Texas Talk
Feb. 15, 2024 | San Antonio musician Joe Reyes
2/15/2024 | 26m 48sVideo has Closed Captions
When it comes to music, musician and producer Joe Reyes doesn't see any limitations
Grammy-winning San Antonio guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Joe Reyes has worked on a dizzyingly wide range of music: heavy metal, jazz, Tejano, outlaw country, art-pop, and flamenco. In this episode, Reyes talks about his remarkable career, his creative process and how the Texas music scene has changed over the years.
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Texas Talk is a local public television program presented by KLRN
Produced in partnership with the San Antonio Express-News.
Texas Talk
Feb. 15, 2024 | San Antonio musician Joe Reyes
2/15/2024 | 26m 48sVideo has Closed Captions
Grammy-winning San Antonio guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Joe Reyes has worked on a dizzyingly wide range of music: heavy metal, jazz, Tejano, outlaw country, art-pop, and flamenco. In this episode, Reyes talks about his remarkable career, his creative process and how the Texas music scene has changed over the years.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipWelcome to Texas Talk.
I'm Gilbert Garcia, opinion writer and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News.
On this show, we bring you one on one conversations with some of the most fascinating figures in Texas politics, sports, culture and business.
When it comes to music, Joe Reyes doesn't see any limitations.
Over the years, the Grammy winning San Antonio guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and producer has worked on a dizzyingly wide range of music heavy metal, jazz, the flamenco guitar interplay of a lot on Reyes Tejano album with Freddy Fender, the outlaw country, Mitch Weber, The Swindles and the daring art of the band Buttercup.
On this episode, Reyes talks about his remarkable career, his creative process, and what he loves about the San Antonio music scene.
Let's get started.
Joe, thank you so much for being on the show.
My pleasure, man.
It's an honor.
Absolutely.
Well, you know, when you were 15, you were playing in a San Antonio heavy metal band.
Yeah, it was.
I was like 60 or 70.
Yes.
And your dad, who worked for the Texas Employment Commission, suggested to you that you needed to you learn other kinds of music, not just rock.
You need to play, you know, learn jazz or country, learn soul and things.
And when I think about your career, you pretty much done that.
You mean you played jazz, You played flamenco, you played rock, you played Tejano, psychedelic pop.
Now, Buttercup.
Yeah.
So you've kind of followed that suggestion.
But I wonder, like, how did you receive that advice.
At the time?
I think as you're as a kid, you're single mindedly trying to try to do the thing that you see other you hear is a done right.
Like, you know, get out, get an album deal, start touring a bunch.
But those things take time.
And it was it was his advice where, you know, none of those things had taken off yet, where I really did think, like, I need to kind of diversify.
Yeah.
The very first offers for anyone to ask me to teach at their music store.
I said yes, even though I really wasn't qualified.
I thought, I'm more people this way.
Yeah, I was meeting tons of people at the stores.
I was working at music Makers.
I met a bunch of important people in my life.
John Whipple I know Gorilla Bitch Webb.
They're all there.
Jason Jason Wren is working there from space to music where I teach now, Right?
It's just generations of people that that we've met over the years that my dad was correct.
It's like in order for me to, like, earn enough living just playing music, it wasn't enough to play rock.
I had to learn how to play everything really, like, you know, just acoustic music, anything electric, any one of those styles you just mentioned it just to become proficient on it.
But it was actually sort of fun.
Like to learn all the different styles was was to be diverse and especially in a studio setting where you're simply sitting there with a producer, an engineer, and they're asking you, Hey, can you do a little bit of this?
You're like, yeah, you want.
Some of that?
You immediately do it.
They're like, how do you know?
Well, that's how like you just you're very.
Diverse and you started playing guitar when you were, what, about seven or.
Something?
Yes.
What was it that that, that drew you to the instrument?
Well, we had a piano and it was sort of laid out, like at my dad's typewriter.
And I could go to the keys and make them work.
And I was like, Yeah, this sounds like some of the music we like.
And then one day we opened it and I saw the strings and saw and I was like, and my brother got a big kitchen spoon and I had even pulled the sustain pedal down and I just started banging on all this just like a heart.
And I'm like, This is it.
And my mom came in just like, What.
Are you doing?
you need an instrument with a guitar, with the strings on the outside.
You need a guitar.
And then about a year later, I get one.
Yeah.
And your mom passed away when you were about 13, I think.
13.
I can't even imagine what that it's.
It's one of those things where the rug is sort of pulled out from underneath you.
And then you, you know, I had a really good family surrounding me to help me through all of that stuff.
But it was music.
It was that's what I was going to ask you.
I mean, I imagine music probably helped you process that and just.
Exactly was well, then it feels like it's really essential.
Like I feel like, I really have to go into music more deeply because this is actually my salvation.
Maybe in this, in this way.
And that's what it was.
Yeah, I just I found so much solace in art.
Any kind of art really.
Like stories, poetry, all the sciences I thought were sort of interesting as well.
So yeah, so this sort of set me on the path of I'm just kind of learning on my own, picking out books from the library that weren't assigned just understanding like all this knowledge was sort of free if I wanted it.
And that's what my dad kept telling me.
It's like, Well, just check that book out from the library if you're interested, or find someone who knows more about it.
And that's that's kind of really what it is.
You're sort of set in motion with the idea that learning is fine and not understanding something is cool.
It doesn't mean that you didn't.
You'll never know it.
And there's a lot of embarrassed goes into.
You know.
Like this job which is like I don't know how to do something, but eventually you're just like, well, show me how to do it.
And that's exactly what happened.
And it started to spread to the other parts of my life outside of music when I was still waiting tables, you know, not able to make a earn a living.
Yet.
If it was slow, I would just go back to the kitchen, Go, Hey, man, what are you guys doing?
We had a Julia.
The curiosity about things.
Yeah, absolutely big.
So that's a big part of our jobs anyway.
And then it becomes a big part of your life.
Is one of the most beloved projects you've been involved in.
Musically was a lot on Reyes, which was your flamenco duo.
You had jewelry, I mean, I think six albums together.
Yeah.
Yeah, you were.
You had a record deal.
Great success.
Yeah.
I mean, how did the two of you come together and how did I mean, that's such a challenging for music to play.
The same thing.
Like in the eighties, I was playing pretty much hard rock till about the mid eighties.
And then I decided, like, I really should like kind of try to find some more people to play with.
I put an ad in the current and only two people answer this country band from shirts and I thought, Yeah, and then John Thomas, who would become the keyboard player from Fine Line and he and I hit it off immediately.
So then I'm starting to play up and down St Mary's streets with this band and we're sort of diverse.
Everybody can play very well.
We're starting to get a little bit of attention and that's what I need to do.
Laura And so around the same time I meet Michael Morales, Right?
And so, so with Serge, he and I start that duo and it's right at the time when they were forming that was starting.
So I actually caught a trend like we actually caught the wave that was like lifting a bunch of these bands and that's how we got a recording contract.
It was it was incredible.
Now, you were were you actually you had a record deal.
You were nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2001.
Yeah.
And then shortly after that, you decided to discontinue things.
And I always thought that was a really bold move on your part because, you know, it's something you could have kept doing with great success for a lot longer.
But yeah, it goes back to what I was saying earlier, like staying curious and learning more about anything really in our lives is super important.
And the day of the awards for the Latin Grammys was 911.
So it it actually is this sort of just like pen that gets.
Stuck in that music.
Of that time.
For a while.
Serge moves back to Mexico.
I have those three years off basically before he was back and then I joined.
Yeah, Buttercup, I'm already in the Swindells.
That's actually how I meet everybody from Taco in.
Like, the whole taco scene is introduced to me by Mitch Webb and the Swindells, and it's amazing.
Then I see all these super creative people outside of the outside of, you know, just commercial music.
And I was like, This world is full of cool, creative people.
I kind of want to stay here.
And that's basically what happened.
And you met Eric Sanden, who's been your bandmate and yeah, in Buttercup for I guess about 22 years.
Yeah, yeah.
And I, I know that you were, you were drawn to his, he was in a pre buttercup van.
You were drawn to his songwriting.
Yeah.
I mean, what was it Because I mean he's, and he's, I mean, when I think about his work, he's got it.
There's a great sense of humor.
There's a, he's very literate person that comes through in his songs.
What was it that that drew you to?
Yeah, well, we we were sort of I was really amazed by his songwriting.
A lot of my friends could write really well, and I was just a nascent songwriter at that point.
I wrote an instrumental music and I'd played on tons of sessions, but I myself wasn't really satisfied with any of the things I was writing until I meet Eric.
He really does give you the confidence to go, yeah, I can.
I can splay my heart.
And really say what I mean.
He's a it's.
A hard step.
It's yeah, yeah.
But it, but it's a monumental leap forward is for me as far as like songwriting and the music production, then it feels like I can really help a songwriter because I know exactly how they're feeling in those moments.
Really insecure, wondering if that's going to work.
And we just kind of move real slowly through those processes.
But that's what I really learned.
And so it's yeah, it's, it's through, Eric, that I learned so much more about songcraft, but that's going alongside all the different types of production work I'm learning in studios and learning how to produce records.
One of the things that that I was that was really interesting was that I think he was initially resistant to doing a band with you because he thought you were too good to.
I was too skilled, which is really funny.
Yeah.
I've had the opposite problem in my.
Life, but.
They're suspicious.
They're just like, Dude, you won a Grammy with Eddie Vedder.
Your Latin Grammy nominated.
Like, why would you want to do this?
Yeah, And I was like, You guys are great.
It's like, I don't think they really saw from the outside what I saw, which is like a bunch of amazing artists that can collaborate really easily with each other.
And that's what I wanted.
Yeah.
So now you all I mean, Buttercup has always been an art project as much as a band.
And early on I remember you all had like the Greco one day performances at the wiggle room and there was it was always a happening.
I mean, there were all these different things happen.
Like at one point I think you all wrote a song on command.
Yes.
For, you know, for the audience.
You would do performances in front of like two people at a time.
There's kind.
Of one, I just want.
To wanted what was.
Is there is there a one show that, like, stands out to you like this was the greatest.
That the audience have.
One was the one where emotionally I saw a bunch of things happen that I'd never seen happen, which was Robert Tatum, I think was was the owner of the gallery that we were playing at the time.
And so we had our friend Matt Roy deejaying outside in the main room where we would normally play and we'd sequestered ourselves in this back office.
Yeah, and with Butcher Paper, we had just written all the names of our titles of our songs on the wall.
And one by one we.
Invited people back.
We had a few questions for them, like how their day was going and all these things, and then we would prescribe them a song.
And I just thought this was the most amazing thing.
But there was this one girl came in and she was like sort of reticent.
She was just like, This is dumb.
And then we picked a specially like a really pretty song for her.
And I remember at one point Eric just very lightly goes over it, touches her on her shoulder, and we watched her just like melt.
And I was like.
wow.
This works.
This, this prescription.
Thing is real.
And then and that's when I.
Realized, like at some point Robert came back and said, Hey, man, people want their money back.
They want to leave.
We're like, Let them leave, man.
We're not we're not leaving this room.
This is important.
And so that's that's when I saw that they weren't just musicians.
They really did care about art.
The frame that it went in.
What the indication?
Yeah.
Communication and what we were trying to to project to an audience.
Yeah it was very specific at times and I thought this is amazing really It was.
You mentioned Taco Land and I mean, this is this is a much loved and just like punk rock, indie rock Haven and Santana.
And you were a big part of that.
Of that, yeah.
That scene.
And then you all were renting a room there, like, for rehearsal?
Yeah.
Yeah.
In behind there was a couple of garage stalls really in the back, and there was one that yeah, it wasn't just us.
Phil Luna, I think was back there, a couple of other people.
But yeah, that's where we rehearsed.
So that was literally our home.
And then one day our home is gone and it's in.
It's really tough for the, for everybody who was in that scene to sort of regroup and understand like where we're going to meet now.
Like, are we just has.
Any place ever really replaced that?
You know, it's hard to say.
There's there's a bunch of places that we'd love to play, but nothing as special as that because of RAM, the owner truly defined like what that space was like, which was a complete free for all as far as.
Music, which I.
Thought was brilliant.
And he himself was a really nice, kind man.
When you when you met him on off hours, like he was picking up cans to recycle, he loved coming out to those gravel shows we would do and I would expect it.
I didn't realize you came out.
So yeah.
He came out to some it, but he would always have just like a Sprite.
I'm like, Hey, Matt, can we get you a beer?
Is like no longer.
And I thought, You know what?
He doesn't have to do this.
He must really want to come.
And that was it meant so much to us when.
The 17th century was, I think it was June 2005, which Abram was, was shot and killed in his.
Along with our our friend Doug Moore.
Yeah, it was it was so traumatic.
I think all of us at that point because we're adults, had suffered some sort of loss in our family.
We've lost definitely lost friends to disease and accidents and things like that.
But he was sort of the father of that thing and he really did treat everybody in this way that I thought was super cool and suddenly, yeah, the center of it all was sort of gone.
And so we had to regroup.
That's around the time that we we start renting a place at the Blue Star.
It's through our friend Michelle Manzo.
So then we moved from basically Taco Land to the Blue Star complex, and we've been there ever since.
And that's the new place where everybody, you know, it's, it's gone.
The Blue Star has changed so much over the years.
It's grown.
It's that was the other thing that happened with Buttercup was that I sort of got ingrained and got to know most of the artists in San Antonio.
You spoke with Cruz Ortiz earlier.
We met him.
He's great.
We know all the people who work at our place.
We know most of the people at the Blue Star contemporary, and that was important to me.
I mean, I thought all art was important, but to have Buttercup, like, be a small part of it was amazing.
Yeah.
So we get to meet and collaborate with a lot of those people.
Now, you you mentioned Pretty Fender and you won a Grammy for your production, right?
Playing on an album that you did.
I think it was was a 2002 I think.
I think is.
The music, by the way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And my understanding is that the concept of the record, which was basically Freddy sort of revisiting songs from his childhood, mainly boleros, but a lot of songs, his childhood that he loved, you really kind of.
It was.
Suggested the idea.
To him, yeah, it was.
Spontaneous, but then he came up from Corpus and we had this songwriting meeting at the lounge of Studio in, and he was, you know, he had his guitar out is like, Can you turn this for me?
I'm like, Sure.
I do this the way you do.
A great Freddy Fender imitation.
we had over the years.
I just love him.
So.
So and my dad was a huge fan, right?
Like, so this is a big deal.
Like, I'm working with the guy we saw on he hall, and it's like he's there.
But he said, You know, I used to sing these mariachi songs as a kid and he sang one and we all just went, We have to do it.
I'm like, this, this, this is now the new direction, right?
So, so we pick the songs he's helping us choose, and then we start the production, right?
And then most of those mariachi records have three part vocals, right?
Like a trio.
You know, any one of the mariachi trios that we know.
So we're thinking, Well, we need background vocals.
And they just kind of look at me like, Well, you do them right.
So it was in the days of having an edit tape and I could take it home and put it in my player and do my parts at home, bring the tape back, go to studio and stick it in.
Right?
So I do my parts, they go and they put it in there like you're all in tune, but it doesn't sound right.
I think you're going to have to impersonate it.
I mean, I'm going to have to sing like in harmony and like an in tune.
They're like, Yeah, let's give it a shot.
So I go home and I think this is never going to work.
So I get them.
I got to get my headphones and I'm doing my impersonation now right of Freddy as I sing.
I take that tape back and we put it in.
It sounds correct and I am just shocked that they were right.
Then I'm like.
This is going to work.
They're like, Yeah, okay, we're going to do all this Sounds like this.
So I did most of the background vocals.
I just overdub them myself the third and the fifth of the harmonies, right?
And even Freddy was just like mine.
It looks like a bunch of me and like a bunch of the great.
There were only a few moments where we were in the studio together because he was going through kidney dialysis.
He still needed the kidney transplant that he got from his daughter.
So he had the stent in, but he was always in such good spirits.
So there was one moment where we had to go down to Corpus to get the rubato interest, which was like robotic means there's no time.
It means I play a chord and they wait for him to sing and then I play another and we're waiting.
We're just kind of anticipating each other, right?
So we have to do those things in person.
And those were the moments where I was looking at him and he's sitting where you are and I have the guitar and I play the chord and I watch him sing and I have to remind myself the next chord.
Is this because I'm just looking at him like, I can't believe this is happening?
It was it was just one of those.
Moments where it is like it's real.
It it happened.
And he was so, so pleased with it.
We went back to listen to the playback.
He's like, man, this is going to be great.
So he really loved that record.
And then, you know, he lived several more years after, after the record came out.
And he used to say all the time.
That mom as one of my favorites, I'm like, yes, it's it's it's really.
Good that he got that he did during that.
He was able to do that because it really kind of capped.
I mean, he made a lot of great records, but there's something about that one that really kind of captures like what you know.
The arrangements are so.
Beautiful.
Like, we worked on this for Bobby Flores, who who's passed away recently, did most of the strings on it.
It's just such a gorgeous record.
I'm really proud actually, of that production.
And it was through, you know, many studios that I worked at, not just studio in, but like Emerald Studios were Mitchell Market and Keith Harder were Blue Cat Studios with Joe Trevino was like, I started to know most of the studio owners here in town, and then they were calling.
Me, calling for.
Nashville.
And I realized real fast.
I'm like, you know, the performance world is great, but the recording world is just as interesting to me as you know, I'm sure you were doing it to listening to Beatle records as a kid and wondering like, how do they get any of these great sounds like what is happening?
And see, it's like magic.
And then you go into the magic.
Shop and they show you how to do it.
No, that was it.
I'm like, I have.
To like, you're good.
I'm good, I'm good.
I'm this is what I got to do.
So between producing records and performing and touring and, you know, playing in bands and writing and arranging this, this has been my whole life as well.
I've got to ask you, like, where's the Grammy?
What do you do you think?
Because I think you I mean, if it were me, you know, I would pretty much walk around with.
yeah, yeah, yeah.
I remember when I first got it.
Absolutely.
I think the next year at the Grammy Awards, someone was saying, Hey, we're having a party.
Can you bring your Grammy?
I was like, Okay, fine.
To me, it was it was simply this acknowledgment, right?
But it really made me nervous sitting in my tiny apartment, you know, at where I lived.
And so I remember the day I boxed it up and took it to my dad's and I said, Hey, man, this is for you.
And he's like, What?
I'm like, Yeah, you're going to have more fun with it.
So he had it till he passed away in 2013, and then I get it back.
Yeah, but now it just sits on the mantel with all my wife's awards.
My wife, Michelle Mondo is, you know, was was a crime writer for the Express-News, and she has a yeah, the Phillip True Awards, all those things.
So they sit with hers.
And then when people come to work in the house or something, right, they'll be like.
Hey, is that real?
Yeah.
You want to take a picture with it?
And I and it's for they're, they see it, they're just thinking, my God.
Yes.
And then they see my house and they see me.
They're like, it's just.
Kind of a normal.
But he's got this statue.
And then I remember like, you know, Flacco has five like there's a bunch of Grammy winners here in San Antonio, and it's because we're like a destination town.
I tell this to people all the time when I'm traveling in Europe, when I'm touring or anywhere in the States, which is San Antonio, sort of has a sound just like Memphis, New Orleans, you know, Chicago.
It's a destination place where people come to like, learn it and enjoy it and know more about it.
There's that famous what is it, Frontera?
Childress.
I forgot the name of the movie, but he's absolutely like covering the basement.
You know, the scene that was here?
Well, it wasn't even nice and it was just ongoing.
But yeah, like, so I realized real fast.
I'm like, this is actually kind of a cool town to come from.
It gives us a sound.
I'm so glad I spent all my career because I got to know most of you.
You ever.
Tempted to go to someplace where there was music there was a.
Lot of work in Los Angeles in the nineties.
Like once I start working with the Morales brothers, I mean a bunch of other producers, right?
I did a bunch of work on the Cumbia Kings records with Eddie Quintanilla, and there was a couple of producers from Mexico City, Marco Floaters and his brother that were doing these big productions in Los Angeles.
So I was flying out there a lot and on my nights off I'd go to Largo or, you know, one of these places.
Where I play.
Yes, he was a B man or Elliott Smith or Miller or John Brian, anyone.
And the people that I really admired were there.
And I thought, yeah, I could stay here and try to meet them.
And maybe try no.
And I just thought to myself, this would be.
Impossible for some reason.
I don't know why.
I just, I just thought this probably just going to be more work and more opportunities and maybe more fun things to do back in San Antonio.
So that's this is exactly what happened.
I just never thought in a million years that I'd get to play with the Youth Orchestra of San Antonio or collaborate with so League or any one of the things that we've been able to do for the city Luminar is a credible festival.
I don't know how many times Buttercup has played it, but every time it's fun and so this year we were playing with low stakes maniacs and, you know, Flacco was up there and their guy didn't show and he was like, Hey, you know, Max Pocket goes, Hey, man, are you sticking around?
Do you want to sit in with us?
I'm like, Sure.
So so I sit in.
And he's just kind of looking at me like, Hey, man, you sound great.
What's your Venmo like on it?
And so I'm playing with Evergreen Hall next month.
And so those things happen in our city all the time, right?
And I think about it.
I'm like, Well, if.
I'd have been from Memphis, that might have happened there too.
I mean, from Louisiana, we know a ton of people that, you know, it's their community that they play with.
And that's how San Antonio is.
It's very much this tight, tight knit.
But it's a it's it's a community of musicians that we know sort of like, I don't know, learn from, collaborate with.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
You've talked about how you stopped drinking, I mean, maybe 20 years ago or so.
Yeah.
And that, that, that how you became maybe more creative and focused after that.
How how much of a problem was it for you and what was the the effects change the song.
We.
Were talking about my mom passing away when I was 13.
There's really at the time there wasn't any therapy I could take.
There was no doctors like helping me, so I was basically just self-medicating all through my adolescence, all through my young adulthood.
But at some point, yeah, you reach a stopping point.
We were just like.
It doesn't feel like this can actually.
Continue and the moment it stops is this moment of real clarity, I think, for a lot of people like this.
And so it's in those very first few years where you're, you know, just have more energy, you're more present, that things really start to move.
And I think we see this with a lot of people's careers where they they know they can quit drugs or alcohol and suddenly they're just amazingly more productive.
And that's what happened to me.
I put out the very first solo records that I did.
All three of them basically all happened within from 2006 to 2010.
And I was going to mention that there's one of my favorites in your records is the EP in 2007. thanks.
And I would encourage anybody who's watching to stream or download, there's a song Just What's Wrong, which is I've got a particular favorite beautiful track and the fact that you layer these things and play everything and sing everything yourself is a thanks.
Yeah, It was just kind of out of curiosity to see if I could do it.
I think at first I am still program the drum machine because I'm not a very good drummer.
Yeah.
That's always, I think, the hardest.
If you look at the one man band.
yeah yeah yeah.
The drumming is usually that.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
But there's a bunch of people.
Jason Little John.
Brian my God.
There's so many people that who can do this work like this.
And I'm a big fan of all of them, but now I get to help clients with this, right?
So I have a lot of clients who come to me to help produce music, but I'm the band.
Ryan I have a I have a couple of new clients.
Eduardo Garza.
You start with drums and build up.
From there.
Yeah, we actually start with the actual person, right?
So, so parallel it.
And Eduardo Garza or two clients of mine right now, Carol's an amazing songwriter that worked in Nashville for like 30 years.
Atwater Garza has been here forever, but he's like this Chicano poet.
So they both have different styles.
But all all Carol does is stand in front of the microphones and sing and play her song in real time with no click track, no headphones.
And then we listen to the recordings we want.
We're like, That's the tape.
And then I simply overdub all the instruments that I hear onto the song.
So if it if it needs drums, I got them.
If it needs bass, I have one.
If it needs yeah, any one of the like kind of instruments I mentioned earlier, ukulele, mandolin, banjo, sex, stuff like that.
Actually, it's a bunch of records.
Yeah.
And then with Eduardo, man, he's just a free flowing poet.
So it's like, Okay, what do you got?
It's like, I got these.
Like, he just puts them out and he starts.
So I always had the microphones on immediately because he just begins and then I'm just trying to find some kind of riff that he can play over right on the guitar.
And we sort of build it up from there and that spontaneous.
We don't know what we're doing at that point.
And he'll just look at me like, Hey man, that sounded pretty good.
Let's listen.
And we listened back and he's just like, How did you know?
I'm like, I didn't.
Know very well, which is.
It?
Just in real time, We were kind of making something up and that is exciting.
And I like making records like that.
I do make the other kind of records, so I have to play the part ten times till it's right.
Right?
They're just like, No, no, no.
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, wait.
I started the other side of that.
Okay, cool.
And that's fine.
I love that kind of work too.
That was the sort of work where I started with Mike and Ronnie Morales.
But the other spontaneous side is funded as well.
Your old friend Miller from the old 97 has said that he thinks of you, thinks of you as a teacher, and you've been you've been teaching guitar.
Yeah.
I'm curious what your approach is, because when someone comes in and they're a beginner.
Yeah, you know, how do you how do you navigate?
It's difficult.
It's a little bit different for each student, but but teaching was the other revenue stream that started post La Grande.
So I was just like, Man, I got one.
I need some more income.
And it was right when Jason Wren from from Music Maker said opened his own play Space Town.
But he had moved to a bigger location on Austin Highway where I had enough for him to teach.
So he said, You want a teacher?
I'm like, yeah.
So that's where I start to meet some of my new clients.
Like, I several students who I make records with.
But but my method is really just mostly ear training, right?
We talk a lot about the music that they like.
We listen to it together.
We sort of analyze it and say, what do you think the guitar is doing there?
Can you hear what it's doing?
You know, yeah, it's doing this thing.
I go, It's not very difficult, right?
Yeah.
Everything else in the production seems like it's making it difficult, but this is what we're going to zero in on.
Yeah.
And once they sort of understand, like the role that the guitar plays and any kind of music, they sort of understand that, it may not be that hard.
I'm like, Yeah, we may only have to hit two strings at a time and just move once.
And they're like, and that's a song.
I'm like.
Yeah, anything.
So.
So basically that's what I do.
Like if anyone asks me a student, a client or something, can we do something?
I'm like, Yeah, it's alright.
We can do.
Anything we want.
Joe, thank you so much.
My pleasure.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
That's all for this episode of Texas Time.
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