Tell us about your tour vehicle.
Currently I drive a 2005 Toyota Camry. I love it. Runs great, astonishingly large trunk. I think it’s about to get to 200,000 miles. I do about 150 to 200 gigs a year, it’s been across the country about 6 times. I’ve had it 3 years now. Prior I had a couple of Mitsubishi Galant, which looked sharp and had great pick up but you had to replace the drive belt every 100,000 miles, and it’s a big job, about 800 bucks. I like to try and get 400,000 miles on any vehicle I own so it got expensive plus if the belt snapped while you were driving it would smash into your engine and ruin it, so it was stupid for hard touring.
The Camry has been cool, I bought it used obviously and within the first couple of days it needed a new engine and it was under warranty so I kinda lucked out. It broke down in Athens, Ga. which is where my label New West has a beautiful apartment so the car place towed it back to NY and stuck a new engine in it, New West rented me a car and I was back on the road. When I finished the tour I had a used car with a new engine. Talk about lemons into lemonade.
My worst car experience was in 2000 when I got run off the road on my way to Pittsburgh for a gig, flipped a brand new VW Jetta twice and broke my back in three places, my ankle and my wrist, 82 staples in my head. It was 9 months in an upper body brace 24/7. When I got that itchy thing off I ran it over with my car, for realz, and I was back touring.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
The gig is the most important thing, food is not that big a deal. I like to get to the gig very early, maybe take a nap in the car in the parking lot. Eating is basically a pain in the ass, a necessary obstacle between me and the gig so I just use truck stops plus I really like their coffee. You can learn a lot from truckers.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
I play solo and I no longer travel with a guitar tech domestically although I do abroad. Which means I can’t afford to break a string and lose the momentum of the show. I change my strings before every gig, and even though I’m a pretty aggressive player that means I won’t break a string and it’s one less thing I have to worry about.
I’m not a big advocate for Guitar Center, a corporate chain is no way for a young player to trade ideas and be inspired. I much prefer privately owned mom and pop stores like the one I grew up with but it certainly is convenient when you run out of supplies in Duluth and you pop Guitar Center in your GPS and bingo you got your stuff. And they have discount sales often where you’re paying 8 bucks for a set, so what’s that like $1600 a year for strings? I dunno, no biggie, I don’t smoke, or drink, or gamble and since the whole opiate epidemic thing prostitutes are a lot cheaper so it’s not a big expense.
And I’m not one of those guys that has to have a new guitar all the time. I have one road guitar, a 1937 L-00 which I love waaayyy too much and am stupidly dependent on and I’ve got a great guitar repair guy near my house here in Ossining N.Y. called Division Street Guitars and once every five years I’ll turn up sobbing at his door and he’ll quell my fears and fix it up better, (read: better) than new.
Where do you rehearse?
I just rehearse anywhere. In my apartment, my car, before the gig in the dressing room, truck stops, hotel rooms, on stage at sound check, my girlfriends, my other girlfriends, my other girlfriends, and the girl’s house I’m thinking about dating.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
Hmm, I don’t remember. But I do remember the first song I wrote that I felt might be my own distinctive voice. I was a very late bloomer, in 1987, I was 33, it was in Albany, it was a song called “Big As Life”, about the media and subtle racism. It was kind of a Woody Guthrie talking blues thing with kind of a Black Flag approach. It became the title track for my first major label release on Mercury records. I could just tell when I played it at open mics and stuff that people were really affected by it was a real breakthrough for me after years of hard work unsuccessfully attempting to find an original voice.
Describe your first gig.
Oh man, I so wanted to make music my life and I so love what I do now and feel so comfortable on stage but I had horrible stage fright for the first couple of years. Crippling really. Why I kept getting knocked down and continued to get up again for the life of me I can’t understand, but thank God I did. I just really, really, really wanted to make music my life.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
I don’t work a day job now and haven’t for years, I’ve been very lucky that music could support me but of course you must work very, very hard, there are no days off but that’s cool. About 8 years ago in a desperate and futile attempt to keep my marriage of 26 years together I managed a little cafe in the basement of the library. Nobody is going to respect you if you’re not doing what you want to do, especially yourself so I was out of there.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
It’s up and down always. You make a record, sometimes nothing happens, do another record, it hits in the UK and all of a sudden you’re drawing 5 times the amount of people and then 5 years later you’re drawing half of that. But if you’re doing it for the money, I don’t know, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. You do it because you love it, because you HAVE to do it, because you’re proud of your work, what you leave behind, maybe, if I can be so bold, how you affect people and their lives. Money is just the icing on the cake.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
The biggest goal, the most elusive commodity, the most important objective is happiness. YOUR happiness. Life is short, love your job. Walk away from the gig, no matter how the audience responds and be able to say, “If I was in that audience I would have been floored!” I love what I do, every aspect, the writing, the editing, the traveling, the practicing, the performing. I am very happy, I hope I can do it for another 40 years. You get to the place where you kick your own ass with your art and everything else will fall into place.