Eclectic Electric with Joe Louis Walker

00:00:00 Speaker 1: joe louis walker is one of the greatest bluesman of his generation. He is a four time blues music award winner and a 2013 Blues Hall of Fame inductee who has appeared on multiple grammy winning albums. He is known worldwide as one of the genre's top musical trailblazers, a mesmerizing guitarist and a soul testifying vocalist. I caught up with joe from his home in new york to talk about his upcoming album, eclectic Electric 11 track album comprised partly of originals, but also finds joe applying his watermark to some classics, including the Eagles hotel California, 00:00:35 Speaker 1: The Rolling Stones make no mistake and muddy waters. Two trains running, you've been back out on the road. You have done a few shows. What's it like to play live again? 00:00:46 Speaker 2: Well, it's it's 00:00:50 Speaker 2: it's not, it's kind of bittersweet because um 00:00:56 Speaker 2: uh 00:00:57 Speaker 2: because of the, 00:00:59 Speaker 2: the pandemic um everywhere you go, every place has different rules and regulations. So some places may, you may need to be vaccinated, some places you may not, some places you may need to have a proof of, of, of being uh, 00:01:18 Speaker 2: of testing 72 hours ahead of time 00:01:21 Speaker 2: and then you get the dynamic where, you know, the people get inside and then people are gonna want to have a good time. So some people will pull their mask off, Some of them have their mask off and sometimes people don't understand each other's position and it's it's it's it's it's a strange situation to be honest. 00:01:39 Speaker 1: Yeah, but it must have felt good to be back on stage at least right 00:01:43 Speaker 2: after two years. 00:01:46 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes, It felt good to get the energy back from the people and back and forth. I've been recording a lot of stuff, different projects, but it's nothing like playing for people. 00:01:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, I can imagine. Um anyway, joe the new album, um eclectic electric great album, I've enjoyed listening to it. 00:02:06 Speaker 1: Um 00:02:07 Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about how the album came together? 00:02:11 Speaker 2: Yes. Um this is my 30th album uh since coming back from playing gospel. I played nothing but gospel music from 75 to 85. And then I came back to blues 85 this is my 30th album under my name. 00:02:26 Speaker 2: And I what I did, I asked friends, I asked friends who in the business. I asked a fellow musicians, I asked family members, I asked DJs that I like, like you, I said, man, what do you know, what do you hear me doing? You know what what what what do you think? You know, and everybody would send me their opinion. 00:02:46 Speaker 2: But one thing that a thread ran through it 00:02:49 Speaker 2: and I would get a thing from my my my my my grand niece and he would say, hey, you know, uncle joe, I liked your version when you did that, that that Beatles song um while my guitar gently weeps for a compilation. Another another family member would say, I like what you did when you did the 00:03:06 Speaker 2: um I um 00:03:10 Speaker 2: Nicholas a tribute song. What's so funny about peace, love and understanding. So what I did, um I just took a bunch of requests and I looked and sing. Uh and I looked at what I look for in a cover song, somebody that I may have a personal catch with a personal relation. 00:03:27 Speaker 2: So when they, when they did work, when it shoots so many world was in London, 00:03:31 Speaker 2: that was cool because me and waddy Wachtel, it's like my brother. Okay. So when I played it for a while, maybe I played it for him and he said, oh that's great. So then he put his guitar part on it. So that sort of solidified. It's the same with the song. All she wants to do is dance because Danny Koch more is like my buddy too. 00:03:49 Speaker 2: And he's in the same band with watty 00:03:51 Speaker 2: but Danny couldn't play on the record because um because of the pandemic things got really strange here in America, you couldn't travel, you could. And the the the the the other one, the other cover was was done a couple of years ago 00:04:08 Speaker 2: for the last record blues coming on, 00:04:12 Speaker 2: but it didn't make the cut. And that cover was to make no mistake 00:04:16 Speaker 2: by Yeah, yeah. And and and I asked him, I said, well you know, can I do the song? And he said, well you know joe just make it your own, just make it judge joe and steve steve uh the drummer who wrote with him, steve Jordan was very kind 00:04:38 Speaker 2: and so that worked that worked out. 00:04:41 Speaker 2: So, 00:04:42 Speaker 1: you know, when I, when I looked at the names of the songs before I listened to the album, I looked at the names of the songs and I saw hotel California and I saw um you know, I saw make no mistake and two trains running and stuff. And I thought it would be a radical reinvention of the song. Right? I 00:04:59 Speaker 2: was pleasantly 00:05:00 Speaker 1: surprised when I heard that you were very, 00:05:02 Speaker 1: you're very gentle with the song, You know what I mean? I mean, obviously it's still recognizable. So there's, you know, you're still 00:05:08 Speaker 1: true to the original in a sense. So what was the philosophy you kind of adhered to while you were doing these covers. 00:05:15 Speaker 2: Well, with, with with 00:05:18 Speaker 2: to funk it up. 00:05:20 Speaker 2: two Blues. If I it up 00:05:22 Speaker 2: and to uh 00:05:25 Speaker 2: with with with, with watching song with, with, with with with with with werewolves. We just wanted to make it super funky, you know, and then they have the have the funky guitar and and and and then they have what is rock and slide and have that juxtaposition with, with, with what you want to do is dance. I wanted to put some horns in there, but I really wanted to make it like a horn stand span, 00:05:47 Speaker 2: you know, uh I don't, I didn't, you know, I didn't want to put a whole bunch of singing, screaming background singers on it now that I didn't need that to me and with hotel California, I wanted to, we wanted to give it a little bit of a reggae, funky um uh, feeling to it 00:06:07 Speaker 2: and um, 00:06:09 Speaker 2: and and 00:06:11 Speaker 2: make it more about the story 00:06:14 Speaker 2: other than the Guitar army thing they do at the end of the big guitar thing. You can't, we can do that no better. You can't do it, no matter joe Washington did it. So what we wanted to do was to accentuate the story, because if you're from California and you're a musician, you've been to a hotel California, Okay, so I've been to a hotel where we, where we get at the gigs over at two at night, we get in the hotel at three, there's nobody at the desk, but there's a wise guy in the corner saying, yeah, dude, you can check in, but you can't check out, you know, just really then you're looking like that guy is serious. Well, and then somebody comes and they show you a room 00:06:54 Speaker 2: and you look around the room and there's no mirrors, none. And then your body tap, look up and there's mirrors all up there and you say, oh, I don't know what this room for. So, you know, it's that, that that's what I was trying to bring out. 00:07:10 Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's exactly what I got out of the song, 00:07:13 Speaker 1: that it was subdued to the point where 00:07:16 Speaker 1: you don't really notice what's going on, but you can feel what's going on. 00:07:22 Speaker 2: I wanted, I wanted, 00:07:24 Speaker 2: I prefer 00:07:26 Speaker 2: two 00:07:28 Speaker 2: have nuance in what I do. Um 00:07:32 Speaker 2: there's, there's a million and one guitar players that are knocking you over the head every minute with a bunch of notes and, and boom. And that's why I'm 70 I'll be 72 years old. And on christmas day, you know, and I look at it like it's, it's a marathon. It's not a sprint. I don't have to bowl people over, 00:07:51 Speaker 2: although I have more power to anybody that can do it and you know, become famous and all that stuff. But it's just that I like to have people um, you know, say, hey, you know, hey joe did something different with that, joe, you know, showed another side of, of something. 00:08:06 Speaker 1: Yeah. Because what I found fascinating as a, as a, as a layperson, 00:08:12 Speaker 1: what I found fascinating. What I was trying to understand was the process 00:08:16 Speaker 1: of um, you know, adding something to these covers. Right? How do you strip away stuff keeps something some part of it that's true to the original and then add more color and rhythm to it. Right? So is that the kind of way to approach it that maybe the baseline is true to the original and then you leave room around it to add stuff to the song. 00:08:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And and, and that's what you do when you look for an arrangement. You know, you you spend a day or two saying, hey, let's try it like this with the baseline. Let's try it like this with with the drums, let's start with the drums and the bass. Let's try it like this. Let's leave the backgrounds out. Let's leave all this guitar out. Let's let's put something else, you know? So you you try. That's where the arrangement comes in. And yeah, 00:08:59 Speaker 1: So is this like, is this album like a part two to Blue's coming on? I mean, Blues coming on was also a collaborative effort, right? You had um kevin moore, you had eric gales, you had all of these guys. So is this like a part two to that? 00:09:11 Speaker 2: Well, actually, Blues coming Home was supposed to be a double album, 00:09:16 Speaker 2: All these songs that you listen to now, we're supposed to be on. Blue's coming on. But we came to the conclusion that the president of the record company, my manager, everybody, my wife, that people nowadays do not have the attention span to listen to a two album record. You know, they barely have attention span to listen to a 99 cent single. 00:09:36 Speaker 2: So, um we said no, let's just cut it in half, let's just do it. And and you know, 00:09:42 Speaker 2: uh yeah, 00:09:45 Speaker 1: but that's interesting that you say that, right, because um you think that, you know, the attention span in today's era of streaming. I mean, people don't listen to stuff more than like maybe 2, 2.5, 3 minutes? 00:09:57 Speaker 1: But back in the day in the sixties as well for radio, I remember Susie Q, one of the, I was speaking to Doug Clifford a few weeks ago and I think the original version of Suzy Q was seven or nine minutes or something like that. And I can't remember if that went on radio like that. Right? 00:10:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, it went on radio because it went on radio where I lived at in san Francisco. If it wasn't wasn't for us in san Francisco, all the radio stations will still be playing songs by the Monkey for two minutes and 30 seconds. We just made it, we just said, forget it. And all the DJs walked out 00:10:32 Speaker 2: and and they said, let's we get to play the songs, we wanna play, how long we want to play them, we're leaving and they left and they went instead of the am dial, they went to the FM. And the first big hit was Susie Q from uh Please Clear Water. 00:10:47 Speaker 2: But 00:10:48 Speaker 1: tell me joe, what what is it like for you to collaborate with all of these people? I asked because I remember reading an interview with Howling Wolf, I think it was an interview he did in 67 where he famously said that, you know, muddy waters never really liked 00:11:04 Speaker 1: playing with anybody because he was just jealous of people who played better than him. 00:11:08 Speaker 1: Um, 00:11:09 Speaker 2: you 00:11:10 Speaker 1: know, um, so, so how is it for you to collaborate with all of these, these great, great people, what is the kind of 00:11:18 Speaker 1: mindset? Is there a sense of competition at all or what's that like? 00:11:23 Speaker 2: You know, I gotta say something, you know, I'm new muddy waters and I knew howlin wolf and you know, number one, I don't believe Wolf ever said that number number one, you know, and, and, and number two, if he did, he must have been talking about another muddy waters, muddy waters. 00:11:43 Speaker 2: Um, 00:11:44 Speaker 2: so many great musicians came out of muddy waters, bands that muddy nurtured, including little walter, uh, James, cotton, uh, buddy guy, uh, junior Wales muddy would, would nurture everybody, including me. He nurtured me. So I don't believe that. And I don't believe Hollywood said that. I just believe sometimes 00:12:05 Speaker 2: people say things and then they just say them and, and, and nobody's here to say to speak up. But to get back to your original question, 00:12:15 Speaker 2: um, when I collaborate with these people, what I do is I'll go somewhere and write songs 00:12:21 Speaker 2: in in, in 00:12:23 Speaker 2: and with them in mind, I'll pick out material with them in mind with them in mind and then I'll get together with them and, and I'll send a little demo, you know, a little voice memo and we'll go back and forth and we'll talk and, or sometimes I might have the whole song done and send it to them or whatever, but 00:12:42 Speaker 2: I listened to all their input 00:12:44 Speaker 2: and um since I'm a fan of theirs, I tried to choose a song that would accentuate the best in in what they do, you know, I don't look to be the star, I don't have to be the star and everything really, I don't know if I I take more joy in singing a duet 00:13:03 Speaker 2: with mitch Ryder or singing a duet 00:13:06 Speaker 2: with the honor, singing a duet with Carla Cooks sam Cooke starter or singing a duet with with with johnson, but I have more fun doing that than I do doing my own thing, you 00:13:16 Speaker 1: know, 00:13:18 Speaker 1: and tell me joe when you write what, what comes first, is it the music or the lyrics? How do you write, what is your process of writing? 00:13:26 Speaker 2: It's it's no it's no real rhyme or reason. Sometimes the music will come to you in the middle of the night, sometimes someone will say something and and and then it'll um pique your interest and you write it down, you know, someone will say something catchy and you'll pick it down and then, you know, the next thing, you know, you've got all these little things written down 00:13:46 Speaker 2: and then you'll have bits and pieces of music and sometimes it will get together, sometimes they want and sometimes something come to you in your sleep, you know, as a whole song, you know, and you say did I really dream that, or did it? I don't want to take it off somebody else's song? And so and that's happened a lot, you know, 00:14:07 Speaker 2: a lot to a lot of people, so there's no rhyme or reason to it. 00:14:11 Speaker 2: Mhm. 00:14:12 Speaker 1: How does um you know, you said earlier, you, you know, you're 30 albums old, essentially. How does one remain relevant through the length of a career? That's as long as yours, Joe. 00:14:25 Speaker 1: I mean, obviously times have changed, fan, your fan base has changed um you know, newer interest, younger artists, How do you stay relevant and how do you bring in a fresh perspective to the music? 00:14:38 Speaker 2: Well, um number one, I listened 00:14:42 Speaker 2: two other bands, I listen to young people, um and I'm known for blues, but I play all kinds of music, I've played uh 00:14:52 Speaker 2: jazz, I played funk, I played rock and roll, I played this that the other, and so I'm not, I'm not adverse into getting, getting together with with with someone else from another genre and and writing and and and taking a little bit out of what he's doing, and you can take a little bit about what I'm doing, and we come up with a song 00:15:12 Speaker 2: or something. I'm not, 00:15:13 Speaker 2: I'm not adverse to that. So my my ears are always open and my heart is always open and my mind is always open. 00:15:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, historically, uh joe one of the major themes of the blues has been, you know, freedom music and it's served as essentially a voice uh of the people. 00:15:33 Speaker 1: Um What do you think the value is in today's scenario, when we are experiencing a lot of these same things? Right? What is the value of blues music in today's scenario? 00:15:44 Speaker 2: Um The value as as it relates 00:15:50 Speaker 2: to the sign of the times of what's, what's going on in the world saying, 00:15:57 Speaker 2: well, uh 00:16:00 Speaker 2: the blues music as you said that, you know, it 00:16:04 Speaker 2: it came out of uh 00:16:07 Speaker 2: um 00:16:09 Speaker 2: hard, harsh circumstances. Um and um 00:16:14 Speaker 2: those circumstances 00:16:17 Speaker 2: have not went away. 00:16:19 Speaker 2: And so when you when when 00:16:21 Speaker 2: any number of things happen that uh the powers that be, you know, they 00:16:31 Speaker 2: treat treat people unfairly. Um 00:16:35 Speaker 2: uh 00:16:37 Speaker 2: don't treat people evenly 00:16:39 Speaker 2: uh 00:16:40 Speaker 2: hurt people as we've seen on tv that the blues can become a conduit, it can become a voice. Uh if you put that in there. Um 00:16:52 Speaker 2: uh 00:16:53 Speaker 2: you know, if if you're talking about America, it gets tricky because 00:16:59 Speaker 2: America has 00:17:01 Speaker 2: um blues, 00:17:03 Speaker 2: uh 00:17:05 Speaker 2: a lot of black blues artists, but the but the fan base is white. 00:17:10 Speaker 2: Okay, so you have, I think just to be quite honest, you have to be honest, not to alienate your fan base. I'm just talking, talking Turkey, you're talking real now, you got to be, not to alienate your fan base, 00:17:25 Speaker 2: but in same token, you gotta be true to yourself. 00:17:27 Speaker 2: And and um 00:17:30 Speaker 2: sometimes those two are a big clash. Sometimes they're they're a big clash. 00:17:36 Speaker 1: Yeah. Because, you know, Kendrick Lamar sometime ago had written that song alright. Which kind of became the anthem for, you know, Black Lives Matter and stuff like that. Um, I was just wondering, you know, does it make, is it may be time for? 00:17:54 Speaker 1: Um you know, it's wrong to say blues musicians, but musicians in general to incorporate a little more uh political awareness and maybe protest in their music. 00:18:05 Speaker 1: Um would it be fair to say that is what I was thinking? 00:18:11 Speaker 2: Well, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with thinking that. And that's the generation that I came out of. You know. Uh so, but as that generation 00:18:22 Speaker 2: got older 00:18:24 Speaker 2: and the next generation came in the 70s, it was more about 00:18:29 Speaker 2: in the sixties, it was more about helping each other in the seventies. It was more about helping me in the, in the eighties. It was about me, me, me me in the nineties. It was about learning a computer and being sedentary by yourself, by yourself, computers by yourself. And so the twenties and and now you have these different things going on and, 00:18:49 Speaker 2: and 00:18:50 Speaker 2: um, 00:18:51 Speaker 2: mm hmm. 00:18:52 Speaker 2: I don't have the answer. You know? 00:18:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, 00:18:57 Speaker 1: yeah, I can I can understand but I want to touch upon something you, you spoke about briefly um about um you know, do you think blues music is becoming very guitar centric today, 00:19:11 Speaker 1: Because I've heard people say that the upcoming blues artists are aren't paying enough attention to the roots 00:19:17 Speaker 1: of the music, right? And then there is of course a school of thought that says blues music has become very guitar driven. Where where do you stand on that? What do you think? 00:19:28 Speaker 2: Well, I think, 00:19:31 Speaker 2: yeah, it's um, 00:19:34 Speaker 2: that the, if if 00:19:39 Speaker 2: the, 00:19:40 Speaker 2: if you took a picture of blues, 00:19:44 Speaker 2: if you took three pictures, one was a guy with a guitar, when was the lady with the microphone 00:19:50 Speaker 2: and one could be someone with a harmonica or a piano. The one with the picture with the, with the guitar 00:19:57 Speaker 2: would have, if it wasn't a test, it would have 1000 hits. The lady with the, with the, with the microphone would maybe have 00:20:05 Speaker 2: 100 00:20:06 Speaker 2: you know, and so 00:20:08 Speaker 2: the guitar is ingrained in blues. But, but what, what I think what you're saying is, is, 00:20:16 Speaker 2: yes, it is 00:20:17 Speaker 2: in a way. 00:20:20 Speaker 2: Um, 00:20:22 Speaker 2: taking away 00:20:24 Speaker 2: from 00:20:25 Speaker 2: the essence of the blues, which was a social commentary. The blues was a social commentary 00:20:32 Speaker 2: and every, every one of those social commentaries, 00:20:35 Speaker 2: The guitar took a little bit of solo in the middle 00:20:39 Speaker 2: and that was it. 00:20:40 Speaker 2: Now you have 00:20:43 Speaker 2: a successful blues song, rock, blues, rock song goes like this, I lost my baby 52 guitar solos. I found my baby the end of the song. 00:20:53 Speaker 2: Well, obviously it comes to this. 00:20:57 Speaker 2: If you don't have, 00:20:58 Speaker 2: if you haven't experienced the trials and tribulations, 00:21:03 Speaker 2: uh, to, to put into a song 00:21:08 Speaker 2: uh, to express your situation. Then if you don't have it in you, you can't take it out you so you can pair it, somebody else's music. 00:21:18 Speaker 2: You can sing. I got my mojo working like muddy waters, but he's singing it about something else. You can sing sweet home Chicago, even though you live in the richest part of Montauk new york. You can sing it. 00:21:33 Speaker 2: And now, whether it rings true or not, who knows? People don't care nowadays, but but the, the the essence of of of the blues now 00:21:43 Speaker 2: is a 00:21:46 Speaker 2: it's party time. 00:21:48 Speaker 2: It's party time where, whereas before it was literally, you know, thinking, you know, you you you thought about what was being said 00:21:58 Speaker 2: now, it's it's more like, you know, they're playing my favorite song, Let's go get a drink. 00:22:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's a credibility thing also, Right? 00:22:06 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:22:09 Speaker 1: It's interesting because I remember reading something that eric Clapton had said back in the day when, you know, he's obviously very heavily influenced by the blues and when I think one of the reasons Cream broke up 00:22:22 Speaker 1: was that he said they were doing all these covers of robert, johnson and you know, all these blues greats and then doing extended guitar solos and things like that and the audience loved it. But somehow he felt very guilty about it. 00:22:35 Speaker 1: And I think he attributed one of the reasons that Cream broke up was just because he says he couldn't deal with that guilt. 00:22:43 Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, 00:22:46 Speaker 2: God bless them. God bless him. 00:22:51 Speaker 1: Yeah. But, but you know what one of the hallmarks of your career has been, You know, you've never been scared to experiment. There's a lot of diversity. 00:22:59 Speaker 1: Do you feel that, you know, musicians today need to be more diverse. Need to experiment a little more with the blues itself? 00:23:08 Speaker 2: Well, you know, I, 00:23:11 Speaker 2: I found out a long time ago, no matter what I think, um, it's um, 00:23:17 Speaker 2: I don't want to, uh, 00:23:19 Speaker 2: be as facetious as to say someone should do what I think. Um, but I do feel that nowadays that people are because it's so much blues all over the world, that people are doing it differently all over the world, you know? Um, and that's, that's a big thing now that people are doing it all differently all over the world. Um, Blues, blues has become extremely popular, 00:23:44 Speaker 2: you know, especially among young ladies 00:23:47 Speaker 2: with guitars and especially the young among young young people that, that don't want to, um, 00:23:55 Speaker 2: you know, they don't, 00:23:57 Speaker 2: yeah, 00:23:58 Speaker 2: I don't know. Um, 00:23:59 Speaker 2: they want, they want to to uh, express themselves with the lineage that, you know, 00:24:06 Speaker 2: if you, if you pick up a guitar and, 00:24:09 Speaker 2: and you see chuck berry, 00:24:11 Speaker 2: you pick up a guitar 00:24:13 Speaker 2: and you see uh, pat balloons guitar player who you gonna want to be, You know what I mean? You're gonna just looking at chuck berry's gonna fascinate you and then just to hear what he does? And then when you see him, the deal is done, the deal is done. 00:24:32 Speaker 2: I defy anybody to go on 00:24:34 Speaker 2: playing guitar after chuck berry. Did 00:24:38 Speaker 1: you, did you watch chuck Berry growing up? 00:24:40 Speaker 2: Did 00:24:42 Speaker 1: you watch it? Did you watch a play? 00:24:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 00:24:49 Speaker 1: incredible. 00:24:51 Speaker 1: You know, joe you spoke earlier about, you know, you said you gave up the blues in the middle for a bit. 00:24:57 Speaker 1: Um, I know you were very close friends with Mike Bloomfield, You were roommates as well. Um, was it around the time of his passing that you decided to give up the blues? 00:25:08 Speaker 2: No, no, I I quit before his passing, 00:25:11 Speaker 2: I quit, I left, I left everything. I left Bloomfield's house. I left all my other friends, I left it all. I just started playing nothing but gospel in 1975, with my, with my friends. And um, I just didn't go back to playing secular music. 00:25:29 Speaker 2: Um, it was too, too many things were happening. Everybody was getting too indulgent. 00:25:35 Speaker 2: A lot of my friends, I mean, literally my friends who had known, 00:25:40 Speaker 2: um, 00:25:41 Speaker 2: for years, 00:25:43 Speaker 2: um, 00:25:44 Speaker 2: they took their bands and all, all of them got signed because the psychedelic craze and all of them got ripped off. All of them got ripped off. 00:25:53 Speaker 2: And the majority of them, uh, 00:25:57 Speaker 2: not very many of them 00:25:58 Speaker 2: came out with anything to show for it. 00:26:02 Speaker 1: So, so the gospel music, does it, has it been like an uh an underlying theme for you all, or all your life has has Gospel done that? 00:26:14 Speaker 2: Well, I just listen to all kinds of music, you know, I listen to gospel music, gospel music, it's like if blues is my mother tongue, 00:26:22 Speaker 2: the gospel is like my my father tongue, because gospel is that's right there together, 00:26:29 Speaker 2: you know, So it's and and it's both of them are steeped in in the african american history, you know, they mean something else to me, and they mean somebody else, you know, so, uh they'll always be in my soul and in my heart, 00:26:43 Speaker 2: you know, and and uh 00:26:47 Speaker 2: certain things that they can say, and in certain 00:26:50 Speaker 2: passages that they can 00:26:52 Speaker 2: if they can refer to that we all know, we all think about we all, you know, we all take solace in, and, 00:27:01 Speaker 2: you know, it's it's like a it's like an old friend, you know, 00:27:05 Speaker 2: and it could take you back to a place you, you remember, like, it was yesterday, it'll take back your place where you were a kid, sitting talking, explaining something to your grandmother or your great grandmother, you know, because you hear a certain song that you like, you know, and then, and then it's like, you just stop everything and you hear that your grandmother's voice 00:27:24 Speaker 2: and you, you know, you it'll make you emotional or something like that, you know? It's it's not, it's not, 00:27:30 Speaker 2: it's got nothing to do with gold records. Yeah. 00:27:34 Speaker 1: But, but is it, is it also a result of growing up in a religious family joe? 00:27:40 Speaker 2: Well, 00:27:41 Speaker 2: I grew up in a, in a somewhat religious family, but my family wasn't, 00:27:46 Speaker 2: I'll give you an idea. 00:27:48 Speaker 2: My father 00:27:50 Speaker 2: remove him and another reverend reverend reverend Stewart 00:27:54 Speaker 2: moved to an all white district when I was about four years old, were the only two black couples there. So my father, 00:28:04 Speaker 2: for some stroke of genius, he figured 00:28:07 Speaker 2: that I should go to catholic school. 00:28:09 Speaker 2: Okay. Now my, all my other 45 brothers had all the fun in the world going to, going to regular school. They had recess, they had dances, You can see all the other pretty little girls with me. 00:28:21 Speaker 2: I had to go to catholic school with the, with the little catholic pants on and everything. And so my first day at school, 00:28:28 Speaker 2: um, needless to say being the only black bird on the fence full of canaries. Um, I was, I was jumped on the first day of school hitting them out for the lunch pail things. Things are pretty well, but you fast forward. Um, 00:28:42 Speaker 2: uh, 00:28:44 Speaker 2: I dealt with that tribulation and some of those guys ended up being my friends or whatever, but 00:28:50 Speaker 2: um, 00:28:51 Speaker 2: plan plan 00:28:53 Speaker 2: I would leave catholic church, come home with my grandmother's and go to baptist church on sunday. So I tell everybody, you know, it was a little joe, you're real religious. I know just enough religious to know that I'm not for organized religion. I've had 00:29:11 Speaker 2: myself up to here 00:29:14 Speaker 2: with organized creatures in religion, I believe, 00:29:19 Speaker 2: until the day I die, there's a higher power. We didn't bring ourselves here. We don't know what's going on and the earth, the mother earth is our mother. I believe that 00:29:28 Speaker 2: a lot of other western hokey pokey, I don't believe, 00:29:32 Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I just don't believe it, 00:29:35 Speaker 2: you know. Um and the same can be said about another of it. Uh religions. I, I just, you know, anything that gives someone's faith, I'm all for it. And, 00:29:47 Speaker 2: but 00:29:48 Speaker 2: you know, let's just be real, you know, you know, 00:29:53 Speaker 2: they're just men, they're just men. 00:29:55 Speaker 1: Yeah, true. Did you, did you study music? Are you formally trained in music? Um joe 00:30:02 Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, I'm trained. I went back to school and got a degree in music and a degree in english. 00:30:08 Speaker 2: Mhm. 00:30:09 Speaker 1: So, and then you, you were saying you moved to san Francisco when you were a teenager, you said 00:30:14 Speaker 2: no, I moved to san Francisco when I was about three years old. What was 00:30:18 Speaker 1: that like growing up in san Francisco in the, in those days. Um 00:30:23 Speaker 1: I read somewhere that you, you grew up, you, you lived down the road from the dead or you know, somewhere of 00:30:30 Speaker 2: hate 00:30:34 Speaker 2: the whole fillmore district. 00:30:36 Speaker 2: The haight district was all african american, it was all african american, jewish, jewish, some jewish, 00:30:43 Speaker 2: some japanese 00:30:45 Speaker 2: Mainly, but mostly it was like Harlem in the 30s, it was just huge. And so um that's where I learned how to play, that's why I was around great musicians and we could play five nights a week. And then when when the young young kids start moving in from from 00:31:03 Speaker 2: Iowa and 00:31:05 Speaker 2: in Chicago and when growing their hair long and wanting to be theirselves, they moved into our neighborhood. 00:31:12 Speaker 2: Okay so we had to 00:31:15 Speaker 2: come to grips and we're we're gonna be friends with these guys and girls. Uh you know it's gonna be some tension. Well it was both, you know uh so that's where I grew up and then when I left home at 16 I moved to um Waller in Ashbury Street 00:31:32 Speaker 2: and if you if you just walk down the corner there's an ashtray, you walked up the hill. 00:31:36 Speaker 2: That was the Grateful Dead House and that's where they played all the time, you know? Yeah 00:31:42 Speaker 1: and you you you jammed with the Grateful Dead at some point. 00:31:49 Speaker 2: Yes, I jammed with bobby. I'm jamming with the musicians. Yeah. 00:31:53 Speaker 1: What what was that like 00:31:55 Speaker 1: I read that you played with Jimi Hendrix as well. 00:31:58 Speaker 2: Well you know when you're just jamming with somebody, you know, you're just having fun, nobody's 00:32:03 Speaker 2: you know trying to find a song that everybody can play together and you know, usually everybody's feeling pretty good, you know, so 00:32:11 Speaker 2: it's it was really 00:32:13 Speaker 2: you know, it's nothing that you think that's going to be anything special. 00:32:19 Speaker 1: Yeah, I can imagine it must have been quite a time though in san Francisco back in those days. 00:32:24 Speaker 2: Yeah 00:32:25 Speaker 2: it was 00:32:26 Speaker 1: yeah. Anyway joe what do you have coming up? So you have, you're going to do a tour now you have a bunch of shows lined up? 00:32:35 Speaker 2: Yes. Um and if you'd like to know all of them, 00:32:38 Speaker 2: my heart, you can go on to joe louis walker dot com. 00:32:42 Speaker 2: Well you can go on my facebook page, joe louis walker. Um Yes, we we started on the 12th of this month of november actually uh and and uh near near Pittsburgh and then we go to Cleveland and then we go to um um des Moines Iowa and then Minneapolis Minnesota Prince, his hometown and then we go to Chicago and 00:33:02 Speaker 2: then do and then some more dates in michigan and then 00:33:05 Speaker 2: we head back home and playing uh you know around the Northeast 00:33:10 Speaker 2: and so we will be um promoting this new record, electric electric. So 00:33:15 Speaker 1: It's out November 12 right? 00:33:17 Speaker 2: Yeah, but you can get it on different search engines now and you can all the singles out now werewolves of London with our special guest. 00:33:27 Speaker 1: Anyway joe thank you so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure and honor to meet you. 00:33:32 Speaker 2: Thank you that's 00:33:33 Speaker 1: it for this week's episode of Tales from the Road, Tales from the Road is brought to you by the concert photographer and moving pictures. Media. Don't forget to join us next week for another episode. If you like what you heard, subscribe to our podcast on ITunes, Spotify, google play. Thank you for listening.