The legendary guitarist Tim Pierce talks in detail about life as a session musician for hire and his time with the Rick Springfield band in the 80s and some of the quirks and issues surrounding the music industry then and now. Definitely an interesting guy to chat to, I think that will come through in the intevriew and some of what he has to say about the industry is definitely enlightening.




G'Day Tim, great to finally have this opportunity to talk to you after following your career for many years. How are you?
Good! I work a lot as a recording musician and I have a beautiful home studio that I work in and a lot of nice people… so life's pretty good.

I can imagine so. You're set up in your own studio, obviously a smart thing to do these days.
Well yeah, it has become… I didn't mean for it to happen but it just turned out to be a great thing for me. A good adaptation to the new music business.

The bands I talk to that are doing the best these days are the ones that invested their money in the '80s into their own gear.
Right.

The ones that aren't are the ones that can't afford to hire a decent studio.
That makes sense, yeah.

I was reading something last weekend just making sure I had a handle on everything you were doing currently - because I've been a fan for a long, long time but you were described as a guitar deity, how do you like that?
Well I suppose I've hung around long enough that certain people might exaggerate what I do. I just kind of work behind the scenes here, do a lot of work on a lot of songs for people and a lot of different records. And then a whole lot of stuff with people that you really might never hear of and so, it's not an accurate thing.
I mean it's just…I do make a good living and I do work with a lot of great people and that is pretty rare. Very few people get to do this particular job that I get to do, which is record guitar every day for people.

Yeah! You are a session musician only now obviously.
At this point.

That's not the way it started out, is it?
Well when I moved here, I just wanted to get involved in anything I possibly could and I hooked up with Rick Springfield and then I did some work with Bon Jovi and some work with John Waite in the early '80s. And after all that died down, I just kind of planted my feet and started doing the recording thing. And pretty much felt like that was my calling.

You are in huge demand. Who was the first person that sort of gave you a call?
A guy named Keith Olsen actually gave me a big break in the early '80s, he was one of the bigger producers in the '80s: Benatar and Foreigner and Fleetwood Mac.

Yeah, I've interviewed Kieth. He's wonderful.
[See my interview with Keith Olsen – here]
Of course! Yeah, and he helped me a lot in the very beginning. And then Patrick Leonard: Madonna's producer / co-writer. He helped me about a decade after that. There's just been different people along the way. There are a few particular recording engineers.

Your body of work is, I'm being honest here, is amazing.
Well, thank you.

Few other artists could have a list of albums they contributed to like yourself, but do you mind being the man behind the scenes?
I never really have minded it. There was a time in the '90s when I kind of got irritated a little bit and I did my own solo record and I kind of got that out of my system. I guess one of the reasons that I adapt so well to it is because I really do think for me, it's the ultimate experience.

Yep.
Touring, if I was in a band that was doing well on the road, I would enjoy touring probably. But that never happens for me because I'm very careful about staying here and being available for all the people that use me on a regular basis and not jeopardizing that. At this point I think it's pretty much a done deal.
But no, I don't…to me the ultimate experience…like today I did something for Jason Scheff from Chicago for a solo record he's doing. Just made me feel incredible: beautiful guitar sound on a beautiful song to me it's the ultimate.

What a great singer he is.
He is great, yeah.

Did you play on Chicago XXX at all?
No I didn't. They did that in Nashville. I'm very aware of how it went down because I know them really well. They did it in Nashville. That's the brand new one, right?

Yeah, good record.
It is good.

Very good record. I first heard of you, and probably the majority of my readers did with your work with Rick Springfield. I'm a longtime fan of Rick's. I've been in contact with him over the years and stuff, did a couple of interviews. But I'm from a different perspective here. Keith Olsen brought you in, right?
[See my interview with Rick Springfield – here]
Yeah, he introduced me to Rick, and then I kind of knew exactly what to sound like, when I auditioned because I had met him and worked with him on the record a few weeks earlier. He put together a new band. It was about 6 months after he became a star off of Jessie's Girl. I knew exactly kind of how to approach the audition which was to have a pair of 100 watt Marshals turned up very loud and play. His dream on stage is The Who basically. If you can provide him with Pete Townsend or something, you know, then you've done it.

He gets painted as a pop artist, probably by the mainstream media but he can seriously rock can't he?
He is, yeah, live especially. He just wants it to be a big rock experience.

Did you feel like you were turned down on the records a little bit?
Well, record making never really supplies you the kind of glory that you imagine you're going to have when you're a teenager or whatever. If you're making your own records, that's one thing, but when you're working with a singer and a songwriter, the day you do the actual session, your guitars are loud and glorious and it never, ever ends up quite… there's just not enough space for you to be loud and glorious at the end.
So, in his case, Living in Oz, I got to be really loud. Usually in his case, I was loud enough. It was just in the later records when he kind of took a different direction. Guitar wasn't the priority.

I remember…
Yeah. Then it became a little… it bruised my ego a little bit but that was just being young and kind of…

Let me come to that, because his material is years ahead of it's time. The records still sonically sound amazing today even though each one of them sounds totally different from the other. But Living in Oz was…, you know, he was a teen idol at the time. Living in Oz was not a teen idol record was it?
Not at all.

That was amazing that a label would sort of…, they must have, you know, sweated a little bit when they heard that record.
Well I think they probably felt like they had gotten… this is going to sound really, really ruthless, but I know the record business. They probably felt like they had gotten enough out of him at that point (laughing). He was going to go platinum anyway and he wanted to do his own thing, and it was a different time. You could actually, kind of; you could take those kind of risks a little more in the record business at that time.

Wow, that's interesting insight. It's definitely changed hasn't it?
Yeah.

So Living in Oz is an amazing record. What are your recollections of making and touring on that record?
Well it was probably the first time I actually got to… that I knew I had gotten to do what I was capable of doing as a soloist and that it was going to be without compromise. Something I was going to be very proud of. The tours were all kind of…, kind of beside the point in a way. I mean once we did the first couple of tours, it was kind of the same drill every time. That part of it, even then, was not what I was that interested in.

OK. Fair enough. He had a pretty good band though didn't he? You and Mike Beard was it?
Yeah, yeah.

You stayed together. I mean that… Rick's had different band members over the years, but those 2 or 3 tours in the early '80s it was that core band with you and Mike.
Yeah, he had that group of people, and then when he stopped for a while, he stopped. And then another group of people and now he's got a wonderful guy. I still see Rick all the time. The guys in his band are all buddies of mine. They're the greatest group of people. He's always kind of done that. He's always created kind of a family.

I was going to… actually family was the word in the back of my mine I was going to use. You're right.
Yeah. Yeah.

Must be cool for you.
It's great. When he plays locally I usually get up and sit in for a song or two and its fun. The drummer, Roger has tried to get me, a couple of years he tried to get me to join. I explained to him I wouldn't. Rick would have to pay me so much just for a travel day that I'd come off like a … that's one of the things… I don't even want to get into that.

No, basically it's a situation I think a few other guys are in that they can't afford you anymore.
Yeah.

I'm a big fan of Dan Huff from Giant – same deal.
He's too busy with what he's got going. A producer, songwriter. When that happens, for me as being a player, you can't really jeopardize that.

No, definitely not. I mean the fans, 5,000-10,000 fans that would sell their grandmothers for a Giant record, but you'd have to pay $500 a piece to be able to afford him to make it. You know, the session.
Right, exactly.

To jump to the Tao record, it was something out of the box, wasn't it? Do you have any memories of Rick's vision for that? It was a pretty amazing record as far as the time.
He was listening to a lot of British people, particularly Peter Gabriel and he just wanted to… He kind of wanted to do a band that's a guitar-based sound, have it be more programmed. That was hard for me because I didn't get as much room to play. But it was an important thing for him. And the tour that followed it was really strong. I understand why he did it. He needed change.

Absolutely! Which sort of led straight directly to the Sahara Snow record a few years later.
Yeah, exactly.

That was kind of interesting. Why didn't that get released at the time?
Well the problem was, that the climate here on the West Coast. It was the kind of thing where if we played that record for people and didn't say who it was, they were very interested in it but the minute they found out it was Rick Springfield they were not. Because he, like many pop stars, there is always a sort of backlash that follows success. That's gone now. Now he's actually quite hip again. At that point, there was actually a backlash and so they weren't interested in signing a Rick Springfield… something he was involved with.

Was that shopped as a Rick Springfield album at the time, Sahara Snow?
Not at all. In fact we tried to conceal the fact. But the minute they found out he was in it, they were… the door shut.

Right, I was just wondering whether the Sahara Snow name sort of doubled the original name for the project.
You know, I don't know. I can't remember who came up with that. We all wrote the songs together and that's why it was a band. I mean it was a three way writing collaboration. That's why it got called a band.

Yeah, and Bob Marlette's a talented individual himself isn't he?
Very. Very, very.

You've worked with him a bit haven't you? What's Bob like to work with?
He's very enthusiastic. He has a photographic memory for music so when he's writing or producing he can draw from everything he's heard on the radio. It's in his head and he can just kind of borrow and draw influences from his photographic memory. And he's also very, very positive. From the beginning of the day to the end of the day and that's one of the reason's he's so good at producing.

You spoke of your solo album there. Why wasn't there ever a second one Tim? Because that was a great record.
I spent a lot of my spare time over a two year period doing that record and I just never had the time again.

Yeah, Ok.
But one of the reasons that I have kind of excelled at this thing I do is because I sacrifice everything for it. And a couple of things I've sacrificed is any kind of a solo career and I kind of gave up song writing. Now for me it's about being really, really on every day when I show up and play for people and actually find ever mushrooming massive amount of gear and keeping it going. So it was just a choice based on time basically.

Yeah, I understand that.
If I had time, and I didn't have the obligation to win every day as a recording musician I would do it again.

Obviously it's a positive thing that you haven't got any time.
Well not really, I mean, but it is a fact of life. I'm sure if you are married, you understand what I'm saying.

Yes (laughs).
My wife and my session career and getting exercise, that's it, you know, so.

Absolutely!
Might happen again though. Never know.

Yeah, well you don't rule it out. I'm sure people would love to hear that.
You've worked with some pretty amazing names but I like the fact that you actually mention that you'd worked with some names that you'll probably never hear of. Some of those actually I cover on the side like Taylor Mesple and Tim Karr back in the '80s and things like that. Why devote some time to people like that?
I don't really distinguish quality wise between one person and another. So if you have a song demoed and you come over my house and you pay me to play guitar, you basically get the same experience and I feel the same experience for you as if I was in the studio with Rod Stewart. Of course if I'm in the studio with someone like that, I kind of have to pinch myself when I hear them sing and that is a little different. But really, quality wise, and experience wise, it's all the same to me. So I think I understand what you meant when you said that.

I meant that in the most positive, possible light.
Yeah, to me everybody's equal. I think that's probably why I'm not burned out on this. It's because I really just try to create a certain kind of quality and if it's somebody who's paying for their own record that you've never heard of or some up and coming person or somebody who is really famous, it's all the same, kind of the same experience.

Yeah, that's actually that's the answer I kind of hoped and expected for.
And on the purely practical side, if I had to depend on really, really high profile projects, I wouldn't be able to pay my bills. Nobody, especially in the record business the way it is now. It's just that part of the business is not as reliable. You know, because you are… really more… they're more fickle and they're more apt to choose one of five or six other players and all the above. It's not as safe, as comfortable as the middle. The very top of the music business is quite competitive and quite flavor of the month, you know, whatever.

I know you haven't got a crystal ball but do you have any idea where the industry is going? It's certainly in a period of, you know, uncertainty.
Well the record business as we all know collapsed about four years ago and lost about sixty to seventy percent of it's infrastructure. So you know, buildings that had 1000 people working all the sudden had 300 people. And all the way down the line. Now there's still more consolidation. They're finding new ways to earn money and to sell records and things will… I think things have bottomed out. I think things will get better and true artistry will always be present along with the pro-wrestling type of phony, kind of music too.

Yes (laughs).
Oddly enough, I think that independent music companies will be justifiable as the record companies that we've known all our lives. That's the great thing. And I think that bands who sell their own records, it's a much more level playing field in some ways. In other ways, because there is so much less money being spent, it has weeded out a lot of the people who are in it for the wrong reasons. So people who are in music these days are in it because they really love music. Or, they're the other side of the record business is where they just get an actor. Apparently Disney was this way in the '50s where you sold records by recording people who were already famous.

Right.
And there's going to be a lot of that because that's really the only way they can make money is by taking Paris Hilton who is already famous and already in the magazines to make a record for them. So that's the other side. But I don't think… I'm optimistic about it and I think what happens is, you have to work harder to find the good and the music that you love in the glut of, the huge glut of …

Crap! (laughs) Yeah I understand. Do you get frustrated?
Driving along listening to the radio wondering how some of these people are actually on the radio?
No, because I'm in the music business, there's no… It's as bad as you think it is and far worse. So there's no… I don't have any illusions about. I mean unfortunately your phone call is so expensive that I can't get into some of my historical and cultural, sociological opinions about pop music.

I'd love to hear them.
I'm 47, I don't know how old you are.

35, Tim.
I don't know that pop music was meant to last this long. I don't know that it was meant to be good in 2006. I don't know how many times you can redo something that was absolutely amazing in 1969.

Yes, interesting.
So you have to be a little bit forgiving about the actual domain. It's an amazing thing but who says it's supposed to be good in 2006? That being said, what you have to do, I believe, is you have to work hard to listen to a hundred things to find one thing that you love. And maybe it was easier 30 years ago.

Yeah, Ok. There is a lot of stuff out there isn't there?
Exactly, but, you know, it's show business. Particularly on the R&B side, things are not… the quality is gone in a lot of areas. It's all just kind of a cheap trick.

Do you have a preference for a style of music? Obviously you're hired to play on pop, rock, hard rock, R&B, country.
Oddly enough I don't. I really love electronica. I really love well-crafted pop. I really love, really honest hard rock. I mean I was wild about A Perfect Circle's two records.

Ah yeah, okay.
Wild about Zero 7 and Frou Frou and Imogen Heap and Sigur Ros. All of the kind of, the ambient, electronic bands, you know. I love Jet's record. I loved a few of the Kelly Clarkson singles. I loved the first Avril Lavigne stuff. Right now, Death Cab For Cutie is pretty amazing, Snow Patrol.

Yes, my wife loves Snow Patrol.
Yeah, I love Coldplay. So it's, you know, it's pretty diverse. And then as I get older I really, really am rediscovering a lot of the beautiful '60s music. Things that I loved growing up. It's pretty all over the place.

Fantastic! You… just jumping off the subject a little… you've worked with some amazing people like I've said but also some very headstrong people like Rick Springfield obviously, has a strong artistic identity and knows what he wants. John Waite is just as… I'm not sure if I'm picking the right word, but is demanding to work for.
Sure, yeah.

How did you go with John?
Well John is, you know, let's see, I have to be diplomatic. He's his own man. I mean he's not the most polite guy and when I worked with him I was absolutely sure that I couldn't trust him. So that's when I actually joined Rick's band. It was a cross roads where I could have stayed on with John or joined Rick's band. Just because I know… Ricky Phillips was my roommate.

Was he? Ricky and I are great friends.
Yeah, there you go.
I knew all about the politics in those bands and you know, John… when you run into John, at the music store or a restaurant or something, he's wonderful but any kind of business partnership, it's just not going to go your way. You're not going to get… it's pretty much going to be all about him...

Did you know that Ignition has just been reissued, re-mastered and reissued?
Oh that's fantastic!

Amazing record. Twenty four years old and just sounds electric still today.
Yeah it was a great record.

I work with the label, I'll try and get you a copy.
I'd love that. That'd be awesome.

I'll get you details at the end of the chat. Good people in the UK. Ah, it's an amazing record. Any thoughts on Ignition?
You know, once again, just kind of, I was really young and I knew that I was really getting to show off and work with some amazing people. My first trip to New York and working with Neil Geraldo. Kind of a dream come true, you know.

Yeah, and you later worked with John a bit further on Temple Bar as well?
I don't think so.
[Tim is credited on the album…]

Okay, that's fine. Back to Ignition - amazing record and hard to believe it's 24 years old.
I mean, I can say more about it but that kind of experience has become so common place for me. You know, it's just at the time it was awesome to be that young and working with… I met Jon Bon Jovi when I was working with John Waite and that was when I did some work with Jon that ended up on his first record. So that was all in New York and it all happened kind of at the same time, which was pretty amazing.

Okay. The first Bon Jovi record you mean?
Yeah.

Yeah, now probably a lot of people aren't or are… or probably are not aware of that.
Yeah, his first single was a song called 'Runaway' and I did all the guitars on that. That ended up on his first record and it was a batch of kind of demos we had done trying to get him a record deal.

Yeah, sure enough! Do you hear from or seen Jon in the last few years at all?
I saw him about a decade later. He had me play on a Christmas record that I actually, still hear on the radio at Christmas. He was very efficient with his time.

You sound diplomatic again. I've heard Jon's a very good businessman.
Well yeah, I mean, he was… when I met him he was 19 years old and he had razor, laser ambition.
I mean at age 19 he had a kind of focused ambition that was just completely laser, razor sharp.

Yes.
And I don't think that ever really changed. It's just something…it's just who he is.

Yeah, interesting. I heard something similar said about Jon today of all times! (laughs) But more of his recent… what he wants to do next sort of thing. So you know, I don't think that's died off any.
Yeah, It's probably just who he is at this point. That means he doesn't really take any extra time because he's moving forward. But that's something you encounter with, you know, people who are really, really successful. You can't really blame them for it, at a certain point that's who they are. That's what they want.

Very wise words. Talking of famous people, I wanted to just sort of run a few names past you to get a sense or two of your experiences with them because you really have worked with some amazing people. Just jumping into something… you have played a number of sessions that you haven't been credited for, which some people are aware of, and again, some aren't, but ghost… the use of ghost players in the industry.
Right.

Obviously that happens a lot. What are your thoughts on that? I mean to explain it to the people that might be reading this.
Well unfortunately that has gotten… it's almost a moot point at this point in time because what happens now is that the actual people that make the music are much more concealed than they were 5 or 10 years ago. Because the image is so important and the marketing is so important that if you work with them for a pop star, the actual credits are so small usually you can't even read them or they're not even listed at all.

Yeah.
So that's almost kind of par of the course at this point. The industry has become about using a bunch of very old, experienced people to make the music and then having some teenage girl and some 20 year-old musicians go out and pretend that they did it. And you know, you can't be … you know I'm not bitter about that at all, its part of how I make my living. I mean the reason Ashlee Simpson had a great record is John Shanks wrote all the songs and played all the guitars and then she goes out to promote the record with her band and most of the public thinks it's her. Same with Avril Lavigne.

Yeah.
There's some Disney stars I work with, Aly and AJ and I do all those guitars on Aly and AJ's. And another Disney guy named Jesse McCartney. And they are like pre-teen kind of stars for Disney and Hollywood records.
All of that music is done by people, you know, people behind the scenes and the actual image that's presented is of them and whatever little kids they carry around pretending to be their band. So it's far worse than just ghosting. The era of the studio musician getting credit in pop music is kind of gone for the moment. Now once again, if you have your own band, it's different. But if you're backing up an artist or a singer or a songwriter, you're hidden.

Yeah, one of my best friends in this business is Steve Lukather. He knows all that. He's in a similar position as yourself.
Yeah, it doesn't bother me at this point because I'm, you know, my life is about the people I work with and the quality of what I do and the life I lead. So a lot of that external stuff …

Yeah, can you sort of talk about any of the more famous ghosting or the sessions you played on?
I don't know that there really are any. I mean, it's not… the credit is always there somewhere. You know it really is. It's just in the very, very fine print usually.

I was told that you provided most of the guitars for the Goo Goo Dolls.
Oh yeah, that's true but there is… I am credited, yeah. But that's a perfect, sort of a perfect example of… and it's not most of the guitars. What it is, is Johnny plays all of the acoustics and quite a few electrics and then I come in to try to fill in what's missing.

Okay.
And on the record that's just got released, I shared that job with two other guitar players.

Right.
And our names are always listed but because of the way music is marketed these days, nobody really pays attention to that. I'll tell you that probably… I do have a good story about that. Because I played on Michael Jackson's 'Black or White'.

Okay.
And they wanted to promote Slash as the guitar player on that song. So what they did is, they had him do an intro to the song that appears before the song on the record and it is in the video before the song actually starts so they could actually tie his name to the song.
So that's probably the best story I have, and a good one, where, because Eddie Van Halen had been the rock star guitar player on the previous record, they needed a new rock star guitar player and that was Slash because he was the biggest name around at that time. And he was not on the song, so they actually created a little intro piece of music that allowed them to market him as the kind of guitar player on the song.

(laughing) You got to love it!
And even that didn't really bother me at the time because I've always been a kind of working musician.

Yeah, I understand.
I mean, if you're in a band. It's like winning the lottery. You get together with a bunch of guys and you do this great music and you become millionaires. It's like winning the lottery, you know. You can't really make that happen. It just happens. So you know…

Excellent! You've got such a great attitude.
Well I'm kind of an adult and I'm very successful at what I do and I get to buy a lot of guitars and amps, and it's really nothing. It's very, very, you know, I'm challenged and rewarded and appreciate it beyond what most people get.

Yeah, look, you're absolutely right, again. I'll just run some names past you for people that may not know or may know of some but not others. You've played on almost every Mark Spiro record.
Yeah.

Now he's just gone through a hard time hasn't he but he's obviously better now.
I think he is, yeah. I don't see him much anymore because he moved down to San Diego, but he did say he passed through his cancer and was doing okay and I love Mark.

He's made some wonderful records hasn't he?
Yeah, he's one of those guys who should have been Lou Gramm in Foreigner, he had the voice and everything, you know?

Yeah…one of those, he'd win the lottery.
Exactly.

Another one of my favorites, and somebody I'm also friends with, Eric Martin.
Yeah, he's great. What a soulful voice.

Another favorite of mine but I don't know him, Tim Karr.
Yeah, he's great. Really irreverent rock, you know, singer.

Meatloaf?
I did Bat Out of Hell 2 and then the record that followed it and that's kind of a flavor of the thing. I have two friends who are playing on Meatloaf's new record, one is Corky James and the other is Rusty Anderson. Corky is allied with Desmond Child and then Rusty was actually in doing something with Meatloaf last week. And you know, as an artist, you want new people when you come back to do a record. You're not going to look for the guys you did it with a few years ago you're going to look for new people.

Okay so you accept that and understand that.
Well you know it never… you do feel… you never completely are free of the feeling of rejection but the thing is… the higher up you get in the music business, the harder the knocks get. And that's one of those things that happens so often. You do great work with somebody and they choose somebody else the next time. You can't really think about it.

Yeah, you'd go insane I'm sure.
And then the thing that happens is, for you it's, all the sudden you're brand new to somebody else you know. It's like it all… it's your turn all of the sudden. And that's happened to me a lot where it's been my turn to be the new guy. Happened to me a lot. So you can't really… you can't really have one without the other.

Gotcha! Ozzy Ozbourne: that must be an interesting experience.
Well to tell you the truth, I don't think I met him when I worked on his stuff. It was probably with Bob Marlette.

Okay.
And in fact I just finished a record with Rod Stewart. It's my third Rod Stewart record and the first time I met him.

Oh really!?
Yeah. I just finished and John Shanks produced it. It's a classic rock kind of record and will be out sometime soon. The third one I've done and the first time I've met him.

Wow! That must have been fun at least to finally meet.
It was. It was great.

Stan Bush?
Oh yeah, Stan's wonderful. A really nice record, I remember doing that.

Celine Dion?
Well she was actually a really sweet person. She actually has a humility about her that most famous people don't have. And she's definitely criticized a lot but she's right on the spot, right there and been there live, she sings so well. When you're tracking and she's singing along with you it's very powerful.

Amazing. The press does tend to give her a bit of a hard rap don't they?
Yeah.

I think they just pick on people that they think, well this one you know. This one's a good guy, this one's a bad guy. What about Fergie Frederickson? Was that one on one session?
Oh yeah, yeah. He's a great singer and yeah I love… haven't seen him in a long time.

He's had some health problems.
Ah… that's too bad.

Roger Waters?
Yeah, that was really fun. You know Roger's one of those guys…, wealthy. The British kind of wealth with the butler and the maid and that kind of thing. You know, rock royalty, that kind of thing. But the other guy for that for me was Phil Collins. I've done a ton of work for Phil Collins. He's that kind of, people are like royalty. They're amazingly wealthy and amazingly focused on what they do and they kind of are above, kind of above it all as far as…

Phil Collins seems like a pretty natural guy.
He is. He is.

Who else do I got here? That's getting close to it. There are a couple of females from a little while back. Robin Beck.
Oh Yeah. I mean I don't really have anecdotes to talk about these people.

I understand.
Mostly because it's such a civilized thing. I mean you show up and you do this great work together. Not a lot usually to… because I'm not on the road with these people. My exposure to them really is just a few hours or a few days.
And then everybody's just working real hard at making music together. There's not a lot outside of… So I wish I had more.

No I understand that completely. Actually that makes a lot of sense. Anything that I've missed, that you think should be mentioned?
Well, I mean, no not really. I mean I work with a lot of new artists, a lot of up and coming artists and these are people that you might end up hearing or you might not because their records might surface you know. They might not sell more than a few thousand copies so that's still a big part of what I do. All kinds of great, new young artists.

Have you got a tip for a new rock artist?
Yeah, it's all the same stuff…be yourself, do it because you love it, and… I don't know. The music business at this point….you're free to, you know, basically create your own business.

Good advice. I appreciate your time Tim.
You got it.
Okay, take care. Thanks for spending the money on this call.

Ah, my pleasure Tim. Thank you for some great music.
You got it.
Bye.