Joe K. Walsh Interview

Click the button above to go to the podcast and video versions of this interview, and also the show notes with album links.

Joe K. Walsh (00:00:00):

Let's see (music)

Joe K. Walsh (00:00:30):

And they were kind of in a nice arc with the bluegrass world. So it was one of those things where the people I had on my iPod, sometimes they would be sitting in the audience looking at us, and that was a big adjustment mentally just to try and get used to playing for the people that I transcribe and listen to,

Leah Roseman (00:00:55):

Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This podcast strives to inspire you through the personal stories of a diversity of musicians with in-depth conversations and great music that reveal the depth and breadth to a life in music. Joe K. Walsh is an acclaimed master of the Bluegrass mandolin and a professor at Berklee College. And in this episode, you'll hear about many of his inspiring collaborations, including with Daryl Anger, Mike Block, Grant Gordy, Alex Hargreaves, and Mike Marshall. We are featuring some music from some of his albums, including "If Not Now, Who?", we talked about Joe's approach as an educator, the challenges and joys of the touring life, the importance of innovation and taking chances musically. Joe's love of music and the mandolin shines brightly in this candid conversation. Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast on all the podcast platforms.

(00:01:48):

And I've also linked the transcript to my website, leahroseman.com. The podcast theme music was commissioned from the composer Nick Kold, and you can use the timestamps to navigate the episode. Before we jump into our conversation, I wanted to let you know that you can support this independent podcast through a beautiful collection of merch with a very cool, unique and expressive design from artist Stephi Kelly. This weekly podcast is in season four, and I send out an email newsletter where you can get access to sneak peeks of upcoming guests. Have a look at the description of this episode where you'll find all the links, including the merch store links for Joe's music, and also the support link to buy this independent podcaster a coffee.

(00:02:28):

Hey Joe, thanks for joining me here today.

Joe K. Walsh (00:02:37):

Glad to be with you. Thanks for having me

Leah Roseman (00:02:40):

So far, the only other mandolinist I've had on the series is Aaron Weinstein, who introduced us,

Joe K. Walsh (00:02:46):

One of my favorites, what a beautiful musician and human he is.

Leah Roseman (00:02:50):

And the first time I was aware of your playing was actually a little YouTube video you guys did under lockdown, one of those remote things.

Joe K. Walsh (00:02:59):

Those things are generally hard, but with Aaron, it worked out pretty good. I found that to be a challenging era to understate the huge statement, but with Aaron, that was a lot of fun. It felt like actually making music with another human being,

Leah Roseman (00:03:17):

And he's a jazz mandolinist For people who don't know his playing, you're coming from a bluegrass background, but incorporating jazz language, which we'll get into. Have you learned from Aaron at all?

Joe K. Walsh (00:03:29):

Sure. Yeah, definitely. I hadn't seen him in a long time. We were students at the same time at Berklee, and so we would have an opportunity to play and hang. And then more recently I've transcribed a bunch of some of his stuff, and it's just cool to have another, such a fresh perspective on what's possible on the mandolin. He's really doing something that no one else is doing it, and he's doing it really well, so it's very exciting.

Leah Roseman (00:03:59):

So since we agreed to do this interview, I've been listening to so many of your fabulous albums, just one after another, an incredible collection of collaborators, and we'll get into various groups you play with, I believe you've just recorded a new album, which will be out in a few months.

Joe K. Walsh (00:04:17):

Yeah, I got to figure out if I like it. Right. Okay. I feel like that's where we should be. Making music is on that edge of it shouldn't be just safe, and that's where this record is. I decided to, for a long time, I've been grousing about the way, I mean my perception, the mandolin world is sort of dominated by a excess overstatement, shred, maximalism, however you want to say it. And I've always kind of been frustrated that there isn't a Martin Hayes who I know you had in your podcast or there isn't a Bill Frisell or there's not a contrasting statement. And there's Andrew Marlin, and I think he's doing a really beautiful job of making argument for less is more kind of, but that's kind of the notion of this record is I was trying to make a quiet record and now I got to see if it's too quiet.

Leah Roseman (00:05:21):

Well, you can always use some of it and

Joe K. Walsh (00:05:24):

That's right.

Leah Roseman (00:05:24):

Figure that out. Okay. Well, I look forward to seeing what comes of that. Well, your most recent album, I believe, that I've listened to is "If Not Now, Who?" and that title, how'd you come up with that?

Joe K. Walsh (00:05:38):

Well, it's sort of related actually in the sense of, like I said, I'm grousing about what I wish were happening in the large mandolin community or the bluegrass community. And instead of just, I kind of have a feeling like if I'm going to complain about something, I either have to fix it or accept it. Right. And that's where that title comes to mind is something should be happening.

Leah Roseman (00:06:04):

So playing with the, if not now, when, yeah, there's a beautiful tune on there, "Tom", that I believe has a special dedication.

Joe K. Walsh (00:06:13):

Yeah, yeah. Well, again, this is such a pandemic record. Most of those tunes were written in the pandemic, and one of the big moving things for me in my experience of the pandemic was the way people were being creative about supporting and reaching out. And some people especially were looking out for the musicians that they cared about. And one day I just got a huge chunk of money, Venmo to me from fellow, this friend of mine, Tom in Florida, and it was the same day I had written that tune and it felt like a fitting tribute to his kindness. The funny thing about that, that tune is, in my understanding, it's very peaceful and he's a very loud frenetic dude, and it's a funny fit, but also this big gentle act certainly warranted some kind acknowledgement.

Leah Roseman (00:07:09):

Yeah. Well, it's a beautiful tune. I was hoping we could share it as part of the episode.

Joe K. Walsh (00:07:13):

Oh, great. Yeah. Cool.

Leah Roseman (00:07:15):

You're about to hear "Tom" from Joe's album, "If Not Now, Who?". Please check the links in the show notes to find all the music featured in this episode. (music)

(00:11:48):

That album was recorded in this, I believe, this farmhouse in Maine, that sort of off grid kind of,

Joe K. Walsh (00:11:55):

Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe Lake Street Dive kind of put it on the map, or it's owned by the piano player from Josh Ritter's band, and a lot of the bands from Boston will do a retreat for a while. I don't think there was internet and think that was a selling point on some level. So it's a nice place to go hole up, and whenever you record, you're compromising on some aspect. I think what's the most important thing, the most beautiful room or isolation or getting in that case, it's really nice to get away from, we don't have any friends anywhere there. There's nothing there that's not fully true. There's a small town, but there's almost, there's not even a grocery store nearby, so you really are just hunkered down with your crew, and I think that's a beautiful way to make a record.

Leah Roseman (00:12:45):

So you spent a couple days together. Right. Okay. Well, it's really, really beautiful record.

Joe K. Walsh (00:12:52):

Thank you.

Leah Roseman (00:12:54):

Now you mentioned you met Aaron at Berklee, and I heard somewhere that you were the first mandolin player to be accepted as a student,

Joe K. Walsh (00:13:03):

Kind of. Yeah, right. So I think basically there hadn't been a mandolin teacher until I got there, and then they hired John McGann. But I think that there had been, so for example, John McGann went to Berklee and he was a guitar student, but he was a fantastic mandolin player too. And there's a couple of people like that he day, I've forgotten his last name. There's a couple of people who went through Berklee and are fantastic mandolin players, but then at some point there was an openness to accepting the banjo and the mandolin and sort of broadening what was permissible at the school in terms of instruments. And that happened to be coinciding with the time I was knocking on the doors proverbially.

Leah Roseman (00:13:49):

And of course, Aaron was accepted as a violinist, which is, yeah, people don't know that. Now you've taught there for many years. I'm curious how the school has changed since you were a student to all the years you've been teaching there.

Joe K. Walsh (00:14:04):

There's a lot more roots, music roots, there's a lot more mandolin players. Generally speaking, there's like eight to 10 or 11 at any semester, and there's a lot more bluegrass there, fantastic fiddle players of all styles. So that scene has really blossomed since I was there as a student, which is I guess 20 years ago.

Leah Roseman (00:14:30):

And you teach composition?

Joe K. Walsh (00:14:33):

I teach mandolin, actually, mostly private lessons. And then I have two ensembles, one of which is sort of, I'm really interested in the string band stuff that happened since let's say the seventies and eighties. And that was kind of doing this expansive thing in the quote bluegrass world. So Grisman and Bela Fleck and many Edgar Meyer and Daryl and Mike Marshall. I love that. And I have an ensemble that kind of focuses on that. And then I have one that's about tune writing. So yeah, I guess you're right.

Leah Roseman (00:15:04):

That's the class I meant because I heard you talk about it in another interview, and I was interesting to me and inspiring that you're bringing your tunes to them. Everyone has to bring something.

Joe K. Walsh (00:15:14):

Yeah, teaching is funny. I think teaching, in my experience of trying to become a better musician, it involves a very stark assessment of what I'm doing and what's working, what's not. But as someone who tries to be a gentle human being, not every student benefits from fully stark statements. There's people who are just like, I don't feel comfortable really tearing somebody's tune apart, really is the answer. And I've read some essays about how other people teach writing and arguing for like, yes, keep going. As opposed to, this is terrible. You can't really do that. And I think, and trying to be encouraging and then using my tunes as a lens for, here's this thing, here's this thing that didn't work, what can we fix? Here's this thing that maybe worked. Let's all take a critical eye. And I feel really comfortable using that as a vehicle for actually inviting more nuanced critique and really trying to model that.

Leah Roseman (00:16:26):

So do your students sometimes. Well, they must give you valuable feedback that affects your writing.

Joe K. Walsh (00:16:32):

That's true. And it's a different crew, of course, every semester. And sometimes I'll bring in a tune, for example, on that record, if not now, I brought in the tune 41 Years, which I had written on my parents' anniversary, and I was pretty certain I was done except for one chord. I was missing basically the punchline. I was like, I have this beautiful thing, but I know something needs to happen and I don't know what it is. And one of the tremendously talented musicians, Minny Jordan was like, here's the chord. And it was really the perfect chord. So it was kind of a beautiful, it ended up being a co-write, and that happens sometimes. And being open to learn from and their suggestions, it's really, I think healthy and been hugely beautiful for me.

Leah Roseman (00:17:23):

So aside from the high level players, you're teaching at Berklee, you teach privately, you do workshops, you work with amateurs, and I was curious, you must get people who are fiddle players going to mandolin as well as guitarists going to mandolin, I'm guessing. So that must present different challenges.

Joe K. Walsh (00:17:42):

Yeah, true. Yeah. I mean, obviously the fiddle players going to mandolin know the left hand, and then guitarists would have right hand facility, generally speaking. So yeah, they're different challenges. I kind of think most students are different challenges. I've always kind of achieved a little bit at the concept of what is your curriculum in private lessons? Because some people take for granted that they understand triads or note and cord relationship, and that's a given. And then other people, that takes a couple years and vice versa with techniques. I think you, you're of course right about different challenges with those two instruments. But I tend to think, I try and be as adaptive to each student as possible no matter what the background.

Leah Roseman (00:18:36):

Yeah, I mean, the few times I picked up a mandolin, I played violin my whole life, it just felt strange. I thought it would be so familiar, but it really feels very different.

Joe K. Walsh (00:18:49):

It requires much more effort on your left hand. Right. Yeah. I felt like I was cheated once I realized how much effort it takes to put the string down on the violin.

Leah Roseman (00:19:01):

Well, less effort on the violin. Yeah. If we could talk about your life as a singer and a songwriter. There's an earlier album, Borderland, and you have a tune on there Innisfree based on the poetry of Yeats, right?

Joe K. Walsh (00:19:15):

Yeah. Yeah. An adaptation of his poem actually, just I was trying to be really persnickety and make sure I didn't lose any syllable in his poem. And I think that kind of ties in with one of the things I like to do with tune writing. I don't even remember where this idea came from, it probably wasn't mine. But looking through poetry books, sometimes you find poems that suggest, here's a rhythm, or here's, maybe this is a pair, or this is, obviously there's rhyme schemes. That's a big concept. Of course, everybody knows that. But sometimes those sorts of patterns can suggest a melodic rhythm is what is my experience of it. And so sometimes I'll pour through books and just get a melody out of it, and that's a big win. And then sometimes I'm not a big lyricist. I don't write a lot of lyrics. So for a while when I was trying to construct songs more actively, that was another thing is looking for poems that would lend themselves to becoming songs. I felt like the Yeats ones worked really well. I did a bunch of those.

Leah Roseman (00:20:32):

Okay, so could we share that song?

Joe K. Walsh (00:20:35):

Oh, please. Yeah.

Leah Roseman (00:20:37):

Next is Innisfree from Joe's album, Borderland (music)

(00:24:10):

So one of your big early breaks was with the Gibson Brothers and you toured widely with them. So that bluegrass tradition of singing in close harmony, is that something that It must feel amazing. I've never done anything like that.

Joe K. Walsh (00:24:25):

I didn't sing with them. Their whole thing was, I mean, I didn'ts very much with them though once in a while would happen, but their whole brand is about the Brother duet, and once in a while there was a space for a third person to sing. But yeah, just being, I mean, I feel like they're the masters of that thing right now. And it's cool in a sense of you could picture them as the heirs to the lineage of the Stanley Brothers or other great brother duets. And yeah, it was really powerful to get a chance to collaborate with them. And it's so natural. And one thing that was really interesting about them is the Brother Duet thing. Everybody talks about or perceives it as it's such a great blend because they grew up singing together, but if you listen to them sing individually, they don't sound like each other at all. It's very interesting. And then they learn how to sing together very well, but it's not about, they sound so similar that it's such a perfect blend.

Leah Roseman (00:25:29):

I was thinking more about just the type of harmonization in that style, but I was also curious to know about those touring years. You were pretty young and touring in Europe and all over the States,

Joe K. Walsh (00:25:42):

Right? Yeah. Well, I was young, but I had been in bands enough as a co-leader or bands that I had started. So I had enough experience on the road trying to book gigs and hotels and all this kind of chaos to really appreciate when I joined the Gibson Brothers that I just showed up and played the mandolin, and I tried to do the best I could with that. That was a very privileged position with them, and they were kind of in a nice arc with the bluegrass world. So it was one of those things where the people I had on my iPod, sometimes they would be sitting in the audience looking at us, and that was a big adjustment mentally and just to try and just get used to playing for the people that I transcribe and listen to. I think it's taken me a long time to appreciate the degree to which the mental game is as important as anything else. And that was a big learning curve with them.

Leah Roseman (00:26:51):

And in terms of touring strategies, I mean, you're on the road a lot except for Covid, so it is a challenging lifestyle. Do you have any tips or habits that help

Joe K. Walsh (00:27:07):

Trying to have less expectations? This is not a pithy, I mean, when I've encountered tension, be it with myself or with anybody else, collaborators or hosts, it's just like I should be open to whatever's going to happen. And my expectations of what should happen in a given moment at a gas station, in a hotel, whatever are not, and trying to remember that is important. And also, I don't know, I have my usual haunts all over the country now. I have all my favorite coffee shops in various places, and trying to make time for that and taking on a walk and always having a nice book with me, I've been very lucky that the people I play with these days are people I consider my closest friends, which isn't always the easiest thing. And it doesn't, like my mom always said, if you want to really know somebody, travel with them. And that's what I do for work. And it's not always perfect, but I'm very privileged that these people I care and love and care about, I'm inspired by are the people I get to travel with. So I always try and keep that in mind too, that even if I'm just sitting in an airport and I hate airports, I'm here with these people that I love and I'm such a privileged person to get to be there with them.

Leah Roseman (00:28:36):

And how about traveling with your mandolins? How does that work?

Joe K. Walsh (00:28:40):

It's not really a big deal. Lately I've been making more records that involve the mandolin and the mandola and the octave mandolin, and sometimes the cello that becomes a bigger deal. But for most of my time, I've just been traveling with the mandolin and it's really never an issue

Leah Roseman (00:28:56):

Small enough. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the Mandolin family and maybe the Ger Mandolin band.

Joe K. Walsh (00:29:02):

Oh yeah. Cool. Yeah, so as some people know, people are familiar with the violin and the viola and the cello, and there's a mandolin equivalent of all of those, oddly enough. So of course, the mandolin is what people are most familiar with, but there's a manola tuned, like a viola, and then there's an octave mandolin, which kind of adds another step as you go down. So that's an octave below the mandolin. And that's kind of been coming to prominence after folks like Tim O'Brien and Matt Flinner, and then more recently, Sarah Jarosz and other folks have really made that a move that to the center of what they're creating. And as someone who mostly plays the mandolin, it presented some beautiful options as an accompanist, as a singer, as someone who doesn't always want it to sound bright and happy. The mandolin is so high and it's a beautiful thing, but both with the Octave Mandolin and the Mandola, it's nice to have a representative sound of other parts of the emotional spectrum.

Leah Roseman (00:30:11):

Yeah, I think you mentioned David Grisman earlier, and I believe in high school, it was one of his records that turned you onto the mandolin, right?

Joe K. Walsh (00:30:19):

Yeah. So had a classmate, and I wish I remembered his name, who just one day offhand played me the first David Grisman quintet record, which for people like me and a lot of people who I looked up to and other generations, that was a just earth shattering record, just a really fully realized fresh take on what was possible with these instruments. And for anybody that doesn't know what it was, David Grisman on mandolin, the first iteration had Todd Phillips on the second mandolin, and then Daryl Anger on the Violin, and Tony Rice, the amazing bluegrass guitarist on guitar and Bill Amatneek, I believe on the first record. But it was sort of this beautiful amalgamation of all these things that I had started to care about, which is bluegrass, but also swing and jazz. And as someone who grew up in northern Minnesota, I'm not really a bluegrass dude, and I listened to Monk when I was doing my homework and Django and stuff. And then here's this really fully realized example of that. You can kind of blend all these things and make something really exciting, totally amazing music life-changing really.

Leah Roseman (00:31:36):

And you've gone on to meet and maybe work with David.

Joe K. Walsh (00:31:40):

Yeah, I got to know David. He invited me to teach at his symposium, and he's always been very kind to me, which is just actually, it was basically true throughout the whole mandolin world. All the people that I looked up to, they've always been really kind. There's so many mandolin players, but it feels like they're all willing to, I dunno, be friendly and give a little space to everybody. It's really a beautiful thing.

Leah Roseman (00:32:06):

That is.

Joe K. Walsh (00:32:06):

Yeah. So yeah, I got to know David a little bit, not as well as Daryl. Daryl was the violin player, of course, in that first record. And I've been collaborating with him for about 15 years

Leah Roseman (00:32:19):

In many groups, including Mr. Sun, which is a fabulous ensemble.

Joe K. Walsh (00:32:24):

Thanks. Yeah.

Leah Roseman (00:32:26):

I've listened to a couple of your Mr. Sun albums, including the Nutcracker Sweet, the Ellington Strayhorn adaptation. It's really brilliant and fun.

Joe K. Walsh (00:32:35):

Thanks. My favorite thing about that band is that we're willing to try things. We did this gig in the winter, and it was maybe one of the biggest gigs of the winter for us, a very nice, large audience. And there was one tune that as we were coming towards the end of that tune, we were all doing different things than we'd ever done before, and we just really committed, and we kind of are building up to the ending and nobody knows how it's going to end, and then it kind of crashed and burned. But that was my favorite thing because it was just such an example of us just like being willing to try stuff, even in this setting where previously we might have been inclined to go towards safety. And so that's kind of my favorite thing about that band is we're just willing to give ideas a whirl. And not everything works, of course, but we're discovering some fun stuff along the way, I think.

Leah Roseman (00:33:32):

Yeah. Oh, sorry. You know what? We skipped over the Ger mandolin ensemble. We started talking about the mandolin family.

Joe K. Walsh (00:33:38):

We can come back. Yeah,

Leah Roseman (00:33:38):

Let's talk about that.

Joe K. Walsh (00:33:43):

So of course, all those mandolins in the mandolin family, there used to be manin orchestras all over the country and all over the world, really. And I've been luckily collaborating with the great mandolin player, Mike Marshall, who is leading an ensemble called the Ger Mandolin Ensemble. And the conceit of this ensemble is trying to recreate music that would've been played by Jewish mandolin orchestras in Eastern Europe around the time of World War ii and creating this ensemble. Before I was part of it, they actually hired somebody to go around to use bookstores and thrift stores and try and find old music that could have been what they played. And then in addition to that, making their best guesses about Polish music or this music. And that's been a really inspiring project and very moving. I mean, it's a very heavy, very heavy,

Leah Roseman (00:34:52):

Yeah, I believe that there was that tradition through the twenties and thirties,

Joe K. Walsh (00:34:57):

And then in some countries it persists. In Germany, it's in every town, and there's actually a bunch in Japan, and there are some in the states, but it's not what it was.

Leah Roseman (00:35:08):

It is a beautiful sound, and it must be very satisfying. Have you played different roles in that group in terms of lower or high?

Joe K. Walsh (00:35:17):

Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I played the Mandola and the Mandocello and the octave mandolin and the mandolin. I was lucky that through reading from Mike Marshall and with my time at Berklee, I was really encouraged and even forced to work on reading music. And that's a skillset that I'm really glad to have, and it's not a given in the mandolin world, so that's part of what makes that possible. Of course,

Leah Roseman (00:35:48):

One of my children played mandolin for a while, and I remember I was looking what was available, and I found this old Russian mandolin book, like a How-to book, and I bought it out of curiosity. I don't think she ever used it, but it was just very cool though. Yeah, I should send it to you.

Joe K. Walsh (00:36:07):

I would love to see that.

Leah Roseman (00:36:08):

If we have it, I will send it to you.

Joe K. Walsh (00:36:10):

Amazing.

Leah Roseman (00:36:12):

Joy Kills Sorrow. You got that started. They've disbanded, but that was,

Joe K. Walsh (00:36:19):

That was a band that I started with some friends of mine when I was at Berkeley. And yeah, I mean, it's just hard to get a band off as a young person. And even that band, everybody's going on to good careers, and it is a really great band. But I ended up quitting because I had this opportunity with the Gibson Brothers and the Joy Kills Sorrow thing that I loved, and it was amazing, but I wasn't making any money, any, and then it was also, I think one, you're a young musician, you haven't realized or not everybody has realized that it's in your own interest to be as easy to be around and as easy to deal with. And at this point, as a 43-year-old dude, the bands I'm in mostly have acknowledged that, and it's much easier to be on the road, but in my early twenties, that's not a given. So that was not an easy band. I think it got better, and we all got better at that as we became adults properly.

Leah Roseman (00:37:27):

Looking back on my own chamber music collaborations, I believe in my twenties, I was much too stuck in my ways if I had an idea. I just really needed to convince everybody of that. And I think now I'm much more, I really let go of things or much more willing to try other people's ideas. Do you find that a little bit?

Joe K. Walsh (00:37:46):

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, my experience of my twenties is I was very confident that I was right. I, and I was very confident that I should be hired, and this is, it really is, well before that's correct, but luckily I still have friendships and I've survived a lot of those nice relationships and all people gave me that space, which is a really invitation for me to do the same for my younger friends now.

Leah Roseman (00:38:20):

Yeah, and it's interesting how when you enter the music business, I mean, I'm sure other professions are like this, but it's a huge range of ages and experience all working together often,

Joe K. Walsh (00:38:33):

Right? Totally. Yeah. Which is a beautiful thing. I mean, it's an unusual, I've been with my wife for 11 years, but when we first started, she works in the social justice field and is a lawyer now. I had students who were my collaborators that I was making records with, and that's just different. I think there's a gray area between generations in music, which I think I don't want to lose, but it's different than obviously many other worlds having friends that I've, people that I consider, friends that I've known since they were 12, but I was in my late twenties. That's unusual.

Leah Roseman (00:39:20):

And we talked a little bit about Daryl Anger. I mean, you've worked with him for so many years. He's such a phenomenal multistyle violinist. What if you learned from him?

Joe K. Walsh (00:39:31):

Oh, quite a lot. I think. Yeah, probably more than I can express. A really key lesson I remember was I played on his record. And there's a thing in the bluegrass world where there's a large trend for a while now towards fixing everything that could be perceived as a mistake. And I think it's to bluegrass's detriment. Nobody is asking me from bluegrass if I think that, but when I look at the reasons, I don't listen to that much bluegrass anymore. It's like there's no life left. And I kind of had a window into that. I did this. We were recording this tune, and I played a solo, and there was one note that I missed. Just one note, who cares? But I had come from making a bunch of records in Nashville, and the standard operating procedure was, okay, fix it. Do this take, we'll take this little note and we could get that note from here.

(00:40:38):

And you can construct a solo, which is kind of, it's not a flattering way to say, but that's how it's done a lot. And he pointed out, no, no, this is the gesture and this is the shape. And that mistake. And I totally, I was resistant at the time, but I'm totally on board the records that I actually listened to. If you listen to, there's so many beautiful records with Charlie Hayden playing duets with piano players, and for example, on Steal Away where he's playing with Hank Jones, they don't play the downbeat perfectly all the time. It can be a little bit like "da-da" sometimes. Sometimes it's true, the same as true with him and Keith Jarrett, but that doesn't bother me. In fact, those are the records that I keep coming back to, and I had to accept that mistakes. They're not going to capsize the whole concept. It's in fact, getting rid of all of them might be the thing that capsizes the record.

Leah Roseman (00:41:43):

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Joe K. Walsh (00:42:35):

Yeah, I don't know. I've just kind of come to accept that the people that I listen to are just making something and then saying, that's what happened that day. And that's been a really good mindset for me with this record last week. I was getting into this mindset of what's the perfect way to do this? And I think that's really problematic. It's a lesson that I learned with Mr. Sun, and then I have to keep relearning that. I don't think there should be a perfect thing. And really what it should be is here's what happened this day with these people, and that's what happened, and that's cool, and maybe this tune will be played differently some other day with other people, and that's a much more healthy mindset for me to just say, okay, this is what's happening. Instead of really pushing away from the concept of, this is the definitive representative example of me or this tune or whatever. That's real problematic.

Leah Roseman (00:43:30):

Have you, or would you consider putting out an album where a tune is at the beginning and the end, but different versions?

Joe K. Walsh (00:43:39):

Yeah, I think that's cool. Yeah, totally. I haven't done that, but there's plenty of examples that I like of that, and I actually was considering it on this record, and I may still do it depending on what happens with, as I get to know this record, certainly changing instrumentation and maybe just doing a duet, that would be a nice thing. Yeah.

Leah Roseman (00:44:05):

So you mentioned Minnesota growing up there. Do you know Adam Hurt the old time? Ben? Yeah, I interviewed him for this podcast as well. Yeah.

Joe K. Walsh (00:44:15):

What a lovely, lovely dude. And very, very inspiring. I always feel like the music should be enough, right? I don't think I really kind of am bummed out when pyrotechnics or kind of what I would consider BS is put center stage, and Adam is such a antidote, and it's such an extremely great example of the opposite. It's just like, here's this beautiful fiddle tune, played perfectly with perfect timing and perfect sound, and it's so great. I love listening to him.

Leah Roseman (00:44:57):

And it was interesting talking to him because he doesn't just plays old tunes. He feels like there's so much repertoire and he's happy just playing the same tunes and re-imagining them. It's very meditative, I think, his whole approach.

Joe K. Walsh (00:45:12):

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Leah Roseman (00:45:14):

You write a lot of tunes. And what's your relationship to sort of the standards in terms of the bluegrass world or any other,

Joe K. Walsh (00:45:23):

Oh, I play a lot of bluegrass gigs here in Maine. When I'm home, I don't really do it much on the road as a prioritized thing professionally, but I still love those tunes. And if you take any fiddle tune, Whiskey Before Breakfast or Angelina Baker out, I expect myself to play that for the rest of my life and still be enjoying the challenge of trying to find something new to say on it. And the thing that I come out of is trying to improvise on these fiddle tunes, and that's the priority. So you could do that forever and try and have what you do on a given day reflect what you learned last week or who you're mad at, or all these things affect how many notes I'm choosing to play or whatever. And for better or for worse, that's sustains my interest. And so I'm happy to play those tunes.

(00:46:25):

I think part of the reason I write tunes is just just trying to, I grew up listening to so many different things from, of course, Grisman and Daryl, but also Soul Coughing and Thelonious Monk or Django or just all these things, and I can't really turn off the stylistic gumbo, so that's just what's coming out. And I used to be more judgmental about writing things and then saying, well, this doesn't sound like that, but at some point there was a really significant shift where what I said about dog was, this doesn't sound like that. And that's really exciting, and that's an important thing, acknowledging that that could be a strength instead of this fatal weakness of these tunes, which maybe they're just bad tunes, that happens too. But the fact that it doesn't sound like a quote bluegrass tune could be a really good thing about it.

Leah Roseman (00:47:32):

I was curious about your approach to improvisation and how you teach it, because it's based on chord changes and you have this jazz influence. So are you using chord substitutions? How are you approaching that?

Joe K. Walsh (00:47:47):

Yeah. Well, having gone to Berklee, a big emphasis is analyzing a relationship between a note and a chord all the time. And so I think that's less of a given in picker circles all over the country in bluegrass, I think. You can't presume everybody's doing that, but I think a lot of people work towards that. And I think the people who do it the best are all doing that. And I don't think of that necessarily as jazz. But yeah, that's a big important thing that it's funny to teach this stuff because as a teacher, you want to teach people things that they're going to get soon. But also that concept I think is really key. And it's not a short lesson. I mean, it's an easy one to convey in five minutes or 10 minutes, but from understanding to using is a longer, much, much longer time period. But also that's what I'm doing. And so there's that tension there. I don't want to water it down. I want to say if this is a D chord, knowing the relationship between how an F is going to sound versus an F sharp versus a G sharp, and being able to hear those sounds in your ear and then make choices based on that, I think for me, that's fundamental.

Leah Roseman (00:49:24):

Do you ever have your students sing a line instead of using their instruments to help their improv?

Joe K. Walsh (00:49:31):

I like that. I don't do that very often, but I like that concept. I think that's a really beautiful concept. I mean, people talk about don't just run your fingers. And I think that's big prevalent in the bluegrass and the mandolin world. So yeah, I love that.

Leah Roseman (00:49:49):

And I was just wondering, in terms of challenges that a lot of students have as a violinist, one of the biggest challenges I find is just coordination that one hand's moving before the other. Does that also happen with the strumming?

Joe K. Walsh (00:50:03):

Yeah, I think that's true. Although it seems like many things, like if you can convince people to slow it down to the slowest point, that there's a point where you can slow it enough that you can do that. And I think that's the solution to practicing things slowly, even though nobody wants to do it, is the solution to most things

Leah Roseman (00:50:28):

And really hearing what's coming out.

Joe K. Walsh (00:50:31):

Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Leah Roseman (00:50:34):

And back to Minnesota, so you were teaching yourself, but you didn't intend to go into music professionally?

Joe K. Walsh (00:50:42):

Well, yeah, that's true. I mean, I didn't have any perception. I was just playing the mandolin and I liked it, and I was getting as good as I could. There was one of the big heroes in the Midwest and beyond is Peter Ostroushko, and I found his name in the phone book, and I asked him for some lessons, and he could not have been kinder. He was very kind. So that was getting to know him and going to the bluegrass circles wherever I was living. And yeah, I guess I remember the first time someone pointed out that they knew a musician, actually. They're like, my friend Dave down in Iowa City, harmonica player. And I was like, oh, okay. Wow. So at some point I acknowledged that people, somebody knew could be a musician. But yeah, I mean, I don't think I committed to trying to give it a whirl until I was 22 or 23, something like that.

Leah Roseman (00:51:41):

And how did you hear about Berklee and find out about that opportunity?

Joe K. Walsh (00:51:45):

Well, there was a bunch of music coming from there. Casey Driessen, maybe perhaps you know him, fantastic multi-stylistic fiddler was there as a student playing, and he was touring with Tim O'Brien, so I knew about that. And the band, Crooked Still was starting, and the cellist, Rushad Eggleston was there at the time, and I knew about him because I knew everything about Darryl. And he had this band called Fiddlers Four with Bruce Molsky and Michael Doucet and Rushad, and I loved that record. And I had another friend, Kip Jones, who's a fantastic improvising violin player. He's in that band, ETHEL, and he happened to be from Duluth, which is where I'm from. And so I visited and improvised a little bit with him and Rushad, and there's been a couple of moments where I just had a window into this other improvising facility, the ability to converse with this language that I didn't really know, but I was able to with him and Rushad, maybe one of them would just gently raise one of their eyebrows, and they've changed keys now or this kind of thing. It was just this beautiful, fascinating dance that I didn't know how to do, but I felt like it was happening there, and so it felt like it could be a good place for me.

Leah Roseman (00:53:09):

Well, you've collaborated with Grant Gordy for many years in many different groups. Do you want to speak to him?

Joe K. Walsh (00:53:17):

Yeah, I mean, especially when I think about sitting in an airport and just remembering how privileged I am, even if the flight's been canceled, he comes to mind. Been very lucky to play with him. He's one of the best acoustic guitar players. I don't know, ever. He's fantastic. And luckily, we both have this deep love for bluegrass and especially the Grisman sort of adventurous wing of the bluegrass world, but also deep are both really interested in studying and processing jazz. And he's gone way down that. And so we have a lot of overlap in some of our curiosities and values. So yeah, we've been very lucky to have this long relationship with him. And we've been in the band, Mr. Sun, we toured with this banjo player, Danny Barnes, and we had a band with a European bass player for a while, and I guess it's kind of like we grew up as my whole adult life has been playing with him.

Leah Roseman (00:54:26):

I think Mike Block, the cellist. You play with him. Does he always play standing up?

Joe K. Walsh (00:54:32):

He does. I think maybe it's actually purely pragmatic. I think it's also part of his brand.

Leah Roseman (00:54:43):

So he has a special strap. I mean,

Joe K. Walsh (00:54:45):

He invented it, the Block strap.

Leah Roseman (00:54:47):

Okay.

Joe K. Walsh (00:54:50):

Yeah, Mike's amazing. I mean, he's, a lot of people we've mentioned are multis stylistic, but I think he, if not more than everybody, as much as anybody, if not more so, is wildly multi-stylistic. I've been in concerts where he is played duets with Rachel Barton Pine, and I forgot the piece. It's the one that Edgar Meyer plays on Uncommon Ritual, one of these virtuoso pieces. And then going straight from that to playing a bluegrass tune with me, and then straight from that to playing an African tune with. And I find it very inspiring how, I don't think he's just kind of floating on the surface with each of these things. He's really conversant with the details and nuances of each of those styles in a way that I find very inspiring. Well, he's just a fantastic improviser too. So again, there's that common thread of being able to share that language and converse in this way that isn't always, sometimes it feels like that kind of thing is easier to do than talking.

Leah Roseman (00:56:08):

Definitely, yes. Yeah. One of the things about the series for me is just I think music is our most important language, and I just try to show people that a life in music just means so many things. So it's great to, also, with all of my guests, we do talk about people's collaborators and mentors because it just brings more in. I wish I could talk to all the hundreds of thousands of great musicians everywhere, but I won't have enough lifetimes to do that. So

Joe K. Walsh (00:56:38):

Yeah, no, I think that's a really important message to be saying. I mean, also to us. I mean, when I wake up, I sit here and I work on music, and I practice and I try and get better at playing with a metronome. And then I think about what my wife is doing, which is that she's trying to keep people from being evicted. And it's not a big leap for me to say, what's more important here? She's keeping somebody in their house. And I wrote a melody, and I think a lot of musicians, not everybody, but I have a lot of friends who are just aware of that. And I think it's really important to remember what music can be and the way it builds community. I mean, I don't have to tell you, I think you're probably as aware as anybody, but it's an important message that I need to hear sometimes.

Leah Roseman (00:57:31):

Yeah. Let's talk about your practice routine. What do you do to keep in shape?

Joe K. Walsh (00:57:36):

Yeah. Well, I travel so much, so routinely is not the word, but when I'm home, it's all dependent on what I'm preparing for. So if I'm preparing for a record, then that's the priority. And trying to, my big priority is improvising, and the tunes that I like to record are, I think generally speaking in a larger subject, the stuff that we're recording holds our interest if it has challenges. So then trying to assimilate whether it's the rhythmic challenges or the harmony that maybe is unfamiliar, that sort of thing. I would spend a lot of time on when I'm left to my own devices for a few weeks. I like to transcribe a lot when I'm listening to a recording and I hear some improviser making choices that aren't intuitive or that I don't understand, that's a sign that I should probably learn that that's a value of mine.

(00:58:43):

Trying to broaden options. And one thing that's funny about the mandolin is, especially in bluegrass, is I almost, let's say 99% of the time, if a note is on the beat, we play a downstroke, and if a note is on the offbeat, we play an upstroke. And so it's this very binary and all the rhythms that become intuitive, if you make a big priority of playing that all the rhythms, da, da, da. And then it becomes this, we're kind of confined to the eighth note grid, and that's cool. And there's an argument for that. It's like the efficiency required to play bluegrass is resting on that, but there's all this other beautiful language that isn't served by that. And so that's a big thing that I try and transcribe. And one of my heroes is the great John Scofield, and at some point I realized that a lot of his language is about slurs. That's part of how he's making it sound that way. And that's also how he's generating streams of notes. And obviously he's playing the guitar, and that's not a mandolin, but there is some overlap, and I've been transcribing some of his stuff, trying to learn that too.

Leah Roseman (01:00:06):

Do you play any banjo or guitar or other plucked instruments?

Joe K. Walsh (01:00:10):

I have played a lot of guitar. At some point I had an injury and I stopped playing it, but spent a lot of time my guitar. Yeah.

Leah Roseman (01:00:18):

Was it because it's a bigger stretch for your left hand? Was that

Joe K. Walsh (01:00:21):

Part of It was actually this the right arm, and when I moved to Maine, I was teaching maybe 20 hours a week of guitar lessons, and at some point, 20 hours of having my arm over the hip of a dread knot became painful.

Leah Roseman (01:00:38):

Okay. Yeah. I actually wanted to ask you about injury prevention and staying relaxed.

Joe K. Walsh (01:00:43):

Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know if you knew, but I went through a big injury where I was going to take time off the road in spring of March, 2020. So I actually was at this place where I was kind of panicked, where I was like, I don't think I can do these gigs. And then obviously they were all canceled. So that enforced recess was very healthy for me, and I kind of got my stuff back together. I think people don't talk about it very much, but I think in the mandolin world, I think it's very common. I think it's almost universal amongst people of a certain age, I think.

Leah Roseman (01:01:26):

Yeah, I mean, do people mean I've developed arthritis, which is affecting my left hand, so just the stiffness in the joints that didn't used to be there.

Joe K. Walsh (01:01:34):

Yeah, I think Daryl has that, and I know him better than any other fiddle player of that age, so I wouldn't speculate on anybody else, but yeah, it makes sense to me. I mean, five decades, six decades of That makes sense.

Leah Roseman (01:01:52):

Yeah. I know you don't normally play solo, but would you be willing to pick up your mandolin and then if you don't like what you play, we won't include it in this episode? Yeah,

Joe K. Walsh (01:02:02):

Yeah, sure. Of course. Well,

Joe K. Walsh (01:02:07):

Let's see. (music)

Leah Roseman (01:03:32):

Beautiful. Thank you.

Joe K. Walsh (01:03:34):

Yeah, of course.

Leah Roseman (01:03:37):

So what was that?

Joe K. Walsh (01:03:41):

I think it's an American tune called Chinkapin Hunting. It's like, I wonder where I learned it. There's a lot of tunes that I learned sort of at Jams, and then I never have a proper source, but it's sort of an old time tune that was in vogue in the bluegrass world 15 years ago.

Leah Roseman (01:04:02):

And the instrument that you're playing on, is that your primary mandolin?

Joe K. Walsh (01:04:05):

Yeah, it's made by this Australian Steve Gilchrist, and he's an amazing, fascinating creature. He had recordings of mandolins and saw a picture of a mandolin and decided to build an F five mandolin, never having seen one in person. It's really preposterous, and he's become one of the two leading lights of the mandolin world. Really beautiful dude. And as I'm sure you've known many musicians, he's the highest standard and unforgiving of his own work. I think just the harsh critic and expecting the most from himself, which is why it works so well, I think.

Leah Roseman (01:04:53):

Have you ever been to Australia?

Joe K. Walsh (01:04:56):

No. I played in New Zealand with a Kiwi guitarist, but I never went to Australia.

Leah Roseman (01:05:02):

Yeah, I've interviewed a few Australian musicians, and I'll probably never get there, but I feel this connection. I was just interviewing somewhere last night, actually. Then you have to do the night interview for the next day.

Joe K. Walsh (01:05:14):

Sure. Yeah. Yeah, it seems, I mean, I think there's a healthy mandolin thing there. Actually, two of the best mandolin builders, Paul Duff is another one, and it's amazing. It seems like really awesome scene there. The mandolin is funny. It pops up everywhere. I went to Japan last year, and there's mandolin builders and a really thriving scene for bluegrass music and sort of the related stuff there. It's really amazing.

Leah Roseman (01:05:45):

Yeah. You mentioned that was an old time tune, and I understand a little bit about old time branching off into bluegrass, but do you want to speak to that a little bit for people who don't understand?

Joe K. Walsh (01:05:55):

Yeah, sure. Yeah, it can mean a couple of things. I mean, it can mean a collection of repertoire that comes from certain style, certain fiddle players or banjo players, but also tends to mean how we approach playing a fiddle tune. And that's an easier distinction to make, which is in bluegrass, let's say we played that tune, the obvious thing that would happen would be somebody would play the melody and then everybody else, this is sort of the low hanging fruit way of arranging it. But with this approach, everybody else would take a solo and interpret the melody, maybe play the melody. But the thing that would be funny would be if there was five of us in a row and we played the melody exactly the same, but once at a time, that actually wouldn't be stylistic for bluegrass. It'd be actually strange. And so the idea there is everybody takes a solo or has their moment, and then in old time, the conceit would be, here's the melody, we're going to play it for a long time.

(01:06:57):

And everybody plays it. And I think sometimes the story's allowed to persist that there's no improvising, and I think that's wrong in Old Time. It's just within a smaller spectrum of how much change we're making at a given moment. I think that as a side note, I think that's an interesting concept, being aware of here's this and then this whole spectrum of how many changes we're allowing ourselves to improvise with. And in that case, with old time, you wouldn't harmonically, you wouldn't take any wild adventures, and it would mostly be about tiny little melodic connections or adding syncopations, right? So let's say the melody was, it is really common stylistically to play the fourth beat of the measure prior to the downbeat of, or that kind of thing is an example of syncopating. Tiny little melodic notes. Should we get more into the weeds? I feel like I'm, well, I've buried myself in the weeds here with old time.

Leah Roseman (01:08:13):

I'm just always interested to talk about this stuff. I did an interview with Jane Rothfield, old time Fiddler, and she was saying how, I don't want to misquote her, but yeah, I forget the guy she was playing with, but he was mad that she was playing over his solo. She came from this old time world that you just all play together. And it is definitely a different mindset.

Joe K. Walsh (01:08:37):

I mean, the bluegrass thing lately, I've kind of chafed at the concept, but I think it's a really beautiful one, which is the sense of the way it's played makes it as easy as possible to play with people you don't know. There's this huge shared repertoire and this nonverbal language of, let's say for example,

(01:09:03):

If I hear somebody do this, I know the downbeat is here, and there's a whole bunch of stuff like that that allows it, I could, allows, for example, me to go to Japan and play with people who I can't even converse with. But we can have a bluegrass jam without any problem, and we know the same repertoire and we could even do a gig reasonably well. And in some ways, the way bluegrass is played in that way kind of makes it harder for you to have nuance, I think, which is, or you lose some things along the way, but it's a beautiful, from a community perspective, I think it's a really beautiful thing.

Leah Roseman (01:09:47):

There's a beautiful record that you're on that I, let me just check the title. Yeah. Bluegrass and the Abstract Truth, and there's a really great fiddler on there. Alex Hargreaves.

Joe K. Walsh (01:10:00):

Yeah, Alex is such an inspiring musician, and he comes out of many of us. He was also inspired by Daryl, and he is very much coming from that school, but also he went to the, there's a college within the college at Berklee, which is the Global Jazz Institute. And Alex was probably one of the first, if not the first violin players to go and worked with Danilo Perez and Ben Street and Joe Lovano, and some of these are the highest names in the jazz world. Alex is uniquely nimble in both worlds and really able to turn one on and turn the other off or live in the middle. And living in the middle was the, the nature of that record.

Leah Roseman (01:10:45):

And you guys got together to make that record. Did you tour it at all? Did you perform?

Joe K. Walsh (01:10:51):

Going back to my concept of the music, just saying, I feel like the music is supposed to be enough, not that we shouldn't tour, but it's one of those records that there was no commercial imperative to make that record. It was like, as it happened, we were all hired to teach at this camp in England, this bluegrass camp called Sore Fingers.

Leah Roseman (01:11:14):

Sore Fingers!

Joe K. Walsh (01:11:16):

Yeah, lovely community. It's a really awesome thing. And one of the evenings they asked, we put on a concert, so we just put together a set from one night. And this has happened a couple of times where you play a set and then you come off and you're like, we didn't have to discuss anything, and we're all pushing in the same direction. And it sounds like things are possible without having to, I think when things are easy, I feel like some musicians gravitate towards that. And that was that case there like, oh, wow, we're all, I think we love a lot of the same things and made things possible for each other. And so after that, we just decided to make a record that following summer, just because again, felt like the music was worth documenting or exploring. And then Alex joined Billy String's Touring band, and there's been a couple of gigs where, actually Australia, there was a gig in Australia and we had to turn it down. Scheduling is always the thing, but,

Leah Roseman (01:12:27):

Well, I dunno, if you want to talk to them, if we could use a track, I'd love to point people in the direction of that album. Do you want to reach out to 'em? Oh,

Joe K. Walsh (01:12:34):

Great. Yeah, please. Yeah. Talk to, oh, I'm sure they'd be happy with it.

Leah Roseman (01:12:38):

Yeah, so I was thinking maybe Mahjong is,

Joe K. Walsh (01:12:41):

Oh, great. Yeah. Cool. That's funny. That's a perfect, Mahjong is funny because for anybody that doesn't know, it's a Wayne Shorter tune. And for me, Wayne Shorter represents this is the heavy stuff that's harder to parse as an improviser. And oddly enough, what they wanted to do, and I think it was cool, was play this Wayne Shorter tune as an old time tune, I think. So it kind of ties in it's funny repertoire, of course, not old time, but at least through the lens of the four of us that day, that was sort of an old time rendering of a Wayne shorter tune.

Leah Roseman (01:13:31):

How do you go about memorizing tunes?

Joe K. Walsh (01:13:35):

Yeah, I think it's like if it's in my ear, I can play it, right? And so for me it's mostly about listening. I don't like being on a gig and visualizing, here's the chart, here's the E seven chord. At that bar, it is mostly about hearing it and knowing the sounds, which there's always room for growth in that, in terms of I should be better at recognizing certain modulations or this kind of movement, but trying to hear things. And if I can hear it in my head, and I'm pretty good at analyzing stuff, so I can say, okay, well that's this chord and that implies this. That's for better or for worse. That's where I'm at. So as I go to a gig, I would much rather have a long playlist that I've internalized and listened to while cooking or driving or whatever. Then trying to memorize it from charts.

Leah Roseman (01:14:35):

Yeah, actually, I was curious. So when you were doing these picking circles as a young man learning, was it all by ear and then later came the church?

Joe K. Walsh (01:14:43):

Yeah, mostly there's some resources online for, but at that point I didn't realize that ear was really going to work better. Yeah.

Leah Roseman (01:14:54):

This is Mahjong from the album Bluegrass and the Abstract Truth with Greg Garrison, Grant Gordy, Alex Hargreaves, and Joe K. Walsh. The link on Bandcamp is in the show notes for this podcast. (music)

(01:18:03):

Oh yeah. I believe you have a funny story about meeting Joe Walsh of the Eagles. Of course, people look up Joe Walsh musician.

Joe K. Walsh (01:18:11):

Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. Even now I get Joe Walsh jokes regularly, but on the road it was all the time, especially with the Gibsons. But yeah, so one time they were given an honorary doctorate to Joe Wal at Berklee, and someone arranged for us to meet and say hello, and that was cool. And he was nice. I really wanted to go with the opening line. I really wanted to say, Hey Joe, I'm really sorry you hear about me all the time and you must be really tired. But I chickened out and he had this handler there. I dunno, some guy who was just whatever, and he kind of intercepted me and shook my hand and passed me a Joe Walsh pic, which was kind of funny. I guess nobody knows what to do when you meet somebody with your same name and I dunno. And then his wife, what did she say? She said, oh, it's nice to meet you. It's nice to be married to you. And I feel like that was my cue to leave.

Leah Roseman (01:19:18):

Well, I'd like to wrap this up with maybe just some reflections. I was curious, we talked a little bit about the confidence of youth, and then you kind of alluded a little bit to a bit of imposter syndrome as you've gained an experience and the mental game, where's the mental game most important for you? Is it more in performing or,

Joe K. Walsh (01:19:42):

Yeah, I mean, performing is just trying to recognize what conditions I thrive in. And so yeah, performing of course and then recording, but also again, as I composed, just trying to, it's so easy to reject. It's so natural to reject. I listened actually to a beautiful podcast from this guy Pablo Held last week, and this guitarist, Jacob Breault was on there and he was talking about when he's composing, he gives himself a period of, let's say two weeks where there's no critique, just no which, I mean, what a beautiful concept. I was just like, that's what I need to do. Because a lot of times when I'm composing, I can't go five minutes without saying, oh, this is stupid.

(01:20:38):

So that is really important. I don't know, I think it's always an evolving thing and just trying to acknowledge what's holding my interest and then being aware that that's what I should be doing. And it's not always what we do, I don't think. Think probably every music has these formulas that you can recognize and then work on in channel, but I think things work best when we are saying, this is what I'm interested in. I'm willing to say that, and you may not be interested in it, but here I am. And so that's moving more and more towards that and less and less towards here's this thing that is of this formula.

Leah Roseman (01:21:25):

That's some great wisdom there. Well, thanks so much for this, Joe. It's really great to talk to you.

Joe K. Walsh (01:21:30):

It was great to have the time with you. Thank you for having me.

Leah Roseman (01:21:34):

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please to share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. The link is in the description. Have a wonderful week.