World Class Violinist Dave Kline Talks About His Music, Performing and Songwriting

Dave Kline

Rick Landers:  Occasionally, we’ll interview people who aren’t specifically known as guitarists. But, I know you also play guitar.

Dave Kline: Well, I’m actually, if I say so myself, a pretty good fingerpicking guitarist. In fact, on most of my albums, I play all the acoustic guitar on them.

Rick: Oh, really? Okay.

Dave Kline: Yeah. And every now and again, I’ll pull out a guitar and play a guitar piece. In fact, I’m playing a guitar piece next week; a piece that I just recently wrote, and I grew up in that English folk, rock folk blues tradition of guitarists. I’m sure you’re familiar.

Rick: Sure. Davy Graham and others.

Dave Kline: My first live appearance on stage as a musician was with guitar, as a matter of fact. And I played at an open mic that was run by David Bowie. David Bowie had an open mic night that he did once a week down at the Three Tons pub in Beckenham, Kent. And it was the first time I ever got up on stage, and I played a tune written by Davy Graham, a fingerpicking tune called “Angie”.

Rick: I know it.

Dave Kline: Okay. Took me freaking forever to learn how to play that, because its got this synchopated part where you’re playing a baseline, and then you’ve the lick on top of it. I must’ve put a hundred hours into that thing, but I actually learned how to play it.

Rick: David. Bowie, that’s wild. Yeah, I guess he wasn’t famous at that point.

Dave Kline: He was just on the cusp. I don’t think his first album had been released yet. It’s funny, I seem to hook up with these guys who were just about making it, and then they make it, and I’m not around, but the pub probably had 300 people in it.

Rick: Packed?

Dave Kline: To the gills, so he was seriously popular, and he got up there and he did his own tunes, as well.

Rick: What year was that?

Dave Kline: That was 1966.

Rick: Oh, so it was well before he came out with Hunky Dory and stuff like that. In the early Seventies when I first heard him, I was living in England, and when I came back home, nobody knew who he was. Yeah, ’74.

Rick: I bet he was a character. So what came first? You’re saying you played guitar. Did you learn that first, before violin?

Dave Kline: No, violin was first. Actually, piano was first.

Dave Kline: Okay. So in 1955, when I was five, my brother and I and my mom all went to the same school. She was a teacher. That was a horror story, but she was my teacher at one point.

Rick: Oh boy…

Dave Kline: Heaven help me! And my brother and I went to the same school and down the road from the school was a piano teacher. And my mom hooked us up, and we both did a piano lesson at the same time. I really wanted to do the lesson. My brother couldn’t care less, or so it seemed, and we fought like cats and dogs anyway, and he just baited me .Well, I probably baited him just as much. So, the piano teacher put up with it for about a year, and then she said, “I can’t do this anymore.”

And quit on us. So, I learned the basics of piano, and I know how to write on piano. I come up with some very creative stuff on piano, but it’s not a performance instrument for me. The instrument I really wanted to learn was violin. And when I was a kid, my mom had a classical music long playing record collection, some of them 78’s, actually.

She had several records by a Russian violinist named, David Oistrakh, who’s considered by many in the top 10 ever violinists. And when I was between the age of two and four, I did nothing but listen to those albums. I was glued to those albums. So, I wanted to learn violin, and they picked me up a half-size violin when I was seven.

And unfortunately, the lessons were incredibly disappointing to me because I wanted to learn Mendelssohn’s violin concerto. And the teacher wanted me to learn, “Twinkle Little Star” and it just did not go over well. And she was not friendly in the least.

Anyway, I hated the lessons and I refused to practice, which I regret that because I consider myself pretty good today. And if I had put the work in that I needed to, I could have ended up playing Mendelssohn’s violin concert, but partly I was too lazy and partly just a rejection of the way it was taught.

Rick: What about guitar?

Dave Kline: Guitar, okay. So, then I learned violin and I took lessons from one teacher or another. I was in the school orchestra in the second violins, and then when I was 12, my brother, my parents bought my brother a guitar, a real cheap, terrible guitar. And I’m the one who started playing it.

He played a little bit, but not much. And then my parents decided to buy me one, and they actually bought me a nice little Oscar Teller, German nylon string guitar, which I have to this day, as a matter of fact. Great little guitars. And I got that when I was 15.

I just spent a lot of time playing and learning and teaching myself how to play fingerpicking style. And I was really into Bert Jansch. And I used to go see Bert Jansch and John Renbourn in Pentangle playing at a hotel on Tottenham Court Road in London on Sunday nights. They played in this hotel. I used to go out there regularly, and there was nobody in there. There’d be half a dozen people in the audience. The band was amazing

Rick: Yeah, I’ve seen them. I saw ’em in Warwickshire. Was Danny Thompson with them?

Dave Kline: Danny Thompson was on Upright Bass. Yeah. Danny Thompson. They had the gal, Sandy Denny singing, and then John Renbourn and Bert Jansch.

Rick: So, did you listen to folks like John Martyn and Nick Drake back in the late Sixties, early Seventies?

Dave Kline: Not a lot, A little bit. John Martyn, a little bit. Nick Drake. I didn’t really know. No, I did listen to folks like Rory Gallagher, the great Irish guitarist, saw him at the Marquee, and I listened to a lot of American rock, the West Coast rock, Airplane, all that sort of stuff. The Doors, Janis Joplin…

Rick: San Francisco. Great stuff. Yeah. Scott McKenzie…

Dave Kline: Actually ended up there in 1971, ’72 in San Francisco.

Rick:  Let’s move to violin. And when you were playing violin, what were kind of the challenges? I think its probably more complex than playing guitar, from what I can tell.

Dave Kline

Dave Kline: Well, the challenge with playing violin is you’ve got to get over that initial hump, when it sounds like a cat being killed.

But once you get past that point, you’re not driving everybody nuts.

It is not that difficult an instrument to play, but it’s a difficult instrument to play really well. And what it takes is it takes a lot of dedication and practice. And like I said, I didn’t do that.

The top classical solo violinists practice 10 hours a day for 15, 20 years, and then they get to the point where they almost don’t need to do that anymore.

But, that’s the level of intensity of playing. It’s like an Olympic gymnast type thing. You have to just do it and do it, and do it and do it. And it’s just tremendous amount of work. I didn’t go that route. But, what I did do was when I went up to college, I had to quit it.

Rick: Did you focus then on violin and just set aside the guitar? Or were you just sort of playing with whatever song came up? You decided to play one or the other?

Dave Kline: No, I was still playing guitar, and I was writing on guitar, but I would say I was primarily playing violin. I got a real resurgence on playing it of my goal to play it. And so I concentrated on that and everybody loved it.

Rick:  Were you playing mostly open mics, and were you getting gigs, paid gigs when you were in England, or?

Dave Kline: No, I just jammed around and I stayed in college because in England, the government pays for your college, and once you are in, it’s hard for them to get you out, and you basically got guaranteed for three years. And so that’s what I did. And I just jammed around at the college and played there, but I didn’t really do too much in the way of open mics, but I saw a lot of guys playing.

I was also really into a cat named Stefan Grossman, ragtime stuff, and he played at a little place called Bunjies (Coffee House & Folk Cellar), which was a little folk club coffee house in a basement off of Tottenham Court. And so I used to see him a whole bunch, and I kind of figured out some of what he was doing, and I can play ragtime style guitar, as well.

Dave Kline

Rick: Before you get on stage, do you do exercises ahead of time to warm up your wrist and your fingers? I would think that your wrist, you’re moving that around a little bit more on a violin than a guitar. Plus you’ve got the bow that you’ve got to deal with.

Dave Kline: Yeah. No, I don’t really do any warmup. I probably should. I mean, well I do a little warmup usually because we do a soundcheck. Sometimes we need to do a rehearsal before a gig. But I don’t specifically do warmup exercises.

I rarely practice scales. I definitely don’t go the normal route. Which, it’s funny because there’s holes in my musical education; I can read, but I’m not a sight reader. There’s cats that can come on stage. They’ve never heard the music. They’ve never seen the music. They come on stage and they just start playing Coltrane off a chart.

And I’m like, “screw you”. It’s like, I can’t do that. I can’t even hardly write charts and things like that are sort of, they’re a little bit of a hole. And some of my musical theory, sometimes I’ll be with some musicians, they’re really into the niceties of this chord, is, it’s a G6 + 13/11th going to….I’m like, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

Rick: That’s where I’m at too.

Dave Kline: And there was a point where a good friend of mine, sax player, his uncle is actually the musical director for the Bolshoi Ballet, and he’s really up there in theory, actually learned saxophone as a classical instrument, but also plays jazz. And I said to him, “I want you to teach me, fill it in for me. All the things that I don’t understand on music.” He says, “You don’t want to do that.” It was interesting. He says, “You don’t want to do that. I said, “Why not?” He says, “You’ll lose what you have.”

Rick: I agree.

Dave Kline: And which brings up another interesting story, which I don’t know if I’ve told this, but Yehudi Menuhin, he’s a British violinist, top of the league, top of the heap, was very famous back in the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties. And he actually did a couple of albums with Stéphane Grappelli.

Rick: Wow.

Dave Kline: Where they did duets. But Stéphane had to write out every word, every note that Yehudi played. And I heard an interview with Yehudi the way he was being asked about this, and he said the biggest regret he had as a musician was that he could not improvise. He simply couldn’t do it.

And that’s what classical music, classical musicians, there’s maybe one in 500 or a thousand that can improvise because you are taught to not play anything unless you see it written on the page. It’s a very stultifying method of teaching. And luckily, because I was so undisciplined as a kid, I didn’t have that problem. And so I never ran into that barrier. And my friend was saying, you’ll lose your spontaneity as a musician.

Rick: And I think some musicians that are terrific musicians don’t know how to read music. And John Martyn, who was one of my favorite guitar players, and I think he was absolutely brilliant, was asked in an interview  if he read music and if knew the circle of fifths and all that. He said, I don’t want to know that stuff. But, he was absolutely brilliant.  I think working outside  the lines is what some do, because they don’t know any better. You don’t…

Dave Kline: Know any better. That’s right. It works.

Rick: But it works.

Dave Kline: But it works, exactly.Yeah. I mean, Béla Fleck doesn’t know how to read music.

Rick: And friends are saying, I wasn’t expecting you to go there, but it works. And so I think there’s a certain creativity that you feel, when you’re not bound by that structure or that paradigm.

Dave Kline

Dave Kline: And I heard, and I’m not sure if this is true or not, that Segovia didn’t know how to read music.

Rick: I think that’s true. I think I read that recently. I was reading last night about  violins, and how those made by Stradivarius are the Holy Grail. Have you ever played anything like a Stradivarius?

Dave Kline: I have not. And, in fact, there was a point where I almost was able to borrow a Stradivarius for an album, but it didn’t work out, unfortunately. And we have a friend that has access to one, but somehow we just never hooked up.

And that’s a good reminder. I need to do that. ‘Cause I really want to get to play that. And I know they also have some, I believe, at the Library of Congress. Yeah. One of these days I’m going to try to get myself in to play one of those.

Rick: Get in there and grab one.

Dave Kline: Yeah, I remember when I was a kid, about 12, 13 years old, my violin teacher sold it to another student, a Stradivarius violin for the grand sum of 1000 pounds Sterling.

Rick: A lot of money back then.

Dave Kline: But oh my God, now you can’t get one for less than three million,

Rick: I would think it’s like the old ’58, ’59 Les Pauls that were 200 bucks back in the Seventies, they were just old used guitars, and now they’re like half a million bucks. They’ve gone up and down a little bit. They’re right around half a million bucks, plus. So what are you playing now?

Dave Kline: I’ve got a couple of violins. The main instrument that I have was actually made by a local maker, McCluskey. And I like it. I think it’s a decent violin. It’s not high level, but I didn’t pay a high level price for it. But the prices on violins are insane. I also have another violin, which is an 1890 Bailly violin, which is a well-known French maker. And that’s a higher level violin. Nowhere up there near a Strad, but it’s a nice violin.

Rick:  And so how many do you have?

Dave Kline: Well, okay, I’ve got those two violins. I’ve got two electrics. I’ve got another couple of acoustic violins, cheap ones, old ones, or one that I had since the Seventies, late Seventies. But, I grew accustomed to it. I can make it sound good, but I wouldn’t say it’s any great shakes as a violin.

Rick: What do you look for when you’re buying a violin? Or has it been a while since you bought any?

Dave Kline: Yeah, just the sound really. I really don’t know enough to really make a very educated decision on ’em. But the one I got to buy, I wasn’t really interested in the fact that it was a well-known maker. I just wanted the sound, but the value of that violin has increased considerably since I bought it, which is just a perk.

Rick: You’ve played with a lot of groups, and I know you played with Chick Corea and Dwight Yoakam, but what about the Dave Kline Band? Tell me about the group, how it got pulled together, and a little bit about the members and what they bring, not just the instrumentation they bring, but what they bring as far as personality traits that really help you congeal, as a group.

Dave Kline: Alright, so the first instrument that I wrote music on was actually guitar. And I did quite a bit of guitar writing of one kind or another, and actually recorded an album on cassette, believe it or not, in about 1989. And that was all guitar music.

And then I had a collaboration that I created an album with a guy in about 1995, mostly his stuff, but some of it I wrote. And that was my first writing of music in my current style. And then in around 2000, I started writing prolifically and decided to do an album.

In fact, I did the album at BIAS Recording Studios (Springfield, Virginia). Bob Dawson was the engineer. And since then, I’ve had various iterations of musicians that I play with, but I’m really, really happy with the current band. Are you going to have a chance to come and see any of the shows at Blues Alley this month?

Rick: I’m going to try. I did see you when you got your most recent bass player. That was his first night I think he played with you. He was brilliant.

Dave Kline: Brilliant. C.J. Turman. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. If you get a chance, and I’m happy to put you on the guest list, Rick, for this coming Tuesday, if you can make it. We’ll have Buddy Spier. Do you know Buddy?

Rick: I know the name, but I don’t know him offhand.

Dave Kline: Buddy Spier owns a studio called, I think three-nineteen something. It’s right in the same complex that Q Recording is in Falls Church (Virginia). He’s a producer and he splits his time between here and Nashville, and he does a lot of recording sessions.

He is a phenomenal guitarist, and he and I are just a really, really in sync. So we play off one another, and it’s a real juggernaut that gets created. I’d been wanting to play with Buddy for ages, and I finally roped him into a gig with me, which he loved, down at that barbecue joint in Northeast, D.C..

Anyway, I played there with him, and one lady in the audience just came rushing up towards the stage and she was like, just freaking out, like having a religious experience. It really was that kind of, just out there. So the band, this coming Tuesday is going to be Buddy,T.J. on bass, Olaolu Ajibade on drums, who you saw playing also. And then there’s a keyboard player named Dan Paul, who used to be in this area. And I played with him a few times.

He moved up to New Jersey, but he’s coming down for a couple of these gigs with me. He’s great. I love him. He’s excellent, excellent keyboard player. So, we’re going to do a lot of originals, some stuff that we’ve rarely played because it’s on the more difficult end of things, and some brand new material. So, really thrilled with what’s going to happen there.

Last week I played with D.D. Jackson, who’s a New York Emmy winning composer and keyboard player. And David Murray, who was founder, co-founder of the World Saxophone Quartet. And so we played a gig, some of D.D.’s material and a bunch of mine, and we had a two minute standing ovation. It was just amazing. Incredible. Completely blew the place apart. Yeah, that’s true.

Many people saying, “That was my all time favorite gig ever.” That best show ever that they’ve been to. Yeah. Cool. So really, really happy. And a lot of what made that gig is the rhythm section of Olaolu and T.J., and Buddy was basically playing a rhythm guitar on that gig. So, that rhythm section was just amazing. And it allowed me and D.D. and David Murray just to wail. So now we’re going to do all of my material and seldom heard or never heard material of mine this coming Tuesday.

Ken Avis, Lynn Veronneau and Dave Kline

Rick: Blues Alley. Right?

Dave Kline: Blues Alley. And I also have Lynn Veronneau and Ken Avis. My band generally includes Ken, who is also excellent on guitar and vocals, Lynn on vocals, Olaolu, and T.J. or another bass player, essentially and myself. But for these gigs, Ken and Lynn are going to be special guests for it on top of those guys. So it’s going to be amazing. And then the 21st, I’m doing a violin summit with Zach Brock from Snarky Puppy.

Rick: I’ve heard the name. That’s about it. I’ll look ’em up.

Dave Kline: Yeah, check him out. They’re really a great funk, jazz band, and they sell out the Anthem. It’s a 5,000 seat venue, very, very, very popular. So excited to do the violin summit with Zach. And then later, we are going to team up with Senator Tim Kaine on harmonica and vocals.

Rick: Yeah, I’ve seen him.

Dave Kline: And we’re going to do a Western swing, Eastern jazz night. So we’re going to do a whole bunch of Western swing tunes, which Ken’s going to sing a bunch of ’em. Tim’s going to sing some. Lynn will sing some stuff. And we’ve got Susan Alcorn. I don’t know if you know her. She’s an out there pedal steel player, but she used to play with Asleep At The Wheel.

So she’s done a lot of Western swing, so that should be a really fun gig too. So I’m just really thrilled with where it’s going. Pretty much sold it out last week. I think the last show is going to be sold out for sure. It’s going to be less filled for the other two shows. And Harry Schnipper at Blues Alley is really pushing me a lot of power. He loves what I do, and he’s really trying to help me move forward and hook up with different collaborators and get a name.

It’s a tough business. It is. You’ve got to keep banging your head against that wall, man, and don’t stop. You can’t say it hurts. You just have to keep banging the head and you bust through the wall. So, that’s the name of the game.

Rick: Yeah, there’s some serendipity to it. And even though it’s collaborative, it’s also kind of a competitive arena too.

Dave Kline: Look. The Beatles played for three years in dives in Hamburg, Germany, playing cover tunes, nothing, and the Bee Gees were together for 15 years before they made any kind of impact.

Rick: Yeah, they were little kids.

Dave Kline: I saw a documentary on Stevie Ray (Vaughan). He was playing dives in Austin, Texas, an audience of 60 people, just spinning wheels. And finally, somebody walked in there who had a connection to the Monterey Jazz Festival.

Rick: I thought he played with David Bowie at Montreux Jazz Festival…

Dave Kline: Maybe he was playing there and he got him to sit in with him. I don’t know. But, that was what broke things open for him. You’ve got to be playing the right music at the right time and have the right guy see you, and you got that combination. Then it happens. I’ve had some of these sorts of connections happen from time to time, but they’re never the one to where they completely broke through. So it’s a little bit like when I used to do door to door sales, believe it or not.

Rick: Yeah. Do the next gig. Just do the next gig. Just keep doing them.

Dave Kline: And my motto is, “Every gig has to be better than the last”.

Rick: That’s a good one. Well, I saw you a couple of times at venues and actually in the studio, where you were terrific. I really want to thank you again.

Dave Kline: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a combination of things, you have to work on yourself. I’m not a good schmoozer particularly, but the more you can schmooze, the better you’re going to do. I’ve learned how to put on a show and talk to the audience and I’m very relaxed and comfortable doing that now. But you need to be able to do that off stage too, and schmooze with people that you need to schmooze with.

But I was always a tremendous introvert, tremendously introspective. And there’s an element to that that helps you as an artist, but at the same time, you have to be willing to push through that as an individual in order to make connections, in order to recognize it is a business. You do have to sell.

Rick:  I guess there’s a fine line between bragging and marketing, but part of it is one of the same.

Dave Kline: Yeah, and to be frank with you about areas that I’m lacking in. But at the same time, those somehow are sort of a strength, as well. And I know what my strengths are, and it’s like when I write music, I don’t sit down trying to write something that’s different. I just write. But I bring together all the different influences that I have and my own imagination, my own creativity, and I just write, and it comes out with my own unique voice.

Rick: You can say it’s your own signature,

Dave Kline: And that’s one of the things that you have to have as an artist, f you’re going to get somewhere. You certainly have to have your own voice and not try to sound like anyone else. Now, there’s nothing wrong with learning other people’s stuff. Now, I always resisted that. I never wanted to play anybody else’s stuff, really.

Rick: Just to sing along.

Dave Kline: Yes, sing along. I mean, I always say the audience is the most important part of the show because not only are they there, and if they’re not there, if a tree falls in the forest, no one’s there. Right? Yeah. But it’s also if an audience is sitting there and they’re listening too and they’re getting your music, they are creating your music with you.

Rick: That’s true.

Dave Kline: They are themselves creating at that point in time. And I always like to remind the audience of that, because they don’t necessarily think of themselves as musicians, but actually they are. If they’re in an audience and they’re being at a show with musicians, they are being musicians in their own way. They’re being creators in their own way.

And to me, that’s what it’s about. Because there’s so much about this world which creates things for you or forces you into being created by something else. Life’s running you. And if you can inspire people to start running more of their own life by just enhancing their creativity or their own imagination, then you make a better world. And that’s where it’s at for me.

Rick: Good. You’ve played a lot of different venues, but you also play on the street and you busk, and I’ve seen at least one video of you busking, and you’re having a great time. And so tell me about some of your favorite venues, and then what do you get when you’re out there and you’ve got passersby coming, listening, some of them ignoring you, others stopping and being wowed by you?

Dave Kline: Yeah. Well, I’ve done several of those types of gigs recently. They have, actually, none of ’em have been strictly busking, not putting the mug out there for the money type thing. They’ve all been paid in one way or another, but they’ve been that type of a gig.

We just did a gig in Georgetown. They had some three stores open on the street, so the local people put on a little show, and they hired Veronneau. And I was playing with them to perform that thing you probably saw with me and Ken Avis, which looked like busking on the street, but was actually a paid gig, but we were doing it right on the street.

And yeah, it’s great because people will just walk by and they get it, and you are giving ’em something they don’t normally get, and it actually changes their life. It makes ’em think about things. It makes ’em look at things. It makes ’em stop for a second and not just continue on with the mundane, but go beyond that. And I love that. So I love doing those types of venues.

Rick: So, more that they’re listening rooms, rather than a loud bar.

Dave Kline:  If I know that it’s going to be a bar situation or a background music situation, most of the time I will refuse to do it. I will not take the gig, because to me, what’s the point? You might as well put your jukebox on.

Rick: I was going to say, you might as well be a jukebox, especially straight cover songs. You’re better off with a jukebox. It’s actually probably cheaper for the venue. Like you say, even if it’s a cover, you can change covers enough so people can figure out it’s a cover, but it’s got a different angle or various angles come into it.

Dave Kline: Yeah, that’s right.

Rick: Do you have any albums coming out, or do you have one recently that you can you talk about how that came together?

Dave Kline: Well, the last album, Shifting Borders, was 2017, which by the way, went to the top of the Roots music charts. Both the fusion and the jazz charts, and stayed there for 16 weeks. So, I was really happy about that.

But I keep threatening to bring out another album. I’ve recorded several things at Blues Alley gigs, but there’s always, and I’ve worked at them, to mix ’em, but it is very difficult to mix live music because you get so much bleed on the tracks. I’m hoping that this last gig was recorded, which if that comes out good, that will be a fantastic album with D.D. Jackson and David Murray on it.

Rick: So when you’re on stage, what are some of the key elements that for you, makes a gig exciting? And I don’t mean exciting like rah rah, but maybe internally. It’s so satisfying. Those elements come together and it’s almost like a perfect gig.

Dave Kline: It’s funny. As I said, I tend to be quite introverted in many ways, but when I’m on stage, a really great gig starts with me being completely extroverted. And most of the time I am, and I start out with the attitude of just, I’m just going to, I almost have the attitude of a prize fighter, and I’m going to knock the audience out, and by the impact of the music.

What I found is if you can do that with the first tune, that from there on out, the audience is with you. They’re no longer spectators, but they’re involved. And it’s that interaction between the audience and the band. And if the band is doing the same within the band, if you have that connection within the band where the players are at a level musically and energy wise, where they’re playing off of one another, then that creates a juggernaut. So you get this juggernaut going inside the band, and then you get a juggernaut going between the band and the audience. And if you get that happening and the music’s good, you have a complete blowout gig.

Rick:  I’m sure you’ve had a lot of wonderful experiences while you’ve been on stage performing. Is there a gig that you’ve played recently that always brings a smile to you? Or maybe one, maybe years ago, but you did talk about working with Spiers in that last gig, and it sounds like that was one of ’em. Are there?

Dave Kline: That was like, “Oh my God, this is where it’s at.!” Because he and I, we were actually playing a blues tune, and it was just, the synergy was just amazing. And when you get that happening, it’s like Gestalt theory. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And that’s what happens.

That’s what happened there. It was like boom, the music took on a life of its own. And I guess that in a way, not meaning to sound arrogant at all here, but what you’re doing, what are you doing when you create music, really, you’re creating life, aren’t you? And that’s what’s satisfying,

I think, because you are creating life in a way; that’s right here, right now. It’s never been created quite like that before and will never be created quite like that again. And if you get that synergy and that explosion happening inside the band and with the audience, everybody in that room is creating life at the same time.

Dave Kline

Rick:  So are those the moments when you get that synergy in the audience, how would you value that compared to when you’re sitting there and you come up with some lyrics and you go, “Whoa, where’d that come from? It’s perfect.”

Dave Kline: Well, that’s a good point. They’re two completely different experiences. One is the composition, the joy of composition, and the other is the joy of performance. And they are two different things. Because what happens with me is generally the stuff that I write almost writes itself.

And I don’t spend a lot of time, I’m notorious behind a console, I will tweak forever, but when I’m writing, I write the piece, it’s done. And I might rearrange it if I come up with a better idea on arrangement, later for live performance, but the actual piece is done, and I’ll write a piece in half hour. And that’s the way it is. It’ll be like that from then on.

Rick: Are you writing songs with lyrics, or are you doing mostly instrumental?

Dave Kline: I do write songs with lyrics. I’m a bit closed mouth on that.

Rick: I’ve got to hear some of them. Well, that’s what I’ve got, is there anything we’ve missed?

Dave Kline: That was a really thorough, I didn’t know I had all that in me. Thank you.