One More Car, One More Rider - Transcript
Music Rewind welcomes blues musician Bryce Evans to discuss the Eric Clapton’s 2002 live album; One More Car, One More Rider
Album: One More Car, One More Rider
Artist: Eric Clapton
Year: 2002
Listen to the album on Spotify
Our Guest, Bryce Evans, is an accomplished blues musician out of Denver, CO. He has released several singles with 2 recents ones you need to check out. Grindstone
Bryce Evans Music Homepage: https://bryceevansmusic.com/music
@bryceevansmusic on Instagram
Transcript as follows: Participant #1:
Hello and welcome to season two of Music Rewind, a podcast where we look to tell the stories behind our favorite albums. I'm your host, Steve Epley and in each episode I will invite a guest on them to tell us about their favorite music album, how they discovered it, and what makes it special to them. So I wanted to take a moment and thank you all for listening and supporting the show. With the limited operation we've got here, it's all thanks to you that we were able to keep growing with more amazing guests and bonus episodes. I will ask you though, if you are enjoying Music Rewind, please check out the links in our show notes. They will take you to either our patreon where you can donate to support the show and get special content on the side, or to our amazing sponsors, Zounds, for all your audio production needs, and also Drizzly, which will deliver your favorite beer, wine or spirit straight to your door. This all helps us keep the show going. Thanks again. And now on with the show. Joining me today is a blues musician hailing from Colorado, Bryce Evans. Bryce is a guitar player for over 20 years with several albums and singles which are all out there on the streamers. Bryce has worked with the great producer Kevin Shirley who has worked with a few acts you may have heard of Journey, Black Crows, Led Zeppelin, among many others. Welcome Bryce, and thank you for being on the show. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Funny enough, the whole Kevin Shirley thing, that was great. And then today I found out that D Sawyer and Holland Oates, John O'pr person actually follows me on Instagram and has been one of my fans for quite a long time. Oh, that's awesome. It was a very cool thing to find out today. And I knew she was the Sawyer's PR person and then I was like, I don't really know who that is, but great, thanks for following me. Whatever. And then I checked her out today and I was like, wow, holy crap. You're also John Outs PR person, edison Safe. That's great. Yeah, it was great. So, yeah, Kevin Shirley was a blast. And hopefully that's not the end of that little bit of time that I get in that realm of the world, but we're working on it. I've listened to your stuff, it's great. And hopefully you get some more listeners off of this and keep making music. I love it. Oh, thank you. This podcast hit a recent high note when William Goldsmith from Sunny Day Real Estate the drummer for them because they're going back out on tour, being a lot more active on social media. Liked one of my Instagram posts about our review of Diary. That was cool. Great. Excellent. Yeah, any bit of progress is great. Progress. Yeah, I sent that to Danny who did that episode and we're like, Okay, time to retire. Exactly.
Participant #1:
Bryce, let's jump right into this. What album would you like to bring to the table and what makes this special to you? So I have decided to bring One More Car, one More Rider by Eric Laughton.
Participant #1:
This is an album that has influenced my guitar playing, influenced my music career for a very long time, since I started playing. I started playing when I was 728. Yeah, 28 now. And I keep coming back to it. It has a lot of memories for me. And as we get further into the album, we'll start to show those. But it just really has done so much for my guitar playing. It's inspired me when I started. It still inspires me today. And I just wanted to talk about it and really refuse such a great album of his world tour and what came out of that in 2001 in such a dark year for America. It was a great year for Eric and for this fantastic inspirational album writer. It's an interesting pin because it's not one that's really that well known amongst just the general population, Eric Clapton fans. Obviously, I had the CD. I actually remember buying the CD at the P X in the military. They had a very small selection and this was in probably early 2003 or something. Oh, Eric clapping out. Let me grab that. Loved it. But it never really came back into rotation too much. Yeah. This one is I don't know, I think it's kind of like what's the word I'm looking for? It's very the best, if you will. And it's kind of a lot of his older stuff, some of his newer stuff, some of his songs from Reptile that was released in, I think, 2001. And he kind of just went over all of that on this world tour. But what really makes this album special to me is not so much the first half. And I feel like a lot of people, when you get a two disc live album, it's like, oh, I'm going to put it in on the first track, on the first disk and I'm going to go, we're going to see what happens. And this one is not so much really that great, in my opinion. In the beginning, on that first disk, there's some really good songs. Tears in Heaven, Bellbottom Blues, Change the World, Revert, Tears. A lot of those are fantastic. But the way he does it on this album is not my favorite. For me, this album, the second disk, is really where it's at and where I got a lot of my inspiration and where it really touched me and really when I started hearing great blues guitar for the first time. So it is kind of a B side album, if you will. But it's so very good. I agree. And I love the poppy stuff. It's all right. I'm not the hugest fan of Change the World tears in Heaven. They're great songs, but in the grand catalogue of Eric Clapton, they don't kind of make anywhere near the top rung for me. But then sprinkled throughout even the first disc. You still have these old classic blues tracks from the yeah. If you trace them back to their origin. Absolutely. Yeah. Especially with Hoochie Coochie, man. I think it's a Buddy Watersol. It is, yeah. And that's it, man. When we start getting into it, I have so many stories about how it influenced things like God. Yeah, great. How did you discover this album? Funny enough, my dad, I guess we'll start kind of from the beginning. So before I started playing guitar, just about a year or so, this album came out on November 5 of 2001. And some point in the middle of November, right around my dad's birthday, which is November 10, he decided, I'm going to take Bryce to a monster truck rally. So my dad had just picked up the CD. My dad's one of those guys, he picks up a new aircraft in CD and he had box stuff. He was a collector. He still is a collector. And anytime he picked up a new album, it'd be like we're playing it for the next three weeks. Everywhere we go, anything we do, that's what we're listening to. So you've just gotten it that day and we're going to this monster truck rally. And my dad like to listen to music loud. And so he was cranking this second Biscuitist album on our way down to the Pepsi Center in Denver, and I remember leaning over, kind of like doubled over myself, trying to get my head closer to the speaker of this Chevy truck so I could hear even better, which wasn't a problem because it was crazy loud anyways, how good this guitar was, so I could just kind of zone in on that. And the 7th track Leila was playing, and it was the intro, and I've heard Leila a bunch, you know, the Derek and the Domino's version before that, near other versions of you have done throughout the years. But this one was special because that beginning guitar track is just on fire. And it comes right out of the name of that song. It comes right out of Wonderful Tonight and it's just epic.
Participant #1:
I've actually got a note of that when we get to Layla because one of the things I love about live sets is where the artists will do sometimes up to a minute of just solo work that may or may not sound like the song they're getting into. But then once there's that change and the first real chords of the song hit and the crowd reacts. I love that on every single live album I hear it on, it's always great. And Leila, this one does that perfectly. It absolutely does. Yeah, it changes, I think, of the Staples Center where it was recorded from you're in this wonderful tonight kind of world, this great saxophone sounding solo that transcended into this fantastic guitar solo. And then he brings it up, goes on this crazy, big, fat, air Clapton tone solo and just drops right into Layla. Amazing. And at that point in time, that's when I realized that's what I want to do for a living. I want to play guitar for a living. And so here we are, years later, still working on that, but getting somewhere now. So that's where I found it. I found it through my dad. And ever thankful for this album ever since. It's amazing. About how old were you? I was about seven or eight years old. So this is like a core memory, if you will. Yeah. That's a trend on this show for the childhood albums that change because people are bringing albums for various reasons at various points in their life, to talk about it on the show. But several that have been musical life changing have been at that six to eight range. Definitely. Yeah. It's one of those the years when you're absorbing I think you're absorbing everything around you. You're learning the world to an extent as fast as you can understand it. And music has a way of touching us all. It amazes me that the older people that are in homes, that have dementia, have problems remembering anybody's name. But as soon as they hear a song from their younger days, they're taken back and they like, dancers go back to dancing again. And the mind just goes wherever it was, when it hurt or when it connected. I think you're so connected with that song, and it takes you right back to that. And I will never forget the way the lights looked as we were driving down the highway, the way the truck sounded. I mean, all of that is ingrained in me from this album, especially with that song. That's fantastic. Yeah. This album, when it's blues, it's very bluesy. When it's pop, it gets very poppy. But then in the middle, there's so much good stuff that actually, I would almost categorize this as a jam album because all the songs are lengthy. They're two to four minutes longer than their studio versions, and they turn into this jam session because we haven't really touched on yet. But the personnel on this album is like a who's who of amazing session. Guitarist with multiple Grammys, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Lucky they're all there. Yes, absolutely. Billy Preston. There's only so many great things I can say about Billy Preston. I love Billy Preston. Yeah. A great organ player. Steve Gat on drums. Amazing, right? Nathan east on base again. Amazing. I mean, all of these guys and that's the thing that I always thought about Clapton, is that he's been around for so long, he's done this for so long that he really has, for lack of a better term, the cream of the crop. He does have the cream of the crop for musicians. And so much of this album, I think. Yeah, exactly. It is a jam album, but it's done with the best jamming musicians yes, you could argue of all time. Yeah, you could say Eric Clapton has on a music standpoint, I know he's had a lot of personal strife with family and stuff over the years, but musically, living the dream at this point because he's able to just do a full live set with these amazing musicians and start playing the tunes that got him into music when he was a young kid. It's not just a golden oldies sort of tour where we're going to go out there and do a full set of our fan favorites and call today. No, he's throwing songs in there that are hitting tracks off Leila and other love songs and other things that were just from his youth, but still being able to play them and do whatever the hell he wants, that's amazing. And this album, too. I feel like he was, to an extent, at the very top of his career. He was, I want to say, somewhere in his late 40s, mid 50s, somewhere in there. I could be wrong on that. But he was at a point where he was old enough to know what he was doing and young enough to still do it. And nowadays he's getting older. The stuff he's putting out is not near as fast as any of this. And he's even came out, I think, and said, I'm kind of over the Crossroads thing. I'm kind of over all of that old stuff, Sunshine of Your Love, that I used to. I'm over that. I've done that a million times. I don't want to do that anymore. But at this point, I think he was just on top of the world. And it shows in this album. I laughed because I remember when his Unplugged came out, which was a great acoustic album, and thinking, man, that's an old guy from my dad's time. Look how old that dude is. And here I am in my early 40s. He's in almost his 80s now. Guy is old, but he's still rocking. Got to give him props for that. He's a lifer, this guy. This guy's a lifer. And at that point in time, he had his youth with him to do what he wanted to do and he had his fan base, which I think he's still very much so happy. But at this point in time, the world tour sold out. It was his first concert since the 92 or the 92 Unplugged out. That was his first back to it type of concert. And that was also Pilgrim, I think, came around that time. I think you're correct. Right after I'm plugged maybe right in there. But his first time being public on a big world tour was doing this. And I was looking into this. I'm reading up on this album before we did this. And I found out, I was like, why did he name this album One More Car, One More Rider? And I had to dig a little bit. What I did find out is that he named this because he was on a Fairground one day, kind of like a carnival or something, and he kept hearing a worker on one of the rides saying, one more car, one more rider to fill the last seat in the last car available. One more car, one more rider. So he was trying to fill up this ride. It's very cool that he was at a carnival and then his marketing people were able to go, we could use that. Let's put a little guy in a car and a classic Clapton fashion will put the big sun in the back. I don't know, man. It really worked out really well. And then the album recorded live, so it just sold it sold the whole thing, yeah. That is pretty clever. I didn't see that in any of the research I did. I searched, but not searched too well, obviously, for the origin of that. But that's a neat story there. Yeah, that's what I found. Now, who knows? The internet is a vast place. It may not be true, but I don't know, I found it out there somewhere, so I'm going to believe it. I think it's cool. Before we get into the tracks, I did have a question here where you kind of answered. How did you discover Eric Clapton? Was it your dad was a collector, so you knew him well before Tears in Heaven? Yes. So my dad really I learned of Eric Clapton in the Yard Birds. Right. And it was one of those things like when you're a kid, you're not really paying too much attention to much of anything. And I guess all of everything all at the same time. I vaguely remember going, who's this dad? He's like, Oh, this is the Yardbirds. Eric clapping is this. And it's like, Oh, okay. Not thinking anything of it. A couple of years go by and then he's like, Oh, this is clapping. Guy shows me a few more things and then maybe a little bit longer goes by. And that's when this album came out. So, yeah, through my dad. I mean, my dad has had a lot of influence on my guitar playing throughout the years. I walked past him a long time ago, technically, but always pushing me forward. And really, I wouldn't have picked up the guitar had it not been for him showing Mirror Clapped, really. So, yeah, my dad showed me that and now he's got me hooked for life. Similar to my story, too, actually, on aircraft. My dad was a huge fan, is a huge fan, and he always got a kick out of stumping me on who the band was because we were driving in his truck and whatever's on the radio, he would turn it down and he would ask me who's singing, who's the artist, who's playing guitar, that sort of thing. They would help build my music trivia as a kid and he loves thumping me on the aircraft and bands because you had the Yardbirds, you had Cream, you had Blind Face, you had Derek and the Dominoes and he loved stumping me on which one was which. It was always fun. Yeah, I kind of got caught in the same sort of scenario. I learned about the Yardbird first. The yardbirds first and then I learned about the Solar career a little bit later on. But I had no clue about Blindfold and really what crime did for him. I didn't know of any of that until I was much older, about 13 or 14. Then I started looking into the history of who this person was and I found out, oh, holy crap, this guy's laid out Brickwork for years before he even got to the show in 2001. That inspired me the most. So it was like, great, I have all this music to go back and listen to you, which was awesome. But then I got went down the rabbit hole because KuchiKuchi Man and things like that. I found out who JJ kale was in Muddy Waters and then you just start going down the line and Freddie King and now you're just lost. And yes, it's been a great journey with Eric classroom. He's done so much for me. Fantastic idol, I think. So walk me through the album the way you listen to it, either track by track or we bounce around. This is your show. Okay, sir. I'm going to basically skip over almost all the first half of the first disk. Like we said, a lot of those are so just kind of want to say repetitive, but they are very like they're just kind of the song. They're poppy. I do want to ask, though, what's your take on the song Reptile? Track two. Okay, so Reptile. This version I'm not in love with, but the album version I love that whole album. That whole album is great. I just don't know about the way it was done on this album. I'm just like, sorry, it sounds like something you'd hear in a hotel lobby. I'm not trying to be me on it. That song is definitely just the low point in the whole album for me. Doesn't sound like anything else in the entire album. Agreed. Yeah. And there's so many other great songs on Reptile. Why wouldn't you pick any other ones? But I guess Reptile is the title track of that title track, which hit number five on the Billboard top 200. I get it, you're trying to promote and that's cool. But, yeah, I would not have chosen that by any means for this album
Participant #1:
if I listen to it all the way to True, I'll start with Going Down slow it's kind of where you come out of all of the slow parts of the album. I think you just got out of river of Tears, like the saddest almost the saddest song on the album. And then you come out with kind of this poppy, bluesy funky it's got a beat, it makes you want to dance, but you just want to sit there and listen, too.
Participant #1:
And the whole going down, going down, slow part towards the end is great. I love that. It's just it kind of brings the whole mood of the crowd up and you can kind of tell it kind of sounds like they're getting a little restless, and then as soon as the song starts, like, Oh, yeah, cool. They've all probably got a few drinks, they kind of start getting into the groove of things. So let's start there. And then She's Gone on track ten is really where I think that crowd turned and became part of the album, if you will, because when he fires up that guitar right at the very beginning, she's Gone, it's electric, and I don't mean that, but it really does light the album on fire to an extent, and it really leads you into the next part of the whole album being disk two. She's Gone in in a three minute jam session. Yeah, it's great. So I have that is highlighted as one of my stand out tracks. I do love Cheese Gone on this, and I can't remember I tried to listen to almost every track on this today. I think this is the one where Steve Gadd, he gets that beat going in the back behind the guitar part, and then he picks it up almost like one beat per minute, and it's so distinct that you hear it, but then he's like a metronome. He stays so flat the entire time once he picks that tempo, and it's like, yeah, it's a great way to showcase the awesome artist. You have the Escape dad's playing right there when he picks that tempo just a little bit. And maybe some people don't notice that. I notice it because I play music. So that's one of those, like, Wow, holy crap, that dude is so good. So, yeah, She's Gone is excellent. It really just picks the whole buyback. So then I Want a Little Girl, what a fantastic not a slowdown, but what a fantastic change up from what you were playing in disc one. And then you're entering almost a different realm of blues when you hit that song,
Participant #1:
I Want a Little Girl,
Participant #1:
it's very sultry. It's very sexy and nice and warm, and it just makes you really love the blues and jump into what blues guitar is all about and blues piano, right? Like, there are so many good parts in all of these songs. I can't even begin to touch on everyone. I have on about four different tracks just of my notes. I just say I love Billy Preston. It's repeated. And this is one of those tracks that pulls him out and showcases it. Definitely. Yeah, I would agree. Is this the one where he yells out in the middle or you take a Billy? I think so.
Participant #1:
I don't recommend anyone dive too deep into the lyrics of I Want a Little Girl. Yeah. The lyrics may not stand the test of time, but he wants a little girl that can cook and stuff, so that's all fine. This is another one of those that's like a blue song from way back when. So it's another rearrangement, right? Yeah. That's the thing that I do love about the blues is that it is timeless, even though it is not always politically correct, but it is timeless. So, Badge, I had heard on the Cream album with that Jack Bruce baseline off of a Goodbye from them. Yeah. And with Nathaniel doing that, who I think is a better bachelor, he brought so much to that song. And the way they did the song, like you said in the beginning, is that a lot of these songs are a couple of minutes longer than anything else on any of the studio stuff. And this is no exception. I mean, the whole end of this album is the whole end of the song is a huge, big jam track and it's just like, oh, man, what a great example of great musicians going after it together. And this is just such a great song, you almost couldn't make it better. Yeah. This is a three and a half minute track, I think, of Goodbye and then here it's over six minutes with another two and a half minute jam session at the end. Exactly. Yeah. Beautiful. It's great.
Participant #1:
The thing I absolutely love,
Participant #1:
and I think it's definitely out of Badge into Hoocikuji Man is that drum part that Steve Gad drops in. Badge comes to an end and then he goes and then it kicks right into that song and it's like, oh, man. And it's almost like, well, stop. This is what we're doing now. And it's like it draws your attention, it makes you listen and then it pushes you back to this is why you come to see in our classic show, you're here for dirty, raunchy, guitar playing blues and that's what you're going to get. We just hold it. We hold it. Wow. We held it ball to the end of this album and now we're going to release all of it until we get to the last track, which then just kind of smooths the whole album over. But that beginning part of Gucci Man is great. And I didn't know it was somebody watersong for years until I think I saw Cadillac Records and then I was like, Oh, I didn't know that.
Participant #1:
Yes, this song is as blues as blues can be. Yeah, absolutely. This is down dirty. Delta blues, that sort of thing, enhanced again by Billy Preston. As I said, I love Billy Preston. Yeah. Those two just complement each other so well on this album where guitar solo ends in Oregon or piano solo begins, and it's seamless and it fits so well together. Absolutely. And I've read also in my research of this album that this was the last United States show on this 2001 world tour. So it wasn't the end of the world tour by any means, but it was the end of the United States leg. And that's when they all took, I guess, six weeks off to pause. And then they went, I think, across these to somewhere else. And you can tell that this is a perfect example, one of the last time they're going to get to play together, for a little while at least. But we're not tired of it yet. We haven't burnt out on the tour. We don't have tour fatigue. And when you hear those two bounce against each other, it's awesome. It really is just fan freaking fantastic. Billy Preston, he's great. He's very great. The next one, Have You Ever Loved a Woman? Is another say this one is eight minutes or damn near eight minutes. And this is classic. The Freddie King one. Yes. Between Leyla and this track are the two tracks that I really fell in love with that night when I was riding in the truck on my way to that monster truck rally. Because Have You Ever Loved a Woman, it's not a standard 145 blues progression in the terms of we're just going to go one, four bars and then the four for four bars and back and forth and back and forth until we reach the five and okay, we're doing it all over again. It's very much so a different style. It's still on for five, but it's a different progression altogether. And it's so good. And when that guitar comes in, man, that thing just screams in your face. Only like Clapton knows how to do moaning. And the tone of that guitar alone was enough to make me go, yeah, I need to figure out how I can do that.
Participant #1:
I think Billy Gibbons, when he played A Crossroads in 2007 with Eric, said, hey, when I heard the guitar, I knew that I had to figure out what it was and how to do it. I didn't know what it was, but I had to know how to do it at some point in my life. And it changed his direction. And this song, this album definitely changed my direction because of the guitars solo, and it's amazing. And the crescendo from the chorus into the guitar solo, is that's what it's all about right there?
Participant #1:
That's awesome. Yeah. Apparently this one he's been playing since he was with John Mile in the Bluesbreakers Long Time, which is another band we forgot about. So many, man, so many. I actually have a Blues Breakers album that someone gave me were like, you like vinyl? Here's a crate. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Just looking through, like, I've never heard of these guys. And it was a fantastic blues out. I can't remember which one it was, but it was excellent. So next up then, is cocaine into cocaine. Yes. And this is when I really feel like everybody kicked it into gear. It was like you could tell the crowd had enough to drink that they were just going to let these guys have it, and they did. I have a note here. A lot of crowd participation in this one. Yeah, absolutely. As soon as Nathan East does that big baseline in the beginning, and then they jump right into the main riff, you just hear that crowd go wild.
Participant #1:
And that is something else on this album, really. Like I said before, the crowd in this album participated in a way that made the album. Even though it's not crazy over the top, everybody's super participating and clapping and interacting with Eric, it really does enhance the album. I think it's also worth noting that this album, audio wise, was recorded very cleanly for a live album. Yes. You can hear every instrument and you can hear the crowd when the audio engineers want you to hear the crowd. Yes, absolutely. I think there's a lot of albums out there that they capture magic, and this one captured magic on that night. I think it was August 15, august 18 of 2001, man, whoever did this album, whoever mixed it, and the engineers at the show itself really put a lot of effort into making this a great album. And it shows. Yeah, full credit to them. I've got a lot of live albums where you can't even hear the bass. And it's really awkward when they do this. They call to action, to the crowd trying to do a back and forth, and you don't hear a damn thing from the crowd. And it sounds awful and awkward. But this one, it doesn't. I mean, when the crowd yells out cocaine on the chorus, you know, it yeah, it's all those people that pay all that money to sit there and watch them that night. And it's great. It really adds so much to the album because when you think of Eric, he did so many studio albums that it's not really something you really hear. I don't want to say unless you start looking towards his live stuff, but even then, all of that is not really like this. Back to what I said when he was kind of on the top of his game. It shows in this album with the crowd because the crowd was so freaking loud. It adds something. And cocaine, it really kind of stepped it up. And the crowd helps so much in this song. Now, have you seen Aircraft in live? Oh, no, I haven't. I'd love to. I've seen Joe Bona Masa three times because I knew when I was growing up. I mean, aircraft were so much anyways. And so when Joe started playing around, I was like, Oh, I got to get fixed to this guy because he's the next guitar player. Like, Eric the next of our millennia, right? I mean, he's amazing. So I went and saw him quite a few times, and Eric just never comes around to Colorado much anymore. And if he does, it's astronomically priced. It's like, I'd love to, but usually I never have that much money when it comes to town. I got to see them once, and it was here in Atlanta, and it was a great show. I have nothing bad to say about the show, but it's one of those situations where the opening act kind of showed him up a little bit, really. The opener was Roger Daughtry solo wow. Which was great. Roger Altre doing striped down versions of Hootunes, breaking them down into blue songs, which was really a lot of fun. But he engaged with the crowd. He talked a lot, and he was a little more active with just going back and forth talking about songs, whereas Eric was very methodical, very technical. This song to this song, this song. Everything was planned, and it was great. I have nothing bad to say about Eric classic, his show. But one thing I do remember is that before Roger's final song, he said, Thanks for coming out. Here my set. I heard a lot of great things about this next act. Eric is an up and comer. I wish him the best of luck. Got a lot of laughs from the crowd. It was really good. It was good, sure. I was watching a thing about Eric Clapton and Royal Albert Hall, which I didn't know. I was obsessed with this dude from the time I heard this album to the time I really ran into Joe Bonnamasa for one of my Friends, giving me one of his albums. And so I read everything I could about him. I absorbed as much as I could. I bought we use QuickBooks to learn how to play like he did. And I guess I've done a great job because a lot of people tell me you sound a lot like your platform, which is fantastic, but it's like, I don't even compare it to the guy, right? And so when I started getting into it and I started reading about it, I learned that he's not really a social guy. And when I watch this thing on him at Royal Ever Hall said he was like, when I do a show, I do the show, and then I leave. I can't stay backstage, I can't go talk to people. I can't wander around the Coliseum with that hat on. I have to leave because the energy of it is just too much for me. And so I think that kind of also plays into the way that he does things on stage. He's not a front man, per se, right. He gets up there, he does his thing, he does what he's good at, which is play guitar and sing the blues, and he gets off and he goes home. That's exactly what I saw on stage. Yeah, it was great, but it's exactly the right description of it. Yeah. And I didn't know that, but I guess everybody's different and I mean, I try not to stick around in my shows when I get done. If there's other bands, I'll stay and watch, but there are just so many people that come up to you and say, oh, you're great. I love that song. I love this song. We buy you a beer. There's only so many beers you can drink. So it's like, man, I don't want to stick around for all that energy coming my way. I just kind of want to play the show for you. I'm glad you loved it. Thanks. But I'm out of here. So I kind of reminisce with that a little bit of how that energy can really just get to you. I don't know, maybe that he shook that off this night when he did this album, because I know from the sound of it, and the video, too, if you watch the video, it looks like he's happy to be there and he's ready to be on stage in doing this and other videos that you watch for him, sometimes he's not you can kind of tell that he just wants to get it over with. So, yeah, that's a little story about him and Royal Hall. But anyway, so into Wonderful Tonight, this song is great. So you get to watch that on Fire crazy version of cocaine, and you drop into this slow beginning with a very soft guitar part, and then Nathanie's kind of adds some stuff in the baseline, which picks it up, and that whoever the other guitar player was played with him that night add so much to this as well. And this version of Wonderful Tonight I still think is the best. And if you look at the numbers on Spotify 2.2 Million, listens on this song. This is a good one. I really enjoyed the arrangement of it because it had that style of jazz and blues where they'll let each individual instrument take a little bit of a solo. Yes, I like it when a band can slow down and do that, and they do well on this one. From a technical standpoint, coming out of a song as fast as cocaine wasn't coming into a Wonderful Tonight. Something that's slow, very difficult, very technically difficult in a live setting to slow your heart rate out, to slow that adrenaline down. Okay, we're going to slow this whole thing down and everybody else's energy, we're going to slow down and we're going to walk you into this next song, but we're not going to leave you there. And then they build it up towards the end. And my favorite part of this whole song is when that what sounds like a saxophone, which is actually whoever played piano for that. And I not feel like Preston, the actual piano player, has this thing and it's like a tag box has a tube, goes into your mouth and he blows into that. And then he uses the keyboard as part of the instrument and makes it sound like a saxophones, but still would win. Instrument, I guess, has a read in the whole thing, but it's just kind of electrified. And my favorite part is when he fills that solo and then Eric Clum comes in on the exact same note and then it just transcends into this guitar solo.
Participant #1:
Me and my dad were blown away by that years ago. We still are blown away by that. Every time we're in the garage together drinking and we hear that, we're like, Wow, listen to that. That part sounds amazing. I agree. Yeah. Absolutely fantastic. And then you pick it up in the Layla and really, I think this is probably the star track on this whole thing. And Eric is one of his best, right? If not the best song he's ever done. But he starts off with that awesome guitar solo and like you said before, you don't really know that he's going into layo. You're just like, what is this? And the keys, they're just droning out in the beginning, providing that base layer of sound for him to just solo over is amazing. And it really I remember when I first heard it, I thought, what is that rumble? What is that thunder of a sound? And then he comes in with that little first two, three notes there, and it's like, Oh, wait, what are we getting into here? And then he just takes you through it until he drops down and he starts that main riff, and then the crowd just fires up.
Participant #1:
It goes from there. And when they went into the piano park again, I said before, it will say it again, they captured magic that night, and they did definitely with the song when they went from the really fast, super hot, awesome version of Leila and brought it into the end of the piano part of Leila. It's unreal.
Participant #1:
Yeah. I'm glad they went with the original part one, part two rock version and then the instrumental second half, obviously a nine minute version, which is phenomenal. They could have done a version of like he did Unplug because it was so popular, but they stuck with the original arrangement, which was thank you for that. Yeah. And I think really, coming from that 192 album of Unplugged and everybody had listened to it, did so well on the charts, I think maybe he was ready. Let's bring out Guns. This is a world tour. We've played in the first disc. We've played all the reptile and got you on My Mind and my father's Eyes and all this kind of slower, more acoustic stuff. So I've already provided all that for you. Now I'm going to give you what you came here for. You. I'm giving you what your money's worth. He does that in Leila. Well, I mean, hell, if you look at it on the second disk, you're going from I Want a Little Girl all the way straight to Leila and then the next one, they're all old tunes. There's no pilgrim, there's no reptile. These are all old school songs. Absolutely. Yeah. This is all stuff that really kind of built his career and then he said a thousand times, and obviously, it's probably why they are as good as they are, because we've done them a thousand times. But that solo in Leila, all of it. Just absolutely all of it. The one thing I did want to say about it is in about a minute and 30 seconds, there's an underlying solo. I know that when he uses other guitar players, he tries to make them sound as closely as possible to him, so the crowd doesn't really have any sort of dissonance between the two. And whatever they did to that guy's guitar that night to make it sound the way that it did, it sounds like that speaker is going to blow up. But it is awesome. It is awesome. I'm sure if you were on stage with them that night, you could feel the air moving past your legs from the amplifier, because it sounds like it was loud as all get out. But it was fantastic and it really changed my life. That track, that was an amazing track. I'll never be able to forget what they did for me and that would be a great way to even close out this whole concert. But it's like not done yet. Not done yet. After it drops down from the piano, Partner does that massive explosive ending in Layla, it goes into another leading guitar solo and this one in particular. This guitar solo really took me from, this is what I want to do for a living, to this is what I have to do for a living. When I heard that, I thought, that's the coolest thing I've ever heard. I can't get this out of my head. And then you're just going to buy ipods, come out. And it was one of the first songs I put on my iPhone. You're talking sunshine of your love, yeah. Once it transcends after Layla and that beginning guitar solo there, I thought, you know what, one day I'm going to get good enough to play that. I got to figure out how to do it. And I tried early on and that was always my goal. It was the big, I'm going to get there, that's the target. And then who knows after that, but that's the target. And so by the time I was about 15 or 16, I was finally able to do it? No, for now. But it took me from the time I was about eight, nine years old to the time I was about 16 years old to figure out how to do it, because there's no tabs for this album anywhere. There's no charts for it. You can watch the show, but you're not going to see his fingers. And so, really, it took me that long to develop my ear to get it, but I finally got it. I remember when I first got it, I was sitting there playing along with it and I went, Oh, I just did it. And that was the big thing, was just get there, get to that point. And then once I did that and I knew that I did it, it's like, well, now what? Now what do I do? So I was like, well, let's go back to track that will be more than enough of a challenge for the next eight years.
Participant #1:
The harmonies and Sunshine of Your Love on this are awesome, absolutely awesome. Especially towards the end of the song, because originally Jack Bruce sang it. So it was Eric taking the lead vocals on this one, right? Yeah. And then I think it's Nathaniece to your hearing, and when he harmonizes with Eric on this, it's great again. World class musicians who can't get any better, and they prove it when they do their vocals and the song. And then at the very end, they slow down. And I think they couldn't have brought it to a better ending than this, both in the musical realm of the show, but also in names of the tour and where they were at on the leg of the tour. They just got done with the whole US side of things. They finished at the Stable Center in Los Angeles there, and it was kind of like, okay, we're here. We're finally on our break. Like, let's give them something to remember if they're not going to remember this for the rest of their lives anyways, right? Which people that weren't even there remember hearing it for the first time. And they played that song and over the Rainbow. It was so much because November 5 is when it came out. A few months later, my dad's father died and this song was huge for him. I was a little too young to remember all the bad details of that, but I definitely remember this song being played a lot and growing up and over the years. It's just one of those very peaceful songs. And the way that it's done is just perfect.
Participant #1:
Somewhere over the Rain
Participant #1:
it's not too much, it's not too fast they didn't do it too slow. It's right on the perfect tempo and it adds so much to the album of all this acoustic stuff up front, all this new poppy stuff, a little bit of the old stuff. But we're going to do it acoustic still, and we're going to fire it up with all this super fast electric awesomeness and we're just going to slow it down and just drop it off at the end and thank you. I love you very much. Good night. And that's it.
Participant #1:
Yeah. It was a great way to end the set. Somewhere over the Rainbow. It's not an easy song to sing in any arrangement, so I think it was beautiful and it was bold to do it that way and just a great way to close it out. He did a great job. Absolutely. Yeah. And like I said, I read so much about him, but he has said multiple times, I am not a vocalist. And when I try to be a vocalist, I have to stop playing. I have to concentrate very hard on my vocals. And he must have been concentrating because he didn't miss a note and what he did miss added, it didn't take away. There's a few parts in there where he gets a little shaky and it's not bad. It's vulnerable and it's very intimate and it adds so much to that song. And it was just great way to close out. Excellent way to finish an excellent album. Completely agree. It was a beautiful ending. So One More Car, one More Rider made your top spot. What other albums made your short list for what could have been on here? Oh, God, so many. But I guess we'll really just kind of work my way through a couple. Okay. One of them is definitely Dustel. Joe Bottomasa. Kind of the same reasons he has this way of playing. Joe Morrison in particular. He's such a vocal guitarist, he plays what he hears. He tries his best to express himself through his instrument and he does a great job. And that album, No Love on the Streets, really kind of changed my world. From Eric Clapton guitar playing to guitar playing that was so much faster but not shred metal. It wasn't like Dragon Force or anybody crazy. And it was somebody who really played melodically and played with feeling, but he was able to rip and it really changed my world. And really, that is such a great album. With Kevin Shirley as a producer, at the time of hearing that, I had no idea who Joe Montana masa really was. I got into him on BlackRock and I loved that. Came out with us. Well, loved that. And then I was like, Oh, look, okay, this is Kevin Shirley guy. No idea who that is. But he makes some good music and then years later, I end up working with him and that was his own thing. So definitely Dustball. That one is huge. I listen to that one a couple of times, usually a month. I'll play a couple of songs off of that. Another one would have to be Dark Side of the Moon. Wonderful choice. What an album. I think it's a deal in this area on the ground. They finally beat them. But I don't know if she did. One of the best selling out homes of all time. I don't know if it's still the best, but one of the best for sure. I think it still holds the record for the number of years on the charts. But it may have been be for best seller. Yeah. Amazing piece of work. Just everything about it. As with many other kids, that was a seminal album for me. As far as started me, it was my gateway into pink employed. So, yeah, started that journey. Sure. Yeah. Years later when I first spoke, that changed my life, too. That's for other reasons because it just transitions so well and you don't realize you're going from one song to the next until the next song is already there in front of you. That's one of those that imagine being in the recording and the engineering of putting that thing together because one song into the next. There's so many, as my friend Luke would say, so many layers. It's amazing to wonder how that got put together. And you know, what amazes me about that album is that the sound quality is far superior to anything that had been released at that point in time. How they got that clear of sound, it's almost like a dappunk album that came out, I think, in 2000, right around the same time in 2001. But that one also is so good and it's far above the sound quality of the music that was being released at the time. Same deal with Dark Side of the Moon. The difference back then, they didn't have all this technology and daft. So it makes you wonder how did they grasp that level of sound engineering in that era? And that, to this day, blows my mind every time I listen to it. Especially if I'm listening on my studio monitors. It's far superior than still almost anything that's out there today. Great Abbey Road, legendary recording studios. Yes, absolutely. That definitely helps. And I think probably the last one before I go onto a crazy long hand of other albums. I think my last album for this is most likely. Of course, now the name of this album is Blanking on Me. It's another Eric Clapton album, It's Timepieces, which, again, is kind of a very kind of best of. But Timepieces was different because it had, like Lay Down Sally on it. It had some more country stuff to it, which one of the things I still love about Eric is that he kept kind of his country roots. There's a lot of stuff that he does on a lot of his albums throughout his discography that are very kind of country. Especially when he gets with JJ kale on Rhode Enchanado. I think a lot of country react stuff in there. He plays so well. And that really kind of showed me that because my mom loved country. Right. I hated country. And then when I heard Timepieces, I was like, oh, so country doesn't have to be Nashville twang the whole time. It could be kind of a slew of the mix of things. And it really kind of made me appreciate country guitar playing, which there's very little of that on that. But when it is there, it's very nice and it's very well done. And Time is another album that inspired me for a long time. There's a distinct difference between old country and new country. And in the early 2000s, there was a lot of new country out there that as you roll your eyes
Participant #1:
I'm not saying it's bad. It was very I don't know, pop country is really kind of one way to say it, but when you get down into the old school country, johnny Cash and beyond, it's really good stuff in there. Stuff that does transfer over to the blues and in the bluegrass. A lot of great stuff out there. Absolutely. And when all that it was around this time, when 2001 was doing its thing and my mom was listening to the station around here, 98 Five Kygo, and it was exactly that, pop country all the time. And it's just like, I don't know. This is horrible. I don't love it. Well, yeah, 2001, you had Country Wise, you had Toby Keys and Kenny Chesney at their height, and Tim McGraw and Dixie Chicks and all those. I'll say a pop country acts that were at their height. Absolutely. They were. Absolutely. Yeah. Growing up with that, the Blue is such a refreshing take on things. And then I heard Timepieces, and that one really showed me a lot about our clients history. Probably the first point that I started diving into its history and it showed me country can be kind of blues, too. And, yeah, it's just a great album. Another fantastic album that has changed my life. This one just won because of its static. The static electricity in this album really made me choose it for this. Did you ever get into the album Seated with BB. King ryan's with the King? Yes. That was it. Yes. Fantastic album. I enjoyed that one. That was great. And that was so much I feel like BB. Had a lot to say in that. There's a song on there, I Want to Marry You, and that is not Eric Clapton at all. He fits in it. He fits in it great. But that is a BB. King song. It's soulful, it's deep, it's rich, it's about, Hey, I want to marry you. And BB, that big voice that he had brought that song across. And then Eric, with that kind of raspy grungy thing he had going on, really kind of highlighted BB. Sold. And the two guitar players themselves, super thin, thin strings and thin sound. And then Eric with this big, fat ballsy tone. It was such a great contrast. Yes. Another great album. That probably would have been on my list the further we went down. I need to look, see how many albums that Eric Clapton actually has. Studio and live. He's probably got quite a few. Yeah, I would think so. He's one of those guys again, a lifer. I mean, he has had so many albums throughout the years. Which one do you pick? Yeah, I'm glad you brought this one because again, it's an album that some people may not even know exists. They might just play slow hand and then unplugged and call it a day. Whereas there's a lot of good stuff that they just maybe haven't heard yet, let alone nine minute versions of them. Everyone should check this out of them out. It's really easy. I agree. Yeah. And I think he's got it looks like almost about almost 80 albums, it looks like, between live soundtrack, compilation and video albums. Yeah. Crazy. That's a very great career. Well, before we wrap this up, please tell all of our listeners what you're working on, where they can find you and anything you'd like to pitch. All right, so I have just had my last release, Hurricanes, so I'm going to record it with my old band. I think you've heard it very good. Thank you. It was one of those songs that really went a lot further than I thought. I really worked hard on public relations on this song. I worked hard on getting it to press. I worked hard on getting it playlisted. I posted about it all the time. It's kind of a give and take with making your music. You can either do that or you can do the music video stuff or you can do the photo shoot. But this song, I'm really glad I put all the energy where I did because now I have over 2100 monthly listeners, up from like, 140 or something. Yeah, it was a great pop. And it's, I think, almost to 5000 streams now. Within a little less than a month, like three weeks it's been out. So very pleased with that song. If you haven't heard it, please go check it out. It's really special to me and clearly it's special to a lot of other people as well because it's getting streamed to us. So that happens. Now I'm working on my next song. This one's called Grindstone. This is out June 10 of this year. And this one is about being on the Grindstone, being working so hard on something that you want, but you have been so far away from grasping it. And it's really about my career as a guitar player. And I don't touch on that too much of the song. But I make it very clear I've done a lot and I'm not done. And I will prevail. I'll get there. It's just a slow game, really. I don't care about being famous. I don't care about becoming a millionaire off of my music. If I could just pay my bills like most people. If I can pay my bills with my dreams, hey, I'm happy. And that's making it to me. So Grindstone really is about that battle that we all face. There's a stream that we want to reach, but it's almost unattainable. But if you work hard enough and you put the right focus in the right places, opportunities start to come to, doors start to open. And if you're smart enough to take them and see them, sometimes they're very hidden. But if you take them, you'll get there. And so Grindstone is really about that. I have an excellent album artwork cover for it. This guy out of I think he's in Poland. His name is Cosmic Havoc, actually, I don't know the gender of this person, so we'll just leave that alone. But they did a great job on it. And they do kind of rap think style artwork. And they did this cool rap think type of dude grinding his guitar against the Grindstone for me. Nice. And he ended up releasing it. It's already been on a magazine. I can't remember. You think I'd remember this, but it's been on a magazine. And then one guy out of nowhere on Instagram messaged me one day, and his username was Ghost. I'm like, this can't be good. All so he sends me this picture. He's like, Hey, Bryce, I hope you like this. And it's the back of a school bus. And the character is kind of cut out of the album artwork. And he's taken that character and he's pasted it on the back of this on the two windows back there, kind of back to back, kind of like a mirrored image. And I was like, how did this guy get this? Did I get hacked? Like, I used the name of Ghosts. Like, Great, here we go. Facebook jail, here I come. And I was like I just accepted his message and I said, Hey, how did you get that? I haven't released it, but I know the artist did. He's like, Yeah, I'm a really good friend with Cosmic, and I do air brushing, and I thought it was too cold, so I had to put it on the back of my butt. I hope you don't mind. I was like, Dude, that's the coolest thing I've ever had happen to me. So how awesome is this? So I was like, do you mind if I use that picture later on? And he's like, no, please do it. I'm really happy you like him. But you're not mad about it? No, man, that's great. I mean, everywhere you go, you're promoting my music. The only thing I ask is, can you put, like, my Instagram handle underneath that so people can kind of start following me around? And he's like, Yeah, I could do that. So Bridesmaid's already kind of making waves, and it hasn't even been released. I haven't sent out an email list to any of my close fans yet, which I usually do. I send out an email list about a couple of weeks before saying, hey, this is the release. They don't tell anybody. Thanks for being part of a mailing list. And so it's doing great already and I hope that it just does even better than hurricanes, but I guess we'll see. June 10 Grindstone is coming up. What is your Instagram handle? My Instagram handle is at Bryce Evans Music. B-R-Y-C-E-V-A-N-S-M-U-S-I-C. Pretty simple and that's really kind of for everything. Bryceevensmusic.com, like Facebook is the same except for it's Bryce Evansmusicfb because I couldn't obtain Bryce Evans Music so I had to work around that. But it's really a brand centric. You can just Google Bryce Evans Music and all of my stuff is going to come up. I tried to make it as easy as possible for people to find. I encourage everyone to go out, seek out Bryce's music. It's excellent. Give them a follow on Instagram. You won't regret it. Thank you. I appreciate you. Glad you liked the last song too. Yeah. I'm going to keep diving into your catalog as much as I can. I like your stuff. Thank you. Yes, please do.
Participant #1:
Well, Bryce, I'd like to thank you for your time today. It was a pleasure to sit and talk with you about Eric Clapton's. One more car, one more rider. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much for having me. Hopefully I can come back and talk about another album one of these days and it's been fun. Love the podcast, really can't wait to see what you do with it. I think you're going to go very far with it. Sounds like you're already having some success, so keep it going. And I'm glad I got to be a part of this. In the early years, I guess this season two has been going quite well. I've had a lot of people reach out to me wanting to be on the show to talk a wide variety of albums. Some I've heard, some I haven't. Coming up next week I'm doing recording for Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. So that's going to be a fun one. Very cool. Okay. I'm excited. I mean, I found you through Julian's. I found him somewhere and then I saw he was on your podcast and I was like, oh, cool, you know, what is this? And that's how I got a hold of you. But I listened to his episode. I listened to it again today. I was like, man, this is a great idea. This is a great idea. I mean, this isn't anything you really hear about, it's just musicians talking about albums and it's fantastic. It's been so much fun. Something I started during the pandemic, just kind of just for fun. My cousin was the very first episode band on the run, but then we've had all kinds of different genres. We've had Phantom of the Opera. We've had Metallica Kiss. I did Pink Floyd. Then we got into the Flaming Lips. Julian did Neil Young live. Rust coming up soon, we're going to be doing it will already have aired by the time this airs. But the two hour Quadraphenia epic. Yes. You're telling me you're diving into that album? Yeah. Yeah. That was a rabbit hole. So that was a lot of fun. And then we got Round Tables. We did the Classic Rock Round Table the first season. And this season we did a 90s music roundtable. Very cool. I'm still editing that one. That one was a hodgepodge of bad connections, but I'm still working on that one. But, yeah, it's just a lot of fun. Even my son got in there and did a quick ten minute episode, which was pretty cool. Yeah, I heard that one. So the Classic Rock Round Table, what's that all about? Gathered up a couple of guys from season one, had my cousin who did Band on the Run, doug who did Van Halen one and Luke who did Radiohead. We just talked classic rock for 2 hours. Excellent. What is Classic Rock? We each came in with different questions and it's actually in two parts on season one. So it's pretty cool. Little roundtable. Excellent. Okay. I'm going to listen to that too, tomorrow. I got a whole bunch of editing to do, so I'll jump into that at some point. That's great. If you ever do that again, I would love to be a part of it. I love doing that kind of stuff. We will be doing more roundtables. A lot of the feedback has been that those are cool. Thank you for listening to Music Rewind, a podcast from the Sidereal Media Group. Future episodes are up on our patreon and you can always just buy us a coffee if you want to help the show. As I always say, listen to the full album. Until next time,
Participant #1:
A podcast from the Sidereal Media Group. Back to you. Take care.
https://musicrewind.podbean.com/e/eric-clapton-one-more-car-one-more-rider-with-bryce-evans/
