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Do you do the arrangements yourself?

Most of the arrangements are done by me, but about 10% or so are things that I've found on the web, and I've reworked them to suit my needs. In a lot of instances, I probably would have been better off doing the entire arrangements myself.

When you perform are you using CDs for your backup?

Actually no, I'm using a music program called Sonar 3 by Cakewalk to run a bank of 5 synthesizers. Everything is recorded into my computer as MIDI (musical instrument digital interface), which is a computer language specifically for musical instruments. I have just recently had to retire my main computer and purchase a new one. The new "toy" is customized and has an extremely fast hard drive (7200 rpm), lots of ram and really fast bus speed. I added a digital PCM card (Digigram V2) and now am able to record my background harmony and vocals onto the computer. It's great - I now have 3,4 and 5 part harmonies on some of the songs. I debuted the new sound on the New Year's Eve gig, and you can read some of the reactions on the "Comments" page.

What software do you use for all of your music?

Presently, I am using a program called Sonar 3 Studio by Cakewalk. It's actually not a bad program but I find it sometimes to be clumsy, especially for something that has been designed to be a high end user program. It does a lot of stuff, but not always very smoothly, and I find the menus to be "counter-intuitive" in many cases (and I hate "clips" for midi! - but will admit that they work really well for the new audio wave background vocals). I also have an old program called Master Tracks Pro, which is by far and away the easiest midi program around. I can create and edit in Master Tracks faster than in any other program, and generally get it right the first time and no issues with recording. It also has some options that are no longer offered in midi programs, and I find I use them frequently when working on material. I have several other programs, which are much less used. For really quick fixes on special music, I have Band in a Box (BB) and Jammer. Both create automatic accompanyment. BB has a wide variety of styles and other options, but its very rare that I find I can keep any of its arrangements for continued use (I only have 2 songs out of over 240 that are BB generated). Jammer, while not offering as many options as BB, is a far superior program and sounds much more musical to my ear. Like any auto accompanyment, there are always issues, but within the styles that it offers, I find far fewer issues with it than with BB. (As a drummer, I really find the drum tracks in Jammer to be quite good, and have used just the drums generated by this program on several of my own songs, rather than record them myself).

[Addendum: I just recently upgraded to Sonar 4 Producer (this is the big package $900+) and it has some really nice features and seems to be much better thought out. Still a little difficult to find certain tools (they seemed buried), but overall it is a vast improvement.]

You said you were a side man, what is that and did you play with anyone famous?

A side man is basically a hired gun who fills in short term for acts that need temporary musicians. Groups usually have a core of musicians that they tour with and are kept on retainer, and they fill in the rest of the band with "sidemen" which are not on a retainer. It's a way of keeping costs low for the artist. Over the course of years, I've been on stage with Johnny Mathis, Vicki Carr, Connie Stevens, The Temptations, Gary Collins (remember the show Sixth Sense?), Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, Davey Jones (a Monkee) and a host of others. (If you count jam sessions, I've actually played with an incredible number of people!)

You've joked about playing with Earth Wind and Fire - did you really?

Actually - yes I really did. In order to understand why I joke about it, you have to know that when you're in the studio doing a recording, everything is layered often one singer or instrument at a time, often times you will never meet the other players on the session. In this instance it so happened that I was doing a session at a studio called "Total Experience Recording" (where the Jacksons, Larry Graham and The Gap Band used to record). The engineer on the session before mine was a friend (who will remain nameless to protect his reputation), whom I'd known from other sessions that I'd worked on. I could hear him getting really upset in the control room while I was setting up, so I went in to see what was going on. Apparently, he had lost about 12 bars of bass drum track in the middle of a song for EWF. Since he was a friend I asked if there was anything I could do to help out. I ended up overdubbing the 12 bars of bass drum for him on the recording - and yes playing with Earth Wind and Fire.

What was the story you told about Ray Charles?

I had a couple of friends in Los Angeles, when I lived there, that played with Ray for a while. The story they told (and I have no reason to doubt it), is that Ray never verbally counted off a song. Instead he would tap the heel of his foot with the count off. So when he finished a number the whole band would turn and stare at his feet to make sure they didn't miss the count. From what I was told, when the band would set up for a concert, the first thing that they would do is make sure that they had line of sight with the piano peddles. (In the November 2004 Keyboard Magazine, there is an article written by Paul Schaffer from the Letterman show. He talks about having to watch Ray's feet, so my friends were definitely not pulling my leg.)

You said you played in an original music band in LA - who was it and did you ever record anything?

The band's name was "Speed Limit" and also went by the name "The Limit". In many ways it sounded a lot like The Knack (they did 'My Sharona'). We recorded 2 albums, both of which garnered mild success and accolades in the LA area (even making Cashbox Magazine, which is one of the Trade Papers). We had 3 songs that got airplay in the LA area, those being "Magazine Man", "In The Middle of the Night" and a remake of "These Boots Are Made for Walking". Unfortunately for this band, they were never able to break out of the L.A. scene and after 4 years of struggles, I was the first person to leave followed by the rhythm guitarist.

Any funny stories about those days?

There were lots of things that happened. Probably, the weirdest was the night we played the infamous Troubadour. It was raining, I had the flu, and there were a bunch of record industry people there. In order to survive the gig I took about 4 or 5 Comtrex Flu tablets. It wired me up something terrible. We had just gotten set up on stage when the whole bank of power we were drawing off of died. The house PA happened to be on a separate power supply at the other end of the building, so it was still available. Well, everyone went in to panic mode, and about 5 minutes into the 45 minute power outage I walked up front and grabbed a microphone (totally high on Comtrex) and went into a 40 minute impromptu comedy routine. I have no recollection of anything that I said or what I may have done on stage, and hopefully not held responsible for any insults that I may have muttered, but the word was from my friends that it was one of the funniest half hours they had ever seen and that everyone in the place was dying laughing. When the power finally came back on, it was a total let down, and everyone in the band was mad at me for stealing the show.

So you played with a bunch of people, did you ever hang out with any?

L.A. is really a place where if you know someone who knows some one, then you can get to hang out. The first couple of years in L.A. I shared a townhouse with a friend from my Fresno days. He was in television, and one day when I came home for lunch, the shoot that he was working on had a catered lunch at our townhouse. When I walked into my kitchen, there was Leonard Nemoy sitting on my kitchen counter smoking a cigarette. So I got to hang out and talk to him for quite a while. Might I say he is a very cool individual, and no - Star Trek did not come up once. This same room mate's cousin also happened to be Tommy Tutone (867-5309 - Jenny), who swung by and spent some time. I also had friends that worked for Avalon Productions, who did all the concerts at the Great Western Forum, so there were a lot of invites to go to after concert buffets and given back stage passes. I also knew folks at one of the big LA radio stations and got to hang at some parties they threw, which included several hours of talking to the guys from Devo. Then there were all of the various engineers at the recording studios that would have parties, and all kinds of people would show up for those things, as well as the people I would run into at the recording studios themselves.

You talk about playing drums and percussion and see in the photo section all of the drums and instruments you owned. Do you still play drums and do you plan to play drums at any of your gigs?

I still have a lot of my percussion equipment, but only have an electronic drum set which I use when doing my arrangements. These days I have to limit the amount of time I spend playing drums, 'cause through the years of playing I developed tendenitis in my left wrist (aka. trigger finger) and after about an hour or so it gets really painful. With that said, it's very rare that I'll play a live gig on drums. So the answer to your last question is "no", I'm not planning on playing drums at any gigs.

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