Primich Interview

"CATHI N., 5-9240" <CANORTON@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> · Wed, 11 Jan 95 13:12:08 EST

Hi y'all...glad to be back after vacation.  I don't know how many of you
subscribe to Blues-L, but excuse me if I re-create (from that list) an
interview submitted by Don (from Dallas) Ottensman (don.o @ chrysalis.org) with
my friend, Gary Primich of harmonica fame.  Hope you like.  WARNING -- It's
long.

Gary Primich Interview  11/16/92
by Don O.

Austin based Gary Primich has just released his
second album on the Amazing Records label, titled
"My Pleasure".  He has also appeared on two
albums with the Mannish Boys in the late 80's and
released his first headlining work "Gary Primich"
last year.  Gary's harp work is so appreciated in
Austin that he was voted best harmonica player in
the 1990 and 1991 Music City poll.  Look out
though, he plays guitar, sings, and is a good
songwriter, too.  I got a chance to visit with Gary
between sets at the Dallas Hard Rock Cafe on
October 29th.

Don O-Tell us a little about some of your early
influences.

Gary-The main guys that I like, that I listen to and
are the most important to me and my music, as far
as blues is concerned, are Little Walter Jacobs, Big
Walter Horton, George Harmonica Smith, and both
Sonny Boy Williamsons.   They're the main guys.
Then there's Poppa Lightfoot, Jerry McCain, Slim
Harpo, Lazy Lester, boy.... there's more.  Those are
really my heroes.  Then there's guys like Otis Rush,
Robert Nighthawk, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, the
whole Chess thing, and the Sun guys.  Oh, I forgot
Billy Boy Arnold, he's one of my big heroes.  Guys
like Rosco Gordon.   I like the New Orleans stuff.
Smiley Lewis, Dave Bartholomew and all that stuff.
I've got several Dave Bartholomew songs on my
last record and I've got another one on my new
album.

Don O-Where did you grow up hearing all of this
great music?

Gary-I was born in Chicago.  My folks moved out to
Gary, Indiana which is right next door there.  You
know, if you read the blues history books, there's a
lot of great blues musicians who migrated from
Mississippi and settled up around Gary and
Chicago.  In fact, most of the black people who live
in Chicago are from Mississippi, it's the most
represented state.  As a consequence the music
was there.  I don't want to get too academic about it
or anything, but you get to hear it.  There's all kinds
of blues up there, great clubs.  All the blues guys
live there so I just got out to hear it.

Don O-You actually played on Maxwell Street for
awhile didn't you?

Gary-Yeah, for a whole summer.  I played down
there every Sunday for $25 in quarters.  I called it
my laundry gig because I'd have a paper sack full
of quarters when I went home from that.  I played
with a guy named John Henry Davis and the
Mississippi Blues Band.  Around the corner
sometimes would be Homesick James and Big
Walter Horton playing together.  It was really
something.  Go down around the corner and get a
pork chop sandwich and come back and listen to
Homesick James.

Don O-So what made you leave all those quarters
and come to Texas?  How'd you end up in Austin?

Gary-For a guy like me, Chicago is a wonderful city.
I love it.  But there are certain limitations to it blues-
wise.  You might not think so, but there really is.
The traditional sound, which is where I base my
music,  is not popular.  They're into the more
modern, "Alligator sound" you hear on the Alligator
label these days.  It has its place, but it doesn't have
anything to do with what I do.  There's really not that
much work for a guy like me who plays harmonica
in the old Louisiana and Chicago style.  So, I visited
Austin and it seemed like I could thrive better, doing
what I like to do, there.  Do my own thing and get
away with it.  Maybe make a little more money.  And
of course it has turned me into the millionaire I am
today!   (laughter all around)

Don O-You've been working with Amazing Records
in Austin for awhile now (their motto is "If it's a hit,
it's Amazing"), first with the Mannish Boys and now
with your own band.

Gary-My first record with Amazing came out in
1987.  But it's great to be able to be able to hone in
on the kind of material that I want to do my own self.
I've got a great band to work with, too.  Shorty
Lenoir on guitar, Richard Grigsby on bass and Chris
Hunter on drums, a guy who is not unfamiliar to the
people in Dallas.

Don O-Yeah, Chris used to drum with Cold Blue
Steel.

Gary-He's been with us since about the first of the
year and he's really great.  We've been over to
Europe and Scandinavia this year and now we're
back here on the endless tour.

Don O- You're on the road most of the time?

Gary-Yeah, in 1991 I figured out we did about 175
dates.  Of course, we're from Austin, but only about
12 of those dates were actually in Austin.  So we're
out of town most of the time.  We love playing the
Dallas/Fort Worth area, as opposed to say,
Houston, because there's a really good audience
for what we do up here.  You wouldn't think it but
there's only one real blues club in all of Houston,
the Bon Ton Room.

Don O-You worked with another very famous blues
harmonica player in the making of the new  album.

Gary-That's right, (Blacktop recording artist) James
Harman is producer of the album.  I found out that I
had the opportunity to make my second one for
Amazing and I had been a big fan of James for a
number of years.   He's a great performer, singer,
and harmonica player.   The reason I wanted him to
produce my record is because James Harman, out
of anybody that I know, really has a handle on how
a blues record should sound.   Really knows what
he wants when he goes in the studio.   He also has
my favorite engineer, Jerry Hall, as his production
partner.   I knew that  I wanted James to produce it
and I called him.   He thought about it, he wanted to,
we set it up, and it was just great.  He was my only
choice and he said yes.   That  made me real
happy.

Don O-Tell us a little about the "real guy recording
method" used on this album and mentioned on the
liner notes.

Gary-I think that certain blues recordings today, and
we're getting into my personal opinion here...

      Part 2 follows

Don O-Fine, give us your personal opinion!

Gary- OK, I will, but the disclaimer is that others
might disagree with me.  I like the old sound.  I like
the sound of the Sun and Chess records and the
Excello records of the 50's and early 60's.  The
Imperial records, that sound.  The way they made
those records and what makes them so magic,
special, spontaneous, raw, and exciting sounding,
is the fact that there were very few microphones
used and everybody was playing at the same time
and nobody  knew what the heck an overdub was.
They didn't have all this electronic brain stuff like
they do today.  There was no sampling back then
and no such thing as a 24 track studio.  That's
James' attitude toward recording, too.  I've got
horns on my records but there are no overdubbed
horns.  We had a gigantic room, about the size of a
high school gymnasium, and literally could have
played full court basketball in there without any
problem.  The engineer, Jerry Hall, sat everybody
around in different places.   Whenever you hear a
cut, that's played completely  live.   No matter if
there's 9 pieces playing on it or 4, everybody's
playing at the same time.  That's what I think made
those old records so exciting.

Don O-Well they've certainly stood the test of time.
We're still playing Muddy Waters' classic 50's stuff
today.

Gary-Exactly.   You hear T-Bone Walker's "Strollin'
With Bone" with all those horns, piano, string bass,
guitar and everything, and there's probably just two
microphones in the room.  We had a few more than
that, but, you know, you get the drift.  I worship that
sound.  I'll be trying my damndest, until the day I
die, to recreate it.  I'm not saying I've achieved it
with my album, but that's what I've tried to do.

Don O-I'll bet it's  a lot easier to go out and do your
live show when you record that way, too.  You don't
have to try to reproduce something that you've
done in the studio with a bunch of gimmicks.

Gary-Well you know,  I was reading the Willie Dixon
book and one of the things Chess session guy, Phil
Upchurch, said, that was kind of a universal truth,
was that "Used to be, you recorded performances.
But nowadays, you perform recordings".

Don O-Good quote.

Gary-Yeah.

Don O-So where did you record the album?

Gary- It was recorded in Los Angeles at Evejim
studio.  Evejim is Leon Heywood's label, a pretty
well known label especially among the soul blues
crowd.  One day Ike Turner was in there hanging
out with Mr. Leon.

Don O-You couldn't get him to sit in with you?

Gary-We went up there to get our picture taken with
him but they were in like "heavy conference" up
there.

Don O-You were in L.A. at an interesting time.

Gary- Yeah, first of all the studio is located in the
heart of south central Los Angeles at the corner of
Crenshaw and Martin Luther King.  We started the
session at the studio on Monday April 27th and on
Wednesday April 29th the Rodney King verdict was
handed down.  We were recording some stuff and
Denny Freeman was going to come down and play
some guitar with us.  Before he came down, James
Harman and I decided we were going to go get
something to eat.  So we went out looking for this
one soul food restaurant but we couldn't find it.  We
noticed all these people throwing rocks and
everything.  We couldn't figure out what was going
on.  Then we went to this other soul food restaurant
and we went inside and they said "What are you
guys doing here?  You'd better get out of this
neighborhood, and fast!"  So we hightailed it back
to the studio, barely made it, and realized that this
riot was going on all around us.  We had to escape
from there but then had to come back the next day
because that's when we had scheduled the horns,
piano, and string bass player to cut the rest of the
session.  All our gear was inside this studio, the
tapes were inside there, the neighborhood was
burning down, and we had to drive in there, record
all day long and then drive out.  It was the most
frightening thing I have ever been through in my
life.  There are four songs on the album that were
cut with buildings ablaze, literally.  We weren't in
some insulated area.  We were right in the heart of
the action.  When we left the studio after we cut the
last song, the building two doors down was totally
engulfed in flames.  Leon Heywood, himself, was
on top of the studio with a shotgun, fending off
would be looters and burners.

Don O-That's a little more excitement than you'd
like to have at a recording session?

Gary-I'd have preferred not to have been involved
with that at all!

postscript-
I got quite a few responses specifically asking for
this interview, so here it is.  It's a little dated, but I
thought I'd go ahead and present it pretty much "as
is" because it has some good background material,
(but mainly because I'm lazy).  Obviously a lot has
happened since then.  Houston now has more than
one blues club (even in Gary's opinion).  Amazing
Records went out of business and Gary signed with
Flying Fish.  His latest album is Traveling Mood and
has been out about 6 months or so.  It's quite good
BTW.  Bass player Richard "Grady" Grigsby left the
band and is now in Dallas with Mike Morgan and
the Crawl.  Drummer Chris Hunter (step-son of
Doyle Bramhall) moved on to another band but I
forget who (maybe Ian Moore?  It's one of those
Austin guys).  Shorty Lenoir is still with Gary and
sounds better than ever.   Gary just got back from a
trip to Italy and will be hitting Europe again in
February.  He stopped by my radio show on Jan 6,
1995 to plug his Dallas gig and do a short radio
interview.  I'll type it up for y'all one of these days.  If
you get a chance to see Gary live, don't miss him.
He puts on a great show.  Cathi and Stuart Norton
have turned Gary on to Blues-L and he is seriously
considering purchasing a laptop just to participate
from the road.  He's not on the list yet, but I predict
it's just a matter of time.

e-mail don.o @ chrysalis.org
--------------------------------------------------------

Cathi N.