Dave: 0:00

This is Country Dave Harmonson, and you're listening to One Hour, Two Doors. All right, do one of my tunes here for you. Hopefully. I got a hole in my heart as big as Texas. It's how my rose is on a tone. Now the western skies don't shine on me no more. It's the only time we'll be rolling alone. Used to dance with Texas to step every night to hold in time. Now she's got a new ranch in the squeeze her holding time. Texas side told right to my heart. It's broken me and tall us apart. Now I got a hole in my heart. As big and wide as the Texas plain. Now I'm walking the floor. I ain't a walkson no more. My rose is gone, I'll never be the same. Now the stars at night are no longer big and bright. I got a hole in my heart as big as Texas. Since I lost my rose down and told Now the times at night are no longer big and bright. I got a whole bunch of my heart big as X. I lost my rose tanning home.

Jon: 3:09

This is One Hour to Doors, a podcast about the business and soul of the festivals and events industry. I am your host, John Stone. Every episode of One Hour to Doors explores the people, issues, insights, and trends impacting the enterprise of bringing people and communities together in common cause. My guest today is Country Dave Harmonson. Dave is probably the most prolific musician I know of in the Pacific Northwest, gigging in one form or another virtually every day. He is rooted in traditional country music and clearly draws on inspirations from blues, folk, jazz, and pop. Within his areas of expertise, Dave is universally respected as a first call musician. I know Dave is having the gift of being able to elevate the story within a song. His career in music spans six decades, and the breadth and depth of his experience holds valuable insights for fellow musicians as well as talent buyers across the spectrum. Welcome to the show, Dave. Hey, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. You and I met, I think, four or five years ago. It wasn't that long ago, but you've been at this since uh early 70s, is that right?

Dave: 4:26

Yes. Um when I first started playing, I was playing a lot of uh coffee house kind of things. Acoustic music, kind of a folk musician. And uh well, I kind of started playing with some friends in high school, but we weren't really playing professionally. I think about the first so-called paying gig, I did some really weird shows where I'd play at some company banquet and we'd play two or three songs and they'd give us a meal. Yeah. Yeah. Like whoopee, we're froze.

Jon: 4:56

Was this in like where whereabouts was this when you were first gigging?

Dave: 5:00

I lived in Tacoma and uh went to high school there. I I I I moved around a lot, but uh I lived in Tacoma and I was in high school, and that's when I first started playing music.

Jon: 5:10

So let's go all the way back. What is your first memory of music? And I'm not talking about when did you first play an instrument, but like what is your first specific musical memory?

Dave: 5:22

Um I I grew up in the church. My dad was a preacher. Okay. I was from Texas, and my dad was a Southern Baptist preacher. And that's where music was with us. I mean, the church music. And uh later I learned, you know, I learned how to read, you know, music singing hymns in church. Remember, I was about fourth grade, and by then we lived in federal wave. And there was a a kid who's a little bit a couple years older than me. We'd sit next to each other and he knew how to read the parts, and I would sit next to him and look at the hymn books, and as my voice started to I could sing the alto part before my voice changed. And then by the time I get junior high it starts to get a little lower, I could sing the tenor part, and eventually I became a baritone. I would sing the bass part usually in the church music.

Jon: 6:10

What what part of Texas?

Dave: 6:11

Panhandle. Okay. I was born near kind of uh outside of Lubbock. We moved around a lot there too. And I the only place I remember in Texas was uh outside of a little town called Clarendon, which is about sixty miles east of Amarillo. Cotton farmers and and cattle ranchers, cotton and cattle and Baptist preachers.

Jon: 6:36

That's fantastic.

Dave: 6:38

And then you and then your family moved up here to the Yeah, we moved to uh the Oregon coast when I was just before I turned five. I was uh a week or two away from five years old, nineteen fifty-six. And um it's kind of funny because I have two older sisters, they're six and eight years older, and it was a big culture shock for them. But when you're five, there's no you don't know what normal is. Right. So y it's it was a big change, but you don't it doesn't affect you that way. But going from the plains of Texas to a fishing and and logging industry area, we it was uh Toledo, Oregon is just outside of Newport. And back then Newport wasn't a big tourist type of place at all. It was it was a fishing town.

Jon: 7:24

Right.

Dave: 7:25

And Toledo was loggers and it was it was probably more redneck than Texas. More hick and redneck than Texas. I can believe that. I can believe that. I mean, it was my sisters were kind of like when they went to school and stuff, they were kind of in shock.

Jon: 7:42

And at what point did you p pick up an instrument for the first time?

Dave: 7:46

Well, when I was you know, I was probably second, third grade, I'd played a little bit of piano. I never really played a lot. Both my sisters played some piano and my my mom, every preacher's wife had to play some piano. And she didn't she didn't play a lot, but she'd be required to play for the hymns sometimes. But my sisters had played piano and and one uh they both played some flute at a time or two. And then uh in Federal Way, I played uh trumpet when started in like uh fifth grade and I played all the brass instruments through high school, but I I kind of quit doing that after that. But I played trumpet and then later in high school, I was j later on about ninth grade till through high school played French horn and trumpet.

Jon: 8:27

Oh, I didn't know that.

Dave: 8:28

And uh I can't play it all anymore because if you don't keep your lip in shape, the you can't make notes on all those things anymore.

Jon: 8:35

My youngest son decided out of nowhere to to pick up trumpet last year in in school. Right. And he got really good really fast. But it's uh a little it's it's funny because I I pick it up and I try to do what he's doing, but it's not that easy. You gotta have your lip in shape.

Dave: 8:56

Yeah, I was I was a fairly adept, you know, I I was usually close to first chair in the bands. But I wasn't, you know, I remember one time uh in about ninth grade and there was a song I'd be in the jazz band or they called it the stage band. And there's a place where you're supposed to just improvise a solo and I did I didn't know at all how to do that. I I mean I could I could play it by reading the music, but I didn't I didn't know yet how to improvise with it at all.

Jon: 9:23

I guess I have to ask now that I realize you have a broader background than I was aware of. So do you consider guitar your main instrument?

Dave: 9:31

Yeah, uh guitar and and one pedal steel guitar and you know and played various type of steel guitars. Guitar and steel.

Jon: 9:38

So at what point did you kind of lock into those and say this is this is home right here?

Dave: 9:43

When I first started playing guitar, I was like fifteen years old. And actually for about a year, I think when I was fourteen, my oldest sister had a ukulele. And she let me use by then she wasn't living at home anymore, but so I I was playing her ukulele, and it was funny I had these like Beatle songbooks and I'd learned how to play Beatles songs with the the show of the guitar chords, so it's the same shape for the first four strings. That was kind of you know, I'm sure it didn't sound anything like the Beatles playing these songs on a ukulele. And it was a pretty cheap little ukulele too. But finally I talked my parents into uh getting me a guitar when I was fifteen. And I had my other sister, my my oldest sister's named Ruth, she's eight years older. My other sister Martha is six years older. She played some guitar before I did. She still plays, she lives in Kansas City and uh she plays a lot of instruments. She showed me the first things to play on guitar when we see each other. Well, my sister here taught me how to play this, you know.

Jon: 10:45

When I was 13, I think, 13-ish, my dad bought my mom uh Yamaha acoustic guitar and the Roy Clark Big Note guitar book. Oh, there you go. The learn how to play it. It had the little sticky dots that you could put on the neck to help kind of guide you through the songbook and how to make the shapes and everything. And my mom had thought she wanted to learn guitar, that's why my dad got that for. But after, you know, a short bit, she realized that she wasn't interested. But I jumped on that. And so that's technically where I learned to play guitar is via the Roy Clark Big Note guitar book.

Dave: 11:26

Well, I wish I would have had a Yamaha guitar to begin with. I my the first one I had, my parents bought from a place called GovMart, which is like a big uh you know, everything store. You know, kind of like well, they didn't have Costco's and back then. Uh simple, but it had everything. There was like clothing, groceries, you know, big it started out as a government like for uh military, but it was a public place. I think it cost like $15.

Jon: 11:52

Well, if it makes you feel any better, this particular Yamaha guitar was awful. But I didn't know that at the time, and this is I guess it was was a silver lining. Uh the problem with it, the action was atrocious. Right. Like you had to have hands of steel, it was it was painful, and no matter how much or how long you played, it never got anything other than painful. But being the first guitar we had ever had in the family, I didn't know any better, right? So I just figured it's like, oh yeah, if you want to rock and roll, man, this is like the price that you pay. And that was the only guitar that I ever held for years and years and years. And so I realized now it in retrospect that that helped me build up some pretty incredible hand strength, like right out of the gate. And it allowed me to appreciate better guitars when I started to get access to that type of instrument.

Dave: 12:45

Yeah, well, you that's a good point. You know, I'm mine was similar. That that guitar it wasn't actually terrible action, if I remember right, but it wasn't you know, it wasn't a very good guitar. I mean, it was yeah, flywood basically. But then my my sister, Martha, had given me a guitar a year or so later. It was a K archtop, uh, which were you know the kind of utilitarian, you know, but you know, it wasn't I wasn't playing like the music you would normally associate with the archtop. You know, I was I was doing the cowboy chords and trying to learn folk music kind of thing. But I had that until finally I I thought I'd got the ultimate guitar when I was like 18 years old, right when I graduated from high school. I got a a Harmony Sovereign, the big fancy one sunburst with the big flashy uh pit guard, tortoise shelf cut colored pit guard and all this. That I think I got it for about $167, brand new significant money.

Jon: 13:40

Yeah, that was a pretty good guitar.

Dave: 13:42

And then finally, I think 1971, I bought a 1967 D28 Martin. So I had a I had a real fine guitar back then $350. It's an investment, but the new price was like right around $500 at that time.

Jon: 13:58

Yeah. So at the top of this conversation, you you mentioned your first paid gig. I'm using air quotes right now. Tell us that story.

Dave: 14:08

Well, I you know, I can't even remember how it happened. I I remember there was a girl that I I'd known from church things, and she found a couple of them, and we played a couple of big I mean, I remember one time we were there was an old big fancy restaurant that used to be in Tacoma down on the in the old old Tacoma called the Top of the Ocean. It was one of this old classic. It was made to look like a boat. It wasn't ever a boat, but it was a over the water. And we were up in this big banquet for somebody up there and and we didn't have a PA or anything. You just you go up and s they have a mic on a podium and you just two of us with one guitar. And yeah, we just you know, so I did a few of those. I did a few solo gigs too, and they were all pretty it was pretty weird. But actually when I first started getting real gigs, I was playing um at Court C Coffee House in Tacoma. I first I had this there was a girl that I've still occasionally uh play with a gay windsor that we met going to Tacoma Community College. And we saw this sign for uh open mic at Court C Coffee House in downtown Tacoma. And it turned out that's still that changed that changed my career or turned me into a a career. That's when I started meeting good players because until that point I didn't really know any players. I there I had a friend in high school we used to play with, but and he was maybe a little better than me, but I didn't know any players that were better than me. And there were a lot of players better than me because I wasn't very good.

Jon: 15:28

Right. Right. I used to have any connection.

Dave: 15:30

I just was learning on my own. I I learned how to play chords and stuff like that, but I didn't know what you're supposed to do with guitar or how it really worked in songs and stuff like that. But I got to Court C Coffee House, and not everybody was good there. I mean, there was amateurs and it was it was open mic. But uh and Chris Lund was the host of that, and that same thing after he moved a couple of locations that eventually became Victory Music. But it was before it was called Victory Music. That was about 1971. And then we started uh he would from collecting from the people that played open mics, you'd you'd get a weekend book there, and you'd play for the door. And it see you could get 40, 50 people max in there, and I think it was a dollar a head, so sometimes you'd get 30 or 40 dollars. We'd he'd also booked, we'd play at that uh University of Puget Sound and uh PLU. He'd get these, you'd have usually like three acts, three or four, and play at the in these uh, you know, in their rec center or not, well, what do they call them? Their their student union uh hub or whatever like that. And you know, sometimes that was a fun gig. Sometimes you're just playing for a bunch of noisy kids that aren't listening to you. But we were getting paid, and then we get it also book us gigs at the uh Fort Lewis and these little uh they call service clubs. It wasn't like the even the NCO clubs, it's little for these the privates and stuff like that. And we'd play, you know, a set we'd get 30 or 40 bucks for a set, and then started finding gigs in bars.

Jon: 16:54

Yeah. Let's pause right there for a second while the leaf blower goes by.

Dave: 16:59

It's like uh playing downtown and the playing down on you know on the one of the piers down there, and a fairy comes in and it's like a B flat that they would play.

Jon: 17:08

You remember the old summer nights at the pier concerts? Ricky Lee Jones. For some reason, that tone of that fairy uh uh whistle. Uh no bueno, no bueno, like she like she said she wasn't gonna go on unless we could guarantee that they weren't gonna sound that horn.

Dave: 17:28

Like you have control over the fairies.

Jon: 17:30

We we contact, we found a way. Wow. That's that was an A-list rock and roll production. Yeah, you need to be able to move mountains if that's what it is like the show must go on.

Dave: 17:41

Right.

Jon: 17:42

The show must go on.

Dave: 17:43

Yeah, but we were just doing the concert for the city and at noon, you didn't have that kind of power.

Jon: 17:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, exactly.

Dave: 17:50

I remember a couple of times we're doing a song in A in this big B flat.

Jon: 17:56

Now that's gonna stick with me. I'm gonna have to look that up. I wonder if those all are I wonder if there are specific like pitches for maritime horns. In my intro, I mentioned that in the time that I've known you, you by all appearances, as far as I can tell, you're gigging every day, oftentimes more than once a day. Has that always been the case?

Dave: 18:18

Uh no. And and now I I don't gig every day, but I do I've been, you know, knock on wood. The last couple of years have been really good for me and and been able to play uh a lot of things. And I one thing that helps is I've I play steel guitar, I play lead guitar. I can be a sideman for somebody.

Jon: 18:34

Mm-hmm.

Dave: 18:34

I I can bring my own band, a full band, or various combinations. It could be a single or a duo, do a lot of solo work. So I can make myself available in different forms.

Jon: 18:45

Okay.

Dave: 18:46

Um, but when I first started really getting to play, well, I w I'll go back to Court C. Coffee House, I started meeting good players. And actually, one night I when I was playing a show at Courtsea Coffee House, I was doing a trio. I had a band called Shade Tree, and it was Gay Windsor and uh who's my dear friend. We're the same age and we sang together off and on since we were 18 years old. And a guy named Doug Holloway played guitar, and he was a really fine finger style guitar player. And I learned that's why I met people that really knew how to finger pick. I did I was doing some kind of thing that what didn't make sense, and I saw the people that really did it right. I learned a lot from him. And anyway, I had a cold and I had my voice got really hoarse, and I kept I kind of liked it. I had this growl that I don't usually have in my voice, and we did the whole night. And the next day on a Sunday morning, I woke up and I had complete laryngitis. I couldn't I had to write things down to say anything. I couldn't I couldn't talk. And I had to pick up my guitar, and before that point, I'd only I'd played enough guitar to back up my vocal.

Jon: 19:49

Right.

Dave: 19:50

I never really thought of it as of its own voice. I just strummed the chords and I didn't I'd never really thought of really trying to play when I was like 20 years old, I guess. And then I'd pick up My guitar and I was like, this is kind of boring, and I can't sing with it. So I I had like two weeks where I really couldn't sing. And in that two weeks, I changed my focus. I mean, I didn't learn everything in those two weeks, but it it made me start thinking about really learning how to play guitar. And I think I really took off from that point. Then I tried to be a sponge with all the people I'd meet. There were some great players I met back there. There was a guy named Dudley Hill who sadly he passed on a few years ago. Amazing player. And he was the first guy I'd really seen that could flat pick, you know, do this Doc Watson stuff. And he'd put out a great album, about 75, called From a Dor Northern Family. And l you can listen to the whole thing on YouTube. It's just amazing flat picking. He would show me tunes and uh he was funny. He'd I'd go over to his house and he'd he was really helpful. He'd show me how to play a fiddle tune on the guitar. And I remember this about 73 or 74, and he said, uh, you know, I've been I've been teaching this kid who lives up in Mount Lake Terrace. His name's Mark O'Connor. So I'm not really teaching him, I just play a song and he plays it back. And I thought he was just kind of BSing me, but then uh a year or two later I see Mark O'Connor's winning national fiddle contest and national flat picking contest, and now he's gone on to be this world famous guitar player, you know, and fiddle player and mandolin player and everything else. But that's that's when I changed my focus. And then I had another guy that I'd met from Court C, Rick Ashelman, who's also passed away. I got a lot of my, you know, the influences that I worked with and met, I met from Court C. He had moved up here from uh California. And uh I remember we were hanging out, they had a the coffee house was like a little diner, and we were sitting there in the afternoon, and he's teaching me the harmony to sing on Buck Owen's uh Close Up the Honky Tonks. We're sitting there and and he was like, Man, you got to listen to Clarence White, his stuff on the birds. And he turned me onto the stuff I'd never really paid attention to before, and steel guitar. So one day, and we'd hang around, he had a little apartment in Tacoma, and I'd go over to his house and he's got a steel guitar set up. This other guy we'd known had gone to Alaska and he left his steel at Rick's house. It was an eight-string fender steel, pedal steel. And they're kind of uh, you know, nowadays you if you're really playing pedal steel, you want a better one than that. But he'd do a couple things on it, and then I said, How do you do that? You got to show me that. So we'd take turns like playing steel and backing each other on guitar. So I learned a little bit of pedal steel stuff when I was about 22 years old. And then I actually had that for a while, I had that steel for about six months until the guy came back from Alaska and took it away from me because it was his. But then I I bought a steel in like '74. I was in a band at that time called Road Apple. And I I bought this pedal steel for $250 and I played it for a couple years, but I didn't really get any, I didn't go very far with it, and I didn't know any steel players. Got rid of it and I gave it up for a couple years. And then '79 or 80, I bought a show bud that was still kind of a worn-out steel. But from that point on, I took serious and I actually took a couple of steel lessons from a guy. Ever since then, pedal steel has been part of my thing.

Jon: 23:06

And there's not a lot of people that play pedal steel.

Dave: 23:10

Yeah, it's it's kind of a specialized instrument. There are some real good players here, though. I've got a good friend named uh Bob Kinesker that does shows with me quite a bit when I do a Grand Parsons tribute. He's a really versatile player and he can he covers all the different kinds of steel from that music.

Jon: 23:25

You sent me a link uh a couple months ago to some sort of a pedal steel gathering, like in Oregon or something like that.

Dave: 23:32

Yeah, that was in Portland, and Portland seems to have a there's something in the water. They've got a lot of really good pedal steel players there. And non there's also non-petal steel, which uh if I digress a little bit, I love the thing it's called a a retro nym. It's uh like acoustic guitar. That's that terminology is a retro nym because before they had electric guitars, no one called it an acoustic guitar. Right. It was just a guitar. And then they had to come up with another name for it after you had electric guitar. So uh a new name for an old thing. So before there was pedal steels, the non-pedal steels were just called steel guitars. And then you know, so the first generation of of pedal steel players all came from playing non-petal, you know, steel guitars without pedals to pedal steel. And I was the other way around. I I learned pedal steel first, and then I went back and tried to learn I played some of the non-petal steel stuff now, too. I'm not as adept on that, and I'm not not that I'm all that great on the pedal steel. I I know my way around it and can manage to keep it in tune most of the time and play notes that don't sound bad, which is one of the keys of steel playing, because it's really easy to make it sound bad.

Jon: 24:43

Right. So in the time that I've known you, you're gigging a lot. At the same time, for decades of my association with musicians of all sorts in the region, kind of the number one complaint is can't get enough gigs. Super hard to get gigs, uh always wanting more. What are you doing differently where you're not suffering that problem?

Dave: 25:13

Um, I'm not sure. You know, I I I'll say I'm thinking of uh heard some people that ask Johnny Gimbel in Nashville, they said, Can you give me some advice on how to get work how to be a success? And he goes, Well, don't forget to be lucky.

Jon: 25:27

Yeah, no, that's the truth.

Dave: 25:29

And I think, you know, when I first started actually, you know, okay, I was dedicated to just being a musician by about 1972, 73, and had a couple of little day jobs before that, and I just now I'm just musician only. And it was it was pretty thin. Uh, you know, it was I wasn't like making, you know, I was scraping by a a a living, you know. And then I I remember the my first hired lead guitar job in a band was it's this dive bar in Tacoma called the Circle Tavern, which is in downtown Tacoma, which is all kind of gentrified these days, but it was across the street from the Greyhound bus depot. It was a pretty surly neighborhood. And but it kind of a historic place. I mean, Buck Owens had played there in the late 50s. And about the Tacoma thing, too. There was when I started really playing Country Western, I started out at folk and I kind of migrated after I'd met some country players. Like, I'm gonna learn how to play country. I really like this. At first I played it to kind of make fun of it, then until I had met the people that were playing it seriously, and I was like, you know, this it's not a joke to them. These are some of the best players. These are legitimate players, and I've thought they oh country, you just have to play C and D and G. And I was like, no, these guys can play in E flat and B flat and A flat they can it doesn't matter what they can play everything. They're real guys. And so I started meeting players like that and then getting respect for them. So but I had this dive bar gig and the band was not very good. But I I was playing six nights a week at this at this bar, and and I th I think we made about fifty or sixty bucks a night, uh, which my rent was like fifty dollars a month.

Jon: 27:08

Yeah, that's great.

Dave: 27:08

And so I was making some money out of eventually the the band got fired because we had the house gig too. We were just hired for there's no end to it. But I was on a the it was a tavern. There was a cocktail bar next door. So the drummer and me, a lot of times we'd skip out of, we'd go over on a break to get a hard drink. So in the last break, we're there having a drink, and then we come back and the band had got fired. Or no, well, they didn't get fired that night, but the rhythm guitar player had taken off because his wife had got in a fight with the bass player's wife on the dance floor. And I was like, wow, you know, this is this is like a movie, you know, you get two girlfriends or wives get getting in a brawl on the dance floor.

Jon: 27:47

I was gonna say it sounds like some current bands that I know, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go there.

Dave: 27:51

So we come back and we played one set without the rhythm guitar player, and actually it sounded better that way. But then the next day that the club had fired us because we played a set with one less member.

Jon: 28:04

Oh man.

Dave: 28:05

You know, so anyway, I joined this band called Road Apple shortly after that. And they were a Tacoma band, and that we I was in that band from 74 until 78. We had that was kind of an interesting band. We did all kinds of we kind of shot ourselves in the foot because we were but we were kind of like too rock and roll for the regular country bars, and we were too country for the rock and roll bars. But we found some places that liked what we did. We used to play in the Tides Tavern and Gig Harbor quite a bit, and we had places they liked us, and then we'd get a sometimes we'd do a gig that where they really wanted just classic country, and those people usually kind of hated us.

Jon: 28:44

Well, that time frame, and correct me if I'm wrong, that's just before like the whole urban cowboy thing kicked up, and I can remember because through my parents, right? Like there was this huge kind of revival of what we think of now as classic country music.

Dave: 29:01

Uh yeah, that's true. Actually, there was when the like mid-70s had its own kind of really uh fun thing in a way, because all of a sudden the biggest thing started to be disco. And I wasn't doing that at all. And now I can look back and say, okay, that music wasn't completely terrible. Like any genre of music, it's these are real musicians playing in and they they're all serious about what they do. And it might not be what I want to listen to, but I I still have this respect for anybody that can play what they do and make it sound right.

Jon: 29:31

But I just made a note that you really do need to cut a disco album. Country Dave Goes Disco. I mean, you you have to. I'm gonna I'm gonna push you on that.

Dave: 29:42

Uh you might have to push pretty hard.

Jon: 29:44

Yeah, well, why why not? You know, you gotta you gotta leave it all on the table, man.

Dave: 29:48

In the about 74 or 75, when I joined Road Apple, right around that time, there started being this kind of a hippie, there was a hippie country thing, we'd called it a little bit, where the California country bands and country influence was eventually was like the Eagles. Of course, you know, I was into the Flying Burrito Brothers and I started, you know, going at Graham Parsons' music. Graham was a big influence on me. He never had like hit records ever, but he he really influenced that California country scene with people like, of course, the Eagles and uh Manassas and um Poco. It was kind of a merging of singer-songwriter with country, so it wasn't like the traditional Nashville drinking and cheating songs and the real you know, Nashville was kind of formulaic a little bit. It was wasn't based around the artist so much. I mean, I love that the 60s country and 70s country music from Nashville. I love that too. You know, the best players on earth playing that stuff. But the California country scene, and one of my favorite country songs ever, uh, performances was Judy Collins in 1968 doing Someday Soon with Buddy Emmons on Pedal Steel and James Burton on the Telecaster, and it's just a beautiful song and just wonderfully played. And it's just it really stands up as just an outstanding performance. So I I kind of really got into that California kind of country scene, and then there was just Texas people like Jerry Jeff Walker, and started, you know, when they started getting a little edgy and Guy Clark, and so there was all the people that didn't like disco were really into that. And then that band, Road Apple, we it was kind of we didn't have a lot of work in the first year or two, but eventually by the end of that run, we were working all the time. And 1978 with that band was kind of dis dissolving on its own, and uh there was a kind of semi-big time band at the area that had been around since 1971, Lance Romance. Oh yeah. Originally, Lance Romance was called Lance Romance and the Three Minute Boogie. I was hired to play guitar for him in 1978, and I'd I'd sing a few songs, and uh to me that felt like now I'm in the big time because I mean we were traveling, we were on the road, and we were gigging all the time. It was a six-piece band with a big band truck and a motorhome, and we're playing in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado year-round, which was insane because we'd be driving in Wyoming in the middle of January, risking your life on every road trip. But it wasn't back then, it was mostly it'd be five or six nights in a town, it wouldn't be one nighters.

Jon: 32:20

Oh, wow, that's interesting. You don't see that anymore.

Dave: 32:23

No, that whole time I've spent so many years of playing six nights a week in clubs, and that kind of started going away in the late 80s. It kind of did that pretty much into the 90s, but it's a non-existent thing. And there might be some small town in North Dakota or something where there's a house band because they only have one band in town where that still exists. But yeah, now it's you're not doing that anymore. And we got used to that. It but it's funny, I I like that you had the consistency, and you know, especially later on when you're doing it at home and you're not traveling. I mean, you just your gear is set up every night and you just go to work.

Jon: 32:54

Yeah.

Dave: 32:55

And then a month later you tear down and you go to the next gig for a month. But it kind of gets boring in a way, too, because you're playing for the same people and they keep having the same requests.

Jon: 33:04

I wasn't opposed to doing those songs, but Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but that's also that kind of an environment, man. That's where you can really build up your skill.

Dave: 33:14

Yeah, and you just get used to playing performing. You're performing all the time. But in Last Romance, though, I played with those guys for a couple of years, and I'd quit playing pedal steel then. I didn't play steel in that band, I just played guitar. I had a real great steel player and uh piano player. We, I mean, we had he had a full regular acoustic piano, a console Yamaho piano, not an electric piano with pickups on it, and a Hammond organ. Wow. And so we had a whole big old Ford box truck. You know, it had rock and roll PA for a country band. It was a straight-up honky tonk country band. We had some fun in that band. We played Jackson Hold Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. In fact, that was my in like 73. I'd gone over there on a trip with some friends and had met a band from Texas. In fact, that was a turning point for me. I still didn't have an electric guitar. And if we saw this band from Texas, four-piece, and they were just playing great country music at Telecaster, steel guitar, bass, and drums, and they're singing Merle Haggard songs, and I I got to go up and sing Mama Tried with them. And man, when I sang Mama Tried with that telecaster and steel guitar, I was like, Yep, that's me. I'm doing that.

Jon: 34:20

It all made sense. Let me bounce something off of you. I get asked frequently from all sorts of people about advice about how to kind of break into the scene as a as a new musician. Uh, how do I get more gigs? Is the number one question. And over the years, I've finally developed an answer to that. And this is what I want to bounce off here. My reply to that is simply this artist or entertainer, choose one.

Dave: 34:53

Boy, I don't know. I you have to combine it. You have to do both. I mean, you know, uh entertainment, you got to be an entertainer to be noticed. But I think to make it worthwhile, to make it be honest, you have to be an artist. But you you know, don't be an artist at the vault of not being an entertainer.

Jon: 35:10

What I mean by that, where I am going with that, is that from the talent buyer's perspective, from the club owner, the festival producer, whatever it is, 100% of the time guaranteed, they're paying for entertainment. Right. They are hiring you as an entertainer. The thought of you as an artist really isn't even a consideration until you reach a certain level that most musicians will never actually get there. They're buying entertainment. I agree with you 100%. You can't have one without the other. Right. Either one of those doesn't exist in a vacuum. But my advice for new entrance into the craft that you have to really understand what the person who's writing the check is paying for. You have to provide that.

Dave: 35:57

Oh, exactly. You know, I I probably didn't understand that early on either. I started out as a folk singer in this coffee house. Well, one thing for sure, when we played those concerts in that coffee house, somebody was talking in the audience. You're like, no, that's not allowed. You know, so you got a silent crowd. And then, you know, I'd get a solo gig in a bar and ording, and you don't get people to shut up in a bar when you're playing acoustic guitar.

Jon: 36:22

Right.

Dave: 36:23

I mean, I'll digress a little bit too. That's another reason why I kind of started playing electric guitar too. I got really tired of trying to play acoustic guitar back in the early 70s in a bar. They didn't have any good pickups for acoustic guitars in those days. You just had to play on a mic. The only pickups they had didn't sound like an acoustic guitar. They had those D Armands that you tried those a time or two and you can put them in the soundhole. But blues guys liked them, but it didn't sound like an acoustic guitar. It just sounded like a uh an electric guitar because it's a magnetic pickup. So I got really tired of playing acoustic guitar in a noisy bar and you can't hear yourself, and you're you can't play with touch, or you can, that's the only way to do it. You're supposed to just play with the same touch and not just not hear yourself. But you wind up eating your guitar and everything's it's just doesn't sound right. And I was like, damn it, I'm gonna get a telecaster and they're gonna hear me. You know, I'd get kind of angry when playing in a bar and everybody's noisy. And uh, you know, you have to realize you can't control the environment. You have to figure out a way in some way.

Jon: 37:23

Absolutely. And I would add to that that you have to get comfortable with the fact that there will always be some amount of indifference out there.

Dave: 37:33

Oh, exactly. Yeah, and sometimes the amount of indifference is it gets annoying. Yeah, I'll I'll tell you a story because this is one that I know you just booked me on this Bellevue art week art walk last week. Yeah, I loved it, it was a fun job. At one point, I was sitting there playing and just instrumental music acoustically, and I was playing the George Harrison song Something, and this lady walks by and goes, Can you play summertime? I said, Yeah, sure. And then I'm still playing something because well, are you gonna play it? I was like, Yeah, I'll play it when I get done with this one. Yeah, yeah.

Jon: 38:06

Artist or entertainer, man. Artist or entertainer.

Dave: 38:10

But yeah, I've done it long enough, I don't take stuff like that personal anymore. I just kind of laugh at it.

Jon: 38:14

Right now, I know that you spend a lot of time playing in clubs, and I know that you do a fair amount of studio work, both for yourself and for other musicians. And of course, there's the other category of gigs that you and I work together in a lot. What's kind of the mix of your type of gigs these days? Do you do much uh festivals, other special events?

Dave: 38:39

Uh I have done, I haven't done as many festivals now as I used to. And I had a band from 81 until like 96. I played I had a band called Stampede Pass. We had a really long run. And that band, especially up into the 90s, we worked all the time. And I'd worked on it to where through the mid-80s, into the 90s in the summertime, we almost didn't do the bars. We were playing every little street fair, wow, festivals, you know, King County Fair, Monroe, played Piallet Fair a couple times. I just really worked hard to develop a thing where every little concert in the park thing we could get. And we were sometimes we were doing two or three of those a day. One time there was a thing in Kent they wanted us to play, and then a place in Mont Lake Terrace wanted us to play, and we were booked at a bar that night. Well, the place in Kent wouldn't confirm this thing, so we went ahead and agreed to play this thing in Mont Lake Terrace. And they're only like an hour apart. But after we confirmed we're gonna play the Mont Lake Terrace gig, the people at Kent said, No, we really want you to do this. So we we managed to talk them into doing a semi-acoustic version of the band in Kent, which actually worked out better because it should have been a low volume type of thing anyway. So I took all of our electric gear and my pedal steel and dropped it off at the stage at the Mont Lake Terrace Festival. Drive what twenty miles, twenty five miles to Kent, do that gig, and then race back up to Mont Lake Terrace, play the gig, then take all the gear to a a bar in Milton and play nine to one thirty.

Jon: 39:59

So long.

Dave: 40:02

So yeah, I've been used to packing it as much as you can. I mean it's maybe it's kind of like uh you've heard of people uh if you've been starving, you couldn't find food forever. When you finally have it, you're not gonna stop eating. You're like, I got food, I'm gonna eat it while I got it.

Jon: 40:17

Feast or famine.

Dave: 40:18

Right. Take it when it's there.

Jon: 40:20

Yeah, that's the story of of my career as well. Feast or famine.

Dave: 40:24

Right. I remember back in the days in Stampede Fast when I was doing all those festivals, I almost wished I could franchise out. That's part of the uh you know Murphy's Law. You you have an open date, nobody offers you a gig that day, but you're booked on three gigs already, and then three other people want to book you that day.

Jon: 40:39

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's that's just the way the world is.

Dave: 40:42

I've always joked about that. I I could sell out, do a stamp, you know, like the the various versions of the Globetrotters, you know, you could have a stampede past one and two and three, and they'd have to all do the same songs and have the same instrumentation, and then I'd get a percentage of all of their now.

Jon: 40:57

You don't go through a manager or anything, you do all your own booking. Yes, correct? So have you had good luck with that overall, or have you gotten into some less unpleasant uh experiences with promoters or clients?

Dave: 41:11

Both, but mostly good. I haven't really had any major issues for a long time, and I guess due to the longevity, and I I think I've built up a good reputation that people know I'm not gonna be flaking on them. A lot of things just come to me. And so I've been really thankful, but really grateful that that's happened. I mean, even back in Stampede Pass, I remember I had to have a new member join and say, How do you get all these gigs? And well, a lot of it was hard work, but sometimes because we'd done all these things and we were visible, people I just get a phone call and they say, Hey, can you play this show for a thousand dollars? And yeah, yes, sir.

Jon: 41:42

And our work together, that's how I think of you. It's like if an opportunity, somebody approaches me with an opportunity, a need, a want for something, and in my head, I'll just start thinking about who would fit in there. And you're one of these handful of of folks that I'm working with currently where it's like if it's even remotely a fit, then that's as far as I need to go with it. I know that if I give you the gig, you're going to deliver, period.

Dave: 42:08

Right. Yeah, this is the old thing, you know, be on time, be professional.

Jon: 42:11

Oh, why is uh Ioncy stagehand taught me long ago 80% of work is showing up.

Dave: 42:18

Yep, there you go. Everything else is just the icing on the cake. The real good guitar player I was playing with for a little while in about the uh in the early 2000s, and uh he's a few years older than me, and we hadn't really worked that much together. Richard uh Gerber, he played back with Mary Lee Rush way back in the early 60s. He was a great old rock player. He could play country really well, but he was old school rock player. He gave me, I think, one of the one nicest compliments after you know we're playing a show and goes, you know what I respect about you is I can tell you like doing this. So you you you love what you're doing. I know if some musicians are if you go and just throw the motions and it's like you're I mean, every gig is not perfect. I mean, it's not like I'm like, oh yeah, this is an overjoy. Um we're playing for two people in a 200 seat room.

Jon: 43:02

Yeah.

Dave: 43:02

No, that's not fun. You live through those, but I love playing music, and I've love playing music with great players around me and enjoying what they're doing, and the communication that you get from playing with players and the and the fact that you're making something, you're making a product that sounds good, and it's something you can be proud of, and it and I really try to be true to that.

Jon: 43:21

Absolutely. Do you have more fun gigging these days in the 2020s than you did say in the 70s or 80s? Is it more fun? Is it less fun? Is it just different?

Dave: 43:35

Yeah, it's hard for me to say more or less. It's different, you know. And I mean I did a lot of stupid stuff back in the 70s too, I would say. You know, we probably carried on a little bit more than we should have sometimes. Yeah. In fact, not probably we did. You know, I I still enjoy it. You know, people say, Well, how why do you do this so long? Is that well, I don't know how to do anything else.

Jon: 43:54

Yeah, I can absolutely sense that you still enjoy it. I guess with technology these days is a heck of a lot less stuff to haul around, or at least the stuff that there is to haul around is a lot lighter.

Dave: 44:05

Yeah, it's yeah, no c yeah. I used to have a back in Stampede Pass days, I always had a big van. You know, in fact for about ten years I had this Ford Maxi van that's like, you know, and you could you're packing in these huge speaker columns and everything in there. Yeah. But I still play steel guitar and that's that's a heavy thing.

Jon: 44:23

Give us a piece of advice for musicians who are just starting out and who want to make a living out of it.

Dave: 44:30

Man, I just try to find something you think people will like. Work hard on it, work on your presentation, be confident. You know, don't be timid, don't don't be shy. But don't be arrogant though either. There's a fine line between being confident and being just being a jerk. You know, try to be uh compatible with people. I mean that's look around, see what people are doing that are being successful, and see how the watch how they're doing it.

Jon: 44:55

Do you have a favorite band?

Dave: 44:58

You know, that's a hard thing because I I I have lots of favorites.

Jon: 45:01

When I asked that question, what are some bands that come to mind?

Dave: 45:04

Well, you know, I'll have to go back and say like when Merle Haggard during his heyday, man, that still stands up as one of my favorite combos, especially when it was Roy Nichols and Norman Hamlet. He had various different people on bass and drums, and he'd have his wife, later ex-wife, Bonnie Owen, singing with him. I love that stuff. Uh I love the swing stuff like Asleep at the Wheel. It was a really fun band play. And in the 70s, people didn't consider him like a major rock band, but Little Feet, I always loved Little Feet.

Jon: 45:30

Oh, yeah.

Dave: 45:31

And uh and people like, you know, Rai Cooter, Rai Cooter was kind of like the solo version of Little Feet in a way. They both had this sense of syncopation that was really unique. And that old Bonnie Raid stuff from that era, too. I was really into that.

Jon: 45:44

I had never tuned into Little Feet at all. And in 89 or 90, I went to a Grateful Dead show at Otson Stadium in Eugene. Yeah. And Little Feet was the opener. Like I say, I I wasn't I didn't know them from Adam. And they came out and holy smokes, man, they just took 60,000 people to school. They were so good.

Dave: 46:09

No, I love that. We in fact when I was in that band, Road Apple, we traveled a little bit. We'd do little gigs over in eastern Washington. That was some of our major uh road fair for listening on the van, you know.

Jon: 46:20

Do you have a favorite lyric?

Dave: 46:22

Oh man. How about Rodney Crowell's song is a beautiful love song, but the first line is I don't drink as much as I ought to. Lately it just ain't my style. It's funny because most bands that have covered that song, including Alan Jackson, it was probably the Nashville producers that made him change it to I don't drink as much as I used to. When you change it to I don't drink as much as I used to, it doesn't really work in the right because that's used to is the rhyming line at the end of the verse.

Jon: 46:48

There's a lyric that has been stuck in my head for a few months now. It got stuck when I was listening to you performing at one of these gigs. I can't remember what location it was, but uh you it was uh buckets of rain. Oh yeah. Completely familiar with the song, but the way that you sang it, you put the lyrics across differently somehow, and uh the lines uh life is unfair, life is a bust. Yeah, all you can do is do what you must, do what you must do and do it well. Right. And man, that's just uh I really connected with that lyric for the first time after being familiar with it for forever. It's fun when that happens.

Dave: 47:30

Man, I always love that song. I'll tell you a story too. About I think it was 1974, and I was living in a house with some other people in Tacoma. We'd uh I came home and and his friends had brought a it was a Sunday, his friends had brought a guy over they'd met at Courtsea Coffee House. He just he was traveling, he was from uh Ohio, California, but he'd been playing music in Canada and he'd heard about this coffee house and he just stopped in to see if he could get some work there, and they kind of blew him off like, well, you have to come down and do these open mics, and uh, you know, he wasn't gonna be able to do that. He's driving through, he was just checking. Many of these friends of mine saw him and they brought him up, they thought he might like to, you know, thought I might like to meet him. And we sat around and played music all night, and he was a great player, really good finger style, and he played that song, and it was before I'd ever heard Bob Dylan do it, and he I don't remember exactly the way he played it, but I I do it play it a little different than Dylan because I'd learn it from this guy. Actually, at the time I was playing every lunch at Courtsy Coffee House for lunch and tips from like noon to one thirty or so, and I wound up giving him my my lunch gig that day so he could, you know, get a little money to go off on the road. But that's kind of where I had first learned that song, and man, it really hit home.

Jon: 48:36

Who do you think you are?

Dave: 48:38

Boy, I don't know. I just uh I'm just country Dave, just trying to be me. What is your favorite sound?

Jon: 48:46

Boy, steel guitar. Who is your favorite ancestor?

Dave: 48:51

Ooh, well, that's hard. Maybe my granddad Hankins on my mother's side. Say more about that. Uh well he was a preacher. We had a lot of preachers in our family, but he was one of my I think my brother-in-law named him Popcorn because he told we'd have a family dinner and he would tell jokes for two hours around the after dinner in the table, and had a great sense of humor. He'd been a farmer in Texas for years and he liked fast cars. In fact, I remember he drove up here in in about 65, driving a 62 Impala Super Sport. He lived out in these rural, you know, farmland in Texas, and he liked to drive these cars 90 miles an hour, so he always had a fast car.

Jon: 49:33

Dave, it's been super fun talking today. Thank you so much for your time.

Dave: 49:37

Hey, well, thanks for having me. I was that was a lot of fun. We'll do it again sometime. I appreciate it. One, two, three, one. So just me and you with your arms around me, and mine around you will dance away these wounds. Trying to mend on the wounds in each other. I don't know about tomorrow. Just hold me. Let's say decide where to go. Come take my hand, dance with just me and you with your eyes around me, and you will dance away these wounds. It takes me away from the pain that I feel down deep instead. Old me, it's just a day. Come take my hand, dance with the waltz for just me and you put your arms around me, and mine around you, we'll dance away these blues. Put your arms around me. I put mine around you, we'll dance away these blues. One hours and hours.