You might not know Greg Koch, but we’ll bet your favorite guitarist does. In 2012, Fender called the Wisconsin blues-guitar phenom one of the top 10 best unsung guitarists, and in 2020, Guitar World listed Koch among the 15 best guitar teachers. He’s been inducted into the Wisconsin Area Music Industry Hall of Fame. Koch is a bonafide midwest guitar god.

He joins Cory Wong on this round of Wong Notes for this meeting of the Middle-America minds, where the duo open with analysis of music culture in Wisconsin and Minnesota—Koch taught at Saint Paul’s now-shuttered McNally Smith College of Music, which Wong attended. Koch and Wong zero in on the blues roots of most modern music and talk through soloing theories: It can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be, but Koch shares that he likes to “paint himself into a corner,” then get out of it.

Koch and Wong swap notes on the pressures of studio performance versus the live realm, and how to move on from mistakes made onstage in front of audiences. Plus, Koch has created scores of guitar education materials, including for Hal Leonard. Tune in to find out what makes a good guitar course, how to write a guitar book, Koch’s audio tips for crystalline live-stream sessions, and why he still prefers tube amps: “I like to crank that sh*t up!”

Visit Greg Koch: https://www.gregkoch.com/

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Produced by Jason Shadrick and Cory Wong

Additional Editing by Shawn Persinger

Presented by DistroKid

What's happening? Welcome to Wong Notes Podcast. I'm your host, Cory Wong. Today on the show, we've got Greg Kock.

Now, Greg is an incredible guitar player, but also an incredible teacher. Now, a lot of people think, oh, this person's great at guitar. They must be great at teaching and communicating.

Tell you what, those are very different skills. And Greg is one of those cats that has them both dialed in.

And so much so that he's been hired to write several books and method books, even how to approach the guitar itself. Kind of understanding of the fretboard, understanding of the instrument, and also understanding certain genres.

Now, you have to have a certain depth of understanding in your own playing to be able to communicate it to other people. And you have to understand how people are going to learn in order to get the most results. Greg is wonderful at that.

I've learned a lot from his materials. I hope some of you have as well. Maybe you've even read some of his stuff and not even known it.

Anyways, incredible guitar player, great phrasing, great tone, really great at playing trio, by the way. And I get into some of that in this episode. Greg's a wonderful dude, a fellow Midwest cat like myself, actually, I was.

One of the schools that I went to for music was McNally Smith College of Music. I went to the University of Minnesota and I went to McNally Smith, which was in St. Paul, Minnesota.

It's no longer around, but right after I graduated, Greg started teaching there. And I was so bummed that I didn't get to take lessons from him there.

I had amazing teachers when I was there, but Greg started teaching there and was spending some time in the Twin Cities and fellow Midwest cat, like I'm saying. So it is.

We're kindred spirits in many of our Midwestern ways, how we look at things, approach things, and just a great dude, honestly, really wonderful guy. I hope you enjoy this interview. I enjoy doing it.

And tell you what, if you're also into education, I gotta say I worked really hard on a guitar course. Over five and a half hours of guitar videos, lessons, stuff is tabbed out. It's the Cory Wong guitar course.

I can promise you you will be a better player if you go through all the stuff in this course. Okay? I mean that it's not just rhythm guitar, it's not just lead guitar, it's all of it. Okay? Practice tips.

Very practical ways of outlining how I practice in a one hour practice session. And just the practice mindset and how to get better things to pay attention. To so got tell you, it's a wonderful course.

I put a lot of time and effort into it. Also, if you're in Europe right now, I'm going on tour. My tour starts this week. It's going to be amazing.

My whole 10 piece band is going to be with me. It's going to be fun. Got the band couch opening up. Fantastic. We'll see you there. Okay, let's hit it. Hey, you guys know about Distrokid yet?

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Greg, thanks so much for hanging with us on the podcast, man. It's great to finally have you with us.

Well, it's great to finally meet you. Dog gone it all these years, you're up there in the dual metropolitan complex. I know we have a lot of mutual cohorts in crime.

Mark Lethierry, that rascal.

I know.

There's Mark Laceri, as I like to.

Say, as Italian as it gets. Dude, what a cat. I mean, Midwest boys, here we go. Dude, you're in Milwaukee, right?

I am indeed.

Is that where you grew up? Like what kept you in Milwaukee? What do you. What do you do. Why are we in the Midwest? Let's. Let's let people know.

Because we thrive on negative reinforcement. I think that's it.

Well, you're. That is definitely a Twin Cities thing. In Minneapolis, you know, coming from the Prince School, that's.

It's just trickle down of generations of negative reinforcement in the. In the music industry. Is that the way that it is in Milwaukee, too?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love my hometown, and I wouldn't be who I am, for better or worse, if it wasn't for this fine establishment.

But, yeah, you know, my.

I guess my original thought was because I always wanted to do my own band, so I went to college up in Stevens Point, where I majored in music and, you know, in beer, whatever you do in college. And I came back here and I wanted to have my own band and always wanted to do that.

So my thought was, well, be a big fish around here, and that's going to be my insurance policy. I could venture out and make forays into the real world, as it were.

But then I'll always have the home base to kind of go back and, you know, rest my laurels on. But. And that's. It's kind of worked.

But then when I started reproducing like a madman and I got four kids, and it was just a good place to raise the kids.

Yeah.

And then everything I did, I was able to do from here, so I just kind of stayed.

Yeah, that's kind of the same thing for me, man. I mean, it's a nice place to raise a family, and for me, it's comfortable. You know, my siblings, my parents are here. It's.

Yep.

It's just a nice. It's. It's a nice area to get a little bit of an escape, too, from. It's not just constant music industry talk everywhere I go.

Right.

You know, my neighbors kind of don't really care.

Oh, I. I was just telling the stories today.

I mean, you know, all the people that are, you know, my kids went to school with, none of them really know what I do. I mean, some of them do, but for the most part, they don't.

And so there's always been stuff over the years where, like, you go out and you do something incredible and you'll come back and, hey, how was your last trip? Did you come across anyone cool and be like, yeah, I was at this thing and Jeff Beck was at our gig, and they're like, now, now, who's.

Who's Jeff Beck? It's kind of one of those things where it's like, you know. So that's part of the negative reinforcement thing.

Yeah, in a way it's cool because there's no, there's no sycophantry or any of that kind of stuff. It's just, you're just a dude doing your thing. And I always just notice that I don't really know what they do, so why should they know what I do?

You know what I mean? So, yeah, it's just one of those things. What are you going to do?

Yeah, my neighbor who works at Medtronic, you know, it's. He's doing just as cool stuff as I am. It's just in a totally different world. And we happen to celebrate music publicly.

Exactly. Now, whereabouts in the Minneapolis do you live? Up there in the, in the area.

I'm in one of the suburbs. Just a couple, couple minutes. I'm about 12 minutes from both downtowns.

Okay. Because my, my in laws, My wife was from Maplewood originally.

Oh, yeah. I'm not too far from there.

Yeah, My in laws are in Woodbury.

Okay, cool.

So we go up there all the time. And, you know, I taught for, for about a year at McNally Smith College of Music. My son was going up there.

Yeah.

And they made me an offer I couldn't understand to go up there.

It was one of those things like, hey, we, we need somebody to come up and do like, the Survey of Guitar Styles class, some playing, some, you know, oral history and whatnot. Would you be able to do it? And I was like, you know, I'm on the road all the time. I. I really can't.

Like, well, you know, we'll make you full time, but you don't have to be here two days a week. I was like, as I said, I'm traveling quite a bit.

And they said, well, we'll put you on salary, you get full benefits and your kid goes to school for free. And I was like, how's Monday and Tuesday? Yeah, so I, I did that for about a year.

And then my son was like, you know, I don't think I want to go here anymore. I'm like, awesome. Because, I mean, I love the teaching aspect. It's a cool facility. All the teachers were cool.

But yeah, you know, when you do clinics and whatnot, when you're in front of people who want to be there, that's a totally different vibe than looking out at people at, you know, 8:00 in the morning that are looking at their phones and you're like, you're paying a lot of money to be here, and you don't really. It's. It's just kind of a soul crusher. So. I don't know how we got in the night. Little segue.

But anyway, so I was grateful to do it for a year and then out Schmidt. But I had a little crash pad in downtown St. Paul.

Nice.

And. And it was. It was good times. I like the dual metropolitan complex, as I like to call it.

Yeah, I went to McNally Smith.

You did?

I was there before you were there, though. I remember. I remember seeing you around the hallways every once in a while because we. I would.

My friends and I, we would go back and rehearse in the building.

Aha.

That was. That was nice that I missed the school for that.

I mean, there's a lot of reasons why I miss having the school around, because it was good for the music community, but it was also for alumni just to have, like, a free rehearsal space.

Yeah, it was a nice spot. It was. It was a cool facility. Without. Without a doubt.

Yeah. I miss it there. Well, let's dive into talking about your new record. I'm loving this thing.

Tell me a little bit about the new album and how the approach was different from other albums because you've been making a lot of rec. You've. You've made a lot of albums through the years. How was your approach to this one different? What were you excited about going into this one?

Well, the whole gist behind this endeavor was that I've been working with Devin Allman in Allman Betts Family Revival, and he came out and saw the band when we were playing down in St. Louis, and he's like, how do we blow this thing up a little bit more? You should be more people at your gigs, this and the next thing.

And I was like, you know, it is what it is. We're doing what we can. And he thought, well, why don't we try to use my channels?

We'll work together and try to put something out and get some attention, raise some money, and then maybe go to a thing where we go to a more named studio and have a bunch of guest musicians on and so on and so forth on down the line.

So he said, why don't we look past or look at your last, you know, 20 records or whatever it is and pick out 10 tunes, and then we'll use that as kind of like a, you know, an entree into getting you to a larger audience of kind of. Here's a Sample of what he's done, we're going to look to the future type of a thing.

And I said, well, my 20 records, the stuff's all kind of over the map as far as stylistically concerned. I mean, there's always been kind of a soft underbelly of the blues to all of the stuff.

Yeah.

But one of the things we always get asked at the merch table, somebody will come up and says, what's the bluesiest record you have? And so now I can finally say this one.

So I basically went through and found little because, you know, my thing was, is that I was always trying to put my own stamp on things. So if I was going to do a blues tune, you know, I always wanted to put, you know, something different about the changes.

Put a bridge in some kind of cool thing to make it different. And so that was both a blessing and a curse.

But because people liked it because it wasn't straight blues, but then all the blues people were like, that ain't the blues.

So be that as it may, it was easy to kind of go through my catalog and literally just put out, okay, well, which actual 12 bar blues songs are there actually in the catalog? So I just went back and. And did like straight, you know, 12 bars blues. Or maybe they had four chords max.

Yeah.

And we made a list of those tunes. And then once Devin heard that, he's like, well, these are great. Do you have anything in the can that you haven't released yet that we could add on?

And I had recorded a couple of Muddy Waters tunes that I did my take on. And I was going to do a kind of a blues record during COVID and it kind of got pushed to the side or whatever.

So I played him one of those tunes and he really, really liked it. And he said, well, why don't we make this the single?

What?

It'd be great if we could get some special guests on this. Why don't you do a duet with someone like Larry McCray? So that's what we did for that can' satisfied tune.

And then I played him the can't lose what you ain't never had song. And he really liked that. He's like, boy, it'd be great if we get Jimmy hall to sing this and get the Memphis Horns to play horns on it.

I thought, wicked. So he got on the phone, half hour later, he lined it all up.

So the record consists of those two new tracks that have never been put out and a bunch of stuff that's been on various different records. Spanning back like 30 years, but. Yeah, but it's new to those twos. Haven't heard it. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I love it, man. It's so good. I love the idea of just showcasing that side of your playing in a really potent form.

And I was thinking about it because as a guitar player, you know, we all have to have some sort of knowledge of the blues. And it just, it lays out on the guitar, you know, like it's.

Yes.

So much of the music of modern music has roots that come from the blues. And as guitar players, it's a fun thing to solo over the blues. It can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be.

But I've been curious on your thought of. After decades and decades of the blues existing, how can somebody now do something that feels unique playing the blues?

Well, that's a good question. I think that, you know, the thing that I think keeps blues fresh to me anyway is when you have.

Someone kind of has their own vernacular of soloing and you just like the way they say things, right?

Yeah.

And so therefore they bring a freshness. Even though it's like I always kind of use the reference of. This is an example of like, like Eric Clapton's Cream era guitar playing.

I, I never get tired of hearing that. Or I never get tired of hearing Albert King. Every time I hear Albert King I'm like, I'm good, you know. Or Albert Collins.

Obviously his, his vocabulary is limited because he's in that weird F sharp minor tuning and he has to capo up when he changes keys and so on and so forth.

But that vernacular, once you've bought into it is something you never get tired of hearing over the course of like a 12 bar song or whatever it happens to be. And then so to me is if you can keep it honest and have your own stamp, that's, that's not necessarily like a lick oriented thing.

It's just that you speak in this vernacular and it's fresh every time you do it.

And then to me, if, you know, if you're going to write a, you know, it's kind of fun doing classics because that's already been, you know, the lyrical content and so on and so forth. It's kind of like playing a standard, right? It just is what it is.

And you can be yourself over that as long as you breathe new life into how you interpret it. But to me, if you're going to write a new blues song, the lyrics should be something that are more conducive to what you're doing, you're not.

I'm not going. Going down to the crossroads to sell my soul. I don't think it.

Or any of those kind of things or any of the other different socioeconomic and things that I have no relationship to growing up in the suburbs of Milwaukee, you know what I'm saying? So I think that because of the form is so simple, the template is simple.

You can approach it in a way that will be fresh if you have the mindset to do so. I think where it gets kind of beat to death is.

Is people just trying to follow in the footsteps of others and try to be a rebranding of what's already been, which is more the rule other than the exception. Not that I'm judging. It's just that that's not what I'm into doing.

Yeah. So, I mean, aside, let's. Let's take artistry out of it. Let's take uniqueness out of it. I appreciate your answer in that.

I like the way that you put that. If we take all those. Those sides of it out of it, what makes a great blues player?

What are some, like, actual tactical things in your mind that make a great blues player?

Well, I think that for me, what I like to listen to is someone who doesn't play will play licks, but it's not. Playing is not putting together licks.

Yeah, yeah.

So they have a language, but they're just not reiterating the same things over and over again. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So to me, like, when I'm. When I'm improvising, I. And I. When people do a Skype lesson with me or something like that, and they're like, look, when I'm playing a blues, I.

I seem to play everything I know within the first 12 or 24 bars. And then I just am flailing.

Yeah.

And I said, well, you should never really be playing any licks, per se. What, you know, what you are about to play should be influenced by what you just played.

And you can tell people that have more of this kind of thematic or sequential way of playing where they're reacting in real time to what they just played. And for me, a lot of times I like to paint myself in a corner and get out of it, you know, And. And. And that, to me, is.

Then you really feel a sense of. Of. Of spontaneity.

And they're really riding that wave of connecting to whatever you want to say, the great smoke, or whatever it may be, as opposed to just kind of just going here's the slick, here's this lick, here's this slick and then done. You know what I mean? So that's. That's, to me, what I like. And it doesn't have to be a massive vocabulary.

It can, you know, as we were mentioned earlier, the other examples of, like, Albert Collins or Albert King or Creamier or Clapton or whoever, but they say unique things every time they put their lingo in action.

I like that.

Make sense?

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I love that idea of painting yourself into a corner to force yourself out of it.

I think, actually, you know, as you're saying that, I'm like, dang, that's a great idea for me. Anytime I'm mid tour feeling like I'm doing the same sort of stuff over a tune, that's a really cool way to think about creativity.

Because if you paint yourself into corner, it's like, you know what? I normally start my solo this way. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna start a little bit bigger on a different area on the neck. Oh, now what?

And it's gonna force the brain to go somewhere that maybe it hasn't done.

Because I think a lot of us that have played over similar or, you know, the same repertoire for years, or even just, you know, on a given tour, you can kind of get into the monotony of, oh, well, here's just what I do on this song. And then, you know.

And of course, that at one point was developed in the moment and still has all the improvisational elements of, you know, phrasing.

And it's not like there's licks ahead of time, but you kind of know how you're gonna dynamically build and dip your solo kind of where you're going to take the thing on the journey. But I like the idea of painting yourself in the corner because it's like, well, now what?

What are you gonna do? Exactly. Exactly.

That's cool. I dig that.

So when it comes to solos, I mean, obviously you're an improviser, but do you ever write your solos, like the Metallica style, AC DC method?

I do not. I mean, there are certain things I'll have a tendency to do in a given song.

Like, there'll be certain arcs, and I'll have different things that I'll do as a. As a cue.

Yeah.

But even those I tried to say, okay, I'm not gonna do that anymore. Cause to me, you know, being such a. You know, growing up, being such a huge Hendrix fanatic and, you know, As I said, Cream and Allman Brothers and.

And Zeppelin and so on and so forth. And having listened to so many of their bootlegs. And plus, the mentality back then, too, is like, you know, they.

You'd hear a studio tune of theirs and they're, you know, primarily, if any of those bands were a trio, they're like, well, how are they going to pull this off live? And so the live version was always, you know, like, sometimes preferable because it'd be more abandoned.

They had to do things to make up for the fact that there's no overdubs.

Yeah.

And they played it different every time. That was.

The thing about Hendrix is like, you know, you hear his versions of Little Wing and it's like every time he's doing it different and it's cooler than the last, you know.

Yeah.

And so to me, that's the whole template for what I try to do, too, is that, as I said, sometimes you'll get into a groove where you'll kind of do similar things. But then, as you said, you know, midway through the tour, like, nope, we're gonna just. We're going to completely change that and just go.

Go club rando and see what happens. So I don't do any.

I mean, if there's kind of a melodic theme that goes in the solo that I might use as a cue, I might keep that as kind of a written thing. But for the most part, I try to purposefully not do the same thing.

Yeah, I love that.

Which I think is kind of frustrating to the. I was kind of talking about this with somebody the other day about how I think fans have changed in, especially of.

From the classic rock era, because they all grew up with what I was just talking about. No bands ever played the same thing twice of the. Of the classic rock era, but yet, now that everyone's kind of old and not. That's not a bad thing.

And that some of these bands are, you know, featuring the original sound, man.

They have the same moniker as the classic band, but a lot of times they'll be playing along with tracks because people now expect when they see these bands, they want to hear it exactly as it was off the record. And they kind of feel like they're being cheated if they don't hear it like it was back in the day. And that's.

That's a little bit of a shame, but, I mean, I understand it.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah. I mean, I'm the opposite, where I'm like, if I want to listen to the record. I'm going to listen to the record at home, Right?

Totally. Absolutely.

I want to. I want to feel like I'm getting something unique in the moment.

Exactamundo. Yes.

Now, that. That goes. It's not licensed for the band just to dick off and do whatever, but I'm saying, like, with intentionality and purpose.

I want to hear what the band has to say through this song today in this room.

Exactly.

Yeah. Well, you know, talking about playing live versus referencing the albums, is there a way that you approach.

You're playing differently in the studio than you do live?

Yeah. And I mean, I try to keep things as live in the studio as possible.

Yeah.

And the stuff that.

It's the funniest thing I find over the years is that the tunes that people seem to respond to the most are the tunes that I literally said, hey, let's just try this thing. You know, it goes like this. And then I call it off and we just play it. Oh, that was pretty cool.

And then you end up putting it on the record where there was no thought and it didn't exist until moments before the light actually went on. And that's the people that, you know, that's the thing that resonates with people for whatever reason. There's a few of those on this blues record.

One of us, this tune called Chief's Blues, I literally. I had this Les Paul that I had borrowed from a friend, and I plugged it into this. This Marshall Plexi. And I was like, God, that sounds good.

Why don't we just do like, a blues? This is an A. Just follow me. And we were. And that's. And people respond to that one or this tune.

When the first time that Toby Marshall and me and my son got together, we got together and I said, let's do a blues and G to see how this all feels. We'd never played anything together prior to that, and I called it off.

And that ended up being the first tune on our record, which we ended up getting a deal with this label and so on and so forth. The first two tunes of the record are literally the first two tunes we ever played. So, yeah, to me, I. I noticed that there's a.

There can be a lack of spontaneity in things that are kind of created in the studio, but sometimes you have to do it. Sometimes you're showing, you know, as you well know, you're. You're showing the guys how the tune goes.

So you got to play the rhythm part and you're kind of saying, oh, the part comes now, and so it's, it's more constructed from the ground up, so it can't be that spontaneous thing. But yeah, for me, the stuff that I, that I like, that I can actually bear to listen to.

Yeah.

Plus there's. The pressure's off when it's all live. You know what I mean? It's like, well, that's the way it was. That's the way it happened. We're done now.

You know what I mean? As opposed to things, you got it. Well, I could go back and I could fix this and I could do that. Yeah, I just like to go, hey, that's done.

That happened.

See, I, sometimes I, A lot of times I go the opposite where it's like, I got one chance tonight to get it right, like live. It's like, this is, I have to nail it right now in front of these people.

Right.

You know, or especially if I'm live streaming the show or something or, you know, I put a lot of that pressure on myself. But yeah, maybe it's, maybe I sometimes need to lighten up. Just like, hey, this is, this is the moment, dude.

This is the moment. Well, I don't know about you, but I, I, I, I think back in the day, you know, I'd get off stage and be more like, oh, that wasn't so good.

And I don't know at what point where it does. I'm just like, that's done. You know what? We walk upstage and we're done. That happened. It is what it is.

Tomorrow maybe we can look at, you know, maybe make some notes as to what could have been done differently. But as for now, we're done, so.

Because I used to play in bands where we'd get off the stage and, and I mean, I, I hadn't done a bunch of stuff where I was in a band with other people that were leading it, but at, I was with a particular gentleman who had a great band, and I was in his band for a while and we were touring around and, man, he would just be so down on himself after he got done with the gig and, oh, this. And you're like, people loved it. They were going crazy. Let's just leave it alone and re, reevaluate it a little bit later.

But yeah, I got to the point where it's just like, you know what? I'm, I'm. What happened, happened.

Sure, that's good. And that's probably, you probably needed that.

You know, sometimes, sometimes we put this, obviously, especially in the modern era, there's so much pressure that we put on ourselves and there's so much analytics that can tell us if we're killing it or not killing it in many realms. But sometimes you know what the moment was, the moment I'm moving on from it. And that can be actually quite a therapeutic thing, I would imagine too.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Well, you talk about being instructor. You.

I want to dive into some of your instructional stuff, but I want to go back to your instruction because I read somewhere that you were mentored by a keyboard player. And as many of us know, there's certain things that you learn from guitar players that are just kind of passed down because of the guitar, you know.

And this, this is what guitar players do. This is some of the things that we do. And then it's kind of, you know, it limits a little bit of maybe the way that you think about things.

I'm curious if when you were learning from a mentor who's a keyboard player, if there's anything in particular that you took away from that that you wouldn't have gotten had you been studying under guitar player.

Yeah, I mean his was more kind of a philosophical thing of playing with him, Junior, who's actually. It's fun because he's on this record. So Junior Brantley was a keyboard player.

He's still, still around, but he lives out and he's lived out in Vegas for a while now. But when he lived in Milwaukee, there was a really cool blues band in Milwaukee from the late 60s through the 80s and they were called short stuff.

And Junior was a keyboard player and sang. And the harmonica player was a guy by the name of Jim Liban who's like an icon to all harp players, you know.

Anyways, but what was cool about them was, is that they fused all these different styles together. They were legit blues when necessary, but they also, I mean it's.

It's one of these things where that band, you know, in the 70s would add kind of the phased out guitar and do kind of like some disco esque things with this harp over it.

And when the Stones played In Milwaukee in 75, they went and saw Short Stuff and shortly after that they put out Miss you which was not necessarily that different from what Short Stuff was doing. Yeah, but be that as it may, so Junior was a legend in the area and he started to do a. He was a blues guy that embraced technology.

And of course back in the 80s we're talking he had an XBX9 or no, no, what was the DX7. He had a DX7. And he would have these tracks that he would play along with, which was just revolutionary at the time, right?

And then I, as this young 18 year old kid, he would invite me to come and I would just play along with him. And he had. And he would like state the head and sing for a while, but then there was plenty of time to improvise.

So he really gave me a platform to play along with him. And he was very much kind of what I was talking about earlier. One of those players that just developed ideas and was very pithy in his approach.

He had chops, but he was more of a groove oriented thing and kind of reacting off of what he just did and building themes and so on and so forth. But he, he would jam. I mean, he would have long periods of time and they would allow me to jam.

So it was great for me is that I was mentored by this guy also playing with, you know, a rhythm section whose time was perfect because it was canned, you know what I mean? And then afterwards he'd make little, hey, you know, in this solo, this and this.

And then he would, you know, he would give me constructive criticism. But he wasn't draconian, as a lot of the blues guys in town were, because I had some chops.

And what I always fought was think was funny is that, you know, what people considered as too many notes then versus what goes for too many notes now. It's, it's not even in the same realm.

I never even thought about that.

It's. It's insane.

I listen back to those things like they were saying that was too many notes because it's totally not, you know, but you know, I'd have all these other kind of older cats. And what was weird for me and I. And again, this is just my own dysfunction talking because it's different for everybody.

But, but I mean for me being a hot shot at 17, 16, 17, 18 years old, people who were baby boomers were still in the hunt, right? They were still young enough where they were still vying for, you know, their careers and so on and so forth.

And I experienced kind of a dismissive like, you're too young, you don't understand, you haven't had, you know, the road pummel you. And then I'd be like, Clapton was 19 on the blues breakers record, you know? You know what I mean?

But, but then once their kids were 17 and 18, then those boomers were bringing their kids all over the place. You got to hear this young kid play this. Yeah, but junior But Junior wasn't that way. Junior was.

Was the guy that really kind of said, listen, I've heard a lot of young people play over my years of doing stuff, and you've got this. So. So it was more of the.

He lifted me up and gave me confidence and gave me a format to have the confidence to go on and, and, and brave the whole musical frontier. Because I don't know about you, but for me being in the Midwest here, the idea of being a musician, everyone thought I was crazy. I mean, what do you.

What do you mean?

There's.

I mean, you want to do that for a side thing, fine, but as a living. Are you insane? And, and so Junior was a real pivot of guy said, oh, no, you're going to pull this off and it's going to be great.

And so that's the biggest thing he gave to me, and I blame him for it to this day.

I like that. I like that.

Well, it's a big difference between being able to just do the thing and to be able to articulate it and articulate it in a way that's understandable and that will translate to get other people to be able to do it, you know, and you clearly have that skill because you've done over a dozen books for Hal Leonard, guitar method books, you know, eight courses or whatever it is, Through True Fire.

Right, right.

So bringing that up, what is it that makes good educational material? Let actually, let me split this up because there's. There's different parts about it.

What makes a good book on guitar, a method book or just like a guitar book in general? Instructional. You can be as loose as you want with that part of it, but book side of it.

Well, that's an excellent question because the first book I did for Hal Leonard, I mean, they had approached me about doing rewriting the original method with the original author, a guy by the name of Will Schmidt. And Will Schmidt was very much a folky. And so. And those method books back in the day. Well, still, that method is still out.

They're all public domain songs, so you can't really reference classic tunes that are not in the public domain. So that's why there's, you know, following the Drinking Gourd and whatever. All these old folk songs.

Yeah.

And so they brought me in to add some things that would, you know, like, I've done a ton of jingles where you write things that sound.

Yeah.

Familiar. You know what I mean? So that one we kind of worked on collaboratively. But the first book that they said hey, we want you to do this book.

Just go ahead and do it. And I could use copywritten material, was the Hal Leonard blues guitar method. And I. And having never done it, I just did it from scratch.

And what I thought my goal was, it's like, okay, well what should the. What should this book be about in terms of goals?

And I thought, well, maybe would be cool is just gradually introduce them to different facets of, of what blues playing is per se. And then at the end of the book have like jam tracks with suggested comping things as well as like some sample licks.

So that the goal of the book will be after you're done with this book where you start as like an advanced beginner. By the time you're done, you could go to a blues jam and go up on stage and someone says, okay, this is a shuffle and seed. You'd be like, okay, yeah.

Or this, this is a minor blues in a. Oh, okay. You know, or this is just more of a swing blues with a 2, 5, you know, turnaround. Okay, got it. So that's the way I approached it.

And because I wasn't someone who was more kind of traditionally curriculum oriented, didn't have any of those hang ups. Yeah, I, I just put it together what would make sense to me. And that's kind of how I approached all the different stuff.

Because I never thought I would end up being a teacher in any way. Of course I thought I was going to be a pagan rock warlord doing what you're doing. But.

But so I just kind of did things that I thought would make sense. And I think in, in doing that, I mean, it's interesting. I've been watching a bunch of.

I don't watch a ton of stuff online as far as YouTube, instructional things and so on and so forth, but I've been watching a few lately just for whatever reason. And it's interesting hearing guys that I really, really respect start showing stuff.

But they, they have different ways of showing it in that are kind of confusing.

And for whatever reason, and I don't know why, I just always had a way of saying what are the meat and potatoes of what I'm doing that are not only going to be inspiring but. But are interesting.

Yeah.

And I think that's. For whatever reason I had that thing just because that's what I would want in instruction.

So, you know, a lot of times if I'm in a situation where I'm doing a clinic, man, you can get all wrapped up in really deep theory and technical stuff. But the Vast majority of people aren't going to be able to use that.

So I try to always kind of frame it in a way where the people that aren't that far along are going to be able to be interested, inspired, but by the same token, the people that are farther along are going to find this shit interesting. So I try to always try to. And I don't, you know, succeed on all fronts at all times. But, you know, I think the stuff turned out pretty good.

Yeah, well, clearly it's, it's one thing this is. I, I think this about also. People are like, oh, I played with X Person. It's like, you played with X person how many times, right? Once. Okay, cool.

Like, that doesn't mean that it was bad and it is a good thing.

But if it's like, yeah, I've played this with, with this person a handful of times or a few of their albums, that means like, oh, yeah, you got asked to do it and you did so well that you got asked back.

Right, right, right.

Same thing with. When it comes to these books and your courses that you've done on True Fire.

There's clearly, it's not just like, yeah, you did it because they needed to get the project done. It's like, you did it so well that they've asked you back several times. So. So clearly there's much to be learned from you in this aspect.

And I'm curious also, because some of us have done educational stuff and other people on different levels. When you do those sort of things, have you published any of your own materials or have you always done stuff with another publisher?

I've never done it on my own yet. I mean, obviously there are.

People have a bunch of great instructional things on their own websites and have figured out ways to kind of get rid of the middleman and do it on their own.

Sure.

I just have. I just have not. I mean, I. I have on my YouTube channel. I just pretty much play. I do, like, live streams with the band. Yeah.

And I won't, you know, during a live stream, if someone asks me stuff, I'll show stuff. And I have done things where I've, you know, you know, break down things that I do and so on and so forth.

But I've never gone so far as to try to have my own platform strictly for doing the educational stuff. And it's something I would look at doing if, you know, I didn't want to go on the road. But, you know, I kind of.

All these different things I've done over the years from, you know, the Wildwood videos to the instructional stuff to the clinics and product demonstration and all this other kind of stuff. To me, when I had four young kids. My youngest now is 21 and out of the house, is in the Air Force now.

So technically he's not my responsibility per se. But be that.

I mean, he is, but you know what I mean, I'm in a situation where I can just concentrate on playing and doing my music, which was always something I fused with all of these other things.

I mean, if I was doing, you know, clinics for Fender or whatever, I was always playing my own music and I would get the new gear that year and always try to record with that new gear to be kind of all, you know, all boats rise type of a thing.

Yeah. Or.

And same thing with the educational stuff. But if finally it's gotten to the point now where it's just like, I just want to go on the road and play and it's awesome. Yeah, yeah.

Because I can, you know, and it's. And enough people have been showing up where it's like, like it's like, boy, we're actually making money. Which is great.

And, and because I've done all those things, I mean, my merch table is deep, you know what I mean? So there's a lot. So I have stuff that helps supplement the, the gigs. And so we get done with every tour. Like we've done it again, fellas.

Yeah, we've made grown up money. So that's kind of my thing at this point in time.

I think if I was not wanting to go on the road and trying to kind of pivot, then maybe I would look at doing kind of a more subscriber based Patreon educational thing. Sure. And right now I just, I just want to rock.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, you got to know what you want.

I mean, and also some of the subscriber and anything that's recurring payment stuff, there's a certain duty and that you have to those people and you need to be a good steward of that. And I think for a lot of us it's like, yeah, I'm doing my other stuff.

I don't want to accidentally give you a month where you feel like you didn't get your money's worth.

Exactly. And that's. And us people with consciences have a problem with that.

Yeah, totally. And I just, I don't have the bandwidth for that now. I mean, what I did is I did my own course online through Teachable.

I mean, it's just A platform that hosts it. But I made my own course. And, you know, it's just a one time thing. I made the course over, you know, in a week.

And it was nice because, you know, I think for many of us, as you know, you've. You've been there when the access to information was a lot harder to get and the access to information from your heroes was a lot harder to get.

You know, and for me, I. When I was growing up, I couldn't. It was just like, I can't pay 150 bucks for the Larry Carlton DVD, you know, or whatever it was.

So it was, you know, I chose not to. But, you know, I had instead I could have, you know, two months worth of lessons with my guitar teacher. And nowadays I think it's really great.

And I think we're in a position, if people are stoked about what we do, it can be fun to pass on some of this knowledge. And it can be, you know, as you're saying, rising tides lift all ships.

It's good for the guitar and the guitar community, for those of us that have something unique to say, to be able to share it in a way that's accessible and it's fun. But yes, like you're saying if you got a conscience, you can't just take people's money and not give them value.

Exactly. I've got enough guilt.

Yeah. Midwestern. I guess it's Midwestern. It would be more Lutheran. Midwest Lutheran is more than Catholic guilt. I don't know what.

Oh, trust me, I've. My. My parents were turbo Catholics, as I like to say.

Okay, so it is just straight up. You got Midwest Catholic guilt, dude. That's deep.

Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, absolutely. I got pictures with my parents with the Pope. So, yeah, it was just.

Wow.

Yeah, the. Yeah, it was. It was intense.

All right. Yeah.

You know.

Hey, yeah, well, it probably gave you some sense of. Of what your conscious is, which is, you know, that's a good thing.

Yeah. You try to do the next right thing. Doggone it.

That's right. That's right. So, okay, I read somewhere you started playing guitar at 12. I started playing the guitar at 12.

So many people that I know have said, yeah, like, I was like 12 years old when I started playing the guitar. And I didn't think about this until I read just yesterday or the day before that you started playing guitar at 12.

I've never thought about, like, oh, when did this person start playing? Unless it's something insane like. Yeah, they started playing when they were four in There, Right. Blah, blah, blah.

But I've never asked or even really thought about it, but I wrote this down because I saw that you started playing what is it, about 12 years old that so many of us pick up the guitar?

Well, I would say. I used to always just say girls sure was. But, but, but that's part of it. But I also think that it may be that's when the old ADHD kind of kicks in.

There we go. Yeah.

And all of a sudden, I mean, for me, I mean, I was a pretty good student all along and sometimes I. Some around the time. And I always wanted to play guitar because, you know, I was always real.

I mean, I did a report on Jimi Hendrix when I was in third grade.

Yeah.

Because, you know, I just was into it. So I knew all about the who played what with who and.

Yeah.

So once I actually got the guitar in my hands, I was fascinated by. But you know, I, I couldn't concentrate on studies. I could, you know, I. And I was looking for what's my thing.

I wasn't good at sports and all of a sudden I got this guitar. I was like, oh, I'm good at this and I love this. Hours just go by and I'm just sitting in the corner playing the. And so that was what it was for me.

So I think that it was. And plus, you know, me and my cohorts, we were. It was the summer of seventh grade. Right. So yeah. Yeah, we're 12, right.

And then we're all like, hey, we're going to play for our eighth grade graduation from, from Christ King. And all the, all the girls are going to fall for. They're going to just won't be able to handle it.

And so only me and this other guy managed to keep on with our lessons to get ready to go. And then we hired a drummer from the public school to come on over and play with us at the Catholic school for this big squalid event.

And that was my first gig. And then I started gigging like right after they got picked up by this band of older dudes right afterwards.

And I just, you know, I think that's part of it too. You're 12, you're trying to find your thing. Yeah.

And then you find your peeps and you find your thing that you're good at and you just become obsessed and then that's that.

Yeah, I didn't think about the ADHD part, but that definitely is a place to put your. For many of us that have the hyper focus version of it.

Exactly.

It's like a place to. It's somewhere to place that you know.

Right.

And it's also. Yeah. It's at a time where we're trying to figure out ourselves, where we fit in the world.

And it's quite objectively a place of self expression and physical release as well. Just like, you could get out angst and you can get out emotion and you can kind of. Yeah. Find your home.

It's interesting, you say, the way that you talk about the way you studied Hendrix.

It's the way that I was with like 90s alt rock as a fifth grade, fourth grade kid, you know, just like doing reports on Nirvana and no Doubt and smashing pumpkins and Blink 182. It's like there was all these things that I was so obsessed with that, you know, and maybe it's a culture thing too.

You know, I saw for you it was that. That side of the culture, but it's. It's direct lineage.

When I was watching mtv, seeing, you know, Green Day and the Foo Fighters and all these bands, it's like, oh, yeah, that skater culture, that whole thing. I feel like I belong there and this is how I can contribute to the community.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, you know, my brother was. He's the oldest in the family, and I'm the youngest, and there are five girls in between. So I had a room with my brother.

Okay.

And so he went to high school between, let's see, six, six. I was born in 66. He went. He was really.

We're a Catholic family man. Seven kids.

All my sisters were into pretty cool music.

Yeah.

And there was just a reverence that they had for musicians. That was different then because they were. The musician was cooler than the sports person or the movie star or you name it.

Of all the different people in society, the musician in that era was the outlier that was going.

And it was before mtv, so it's like they might do some kind of like rock and roll television program, kind of doing a survey of rock and roll up to that point. You'd see like 30 seconds of Hendrix. You're like, you know, and he's like playing behind his back or through his lane, like, what is this devilry?

You know?

Yeah.

And in order to see any of the actual bands play, actually had to go and see him in concert or go to the. The cool Part of town at midnight on a Saturday night to see the song remains the same or yes. Songs or Russ never sleeps or whatever.

And so there was a whole different way of the way people perceive musicians, at least in my twisted mind.

So I think that was another thing of the 12 year old, you know, thinking of, well, I'm going to be part of a super, super secret handshake, cool guy club.

Yeah, yeah.

As we see how that turned out.

Yeah. We just. Now we're just guitar nerds on the Internet, you know.

Yes, yes.

Hey. But we get to do what we like.

Well, it never gets old.

That's right.

I love playing. Doggone. And I wake up, I just grab that thing and start get to getting and just time flies by. You never get. You never get sick of it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, I have an approach question for you because this is one that I have.

I've actually probably struggled with through most of my playing. Yeah, I guess most of my playing is how.

How you approach playing trio with guitar or guitar, bass drums versus when you have a keyboard or another guitar comping behind you.

This is one that I'm so used to having another person comping that whenever I play trio I'm so in my head about it where it's like, okay, there's just stuff missing and then I. As soon you as, you know, as soon as you get in your head, it's kind of game over. You can't play your best, but.

Right.

I'm curious how you approach playing trio, what your mindset is going into it, what you release and then how you approach playing when there's somebody else comping, whether it be guitar keys, whatever else.

Well, I, I mean I enjoy playing in both, but to me it's. I think I can do more of. There's more musicality to be had for me with having that harmonic rhythm behind me of a keyboard player and.

But, but I do like playing in it. And I played in trios or traditional trios with bass and drums for years on end. And it's definitely. It's fun from a point of view is that you've. You.

You gotta be on at all times, obviously.

Yeah.

And I think it lends itself to.

For instance, when I first started doing the trio with Toby on B3 and left hand bass and my son on drums, I went with just like a guitar into the amp kind of a scenario because I thought I'm going to keep my thing as organic and simple as possible and just get whatever I can with my hands and the pickup selector Maybe some tremolo, but that's it.

Whereas when I'm thinking in a traditional bass guitar drum scenario, then I'm going to have my Leslie simulator and maybe univibe here and there and I don't like a ton of delay, but you know, a little. Just to make things a little more moist and I might think in terms of those textures a little bit more.

And then soloing wise, you know, I might do things that are, you know, are still. You know, obviously there's going to be a lot of single note activity, but there's also going to be more kind of triple stop rhythmy type of, of.

Of soloing things to keep just the continuity of having a little bit more substance there. Yeah. Whereas when I'm playing in the other scenario, I'm going to be a little bit more wary of that. But I just love to comp as. As you do as well.

Yeah.

And so I really love being in a scenario where there's another soloist. So.

Yeah, that's where I really think I can do my whole grab bag of things and, and really kind of make things percolate to a frothing apex with, with being able to comp.

So I, I prefer to be in a scenario where I have someone to comp behind as well as someone who can put some pads behind some things if I want to get out there a little bit.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I see the masters of it and it just. You don't. It's like there's nothing missing.

You know, you talk about Jeff Beck, Hendricks, obviously there's so many scenarios. It's like, I don't know, when I listen to them, it don't feel like anything's missing. Right.

Then again, they're also playing through gigantic rigs and I'm not, you know, I never afford myself the luxury of playing that loud live. So.

Yes.

Occupying that much, you're just pushing that up. Much air might also have some, something to do with it.

Yes, indeed. I mean there is something about a, A Marshall. Properly deduced.

Yeah.

And, and, and dime. That is a glorious sounding thing. But yeah, that, that definitely helps. But you know, I do love a good trio and I do.

I like some of the live streams we do here. Obviously. Toby lives up in Minneapolis there, so it's, it's hard for him to participate in our weekly bacchanals when I'm not on the road here.

So I, I do a, A trio with the bass player Matt Turner down here. What I like about his bass playing is he's more of kind of an old school. Where his. His bass sounds that big round. The big round bombs.

As opposed to the more. The glassier, percussive thing.

Yeah.

And. And that fills up the space nicely as well. In a trio format.

Yeah. Okay, last question here. Cause, you know, we haven't really talked enough gear. But, you know, speaking of.

Of amps and that sort of thing, I see you got amps behind you. I got amps behind me here. But, you know, we're in a different world now where the modeling stuff sounds pretty fricking good.

It does.

You know, I'm just curious where you're at with that. What you are, you know, what goes into your decision making in the studio and live.

Yeah, well, it's kind of an interesting scenario because back in the day, one of the big things I did when I started doing Fender stuff as I championed their Cyber Twin amplifier.

Yeah.

And which of course was kind of the first one of the first rounds, other than like the pod.

Right.

That was one of the first real forays into the modeling frontier. And of course, there was tubes involved in that. And.

Yeah.

And it was a cool amp. But, you know, the moment for me is I was gigging a bunch with it and I was. And I recorded a bunch of stuff with it.

And I would have people who were hardcore, you know, tube only folk. And I would play them something like, well, check this out. And they'd listen, man, that guitar sounds good. What is it?

I was like, well, that's a Cyber Twin. And then of course, once they heard, they were like, well, you know, you can hear. It's like, no, you said you like, right?

But for me, it was when I was off the road and I was doing a gig someplace and I brought the Cyber Twin and I set it up and then I put my super reverb right next to it. And because I had been traveling so much, I really hadn't had a chance to be it against anything. So I plugged into that super. And it was just like.

It was so much more open and just 3D and all of that stuff. So for me, I mean, the technology's even come farther than that, obviously, with the modeling stuff, but.

But there's a feel and a response in more the traditional format that I prefer.

And plus there's a variance from day to day of how it's going to sound and how the pedal's going to interact and how the tubes are feeling that day, which I think is all part of the equation.

Yeah.

So if you start taking all of those Variables out, and you narrow it down to this perfect ish sound that comes across on recording or in a big PA situation or something like that. I get all of that. And I get even the convenience of having it locked to some kind of grid where you're not even touching anything.

It's automatically changing sounds. For you, I get all that stuff. But for me, I let my eardrums bleed and I just crank amps and. And let the good times roll and.

Because that more than anything else, I mean, it's. It's a sound thing, but as we mentioned earlier, it can get pretty close to the side. It's a feel thing.

Yeah.

And it's just kind of. That's. That's kind of it. I mean, I. If I was in a situation where I had to use it, I could totally use it and be fine with it.

I mean, I wouldn't be like, you know, this is so horrible. It's like you find a way to make it work. And yeah, it sounds good in those different scenarios, but for me, I like to crank that shit up.

Yeah. Well, what's the rig you're using for your live stream? Cause your live streams are dope, man. By the way, thank you for doing those.

I mean, both guitar wise and also. Are you running a soundboard live? Are you just running into an interface? Tell me a little bit about what your rig is.

Okay, first of all, let me just. Let me just say that I am like the most technically non astute person. I mean, not completely vapid, but pretty close. So when.

When Covid started and we started to do live streams from my old orange room, which was in the. The house. I'm now in a room above our garage now. My wife's like, get this stuff. So during the COVID we started off with a.

A laptop and I had this microphone. It's just, you know, a USB mic.

Yeah.

And that's how we did it. And we would position it between me and my son on drums, and then we'd kind of. Then my son's like, this is ridiculous.

We need to get some technology in here. Like, yeah, whatever. So then we ended up getting a nice desktop Mac and then we had a. I don't know, some interface. And then.

And then we started to mic up a few more things.

But then once Covid started to lift up a little bit where we could actually have like strangers to our house, we were like, well, well, if we wanted to have a bass player or organ player, we need to have a better interface. So a guy, a buddy of mine reached out to me from Tascam.

Yeah.

And he said, you know, your, your live streams are getting a lot of traction. We'd like to be involved in some way, shape or form. And my son Dylan's like, get a model 24 from them. So we use the Tascam model 24 as the interface.

Of course you can record on this thing, but we don't. We just use it as the interface.

Yeah.

So everything goes into the model 24 and then it goes into Logic and then it goes in to obs and then out into Restream and then out into the world.

So are you mixing and processing in Logic?

Correct. So I've got a buddy of mine who actually zaps into our computer via team viewer.

Yeah.

And he does all the sound stuff for us and he'd move the cameras and whatnot. It's like he gets us in the ballpark. And then I've got a foot switcheroony for the cameras if I remember it during playing.

Or sometimes he'll stay on the stream and adjust things accordingly.

Cool.

But you know, I got a nice little Sony, a whatever camera, some lights in here and whatnot. And away we go. As far as amps concerned, I've been using the Tone King Royalists.

Yes.

This is something. Well, I switched amps because I had. There was that company with my same last name that I had a signature amp with called the Greg.

Oddly enough, I like that. And. And those amps turned out great.

But over the years it's like, you know a lot of people because obviously it was my signature and they were great amps. But business wise and you know, things change. And so I decided to make a change.

A lot of reason was because when we first designed those amps I was playing in a traditional trio with a bass player and a drummer and I didn't play as loud. So that amp was perfect. But then when I started playing with my son and with Toby, it. The dynamic range increased.

Yeah.

So I needed something with a little more thwack. So I. I had been using Tone King Imperials for the Wildwood videos for years. Yeah. So I knew that that was a good amp.

But they're like, you should check out the Royalist. Because the Royalist is kind of like a. It's a Marshall basically with the. With the power attenuator on it. Which.

Cool.

I sometimes use. And. And so it's a single 12 and then I put a 212 cabinet or a 112 under this. It's two 12s altogether. And I'm not real picky about the mics.

We just put a 57 in front of it. It goes into the model 24 as I said. Bing, bang, boom, and out it goes. But it's, you know, it changed. It fluctuates.

Sometimes I'll listen back to the streams. I'm like, oh, the guitar sounds good. Another time to listen back. Like, it sounds a little plinky. It sounds different in the room.

But you know, again, that's, that's all part of that mysterious. What, did I move the mic a little bit or is it phasing against one of the drummer? I don't know this. All I know is that what happened, happened.

Yeah, there you go. That's that mindset again. You let it go. See me, I'm like, dude, that's gonna live on the Internet forever. Like, what am I gonna do, man?

Everybody's gonna say my guitar tone sucks.

Well, you know what I find funny about all that shit is like, you know, someone tunes in for like a 30 second snapshot of your playing in a particular situation where you had very little control over any of the quality control, and then they base their entire opinion of you on that. And as my wife would say, that's on them.

I like that.

That's on them.

I like that. Awesome. Well, Greg, it's been so great to chat with you, man. We are way too close to be not hanging out and playing.

I mean, no, we should absolutely do it. I'd be totally down.

We're a five hour drive or something. But we gotta, we gotta hang some time and play Ride together.

I'd love it.

Let's, let's, let's do it, man.

My absolute pleasure. That would be a blast.

Yeah, please.

You know, the old Bunkers was a place where I spent many an evening.

Yes.

Yes.

And on playing like nine gigs a day. Correct.

Yeah.

And of course my, my glorious gig was a. A country slash Whitney Houston medley.

Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah.

Glorious. And then you were off like in the evenings and whatnot. So I remember that's when Pete's guitars was still around up there. Remember Pete?

I don't know. Pete's guitars.

No, Pete's guitars was like what Willie's guitars is now. But it's like he was the vintage dealer. Sure.

And would Interface with like, you know, George Harrison bought a guitar room and clapped and yada, yada, yada. So I was in his shop one day and I was playing like a Strat through a super Reverb.

And I was kind of noodling around, and this guy comes over and he goes, are you in a band? And I go, well, if you count playing a Whitney Houston slash country medley at Valley Fair, I am indeed.

He's like, well, what are you doing Saturday night? And I said, well, I'm off Saturday night. He goes, my name is Pat Hayes. Name of my band's Lamont Cranston.

I need you to play on Saturday night at a Dyna Ballroom or whatever the hell.

Yeah.

And I was like, awesome. And I just remember going back to. Because, you know, Lamont Cranston was like the blues band up there at that time.

And all of my, you know, buddies from school and whatnot knew who the band was. I remember going back to the apartment being like, I got a gig Saturday night. Who you got a gig with? I go, lamont Cranston. No way. Way.

Yeah.

And then I call up this girl who I'm going out with, who grew up in the Twin Cities and who is now my wife. But I called her up, I said, hey, you want to come out on Saturday night to this gig I got going? She's like, who's it with? I said, lamont Cranston.

She says, and I quote, who the is that? And I was like, she's the one.

Yeah.

But that's how I met Doug Nelson. And Doug Nelson, I would invite me down to sit in with the combo. Dr. Mambo's combos, it was called back in the day.

And then Billy Franzi was a good buddy, too. So I used to go out and sit in. But every time it was funny because every time I'd come and sit in, Michael Bland would never remember who I was.

So he was like. He gave me this look. I'm like, how many 6 foot 7 freaks come in here and. And talk like I do? But, okay, but last time I was in there playing was.

It was with. It was with Billy Franzi. And God bless him, he was such a cool cat.

Yeah.

And. But. But it was one of those things with the combo where it's like, you know, 10 years would go by and I hadn't heard him.

And I'd be like, I wonder if it's still as good as it was. And then I would go and see him and go, oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah, it is. It's still.

Yeah. So much fun, man. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was my stomping grounds, too. That's where I learned how to play funk and R and B.

Yes.

That was Doggone it.

I wish I could have seen you back because I. I was so in and out of town, I could never make it down there. And then as I said, it would be like once every 10 years I'd go in.

But yeah, it's been since. I haven't been in there since Billy Franzi passed, so it's been a long time.

Yeah. Well, you'll have to come up. We'll have to go hang and go there.

I'd love it. Let's do shall be done.

Yes. All right. Well, thank you so much, man. It's great to see you and we'll be in touch. We'll talk soon.

Sounds good.

All right. Thanks, man.

My pleasure. Thank you.

There you have it. Greg's a great dude. Come on. What a nice guy. Appreciate him sharing his wisdom, hanging out, chilling on the podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

Tell you what, if you are interested in guitar, check out the other episodes I got. I've got multiple seasons of. I've got to interview a lot of my heroes, probably many of your heroes.

I cannot believe the list of artists that I've been able to interview. Honestly, it's just been incredible. It's been an absolute joy to do. I hope you're getting.

Getting as much out of it as I am because I'm loving doing it and I'm learning a lot. So thanks for hanging with us. We'll see you next time. Peace.