Les Jansson, Musician (Steve Augieri)

One scoop of vanilla ice cream after dinner sounds harmless until it turns into a band tradition, and it’s the perfect opener for a conversation that quickly gets real about what a working musician’s life actually looks like. We’re joined by Les Janssen, a New York bassist with deep roots in rock, a love for great feel, and the kind of touring experience that forces you to think about everything from stage sound to airport baggage claims.

We talk about playing at Daryl’s House and why consistent production changes the entire night for both musicians and the crowd. From there, Les walks us through his early start on bass, the influence of growing up in a musical family, and how the discipline of learning technical music (hello, Rush) can be a gift and a challenge when you’re trying to get back to pure rock and roll groove. He also shares advice he gives younger players: don’t become a pattern player, learn the basics, and stay open-minded so you don’t trap yourself in one lane.

Then we dig into gear and career realities: the Michael Kelly bass he helped design for real-world fly dates, the small design choices that make an instrument feel “high-end,” and what the NAMM show is like when you’re working a booth, meeting other pros, and still squeezing in performances. Les also connects the dots between Journey tribute worlds like The Voyage and playing with Steve Augieri, plus the travel stories that come with it including a private jet sprint stuffed with gear.

We wrap with studio life, from tape-era lessons and apprenticeship habits to modern home recording with Universal Audio Apollo interfaces, Cubase, and remote session work. If you’re a bass player, producer, or just curious about the behind-the-scenes of touring and recording, this one is packed with practical takeaways. Subscribe, share this with a musician friend, and leave a review with your favorite road or studio lesson.

Episode Links

• Les Jansson: https://www.lesjansson.com/

Transcript

Welcome And The Ice Cream Ritual

Jay Franze 0:39

And if you would like to join in, comment, or fire off any questions, please head over to jFrenzy.com. All right, my friends, tonight we have a very special guest with us. I said it once, I will say it again. We have a very special guest with us. We have a renowned musician hailing from the great state of New York. We have Les Janssen. Les my friend, thank you for joining us. Glad to be here. It is a pleasure to have you here tonight, sir. I want to jump in. There's a lot of things I want to talk to you about, but first and foremost, I need to know how did ice cream after dinner become a tradition?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Oh.

Playing Daryl’s House And Sound

SPEAKER_00 1:18

It just came that way. How'd you find out about that? Yeah, me and uh I'm involved with Michael Kelly guitars, and he had the guy who runs Michael Kelly guitars basically starts it, and where every time we go to Nam or a dinner or whatever, it's always like order that one scoop of ice cream at the end. Meanwhile, everybody's eating it, and the person him who actually started it has this one little half scoop and done. We're looking at him like okay. There's just a tradition thing. You know, we go to Nam and that one little scoop of ice cream at the end, and that's it. Nice.

Jay Franze 1:50

Any particular flavor?

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Oh, vanilla.

Jay Franze 1:53

All right. What was it like playing at Daryl's house?

SPEAKER_00 1:56

It was interesting. He wasn't there, but the production is amazing. Amazing. You know, we go to places and you know we cross our fingers if it's gonna sound good or not. The guy who runs it, you know, the board and everything, he's actually Daryl Hall's sound guy. So whatever he's doing is good. Piece of cake, you know, nice place. If anybody, you know, live by there, go check out his show. I know I'll be back there soon. It's it's a great place. Anywhere you sit in the place, it sounds good.

Jay Franze 2:27

Well, I'm assuming because it's his place and he put a lot of time and effort into it, that they probably dialed it in and not much changes from night to night as far as production goes.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Oh, yeah, without a doubt. Like I said, no matter where you sit in that place, you could be against the wall or corner. They gotta figure it out.

Jay Franze 2:47

I used to love watching that show. I don't know, I don't know if he still does any of it, but I haven't seen it in a long time.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Sometimes they do like a little YouTube blur, but the show on I guess it's Access, I think it is, hasn't had a new episode in a while.

Jay Franze 3:02

So let's talk about you, sir.

Childhood Beginnings And Musical Roots

Jay Franze 3:05

You are a bass player. I would like to say I'm a bass player, but I am not a bass player. I'm somebody who owns a bass and knows what to do with it, but I just can't get my fingers to do it. So how long have you been playing bass?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Oh, geez. I've basically almost been playing since I'm a toddler. Uh well, not that long, not that young. Probably like eight years old. I was lucky enough to grow in kind of a music household. My dad had some success back in the 60s, early 70s with uh a band called New York City Boys and then uh the Emeralds. They're all like back when it was like everybody sang, it was more vocal-oriented and stuff. And you know, he had the same thing where one of the bands, I forget which one it was, it almost got to the table, signed, and at the end something happened. But anyway, so my dad was a musician, uh, he was a bass player and a guitar player. But funny story about that is uh Chuck Berry, he didn't have a band. He used to go into towns and uh call off the uh local musicians. So uh my father, when he lived with his parents at the time, Chuck called the house looking for him. He says, Yo, the same name as me. Yo, Lester, are you available? You got a drummer. So my father got a his friend drum, and they would play every time with him when he came into the tri-state area.

Jay Franze 4:35

That's gonna be pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

So, leading off of that, you know, they used to have band practice in the living room. I used to come home from school. It was there was a little Hoffner bass, and uh, I used to go play the strings, and my first song I ever learned was Living in the City by Stevie Wonder because it was the top string, an e-string. I used to hit it, and that got me hooked.

Jay Franze 4:58

A Hoffner bass, remember what model it was?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Oh, it was it was the Beatle bass.

Jay Franze 5:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah, I still got it. Do you really? 19 what I think it was the 1964 version of it. Yeah, you can't play it anymore. It's too delicate.

Jay Franze 5:14

That's gonna be pretty cool. I mean, I know you're sitting in a studio right now with about 15 of them beside you. So I also know you're endorsed, but what model's your favorite at this point?

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Oh, well, right now, the company that I'm with, Michael Kelly, the bass that I designed with them, is a accumulation of like all the basses I played over the years. I like to cater to the musicians, especially bass players. We cater the guitar players too. We're we're equal opportunists, but on my Anthony bass player, I like to lean towards bass playing. I do a lot of fly out gigs, and I've I've used to fly out with basses that are worth thousands and thousands of dollars. And I fear when I go to oversized picking up my luggage that it's gonna be in pieces.

Building A Practical Five-String Bass

SPEAKER_00 6:05

So, base I got, it's a a good price point. I took all the characteristics, all the points from all the bases that I like, and I put it all in one.

Jay Franze 6:16

Well, let's talk about some of the characteristics.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Uh basically, oh, this is it over here.

Jay Franze 6:24

It's beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Looks is one thing, but the net feels great. The the bridge has ultimate control, the pickups, you can configure them any way you want. They got two coils per pickup. So you can do like split them one and one or two and one. You can do all this other configuration.

Jay Franze 6:44

Are they bartellinis?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

They look like bartellinis, but they're not. They're too expensive for us to put in here because they do whatever. But overseas, we got our our own our own pickups that we we use just for ourselves. And the action is great. But the biggest thing, when you go to like these, you go to the if you ever went to NAM or anybody goes into the music stores, you go to the bass guitars, and there's always a big space over here. That's not how the high-end bases go. You'll never see a high-end bass. It's a very inexpensive way to make it. So I basically have this sunk into the pocket with an angle. Now, when you do the angle, brings the strings closer to the body, and you're not just fluttering under and getting lost. Feels a lot better. So it's just it's just those little stupid things that don't cost extra money. It's just extra design points that make it play and sound better.

Jay Franze 7:40

Nice. Um, what kind of fretboard is it?

SPEAKER_00 7:43

An ebony type. We can't use ebony anymore, but it's it's an ebony type.

Jay Franze 7:50

So same feel, same texture.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Same feel. It's actually it's got I can't see now, but these are these are these are glow dots. I can't tell you how much that that helps. We're on stage, lights go out, and now the drum is counting in the next song. I'm like, where's my hand?

Jay Franze 8:13

I can imagine, right? What kind of strings do you play?

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Uh right now I'm doing uh DRs. DRs, 125 on the B and 45 on the G. Alright. Yeah.

Jay Franze 8:26

And you are known for uh playing five string. Is that traditionally what you play?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Basically, yeah. I didn't start on five string, but No, you started on one. Yeah, started on one in each string. Yeah, I mean, just one day. Um, I mean, I grew up in the household with Led Zeppelin and Cream, and I did that whole 70s thing and listening to my father's band and listening to the radio. But ultimately, when I hit 13 is when I actually um started joining with friends. The funny story, one of my first drummers I had was Stephen Baldwin. Because I grew up in Massapequa, and that's where the Baldwins are from. Right. And he actually was in the band for like two rehearsals. It was funny. But anyway, back then grew up, everybody was playing KISS, it was the easiest thing to learn. And then after we we got out of the KISS phase, we were doing Rush. And let me tell you something. Rush was like the perfect music to s to go to school with. The only negative point is for me, I know this when I got done doing all the rush stuff and did the rush tribute band and all that other stuff, it was time to get back into rock and roll. Went back into rock and roll. I had to do a whole other shift changeover to get that feel again. And there's nothing wrong with you know the rush thing. It's great. But with me, I had to get I had to retrain myself school-wise. But let me tell you something, it's good that I had those tools. The tools from Rush, the tools from the 70s rock, and the tools from the new rock, put them all together. That's what got me going.

Jay Franze 10:04

I mean, I know it's probably a combination of all, but do you have any preference on what you like to play?

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Uh I'll play anything. I just nothing, nothing incredibly heavy. Nothing too heavy.

Jay Franze 10:20

So I I didn't know if you like enjoyed the combining those styles or if you preferred playing one over the other.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Kind of like combining, but I I do feel growing up on the basics and then getting the technical from the rush and then uh putting it all together for the music after that was like I think a perfect storm.

Jay Franze 10:45

Now my favorite band growing up was the band Journey, and I know you have a lot of connections to Journey music. So I have a little. But you have the connections, and Journey music was always commercial music, you know, your basic pop rock music, but it was much more technical than that as far as the players go. The players were extremely talented musicians. Oh yeah. So do you feel like playing in those scenarios combines that basic rock and that rush stuff that we were just talking about?

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Jay Franze 11:25

So do you feel like that is what makes that such a good fit for you?

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Oh yeah, without a doubt. I mean, I'm I'm I'm not sorry. I'm very glad that I had the opportunity to experience all those different genres.

Jay Franze 11:40

Yeah, I think it's it's led you to where you are. And I think it's what's given you the ability to play like you do and to play the the type of music you play now.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Oh, yeah. I mean, I've I didn't really give lessons when I was younger because I was just too busy outperforming, but I used to give tips and hints to uh the kids coming up, especially that there's now school of rock. Uh I run into those kids all the time and they they ask me questions,

Rush Discipline And Journey Feel

SPEAKER_00 12:05

and I always tell them the biggest things, and this is what was taught to me. I went to Five Towns College, which is a music college over here, something like Berkeley, and uh I had a renowned uh teacher which is called Joe Carbone. If people out there hear the name, he's famous. Anyway, he taught me do not become a pattern player. You become a pattern player, it's a curse. You just learn the basics, learn the feel, learn how to play music. Don't learn how to play a pattern. But I basically tell the kids be open-minded and don't have tunnel vision on your music. Because then you'll get caught in a rut. And then you're in that music rut.

Jay Franze 12:50

So do you have any examples of when you may have applied that lesson?

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Oh, geez. That's a hard one. Um I don't know. There's so many instances.

Jay Franze 13:07

Well, is there any band that forces you to play outside of the box?

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Uh oh, there were so many bands. I'll tell you one band that that was very interesting. I did some shows with uh oh uh Randy Jackson from Zebra. And um, he contacted me. He was he wasn't doing zebra shows, he was doing the Randy Jackson band, and he wanted a bass player for it. So it's all right, no problem. And he gives me these songs to learn, and we did a couple of the classics, but then he was doing stuff purposely that Zebra doesn't do. They were great songs, I mean, beautiful songs, but they were a little out of my wheelhouse at the time, and I was loving it. I'm like, this is great. Uh, I'm gonna take my skills, learn the songs, and done. And sure enough, I'm I had actually I had to go to NAM, so I brought a bass with me, and at night at NAM, I was going over all the songs because uh I only had like like 10 days to get the stuff down, and I still had to work at NAM at the booth and do all my appearances there.

Jay Franze 14:20

You mentioned NAM a couple times. I don't think people understand just how big NAM is and what's involved in it. You say you were working a booth, and that's because you're sponsored by Michael Kelly. Yeah, and you go there to represent their product.

SPEAKER_03 14:35

Correct.

Jay Franze 14:36

So when you're there, do you actually do full performances in the booth, or are you just signing and talking?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Uh a little of both. Signing and talking, and then we'll get a guitar and bass and we'll plug it in and we'll start playing and jamming. And then um at night, there's performances all over the place. The last one I just performed with Randy Jackson, the drummer from Zebra, and a couple other cats. Um, they have the ultimate jam that everybody gets together, famous people. So I forget what the theme of the night was, but we had uh we did one Zeppelin song. We did Cashmere.

Jay Franze 15:15

Oh, nice song. It was a fun song. Yeah. You being a bass player, do you s find that other bass players gravitate towards your booth and want to see what you've got going on? Like, for example, Victor Wooten.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Yeah, he does. He does. Michael Kelly is under what's called the umbrella corporation of Samson, which used to be it's Sam Ash, but Sam Ash is not around anymore. Samson is Michael Kelly, Harkey, and Samson Electronics. So at our booth, we have Harkey. So he's always coming over, hanging out because he's he's a Harkey endorse. But the bases that we've we've given him some of the bases, he likes them, but he's um he's an endorse of um another company.

Jay Franze 16:03

I'm just curious, like when you guys get together, that if you're swapping war stories or that type of thing.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes, yeah. It depends on depends on how many drinks sometimes people have.

Jay Franze 16:17

Nice. It's all a good party. Of course. And, you know, I mean, those are great guys. All those players that come in and out of the NAM show are always great people. I always love seeing them. All right. We mentioned briefly that you have connection to journey music and you play in a band called The Voyage. Can you tell me how that came about?

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Well, I have been playing a lot with them. I'm actually technically the sub. Greg Smith is the main bass player. Right now, I'm concentrating more of my time over with Steve Augieri. Again, another connection to Journey.

Jay Franze 16:53

Right, who was actually in the band. Right. He was in the band. He was one of the replacements after Steve Perry. Right. So, how did that connection come about?

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Really, to describe the whole connection from the beginning is there was a tribute band called Evolution that I was in, which was with Hugo Valente, Adam Holland, which is in the Steve Augier band, another guy, Mike Morales, and Lance Millard, and Lance Millard's the keyboard player who's in Voyage. So I feel Evolution was like the super group at the time. We we sounded great. We started out when there was really the tribute field wasn't that well. So Evolution started, we played out, and every couple of months the pay keeps getting more, and the gig kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger until finally we played. Well, we were doing the Versace mansion. Google hired us, and it was ridiculous. Um, and then one day there was um an offer to play some concert out in Rutherford, New Jersey at the MetLife in front of like 50,000 people. And we wound up doing it. It was supposed to be a surprise. We we played in between um not important, but they were big bands. There were so many of them. So we were playing in in between those big bands. I mean what we're we're a trivia band at the time, and sure enough, there's like 50,000 people there waiting. We go out there, and then we um I mean this is this is okay to tell the story now because it's just so funny. We go out there, and the first song we open up with is I think separate ways, and 50,000 people start like crashing the stage and they they think it's journey. As we're going home, I'm looking at my my phone, and then at the time, I think it was like

NAMM Booth Life And Music Friends

SPEAKER_00 18:40

2009, I had a trio. It wasn't really an iPhone at the time, I don't think. And uh Rolling Stone magazine basically says uh Journey reunites. Like, oh boy, okay.

Jay Franze 18:51

That is funny.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

That would that that was interesting. You know, the band got to its point that it got. Eventually, things things split off and whatever. But uh Voyage was formed at the time. Hugo was in it and many different players, and there was evolution again. There was a whole mishmash. I eventually wound up subbing in uh Voyage for a lot of dates because Gray Smith is a very active bass player. He he keeps very active in the field. And as far as uh Steve Augieri back in like 2017, the bass player in that band, I know very well. He was off doing some stuff, so I started like subbing for him, and then eventually uh Steve just brought me in the band full time, and uh that's basically where that's going to.

Jay Franze 19:42

When you play with Steve, what music are you playing?

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Basically, all the journey stuff. He has some solo stuff. I'm thinking uh, you know, probably he'll wind up doing it with us again. We actually just started doing some of the songs off of Arrival, which was cool. Because I think he's been on, he was on three albums, I believe. And Arrival was the one we because I remember he sends out the set list, and I'm like, oh, new songs.

Jay Franze 20:11

So do you like it when there's a surprise like that, a new song come in?

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'd rather have it that way when it comes in because several times is like we're on our way to the gig, like, okay, we're gonna add this song. We never did it before. Okay, so you just go over it at sound check.

Jay Franze 20:28

Right. Playing with musicians of that level, you know, it's probably much easier for you guys to do something like that than it would be the average band. Plus also the connection with people, you know. So you talk about the connection and the the music. Do you feel like playing with Steve is different than playing with the other two?

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Um they all have their different styles. They do. Um, I played with I played with Pedro, who's in Voyage. Now I played with Hugo for years and with Steve, and they all have their different styles. None bad.

Jay Franze 21:10

Right, just different.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

They're just different.

Jay Franze 21:14

Any particular era of journey that you prefer over another?

SPEAKER_00 21:18

I don't know. I mean, I grew up on the 80s of that big Houston tour that they had.

Jay Franze 21:24

Yeah, that was what, 1993.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah, that was that was the big one. And then, you know, the stuff that uh I like um I like the stuff on arrival, and we do higher place, which is a great song, because I'm able to use the uh the low string on that one. Nice. Thunderous. Yeah.

Jay Franze 21:44

I remember that that was the what the first live concert on MTV, wasn't it? In 1983. Was oh yeah, yeah. Live in Houston.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

I didn't have a VHS and I asked my friend, you gotta record it. Right.

Jay Franze 21:56

I recorded it as well. I mean, Lord knows where that recorded. Is but I did record that. That was a great performance. Now it's on YouTube, you can find it easy. Right. Yeah. And um I grew up in the 80s. So that that was the time

Evolution To Voyage And Steve Augeri

Jay Franze 22:10

frame of Journey. I like the escape album Frontiers. But now that I look back at it, I like the the 70s stuff probably equally as much, if not more. The Greg Raleigh days. Yeah, Greg Raleigh was awesome.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Yeah. My my first journey song that I learned was well before Steve Perry. It was on the first record called Topaz.

SPEAKER_03 22:35

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

And that record was basically almost like a fusion Santana style.

Jay Franze 22:42

Right. It's when they were in more of a jam band than they were a commercial rock band.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Right, yeah. I learned Topaz and I was like, wow, this is great. And then eventually, you know, when years went on and they started doing more commercial stuff, you know, just latched onto it.

Jay Franze 22:56

Oh yeah, no, I love it. Now you've played with others as well. You've played with an Elton John tribute.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Yeah, the um the keyboard player in Voyage, who uh we played in Evolution together, he does the Elton John guy. You do Elton John Tribute. In fact, we got a show this this Wednesday coming up. Yeah, when we're not traveling, we fit these shows and do Elton John Tribute. I do um I got this other woman we do um Joan Jett Tribute. Yeah, yeah. Um, because there's an original artist that I deal with sometimes, play with uh T C Cross. She has a couple of records out there, she had some you know success, and we're still doing it with her. So I told her, she's like, Oh, I want to do a tribute thing. Well, yeah, do the Joan Jett. She's like Joan Jett clone.

Jay Franze 23:47

It sounds awesome, too. That's who you were at Daryl's house with. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Actually, I was at Daryl's house with the Joan Jett tribute and just recently with the Elton John tribute.

Jay Franze 24:00

Oh, pretty cool. Now you say, you know, when you're not on the road, you're you're able to play these gigs. So what's the road life like these days, and how often are you out?

SPEAKER_00 24:12

It it's it's spotty. Um I know right now, a couple times a month, we do the fly out stuff, and there's a lot of private stuff coming up. Just came back from Minnesota, did the midsummer concert out there. So, like three weeks, I got a bunch of local stuff. And then August, we have some privates with Steve Argiri. What's cool is the next private we're doing, we're gonna be playing with Lou Graham and Justin Payne. That's gonna be a cool show.

Jay Franze 24:43

That would be a cool show.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Yeah, that's a cool show, yeah. But down in Maryland, that's a I think I think we're driving to that one, so I don't have to fly.

Jay Franze 24:52

Speaking of flying, what what's it like taking a private jet?

SPEAKER_00 24:56

I actually took a private jet one time. I could tell the story on that. I did uh when I was um with voyage for a gig uh what was it? I think it was like last year, we had to do three shows in a row. And when you do three shows in a row, it it's it's tough getting from place to place. In fact, in that two-week period, I counted, I did eight flights in two weeks. But the story I'll tell you is the last week of us traveling, we did uh show number one of that week. We played it, we get to the hotel, it's get up at five o'clock in the morning, and you get up, you take the first flight out, and you're lucky to get to the one o'clock load-in and all the sound check stuff. So we do that two days in a row. The travel gods all have to be working together to make it work, and we got lucky. But for the third show, we had to go to Texas, and the problem was it was it was a travel problem. I didn't know the technical aspect of it, but the time that we were ending our show, the flights were done. We couldn't catch a flight in time because we we had the we had to get out that night or something like that. So we were either gonna do a bus, like one of those provost buses were gonna be waiting for us and drive us overnight, or we were gonna take one of those little uh, I forget what they call the planes, but they were like those the jet planes, the small jet. So, luckily enough, we get done. Uh, the provost was like eight hours out. We're like, oh, we're never gonna make it. And then luckily the plane was available, but we had to get there before a certain time because the airport closed, I think, at like 11-ish or something like that. So we're scurrying over to the airport. We get into the plane, and it was like this was crazy. We're like, like, this is like, where are we? So we get on this little plane, we could barely get all the gear in there. We had more gear than we needed. I I think I think the uh the pilot was nervous because we filled up the bathroom with more gear. So there was no use in the bathroom. We had the bathroom full of gear, the aisle's full of gear, everything. Oh, it was stuffed. I'm surprised the plane.

Jay Franze 27:16

Did you check the weight limit?

SPEAKER_00 27:18

We were over the weight limit. They they still got the plane up, and we went there and it was a 40-minute flight versus uh you know taking eight hours there. So we we made it. We made it. We would never have done commercial.

Jay Franze 27:36

Now, when you fly like that, do you feel like you never want to go back to commercial? Oh, absolutely. I know, right? I said that to I took a first class flight for a job one day, and I was like, man, I never want to go back to sitting coach again. I'm sitting up here with leg room, I could put a chair back, I get food. I like this.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Oh, yeah. I mean, I gotta I just heard that we're gonna be going to Chile to do some shows. And I was like, I just looked tonight on how long the flights were. It's like 12, 13 hours of flying. I was like, oh, I gotta get a good seat. All right.

Jay Franze 28:12

So do you like playing out of the country?

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was coming in and played Canada, Dominican Republic, you know, and Chile's coming up, you know, all that stuff. I haven't gone over the Europe. I mean, I've been to Europe for vacation, but I haven't played over there. I've had I've had opportunities to play over in some of the festivals over there with some of my friends. It just scheduling just never worked.

Jay Franze 28:37

Now, you're known for being a live musician. Do you do any studio work?

SPEAKER_00 28:42

I do. I have. I have had a few people ask me to put some lines down, and since I got to studio home, I can do remote. They can send me tracks, I can I can send it out to them.

Jay Franze 28:55

So, I mean, you said you occasionally play with the the girl from Joan Jet who does um original music as well. So when you're in the studio, are you recording original music?

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Yeah, we have we have some original music that we've been working on. I know before I joined her, she had like three albums. There is one that's online that we did called The Hangover. They had interest of it almost being used in the movie Hangover, but came close, but almost.

Jay Franze 29:26

That would be cool. So you go in the studio, do you you play the same bass, the same gear?

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Yeah, it it it it depends. I mean, maybe in the studio I'll bring out the bass that cost thousands of dollars just uh mess around with it. I got them, I gotta use them. Right.

Jay Franze 29:45

I had a base that was custom made that cost me about five grand, and I I didn't want to touch that one. It was an MTD, Michael Tobias.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Jay Franze 29:55

Yeah, I had he built an electric one for me and an acoustic one for me.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

I had a Tobias, I had a couple of them, but I had one that I bought from a guy who was getting divorced. He was crying, getting rid of it, and it was um it was serial number five five five. At the time, I didn't know how much it was worth. I think I gave him like three grand at the time or two grand, whatever. I played it for a while, it was a five string. Situations in life arise, and I had to sell some things, so that was one of them I sold, and now I look back and I was like, I want to find this base again. Where is it? I'm just you'll never be able to find this base like that again. Right. And that was a Tobias? Uh yeah, the the traditional Tobias that was made, you know, in the original factory because now they sold the Gibson and the new ones aren't the same and all this other stuff. Serial number 555. So if anybody knows 555 there, call me.

Jay Franze 30:58

So I went to his actual house in, you know, I was living in upstate New York at the time and I drove down to the Catskills. Yeah. I drove up to his house and or down to his house. And he sat there and watched me play for a little while and said, All right. And I said, Whatever you think is best. So I sat down, I played, and he made me two instruments that he thought were best. And they were the most beautiful looking instruments ever. I didn't even want to touch them. But like you said, I I got to a point in life and I I sold them and I would probably give anything to have them back.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Oh yeah. I mean, I I've met Mike a couple of times, hung out with him. He's he's a nice guy.

Jay Franze 31:37

Oh, super nice.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Sweetest guy.

Jay Franze 31:38

Yeah. And I play left-handed, so he had to build those left-handed for me.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Ah.

Jay Franze 31:44

Yeah. Anyways, I mean you're sitting in the studio, so what do you do with the studio you have at your at your place?

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Mostly rehearsals here right now. Everything we do in years. I just helped start this other tribute up, McVee and Miller time, which is Christy McVee and Steve Miller. So I just got done putting all the backing tracks and just tracked the whole show, which is a nightmare scenario to do, but thank goodness I know how to do it and I like the torture.

Fly Dates And A Private Jet Sprint

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Right. Hours and hours. Yeah, the studio, I mean, sometimes it sat here doing nothing, and I'm looking at it like I think I've had a studio since I was like 18. I started out with a uh Tascam cassette four-track and used to um, you know, play around with that. And I think 1992 or 91, I really got into it. My dad had a band. He started with all my friends. I don't know, they were sitting around a bar somewhere at his birthday, and they were joking, let's start a band. So we started a band called Tumble and Dice. Cool stuff. We wrote a couple originals. The point is, we wound up recording at a studio by us, and there was this producer called Brian McGee. Unless you're in the industry, you you wouldn't know him. But Brian McGee, he wound up engineering and producing for like Lita Ford, Patty Smythe. But before that, he wound up being the engineer on a couple of Rolling Stone records, uh, started off and stuff. So he has a street cred. So he was in the middle of uh not doing anything at the time. So he was available. So my dad ponied up some money and hired him for a week. Hired him for a week. Me and Brian, we hit it off really well. And I basically said to him, Listen, I want to learn. Teach me. So he had um this place that we're at, Cove Cove City, up in Long Island, North Shore. They bought this Niave studio from London. They had it brought in, and they had this little board that went across that you have to like uh it wasn't digital. So you have you had this little uh piece of paper, you have to write down all the settings. So that was my job. So even after we were done, he said, Listen, do you want to come? I'll teach you. You want to apprentice? You have to write down all the settings on the board. So I apprenticed under him for a little bit while he was available and in town. I learned a lot, and I took all those skills, and that's why I built my studio the way I built it.

Jay Franze 34:31

How often did you ever have to recall one of those sessions?

SPEAKER_00 34:35

Oh, a few times.

Jay Franze 34:38

Not a fun time, is it?

SPEAKER_00 34:40

I got I got a hand cramp every time I had to now today it's just you hit one button.

Jay Franze 34:47

I like needs for tracking music. I like SSLs for mixing music, but great preamps, just a great console, but there's a lot going on.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Oh, it's it's it's a great sounding console. We had um two 24-track studers, and what blew my mind for the first time, and you know, people out there listening, when you splice tape, you have to be a genius. This guy, something happened on one of the recordings, and he's like, wait a second, I'll fix it. He takes and splices the tape, and he's he's listening, splices it, puts it back together, and plays it. I couldn't hear anything different. It was fixed.

Jay Franze 35:27

Yep. It's amazing, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Working with tape machines is a beast because you know, you have to align them, you have to prep them. There's a lot of work that goes into making a tape machine work. You don't just walk in and press play. What do you have in your studio now?

SPEAKER_00 35:43

Um, I'm using uh Universal Audio Apollo's. I got I got two two units that I use. I mean, I haven't hit the threshold limit. I can I've been up to like as many as like 64 channels. So I haven't hit the threshold yet. During COVID, I got bored and I wound up uh mail ordering pieces for a computer. So I made a uh a monster powerful computer.

Jay Franze 36:09

So you built your own.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Yeah, I had time. I had time. I learned how to make a computer.

Jay Franze 36:15

Nice. What was the biggest challenge doing that? Putting the CPU in the board. Oh, so you you really built a computer.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

Oh, yeah, no, no. I got the motherboard, no CPU. I wound up getting like one of the fastest Intel chips, and I had to wear like the anti-static bracelet, so you don't hit it. Right, pop. That was the worst day putting the chip in that board.

Jay Franze 36:38

Did you run into any compatibility issues at all throughout that process?

SPEAKER_00 36:43

No, no. Luckily, I had a little bit of experience beforehand building stuff, but this was like a little above my pay grade, so I did a lot of investigation beforehand.

Jay Franze 36:54

Yeah, I've built

Studio Workflow From Tape To Cubase

Jay Franze 36:55

computers in the past, but never to that extent where I'm putting the processor in.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Yeah, I mean, I've bought in the past computers where they're called um phone stock, where they'll have the case, the motherboard, and the chip in there, and all you gotta do is just add some memory and a hard drive, whatever you want. That's how they used to sell them back in the day. But uh, I was like, no, no, I'm gonna make a monster. I want to build it once and that's it.

Jay Franze 37:23

And are you still using the same one?

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Yeah, still using the same one. It hasn't no slowdown or anything.

Jay Franze 37:30

Really? What's your DAW of choice? Uh cubase. Cubase. Okay. What is it you like about Cubase?

SPEAKER_00 37:38

I've been using it for a while and it integrates with a lot of the uh instruments, meaning the um, you know, the virtual instruments. I I like that a lot. When I record the drums, I have real drums, but I don't have real drums in my studio anymore. I have an electronic drum kit. So what I'll do is I'll record the electronic drums on one track, but on the MIDI track, I'm recording the MIDI. So when I go play back, I go into program Superior Drummer and I just track it all in there. But I don't do symbols electronic. I actually use real symbols when I record. So I got real symbols, and I can just pick and choose whatever drum I want on Superior Drummer.

Jay Franze 38:24

So you're playing real symbols at the same time as the electronic kit. Yeah. Very cool. So I work for a producer in Nashville named Bob Bullock, but he is big on Nuendo, which is you know, brother to Cubase. Right. So we go in the studio and recorded in Nashville at all the big studios and they'd all have Pro Tools. But we go back to his place and when it came time to mix, he would mix in Nuendo. For whatever reason, he preferred it.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Yeah, I mean, if if you threw me in front of Nuendo, it's not that much of a learning curve. I could do it. I forget the differences because I have had I have messed around with it, but uh I just know QBase so well now.

Jay Franze 39:08

Yeah, they're they're very similar. I mean they're all very similar at this point, but I grew up on Pro Tools, so I've just been a Pro Tools person ever since. But I've used all of them at one point or another. And I used to teach at the college in Nashville, and Cubase was one of the ones we would teach specifically for the MIDI.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Yeah, I almost I almost went the Pro Tools route because I started with Digigesign. They had something called the Session 8, which was uh a Pro Tools derivative. It's like the the the younger brother to Pro Tools. It only did eight tracks. That's it. Not expandable, not whatsoever. And then I looked over at Pro Tools and I was like, oh, I gotta buy the computer, and then every time I want a new track, I gotta buy another rack.

Jay Franze 39:52

You gotta buy more gear. You gotta buy specific hardware. Yep. Now you can pretty much use anything you want, but then Oh, yeah, the computer, that's it. You don't need anything else. All right, sir. Well, we do this thing here we call unsung heroes where we take a moment to shine the light on somebody who's worked behind the scenes or somebody who may have supported you along the way. Do you have anybody you'd like to shine a little light on?

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Oh. That's a hard one. There's so many people out there. I mean, it's just basically ever ever every everybody out there, you know. That's gonna be a difficult one. I don't think you'll get a name out of me. There's a lot of lot of I mean, basically all my close friends and stuff.

Jay Franze 40:35

Yeah. Any particular mentor you ever looked up to?

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Well, I know my dad was a big one. I think if it wasn't for him, I I probably wouldn't even be in the music.

Jay Franze 40:48

All right. Well, we have done it. We have reached the top of the hour, which does mean we have reached the end of the show. And if you've enjoyed the show, please tell a friend. And if you have not, well, tell too. You can reach out to both of us tonight over at jfranzi.com. We will keep this or any other conversation going. Sir, my friend, let's cannot thank you enough for being here tonight. We would like to leave the final words to you.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Um I don't know.

Jay Franze 41:14

Keep it going. Rock on. Rock on. Couldn't say it better myself. On that note, folks, have a good night.