Music Makers and Soul Shakers with Steve Dawson Steve Dawson

JJ Grey joins me this week to get Season 8 rolling in style!
JJ is an incredible singer, songwriter, guitar player and frontman for his band JJ Grey and Mofro, based in the Jacksonville, Florida area. He’s been making soulful, brash, and deeply authentic soul and rock n roll records since the release of “Blackwater” in 2001. JJ has a brand new album out now called “Olustee”, which is a remarkable record due to the stellar material and inspired performances perfromances, but also in how it was made. We had a chance to sit down and talk about how it all came together, as well as his songwriting and recording process, how he records his vocals with a $15 microphone, getting janky guitar sounds (janky is his own term, as you’ll hear), along with self-producing for the first time and working on mixing the new record with Vance Powell. Enjoy my conversation with JJ Grey!
You can get all the info on the new album and his extensive worldwide tour dates at jjgrey.com
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The show’s website can be found at www.makersandshakerspodcast.com
Your fearless host, Steve Dawson can be found at www.stevedawson.ca
This season is brought to you by our sponsors Larivée Guitars and Fishman Amplification
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This episode is just to check in and let listeners know the schedule for the upcoming season, which will begin droping new episodes one week from today. Be sure to subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and thanks for tuning in!
Visit us and check out all the past episodes at:
https://www.makersandshakerspodcast.com
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I’m preparing to release Season 8 starting very soon, but in the meantime, the great Duane Eddy passed away earlier this week and I have decided to re-release our conversation from 2016. That was a 2-part episiode, but I’ve combined them here into one so you can spend a couple hours with Duane and I chewin’ the fat. RIP Duane Eddy!!
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Tommy Emmanuel, the stellar Australian fingerstyle guitarist joins me on the show this week for the last episode of Season 7! I first saw Tommy play back in the early 90’s when he was relatively unknown and was blown away by his adventurous technique, style, and obvious dedication to his craft. Since then, Tommy has gone on to be one of the most well-known acoustic guitarists of our time and to create an incredible body of work, but he is still mostly known for his spellbinding solo shows. Tommy was a child prodigy, playing professionally since he was 6 years old. He and his brother, along with their dad, toured all over Australia and that lead to session work, and eventually pulled him to the US, where he landed in the 80’s and met his hero, Chet Atkins, in Nashville. Tommy received the coveted seal of approval from Chet, and is one of the few guitarists alive to have the official “CGP” title, given out only by Chet himself. Tommy has made tons of records, some solo, some duets and some with bands. The latest of these is the second in a series and it’s called “Accomplice Two”, a recording of collaborations with artists like Jerry Douglas, Sierra Hull, Little Feat, Molly Tuttle, David Grisman and many more. Since we do talk about his meeting with Chet quite a bit, be sure to also check out “The Day Fingerpickers Took Over The World”, Tommy’s collaboration with Chet Atkins, and must be the last thing Chet ever recorded, from 1997. It was great to have Tommy on the show - we did get a chance to talk quite a bit about Chet, their meeting, and his influence, as well as Lenny Breau, some of Tommy’s stage gear, how he goes back and forth from thumbpicks to flatpicks, and how he approaches arranging tunes for solo fingerstyle guitar. He was also kind enough to grab his trusty Maton guitar and show me some of the things he was talking about as well.
You can get all the current info on Tommy and his very busy tour schedule at tommyemmanuel.com
Enjoy my conversation with Tommy Emmanuel!
You can join our Patreon here to get all episodes ad-free, as well as access to all early episodes
The show’s website can be found at www.makersandshakerspodcast.com
Your fearless host, Steve Dawson can be found at www.stevedawson.ca
Get ad-free episodes and access to all early episodes by subscribing to Patreon.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mandolinist John Reischman joins me on the show this week. I’ve actually known John for many years, as he moved to Vancouver in the 90’s and when I was starting to do more acoustic music, our paths would cross at festivals and I’d also bring him in for various projects and sessions. John is an absolute master of his instrument with a unique touch and tone that is truly remarkable. He grew up in California and came up in the Bay Area music scene, where he joined The Good Ol’ Persons, which was up until then an all-female bluegrass band that featured Kathy Kallick and Sally Van Meter. After touring and recording with them for a couple of years, John scored a gig in the groundbreaking Tony Rice Unit, one of the ultimate ensembles in modern bluegrass and acoustic music. John toured and recorded with Tony for a few years and developed an incredible style that owes almost as much to jazz horn and piano players as well as different kinds of world music as it does to traditional bluegrass, although John certainly can stand up with the best in the world in any traditional setting. The Tony Rice albums Backwaters and Devlin feature this lineup with John’s amazing playing. After leaving Tony Rice, John moved to Vancouver, where he formed the Jaybirds, a group he has been performing with now for over 20 years. John also made a solo record during the pandemic called “New Time and Old Acoustic” which features guest appearances by Molly Tuttle, Chris Eldridge, Todd Phillips and many more. It was great to re-connect with John, and get a chance to talk about meeting and playing with Bill Monroe, his coveted mandolin, and his history recording and touring in the world of bluegrass and acoustic music.
You can get all the latest info and tour dates for John and the Jaybirds at johnreischman.com
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting the show with a donation or Patreon subscription
The show’s website can be found at www.makersandshakerspodcast.com
Your fearless host, Steve Dawson can be found at www.stevedawson.ca
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Larry Klein has had his mitts on so many amazing records over the past 40 years, but is still a relatively quiet, behind-the-scenes kind of musician. He is a four time grammy winner as a producer, and has made records for artists like Joni Mitchell, Herbie Hancock, Holly Cole, Madeleine Peyroux and Tracy Chapman. I think the first time I ever saw his name was on a cassette I had of Shawn Colvin called “Fat City”, and then I kept seeing his name pop up on cool records over and over again. Larry started out as a bass player in California, and landed a gig pretty early on with jazz legend Freddie Hubbard. He toured with Freddie for years, and then slipped successfully into the session world. As a bass player he played on so many classic albums like “So” by Peter Gabriel, “Building the Perfect Beast” by Don Henley, Robbie Robertson, Tracy Chapman’s debut album and many more. He eventually landed a session with Joni Mitchell, which led to him playing on and producing a string of her records, starting with “Wild Things Run Fast” in 1982, right up through “Travelogue” in 2002. They were married and divorced in that window of time as well.
His production work is always deep and sonically interesting. He has a real jazz mentality towards making pop records, which I love. There’s alot of live performance based takes, mixed with rich sounds and experimentation. Gaining the trust of Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter is no small feat, but Larry did that and produced records for those jazz legends! In recent years, Larry made a great record with Herbie Hancock of Joni Mitchell tunes called “River: The Joni Letters”, and during Covid, he made a record in a similar vein called “Here It Is”, a Tribute to Leonard Cohen. It’s basically an insane house band backing up artists like Iggy Pop, Norah Jones, Peter Gabriel, Mavis Staples and lots more doing Leonard Cohen tunes. I should also mention that we just ran out of time on this one, hence the abrupt ending. Larry had a limited window and I lost track of time, so we just kind of had to cap it mid-stream, but we got into tons of cool stuff anyway! I don’t think Larry is on the road at all any more, so you can’t catch him live with anyone currently, but you can get info on him and news on his latest projects over at larrykleinmusic.net  — Please enjoy my conversation with Larry Klein!
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting the show with a donation or Patreon subscription
The show’s website can be found at www.makersandshakerspodcast.com
Your fearless host, Steve Dawson can be found at www.stevedawson.ca
Get ad-free episodes and access to all early episodes by subscribing to Patreon.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.