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DC: No, I don’t play mandolin but I have noodled on one, but you know what? Surprisingly also
once again on one of the Doug Macleod albums, I played a little bit of autoharp of all things. We
didn’t quite go into the Lovin Spoonful thing but I just use it as a little flavour in the background
of one of the songs.
BiTS: Right. What’s it like working with Doug Macleod?
DC: Doug is such a funny gentleman. He’s just the greatest guy in the world and we always have
a very good stage rapport. A funny thing about Doug, you’ve seen him perform, have you?
BiTS: I have. Yes.
DC: Yes, and you know how dynamic he is and he’s just an incredible storyteller so I’m the guy
who sort of throws in the asides occasionally and I have ended up sort of side-tracking him on
some of his stories occasionally and so he’s always had me up on stage and like I say, I’ll do little
asides and he’ll always say, well, “no microphone for Denny” because of course, he wants to be
the star. But funny enough, one time he did put a microphone up on stage and I didn’t have any
asides to give him because I kind of preferred them to be just within the stage area there.
BiTS: Are you working on anything at the moment?
DC: Right now, well Lawrence and I are kind of working out, kind of getting some ideas for a new
project. Lawrence Lebo, my wife of course, and a lot of what I’ve been doing lately is I’ve been
doing a lot of teaching, which I’ve done of course, for the last just about 40 years, I think.
BiTS: I wanted to ask you about working at McCabe’s, which I have heard of but have never been
to. It’s World Famous!?
DC: Absolutely. Yes. And it’s an institution and I like to say I’ve been institutionalised for 36 years.
BiTS: Wow!
DC: It’s a fantastic venue. We’ve had people from Linda Ronstadt to Tom Petty’s been there. In
my time of working there, we’ve had all different
people, Dylan came in. Neil Young, Glenn Frey, but Lawrence Lebo and Denny - in concert
I’ll tell you of all the people who have come in the
store and just sort of shopped around, I’ve been
impressed but honestly the one time where I
honestly just kind of lost my breath was when
George Harrison came in.
BiTS: Really?
DC: I said to myself, that’s not a human being.
That’s a Beatle [chuckling].
BiTS: [Laughing] Do you actually teach a course
or are these just sessions that people attend?
DC: I do private lessons. One time I did teach a
bass class. It was a blues-oriented bass class, and it was fun but obviously, I like dealing with
individuals very much. A lot of people have various places along the path that they’ve reached
and so teaching a class you have from very straight beginners to very advanced folks. So yes,
again, as I say, I like to model my lessons for the individual.
BiTS: I believe Lawrence teaches there as well. Is that right?