C: Who were some of the people who influenced your playing? S: My cousin Kenny. C: What'd he do? S: Influenced my music :) C: Why? What did he do? S: He could actually play!! C: Was he older than you? S: Yeah.

More of Zero Jam Room

C: Did you idolize him?

S: Oh, yeah. He was my big cousin. He was really really cool man, he had a Les Paul and everything like that and he'd come over to the house, I'd barely know a chord and he'd play Rolling Stone songs and shit, and I'd just be like--- what the fuck? So he's real important.

So first Kenny and then Eric Clapton and stuff like that, you know all rest of the guys that everybody listened to...I mean, when you get into something at an early age, who's gonna get you into it? Go ask Michael Andretti, "How'd you get into racing cars? " He'll go, "Well, my dad was Mario Andretti" and you'll go, "Oh, OK, I get it." It's just like your family, you know...who gets you into it really. And what you think about what they're doing and how they're doing it. Then there's every other musician you hear and everything, but there's something about that first hit and how you get that first hit and what it's made up out of that really points you...like my cousin Kenny and my aunt Dottie and people like that.

There's lots of people who I like though. Hermedo Pasquale is real cool. He's a Brazilian composer/band leader. Has a small band--7 or 8 pieces. He's amazing. All the regular guys, right. All the 2nd generation blues guys...so, like Clapton, and Hendrix and Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Duane Allman, you know...Johnny Winter.

C: Must have been a good time to listen to stuff.

S: Yeah, you know, all that stuff was fresh---all the Hendrix stuff, all the Cream stuff---all that came to me as brand new. Here it is, it's just out...you know--- at a really impressionable age---a lot of really creative stuff.

C: Did you see any of them live?

S: Some of them. Never saw Hendrix, though.

So there's all the rock guys...then a little later I started listening to John Coltrane and Miles Davis, and that was real important listening. I still do that. Johnny and I have listened to Kind of Blue about 100,000 times. Literally. All night and all day, every day, for a couple of years. That's all we listened to. When it was time to go to sleep, I'd put Miles on and let it play...all night. Get up...it's still playing. I did the same thing...listened to nothing but John Coltrane's Love Supreme for months. Over and over and over again. Just wore it out

First Band On American Music