Matt Connarton Unleashed: Jon Pousette-Dart

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody. This is Matt Connorton Unleashed. We are live from the studios of WM and H on this Saturday morning. You might be hearing Amnesia by John Possett Dart and we have him, I believe on the phone with us.

0:14 Speaker 2: John. Is that you, Hey man, how are you doing?

0:17 Speaker 1: Good? Good, Welcome to the show. It's great to speak with you. I kind of went down the rabbit hole last night with your music. Obviously I've always been aware of you, but it's been a long time since I listened to any of your well, first of all, since any Posset Dart band. So that was fun kind of going back and listening to a lot of that stuff. And I also listen to some of your more recent solo material. And I have to say, I really really love a lot of what you're doing. And I'm excited that you're coming to Manchester on the thirteenth to play at the Rex Theater.

0:50 Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, the Rex is a really nice room. We love coming back here.

0:54 Speaker 1: Have you played there quite a bit over the years We have played.

0:58 Speaker 2: Yes, we have, we have. And the new end it's kind of you know, it's gone to a couple of changes and they've really fixed it up nice now and it's just a really really great listening room. I mean, people really and the audiences are really good and the whole staff who run it are really great folks. So's it's excellent. We yes, we love coming there.

1:16 Speaker 1: Outstanding. Now are you doing? How big of a tour is this? Are you doing quite a few dates?

1:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, this September. We're jumping around quite a bit all through September. It gets quiets down after September, but we're all over We're doing you know, New Hampshire, Massachusets, Maine, Connecticut. We're moving around quite a bit this month, so that's good. And it's myself and Jim Chaplain, who's I've been playing with now for twenty five years, and we're doing I've been really focusing on kind of coming back to the roots of the songs duo, which I really like and it really brings in people close to the to the songs and the music.

1:52 Speaker 2: So we're really enjoying working, you know, in this very kind of intimate environment. So it's really great. And Jim and I have been playing together for a long long time, so it's a very we're very tight. It's like he's a brother, you know.

2:04 Speaker 1: Excellent. Now, Jim was not a member of Who's That Dart Band?

2:07 Speaker 2: Correct, not the original band, Okay, but he's been a member of the band for twenty five years because the band, original band broke up quite quite a way's back. But Jim and I've been playing together now for over twenty five years, and in the band when we were working with the band. But these days we've been as I mentioned, we're focusing more on just doing a I've been focusing on the acoustic aspect of it just because I really enjoy it. And but Jim has been is well known. I mean, he's I don't know how if you remember n RBQ and he old but he plays with Al Anderson, who's like one of my favorite guitar players and songwriters.

2:43 Speaker 2: Oh and so we've known each other for a long long time and he's he's he's he's just great.

2:50 Speaker 1: So now on this tour, is it just the two of you? You're just doing it as a duo? Yeah, okay, okay, now you said so do you prefer that? I mean, is he playing with you the entire set?

3:06 Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, we do a duo with the whole show. Is duo. Oh very good, so so, you know, I and allows me to kind of really open up and carry down the root of the songs and then and we we trade off. It's like we're very it's very seamless how it's kind of worked out together. But but it's it's just uh, it's just kind of nice feel and it brings the songs right to the root of where they are. So it's very uh, you know, you really get the core of what it brings. And it also I find, you know, having done both, I like enjoy the band, but when you're playing with the band, it kind of pushes it, you know, it puts you, what, it's a little further away from you, whereas when you're acoustic in this setting, it really allows an intimacy.

3:43 Speaker 2: It allows the audience to come up really kind of get in close and bring the songs up very in a very kind of warm way. So I really enjoy it. Uh.

3:52 Speaker 1: Do you ever play with a full band at this point or do you always do? I mean, since Poos that Dart band broke up? How long was that band together? Not that long?

4:04 Speaker 2: Right, Well, we were together in the seventies and into the early eighties, and the industry really kind of took a big shift at that point, and that's when we left Capital and We've done We've got a long tour and then disbanded after this very long tour across the country, and the whole nature of radio and record really went through a shift. It was kind of during the period when the disco and techno stuff really hit the country, yep. And and when we were with Capital at that point, there was a band called the Nac that turned in my Sharona, and the labels really just changed their whole emphasis and direction and so a lot of rosters really shifted around that period of time, and so it was almost kind of the end of an era.

4:55 Speaker 2: And it wasn't really until kind of the beginning of the nineties when when female artists kind of came back into the picture that I felt like kind of really kind of reconnecting. And it was because it was it was the hole that hole here in the eighties was a kind of a bizarre period of time musically.

5:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. Uh, A lot of people when they go through that, I just know from interviewing people when they go through something like that where they've been on a major label, and then you know it kind of like you said, there's a shift, right, and then they get kind of at the end of it, they're kind of exhausted by it all, and they and they step away entirely. And it sounds like, so did you take a break. It sounds like you took a bit of a break after that.

5:38 Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we did. I mean the whole there was a big shift in terms of the whole picture. In other words, I left, we left capital, I left management, and at that point, I actually I moved. I moved to a different area, and then I moved from I lived in Rockport at the end of the seventies. Yeah, and then I moved to New York and started doing when the band broke up, and I started doing a lot of session work, and so I got involved with singing and doing a lot of session work in the city, which kind of kept me very active, but in a kind of a different vein It was more more revolving around television and different things that were and writing for different venues rather than just record and so I got really involved in that through the eighties, which was great because I worked with a ton of people and I had a lot of and I actually had a lot of different bands then, but there were different players.

6:27 Speaker 2: It was a bunch of guys playing, you know, it was it was It wasn't the original band, but the original band, all the original guys, Troy and Curtis and I are all in touch, like we speak to each other regularly, and we're all still you know, everybody's kind of gone off in different directions as happens, you know, because really when you're with a band like we were, we were a family. I mean, it's like being married. You know, it's like a marriage, you know, and when the marriage breaks up, you know, you everybody kind of goes off in different directions.

6:56 Speaker 2: But we're still very very close, and I love those guys yearly, and we stayed very much in touch.

7:01 Speaker 1: That's really good to hear, because, as you know, so often that's not the outcome, you know, very very often it's it's, you know, people don't talk to each other anymore. There's there's some sort of weird grudge between musicians wh've been in a man.

7:17 Speaker 2: That wasn't the case. Yeah, that wasn't the case with us, because it was more just the business that changed. It, wasn't it wasn't. It wasn't interpersonal. It was more just, uh, you know, we had really worked hard and we you know, we broke the top forty and then it didn't didn't. You know, it's just for a number of reasons. There were a lot of decisions that were made that were kind of speculative that we weren't very happy about, choice of singles and the directions that the labels, you know, chose that kind of affected the whole picture, and so there was a little bit of disenfranchisement with the kind of what had happened was on that level.

7:48 Speaker 2: Because the record business is such a wacky business. People have no idea how crazy the record business was back then. Yeah, so it was like really a different animal, you know. Yeah.

7:58 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still pretty crazy in a lot of ways. We talk about it a lot on this program. But so when you got back in so that was during the nineties when you started really kind of focusing on your solo career and playing out and all of that.

8:14 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what yeah, Yes, what happened is I was actually in New York and we were playing the Loan Star with the New York band who I was playing with, John McCurry and Chris Bishop and some really great session players. John McCurry is one of my favorite guitar players in New York. And he's been with Julian Lennon, Billy, Joel False. I mean, he's played with everybody, and he's like he's a really he's in Cyndi Lauper did all of her early stuff and he's a really good old friend. And he was he joined the band for a while and we were very close and I was playing the Loans I was I was doing the Loan Star actually one night with the old Loan Star thirteenth and fifth, which is a great room, and they run an ad and there was a record guy in Nashville at that time with us.

8:54 Speaker 2: At that time, there was a label called Asylum, Uh, and he was a asilent Nashville and he saw the ad and he called me up in New York said what are you doing in New York? And he said, why didn't you come down to Nashville. And that's where we originally recorded the early records, all in Nashville, And he said, why don't come down. I'll set you up with you know, a whole bunch of great writers for and we'll get see, you know, let's see what we can put together. And so he basically contacted me out of the blue and set me up with all of the most wonderful writers in Nashville.

9:24 Speaker 2: And so I went down and wrote for two weeks and then recorded all that material, and that kind of brought me back into the Nashville fold. And so then I started working on solo things from there on, and that's where my original solos, a lot of the first solo things started getting off the ground. And it was I so went full circle because we actually did our first records there in the early seventies at the Old Quad, which was a notorious that's where Drift Away by Doobe Gray was cut and all of the kind of legendary stuff from that era was cut down at the Old Quad on Grand Avenue and Film.

10:00 Speaker 1: So you probably back there. So you probably didn't have any trepidation, right, because I know a lot of people, you know, when they go to Nashville, people we've had on the show, they'll they'll talk about how scary it is because that's like, you know, I mean, that's that's high pressure, right, you know, sitting around writing writing songs with people in Nashville, Tennessee. But you had already recorded there with the band and everything, so for you, I assume it was pretty comfortable.

10:25 Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, we were very fortunate and that was the first place we went when we first signed Capitol. They sent us to Nashville with Norvid Putnam and Normood Putnam and David Briggs and Kenny Butchery, who we did the first records with were the last Elvis Presley manns. Oh wow, they were with Presley. So we were working with the Presley crew. Wow. Which was really amazing as a green kid to be in the studio with those guys because they were just phenomenal. Yeah, and so we I was very lucky to kind of to bump into like some of the most veteran players at the very beginning.

10:55 Speaker 2: And we were and we were in Quad, which is one of the studios which was had Dylan worked in, Joan Baez, Dobie Gray, you know, Dan Fogelberg, you name it, Jesse Winchester was like that studio was the place, yeah, and so so it was we Yeah, so I was we were very fortunate to really land in with a really good crew and nor Butt was an amazing musician, and producer. So we were very, very fortunate to be in the good graces of some really wonderful people who you know, was a world class education for me and in every way.

11:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Now the set that you do now on tour, do you do a lot of the original material who sat Dart band? Or is it I imagine you mix in because you've been prolific, You've recorded a lot both with the band and since then as well.

11:49 Speaker 2: Yes, so yes, So basically I make a good make a point of really going back and honoring a lot of the early material to the early records through the capital the years, and then we move on through the newer things. So it's a real you know, it's quite a wide swath of material, you know, that goes back to the beginning for the songs that people really like from that period, and then newer things. And also a couple of very discreete covers here. I try and pick songs that I really love to play by, you know, by really great writers here and there.

12:19 Speaker 2: So it's it's a real wide array of things. And and Jim is you know, we both covered a lot of ground guitar wives and Jim is just an amazing musician. So and we're very tight, you know, and so it's it's, uh, you know, we're very close with each other and kind of it's there's a lot of really nice chemistry involved. So it's fun. It's just it's just really fun.

12:42 Speaker 1: Yeah. Are you by the way, are you from here? Originally? Where are you from?

12:48 Speaker 2: I'm actually from New York. I was. I was. I was born in New York and raised in New York, and I moved I went to Boston when I first met I first. The reason I how I wound up in Boston is I had my grandparents lived in Nantucket, and I used to go up there a bit, and when I in the fifties, in the late fifties and early sixties, and they One night, I had a friend who got me to sit down and do an audition in front of John Hammond, who was playing the Chicken Box, the club out in Nantucket, and and John asked me to stay on and play with him for three nights.

13:24 Speaker 2: And so I opened for John Hammond at the Chicken Box and one night Don Law, who was a promoter in Boston, yep, very familiar there because he and John Hamm's father, John Law's father and John Hammond's father were both talent scouts who had founded all kinds of you know, we're legendary and the music business. Yeah, and Don saw the show and said, what are you doing? Want you to come to Boston? And I went to Boston and he started managing me, and that's how the band started.

13:51 Speaker 1: That's a that's a hell of a great start, I'll tell you, that's fantastic. That's that's that's a that's an amazing start. And then did you get signed to Capitol pretty quickly?

14:04 Speaker 2: We actually did a lot of road work. You know, Don really threw us out on the road, and I asked John Troy from California. I went to University of the Pacific in California. I asked him to come out and play bass, and he started playing bass as a duo. And then we found John Curtis through an ad in a music store and we started playing trio. And Don really put us out on the college circuit really like and it led a huge amount of work. We started doing the NEC conferences and everywhere. We played all the colleges in New England, and so he really turned us into like a real road outfit really fast.

14:37 Speaker 2: He just had us on the road endlessly, and we got a reputation kind of you know, through just really hard work before we were ever signed. And then you know, there was we had a strong reputation going from roadwork, and then we were started seeking out labels and towards the early mid seventies and then you know, we went through the same thing that I'll probably all Dan went that we were rejected by all kinds of people, you know, one left or another. It's you know, it's the game of rejection. Was trying to find labels.

15:06 Speaker 2: And then finally a uh there was a legendary recordman named Al Corey was then the head of Capital and he was actually an old Boston guy and he wanted to come to Boston and he came to Boston, saw us and signed us, and so and so we signed with Capital, and uh and then the rest was you know, a couple of weeks later, we were Dawn and I were out at the Brown Derby and Hollywood and Vine and they were setting us up to uh go and start recording in Nashville with Norburn.

15:32 Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, that's yeah, that's that's fantastic. That's uh, yeah, that's a great start. How many records did you do for Capital?

15:41 Speaker 2: We did four, there was an option on five and then and then then the whole kind of industry. You know, when at that time when we were making those records, we were really spending a lot of time and really you know, putting a lot of effort of the records. And we were spending you know, the budgets were really high weed to make some pretty expensive records considering what was going on at that time. And what happened is the whole industry was very decament at that point. That was when you know, Fleetwood Mac turned in Tusk, which was and that was like during that era, and so the industry was really wild and crazy at that point.

16:14 Speaker 2: And and then you know, as I mentioned, they signed the Knack and the NAC turned in my Sharona for ten grand, and all the labels went, oh, man, we're when we're changing gears now. And they realized that they could get everybody to do these records for nothing, and so they just clean sweep all Warner and Capital and a lot of labels just did a clean sweep of their rosters and just kind of you know, started all over again. So it was like a real like, you know, a real rude awakening in a lot of ways at that period of time.

16:46 Speaker 2: And then also a Saturday night fever came in from the DG's and the whole scene just kind of went, you know, just went flipped like like a one eighty degree in terms of what was going on in terms of record radio. So it was it was a very know, it was a very eye opening period of time to go through, that's for sure.

17:04 Speaker 1: Yeah, but you had a you had a great start, and of course that built the foundation for everything that you've been able to do since. And and I like I said very much, so yeah, and I really like a lot of the new material that you're doing as well. And we should mention, we should remind people. Of course, you're going to be at the Rex Theater on September thirteenth, and of course, for anyone who's never been there, it is a it is a fantastic place. And this is this is just you. Correct, there's no opener, it's just it's just you and your partner.

17:33 Speaker 2: And last time, no, the last yeah, the last time we were in it was just us. I don't I don't recall that we had no better last time. Okay, but the nice thing about it, there's really a really great audience there. I mean that the audience was fantastic the last couple of times we've been in there. I mean, they're just it's a very enthusiastic and and uh, you know, people really knew this, knew the songs, and so we love playing. There's a great room.

17:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's that's excellent. That's excellent. And then what are your plans for after this run of shows is done on this tour? Are you gonna You're gonna do another album or what? Do you know what your kind of long term trajectory is?

18:10 Speaker 2: You know what I've been doing this. I've been since I did a record. The last record I did I did for Sony Red and we did it. We did I went back when I first went to Nashville. I told you I came. We came on the tail end of the drift Away sessions with Dobe Gray, and I walked him at the end of their cutting drift Away and the guys were still in the studio and one of my heroes, Reggie Young, was one of my really one of my favorite guitar players, bar None was there in the studio, and I kind of made a mental note at that time, which was, this is the seventies, that I would wanted to do a record with him so badly all these years, so you know, turned the clock turns, you know, thirty thirty years forward or so, and I made a mental note that I wanted to go back.

18:55 Speaker 2: And I met with a producer named Bill Worndek, who passed subsequently since, but one of the legendary, absolutely amazing producers. He's done Alison Krause and you know Bellafleck and many many of the greats, and you know MARLEH. Stanley. I mean, it's just a long list. But we got together and did a record, and we wanted to bring in these these the Muscle Shows guys and Reggie Young. So I did a record with a lot of the Muscle Shows guys, Reggie Young and the Memphis and the real top bench Nashville players and turn in a record called Talk, which was I think the best record I've ever done.

19:30 Speaker 2: Wow, that was the last record I did, and it didn't it was kind of quiet, kind of it was didn't really like Sony didn't do much you know, it was the period of time when everything was changing from kind of the old record the whole promo routine to social media. So it's a big switch. And since then I've started really working wanted to put more effort and just putting singles out so I don't spend so much time working on a whole record and just kind of putting things out immediately. Which you've really noticed from the site is I put and videos out like one by one so that they're immediately there and I don't have to spend a lot of time waiting to ac creue.

20:07 Speaker 2: You know, the energy that you put into a record, time it takes to get it out, and the attentions. Man, there's so much shorter now and a lot of people don't even have you know, they don't even have CD players in their cars anymore. So it's it's coming through streaming. So I'm kind of addressing that the medium has changed to this to a very much more immediate, you know, uh format. So that's kind of the way I've been approaching it, is just putting out singles.

20:32 Speaker 1: No, that makes sense, and it's something that we talk about a lot on the show with our guests. Is that we live in a time where you have all these different options in terms of how you want to release music. You know, you can do an album, you can do an EP, you can put out just singles. And some of our guests they'll talk about putting out a series of singles that eventually they put together into an album. But you know, kind of the inversion of you know, instead of putting out an album and then releasing singles, you release the singles and then it becomes an album.

20:59 Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I mean that's a talk about a big shift in the industry. Yeah, that's a that's a really big one.

21:06 Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, I mean people really, you know, our people are just kind of getting things, you know, I mean, you know with obviously you know, the advent of Spotify and Rhapsody and Pandora and Amazon and all the rest of it. You know, that's really the way people are are are receiving most of what they're getting. And it's a you know, it's it's it's it's also very difficult because there's so much stuff coming through that you really have to kind of dig down to find a lot of the things. You know, Like there's there's tons of music that's just below the surface.

21:35 Speaker 2: It doesn't ever kind of come on to the yep. So it's you know, it takes it takes some effort to find the things that you really love, but it's it's there. It's just I mean, you know, it's just there's so much more being released now than ever before. So it's it's definitely an onslaught of media that's being that people are being inundated with, no question.

21:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely absolutely if you are just joining us, John Poussett Dart is with us, and uh, we've been talking about he's got to coming up on the thirteenth at the Rex Theater right here in Manchester. And John, well, we'll let you go in a moment, but I really appreciate your time this morning, and it's great to get to speak with you. And yeah, the Rex Theater is such a nice venue. Of course, if you're online you can go to Rextheater dot org or Palace Theater dot org if you want to get tickets online or call six O three six six eight five eight eight.

22:25 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and you can see John Poussett Dart And I'm sorry, what's the name of the gentleman who plays with you again?

22:32 Speaker 2: Jim Chapter Laine and the people. If people know Al Anderson, Al Anderson is just a treasure, a musical one of the great guitar player in Saner Sommers and he plays also with Al and Al is just a monster. He's literally he was a guitar both with NRBQ and n RBQ the original NRBQ is was one of the greatest bands up their Little Feet and Bonnie Ray and some of my favorite bands bar None the original band it's changed now, but Al was part of it, was one of you original members. And he's so he works with Al and and myself and so he's just and he's also we have a lot of similar friends in Nashville and spread around, so he's he's a he's just a wonderful musician.

23:12 Speaker 2: Jim Chapter Laine.

23:14 Speaker 1: Okay, very cool, very cool. All right, Well, John, we will let you go, but thank you so much. It is wonderful to speak with you today. Have a great show on Friday. I wish I could be there, but I'm actually on the air Friday nights. But but I know it's going to be great and we'll keep plugging it here and spreading the word. And thank you so much for joining us today.

23:32 Speaker 2: Matt. It's wonderful talking to you, and thank you for having me. Greatly appreciate it.

23:35 Speaker 1: Thank you so much, anytime, anytime, all right, Thanks John, Take care, take care.

23:41 Speaker 2: All right.

23:41 Speaker 1: That was John Poussett Dart and we're gonna play to close out our conversation. I'm gonna play this track Amnesia. This is one of the hits from back in the days of the John Poussar, the Poussett Dart Band. Boy, I do a radio show, can you the Poossett Dart Band? This track Amnesia? And I decided to play this one specifically for our friend Tony Petrello, who might be listening, because last night on Retrospectrum Radio we were talking about how John was going to be joining us this morning, and Tony had mentioned that he particularly particularly loves this song Amnesia.

24:20 Speaker 1: So let's give this a spin. Then we'll show some love to our amazing sponsors and then our guest. We have a great guest coming in and plus we'll remind you about that show and the art show that Jenny is featured in as well. We'll talk about all of it, but here it is. This is Amnesia. This is from the poussett Dart Band, John Poussette Dart