By: Rick Landers
Tal Naccarato Interview: Part ONE
Tal Naccarato – Photo by Rick Landers
Although guitar aficionado, Tal Naccarato‘s family heritage digs deep into the hills of his native Italy, his life passion is reaching out to those in the world who love and appreciate singer-songwriters and guitar masters.
And he’s game to roll along the landscape and streetscapes of America to make musical and spiritual connections with others in all walks of life who appreciate and share his love of well-crafted original music, music that comes from life’s hard won experiences and from the souls of artists.
Immigrating to America as a young child, he grew up in New York City, where he not only found his passion for song, but studied guitar and performed at some of the most iconic hot spots in the country, like The Bitter End, and Kenny’s Castaways, in the East Village, and other places where he honed his guitar and live performance skills.
As a mature artist, he still draws crowds and touches people from all walks of life when he finds a spot on a sidewalk, in between live gigs and recording dates, and gifts passersby with some of the coolest and hippest street music around. They also dig the music man himself, and his lyrics which often offer reflections of life from many different angles, angles yet to be experienced by many of them.
Classically trained, Naccarato clearly knows his way around the fretboard as illustrated on his new album, Ten and Two Blues, to be released on April 27th 2022, as well as on his last three albums, Hot House Flowers, Piedmont Black & Blue, and Dreamflower Sessions, which all field songs of traditional blues and songs influenced by past Appalachian traditional masters, while at the same time weaving his own signature style that make his music both roots driven and contemporary.
Ten and Two Blues album available HERE!
******
Rick Landers: Are you originally from Italy or were you born in the States, and how did you get into guitar?
Tal Naccarato: I was born in Italy in a small village. It was called Fiumefreddo Bruzio, in Calabria.There were about a two thousand people in the town at that time. It’s a mountain top village, ancient, medieval.
So, I’m a country boy, just from a different country. I came here a babe in arms, when I was six months old and I was brought up in New York City. I lived in East Flatbush, where I tell people Bugs Bunny comes from. (Editor: Bugs had a Brooklyn accent and was from East Flatbush.)
As I was growing up, there was a kid on my block named Frankie Appice. Now, Frankie was a drummer, he learned it from Carmine Appice, of Vanilla Fudge, Cactus, Rod Stewart, Beck, Bogart & Appice fame, who was his cousin. We were eight, nine years old: maybe ten. We’d sneak into the backyard on East 39th Street and appear at the window and watch Carmine playing drums.
Carmine was quite a few years older than me. Next door was a house full of guitar players, and one of them had an old 1963 Ampeg -15NB PortoFlex 25-Watt amp and a Gretsch electric Guitar, which as really a big deal at the time; great little amp. A vintage model sells for about three thousand dollars now. It was really a bass amp, but it worked well with guitar too. It had one little 15’ speaker.
With those amps, the guts were all tucked in a way, inside the amp on top, and they turned inside out on themselves, all the guts, and then the tubes and all, they’d be flush on top. It was a little cube with all the tubes exposed. We loved it! It sounded great, and cool looking to boot!
Rick: I remember the old Ampeg Reverberockets in the mid-Sixties.
Tal Naccarato: Yeah, and this was in the Sixties. And at the time there weren’t a lot of people playing music. There were only a handful of guys who did it. We were sought after for block parties. They would come from miles around to find us and to hear us play. It was great fun. Just kids, ya know. Magical time, really. Playing constantly.
Today, Garage Band is an app, but we were a real garage band. [Laughing] We played in garages. I mean, we were the original thing. So, Frankie would come over and he’d just slam those drums up. I don’t know if I ever played with Carmine, but he was very well known. He went on to play with Rod Stewart and Vanilla Fudge. So, Vanilla Fudge was from my neighborhood, as well.
So, we had a lot of influences. I saw right away that I wanted to play guitar. I wanted to play with a friend’s brother who was four or five years older. I started to play better, real fast. And, this guy would let me play his guitar, a great ’60’s Gretsch hollow body, I think it was a Country Gentlman, or something like that; not sure; it was a long time ago. it was the first electric guitar I ever played, and I was hooked!
I said, “Wow! This is (expletive) Great!” Then I started hanging out with the older guys and I was much younger than them, but I picked up all the skills and we started playing music, and then, you know, the English guys came in.
And we started hearing Clapton and those guys, we’d buy their singles and just learn the music.
Rick: Did you know Waddy Wachtel who’s from that same area or Leslie West?
Tal Naccarato: No, I didn’t know Waddy. I knew about Leslie, but never met him. He lived on Long Island, which in those days, to us, was a world away.These guys were a good deal older than me. Leslie was with a band called The Vagrants, on then went on to create Mountain, We were well aware of their work, but never crossed paths.
Then around this time, I started to really concentrate on learning the guitar. And then, you know, later on in high school, we started playing in electric bands and started copying the whole Southern Blues/Rock style, like The Allman Brothers and such. We were all playing slide bottleneck guitar. And not a lot of people were doing that, but we were killing that like the “Statesboro Blues” and all that stuff. We’d play electric, but were also doing acoustic sets occasionally.
And then I started to realize, I’m eating cows here. I said, I don’t wanna eat cows.
I want to eat what cows eat. And I started to dig a little deeper and I started to find out that these songs, you know, the “Statesboro Blues” and all these songs that the English guys were doing, Clapton and “Crossroads.” It was like “Wait a minute!”
Now there’s somebody that these songs came from. So, I started to study the old blues guys like Robert Johnson. Now the first thing I thought of when I heard Robert Johnson was as compared to the production of all these other records. I was like, “Wow, this isn’t too good.” You know, because I was a kid and then I thought about it and listened and listened.
And then I thought, “This is very good. It’s just that the quality of the recordings are not so good. You’ve gotta get beyond or past that.” So, then I sat down and I schooled myself in Robert Johnson and I sat there with, you know, that album forever and learned all that. And, then Charlie Patton.
Then I discovered the Chicago Chess Records guys, like Muddy Waters and then later on I discovered and learned the Hoy Gospel/Piedmont Fingerstyle Blues style of the Reverend Gary Davis. Man, I loved that sound, and, I really got into that. The rest is history. It’s just a progression.
I remember doing a live show on WETS/NPR Radio in Johnson City, Tennessee, somewhere a little while back, and I was playing a Gibson Hummingbird, a ’68 that I have. And, I was warming up and I was playing JD Loudermilk’s “Windy and Warm”. So the guy doing the interview, he says, “Well, that’s Doc Watson isn’t it. And I said, well, actually, that’s JD Loudermilk. He said, “Well, Doc Watson sat right in that chair. you’re sitting in right now and he played that song.”
I said, “Well,then, I’m gonna play that for you right now. Hello, Doc, wherever you are!” We had some fun that day.
Rick: Were your parents supportive or were they musicians?
Tal Naccarato: My father was an amateur musician. He was a tuba player. He was very supportive, but it was really my mom who encouraged me and brought me along; she bought me my first guitar and my first amp: a little Fender Princeton Reverb; ten inch speaker…great amp…I wish I had it today!
My Mom brought me my first instrument and made it possible for me to take guitar lessons. She was great. Fantastic woman. And the first thing you got back then was an acoustic guitar. So, I got this acoustic guitar that had like cables on it. It was like you had to press the strings down. Yeah. It was like a $20 guitar and it was impossible to play. I’d just rented it and then I started taking guitar lessons from the same store.
And I remember riding in the car and just having that guitar, just the way that case smelled and I was hooked, I would just go in and just open the case and smell it once in a while and say, that was my guitar, this is just a beautiful thing.
I took the lessons for a while and I am actually classically trained. I went through that for quite some years. I would study that during the day and then at night I’d play in the band and we’d be doing, you know, “Sunshine of Your Love” at the local hop, you know, at the local school.
Tal Naccarato: It was like, don’t quit your day job, you know? But, as it turned out that the classical training really worked out for me and still does.
I just bought a great handmade classical nylon string guitar, made in Valencia, Spain by the Master Luthier Manuel Adalid who builds under his name for the House of Esteve; it’s called a Model 12, Cedar. Great guitar sound and looks beautiful. Granadillo back and sides, cedar top, ebony fingerboard, pau ferro neck and headstock. Granadillo is also known as mexican rosewood. It translates into, ‘…the wood that sings…”, or something like that. Sounds fantastic. Great projection. Smells terrific too.
So, I’m still playing classical pieces. They asked Doc Watson once, “What kind of music do you play?
He said, “I play what I like.”
And that’s the same thing I do. I play what I like, I’ll play a show and I’ll do one, two, three sets and there’ll be classical pieces in there and everything in between. But they all start to meld in together. The DNA becomes one.
I was talking to my friend on the phone the other day and he said to me, “What I like about what you do is that you don’t do it like anyone else, you know, it’s not like you do a song the same way as anyone else does. And I thought, well, yea, like what’s the point in doing a cover of a song if i’m not doing it in my own style and killing it?…in an original way?
I see a lot of guys walk in and kill the version that’s been recorded by someone. Yeah. I mean, I could do that, but you know, I play the notes, (you’ve heard this a million times and your readers probably have too. I play the notes just as well as the next guy or better, or not as good as some, better than others, but you know, it’s about the empty space between the notes.
So, the space between the notes is what you’ve gotta do better and the way to do that is to just do it your own way. And, always be chasing that piece down the street, you’re always raising the bar. You’re never quite get there.
I’ve been working on some pieces for nearly 30 years and never quite got there. And some of them and every guitar player or musician will tell you, that the recording that they got, they hate it because it’s not a real good version of how they’ve played it so many times so much better.
And other people say, “Wow, that’s great!”
And you just have to keep your mouth shut and say, “Yeah. Okay, thank you.”
But, you and your heart know it’s not even close to as good as you’ve done it or you can do it. So, I’m always trying to improve on that.
Rick: So, when you did your first record, how did you get that? Did someone say they wanted to record you?
Tal Naccarato: I did Jimmy’s Basement myself. The very first record I did I was 17, like ’74. And we did it in a basement studio in Brooklyn, New York. I still have that record and I’m polishing it up.
The more I listen to it, the more I want to release it again. It’s called, Jimmy’s Basement.
I don’t want to call it The Basement Tapes; at the time we were doing a lot of basement tapes recordings , ‘cause those were the studios were that were available to us; the very first ‘home studios!’ To make a long story short, well I’ve been listening to that recording and I’ve been thinking, “Wow!”, I should do something with this.
A the time, I didn’t think, and any musician will tell you, that at the time I thought it wasn’t good enough, but now that I’m listening to it, it’s a 17-year-old Tal, you know? I mean, it’s all original. And I was like, I need to release this stuff. And it’s so so much fun to revisit.
So, we did that. That was the very first recording I did. We just blasted into some recording equipment, dragged it into the basement and fired away. Totally live. Totally acoustic; just me and a mike.
Rick: Well, it’ll be interesting to hear that. And I’d expect a new recording to be more refined, more mature, you doing the same songs.
Tal Naccarato: Now I’ve got two or three songs from that record date that I did that way. I did it later. I did it in Stanton Street Studios on the lower east side of Manhattan…. you know, over the last 10, 20 years, you know, 30 years has become the hippest place on earth in Manhattan.
And we had this great studio and this tenement and we recorded a whole bunch of that stuff again, and it’s still there! I’m wading through some of the tapes now.
Rick: Did you hang out in Greenwich Village at all?
Tal Naccarato: I played Greenwich Village many, many times. And I played The Bitter End and Kenny’s Castaways. Kenny’s Castaways was a great place to play.
Because when I was playing at Kenny’s Castaways, Bruce Springsteen had played there at around the same time as me, and he was just starting to really hit at the time. And that was the time. It was a great room!
People would come in, would listen and it was electric. The guy that owned it lived down not far from me.
Kenny was his last name. I remember one day I was walking down the street and there he was sitting on a curb sitting, waiting for a bus.
I think his name was John. I’m not sure, a very Irish guy, and I said, “You’re John Kenny, aren’t you?”
He said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
And it was the kind of place where you would go and, have a bachelor party or something wacky like that, it was kind of a weird place. And all kinds of stuff hanging off the ceilings. It was a kitschy place.He could have rented it to The Elks.
And it wasn’t just like a rock club, so that’s what was good about it. And then we started to talk and then I’d wind up playing there and it was fun. And, you know, it was great.
Rick: I know of four albums you’ve made, do you have more than that?
Tal Naccarato: I do. Only four that are currently published and available that I’m using. I’ve got seven albums. I just finished putting the finishing touches on the new one which will be released on April 27th, 2022, (my birthday.) It’s called, Ten and Two Blues.
Rick: What kinds of lessons learned do you have over the course of time you’ve worked in the studios, trying to work the business angles of this so that you don’t get ripped off at some point? Have you gone through those type of crests and troughs of the music industry, or have you been able to keep things stable and steady stream going?
Tal Naccarato: I’ve been able to keep a steady stream going. I feel right now that I’m at the strongest I’ve ever been. I feel very strong and if you’d asked me that a year ago, I probably wouldn’t have said that. But the thing is that, it’s not like riding a bike, playing an instrument. You’ve got to keep on top of it. You’ve got to keep on top of the instruments. You’ve gotta keep your repertoire, intact. You’ve got to be able to kill it. There’s no room for error here. There’s no room for mistakes. This is the big dogs, you know?
You’ve gotta play with the big dogs. And you know, the way to play with the big dogs to make sure you’re on top of your game,; is to be like a classical guy, rehearsing many hours a day.
Like the thing with the Olympic stars where this one just dropped out because all of a sudden, they start to think or overthink.
That happens in music too. Now the classical guys, I’ll take a lot of my instruction from classical guys, the real deal. Like the Yo Yo Ma’S of the world.
They’re afraid of the same things that in their circuit that people like you and other people are afraid of, which is, you’re afraid that you’re going to forget everything. I was surprised to hear the classical guys still worry about that. And they worry, they have nightmares that they’ll be on stage and just draw a blank! Just freeze.
And it happens, so you’ve gotta be careful, because it’s all a mind game. So, the way to do that is to practice all the time. A lot and every day in a very, very determined way and make it fun. But, to do it in the same way you’d brush your teeth, or take a shower or wash your clothes. As a meditation. Another thing you do is you rehearse. It’s just one of the things you need to do.
Tal Naccarato: I try to rehearse three to four hours a day, every day. That’s my goal and at the same time, when I can. And sometimes I look up during my practice and many hours have passed without my noticing. Now, when that happens, that’s wonderful. Because, you need to do that, and you have to be around people who understand. It’s best not to be around people at all. It’s best when no one’s around.
And right after I rehearse, I like to just sit quietly because when you learn what you’ve just rehearsed is when you sit quietly afterwards. That’s why it’s very good to learn something right before you go to bed. Or it’s very good before you take a nap, anything that you need, because that’s when you really process it. And it sinks in.
Now, when you rehearse and then after you rehearse, somebody starts barking at you or some something happens and the phone starts ringing. That’s not good. It’s not good for your practice.
They call it, “Practice for a reason.” You know, doctors, they practice; Zen masters. monks. They all ‘practice’. Musicians should practice in the same way and not give the word a new spin or a new meaning. Somehow, it’s like it became this mechanical negative thing when musicians sit to practice. It’s not that at all. Practice is a spiritual thing. Yeah.
That reminds me, of something Ron Goad (D.C. area award winning promoter) said when he and I were talking last week. Ron is a Songwriters’ of Washington (S.A.W.) board member and we were talking about semantics.
He said, musicians are always talking about where we’re gonna play. We’re gonna play there.
And there’s somebody who wants me to play there. And then the venue guy’s saying, “Okay, we would like you to play for an hour or two or three. Ron said, “We’re not playing, we’re performing. Right. We’re working. Right. And so when they try to equate the money to that, it’s like, well, you’re just playing. No, no. See it’s not.”
Rick: Yeah, it’s work. I also think you’re right. When you practice, you’re practicing with intent. And just repeating things isn’t a good idea. You have to be totally into it.
Tal Naccarato: And you have to be conscious and you have to watch and look, look and listen to yourself while you play. Because if you keep repeat things and you keep missing a passage and you keep going back, you are not paying attention.
You are not practicing correctly.
Something’s wrong. It’s not that you can’t get that passage. Your practice is bad. Well, practice is never bad unless you repeat what’s wrong too much. And some people think that because musicians who write their own music, because they’re creative, you can be up on stage and you find that you’re playing your music, but your mind, because it’s creative and it’s always trying to connect things sometimes you can lose track of here you are and you get distracted and you go off and lose your spot. Kiss of death.
Tal Naccarato:There are exact classical training ways to do that. The two most important ways are, listen, and look, when you find yourself drifting, it’s the same as meditation. You know, I like to meditate and I practice yoga. And the things that I do are in the Shambhala Buddhism school of thought, it’s something that, you know, while I don’t look at it as something that rules as my life, I believe ithas great wisdom, as do many other spiritual teachings, of course.
I began doing it at an early stage of my life, I had teachers that were spiritual. Now they were Xaverian brothers. They were like the layman’s Jesuits. They were like the poor man’s Jesuits.
I had Xaverian brothers for grammar school as well as in a high school. And they led me towards all these spiritual teachings. And one of the things that you learned in spiritual meditation is, and I’m not like, you know, a freak about it or anything, you know, or trying to convert the world.
You’re always thinking, so you think about your breath and your out breath during meditation and then normal, everyday sounds and thoughts are gonna come in. You don’t judge it; you just label it: ‘thinking’, and then just keep practicing.
And the way you label it is in a very gentle way towards yourself, like a feather touching a bubble, is the way it was once described to me.
One time someone asked me, They said, “Well, how would you describe your music?”
Like, how do you answer a question like that?
I said, “It’s like a feather touching a bubble.
And that’s what good practice is. You bring yourself back to your posture and you bring yourself back to the present moment.
And you let go of that thought in a gentle way when you’re playing. When thoughts come in, it’s very similar to that. Because, as soon as you start to think, you’re dead. And, you can’t let that happen.
So, what do you do when you find yourself drifting off? You look at your fingers, look at your hands, look at your instrument. That’s one technique. Look.
Rick: So, you’re grounding yourself.
Tal Naccarato: Ground yourself, back into the present moment. Just look and bring yourself back and let the thought dissipate.
Don’t try to fight it. And another is to listen carefully. You can do both. Sometimes, you can just close your eyes and listen and that’ll ground you too. So, that’s the answer to your question.
You look or you listen or you do both at different times. You don’t do ’em at the same time. You have to focus and that’s what will bring you back. Okay?
And I also… I try not to make eye contact with people Iin the audience. I try to see the people, but I try not to make eye contact, because that’ll bring you off. Now you notice a lot of players they’ll close their eyes.
Rick: Townes Van Zandt, Tim Buckley and other singer-songwriters close their eyes and go “there.”
Tal Naccarato: Now, I do that sometimes too. I did it the other night. You saw the show, when I saw myself drifting off.
Sometimes I’ll do that, but it’s not generally a good technique for me. What I do is I look at the crowd as a whole, but I don’t try to zero in on any, on anyone. Because for me personally, that could be a very big distraction for me.
When I see someone, especially if you see someone you recognize and they smile or they do something that could drop you off, you don’t want that to happen. The best technique is to look or listen.
Rick: Okay. Thats kind of leads me to snowballing. I tend to snowball, I’ll start a song and then I’ll speed up, maybe going too fast in order to get it over with, when I’m in front of people. I don’t snowball when I’m alone, practicing by myself.
Tal Naccarato: That’s when you’re talking about getting faster as you go along. Yeah. Now all songs will go and get faster. You go along. They naturally will. And they sound unnatural if they don’t, it turns out every time I’ve recorded, I’ve been with guys and they say, “Geeze.” They said, sometimes they use a click track. Sometimes I know I like to use a little click track if it’s just gonna be me live, because, and especially if I’m putting a voice or an instrument dub over in it later, or even if I’m doing it just me live with vocal, because I can always add anything I want to it later.
I can always send it to someone and say, put something on this. And I don’t even have to be there. So, it’s wise to use the click track, although I hate to use it for that, but I don’t need it for the rhythm that much.
And I’ve always surprised people, but they’ve said, “Wow, man, you’re right on this thing. Well, how do you know you”re circling back and there you are. You’re right on that click track. Look at that!”
Now, if you hear the click track there’s something’s wrong, you shouldn’t, when you’re in the pocket, you won’t hear it. You will not hear it now. Here’s my advice to anybody coming up. Okay?
Or anybody that wants to perform, find their technique; practice with a metronome, you know, if you can get your hands on an analogue, old school metronome, use that. If not, A digital one is fine, especially if you have to travel with it..
I always practice with a metronome and I run scales. I’ll run scales before every show and I’ll practice with a metronome. You will find that over scores of years, over long periods of time, the scores of years that I’ve been doing this my timing has become internalized. I have no problem with that. I can dance around it and come in and out at it sideways.
And you know, I’m always a little behind the beat, a little above the beat, you know, in front of the beat. And I’m always coming in at different angles. Anybody listening to my music will see that it’s never quite linear. And I think that’s something that’s a good thing because it kind of just changes the sound of your you.
Rick: How do you approach lyrics? So they aren’t so symmetrical that they’re feel flat, that maybe you can add in some word to keep the story a bit off kilter or more interesting?
Tal Naccarato: Again, it’s off the beat, front of the beat. And then, you know, before the beat, you know, before the beat, after the beat, you know?
I spend a lot of time thinking about which words are going to come first or not first, how many words am I gonna put on that line before the next? We did one record. It’s called Hothouse Flowers, and we did it live in Stanton Street and it’s got cello and violin on it. And it’s all original. And I wrote all the cello parts, all the violin parts.
And we did drummers charts, but it was very loose. I never told the cellos or the violins exactly what to play. I did drummers’ charts and I said, “Here’s where you’re gonna play. And here’s a riff, I want you to play.”
And I would write it out a little bit, but I’m not gonna write every note that they should play. It’s not a score. It’s a chart with certain areas where they take the solo, and this is what I want them to play. But it’s a chart where I’d write their solos. But they could improvise.
The reason I’m telling you that is because that’s the same thing with lyrics. Sometimes with lyrics, I’ll put whether I want six words on a line, or seven? Because, now you need to say it or sing it differently.
Rick: Yeah, you can phrase it right.
Tal Naccarato: Gotta phrase it right. Yeah. And the phrasing is part of music. I spend a lot of time with that. I suffer a lot about that.
We spend a lot of time weaving, you know, agonizing over that because you could do it the easy way, but it’s never as good. And if you do it that way you’re flying without a parachute and you’re operating without a net; when it’s good, it’s good. Yeah. When it works, it’s great.
Sometimes you have to change. You gotta find the word. That’s not the right word. I know it’s not the right word, but it’s the phrasing.
If you notice the old Calypso guys, which I do a lot of, I like a lot of Calypso guitar. I like that style to put in there. I mix it in with all my other stuff, but their words, the way they machine gun, those words, that’s impossible to learn.
You know, you sit there and Jesus, I’m gonna play this song, but my God, I mean, you could spend as much or more time just getting the lyrics, right? As much as the music itself, you know, the actual instrumentation. Because the instrument learning, that is hard enough, but then you listen to the way they sing, when it’s good, it’s good solo. And it’s when it’s good. It’s very good.
Rick: Yeah, there’s’ a certain optimal flow to it. Do you find that when you are singing or once you’ve developed a song and you’ve got it down, where you want it, that you can always get into that zone. So, you’re almost on a mini-vacation when you’re playing your music.
Tal Naccarato: The zone, that zone is alone. That’s the alone zone. You need to be alone in a pack of people. When you are in a room full of people, you are alone. There’s only one person diving off that diving board. There’s only one person, jumping out of that airplane. There’s only one person.
That’s why a lot of people say I play solo all the time. Like I’ve played with bands my whole life. And then, you know, I would show up, a little off kilter and the rest of the band would be completely on or they would show up off kilter and I would be on. And one day I just would like to show up where all of us live in the same place and not have to say, “Who quit and who did this and who became a Rhodes scholar and whose wife wouldn’t let him play anymore?”
OR whose husband wouldn’t let her play anymore and on and on. And you know what? There’s only one person that I wanna depend on is me, but it’s hard. But it’s got a lot of advantages.
So, the answer to your question is it’s just you, what you have to understand is that that’s what a person has to understand is that that’s, you, you’ve gotta just find that core. And it’s always that you are always alone in a room full of people.
Tal Naccarato – Photo by Rick Landers
Rick: Have you played with other folks who you’ve been a fan of, or that you respected so much and you’re like, oh, I’m playing with so and so?
Tal Naccarato: Well, yeah, I mean, I have so, so much respect for all my peers. They’re all great. And they all do different things, but you know, I’m not them. And, I generally enjoy playing by myself. I don’t enjoy being by myself. On the road all the time. But I do enjoy playing by myself because I just get to do what I do.
And I don’t have to depend on anyone else. And if anyone screws it up, it’s me. And it’s like, okay. Because there’s so many moving parts, there’s so much that can go wrong.
Rick: Or even just logistically.
Tal Naccarato:I’m talking about keeping your eyes on your equipment and maintaining your equipment and getting the gigs. You want to piss a musician off? Give them a gig.
Now, what musicians do, it’s like the phone’s not gonna ring. I’ll never get another job. Oh, my God, oh my God! And then the phone rings and “Oh, my God, I gotta do this gig!”
So, now we’ve got to maintain our instruments, buy instruments, get it all done. We get our own gigs these days, nobody’s getting anybody helping. You could be, Jesus Christ and you’re still not selling any records or getting gigs. You know, you’re by yourself, you and your wife are on the phone. Even if you are a million seller, you know, it really is that way. Alone.
I mean, unless you’re Eminem, for Lord’s sake, you know, but I’m saying at a certain circuit, the circuit that I run in, most people are booking themselves, or they only have a couple people helping them. And it’s word of mouth, a lot of that, you play the same venues and you have the same friends and you make more friends as you go along, some drop off…some.
Rick: Do you have a favorite kind of venue? Like weddings, house concerts, or big venues?
Tal Naccarato: I don’t like to play bars. In fact, I don’t play them anymore. I generally like a listening room. I wanna play in a place I like to play, my goal really is to keep busy and play. It’s not so much to light the world on fire. Or make five million dollars. That’s not what I need or want right now. I don’t need that. I don’t want it.
What I would like to do is just get under a roof full of people who appreciate the music, like the other night. And they love that music. I’d like to play for people who like the music, you know, a good musician or a good artist could sell a person sand at the beach with their show.
But, I don’t like to sell sand at the beach.You know what I’m saying?
It’s like a good musician can do that. I don’t want to have to do that. I just want to come somewhere where they understand, where they appreciate the work that goes into it. And while I’m touring, I’d rather be playing then sitting in a hotel room somewhere. I like to play in a lot of places and I like to keep busy, and I don’t play for free unless, of course, I like you very much, and I believe in your cause.[Laughs]
If you believe in the music, so I will not play for free, but I will play at a house concert where people will do tips. I’ll do that because they’re listening. You know, put out a tip jar. That’s fine with me.
But, that’s been the way this music, folk and blues music, has been since the beginning of time. I mean, Doc Watson used play on the street. So did many other great performers and musicians. Playing like that is one of my favorite things. I love doing that. Yeah, nothing like it. Beats being on tour and siting some hotel room sonwhere in between gigs, I’ll tell ya…
Tal Naccarato: A beautiful thing. Not everyone can do it. You’ve got to be able to do it. Right. And you’ve got to do it in a very high level. You’ve got classical guys busking!
And they’re playing Tchaikovsky and Joseph Haydn, you know, if you’re gonna play Tchaikovsky and Haydn, that truly translates to our world, then busking is a good idea.
So I like to go out, I don’t call it busking. I call it street performance. And I’ll go out and do street performances in Nashville or in New Orleans. I’ll be glad to do that. But it’s gotta be high level stuff. I went down to New Orleans and all these 17-year-old kids played, as well as mature, pro musicians all mingled together playing music.
You know, in these kids shorts or sweatpants with white socks and sandals playing on the street. Wearing, you know, sandals and t-shirts. They look at you like, “What are you doing here? And they’re playing tubas and trumpets, and they are killing it!
I came down too, to perform, and I had a little Crate amp and I had my SJ-200 Super Jumbo (Gibson), which is a sweet street guitar. Loud. cuts through the haze.
There are these street performers and I pulled up and I said, “I’m gonna play guitar.”
And they, the other musicians, they made way for me, and they were kind of watching me. And it’s a tough bunch, hard to please. And I got up and did my thing and they came over and said, “Tal, we are glad to meet you!” And I asked “Why?” They said, “Because we thought you were gonna be playing like John Denver, and singer-songwriter bullshit! (Laughs]
So, when I started playing ‘’Darktown Strutter’s Ball’, and “Basin Street Blues”, and “CandyMan Blues”, ya know, …’”Slow Drag”, and all that..stuff from the turn of the last century, they were all very surprised! They loved it. And I got this affirmation and I said, “Thank you.” And they made room for me, for this guy they didn’t know from way up North. It was magic.
Ten and Two Blues album available HERE!
