As a harmonica player and pianist, I often find myself practicing. As a composer, I often jot down little ideas in music notebooks that sometimes become compositions. Sometimes I’m at an instrument, sometimes not. And then there is recording, rehearsing, booking tours, etc. When people ask me if I have any hobbies, I usually just laugh, because Music is my Life. I spend so much time playing, writing, and thinking about it.   HOWEVER, I do read the occasional book, and I find myself influenced pretty heavily by what I read. Sometimes I’ll even write music inspired by things I read. So I thought I’d just share with you a short list of things I’ve read recently or am reading now.  As I look at it, I realize that most of them are about music. Oh well…

“Body and Soul” by Frank Conroy is one of the greatest books of fiction that I’ve ever read about music and musicians. The more you know about classical music and Jazz, the better it is. If you play piano and have ever lived in Manhattan (‘yes’ on both counts), it’s indescribably great. As I read the book, I felt like I wanted to call up the author and just thank him for writing it. To my great sorrow, I found that he died a few years ago. What a writer…

“The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra. I first read this when it came out about 30 years ago. It was a huge influence on me then, and re-reading it now has had no less profound an effect on me. It links together many of the concepts found in Eastern religion and particle physics. It is brilliant and deep.

“When my Fiddle’s in the Case” by Johnny Frigo. John was a dear friend, a great Jazz violinist who departed this earth last year at the age of 90, leaving behind a rich legacy of recordings and this fabulous book of his poetry and art. If you can find this book anywhere, buy it. I never tire of reading his poems, which are in many styles and are about, well, just about everything.

“Strange Sects and Curious Cults” by  Marcus Bach. Written in 1961, this is a fascinating exploration of some mainstream and not-so-mainstream religious groups and societies from ancient times to today. I peruse it often, opening to random chapters to immerse myself in the lore of these belief systems, which include the Shakers, Penitentes, Doukhobors, Voodoo, Father Divine, et al.

“Bird Lives” by Ross Russell. The first chapter, which is an account of Charlie Parker playing “Cherokee” at an L.A. Jazz club in the late 1940’s, is an amazing verbal description of his performance and everything surrounding it. You’ll feel like you were there after reading those 25 pages. And the rest of the book is a treasure trove. The more you love Bird, the more this book will mean to you.

In 2006 I got the call to fly to NY and record on Donald Fagen’s new cd (first one in many years) “Morph The Cat”. After I walked into the studio and met Donald,  I asked him how he had heard of me. I figured it was The Flecktones, Kenny Loggins- something like that- but he told me that it was my playing on “A Prairie Home Companion” that made him call me. You never know…

I played on 2 tracks, “What I’d Do”, where I filled and soloed extensively, and “Mona”, where I played some fills and interacted with the textures. Afterwards we talked a lot about our mutual love of Jazz, especially John Coltrane, and discovered that both of us had gone many times to the Village Vanguard to hear the greats while in our teens, and that we both bought our Jazz records at the same shop on 8th St. in the Village. It was a great experience in every way.

He mentioned to me that he’d like to have me sit in with the band when they played Chicago, after the cd came out. I almost forgot about that until I got a call from his mgmt, telling me that Donald was coming to Chicago and wanted me to sit in. I checked the date, and the problem was that Chévere (www.cheveredechicago.com) was playing that weekend at The Green Mill. Since I am the music director, I don’t miss a Chevere gig unless I really can’t make it. A devoted Steely Dan fan from NY who is a good friend of the band got in touch with me, telling me EXACTLY when in Donald’s set they were performing “What I’d Do”. If  I left The Mill as soon as the first set ended at 9, I could be down at The Chicago Theater in time to jump up onstage for “What I’d Do”, then hurry back to The Mill for Chévere’s 2nd set, only missing one tune (which we made sure was one that didn’t require my presence)

I went to Donald’s sound check that afternoon and ran through “What I’d Do”- it felt great. Got to play again with my friend Freddie Washington, the great bass player (we had played together with Kenny Loggins). Then I went to the Mill for the 8pm set with Chevere. At 9pm they had a limo waiting for me at the side door of The Green Mill. At 9:01pm I jumped in with my friend Craig, we drove down to the stage door of The Chicago Theater, and I went in and waited in the wings. Donald was very funny- he said something about me coming down the lake by hovercraft- and called me out on stage. It was a blast to play, as you can see in the pic (snapped by the guy from NY who had timed the set). As soon as I finished, it was into the limo and back to The Mill, where I jumped up onstage in the middle of the 2nd tune. The fine Chicago pianist Ben Lewis had been in the audience and filled in for me on the first tune, which he knew. It worked out perfectly.

When Donald returned to Chicago with Steely Dan the following 2 years, he asked me to sit in with them both times, too, which was a thrill. What a band! The July 2008 show was just about the best thing I’ve ever heard live. I hope to do it again.

Had a great 4th of July weekend at home, busy playing music. I played on “A Prairie Home Companion” at Ravinia (my 3rd time there with the show), a 20 minute drive from my house. This time, it was an embarrassment of riches for me. I premiered my minor- key Bluegrass tune “The Streets of Paris” with the band and the great Sam Bush on mandolin, got to play “Lover Man” with the transcendent vocalist Jearlyn Steele, play a few tunes with Suzy Boggus, act and play harp in a Garrison Keillor comedy sketch, and perfom “The Stars and Stripes Forever” as a duet with Rich Dworsky. That’s enough for several shows, but I also soloed on several other tunes with Jearlyn, Sam, and Pat Donahue on lead vocals. It was a total treat for me. Doing that show is always a surprising and amazing experience, but this one was just about the tops.

The next night, I dropped into Bill’s Blues on Davis St in Evanston to sit in for what I thought would be a few tunes with Johnny Burns. We played together years ago with Steve Goodman and John Prine. John is a great guy and a hell of a guitar player. He kept me up there for an hour and I had a blast playing harmonica and piano with him. John is the son of the late, great Jethro Burns, mandolin master and guru to so many mandolinists (including Sam Bush).  Jethro was one of Evanston’s great musical citizens. John is living is New Mexico these days, and was in town for a reunion of his band “The Famous Potatoes”.

I have known Paul Reisler for 25 years, since we met at The Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1982 when he was playing with Trapezoid. I recorded with him on many projects, most recently the fascinating “At Night The Roses Tango” a few years back. Since then, we’ve played concerts of this music every June in Virginia where he lives. This June, I played 2 concerts, one at the small theater run by Loren Maazel at his country estate, the other in a park in Vienna, VA.

The Maazels’ venue is unique, in the middle of nowhere, totally unexpected. It is small- about 85 seats, but capable of staging operas- full lighting system, an orchestra pit, Boesendorfer piano, PA, etc. It was very inspiring to perform on a stage that has featured some of the world’s greatest classical musicians. Adding to the inspiration was the presence of the great singer Ysaye Barnwell from Sweet Honey in the Rock. Maestro Maazel’s extremely gracious wife was our hostess, making us feel welcome, almost like family members, and the whole staff were the same way. We were treated to a delicious after- concert meal, and stayed in the luxurious guest house down the road.

After that, I had a few days off and got to visit with my friend Lorraine Duisit, another former ‘Zoid, whose album  “Hawks and Herons”, I recorded on in 1983. It is still one of my favorite recordings. She is writing a lot of new music and sounds wonderful. We have started collaborating- she just composed a musical setting for my poem “Make Your Heart a Garden”  (which you can read here at levyland.com).

I also visited Shahin Shahida, guitarist/producer who plays in the Genesis ensemble with me. Vocalist Humayun Khan came up and we jammed and recorded late into the night at Shahin’s studio in his mountain home nearby. Very inspiring, and much more of that to come. Then, I drove to Washington DC and lobbied Congress to help get a bill passed that will FINALLY pay musicians for their performances on terrestrial radio broadcasts. Up till now, only the composers of the music have been paid. So the record labels and musicians’ union got a group of us together to lobby. My group included Alejo Poveda (drummer for Chévere), and studio legends David Spinoza and Neil Steubenhaus. It was fascinating, and I just found out that the legislation was approved by committee, so it will actually go to a vote and perhaps become law.

Then I played the second concert with Paul in a beautiful park in Vienna, VA, for a very enthusiastic audience. I drove my rental car to Takoma Park to the home of my dear friend, Marika Partridge. She used to program all the music for “All Things Considered”, played lots of my stuff in between news items. She and her family are special friends of mine. They were having a party, and I played an impromptu solo piano concert for them, which was about as much fun as I’ve ever had doing that. After a short night’s sleep there, I flew to Detroit, where I was driven to Ann Arbor to rehearse for A Prairie Home Companion. It is always a great experience and this was no exception. The beautiful Hill Auditorium was packed with over 4,000 rabid fans, and they really liked my solo feature, “Blues in Triplicate”, that I wrote specially for the ocassion.

At the after- show party the next evening, I mentioned the name of the one person I know in Ann Arbor, and the person I was talking to said, “Oh, he’s right over there” It was Peter “Madcat” Ruth, one of America’s great harmonica players. I have known him for many years, and he had played at an outdoor festival right next to the hall where I had played- at the same time! One of those odd things…And with him was Benj Kanters, from Evanston, who used to run Amazing Grace and Studiomedia Studios. He was visiting his daughter who attends U of Michigan. Small world…

After a week like that, it was good to get back home, feeling inspired, energized, and gratified.

Over the years, I have appeared in a bunch of music videos. The first big one I did was “The Sinister Minister” with The Flecktones in 1989. We did another one in NYC and upstate NY in 1991, and one in Nashville for VH 1 around the same time. I did a bizarre one with Paquito DeRivera about the smuggling of exotic birds from South America, and a live concert video/cd with Kenny Loggins for Sony called “Outside from the Redwoods” that was shown extensively on PBS.
Making these videos is always surreal. There are so many elements that have to come together, so much work involved, and the images that end up on the screen stick with people for a long time. I’d like to share some of the funnier/stranger moments of these with you.

The first Flecktones video, “The Sinister Minister”, was a big reason for the quick success of the band. Warner Bros. had the vision to put us in front of millions of  TV watchers, and VH1 took them up on it by playing us in heavy rotation even before the first cd came out. We filmed it in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was the coldest it has ever been there- it snowed the day we left. They had me dressed in a long black cape and a black beret. I thought it was cheesy but it was a blessing in disguise, because we were out there on the street for a few days and it kept me from freezing my ass off. We had a police detail there at all times, and I remember one of them telling a wide- eyed little kid that, yes, I WAS a vampire.

The Czech film director, who was wonderful, would show me the view through the lens before a shot. He used film, which gave the video a very classy look.

The Flecktones 2nd video did not go so smoothly. There was a different director. We shot a tune in a fairly disgusting vacant lot on the lower East Side of Manhattan where some squatters had built a surreal sculpture. It turned out that they wouldn’t let us film in front of it, which had been the whole point….Instead we were filmed standing in front of a brick wall while graffiti artists spray painted things behind us…Our tour manager, Richard Battaglia, took us aside before the shoot and warned us to wear thick soled shoes, as there were numerous used syringes and condoms on the ground. It was charming.

The second part of the shoot took place in an amazing rock sculpture garden upstate. I can’t remember its name or where it was, but I do remember that the owner was squashed to death by a huge rock that he was moving years earlier. We filmed our version of “The Star Spangled Banner” there.

(I should explain that when making these videos, you are “playing” along to your tracks, which are being played over a PA. Everything is synched. In those days, they used a Nagra with a synch track to make sure that the sound and cameras were together. It always took a little while. Then the tech guy would shout “Speed!” and the filming would begin. Now it’s all done on computers, instant synch.)

We got the footage when it was done and watched it on the bus. I commented that everything looked a little washed out. It turned out that our filmmaker had miscalculated the light and that the film from the upstate NY part of the video was overexposed. They had to spend a lot of time and money making it look good, I remember.

The same director had done a VH1 special on us in Nashville, which is how he got the call to do the video. It was called “In Your Face”, one of those shows where they used that herky-jerky cut up look for much of the footage. It was the fashion then like strobe lights were in the psychedelic ‘60’s. In addition to performing a few tunes live, everyone did their showiest  thing. Victor threw the bass around his body, might have even done a standing back flip, Roy is a show in himself, I think Bela played banjo blindfolded, etc. When they got to me, in spite of the guys telling the director that I could play harp and piano simultaneously, that I was the first one to play the diatonic chromatically, etc, he wasn’t sure what to film. Plus, what I do on harp is mostly INVISIBLE…it doesn’t make for good film, and this was “In Your Face” film.

So the director asked me, “So Howard, what can YOU do that is special?” I thought of some choice answers, thought the better of it, then decided to put him on. I stared into his eyes and said, “I can play piano with my hands behind my back!” Any kid can do that and I was joking, but he seemed genuinely impressed and eager to film it. There was an old upright piano there, so I did it. What I played sounded coherent in a twisted way. Then I had to say “You’re watching ‘In Your Face’ on VH1”. I had to say “In Your Face” very aggressively. It felt disgusting to me, like I was flipping off the audience. The director loved it.

Years later…I sat in with The Flecktones on harmonica at Ravinia in 2003 or 4. They filled the place, must have been 10- 15,000 people there. A kid came up to me afterwards with a look of awe on his face, and said, “Wow, you’re the guy who plays piano with his hands behind his back!” …

There was another unforgettable moment from that film. We did a live performance of Bela’s “Sunset Road”, one of my favorite tunes in the early days of the band. I used to clap softly on the backbeats before my entrance on keys, because the groove felt really good and it was a natural thing to do. The director liked it- it was visual- and made sure to film it. In the film, they made sure to show me clapping to the music. However, the person who edited it had me clapping on 1 and 3 instead of 2 and 4, which is where HE thought you should clap. It made me look like a moron. It’s kind of the musical equivalent of quoting a politican out of context.

The Paquito video a few years later was truly bizarre. It was shot at a now defunct Chicago Jazz club called George’s. It was a full scale 3- camera shoot with all the bells and whistles, but our music was background for a story about illegal smuggling of tropical birds. The whole thing was strange. We played a few tunes. Paquito, in his inimitable way, not only wanted me to play the tunes, but also to play a Bach Prelude in Cm from The Well Tempered Clavier as an intro to one of them. First, I am not a great classical pianist. Second, though it sounded familiar when he hummed it to me, I had never played this piece. And most importantly, he didn’t have the music. He said, “Oh, every pianist knows that piece”. During the  break between the rehearsal and the shoot that night, I raced home, unearthed the music, practiced it, and eventually played it half-decently in the video that night. If anyone of you has actually SEEN this video, please let me know.

Kenny Loggins- Outside from the Redwoods. 1993. This was a great experience with great results, but the way that it started was another thing entirely.

In Spring of 1993, I was contacted by an arranger who was revamping some of Kenny Loggins’ tunes for “Outside from the Redwoods”, the live cd/video. I was hired for the recording and became part of the touring band, playing harmonica, mandolin, ocarina, and a little keyboards. It was a great band, with either Herman Matthews or Alvino Bennett on drums, and the great Freddie Washington on bass. Playing with a rhythm section like that made everything feel easy and right. Everyone else in the band was at that level, too- Mark Russo, Steve George, Chris Rodriguez, Ed Mann, etc. I was featured on a few big harp solos. After The Flecktones’ chops-oriented music, it was a relief to be in a setting where communicating the emotional and lyrical content of the song was the most important thing. Kenny was an amazing singer, and there sure were a lot of great songs.

I rehearsed in LA for 2 weeks for the live recording, going over and over the music in minutest detail. It was hard work and things were always changing, but I really enjoyed it. Kenny even had me singing a little. I felt appreciated and got along well with all the guys

When I showed up for the live recording a week later in Santa Cruz, I was ushered into the dressing room where the wardrobe lady took me aside. We had been fitted for clothes, and I assumed that they would have something Western for me to wear. It was the general look.

She looked at me with an apologetic expression, saying “I don’t know how to tell you this, but…” -she had a hanger full of clothes for me to wear- “Kenny wants you to wear these”. She handed me a long, heavy cloth coat and a stovepipe hat. From Bela Fleck introducing me as “The Tall Thin Flecktone” I had graduated to Kenny Loggins presenting me as Abe Lincoln.

I looked the wardrobe lady in the eye and said ”No Way!” She looked at her feet and said, “Yeah, I know”. Not only was it totally surreal, but it was about 90 degrees and humid outside, too.
“What else do you have in my size?”
“Well, there are some blue jeans”.
“Fine!”
“And this blue jean shirt”.
“Great !”

I walked out on stage, Kenny looked at me with raised eyebrows and said, “Well, hello, Mr. Blue!” I smiled, we played, and everything went well. The “costume change” was never mentioned, and I went on to tour with Kenny for a year or two.

Folk Music

I developed a love for so-called “folk music” in the mid 60’s going to summer camp in upstate New York. Guitar was the campfire instrument. Plucking strings in the rhythmic fingerpicking patterns wove a magic spell when mixed with a flickering campfire, pretty girls, a starry sky, and the smells of the country. I can remember some of the songs- folk songs, Jewish songs (it was a Jewish camp). I met my friend Marty Rothkopf there. He played 12 string guitar, wrote songs, and sang very well. We started a little band- guitar, washtub bass (played by yours truly), and 2 other guys who sang with 4 part harmony vocals. Our big number was “Rag Doll”, by The Four Seasons”. We worked out the harmonies and got a big response.

One day we all piled into the camp truck and drove to a Pete Seeger concert in Connecticut. Nowadays, nobody would have allowed 25 kids to sit on benches in the open air back of a truck with wooden slats for sides, but that’s what we did. We pulled into the parking lot and there was Pete Seeger driving a pickup truck with his grandson, and a canoe and guitar and banjo cases in the back. Marty recognized him, shouted out “Hi, Pete!”, and he waved to us. It was a wonderful concert. He knew the fine art of the singalong, made you really feel like singing, and added fantastic high falsetto parts over the top of the music.

Folk music made me want to play a portable instrument. I was 14 and started messing around on guitar just a little. (I also figured out how to play the jew’s harp.) When I got back to NY, Marty turned me on to a lot more music-Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Hamilton Camp, an Elektra sampler called “Folksong ‘65” that had a lot of artists on it- Phil Ochs, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, etc. Some of it was political, some bluesy, some funny, some beautiful. I learned how to simulate guitar fingerpicking on piano. (Years later I was to learn that a lot of Elizabethan English harpsichord music was derived from lute playing, as was a lot of German baroque, including Bach.)

Folk music was very much a part of the political protest movement that became tied to anti-Vietnam War protests. I was very involved in those from 1967-71. I marched in the big Peace Marches in NY in 68 and 69.

Marty and I started a band with two of my high school friends. It was more in the rock and Jazz direction, didn’t have much to do with Folk music, but it was the start of my first real band, The BMT Change Agent.

I moved to Chicago to go to Northwestern in Fall of 69. I quit in Spring of ‘71, moved back to NY. Then when I moved back to Chicago in June of ‘72, I found myself between styles. Unable to make a living playing Jazz, I found myself still drawn to Folk music, folk rock and at the same time developed a very strong interest in World Music, also entirely acoustic.

And I discovered Flamenco, Bluegrass, as well. I even took some Flamenco lessons annd started playing more mandolin. I played flamenco on keyboards as well.

I got my first “break” into the big time through a mixture of Folk, Swing and Jazz. I met a wonderful singer named Diane Holmes. She was playing at a club in Evanston called “Amazing Grace”. (It started as a soup kitchen at the NU student union during the student strike resulting from the Kent State killings in the Spring of ‘70. After that it thrived as an eclectic venue featuring folk, Jazz, bluegrass- just about everything.) She was singing with a very eclectic artist named Ken Bloom, who played as many instruments as I did, but all different ones. I sat in and felt a great rapport with Diane.

She asked me to join a band called “Swingshift”, led by a very funny singer/guitarist/songwriter named Ron Crick. The band featured the great mandolin player Jethro Burns, the rhythm section of Jim Tullio (to become a big jingle and record producer) and drummer Angie Varias, as well as T.C.Furlong on pedal steel guitar from The Jump in the Saddle Band, who had a hit with “The Curly Shuffle”.

Steve Goodman used to sit in with us, and basically hired us as his backup band for tours in late ‘76 and ‘77. He hired me for my first real recording session with Malvina Reynolds. Then, he produced Martin, Bogan, and Armstong’s “That Old Gang of Mine” and John Prine’s “Bruised Orange”. I played on those albums, and John hired me to tour with him from ‘78-79.

John is one of America’s great singer/songwriters. It was my entree into the big time. In addition to doing 2 albums, we played over 100 concerts, had a tour bus, and carried our own PA, Yamaha Grand piano, B 3 organ. I also played mandolin, pennywhistle, accordian, steel drums (which I learned for this gig), soprano sax, and of course, harmonica.

I got to meet Kris and Rita, Phil Spector (!), Gary Busey, David Alan Coe, Jerry Jeff Walker, Leon Redbone, Mac Macanally, Bonnie Raitt, etc. But it really wasn’t for me. I missed playing Jazz, and the Rock and Roll road life didn’t interest me. My wife got pregnant and I wanted to stop touring with John, so I played my last concert with him at Mandel Hall in Chicago in June 1979. Miles was born July 3.

After that, I branched out in Chicago, joined Chévere, founded the NBV Quintet, co-foundedThe Balkan Rhythm Band, etc, But my strong folk credentials persisted, and I started getting asked to play on records and do more shows. A lot of Flying Fish sessions- Don Lange, Si Kahn, etc, mostly at Acme Studios on Southport and Grace.

I started playing with Bonnie Koloc in 1980. I’m probably the only musician in Chicago to have worked extensively with the “big 3” of Bonnie, John, and Steve. Our first rehearsal was at a club, I think Byfield’s, one afternoon. It was me, Bonnie, John Baney and Steve Eisen. I had heard all these stories about how difficult she was to work with, but the experience was totally the opposite. She was totally sweet, really musical, a great voice, self-deprecating, very open to suggestions, stylistically broad. We had an instant rapport that has continued for more than 20 years. We played many clubs and concerts in the Chicago area, and some touring , too, through the 80’s, until I joined the Flecktones, when my whole life changed. I produced her Flying Fish album, “With You on my Side” in 1987. (I also wrote about 8 songs for her in Brecht’s “Puntila and His Hired Man”, where she was cast as the Cook, the main singing role in the play. I won a Jefferson Award for Music).

In 1982, bassist Brian Torff (Stephane Grapelli, George Shearing, etc) asked me to play with him at The Winnipeg Folk Festival. I had met him when he played with David Amram, who opened for Steve Goodman at The Earl of Old Town’s Christmas shows in 76 and 77, maybe some other years, too. He thought I’d be the right guy to play a folk festival with a Jazz trio, and it worked out well. There, at one of the post-concert parties, I met Lorraine Duisit and Trapezoid, which led to my playing on her album, Hawks and Herons, the ‘Zoids’ “Cool of the Day”, and other albums with Si Kahn, John McCutcheon, Sally Rogers, all recorded at Bias Studios near Washington, DC. It also resulted in us becoming lifelong friends. And for those who don’t know, Lorraine is responsible for The Flecktones, because she made Bela and me play together at the 1987 Winnipeg festival, right in the hotel lobby. (He was there playing with NewGrass Revival.)

Paul Reisler asked me to teach a world music class at The Omega Institute in 1984, which is how I met Glen Velez (which led eventually to the formation of Trio Globo in 1993.) Then he got The Augusta Wkshp. to hire me as a harmonica teacher, which I did for 7 summers (I think). That led to so many things that I can’t even separate them. Many friendships, Harmonica Summits, recordings, Hank Bahnson’s research, my Homespun video, etc.

Meanwhile, back home I was recording with Tom Paxton, Bob Gibson, Jim Post, Bryan Bowers, Jenny Armstrong, Claudia Schmidt, playing on Studs Terkel’s radio show on WFMT…

One year at Winnipeg, I played with Bonnie Koloc, and also played sets with Maria Muldaur, Amos Garret, etc. Noah Adams, who was in the audience, was impressed. He asked me to play on “Good Evening from Minnesota”, a show that replaced A Prairie Home Companion. I played the show several times with Bonnie, Ken Nordine, and others.

So “folk” music and my love for it led to many musical things in my life and career.

Pt. 1- Background

It was Winter of 1969-70. I was playing piano in the Jazz band at Northwestern Unic=versity in Evanston, IL. The bandleader was the great alto saxophonist Bunky Green. There were some very good horn players, and a good drummer and bass player. Reading big band charts was a new thing for me. Although I had been playing jazz and writing jazz tunes for a year or so, nobody had ever shown me Jazz chord symbols. I didn’t know the names of the more complex ones, though I had heard them on recordings and played some of them. And there were many chords that I didn’t know and hadn’t played, either. It was a much needed musical education, and I started playing better and writing some interesting tunes as a result.

I was in a new place, I didn’t know anyone, I was learning more about Jazz, writing new tunes, and trying to do well in my academic classes, some of which were very inspiring.

All this newness and stimulation extended out to my harp playing. I had started to play harp that September during freshman orientation week when I bent my first note (that story is also here at levylogs). After that, I played constantly- while walking to classes, in resonant hallways, in the echoey dorm bathrooms (great acoustics!) It had become an obsession. I loved playing blues licks on the harp, but soon my pianist/composer mind wouldn’t accept the apparent limitations of the diatonic harmonica. I started playing scales and arpeggios in different keys on one harp, the way I had been taught on piano, and playing along with records and songs on the radio, no matter what keys they were in. I mostly played on a G harp, but I started buying more – a C, a D, an A, a Bb.

After a few months I figured out how to play the blow bends on the top 3 holes, and realized that you could bend any higher – pitched note down to just above a lower – pitched one; it was blow bends on the top of the harp, draw bends on the bottom. That was a revelation, understanding the pitches of the bent notes and how far I could bend each one. I started to see a picture of the harp in my mind (based on the G harp), which would eventually become notes on an imaginary piano keyboard in my mind.

I had been in a Blues band in high school in NY, and missed being in one in Evanston. So I started one with my friend Dave, a guitarist from the NY band who was a student at nearby Lake Forest College. We had 2 guitars, bass, drums, 2 saxes and trombone. I played piano. I took the train up there to rehearse, and we started getting some frat party gigs. As I got better on harp, I gradually started playing it more in the band.

It was a big kick for me to actually be playing Blues on harp with a good band, but I soon ran into some dead ends. There were some bluesy notes that just weren’t on the harp, and I wanted to play them. This upset me.

“How is it possible for an instrument to not have all the notes? Every instrument has all the notes. They must be in there somewhere,” I said to myself. I set about to find them.

Pt. 2- I Find Them

It was so frustrating, for example, to not be able to play a minor 3rd in the second octave of cross harp. You couldn’t bend 7 draw down to get it, because it was the lower note on its hole. It didn’t seem like there was any way to do it. Settling for playing 7 draw, a major 3rd, sounded wimpy and wrong , even more when it would be the maj 7th of the 4 chord. A guitarist or a sax player would never hit that note! Why should I have to? I had to figure out how to get it. One day I thought, “What would happen if I tried bending down a lower –pitched note, one of the blows between 1 and 6?”

I started with 6, because that was the area closest to that missing minor 3rd. When I tried bending down the D, I got a very buzzy, distorted sound. I thought, “Wow, what a cool, funky sound”. Then I realized that the upper part of that sound was the missing minor 3rd, an F. I focused on that pitch, and gradually was able to separate it out. I had found one of the “missing notes” and was very excited.

If I could get F like this, maybe other missing notes could be obtained this way. What about the major 7th in cross harp, a C#? It just wasn’t there, and I really wanted to be able to play it, especially as the 3rd of the 5 chord. So I tried bending down 5 blow, a B, and lo and behold, a C# popped out, a little flat, but there. This was getting more exciting. The other nearby missing note was the Bb. When I bent down 4 blow (G), it popped out, very fuzzy, flat, and hard to separate, but it was there, too. If I tried to bend a lower note on a hole down, the note just above the higher note on that hole would pop out, as if by magic.

If I had known anything about adjusting reeds, it could have been much easier, but I had no clue. So I just tried and tried, found that some of these notes, like the Bb that popped out of 4 blow of a G harp, were easier to get on higher harps like a C. It was then that I asked my sax player friend from Jazz band, Eric Allison, what I was doing to get these notes. I played them for him, and he thought I was overblowing harmonics of the overtone series the way you do on a sax, trumpet- just about any wind instrument- by tightening your embouchure. I figured, “ He must know what he’s talking about, because he does that, too”, so I called it “overblowing”, an unfortunate name that has stuck. I’m sorry I popularized the term, but that’s the way it is. No hard feelings, Eric.

When harp players hear that word, the first thing they think is that you have to blow harder to get the note to come out. It really is a type of bending, with a very specific embouchure to extract the high note, to get it to “pop” out. The sound of the high note actually comes from the draw reed bending up- the blow reed goes down as low as it can, then stops sounding and acts as what is called a “closing reed”, creating a vacuum that enables the draw reed to bend up in pitch and actually produce the sound, surprising as it seems. Years later, I learned that the pitch of an overblow is flexible, that you can bend it up and down, that getting one “in tune” depended on what note you wanted to get, from a range of up to a fourth or even more! Playing Hank Bahnson’s hybrid overblow harp in the ‘90’s showed me that possibility. It had slides that closed over the closing reeds for overblows, letting the draw reeds bend up incredibly easily. Adjusting reeds down toward the reed plate on a standard harp made it a lot easier, too. I started doing that in the late 80’s after learning about it from other harp players. Back to the story…

After that, I found the Bb on 1 blow (still referring to a G harp). I couldn’t sustain it well, so I used it mostly as a passing tone. Then I tried bending down the draws from 7 up to 10, and discovered the “overdraws”. They filled in all the missing notes on the top 4 holes of the harp. I got 9 (Eb) and 10 (G#) but couldn’t get 7 until I bought a 14- hole Marine Band 365 in C (one octave lower) in Spring of 1970. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, 7 draw and blow were adjusted close on it, and C# popped out. (For years I thought I had to find harmonicas that had overblows and overdraws that “worked”. I could have saved a lot of time and money and played a lot better adjusting reed clearances, but I had no idea that you could do that. All I thought about were the notes and the music.)

So, by Spring of 1970, with all the bends, overblows, and overdraws, I had a 3- octave chromatic scale. When I played in public, I was a little reluctant to try overblows too much because they didn’t always pop out, but I kept working at it and got better at it. If there was a note I wanted to play, I’d go for it, the same way any guitarist, pianist, or sax player would. I wanted to play music, not just harp licks. I switched to Golden Melodies sometime in the early 70’s because they seemed easier to play for me. Years later found out that they were Hohner’s first diatonic harps tuned to a tempered scale (like chromatic harps), much more suited to my style of playing than the just intonation harps, which all the others were (and most still are).

Now that I had all the notes, I started to work at playing Jazz tunes. I soon discovered that the key of 5 draw (12th or 1st flat position) was a great key to play in. Being able to get the 4th in the second octave with 6 overblow allowed me to play more than just the Lydian mode. It also had some great bends in different places from cross harp, giving the harp an an entirely different character.

I started playing some Jazz tunes in straight harp (1st position), which is a key mostly used for folk music. It worked well for uptempo swing tunes and tunes like Samba de Orpheus. 6 draw (4th position) was a great key for minor key Jazz tunes like Autumn Leaves. It is the relative minor of straight harp. I also played My Favorite Things a lot in that key. 3rd position, the key of 1 draw, was great for minor key blues and bluesy tunes like Summertime.The key of 2 blow (5th position)worked well for minor key blues because you could bend the 3rd and 5th, but you had to be careful of the flat 2nd which was 5 draw. But then I found that 5th position worked great for playing middle eastern music where b2 was an important note. You could also wail on the top holes where 8 blow was the tonic and 9 blow the minor 3rd. And so on and so forth.
To be continued…

8/14/04
I just returned from the Rocky Grass Song School and Festival in beautiful Lyons, CO. I taught a class called “Musicianship” to singer/songwriters. The staff was made up of many fine artists. Many of the students are professionals with careers who come there to learn more about songwriting, the business, to have their minds stretched, to hang out with their fellow artists, and just to be in the beautiful Colorado setting. It was a beehive of creativity, intelligence, and musicality. I was asked to teach there through my friend Paul Reisler, with whom I just recorded a cd “At Night the Roses Tango”. I have to digress a little and tell anyone reading this what an important person Paul has been in my musical life.

For years he was the leader of the acoustic folk group Trapezoid. I met Paul and the other ‘Zoids at The Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1982 (I was playing with bassist Brian Torff). After our meeting, Paul hired me to play on several recordings that he produced, and then recommended me to teach harmonica at The Augusta Heritage Arts Workshop in Elkins, WV, which I ended up doing for 7 summers. So many fine harp players passed through there- Carlos del Junco, Sandy Weltman, Mike Green, to name a few- as well as Hank Bahnson, whose important research into the diatonic harmonica started in my class.

Paul also hired me to teach at a World Music Week at The Omega Institute in 1984, which is where I met percussionist Glen Velez. This led to many projects, culminating in the formation of Trio Globo. In 1987, while playing with Trapezoid at Winnipeg again, I met Bela Fleck. Trapezoid member Lorraine Duisit (whose beautiful Paul Reisler-produced “Hawks and Herons” album I played on in 1983) kept insisting that Bela and I had to play together. She physically dragged me over to where Bela was sitting in the hotel lobby one night and said, “Howard, Bela- Play!” We ended up jamming till 7 am. As a result of that night, Bela called me to do The Lonesome Pine Special TV show in Louisville in 1988 with the Victor and Roy Wooten, and The Flecktones were born.

So now Paul has introduced me to a new circle of brilliant and soulful musicians. Steve Seskin, Angela Kaset, Peter Himmelman, Arthur Lee, among others, not to mention a reunion for me with the Planet Bluegrass people who run Telluride and other great festivals in Colorado- Steve Symanski, Craig Ferguson, all the other wonderful staff people who made me feel like a member of a big extended family. Not to mention all the good vibes I got from so many of the students.

After I finished teaching Mon-Thurs, Paul, Angela, and I played a set on the festival stage. Before that, I sat in on 3 tunes with Steve Seskin. Thurs night there was a big student/teacher concert, and I sat in with a bunch of folks and had a great time.

The Planet Bluegrass people really know how to run a festival, and Lyons is a great little town with nice cafés, restaurants, and shops. For more info go to www.planetbluegrass.com.

Summer of ‘90, I was with The Flecktones, and we were opening shows for Chicago. It was a strange pairing, but we opened about 30 shows for them and it helped spread the band’s name. One was at The Jones Beach Ampitheater on Long Island, around July 4th. After the show, I went to stay with my folks in Rockaway, which is pretty close by. We were all exhausted after a very long hot day and I collapsed into bed. The next thing I know, my mom is shaking me awake. I look at the clock- it’s really early, like 7 am. I
think- “The house is on fire!” or something like that. But she’s smiling, telling me, “Quick! Get dressed! They want you on live TV!”. This was very surreal. I mumbled something like, “Who? What are you talking about?”.

It turns out that there was an early morning show that traveled to different neighborhoods of New York every morning, looking for interesting and slightly wacky things to put on the air. That morning they were in my parents’ neighborhood to do some barbecueing, but the person slated to cook wasn’t home, and the host, a very personable Australian chap named Gordon Elliot, asked the assembled neighbors if anyone interesting lived nearby. My parents’ neighbor, Faye Levine, piped up, “The world’s greatest harmonica
player is staying at the Levy’s house on ___St.!”. So Gordon says, “Well, let’s go wake him up!”.They walked over, Gordon rang the bell, my dad, half asleep, stumbled downstairs in his shorts, opened the door a crack, to be greeted by a crowd of 30 raucous neighbors and a camera crew. (This was all being shown live on the New York Fox station).

So a few minutes later, there I was, sitting on my front porch steps half-dressed. Afer a commercial, they turned on the cameras, interviewed me, made me play a little, the neighbors clapped, and we all went back to bed. I have no idea what I said or played, but it seemed to satisfy Gordon Elliot and his camera crew. If anyone saw that little segment, yes, it was me.

January 2004

I’ve read some other people’s accounts of this life-changing experience, and some pretty good ones, too. I thought I’d add my experience to the pile.

I started trying to play harp toward the end of senior year of high school in New York, 1969. I had played piano since I was 8 years old, mostly classical, and had always improvised and written my own music, too. I had expanded my interests out into many styles, and was in my first real band. We played rock, blues and jazz with some of my originals, too. The drummer, a classical violinist who taught himself drums by emulating Elvin Jones, also taught himself harmonica from listening to Chicago Blues recordings and just absorbing it. In a few weeks he was sounding really good- in a few months even better. I was impressed at how well he played, and how quickly it happened. I also fell in love with the Blues, period. I went to hear Paul Butterfield and James Cotton at a club in The Village, and that sealed it- the music blew my mind. Growing up in NYC, I had never heard any blues live. There weren’t many places to hear it, very few Blues players, and a general lack of awareness of the music.

After I got comfortable playing Blues on piano, I wanted to try harp- it was portable, unlike the piano, and you could bend notes on it, unlike the piano. I also met my first serious girlfriend around that time- she liked the way my friend played the harp- a little extra incentive for me to learn it. So I bought one at Manny’s on 48th St. in NY for about $2.50 and started honking on it. I sounded like any other kid who tries to play-terrible. I had no clue how to bend a note. I asked my friend Kieve, who couldn’t explain it – invisible things went on inside your mouth that he could do effortlessly but couldn’t impart to me. I tried for months with no success and almost gave up.

In Sept.1969, I went away to college at Northwestern University in Evanston, just north of Chicago. During orientation week, the Chicago Seven- Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Rennie Davis, et al- made a fund-raising appearance at an NU lecture hall. They were on trial for planning the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. I was against the Vietnam War, which was the central issue of the day and the main reason for the protests at the Convention that led to the trouble and the trial. So I went and squeezed into a spot with 4-500 others. It was really something to see all those guys in person, get a feeling for each of their personalities and beliefs, and listen to their speeches. My most vivid recollection is of Abby Hoffman as a wild court jester leaping all over the stage, saying outrageous things. Tom Hayden seemed like a grim anti-government politician with a serious message. I don’t remember Jerry Rubin very well. Another of them was into Bhuddism, one was a pacifist/conscientious objector. One might have been talking revolution- it’s a little hard to remember. A lot of people were talking about that back then because there was such anger against the government and “The Establishment” in general. It was heavy, I didn’t know a soul there, and it was my first time West of Pennsylvania.

I walked out of the hall that day, trying to absorb what I had seen, what it all meant, and trying to figure out where I stood in relation to all of it. Somehow, I felt like playing the harp. I fished it out of my pocket, a Marine band in G (from Manny’s), put it to my lips, and suddenly, I bent the 4 draw. I was shocked- that’s what it felt like- WOW! Indescribable, an oral balancing act between vacuum, pressure, and breath that transformed the harp from a mundane wood and metal object into a magical, organic vessel that vibrated, sang, and changed me in the process- forever, as it turned out. All thoughts of politics vanished as I bent 4 draw over and over while I kept walking, and then started to apply that one note to some simple Blues licks. I had heard them hundreds of times but could never play them before this moment-what a feeling, what a revelation! Within a few minutes I was bending 1,2,and 3 draw, later, 6, and finding more and more Blues licks. They had been there the whole time waiting for me to bend so I could play them. I was speaking with a voice I didn’t know I had, because I had never had it before- I wished that my girlfriend back in NY could hear it, and my bandmates, too. It changed me forever. I felt like people who’d known me before didn’t really know me anymore. And since nobody here knew me at all, I was starting my time in Evanston as a different person than I had been just days before in New York. It was exciting, strange and a little disconcerting. I had to tell someone I knew.

I went to a pay phone at the train station and called a guitarist named Dave who I’d played with in Brooklyn, who was attending Lake Forest College (about 15 miles north). I told him about it and took the train up there to play for him- I was practically jumping out of my skin. I’ll never know why I had my breakthrough at this particular moment, whether the political rally or just being in Chicago had anything to do with it. All I know is that it did happen exactly as I’ve recounted here.