Exit Stage Left

The recent deaths of rock stars Jeff Beck and David Crosby left music fans mourning not only those two legends, but also the acceleration of an inevitable, tragic trend. Beck, who died at 78, and Crosby, 81, constitute the trailing edge of the cohort that preceded the Baby Boomers. Those Silent Generation rockers still with us are reaching the age – especially having lived the hard lifestyle – where they can’t look forward to many more birthday cakes. Jagger is 79, McCartney 80, and Dylan 81. None of them seem to be in imminent danger of leaving us, but odds are they won’t be entertaining us long into the next decade. Next, we’ll start to lose the oldest of the Baby Boom rockers – Neil Young and Clapton are both 77; Elton John, Santana, and Bobby Weir are all 75; hell, Springsteen is 73.

But they’re all still with us and still playing. We still have a chance to see them – maybe for the first time, maybe one more time, maybe for the last time. I’m sure some of those appearances will be painful to watch and listen to. But some will be inspiring, like 78-year-old Joni Mitchell’s triumphant return to the stage at Newport last summer. (Thanks, Brandi Carlile.)

And that’s what led me to write tonight. Many, many highly talented performers died way too young and before I had grown into an avid concert-goer. From September 1970 to just October 1971, 13 months, we lost Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Duane Allman. Average age, 27. And I never saw many others who left us a bit later, but also too soon, like John Lennon, Keith Moon, and Bob Marley.

I’ve been to hundreds of concerts over the past 50 years, seen many artists in their prime and some well past that zenith. I’ve also been lucky enough to catch some musicians at or near the very end of their careers, knowing I’d probably never be able to see them again. Some of those have been disappointing (Jack Bruce standing like a shriveled statue at a steamy late-night show at Bonnaroo 2012; Leon Russell with almost no energy). 

Some, like Art Neville struggling to keep up with his old bandmates at a Funky Meters show in Austin, were sad and touching. I think, though, I prefer the memory of Art, full-strength, at a snowy New Year’s Eve Neville Brothers show in Park City.

I saw BB King the same night I saw Leon in 2011, at Austin’s ACL Moody Theater. BB’s guitar playing was limited to delightful licks here and there, decorating the songs and the stories. But those stories were fantastic and he laughed so hard at his own jokes. (I just looked it up, and BB maintained his intense concert schedule – 3-5 shows a week for months on end – for the next four years, almost until the day he died in November 2015.)

Dr. John was a hoot replaying his appearance at The Last Waltz as part of a 40th anniversary celebration of that event organized by Warren Haynes in 2017. The Night Tripper had a bit of trouble navigating the stage, but once he reached the piano bench his voice and playing were strong. He sang “Such a Night,” and it really was. Garth Hudson, then-80 and one of the two surviving members of The Band, was even more impressive that night. He needed a whole lot of help making it to the organ as he joined Haynes and friends for the encore. Then the diminutive Hudson presented us with an extended, maniacal solo on “Genetic Method” before leading the ensemble on a rollicking “Chest Fever.” Garth is still with us, but from what I can tell, he hasn’t made many more public appearances since that 2017 show and is in pretty poor health these days somewhere in upstate New York.

My favorite almost-at-the-end show also involved someone from The Band. It was a hot – make that very hot – and muggy July day in Bridgeport, CT, for the 2011 Gathering of the Vibes festival. Levon Helm was frail but mighty. His once muscular arms were so thin I was afraid he’d drop his drumsticks. (He didn’t.) Levon’s voice didn’t have the power it once did, but his singing was somehow powerful. He didn’t hit the drums as forcefully as he once did, but his drumming still had the force of his exquisite touch. He never stopped smiling. Nor did his (extremely pregnant but not wilting in the heat) daughter and musical partner Amy Helm. Nor did any of Levon’s big band. Nor did any of us in the audience. It was obviously going to be one of his last performances. We appreciated the gift he was giving us. 

Levon closed his set at the Gathering with a rousing “The Weight.” The “feeling ‘bout half past dead” line was kind of a kick in the gut, but that’s in the song’s first verse and was long forgotten by the time Levon and Amy and the rest of the band and the whole audience shared the last wonderful refrain, “And, and, and ... you put the load right on me.”

Thanks for taking the load off Miss Fanny for all these years, Levon. Your singing and playing and joyous approach to life took a load off a lot of your fans, too. I’d seen you with The Band (sharing the bill with Crosby, Stills, and Nash) on a hot August evening in Austin (out in a big old field that’s now a sprawling shopping center) some 30 years earlier. That show was fun. This one, because we knew we’d never see you again but also because you were loving your craft up until the very end, was special.

(Levon’s last album, a live show from his Woodstock, NY, studio with the great Mavis Staples, was recorded about a month before his appearance at the Gathering. Check out Carry Me Home if you want to hear the final vintage from a rock legend.)

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Beauty is in the Eye of the Musician

 

The Mandolin in Modern Music. Who Needs Rock?

(Originally published May 17, 2022, Mandolin Cafe)

Back in 1969, the mandolin seemed poised to become a sustaining part of rock 'n roll and popular music. Over the next three years, no lesser lights than the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Band, the Grateful Dead, and Rod Stewart would produce one or more songs that featured the instrument. Each of the albums went platinum. And Stewart's classic "Maggie May" simultaneously topped the pop charts in the U.S., U.K, Canada, and Australia.

The instrument's future in popular music seemed bright. Until suddenly it wasn't.

Over the ensuing seven decades, the mandolin has retained its beloved place in folk, country, and bluegrass, even classical, and occasionally in jazz. Generally, though, the instrument the Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh compared to "the ringing of a bell" has been absent from rock and pop, with bands like R.E.M, Wilco, the White Stripes, and others releasing a few one-off mandolin songs.

To find out why, the Mandolin Cafe talked to successful and highly respected mandolin players from three very different schools of music: Ronnie McCoury, John Skehan, and Sierra Hull at the 2022 Old Settler's Music Festival.

About the author: Steve Levine is a photojournalist and communication consultant based in Austin, Texas. Find his best words and pictures at linktr.ee/stlevine.

Their collective response: So what? The mandolin is making some amazing music these days everywhere it's played. It always has – even if some people have heard it only on those rock songs.

"When I was a young boy in the 80s, my buddies from Pennsylvania said, 'Oh, you play the mandolin? Oh, what like Led Zeppelin or Grateful Dead?'" McCoury said. "And I was like, 'Well, I don't know what you're talking about.'"

Photo credit: Steve Levine

It wasn't long before he figured it out. "I was in love with David Grisman's music," he said. "So I discovered the guy playing the mandolin on the Grateful Dead stuff was David Grisman." As he grew older, he met John Paul Jones, the Zeppelin bass player, who performed the mandolin parts along with guitarist Jimmy Page in that 1970 album and on tour.

Skehan was enthralled by Grisman as well. "Somewhere, somebody gave me a cassette tape of that first Grisman Quintet album," he said.

"That just blew my mind as far as what you could do with the mandolin, the fact that Dawg had created this signature form of music all his own that was such a melting pot of other styles."

His mandolin ear continued to grow.

Photo credit: Steve Levine

"To me the big epiphany discovery was how much mandolin music there is out there without even getting into popular music," Skehan said. "It has such a wide ranging reach and influence on American music."

McCoury recounts a story his dad, Blue Grass Boys alum Del McCoury tells. It credits a mandolin-heavy Bill Monroe song with inspiring the creators of rock.

"There's a tune that Monroe sang called 'Rocky Road Blues,' it was like 1943 or 4, before Earl Scruggs came and bluegrass jelled," the younger McCoury said. "And it had this beat, and Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee [Lewis] and Elvis and all these guys were hearing this. And Carl Perkins said, 'All we were doing was putting rhythm and blues and bluegrass together.'"

Chuck Berry, McCoury adds, "loved to listen to Bill Monroe" because his mandolin chop matched Berry's distinctive guitar sound.

Fast-forward 70 years or so, and Hull finds the instrument still at home in any genre.

Photo credit: Steve Levine

"It's such a diverse instrument," said Hull, whose multitudinous musical experiences belie her young age. "One of the things that I love about it is that it can find its way into whatever is missing in the context, whatever configuration or instrumentation."

Skehan says he hears the influence of the mandolin in popular music that is definitely not bluegrass, particularly in the sounds of one of his favorite bands – the Grateful Dead.

"There's that thing about the Grateful Dead that's not really country music, but it's not quite rock and roll and it has this free-wheeling jazz element counterpoint, everybody's improvising kind of thing to it," he said. "But that odd, odd tone, what Bill Monroe called the ancient tones, the modal quality and fiddle-tune music, it's so present in the Grateful Dead's songwriting and their approach, that out-of-left field thing."

All three learned to play mandolin in the Monroe tradition, where it acts as a percussion instrument in bands that have no drums.

Photo credit: Steve Levine

"I'd just as soon play rhythm all night than to play a lead, because it's just so fun when you groove and you get to be part of that pocket," said Hull, who – of course – earns rave reviews for her blistering solos. "At the same time, it's fun to kind of get removed from that context a little bit and then explore what else the instrument can do."

After starting out "a proper bluegrass player," Skehan has been playing alongside a drummer for decades in the jamgrass group Railroad Earth.

"I can function as the snare drum but in tandem with the snare drum, where the way I would voice chords in a lower register when doing a bluegrass chop is a way of kind of giving the snare drum pitch and relevance to the chord changes," he said. "But the snare drum is also giving my backbeat an extra pop and shot to it."

"I kind of got into this thing of doing backwards rakes against chords, then with a little bit of delay, it's an arpeggiated piano chord or something," Skehan added. "To just hit a long chord and let it ring out in that raked arpeggiated way and then start to join the chop but be able to step away again became a thing I do."

Photo credit: Steve Levine

All three have played mandolin with rock groups, and they love the sound it brings to those performances. "It will continue to pop up unexpectedly in some recordings," says McCoury.

"It just takes the right producer that hears it in their head, and wants to produce it," he said. "I guess they don't find it being useful on every song, and me as a mandolin player, I do."

Just a few weeks after this interview, McCoury found himself playing mandolin at Nashville's iconic Ryman Auditorium with an incredibly diverse group of performers, including Dead & Co's Bob Weir, guitarist extraordinaire Billy Strings, avant-garde bassist Les Claypool, and Marty Stuart.

Just a few months earlier and less than a mile from the venerable Ryman, at the brand new Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, Hull took the stage with a very different kind of ensemble. That night was part of a 21-date tour with Cory Wong and the Wongnotes. How does a mandolin find a voice with a funk band that includes a six-piece horn section?

"In the right context with the right musicians playing, respectfully and kindly and dynamically, it can really be amazing in a lot of different musical situations," Hull answered.

To translate those words into a musical experience, take a listen to "Over the Mountain" on Wong's recently released Power Station album. It opens with Hull playing a simple acoustic melody. She's quickly joined by Wong's guitar, and just as quickly the song transforms into a soaring tour de force with Hull and Wong trading solos over and around the funky, driving bass lines of Sonny T (who performed and recorded with Prince's band The New Power Generation in the 1990s).

After discussing her tour with Wong during a backstage interview at Old Settler's, Hull paused and listened as the sounds of Peter Rowan and His Free Mexican Airforce filtered in from the stage.

"The thing I'll say about the mandolin," she said with a smile, "it shines its brightest when you really can hear the instrument and the wood on a microphone."

Skehan recalls hearing acoustic music being played on acoustic instruments at his first Winter Hawk or Grey Fox festival.

"The Del McCoury Band stepped up to two microphones and made this incredible sound," he said, almost wistfully. "The mandolin is just cool. They are icons of cool because they wield such an unlikely instrument in such a powerful way."

Photo credit: Steve Levine. Drew Emmitt with Ronnie McCoury

Additional Information

• Old Settler's Festival
• Sierra Hull
• Ronnie McCoury and The Del McCoury Band
• John Skehan and Railroad Earth

Photo credit: Steve Levine

Old Settler’s recap: “Hippie festival” offers four days of people and performers being themselves

(Originally published May 7, 2022, Ear Traffic ATX)

A riddle: If you’re watching a Tejano band play Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” at an Americana music festival, where are you? It’s got to be the 2022 Old Settler’s Music Festival, the Austin area’s longest running, multi-day, live music event.

Planted now at its “forever home” amid the rolling meadows and woodlands southeast of Lockhart, Old Settler’s continues to assemble a strong and diverse lineup for the pleasure of its faithful fans, most of whom camp for three nights (or longer) on the 29-acre site.

One camper and I spent a leisurely half-hour under a canopy trying to decide how best to describe the 35th annual installment of Old Settler’s. “It’s got lots of bluegrass acts, but it’s more than a bluegrass festival,” I offered, with which he agreed.

We went on to rule out “roots” and “country” and “folk” and “acoustic” – all much too limiting to define the 30-plus artists on this year’s bill.

“It’s a hippie festival,” the camper offered, and we both immediately agreed. “Hippie” aptly describes the crowd and the vibe and the culture and the music. Despite the amount of alcohol being consumed, I didn’t see nearly as many stumble-down drunks as I used to encounter at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. I didn’t smell as much weed as I expected, but I heard plenty of glassy-eyed men and women mumbling about acid and mushrooms. Ponytails, not man buns, flourished.

Like the idealistic early days of hippiedom, the fans and staff and musicians and volunteers (masses of dedicated, longtime volunteers make the festival work) value friendliness, sincerity, and sharing. Campers actually listened to the answers when they asked, “How ya’ doin?” Strangers shared “good mornings” with smiles and warmth and maybe a cup of coffee.

And the performers, whether at late-night, three-person jam sessions or on the main stages in front of thousands, brought their genuine, human selves to Old Settler’s. The crowd recognized it and appreciated it.

Several times my friends and I commented that shows felt like private concerts set among the vast open space of the main festival arena. When I asked Old Settler’s spokesperson Heidi Labensart for the attendance numbers and whether they met with organizers’ expectations, she replied, “It is best to say it was a great festival, and everyone who came out had a great time.”

So with that background, here are some of the musical highlights from my four days of Old Settler’s 2022:

Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph guests with Galactic.

The most high-energy show of the festival came at the last set played on the big stages. New Orleans funksters Galactic lit up Saturday night with a powerful performance fueled by trumpeter Eric Gordon and guest vocalist Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph. With tunes like “Yes We Can Can” and “Clap Your Hands,” Joseph pushed and cajoled and incited the crowd to clap, wave their arms, or shout their approval. Throughout, guitarist Jeff Raines, bass player Robert Mercurio, and drummer Stanton Moore laid a rock-solid funk foundation for Joseph and Gordon.

And, to put a magical touch on a gorgeous Texas spring evening, a favorable breeze blew an almost continuous river of glistening soap bubbles from atop a nearby hill, high over the audience, and beyond the stage.

From “99 Shades of Crazy” to “Lochloosa,” Friday night headliner JJ Grey & Mofro delivered what the crowd craved: a giant helping of smoky, southern-fried, blue-eyed soul. The band ripped through “House of the Rising Sun” like they owned that classic. Grey launched swampy ballads off the back end of mini-sermons on modern life. The group was unpretentious and obviously happy to be back on the road after the long COVID shutdown.

“We’re all like bears coming out of hibernation and ready to eat, ready to get down,” Grey told a hometown Jacksonville, Florida TV reporter before starting his current tour in mid-March.

Jam bands often get a rather raw deal from the tight schedule of a festival format. Unless they have a longer slot at a day’s end, musicians who frequently play a single song for 20 minutes-plus have to squeeze their entire shows into 60 minutes. Jam band fans call it “the festival set.”

Bluegrass jammers Railroad Earth not only had to work with the one-hour limit at Old Settlers, they also were celebrating the long-delayed release that day of their new album All For the Song. Todd Shaeffer, Tim Carbone, John Skehan, and company played four tunes from that album, brought bluegrass godfather Del McCoury on stage for his classic, “High on a Mountain,” and found time to stretch out a bit on old favorite “Mighty River.”

The legendary Flaco Jimenez.

Multi-Grammy-winner Flaco Jimenez of San Antonio joined his old friend Max Baca and Los Texmaniacs for a crowd-rousing rendition of the Texas Tornadoes’ “Who Were You Thinkin’ Of?” Mandolin legend Peter Rowan sat in for several numbers with the ensemble and later played a full set with Los Texmaniacs under the name of Peter Rowan’s Free Mexican Airforce. The Airforce earned rousing applause with a sweet and heartfelt version of the Rowan/Jerry Garcia classic “Moonlight Midnight.” (And by the way, it was Los Texmaniacs with guest guitarist Will Owen Gage who cranked out the “Foxy Lady” of the riddle.)

Rolling Stone calls American Aquarium leader B.J. Barham a “Southern Springsteen.” The songs he performed at Old Settler’s didn’t live up to that billing. His vocals do, however, recall his idol Tom Petty, and the band (including bassist Alden Heges, top photo) has some Heartbreakers-worthy chops. Aquarium fans must be happy that Barham stopped drinking, as that’s a major driver of his songwriting. It seemed at least half the songs in the set dealt with the travails and triumphs of sobriety, and lyrics like these (from 2020’s “The Long Haul”) are decidedly un-Springteenish: “See the hardest part/Of getting sober/Is learning a drinking buddy/Ain’t the same thing as a friend.”

Recommended, and not:

• Two artists I knew little or nothing about beforehand but enjoyed enough to look forward to seeing again: Maggie Belle, a wonderful singer from New Orleans whose voice has a lot of Amy Winehouse touches; and Sierra Hull, once a tiny mandolin wunderkind, now a thoughtful 25-year-old singer-songwriter with a tight backing band and still-wicked mandolin chops.
• I knew the California Honeydrops were a good band when I first saw them at the High Sierra Music Festival back in 2016. They’ve matured since: more fun, better songwriting, better performances. They put out a highly danceable funky, bluesy, horns-y mixture.
• McCoury is a bluegrass legend, and his family band is tight and top-notch. But McCoury’s high, nasal vocals grate my brain like an icy shower or a whiff of strong ammonia.
• Austin blues guitarist Zach Person is obviously talented, but the bass and rhythm guitar backing track that accompanied Person and his drummer detracted decidedly from his show.

Keeping with Old Settler’s tradition, Austin’s own Shinyribs played the final set on Sunday afternoon to close down the festival. Mic in hand, front man Kevin Russell sashayed through the crowd, dancing with the ladies, singing Freddy Fender’s “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.”

That’s a great song, and Shinyribs rocked it, but it certainly didn’t describe the exciting days and enchanted nights I spent at Old Settler’s 2022. Something like Robert Earl Keen’s “Feelin’ Good Again” would have been a much better match.

Old Settler’s Music Festival day 1, after dark: When the music stops … it doesn’t

(Originally published April 24, 2020, at Ear Traffic ATX)

(CAMP BANJO, TILMON, TEXAS) – New Orleans-based chanteuse Maggie Belle crooned her last note close to midnight on the opening day of the 2022 Old Settler’s Music Festival. The lights went down, her five-piece band began packing up their gear, and the audience began to drift away.

Many in the crowd didn’t have far to go. The stage is tucked among the cedar and mesquite in a corner of the festival’s liveliest campground. And one of the event’s chief attractions — which, at least once in the past, has been an early showcase for future music superstars — was just about to begin.

“It’s what I come for,” said one smiling, toe-tapping middle-aged lady.

Across the crowded venue, jam sessions popped up and blossomed like the desert after a downpour. Guitars, banjos, dobros, mandolins, fiddles – just about every kind of wooden instrument whose strings can be plucked, picked, strummed, or bowed – appeared from cases and tents.

Traditional folk songs and blues numbers dominated the playlists under the stars. But this writer heard more than a few acoustic Grateful Dead covers and even a rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers.” The honor of choosing the next song proceeded in an unwritten but genial code, a round-robin among the players.

Each gathering seemed to coalesce into a similar configuration. The busiest artists, those who led the way through every tune, sat or stood in the center. Next came a sprinkling of background vocalists and musicians who contributed quietly or offered up just the occasional flourish. Tapping, nodding, and swaying spectators made up the outer ring. Wandering strangers received warm welcomes.

Every available open space in Camp Banjo — said to be three-and-a-half acres, but it seemed bigger — was occupied by everything from immense RVs to classic, silver Airstreams to simple tents.

Campers had obviously made meticulous preparations for their spaces. They strung up tie-dye and mandala tapestries to create billowing walls. They decorated their sites with banners and streamers, rugs, couches, tables, blinky lights, and even a pair of hanging geranium pots. Grills and camp stoves produced late-night snacks or waited to sizzle bacon, sausage, potatoes, and eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast.

Lee Thompson, a guitar player formerly from Austin now living in Oregon, is a longtime Old Settler. The after-hours camaraderie is an important part of making the festival what it is, he says.

“Some people need music. They don’t want to make money at it, but they need it in a deep way,” Thompson told me the next morning. “They just want to be around people who also need that. And you find ’em here. It kind of boils the fat away. If you really want to play music, come do it here.”

The quality of the campground talent varies tremendously, from earnest novice to true virtuoso. The family-friendly festival has always attracted young players with obviously bright futures.

Thompson recounted a memory from the second Old Settler’s Festival in 1988. “A family came out of their tent, they had some coffee with me and then two little kids came out, 12 and 14,” he said. “One had a fiddle; one had a banjo. They tuned up and then just started ripping.”

Not many years later, those two sisters, Emily and Martie Erwin, became known as the founding members of the Dixie Chicks, now known as the Chicks.

“You can’t bottle it,” Lee’s brother Jay Thompson, of Dallas, says of the campground mystique. “It’s got its own flavor.”

This writer fell asleep well after 2 am, listening to the Thompsons and their friends, plus a few other groups of pickers in the immediate neighborhood.

It was beginning to grow light when I lifted my head from my pillow. Somewhere not far away, I heard one lonely guitar competing with a crowing rooster to welcome the dawn.

Neal Francis Leaves ‘Em Gasping for More

Neal Francis left Chicago, and he headed to the ATX. Three days, 6 concerts, and 2 live radio shows later, Francis moved on. The modern day piano man left behind a legion of new fans begging him to come back soon.

During his whirlwind SXSW 2022 stay, Francis appeared at venues as large as Willie Nelson’s Luck Reunion and as intimate the brand new coffee bar at the Carpenter Hotel. He shared bills with the likes of Nelson, Jason Isbell, Heartless Bastards, and The Bright Light Social Hour. His high energy shows left audiences hungry for more.

“I think he’s really going to blow up,” predicted one fan, who told me he’d been to half of Francis’ Austin appearances.

This writer was fortunate enough to catch Francis and his band under a big tent at Luck Reunion on Thursday and squeezed into the patio stage at Parlor & Yard on Saturday. Both times, the quartet delivered incredibly tight arrangements with enough jamming to show off their virtuosity. They play a little bit of soul, a little bit of synth, a little bit of funk, and a lot of rock and roll. It’s all packaged around Francis’ soft but intense tenor sharing lyrics that explore the 30-year-old’s battles with alcohol, drug addiction, and their accompanying sorrows.

Witness this line from the hard charging “Can’t Stop the Rain,” off of his new album, In Plain Sight. (The album cut includes some fine slide guitar work by Derek Trucks.)

When you look in the mirror,

Do you see someone you know? 

Or are you just a stranger,

Buried in the snow?

Francis’ style touches on, but certainly doesn’t imitate, many keyboard legends. Going from song to song, his music elicited a “that sounds kind of like” response in my head: one was kind of like Elton John, another was kind of like Sly Stone, kind of like Leon Russell, kind of like Phish’s Page McConnell. The press clippings about his 2019 debut album, Changes, include a BBC radio host calling Francis “the reincarnation of Allen Toussaint.” One of the photos I took even made me think he looked kind of like a young Warren Zevon, whose demons he shares.

After the Parlor & Yard show, I asked Francis who his favorite piano player is. Given his variegated musical influences, his response really came as no surprise. He glanced upward for a moment then told me, in all sincerity, “I, I don’t really think I can answer that.”

Bobby Whitlock’s Layla Tales

When Bobby Whitlock and Coco Carmel take the stage at Austin’s Saxon Pub on a Saturday evening, Whitlock’s classic stories – as much as the pair’s performance and their I-really-love-you grins – are the stars of the show.

The stories chronicle events of almost 50 years ago. But they captivate because they recount the writing and recording of the magical songs that Derek and the Dominos released on their only studio album – Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

They’ve played hundreds of shows at the Saxon – most of them replete with versions of the same stories of Bobby and Eric Clapton and George Harrison. And that’s just fine by the crowd.

Two of my favorite classic Bobby tales:

• “So Eric says to me, ‘Bobby, why does love have to be so sad?’ And I’m thinking, ‘Dang! Why does that have to be such a long song title?’”
• On writing the lyrics to “Keep on Growing” on the spot. “Inspiration had its hold on me since I was real young. So I went out in the foyer of Criterion Records and my relatively inexperienced life fell out on that paper. I couldn’t write it down quick enough.”

There’s one hilarious story I didn’t record or write down, but I’ll get it one of these days. It’s about the time Bobby let Eric’s pet parrot Morris out of its cage, and the bird flew straight into the open fireplace. There’s a version of it in Bobby Whitlock: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Autobiography, but it’s not nearly as funny ... or sad ... or endearing as the way he tells it at the Saxon.