2000 Chewing the FAT with John Kahn By Felton Pruitt [Image] I first met John Kahn during a Jerry Garcia Band show at San Francisco State University on February 28, 1982. I had just started working for KFAT radio in Gilroy and, low and behold, my first professional interview was with Jerry himself. What I remember most about John Kahn that day was the warmth of his smile and how it had relaxed an extremely nervous interviewer during his first big gig. The next chance I had to talk face-to-face with John was at a nightclub called Palookaville in Santa Cruz some 14 years later, May 4, 1996. It was the debut performance of the John Kahn Band, featuring the old Jerry Garcia Band members with the additions of Larry Batiste on vocals and Ho-Young Kim on guitar. I went backstage after the show to say hello to John and Melvin Seals and to tell them how glad everyone was that they were out playing music again. Upon reintroducing myself to John the first image I was struck with was that warm smile. Even though he was pale and dripping with sweat, John still radiated a calming friendliness. I asked John if he would be willing to do an interview. He told me they had just added another show for the next night and that he would be glad to come in early to do the interview. True to his word, John showed up early on Sunday evening, May 5, 1996, to do this interview: FP: We saw you for the first time with your new band, the John Kahn Band, last night here in Santa Cruz. Your band was pretty familiar to those of us who used to see you with the Jerry Garcia Band. JK: Right, it's pretty much the same band, the changes are Larry Batiste is the lead singer and the guitar player's name is Ho-Young Kim. FP: Where did Ho-Young Kim come from? JK: I've known him for quite awhile now, I've know him since at least the mid-'70s. We've done some projects together over the years now and again. I've always wanted to do something with him so this presented a perfect opportunity. FP: Where did you run across Larry Batiste? JK: I ran across Larry though a mutual friend, a bass player, Merl's son Tony Saunders. We were working on a movie project. Actually the movie project fell through and never happened but out of it I met Larry Batiste. We were working on a song together. He writes songs. I write songs, but I'm never very good at lyrics and that's what he does mainly, so we started collaborating on songs and our relationship grew out of that. FP: He's got a great voice. JK: Yeah, it's funny because I never really heard him sing all that much, it was mostly on faith, but I knew he was gonna be good so it worked out okay. FP: The rest of the crew up there were pretty familiar to most of us old-timers. JK: Right, the background singers are Jackie LaBranch and Gloria Jones, Melvin Seals on organ and Donny Baldwin on drums. We all played with the Jerry Garcia Band. FP: How long have you known Melvin? That must go back a long time. JK: Well, I'm not accurate on the year, but it's been quite a while. I know he played with the Jerry Garcia Band since at least since 1980 and probably before that. FP: Are we gonna see an album put together within the next year? JK: I would certainly love to. FP: What are your plans? JK: Well, my plans are not real definite. This was just an experimental thing to see if it was gonna work at all. It seems like it was an awful lot of fun for everybody, so I'd like to continue with it and see what we can do. We all love to play together and I would love to make a record with some original songs that I've been working on with Larry Batiste. And I know Melvin writes songs. I'd really like to do some original stuff. FP: That would be great because I think there is certainly a demand for it. JK: We've been doing cover songs for so many years now it would be nice to do some of our own stuff. FP: I recently saw you with some of your old friends, Old & In the Way, at David Grisman's birthday party at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco. JK: Right, that was an opportunity to do it, it was great fun. Vasser Clements, he's great. I don't think I've seen him in 22 years maybe,he looked just the same. FP: Really, you haven't seen him since the Old & In the Way days? JK: No, I haven't really run into him since then. FP: David Grisman's record company Acoustic Disc has just released another Old & In the Way album. I've heard that David may even release another record of old stuff later. JK: Yeah, I guess if there is a response for it. I know he does have one more set of stuff. It's all from the same gigs. It's all from two weekends at the old Boarding House [in San Francisco]. FP: You certainly cover a wide range of music in your playing, from country and bluegrass to soul. JK: Well, I like all kinds of music just about. FP: What were your roots? How did you get started in music? JK: Well, that's a good question. You know, piano lessons. I actually got pretty serious about music when I was young. I wanted to be a composer.I went to college for a little while. I went to S.C. as a composition major and I went to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I didn't graduate from either one. FP: So how many different instruments do you play? JK: Well, I play a lot of instruments a little bit. I mainly play the piano, bass and I can get around on the guitar. Most instruments, I know how they work at least. FP: Which did you learn first, the string bass or the electric bass? JK: Actually I learned the string bass first, but I learned the guitar before that even. Electric bass is really the bottom four strings of a guitar an octave lower. It's hard to say. I think my electric bass playing comes more out of string bass than guitar. FP: What were you doing in music before the Jerry Garcia Band? JK: Oh I used to do a lot of things. I played a lot of blues music. I played with Mike Bloomfield for a long time. I played with the Paul Butterfield Band at one point. I did recordings with Otis Rush, Fred McDowell and John Lee Hooker. FP: I seem to remember your name on a lot of old albums I have. JK: I used to do a lot of studio work in the early '70s. FP: About what time did you hook up with Jerry and decide to do the Jerry Garcia Band? JK: I actually got to know Jerry because of this Monday night jam session gig at a club called the Matrix in San Francisco. This goes pretty far back, this is like 1968. It was a Monday jam session gig. It was Jerry, Howard Wales, the organ player and Bill Vitt. Bill Vitt was the drummer with the Bloomfield Band at that time, and he turned me on to the gig.I had never met Jerry, I had met Howard once before. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and I just kept doing that. We played Monday nights when everybody was in town. Nobody came, there was maybe five or six people there. We'd split up maybe ten dollars amongst the four of us.It went on for a while like that, I mean nobody ever came. Then finally one night there were a lot of people out there, and Howard realized that that's not what he wanted to do, and he stopped doing it. So I got Merl Saunders, and that's when it turned into the Jerry Garcia Band, and it's been going ever since. FP: Those gigs were always famous at the Keystone in Berkeley, the Keystone in Palo Alto and then -- was it the Keystone or the Stone in San Francisco? JK: That was the original club, it was called the Keystone Corner. FP: Was that on Broadway? JK: No, it was close to Broadway, maybe Green in North Beach. Actually I was in the first band that ever played there, the Bloomfield Band. It was next door to a police station. FP: Over the years we got to see you a lot with Jerry Garcia Band, and then this weird bluegrass thing called Old & In the Way popped up about 1973. JK: Yeah, it lasted not very long, less than a year. FP: Who's idea was that? JK: I think it was Jerry and David and Peter Rowan. They all lived in 350 Stinson Beach at that time, so it was something they did in their spare time in Stinson Beach. I guess they started to get serious about it, so Jerry asked me if I would play bass, and it went on from there. It was just a lot of fun. John Kahn died three weeks later in his home in Marin county. As far as I know, this was his last interview. The warmth of his smile will stay with me forever![Image] [Image] Click this small FAT logo for index The entire contents of The FAT Music Show's Home on the Range are copyright 1999 by FAT Music, Inc. Worldwide Rights Reserved. Inquiries regarding the FAT Music Show can be addressed to: felton@fatmusic.com. Our mailing address is: P.O. Box 1869, Freedom, California, 95019. . 0