The Legendary Claudettes from Chicago with Johnny Iguana

Welcome to Music Matters Podcast with Darrell Craig Harris, talking about all things music with celebrities, artists, music business insiders and more. Johnny Iguana from the Closets. How are you doing today? Great. Awesome. Yeah, well great. It's great that we're able to connect. We connected through our friend Howard, who's a great publicist friend. So the Closets, it's a really cool band. You have a lot of history. You're coming up on your seventh album, which is going to be live for streaming June 5th. The album's called Garage Glamour. I was checking that out. It's great music. I love the vibe. It's arrived, that record. Yeah. So you guys are based out of Chicago. Actually, too, I should say, the album's coming out on Proctor Records. And there's got to be vinyl and CD coming out later this spring. But you guys are based in Chicago. Tell me about the band and how you guys got together. You have an amazing singer, too, with Rachel Williams. Well, the drummer Michael Kasky and I started the group quite a while ago, really modeled after there's this great blues compilation. So when I was a teenager, I was into punk and new wave and stuff. And I had classical piano lessons. And earlier on, when I was a kid, like all kids back then, loved classic rock and pop and stuff. And then my uncle sent me all this great blues stuff. And I really got into blues. And so that's what moved me out to Chicago, playing with Junior Wells, which is a lucky circumstance for me. But so I started this, the Clodettes as a duo with a drummer modeled after these great compilation recordings called Chicago the Blues Today. And it was the tracks by Otis Spann and SP Leary that were just piano and drums, sometimes with vocals, sometimes just instrumental. And I thought, because he and I had a really good musical kind of chemistry and thought, let's do like kind of a bluesy, but like kind of open hearted, you know, any genre welcome, because we all listen to so much stuff, like we will center it around blues, but just speak for ourselves, you know, whatever comes out and make and see if we can make a whole show and a whole album out of just piano and drums. And that's what we did for the first two albums. And then we started gradually became a vocal group, just as we, you know, your sphere of musicians and people you're hanging around, you know, evolved changes over time and you meet new people. And so over and I, you know, I had written music with a band called Oh My God, writing a lot of lyrics. And so I just, yeah, I kind of, it kind of morphed into that. And so over the over the records, it's gone from pure instrumental to some instrumental to all vocal group. But we play live, we still do some instrumental. Yeah. And you guys have a killer singer and Rachel, Rachel Williams, tell me how you, how you two connected? Oh, well, he did some gigs years ago with a, with a cover band here. And when, when the guy who led that, that cover band, when he got word that we needed a singer, the previous singer we had was kind of done with van life, you know, I've never done that van life. I'm going to van life until I have like, you know, hospital life or something. You know, but when he got word that we needed a singer, he called me and said, do you know Rachel Williams? And I said, no, he said, she sang with me a little bit, but, but she, he said, she posted this rhapsodic post about a Claudette's shows he saw. So she's a fan of the band and she's dynamite. And so I called her and speaking of me sitting here coughing. She had COVID when I called her. So she's like, I don't usually sound like this, you know, but, but we got started, we got together at the piano and just started going through all the repertoire and really got quick to writing with her. And oh no, she is dynamite. She's just, when people, she comes out on stage, she, she's six foot in socks, you know, so she comes out on stage and in heels. And it's like six, four, and she's had a few different great hairstyles and she loves really, she loves playing dress up. So we kind of get together with stylists and come up with fun ideas. And, and, and that's part of the reason we like doing instrumentals on stage is give her a chance for a costume change in the middle, you know, but, but all that is sort of secondary. She's mostly just a really good, she gets sure she spends all her time, but she's not with, with me, with us, as a vocal teacher. She's a really well known vocal coach, their vocal teacher. So she's, I mean, she's a really great singer. She has a lot of soul and, and most of all, she loves theater and she loves to portray the characters that are the narrators of the song, which is really helpful when you're playing it live. It really helps it reach people when they, you know, it's so easy to have the words go by like sounds, you know, in a live, exactly. Or they're just maybe disconnected in a way. Yeah. Well, sometimes the sound in a room is a problem other in the mix. Other times, it's just that there's a lot going on and it's like almost a lot for the brain to like to comprehend the words as well as feel the music. And sometimes it's tempting to just sort of bop along, but she really helps the heart of the song to reach the hearts of the listeners. Yeah, she has a very dynamic voice that that was the first word that came to mind. And, and, and, and a beautiful 82 with really, really great presence on stage. I was checking out some of your YouTube videos. It was really, really fun to see. Talk about songwriting. Are you guys writing together? How does that work for the band? So far, it's really, I've written all the words and music. I sort of present ideas to the band. And then, you know, from that point on, drum parts, guitar parts are, are discovered mutually. And sometimes Zach, you know, on the guitars will, will come up with a great idea and send me a little demo of it or something. But more recently, Rachel and I started, she's been sending some voice memos of just little phrases, little kind of chorus lines, little ideas. And, and two of the songs we're going to be working on next. I'm really excited about we've written together, that were initiated by her voice memo. So I think that's the natural progression is we should be writing together. Because she can only, you know, you can't help but deliver a song really well when it came from your heart and your mind. Do you know that I really, I really want her, I don't want it, even though I tend to emcee the show sort of because I introduce some of the songs, I don't want it, I don't want her just to be like a mouthpiece, you know. It's nice, it's nice to have band members who feel invested in the songs. Yeah. It's as, as, as you know, we've all, we've all seen that story. At some point, if they don't feel invested, then, then maybe they don't hang around a song. So it's nice to have them look forward to like have a voice and, and it's all, you know, it's all band management and band, band leading is always a challenge, as we know. I'm also a musician, I could, I could speak on that topic. And you, on your own, actually, are very prolific. You've, you've toured and played with a lot of folks, Junior Wells, Otis Rush, a bunch of other folks. You've recorded Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, a whole lot of, a very cast of Who's Who. Tell me about that and being, being in that space for you. How is that? When did that first start for you? Well, one thing that started for me when I was just starting to drive at age 16 was I was in a blues band in the Philadelphia suburbs and we would play in the Philadelphia area. But, but I was also in rock and leaning toward punk and sort of new wave bands because that's just what, you know, Minute Man and Hooster do and wire and the Clash were my favorite bands when I was a teenager. Yeah, we kind of grew up in the same area. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, actually speaking of Howard, he's got, he's got Mike Watt interviewing me. How about that? I'm pretty psyched about that. Yeah. And actually I interviewed Mike. Yeah. He's, he's super fun. Well, I told, I told Howard, I said, I hope Watt's not annoyed that it's going to be very hard for him to get any questions in because I'm going to have all the questions. He might remember me because he actually slept over this house once and we played on a bill one together once. So, but so anyway, so I was in blues bands separately from being in rock and kind of punk bands as a teenager. And that, that persists today all the way through from when I was 16 years old, because I find it is a really good way to recalibrate as a musician. When you are doing a different kind of music and then you come back, I feel like you can see it more clearly here, more clearly when you kind of, you know, I think there is a calibration thing there. I don't know. I really like that. And so I do a lot, you know, for years, I said no to, to when people ask me to play a piano on tours, because I was just very, very busy and I just didn't really, I sort of had stepped away from that. But more recently, I've started, I've started saying yes to almost everything. So I'm, this is, this is a good example. I just came back from France and Belgium playing with Matthew Scholar, who's a great harmonica player, singer, songwriter in Chicago. I was in France and Belgium with him and his band with precious Taylor, who's Coco Taylor's niece, who's a great singer. Awesome. Yeah. And then I got back, we had these two Claudettes release shows in Milwaukee in Chicago. And then I'm leaving on Wednesday for Memphis, Clarksdale and Biloxi with the Stephen Hall experience play. And I'm actually going to be playing on the stage at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis, which is kind of like the Grammys of Blues music. Because actually, I have two records out now under my own name on Delmark, which is the same label that Magic Sam Otis Rush and Junior Alzaron, which is pretty cool. And I had my most recent one as a solo piano album. They kind of tricked me a little bit. They had me come up to the Delmark Studios to play their piano because they had had their tape machine restored. They're like, you know, tied their old original analog. Yeah, like, you know, a half inch or whatever it is there, two inch tape, I guess, two inch tape. And when I got there, they said, actually, we'd like you to record a solo piano album for Delmark. There's a history of, you know, Little Brother of Montgomery, Roosevelt Sykes, all these great solo piano records on there. And they asked me to do it. And I was, you know, pretty flattering and almost humbling. Right. But so I actually had been playing a lot and writing a lot. So I actually went, they had an engineer there at the studio. So I went in there that day and I came back two more afternoons. And that was the album. And our whole concept was no edits, every single performance is a complete performance, which is really hard because it's hard to play for four minutes. And not as the player here, one second spot here, one second spot there, you just deeply regret. You're like, I lost the groove. I fell off the rails. Part of the process. Yeah, because when you're playing piano, you're like, you're like the rhythm section on the lead and all this. And once it's a while, you're like, why did I speed up so much there? Like, whoops, that, you know, I didn't mean to, I forgot that thing entirely, whatever. But, you know, mostly, mostly a problem for me. Yeah. And part of that, I think today is a lot of the pop recordings are so clean and so edited that music lovers really want to hear the raw, the rawness. And they don't mind, they don't mind a note, maybe a note's not quite exactly the right place, but that's, that feels real. There's probably a real art to like, manufacturing near mistakes, you know, to make it sound more human than it really is, you know, and you know, putting like the slop plug in, you know, how much slop do you want, you know, the 1960s live. Yeah, like, do you want cocaine or whiskey slop? Like at this part, like, you know, exactly. Or is the guitar player tripping or they just, they've been up for four days, which one? Yeah. But there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of, especially when you've talked about like the old stone stuff and there's a lot of stuff, or maybe it's something that's a little out of tune or whatever. But actually that, that little dissonance here and there, or rhythmic dissonance, you know, that kind of creates the magic. Oh, it's some of our favorite records, I'm sure, our favorite moments. I mean, I always say, like a lot of my favorite music is by people that sound, you could say they're amateurs. I mean, I love the Velvet Underground records and that they're raw. Well, that's what inspired, they say they inspired more bands than anyone because they made, they made people go, Hey, I can do this. You don't have to be, you don't have to graduate from Juilliard, you know, you know, you don't have to be Ronnie James Dio to sing, you know, you can be like a, you can kind of talk, sing, you know, I mean, Lou Reed to mouth, miss, you know, you can do a sort of talking, singing and you can sort of, it's sort of that, it's sort of that thing too. It's like, you know, we had to think of guys like Willie Nelson, like, is he the best technical singer? No, but you hear two words and you know exactly who it is. And that's, that's where the magic is, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And you've got to, as my uncle would say, you got a thing. Do you have a, you know, that thing? Yeah. Yeah, storytelling. But I did get hooked up with, so my good friend, yeah, I mentioned Matthew Scholar, who I traveled with, his brother Larry Scholar has only produced a handful of records, but I think all of them are Grammy nominated when he does one. It's a good one. And he did one that was called Chicago Blues, a living history, which was with a lot of great Chicago artists I got to play piano with on that record, Billy Branch and John Primer, Carlos Johnson, Matthew's on it and Larry Bell. And then on the record, we had Buddy Guy, we had James Cotton, you know, like really, really heavy. And then Larry produced this, this Chicago plays the Stones record, which was his idea of the Stones, you know, took muddy waters and Elmore James and like, you know, like their early stuff, you know, they're doing little red rooster and stuff, you know. And so they came out of Chicago Blues, they famously came to visit muddy when they came to Chicago. And but then he kind of turned it, Larry, the producer flipped it and said, let's have Chicago Blues artists play Stones songs, but play them like as, as we might play them in a Blues Club, you know, and dig the Blues out of them, you know. And we did that. And it was cool to play on that because Derek Trucks was on it and Buddy Guy, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. So like pretty, pretty crazy, right? Johnny Winter got to play with us on this track. So that was a cool scenario. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's kind of the reason why most of us got into music is because you want to, in your mind, you're thinking, well, someday I'd like to do this. And then when it actually happens, you're kind of sitting in the studio going, wow, it's pretty crazy. Tell me about producing, getting back to the, the Klawdette's release. Tell me about producing that because did you have a co-producer? How did you guys put the record together? Well, we, we actually recorded more than an album's worth over, you know, we had maybe, I don't know, four different sessions of three or four songs each that we recorded at some of which is a Michael Kasky's basement studio. He's fully qualified engineer, has a lot of good mics and stuff. And we recorded some of it in his basement studio and then mixed it elsewhere. We recorded some of the studio called Joy Ride, we recorded some of the VSOP, different engineers. But the ones that I used to produce are, I used JQ who does the bear score with me. I wanted him, he's really like a beats kind of hip hop and dance, like electronic music kind of guy. And I knew that he would hear, and he also loves punk and rock and all these things. I knew he would hear things in, let's say our drum pattern in the song, or what the guitar, how the guitar and the bass are interacting with the keyboards and the drums. And he would have ideas that about the human part, but also I thought he could add some other elements to the track, to maybe fatten up the snare or like thicken up the kick, like that. And just other elements to make you bop more to it. So he did two of the tracks. And then also my uncle, Steve Berkowitz is known to a lot of people in the music industry. He was Jeff Buckley's A&R guy, he brought Fishbone and Soul Asylum to Sony. He worked with Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan and Miles Davis. I mean, he's known in that. Pretty good resume. Yeah. But he's been in the studio with just, you know, way more times than he could ever remember or count. And when I sent him the new recordings, and he was right away, he was like really excited when he heard the stuff with Rachel and saw some clip sauce with her. But he heard the tracks and he had this whole notebook of notes. And he said, there's things about these tracks that make them seem like demos to me. There's things that need to jump out more, things that need to get cut away. And as he started talking, I said, well, why don't you come out to Chicago and mix this with me? And he, and he, I think he took two seconds and said, okay, I'll do it. Yeah, let's do it. And so we made it like our first real thing. You know, we've always had kind of parallel lives in music. He's my uncle. So he's been doing a lot, a lot, quite a bit longer, but we haven't really worked together. Other than he did, we did master an early Claudette's record together in New York City at Sterling Sound. But, but so he came out here and it was great. We spent a full week at two different studios. And he was, I mean, the band was really impressed with, he's just really good at, he said there's a scientific principle that when a band or artist has a track, there are things that they think people can hear that, that aren't, aren't, aren't, that don't come across to people. Because you just, of course, you know, if there's a part that you think is wicked awesome in a certain section, it should be boosted to show people. This is the highlight of this section. This is the star of the show in this part. And yet his feeling, which we ended up agreeing with was it was almost like live, where it was just, we did, we played the song and it goes across the minutes of the song. And there's some singing when the singing goes away, the band's still playing, but he's like, he had all these ideas like this part's got to come way up. This part should be deleted. This part needs tambourine. And you know, so we did more than mixing. We did overdubs. I added organ. We added extra vocals. And I think the tracks did go from, from good to really great. Well, do you think, you think if you had to actually pay somebody like him to come in and do that, it would be a lot of money? Well, we did agree, we did agree that he has producer points, you know, so he, so, so should it blow up his kids? Well, well, you know, we'll have some income from, you know, it's the album. And it's interesting too, because you mentioned all the different studios of different play, but it's actually very consistent. The album sounds, sounds very consistent all the way through. Tell me, like, it's hard to peg the style. You want to say like Americana, but it's not just that it's a lot going on. What would you, if you're first like impression, what would you say the style of the band is? I've had, I've struggled with it. And it's not just a small, it's not a minor issue, because you're supposed to file yourself under something for, you know, it used to be for the record store. Now it's for Spotify. Like what, what is the genre and what is the subgenre here? You're seven choices. You know, sometimes it's like, well, there's blues and rock in it, but you better believe it's not fog hat or deep purple. So it's not like blues rock. And I would, I would shudder to have it filed under blue rock because nothing against it, but that's not what this is. Yeah, there's some R&B in there. There's some great Hammond organ going on. There's a lot of, a lot of really cool interesting stuff. Yeah. So I came up with the term a while ago, garage cabaret, because I thought that in the cabaret part is the jazz club with the grand piano and the garage is like, you know, 60s garage rock or, you know, I guess they called it punk even back then, you know. So it's got like, it's got glitz and grit, you know, so, so we thought garage glamour was not just a good name for the album, but also sort of the band. That's kind of what it, what it sort of is. It's got that sort of, you know, combination of uptown and downtown, you know. And yeah, the glitz and grit is actually a very good, that's a good way to put that. And it's interesting too, because like for me, like when I listen, I've been getting a lot of bands that are submitting for the podcast. And I kind of always hesitate to like categorize bands because I don't feel like it's my place to do that. I love to hear what they think, you know what I mean? Because I have had, they've all had to deal with that thing, trying to figure out, okay, who are we? What are we? Do we have to be one thing, which is always the A&R thing, trying to put you into like, oh, you're this. I think we, I think we picked Indy. All that ultimately means is that the major labels said pass, right? That's not just what it means. We can't figure you guys out. Hey, tell me about that, that platinum album over your shoulder, just because we talked a little bit about that. But is that, is that the same, is that your uncle? Yeah, it says Steve Berkowitz on it. It says, to commemorate the sale of one million copies of the Elector Records long playing record album, Candio. So yeah, that's it. I think that makes it platinum. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, cars, which we were kind of, we were kind of bonding over that. That's some, we, you know, that's, I mean, I hate to be like the old guy, but like, there was some awesome music coming out that they're kind of early mid-80s stuff was really fun. Someone just asked me in a, in a, in a emailed interview, when did you first know you wanted a life in music? And I have an answer to that, which is I was six and I went to see the cars at the spectrum in Philadelphia with backstage passes from Uncle Steve. He was, he got them for us and they were opening for foreigner. Maybe you remember this tour. Wow. Yeah, what a tour that is, right? But I was literally backstage in the wings and all of a sudden towards me walks Ben Orr, the bass player and that singer with a feather boa around his neck, sunglasses on his face and a girl under each arm, a woman under each arm walking down the hallway. And it's like, wow. What's the, what's the movie by the like the music journalist about like, we're like the, the, the almost famous, almost famous. It was like a slow motion backstage scene that I had. And I just, at six years old, I said, that looks pretty good. I think I want, that's what I think. Yeah, I want a piece of that. I want the feather boa and the sunglasses. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, that's, I mean, and that's, you know, my memory of that too is like singing along in the car with my mom on songs, like even going back to like Barry Malo, The Carpeters. I was like, man, I, you know, that just, that, when that grabs your soul, as you know, as a musician, it's just hard to deny it. It's hard to walk away from it. If you could give some advice, and I know it's kind of a, always kind of a big question, but give some advice to young musicians. A couple of things that you've learned, especially because you guys kept this band together and kept this project together for so long. What are some things that you've learned that are important? Well, I, I, I think for the four different reasons, practicing your instrument of choice every moment you can is a really good, the reason it's so, it's so important to me is, first of all, the music is pretty challenging to play. And it's kind of like being a basketball player and going to the gym. You can't just play the games. You have to go to the gym and you're going to fail in the game. And my fingers won't do what I want. And my mind won't remember all the changes unless I practice a lot. But also, it's just, if you want to, you know, be successful and you're listening to all the voices telling you about tick talking and digital marketing and, you know, the best practices on social media and everything. The only thing I keep returning to, if you want to elevate professionally is to practice and to, to get, when you're undeniably good, word will get out. And when I say practice, it doesn't have to mean being, you know, Paganini, it could just be playing with nuance and playing with soul and having really good, you know, my minutiae of timing, you know, really, really, really just flowing easily as you play, not sounding jagged unless you want to, you know. So, you know, obviously practicing a lot is a band, but it's just also as the world around you seems confusing. And as your Google calendar is full of stuff that's stressing you out and you're maybe not feeling too connected to earth or feeling upset or hopeless, the time of just making chords by yourself and your instrument is such a sacred thing. It's like it really soothes me so deeply to just sit down without a plan and just hear chords. I mean, somebody invented these hammers, needle, hammers, not needles, but hammers and strings and keys for me. And I can just sit down and this bit of magic happens where, you know, and my piano sounds really good in the room that it's in. That's one thing I think is lucky to be a piano player is you can make a whole song just by yourself. It's a different of a bass or drums, you know, it's, it seems like everyone should have a piano. I did think for years, if it was law that every house had to have a piano, I think it would be a much more peaceful world. You know, if you could just sit down anytime and it's hard to put your thoughts into words, it's, you know, things seem insurmountable. You can just sit down and without a plan. I call it Ouija boarding. Just put your fingers around the, spread your fingers out differently. And before you know it, you're playing you're playing a minor chord with a major seven or you're playing a minor six chord or you're playing a flat nine chord, whatever it is, you can, you can, you know, you can decipher that later or instantly if you want, but you don't have to just, you know, I'm sure we all know incredible jazz musicians that probably just had, they were like autistic level genius, you know, or just like some of them, some of them compose and make whole scores and some of them probably never read music, you know, and they just have this incredible ear. They always said that about the Beatles. I don't know if it's true, but that, that, you know, they just had this ear that it was just that like a once a century assemblage of people who had in heart, soul and an ear and came up with these changes that became standards across every genre. And some of the best songs ever written only had three or four chords. Yeah. It took, it took 10 minutes to write. Oh, and I love, there's, there's a guitar slim solo that's two notes. It's just, it's, it's the things that I used to do. It just, but the more he plays it, he starts to fall behind a little and it almost can make you cry. There's something to it. You know, there's, there are great solos that are, you know, you're right. Whole, cold chord changes that are nothing, but, but that, that's really like, I don't know, as far as music business and there's a few quotes I read and so, and do you know who Nat Hentoff was? I don't. He was like a, he was a music writer, I think jazz critic from Boston, I think, and he had this book called Listen to the Stories. And it was, it was a compilation of just anecdotes of writing and limos with like Bing Crosby and Duke Ellington and, and Satchmo and, and just lots of musicians that were locally famous in Kansas City or, you know, St. Louis or LA and, and one of them that, that, that I tell my bandmates is some doofus of an interviewer asked Duke Ellington while he had access to Duke Ellington. The most inane question, which was, how did you score all those chart hits? And, and Duke Ellington's brilliant instant response was, well, at any given time, I looked around at the musicians in my band and I said, what do these people do well? And that's really important that when you get a new drummer, when you get a new guitar player, whatever, if you have a song that is really, that really swings, and they sense this drummer is not a swinging drummer, they're like a great rockabilly drummer or like whatever like that, lean into what they do with the people you have in your realm at a given time, lean into what they do well. And that doesn't necessarily mean you have to completely change course, but, but maybe change, you know, change up your set, your playlist, your set list, and emphasize. And as you're writing, keep in mind who you have in your orbit. It's like, people say, which is the best college to send my son to? It's like, well, which, what, what humans are teaching there right now? I mean, that's a factor. You know, we can't necessarily know that, but the walls aren't why the university is great and the legacy is why it's great. Have they ever earned a living doing what they're teaching? Yeah. Important. Yeah. I mean, so that was that, that, that was one of the other ones was there was a Kansas City musician that said in the heyday of like, you know, the, the, the, the, the, when Jay McShann and all the great Kansas City artists were playing on the, on the strip there, he said, you can walk down the street at two in the morning and hear different clubs. And as you walk by, you can go, oh, it's, you know, which musician that, you know, is, is, is playing in which room and you could hear it as you walk by. And he said, ultimately, by the time you're, let's say 28 years old, if people can't do that when they walk by and hear you playing and you've lost your way, if you're, if you're a clone to someone else, if you're just trying to do what the other people have already done, what's the point? You know, if you're not expressing yourself the way that's natural to you and it's sometimes hard for people to get to that. Yeah. And you kind of mentioned it when you were talking about using your musicians and their best attributes. That sort of was Frank Zappa thing. He would identify guys in his band that had a particular aptitude and he would really, you know, like Steve Vai, a lot of the, a lot of the people that had played with him, which was always really interesting. Tell me about how people can find you online and, and also, are you guys have some live shows coming up with the Claudettes? Yeah, I need to, I probably shouldn't do it this way. But when I have like what's going to amount to a six show run that's got two holes in it, I tend not to post the four shows until I get the other two done. I just, I just like to post the whole thing. It's a little silly and pointless. But so we've got, soon our show dates page is going to turn from empty to like a long scroll because we have a lot. But because the album doesn't come out till June 5th, there's a little bit of a lag where like, I booked a lot of shows in the fall, like after the album has a chance to come out and get heard and talked about. So I didn't book a whole lot. Right now, we just did Chicago and Milwaukee. We're playing three Wisconsin shows in a few weeks and then we're playing some Michigan shows. And I'm also doing a bunch of touring as a piano player with blues groups. I'm going to, I said, I guess I said I'm going down south and then I'm going to Europe again. So my calendar is full of playing with like three different groups and that's great. I mean, but the Claudettes and this album are the absolute centerpiece. And it's going to get really, really busy. But there's the Claudettes.com. We're on every social media. Just search the Claudettes. We're on there. And, you know, we have like a link tree that people can find that's, that has it all in one place, you know, but it's all just the Claudettes. Yeah. And I encourage people to check out your Spotify, but also YouTube because you have live videos and they're really fun to watch. Yeah. We actually just put out a lyric video for this song. You are my whole world that John Primers on who was in the Muddy Waters band up toward in record. I've played in Beirut and Jakarta with him. I mean, we travel a lot. Yeah. But he's, he's 81. And he, and he not only is, you know, very famous as a blues artist, but he put out an album a few years ago called The Soul of a Bluesman because he loves like Rainy Night in Georgia, like 60s, big season 70s soul. And he sings it so great. So I had this idea of him duetting on this song I'd written for this new album. And oh my God, did he kill it? He just, he was a little confused why I asked him at first because he was around these younger people in the studio and the music. He didn't quite understand the part I wrote for him. And then at some point he said, can I sing it my way? Cause he was starting to hear it. And he turned it into a duet where it wasn't just a pure harmony I wrote. He's just kind of bouncing off the other vocal and doing counter melodies and probably unisons like in an octave. And then, and then, and it sounds like, you know, I love those great duets where, where they're just kind of playing off each other. It's not just a lockstep. Yeah. It's, you hear the collaboration aspect of it. Yeah. The back and forth and give and take. And it's so good. And like many people have told me that they cried the first time they heard the song. It's just, cause John really discovered it. It's like a love song. And it's really sweeping dramatic love song. But, but he just, it's so thrilling to have had the tape rolling while he discovered the song, not while he mastered the song, but while he, like all of a sudden the light bulb happened and the tape was rolling, you know, that's a, that's a bit of magic if you can pull that off. Yeah. Yeah. If you can get the first take, if it, then that's, it has an energy to it that, that's undeniable usually. Yeah. And, and you know, there's mixed, because it's a mixed bag. Do you chore the song for six months and then get, work out the kicks and get it really tight and then record it? Or do you go, no, no, no, record it when it's fresh and new and means a lot to you rather than like song number eight on the set list every night. Exactly. Yeah. You want it, you want it to be alive. And at the end of the day, it's all about communication and people, you know, it can be, it can be a little raw. People don't mind that as long as it's real. I think, I think that that's, that's for me has always been the most important thing. Johnny, thank you so much for joining me. And I, we haven't even touched on your, on your scoring career because you have a very prolific scoring career. Actually, what is, well, we should talk about it just briefly. You co-compose on the FX Hulu series, The Bear. Talk a little bit about that, because that's a different world on a lot of, you know, musicians. We all hear about that kind of film, TV thing, but that's a different world, I know. We were lucky, JQ and I, we had a band called Them vs. Them and we still make a lot of tracks together, partly for fun and partly, kind of with our wheels turning about a new idea about, you know, presenting some live music together. But it's, we're in Chicago and The Bear was set and filmed in Chicago. And so he was asked by one of the producers of the show, who they go way back to create a little bit of music in season one. And then he realized, Jay, Jay, Jay's like, he can play some keyboards and he can sing. And he writes a lot, great writer, but he's like, but he felt he needed me for a little bit more advanced like notes and chords, you know, because he can, he can, and he does all the time make music like that, but they wanted specific things that he felt like was out of his comfort zone. So he had me over and then we submitted some things and then they started asking for more and more. And by the time season two came, it was very, very prevalent. There's all these key scenes that have our music in it, and including like, I think it's the season finale of season two, the whole first five minutes is this theme that we did that's very on edge. And it's the kitchen theme, whenever they're in the kitchen, and there's like panic going on. And then it goes to the, to the, to the dining room and it's like soundtrack, you know, but when he goes back to the kitchen, it's our pizzicato strings theme that we did. That's just sort of like pins and needles, you know. And so I have a nice like 15 minute compilation of just themes we did from season two. And that was the peak after that as the show got outrageously successful, their budget grew and everything. And so they spent a lot of the musical minutes picking soundtrack selections that they, I think they feel like are going to have a lot of real impact. And so there's less room for scoring. Of course, we want to do as much as we can. Talk about the difference between soundtrack and scoring. Because I just had, I just had this discussion with another very prolific composer. And he was telling me a little bit about that. So maybe you could talk about it. Well, they have Genesis and ACDC and Wilco, you know, on the soundtrack. They even also have some Trent Reznor pieces, I think, apart from Nine Inch Nails that he had done that they did have them, I think, rearrange for certain parts of it. So, but the only new original music created expressly for the show was what we would call scoring. And that's what we did. So whenever you're hearing, you know, the English beat or the beat, you know, like that, like in this last season, that's part of the soundtrack. And there might even be a soundtrack album and the soundtrack album might or might not have original scoring on it. It might be just soundtrack selections, you know. So, but some shows, it's interesting when you watch them. And now, of course, I'm obsessed with, I'm barely paying the attention to plot. I'm like listening so much. The cues. Yeah. And there's such great music supervision on some shows. Like, I love, did you watch that? Speaking of Nevada, did you watch the Reservation Dogs? Yeah. Yeah. I love that show. And the music supervision, the scoring is, I kept shazamming. There's like all this great stuff up there, you know. And it's cool when they can pick something that's like, there's like 70 years of tracks on there, you know, of recordings in the soundtrack that are perfectly, exquisitely chosen, you know. Yeah. I always, I think of, I always think of when I first saw the first Guardians of the Galaxy film and I was like, oh, the music was so, yeah. And Peaky Blinders. Peaky Blinders is one of several shows that uses Nick Cave's red right hand, you know. And a bunch. And, but, but I shazammed a lot on that show too, because there's a lot of like, not very big UK kind of punky bluesy bands, which is why I was like, oh, we got to get on Peaky Blinders because it's like, it would fit perfectly, you know, sort of like gnarly, bluesy indie rock, you know. Except the thing that's so different is it's piano based. I always like said, ours is like, Ray Charles meets Julie London or something. It's not like, it's not like Dick Dale or Elmore James in a punk band, you know. It's like, I think it's puzzling for some people, you know. It's like, that doesn't go, you know. That's good. Yeah. But it's good to mix it up. It's good to kind of go, oh, again, that's what we have at our disposal. So that's what we use. Those are our tools. Yeah. And you bring that, and you bring that going back to the Claudette, you bring that, that, that sensibility to what you guys are doing, because you can hear a lot of it, different influences, but the musicianship is great. The production is great. Yeah. We really go out of our way to make the tracks what I would call cinematic and not necessarily to like score placements in films or TV or ads, but it's just a sound we like. We like using the studio as an instrument, using copious reverb, you know, considering turning things backwards. A lot of just little things that you don't hear overtly. But if you took them away, you know, you know, like we do, the studio time is so fun. I mean, it's stressful because the clock is ticking, money is being spent and you're creating the lasting impression of this song idea, like this is the authoritative presentation of this piece of art that you made, and it feels like a huge responsibility to get it right, you know. But it's also too, it's nice to have collaborators, other pairs of ears to kind of bounce off. I love having it. The purpose of having a producer is to listen to them because it's very easy to sit. Why would you have a producer and then basically say it's my way or the highway? It's just wasted. Why did you bring them in? You could just get an engineer if that's what you want. I've had several times where I've told the band, I'm like, when the producer says you should cut this whole section and this other section, this part you're not emphasizing is the part that should be emphasized. Turn that upside down. Like we're going to do what the producer is saying because we trust them. They've made great records and they're probably hearing something or not and it's really good advice. And we've agreed that we've almost had a handshake agreement that we're going to collaborate. I mean occasionally you might be like, no, I'm not changing that word. That word is the word I meant. Something like that. If it doesn't have a good sound to the producer or something like that. But large scale things like, I remember with Ted Hutt with our high times in the dark record, he said, you got to write a bridge to this song. We kind of talked about it. He's like, we left the studio and like come into the studio tomorrow with the bridge. We're going to put that part in. It's a lot of responsibility, but it's like, but when you, once the wheels are turning, like you can get there, just do it. Yeah. Well, and that falls under the great advice category. Listen to your producer. That's why you hired him. And if you're not working with people that you don't trust, then you should find some other folks. But yeah, that's awesome. Hey, Johnny, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate your time. Yeah. I hope we make it out to Vegas and can meet out there or maybe you get around and I'll see you somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah. And I get to Chicago pretty often too. I'm working with some folks that you probably know, but Craig Snyder and Dean Boushalla, Dean's a big TV guy in Chicago. Oh, well, yeah, that definitely looked me up when you were in town. I mean, I might very well be playing a blue show that night or something. I'll catch you in. Yeah, that would be awesome. Good. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. Everybody, please check out the Claudette's release. It's going to be live for streaming. Garage Glamors, the album. It's going to be live June 5th for streaming at the record full record on vinyl, CD and all the other methods that will be coming out in spring. I will include your Claudette's website and social media on the podcast description so everybody can find you. Thank you so much, Johnny. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me. All right. Have a great day. You too. 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