 Hello and welcome to senior moment. My name is David refson. I am your host for the show senior moment is about seniors and four seniors and A number of years ago Music venue opened in Northampton. That was only not only iconic, but sort of international in flavor 40 years later. It is still going strong. I am very pleased to have as my guest Jordy Harold along with John Riley who started it all Jordy. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much so one of the things I wanted to start with is is something that you did back in the 70s before you actually got involved in The iron horse and that was to go to the troubadour out in London How did that come about and how did it sort of influence things to come? Well, there's a direct line from the troubadour in London England to the iron horse So that actually starts before my arriving at the troubadour when I was About 11 years old. I went to a summer camp where someone who ended up being a former student of my dad's who was a high school teacher taught me to play guitar and It was also the summer camp was in Beacon, New York where Pete Seager lived and though We were told that well, maybe you know just maybe you'd actually get a sighting Maybe you could play along and that that that part didn't happen, but My dad helped me a little bit with the rudimentary guitar when I got back and then his friends who are a little bit better than him helped me You know for another few weeks and then I exhausted within days what they could tell me and got hooked up with the local teenager who gave me more guitar lessons and eventually I Got passed whatever they could all teach me but my mother's best friend decided that then she would school me by giving me albums And she lived in Greenwich Village She got me Tom Paxton's first album. Maybe it's called Ramblin Boy, right? Which actually does a cameo in in the recent biopic about a Dave Van Ronk's life, right and So I then became a Paxton fan. I don't know probably then you know was the 60s It was the beginning of you know the folk revival and that was that was a hip thing. Yes, it was and and I Proceeded to get all of his albums and on maybe three albums after that There was a song called leaving London in which he exclaims, you know that he's love Lorne He's in London and he goes to the troubadour and it's totally packed and he sings a song that she knew quite well and Quite quite literally, you know eight years later I found myself in London love Lorne having had a falling out with my girlfriend And I went to the troubadour and I went down to that same basement and I sang a song. She knew quite well and During the day I actually felt at home there the place kind of fit like a glove and I would sit and write in my journal and one of The things that I wrote in my journal was the coffee house fantasy, you know how I might open a place that Felt like that, you know, which had people hanging out by day, but music at night I mean, you know Dylan wandered into the troubadour when he was first in London and there were instruments all over the wall such as there Are even today 40 years later at the Iron Horse and Definitely took a big page from their history. And in fact, I got to go back there just last April in 2018 and visited with my family and the manager was very nice and took us around and coming full circle a Waitress at the Iron Horse in the 80s was actually a very fine artist and when she left She gave me a copy of an etching that she had given to the troubadour of the actual facade of the troubadour And I was a when I got when I went there. They said, you know We remembered that artist and we don't know where ours is, you know, so God bless you you have one I decided that I would send them mine to bring it full circle. That's really something There's a long answer to a short question. I understand so now we're back in in the United States and it's The 70s and moving along and somehow you and John Riley decided on doing this venue this coffee house fantasy, so to speak and So you and John decided to open something. Yes, talk about that initial something. That's the beginning of all of this all that that initial something came because we were We were we were hanging out as as you would say some sometimes Over beers here or there sometimes at his apartment and kind of a moaning the fact that there was no place that had that feeling That had the coffee house feeling that you could just go and be and I think it was one night actually in Sheehan's cafe and we were in the back room at Sheehan's Where was the only place that it wasn't either the bar or the band that was pressed up against the window and the furnishings for the Backroom or a couple of automobile seats and a bare fluorescent light bulb and we looked at each other and we just said, you know there's just and we literally shook on it and I said, you know look the feeling is now But you know if we haven't signed a lease for something within 90 days I mean maybe the feeling will pass maybe we'll be on to other things, you know But if you were to ask me right now, let's do this and you did and we did you know I think John probably sourced the location on Center Street and and very quickly We had a lease for a lordly three hundred and seventy five dollars a month and it was always called the iron horse There was no pre name to that when you're very very first started. There was no Working title and you know the iron horse just kind of got plucked out of the plucked out of the blue my mother was a painter and sculptor and a metal sculptor and I was literally at the family home in the Berkshire is where Sculptures were Planted through the fields and one was of an iron horse So there was no relationship to baseball players. No relationships to railroad trains just a relationship to that statue that was in front of me and it became then it became a logo and a little a little bit of a symbol for the place so 1978 is more or less when it started. Yeah, oh doors open in 79 The thought the thought there was the fall of 78. Yes, right and so Who's who started coming there? Not not so much the Folks to see music, but who was some of the first guests that you had that would be willing to come into a place That was like that and just starting out who you well, you know It was it was interesting because you know so so what I mean at that point I'm 24 and John's a few years older than me So I don't know exactly what he is, you know 27 28 at that time and You know all all we knew is that that felt right to us. So then maybe we were thinking, you know 20 some things but but and We thought yeah, maybe a few people, you know We'll come in and eventually the world will grow and we had a kind of a diorama in the front window of what we were going to Be about, you know, and we had a chess game set up and a couple of international newspapers And you know a guitar and a sax rakeishly posed and maybe a beret hanging on the back of a chair and You know and a notebook open, you know, I don't I have photos of it But you know, that's essentially essentially what it was and we thought this will communicate who you know what we want to be to to the community and The very the very first day we had 200 and something rings at the register and the first night We were literally scrambling to pull, you know old milk crates, you know full cartons of you know Chocolate syrup whatever it was that people could sit on, you know to even get get people in the door So there there was this kind of pent pent up need, you know, there certainly were bars in town There had been, you know, some kind of music venues You know in the years prior that I remembered but there wasn't anything that satisfied that need in In that way and so, you know, I'm not to say that every single day was like that in those first days But we were we were often running and I think it was you know to answer more specifically, you know, I think it was everybody I think it was students. I think it was, you know, I think it was, you know, college faculty I think it was, you know, people who were then already, you know Approaching being seniors who remembered their, you know, bohemian days, you know in you know And you know that in the in the early 50s, you know as or whatever, you know, so just as an aside I work with a gentleman who's been to the Iron Horse over 200 times That's the kind of venue that he loved going to to hear the kind of music that was going on So there's a there's not a lot of just one offs. Somebody goes in once and that was the end of it Right and he's maybe an extreme example. No, but there were they he was but he's not alone Right, that's not alone and I can and I can you know, there is one in one guy, you know and you know, bless bless his soul John Bodnar has been to over a thousand shows, you know and Who is some of the early guests the very there's a lot of big names and I've been reading through some of this There was some serious folks here coming to this venue. Can you talk about that a little bit? Well, I mean the the place was was certainly in its first handful of years was split between those Those nationally and internationally known names, but it's not what we started out to do Well, we really started out to do had much work to do with cafe life and lifestyle then becoming a Concert venue for internationally known people, you know, we really just had this vision of like, ah, you know You'll come in on you know, we had it we had it mapped out that on Thursday night there'll be classical chamber music playing and and on you know Friday night that there would be Some form of jazz playing and on Saturday night, there would be you know Kind of what the original name of CBG bees was, you know, there'd be kind of like you know folk jazz bluegrass and other music from underground, you know and and we actually Stuck with that, but what we found just like the huge influx of people that came in in that first day By the time we were done with the first week We had so many local musicians just saying can I get on that stage? Can I get on that stage? Can I get on that stage that we were booked months in advance for seven days a week with people who? Just wanted to play and we had a system where people played for tips and you know, we were aggressive which bothered some people, you know, but of Collecting tips on behalf of the musicians We didn't just leave a tip jar on the piano as it were and you know And everybody left with some money and in the rarest of nights when the tips were just like oh That's too paltry, you know, then we would we would make up some of the difference, you know, just as as as good humans, but You know so that is that is where it started and I still see the names of some of those people even last This past weekend there was a music festival in in month in Montague where people went from house to house to house You know seeing these musicians and some of those musicians who were playing in those first weeks of the iron horse We're still playing on front porches in Montague and and that was a big part of what we wanted Was just that community vibe and that music and that sense of like again slipping into that place at night And you know in those days a little bit of smoke in the air and the sack solo and a quiet conversation And we had just had this whole this whole picture, but On another another track, you know, I was friendly with the people who were who had when I was in college a Few years earlier who had done the five-college folk festival Of course that folk festival in part started by you know the likes of Taj Mahal and Buffy St. Marie when they were students at UMass and They I had offered them in fact a home in the basement of the iron horse just as you know The troubadour had a home in the basement of a cafe, you know I just replicate when you can and they were like no, no, no, that's okay We're doing this we've got a series of shows and we do them in this place And that's just fine and they get they would get called all the time for shows that they couldn't They couldn't Accommodate because really they were just doing six shows a year and they were a volunteer organization And thank you very much and one day someone called them and said, you know Well, we had a few people coming through can you do some shows and then they said no But then in off-handed ways like called Jordy and they did and they called me and I knew well enough to say Yes, the first time it's kind of like was my my my short career before that was teaching and I knew That the substitute teachers who got used were the ones who said yes the first time they when they get called every single time And so if I said yes the first time I said well I'm no idea how I'm gonna pay someone five hundred dollars, which was like five times my rent at the time But I better say yes because then maybe I'll get called every single time and we did I want to ask you this The idea of a folk cafe probably changed rather quickly to a much broader Musical venue at some point Didn't probably didn't take very long to realize there wasn't just folk music Well as I as I said even just a moment ago it always even even on the local level it started out You know classical music folk music jazz blues bluegrass I was always part of it and then it grew very quickly the first night's music was Celtic music and Celtic music became a big Part of it women's music as it was called then became a big part of it. You know as our You know we were aligned with and then and then ultimately next door neighbors with the woman fire bookstore You know in a true good, you know 70s 80s, you know culture for the the valley and then you know international music of all kinds, you know quickly followed, you know Cuban jazz and you know touring African bands and You know Everything you know music, you know, you know French Breton music, you know And then that that moved, you know within a handful of years to you know, what we call the new way of cafe, you know Where people you know in in you know who had been involved, you know with the Lower East Side new way of scene You know we're coming through and and playing and so it really it really became a Room that had an identity, but it was it was almost as if it was for everybody It sure was I mean there's no question about that and then not too long after that the need to expand occurred probably in the early 80s Yeah, something like that well within the within the first even year or so that we were open We were 65 seats and we conceived to put a balcony at the back of the room that would you know Maybe up does another 20 people to 85 seats and so that probably Happened by you know 80 81, you know within a year or two of opening and then In 1989 you know the opportunity to rent the space next door the bookstore had closed and it was vacant and It was another one of those well no idea how we're gonna pay for this But let's go for it and we we knocked down the wall between the two spaces and then we went for a building permit It's always easier to ask forgiveness You started to talk a little bit about some of the early folks that came on like above you say Marie Taj Mahal can you talk a little bit about some of the others people who are not quite having made it yet? But we're starting out and was gonna make it or well I mean in there there were those people in you know in just in if not I want to say every genre but in a lot of a lot of genres for us And I almost don't know where to start for those those with those stories But just you know to tick off a few you know in the in the the folk or alternative music area You know I mean clearly Suzanne Vega Yeah, who was sold millions and millions of albums showed up playing for tips at the iron horse And in fact I just recently came across and sent her a copy of her first hand pen note to me Sorry, I was so short on the phone I was talking at work, but I look forward to meeting you and playing there You know because you still had her her day job But you know and Sean Colvin started off at the iron horse You know playing for tips and you know and over on the jazz end of things You know went and Marsalis started out playing literally as a side man to a side man You know Avery Sharp was a wonderful bass player who were blessed to have live in the area was in turn the bass player for McCoy tiner Yeah, extremely well-known pianist and Avery would you know said you know, which maybe I could bring in something of my own I was like sure I think so you can I it is a matter who I have on the bill of me I was like no, I'm whatever you're gonna bring in is gonna be good You know, I trust you and you've got some connections to the University You think it would be people there and he brought in some people that I knew from other bands and then a drummer who became Winton's drummer forever Ronnie Barrage and Winton and that was his you know very special quintet that night for I think a ticket of $6 And years later that became Winton, you know playing literally 10 sets in a row at the iron horse to warm up for European tours And he did that any number of times, you know and we would thank him for that and he was saying no No, I think thank you. This is really a place where it can feel good. So, you know, you know woodshed, you know And and rehearse my band and that yeah, I mean all kinds of things I was just looking at I was just looking at a calendar You know the last time I saw you know the alternative band cake was at the Orpheum in Boston at a $50 ticket and Cake played a Monday night at the iron horse for like God knows how few dollars, you know Nora Jones played at the iron horse for Two sets opening for Livingston Taylor, you know for two nights for $40 a night Maybe it was $30 and I as a favor to an agent who wanted to get this person in front of you know an audience And I didn't have the heart to tell him that she'd already played here You know when she was the vocalist for for a sort of ambient electronica band, you know, so I mean it's What's also amazing is that the artists themselves were not one and done they really like this venue This is a wonderful comfortable place for these musicians to come and they'd want to come I know for example the Nils they've played there. I can't even count how many times just for their adult lifetime I'm just saying there's so many other people like that who want to come back and Sure money was important and maybe at the beginning with new artists They had to do what they had to do but people are coming back and and if it wasn't the money it was the place Yeah, no absolutely. It was the atmosphere. It was there were people there would be people who would play You know theaters in six major cities and the iron horse, you know It's it's really quite and some and some of that, you know I'd like to think that a lot of that has to do with how good the audience felt and how good the place Felt and some of that just has to do with you know, not every night is a Saturday night And you know and I was you know, I would lie down and walk all over me. I'll give you Monday night Yeah, that's fine. Just come here. Just as an aside. I understand that you actually played a little bit Maybe a little bit a little bit of music. Yes Yes, well, you know, I played in a rock band in college like everybody else and I you know played at summer camp You know even you know when I was a summer camp director instead of you know said at the time when I was 11 and learning at summer camp, but I Played a you know a few few lead guitar riffs on somebody's demo You know that then worked out and he got a small recording contract out of it But I don't think of myself right as a guitarist But it but you know having been a guitarist and having played in the college band, you know Even that you know gives a kind of a frame of reference, you know for what's for what's going on where you actually have a Set of the years that are not just a fan set of the years But you know you you know some of the terminology and you know what you're listening for well I think you also alluded to it just before the loyal fan base is just remarkable This is again. We talked not one off. I mean, it's remarkable how many people have come back Constantly and love the venue and love to see what was going on. I want to talk a little bit about your book Jordy has written a book and it is called positively Center Street my 25 years at the iron horse 1979 to 2004 and I think you have the book with you Would you mind just reading one particular if you feel okay about that? Oh, I feel okay about it I'm not sure how much time we have but not a ton, but we have enough time for you to read one part All right. Well go for it. Let's see. I think what we're gonna read then this is this is just because it was Captures captures a lot of the feeling so we're we're probably we're probably here sometime in the The mid 1980s now, so really only five years after the place is open then there's already been an influx of National and international talent and one of those areas that that the club really had a signature in was the blues and so whether You know whether it was, you know, sunny terry and brownie McGee or whether it was, you know, buddy guy in junior Wells You know or whether it was, you know, Albert Collins and Sun Seals, you know from Chicago there were there were always there were always icons of the blues in in the room and You know and you should pause on that because now if you go to see buddy guy You can't see him in a situation of less than 4,000 people, you know, and so this is really iconic things Happening there. That's you bring up something really important here You're right. You can't see sunny guy in less than whatever 4,000 seats. That's another Advantage of the iron horse you were there. You could almost touch these folks Absolutely and that really really made a difference to the people who came in to see the music there They weren't sitting in the balcony, you know a hundred rows away. They were right there and that I think was Pretty interesting go ahead, right so I'm just gonna kind of jump in jump into the middle of this but This is a little bit thinking about times when Willie Dixon and Albert King two different two different blues shows of the horse I'm gonna read it a little bit more quickly than I would otherwise because I see a couple of pages in front of me And I don't want to run your clock. That's okay. You're doing fine thinking about working with Willie Dixon I remember being a kid and being like 11 years old and looking on the credits on the Rolling Stones or the doors songs and seeing that name Willie Dixon, what did that have to do with those bands? Well, I actually worked with that guy just being in the room with him and his huge girth and his gentle nature The sense of just being in the presence of someone who had written songs that are fundamentally iconic I grew up as a teen with spoonful being the epitome of what you would listen to Clapton playing spoonful, but he didn't write it Willie Dixon wrote it and there he is like you said close enough to touch His songbook reads like the Bible of the blues and this guy comes in and he was just a gentle giant He was heavy and was walking with a cane And it was dubious whenever he went down the stairs to the dressing room because they never knew if they were gonna get Him back up the stairs and his his hands were enormous. So one thing I remember about him was his hands I have big hands by any standard and putting my hand in his to shake his hand was like feeling like a little boy There were baseball mitts enveloping my hand and he had written all these things that just blow you away He's the Bible of the blues except he wrote every one of those songs It's like being with the guy who wrote the Bible instead of hearing someone in tone it in Sunday school You're just like okay Let me get this straight me and 80 or 90 other people in this room are 10 feet away from the Bible of the blues And he's telling us what he wrote. It's just a most amazing experience But for all of his having written those standards He had written a newer song that to him was more important than any of those Who knows what war we were in because we're always in a war But he had a song that said Don't make sense if you can't make peace and he had started the blues peace foundation That he was selling buttons for and he was singing his song to as many people as he could the gist was You can be as successful as you want, but if you can't make peace you're nobody in my book He was a bass player and he still played an acoustic stand-up bass long after everyone else was on an electric bass And he would just dwarf it. It was guitar sized in the presence of his body You could be really dramatic and say it was like a ukulele, but but it was dwarfed by his body He would get to the final lines it goes you have made great planes that span the skies You gave the sights the blind with another man's eyes You make the deaf man here and the dumb man speak But it don't make sense if you can't make peace and when he sang you can't make peace He would turn out both of those huge hands There were like four times the size of my hands and he would hold them out in the gesture of absolute supplication So those are the things I remember about him between his physicality in that song The gesture of supplication and being there with a person who wrote the book that was so true in so many shows I did with Robert Hunter. He wrote all the songs for the Grateful Dance lyric book That was true of the oft-covered Moses Allison and that was true of Dan Penn Unknown by name, but who wrote myriad Memphis soul hits every here of do-right woman do-right man He's the man behind that what Aretha was singing like Willie Dixon Albert King was a groundbreaking blues man who also played the 85 seat horse several years before he died Another imposing figure King was a scorching Mississippi born South ball guitarist and like Dixon He bridged traditional and modern electric blues His version of such songs is born under a bad sign and cross-cut saw are timeless And he was a significant influence on the likes of Jimi Hendrix Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan Plus he played a flying V guitar and you gotta love those. He was well over six feet It seemed to me like six foot four and and a kind of 300 pound guy dark glasses And some kind of hat I think he smoked a pipe the band pulled up with their van and a trailer behind it And he got out and they're standing around by the curb I see the band is not coming into the club and I'm wondering why is the band not coming in what's up here? I go out. I don't introduce myself to anybody. I'm just kind of out there They spot me in one of them who turns out to be King himself asked in the deepest of voices who was in charge here. I Try to be that would be me and he rumbles. Well, then we have to talk It's like alright. Do you want to talk here? You want to talk inside? Let's go inside So we go inside and I take this as a small victory because we're inside that means I'm establishing a precedent They can walk through the door and they've come and they can come in the club. I'm going through the list in my head They've been paid their deposit so they have that they better not be asking for their money before they play because I won't do That I'm thinking he's just kind of gonna want to say You know my guys are hungry and they have to eat right now or something like that That's usually the big alarm that's going off. So we get inside and he intones. We better sit down We walk over to a little table where we'll have some Some of this old-out crowd sitting shortly. We sit at this table, which is comically small for him He's this huge guy and his knees are up higher than the table He's got that boss upper Fundo and that little bit of street thing I'm like, so what's going on here? And he says again in his deep voice. Oh We got problem. We're gonna have to stop here Jordy at that moment. Okay afraid to say We have run out of time that's okay, and I have a lot more things to talk about We're not gonna get it today. All right, Jordy Harold. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show You are absolutely welcome. Thank you so much You