 Good morning and welcome to Moments with Melinda. I am your host Melinda Moulton and today I have the rock star, Jeff Salisbury with me. Jeff, how you doing? I'm well, thank you. It's been a weird couple of three years, but I'm doing fine, thanks. Well, you look great. Well, it's all those preservatives I've been eating. Well, there you go, well, you look terrific and I really appreciate you being on my show. I'm excited to share with my viewers your life and your career. So let me tell my viewers a little bit about you. Jeff Salisbury, teach drum set at the University of Vermont and was the vice president of the Vermont chapter of the Percussive Art Society. He served as an artistic advisor for the Discover Jazz Festival. Jeff has played for the Albert King Blues Band and Cold Blood in the late 1960s and he has performed with Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and many other artists in the R&B and Jazz. He performed with James Harvey, Pure Pressure and the Scalar Gripote Sextet. He has studied with George Marsh, Bob Moses and Pete Magadini and is a drum workshop drum set artist. Jeff has appeared in modern drummer and downbeat magazines. His articles have been published in Percussive Notes, Percussion News and Drum Instructors Only. And you've written a book. We're gonna talk about that. So did I cover everything? Was that fair? Oh yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of stuff in between all that, but of course, but I started out in Columbus, Ohio where I was born and grew up mainly in Indianapolis, Indiana. But just as I turned 15, my dad got a job in San Antonio, Texas. And so we moved from Indianapolis to San Antonio, which was a blessing. It was very good for me because I was spinning my wheels at the age of 14 and not knowing anything to do except vandalize and shoplift and like those sort of middle school activities. So moving to San Antonio was excellent. My brother and I were walking along our street not knowing anyone and heard live music coming from a house. He sort of camped out in the yard and the people came out and invited us to come in. And it turned out one of our neighbors was having this jam session. And so I got my first opportunity to play a drum set there. And through that, I met two other young guys, teenagers and we started our first band in San Antonio. And we played Benefit for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and played at the Tuberculosis Hospital on the back of a flatbed truck where I first saw blue masks then back in 1964. But the pivotal part that happened, Kenny Edwards, the guitar player called me up one day and said, how would you like to help set up some equipment for this band that's coming to the team fair? And this is June of 1964. I said, well, what band is it? Said some band from England called Rolling Stones. So we got some equipment from Caldwell Music. We took it out to the Joe Freeman Coliseum, the livestock exhibition hall, set up the equipment for the Rolling Stones. And they came in and we saw them. We saw their sound check. And in between the sound check and their concert, Bill Wyman was just sitting on the stoop. There were very few people there. It was poorly promoted and poorly attended. But Bill Wyman was just sitting out on a step and we approached him and told him we had a little band and invited us back into the dressing room, which was in the livestock hall. It's not like a big fancy thing. And so Bobby V and Diane Rene and the Rolling Stones were all in the dressing room. Bill Wyman borrowed Keith Richards guitar and had Kenny sit down and he took his little acoustic electric bass and accompanied Kenny and they played a little blues. And then we watched their concert and I thought, these guys are doing this. I can do this. This is what I wanna do. And so I've been doing it ever since and as long as they're still rolling, I guess I can as well. And that was a true sort of light bulb moment of a moment of inspiration. And later on the next year, I saw James Brown, 1965 was totally rearranged my mind. And shortly thereafter, I saw the Dave Brubeck quartet and all these shows had a profound influence on me and my direction. Played in high school concert bands and the last high school I went to had a stage band and I played with them and it was my first experience playing any big band jazz at all. And then I attended the University of Texas although I used that term attended very lightly and I discovered pot and girls and that was a lethal combination for the academic progress. And so I was on scholastic probation and some guys, different guys from another high school band called me up and said, hey Jeff, we're going to Hollywood to start a band you wanna come. And it was perfect timing after I had failed out of the University of Texas for a semester. So we went to Los Angeles, we found an apartment in Hollywood who was managed by a guy who did some band management with a group called the Brain Train which became the clear light and eventually got a contract with a lecture but that's sort of incidental. We got a singer and a bass player and a manager and the manager got us a job at Gazarians on the Sunset Strip. So we played there six nights a week and it was just launching us. One time this guy came in, he was listening to us. He called me over at a break and said, you should be playing with better musicians. Only years later when I was reading his obituary that I discovered that that was Warren Zevon. And so I took his advice. I got with a band that was, the lead singer was Lynn Carey who was the daughter of McDonald Carey who's famous actor back in the 40s and was the voice of the days of our lives. That was, she had some management and she got us a job on a blues festival at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium with George Smith and his Southside Blues Band, Lowell Folsom and Pee Wee Creighton and Albert King. And so this, the band that I was playing with was called CK Strong and we opened up and then Albert King's manager came in to our dressing room and said to me, Mr. King wants to talk to you. So I went in there and he offered me a job with his band. And shortly thereafter, I went on the road for eight and a half months with him. And that was really my music school. That was my learning experience, my sociological realization and my historical perspective on the United States and the Southern United States. We played a lot of the psychedelic circuit, the Fillmore East, Fillmore West, Carnegie Hall, the Electric Theater in Chicago, the Electric Factory in Philadelphia, the Grandie Ballroom in Detroit, the Rockpile in Toronto. We played some festivals. We opened it up for Jim Morrison and the Doors in Phoenix the night that he got arrested. But we were out past that. He did that after we went on. So that was a curious show. And then the first time I ever went to New York City was when we opened up for Tim Buckley and the Jeff Beck group at the Fillmore East. And that was October of 68. So we did two nights there. And I was astounded by Jeff Beck's group, which Rod Stewart, Nicky Hopkins, Ron Wood and Mick Waller, a great band, the band that was on his first album. And I was blown away by those guys. They were fantastic. May he rest in peace. I realized that there are only three of us who are in that show who are still alive. That's Rod Stewart, Ron Wood and myself. So, but other than playing in the psychedelic circuit, we toured the South and what's referred to as the Chitlin Circuit and played Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and I got to see what people, the conditions that African American people had to endure. And I was the only Caucasian member of the band at the time. So that was a curious experience driving through little towns in Mississippi at two in the morning where I pulled my watch cap over my head and slumped down in the seat. They didn't want Sheriff John Brown to stop us and frisk us or whatever or shoot us. You know, possible. So that was a very interesting learning experience for me. And the discrimination of people of color being able to play in different venues, you must have experienced that. We played primarily black venues down South. And yeah, I was generally the only one there who was, you know, I don't know what would have happened if law enforcement pulled us over, but I don't like to think about that. But that was a great learning experience for me and that Larry Davis and Sun Seals and got a chance to play with them. Larry Davis is the person who wrote Texas Flood. Stevie Ray Vaughan had a big hit from that. Sun Seals of course went to Chicago from Arkansas and became a famous blues person in Chicago. And met David Porter, a great songwriter for Stax Bold. We stayed in the Lorraine Motel, which was infamous of course. I stayed in the room adjacent to the room that Martin Luther King was staying in when he was assassinated. And yeah, it was quite a time. And this was all when you were just a teenager. I was 20, yeah. Well, just, you know, that's a pretty remarkable history over a seven year period. Right, I was lucky. I mean, I was fortunate to be born at the time I was and to be able to have access to that. Absolutely. What an extraordinary, what an extraordinary tale of just a few years in your life as a drummer. That's your musical gift, right? Yeah, I, talk about that. Well, as I say, I started on drum set when I was 15 at those jam sessions across the road from us. But I had started banging on a drum. It was my brother had one that he lost interest in back in Indianapolis. So I played in the elementary school band and orchestra. And then in the first, high schools were four years in Indiana and three years in San Antonio. So it was easy transition for me. But, yeah, I was in music programs where the bandwriters sort of ignore the percussion section until they get violent with each other. They're always asking you to hold it down while they're working with the clarinets or that sort of thing. But I don't remember receiving much instruction that way until I got to Texas. Well, they're the rebel rousers, wouldn't you say? Yeah, yeah, I would say that. But they're also, they're also, they're also what brings the music together. They're the beat, they're the beat, right? We've got it. You got it. So tell us a little bit about who your greatest inspiration was in your life and in your career. I would say that both Albert King and BB King were great inspirations. Chuck Berry, also Max Roach, who I studied at a workshop at Omega Institute for Holistic Studies back in 88, I believe it was, when I went to a workshop there, a two-day workshop called The Drums that Max Roach taught 32 drummers together in a barn at Omega. And that was a life-changing experience. And my teachers, George Marsh and Pete Magadini as well. And Bob Moses is something else, he's an alternative sort of influence. But I'd say Jack Digenet and Alvin Jones, Tony Williams, these fantastic musicians who played drums for jazz groups and had their own groups as well. And I mean, that's musically, that was my influences for sure. So what about your family? What about your parents? When you decided you were gonna go be, I mean, look, parents during the 60s weren't real pleased with where we all were going. And there was a lot of conflict because we were rebelling against their lifestyle and their culture basically. And we changed the world in so many ways in social justice and all the different things that we did in that revolution that we had. And certainly the music scene was very important in that. And that's a question that I am gonna wanna ask you about the music scene today and what's going on in our world and how it is impacting the way that people think because our generation created music that helped people to think about what was going on, whether it was Jesse Cullen Young or Bob Dylan or whomever. So tell me a little bit about your family and your parents and how they reacted when you wanted to be this great musician and you wanted to take your brilliance off on the road. Those are some supportive terms. However, my parents were very supportive of what I wanted to do. My father was a public health veterinarian and my mother was, I hate to call her a housewife. She was really much more than that and she went to work after kids had grown, of course, and worked for various governmental agencies and went back to college and got degrees, et cetera. But they were very supportive of my efforts on our first band. We would have rehearsals at our house and the other parents would come over and they would hang out while we practiced and they were extremely supportive and they always loved music and they just figured the way that I was going was, I mean, they had some worries when I was out in Hollywood, they didn't hear from me, et cetera. And of course, the selective service had a lot to do with my status in their minds. So my father had been a bomber pilot of V-24 pilot in World War II, had been shot down over the North Sea and was rescued by a British Navy and so it was very formative experience in his life. And they were conservative people politically, but they loved music and they wanted me to do what I wanted to do, which perhaps was rare back then, but I mean, they did urge me to break up with my girlfriend at the time who became my first wife, but come back to Texas and go back to school and I said, no, sorry, it's not working for me. So they were concerned, but they were also very supportive. So, I mean, you were making music during the 60s period, the 60s revolution. So I'm gonna ask you that question. Our generation was transformational, only 17% of our generation was part of the hippie movement. So how do you feel about music today in helping to change the world? And how did you see it? When you were making music back then, did you realize that the music you were making was changing the way that people thought about our world and maybe about a war that was not a just war? Talk about that a little bit. Well, when I realized we got to hear Bob Dylan's music and got to hear staple singers and various people who were making political statements through their music, it was something I definitely thought about. I was not in a position to really do much politically, although I was confronted or confronted myself with the selective service system, but that's a whole other story that we don't need to put out. Well, no, I mean, but that's an important story. I mean, because a lot of men your age, we're facing that of having to be drafted. So, and a lot of our friends went into the war and a lot of them didn't come back. So let's move into moving to Vermont because a lot of people of our generation came to Vermont for a lot of reasons, to settle down, to be able to buy some land to Homestead and also to be close to the Canadian border. Talk a little bit about what brought you to Vermont. Well, after playing with Albert, I moved to San Francisco area to San Rafael to play with a band called Cold Blood, which was like a white soul band, Lydia Pence, four piece horn section, organ guitar based drums. And I did a couple of tours with them, but then I was goofing around, I suppose. My first wife got very interested in a place which you may have heard of called Synanon Foundation. And she loved to go in there and play the Synanon game, which was a tech therapy in groups. It was a very curious concept. So one day she came home and I was in between bands and she said, well, I'm moving into Synanon and you can come if you want or you can stay. And I just, we had only been married, geez, less than a year. And she was intent on moving into this place. And so she was a legal secretary at the time. So she could move in and be called what was termed lifestyler, which as a musician, I was automatically assumed to be a heroin addict. And so I was brought in as a dope fiend as they referred to us, but I was just a pot smoking hippie. I wasn't any IV drug user, but so we spent a year and a half in there. And I would say that the best thing that came out of that for me was learning how to verbally defend myself and also having the opportunity to play with some of the great jazz players who were in there for their addictions, Art Pepper and Frank Rehat being among them. I played with a 40 voice gospel choir that was conducted by Matt Beard, who you may remember as Stymie from Little Rascals. And we stayed there for a year and a half until we were sick of hearing you're such an asshole. And as soon as you walk out of here, you're going to be falling down a manhole cover. You're never going to make it and blah, blah, blah. So her sister and our brother-in-law came out to California. They had been living in Platsburg, well around Platsburg actually at a place called Highland Community, which is rather infamous now in Paradox, New York. So we moved from Los Angeles to Platsburg, New York, Los Angeles to Platsburg, New York, which was culture shock. They're the only thing there was the Air Force base. I was going, oh my God, why are we here? I was there for about two weeks, took a ferry over to Vermont and saw Burlington and just said, yes, this is where we should be. We should not be- And how old were you? How old were you? Oh, let's see, it was January of 72, so I was 23. Okay. So we moved to Burlington in January of 72 and we had a child in 1974. Her dad got sick in 75. We moved back to LA for a little while. I had temporarily, Jettison, the music business just because of some negative experiences that I had and also because of the Synanon Foundation experience. And so I was studying animal science at UVM and I was milking cows for UVM. And then we went out to California. We came back and I milked cows at Shelburne Farms and worked in agriculture. And then I was downtown Burlington one night and I heard this group, the Larb Duggan Quartet, which was Larb Duggan and Jack Von Baron and Hallie Mitchell and Paul Asbell. And I thought, wow, there's actually some good music around here. Then I was taken down to a club on Lower St. Paul Street. I think it was the Bluetooth, I'm not sure. I heard Kip Meeker in a band called Anvil. And I thought, well, yeah, there's some hope around here. And so anyway, my first wife when I were eventually not getting along that well and I was starting to play out a little bit. And my ex now said to me, well, Jeff, if you're going back in the music business, you're going alone. So I went alone. Because you met your beautiful wife, right? Yes, at some point down the line, that was true. That was like 85 though. So there were a few years in between 77 and 85. But and she was a veterinarian, which sort of follows up with what your father was, you know, kind of your father's career. It's right. And so it's been a long and enduring beautiful marriage. And Michelle Toulouse is one of my favorite people and she's done so much in the in the world of animals. Let's move on to today because we're coming down to the end of this half hour. Jeff, talk to me a little bit about music today and what are you doing today? What is your passion and what are you doing and where can people hear you? Are you still playing? Talk to us about that. Well, one thing I wanted to mention was my teaching at UVM and also at Johnson State prior to and simultaneously with that for a number of years. I had a wonderful group of students who are now a lot of them playing professionally in the area. Dan Ryan and Caleb Brown, Steve Hattica and Todd Javeri, Sean Priest and all sorts of folks. I'm sorry if I don't mention everyone's name, but I think that my primary influence has been teaching. I would never say that I'm responsible for anyone's talent, but I've sort of given them nudges along the way and I'm very proud of the number of students that I've had who have become professional musicians. Now I play with an old buddy of yours, Dennis Wilmot, every Saturday at Red Square. I play with Bob Standard whenever he has jobs, which are usually festive occasions. I have a couple of different versions of my band with several different musicians, Bob Butterfield, Steve Hirsch, Ben Weber, Tom Buckley, Paul Asbell, Terry Yau, Clyde Statz, Chuck Eller. I play with Tom Caswell, Bruce Bann, now Tom is a young guitar player from Britain. And so we've been playing around. We play at Jericho Cafe and Tavern. We play at Twigs up in St. Albans. We played car dealerships around the area. We play special occasions and we're about to do some more recording of stuff. So I practiced, I try to maintain my skills and I'm not really teaching. I would teach here and there, but I love the Burlington area. And as far as the music business and how things are streaming and how people are getting paid, I still make about the same money I made when I was 18 to 20 years old. So if it hadn't been for teaching, I would have had to seek an alternative, perhaps no-king cows, but that's a really lucrative profession. So it's a difficult time for young people. Now, you used to be able to start a band. You used to be able to rent an apartment for 150 bucks. You used to be able to feed yourself for $60 a week. Now, these days, if the pay hasn't changed but the conditions certainly have and everything's expanded to about 10 times the cost that it was when we were young and I really feel bad for people how can you start a band? How can you keep it together unless you're really savvy technologically? All that stuff has passed me by and I don't try to keep up with it, but kids have to promote themselves online and have to have a steady appearance. And with our society's fixation on celebrity, it's tough because if there is a certain person in the group that can be extracted and put into a different situation. Some producer gets ahold of them and gets rid of the rest of their band. That's an old story. And I'm not mentioning any names around here, but it happens. And the misogyny that goes on in the music business is tremendous and ongoing. And yeah, I feel really bad for people who are what age I was. I just lucked out and was able to go on the road and was able to play with these various people. But that stuff, I know that that can really happen with the situation these days. Well, you must be doing mentoring for some of these young people to help them. Well, I love seeing them. One time in the jazz festival, I was walking down the church street with Michelle and I heard about six different bands up and down Church Street. And I said, everyone of the drummers was a former student of mine. So I feel very enriched. So we've come to the end of our show, but I want to talk to you for a second about how people can find you and how can people know where you're playing and how do you have a website that you can share with my viewers? I don't really have a website. I'm on Facebook. And I, well, I don't know, but just... Just to follow you, people can, you know... You can follow Left Eye Jump, which is the band. Left Eye Jump, which is the band, right? Of course, were you at Bob's standards last? Because I was there. I should know whether you were there or not. I was in Arizona at the time in the show at the Jen's Opera House. I played there with Bob in previous years, but no, I wasn't at that one. Well, it was... We missed you, and you would have certainly added to it, but it was an extraordinary event. I heard it was four and a half hours long. I know, and I was like, well, this is the end, you know, I'm walking, but that will never happen. So listen, Jeff Salisbury, what a talent. I think you should write a history book, write your memoir, and with all your incredible stories because young people have to hear your stories. They're beautiful, they're profound, they're hopeful, and I think they're inspirational for our young people. So for the time that you have given me here today and my viewers, I honor you. I'm gonna show up at Red Square and hang out and become your groupie, and thanks so much for what you've done for the music scene and for Vermont. Well, thank you, and it's been reciprocal. Vermont has been very good for me, and thank you, Melinda. It has been, you're a beautiful man. And to my viewers, I wanna thank you for joining us today and I will see you soon. Bye-bye.