Danny Kortchmar – rumours

JUNE 2003

Ben Smith has nicely accepted to talk about his group, The Unbusted, and his experience with Kootch on my first e-interview:

Alda: Can you tell us something about your group The Unbusted?
Ben: The Unbusted all grew up together on Martha's Vineyard. The group originally started with Joe, Jack, Tim, and Dan Gaskill (our old drummer). I joined the group in, I think, 97. Since then it has gone through a bunch of different changes but Joe and I have stayed in the group the whole time.
A: What kind of music has influenced you and your group?
B: We started out playing Led Zeppelin, Sublime and Black Sabbath covers. Throughout the years we have been heavily influenced by Supergrass, The Strokes and Radiohead, to name a few. Since meeting Danny we realized that he had been influencing us long before we met him. I remember listening to "Tapestry" with Joe and being blown away. Not to mention the fact that since I was nine I was a huge closet Don Henley fan (not the coolest guy to like in fourth grade!). "End of The Innocence" definitely impacted me as a musician. I think it was really the first album I ever loved.
A: Has living in Martha's Vineyard pushed you to become a musician?
B: Living on the Vineyard has greatly influenced us musically. There have been some long cold winter nights where there has simply been nothing else to do other than play music. Not to mention the fact that the huge summer influx in population has lead to some great romance-gone-bad song writing sessions (just kidding). We left "The Boys of Summer" sentiment for Kootch and Henley. But still, being from an island definitely impacts the way you look at the world and, somehow, I think that has come out in our music
A: When did you decide to contact Danny Kortchmar to be your producer?
B: Strange as it may sound, Kootch contacted us. I think he was looking to give something back to the place that inspired him when he was our age. He found a group of four guys (minus Tim, plus Dan Gaskil) who were very like-minded in his way of looking at the world and music.
A: Was it difficult to "catch his ear"?
B: When Kootch met us we sort of stunk, not that we stunk we just didn't really have any direction. We were making good music; it was just all types of good music. Meeting Kootch really helped us focus on our overall sound. It's funny because in a way it sort of aloud us to discover ourselves and what we wanted to convey to the world; what was most important to us.
A: Can you remember the first time that you met him?
B: The first time I met Danny was back stage at a concert at the Vineyards own Catherine Cornell Theatre. We had just played a show and we knew Danny was going to be in the audience. The week before the show had been incredibly stressful. We had just been evicted from our rehearsal spot and hadn't really had any real rehearsal. I remember that night just going on shear energy and when I got off stage Joe gave me a big hug and we were both like, "Holy Shit, what just happened" The fact that Kootch was in the audience ended up being one being cherry on the ice cream of an amazing
night.
A: By the way, how did you call him? Mr. Kortchmar, Kootch, Danny or...?
B: Oh, hell I don't know. I think we started out calling him Mr. Kortchmar in some letters we mailed him along with demos. Now we just call him Kootch.
A: What was working with him like?
B: Give me a blank version of war and peace and maybe I could explain to you what working with Kootch is like. I'll say that it was probably the high point of my musical life. I have never met anyone who inspires me more. I think I speak for the rest of the band as well. The sessions in the studio went very smoothly. Well almost. We were insanely nervous at first so we wasted the first few hours getting our feat under us. From that point on it was all gravy.
A: What has he brought to your music?
B: Too much to really say. I think more than anything he has given our songs a feeling of identity. We know where they stand in our hearts now and although it seems strange it means a lot. He, in a way, has aloud us to step back from ourselves and take a look at our own music.
A: Did he also play in your songs?
B: Yes. It’s strange, in this world of digital media, it is hard to separate playing from programming. But there was no guitar work from Kootch. Some keyboards and drum loops I think.
A: What are your plans now for the future?
B: The Unbusted are planning a tour for this fall. We have been living in Boston getting better at playing live. We feel comfortable on stage now which is saying a lot considering where we started out. The Vineyard isn't exactly night club central.
A: Would you like to tell us something else before quitting this interview?
B: A Quahog is a shell fish. And people need to listen to The Unbusted
Thank you so much Ben and best of luck for The Unbusted.

Do you remember Rick Vito ("Jackson Browne wants this guitar more than anything else in the world"), the amazing guitar player who replaced David Lindley in Jackson Browne’s band? He toured Italy and Europe with J.B. and Danny Kortchmar in the summer of 1982 and stayed with Jackson Browne until 1985. He has just kindly sent me this:

Dear Alda,
The time I spent with Jackson will always stay very special in my heart. We had a fantastic trip through Europe in the summer of 1982 and I especially loved Italy! My grandfather came from Napoli (one place I have not seen yet) and I look forward to revisiting Italy with my own band at the first opportunity. Danny Kootch is a great guitarist/producer and we had great fun working together with Jackson. Thank you for the very kind words and I look forward also to meeting you on one of my tours. Best wishes, Rick.

See Rick’s official site at www.rickvito.com

MAY 2003

In an old Jackson Browne’s interview (by Guido Harari, 1982), Jackson said that during the 1977 Summer Tour, there were mics everywhere in order to record every whisper of a real life on tour, "so that Danny Kortchmar refused to speak at all except for the few words he says at the end of Cocaine". As a non English native speaker I always wondered what Danny says in that dialogue.

DK (?): "Blood on the highway."

JB: "Gotta take either more of it or less of it. I can't quite figure out which one."

David Lindley (?): ""Well, I'll tell you what it does take. It takes a clear mind. That's what it takes."

JB "You mean it takes a clear mind to take it, or a clear mind not to take it?"

DL (?): "It takes a clear mind to make it."

About Danny’s line "Blood on the Highway", it could be a possible Bob Dylan reference (a combination of "Blood on the Tracks" and "Highway 61 Revisited"), but much more likely the line "Blood on the highway" does appear in a poem called "The Highway Man" by Alfred Noyes and since the whole "Running on Empty" album is supposed to be about being on the road, it could very well be a reference to that poem. Many thanks to Russ Paris from the huge Jackson Browne Unofficial Site and Holly Bowen for help and translations.

In a recent interview, Stan Lynch recalls how Danny first taught him the art of songwriting:

...In the early ‘80s Lynch met writer/producer Danny Kortchmar. "He was a really great writer and musician, almost like a prodigy guitar player," Lynch said of Kortchmar, who started writing in the ‘70s with Jackson Browne and performed on albums such as Carole King’s Tapestry. "He was a part of this thing called "The Section" in Los Angeles and they played on all the great singer-songwriter records. I met (Kortchmar) when Don Henley was making his first solo album. He produced and co-wrote most of the stuff with Don and he brought me in. That’s how I started writing with Don."...

...To help refine his songwriting skills, Lynch said Henley and Kortchmar gave him a title, a legal pad and a track on a cassette and told him to write some words to a song that became "Driving With Your Eyes Closed". "I came in with the pad full of ideas and the first thing Don did was correct all my punctuation and spelling with a red pen. He said, ‘I can’t look at this crap, I can’t read a thing on here.’ These guys were so straight up with me, like only brothers could be. They got me reading better books and helped me step up to the plate professionally. They told me that I could really be something."

As soon as Lynch was officially out of the Heartbreakers, he was invited to work with Henley and Kortchmar, who welcomed him to the next chapter of his life. "Those kind of people are invaluable," said Lynch. "Every writer has somebody who opens a door for them and there’s no question in my mind that these guys did that for me."...

..."(Henley and Kortchmar) were true friends and they still are," said Lynch. "I talk to them most every week."...

from "Renowned Heartbreakers Drummer Stan Lynch Becomes Top Songwriter & Producer" by Jayne Moore 2003

Hanson, the Tulsa-based pop trio, is currently in studio with Danny working at their new and long-delayed album "Underneath". In the press release, Danny said:

"In a flavor-of-the-minute environment for music, I'm very happy to be able to work with a band like Hanson, who are real musicians with a strong vision of what they want to achieve artistically,".

Hanson with Danny, April 2003

See Tulsa World article and the announcement from Hanson at: http://www.hanson.net/News/# and Hanson’s unofficial site at www.hansonhotel.com

Danny appears on the Steve Jordan’s dvd "The Groove is Here" (2003), the first instructional program on drums playing. This DVD includes live performances by Bob Cranshaw, Danny Kootch Kortchmar, Bernie Dr. Woo Worrell. It also features commentary from Jackson Browne, Leroy Clouden, Levon Helm, Keith Richards and the late Timothy White, Billboard editor-in-chief.

April 2003

"THE NIGHT THAT I KNOCKED ON DANNY’S DOOR"

submitted by Steve Helgeson

www.moonstoneguitars.com

"... Attached are some scanned pix of Danny and me the night before his concert at the Concord Pavilion. He is trying out the eagle guitar for the first time. He said he would try it out at the concert the next day, and if he liked it, he would buy it. I had built Lee Sklar the doubleneck Eagle bass a tear earlier, and Lee told me to go surprise Danny at the Mikado hotel in SF. I knocked on Danny's door, and held out the eagle guitar when he answered, and he was totally blown away, not knowing that I had built it for him. After playing it throughout the whole concert with out putting it down, (there were eight other guitars in the rack onstage) He bought it back stage after the concert for $2500.00 cash. That was one shining day for me..".


Mikado Hotel, San Francisco, 08/26/1977	The night before the Concord Pavilion show ("Running on empty" tour)

Thanks Steve! And thanks to Robert Szymanski.

Danny has just completed the production of Unbusted, a young group from Martha’s Vineyard.

"... they managed to catch the ear of acclamed producer Danny Kortchmar, known for his work with Bob Dylan and Neil Young (to name a very few). He liked the group so much that he invited them into the studio over the past summer to record an EP...".

From Unbusted web site at http://unbusted.com/band.htm

Recent productions include Slo Leak, Boz Scaggs, Lonesome Jones, a track for Rod Stewart, two tracks for Curtis Stigers. He’s also working with Van Halen on their next album.

The release of a "Running on Empty" dvd is scheduled for Fall 2003, when Jackson Browne’s tour is over. It is very likely to contain the recording of "Shaky Town" with Jackson singing in the bathroom and Danny playing in front of him!

In January 2003, Danny with James Taylor and the author worked on the arrangement of "Bittersweet", a song written by John Sheldon and enclosed in James Taylor "The best of", out on 8th April 2003. See John Sheldon news section: www.johnsheldon.com

On October 2002, Danny joined the Timothy White Tribute playing in Boston and at the Madison Square Garden in New York. A cd and a dvd is due to be released. Timothy White was the JT’s biographer and wrote many articles concerning JT’s band. Danny (in a dark suit) played with Pink Floyd’s member Roger Waters and Don Henley. James Taylor played "I’ve got to stop thinking about that", introducing the song "This is a song Kootch and I wrote long time ago..."

October 7th-8th 2002

Music To My Ears Tribute to Timothy White
October 7th, 2002: Boston's Fleet Center
October 8th, 2002: Madison Square Garden

On the last David Lasley’s compilation "Back to Blue-Eyed Soul" (2000), David sings a song by Danny "Promise Me the Moon", (originally recorded with Attitudes), with the line "Where are you Danny Kootch?". See David Lasley’s comment on the song on his great site at www.davidlasley.com

On a recent Penguin interview, Waddy Wachtel remembers his first encounter with Danny:

".....That's where I met Danny Kortchmar. And that completed my cycle of meeting everyone in The Section. You know, Leland Sklar, Russell Kunkle, Craig Doerge and finally Kooch . . . who I hated (Laughing) because Kootch was the one working on the records in town, and I couldn't get any work! I hated his guitar playing! I hated his solo sound, and everything. And I said, "I'm going to hate this guy when I meet him," and we loved each other . . . and we love each other to death....".

".....At one point she (Carole King) had this boyfriend who was a fuckin' screwball. She was this Jewish girl from New York, and she was going with this Gentile cowboy, redneck, asshole. You could tell this guy was a druggie, a fucked up guy. And like I said, I was "new boy." And we were on this tour. And we did a show, we came off and all the sudden this guy starts yelling at Danny-Kootch. He was screaming in Kootch's face. This asshole is a BIG guy. And I don't know what is happening, or what the fuck is going on, but all the sudden he hits Danny. He punches him! And I was sitting there on a road case. And I just did the Clark Kent thing. I just stood up on top of the road case, and dove on this guy from across the hall and took him down on the fuckin' floor, and Kunkle grabbed him, too, and we started pounding the shit of this fuckin' guy. Thank God Russell [Kunkle] was there because he's big, too. I'm this little twerp. We pulled this guy into a bathroom and were pounding him. Hey, then as soon as Russell let go I jumped off. (Laughing) At that point Danny Kortchmar and I were just getting to know each other. Then we went back out and did our encore. (Laughing) Danny comes up to me and he goes, "Man I just want you to know something. You and I are brothers from now on, man . . . forEVER. I don't know who you are, but you and I are brothers. You will never lose my friendship for what you just did." It was great, you know?...."

read the interview at: www.fleetwoodmac.net/penguin/waddy.htm