Omaha Rainbow : Issue 4

The Arnie Moore Interview - by Peter O'Brien

My father was a lawyer.  I was the first in three generations not to go into law.  My Grandfather was a justice; mother was a former actress, that sort of family.  Lower upper class, sort of thing, country clubs and all that.  I've spent my entire life trying to reject all the class I was ever born with.  Going into music my father didn't like at all.  He and I are the same signs and I sort of believe in astrology, I'll go for that.  I went through college.  Wittier College which is Nixon's old college. My father had also gone to Wittier College.

Where, in fact were you born?

The precise place is in Orange, California; I think it is the county seat of Orange County which is where Nixon is from.  I really grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles called View Park, nice white suburb.  Went through public and private schools; went to college for four years, got a degree in speech and drama.  I was an actor. That was my first interest of a serious nature.  My parents had given me musical lessons when I was a child. I had two years of piano from my cousin Mimi, who was a ...... I guess I was ten years old at the time and she was 72.  Wanted to teach me all the classical things. and this was 1955 and I was so into Elvis and I just wanted to rock and roll and she wanted to do this, and I got really bored with it.  I did it for two years though.  That was the first music training I had.  My mother used to sing to me as an infant. I mean, I can go back to my infancy when I was sucking on my mother's tit and she was singing me lullabys, and I know that there is something there with what I am doing now.  And I know that this is one of the reasons that she can appreciate it, and she always has, whereas my father couldn't.  He does now; we get along famously.  We're great, my whole family.

Have you got Brothers and sisters?

I've got one older brother.  He took over my Dad's law firm. My Dad's a Judge now in the Superior Court in Los Angeles.
My Grandfather was a justice in the District Court of Appeals.  In the States you've got different levels of law and justice.  Each state has its own Supreme Court, and those just below them are the Appelate Courts, and below them go the localities. Los Angeles has its Superior Court; the Superior Court of San Francisco.  Each county would have its Superior Court then smaller than that would be the city within that.  The cities have Municipal Judges.  Anyway, my Grandfather was up to the Justice level.  My father is a judge and he's gonna retire next year and move up to our farm in Placerville.  My brother took over the law firm, and I'm musician, a long haired hippy musician.  They said, "You can't do that!"  I said, ''I don't know why not."  I'd been performing all through college.  I'd been in a group.  We got our name from the man who paid us our first gig at this little restaurant.  We were a Kingston Trio copy group, of which there were many.  I loved the Trio from the first.  But then I started listening and I thought it's different but it's still incredible.  They didn't have headphones then, but I used to get my stereo speakers, close my eyes and just listen to their records.

Did you get to see them live?

I only saw them live twice.  Never the original group.  My mother took me to see them at the Coconut Grove, when I was 16 years old.  Three years later I saw them again when I was in college.  Anyway, we were a Kingston Trio copy group.  During the school time I was in that group playing different functions, and in the summer I would go across to this resort called Catalina Island out in California and over there I was in a bluegrass group.  I'd play acoustic guitar and with one group I'd sing low harmonies and with the bluegrass group I'd sing high harmonies.  A real identity crisis!  We did that for four years, then when I graduated from college I really had two choices.  I'd been rejected by the navy.  I didn't want to go in the war, and I avoided the draft by being overweight.  I was playing football for the college.  I was a second string tackle the biggest man in the team, and the coach didn't want to lose me.  The draft came up in '65 and all the kids were getting drafted.  I got my call to go and get a physical examination before they were going to draft me.  The coach took me in, his wife was from Hawaii, and every day I'd go in and pick up a pound-and-a-half loaf of banana nut bread.  I'd eat half of that with a pint of half-and-half milk really creamy milk before I'd go to bed, and the other half when I'd wake up in the morning.  I put on 201bs.  I was 285 when I went for that physical!  I was50 pounds overweight, so they rejected me.  I had to go in for periodic visits after that but........ the navy had rejected me. So my choices were to go to New York and starve and be an actor. I was really into acting by the end of college.  I was one of the main actors at Wittier College when I graduated.  The other choice was one of the guys I had been singing with had formed a new partnership with this black girl, a group called Hedge and Donna.  They were on Capitol, they did five albums.  Nik Venet sort of discovered them, and produced their albums.  Anyway, I chose to go with them.  I played bass, but they wouldn't let me sing!  During the three years I was with them I didn't sing.  Whereas I had been a primary voice in the other groups, by the time I started playing with John and with Hoyt Axton I was very insecure about my singing.

You'd been acoustic through college. When did you get into electric bass playing?

When I graduated.  Not until I got back from Europe, and Hedge and Donna had a contract with Capitol.  I had gone away thinking the possibility was that I'd play acoustic guitar for them but when I came back they said, "Arnie, we don't need a guitarist, we need a bass player."  I said, ''Shit. Well, I don't know."  He said, "It's just like the bottom four strings of a guitar."  I said, ''O.K."  Just played by ear for a few years.  Took lessons eventually.  Just before I quit Hedge and Donna they called me for a record session.  I went down there with my bass........ I played by ear and I loved the bass; I loved listening to McCartney and the Byrds, things were best when the bass was really standing out.  That's how I got turned on to the bass before I played it, listening to the Byrds, as a matter of fact.  I was in a dormitory, I had a stereo and one of the speakers was by my bed, and before I'd go to sleep I'd turn on the Byrds, and all the bass was coming out of this one speaker and....... far out!!!  I can read music a little bit.  I don't have to read with John or Hoyt Axton.  Anyway, I'd done three or four albums with Hedge and Donna, but no hits.  So, unbeknown to me Nik Venet decides that he's going to use a formula studio band from Los Angeles.  I walk in there, and here's this 35 year old chick sitting there playing the bass in a great band.  There was Ronnie Tutt, Joe Sample, Larry Knechtel, famous people, and there was this chick and she was Carol Kaye.  I had always justified to myself position in that group of being able to make records by saying that Hedge and Donna's music was so sensitive that it needed somebody that was really close to them to be able to interpret their music.  That was just utter bullshit! You've got to be a competent musician first.  So here was this chick playing the shit out of it.  They said, ''Arnie, Carol's going to play the first song and you're going to play the second song.''  I said, ''Bullshit, man!  I'm not going to try to walk in there after she's been playing like that."  That was a real trauma in in my life.  I told my girlfriend, I can't compete commercially, I can't make a living competing with a musician like that.  I'm not a musician.  I freaked out for a week.  This is what happens to me when I have a trauma.  I just become reclusive and worrying, fret.  Anyway, somehow it came to me and I just called Her up.  I said, "Carol, my name's Arnie Moore.  I met you at the Hedge and Donna session.  Will you teach me how to play the bass?"  She said, "I'm just starting to take students now!'' so I was her second student.  Studied with her for six months.  She really got me together.  Then, after six months, she said ''That's it", cut me loose.  At the same time I was studying with her I was really into studying, and I got a theory teacher.  I was learning theory of music and arrangements and things like that.  They're handy tools, but that was three years ago, and I haven't really had to practice since I've been working with John and Hoyt Axton who are just purely head people.  But it's good to have a knowledge of music; it's part of being a competent musician.

So during this time you left Hedge and Donna, did you?

Yes.  I was with them from '67 through '70 and joined John at the end of 1970.  I'd worked with John once before when he was with Buffy.

Was this on 'Signals Through the Glass'?

No.  When I was with Hedge and Donna it was really funny.  A friend of mine who's a dope dealer, and also a guitarist in a couple of groups in Los Angeles, and was also a neighbour of mine, said "Arnie, do you want to play for John Stewart?"  I said, ''Jeez, far out, I'd sure like to give it a try."

Had you ever met him?

I worked on a bill with him. I knew him, he said the Trio had broken up and I hadn't heard of him in a long time.  Then I was doing a two night gig in a little club called the Ice House, out in Pasadena, opening act for John and Buffy.  I was very favourably impressed with them.  I introduced myself.  I said, "Look, I'm just a gawking fan but, you know, fellow musician......."  And he remembered me from that.  We saw each other in The Troubador a couple of times and we'd say, "Hi, how are you?"  A while later this dope dealer got the call from Henry Diltz, who I hadn't met before, and the dope dealer did not want the job, but I did!  So I got together with John over at Henry's house, and we played, and it was acceptable to John. Then we went up to John's house and we practised for three or four days, and his brother Michael was going to do it.  We went and did one concert which seemed very successful to me.  I was still with Hedge and Donna at the time though, on a permanent basis and I felt very strongly about them.  But after that gig John asked me to stay with him, and I said "Please come and see me with Hedge and Donna I can't do it.  There's something special happening with them, and if you see us you'll know what I mean."  He came and saw us, and he was knocked out.  The Troubador was full standing ovations, and John was impressed and he understood.  After a while, maybe a year later, I quit.

Why?

Personal reasons, and the pay was lousy.  They wanted me to go out on the road, netting 80 dollars a week.  I said, "No."  That was the end of that , at which time the old musicians trick.  When you're out of work you just call everybody in the business you know and tell 'em.  Somewhere, something's gonna come up.  So I called John and I told him, and I guess it was shortly after that, there was a thing between me and a friend of mine, a bass player called David Jackson.  A very good friend of mine, he's playing with Hoyt Axton right now, and John gave us both a try.  It ended up with me, and I've played with him ever since.

That was just after 'California Bloodlines', 1970?

Right.  The thing is, right after he asked me to go with him and I turned him down , he went to Nashville and did 'Bloodlines' with Nik Venet who, at that time, I hated.  After five albums with Nik, I hated him.  But when I heard 'Bloodlines' I said, "Oh, my God, why didn't I do that?"  That's happened since, too, I got asked by a bunch of people last year that are hits now.  Maria Muldaur asked me to go with her, but I'm really glad I didn't do that, because I really believe in John.  I know that if John makes it, I'll make it.  There's a rapport between John and me that doesn't exist in other places, and that's worth a lot of money to me.

A quick sidetrack. You mentioned Henry Diltz, who I think must be a fascinating character.

He takes, it seems like at least 90% if not all the cover photos on the rock albums that come out of Los Angeles.  He shot Woodstock he had the pictures in that big Life Magazine thing they did on Woodstock.  Famous photographer, specially with the company of Stills, Neil Young, John all those people.  Henry used to be in a group called the Modern Folk Quarter with Chip Douglas and Jerry Yester, who ended up in the Lovin' Spoonful, and some other guy.  He's crazy!

Can we go on to talk about the albumsof John you have played on?

The first one I played on was 'Lonesome Picker'.  When Michael started producing John, Michael's idea was to use a formula band, try to get a hit record.  When 'Lonesome Picker' was coming up, we had just finished a gruelling tour called 'the Strange Love Rite'.  It was a Ken Kragen idea, terrible idea, it lost money.  Thirty concerts in 32 days on a Greyhound bus.  Actually, in retrospect I loved it.  When I was doing it I got strung out on cocaine, all the shows were disastrous, but the band got really good.  We had a band of me, Chris Darrow, Loren Newkirk and Russ Kunkel when he could join us, which was for about ten of those days.  It was exquisite, I loved it.  Chris could play everything.  That's the group you hear on 'Wolves in the Kitchen' and 'Swift Lizard'.  Those were recorded just before we went into production on the album, and it was a spur of the moment thing.  They recorded a whole set at Chuck's Cellar, a whole night.  It might have all come out had it not been for the engineer in the recording truck.  He had had a gig the night before and driven up from L.A. during the day and was just exhausted.  He literally fell asleep at the controls.  Michael had to keep on hitting him to keep him awake, so the quality of the tape just wasn't sufficient.  Those two tracks were the only things they could salvage out of that session. Right after that they went into production on 'Picker', and I was having a disagreement with John.  Called him up long distance and told him that I felt really hurt that he wasn't using me on the records.  He said, "Well, it's a decision we had to make," and it took me a while to accept it.  But I think 'Picker' is a good album it's certainly got some good songs on it.

Why did Michael produce?

I don't know. John wanted to produce one with his brother.  They get along very well, and he felt Micheal could perhaps have some insight into him.  I don't know all the reasons.

Then the next one was 'Sunstorm'.

Same situation.  Micheal producing, and for the most part they wanted a studio album, a studio band album.  Micheal didn't look at me as a professional quality musician yet.  I had to bitch to get on the two songs I'm on, 'Light Come Shine' and 'Bring It On Home'.  There are some songs on that album that I really dig.  I really like 'Cheyenne' and 'Kansas Rain'.  I don't think John was ready to record then, it was as if somebody was pushing him into it.  He was rushing through songs.

I shouldn't think that could be said of 'Cannons'.

What appealed to me about 'Cannons' was the quality of the songs.  When we recorded that it was almost like.........I've heard stories about the recording of 'Mother Country'.  I was there when we recorded the title track, 'Cannons in the Rain'.  Buck Wilkins, the guitarist was there.  He was down on his luck at the time, and John gave him those sess ions because he was down and, more important, because we wanted his creative talents on there.  He heard that song when we played it back in the studio (that's a song for dreamers, you know) and tears were running down his face, that song got to him so bad.  Just that image is so strong to me that it's still one of my favoutite songs.  It's so much John, too.

Was that the first time you had worked in Nashville?

Yeah.  That was a real pleasure.  I remember going down there I was a little bit apprehensive.  I was confident in my own ability, but all of a sudden whereas I had been screaming and demanding for years to be allowed on the album, all of a sudden John was saying, "O.K. Buddy!"  For the two months immediately preceding that we had. been working as a duo, and we got really tight in what we were doing as musicians, so I knew basically what we were going to do.  I was a little intimidated by the reputation of these musicians that I was going to be working with, who all make in excess of l00,000 dollars a year.  But they were very nice in accepting me.  Charlie McCoy is a gentleman, they're all gentlemen.  I'd never spent any time in the south before, and I really enjoyed that.  It turned out to be a really delightful experience.  We recorded six hours a night for five days, and the first night we got four tunes, maybe five tunes in the can.  There were only twelve songs to be done, and we knew we had to get an album in six days, so getting four or five in the first night took the pressure off completely.  We were essentially finished by Thursday night.  We came back and did 'Chilly Winds' and tried for a version of 'July' that didn't work out, and the rest of Friday evening we just sat around and drank and all of us sang.  I sorted of helped put together the vocal parts on 'Anna on a Memory' and 'Wind Dies Down'.  'Anna on a Memory' is one of my favourite songs.  That's a very special song; that's a word picture.  I close my eyes and I can picture that guy on the railroad being kicked out of town, thinking about a chick and watching these things happen.  Watching these poor dogs running along the street and getting hit by trucks.  I've seen that happen, and that song's just a word movie.

That has to be my favourite song from 'Cannons'.

Yes.  You see, one of the ideas of the live album is that over the time we get to know, performing these songs every night, by our own feeling initially and then by the audience response, what songs really stand the test of time.  Those are the old songs that have made it on to the live album.  Of the songs from 'Cannons', we still do 'Road Away' a lot, we do 'Wind Dies Down', 'Anna', 'All Time Woman' and 'Lady and the Outlaw'.  That's a fun song.  I see it as a tongue in cheek song though John pronanly sees it differently.  The outlaw image always appealed to me.  That's why the Eagles get me off so much because........that Glen Frey, he's just a punk, a Detroit punk, beautiful cat!

You know him, then?

They're good friends of mine.  You see, all those people that hang around Los Angeles ........the Troubador is the centre of that thing in Los Angeles.  All of us hung out there.  Jackson Brown, Linda Ronstadt, J.D.Souther.  I've known Jackson since he was 17 or 18.  J.D.Souther has got a new group happening with Richie Furay, and Jim Gordon gonna be playing drums, and Al Perkins.  Chris Hillman ripped off the rest of Manassas from Steve Stills.  Sounds like it's-gonna be incredible. They've got the tracks done on the album, and they're hoping to start rehearsals in a month or so.  All these people, the Eagles, Glen Frey especially, and Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner.  That reminds me of the very first time I saw Poco perform.  I don't know what year it was.  They didn't have a record contract, but somebody had put in a lot of money because Richie Furay could put it together because of the Buffalo Springfield.  They rehearsed for months out in Topanga Canyon, and I walk in the Troubador one night and there are all these record people there, so I think something is going to happen.  You see, Monday night there is hoot night.  You can sign up and perform, and between 10 and 11 o'clock is the prime spot, and record companies will bring their debut artists in and people that want to audition for somebody get that spot.  So I go in there and there are the original Poco, with Randy Meisner on bass.  They came out there and did five songs, I can't remember which, and blew the place apart.  Nobody could believe it!  Nobody had ever seen Randy Miesner before.  He'd done little things around town, but nobody was really aware of him.  He'd been in other little groups and things.  The Poor, they'd come out of Colorado, or wherever it was they'd gotten together.  Came out to L.A. to make it big and didn't.  Randy got found by Richie and in to Poco.  Rusty Young, he's a nice cat as well.  The Troubador is the centre of all that, the hang out place where we all go if we're lonely, or want to go out for a beer or meet some friends.  A year before the Eagles formed, before anybody heard about it, Glen Frey asked me to come over and play rock and roll with him.  I was always on the road, just like I am now, and I never got time to go over and play with Glen Frey!  Had time to go over and hear them rehearse after they got together, but I can't sing like Randy Meisner, I wish I could.  I love high harmonies.

Pete Frame has done a fine family tree of the Eagles.

I've got that on my wall.  Cort Casady laid that on me.  I've got it in my water closet.  My water closet is the center of all my culture, any memorabilia.  As you can imagine, it's a tiny, little room, all it has is just the john in it.  I've got posters, and over the posters collage or montage over everything.  Walls, ceiling, over the toiletseat, memorabilia from all the tours I've done.  I've got reviews and photographs.  I take pictures wherever I go, and I've got photos from all the different tours.  People walk in.......... I knew one chick that was a fan of both John and Hoyt, she went to the bathroom and stayed there an hour'!

Anything more on all these L.A. musicians?

Jackson Browne I've known since 1967.  He grew up in Orange County in Southern California.  He was writing incredible, far out songs when he was 14.  When I met him he was probably 18 or 19, younger than that even.  Saw him play and I was just knocked out by him.  I knew it would happen for him, and now it has, and he's getting better, so he's very special.

Linda Ronstadt?

Same thing.  Troubador.  After seeing each other around for a long time, we finally meet each other and are very friendly.  We go to the same health club together and work out.  She's a very sweet girl and has a hard time keeping a band.  I don't know, really, what to say about her.  Nothing but good!

You saying how difficult it is for Linda to keep a band together.  What is it like, being on the road all the time?

It's a reality.  In order for John to be able to do what he's gotta do, he's got to keep himself in the arena.  That's what he's doing.  Keeping himself out in the public view.  He's out working his ass off, we both are.  We've been on the road almost constantly it seems like since last September.  We're gonna take this summer off, we hope, or a good deal of it.  We hate it. We love it but we hate it.  It's like that verse of  'All Time Woman'.  After you've seen a Holiday Inn, man, you've seen a Holiday Inn.  It gets to the point where it's so boring you'll be up stoned at 3 o'clock in the morning watching a close-off.  But we're out there doing it, and positive, and that's great.  But we've paid our dues!  We love the people that come and enjoy what we're doing and see value in what we're doing now, but we want to be justified and put us out where we're making instead of 1,000 dollars a performance, we're making 17,000 like John Denver does right now.  I was on the road for 2O5 days last year, and that seems a bit much.  You can't make a lot of money at it.  John can't make a lot of money at it, and he can't afford to give me a lot of money.  My ambition is to be a good studio player, but that's a contradiction with my life right now, because there's a trap of going on the road.  A year and a half ago I was doing maybe 200 dollars a week in sessions. Not much, but it was a living, and I was very happy.  Then we started going out on the road a lot, and I was out on the road for the first six months of 1973, and being gone for six months, they don't call me any more.  So it's a trap.  To make money you go back out on the road, and you can't get any sessions while you're on the road.  That's just the way it is.  I love the challenge of playing in the studio, I love the work, and I don't mind working hard at it, and it is hard work.  I love it, and the pay's good.  The pay's exceptional.  30 dollars an hour.  On the other hand, I love the road.  I love to travel.  I think of all my friends that are in Los Angeles, how they're stuck in ruts.  There's no rut in my life.  Here I am in London, enjoying myself in a grand fashion.  Just don't have any women!  Saw a few hookers today, but they weren't my type.

What sort of places do you play in the States?

This year we've been doing a lot of colleges.  We did a ten day tour, every night a different college, and that was a lot of fun. I've been talking to musicians over here, and they say that clubs don't usually provide the sound system, the bands do.  Over in the States the clubs always supply a sound system, but colleges don't usually have sound systems.  Therefore they have to rent them or do with what they've got.  One place we'd go would be lousy, a nice auditorium and only forty people would show up. In another place we would go to, in Idaho, we played in a very stark room, a big student union sort of building on a college, and 1500 people showed up.  The place was packed, and the sound system they had for us was a little system that ........... but the people still loved it, despite that.  They really got off to us, in fact.  So it's either colleges or clubs and the only place we go in and do concerts is Phoenix.

Why is that?

Because that's the only market for us to do that kind of a concert, where we could fill up a hall that would hold 2500 people.

But why just in Phoenix?

Because there's a disc jockey there who plays our records as if they were hits, and so far as the people in Phoenix are concerned they are hits.  So we sell a lot of records there.  It's just the old story, it's just radio play.  This guy, Bill Compton is his name, he's on for three hours every afternoon from 3 to 6 in Phoenix on the largest radio station in the whole of Arizona, and it reaches the ears of 80% of the population of Arizona.  He plays our records two times a day at least, and sometimes once every hour he'll play some cut.  So that's why Phoenix.  We do well in Los Angeles, we do well in most of California. We'll do well in clubs like the Boarding House in San Francisco and the Troubador in Los Angeles.  The Troubador holds 350 people, and we'll pack it for eight performances straight off.  We were there right after Christmas and it was raining in Los Angeles, raining cats and dogs, and people were standing in line round the block to see us.

I see you played at Aspen early this year.

That was my idea of a good time.  The club was a 1ittle bit of a drag; playing a ski joint where people go to drink and have a good time.......... the only place where we can do that and be happy is Chuck's Cellar.  People do listen and the place is packed.  They're all having a good time, imbibing a great deal, and so are we, and it's very loose.  But go out of that situation and we're not happy, we're not comfortable.

Can we round this off by talking a little about 'The Phoenix Concerts'?

John had wanted to get back together with Nik Venet for a long time, and Nik had too.  When we were playing the Troubador that last time he was there every show.  It seemed to me at the time that he was really hustling that gig.  This was the first time in years that we had sat down and talked, because we'd had that falling out.  Maybe the gig was already his, I don't really know. As far back as a year and a half ago Phoenix had been such a good audience, on stage one night John had said..........like, just before the encore, standing ovation, and John said, "You guys are so great to us, I tell you, we're going to try and record a live album here the next time we come."  That was a year and a half ago, so we had wanted to do it for a long time, we knew Phoenix would be the place.  So every time we went back they'd ask if we were recording that night, and we'd have to say "No, it just hasn't worked out yet."  Then Nik and John had this grandiose plan of a double album that would be the price of one, and they had a scheme in their minds to enable that process to happen.  It seemed like such a dubious task, and actually the papers weren't signed and......... all that time in front we knew what we wanted to do, in terms of selling the publishers, the record company, anybody on the idea, it was such an incredible hassle.  The final papers and everything wasn't positive till just a matter of days before it took place.  Great deal of effort and hassle on everybody's part.  We had three days to get the band together; along with John and myself were our regular drummer, Jon Douglas, who also plays piano and sings with us, and that's our usual trio.  Jon relinquished the drums to Jim Gordon, famous rock and roll drummer, and Jon Douglas played piano and organ and congas.  On 'Last Campaign' he'd play piano, then for 'Wild Horse Road' he'd walk over and play congas, and then come back for 'Shoot All the Brave Horses'.  We had Loren Newkirk playing on piano and organ.  He plays a great piece called 'Kansas', a song on the third side of the album.  Loren really shines on Kansas.  Running down the rest of the musicians we've got Dan Dugmore on steel, and on 'Cops' he plays electric guitar; we have Michael Stewart on rhythm guitar; then we have three singers, Buffy, Denny Brooks, who is a local singer around L.A. and Mike Settle. It was just a great experience.

Did you rehearse much beforehand?

No we were on the road........ John, Jon Douglas and myself, had been on the road for ten days immediately prior to the week of the concert.  We came back on a Monday afternoon, and the concert was this coming Friday, so Tuesday we went in and rehearsed it with everybody.  We had, I guess, three days of rehearsals, of maybe five hours apiece.  MeanwhiLe, Nik and Peter Rachtman were still busy running round trying to get all this crap together.  Peter came in once to rehearsals, and Nik came in a few times, but he left it pretty much to us.  That's where Nik get it off as a producer.  He doesn't usually try to tell people what to play, he leaves it up to the musicians and the artists.  He just gathers the right group of musicians and makes the sound. Opening night there were sound problems the monitors were not right.  We'd never been on stage before with a lot of people and we were all spread out in a line, so we couldn't communicate too well musically.  Some of the tempos were rushed, a little out of tune here and there, there were nerves, none of it was right.

What did you do following that?  Panic?

We came in the next afternoon and rehearsed.  Figured out what was wrong.  We all listened to the tape, and I was telling John, "It's gonna be alright.''  I still didn't have any doubts.  We worked out some of the stage problems; got the monitors right; got ourselves arranged in more of semi-circle and closer together, so that even if the monitors didn't work properly, at least we could hear each other.  We all just bore down that next night and did it right.  Did it absolutely right!  It was an incredible performance!  Some of the songs on the album are just O.K.  I'm starting to see the strengths and weaknesses and I'm hoping to be objective.  'Pirates' has just got a magic about it.  It's just amazing.  'The Last Campaign Trilogy' is remarkable, so dynamic.  'Shoot All the BraveHorses' on this goes on for another four minutes.  Buffy does a verse by herself, and then there's a steel guitar solo, then everybody joins back in, it just gets so huge, and Mike Settle is singing his ass off.  You hear Mike Settle's voice come up above everybody.  So much energy, it knocks me out!  There are a lot of places like that.  'Mother Country' is excellent.  This album is alive.  These aren't perfect performances, but so what?  I really enjoy the album.