"10 Questions"
This question and answer session was conducted via email between
late 1996 and February of 1997 for the Bryndle website by
Kara Longo and Paul Grosso.
Hi,
Kenny, thanks for taking the time to try to explain your entire
career in one breath. You're a good sport.
1.
It appears that from an early age, you were interested in
music that was a few ticks away from mainstream. What were
your early influences, and what do you listen to today?
Just as I was starting junior high school
I heard Jerry Lee Lewis' "Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On"
and Chuck Berry's "School Days". That was it for
me. I went to the music dept. and told them I wanted to play
the piano. They said, "We don't teach piano; but you're
tall and your mom has a station wagon; why don't you try this
bass violin". A couple of years and a few instrument
changes later I was playing the ‘cello and pretty hooked
on music in general.
I loved all the black rock artists the best: Little Richard,
Bill Doggett, Bo Diddley, and some of the more dangerous sounding
white rockabilly guys: Link Wray, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly.
I also listened to and played a great deal of classical music.
In high school I discovered traditional folk music and early
blues and I started to get into playing guitar. The ‘cello
sort of fell away during this period as I furiously tried
to learn the mandolin, banjo, and the guitar.
The
next big influence was Indian classical music. It has a kind
of neurological effect on me.
I
still listen to all these and Irish and African music.
2.
Linda Ronstadt has said that she met you at the Ash Grove
in Santa Monica, and your common interest in Mexican music
led to striking up a friendship. How did the Stone Poneys
come to be?
I actually met Bobby Kimmel first and
he introduced me to Linda Ronstadt. I was working at the McCabes
annex at the Ashgrove at the time and spent most of my days
there meeting passing pickers and learning how to play Delta
Blues. David Crosby and Roger (then Jim) McGuinn used to come
by the store. They were very excited by the Beatles and had
the idea of hatching their own rock band, the Byrds. They
figured that if they just electrified the folk music they
were playing at the time they could be successful just like
the Beatles, and it seems they were right. We used to go hear
them play live at Ciro's, a club on the Sunset Strip. It was
all very exciting , this loud folk music. Kimmel and I wanted
to make some of that noise ourselves. He said he knew a great
girl singer from Tucson, his home town. He made a call, Linda
moved to LA and we started the Stone Poneys.We didn't really
share our feelings about Mexican music until later.
A pretty fun period, those mid-sixties.
3.
In the late 60's, you were already a veteran of a band with
a national following, and the (slightly) younger Andrew Gold,
Wendy Waldman, and Karla Bonoff were high school students.
How did the four of you meet and form Bryndle?
After a period of participating in
some fairly interesting chemical experiments I started to
explore Eastern spiritual practices and later became involved
with Transcendental Meditation. I went to a month-long residence
course at Lake Tahoe where a couple of hundred of us meditated
and listened to Maharshi Mahesh Yogi speak. It was at this
retreat that I met Karla Bonoff. Actually there were a lot
of musicians pursuing this thing at the time, probably having
something to do with the Beatles. At any rate, a bunch of
us would jam in the evenings between lectures and I noticed
one girl who was a pretty good player. Karla and her sister
had a little duo and I was impressed. That's how we met.
I had met Wendy Waldman a year or two earlier when the Stone
Poneys played a concert at her school. Her history teacher,
who was from Tucson and knew Linda Ronstadt, brought Wendy
up to meet us and told us what great a little blues monster
she was; she was around fifteen, I think. Andrew Gold was
also a student there. Later on, after the breakup of the Stone
Poneys, the four of us decided to pool our efforts and started
Bryndle.
4.
Bryndle made that unreleased A&M album in '69, and broke
up the next year. What lessons did you take from that experience?
Bryndle's ill-fated first record was
doomed for a number of reasons. First; there was so much confusion
and lack of experience, both in the band and in our producers,
that our music wandered around hopelessly in search of a real
direction. What started out as a couple of exciting live performances
with acoustic guitars and a lot of feverish singing didn't
really translate to a traditional pop music approach in the
studio. Second; we were new songwriters and were wary of co-writing
and diluting our adolescent visions. A listening of those
early songs will show that the visions in question really
cry out for as much dilution as possible. We know better now
and co-write regularly, though I must say that some of us
(not me) developed into very talented solo songwriters.
The lesson? Keep it simple and rely on your friends.
5.
During the 70's, you toured and played almost constantly with
Linda Ronstadt. You were honing your craft and getting great
professional experience, but you were also growing up on the
road and foregoing a lot of things that the rest of us took
for granted in our early adult years. Would you do it again?
Would you encourage a son or daughter who wanted to be a rock
musician?
While its true that being a professional
musician/artist can be a very satisfying and novelty-filled
existence, it comes at a cost. As you point out, many of the
wonderful things about being a normal grown-up are sacrificed.
Even with some success, the financial insecurity and rapidly
changing music business landscape can be daunting. I don't
know that I would recommend it to friends and family members.
6. You produced Karla Bonoff's first three solo albums. Nearly
20 years later, "Karla Bonoff" (her first album)
is still in print and gets a lot of play on folk radio stations.
When you were working on it, did you think you were involved
in something special, or was it just another job? What do
you think of that album today?
Karla's first record is something I'm
still proud to have worked on. She had such great songs and
such an effecting way of singing them that there wasn't much
to do to make it work. Fortunately I didn't know much, so
I didn't do much. Maybe picked the right players.
Karla had worked for quite a while compiling the songs for
that record, so it was great to hear them come alive on tape
in a way that I think surpassed our expectations .
7.
You're probably best known as a session musician for projects
with some of the most influential pop and rock musicians of
the last 25 years, everyone from Don Henley, Jackson Browne,
Warren Zevon, and Albert Lee, to Marcia "Brady Bunch"
McCormick. Your recent work with Bryndle puts you front and
center, in the spotlight. How does that compare with your
more familiar role as a session player?
Being
a sideman with Ronstadt and others for all those years was
kind of a departure for me. We had worked on Bryndle for a
couple of years before we broke up, and then Andrew and I
tried the artist thing again with the Rangers. I think we
played seventeen straight auditions without getting a gig.
When the sideman opportunity presented itself, it was kind
of a relief to be a worker bee for a while.
Because bands are collaborations with people of different
strengths, I think I have something to offer in Bryndle by
way of my experience as a player/producer. I think knowing
how to enhance someone else's music is one of my strengths
and I try to bring that to the party.
The
actual "spotlight" of singing lead on some of the
songs is new to me and, while I don't have that much experience
at it, I enjoy it a good deal.
8.
Have you ever thought about doing a solo album?
A solo album is something I'll try when
I've run out of friends who are willing to work with me.
9. Bryndle fans tend to muse (incorrectly?) that the lead
singer on a given song was also the lead writer. The songs
that feature you on lead vocals tend toward observational
lyrics that don't reveal much about the narrator's inner life.
Is that deliberate?
One of the things we tried to do in
the writing of that first record was to write from the perspective
of a group of people who are dealing with similar circumstances
in their lives; "Walk This Road", "Till the
Storm Goes By" come to mind in this respect; kind of
angst driven music for adults. Other songs, such as "I
Want to Touch You" seem more personal in the traditional
sense, so I don't feel that one-sided about it. But the listener
has to decide what sounds abstract and what seems more likely
to have been a "personal "statement.
10. Bryndle is going strong after all
those years as just a concept, and recently, the departure
of a founding member, Andrew. Where would you like Bryndle
to go in the next few years? What do you think will happen?
Even though those of us remaining in Bryndle have been making
music for a long time in various contexts, being in a real
band is an acquired skill. I think we're finally getting the
hang of it; now we can go little deeper into town.
If the new songs are as good as we think they are, this next
record should be nice.
