Video

I thoroughly enjoyed working on this song for Liz. She was patient with me in achieving her vision of the role of the pedal steel in the song. There’s a contrast between working together in the studio and living 3000 miles away where I send MP3s that ask, “How’s this one?” I’m glad we persevered. This is a really sweet performance here and I’m delighted to be a part of it.

A chance late night meeting in a hallway resulted in me playing on stage with these folks the next day. What great fun! Me, Ray Franks, Mick Moloney, and Melanie Nolley.

I think this was about 2007 or 2008. My friends at Guitar Showcase invited me down to do a half-hour live interview and music show. I sent Dan some pictures and printed up some chord sheets.

I’ve been a fan of Mary McCaslin since the early Seventies. In June of 2009, I finally had a chance to meet her at an intimate gathering at Dave & Kia Hatch’s place. I, of course, brought my National 8-string dobro along—just in case. And she did ask me to sit in. The fact that we had no rehearsal is my lame excuse for the clinkers at the start. It got better, and we both had a great time.

We recorded this Thomas James Haithcock song at Studio E in Sebastopol, California. Always good to play with Nina Gerber, even though our schedules didn’t allow us to play at the same time. My friend, and also short left-handed musician from San Carlos, played drums and Jeff Martin engineered and played bass. Jan Martinelli on piano.

See Dale’s blog about it here: https://electriccanyon.com/recording-studio-e-thomas-james-haithcock-sebastopol-ca/

David Lindley passed this 1979 Grammys gig on to me. I got to wear a tux and hang out with not only Olivia, but Barry Gibb, and Glen Campbell. Watching the 95-year old Eubie Blake was the other highlight of the evening for me.

I’m playing my double-12 Emmons pedal steel through a Webb amp. If you noticed that the very first dotted quarter note is missing from my performance, you are correct. After the one rehearsal (One time through. Time is money. Keep it all moving.), I’d pleaded with conductor, the other Jack Eliot, for some kind of indication of what his wild gesticulations meant as far as where in the world the downbeat was going to be—just a nod to me, since I was right there—but he said, “No, you’ll get it.” Nope. Also at the rehearsal, Olivia’s producer, who had played the parts on the record by multi-tracking a Telecaster and wrote out every single note for me, said something like, “That was OK, but in bar 17, you played an A and then an F#, where clearly it goes F# then A.” Well, they were paying the bill, and it is a beautiful arrangement, so I managed to do as requested.

Here ’s that PBS Special that I’d been telling y’all about for months and months:
http://www.pbs.org/video/nell-robinson-jim-nunally-band-aev1kd/

Check out YouTube videos of
David Nelson and Friends
The Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, California on
Saturday, March 3, 2018
featuring Steve Kimock, Michael Falzarano, Pete Sears, Mookie Siegel, Johnny Markowski, Pete Grant, & Master of Ceremonies Wavy Gravy. We had a great time!
Here’s the downloadable audio from that gig.
https://archive.org/details/dn2018-03-03.dnf.sbd.vgrm399.flac16
The audio from archive.org is way better than the YouTube audio.