On April 9, 2019 I did an interview with Rob Foster, whose YouTube channel does interviews with Kansas City musicians, among other things. It's a free-ranging style of interview and he likes to try and limit it to an hour. This one is about an hour and 25 minutes. We couldn't help ourselves!
Being a pro himself (he plays violin/fiddle), Rob likes to pick the brains of musicians on issues that bug him. Topics scan a broad range; personal history, gigging, marketing and promotion, education, teaching philosophy and pedagogy, stagecraft, contracts, booking agents, record deals - anything that applies to a music career, local or otherwise.
We spent quite a bit of time on my teaching activities as well as the Saturday Afternoon Jam and Mama Ray, which is a Jazz-meets-Blues open jam session that's been going on weekly, in one form or another, since 1984. It's the longest continuing jam session in Kansas City history. With the exception of about 5 years ('86-'91), I've been the house guitarist the whole time. And I'm the only original member still on the gig.
Consequently there were questions about jam etiquette, repertoire and so on.
I like these kinds of interviews - they're prerecorded, there's very little editing, and you don't have to interrupt for commercial breaks.
Shortly after I did this interview, I left for India and didn't get a chance to properly promote it - my apologies to Rob. I'm rectifying that here.
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