"The Way Of The World" is out on Quarto Valley Records who are an independent label and they get behind a lot of artists that are really interesting; Edgar Winter, Sean Chambers, The Immediate Family, Paul Rogers, Savoy Brown and they are a pretty interesting place to land."
The artist simply known as T-Bear has a long, interesting, musical resume that many would clamor for but for him, it is the result of dedication, hard work, second chances and the good ol' "Right place at the right time."
As you will read below, the list of talent he has performed, recorded or been associated with is not only immense but stellar as well and with the recent release of "The Way Of the World," his second with Quarto Valley Records, those talents as well as his are on full display. So, in order to understand this amazing songwriter/performer; let's delve into his story.
"Fortunately, I've been tabbed as a session player and I've played on a lot of records but things opened up for me way back in the late '70s when I got my first record deal with RCA," he began. "I put out a record that went to number four worldwide so I started getting a little bit of notoriety. People love the way I play because I play a little differently. I was born in New York City but I was raised in the Caribbean, so I have a lot of Caribbean, Latin and Creole influence in my life and DNA; I love that kind of music. I played percussion to start as a kid and when I came back to the New York area; my parents had a place in Yonkers and they had a piano there and I started playing the piano almost like it was percussion and my parents said, "That's a piano, you can't hit it like a Timbale" and they got me a piano teacher. So, she came over and showed me where to put my hands, I had about three or four lessons with her and then I was on my own. I used to ride my bike into town and vinyl was what you bought in those days; I'd bring the records back, put a small portable record player on top of the piano, play the records and follow along and I developed a really good ear. By the time I was 12, I was playing well enough where I put a band together and then started playing dances as a teenager and then I got a job working at Manny's Music in New York City and I met a ton of these kinds of people. I met all of the roadies and all the artists that came through. I used to get passes to go to the Fillmore East and one night there was an unannounced jam and one of the roadies gave me a backstage pass and I go down there and he knew I played keyboards and all of a sudden Jerry Garcia looks at me, beckons to me, I come out on the stage and sit down at a Wurlitzer and I'm jamming with The Grateful Dead, Traffic and Hot Tuna and from that moment on, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Then I started going to all of the open mic nights in the city, the Village and all around and there was a place called Dr. Generosity's or Dr.G's on 73rd and 2nd; Odetta used to sing there and Richie Havens came through and saw me play and said, "Hey, I'm doing an album; would you play on it?" So, that started my session career and then I toured a bunch for my records and then I got tabbed to play on the KISS records, Billy Squire's records and while I was working with Gene Simmons, he was dating Cher and she said, "Have you got a song for me?" I gave her a really good song and she brought me out to California and I worked with her in the studio and then helped her put a band together and while I was out there, I kind of hooked up with Stephen Stills and I joined his band and played on some of his stuff and then he took me into record. We worked on a song called, "Southern Cross" and I played on that with Crosby, Stills & Nash and then I was off and running because I had the pedigree."
Quarto Valley Records is making huge strides in the industry with its focus on various genres but their roster does have quite a few Blues artists as well so; why did he choose to go there?
"I know that Bruce Quarto wanted to have a platform for certain artists and he's making some headway, I can tell you; this is actually my second album with them. We did an album three years ago and it was released during COVID so we couldn't go out and tour or do anything but the single that I wrote with Stephen Stills and he plays on it called, "Give It Up" which is on the "Fresh Bear Tracks" record went to number one in Europe; and that was a good start with the label."
Recently, he has been touring with Blues stalwart Walter Trout which has further enriched his list of connections and gig schedule but he says that he and Trout go far beyond a boss/employee relationship.
"I've been on the road for about a year with WalterTrout, we've known each other for 30 years. I met him when he was playing with Canned Heat, we both did a festival called The Musician's Picnic and we got along like great chums. I stayed in touch with him and when he started doing his albums, he called me to write songs with him. So, I've written a few songs for him and one with him and one of the songs on "The Way Of the World" called "Breathe;" he heard it and said, "I wanna put this on my new album called "Broken." So, I said, "Great!" He recorded it and he and I have been really good chums. He called me last year and said, "Hey, my keyboard player can't do the European tour; would you consider coming over there with me?" That was last Spring and I went, had a really good experience, then he asked me to do the festivals last Summer which led to a U.S. tour and then an Australian tour and I'm getting ready to go back out with him in July. He's a great musician, a great writer and a great guitar player with 31 albums and people absolutely love him."
Ah, but alas, like so many of us, even those at or approaching the pinnacle of their careers can get sidetracked; such was the case with T-Bear as he stepped away from the music business and began "Selling light bulbs" to satisfy a now ex-wife and support a growing family; it wasn't until that marriage broke apart and he found the love of a woman who accepted his passion as her own that he received a second chance shot at the music biz.
"I started writing and doing sessions again at the urging of my new wife and I was at Robby Krieger's studio, "Horse Latitudes" and Robby walks in and says, "Bear; whatcha' doing here?" I told him I was playing on this guy's record and he asked: "When are you gonna make a record?" I told him I didn't have deep pockets and not enough songs ready yet and he said, "When you do, come here." I said, "Robby, I can't afford your studio" and he said, "This is a private studio and I'll tell you what I'm gonna do.You come here, record here and pay the engineer and the studio is yours while you're making the record" and I said, "Wow, that's an incredibly generous offer" and I thought about it and thought, I'm gonna do it. So, for the next two years, when the studio wasn't in use, I'd go in and cut tracks; 23 tracks, 21 originals I had written in that two year stretch. The other thing Robby said was, "If you're gonna do that here, you've got to let me play on it" and I said, "No problem (laughs)." So, Stephen Stills, Robby Krieger, Edgar Winter, some of the guys from The Heartbreakers, some of the guys from Steely Dan, Chuck Berghofer of The Wrecking Crew, The E Street Horns, two of the guys from Wings, Tony Braunagle, Tom Scott; everybody showed up to play on this record. We finished the record, we were getting ready to mix it and my wife was diagnosed with stage four cancer and passed away shortly thereafter. So, "Fresh Bear Tracks," my first album for Quarto Valley Records is dedicated to her and the last song on it is, "Nina's Song" and they play it on Paris Radio all of the time and it is a very sentimental song and it was the first song I started writing when she said, "Start writing a record." Before she passed, she gave me a note and she had written down, "Finish the record, put it out, go out on tour, live your best life, fall in love again" and so, that's my mantra. So, COVID comes, we put the record out, Walter and Stephen Stills traded licks on "Give It Up" that Stephen and I wrote 30 years before and it went to number one. So, in a sense, I was back; we couldn't go out because of COVID but I started writing "Way Of The World" and Quarto said, "We love this album, it's getting great reviews, we want you to do another one" but this time I stayed in-house (laughs). I went to Laurence Juber the guitar player from Wings and Tony Braunagle who produced "Fresh Bear Tracks" and asked if they'd do the record with me. So, I'd go over to Laurence Juber's house, sometimes with a mask in his little home studio and I'd record a song I wrote the day before, put a click track on it, sit at the keyboard and sing, go home; he'd send it over to Tony who had his drums set up in the living room, he'd put the drums down, send it back to Laurence, he would do the guitars and send it over to somebody else who was playing bass and that's how this record was made. It really sounds retro and it sounds really modern and it's getting really great notes on it and I'm really happy I made it because it's an homage to a lot of stuff that goes on in a person's life."
Having written songs for so many others, played on the iconic "Southern Cross" and done so many varying styles; how does he write his own music?
"I definitely work outside the box," he laughed, "The way I write songs is, I start with the words first. It is usually either a short story that I'm writing, a poem or some sort of phrase I think about that tickles me. I start putting the words together and I get a thread and then when I get enough lyrics to maybe make a song, I'll go sit down and start to write music. Everyday you're not in the same groove or same vein; for example, "The Way Of The World," the title song, that was the week I was listening to Bob Dylan a lot and because the world was so crazy at that time, which it still is, even crazier, I was listening to "The Times They Are A Changin'" that day and I went wow! The way of the world, let me write something about it. So, I started writing these words and lyrics and they came to me in poem form and I thought; what would Bob write? So, I was off and running; that song is an homage to Bob Dylan."
Despite the aforementioned recording method, T-Bear still enjoys the "Live" recording experience and this latest release does offer some of that.
"On "The Way Of the World," we put everything together piece by piece except for a song called, "Breathe" and another called, "Jewel." Those were cut in another friend of mine's home studio; JJ Blair because he has a beautiful grand piano and he has the best mic collection in L.A. of anybody I know. I went over there and Tony was in the basement, Laurence was in an isolation booth, Ricky Cortez was in another part of the house with an upright bass and I sat down at the piano in his living room and a Neumann mic. We couldn't see each other but we just counted it off and it was one take, one vocal, live and that's the way we did those tracks and it sounded great because it has that energy, that genuine authenticity of a live performance."
"Authenticity" is something many older musicians feel is lacking in today's technology driven sterile recording environment and T-Bear feels that's a topic where we can all agree to disagree.
"There are some things that are coming out that are really good and there's like 95 percent of the things that are out there that aren't so good and I'll not say anything worse than that," he spoke carefully. "I will say that the way people are crafting songs today and I'm going to talk as a songwriter; they get eight or ten people in a room and they come up with two lines and two or three chords and you hear those two lines, I don't know; 15 times in a song and that doesn't get it for me. I don't know if that's because of the culture today where people are looking on their phone and it's Tik-Tok or this thing and that thing and they don't spend time; they don't download the album, they're gonna download a single because they don't have time to listen to the other stuff. When I make records, I make them for guys like you and me; people who have a relationship with music. The people who looked at the liner notes to see where it was made, who played on it, what the artist was thinking and that to me is part of the art. When I go on the road with Walter Trout, he says, "There is a song I'm gonna do about me living in a house next to a railroad track" and he tells the story and we play "Ride" about him wanting to get on a train and it tells the story. The way I was brought up as a songwriter was, you're gonna need to tell the story in under three or four minutes in order to ever get it on the radio. I was writing jingles out of a jingle house in New York and I got a publishing deal and I brought something in for the publisher to listen to and he said, "The song is good, your playing is great but Richie" and I thought, "Oh boy what?" and I could see it coming and he said, "Don't bore us, get to the chorus" and I learned a lot (laughs). There are still songs being written today that are really good, there's just not so many of them and a lot of the people we admired are not here anymore. My influences were Leon Russell, Nicky Hopkins, Dr. John, Professor Longhair; I really dig deep into that kind of stuff and when I put my chops into it, it comes out great."
Back in the saddle and with the new record out and doing well, he has no plans on relaxing as the Summer festival season is in full swing and his "Chum" Walter Trout is calling once again.
"I'm going out to support the record; "A Change'll Do Me Good" which is about Bo Diddley; it has that Bo Diddley groove because nobody plays that anymore. So, I said, "Let's honor Bo Diddley with a groove and mash it up maybe with a Deep Purple organ" and Laurence starts to chunk along with the guitar and it was feeling really good and it's all about the COVID world at the time; you know, sitting in the BarcaLounger watching Netflix every night and there's a line in there that goes, "I'm lounging in the Barca five days a week, my lows are multiplying and my groove has sprung a leak" and when I wrote that little poem I thought, what can I put with this and it was, oh, Bo Diddley. That went number one on Easter Sunday in the European Hot 100 and the funny thing about it was, Walter's "Broken" with Beth Hart was at number one and I'm climbing the charts and I was out with Walter touring Australia and every week we'd look at the charts and he'd be at number one and I'd be at 14, then I'm at seven and I'd say, "I'm comin' for you Walter" and we'd laugh and then I was at number six and he's still at number one and then the next week, sure enough, I was at number one and he was at number four and so I had to send him a text (laughs) but I've done a lot of opening slots and will do more to support this record and then I'm going out with Walter in July."
To discover more about T-Bear, please visit https://www.tbear.rocks/
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
