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BluesWax Sittin' In With Rick Estrin 


A Nine Lives  Interview


Part Two


By Mark Hummel


Rick Estrin is the frontman, harp player, songwriter, singer, and  character 
extraordinaire for Little Charlie and the Nightcats for over 30 years.  Estrin 
has definitely had Nine Lives (the title of Rick and Little Charlie  Baty's 
brand new CD), since we first met. At the time we met he was on a  methadone 
program to kick heroin. I first met Rick in the early seventies when  he had 
just returned to San Francisco from Chicago. I'd heard about this really  great 
harp player with a really bad reputation. I'd just moved from Los Angeles  to 
the San Francisco Bay Area and I was looking for a gig. I read an ad in a  
local paper looking for a harp player. I called the guy and he tells me he just  
hired someone, I asked who and he says the harp player's name is Rick Estrin. 
So  I go down to their gig that night in the Mission district of San Francisco 
at a  really seedy bar where the guy is playing really loud Jimi Hendrix style 
guitar  and Rick is almost inaudible thru the PA. 

The band has a washtub for  tips going, that's all they're getting paid. I 
walk up to Rick, who's wearing an  eye patch and an Army jacket and tell him I'm 
a harp player, too. Estrin then  asks if I want to go out front and have a 
smoke. He picks up his harps, goes up  to the washtub on his way out and scoops 
up all the bills and coins he can fit  in his Army coat, and we go out front. 
We blew our harps out front for awhile,  then went across the street to the 
donut shop and talked till 3 a.m., after  which I drove Rick home to wherever he 
was crashing. I saw him again right after  he and Little Charlie hooked up a 
year or two later. This time he says, "I heard  what you were saying about me 
and I don't dig it." I say, "I don't know what  you're talking about?" 
sounding freaked out, to which he responds, "I was just  fuckin with ya!" So begin my 
friendship with Rick, way back when. Enjoy Part Two  (to read Part One click 
HERE to read it in our ARCHIVES)!

Mark Hummel for  BluesWax: How did you hook up with Little Charlie? What did 
you think of Charlie  as a harp player before the guitar became his main 
instrument?

Rick  Estrin: I had met Little Charlie when he was at U.C. Berkeley. He had a 
band  called the Charles Baty Blues Band. I would see that name in the club 
listings  in the paper and I used to think, "Wonder if that's a harp player?" 
Back then  the scene was so tiny and so competitive you sort of knew, or knew 
of, everybody  out there. Anyway, I was back in San Francisco, probably around 
1973, I wasn't  doing much and I got a phone call, it's this guy Charles Baty 
and he wants to  come over and meet me. He had heard about me from Gary Smith. 

The bait  he used was that he said he'd bring me a '45 of "Tonight With A 
Fool" b/w "Don't  Have To Hunt No More," - which at that time was this mysterious 
Little Walter  record that nobody had ever heard! Somehow, he had gotten a 
bootleg copy of this  '45! So, he came over, played the record, which is great 
of course, but can you  imagine hearing something like that for the first time? 
I mean this record had  previously been like a myth or something - and we 
talked. 

I told him  that I hadn't even been playing much since I'd been back from 
Chicago. Told him  it just seemed like there wasn't any scene and nobody knew how 
to play behind a  harp anyway, generally just bitching and making excuses. He 
told me that he knew  how to back a harp on guitar. He had learned this stuff 
so that he could show  guitar players what he wanted to hear behind him, when 
he was playing harp! And  looking back, I can see now that he always was the 
type of guy to take the  initiative, ya know, make shit happen...whereas I was 
always more of a dreamer,  the kind of motherfucker that just sort of fell in 
to the next thing that came  up. Anyway, he said maybe someday we could try 
playing together...just threw it  out there.

After that I saw him maybe a couple times. One time that I  remember I ran 
into Charlie over at Keystone Berkeley. Muddy was playing, Jerry  [Portnoy] was 
in the band by this time and Muddy called me up to sit in along  with John Lee 
Hooker! Now that was cool! I'm up there blowing, standing in  between Muddy 
and John Lee and they're trading verses on "Boom Boom Boom"! Then,  after John 
Lee sat down, Muddy kept me up there to finish the set with him.  Really made 
me feel good that he obviously still dug my playing. After that, I  think I 
moved to Chicago again one last time and when I came back to California,  I went 
out to a club to see Luther Tucker and Gary Smith. They were playing a  place 
in San Francisco called the Savoy Tivoli. I went there on sort of like a  
double date with a guitar player, good friend of mine and yours, Mark, the late  
Sonny Lane, and two of Little Walter's sisters, Sylvia and Lula. I ran into  
Little Charlie again at that show and he told me he had moved to Sacramento and 
 had started a band up there. He gave me his phone number and said that maybe 
in  about six months he'd be ready to try playing together. I took the phone 
number,  but I didn't think anything would really come of it. Then, fast 
forward six  months, I was in San Francisco living in the Tenderloin with a hooker. 
I don't  want you to get the wrong idea either; this was no glamorous 
pimp-type  situation. This was some low-level shit! I was on methadone maintenance. 
In  those days I had a small recurring drug problem as well. Just in general, 
you  could say I wasn't doing too good. 

One day, I looked in my wallet and I  saw this piece of paper with Charlie 
Baty's phone number on it, and I thought,  "Nothin' from nothin'...hell, I ain't 
doin' shit around here." I called him up  and he said we could try it. At the 
time, he had a couple of funky little gigs  lined up. I rode up there on the 
Greyhound two or three times and it seemed to  be working, so I relocated to 
Sacramento. I had never really heard Charlie blow  harp until I went to 
Sacramento and started working with him. We had a second  guitar player at the time, 
so the way the show would go in those days was,  Charlie would play harp on 
the first set and after that, he'd switch to guitar.  You know this, Mark, 
'cause you heard him back then. That sucker was a hell of a  harmonica player! That 
same kind of fire and imagination that he has on guitar,  he had that on the 
harp! I heard him and it really made me re-focus on getting  my shit together 
as a player, as a performer, and in general 'cause I could see,  some half-way 
effort just wasn't gonna get  it!

----------------------
Have you been to the ARCHIVES lately?
Be  sure to check out everything in the BACKSTAGE area
Including the PHOTO PAGE  featuring the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage  Festival!
----------------------

BW: How did you first start writing  songs and what inspired you to do that?

RE: For some reason I always  believed I could write and then, when I got 
with Rodger Collins he would always  encourage me to try to write. He'd 
constantly talk to me about songwriting and  he kind of drilled into me certain 
principles, gave me basically like a check  list to see if a lyric can stand up. 
Like, is it interesting? Is the story worth  telling? Does it make sense? Is a 
rhyme too obvious? Are you telegraphing? Is  what you're saying clear? Is it 
fairly conversational? In other words, would  this person really talk like that? 
Does the meter match up well enough? Is there  a rhythmic pocket to the meter? 
Is it singable? He used to say, "It's many  things, Rick," and he sure was 
right! He also set a good example for me as far  as showing me what it was to be 
a real professional. He was always  thinking...wracking his brain, always 
editing and trying to improve whatever  song it was he was working on. Always 
listening for song ideas in everyday life.  He showed me so much stuff, man! He 
put me on shows with him when I was  basically of no value to him, but he could 
see I was serious about learning so  he tried to help me improve as a 
performer. He'd explain to me why certain  things were effective. Little subtle shit 
that makes a big difference! I really  owe a lot to Rodger Collins! 

A lot of the stuff he showed me, I couldn't  even use back then, but years 
later, when I was ready, I was able to apply those  principles in telling my own 
story, in my songs and also in my performances.  Percy Mayfield too, he 
really encouraged me. Not by giving me specific pointers  or anything, but just by 
being complimentary about my work. He really made me  feel like I had 
something legitimate to say and that I had the talent and the  skills to get it 
across! I really miss that guy too. He was one cool and classy  cat. I wish I 
could've spent a lot more time with him.

BW: How have you  and Charlie worked it out to work together so long? It's 
very difficult to play  with another musician for almost thirty years without 
getting on each other's  nerves or driving each other crazy. Does two vehicles 
when you tour make the  difference, among many things? I know you have huge 
respect for Charlie,  musically.

RE: Getting on each other's nerves used to be a recurring  theme in the 
really early years, but things have smoothed out a lot since then.  There's rarely 
any friction now days. We respect each other's space and over  time, our roles 
on and off the bandstand just sort of naturally defined  themselves. He's 
much more of a detail person, a natural organizer, and I'm more  of a dreamer. 
It's a combination that works. What can I say? I'm sure two  vehicles help some, 
but ours is kind of a unique situation. Charlie likes to  keep his own 
schedule. Likes to get up early, leave the hotels early, get  wherever he's going 
early. The rest of us like to take our time when we can,  check out the scene 
wherever we happen to be. So the two-vehicle arrangement  definitely helps. 

As far as my respect for Charlie as musician  goes...awe is probably a better 
word for the way I feel about his talent and  skills and creativity. Plus, 
his playing still surprises me every night! He can  generate so much excitement 
with a guitar that being on the bandstand with him  is just never 
boring...never! 

Hey, I just thought of something that  would probably help relations within 
any band way more than two vehicles is  single motel rooms! We figured that one 
out a long time ago. Think about  it...you gotta be stuck in a van together 
all day, then you gotta work together  on the bandstand all night, and then 
you're expected to go back to a motel room  and be cellmates, too! I don't care 
how much you might like each other or  whatever, but over an extended period of 
time, that's gonna wear on anybody!  Separate rooms!

BW: What is the typical time it takes to record a CD? To  write a song? 
What's a typical process on either, from idea to  completion?

RE: Usually, we'll record for about four days. There really  is no typical 
time that it takes me to write a song. I've had songs that I've  struggled with 
for weeks. I've had songs that have started as some fragment, a  couple of 
lines or a hook and didn't get written for years, and then I've had  some that I 
call, "getting a free one" where the whole thing, beginning to end,  just came 
to me at once...where I'm just hoping I can get it written down before  it 
disappears. The "free ones" are a pretty rare occurrence and they generally  
only happen when I've already been wracking my brain, working trying to solve a  
problem with another song. Somebody once asked Yip Harberg, the Tin Pan Alley  
lyricist who wrote all the lyrics for The Wizard of Oz, wrote "Brother Can 
You  Spare A Dime," and lots of other old standards, about his process and he 
said  something like, "Nothin' to it...I just stare at a blank piece of paper 
until  blood comes out of my forehead." That about sums it up pretty well.

BW:  How much input does Jerry Hall have in the studio when he produces?

RE:  Jerry's our engineer so he's not producing, but he has an awful lot to 
do with  the way things sound. He's got amazing ears. He's the one that makes 
it sound  like a record. What mikes to use, where to place them, and all kinds 
of other  technical shit that I couldn't even begin to explain. Jerry's also 
been real  helpful to me in a production sort of way on songs where I end up 
overdubbing  the vocal. I think because I'm doing brand new songs, where there's 
no template,  no established way of singing the song...like sometimes I 
might've just written  it and haven't had a lot of bandstand time to really settle 
on my approach or my  delivery...Jerry is great for guidance in those 
situations. Jerry's got great  ears plus he's really calm and has tons of experience.

BW: How do you  decide who solos, you or Charlie or both? Genre, style? It 
seems you played a  little less harp on the Nine Lives CD?

RE: To me the song itself makes  those kind of decisions. We try to do 
whatever seems right for each song. After  we were done with the record Charlie 
brought up the point that maybe there  wasn't as much harp as there was on some of 
our previous records, but that's  just how it turned out. I feel like you 
should serve the song...almost like  subordinate yourself to the song. To me, 
with a lot of Blues today, I sense an  attitude like "Ok, let's get this other 
shit - the song - out of the way so I  can get to the solo, really show what I 
can do!" I can tell you that is  definitely not my approach. I'm trying to tell 
a specific story with each song  so the arrangement and which instrument 
takes a solo and even the message of the  solo is hopefully going to reflect 
whatever that particular song is trying to  put across.

BW: What's your main goal on stage with an audience, on how  to affect them, 
emotionally or otherwise? Has it changed over the  years?

RE: Well, first of all, emotionally is about the only way a  performer can 
affect an audience...I mean I'm not really looking to educate  anybody. There's 
a whole range of human emotions that can be affected by music,  by a 
performance, but it basically boils down to this...you can turn 'em on or  you can turn 
'em off! The longer I do this job the more I see that if you can  just be 
yourself and if you feel what you're doing people will  respond.

To be continued...

Mark Hummel is a contributing editor  at BluesWax. Mark may be contacted at 
blueswax@xxxxxxxxxxx



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