summer? You wanna come do some background work? We'll make sure you kind of, we'll give you good stuff. You're not just gonna be across the street walking. Come, come do it if you want. And I said, sure. Um, because at that point it was Woody Allen. Right. It wasn't Woody Allen. It was Woody Allen. Right. Speaker 2 01:14:13 And, uh, so yeah, so I, I got to spend, um, a week or so it was, it was all shot, um, at the school out on Newport. Was that South Regina? I think whatever the school is out there, that's where we were. And delightful experience in every regard. Um, often got to, you know, got to be in scenes. I I wasn't just background, I was filling up scenes with the, with the, um, major, the leads. Um, one particularly at, can I tell a boring story about this? Yeah, please. Okay. I love boys stories. So the, so the movie was called The Irrational Man. And if you're looking it up on the list of Woody Allen's Best to worst films start near the Bottom <laugh>. Um, and uh, it started Joaquin Phoenix, uh, as, uh, the the male lead. And um, and uh, I was doing a scene where we were at a party with Joaquin and they were, we were in little groups. He was in one group and then the, the other lead was in another group and they were supposed to leave their groups and bump into each other. But the scene starts with us chatting in our groups. And so they put me, uh, in the group and with Joaquin chatting with me before he goes and has an interesting conversation Speaker 1 01:15:23 And out loud conversation. Speaker 2 01:15:24 Right. An out loud. Interesting. Cuz we weren't allowed to make any sounds at all. And, um, but what was, what was interesting for me at least, was, um, that those two, uh, was Woody kept coming over and directing those two with me standing there. You know, what's Who Speaker 1 01:15:39 Was the female lead? Speaker 2 01:15:40 Emma. Emma Stone. Speaker 1 01:15:42 Oh, I've heard of her. Speaker 2 01:15:43 Yeah. Young, but promising. Yeah. Um, and so, uh, whatever you think of Woody, it was just interesting having been a person who really admired Woody Allen early in the old days. You know, having seen a lot of his films. Um, it was just interesting to watch the three of them work together, how he directed them just Speaker 1 01:16:02 Yeah. To be on that set. Speaker 2 01:16:03 Right. And so, uh, um, I'm not in the film a lot, of course couple of different scenes. I have students who texted me and said, loved your ponytail, saw your ponytail. Um, but, uh, that was, that was before any of us decided we shouldn't be fond of Woody. Speaker 1 01:16:20 Well, it's a complicated history to say the least. Speaker 2 01:16:23 Right. And Joaquin was interesting because he's a very, he was a very intense actor. Every time they said cut, he would leave us immediately go walk over towards the windows and just sort of look out the window and stay in character and don't talk to Joaquin. Um, and then he'd come back and he'd be cool. He tried to make me break a couple times and you know, tried to make me talk when you're not supposed to, but then right back very intense. Don't talk to Joaquin. Um, Speaker 1 01:16:49 That's cool. Speaker 2 01:16:50 Yeah. So that was a fun experience. And uh, I've had a couple of those where I was supposed to be in one role, not supposed to audition for a role. They liked me, ended up going with someone else and then said, you wanna still be in it? You know, why not? If you wanna just be hang around. Right. So I have had a couple lows back east, which I didn't expect cuz it's, Speaker 1 01:17:06 It's not a major film. Speaker 2 01:17:08 Right. Speaker 1 01:17:09 In Boston. Speaker 2 01:17:10 Didn't think, well, I'm gonna leave Chicago and go back to Connecticut and become a film star. You Speaker 1 01:17:14 Know, it is one of, I, my career regrets is that I've never really been, I haven't been in a movie, but I haven't even spent any time on set. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I just wish I'd been in that in environment and see, you know, had to sit there for six hours while they light somebody and then you shoot for 12 seconds and then it's another six hours. Speaker 2 01:17:32 Right, right. Speaker 1 01:17:32 But it would be fascinating just to know the mechanics of it. Even when I lived in LA my brush with greatness is I went to a filming of The Facts of Life when my roommate was in it and I went to a, a taping of, uh, cheers. Wow. A cheers episode Right. With James Bur the whole thing, the whole gang doing it deadly boring. Yeah. Because it takes so long. Yeah. At first it's really cool. There they are. It's Ted Danson. Right, right, right. You know, and then in hour five you're like, oh my God, they're going to do that where she walks in again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but that's as, that's my full film experience. Thank you. <laugh>. I'll post photos if I Lovely. Wow. If they ever existed. Um, so, um, I, now you're teaching at the Hart School of Music in Hartford. Yes. Your, your teaching thing is still a thing. That's pretty cool. Yes, yes. Famous school. Famous music school. But, and do you, is there opportunity for side gigs in Connecticut? What's the music scene? It's, Speaker 2 01:18:41 There is a music scene in Connecticut and I've had, uh, a different, uh, seasons of that. Um, when I was teaching at the high school, the, my first teaching job there, uh, I had a little more time to myself to do that, but I tend to jump in with both feet when I have something like this. And because I see them as not just teaching opportunities but as creative opportunities, which is probably the mistake I make now that I'm thinking about it. I would think, oh, they've given me an ensemble to teach. I'm not gonna buy charts. I'm gonna write those, those charts. Why would I do that? Why would I buy somebody else's charts? So I, I'm often in my basement. I'm now in my basement writing the charts for my, for my, uh, jazz band and for my commercial ensembles. I teach in what's called the Commercial Music Program at the Hart School, which they're building. Speaker 2 01:19:30 This is a new program, which is not jazz or classical Harts. The Conservatory of the Hart School has a great classical music program. And Jackie MacClean started the Jackie McLean Institute decades ago, which is a great jazz program. Jevon Jackson runs that. I'm doing a good job of name dropping, aren't I? Yeah. Didn't realize it. Yeah. Actually. And now they want to build, uh, the rest of the music program, a giant umbrella they call commercial music. And, um, again, they said, can you build it? And I sort of like fell in my lap. And so for the five, last five years, that's kind of what we've been doing. We started with a few students and we are now building it. I'm building ensembles, hiring faculty who could come in and teach, not classical voice, but commercial voice. Actually, those faculty were already there. But, uh, we, commercial guitar, commercial bass, commercial, we talked about, should we call it contemporary? You know, it's, it's hard to label it, but it means everything that's not classical or jazz. Yeah. Um, so we have like singer songwriter students who play great finger style acoustic guitar, but next to another student who can play, you know, every like Speaker 1 01:20:31 Segovia or something, Speaker 2 01:20:33 Or hen Jimmy Hendricks solo. Oh. So, and they're both considered guitar students at the school because they're doing what serves their art. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and so I've been doing that now for five years and yes. And I, so I do have some time to keep doing some gigs here and there. I started two ensembles with fellow heart teachers. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, I have one group with, uh, with two other, uh, friends of mine that play, um, sort of a Brazilian bossanova jazz music with a clarinet friend of mine, Alex and a flute player, a friend Gonzalo. But again, I wrote all the charts and music for that. Right. And I started a group with a friend of mine from So Speaker 1 01:21:06 Are you, are you guitar in that piano? Speaker 2 01:21:09 Yes, I play guitar in that. Okay. And the other group, uh, I'm talking very fast, sorry. Uh, my friend Esther Esther, she's from, uh, Wuhan China. She was teaching at Heart school and one day I Speaker 1 01:21:21 Popular location these days. Speaker 2 01:21:23 Yes. I saw her playing the Jiang at a, demonstrating the JE to the students. And as she was leaving, I literally chased her down the hall and said, we have to jam. We have to jam. Now I have to jam with you because I just felt like she could improvise on the Jiang. And, and we did and we got together, I brought my guitar and we would improvise Gu Jong guitar stuff until I finally turned that into a band. And I wrote a bunch of charts for Speaker 1 01:21:46 That. So tell me what a Gu Jong is. Speaker 2 01:21:48 Gu Jong is the Chinese zither. It's that real long table like instrument with long, long strings that you, you wear these little finger picks and then your other hand you can bend the strings cuz they're so long. So you could pick, pick up all the other notes by bending the strings. Um, I've learned a lot about Chinese music from her. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and we had a, we had a group with her and, and myself and Alex, Alex Collus, who plays Kremer Clarinet and I played sort of a hot club guitar. And so it's this weird cultural potato salad. Speaker 1 01:22:17 Yeah. I can see that being popular at weddings. Speaker 2 01:22:20 Uh, we have three, three people who liked it so Speaker 1 01:22:22 Far. So Chinese Jewish weddings. Speaker 2 01:22:24 Yes. Yes. Right. Speaker 1 01:22:26 But um, Speaker 2 01:22:27 But so I have had those venues and again, it's all, to me, it seems to always be, I'd rather do that whether three people like it or not than to, to just go out. And I shouldn't say just then to go out and play for, you know, let's go play a wedding and do all the songs, everybody else at this. At some point I just decided if I'm not writing for the group, I'm not sure I wanna do that group. Speaker 1 01:22:48 Right. Well it's the's your wheelhouse. Yeah. Let me, I can write the charts. I like to write the charts. So, and the, even building the, the music program, it's like, okay, I'm pretty good at making something where there is nothing. Right. I think that's like one of your major skills. Speaker 2 01:23:07 Well it's, it seems to keep falling in my lap for better or worse. That's what I end Speaker 1 01:23:11 Up doing. Well, because you can do it. So I want to end with, I wanna throw you a weird curve ball Uhoh. And because I know that you've told me you do this with your students, like they come in and you say, what do you listen to? And they go, Kendrick Lamar. You're like, how do I relate that to, you know, um, Jerome Kern, what, what can I, you know what I mean? <laugh>, but you, you say like, sometimes you come up with a list of 20 songs they should know in this genre or that genre. And um, so if you had students and you were saying you must learn the Luke and the Cool Hands over, what is the, what are the top 10 Luke and the Cool Hands songs Speaker 2 01:23:54 Oh my Speaker 1 01:23:55 Goodness. That you would want them, that would sort of give them the idea of the whole range of the sort of things you did. Maybe even from like the old Cowboy Trio up into like, you know, meanwhile and some of those scat faced ones. Speaker 2 01:24:10 Right. Oh my goodness. Um, gee, why I'd have to talk myself into making my student listen to that, but, well, Speaker 1 01:24:19 I think of Swing By My Place on your way home. Speaker 2 01:24:23 Yes. Speaker 1 01:24:23 Beautiful. Speaker 2 01:24:24 Some of the songs are definitely more ra what you might call radio friendly songs. I mean, some are a little bit further outside and sort of experimental, adventurous, but some are a little bit more like, that's just a pretty decent song. And I'd say Swing By My Place is one of those. Speaker 1 01:24:38 What do you, so what if you had to play 10 songs that would represent you? Right. What would they be? Speaker 2 01:24:43 Um, uh, well, um, I think that, uh, you mentioned meanwhile, I think that's a pretty cool different kind of song that sort of shows the real jazzy vocal side to us. Uh, it's more like bebop than many of our, my other songs. And that's, that I felt was like stretching the limits of what people consider that style of music. But, um, some like real straight ahead stuff like Swing By My Place Rain Dance, I think is a, is a pretty solid ballad of my ballads. Um, and then some of the more interesting songs that kind of, uh, um, well a couple of my songs that I sing, I always liked When the World Was Young. I think that's a really cool song. Or Tall Ark and Lonesome. Uh, it depends on what you wanna show them. If you wanna show 'em like, here's songwriting, um, or this is how Innovative it was, it would, there would be a different group of songs. Speaker 2 01:25:33 Um, meanwhile it's a little more innovative. Um, whereas, uh, shoot Low or I Shot The Bourbon, those are pretty much straight ahead songs. Um, my daughter just mentioned how much she recently really likes Back in the Battle again. Mm. And we, I talked to her about, I said, you know, there's two things I did with, I talked to her about how I, I I get hooked on, I get wrapped up in the craft of songwriting sometimes maybe too much. But, um, I said, you know, in that song I wanted to find a way to do a turnaround that wasn't the five chord. Cuz every song I've ever done, every pop song, you get to the end of the first verse and then you play the five chord and then start the second verse, usually back on the one chord. I says, why, why, why does it have to be the five chord? And so that song, I picked a major two chord, and if you listen to it, where you would expect there to be the five chord between the first two verses, we play a major two chord just because I wanted to see if it would, if people would accept that as the turnaround chord. So stupid things like that. Um, I dunno if it's stupid, but I can't help tweaking things like that. Right. Speaker 1 01:26:34 You give yourself a mission or a goal or a a. Speaker 2 01:26:38 Right. And the bridge of that song has a six four bar every other bar, which was always fun to play at clubs where people were dancing. Right, exactly. It Speaker 1 01:26:46 Totally Speaker 2 01:26:46 Messed them up. Um, so that one, um, and, and I'm so sentimentally attached to any of the stuff I did with Brad. Good on that second record. It was so much fun to make that record Western Avenue. Um, any of the songs were Brad Lonesome Moon. Uh, Speaker 1 01:27:04 See, you're gonna have trouble getting your list down to 20. Speaker 2 01:27:07 Did I hit 10? Speaker 1 01:27:07 Oh yeah, we're up like 12, 13. Okay. And you've just scratched the surface of Luke and the Cool Hand. And in fact, I feel like we just scratched the surface on Luke Nelson himself. But, uh, I, I enjoyed our conversation. I learned a lot about you and I've known you for a long time. Speaker 2 01:27:24 Yeah. I learned some things myself. This was very, this is, I I haven't thought about a lot of this in Speaker 1 01:27:28 A you have self revelations. Wait a minute. I should have figured out that part. Right? Speaker 2 01:27:32 Are you kidding Speaker 1 01:27:33 Me? 20 years ago, Speaker 2 01:27:34 I, I hung out with John Hendricks. What was I thinking? Speaker 1 01:27:37 Yeah, well that's what this is. It's basically therapy on tape. Yes. Without the tape. Speaker 2 01:27:42 Well, okay. It checks in the mail. Thank you. And Speaker 1 01:27:43 Really without any sort of useful therapy, <laugh> Speaker 2 01:27:47 Just, just a lot of exposure. Speaker 1 01:27:49 Exactly. So this will, both of my listeners will love this. Speaker 2 01:27:53 Well, hello to both of you. Speaker 1 01:27:54 Yeah. And so I can't thank you enough. It's great. I'm a I'm glad you're here in Chicago. Speaker 2 01:27:59 Can I say one last thing here? Speaker 1 01:28:01 I guess so Speaker 2 01:28:02 I can, as I'm sitting here about to wrap things up and I don't know if I've mentioned Sharon, my wife, her name is Sharon. I don't think I might have said that. But Sharon is my lovely wife, and Grace is my lovely daughter. And, uh, years from now, when this is the only podcast that's out there, they'll be able to hear it and go, oh, he did mention us. Oh, that's right. So I'm pretty, I could be pretty bad about that sort of thing. So if there are any names that I feel, did Speaker 1 01:28:21 You have any pets or anything? No. Sharon's allergic, Speaker 2 01:28:25 So. Right. We have birds, we had some great birds, but if there are any names I feel good about dropping. It's those two wonderful people, grace and Sharon. So Speaker 1 01:28:31 I know them both. I'm lucky to know them both. They're lovely and, uh, yeah. So, but you know, you, a lot of your life choices are based on those two ladies. That's true. So as, even though we didn't dwell on that, why are we in Connecticut? Why are we, why am I teaching? Why am I that it's like that's how, that's what shapes our lives. That's I think all of us. Right. Any artist has made their choices about Sure. I'd like to just ride in a van with John Hendrix for the rest of my life. Can I afford that? Uh, probably not. Yeah. Or will I be fulfilled by that? Uh, Speaker 2 01:29:04 I might miss my wife at some point. Speaker 1 01:29:06 Yeah. Yeah. If you, you didn't have a wife at that point though, did you? Speaker 2 01:29:10 Um, no, I didn't. No, I didn't. Correct. Speaker 1 01:29:13 Well, congratulations. But Speaker 2 01:29:15 I do. Now Speaker 1 01:29:15 You got one eventually. Whohoo. Whohoo. What a great thing. Alright, I, my thanks to Luke Nelson and everyone else involved in this podcast, which was Luke and me. Thank Speaker 2 01:29:25 You Shawn. Speaker 1 01:29:26 Thank you. And, and a little dog barking. Speaker 2 01:29:28 Excellent job for, Speaker 1 01:29:29 For atmosphere. Speaker 2 01:29:30 If you wanna take this on the road, let me know. I'm a really good road manager. <laugh>. Speaker 1 01:29:34 Now, now, now, once you figured out that you fly the family Yes. And, you know, drive with the bands. Yeah. I think that's a good sort of just mantra in life with the family. Fly the family drive with the band. The band or the band. Speaker 2 01:29:49 The band. The band. I think that's a T-shirt. Okay. Speaker 1 01:29:53 We can, uh, monetize that as they say. Let's Speaker 2 01:29:57 See. Nicely done. Speaker 1 01:29:58 That's the first chip thing I said all day. All right. Thanks to Luke Nelson. Uh, join us again next time for another, another exciting episode of Chicago Musician. See ya then. I'm your host, Sean Stengel. Bye. Speaker 2 01:30:12 Sharp 11. Speaker 1 01:30:15 That was my nickname in the, you know, the locker room. Speaker 2 01:30:19 <laugh>, you didn't record what we just said, <laugh>. That's not good podcast material. Speaker 1 01:30:29 No, no, no. We're done.