What got you into playing music, like all the way back to like 11?
The soundtrack for Bambi.
That's a deep okay,
That's a really deep cut. That's I always say, like when I think of I think that was one of the first albums that I understood.
But I grew up in a house that, though neither of my parents were professional musicians, they were very active in music and playing music.
I think I chose to play guitar because my dad was my dad play guitar, and so I wanted to be like him. So I chose the guitar and he was a very, what I call like a folk guitarist and very basic chords and stuff.
But he was really into it. And so that was the first guitar that I would have had. I would have had access to. And I remember asking for my own first guitar when I was ten and plugging into some. I'm laughing because I'm guessing this is something you haven't grown up with or that your older viewers will know.
A Zenith console is like this huge piece of furniture that look like a, you know, like an oak cabinet or something. You open it up and there's a turntable inside the speakers on the side. And so I plug that guitar into the the stereo system. Somehow I don't remember how I did it, but then we kind of experiment with the sounds and then started learning to play really by putting a Rolling Stones record on and playing along with the Rolling Stones record and realized, my gosh, I'm playing the same notes as Keith Richards and so first I tried to copy the notes, and then I realized, well, I can play this note, and
it still sounds good. It's not exactly what he's playing, but it's kind of it's in the same world. I didn't understand keys or anything like that, but that's kind of how that got started.
And then I studied classical guitar in college, and when I got done with that, I ended up going back to the electric guitar playing in various bands. This is back in Indiana and Ohio. And so I was in groups that were kind of jazz rock fusion. I was in a group that played primarily music from the Motown era, then a group that played all original music that was sort of a, I guess I don't know if you're familiar with Tears for Fears, they've actually come out with a new album lately.
It's kind of like sort of Tears for Fears, all original music. I was starting to kind of teach myself some other types of instrumental guitar stuff and composing tunes and by the time I moved out here to Montana in 1993, I kind of had a vision. I'm like, I think I'm going to go with a steel string acoustic guitar and try to develop something with that.
And I knew enough to know that I would get more work if I would sing so I could sing. Okay. So I thought, I'll do this, you know? And so I kind of combined the two and as the years have gone on, it's still kind of a combination of those two things of instrumental music and vocal music.
So cool. What brought you out to Montana back then? Well, I had I got my degree in something called music therapy.
And ironically, there's a woman that I did an internship with who lives in Kalispell, who no longer some music therapist, but it was kind of ironic that I moved out here and then found out that she was out here, too, as well. And she lives here with her family. But I did that. We did that internship in Denver, Colorado, and that was my first introduction to the Rocky Mountain Era area.
And so I always was it always stuck with me. Then I moved back to Cleveland and lived there for a while. And then when I met my former wife, we started traveling here just for vacations like a lot of people. And it really got into our psyche and our soul and we decided, you know, I think this we could start a, you know, a life out here.
I wanted to ask a little bit about your work with Montana Public Radio and Montana PBS. How did you get involved with them? Well, 1997. So I've been here about four years and I'd started playing a lot of solo gigs and recording albums and stuff.
And the gentleman who's now the program director of the station, a guy named Michael Marszalek, and he had started the program that I've been hosting now myself for 27 years, and that's called Musician Spotlight. He had started that program and he was going to be moving on to bigger and better things as I was soon to find out, including being the program director.
And so he asked if I wanted to pick up the show and continue to do the show and so I did. Along with co-host at the time, a guy named Brian Copper. And we were co-hosts that for a little over a decade and around 2008 or 29 is when I started hosting just by myself. And it's been an incredible journey.
I would not have thought it was going to be something that became so much a part of my life. I didn't I didn't you know, I didn't have any aspirations to be a journalist. And it's funny because somebody who was on the show recently said, well, John, you as a journalist would say, I'm like, well, I'm not a journalist.
I'm just a musician who can talk to other musicians and put it into a software program and edit it and and put it out. And and it's good enough for broadcast, you know. But I had no aspirations to do any of that kind of stuff. It just kind of fell into my lap. And that became something I took a lot of pride in and had a lot of fun with.
And it's been been fabulous. That's incredible conversations I've had. I can't remember the last the total number of folks that I've interviewed is I want to say it's like 600 people or something like that over that time. It's pretty astounding. And a lot of them are household names like B.B. King and Alison Krauss, Bonnie Raitt, I mean, all kinds of folks.
But then there's also we have interviewed musicians from the Flathead. I've got my head, Mike Murray. John, again, Erika von Kleist, I'm not going to start. I'm just going to stop there. So I'll start, you know, leaving people out. But it's all kinds of musicians and so everybody's got a story as to what brought that. So I'm usually doing the other thing that you're doing here is asking me what brought you to music and what were your inspirations and that kind of stuff and everyone's got an interesting story to me.
So my job is to convey that story to people. And then the PBS thing came about through the pandemic, actually, and that's why I got a camcorder and set up a microphone here was because I would do this and I would be the host and we would get music videos from around the state from all kinds of musicians.
And then I was like the host in between. It was sort of similar to back when MTV actually played music videos, and that's where you'd go to see music videos, you'd watch a couple of videos, and then some guy with you there, some woman would be there and tell you what you just seen and tell you a bit more about it.
So we did that from the pandemic, kind of from the from the the shutdown on because musicians weren't working. Obviously, you know, we work to be in public. And so we were looking for an avenue to keep musicians motivated and and and get their music and get their work out and and also for people and not just for musicians, but for people who love music and are interested in what's going on in the state.
So yeah, we did that for we did a total of, I think eight shows maybe that are on PBS and they're available on the website and stuff. So I'm not sure where that's going to go in the future. But that was if, if that's it, that was great. That was a lot of fun. And another, another way to kind of serve the community and and Montana musicians as well.
Tell me about your new album coming out. Yeah, now that album that does rock a little bit. Okay, it's it's seven new tracks and it was recorded here in Missoula and it's myself on acoustic and electric guitars and vocals and mandolin.
And then my partner plays cello and she's recorded on that as well. And also a drummer. Travis I should say. Jennifer Slade and on cello, Travis Yost on bass and Ed Starling on drums. So it's like a group and it's a full, full group sound, but it's a little different. Certainly the cello brings an element to the music that is very unique.
And I mean, there are there are definitely more. You're hearing more cello around these days in popular music, I think, than certainly when I was growing up. But it's still cool and it definitely brings a whole other flavor to what we're doing and the album is called Thankful, and there's of those seven tracks, six of them are my own songs, and one of them is a version of a song called Take Me to the River, which is originally written by Al Green, the famous R&B soul singer.
And then it was also made famous by the Talking Heads. So it's a well-known tune and you get to hear Jennifer do some stuff on the cello. You don't necessarily ever hear a cello do, which brings a real nice energy to that. And in terms of the the lyrical content, the subtitle of the album is called Songs of a Certain Age, I thought was very clever, obviously, Meaning they're songs that I wrote as a middle aged man.
They're, you know, they're reflections of of life and things that were happening to me in the last 15 years or so, you know, and, and, you know, decade, decade and change will say. And so those things are going to be different than what I was writing about in my twenties and thirties. And and in some ways, in some ways not.
So it's reflections on relationships and reflections on life, life choices, that kind of thing. But I'm real proud of it. I'm real proud of it. And I'm working on a couple other projects of just me and my guitar, more singer songwriter type albums that I may just do digitally at first. So I've got that. I'm actually trying to finish up something here in the next few days that could be available on Bandcamp, which is where, you know, independent artists can put music out there and that those are songs actually that are more autumnal and in in flavor.
So maybe some point I'll have all the seasons covered with different recordings.
Hey, John, thanks for joining us. Really looking forward to your press show.
So yeah, me too. Thanks for having me.