Andy Just By Dennis Carelli,

Andy Just By Dennis Carelli, www.harmonicasessions.com December2006 A musical veteran of almost thirty years, Andy Just is a unique and innovative harmonica player who carries his distinctive approach to the Blues to Blues lovers throughout Europe, Australia and the United States. His high-energy playing and soulful singing gives his audiences a full measure of what he has learned and experienced from his Blues travels. He has fronted several bands in the San Francisco area, played on at lest 30 CDs and over the years performed with a long list of the very best if Blues performers including: B.B. King, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, Albert King Robben Ford and many, many others. Dennis Carelli for HarmonicaSessions : Good afternoon Andy. It s taken us some time to arrange this little get together so let s dive right in. When did your harmonica playing days start? ANDY: I remember when I was a kid my father went to this music store over here in San Jose called Campy s Music. It was just one of those little record stores and they had harps and stuff and he bought a chromatic harp back then. One of the big harps, a big chromatic for, I think, $35 [laughs]. He tried playing it and it just wasn t his thing. I think my Dad was influenced by the Harmonicats. That was much more popular music back then; the harmonica bands. So I just got a Marine Band, I was probably under ten years old. I just had a Marine Band always. It was something that you just had when you re a kid because the music scene then was coming out. I used to wait feverishly to listen to Roy Orbison [laughs] and some of that old stuff. I really wasn t hip yet cause I was so young to what Blues was. But I played all the songs that they gave you with the harmonica, like Home On The Range, etc. It actually showed you how to tongue block and stuff. They were trying to teach you right off the bat how to play the harp with your tongue. What I did, as did our generation, once the Beatles hit, it all became a different thing for me. I went from Roy Orbison and a lot of the early 60 s Beach Boy, Ventures music into that English scene. I started listening to all the music coming out then; the early Stones and the Beatles too because they were playing that early R&B stuff in just their own way. The Chuck Berry stuff. Both bands were playing Chuck Berry music and more. So I went to guitar. Actually before that, my Mom, my Italian heritage my Mom made me learn how to play some music on an accordion. It s that weird. I started with an instrument similar to the harmonica, but I let that go and had to have a guitar. My folks actually bought me back in the day a 1961 Stratocaster, which I wish I had now. And I took lessons to read music. All the easy stuff. I wanted to be a guitar player really. I learned how to play the guitar, which I still play and I use as my main instrument as far as composing any kind of song. I always use the guitar. 1

I really don t know how to play the piano, so the guitar is easy for me. And when I m playing with guitar players I can actually look at their hands, I mean it s not a big deal, but I know what they are doing and where they are going to go as far as chord changes. And I can speak the lingo with different chord changes. And it helps. Getting back to the harp, I always had a Marine Band around. So, let s go ahead a few years. I m playing guitar and I get into high school and I meet Paul Durquette. Believe it or not. I meet Paul Durquette who is a wonderful person and great harmonica player. A great musician. He used to play guitar like crazy. So I heard him play [harmonica] and said this is great. There used to be the 101 House on Highway 9 where Sid Morris, Gary Smith and Paul Durquette hung out Charlie Musselwhite. It was like a meeting place here in San Jose because from any of the places in San Jose they could go to the colleges to play or some of the little clubs that were here in that day. Mostly pizza parlors. I played a little bit of harmonica, which was mostly the style then like The Yardbirds or Mick Jagger. I was in the early beginning stages of harp, which at that point I had only taught myself, so Paul said there s more to this and he played. And I was like, Wow. As the month went by he introduced me to all the guys, Sid [Morris] and Gary Smith. I then met Gary Smith and heard him play and said, Oh, my God this is another thing. There used to be a place called Maple Leaf Music and Bud Demek was the music teacher there. Every, I think, Tuesday evening they would have a jam. Gary Smith, Paul Durquette, Billy Johnson, myself, and Sid would go down there and just be able to jam. And Bud Demek, the senior teacher, was a great jazz guy was teaching us. Or teaching them and I was learning off of them. It was going down the pecking order kind of [laughs]. These other cats were a little bit older than me so I was learning from them. So I decided that this harmonica was something else and started really getting into it. Paul and Gary, I d seen them and they told me to listen to this guy named Paul Butterfield. I didn t even know who that was. So I bought the Fathers and Sons record. Back then it was vinyl. It was a double record and it was just fantastic. McKinley Morganfield [Muddy Waters], I didn t know who he was. So I listened to that and I started to try and copy the licks that Paul Butterfield was playing. I don t even think there were cassette players yet. I used to have a little reel-to-reel I d bring when I went out to listen. A little small one. Remember those with the little teeny microphone you could use? I still have some of those tapes of Gary Smith, Paul Durquette, Robben Ford and those guys all playing. That was another thing. That comes to the next phase. One evening I went down to De Anza College and for 50 cents, there was this band called The Charles Ford Band. It was Robben and Mark Ford, Stan Poplin and Patrick [Ford]. That was then another level of music I had not heard yet. This was like wow for me. DC: Were they living in the South Bay then? ANDY: I think Robben was and Mark would go back and forth from Ukiah [CA] I believe. He might have been down there because Mark is a year older than me so he was probably at that time, I don t know, sixteen and I was fifteen. I heard Mark play and it was a different thing. It was kind of this great in-between place that I really dug musically because he was playing something like Gary Smith, Butterfield, Paul Durquette and these guys I was listening to, but because of Robben s [style] playing of guitar it made Mark go in a direction with those chords that was just absolutely phenomenal. He s such a lucky soul because he 2

had a brother that played this style guitar. Robben also played old style, but he was more Jazz, so Mark kind of went in that jazz direction. Here I am listening to James Cotton for tone, Little Walter for traditional and Sonny Boy Williamson for licks. Going to Paul Durquette and Gary Smith and seeing how you do that. They showed me I could pick it up pretty easy because I think the harmonica is the kind of instrument it s better if you have knack for it. It came pretty naturally to me. DC: You mentioned earlier the pamphlet inside the Hohner box and the tongue blocking description. Did you start out that way, playing tongue block? ANDY: Yeah, I did actually. But I didn t understand that you could bend notes tongue blocking. To get the sharps and flats I use to just lip it then. It didn t occur to me until later in life to tongue block bends. As my style is now, I do both. I don t just tongue block like a lot of harp players that are more traditional style than me. Great guys. They tongue block and bend some of those notes and I just don t know how they are doing it. Some of the notes are hard to get with your tongue in there man. I guess my tongue is too fat or something [laughs]. I don t know. So I just lip it. I heard Mark and actually he tongue blocks more than you would think. You would think he is lipping it because some of the chops that are up there are kind of fast. He actually does tongue block quite a bit. He has great tone and he plays through this little amp. That was another thing that I had to understand, his tone. I wanted one of THOSE mics, if you know what I mean. Before I had an old, kind of like a tape recorder mic. It looked like an SM57 Shure mic but it was real old. I couldn t get any real tone. I didn t know anything about tone yet. Mark was playing through this little Ampeg and he was getting this great distortion. But in those days the bands were playing lower [volume]. They didn t have to play at a high level. There were no monitors really and the PA was usually this old Fender kind of a PA. What were they? Silvertones? I can t remember. They were just these columns. There were no PA systems so you played at a lower volume. Going back to seeing Robben and those guys for fifty cents I just started to make friends with these guys and through the years I ve always kept that relationship up. You know somebody can show you stuff, but you really have to do your homework on your own, I think. You have to say I am really dedicated to this. I then put down the guitar. I can play all kind of these chops I have in my head which were all these guitar licks. I had tons of guitar licks because I was learning how to become a lead guitar player. I was playing lead guitar in bands that we had in those days. Mostly things like Eric Clapton stuff, Cream. I hadn t really gotten down to the Blues guitar players yet, the black real stuff. I didn t know about it yet. I listened to Robben Ford and those guys. I had to go back. I was jumping at what was happening then. I could grasp onto it because it was happening right in front of me. I would have been a knucklehead not to grab it. The information and knowledge that was happening. So, I kept on hanging out with Gary Smith, Paul and all the guys; Mark and Robben. I used to go down to the nightclubs and they would let me sit in the last song of the night [laughs]. I would wait around all night but it was great. I was listening and learning about tone, about amplifiers. How to be a performer and a harmonica player because that s what I decided, even though I was still playing guitar, this is what I want to do. I just fell in love with that sound. I ve always had it in my life. Even when I was a kid, that s what my parents played Harmonicats records and Chet Atkins stuff. I was listening to that so it was pretty natural for me to pick up the harp also. And I ve always had it in my guitar case or 3

wherever. A lot of guys now a days say they want to play harp and they are SO dedicated to it. They want to play so bad, but they never played music and don t have the knowledge of music. DC: What was your first Blues band? ANDY: The first Blues band I think was called, Lights Out [laughs]. We had someone make little cards for us like hand made type. It was local guys that, I believe, are not in the music business any more. They got smart and got a real day job [laughs]. DC: Were you still in high school or was this after high school? ANDY: Yeah I was still in high school. I was probably in my junior year. You know how they had a hootenanny once a year and I came out with this band. It had two guitar players. God, I remember one of the guys names was Willie Flores. Bob Joay was the other guitar player. Les Armolan was the drummer. I don t remember who the bass player was. But what I learned, the best that I could, was some Little Walter songs and a lot of Charlie Musselwhite. Because I knew Charlie and I was in love with this guy. He did this album Louisiana Fog. And Taking My Time, I think, or Taking Care Of Business. It was one of his early albums. Stand Back I think was another one. I just studied those and the Charles Ford record that had come out in 1971, I believe. I played those records until, actually, the grooves turned white. I played it so, so much. And the James Cotton stuff. That first album there was a great album. It s got Jelly, Jelly on it. It was on Verve Records and had Good Time Charlie and Something On My Mind, Off The Wall, Knock On Wood. All those killer songs that were recorded in 1967. I fell in love with Cotton because of his tone. That was, I thought, the FATTEST tone I ve ever heard in my life for diatonic harp. I thought, my goodness this guy is insane. DC: Were you singing at this time as well? ANDY: I ve always sang all my life cause I was always the singer. Singing for me is pretty natural. I love to sing. As a middle-age man now I think that singing is the most important thing about being in the band. Because that s what it s all about. If you are a backup guy it s to embellish the frontman, the singer. You know what I m saying DC: Yeah I think I do. Excluding instrumentals of course, the focus is on the emotions of the song. ANDY: Right on the vocals. Vocals are so important too, because the harmonica and vocals are very, very, very close together in the sense of the way I sing is the way I play harp too. It s like an extension of my vocal chords. That s what s cool about a wind instrument. It s an extension of your vocals. It s not like a guitar where you re playing with your fingers and stuff. This is in your mouth. This is almost as close to your vocal chords as you can get other than playing a sax or trumpet or some other woodwind instrument. So, we played at a hootenanny and boy we did like Kiddio, Off The Wall and Takin Care Of Business. We just went over great, my first gig at a high school. Then I said I definitely know what I really, really want to do in life. At that age. This is what I want to do. My Dad was an administrator at Stanford Hospital and he was like, NO that s not what you want to do [laughs]. You have too many opportunities to do this. But I said this is what I want to do, to play music. That was my first band and it was bout 1970 or 71. We weren t old enough to play nightclubs so we went and played parties and get crazy. Same thing kids do, I guess, today just a little different. And we played. 4

I kept going back and hanging out with Gary Smith, hanging out with Paul Durquette and hanging out with Charlie Musselwhite. Now Robben Ford had become a little bigger and the band [Charles Ford Band] had disbanded so it was harder to see Mark. But we were close friends and he showed me a lot of things. [He showed] Certain techniques such as how to do the vibrato the way he does it compared to somebody like Rick Estrin from Little Charlie & The Nightcats. He can make it really nice and slow and fat. Learning how to play it slow was hard to do. A lot of people, I got a harp here, [demonstrates] they play that. But, to slow it down [demonstrates] it s hard to slow it down. It took a lot of discipline. Around 1973, 74 I graduated from high school and still hanging out waiting to play the last song or two with Gary Smith. It was cool with Gary cause he would make me wait [laughs]. He would make me wait. It was just part of the deal. He s a just great guy and he s helped me so much. And Paul and also Mark and Charlie Musselwhite. They really helped me, because they taught me more than being a harmonica player, but being a performer and what goes along with being a musician. It s not just the harp, it s the whole package. Attitude. You had to have attitude. Everybody wore leather jackets and sunglasses. I had hair then and I didn t wear my beret. I used to slick it back like a lot younger generation Blues players do now. I wish I could slick it back now [laughs]. DC: The slow and the fast vibratos that you mentioned, would you say that was one of the more difficult techniques you had to learn? ANDY: It is kind of hard. It depends. If you are a singer in a band you have to sing in keys that are going to work for your voice. If you are a harmonica player, you pretty much have to start your own band if you want to be in a Blues band. It s not like people just calling up saying I need, except for guys Kim Wilson or something, a harp player. Bonnie Raitt calls him up, boom. It s different. You have to usually start your own band and go through the whole process. So a lot of guys, their voices are in different keys, of course and if they are in the higher keyed harps it s easier playing that fast vibrato. Playing a high-key harmonica for me, to slow down the vibrato when you get to the low notes, it s a little harder because the reeds are shorter. So, when you play a harmonica like an A harmonica or G or something, you can get down to those low notes and slow it down. That s what Cotton did that I was wowed. On the other hand if you have got guys like Mark Ford for instance, he had that real Butterfield-like sound [demonstrates]. He had that faster vibrato. I realized later that it was because Robben could only sing in these certain keys when they were playing and so Mark had to use harps like Eb, F, and D harps. When I play with Robben I have to get special harp keys. To me they are special harps because they are flats and sharps in the higher register because of his voice. You have to figure out, if you are a harp player, where you can sing the best and then unless you are going to change the solo for the song, the harp. But definitely learning how to slow down your vibrato takes time and you really have to concentrate on it. And it s a good thing to learn because it gives you more dexterity for your whole playing. You can slow down your vibrato. You can speed it up. Also when you are blowing on the high notes you want to do a thing called tremolo [demonstrates]. And not using your tongue [demonstrates]. All those things take time and you have to be aware of them. As far as chops come, I ve been known as a chops guy. It s because I ve always heard guitar chops in my head when I m improvising unless I m really try to think of a certain song. 5

DC: Oh, right. Recreate something you ve heard like a Little Walter or Sonny Boy lick. ANDY: Yeah. Like Juke or something that I ve memorized. I have memorized a lot of harmonica licks. But when it s just time to open up and flow through and improvise, it has a lot to do with the guitar player and, of course the rhythm section, the chords and the voicing. If I play with Chris Cain I know the type of chords he is going to play there and I ll play accordingly to that style. Or to Robben [Ford]. Those guys are great rhythm players and that s what you need as a harmonica player if you are in a band. You need a great guitar player that can play lead but the main thing is you want a great guy who can play rhythm. A lot of these guys don t like harp players because they [harp players] get in the way sometimes. That s another thing you have to learn: how to NOT play. DC: That s an often-quoted critique about harmonica players; they don t know when to take it out of their mouth. ANDY: Exactly. And the older I ve become it seems less IS more. So different guitar players that I play with were more of the Texas style guitar playing. After the [Fabulous] Thunderbirds came out everybody was like, Woe. This was nothing new but it was new to a lot of cats that hadn t heard that yet. Or, Stevie Ray Vaughn even. They had brought that Texas Jimmy Reed bass line that everybody liked. You ve heard it a million times, Chicago-style but something about that Texas-style that was laid back and great for harp players. Jimmy Reed, he just kills when he would do that stuff. And he was doing that with a capo on. Junior Parker, he just played the heck out of the thing. DC: You mentioned earlier that you are well known for your chops, but I would also say you are well known for your very distinctive tone. You remind me of Mark Ford and sometimes I get the two of you confused depending on the recording. When did you start to really refine your tone to what you have today? How did it start? ANDY: Let me tell you in a nutshell. Tone is the most important thing about playing harmonica to me. It is THE most important thing because tone and feeling is like two plus two equals four. That s what it s about: tone. Chops are candy on the cake. I had to go forward and then go backwards to learn that because I could play fast and the chops stuff. The crowd was digging it and my ego said people loved this shit. The older I ve become I ve learned it s not quite the chops, it s the tone. I started to realize that probably more like in the 80 s. I had already used amps. I m not really a fanatic that you have to have a 57 Bassman or whatever. I like the four 10 s through an amp for playing live. For me it s a Super Reverb. The re-issue Bassman s are wonderful. So are the re-issue Super Reverbs. If I am playing a big festival I like to use my Super Reverb with a Twin also because it gives you enough pressure when you are playing outside. Indoors you don t need that much. But that s what I like. It will be thin outside because the harp just goes out into the universe [laughs]. DC: Yeah, I think they often crank up the bass guitar and kick drum volume to get the strong groove out into the crowd and the harp gets lost in the that mix. ANDY: I agree. If you look at my settings, volume is at 2, my treble is at 4, my middle is at 4 and my bass is at 10. I learned that s for me because of the way I play, I have pretty big hands and I have a big mouth too [big laugh]. What I try to emphasize to harp players when they come up to me during a break or whatever and want to know how get that tone. It s two things. It s in your mouth and in the whole chamber of your throat. That s part of the game. Tongue blocking is the other part of the game. It s up to you. You don t have to tongue block to get a fat tone. If you re playing using a microphone, which I forgot to tell you was a big deal for me to get my first. It was a Green Bullet (Shure 520). That was a big 6

deal. [whistles] I finally got one. They were hard to find back then. I could not find one. It took me months. I practically begged Gary Smith to tell me where to get one [big laugh]. So the thing is if you are playing and you want to get the best tone you can get, watch the treble knobs and watch the middle. Turn them down and watch the volume and you can get a good tone. Harp players are always caught in the feedback thing if they are in a band. You want to be loud enough and make pressure and make the sound come out but you don t want to feedback and be annoying either. But the most important thing is if you are using an Astatic (JT30) or Green Bullet type mic, is to cup that thing and make a complete vacuum seal from your lips and hands and mic and harp. This is a technique that almost has to be shown. That s how I can get that fat tone because there is not air leakage. When you have any air leakage, it s just going to make it thinner sounding. DC: The bass response is really fortified. ANDY: Right. And another important thing for harp players is to have control of the amp so you are not an annoying instrument in the band. Control of the volume. I use just an on-off switch on the mic. I just flick it with my little finger when I m playing. I ve got it down now so I can do it off-on between phrases. A lot of cats like to use nothing and they ll play straight thru the amp without any volume control. I feel the volume control on the microphone takes away from the ambience of the microphone. The mic should be full on. That s what I believe. If you turn down the volume knob on the mic, you are not getting the full resonance of the cartridge inside the microphone. My amp I usually have it right on the brink. You seen me play quite a few times and I usually don t get feedback unless I accidentally turn directly toward the speakers. If I play with certain guitar players I have to play loud. I have to have an amp that can cut through. It s not really cutting through, but to be equal with the guitar when it comes time for a solo. I want to be right up there to. I want it to blend so it doesn t sound weird. A lot of times, not with me, people will say I couldn t hear the harp. If that happens with me [BIG laugh], that s rare, because I usually play too loud. My hearing is pretty shot anyway. DC: You will also put something in between the mic and the amp. ANDY: Right. That s an individual thing. A lot of guys are just totally against it. The main thing is this; get yourself an amp that you like. Lots of guys try to find an amp that they think will be the magic thing that will make them be great. That s not it. None of it. It s not an amp, not the mic, not any effects. It might make you a better sounding harp player maybe. But the main thing that I have to stipulate is you have to learn the tone and you have to learn how to be a musician with the band. Whether you are the frontman or not. That may mean laying back, playing chordal stuff real low. Or, maybe not at all. Don t play anything. Just wait, and when it s your turn, it s time. We used to use Echoplexes, Gary Smith and I. Not Mark Ford. He always just played through the amp. As technology got better there were some things that were coming, called processors. Whether it was analog and then digital. I always think those Echoplexes sound great. If you want to sound like Little Walter, one of those is just great. But I found a unit called a Digitec Valved Effects. It s just a processing unit, but it does have a tube in it that makes it sound warmer. It doesn t quite have that sterile sound that digital effects have nowadays. I always thought that the analog tape and analog effects, whether you are in the studio or not, sound pretty cool. They have warmth to them. It gives the fatness that I like. So I stumbled upon this unit. Nobody told me. I just went down to the store and checked it out. I plugged it in and messed around and thought I think I can do something with this. So, I use a black-faced Super Reverb. It s a 70 watter, made I think in 79 or 80. It has a master 7

volume so I put that on 10. So I have that opened up and my volume is low. I have it on 1 and a half or 2. But I have the valved effects. I sat around for probably hundreds of hours messing around at home trying to get that tone that I wanted because I was traveling to Europe a lot and it got to the point where you couldn t bring your own amp any more because it was too expensive. So you would be at the mercy of whatever amp they had in whatever country you went to. I always tried to get a Bassman re-issue or a Super Reverb. And if I have to I d use a twin but they are so powerful and I don t care for the 12 [12 speaker] as my main sounding amp. I like to have the 10 s cause they break up and have a nice warmth to them. Studios I always use small amps with one 10 in it. It could be a [Fender] Princeton or whatever. Just a small amp. So with the processor I tried to get the sound as close as I could to sounding like a natural, good sounding amp at home; playing through a green bullet and a Super and where it breaks up just right. That warmth where you are comfortable playing and you think this is what I like, I can play. This was actually something to take to Europe and now it s become part of my every day use when I play. A lot of harp players will disagree and they don t like it, but I didn t try to be like any modern rock harp player that plays real fast. I just needed to have a sound if I had a crummy amp in Europe that I could kind of get a decent sound. I really used it mostly for a little bit of the overdrive. And a tube in the processor made it sound like an amp. Maybe I put a little reverb or a little bit of delay in it. And that s it. I never did anything fancy, using it to get an organ effect. Lee Oscar can do those things with effects and he has it down to perfection where it sounds awesome. But for me, I tried to actually get the harp to sound between the harmonica voice, of which I use the Marine Band, and the amp. The amp is still the sound with a little frosting on the cake with the processor. For me, what I like to hear is a sound that is a harp, but it might sound like a guitar a little bit. That s just what I like DC: It s very distinctive and people need to recognize that that is you. Your style. ANDY: It s just that some people are more traditional. DC: There is room for both. Andy, thanks for making the time to talk with us today. It s been a scheduling challenge, but well worth the effort. Great talking with you today... best of success. ANDY: Thanks Dennis. It was a pleasure. 8