The David Lindley Interview

The First Bouzouki I was a fan of classical Indian music from my dad’s record collection. He had Yehudi Menuhin records. He bought Ravi Shankar’s first album on World Pacific, Ragas & Talas. My dad was very hip about all kinds of stuff. He would listen to stuff that was really pretty serious. He was a corporation lawyer for 20th Century Fox. He played piano and loved different kinds of music from all over the world. The first bouzouki playing I ever heard was a soundtrack to some film. He loved the film because of the traditional Greek music, Rembetika. I had never heard anything like that. I asked him, “What is that instrument?” He said, “It’s kind of like a mandolin with a long neck.” There was a picture of it, and I noted, “Oh, one of those.” The wheels started turning, and there were some great players in those days, too. Because of that, I went into playing different kinds of folk music. Playing bluegrass, I had been listening to Earl Scruggs and Don Reno. I had also been listening to Sabicas, the Flamenco guitarist. Hillbilly Jim Keltner and I shared a studio for a while at Berry and Grassmueck Music. I’d get a Coke from the Coke machine and I’d put it on his snare drum. One day I spilled Coke into this priceless old Ludwig. He got really pissed off. The snare drum was prominent. There were other drums in there, too, but the snare drum was being used for rudiments and marching. Keltner used to work behind the counter downstairs and sell stuff every once in a while. I never got to do that. Management kind of had this idea about me, “He’s not a real guy, he’s a folk musician,” which was not a bona fide musician. “Oh, he plays five-string banjo: that’s hillbilly music.” Cat’s Pajamas Ed Pearl, who was the owner of the Ash Grove in Los Angeles, would have people come in. He would make sure these Mississippi sharecroppers had the transportation, had a place to stay, and he paid them really well to come to The Ash Grove and play for a week. We all went there and we’d hear these guys play and go, “Holy sh**!” It was all people of a certain age: me, Ry Cooder, Al Marian, Sandy Mosley, David Cohen, we’d learn all this stuff and we had our version of it. Jim Kweskin was the resident guru at The Cat’s Pajamas in Arcadia, where I played all the time. That was the first time I heard Kweskin. He was getting together a jug band and he was looking around for people in East LA. There were a lot of fantastic players there. I used to go see Mike McClellan every time he played. He played the twelve-string like Leadbelly, he played the banjo like Ralph Stanley, and he sang. I’d go see him all the time. It was the folk process. You didn’t go to school, you went to the club. You absorbed and you learned how to steal.