"Let's Play in the Snow": Doug Hamilton

[00:00:14] Speaker A: This is Aaron, this is Michael, and you're listening to the Nathan's and Roncast. How you doing, Michael? [00:00:23] Speaker B: Doing pretty good. You know, I'm thinking about our intro and I feel like we've been inspired by Rusty and Jan with their do they do that? They do a similar type of thing together, which is cool. [00:00:36] Speaker A: Well, if we can take after such a dynamic duo, then we are lucky. Indeed. [00:00:41] Speaker B: Indeed. Yeah. So we've got a song that we're going to talk about in this episode. I don't know many artists who have done a podcast per song. [00:00:50] Speaker C: No episode. [00:00:54] Speaker B: I don't know. I'd like to say it's revolutionary. It is in our own little way. [00:00:59] Speaker A: Much like the topic of this next song. Yeah, this is a song called let's Play in the Snow. And it's really complicated. It's a song about playing in the playing in the snow, yeah. [00:01:11] Speaker B: When Aaron brought it to me, I said, no, who would do that? Actually, when I was 25, living I'm 39. 39 in July. 38 right now. [00:01:25] Speaker A: That would make you 38. [00:01:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:26] Speaker C: Well, sometimes I like to age myself. [00:01:28] Speaker B: A little bit, but basically when I was 25, living in collegeville, PA, near Route 113 and I don't know, I was 23 or something like that. Either way, it doesn't matter where I lived. Either way, it snowed. And I learned that snow can go down and make a snowball. I didn't believe it. I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, in the desert. [00:01:53] Speaker A: Was there any ever any snow? [00:01:55] Speaker B: I mean, I saw some snow in kindergarten in 1990. It snowed enough to make a snowman. But I don't remember rolling a snowball. I thought we packed the snow and it could have been that we did, but I think we so it was snowball, rolling snow. And I walked outside of the basement thing that I rented and this 25 year old Michael Ronstadt was like rolling snowballs and building a snowman and I was just as happy as could be. I was playing in the snow. I was by myself, probably a little lonely, going, wish I had someone to hang out with. But the snow made it all better and I just love it. So this song just makes me smile because there's a snowball fight. I think there's laughter to me, is like all the accolades of a family having a beautiful moment that you might see on, like, old time camera footage and say, oh, man, that was the day when we could I don't know, there's something about that nostalgia. So I gave myself nostalgia that I never had at 25 and this song gave me nostalgia to that. [00:03:06] Speaker A: I started writing this as a bit of a joke song, kind of an ode to having I wrote this just after playing in the snow with my daughter Lily. She was, I guess, 14 at the time. But we went outside. I think this was basically the last time we had a major snowstorm and just that cozy feeling of, okay, the roads aren't plowed yet. There's no place to go. There's nothing to do but to go outside, play in the snow, and then come back in and have hot chocolate. And Lily loves the snow, and I have great memories of growing up out east in New Jersey and in. [00:03:53] Speaker D: You. [00:03:54] Speaker A: Know, sledding and making. [00:03:59] Speaker E: You know, it. [00:03:59] Speaker A: Was just a moment that I got to share with Lily. And then I came in and know, we're talking, know your age. I'm getting up there. I'm going to celebrate. [00:04:10] Speaker B: He's turning 28. [00:04:11] Speaker A: I'm turning 28 in August. And there's little aches and pains that you feel when you're a parent at a certain age and trying to act like you're younger. And so just playing in the snow as a middle aged person, I think this song kind of reflects on being a parent and feeling that awe despite being in a little bit of pain. [00:04:39] Speaker B: And at least there's a soft landing, kind of. Yes. I always say that when it's raining. [00:04:45] Speaker C: Out or you're like, rolling around in. [00:04:46] Speaker B: The grass. [00:04:50] Speaker A: Let'S play in the rain. That's a different song. [00:04:52] Speaker B: There's a little lyric video music video that we did. So we're like having we're working on it. We're working on it. That's what it is, actually. For the last one, without the Cold, we were pretending there was snow. [00:05:03] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:05:03] Speaker A: There's a number of winter songs on this album. [00:05:06] Speaker B: It's good. There are certain sounds that we put into the song. If I may talk about a few spots, please, where we used instruments or sounds that I think evoke winter. I always think of placid lakes or just space, a lack of noises, snow pads the sounds around you. It's kind of like fog, makes it sound extra silent because all those things get stuck and don't get to you. Right. There's a calm about it. So just like the last song is Winter Without the Cold, let's play in the snow. When you're out there and playing, sometimes you're bundled up enough. You don't really care that it's cold or your shoes are getting wet. You're just having a good time. You're going to go warm up later. But I believe it's track it's track four on the album. Yeah, track four on the album. And I did some steel string guitar because I think I added a second guitar. That's what it was. [00:06:16] Speaker A: You played the Rhodes on this? [00:06:17] Speaker B: I played the yeah. [00:06:18] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:06:18] Speaker B: That's what I'm trying to find. So the Rhodes keyboard is there, and we even did that on without the Cold, in fact. So the Rhodes keyboard, I played on two things. That's about the winter, but what's characteristic about the sound, let's just listen to the spots where you hear the roads. What you may have heard is that it's a very bell like sound. It's a percussion instrument. The keyboard is literally making a sound that's percussive, hitting like a metal bar or something. I don't know the insides of a Rhodes keyboard, but it's a classic sound either way. You hit it and it just has this ding. There's no vibrato. It's just very calming. I love it. It adds that thing without being overwhelming. You can play Rhodes with overwhelming tendencies, but even then, it's very subdued. There's other instruments that do that. But Rhodes keyboard, in this case, the studio had it. We utilized it. I don't play keyboard, but I can play a few notes. And that kind of evokes the winter in my mind. I hope it does to your ears. [00:07:34] Speaker A: Yeah. I remember the roads from some vintage Billy Joel tracks from the 70s. It's got a very 70s feel. But that's not what we were trying to evoke here. [00:07:45] Speaker B: So, anyway, I think we tried to evoke some winter. And it's a beautiful moment in that song captured from your family and makes me happy because it makes me think of when I was 25. And if you think about your own situation because of someone else's story, it's a good song. [00:08:04] Speaker A: And a discussion about this song would not be complete without a nod to Doug Hamilton, who played that's right. Played strings. [00:08:14] Speaker B: Doug and I added a string quartet section. Two cellos, two violins. I've been working with duck. I don't work with ducks. I go I do have this little wooden duck. [00:08:28] Speaker A: I think you're thinking of a character from Mad Men, but go ahead. [00:08:31] Speaker B: So I've been working with Doug Hamilton, bicycle connoisseur, builder, spoke builder. He's the best violinist I know, and I know a lot of them. He is a BMW car mechanic just by self being self taught and maintains his cars beautifully, wins car shows with his early 1980s BMW that just for car people. It's stunning. Right. For me, I don't know much about cars. I just think it's a cool car. But basically, he can do anything. And we've been playing music together in the studio for a lot of years. And for the over the decade that I've worked with him, 14 years, 15 years, he basically it's like we read each other's minds. And so when I brought him in to add violin parts, he knew exactly what I did without ever hearing it. He did one pass, a second pass, and we had a quartet no overdubs. Everything was perfect. So shout out to Doug Hamilton if you're hearing this. You rock. As I like to say to Aaron, like anyone who just rocks the world of whatever they do, you rock. [00:09:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Doug's a really sweet guy and very generous, very kind. And a really talented strings player. [00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah. We'll play a little snippet of that section. I think that strings section is magical. So here you go. [00:10:36] Speaker A: All right. Well, without further ado, here is our interview with our esteemed guest this week. [00:10:44] Speaker C: Well, we're so excited today to have our guest, Doug Hamilton, who isn't what the song is about, but he played violin on let's Play in the Snow. So, Doug, thank you for being here. [00:10:54] Speaker D: My pleasure, guys. Hello, Aaron. [00:10:58] Speaker E: Good to see you again. [00:11:00] Speaker D: It's good to be. [00:11:03] Speaker C: And in this digital world, we're looking at each other in three different locations. Doug, it was so much fun to have you join us in this little Michael Doug Quartet setting. It's one of the things that you and I specialize in and have been doing so since 2008. But you probably remember how we met. It was with a show with Lisa Bialis and her band. [00:11:28] Speaker B: That's right. [00:11:28] Speaker C: And I'm some random cello guy who came in to sit in at the show at the Oxford Community Arts Center. And I'm curious what your I feel like instantly we had a rapport. [00:11:41] Speaker D: Absolutely. It's one of those things people talk about true love and well, how do you know? And it's like somebody walks in the room and you have a connection, and we have that musical connection that it's really hard to explain. We've been in a lot of different musical environments together, and I don't recall one where we weren't able to create without really any discussion whatsoever between us, something that served the song. Because that's what it's about, really, when it comes down to it. It's about serving the vision of the songwriter and making the lyrics, not making it about us. It's about the song. [00:12:38] Speaker C: But one of the things that I love about is that we had this little string section breakdown, so I did a little cello melody, little bass line, and it didn't need a lot. It just needed that push and pull, kind of like that whole EB and flow that you see with life, storms, wind, anything. Part of what we do is we can kind of follow things that aren't with a click track. And let's Play in the Snow is not done with a click track. So when someone says, hey, do you know a violinist? I say, well, let's call Doug, because he'll play the exact thing that it needs and serving that song. Aaron, what were your impressions when we first had those parts sent to you and you heard them the first boy? [00:13:23] Speaker E: Well, I loved hearing it and hearing the song come to life. I always pictured a string quartet there, and I knew that when we roped Doug in that he would pull it off. Doug also did the part for Hello World. He's like, the first thing you hear on the album is Doug. [00:13:49] Speaker C: Pinocello. There just some Doug Hamilton at the top. [00:13:53] Speaker E: Right. So, you know, your playing has always kind of reminded me of that whimsy that you used to hear on A. [00:14:00] Speaker D: Prairie Home Companion oftentimes. Aaron, when I hear you sing, I have sort of a movie that plays in my mind because your singing, you sing about things. It's very thematic, and there's a subject and it's not sort of what would we say, some sort of stream of consciousness thing. These are deliberate songs. They're composed so oftentimes a reel of film starts grinding out in my mind of the scene you're describing, and all I'm trying to do is it's sort of like musical seasoning. A little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper, maybe some oregano over here or something that seasons it and hopefully complements it, but doesn't make itself center stage and doesn't try to take over the tune. It's like good seasoning. You shouldn't notice it unless it's absent. [00:14:58] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:14:59] Speaker E: Well, thank you. Yeah, I think there's a good interplay there on the recording. Even though we weren't in the same room together the one time that we did act, I think we've only played together live once. [00:15:13] Speaker D: That's right. At the Community Arts Center. [00:15:15] Speaker E: Yeah, but that was a really fun evening. Maybe you knew the songs, I think you'd reviewed them, but you didn't spend weeks reviewing them. And you jumped right in there and the whole show was it's got to be among my top ten favorite shows that I've ever played. [00:15:35] Speaker D: That's awesome. [00:15:37] Speaker E: We did the Watchtower at the end, and that was kind of epic. [00:15:42] Speaker D: Michael and I often joke that sometimes the best performances are the ones when the first rehearsal and the first performance run concurrently. And sometimes you get really lucky with that, and it's very special when that happens. [00:15:57] Speaker E: How do you do that? How do you just jump in and play right. Without a ton of rehearsal? [00:16:07] Speaker D: You know, my fiance asked me that question, and I really had to think about it. And to me, it's not any different than sitting down with three people and having a conversation. I mean, you don't have to think about what you're going to say. You just respond to the chatter that's going on. And it might be an interjection and like or maybe you'll say a whole sentence or maybe a whole paragraph, but you don't think about it. It becomes just a form of communicating. So nobody rehearses bar conversation. [00:16:45] Speaker E: I can see that. I mean, your fiddle is very expressive. [00:16:48] Speaker D: Thank you. [00:16:49] Speaker E: What kind of instrument do you play? [00:16:50] Speaker D: Well, if it's going to be just acoustic, I have two violins that were made for me by a man for whom I apprenticed in Atlanta probably almost 40 years ago now. His name is Robert Kimball, and he's kind of a savant in that he only makes violins because, as he puts it, that's all I hear, and I make the sound I hear in my head. I don't make violas, I don't make cellos because I don't hear violas and cellos, I hear violins. And he'll describe in depth what he's going to make and then put it in your hand six weeks later, and he's made the sound he's described for you, which is amazing, but it also means he can't tell you how he does it. So he doesn't have any students. I mean, I learned how to set up violence with him, and I got good at that. But when it comes to actually he's holding up a piece of spruce and going, okay, you hear that? I'm going to take a little bit of that, of this. I'm going to bring in this, and it's a little bright. I'm going to change that. I mean, I don't know how he does, you know, those are the two main acoustic instruments now because of a friend Michael introduced me to almost a year ago, wasn't it? [00:17:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:59] Speaker C: We did a jazz show, big band with string quartet, essentially, but no brass. We were the brass section. [00:18:07] Speaker D: Right. And we pretty much I mean, it was kind of a rehearsal, but we just went for it. [00:18:12] Speaker C: It was a little chaotic until we got on stage, which was it's kind of you when you're a little scared, sometimes the best things happen. [00:18:19] Speaker D: That's true. And so I got a five string violin out of that deal, and I find, surprisingly, it actually records really well. [00:18:27] Speaker C: Which has been a you know doug, did you use the five string or the four string for this recording? I think it was before you got. [00:18:36] Speaker D: Yeah, it was before I got it, yeah. [00:18:37] Speaker C: Because there was a lot of times with I feel like with your high end brightness of a fiddle in the room, sometimes a quieter instrument has all those things that eliminates what you're rolling off on the high end. For any audio geeks out there, if the fiddle is a little more quiet and just records exactly what you need, then you take some of the work out of the equation. [00:18:58] Speaker D: I'm glad you said that, Michael, because you just hit on something that has been something that a lot of amplified acoustic players don't seem to get, and also when they want to stick a pickup on an instrument, acoustic stringed instruments, violin, violet, cello, bass, evolved over hundreds of years to be heard at a distance. Very rarely was a crowd less than 10ft from you. And so these instruments had to project because there was no other way to get the sound to the back of the hall. So the way you get that is by creating depth and focus. Now, the problem is, if you stick a mic right over a violin like that, you get a lot of stuff that you don't want that the air in a concert hall will naturally attenuate. But when you've got a violin like the five string that's essentially built from the ground up as an amplified instrument, the maker is not trying to push it to the back of the wall, he's trying to just get it out of the f holes. And so there's a lot of those high partials that make it sound brilliant at the back of the hall that simply aren't there, which I think lends it to recording particularly well. Especially with a close mic. [00:20:12] Speaker C: There's condenser microphones and there's ribbon microphones. There's other kinds, but the ribbon mics have kind of a sweet sound that create that back of the hall sound. So they always say with string players, record with a ribbon. So a lot of what I record tends to be a condenser microphone and a ribbon microphone combined, because I get the sweetness of the ribbon and that brightness of the dynamic. It's all a game. You're trying to figure out how to recreate what happens in the stage, on the stage, in the hall, in the living room, when you're playing for your friends. How do you recreate that in the studio? And part of what aaron and I work to create with these albums is we record the basics with no vocals, and we might have a click track behind us if it wants it, but most of the time, we're trying to just have a great performance that still has groove. I would call it the bobbing your head factor. If someone's just sitting in the audience going, yeah, man, or they're like, slapping their knee the whole time. Depends on whether it's a barn burner or just a slow ballad. But when you've got all that going on, how do you create that on the album, and how do you make it so your audience doesn't say, well, I really like their live performances more than their albums. And although it's a compliment, you want to be able to have two great products, essentially one that has the energy in both worlds, which is so difficult. [00:21:42] Speaker D: Aaron is able to pull that off vocally, and then the rest of us just try know, hang. [00:21:49] Speaker C: Well, aaron aaron will ask me in the studio, was that too much? I'm like, well, you really can't do too, uh sometimes we can maybe work too hard to make something happen, but I feel like this happens in recordings. Recording engineers soften your p's and t's, but when you listen to musical theater recordings, the p's and t's, they pop, they're all there, and it's for the expression, right? So where do we find that balance so that you're not popping people's speakers, but you're not turning your p's into b's and your t's into. [00:22:26] Speaker B: Know? [00:22:26] Speaker C: For me, how can we find that crossroads where we're real? [00:22:33] Speaker A: So, michael, what are we selling this? [00:22:36] Speaker B: You know, it kind of relates to us in that it's about a song that we never put out called beat the traffic, and we always do this thing every month. It'll be a multi tiered thing. There's february album writing month, and a lot of musicians, creators, amateur, professional, whatever, we're all there every month. And the goal is to write 14 songs in 28 days. If it's leap year, 14 and a half songs in 29 days. I was like, all right, a fiddle tune. So I wrote this fiddle tune called race the traffic, and I sell that in PDF form@shakenearthmedia.com. So if you go to Shakenearthmedia.com shaken Earth Media, where are the media? Yeah, I didn't have anything for media. You can go buy the PDF for, like, $2 and you can get, I believe, treble clef and bass clef versions of it. But Race of Traffic fits all the contradance needs you need. So if you're a banjo player, fiddle player, cellar player, Geeter player, go to the festers. You want to add something. This is perfect. 16 bars. 16 bars. Race the traffic. So if you want to beat the traffic with your cool new fiddle tune that no one's ever heard, get Race the Traffic and add it to your repertoire, because Shakenearthmedia.com has what you need. [00:24:17] Speaker C: We also have a bunch of other. [00:24:18] Speaker B: Stuff that I put out there instrumental music and FOM, February Album Writing Month. Yeah, it's a great thing. And if you want to be creative, do something. If you just want to be a lyricist or just do instrumentals, it's the place for you. There's a lot of people it's a social, community based thing. It's great. So anyway, find your community over@fom.org and get some sheet music@shakenearthmedia.com. [00:24:53] Speaker C: Back to your. [00:24:54] Speaker B: Regular programming with part two. Doug, you have had a variety of. [00:25:03] Speaker C: Things in your career, which includes music, of course, which I think is probably the biggest part of the pie, if I had to guess. But you also own a bike shop called Bikewise in Oxford, Ohio, and so you are a genius bike mechanic. All evidence points to that. And then you also are an aficionado of BMWs, and you have only old ones, and you fix them up yourself, you maintain them yourself, and you win car shows with these things. And then on top of that, but only old ones on a number of any other subjects, like photography. You do some photography work, your creativity. Basically, you're kind of the Renaissance person that I think many of us could see more of in this world. But I'm thankful that if there are few and far between finding a Renaissance person, you might fit that characteristic. So I'm curious, when you were younger and growing up, what did you think. [00:26:15] Speaker B: You were going to do? [00:26:16] Speaker C: And then as you started to discover various pathways and things you could do in life, how did it divert in ways that surprised you? [00:26:29] Speaker D: That's an interesting question. Is it possible to blush on a podcast? That was the nicest thing anybody's ever said. Thank you, Michael. Okay, so I started on trombone in the band because my friend Jeff Cranfield played the trumpet and I wanted to hang out with Jeff, so I joined the band and they put me on trombone. And I guess I was miserable at it because the band director sat down with my parents and said, look, he just really doesn't have any talent musically and so probably should sit this one out. And so I said, well, whatever. Well, a year later, the very apparently attractive to me orchestra director, this bohemian of a woman came up and said, would you like to learn how to play the violin? And I remember looking up at her and shaking my head and going, so I hate to admit, but that's kind of where it all started. And I just took to it. A year later, she's saying, okay, you need a private teacher. And then, of course, he took one look at me and said, oh, we're going to turn you into this classical violinist and you're going to be a concert master, and you're going to go do this and that. Which worked for a while, but I really found that confining because I had all these other things I wanted to play. And I had kind of remembered reading about Bach and how in those days you were expected to be able to improvise. Bach might write down the chord progression, but you had to get from one to four to five to two minor to wherever with improvisation. But suddenly in the classical world that was verboten. Improvising was like, oh, you missed the notes. People show up at concerts with scores. It just seemed to me that there are other people much more suited to that kind of thing. And went through four music schools trying. [00:28:41] Speaker C: To bank now that I know I can't hire you ever again. [00:28:44] Speaker D: Four. Never. Still don't have a degree. Sorry. Most people that go to school for seven years are called Doctor. Thank you very much. Finally ran across this guy named John Coggy, and I'm actually playing with him tonight here in Oxford, which is kind of funny that we should be talking about this. He had a little folk band called The Lonesome Strangers, and they did everything from Dead covers to some originals to John Prine. Just all kinds of really juicy, straight down the middle folky, rocky kind of stuff. And he said, hey, you want to come sit in sometime? Because at that point I'd given up playing classically and was so bitter about the whole you know, he's trying to be nice, and I bring my stuff and I set up, and by the end of the first set, he says, you want to join the band? It came so naturally. It just felt like everything just fell into place, and I really never looked back. Started playing jazz, started playing everything but classical. Ended up in Nashville touring for eight or nine years and moved back up here and kind of at the behest of my wife at the time who didn't want to live in Nashville and raise kids there. I bought myself a job at the bike shop and then met a guy named Michael Ronstadt and want to play a lot more music. I don't get to play as much as I'd like to. [00:30:16] Speaker E: Tell me a little bit more about those eight or nine years you spent touring. Who was it with. [00:30:20] Speaker D: Well, I was fortunate enough to be in a jazz group that we opened for Baylessleck and the Fleck Tones. And at the end of our set, Vic came over and said, hey, man, you ever think about moving to Nashville? And I said, well, you know, actually, I kind of toyed with it. So he gave me his number and a month or two went by and I called him and he said, well, I'm going to be in town in a couple of weeks. Why don't you come down and I'll kind of show you around town? So after meeting some folks, I went and met a guy named Fred Carpenter, who ran the violin shop and didn't know it, but here's Mr. Violin Contact Central in Nashville, and basically within minutes of being in there. And here's Victor Wooten. So he's thinking, well, Vic's behind this guy can't be so bad. Handed me a fiddle and said, hey, I just set this up. Play something for me. Well, there's your audition, of course. I don't know, all this is going on and kind of behind my head, so to speak, but decided to move. And of course he's like, if you ever move to town, let me know. So I guess a month or two went by and I said, well, the heck with just, let's just go. No gig, no job, no nothing. Let's just go. Vic's girlfriend at the time was moving out of a house and she's like, hey, here's a place to live. You can move right in. I'm moving out. So I moved, moved in there and a week later had an audition with a guy named Aaron Tippen, who had a bunch of number ones at the time. This is 93, I believe, and was out on the road with him 120 days a year, played with Tricia Yearwood for a little bit, went out with Tanya Tucker, Barbara Mandrell the last two years of her career, young guy named David Kirsch, who had a few number ones, and then Reba McIntyre. And at the end of that tour, my daughter was scheduled to be born, and I didn't want to be the guy that was gone all the time. And my wife had the job with benefits, so I did the stay at home thing. Loved it. [00:32:36] Speaker E: Wow. [00:32:36] Speaker C: And one of the things, Doug, you've told me is that you kind of learned what you don't like about doing the same part every night versus that conversational aspect. And that was, I think, really cool that if I say, hey, Doug, do that same part every night, I know that you're going to be like, I don't really feel like is, but humans don't work that way. Machines do. And I feel like some of these tours probably felt like you were just to turn yourself on, turn the off button, switch it to off, go relax, same thing every night. Was it like that or was it well. [00:33:14] Speaker D: Somebody explained it really well to me, and I think this makes perfect sense. Great shows that you're presenting to the public as a show are built on the avoidance of risk. Think about that. Everything has to be the same. So you don't want to do anything that would court risk, throwing anybody off, being not exactly like it's supposed to be. Great music, on the other hand, is built on the embracing of risk. We had that set together in Community Arts Center, where you looked to I said, what are we going to play? And you just simply started improvising and we just jumped on together. We didn't know where that was going. We embraced the risk and we got a great tune out of it. Just the other night at that wine club thing we did, I think that was probably the best minor swing you and I have ever played. And nobody knew about it. [00:34:13] Speaker C: We're the only two people. [00:34:15] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:34:16] Speaker C: Aaron we were playing for this wine club, Noisy, and we did a version of Django Reinhardt's minor swing that I think would have beat any version, but I don't think anyone really noticed except but we were just happy. I would I would bet money on that version. Like, usually that doesn't happen in my life, but we went some places with that tune, so it was good. [00:34:41] Speaker E: Doug, knowing you as mean, I can imagine that being forced to play the same thing every night would be quite aggravating to your musical sensibility. But, I mean, did you have to kind of suck it up and do that when you were out on the road with these big names? Did that diminish some of the enjoyment, or were there still things to I imagine that being on a stage that big, hearing the roar of the crowd, you can't help but take energy from that. [00:35:11] Speaker D: Sure. That's the name of the game is being consistent every night. Yeah, there's a certain kind of energy that has to just go into the focus because you've got to present the music. It's not AC DC we're playing with here. There's a certain amount of control. You've got to be very focused to play non fretted instruments in tune so you can't get too excited. You've got to focus in on what you're doing and serve the song and serve the stage and hope it all turns out. I did notice it took the edge off my ability to improvise until you sort of get in this rut, and then suddenly you go sit in someplace and you feel like, where did it all go? Now, to the credit of one of the guys I worked with named David Kirsch, we were playing we still I think that band still has the record of the most shows in one year of the William Morris Agency, we did, I think, about 437 shows in one year. [00:36:20] Speaker E: Multiple shows a day. [00:36:21] Speaker D: Yes. Sometimes two and three. Wow. And here's the band you talk about, burnt. These guys were just over it. So I'd been nominated the band leader at this point. So I said, all right, guys, let's do something a little different. If there's a signature leg, play the signature leg. Like, if it's a thing that identifies the song, play that. But if there's a fill, fill it. If there's a solo, play a solo. Like, start, just play. Give the crowd a little something that they can't get. Listen to the record. And what was fascinating was how the Creature of Habit, it was a very capable band who could play and could improvise. But you've done it so many nights exactly the same way that it actually took a little bit of it took some time to really start to fall into it, where it started to get more comfortable. And crowds noticed it. They thought, oh, this is a little bit different. This is fun. David's going to run across the stage and climb halfway up the scaffolding. Let's extend the solo or let's trade fours. Let's toss it around. And of course, the production manager, when he first heard of this idea, was kind of like, well, how are you going to know what to play if you don't play what's on the record? And I said, Believe it or not, that's kind of what we're supposed to do. You have to trust us. And it was a little bit of pulling teeth for a while, and it's very not Nashville to do that. You might know a fiddle player named Stuart Duncan who's played he's. [00:38:11] Speaker C: Yeah, he's amazing. [00:38:12] Speaker D: One of the finest ever to walk the earth, as far as I'm concerned, for playing that genre. I was talking to him one night. I can't remember where I saw him. It might have been Station Inn. And he was talking about he played on all those Lyle Lovett records. [00:38:27] Speaker E: Really? [00:38:27] Speaker D: Yeah. So that's Stuart. [00:38:29] Speaker E: So he's the guy that did well, some of my favorite songs. [00:38:33] Speaker D: Right. I mean, the guy's a genius. Improvising. So Lyle decided he wanted to take a band out that was essentially the Studio Band. And hey, these are the guys who cut the tracks. And so Stuart shows up for the sound check, and there wasn't really a rehearsal or anything because these guys played on the record. What do you need a rehearsal for? So he's playing this kind of stuff, and Lyle says, well, that's not what you played on the record. And Stuart's like, I don't remember what I played on the record. And Lyle says, Well, I really want you to play what's on the record. So you can imagine you hire this guy who's capable of all this and go, nope, I'm going to handcuff you to the record. And I thought, oh, to me, what a lost opportunity. But then again, Lyle is famous for putting on a great show, and so he wants to avoid the risk and once in a while you'll run across a band that can do both. But it seems it's pretty rare to find somebody that's going to go out there on a limb in front of anywhere from, I don't know, 200 to 20,000 people. That's difficult. [00:39:47] Speaker C: When you take risks. Sometimes you fall on your face. And Aaron and I know well, we all know about taking know, like, I've played a solo that like, oh, my God, I had no groove. I lost my key. Know, if you don't make big mistakes every so often, you're not really playing, in my opinion. But like, Aaron and I had a review for our cover of Englishman in New York from our previous album that someone had said there's some songs that people should not a group should not cover, and that is one of them, but the other ones are great, so we can skip over that. It's some variation of that. I disagree wholeheartedly that we fell on our face there, but to his ears, it just wasn't what it needed to be. We fell on our face to that reviewer, and that's a risk when you take a song like that and don't do an English accent and you got two baritone style singers and you might not make the cut. It's okay, though. If you love it yourself, that's a good thing. [00:40:59] Speaker D: The challenge there is to hear it with fresh ears, and that's hard for a lot of people to do. I mean, I'm guilty of that. If I've got a song in my head a certain way, and it's like home to me if somebody takes me away from my home, it might be a perfectly valid version. It's musically fine, it's performed well, but it's not what my brain is expecting. It really can be a challenge to set that version that you've got stored in your memory cells aside and let something else in that challenges know. [00:41:29] Speaker C: Aaron, when we learn songs, do you study the original very much, or do you try to listen once and then go for it? Because for me, I'll listen and figure it out, and then I forget about it, which, again, I could fall on my face with these. [00:41:43] Speaker E: You know, if it's a song we haven't played in a while, I'll go back and listen to the recording and practice to it. But when you and I get out there and this is something I appreciated about Doug, who kind of had the same mentality and then some, they're meant as a starting point, and departing from it is something that we like to do, that sometimes we'll throw each other a curveball and we'll improvise and we just read each other. And I know that you guys can do that, too. So, Doug, I mean, it must have been quite a change to be on the road constantly with these wonderful musicians and have these big crowds and then all of a sudden, you're in a much different environment, doing something completely different. What was that transition like, and why did you feel like it was necessary to make that change? [00:42:46] Speaker D: Well, I didn't want to be somebody that was gone all the time with my kids. I'd seen other people in bands that I was touring with that really seemed like they were missing out on a lot, and I just didn't want to do that. You hear all the stories about, well, I didn't know my dad growing up because he was gone all the time. Didn't want that to be really what my memory of my children was like. I wanted to be present. We moved back up here to Oxford, Ohio. My wife at the time was from Cincinnati, and I had worked at the bike shop up here before. When I quit school the fourth time, I worked at the bike shop for a little bit now. I'd been tinkering with bikes since I was a kid. Couldn't afford to take my bike to the bike shop. But I was good at reading and figuring out how to go from there. So you could go to the library and you could read a book about how to fix your bike and apply that. And so I went from there to tinkering with cars a little bit, just because basically, if you're struggling as a musician, there's just not a whole lot of cash laying around. So if something happened to the car, I would just figure out how to fix it myself. And that kind of became a love of I mean, both my kids share that passion. Know Ethan, I don't think Michael knows this, but Ethan is now working out at Ketler Motorworks. He got hired out there this summer. And all those guys out there like, where did you learn to wrench? I mean, you don't have a background in this. And he's like, Well, I've been working under cars with my pop since I was seven. Aaron, it's interesting you asked the question about you're either serving a large audience or you're serving a small audience. With the work I do at the bike shop, you're helping people one on one. Yeah. It's not 20,000 people, but to me, the joy is like serving the song or serving a tune or putting a smile on somebody's face in a different way. Seeing somebody that didn't ever think they'd be able to meet their fitness goals. But you got them the right gear and you got them in the right kit, and you got them the right attitude and watch them go. That, to me, is a beautiful thing as well. It's different than a round of applause after a tune, but in a lot of ways, it's equally satisfying. [00:45:19] Speaker C: Yeah. And sometimes I think about audience sizes. I'm kind of unique in a way that sometimes I love an empty room. I don't like an empty, empty room, but when the bar is like a third full because you didn't quite get enough people there. You can really hear yourself well, and that sound is sometimes pristine. I'm like, we're going to go with this compared to like, we packed the place, but no one can hear us. And when you're in a concert situation, half the time you can't see them anyway. Where I get most nervous is probably in front of my peers, probably going back to master classes in my music degree. I was like, working up this thing and I wish I could go back there now and do it and just say, okay, I know I can do this. Those moments where you succeeded the other times when you fell on your face, I love the idea that it's helping people, it's putting a smile on their face. I mean, that is what music needs, to help people feel something. Maybe it's a thing they need to feel and hear at that moment. Maybe it's a thing they go, next song, but that next song is the thing they need to hear. And you always hope that the music that we as musicians create becomes that thing, that soundtrack to their life, because they're probably taking a jog at a park with earbuds in and we might be their soundtrack for that moment, that pristine little time when time stands still. We might be that moment. This song, I think, is one of those that can be that moment. Quite honestly, it does that to me. And I played on the thing. [00:46:57] Speaker D: I'm always struck by how many different people take different meanings from the same song. They'll say, this means X to me or Y to me. And I thought I'd never even thought about it like that. And your crowd size thing, we would often play like, say a 02:00 and a 07:00 show at a big fair and you've got this enormous crowd and you play the show and it's okay. And then you load out and throw everything under the bus and drive an hour and a half to some bar on maybe the outskirts of a town and you would set up the show in about 20 minutes. You go in there and I mean, the place is open and there's thumping music going on and there's a stage and here you go. We got it down to where we could pretty much have everything set up, ready to rock, spread some monitors around and be ready to roll in 20 minutes. And that's what I think we had seven piece band at that point and you just hit the ground with that and the energy is so much different. It's the same tunes you were playing 3 hours ago, but everything is different. And even though you're kind of playing the same notes and the same songs and he's singing the same words, just changing the environment, changing the space that has been created for that, it just changes the energy entirely. And Michael you and I have played the same songs for different people and had it be completely different experiences both for the player and the listener, which to me is fascinating. [00:48:46] Speaker C: Yeah, well, and one of the things we did recently was we had Ethan Hamilton, Doug's son, on drums and then Doug and I were leading the band. [00:48:56] Speaker B: And so we had a kind of. [00:48:57] Speaker C: I call it a power trio just because it felt really good. But we played the Mayo, the 6 May and did a lot of stuff in Spanish, English, and I went way off book with the set list. And I think of family and music because I grew up with family and music. Aaron, your daughter is learning piano and singing in musicals and just listening to music. She greets me by singing my songs. I love like she knows all my lyrics in the right key, so all of the above. And I recently did something with Josh. Heisle with my old duo Lost in Holland. And Holland played baritone with us on a new song that we recorded. So it's so crazy that that band was named after him. Thinking of his son while he was not in town at war, essentially with the Iraq War and everything, but he was thinking of his son Holland, and that was his band name. And so, yeah, not Lost in Holland, but he was lost and thought about Holland and having Holland on stage was just you could feel that energy and that sound and it makes it special. Right. Something a little different. So this song kind of being about family really brings it around and I always feel like you all are family to me because musicians are an interesting set of breed of people. Essentially, we make friends with the people we work with and the way we play is to collaborate on projects that happen to be work, but it's fun, but it's also work, which makes everyone else in the world not understand us in any sense of the way of the word of like, well, you're going to work. Well, you're going to play. What is it? I don't know how to explain it. So this collaboration has been wonderful. And Aaron, thank you for letting me bring Doug on board and trusting me with this. And Doug, thank you for trusting me with sending you stuff that I'm like, don't worry, you'll be fine and you just fit exactly what it needs to be. [00:51:11] Speaker D: Well, the trust triad is kind of Aaron. I need to feel like Aaron trusts me and isn't going to sit there and go like, oh, my God, Michael, where did you find this guy? Because all of us, I think I don't care how high you go up the ladder, so to speak, but I know guys that have been playing for 60 years and they still have impostor syndrome. They still think they're sitting in somebody else's chair and that's a hard one to shake for anybody. So I appreciate the trust and jumping off into the well from which great music. [00:51:51] Speaker E: You know, was it my idea to bring Doug in? [00:51:56] Speaker C: I think it was because we had done that show, and you're like, well, I want a quartet. Can we do a quartet? And I think either you brought it up, or we both thought at the same time, because if Doug's available, he's the one to get so it's like there's not another option to me as a first call. There's a lot of great players we all work with, but you just want someone who can feel that song and make it happen. Doug. Yeah. You made the cut. You made the cut. Always honored small folk time outfit that we were not sure if ten or 25 people know about us, but those 25 or ten people do like our music, and they appreciate your work as a result. Thank you so much for being a part of the album and letting us dig a little deeper into your background, because I think people should know who you are and why the song sounds so good. [00:52:50] Speaker D: Well, thank you. And I look forward to the next time we get to play together. [00:52:53] Speaker E: You too. [00:52:54] Speaker C: Till next time. [00:52:55] Speaker E: Thank you, Doug. [00:52:59] Speaker B: Once again, we've expended a perfectly normal hour with some wild conversation. [00:53:09] Speaker A: We hope you enjoyed the conversation. [00:53:11] Speaker B: Yes, we're going to play the song for you. [00:53:14] Speaker A: Here is let's play in the snow in its entirety. [00:53:27] Speaker F: Let's play in the snow. There's no place to go with that stuff on the ground. I'll lace up your boots, put on your hat let's go stomp around this beauty can't last. You won't always be small. Snow turns to rain and the moment is gone. I'm bundled up too, ready to go. Let's play in the snow. Let's make a snowman. Let's roll some snow, that's what you said. You're down on your knees while I stand and freeze because it hurts when I bend. You stand up and throw a snowball at my head. I duck and I throw out a muscle instead. My pants are all soaked, but the world is a glow. Let's play in the snow. And my socks are bunched up in my giant snow boots and my face is all red and my ear muffs is skewed. My glasses are fucked and my hair's out of place but it all disappears with that smile on your Facebook. [00:55:25] Speaker D: Samantha. [00:55:50] Speaker F: Three snowballs stacked with a pipe in its mouth. A black Abe Lincoln hat from the garage. You look so proud. I ask for a hand to get up off the ground. You help pull me up and then I knock you down. We laugh, we seize the day. But I'm ready to go because we just played in the snow. [00:56:26] Speaker A: Well, that was refreshing. [00:56:28] Speaker C: Yes. [00:56:28] Speaker B: I feel a little chilly. I need a hot shower to warm up. [00:56:32] Speaker A: Would you like some hot chocolate. [00:56:33] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, let's do that next. [00:56:35] Speaker A: Let's have some hot chocolate. I'm looking outside. It's May, but it feels like winter. [00:56:41] Speaker B: And have a hot chocolate on us. You have to make it, but just know that we gave you the energy to get up and make one. And if you have some Mexican chocolate, cut a little square. [00:56:52] Speaker E: So good. [00:56:52] Speaker B: Melt it in some either nut milk or actual milk and it's perfect. That's how my grandfather did. Put a stick of cinnamon in there while you're doing it. That is the cup of hot chocolate that I grew up with. It's a little different than Swiss Miss, but it's pretty good. [00:57:10] Speaker A: And an authentic recipe from the Ronstadt family. [00:57:13] Speaker B: Yeah. There you go. So don't forget the cinnamon stick. It's all about that next song is going to be a really moving song that I think will break your heart multiple times and continue to do so. But I think it's a really important message about treating your fellow human better and also remembering to apologize for that. So it's for the song. [00:57:40] Speaker A: Sorry, allen next on The Nathan's and Roncast michael, as we end this episode, do you have any words of wisdom? A word of wisdom? [00:57:50] Speaker B: Daring dew. [00:57:53] Speaker A: Daring dew. [00:57:54] Speaker B: Daring Dew. [00:57:55] Speaker A: I think is that a Hyphenated word? [00:58:01] Speaker B: If it is, I'm just going to go with it. [00:58:04] Speaker A: All right. [00:58:06] Speaker B: I'm going to have the daring dew to use daring dew as a single word. [00:58:10] Speaker A: All right, well, then I will counter with another compound word or a Hyphenated word. And that word, my friend, is swizzle stick. [00:58:19] Speaker B: Hey, that's pretty good. I like that. Enjoy your hot chocolate, everyone. [00:58:24] Speaker A: You're welcome. [00:58:25] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:58:26] Speaker A: Peace. [00:58:40] Speaker B: Croons itself to rest a soft wind bend.