Showing posts with label #folk music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #folk music. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Jesse Colin Young Exclusive Interview: Legendary Performer Reveals Longtime Struggles with Lyme Disease


By Ray Shasho

Exclusive Interview with Jesse Colin Young:

 'The Youngbloods' were a psychedelic-folk rock band that mellowed millions across the globe with their musical directive for peace and brotherhood entitled “Get Together.” The song was penned by singer-songwriter Chet Powers (Dino Valenti/Quicksilver Messenger Service) and monumentally performed by Jesse Colin Young (vocals, bass, guitar), Jerry Corbitt (vocals, lead guitar), Lowell Levinger known as “Banana” (electric piano, guitar), and Joe Bauer (drums).

The group’s first two releases ‘The Youngbloods’ and ‘Earth Music’ were produced by Felix Pappalardi (Cream/Mountain). After the success of “Get Together” (1967) the band moved to San Francisco during the ‘Summer of Love,’ an ambience conforming to their lifestyles. Their debut album also generated a minor hit with “Grizzly Bear” (1967) written by Jerry Corbitt.

The Youngbloods attained greater success after “Get Together” was reissued in (1969), peaking at #5 on the Billboard’s Hot 100. After co-founder Jerry Corbitt left the band, Jesse became the principal songwriter. The Youngbloods third studio release ‘Elephant Mountain’ spawned the Jesse Colin Young penned classics … “Darkness Darkness” and “Sunlight.”

Between 1970 and ’72, a trio version of The Youngbloods released four albums … ‘Good and Dusty,’High on a Ridgetop,’ and two live recordings ‘Rock Festival’ and ‘Ride the Wind.’ The Youngbloods parted ways in 1972 as Jesse Colin Young embarked on a successful solo journey. Jesse released ‘Together’ his first solo effort since ‘Young Blood’ (1965) and ‘The Soul of a City Boy’ (1964).

In 1973, Jesse Colin Young released his critically-acclaimed and commercially successful ‘Song for Juli’ album featuring the tracks “Mornin’ Sun,” “Song for Juli,” and “Miss Hesitation.” Country fusion … jazz fusion … blues rock … Young’s musical ingenuity endured with subsequent releases… ‘Light Shine’ (1974), ‘Songbird’ (1975), ‘On the Road’ (1975), and ‘Love on the Wing’ (1976)

In 1979, Jesse closed the ‘No Nukes’ concert and movie along with Jackson Browne, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash, while performing The Youngbloods classic hit “Get Together.”

In October of 1995, the Mount Vision fire destroyed Jesse Colin Young’s home in Inverness Park, California. Over 12,000 acres burned over 4 days destroying 48 hillside homes and incurring 20-million dollars in damage, including Jesse’s Point Reyes ridgetop home in the hills overlooking Tomales Bay. Everything was destroyed except for his recording studio.

Jesse Colin Young has performed with Led Zeppelin, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to name just a few.

In 2003, legendary Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant won the Grammy for ‘Best Rock Vocal’ for his cover version of “Darkness Darkness” penned by Young.

Jesse Colin Young currently lives in Aiken, South Carolina and is recording tracks for a brand new album that will feature Julliard pianist Donald Vega and Jesse’s son Tristan. Watch for a possible release in 2015. Jesse and his wife Connie also perpetuate a Certified Organic Farm entitled ‘Jesse’s Kona Coffee’ located in the Kona district of Hawaii.

I had the incredible pleasure of chatting with Jesse Colin Young recently about … His struggles with Lyme disease…. The Youngbloods … The inception of “Get Together” …The passing of his best friend Jerry Corbitt … Supporting our Vets … Jesse’s sons in the music business … Jesse’s new album … Walking off the ‘Tonight Show with Johnny Carson’ … My infamous ‘Field of Dreams’ wish question and much-much more!

Here’s my recent interview with legendary folk-rock/ singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/ founding member & lead vocalist with ‘The Youngbloods’ and accomplished solo artist … JESSE COLIN YOUNG.
Ray Shasho: Hey Jesse, how’s it going man, you’re in the studio?
Jesse Colin Young: “Yes I am. I like to have a studio either in the house or next to the house. I built my first one in California around 1972. The house burnt down in 1995 but the studio was down in a gulley that was really wet. The forest was just smoldering stumps and my four story house was gone but the studio survived. My godson works in there now with my son Cheyenne Young in a band called ‘Beso Negro,’ it’s like a gypsy jazz/rock band; they have a good following in the Bay area. They’ve got two really strong guitar players and singers. My godson Ethan Turner is the drummer and my son plays bass, Cheyenne plays upright electric and wash-tub bass; they both grew up together and are about two years apart. My youngest son who is just taking a break from Berklee College of Music is here working on a record with me. So yea, two bass players, I did play bass when I was in The Youngbloods but only because I had to. I really didn’t know how, we had two guitar players and we couldn’t get Felix Pappalardi to join the band. I don’t think the band was heavy enough though for Felix. So I turned into a bass player. It must be in the genes because I have two sons and a daughter that plays bass.”
Ray Shasho: Jesse, let’s talk about your personal plight with Lyme disease?
Jesse Colin Young: “The chronic Lyme sufferers of which I am one, and I would say most of the people in this country who have it are undiagnosed. The official international infectious disease doctors in the United States have taken the position that there is no chronic Lyme disease and that the treatment is three weeks of Doxycycline …and that’s it! There are those of us who have had it for years or even decades. Many of whom are really suffering and are confined to wheel chairs. Lyme disease sufferers are not getting the treatment they need. Like me, they may need a year of antibiotics and not three weeks. If they’ve had it like I did, probably for a couple of decades before it was diagnosed. It took a year of five antibiotics, some of them were antimalarial drugs, and that’s a lot different than three weeks. And that really helped to bring back my sanity and physical health.”
Ray Shasho: I believe you had told me earlier that you couldn’t completely rid yourself of the disease?
Jesse Colin Young: “That’s true … I mean that’s my truth. Dr. Richard Horowitz is leading the charge right now in New York State; but it’s so hard to find a doctor who specializes in Lyme disease. The blood tests are not very accurate and it also depends on the lab you send them to. A doctor actually has to listen to every symptom you have and that takes time … most doctors don’t have it, what do they put aside for a visit ten-fifteen minutes? We had a Lyme doctor here in South Carolina and they suspended his license, and this happens all over the country. They do that because he’s prescribing long-term aggressive and expensive treatment. One of my antibiotics cost six hundred bucks with insurance. That was an important one for a co-infection, when you’re bitten by the tick you just don’t get Lyme’s, you get other diseases with it, and you’ve kind of got to fight them all at the same time.”

“So right now… the New York legislator has passed a bill that kind of forbids whatever the oversight organization is in the state that is persecuting the Lyme doctors. It forbids them to do this. There’s a great push at the moment to get this bill on the floor of the senate. I’m not a New York state resident but I’m going to write a letter and let my voice be heard. My doctor … Dr. Richard Horowitz is in New York State and he brought this to the floor. His book that came out this past year is called ‘Why Can’t I Get Better?’ and is a definitive work on chronic Lyme, which the AMA says does not exist. I think Richard has had around Fifteen Thousand patients in upstate New York. He kind of wandered into a hotbed right out of medical school, so many of his patients had Lyme disease so he became a specialist. He’s been a great help for so many of us. Many lives and families have been destroyed by this disease. It not only makes you hurt, but it makes you crazy.”
Ray Shasho: What were some of your early symptoms that told you something was wrong?
Jesse Colin Young: “We had moved to Hawaii in 1995 after our house burnt down in California, and we had lost everything except the studio. So when I started to get kind of crazy and have anxiety and depression in that first year in Hawaii, my therapist said maybe you’d better take some medication for the anxiety and depression, so they put me on some antidepressants and nobody even thought about Lyme disease. So I took the medications until I moved here to South Carolina, and to my wife’s hometown. She went to a family funeral in Ohio and she came back with this pamphlet from one of her cousins who was an Internist working with ILADS (International Lyme And Associated Diseases Society). The pamphlet ended up in the kitchen and I opened it up one day and started reading all the symptoms and thought … Good God, this sounds like my biography … maybe I have Lyme disease? And here I had my wife’s cousin who was working at ILADS. I called her up and asked who should I see and she said Dr. Richard Horowitz. So I flew up to New York and was diagnosed with Lyme’s. Richard put me on heavy antibiotics and began to get my brain back, my thinking, and a lessening of all those anxiety and panic attacks. It was like getting my life back.”

“After I had been treated it did not show up in a Western blot which is a common blood test for Lyme disease. Mine did not show up positive until I had my first month of antibiotics. My first Western blot showed up negative. It was so small that one of my doctors said it was negative and not positive … and that’s one of the problems with diagnosing Lyme’s. Dr. Horowitz sat me down for a couple of hours and listened to my whole story. I really never talked about this in an interview before, but I think it’s really important because there are people out there who are suffering and have no idea why.”
Ray Shasho: Talk about the inception of your company Ridgetop Music.
Jesse Colin Young: “I had not been paying attention when everything went to CD’s and had not made my catalogue available on CD in the early 90’s, so my wife Connie and I started Ridgetop Music to remedy that and to also bring out the new music. We have a little place in Hawaii that we bought on our honeymoon. We’d go there and I began being influenced by Hawaiian music. I eventually made a couple of albums, one called … ‘Swept Away’ (1994) and the other entitled ‘Living in Paradise’ (2004).”
Ray Shasho: Then you started Jesse's Kona Coffee?
Jesse Colin Young: “We fell in love with the big island; we’ve got a little farm there and it had a little house on it. We bought that in 1987. Then when the house burned up in California, Connie and I decided, we’ve got a house in Hawaii, at least we’ve got somewhere to go. Most of the people that lost their homes didn’t have a spare house, we were lucky. We found the Waldorf School ten minutes from our house in Hawaii and that was very important to Connie and turned out to be important to me. We became big supporters of Waldorf education and actually helped build a K through 8th grade school that survives in Kona to this day. Now it’s a Waldorf inspired school.”
Ray Shasho: Jesse you’ve written so many beautiful songs … your breathtaking composition “Sunlight” always comes to mind, which was covered by Three Dog Night, and of course “Darkness Darkness.”
Jesse Colin Young: “Actually I just got a check for that and I built my studio with the Three Dog Night money. (Laughing) “Sunlight” was the first song I wrote in California. I think I started it during the spring that we played The Avalon. Someone took me out to Muir Beach which is in Marin County just north of San Francisco. I fell in love with Marin and began that song. I wrote “Darkness Darkness” in New York. When I was in San Francisco, David Lindley was in a band and spent a lot of time as an accompanist with Jackson Browne and is a beautiful slide player and violinist. We played with him at the Avalon once upon a time. The band had Oud players and it was the time for people experimenting with all kinds of instruments and music. You could turn on KSAN Radio and listen for 24 hours and never hear the same song … it was wide open. National musicians like myself could listen to the radio and learn all kinds of things because there was a lot of great music going on back then. The beginnings of “Darkness Darkness” were there from listening to KSAN Radio while I was in San Francisco and was completed in New York. I spent one sleepless night thinking about my friends who were in Viet Nam and how terrifying it must be. So much of the fighting was done at night and “Darkness Darkness” came out of that sleepless night. I tried to put myself in their shoes.”
Ray Shasho: I chatted with Dave Mason who was absolutely overwhelmed when a Marine came up to him and said, “You know man, me and my buddy were stuck in a foxhole for three days and we would have gone absolutely nuts if it weren’t for a Jimi Hendrix tape and a Dave Mason tape. I’m assuming the same can be said with “Get Together” and “Darkness Darkness”?
Jesse Colin Young: “It was my privilege and pleasure to find that out after the war. My support for the Vets still goes on. Two weeks ago we initiated a program that started in Saratoga. It’s called the ‘Saratoga WarHorse Foundation’ and is an amazing program. It started in Saratoga because they’ve got a racetrack and racehorses that nobody wants anymore. I believe they’re done racing at around three or four years old. The founder Bob Nevins served in Viet Nam as a medevac pilot for the 101st Airborne and learned that soldiers and horses bonding together helped Veterans struggling with PTSD, sleeplessness or suicidal thoughts. Bonding with the horse works like forgiveness. It’s an incredible program and we help to fund the initiation of it here in Aiken, South Carolina.”
Ray Shasho: I grew up around the Washington D.C. area and Jesse Colin Young was very much a concert mainstay on the D.C. music scene … The Cellar Door, the Birchmere, Constitution Hall …etc.
Jesse Colin Young: “Oh my God, yea, The Cellar Door. I think the first gig that I played as a folk singer was at The Cellar Door with a band called The Country Gentlemen, they’re called The Seldom Scene today. We’d go down there and listen to them almost every night. Right down the street was the Little Tavern between the Cellar Door and the Shamrock Tavern. We’d go to the Little Tavern and listen to The Beatles on their jukebox. They were just happening so that must have been around 1963.”
Ray Shasho: What were the early Greenwich Village days like?
Jesse Colin Young: “The Youngbloods were at the Cafe au Go Go. The Magicians, Tim Hardin, and The Lovin’ Spoonful would play at Cafe Wha? … and then all kinds of other music… there was jazz next door, although it was kind of a high ticket price so we never went there, but it was really the same building as Cafe au Go Go. They’d have acts like George Shearing and people like that playing there.”

“I first heard “Get Together” at the Cafe au Go Go. The Youngbloods played there about a year and we opened for anyone that Howard Solomon wanted us to open for; I think he paid us twenty bucks a piece. We opened for Muddy Waters, Ian & Sylvia and… whoever, but we got to rehearse and really put the band together there. Jerry Corbitt and I were folk singers and we hadn’t been in a band since high school, and there I was the bass player. We picked Joe Bauer a jazz drummer from Memphis … Jerry was from Tifton, Georgia … Joe Bauer from Memphis … and ‘Banana’ (Lowell Levinger) and I both born in New York.”

“It was a Sunday afternoon and I had stopped in to the Cafe au Go Go to see if anyone was rehearsing because The Blues Project had also rehearsed there. I walked in and there was an open mike and a fellow named Buzzy Linhart who had a quartet called the Seventh Suns, and he was singing a song called “Get Together” and I was struck by it. This was a song written by Dino Valenti (Chet Powers). I ran backstage and said Buzzy write the lyrics out for me because I’ve got to sing it. I must have memorized the melody but he wrote down the lyrics on a piece of paper and I had watched him play it on guitar. But yea, that was a momentous day for me. I took it into rehearsal for The Youngbloods the next day. Most of the songs I had written myself, but I knew “Get Together” was a game changer … a life changer for me.”
Ray Shasho: “Ev’rybody get together, try and love one another right now” … Awe-inspiring lyrics that should be observed on a daily basis in today’s coldhearted and destructive world.
Jesse Colin Young: “I don’t think the generations who have come up in the last thirty years are as optimistic as we were. And many of us may have been disillusioned by it and what happened. I grew up in school first in Ohio and I felt like there was one guy who understood where I came from politically and emotionally in a school of 25,000 people (laughing) … there was people from all over the country who felt like outsiders. Then we went to play the Avalon Ballroom in May of 1967. In New York we were kind of outsiders, discotheques were the thing. I remember the first time we played with the Buffalo Springfield was in a discotheque. Bands like The Rascals were more successful, they wanted dance music. In May 1967, we walk into The Avalon Ballroom and there were people with hair like ‘bananas’ … he just had a huge head of hair, we didn’t see that a lot in New York, everyone in the audience, even the females had hair like that(All laughing).”

“We checked into this cheap hotel down the street from the Avalon, I put my bag down, turned on this radio that was built into the bed and it was “Get Together” on the radio. We had no idea they were playing it. We walked into the beginning of the ‘Summer of Love’ back in the spring and all of a sudden half the people on the street were looking you in the eye and realized we were a movement, not just a bunch of outsiders. It was incredible, and then of course that spread.”
Ray Shasho: Jesse, here’s a question that I ask everyone that I interview. If you had a ‘Field of Dreams’ wish like the movie, to play, sing or collaborate with anyone from the past or present, who would that be?
Jesse Colin Young: “Well, I just lost my best friend Jerry Corbitt; we buried him down in Tifton, Georgia two months ago, right next to his mom and dad, and that’s where he wanted to be. So I think it would have to be Jerry, I’d love to sing with him again. Our voices did something wonderful together. I remember years ago, Neil Young turned out to be a neighbor on the big island and Neil tried to encourage me to get The Youngbloods back together and said I want to hear you and Corbitt sing together again …but it never happened.”

“We had plan for Jerry to come to Aiken, he’s a horse guy and this town in South Carolina we live in is just full of horse people. So he had planned to come here, and he was going to sit on the porch and pick, just like it was in the folk days …that’s how we met. I was playing the Club 47 and staying with somebody my manager new. Coming back from the gig I got this message saying don’t go back to that house he’s been arrested. So I ended up with Corbitt and that’s how we met. We’d sit on his back porch at the Cambridge apartment and just played and played. Corbitt was a great Ragtime picker and kind of introduced me to Ragtime. I guess in the great beyond there’s a porch and Corbitt is up there right now and that’s who I’d collaborate with.”
Ray Shasho: You’re working on recording a brand new album?
Jesse Colin Young: “It’s an album I started with a Julliard pianist named Donald Vega. There’s a project called Julliard in Aiken (Aiken, S.C. the town we live in). About ten years ago our neighbors down the street called up Julliard and said that we’d like to give you our mansion when we pass. They are Pulitzer Prize authors Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh. They made this connection with Julliard, that when they die, their house and foundation to support it will become a part of Julliard. So the Julliard students started to come here about six years ago. They would come down on spring break and we created this ten day long festival in Aiken, South Carolina.”

“In our guest house we would host the jazz guys and a lot of piano players would come down. Donald Vega would warm up on our piano and get ready to go to a gig and I fell in love with his playing. A couple of years ago, when I was still on the road, he played with me on the road until his first jazz album came out, and it went to #1 on the jazz charts. We had about twelve songs that we had recorded together, and he just came down a few months ago to play a gig here, and I recorded another five new songs with him. So we’ve got about 12 songs with Donald on them and me playing electric guitar, and hopefully by the time we head over to do our work on the Coffee farm, our son Tristan (Everybody calls him ‘T’), who is in his last year at Berklee will be part of the new record.”

“It’s not a jazz album but will be kind of jazzy. It’s a mixture of new material and a few of my older songs that I’ve wanted to record with a beautiful pianist … like a song called “Great Day,” and some of my music is jazz inspired. The only station that I could get when I moved to Point Reyes on my radio was a jazz station. So back in 1967, I started listening to a lot of jazz. Up on top of the mountain, the only FM station that would come in was KJAZZ. We’re not sure yet when it will be released, hopefully by next year. I’m also not sure what we’re going to call it yet, but it might be entitled ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ because that’s one of the songs I fell in love with as a kid. It’s a jazz standard but a big hit for The Flamingos in the 50’s, and that’s when I fell in love with the song.”
Ray Shasho: Jesse will you be going on the road anytime soon?
Jesse Colin Young: “I don’t think so. Maybe when I finish this album I’ll be so excited that I’ll want to. I quit about two years ago because I wasn’t having any fun. I’ll have to somehow deprogram myself from this perfectionism that has always plagued me and been responsible for a lot of the music that I made. When I couldn’t get an engineer out in the country I learned to do it myself. Many of my records in the 70’s were self produced and self engineered. It’s got to be fun for me now. I was pretty driven for those 50 years that I spent on the road; I’ve been working on changing my attitude and learning to relax, so that has to change.”
Ray Shasho: You’re a huge fan of Lightnin’ Hopkins?
Jesse Colin Young: “Absolutely! And I knew Lightnin’. I’ve got four guys over my desk … Lightnin’ Hopkins (holding a flask in his hand), John Hurt (who I was also privileged to know and play with when I was very young), Pete Seeger (who I think was the grandfather of the folk generation) Jerry Corbitt, and over in the corner is my hero Yo-Yo Ma.”
Ray Shasho: I wasn’t going to ask you about the Johnny Carson incident because you’ve repeated the story so many times …
Jesse Colin Young: “Well, it was very simple, they wanted us on the show (The Youngbloods) and called us, we had just released ‘Elephant Mountain’ and we said sure we’ll play “Get Together” but we also wanted to play a song from our new record. So that was the deal and had their word that this would happen. We flew out from California to New York. When we got there, their set was sort of a corny psychedelic setup, and they didn’t have floor monitors. We fooled around and did our soundcheck, and then the producer of the show came over to talk with our manager who was there with us and said … “We really don’t have time for two songs.” Our manager said that was the deal you made with us and what brought us all the way here to do this. I think he thought that he was so powerful that no one would walk off the show. So Stuart our manager walked over to us and said what do you want to do guys? We thought about it and said no, they have to keep their word. I’m sure they were use to getting musicians in there with promises and then saying ...play your hit and get out of here, and be grateful that we even considered you. We were just not those kinds of people and expected them to keep their word. So when they wouldn’t we just walked. The whole idea was to make the record business and the TV business treat musicians with respect. So it’s important for people to know that The Youngbloods took a stand to be treated with respect, because musicians traditionally have not been. When we were allowed to choose our own producer on RCA Records … that was a huge step!”
Ray Shasho: Jesse, thank you for being on the call today but more importantly for all the incredible music with The Youngbloods and as a solo artist that you’ve given us and continue to bring.
Jesse Colin Young: “My pleasure Ray, thank you!”

'International Lyme And Associated Diseases Society' ILADS website
Purchase ‘Why Can’t I Get Better?’ by Dr. Richard Horowitz at amazon.com
Visit the Saratoga WarHorse Foundation
Jesse Colin Young official website
Jesse’s Blog
Jesse Colin Young on Facebook
Jesse Colin Young on Twitter
Jesse Colin Young on Myspace
Jesse's Kona Coffee official website
The Youngbloods last.fm website
Beso Negro (Jesse’s son and godson’s band) official website
Donald Vega official website
Very special thanks to Eddie Camolli of ‘The Hungry Ear Agency’

Coming up NEXT … The pioneer of the ‘electric violin’ Darryl Way of ‘Curved Air,’
UP ComingDon Wilson legendary guitarist and co-founder of ‘The Ventures,’ Keyboard extraordinaire Patrick Moraz (YES/The Moody Blues), folk rock singer & songwriter Jonathan Edwards (“Sunshine”) and Al Kooper (The Blues Project, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Bob Dylan …while responsible for the success of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Contact classic rock music journalist Ray Shasho at rockraymond.shasho@gmail.com

Purchase Ray’s very special memoir called ‘Check the Gs’ -The True Story of an Eclectic American Family and Their Wacky Family Business … You’ll LIVE IT! Also available for download on NOOK or KINDLE edition for JUST .99 CENTS at amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com - Please support Ray by purchasing his book so he can continue to bring you quality classic rock music reporting.
“Check the Gs is just a really cool story ... and it’s real. I’d like to see the kid on the front cover telling his story in a motion picture, TV sitcom or animated series. The characters in the story definitely jump out of the book and come to life. Very funny and scary moments throughout the story and I just love the way Ray timeline’s historical events during his lifetime. Ray’s love of rock music was evident throughout the book and it generates extra enthusiasm when I read his on-line classic rock music column on examiner.com. It’s a wonderful read for everyone!”stillerb47@gmail.com

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Monday, January 30, 2012

Exclusive Interview: Roger McGuinn says David Crosby can reunite The Byrds without him

 

By Ray Shasho

Orlando, Florida resident Roger McGuinn will be making a rare concert appearance on Saturday, March 17th at the Capitol Theatre in Clearwater. Roger (a.k.a. Jim McGuinn) began his music career as a folk artist, touring with the Limeliters, Chad Mitchell Trio, and legendary crooner Bobby Darin as a guitarist and banjo player.
After listening to The Beatles, McGuinn altered his folk styles to include a rock and roll beat while performing at coffee houses in Greenwich Village, New York. His efforts to merge traditional folk music with rock and roll were not well received, so Roger moved to Los Angeles and began work at the infamous Troubadour. It was after Roger’s opening set for country music legend Hoyt Axton that he and Gene Clark first met. Soon after, David Crosby joined them completing one of the most influential bands of the 60’s.

The Byrds would soon become Roger McGuinn (lead guitars and vocals), Gene Clark (tambourine, vocals), David Crosby (rhythm guitars and vocals), Chris Hillman (bass guitar and vocals) and Michael Clarke (drums). Columbia Records signed The Byrds in 1965 and they recorded their first number one hit, a Bob Dylan penned song, “Mr. Tambourine Man.” The Byrds continued to score big commercially with their 1965 classic that was adapted from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, “Turn! Turn! Turn!”I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better,” was another huge hit for the group in 1965 featuring McGuinn’s trademark jangling 12-string Rickenbacker. “Eight Miles High” was The Byrds 1966 Top 20 Psychedelic classic and “Mr. Spaceman” reached #36 on Billboard’s Top 100, both were featured on their Fifth Dimension album.” Dylan’s penned, “My Back Pages” released in 1967 #30 and “So You Want To Be A Rock ‘N’ Roll Star,” also released in 1967 was a #29 Billboard Top 100 hit. 

Gene Clark left the band in 1966. David Crosby and Michael Clarke departed in late 1967. In 1968, Gram Parsons was hired and The Byrds recorded their critically acclaimed release, “Sweetheart of the Rodeo.” Later in 1968, Hillman and Parsons left.
In 1969, The Byrds recorded, “Ballad of Easy Rider” for a film starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. McGuinn also co-wrote, “Chestnut Mare” with Jacques Levy in 1969, a song intended to be featured in a musical inspired by Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. McGuinn led several Byrds lineups until 1973 when the original quintet reunited and then disbanded after the release of their 12th and final album Byrds.
Roger McGuinn rejoined Gene Clark and Chris Hillman in 1978 and recorded three successful albums for Capitol Records. 
In 1981, McGuinn returned to his folk roots and began to tour acoustically as a solo artist.
McGuinn, Crosby and Hillman performed as The Byrds in 1989 and 1990 and recorded four new songs for their box set released in 1991. 
The Byrds were also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.

In 1995, Roger McGuinn began recording and uploading a series of traditional folk songs to his website. It’s an ongoing project to create awareness of folk music. The songs are available for free download at Folk Den- http://folkden.com on Roger McGuinn’s official website.
Roger McGuinn’s CD, Treasures From The Folk Den, featured his favorite songs from The Folk Den and included guest artist duets with Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Odetta, Jean Ritchie, Josh White Jr. and Frank & Mary Hamilton. It was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2002 for “Best Traditional Folk Album.”
Roger McGuinn Live from Spain recorded in 2004 is an awesome live recording featuring all of Roger’s classics. The Folk Den Project was released in 2006, a four CD 100 song box set of rock, electrified blues and folk, rich in Rickenbacker “Jingle Jangle.”
Roger McGuinn’s latest release is an incredible 23- song collection devoted to the sea called, CCD.

Last week I had the rare opportunity to chat with /The Byrds founder and leader/singer/songwriter/guitar virtuoso/ folk-rock pioneer/ folk artist extraordinaire/Roger McGuinn.
Ray Shasho: Good morning Roger, thank you for being on the call today.  How long have you lived in the Orlando area?
Roger McGuinn: “We’ve been here for over twenty years and just love it.”
Ray Shasho: Are you a Disney enthusiast?
Roger McGuinn: “When we first moved here I was. We had annual passes and kind of treated it like a country club, and then I got so busy and didn’t use the passes anymore so we quit doing that. I really haven’t been there in a long time now. But we have friends that work there. When we first moved to this location I was a scanner radio buff. I use to want to listen to the backstage chatter at Disney. So I drew a five mile circle around Epcot center and said I wanted to live in this area. Fortunately we found a nice house in the area. I use to listen to them on the radio but they’ve been switched over to Nextel now. They’re all digital and you can’t get them anymore.”
Ray Shasho: The Tampa Bay area is excited that you’ll be performing on March 17th at the Capitol Theatre in Clearwater.
Roger McGuinn: “Me too, it’s going to be a lot of fun, I love the old theaters.  I’m so glad they’re still going and people are fixing them up and keeping them alive.”
Ray Shasho: I peeked around the internet looking for some of your most recent setlists. I really admired the setlist from your concert in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Is the Clearwater concert going to be similar to that show?
Roger McGuinn: “We changed that setlist because of the language barrier; I do everything in English so I had to keep it kind of simple. I’m not sure what we’re going to do, we usually figure out the set the day of the concert at around two o’clock. We have lunch and check out what we’ve done in the area, and probably what they are going to like in the area. So it’s similar in that I tell stories, usually autobiographical stories and tie all the songs together with the stories.”
Ray Shasho: What I saw will certainly captivate the audience, plenty of great Roger McGuinn/Byrds classics and a nice long setlist.
Roger McGuinn: “I do a long show now because I decided it would be more fun to do, “An evening with” rather than to have an opening act. So I’m doing two separate sets. I remember back in the 80’s, Donovan came over to the house and he was telling us that he didn’t do two shows anymore and I said, “How do you get away with that?” And he said, “Well, I just tell them that I won’t and they pay me the same amount.” So I said, “Wow, I’m going to try that.” So I did and it was working for awhile, but people wanted a longer show. My set is pretty intense; I do a lot of work up there.”
Ray Shasho: I’ve watched you and you really do work hard on stage. Just watching you play, “Eight Miles High” acoustically was intense. That’s got to be difficult to do.
Roger McGuinn: “You get use to it after awhile. It was interesting when I came up with that arrangement of it because I didn’t have the band, so I had to put in some more licks to have it sort of fill out. You’re not going to get exactly the same sound as the Rickenbacker electric but I kind of fill it out with Segovia and some classical Spanish licks.”
Ray Shasho: Your son Patrick is a filmmaker, how’s he doing?   
Roger McGuinn: “Patrick has made films, he was about to make one up in the Catskills when hurricane Irene came in and wiped out the whole area. It flooded the place where he was going to shoot, so he didn’t do it. So he’s still into that and he was working for Technicolor as an administrator for awhile.”
Ray Shasho: Being from the Tampa Bay area I really love songs about the sea. Your latest album called, CCD has 23 songs about the sea. Talk a little bit about that album.
Roger McGuinn: “I’ve been doing sea songs on my Folk Den for the last sixteen years, and if I had to pick a segment of traditional music that I liked the best it would be the old songs of the sea. I just love the kind of bravado and camaraderie and they were just amazing guys out there, it was like a frontier, they were like spacemen. I decided to do a compilation from some of my favorites from The Folk Den and put it out. We were going to call it, 23 Songs of the Sea but then kind of abbreviated it down to CCD.”
Ray Shasho: I remember another great sea song from the Cardiff Rose album called, “Jolly Roger” and that was a really cool tune.
Roger McGuinn: “Well thank you, Jacques Levy and I wrote that back in the 70’s, to try and get the feel for The Rolling Thunder Review.”
Ray Shasho: You once commented in an interview about The Byrds, “We were a ship of pirates; it was every man for himself.” You must have a genuine love for the sea. 
Roger McGuinn: “I’ve been sailing a lot, we just did 14 days on the Queen Mary 2 last week and had a ball. I love being on the sea and the rolling of the ship, and for me it’s not really happening until we get a little wave action going, I love that feeling. We’ve traveled so much that we don’t have any motion sickness problems.”
Ray Shasho: The Folk Den was created by you to raise awareness of folk music. Was that the primary reasoning behind it?
Roger McGuinn: “Yea, that’s the idea. Back in 1995, I noticed I wasn’t hearing as many traditional songs as I had in the past because the trend was for singer/songwriters to write their own material. So, I started to put them up on the internet for free download with the chords, the lyrics, and a little story about the song. The University of North Carolina picked it up and they’ve been using it for a public service for all these years, so it’s really kind of a labor of love.”
Ray Shasho: We use to sing the old traditional folk songs in grade school; it was part of growing up.
Roger McGuinn: “Then Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan came along and started writing their own and it stopped being cool to do the traditional songs, it became cooler to do your own. That was the problem, everyone started to do their own.”
Ray Shasho: I remember growing up watching Burl Ives and then later the Smothers Brothers, who I thought sort of reintroduced folk music on television.
Roger McGuinn: “I remember listening to Burl Ives when I was a kid too. The Smothers Brothers always put satire into it; they were a really great act. I remember first seeing them in the early 60’s, probably around 1961 at The Purple Onion in San Francisco and they were just hilarious. They still do the same things that they did back then. I know Tommy pretty well; I use to hang out with him in LA, but didn’t get to know Dicky real well.”
Ray Shasho: We’re missing so much of the traditional music that we grew up with, especially the storytellers.
Roger McGuinn: “I do that!”
Ray Shasho:  Yes you do, you’re the last of the Mohicans.
Roger McGuinn: “Well, I picked it up from Pete Seeger back in the 50’s; I use to love what he did in his concerts. So it was an inspiration for me when I watched Pete work.”
Ray Shasho: Pete Seeger is truly amazing; he’s a walking museum of history.
Roger McGuinn: “Absolutely, he’s 92 years old. I’ve had the privilege of working with him several times. I played at his birthday party at Madison Square Garden two years ago. I played, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and a couple of guys form Band of Horses backed me up.”
Ray Shasho: Who are some of your favorite artists in the folk world?
Roger McGuinn: “I love Pete and loved Josh White, Big Bill Broonzy, Odetta and Lead Belly. The Weavers were great when they were with Pete but he went solo after that. Then there was the college generation and… The Kingston Trio, Peter Paul and Mary, Bob Gibson. One of my favorite albums is Bob Gibson and Bob Camp, At the Gate of Horn. It was a really dynamic album almost like The Beatles, and way before its time … around 1960 or so.”
Ray Shasho: Dance, hip hop, and variations of country music seem to be the nucleus of today’s music scene. Where did rock and roll disappear to?
Roger McGuinn: “Rock and roll peaked a long time ago, maybe 15 years ago. It subjugated to where Jazz was, it’s a subgenre now.”
Ray Shasho: Do you think rock music can make a comeback?”
Roger McGuinn: “No, I think it will always be there like jazz is, but it’s not going to come back into full blown popularity like it was in the 60’s. You can’t reheat a soufflé to quote Paul McCartney. It was just something that happened and it will never be the same. We’ll always have the music but you’re not going to get that popularity again. There were so many elements involved; the majority of the people were under 30 at the time, there was a Viet Nam war going on, and a lot of social pressure to change things, and there was no internet so people only communicated via songs on the radio and that sort of thing. And most of the elements have disappeared.”
Ray Shasho: Would you say record companies basically killed themselves when music started being distributed around the internet?
Roger McGuinn: “They didn’t get it. They laughed at it at first and then tried to sue everybody. Then they went out of business, a really ludicrous scene. I remember this guy from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cory Doctorow was talking about, if they’d only grasp the idea that they could have sold these MP3’s at reasonable pricing, it could have dragged them kicking and screaming to the money tree. But they missed it; the only guy that got it was Steve Jobs. He got it and iTunes is the biggest music publisher in the world.”
Ray Shasho: Do you think they’re making as much money today on iTunes as record companies did selling records or CD’s?
Roger McGuinn: “It’s not as topped out, it’s sort of sideways distributed where the artists are getting more. Before, like when Sony bought the AT&T building and they had private jets, they got all the money and the artists got a little bit of the money, that’s not the way it is anymore, the artist can get more of the money from their music now, so it’s a good thing for the artists.”
Ray Shasho: I talked with a lot of artists who had multiple hits in the 60’s, and they all confirmed that they were under constant pressures by record companies, demanding artists to record their next hit single or album.
Roger McGuinn: “Absolutely, there was a lot of pressure; we had to do two albums a year for Columbia and there was also threat of being suspended, if you were suspended that meant you couldn’t record for them or couldn’t record for anybody else, you were still under contract. So they could basically shut you down. It was a horrible thing for artists. I’m not sure it was that financially rewarding, some of the old contracts were pretty low for the artists.”
Ray Shasho: The Beatles were huge Byrds fans?
Roger McGuinn: “They proclaimed The Byrds to be their favorite band when they came over to America and that was really a blast. They were our favorite band and inspired us into the music that we were doing.”
Ray Shasho: You and George Harrison were good friends?
Roger McGuinn: “I knew George and John; I hung out with Paul just a little bit. George and I were more friends than anybody.I’d see George over Tom Petty’s house in the later years, 80’s and 90’s.”
Ray Shasho: The Traveling Wilburys were a great band.
Tom Petty is back on tour, any chance of you and Tom singing, “King of the Hill” together at his Orlando show?
Roger McGuinn: “Yea, that would be fun, I have done that in the past, but I’ll be out of town unfortunately. Whenever it’s handy we do it, but we’re always pretty busy. I love sitting in with Bob Dylan too. I’ve done that quite a few times when I’ve been in town at the same time, and they’ve invited me up on stage and it’s always a thrill to play with these guys.”
Ray Shasho: What is the origin of playing a 7-string guitar?
Roger McGuinn: “I came up with it because I wanted to get the best of a 12-string on a 6-string. So, I doubled up on the octave on the G-string, otherwise it’s still a 6-string, and then I can play lead notes up and down the G-string. It’s a trick I learned from George Harrison. You don’t need a 12-string for everything you do so the best part of a 12-string is a G-string pair for doing leads. I really love the 7-string; I play it quite a bit.”
Ray Shasho: It was almost unheard of for a rock and roll musician to talk about their faith at one time. But now, I find more rock stars turning to God as they get older.
Roger McGuinn: “I’ve always been looking for God back in the 60’s, that’s why I changed my name from Jim to Roger. But I was raised a Roman Catholic and had to go to the eight o’clock Mass every morning and have communion and wear a tie, kind of like a restricted life style. Then in the 60’s we got wild and let it go and started looking in other places to see where God really was, and I came back to the Christian thing.”
Ray Shasho: The artists that have embraced God seem to have a wonderful outlook on life, and are in great physical condition because they take really good care of themselves, and look like they’ll live to 100 years old.
Roger McGuinn: “My mother is 101, she smoked until 70, and she drank pretty heavily until she was in her 80’s. So I think just good genes on that side of the family.” (Laughing)
Ray Shasho: What do remember the most about the 60’s?
Roger McGuinn“I remember the good times and hanging out at Laurel Canyon with my friends like John Phillips, Michelle and Crosby. We’d go to each other’s houses, play guitars, sing, and make up songs. So I just have positive memories of it, yea there were bad things going on but I wasn’t really focusing on them. I remember one night though trying to get down to the strip and there were flares across all the access roads to Sunset. I didn’t know it but there was a riot going on. I just went back to my house in the Canyon and found out the next day.”
“We campaigned for Bobby Kennedy at a venue in downtown LA, some sports arena, and I think it was right before he got shot; The Byrds did a show for him … a set. I met him and told him that I wished him the best and everything. That was pretty bad because I was a big fan of JFK.”
Ray Shasho: Before The Byrds, you worked with Bobby Darin. I remember the critics saying at the time that he was going to be the next Frank Sinatra.
Roger McGuinn“I was with Bobby when he was doing that Frank Sinatra style.Then he got interested in folk music and that’s when he hired me to back him up on the 12-string guitar and sing harmony. And he was a good teacher. He was a mentor and taught me a lot about the business, taught me how to write songs. It was a great time.”
Ray Shasho: Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Ritchie Furay announced in 2011 that they were going to do a reunion tour. They’ve done some dates already but have yet to tour on a full scale level. David Crosby mentioned that he would have liked to see a double billing including a Byrds reunion but thought that you probably wouldn’t do it.
Roger McGuinn: “That’s true; I’m just too busy and happy doing what I’m doing. I’ll go back to the reheat of the soufflé quote from Paul McCartney; they asked him to get The Beatles back together when John and George were still around and he said it was like trying to reheat a soufflé, it wouldn’t be the same. I’m just having a ball now. To me being in the big time is not that big of a deal. I’ve been there, I know what it is, it’s exciting, but it’s also a lot of work and pressure. I love sort of flying under the radar where we can play theaters and sell CD’s on the internet and it’s really kind of a cool time.”
Ray Shasho: Do you still chat with David Crosby?
Roger McGuinn: “I wish him happy birthday every August 14th and he thanks me. But he does want to get The Byrds back together and he’s even been quoted saying that he’s offered me a million dollars to do it and I turned him down. Melissa asked me, “Did he really offer you a million dollars?”  I said, “No.”” (Laughing)
Ray Shasho: Hopefully he won’t try to reunite The Byrds without you because that happens a lot nowadays.
Roger McGuinn: “There’s this guy Andrew Gold, he had all my Rickenbacker and vocal parts down for The Byrds, but he passed away last year.  I said, why don’t you just get Andrew Gold man, he can do all my parts, he’d be great.”
Ray Shasho: Would you be upset if David Crosby reunited The Byrds without you?
Roger McGuinn: “I suggested it to him. He wants to do The Byrds … I said, “Okay man, take it out and do it, I don’t care.”
Ray Shasho: I always ask everyone that I interview if they have a good/funny story about when they were on the road.
Roger McGuinn: “Around 1965, we were touring in a motor home in Rome, Georgia and for some reason a doctor driving a Cadillac took offense at us. He drove his car into the front of our motor home and we all kind of stopped and the cops came. The guy that showed up was officer Pope and we were in Rome, Georgia. The doctor said, “These guys ran into me!” Officer Pope takes a look at the car and the motor home and said, “Looks like you ran into them doctor.” And he just let us all go. Back then, anybody with long hair in the south was considered suspicious.”
“When we played the Grand Ole Opry we got a real cool reception there. It wasn’t friendly, we got booed. It was like we were invading hippies and they didn’t like it. I bumped into Marty Stuart about ten years ago; he was the master of ceremonies at this IMAX movie that Dolly Parton was in. Marty and I sat down and he pulled out this B-Bender guitar and starts playing all of Clarence White’s licks. I went, “Wow, I haven’t heard those for thirty years …this is great!” So Marty and I started playing together and kept in touch and he invited me back to The Opry about a year ago. So forty three years after they sort of kicked us out of The Grand Ole Opry, I got to play it again with Marty.”
Ray ShashoRoger, thank you for spending time with me today, but especially for all the great music that you gave to all of us through the years. We look forward to your show at the Capitol Theatre in Clearwater on March 17th.
Roger McGuinn: “Thanks Ray, we’ll see you in Clearwater.”

A very special thank you goes out to Camilla McGuinn for arranging this interview.

Roger McGuinn official website www.ibiblio.org/jimmy/mcguinn
Roger McGuinn Folk Den http://folkden.com
Order… CCD -23 songs of the sea (Roger McGuinn’s latest release) at www.ibiblio.org/jimmy/mcguinn, Cdbaby.com or amazon.com.

Roger McGuinn performs live at the Capitol Theatre in Clearwater on Saturday, March 17th at 7:30p.m.

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Contact Ray Shasho at rockraymond.shasho@gmail.com


Order Ray’s new book called Check the GsThe True Story of an Eclectic American Family and Their Wacky Family Business at amazon.com or iuniverse.com.  

 
I found Check the Gs to be pure entertainment, fantastic fun and a catalyst to igniting so many memories of my own life, as I too am within a few years of Ray. So to all, I say if you have a bit of grey hair (or no hair), buy this book!  It’s a great gift for your “over-the-hill” friends, or for their kids, if they are the history buffs of younger generations trying to figure out why we are the way we are. ~~Pacific Book Review