You may recall that a few weeks ago, I played a couple of interviews with the great Vinny Ciesielski. He's a wonderful person and has been a mainstay for years in the Nashville music scene. Vinnie really acquitted himself well in the podcast, so much so that I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if I were to give him the reins for an interview on this podcast!

What you'll hear in this episode:

-Mike shares his founding origins on trumpet in the Nashville area...04:30

-Successes and pitfalls breaking into the Nashville scene in the late 1970's...09:45

-Mike and Vinnie discuss equipment for varying situations...19:05

-The worst things often lead to the best things...22:30

-How "overuse syndrome" nearly derailed a boatload of "natural talent"...29:15

-Serve the music, and remember just because you have it doesn't mean you need it...37:00

-The spirituality of the practice of music within and without...41:30

-What Mike would teach his teenage self...52:00

-Plus whatever your discerning ears deem worthy of your time and interest...

Resources mentioned:

Trumpet Dynamics podcast episodes with Vinnie Ciesielski

The Way of the Peaceful Warrior

About the Guest:

Attending Towson University in Maryland, Vinnie Ciesielski majored in music performance on trumpet, which he has played professionally for over 50 years.

Since coming to Nashville in 1992, Vinnie has played on thousands of recordings with artists such as Lyle Lovett, Travis Tritt, Tracy Byrd, Smokey Norful, Tanya Tucker, Glenn Frey, T.D. Jakes, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bad Company, Gregg Allman, Kirk Franklin, Queen Latifah, Yolanda Adams, Donnie McClurkin, Israel Houghton, Demi Lovato, Grace Potter, Delbert McClinton, Alison Krauss, Taylor Swift, The Clark Sisters, Thomas Rhett, Nuno Betencort, Marcus Scott (Tower of Power) Steven Tyler, Vince Gill, Michael McDonald, Keb Mo, Johnny Taylor, Bobby Blue Bland, Via Con Dios, Martina McBride, Don Was, Zac Brown Band, and many more.

He has performed live with artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Gladys Knight, Kid Rock, Keith Richards, Jimmy Buffett, Paul Simon, Sting, Tony Bennett, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Kenny Rogers, Shelby Lynne, The Temptations, The Four Tops, The O’Jays, Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge, Shawn Colvin, Eddie Floyd, Booker T. and the MGs, Vince Gill, Amy Grant, Bob Hope, Frankie Valli, Sheryl Crow, Adrian Belew, Bruce Hornsby, Michael McDonald, Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Nettles and The Beach Boys.

He has also appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,, Late Night with David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Good Morning America, The Today Show, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, CBS New Years Eve Bash, The Road, SoundStage, Disney and Universal TV specials, Nashville Now, Music City Tonight, Austin City Limits, Grand Old Opry, Rosie O’Donnell, Ellen’s Really Big Show, Crossroads, The Dove Awards and The Stellar Awards. Vinnie has performed on numerous Radio, Internet, TV and Movie soundtracks and Trailers. He has also performed with the Nashville Symphony, Chattanooga Symphony, Orchestra Kentucky, Nashville and Knoxville Jazz Orchestras.

Well known in the performance and recording community, Vinnie’s resume includes work on over 6,000 recording sessions, 50 Grammy-nominated and 25 Grammy-winning recordingsand dozens of Stellar and Dove Award nominated and winning recordings. Vinnie has also been the horn arranger on multiple Grammy, Dove and Stellar nominated and winning recordings.

Thank you for joining us on "Trumpet Dynamics" – telling the story of the trumpet, in the words of those who play it.

For more captivating episodes and exclusive content, visit our official website at trumpetdynamics.com. There you can dive deeper into the interviews, discover additional resources, and connect with your fellow trumpeters.

Also be sure to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast platform, and even leave a rating and review. It really helps with the visibility of the show.

Until we meet again, may your fingers be fluid, your breath unimpeded, and your chops ever fresh.

Play hard!

Many thanks to the great Alexis Baro (listen to his interview on the podcast here) for allowing the use of "Come Together" from his outstanding album Sandstorm for the intro and closing music for the podcast.

Discover Alexis' incredible playing and his terrific contributions to the music world at alexisbaro.com

Mentioned in this episode:

Odd Meter Technical Exercises for Trumpet by Michael Hengst

Original exercises and adaptations of your favorites, all in 5/8 and 7/8 meters.

OTME

 Hey y'all, Vinny Ciesielski here on the Trumpet Dynamics podcast. James and I had a great interview a couple of weeks ago and he thought it might be fun for us to do this, I am here today with my good friend, a great human being, incredible musician beautiful trumpet player, father, partner mastering engineer, and help me with my last four or five real estate sales.

So he's all over the map. Mr. Mike Haynes. Hi Mike. Hi Vinny.

How are you, buddy?

I'm good. I'm glad to be here. Good. I'm glad you're here too. Mike's a good dude, as I have said and will say many times in this interview, but he's not, he hides his bushel very well. He's not a counter.

I'm a counter. He's not a counter. I'm a I but if I could do the math, I would say Mike is probably responsible for well over 10, 000 recordings since he's been in the studio. Mike, you're from around here originally. Where are you

from? Yeah, I'm from Tullahoma, Tennessee, which is about an hour and a half south of Nashville.

Yeah. And and you went to high school, Tullahoma high school. Yeah.

Great band program. Yeah.

Yeah. And and tell me about your influences down there, band director and, the people who influenced you.

My dad was a trumpet player, which was really cool. He was worked on rockets. He worked on all the shuttle and all the Apollo shots and cruise missile and so forth.

But earlier on, he was a trumpet player and a jazz trumpet player, very influenced by Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie, a real soft, smooth swinging guy. He could still pick up the trumpet at any point. And it was just so in the pocket. I have to give my dad a lot of credit for early influences, owning, Maynard Ferguson Records and Doc and Buddy Rich and he'd buy big bands.

We had a lot of... music I listened to. So dad was a big influence. And then my band director in high school who came to Tullahoma as the band director when I was in the eighth grade really took the high school band, which had stalled and took it into the new era, which was a drum corps style, you Brassier sound and really encouraged me to play and heard me early on, even when I was in the ninth grade, I was able to put out some sound and range and brought me to the high school and I got to play with them and That was really, incredibly formative early on to be playing in a big band, when I was 13, that was decent and having the influence of actually national players.

He brought down some session players. Barry McDonald came down and gave us a clinic and talked about being a session trumpet player. Yeah, my high school band director put me on the 50 yard line and got me in Allstate and and I went from there. Yeah, it was really an extraordinary, really extraordinary high school experience.

The band ended up winning contests by senior year. Jazz band won contests, marching jazz. It was covered a lot of ground, so I'm so supportive of High school programs and early education because it does make all the difference in the

world Very cool, and you and I've had talks about the what they call the marching arts now.

We just called it marching Rights, it's an art. Yeah. It's just it gives You know you're with, I hate to use this term, but you're with like minded people. Everybody's trying to execute the same thing at the same time that all translates into later in your career when you're sitting in a section and you're all trying to play a short note on four, it's same kind of energy.

So that's cool. And I actually know the truth about the marching band. When you were the soloist, you were surrounded by majorettes and flag girls, and that was

really the... That was inspiring. You've got to have motivation. That was really... As a young man, to keep pressing that piece of metal against your face

all the time.

And we won't get into it, but you had a brief stint... In drum and bugle corps, DCI. And

I think I was what a short period of time with the right experience, but drum corps took what I'd already learned and elevated it. To a level of excellence and precision. Like you're saying that has lasted me and I have rarely encountered since I started playing. Awesome.

You went to Middle Tennessee State University.

I

did. I attended there a long time. I didn't quite get my degree, but I spent a lot of

time there. Good. I feel the same way about Towson my alma mater. I went back there last year and it hadn't changed much, but yeah I think I was like 20 credits short

of graduating. And I'm only two.

Two credits short piano proficiency, which I failed more than one time, but you can't learn to play piano in one night That's not an impossible feat. I just made it impossible, but She was cool. It's

not like preparing for a jury where you can shed for two days No, I didn't

know how to play the piano.

It was a bad. I just it was a bad choice on my part, probably to be a music performance major. Have you,

Have you made any progress on the piano since then? No. Just

for fun, nothing that would get me that degree, but they've asked me to come back and they say I can tinkle on the Ivory's and they'll probably give me one.

So I wonder if you could fake like a, like an injury, a hand injury and say, I

couldn't buy them offers. No, I wanted to get it before my dad passed away because I thought it would be, he would find it. Humorous because they worried about me obviously early on because I got so close to the green then work picked up the reason I didn't finish the green really was because I was ultra busy quickly and I Just it just took me and so I went to nashville when I was 21 I'd already been commuting for four years from college and then moved and yeah, I never went back When you came

into nashville and a lot of people don't a lot of people know now, but they didn't know back then There's a prolific recording scene And not just country tell us a little bit about how the old guys embraced you and taught you and who you learned from when you first jumped in the studio.

Yeah. Because I, and I was so fortunate to be in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills. Excuse me. There were so many seasoned players in a group called the Nashville Jazz Machine, which was a group of session players who made a big band. Because the sessions at the time in the 70s, if they're playing all these country sessions here in Nashville, they were very easy.

And jingles were very easy. So pretty soon you lost. Any chops you had you couldn't rely on just playing which is a little different now if you're playing all the time Music is quite demanding pop music and things we cover but back then it wasn't so they felt the need To make a big band and they wanted to they're all great jazz players.

So I had seen that band While I was in high school, once again, loving to my parents and kudos. They took me out three years, sophomore, junior, senior, and my brother, to go see the Jazz Machine play at what was called the Rite of Spring. It was a big jazz festival that used to go on here in Nashville, and they had headliners, Dexter Gordon, and Maynard Ferguson, Stan Kenton.

All those were various years headliners. And we got to hear the Jazz Machine, and I told him I'm going to play in that band one day. I remember saying it to my dad, and my dad, as usual, pat me on the back and said, that's nice. And no, he was very supportive, he just didn't want to build me.

And I got to MTSU in August, and by November I was playing in the Jazz Machine. And they just... Took me in. Once again I, golden rule, don't be an a hole, and I followed that pretty much. Pretty much. I hope so. I'd have to get a second opinion probably on that, but, yeah, I sat down at the end of the section for a year, and when I say section, it would be either the jazz machine or anything that was done in that, because we, there'd be, record dates started happening, and various kind of gigs, and sometimes that section from the jazz machine would be the trumpet section.

And I sat on the end and I played high notes and fifth trumpet, because my reading chops were so poor. That I really couldn't sit in the lead chair unless I had some time coming out of rote learning from high school. Quickly I started my sight reading started picking up. And through time, they showed me and I showed them that I could do it.

They showed me what to do. And there was a lead player here named Ron Keller. Who had played with Liza Minnelli and Kenton, and lived in New York, played a lot of sessions, and moved down here. And when I got here, he was transitioning to the investment world. He ended up being my investment banker, and he helped me out very much.

In heaven, thank you, Ron. But he pretty much handed it over to me, one might say, at least a segment of the work, or of kind of the scene. George Tidwell is, One of the greatest influences on me, who we played together for 30 years George, an amazing flugelhorn player, amazing copyist, arranger, friend, just an amazing improviser, and showed me and taught me a lot about the studio.

So that's, Trumpet World, there were, and there's other names as well, but those are some of the, the two older guys who really helped me. Chris McDonald, who's still around, Chris is, a bit older than me, but Chris immediately took me as his player. Chris is a trombone player and a fabulous arranger and has been for 40 plus years now.

Absolutely. So many records. And he heard in me, he came up to me on the marching field. during band camp, my freshman year and said, do I want to be in a band? And I said, what's what kind of band what's I just, I didn't really know. And he said, it's like earth, wind and fire. And I said, okay, yes. And he said, here's the book.

And he gave me the book. And I was like, Oh my God, because I didn't read once again. So I had this huge book to learn Chicago earth, wind, fire, all of the Al Jarreau. Al Jarreau of the time, Lionel Ritchie, those were, stuff, and Michael Jackson, the kind of the any one of those pretty young things, or any of those hard horn tunes.

That was an amazing boost to my career to have an arranger who could not only teach me, but used me on the recordings. The Guys in the Jazz Machine was another set of set of gigs and set of musical situations. And at the same time, orchestral recording, Christian orchestral recording was taking off as the inspirational gospel scene was launching.

And it really started around 79 or 80. And quickly, I was sitting in the one chair of the orchestra. And I was, I was pretty young. I was 20.

Like a 60

piece, right? Like a 60 piece orchestra. And by 21, yeah, I was doing it all the time.

The the old school guys at the time, I guess we're the old school guys now.

Exactly. I have seen the way that you... that you welcome new players into town. I feel like at least these days I'm much the same way. And if somebody calls me and says, Hey man, I want to move to Nashville. I always tell them, come on, there's plenty of work for great players. You're not going to take anything from anybody who.

is not willing to give it up and so on and so forth. Were the guys that started here in the 60s and 70s and then when you came in the 80s, were they gentle with their approach? Or did they, say, hey kid, play that note short or go home and read some clarinet solos or something?

It would be more on the gentle end of the spectrum. I think much of that owed to we live in the South. And so there's this, there's a little nicer thing. So I think that's an aspect of it. There was, there were a few, as there's always a few, that teach you lessons of the hard way, or with a little more fire, you might say, right or wrong, it's still a lesson.

And so I ran into a couple, both trumpet players, both older trumpet players Who we had to find our happy place. Ah, okay. And I'm a get along kind of guy. Yeah. And I think they felt Threatened. Threatened. And maybe they projected an egoic kind of arrogant kid thing on me, which I can say I was not, it's just not my nature.

With a little time, It all was made well, and we, I worked with both of them later on, all good and all cool, but it was a little rough. But generally speaking, come back, it was a really I have to say it was a kind intro. I had to get fired on my very first session. Oh, nice. My very first full master recording session.

Tell us about it. That was one of those trumpet players. I'll leave his name out, it doesn't matter, he's passed long on. Great session, and Ron Keller, who I had mentioned, it was a jazz machine session, it was two sessions. Two days of recording. Big band. We were going to do some Kenton lifts of tunes.

And one was oh, I can't remember. It's it's a really complicated intro. And it's a high descending thing, and it's I don't know if it's chromatic, or it's just modal, but we were in the studio and Ron said, Hey man, play lead on this. And I said I don't know, Ron. He goes no, do it.

So I tried it twice and I blew it. I just really just made a massacre of it both times. And I said, Ron basically goes, oh yeah. Ron said, okay, I'll play it. So I moved back down. And then after that session, the trumpet player said, I don't want that kid back. That and all the guys later, the guys in section came up to me and they said, it's not you.

It's him. They gave me the, or they covered me in support. I wasn't shattered. I don't really don't remember being shattered, but it was like damn, as my first session that didn't go so well. My first paying session, I'd done a couple before my first paying session, but sometimes a bad dress rehearsal makes for a good

performance.

I think it was a, it was a small orchestra. It was probably 25 people. And we started playing, it was a TV theme song and I thought, man, this is really cool. I don't, people told me I needed to wait at least a year to get my first session and here I've been here a couple of weeks and I got one.

I started playing and it stopped and it was silent and a saxophone player who will remain nameless. Mr. Happy,

He said to me, he said, Hey Mr. Trumpet player. And I just sat there, just froze. And the guy next to me said, I think he's talking and he said, how are we going to tune with you with all that vibrato in your sound?

And I was like, I had no idea. Big Maynard fan, for a long time. And I just did, I spent the next year. Taking the vibrato out of my sound and being able to add it back in. So it's one of those things where, you learn a huge lesson from those kinds of things. Back up a little bit when you were playing fifth and this is more of a kind of a trumpet geek thing.

And that's what this podcast is about mostly. So when you're sitting in the fifth chair and then the lead player says, Hey man, on, on the. Second half of that double chorus. I want you to take your part up two octaves an octave above me tell me about did you ever get mushy from playing down low and then having to play high and then going back to playing Down low was it ever never suffered from that?

That's

good, man. And that is a common. I know that's a common Issue. Yeah. The going back if you especially if you're swapping equipment or whatnot, but I've and especially in that day And I was always a jet tone studio see and I still to this day I play as a Patrick mouthpieces copy of my studio C Which has his changes to the throat and backbore and so forth a lot of stuff like that.

I don't know But it didn't it didn't mess with me, and it never did. I basically had a lead part, just a copy of the first trumpet part, and I would play it down an octave at times and then play, the up stuff. And through all my years of recording it, At MTSU. I think I still have the mouthpiece somewhere.

Wow. I got a Bach 5B and it was just, is that right? Oh, everybody's kicking me on the arm. It's a 6B. I'm sorry. It's a 6B. All my trumpet friends are saying dumb. And that was the mouthpiece that just was like, Oh, it gave me the classical roundness or, for doing that in a, that kind of orchestra, to play round tones, solo esque parts, top of the staff, up to C, and then switch over to the studio C.

And for years and years, I kept, my setup in the studio was Two horns. We didn't do C trumpet back then much at all. So it would just be two B flats. It'd be my kind of a brighter B flat or not even brighter. It would be a commercial, what I call a commercial lead horn with my jet tone in it.

I think that's good.

A lot of people are, there's a lot of differing opinions on changing mouthpieces and horns. I change a lot because here at the studio, which is where we're recording from, my overdub studio I'm oftentimes stacking myself and I've told this to a bazillion people and people are starting to listen and see the merit in it.

If you play this all four parts on the same horn with the same mouthpiece and you have any unison stuff, you're going to run into that. I used to call it gospel phase cause they loved it in the gospel industry, but it's a phase shift, and it's a, When you hear that when it's the same guy playing the same note and it's in tune, it still happens.

And so I change a lot. So the changing the mouthpiece thing, is it's got some merit for some players. It really does. So you started in the studios early 80s, yeah? Okay.

Yeah. First session. Actually, I caught 79 by just by the tip. So the 70s. So I could say the seven.

Yeah, that's good.

That was a good era for a horn players and string players, but it's, yeah, it's with the disco stuff. Okay. Then you you're living in Nashville. When did you feel the change? Did you ever feel the change? Or when did you feel the change where you went from a live player to a studio player?

And then not as much live and more studio stuff. Was that right away

or? No, actually that was a bit of a, oops, a bit of a journey being. In the 80s, the sessions started pretty quickly and started pretty regularly, along with the gigs. And we would, with some regularity, have 10s, 2s, and 6s. Or 10s, 2s at least, and have gigs at night.

On the weekends, we'd have a Friday and a Saturday. We were pulling long days. I kept my date books from back then because it's just... It's so unbelievable, but we were young. We're talking from age 20 to 30, it was 10 years of that. And then I started having problems and. The chop problems for me, which is neuropathy, from nerve, just pounding the nerve on the left side of my face.

That's the long end, short end of the long story, precipitated me stopping playing live. Okay. For all, for most intensive, like I, live gigs with bands for fun, so to speak. Any kind of wedding or anything, I just stopped doing it. I just went to the studio, which people thought was strange.

I did it for, Survival. Yeah. Totally. I did some tours, like the Michael W. Smith tour we did around that time. That's where I met you. Oh, that's right. Is that where we met? Yeah. That was, we just had a reunion. We had a, we all got together. I think I saw a picture

of that somewhere. Yeah. Nice. We all

got together with Smitty and talked about that.

That was a, it was a great

time. There are some good stories from that tour. Oh, there's some great stories. Which we will not tell on this podcast.

Yeah. tour. We got to keep it clean. No, it was good. No, we didn't do anything bad. Just fun. There's lots, there are lots of fun stories. But yeah, I had done some recouping by that time and just controlling my life that you know the Silver lining thing cannot be stressed enough that your life situation will lead to something The worst things often lead to the best things i've had that happen so many times I cannot begin to tell you a my chop problems You know my job problems forced me to stop playing a lot of live gigs I really didn't want to play and focus on playing the studio where I could be More controlled and really do what I want to do more and I would not have stopped playing those gigs probably for a while So it forced me to do that.

It forced me to look at other opportunities in my life, which led me to other avenues of business so So yeah by the time I was 30 I had stopped playing most gigs and was just playing sessions. And

and so I guess the lesson for the trumpet players out there is Mike. And I've said this about Mike before, actually to his face, Mike jumped into a magic trumpet closet when he was, in, in eight or nine, and came out and could play the trumpet.

Just could play it could play the snot out of it and which is really cool The producers in Nashville when you first came on the scene, they were like, oh, that's good We got another lead player and but then they realized that you had an extended upper range Double C's plus right and cherry picking like if somebody said I want to you know I want to double see on the end of that you just went.

Thank you very much and everybody moved on and then they started writing crazy high stuff Just because they knew you could do it this. It's funny that you mentioned Jerry. Hey, Jerry almost did this too. I don't know the story and Jerry, if you listen, you can you can let us all know, but Jerry had some issues too, but he was mostly writing for himself.

So he was injuring himself. The guy, if you listen to Rosanna, very Very faint in the mix. That lick is up an octave, and just nailed. And I'm sure it was a, one or two take, a fair and that's before pro tools or any of the digital audio workstations where you could fly it.

So he did it at least three times on that song. So they found out that you could play high and that you were willing to play high. And I'm guessing there was a certain amount of, if I don't do this, yeah, they might. not call

me or whatever. And it's always what I'd always done. I didn't know anything to do.

You step into the not hero Superman. It's not that necessarily, being a first trumpet player, being the soloist. Feeling like you're carrying the ball, you just got to come through. And I think I know, it's, I'm a boy, I was a boy scout at heart, for many years and the band and what you play and being part of a group.

And I Just never lost that mentality of, yeah, I need to kick butt and I paid. That's not the only reason I pay prices. I pay prices because of bad habits.

I think you're saying you were young and dumb,

young and dumb and lack of warming up or practicing.

And that's part of the magic trumpet closet. I say that tongue in cheek, of course, none of us, none.

I don't know, infrastructure, the way your oral cavity the size of your head, honestly, God, the way you and I've played with Mike many times. And if you can find some recordings that he's played on and listen to the, really the, and I say this with great. Reverence the art of commercial articulation.

I've never sat next to any I've never heard it on a recording and I'm talking about from everybody. Something about the way that you articulate is really special. And believe me, for 30 years, I've been trying to grab a hold of it. And every time I asked Mike, I say, what is it? He's I don't know.

I just stick it up there and tongue, it's a it's not I'm sure you could teach, but I'm not sure you'd be any good. I

just sit there and stare at

it. We know a couple really beautifully, naturally gifted players who are running into the same issues as you get older.

And as you abuse your chops, because you, you worked at the trumpet, but. We know some people may be sitting in this room that work at the trumpet a lot. Oh my

gosh. You know what I mean? Vinnie works at the trumpet hard, folks. And it doesn't do any damn good. He's the most practice conscious.

Really, I think, I've never, I haven't quizzed anyone, but you would be at the top of the list, so yeah.

When you're a natural player, and I'm talking to the folks out there, as well as Mike, who's sitting right across from me when you're a natural player, What you have to be careful of I think is because everything comes to you.

And then when you experience a problem, because you've never experienced one before, that was the first time you'd ever had job problems, early nineties. And it didn't just go it didn't, it wasn't like, gosh, I feel tired, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was numb. You couldn't tell where you were putting the mouthpiece.

You couldn't tell what was going to come out of the end of the horn. Accuracy went, range went, so on and so forth. Muscle went smooth.

Yeah. Just smooth on this top side. Yeah. I couldn't, yeah, I couldn't hold an embouchure. Yeah. I'm still not exactly sure what happened. Some might say you snapped a muscle.

Yeah. I don't think that's what happened. It might have stretched it.

There wasn't an event like you played a double C and you felt there

was. And I had three events. Okay. I had two events and one kind of protracted, but they, I remember the tunes and when they were happening. So maybe it wasn't overdriving and the stretching of the muscle and included the nerve because it was, it still is about.

75 to 100 left to wow. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's happened several since the early 90s, it's happened and that's when I came into town, 92. Of course, when I came into town, and this is another thing for the younger players, when you go into a If it's Nashville or New York or Chicago or anywhere you move, it doesn't really matter.

It could be Norfolk, Virginia, find out who the cats are, find out who the guys are, and then go hear them and then make sure you have your trumpet in your car because you might show up at the Nashville Jazz Orchestra or the string machine. We have a friend, Mike Castile. Who's a really gifted musician but has made his living in the copy business, really copy and orchestration.

And he's gone on to Broadway and really created a comfortable situation for himself. But he told me when he would deliver charts in the nineties, this is before you could email them and have somebody print them. He would print them and tape them. They'd work all night. He and his wife. And it would be meticulously, absolutely perfect.

The guy's just that guy, but he'd always have his horn in the car. And he said one day it was that big boy down there. What was the name of that studio? Oh, shoot. Anyway, they had a.

They had a Bob's Big Boy statue in this big room and one of the trumpet players got sick and didn't show up and so what are we going to do and Mike was sitting over in the corner and kicking at the dirt and said shucks guys I might have my horn in the car and boom, there it was. So there's a great lesson to be learned there, but but Mike, you have.

You have fallen into that and come back out of it several times in the last 30 years, yes? Yeah,

the early 90s and then I, because I really clamped down on the live playing and controlling the situation, which I saved myself by controlling the situation because a lot of times when I play live, I can't control myself.

We had to have somebody rush us the sound check after the long flight You were tired. Oh, yeah, so that is part of it. I really was Overdriven from the tour I had been on, which was fantastic. If you can find the, these days Vince Gill tour, it was just, Oh, it

was, it was magical. I saw it at the Ryman.

You, you got me tickets. I've never forgotten what you said about it. Oh, my, what

did I say? You said that it sounded like a record or, you said that it sounded so accurate

and so tight. Oh, it was incredible. It was a four piece section and a huge band. It was like 900 people on stage and it was magical.

Yeah, he's doing great, doing really well.

Yeah. And so it was, that we just, I just got a little burned and then went to the Larry gig and I'm, and it just melted down. My, I, We had a sound check and I could just feel them. Everything went numb. It just went, I could barely, I thought I could barely play.

It actually sounds fine. It was nothing high to bite. The gig was more pockety. I had some solos to play, things like that. And then after that, I really took about a year off and didn't play for almost a year. Yeah, it was 10 months and I had really, you didn't touch the trumpet for 10 months. Overuse syndrome really is what this is.

And this, and for anybody out there, if anybody ever wanted to reach out to me, I can give you my experience and some of it, you can come back. This was not a focal dystonia. But just overuse syndrome, I, and when I stopped, it just felt so, the problem with overuse syndrome is you always feel tired and you feel like you haven't been practiced.

It's welcome to your trumpet hell, so to speak. So I just stopped and after 10 months I picked up the horn, it felt exactly the same. Didn't feel any better, didn't feel any worse. It was like, welcome to your hell again. It's exactly like it was. Holy crap. That said, over the next six to seven years, I kept playing.

I just moved down the row, which was fine. I moved down a third and everybody else moved up. And I was able to keep playing and play fine in that register. It got better, and after about seven to eight years, and I wasn't counting, it got better. You're not a counter. I'm not a counter, I'm letting, that's right, that's exactly right.

Just letting it happen. Where are we, what bar are we on? Where, what's the count? That's just being a lead player. Thank you. Give me the count, give me the count. It just, I started to notice that I was taking gigs I hadn't taken before. And I told my wife, I said, and my wife, bless my heart, Gina.

She's the love of my life. Amazing person, such a support. She'd heard me say, Oh my God, chops feel so weird. And, 18 kajillion times. And I was finally able to say, I think my chops are better. And she was like, what? I said. I'm taking gigs. And it slowly has gotten better and I've returned to a place where I can play first and play lead and do, I don't play double C anymore, but I play up to F and I played F sharp, I've

heard you play a nice fat G just sitting around and you were like, Hey, check this out.

I think something's happening.

It's a, it's an interesting seasons. of a career and I mean I have really had some varying seasons and now I feel like I'm moving into this season like you're talking about you know of playing it's a full time I can have control over what I want to do I can be more involved in the things I want to I can give my time and energy to younger players and talk and support them and coming forth it's just really I'm so So grateful.

I know so many players who really did hang it up. And some of them, we're all doing the best we can, and I would say that maybe some of them stopped when they didn't have to. And I only say that because I wanted to stop a million times. But. I just, and I'm not, it's not wily discipline, it's just my way, don't misunderstand, I just kept getting up and putting the trumpet in my face.

It's just to say if it's bad, it can get better. Are you

doing a little bit more of a comprehensive short and sweet work warm up?

Yes, more of one, that's a good way of putting, no I really am, I really do have to practice and I've really found finally some joy in the practice process.

This was a guy that drove up to sessions.

Possibly two or three minutes

late, maybe two minutes

before two minutes before driving with his elbows playing his trumpet as he came into the parking lot. I heard that story from a lot of different people. Got to warm up. Yeah, got sessions about to start stuff. You got important stuff

to do.

I had a flat on the interstate one time in the A's before cell phones or anything. It's like they knew I was really down to the wire. It was bad. I'm not like that anymore, but I was really, there would be everybody be in their seat and I'd walk in, sit down, put my heart together and the conductor would raise his arm and I had a flat.

And I finally got changed and I got to the session, so I just took the flat in with me to the session and I rolled it across the floor back from the door. Everybody's looking at me and looking what, and I rolled it back to the brass corner and I said, I'm sorry, I had a flat. Oh, nice.

You're still late, but yeah, I guess

you covered up with some hoops. That's good. That's good. Now, I will attest to for the length of time I've known you, you have, and it's part of the reason why I asked you about that. And I think this is important. I think this is important in life.

And you and I agree on this, so if you go to somebody and you say, Mike you're going to give me a heart attack you're showing up two minutes, two minutes ahead of time. I don't know if anybody ever did that doesn't really matter. The fact of the matter is that over the years, you have made it more of a priority to be there.

And when I really noticed it was, we were doing something, might have been one of the APC sessions. It was at it was at a studio that, that had a lot of them around. Merit? Is it the Merit, the old Merits? Maybe. And I showed up, and I'm habitually early. I showed up early, and you were sitting in your seat.

And I thought to myself, alright. Hell has frozen over first. And secondly, Mike is really making an effort to, to be conscientious about that. I know, everybody always says, show up on time, keep your head low, be a good hang, and all that stuff is true. All this, and could not be more true than with Mike, because people love playing music with Mike.

And as Mike has because of the chop situation, has had to move down this. Section, he still brings just as much, if not more music to anything he's working on from the third chair then he did from the lead chair because it's just, it's what's the word? I'm like pervasive. It's just so strong who we are.

Yeah. Whatever line you were in when God was giving that out, you were at the front of the line. So that's super cool. It's fascinating. We could talk about the studio scene forever and how much it's changed and how much it's the same and all that kind of stuff with the advent of home recording.

But I guess the lesson from the last section of this would be just because you have it. doesn't mean that you have to use

it. Yeah, that's exactly right. And,

I'm guessing what you would have done and say, I think there's room for some of this, but I don't think we need all of it just because we can. So because high notes, they're fun. But a modicum of, even Maynard played in the lower register, but a modicum of them, it adds that shimmer and that excitement to music, but it's like somebody who yells at their kids all the time.

When you yell at your kids all the time, they just roll their eyes back in their head and they go to their happy place. That's the same way with high notes. So if you're a younger player or even an established player, you don't have to do it all the time. A nice. Big fat high note on the end with a kiss off that holds over just a little bit.

Okay I'm, okay because that's it's what we do, you know what I mean? So that's pretty cool. So so Mike you have had in the time that i've known you and I think your whole life have been very aware spiritually, and I think I'm not sure whether it's a chicken or an egg thing, in an effort to, make sure that everybody's being loving and gentle and kind with their, cause sometimes you have to criticize. If you're sitting in a section and the fourth trumpet player who's playing two octaves below you, let's call it the easy part keeps playing the long note on four and you want it short and you're playing a high Q flat there's a really.

Kind and gentle way to tell him the first three or four times. And then you channel your inner Vinny and say, if you don't play that, I'm going to kick your arse. But tell us just a little bit about what sort of led you down the path that you've taken and how you think it has affected your career and your ability to communicate in the studio and in life situation.

Spiritual. Yeah. Having grown up Methodist in the South, and it was a great church in Tullahoma. Such a solid foundation. I was in the so involved with the social aspect of the church and in the choir from an early age and in the choir through high school. Coming back to trumpet because I am a big proponent of seeing the trumpet as singing.

I always have been. We're singing through our horn, you say that, and it's really letting go, doing your work until you're good, until you're ready to let go of the physical part of it so you can just sing. And I think getting to sing as I did for so many years early in life. Was of such in such a positive environment a nurturing environment was so Affirming to the musical part of myself and it just helped it really grow And I'm you know a chicken egg thing.

I've always been Yeah, I've always been a Inquisitive spiritual person from an early age. So it's just my nature and I got to college and life and expanded thinking and studying. And probably when I was around 30, around the same time, I was having so many problems, wondering if I would ever play the trumpet again, sitting on the side of the bed.

I can remember that just had my hands thinking, am I ever going to be able to play? And I had a book I'd been given to make all way of the peaceful warrior, which is, it's a. It's a work of fiction, but it highlights a lot of wonderful qualities, many of them attributed to the Buddha or Zen Buddhism. And, man, I read that book, which was given to me at this time.

A friend of mine said, here, this is a really cool book you may dig, and it may be of help. I still have that copy, and man, it... It showed me, in my pain and in my suffering, how to be, or how to get, I won't even say get through it, but I do mean that, how to be with it is a better way, and I spent a week by myself in a cabin in Maine, and I read that book, and at the end of that week, I believed I could get out of this and be okay, and that's a Such a piece of teaching, learning, and understanding for any of us to be able to have because we will face so many situations and to feel that you can make your way through it.

There's a lot of things that can make players scared, nervous, insecure angry. There's so much there that it is a, it's a constant opportunity to let go and to be with. And... To not grab onto all of the varying emotions that can fly around in the studio and I'll pick the sense We're talking about so you can be anywhere but to what it's like to as we say take the one seat where you're able to be settled and see everything without reacting or Taking part in it and that sounds a bit clinical, but it's just a way of framing it and as you get older, sometimes it naturally happens.

How that translates into everything in life is being able to, in situations where everything is coming unglued, which sometimes, musically, that happens a lot. And you've got producers coming unglued, you've got players, you've got emotions, you've got egos. Often it's It can be boring, don't misunderstand me on a session, but it can be enlivened like that.

And all it takes is one something, maybe a player's having a bad day, maybe they're going through a divorce but to be that person in any situation that can be stillness. Because when you're still, you transmit that. Other people see that, they feel that. They feel that. Steadiness that clearness that calmness in the face of, something really bad just happened.

Okay. Let's see what it is this ability to be with and help people walk through. Whatever it is they're going through in this life and on a session. It's helping people get to the end So that it's a bit of a rambling way of saying I don't think

Man I think there was a lot of good a lot of good stuff in there and you know you can choose Which spiritual path you'd like to take believe what you want to believe and love who you want to love And we're fully supportive of

all of that.

Yeah, absolutely.

But taking those qualities that you've learned from life and studying and being present and being quiet and being comfortable with yourself. When you're quiet, people who are type a and overachievers, when they meditate, they have to meditate for five minutes because on minute six, they've got something else.

They got to do, they got to make a plan and all that kind of stuff. But and these things don't come overnight. They don't come overnight. It's a practice. It's a practice. And yeah, that's why they call it that. Just like the trumpet. If you pick something up new on the trumpet when I add something to my routine, oftentimes the first time I play it I'm very disappointed with myself, but I do realize that in six months, I'm going to be playing that at a high level because I will have done it.

A thousand times and then a year after that, I won't even be really thinking about what I'm doing on Clark studies or lip slurs or what the tonguing exercises, whatever it is. You know what I mean? And there's something to be said for like with time. So everybody knows this, but somebody out there might not.

So you come upon a piece, whether it's a commercial piece of jazz piece or Patricia and you slow it down. And you put it on a metronome. So let's say you need it to be at 90 beats a minute and you have six weeks. Started at 60, very manageable at 60 and then tomorrow just bump it to 61. This is where patients, which a lot of us trumpet players don't, weren't really, we were not in that line at all.

When God was given out patients bump it to 61, which your body won't be able to recognize really. And then every day bump it one metronome marking. And so in four weeks you're going to be playing it at tempo and then you'll be playing it for two weeks at tempo before you need to audition or perform or whatever the deal is.

If you have that kind of time, if you practice, and you

can do that on a, in a mini version of that too, if you've got a couple of days, you do, you just bump it up a little bit more. But those things and being present and having peace about what's going on. And that's really key in those because you're not making big, you're never making huge, giant strides on the trumpet.

You make very small strides on the trumpet. And I think that your decisions and the path that you've chosen have helped. With that even though you did jump into the magic trumpet closet, right? So my buddy John Snell Out of Bob Reeves brass asked this we're gonna wrap it up if that's okay.

Although, And based on our history, we could sit here and talk for, do it again

For a long time about trumpet.

Yeah, that's fine. Now we need to talk about Trump. We did talk about a lot of trumpet. Yeah. It's just things like, just to digress a little bit, like the thing that's fascinating to me is that when you walked in the studio for the first time and you sat down in your chair and there's these things, whether it was the paid or the free, there's these things in front of you.

First time I ever did it, I was in college. And I remember. The headphone thing what do I do with the headphones? How do I set the level? Do I keep an ear off? Which side is supposed to go on which side? How do I keep the cord from getting tangled in my trumpet? Where do I put it when I'm not using it?

Should I unplug it? Should I turn it down? What there's like a hundred things about headphones that you need to know. Then you multiply that by everything. Like the one thing that I always say, like when you walk into the studio, you should already know which. Side of the stand that you play on do you, as a trumpet player, do you, is your bell to the left of the stand and you read to the right, or is it to the right of the stand and you read to the left?

Because if your microphone's on the left and you read from the other side, you're not going to get picked up. Your signal's not going to get picked up and your little tracks are not going to be beautiful and where they're supposed to be. So it's interesting. And it feels like the guys that.

grabbed a hold of you. We're able to tell you those things. We could go through all the technical aspects of what to do in the studio or what to do on a live gig. Do you want to play with a shield? Some people hate shields. I like it cause it's bright. It's like a brain dart and I don't have to play as loud and it just, and it lends itself to me, but some people don't, just don't care for them.

So it's really interesting. So John, back to John Snell, Who has a podcast called the other side of the bell. He's a sweet man and and really good at his job and really good at running a podcast. He asks a question. I'm not going to ask you about gear. Cause. You know what works for you, although I do have that mouthpiece and I use that on a regular basis the

85 Yeah, the Patrick.

Yeah. Yeah, I do have that and when I don't have to play super high I love that mouthpiece is a big fat sound of great flexibility Yeah, the articulation is where it needs to be and all that stuff. So won't ask you about gear, but If you could go back to your high school self, okay, this is a little bit different than john poses.

You could go back to your high school self when you were senior. What is the piece of advice that you would give yourself

on any level?

About anything. It doesn't have to be about trumpet or music or any of that kind of stuff. I'll

make a dirty joke, but I'll leave that out.

I could

edit it. Yeah. Man and the one thing that always comes to mind is if I say, if I told myself something that I might change it and then I wouldn't know my wife because I love, I wouldn't do anything.

But anyway, that said trumpet in the world of trumpet, it would have been trying to communicate. relaxing more when I was playing, cause I played with so much pressure and drum core and earlier on we lacerated our faces. And if I could have, which I don't do that any longer, obviously we blow it away from our face.

It's You do everything you can to keep it off your chops while still playing. So it's this constant tug of your, obviously you're wanting to pull it into your face. You have to bring the horn to meet your face. But there's this sense of bringing it away from your face all the time.

And when you do that, blowing it all forward, you give yourself, I find I have more endurance, sound. It's easier that it's the death knell to start coming into your chops. And we're talking. Microscopic differences, but that sense I would have tried to communicate living and playing with more ease Overall,

yeah, that's good.

I think that's I think that's some great advice. What's been wonderful having you here I wish again, I wish we could do five or six of these in a row we could really get into some good stuff, but so be kind and gentle and Yeah Serve the music.

So the music is always

first. Yep. Always first above everything else

If you take care of the music, you'll be taking

care of and my friend chris gordon down in tuscaloosa, alabama He's a trumpet player.

He's a freaky trumpet player really good He's not on the horn a bunch, he taught for a bunch of years, he's retired, he's producing now and is having some success because of the way that he communicates. He's very Zen too. Also and he does this little whistle thing where he plays like triple notes audibly and with control.

He I was on a session down there some years ago with the University of Alabama alumni band. The lead player that played had some health problems, so they called me in. And one of the trumpet players who I work for a lot, And he and I have since, we've worked together a bunch but I've apologized to him for this because he he, his name is Mart Avent and he books the Tuscaloosa horns for tops and the temptations and a bunch of different OJs, he's got a cool gig.

They've been doing it for 30 or 40 years. They're called the Tuscaloosa horns. We're playing the fight song for Alabama, but it's a swing version. Be boop, do, it's like lightening. And we played it through with Sight Reddit. I didn't have any of the music at the time, Sight Reddit.

And it sounded really good in rehearsal. And Martin looked at me and said, back when I was in the band, the way we used to do this, and I said stop what you're doing. Because, I was hired for a reason and I'd like to get through it a couple of times and then we can, we can talk about it, but it created some negative energy and Chris pulled me off to the side and said, man, I believe that you can hear joy or anger.

In a recording and man it, it really changed the way that I did business. It's really incredible. And it's true. I had somebody, the highest compliment I've ever gotten in my whole life about my play, a very heartfelt conversation. And he said to me, cause I put these little blue screens up on, on Facebook and the interwebs.

And they're just like 15 second clips of stuff I've been doing here in the studio. And it's usually higher, faster, louder. And it's a lot of fun for a very small segment of the population. But he said. I can hear the joy coming out of your horn on those recordings. And so I turned the corner after that, that was a big deal for me and Mark Martin, I, kiss the maid up and everything is cool.

But at the same time, you just, you need to remember that you're there. You're not there. It's great to socialize. It's great to hang. It's great to have the work. It's great to have the money The most important thing when you're in that studio is making that music a little bit better By adding what you can add.

Yeah, and I think you've done that for Every session you've ever done and and I really appreciate it. Something to definitely something for me to aspire to both musically and as a person. And so I'm glad you're my friend and I really appreciate you doing this. We'll get Mike's not on social media, a bunch.

I do some Facebook. Yeah, a little bit of Facebook. I might do Instagram someday. But yeah,

you're so

old. I know. How'd that happen? It's so

weird. What we'll do is we'll put up a, we'll put up Mike's Facebook link and if you want to talk to him further, just send him a DM.

A you can do it.

Come on. Direct

message. Direct message. Very good. Very good. And he'll he'll get to that in, when he gets to it. And then you can hang out with him and pull some of this love off of him too. Thanks you all for being here. And I hope somebody got something out of it. I know I did.

Thanks for having me. We'll see you next time, Mike. Thank you.