Hey, everybody. This is Daniel Patrick and this is episode number 173, the Mandolin's Beer podcast brought you in part by my favorite website, the Mandolin Cafe. It's also brought to you by Acoustic Disc. And it's March 3, so that means Acoustic Disc should be putting out a brand new release here sometime in the next few days as well as a new Acoustic Encounters podcast. So be sure to go over to Acoustic Discs website. The link is in the description below and sign up for their email list. They also send out a free treat every week. That's one song that they send for you to get for free, so check that out. Also brought to you by Grace Design preamps. Plugged into mine last night. It was actually a guitar gig. I played my first solo acoustic gig and jeez, I think a year and a half almost. It's exhausting. My fingers are killing me and so was my voice. Usually when you play in the door or trio, you don't sing the entire 3 hours, but that was up to me. But I had a really good time at New Realm Brewing. And if you're coming to the Charleston area, I should promote these gigs. I'm terrible at it. Every Thursday in March, I'm at New Realm. That is non mandolin, just a vocal and guitar. Every Saturday and Sunday morning on King Street for the best brunch in downtown Charleston at Prohibition for their bluegrass brunch. And that's a duo. So if you're ever coming to Charleston, those are the dates I'm playing. And I'll probably be plugged in to my Grace Design Preamp when you come and see me. So be sure to go to Grace Design. Check them out. All right, welcome to the podcast, everybody. 173 creeping up there. I forgot to mention last week, too, during the intro for Rodham's Ankle, but the Green Mountain Bluegrass Festival announced their lineup and it is awesome. I cannot wait to get back there. It is just an experience I think you really got to check out. It was a beautiful time, beautiful location. The people who run it are the best. Jill and John Turpin, they do a great job. This lineup is a great mandolin lineup. Once again, cannot wait. It's also Bandcamp Friday today, if you're listening. Today, March 3, when this episode comes out, my guest Grant Gordy, just one of my favorite musicians and just a great person as well. Always love catching up with Grant. And he gets some really interesting he plays with some of the best mandolin players in the world. I mean, he was playing with Dog and he's got Dominic Leslie, Joe K. Walsh and Jacob Jolloff on his recordings as well. So we talk a bit about that, too. So, yeah, I'm excited for you to check this out. Speaking of Joe K. Walsh on Peghead Nation, they just released Joe K. Walsh's new swing and jazz mandolin course. You know, it's going to be incredible. So you can go there and check it out. The best part is if you go to peghead nation and type in the code mando beer, all one word at checkout, you're going to get your 1st 30 days for free. So head over to peghead nation and check out this new Jo K. Walsh series of lessons. Northfield mandolin's. Let's build more than amandolin together. Check out their [email protected] or download their app at mandosumit app for lots of special performance recordings, demonstrations, and special workshops. Pavamandolins dedicated to the impassioned player pavamandolins in Austin, Texas. If you want to check out some beautiful Pava mandolin's, head over to elderly Instruments website. Elderly. Elderly Instruments is your trusted source for new used and vintage fretted and stringed instruments for the experienced beginner player. Their vast selection of mandolin's, guitars, banjo's, ukulele's, and did I say mandolin's? Includes all of the accessories and books to go with them. All of the instruments are inspected and set up for easy playability, and their down to earth and knowledgeable staff are there to help. They're in their 51st year of business. They're family owned and operated. They ship worldwide, and you can visit them [email protected]. And tone slabs. Slabs, the tone. These pics are incredible. I've been absolutely loving mine. I'm a big fan of the eight, the C. J. Lewandowski signature version. But if you go to Toneslabs.com, you can check out all the shapes that they have on their website. Read all about this incredible process that makes these picks so special. And if you know anything again about Frank Sullivan, follow him on his instagram. The dude doesn't do anything halfway. He goes all out and puts all his time and love into it. He's a killer and mandolin player. So if you want a guy designing a pick, that's a pretty good guy to go with, I think. So. Check him out for yourself, [email protected]. Let's get into this episode with Grant Gordy. You guys have yourselves a fantastic week. Cheers, everybody. All right, man. It is my pleasure to welcome back to the podcast Grant Gordy. Grant, how are you?

I'm well. It's my pleasure to be back. Yeah, what a delight.

It's a delight to have you back, especially after you made the COVID of acoustic guitar magazine. I was like, well, there goes any text I'm going to send Grant ever again.

It's funny. Well, I didn't make it. I mean, my picture is on there, but fortunately, I wasn't involved in the actual production because it would have been written in crayon with backwards letters and stuff.

It's a killer picture, too, man. What's it like to go? Have you been to a store and airport yet? Where that's, like, on the COVID No.

I haven't seen it out in the wild yet, but admittedly, I did buy some copies. I had some copies sent to my home, but no, I haven't seen it. But I have gotten people have texted me your email and sent me a picture of it. So that's pretty cool.

Yeah, that's exciting. How far in advance did you know that was going to happen?

Well, actually, not that far. I'd been in touch and did the interview and stuff, and then I only found out later that it was going to be the COVID story, so I didn't know how it featured. It was going to be, like, as we were going through the process. So it was definitely a surprise.

And it's a great article. It's really cool, really well done, and it really actually got me excited to talk to you about this new album because it really shed some light on the new album, which is why we're talking today. Peripheral.

That's why we're here. Yeah. Peripheral visions.

If you are listening to this, today the day this episode comes out. The album is available today. If you're listening to this at all, the album has been out, and it is so great, buddy. Man, thank you.

Dan.

I got to be honest, it took me a week to listen to it because I was super nervous because I love that first solo album you did. It was one of my all time favorite albums that I was like, I hope it's, like, nervous to listen to this and just instantly in love with it.

Man. Thank you so much. And it took 13 years to follow up to the first one. I mean, I've done other stuff in the interim, as you know. But as far as, like, revisiting that first band, that aesthetic with kind of string band thing, all original compositions and this kind of particular musical relationship and affinity that I feel like with Dom and Dominic, Leslie and Alex Hargris and Aden O'Donnell, the bassist. It's a thing we just hadn't really explored in years and certainly hadn't recorded it over a decade. And so I was a little nervous, too, because I think, man, that first record, everything is a snapshot of its time, right? Where you're reflecting what you're into and how old you are at the time, what you're thinking about and all that stuff. At that time, I was in my mid twenty s, and I remember feeling strongly, like, I want to make a new acoustic music statement, right? I was like, so feeling such the imprint, as certainly as I still do, but really feeling the imprint of the kind of feely music and the Grisman stuff, and Darryl, of course, and Tony, and wanting to kind of contribute something to that conversation. Those figures had started, those people that I looked up to so much anyway, coming back to this same ensemble. But then all these years later, I kind of felt like I've developed in my own musical path over the years, and I feel like I've really come into my own thing. It's developed since that time, and so I didn't know, like, well, man, maybe it's going to be so different from the first thing. People aren't going to like it or it's going to be less exciting somehow. So, yeah, I also felt some trepidation like, who knows what this is going to be.

We also have the rarity of that first album is killer. And not everybody's first album or first attempt at recording an album is really good right off the bat. It takes time to be like, oh, yeah, I mean, that album is just stunner, man.

Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. And what's really cool about this album, I think, is this album really kind of takes it's like a great mix of new acoustic and then jazz. And so all these things that you've been exploring, I think from listening to your other offerings, I think it's a perfect mesh of kind of multiple different worlds and putting even more of you than your first album. Which probably sounds a little weird to say, but I think you have more of an identity even on this new album.

I agree, man. I think that you kind of hit the nail on the head. It takes time to sort of come into one's own voice as a player, or certainly it has for me. And I think I'm definitely like a slow learner, a slow digester. And I think at that time well, for example, on the very technical level, at the time that I made the first record, like most kind of modern bluegrass and bluegrass adjacent guitarists, I was playing A Dreadnot on that record. On the first record, I played my Calling it's not a D one, I guess it is, which is like a D 18. So I played a big dreadline guitar on that record and in the interim, I had since kind of exclusively switched over to smaller guitars and I've been playing triple O's now for a decade. And I realized, like, that's my sound. That sounds like me. And I'm not trying to wrangle my sound into the kind of bandwidth of what A Dreadnought does when I pick up my triplo, like, that feels like my voice key. And it took me time to arrive at that and it took time to develop some of these pieces that were on the record. Some of the pieces being a couple of things had been kind of sitting around as like, fragments of ideas for years and years and just needed the right venue or the right vehicle to find a finished state and find a presentation. So just things take time. And fortunately there was well, I shouldn't say fortunately because I think one reason it was able to happen finally, is the pandemic happened and everybody had a little bit of time to kind of stop and assess things. And something about that time made me realize I've been talking about making another record with this band. People have asked, when are you going to make another record with those guys? And I just felt like, okay, now is the time.

And then you also had another big motivation in this is that Ron Miles album, Rainbow Sign played a big part of an inspiration in this. And I'd love to talk to you a little bit about that.

I'm so glad you bring that up. Yeah. And I've been making a lot of noise about that because it's one of those records that we just have things that strike us right and are so meaningful and might even if we're practitioners of music might even provide some kind of like inspiration or template in some sense. I certainly felt that way about Grissman's music in general, that era of kind of writing that first batch of tunes. So we take influence from everything around us all the time and particularly the last couple of years. I've been a fan of Ron Miles'music for a lot of years. And this particular one, Rainbow Sign, which came out on Blue Note 2019 maybe. So it's fairly recent. And great band is Brian Blade on drums, thomas Morgan on bass, bill Frizzell on guitar and Jason Moran on piano. And you might hear that Ron, of course, being a flugal horn in cornett and trumpet player, you might think, oh, it's a jazz group, it's going to be jazz or bebop. But Ron's compositional style is so expansive. Yeah, you might generally kind of loosely associate it with the idea of jazz. But there's just like this incredible textural palette that they're working with all the time in the kind of vehicle of these tunes that he writes. And there's this incredible these mercurial moments of sliding between somebody improvising and then going into like a through composed melody line. There's so much space in the music and it's certainly like harmonically dense, but it's not like Frenetic. And it's just like this incredible version of ensemble playing in the context of compositions that are already like really great, really great music that don't need great interpretation to already be good, but their incredible interpretation just does takes it to that kind of higher of a level for me anyway as a listener. So I just found that music so inspiring. I mean, I listen to lots of music all the time, but that really struck me. And I remember thinking as I was kind of getting ready to I was finishing these arrangements and getting ready to go in the studio, I remember thinking, like, man, how can we try to emulate the way they're interpreting this music as a string band in a context with no drummer, in a context with we're providing all the rhythm, and yet we're trying to play maybe some ensemble like counterpoint lines? And how do we support rhythmic movement and whatever harmony counterpoint with only four voices, which is hard. Just arrangement wise, it's not easy. I feel like I'm kind of rambling.

This is great.

This all brings to mind, no, please do.

This is fantastic.

Thanks. Yeah. All of us kind of modern, like acoustic practitioners or these people, when we do this kind of music, we're all taking in all these different styles of music and all these different inspirations and influences. And sometimes you kind of run into this slightly thorny problem of, like, how do I express something in a way that feels earnest and genuine but maybe isn't, like, all the roles that maybe isn't, like, expressing all the roles that these instruments naturally tend to express. I remember David Grismman saying how a bluegrass band is like this perfect ensemble in its own way. Everybody kind of has a role and you kind of get it. Everybody's got their job that they do and it becomes this cog or everybody's a cog in this machine. Right. And you hear that when you listen to good bluegrass band. It's like everybody's providing rhythm and harmony and it's just this kind of perfect ensemble. So those are the jobs generally, we're just talking about bluegrass. Those are jobs that those instruments do. And so if you're trying to do something that kind of sits outside of those prescribed roles, how do you do that in a way that feels, like, honest and not like you're self consciously trying to do something different? And that's why I love these particular musicians so much. I feel the same way with Mr. Son, with Darryl and Joe Walsh and Aidan. We have a pretty good chemistry and we can kind of create interesting textures and kind of take influence from different kinds of rhythm and sort of harmonic spaces. And I certainly feel that with Aidan and Alex and Dominic that I think we're all really interested in space and improvisation. And I think even though we all haven't gotten to play together as an ensemble for quite some time now, I think there's a lot of trust there that we can kind of create something interesting based on just our shared understanding and our shared chemistry. And I don't know. I don't know if that makes sense.

Absolutely. Well, I mean, the first song, I believe, Bridge and Tunnel has some really cool interplay or, you know, where there's solos being taken or, you know, it's almost like things being said. It's very conversational, the way the instruments play off each other. And that's that definitely seems like something that you wouldn't necessarily have with someone you have zero experience with.

Yeah, sometimes you look into it. Sometimes you find yourself in a great like a surprisingly great jam session kind of situation. And certainly that happens, and that's a beautiful thing. And sometimes you have long relationships with people that you can it's not even like a specific thing that you can articulate that you can fall back on, but it's just like just the bonds that you have. You can kind of fall back on that and kind of make something work. So there's just a trust there. And I think to me as I go along, I'm realizing, or sort of an observation I've had in noticing the great players that I look up to, or like, I'll listen to these recordings. I'm listening to this recording of Chick Korea playing Autumn Leaves with his band, with Patta Toochi on bass. I can't remember if it was Brian Blade or somebody else playing drums. And they do this thing where Chick takes this amazing, obviously, Chick Korea solo, and then Pattacci takes a solo, and somehow during the course of Patitucci solo, they just kind of leave the forum. And at least to me, it seems fairly clear that they didn't agree. Like, okay, now we're going to leave the forum, and we're going to count our way back in or something. It just happened. And I think that how that played out, or at least my guess is how that played out is it just felt like that was an option, and they all trusted each other and trusted themselves that they could find their way back to the tune, which they did. And I think it was kind of a big lesson for me that it's like, yes, they're all great, and we take that for granted. That's what you got to do. You got to get that good on your instrument if you want to be that good. And that's obviously true. But I think part of what makes Chick Korea chick Korea is just that he has that trust and confidence that it's going to happen, and it's okay. I've just been thinking about that a lot. If I can kind of let go of that worry that I got to keep something together or else things are going to fall apart and just kind of let it happen. Of course, you got to learn the music, and you got to know how to play the changes and all that stuff and play in time. But barring all that kind of technical stuff, there's a great sort of freedom and just trusting that something is going to happen. And even if you leave the forum and go out of time or whatever, it's okay. Something cool can still come out of that. Something even more surprising might come out of that.

Would you also say that it's probably easier to be a little bit more vulnerable as a player, too, in front of those people? Because if it doesn't work, it's people you have a musical relationship, and they realize it's not because you can't do it. It's just you guys just took chances, and that's the beauty of your position. Let's try it again.

Exactly. And sometimes things do fall apart, and sometimes you go for something and it's weird it doesn't work. And when you're with people that you trust, and this is also just true of life, right? Like, you're with people that you trust, maybe you're slightly less worried about making a fool out of yourself, and that's okay. Maybe something falls apart and then you just laugh and it's okay because it's just music, too. Nobody's getting hurt, right?

Did you guys rehearse much ahead of.

This kind of dominic, of course, lives in Nashville, so we didn't have endless time because I had to fly him in. And I'm sure this was before Alex had the Billy Strings gig, I think, but I'm sure he was still quite busy. Everybody was busy with different stuff. But that aside, even just Alex, I'm sorry, Dom doesn't live in New York anymore, so we need to really make use of the precious time that we had. I tried to send demos and charts of everything to everybody as far in advance as possible. And then I think we had, I can't remember, two or maybe three days of rehearsal before we went in for the session, which even then is kind of a luxury because sometimes you have no rehearsal and you have to go in and try it. But yeah, fortunately everybody was able to set aside the time and some of the pieces were not totally done when we started working on stuff. And so we were kind of a couple of things. I think that the tune two Ron at the end of the record, that one was I think we finished arranging it kind of while we were recording. We didn't have a set game plan, really, until we're actually tracking the tune. And sometimes it takes that long to kind of come together that's.

You really nail the space aspect of this album. And that and the Ron Miles thought process, man. That's one of the first things I thought about when listening to the album was just like, how airy and spacious it sounds, which is just it's beautiful.

Thanks, man. Yeah, I mean, that was you know, I don't think acoustic music will ever be done in disservice by more space being added, especially instrumental kind of new acoustic stuff. It's easy to play a lot of notes, kind of, and that's that trusting. And I think that there's like the first thing I certainly notice this for myself if I feel like unsure about where things are going, especially if I'm taking a solo, the first thing that I'm going to do is probably play more to kind of ground myself and sort of say, okay, I know I'm here. Make sure I'm playing all the down beats so I know where the one is and where that but think that for me, that trust kind of manifests is just that ability to just feel like I have a sense of where the time is and where I am in relation to it, even if I'm not playing all the time.

I love your accompaniment back. Just the background guitar parts, even when the guitar is, quote unquote, not the focus. When some other people are soloing, you create such cool movement, man, which is great. And I just interviewed Rodham Zinkles and so I literally just said that to him too, because he's the rare mandolin player that can move around and it doesn't affect it. And I talking about that habit on my mind and just listening to something I'm like, man, just what? Cool chord, voicings movement, you know, all these things to create that and and it never interferes with the space.

Thank you. Thanks for saying that. That's the goal. I definitely feel like I don't feel like I'm ever going to be the most amazing guitar solo taker. And there's plenty of people that do that really well. And certainly in the bluegrass world there's plenty of shredders. But I've always felt like, really drawn to comping and I just really like that feeling. You're creating something together. Right. It's so about being interactive, which doesn't necessarily mean playing in an interactive way, does not necessarily mean somebody goes and then you got to go back at them. Like, look, can't you see I'm listening to you? That's not necessarily always the best response. Whatever. There's always a bunch of options. But to me, that's just so fun. Like that aspect of just how to create how to create interesting support and how to think about harmony and maybe a more fluid way, rather than just like, oh, here's this block of notes that makes a chord and then it's the next chord. Better go to this other block of notes based on this other shape that I know. Right, right. Anyway, so thanks for noticing that. That's definitely a big value for me. It's just that yeah. Just trying to be a good comper.

Yeah, well, you're doing it. Do you name these tunes at the time of writing? I love some of the names of some of the songs and especially with instrumental tunes, I always find it intriguing, the names of some of the songs. So I was wondering if maybe you could just like Mobius, for instance.

Yeah, it's an interesting, sometimes fraught process and sometimes it kind of just things kind of reveal themselves. It's always a little bit different. But like, that tune, I think that name kind of revealed itself as I was writing it because I think sort of the conceit with that one was like, I wanted to have this tune that was very diatonic. Right. It's like super D major and hopefully fairly pretty in its diatonicness. But I also wanted to feel kind of a little bit opaque, like rhythmically, where you weren't always sure, like maybe even what time signature it was in or where the downbeat is, like how long the form is and that kind of stuff, which actually it's a 32 bar form, so it's an even form. But I wanted to feel like this kind of like looping, endless thing where you could almost pick it up at any point and start there. Right. Which I'm not a mathematician, so I don't actually understand what the importance of a Mobius strip is, but I've seen pictures of them might be related, but any mathematicians out there, feel free to contradict me because I don't actually know what I'm talking about. But yeah, or like espionage. I think that was one where that was that one actually that had been sort of gestating for years and years and it was just kind of waiting for the right time to sort of come out in finished form. Video, I think like a couple of years ago at some point, that title struck me like, oh yeah, that's the right title for that too. And that's what that is expressing. So sometimes you just kind of find a title that feels really appropriate and it's like, yeah, that kind of suits whatever the vibe is it's being expressed there and then sometimes it's harder. Or if Tunes just feels like the title doesn't really fit that well, but you're just kind of stuck with it.

That's what's on the chart because that's.

What'S on the chart.

Which one of these for you did you feel the most I don't know if uncomfortable would be the right word, but maybe you're like, wow, this might work. This might not work, but let's give it a shot musically.

That's a good question. Well, I guess I have sort of a couple of answers to that one. The first most obvious one to me is the tune to Ron because it was one of those ones that didn't have a really clear form. Sometimes it's like, okay, I've got an A section and I got a B section. Or maybe I've got like, this sounds like a B section, so I need to write an A section. You know what I mean? These kind of divisions of the form of a tune kind of reveal themselves and it's clear, like, okay, I know what that's supposed to be like. But with this, I kind of like, had this melody and this kind of set of chord changes that I thought was nice. And then I had this other bit that was in the same key, more or less, that was on a voice memo on my phone. I thought, well, maybe I could use that as like a bridge. But I just didn't really know how it all fit together. Like I said, we kind of finished writing it in the studio and it felt like a bit of a question mark and I wanted it to be sort of like this fairly sentimental gesture. But at the same time I felt like, well, is this even going to be like a completed tune? So I just didn't know if it was going to work. It wasn't clear. Should there be a solo section? What are we going to solo over that one, I never felt like, okay, I know exactly how this is supposed to go down. And then it felt like we made it work. All of those unsurities notwithstanding, I think we made something out of. It. And then I guess the other thing would be the tune Cloud of Witnesses, which is like, I'm really glad it's on the record. I think it's basically what it is, is a short, like, through composed piece. Right there's. No solos or anything, but what we ended up doing in rehearsal was deciding to proceed the through composed piece with just playing free. And I didn't have that in mind at all as we were leading up to the session or anything. In fact, the working title for that tune was like, Intro because I thought it was going to be the intro to something else, but instead it ended up being its own standalone thing, which was kind of preceded by this kind of somewhat like intense, chaotic, free thing, which I'm actually really happy with. It's not always really comfortable to listen to the free part because it's quite like a tonal, but I'm actually really pleased because I feel like it's almost like much like life, like, if you can get through the hard part, it sort of rewards you with, I think, a part that's pretty beautiful. So I'm actually really pleased with how it came out.

You should be pleased with that analogy too. That's perfect. How many days then did you spend in the studio after rehearsing?

I think we had four days booked, and then, if I recall, we got pretty much everything done in three. And then I think we maybe had like one tune left on the fourth day or maybe just like a couple of fixes or something like that. I remember we actually went home early on the last day.

Wow.

Yeah. So it happened pretty fast and you can get a lot done in the day. And if we had kind of full days booked, I usually plan on average of three tunes a day is a pretty safe average. And I don't remember exactly what our speed was. Pretty much pretty much got it done in 3.2 days or something.

Ballpark, let's talk a little bit about you've got an embarrassment of riches with mandolin players in your circle.

I do. I've been really lucky.

Dominic Leslie on this album, just crushes it and plays. I've been fortunate to see Dominic play a few times last year and just so good. And this recording seems to fit his style super well.

That's nice to hear.

But I have to ask if you could find three differences, because I think the three similarities between Joe, Jake and Dominic are pretty much they're all amazing players at what they do, but what would be the three biggest differences between Joe, Jacob and Dominic in your eyes?

Man, that's really interesting. There's a thing like Joe and I've probably played more with Joe than I have with anybody at this point. I think that's safe to say. We've really put in a lot of time over the last decade plus we've played a lot of gigs together and done a lot of stuff. And what I love about playing with Joe, I mean, among other things, is I think we actually feel time a little bit differently. And what happens and it's not about like, there's no objectivity here. I think people have different color eyes or whatever. I think where we feel grew is just a little bit different. And what that does, it creates, like, a really cool tension between us. And it's not bad tension, it's really good tension. It's like a certain kind of rub that I think creates a really exciting rhythmic drive, whether we're both comping or one of us is soloing, one of us. And so there's this way that we settle in with each other. It's easy because we've done it so much, but there's a snap to it or like, a spark to it. To me, it's like sparks when you grind things together, you know what I mean? Yeah, just that little bit of like a rub and just feel like, where we feel the pocket is a little bit different, but in a really cool way. And I love that and it's really exciting. And I think the difference, particularly between him and Dom is I think, to me, it feels like Dom and I feel the pocket kind of in the same place. And so there's, like, a naturalness when we play together. And again, we don't really get to play together that much, but we have been playing together for a very long time at this point. When I very first started writing tunes and I put a little band together in Denver, he used to come over after high school and come to rehearsals at my apartment. So we go way back. He was, like, the first person he and my friends Adam and Ian were the first people to ever learn my tunes and kind of work on that music, learn tunes like Channel One and Pterodactyl. And so there's a long standing imprint, I think, that we have together. And also just, like, to some degree, I just feel like our sort of natural, like, the way we feel time is just very kind of putting on a really good old, well made pair of shoes. But just like, they just feel great. And it feels great with Joe, too, but just in a different way. And with Jake. Jake, technically, I feel like I'm just barely keeping up because he's just so and this is not, like, in a competitive way, but there's just, like, so much music coming out of him all the time. So I think somebody described him as Ronnie McCurry and Clifford Brown or something. You know what I mean? He's got that just like yeah, clearly that like, Ronnie kind of thing. I mean, that's an interesting thing, too, between the three of them, when I think of the closest kind of model for their respective styles, I kind of instantly think, like, well, I hear a lot of flyer in Joe and I hear a lot of that kind of clear, like, early feely imprint in Dom. Even. The Dom obviously has gone on to really sound like himself. And I hear a lot of that Ronnie sound in Jake. And I don't know, that's just kind of how it goes.

Yeah, I think those are all straight on analysis and literally just the very first track, again when it starts off and Dom's just got that kind of little feel going just on the brake beat. Jesus, man, you're just like yeah, it does seem like when you said the old pair of shoes, that's kind of how I felt like, I'm going to love this album.

He just feels so good. And the thing about Dom, too, that I love so much is like, I have the sense, like, with Jake, jake clearly spends a lot of time transcribing whatever cannonball. He learns a lot of bebop heads and he's like and I love that because we get to play all these students together. He knows a lot of tunes and he's clearly invested in really studying jazz vocabulary, which I think Dom has done some of that and I know Joe's done some of that too, but I think Jake is definitely the outlier in terms of dedication to really studying that vocabulary, that dialect. And to me, Dom is like he's just like a natural improviser. And it's not like he's playing, he's just playing like Dom. And there's so much dynamism in what he plays and you can hear little sort of references to things, but it's just so him and he just ended up having such an original voice and just like I said, just so dynamic, such a range of expression. He'll sometimes play with this really kind of like full, rich, every note is like a gold coin, like grizzman kind of thing. And then sometimes they'll play really close to the bridge and it's kind of like jarring and slightly humorous. There's just so much range of expression. And then his groove is just like always just so locked in. The groove is always so present. And same thing with Joe. I mean, with Joe, there's just so much fun and responsiveness in what he plays that I love. Whenever we do a Mr. Sun gig, like, somebody always comes up afterwards and it's like you're just looking like you're having so much fun playing together. And it's true, it's not an affectation. It's just like he's so present with what everybody's doing and so responsive all the time. Yeah, like you said, it's an embarrassment of Richard.

Yeah, it's pretty incredible, man. And going back to Dom's rhythm, he's like a world music section of that's how I get that vibe from him, too, sometimes. It's probably because I saw him do a thing on some sort of world music rhythms, but he really does have this interconnection to a different rhythm. You know what I mean, kind of like Sam Bush broad palate.

Yeah, we went to India together. His wife Phoebe organized this trip of a bunch of musicians. I think she wanted to go study with this violinist, Kala Ramnath. And Kala said to her, like, well, you should just come to India sometime and hang out and study. And she's like, yeah, I like to do that. Well, why don't I see if I could sort of organize a little kind of retreat camp kind of thing. And so she ended up getting I think there was like ten friends who this wasn't by design, but we all happened to live in New York at the time. She was like ten musicians from Brooklyn and hung out at this Sasha for a week and a half or something like that. And it was kind of this crash course in Indian classical music with this woman Kala. And she taught us about T Hi's, which is that rhythmic calculation thing and about all these different obviously the different ragas and scales and all that stuff. I think Dom was pretty tuned in to that stuff. Clearly is like an omnivorous listener. He turned me on to a lot of cool stuff. And I remember kind of geeking out to that early Shock Tea with John McLaughlin, like those records. We used to listen that stuff together a lot back in the early days of playing together. So he's been tuned into I mean, obviously his heart is clearly in bluegrass. Grew up going to Rocky Grass every summer of his life. And that's definitely his home. But he's been like an intrepid explorer for a long time.

Yeah, I mean, all three of those guys, man. Again, what inspires me about the mandolin and the big basis of this podcast is like, there's just so many avenues to explore that are that I think the mandolin and acoustic guitar, I mean, get pigeonholed into. You see it and you just assume, oh, folk guy, singer songwriter, or bluegrass guy going to play and be all night. But there's so many things out there.

Yeah, the mandolin world is so deep. There's so much like man, I was thinking, like, I really want to hear more like katarina. Just like that whole thing. Yeah, that's a whole other deep world. It's like so unconnected to bluegrass and.

All that thing in virtuosic. Holy goodness. Well, man, before we started this podcast, this album is being put out by Grant Gordy. There's no label behind this. And already there's people supporting it on Bandcamp. Is that the best place for people to go if they want to purchase a copy of this album? Is that best way to go for it?

Yeah, definitely. Bandcamp is great. The best platform for actually, like, supporting musicians and their recorded music. It's a place where you can actually support musicians. I think we're generally around the same age and I think we both can relate to the shift that we've seen happen where when I was growing up, music was the thing you bought. And I think it's becoming more and more normalized that it's not a thing that you pay for anymore, which, I mean, I'm not trying to tilt at windmills or anything, but I think that if let me put it this way. I try to support people's recorded music as much as I feel like I can. And I very much appreciate when other people do that too. And it'll be out on all the streaming services later in, I think, March 24. So just a couple of weeks and then it'll be out and free and everything. But for now, if you want to be supportive or if you want to buy a vinyl record, which are I don't have them yet, but they're coming. That's also possible. And I should mention, too, the bandcam version, even the download well, the download only version, actually, the bandcamp download version is it has two kind of bonus tracks that are not on streaming platforms or on the CD or on the LP. So if you want to hear those two extra tracks, bandcamp is the way to go.

And again, while music isn't free to make, or I should say I should say that differently, yeah, it's not music is not free to make and that's the thing. It's streamed and that becomes an issue. But if we want all of our favorite musicians to continue putting music out, I think for some artists that have been lucky enough to reap the benefits of putting out albums when people generally bought them and I'm not poopoo and streaming, I have subscriptions to all the streaming services.

Of course we all use it. Yeah.

But I do buy anything I love, even if I never even put it on my computer, I want to give a little bit back and be like, it's ten or $15 and it's going to make up. It makes a world of difference for the artist.

It does, yeah. Putting a record out, it's certainly a labor of love and it's a lot of even without hiring a publicist or whatever other ancillary things, it's a big undertaking. And I'm not expecting that I will recoup my costs from sales on banking, but that's okay. That's not the point. It's more of a gesture. Like if it feels important to support, then you can support it. And I'm making the decision to choose to spend my money on making a record instead of, well, there's not really anything else I would want to buy anyway, instead of paying my rent, maybe.

Oh my gosh, well, it's such a great album, man, and you inspire me. Talking to you inspires me. I'm just like writing notes, even though this is recorded of like, you know, stuff to check out or things you said. I love the album, I really do, and I seriously was nervous to listen to it. That's a true story just because I love that first album.

I hope it's excited.

Yeah. Now I'm right in the groove of it. It's like a nice, worn in pair of shoes to go back to a it really is. It's a great listen, man. And I did listen to that, actually. I listened to the Ron Miles album twice last night in prep for this. I'm like, wow.

Yeah, it's pretty heavy.

It's a great album. Well, dude, thank you so much for doing the podcast and taking the time, man.

Thank you for taking the time. It's such a pleasure to get to talk to you.

All right. There you go. Grant Gordy is such a great guy, man. The album is fantastic. If you're listening, today, March 3, it's Bandcamp Friday, so go out and support any of your favorite artists. Makes a huge difference to them, and we can keep enjoying all this incredible music out there. All right, everybody. Have a fantastic weekend. Cheers, everybody.