By Rob Garner
Cover photo by Geof Kern
If you only know 1991 Buddy Magazine Texas Tornado Josh Alan from a distance, you might know him as the guy with the “atomic” approach to acoustic guitar, and a witty stage presence. Digging a little deeper, you also find the author of Black Cracker and Tell the Truth Until They Bleed and ten others, a writer who has spent a lifetime chronicling the sung and unsung heroes of American music. And if you were around Dallas, Austin, or New York at the right times, you might have caught him in one of those rooms where the crowd walked in for a gig, then walked out knowing they’d just seen a style of acoustic guitar playing and songwriting that they just couldn’t quite categorize.
For a few years around the turn of the millennium, I rode along as part of the Josh Alan Band era of his career. Not as a writer, but as the bass player in one of the only fully electric excursions Josh ever led. We toured, recorded, and accumulated a stack of unlikely stories, some of which are touched on in the sidebar to this interview.
But in this conversation, it’s about the long arc of his life with the guitar: from teenage Josh attending Fillmore East shows and his early New York studio work, to Dallas clubs, Texas road miles, and a catalog of acoustic music that never quite fit into a set genre, but has never stopped evolving.
Josh’s new album, Acoustic Instrumentals, is officially his sixth release and self-described swan song, but in some ways it feels like the one he’s been long aiming at since he was a teenager tracking esoteric compositions on a Teac four-track in his bedroom. These are pieces he once hoped would point the way to a new kind of rock and roll–a power trio built around an acoustic guitar, but now, they stand on their own.
In the conversation that follows, Josh talks about those earliest compositions and how they resurface on the new record. He traces the guitarists who truly shaped him–Johnny Winter, Leslie West, Jim Hall–and explains why he’s more drawn to the bass players and side musicians that history tends to leave in the margins. Along the way, he reminisces about the Fillmore East, New York studio sessions, Dallas Observer days, and the long-running tension between commercial expectation and a singular artistic voice.
Rob Garner: Your new album contains composition numbers as names of songs.
Josh Alan: I started doing these compositions in the early ‘70s. They’re just home recordings. When I was 17 years old I believed that acoustic guitar compositions were going to be the future of rock and roll. I had grandiose fantasies of fronting a group like Emerson, Lake and Palmer with an acoustic guitar. A power trio with an acoustic guitar in front. But I never was able to achieve a live sound to compete with drums and bass. Little did I know that the future of rock and roll was not acoustic guitar instrumentals. It was Bruce Springsteen and punk rock–which took over. I was gravely disappointed. However, this new release, which is my sixth album, called Acoustic Instrumentals, contains a few of the compositions from 1979 and 1980.
Rob Garner: These were some of the ones you did on your four-track Teac 3340?
Josh Alan: Yes. I used to practice to the point of madness before I started recording. I landed an appointment with an A&R man at CBS Records when I was still a teenager. I came armed with my acoustic guitar instrumentals. What he basically said was, Go home and put lyrics on them. In other words, do commercial music. Unfortunately, this was not commercial music. This was very esoteric. It’s not for everybody. You know, the way some people can’t hear a bass guitar tone. Their ears can’t process a stand-up bass. I think there are people who can’t process an acoustic guitar instrumental also. I wish there was a bigger audience for it, but there’s not. I don’t play like Tommy Emmanuel. I don’t play American Songbook standards. I do something that’s closer to blues rock, except on acoustic guitar.
Rob Garner: And of course you’ve called that Atomic Acoustic, right? Does that label still apply or was that somebody who applied it to you?
Josh Alan: That was a gimmick catch-phrase that we used, you know, 30 years ago.
Rob Garner: It kind of fits. I mean, you’re punchy and forceful in a lot of your approach.
Josh Alan: I used to use an Echoplex on my acoustic guitar, which I bought in 1972 and became old and rickety. It’s in retirement, in a cabinet. I used to be able to get acoustic feedback on stage. I would do surf instrumentals and Black exploitation film soundtrack songs like “Shaft” and “Pusherman.” So we called it “atomic acoustic” guitar. You’re always plugged-in on stage. It’s not like it’s completely acoustic.
Rob Garner: So the new album is a compendium of sorts of your acoustic recordings. And there’s some newer ones. I think it speaks to what you just said–that you have something that’s different. It’s a blessing and a curse, right? It’s original. And it’s what made you stand out.
Josh Alan: Right. It’s a good way to describe my whole career. I’ve been blessed and cursed at the same time.
Rob Garner: But you know what I’m saying. It’s true of many original artists, that they’re so singularly voiced and unique, a voice that it stands on its own. I think you’re one of those artists.
Josh Alan: Well, there are a lot of extraordinary acoustic guitars out now. You know, like Billy Strings, Tommy Emmanuel and all the people around Tommy Emmanuel that he promotes. But I don’t play that way. I don’t play “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I don’t do standard American Songbook. I’m playing an acoustic guitar like it’s an electric guitar, except it doesn’t sound like an electric guitar. I feature the wood sound of it. I think that’s what’s different from other acoustic guitarists. You know, like when I do “Jeff’s Boogie,” (Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds) which we used to play in our band (Josh Alan Band), that’s a purely electric guitar song. But I’m doing it on acoustic.
Rob Garner: Yes. I was just listening to a live recording of “Jeff’s Boogie” by Beck/Bogert/Appice. It’s a whole other tangent.
Josh Alan: We were shocked that Jeff Beck died so suddenly two years ago.
Rob Garner: Yes.
Josh Alan: Truly shocking. He was at the top of his game at 78. But he was never a healthy fellow. He was always sickly. I interviewed him once in 1976, right after Wired came out, and he had just gotten over pleurisy. So he always had lung issues and was never the robust picture of health.
But still, to lose him that fast was shocking. And then Rick Derringer died at 77, who was very influential to me. But all through my childhood, the Beatles were the biggest thing in my life.
Rob Garner: So for the folks that are reading this who are new to you as an artist, can you talk about your other influences in guitar?
Josh Alan: People might be surprised at who my favorite guitarists are. Tied at number one were the early Johnny Winter and early Leslie West. Johnny Winter’s records from 1969 to 1972. Only those years, everything else was mediocre-to-terrible. Like he fell off a cliff. I thought the same with Leslie West. The first three Mountain albums were brilliant, better than Cream. Seeing Mountain at the Fillmore East, with Felix Pappalardi, comprise the fondest memories of my teenage years. Seeing Johnny Winter with Rick Derringer.
Rob Garner: I can only imagine. Jack Bruce once said that Leslie West had the greatest guitar tone he’d ever heard anywhere, hands down. Knowing the people he played with, that’s a huge endorsement. And you got to hear that, right?
Josh Alan: He had, and I did.
Rob Garner: Can you describe what that was like in some way?
Josh Alan: I was overwhelmed, never experienced anything like it. My very first time going to the Fillmore East in New York City, I was 14 years old in May 1970. Mountain headlined. They were frightening. West wielded his Les Paul Jr. like harnessing an electric eel, bouncing off his great belly. That was my first concert hearing what was then still regarded as underground music. The wall of sound that Mountain created was sublimely EQ’d–loud as a motherfucker, but pristine, clear, ear candy. I have a chapter on it in my upcoming novel, All Roads Lead To Great Neck. I saw all the bands I loved–my friends and I thought we were their only fans, but suddenly there’d be 2,000 other people at the show. I spent my allowance on the Fillmore every month. My father [Bruce Jay Friedman] wrote a hit off-Broadway play in 1970, Steambath. It was at the Truck and Warehouse theater, a few blocks from the Fillmore East. Anthony Perkins directed and starred; Hector Elizondo played the Puerto Rican steambath attendant who turns out to be God. The routine was, I’d bring my friends to see the first act, which contained a nude shower scene with a gorgeous blonde actress. Nudity was a big deal then. Especially to 14-year-old boys. Then we’d go to the early show at the Fillmore East. Sometimes we’d have dinner at the Paradox, which was a hippie vegetarian restaurant in the East Village. There were kiosks that sold rolling papers, hash pipes and Screw Magazine and Zap Comics and a mag called Horseshit I would buy. The East Village was hippie heaven back then, highlighted by the Fillmore East. I was crushed when the Fillmore closed in 1971. The bands wanted more money, and the onset of arena rock ensued. But I’d seen Santana, Humble Pie, Cactus, Ten Years After, Jethro Tull, Chicago, Blodwyn Pig, Buddy Miles, B.B. King, Edgar Winter, Elton John, Savoy Brown, Bloodrock, Canned Heat, Grand Funk Railroad, Hot Tuna. Albert King, John Lee Hooker and T. Rex were opening acts.
Rob Garner: Did you ever get to see the Allman Brothers?
Josh Alan: I saw them three times at the Fillmore East. With Skydog Duane Allman. They opened for Johnny Winter, and I’m part of the crowd noise on the Allman Brothers Live at the Fillmore East. A number of shows that I saw at the Fillmore were taped for live albums. I missed the Hendrix Band of Gypsys night, turned down a ticket that my friend offered me. I said I’ll see Hendrix next time. Then he died. I also missed Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis, when he played the Fillmore.
Rob Garner: You did know Leslie West.
Josh Alan: I met him a few times. He was a nasty son of a bitch. Howard Stern says he was a great guy, but of course he was only a great guy to Howard Stern. He was exceedingly rude when I did an interview with him for High Times, where I was Managing Editor in 1982. But Corky Laing was terrific. Leslie said, “you should be honored to be talking to me.”
My favorite jazz guitarist was Jim Hall, considered one of the greats. I took lessons with him when I was 16. They cost $20 for the hour in 1972, which was a lot back then. You had to hear Jim Hall live to appreciate him. It never translated to records well. The records just do not convey the subtle power that he had. He conked you over the head with his subtlety.
I thought the guitar solos in Steely Dan were extraordinary. They were done by Larry Carlton, Rick Derringer, Denny Diaz, Skunk Baxter, Hugh McCracken. When I was still a teenager, it was a dream of mine to get hired to do a Steely Dan solo. But I don’t think I could have pulled it off because those guys just knocked them out. I would have had to sit down and work on it note by note for a long time.
I worked at Regent Sound Studios in New York City when I was 19, right out of high school. I was mic setup man. And every morning at 9 AM, the local 802 American Federation of Musicians, union guys, would walk in, dozens of them in an orchestra to record a movie or TV soundtrack in Studio A. I’d get there at 7 in the morning and set up all the mics and the ashtrays. They all smoked. The studio musicians back then, when they weren’t playing, they just talked about money. They didn’t talk about music or art. They just talked about how much money they were making, whether they were getting overtime. But it was a fantastic entry into the professional music world.
Rob Garner: Who were some of the guitarists that you remember coming in and out of the studio?
Josh Alan: Well, David Spinozza, Hugh McCracken, Cornell Dupree. These are champion New York studio players. Dr. John would come in for piano sessions. Atlantic Records producer Joel Dorn had his offices at Regent Sound, and he was always producing three albums at once.
Rob Garner: Many of those recordings are still heard by millions. They’ve cemented themselves. Yet they didn’t write their names down on the production sheets.
Josh Alan: They were anonymous, literally. Both McCracken and Spinozza played on McCartney’s album Ram, uncredited. But they helped make it into McCartney’s greatest solo album. I dreamed of being a studio guitarist, instead of the lowly mic setup man. But I couldn’t read music well. I played on a few TV commercials.
I dreamed of being able to take taxi cabs from gig to gig the way they did, like two or three sessions in a day. They got $40 union scale back then, but the musicians I mentioned got double scale. Forty bucks was a lot in 1974. King Curtis was the first-call studio sax in the 1950s and ‘60s.
Rob Garner: Who also opened for the Beatles.
Josh Alan: He played on a thousand hit records, you know, all the Leiber and Stoller records, the Coasters, the Drifters and everything. It’s all King Curtis, from Fort Worth. He would come to sessions in a limousine, and he’d have his saxophone in another limousine behind his limo, delivered to the session by itself.
Rob Garner: Bit of a showman, too.
Josh Alan: Now, King Curtis was before my time at Regent, actually. He was murdered on his doorstep in Harlem in 1971. He once had Jimi Hendrix and Cornell Dupree in his band at the same time.
Rob Garner: And Chuck Rainey was also in that band.
Josh Alan: Have you been in touch with Chuck Rainey recently?
Rob Garner: Not recently. You know, I had many conversations with him in the past. He would talk about those days, and he said Jimi would just walk into the gig with his guitar. He didn’t have a case. So you just show up with the guitar, plug it in and start going. He would tell great stories of their time with the Beatles as well. You know, they’re on the plane going to the next gig, and he’s hanging out, playing cards with Ringo and John.
Josh Alan: I did pieces on Chuck Rainey and Cornell Dupree in the Dallas Observer, which ran in my book, Tell the Truth Until They Bleed.
Rob Garner: That was actually my first introduction to your writing because obviously, me being a bass player and having bought every single issue of Bass Player up to that point, I was fascinated with your articles because they were about the human being behind the instrument. You were covering a lot of bass players.
Josh Alan: I was more interested in the unsung hero. The bass player behind the star guitar player. I did a feature on Tommy Shannon, who was both Johnny Winter’s bass player and then Stevie Ray Vaughan’s, from obscurity to stardom with both of them. Lightning struck twice with Shannon.
Rob Garner: And you did Keith Ferguson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds.
Josh Alan: When Keith Ferguson died in 1997, the Austin Chronicle reprinted my interview as the cover story. It’s still online. But I betrayed Keith Ferguson in the piece. I strongly hinted that he was a junkie and that freaked him out. He was very upset with the piece; it depicted him waiting around with a bunch of old Mexicans waiting for the phone to ring. And they’re all just darting out to the car to go cop, you know, to get their daily dose. So it kind of betrayed him.
Rob Garner: You also did a profile on Jack Bruce. What other pieces were in Tell the Truth Until They Bleed?
Josh Alan: There’s a 90-page chapter on Jerry Leiber of Leiber and Stoller. Which tells the Leiber and Stoller story more than any other source. They invented rock and roll. I stayed with Jerry in Venice Beach for a few weeks. We were going to do a book called Kiss My Big Black Ass. He died before we could finish the book. So I used a lot of the material in Tell the Truth Until They Bleed. And I had Mose Allison and Dr. John in there.
More importantly, I’ve got a new book coming out.
Rob Garner: What’s your new book?
Josh Alan: It’s called All Roads Lead to Great Neck. I’ve worked on it for the past 15 years since Black Cracker came out. It’s about the Fillmore East days. It’s a novel about a legendary, mythical kid who we grew up with, who died young as a heroin addict. When he trips, this doomed adolescent hippie sees visions of a 19th century Jewish pimp. I mythologized his entire teenage years. It takes place in Great Neck, Long island, where I grew up. It’s coming out in December from Wyatt Doyle Books.
Rob Garner: Delving back to the interview side of things and your work as a writer. You didn’t talk about gear and the musical things as much. Music journalism now seems to be missing the life aspect of the artist.
Josh Alan: Well, the bass players were characters and more interesting than the guitarists. They got to watch what was going on from the observer’s perspective. Obviously the guitar magazines don’t do interviews about the lives of who they interview. They just do the guitar. But not all musicians are characters. The bass players I interviewed could be characters in a novel.
Rob Garner: With your writing background and your family’s literary background, you have a different view from the way a lot of music writers approach their interview subjects. The writer has to be kind of teed-up to ask some hard questions. Do you think that writers are afraid of offending an artist to get a story?
Josh Alan: Maybe.
Rob Garner: Why do you think that is, and why were you not?
Josh Alan: Well, in the example of Keith Ferguson, I had the advantage of being a musician. Every time I played in Austin– which was once a month back in the late 80s, early 90s–I would play on a Friday or Saturday. Then the next day I would go to Keith Ferguson’s porch and hang out. I did this 25 times, where I’d mingle with all the old hippies and Mexican junkies of Austin. A hangout for wounded animals, reptiles and old pachuchos. And Keith Ferguson held court. I was able to glean good material. Keith was an eloquent and soulful sage. [You can hear it here: https://blackcracker.fm/episodes/keith-ferguson-remembers-part-1]
In the guitar magazines, they only ask questions about guitar. Would anyone be interested in Larry Carlton’s personal life? Or for that matter, Jeff Beck’s personal life. He wasn’t much of a character. I once wanted to do a piece on Jeff Beck for The New Yorker. A profile on his career. They wouldn’t go for it. They actually did a large profile in the mid-’70s on Jim Hall in The New Yorker. I took that as a cue to proposition them about doing Jeff Beck. But I’m kind of glad I never did it because Jeff Beck wouldn’t have necessarily been a great person to write about. Or maybe he would – he was all about cars and guitars. I mean, does anyone know whether he was married or whether he had children? Nobody knows. Clapton they know about.
I had a good run at the Dallas Observer. They let me do about 20 pieces when Robert Wilonsky was music editor. I always needed a champion at a publication who would let me go to town. I don’t have that right now. I miss it. But I’m 69, retirement age, you know. The Acoustic Instrumentals album will probably be my swan song. That album is my life’s work. There are 10 instrumentals from my previous albums and four new ones. The last one I recorded two years ago.
Rob Garner: Yeah, that’s about how many I didn’t recall ever seeing. Cat’s Squirrel is one of them.
Josh Alan: Cat’s Squirrel was from my last album, Sixty, Goddammit.
Rob Garner: And Composition 8.
Josh Alan: Composition 8 is from 1980.
Rob Garner: And Composition 13 and 14.
Josh Alan: Those are new.
Rob Garner: Do you want to talk about your gear? What are you using?
Josh Alan: I use two guitars for my acoustic act. My Guild D-40 was my 12th birthday present in 1968. I used that for all my live gigs. When I got to Texas in 1987, I discovered that my Guild sounded far better on stage than my expensive Martin HD-28. I had Barcus Berry Insider pickups installed in both guitars. The Martin was my moving-to-Texas present to myself. I thought the new Martin was going to be my stage guitar. But it sounded awful on stage. And it sounded great recorded. So it’s my studio guitar for the albums. With the Guild on stage, I used the Countryman direct box. I got that from Leo Kottke because he used one. For many years I also used an Echoplex. I did a James Gang piece called “Ashton Park” from their James Gang Rides Again album, which was an Echoplex song that Joe Walsh did. I never recorded it. I would do surf instrumentals like “Pipeline” and “Wipe Out” using the Echoplex.
I used John Pearse Phosphor Bronze light gauge strings on my Martin. And GHS Vintage Bronze Bluegrass strings on the Guild D-40 playing live.
Rob Garner: They’re bouncing. It’s a fresh metal sound, like the sound of fresh strings.
Josh Alan: Especially the early compositions that I recorded in 1979 and 1980. Those are extra bright. But that was some unit that I was mixing through, kind of brightened the sound. On my last album, Sixty, Goddammit, in 2020, I was able to record at home for the first time, not go into a recording studio. I used an Earthworks mic crossed with a Neumann km84 on the guitar, with api 3124 pre-amps. And then got a magic sound going into Logic Pro. Logic Pro is the program that I use, instead of Pro Tools. And then after every song that was recorded here, I would drive down to Austin to mix with engineer David Rosenblad. He engineered four of my six albums.
Rob Garner: I don’t know if you could call it “embedded journalism,” but having played and toured with you, I have a different level of insight into this interview, compared to others I do.
Josh Alan: We had some adventures. When we went to New York and attended Saturday Night Live. Oh my gosh, backstage we just went hog wild.
Rob Garner: We did. Hog wild. That was one of a series of bizarre Saturday Night Live coincidences I had all over the city that week of the tour.
Josh Alan: It was right after 9-11. We saw smoke. We went to a radio interview at 2AM in the morning on WBAI. WBAI was located across the street from the 9-11 site, which was still smoking after the collapse. It was like science fiction.
Rob Garner: It was. You and I and Derek Rougeot (drummer) and Bill Eden (sax). Do you remember the courier’s bicycles that were still chained to lamp posts? The fatigue of the firefighters going in and out was beyond palpable. I’ll never forget this firefighter. He was walking slowly and his shoulders were sunken and his helmet was covered in debris and he was spent. Who knows if he’s even here now.
Josh Alan: Those guys are getting cancer.
Rob Garner: Yeah, mesothelioma, I think.
Josh Alan: Heroes. . . We played the Village Underground. We still had Bill Eden in the band.
Rob Garner: Such a great player. I remember I had a series of SNL coincidences that week. “Synchronicity,” I think it’s called. I went over to Jimmy Coppolo’s guitar shop in Hell’s Kitchen. He was setting up the basses and guitars for No Doubt, who was performing on SNL that week and they’d sent their gear to him. We’re over in the Village at one of the music stores and G.E. Smith is hanging out. And then we meet Ratso Sloman. I think me, you and Aaron (Josh’s nephew) went over and met Ratso at this Italian restaurant in the East Village. And after meeting Ratso I get back to the hotel and I turn on Comedy Central SNL reruns and there’s an old bit from the early 80s and Ratso’s featured on it. You know, I’m like, what the hell’s going on here? And then of course, we went to the show that week, and met your friend, SNL film director Jim Signorelli.
Josh Alan: He was Lorne Michael’s right hand man.
Rob Garner: And he filmed that week’s SNL bit in our hotel. They did a Beatles thing, you know, running through the hotel.
Josh Alan: And Aaron was with us. It was the second time I took Aaron up to Saturday Night Live. And he stood watching with Mayor Giuliani backstage.
Rob Garner: It was just a mind blowing trip. I remember you and I were standing outside because we had a couple of passes, and Derek and Aaron were running around backstage. Tina Fey walks right by, grins, and says ‘Hi’ to me. Then you came out. We’re standing there outside the door on the eighth floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Door opens and Lorne Michaels walks out. And he’s got two blue-jacketed, gold-buttoned NBC executives on either side of him. And I’ll never forget this. We’re standing like this far away, and he opens the door, like he’s looking out over a huge mountain range. And you said from about three feet away, “Hey, Lorne, it’s me, Josh,” and he goes, “Josh! How are you?” His face lit up. “Come on in!”
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