PT Gazell
The following interview originally appeared in the National Harmonica League magazine as part of my regular column, Reeds for the Record...
PT Gazell has performed and recorded with countless major artists over his career, including Johnny Paycheck, Mel McDaniel, Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas. Born in Wisconsin and now based in Nashville, Tennessee, PT is equally at home in a range of musical styles from Jazz and Bluegrass to Country and Pop. PT was the first harmonica player to be honored with a recording contract with famed record label, Sugar Hill. This association produced his first CD PT Gazell “Pace Yourself” still considered a benchmark for diatonic Bluegrass Harmonica. In recent years PT has teamed up with Seydel Harmonicas to develop and produce the Gazell method harmonica, a half valved diatonic harmonica that he plays exclusively. More at www.PtGazell.com
RG: Many of readers are familiar with the last 10 years of your career, your recent solo releases, and the Gazell Method half- valved harmonica. Can you take us back to the Johnny Paycheck days of your career and fill us in on the earlier part of your career?
PT: The starting point is really me moving to Lexington, Kentucky around 1976. I went to a Bluegrass festival in Indiana and somebody was recording the festival for a record. As I recall, I just went up to the engineer and introduced myself. He had already heard me play as I had been sitting in with some of the groups, and he told me that he had a studio in Lexington (LEMCO Sound) that was becoming a hot little spot for Bluegrass musicians. It seemed like everyone was wanting to go there, plus Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas lived there and a number of other great players were around as well. He told me, if I’d be willing to move there and do some sessions for him, he’d record an album for me in exchange. Being young and commitment free, I did it. I moved to Lexington and began doing studio work for him, and that’s how the album Pace Yourself (Sugar Hill Records) came to be. During that roughly two year period of time I was hired to do a TV show with a well known Bluegrass artist named J.D. Crowe. One of the other players that had been hired was a pedal steel guitarist from Nashville and he was also Johnny Paycheck’s bandleader. He basically hired me on the spot. And here I am in Nashville forty years later!
That’s how it started. In 1985 I had come off the road with Johnny Paycheck, and Mel McDaniel and decided not to do road work any longer. I started to do sessions here in town but quickly got very disillusioned with the studio process. I didn’t like being pigeonholed and playing stereotypical things. I was also frustrated with the instrument. There was no overblowing or half-valving at that time and I just didn’t want to play an instrument that couldn’t play everything I was hearing, so in 1988 I walked away. I basically didn’t play an instrument for fifteen years.
RG: Let’s talk a bit more about your studio work from that period.
PT: I got frustrated because at that time in Nashville there was a formulaic approach to recording. It just didn’t appeal to me. If I had been in that position ten or so years later---that would have been at the start of all the small boutique studios when it became easier to put out an independent project---I might have felt differently. In ‘85 you were still locked into having a label and producer who had a formula, and I just didn’t fit for that kind of thing. I wanted to play outside that formula.
RG: Who was at the top of that game, harmonica-wise?
PT: Easy! Charlie McCoy. His successor was Terry McMillan, and he fit into that formulaic thing really well. After that Jelly Roll Johnson took the mantle. Jelly Roll has my utmost respect because he knew how to fit in that formulaic thing and still be creative. It's a real art. For me, it just wasn’t that stimulating.
Charlie McCoy knew not only what to play, but where to play in the track. It was never a problem for him to play something meaningful. He understood the chord structures and he could arpeggiate runs against the chord structures; it wasn’t just someone playing a lick, there was some content to it. He was also part of whatever pattern/formula they had down for the song; the opening lick, the turnaround, and the end---he was always part of that and wasn’t just playing a fill somewhere. He was actually part of the section, which was really cool. Terry was a really great player though I don’t think he did much other than follow Charlie’s formula. Jelly Roll came in and put his own stamp on it. Where Charlie and Terry were pretty much pucker players who’d play single notes and lines, Jelly came in with the tongue blocking thing, and really made the octave splits and chording fit really well into the studio context.
RG: In recent years you’ve returned to do some studio work. Describe some of the differences between your studio work in the 80’s and now.
PT: When I came to town (Nashville), it was formulaic with the labels. There was a producer who would demo songs from songwriters and pass those on to the artists. The artist and producer would then decide what they wanted to record and literally that day they’d walk into a studio and play the demo for the studio players. Then, in a matter of five minutes the players would decide on something to lay down as a record. Those guys are incredibly talented and very inventive, but it was still formulaic; “we’ll have an intro, you’ll fill on this verse, you’ll fill that verse, then the turnaround where we’ll all play, then let’s add a half of a verse as a solo, then we’ll come back with a chorus, tag the end of the song, and then play the ending lick”. What I saw with the rise of the home studio in the 90’s is that guys weren’t locked into that formula. With affordable home recording and self-production, you began to see much more inventive tracks, and I thought that was really cool! I started playing again in 2003 and by 2005 I started getting emails asking if I had a little recording setup and could put something down on a track from home. I just love doing that as it gives everyone a chance to stretch out a bit. Today’s audience isn’t looking for the formulaic thing and are willing to listen to anything.
RG: Let’s talk about recording technology a bit. Can you share some of your thoughts on the evolution from analog to digital?
PT: The thing that sticks out to me is that when I go back and listen to some of the stuff I did in the tape world, it sounds so much smoother than anything I’ve ever done in the digital realm. In my opinion, even to this day---and I think I’m getting a great sound digitally---tape is a lot more kind to the harmonica. That’s a striking difference for me. It’s smoother and rounder. Go back and listen to blues records where guys are amplified and distorted and there’s still a smoothness and roundness to that sound, as opposed to laying it down digitally. Now a lot of people are going to analog studios and letting it pass through the electronics of the tape machine and dumping it to Protools live. I haven’t done that, but I’d like to think that if I cut another record that I’ll do it that way.
Clearly digital editing is so much nicer. It’s easy to do! But we miss the saturation of instruments to tape.
But here’s the bottom line: no matter how easy it’s become to record digitally, to do it correctly still requires a good musician and an engineer that knows how to preamp and place a microphone correctly in an acoustically correct environment. Once you have all of that, I have heard digital recordings that were stunning. It’s just different, that’s all!
RG: You were a professional post production audio engineer in your career away from the harmonica. Can you share some of your insights into recording and engineering a great harmonica sound?
PT: It’s an ever evolving thing. The last three records of mine have been a combination of my Audix Fireball very close mic-ed (not handheld) and then a ribbon mic about forehead height and a foot away from me. I try to blend the two. On the first two records I featured more of the ribbon than the Audix. Interestingly, on the last record, A Madness to the Method, the tracking engineer said, “there’s something very cool about that Audix”. Then when I met with the mixing engineer, he thought the Audix sounded better and we mostly went with that. Now on some tracks we blended the ribbon or used just the ribbon, but about two thirds of the record was just the Audix close up. We had to do some eq-ing. Mostly just taking away frequencies. The further away from the microphone, the less problems you have, but the smaller the instrument starts to sound. That’s fine as a color or background instrument, but as a feature instrument, the only way I can get enough body to be front and center as a lead instrument is to do it (mic it) nice and close. But what happens is that the instrument is mid range heavy, no matter what key you’re in really, and I end up taking away some mid range frequencies. Typically from 850/900hz-1600hz, a gentle dip cleans up the harmonica a lot. I also tend to roll off from 7500hz up because it gets really piercing for me. This is just for acoustic harmonica, and when you start running it through an amp it becomes something totally different.
------
RG: Any advice for working with a recording engineer?
PT: The first thing you need to is get a point of reference from the engineer on what they think a harmonica sounds like. There’s some engineers where the first thing that registers with them is Bob Dylan. That’s great if you’re playing like Bob, and the engineer might stick an SM58 about a foot in front of you and it’ll probably sound great. But if you’re trying to get something across more like Toots---or me, for lack of a better diatonic example---that’s probably not going to work.
RG: Any thoughts in terms of effects or processing in the mixing stage?
PT: On my records, I like a spring reverb and a little bit of delay. I like both on my sound. And I do like a little compression on close miced harmonica as well, just to control the dynamics. I don’t want it to sound compressed---maybe a 2:1 or maximum 3:1 compression ratio. No more than that or it’ll start to sound compressed.
RG: Are there any aspects or new developments of the harmonica you feel are exciting or underexplored?
PT: Frankly, I love what you’re doing! You’re taking a chord harmonica and a bass harmonica and a harmonetta and whatever and you’re not afraid to make it sound different from what the Harmonicats did. I love that and think that it’s way underexplored. John Shirley is another guy who’s done some very cool stuff with bass harmonica, running it through plugins and getting some great effects. I also think a guy like Jason Ricci is pushing the envelope with all the pedals he’s using. And he’s not just slamming on pedals; he’s really played with them enough where he’s getting a defined and useful sound out of them. Taking away all the electronics for a second, there are guys like me; I’m playing half-valved, and that’s a totally unique sound. It’s a hybrid sound, almost like a chromatic while retaining all of the diatonic loveliness. And the alternate tunings people are using! To me, this is the golden age of the instrument. I’m hearing stuff none of us even thought about as late as 1988. Frankly, we didn’t even think much about positional playing; you played in first, you played in second, and you played in third minor---there wasn’t anything else! I played a song in twelfth without even knowing I was in twelfth! I wanted to play “Yesterday” without switching harmonicas and so I sat for one whole day to find a harmonica I could play it on---we didn’t have all the notes at that time and I didn’t want to switch harps. Years later I discovered I played it twelfth---I didn’t know that at the time!
RG: Any advice for aspiring players?
PT: First and foremost, learn songs. Learn melodies. Don’t be riff based. It’ll help you learn this crazy instrument that we play. None of the three octaves (in Richter tuning) resemble each other in any way and learning melodies will help. It can be anything, Oh Susana or a Bach concerto! The more you learn songs and try to play them in different positions on the same harmonica, the more you understand that instrument. First and foremost, it’s melody; learn songs.
Secondly, don’t be afraid to play that stuff live. Try to push yourself to play it live. Don’t be afraid to throw out some horn lines or section parts. That’s not something people think of when they think of harmonica.
RG: Could you point the readers to some of your sideman work that you’re particularly proud of?
PT: Any of the Johnny Paycheck records I did. I’m on “Take This Job and Shove It”, “Everybody’s Got a Family...Meet Mine”, and “New York Town”. “New York Town” was a live record and has some really cool stuff because the steel guitarist and I had some crazy section stuff worked out! There were a couple of albums I cut with Mel McDaniel. There’s some stuff with the McPeak Brothers and an early Jerry Douglas record called “Fluxedo”. Honestly, I was a really bad at keeping a discography, but those are some that come to mind.
RG: Any closing comments or exciting things on your horizon?
PT: Well, I’m really proud of my new CD, “A Madness to the Method” and the Seydel Overtones video interview series. Seydel Overtones has blossomed into a really cool series that’s featuring a lot of cool artists across a wide stylistic spectrum. I also have two complete instructional courses on MusicGurus.com. They turned out really well! I also play a lot around Nashville---so catch me around town!
PT Gazell has performed and recorded with countless major artists over his career, including Johnny Paycheck, Mel McDaniel, Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas. Born in Wisconsin and now based in Nashville, Tennessee, PT is equally at home in a range of musical styles from Jazz and Bluegrass to Country and Pop. PT was the first harmonica player to be honored with a recording contract with famed record label, Sugar Hill. This association produced his first CD PT Gazell “Pace Yourself” still considered a benchmark for diatonic Bluegrass Harmonica. In recent years PT has teamed up with Seydel Harmonicas to develop and produce the Gazell method harmonica, a half valved diatonic harmonica that he plays exclusively. More at www.PtGazell.com
RG: Many of readers are familiar with the last 10 years of your career, your recent solo releases, and the Gazell Method half- valved harmonica. Can you take us back to the Johnny Paycheck days of your career and fill us in on the earlier part of your career?
PT: The starting point is really me moving to Lexington, Kentucky around 1976. I went to a Bluegrass festival in Indiana and somebody was recording the festival for a record. As I recall, I just went up to the engineer and introduced myself. He had already heard me play as I had been sitting in with some of the groups, and he told me that he had a studio in Lexington (LEMCO Sound) that was becoming a hot little spot for Bluegrass musicians. It seemed like everyone was wanting to go there, plus Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas lived there and a number of other great players were around as well. He told me, if I’d be willing to move there and do some sessions for him, he’d record an album for me in exchange. Being young and commitment free, I did it. I moved to Lexington and began doing studio work for him, and that’s how the album Pace Yourself (Sugar Hill Records) came to be. During that roughly two year period of time I was hired to do a TV show with a well known Bluegrass artist named J.D. Crowe. One of the other players that had been hired was a pedal steel guitarist from Nashville and he was also Johnny Paycheck’s bandleader. He basically hired me on the spot. And here I am in Nashville forty years later!
That’s how it started. In 1985 I had come off the road with Johnny Paycheck, and Mel McDaniel and decided not to do road work any longer. I started to do sessions here in town but quickly got very disillusioned with the studio process. I didn’t like being pigeonholed and playing stereotypical things. I was also frustrated with the instrument. There was no overblowing or half-valving at that time and I just didn’t want to play an instrument that couldn’t play everything I was hearing, so in 1988 I walked away. I basically didn’t play an instrument for fifteen years.
RG: Let’s talk a bit more about your studio work from that period.
PT: I got frustrated because at that time in Nashville there was a formulaic approach to recording. It just didn’t appeal to me. If I had been in that position ten or so years later---that would have been at the start of all the small boutique studios when it became easier to put out an independent project---I might have felt differently. In ‘85 you were still locked into having a label and producer who had a formula, and I just didn’t fit for that kind of thing. I wanted to play outside that formula.
RG: Who was at the top of that game, harmonica-wise?
PT: Easy! Charlie McCoy. His successor was Terry McMillan, and he fit into that formulaic thing really well. After that Jelly Roll Johnson took the mantle. Jelly Roll has my utmost respect because he knew how to fit in that formulaic thing and still be creative. It's a real art. For me, it just wasn’t that stimulating.
Charlie McCoy knew not only what to play, but where to play in the track. It was never a problem for him to play something meaningful. He understood the chord structures and he could arpeggiate runs against the chord structures; it wasn’t just someone playing a lick, there was some content to it. He was also part of whatever pattern/formula they had down for the song; the opening lick, the turnaround, and the end---he was always part of that and wasn’t just playing a fill somewhere. He was actually part of the section, which was really cool. Terry was a really great player though I don’t think he did much other than follow Charlie’s formula. Jelly Roll came in and put his own stamp on it. Where Charlie and Terry were pretty much pucker players who’d play single notes and lines, Jelly came in with the tongue blocking thing, and really made the octave splits and chording fit really well into the studio context.
RG: In recent years you’ve returned to do some studio work. Describe some of the differences between your studio work in the 80’s and now.
PT: When I came to town (Nashville), it was formulaic with the labels. There was a producer who would demo songs from songwriters and pass those on to the artists. The artist and producer would then decide what they wanted to record and literally that day they’d walk into a studio and play the demo for the studio players. Then, in a matter of five minutes the players would decide on something to lay down as a record. Those guys are incredibly talented and very inventive, but it was still formulaic; “we’ll have an intro, you’ll fill on this verse, you’ll fill that verse, then the turnaround where we’ll all play, then let’s add a half of a verse as a solo, then we’ll come back with a chorus, tag the end of the song, and then play the ending lick”. What I saw with the rise of the home studio in the 90’s is that guys weren’t locked into that formula. With affordable home recording and self-production, you began to see much more inventive tracks, and I thought that was really cool! I started playing again in 2003 and by 2005 I started getting emails asking if I had a little recording setup and could put something down on a track from home. I just love doing that as it gives everyone a chance to stretch out a bit. Today’s audience isn’t looking for the formulaic thing and are willing to listen to anything.
RG: Let’s talk about recording technology a bit. Can you share some of your thoughts on the evolution from analog to digital?
PT: The thing that sticks out to me is that when I go back and listen to some of the stuff I did in the tape world, it sounds so much smoother than anything I’ve ever done in the digital realm. In my opinion, even to this day---and I think I’m getting a great sound digitally---tape is a lot more kind to the harmonica. That’s a striking difference for me. It’s smoother and rounder. Go back and listen to blues records where guys are amplified and distorted and there’s still a smoothness and roundness to that sound, as opposed to laying it down digitally. Now a lot of people are going to analog studios and letting it pass through the electronics of the tape machine and dumping it to Protools live. I haven’t done that, but I’d like to think that if I cut another record that I’ll do it that way.
Clearly digital editing is so much nicer. It’s easy to do! But we miss the saturation of instruments to tape.
But here’s the bottom line: no matter how easy it’s become to record digitally, to do it correctly still requires a good musician and an engineer that knows how to preamp and place a microphone correctly in an acoustically correct environment. Once you have all of that, I have heard digital recordings that were stunning. It’s just different, that’s all!
RG: You were a professional post production audio engineer in your career away from the harmonica. Can you share some of your insights into recording and engineering a great harmonica sound?
PT: It’s an ever evolving thing. The last three records of mine have been a combination of my Audix Fireball very close mic-ed (not handheld) and then a ribbon mic about forehead height and a foot away from me. I try to blend the two. On the first two records I featured more of the ribbon than the Audix. Interestingly, on the last record, A Madness to the Method, the tracking engineer said, “there’s something very cool about that Audix”. Then when I met with the mixing engineer, he thought the Audix sounded better and we mostly went with that. Now on some tracks we blended the ribbon or used just the ribbon, but about two thirds of the record was just the Audix close up. We had to do some eq-ing. Mostly just taking away frequencies. The further away from the microphone, the less problems you have, but the smaller the instrument starts to sound. That’s fine as a color or background instrument, but as a feature instrument, the only way I can get enough body to be front and center as a lead instrument is to do it (mic it) nice and close. But what happens is that the instrument is mid range heavy, no matter what key you’re in really, and I end up taking away some mid range frequencies. Typically from 850/900hz-1600hz, a gentle dip cleans up the harmonica a lot. I also tend to roll off from 7500hz up because it gets really piercing for me. This is just for acoustic harmonica, and when you start running it through an amp it becomes something totally different.
------
RG: Any advice for working with a recording engineer?
PT: The first thing you need to is get a point of reference from the engineer on what they think a harmonica sounds like. There’s some engineers where the first thing that registers with them is Bob Dylan. That’s great if you’re playing like Bob, and the engineer might stick an SM58 about a foot in front of you and it’ll probably sound great. But if you’re trying to get something across more like Toots---or me, for lack of a better diatonic example---that’s probably not going to work.
RG: Any thoughts in terms of effects or processing in the mixing stage?
PT: On my records, I like a spring reverb and a little bit of delay. I like both on my sound. And I do like a little compression on close miced harmonica as well, just to control the dynamics. I don’t want it to sound compressed---maybe a 2:1 or maximum 3:1 compression ratio. No more than that or it’ll start to sound compressed.
RG: Are there any aspects or new developments of the harmonica you feel are exciting or underexplored?
PT: Frankly, I love what you’re doing! You’re taking a chord harmonica and a bass harmonica and a harmonetta and whatever and you’re not afraid to make it sound different from what the Harmonicats did. I love that and think that it’s way underexplored. John Shirley is another guy who’s done some very cool stuff with bass harmonica, running it through plugins and getting some great effects. I also think a guy like Jason Ricci is pushing the envelope with all the pedals he’s using. And he’s not just slamming on pedals; he’s really played with them enough where he’s getting a defined and useful sound out of them. Taking away all the electronics for a second, there are guys like me; I’m playing half-valved, and that’s a totally unique sound. It’s a hybrid sound, almost like a chromatic while retaining all of the diatonic loveliness. And the alternate tunings people are using! To me, this is the golden age of the instrument. I’m hearing stuff none of us even thought about as late as 1988. Frankly, we didn’t even think much about positional playing; you played in first, you played in second, and you played in third minor---there wasn’t anything else! I played a song in twelfth without even knowing I was in twelfth! I wanted to play “Yesterday” without switching harmonicas and so I sat for one whole day to find a harmonica I could play it on---we didn’t have all the notes at that time and I didn’t want to switch harps. Years later I discovered I played it twelfth---I didn’t know that at the time!
RG: Any advice for aspiring players?
PT: First and foremost, learn songs. Learn melodies. Don’t be riff based. It’ll help you learn this crazy instrument that we play. None of the three octaves (in Richter tuning) resemble each other in any way and learning melodies will help. It can be anything, Oh Susana or a Bach concerto! The more you learn songs and try to play them in different positions on the same harmonica, the more you understand that instrument. First and foremost, it’s melody; learn songs.
Secondly, don’t be afraid to play that stuff live. Try to push yourself to play it live. Don’t be afraid to throw out some horn lines or section parts. That’s not something people think of when they think of harmonica.
RG: Could you point the readers to some of your sideman work that you’re particularly proud of?
PT: Any of the Johnny Paycheck records I did. I’m on “Take This Job and Shove It”, “Everybody’s Got a Family...Meet Mine”, and “New York Town”. “New York Town” was a live record and has some really cool stuff because the steel guitarist and I had some crazy section stuff worked out! There were a couple of albums I cut with Mel McDaniel. There’s some stuff with the McPeak Brothers and an early Jerry Douglas record called “Fluxedo”. Honestly, I was a really bad at keeping a discography, but those are some that come to mind.
RG: Any closing comments or exciting things on your horizon?
PT: Well, I’m really proud of my new CD, “A Madness to the Method” and the Seydel Overtones video interview series. Seydel Overtones has blossomed into a really cool series that’s featuring a lot of cool artists across a wide stylistic spectrum. I also have two complete instructional courses on MusicGurus.com. They turned out really well! I also play a lot around Nashville---so catch me around town!
