Join @thebuzzknight for this classic podcast interview with drummer Russell Kunkel. A true legend in the music business, his influence is far reaching from his work with an amazing list of artists. They include Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks and many, many more. He is also part of the band The Immediate Family and is featured prominently in the documentary.
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Taking a Walk.
The basic connection that I had with someone that was great coming out of the whiskey was David Crosby. David I met David and Steven and Graham kind of around the same time, basically through my wife Leah, who is Cass Elliott's sister. So I was privy to being at Cass's house and meeting lots of incredible people during that time.
Welcome to the Taking a Walk Podcast, the podcast where Buzz Night talks with musicians and gets the inside story on their work and creative process. Today, Buzz speaks with one of rock's great drummers. Russ Kunkle, is known for his work with an impressive resume of artists including Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Carol King. He's also part of the session supergroup the Immedia Family, which includes Waddie Wattell, Leland Scar and Danny Korchmark. Russ has appeared on some of the most iconic albums of our time, and he joined It's Buzz Night next on Taking a Walk.
Well, the great Russ Kunkle is here on the Taking a Walk Podcast. We're gonna take a walk down Memory Lane. Russ thanks for being here, My pleasure buzz. Did it all start for you with Wipeout?
No one's ever asked me that question before, but it's pretty spot on. I mean, it's certainly a song that inspired me early on because it was such a huge hit. I think it was a song was recorded by the Safaris, Is that correct? Yes, and it featured a very repetitious kind of drum part in it that everybody loved and gravitated to. Probably. I guess that must have come out in nineteen sixty three or nineteen sixty four, somewhere around then, because I think I was in high school at that time. So yeah, and the bands, the early bands that I was in in Long Beach, California, we certainly played that song when we were in our surf music craze, and at the same time I was actually surfing. I started surfing then, so wipeout has a double meaning for me. It was the name of a song and I actually got wiped out many times, so I understood it.
Did you have someone teaching you and mentoring you similar to the movie Whiplash?
No, not at all. For the most part. I'm self taught my brother Gilbert Kunkle My oldest brother who's passed on now, was a drummer and he sat me on his lap and put the sticks in my hand when I was probably about six or seven years old, and he introduced me to the drums. He had a band, and his band rehearsed in our house from time to time, and so you know, I kind of grew up with a little bit of an inclination of what that meant and it was very exciting. So I give him credit for certainly setting me off in the right direction.
And the band that really began things in the big way was your band Things to Come that ended up landing.
That was it?
Nineteen week run as the house band at the Whiskey?
Is that right? It was very close to that. It was a long period of time and we were taken under Mario and Elmer's wing and we were just the opening act for lots of bands that came through at that time. It was an eye opening experience. I'll say that more ways than one. I bet, yes, it definitely was. We don't have to go into detail, but I wouldn't trade that time for anything.
And you saw a few notorious bands come through during that period.
Care to talk about any of those bands. Well, one of the bands that came through was the Hourglass, which became the Almond Brothers, and it was interesting to see them in that configuration. It was pretty much the I can't be certain of this, but I think it was the same personnel and then and of course we know they went on to unbelievable greatness. And another band that came through there was who had a different name. It was DTA, which was the Chicago Transit Authority, and I think they had a different name at that time before they were called Chicago. Oh, I forget what they were called. Anyway, they had a different name at that time before they became Chicago. Got to see them, got to see the Holly's open for them, opened for Cream, opened for the Electric Flag, Paul Butterfield, Jean Clark, the Birds. Got to see Jim Hendrick's play there. We didn't open for him, but he did a show at the Whiskey before going up to the Monterey Pop Festival. Got to see that. It was It was definitely eye opening.
And you were just in this phase certainly that I still believe you are in, which is learning and being a sponge for everything.
You were witnessing. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I don't think I've given that up. I you know, I'm being self taught, you know. I taught myself to play the guitar enough to write, and a little bit of keyboard enough to write, so and you know, kind of reinvented myself into a bit of a songwriter and a producer, and I've had some success doing both. So I'm I guess you could you could liken it to being a sponge. I do like to learn new things, and I practiced drumming and guitar every day, and you know, so it's a I think it's a it's a book that you can never finish reading.
So can you describe what are the traits that go into being such an accomplished drummer as you are.
When you start out? I don't think you have any idea what you're going to end up being, so to answer a question like that, it's all hindsight, you know. And I just never gave up, you know, and I wanted to. I wanted to not get fired was the main objective, and to listen enough to find out what people wanted from me, you know, and not get caught up in doing something other than that, and more than anything, I wanted to be appreciated and hired back, you know, to repeat, you know, I was. I was married at a young age. When I was twenty one. I had my son, Nathaniel, was born when I was twenty one, and so I had to make an income. My wife worked at the time too. But you know, I had to get serious real quick, and I think in a lot of ways that kind of kept me on the straight and narrow when a lot of other people who didn't have those kinds of responsibilities, you know, went down a different road. So but you have to listen, I guess that's the word that I'm coming around to. You have to be aware of your surroundings and be very aware of what's needed from you and really try to present it.
How do you balance the intensity of your job with the cool, calmon collected need to be the glue that holds everything together.
When you walk into a situation where you're either recording or you're playing live recording in particular, you don't necessarily know the song all brand new, so there's an unknown factor there which can be scary or it can be exciting. You know, I try to approach every session that I do in a way that I try to play things that I've never played before. At least I make an attempt to come up with something that I've never done before, and if I'm lucky enough it it suits the song and it makes everybody that I'm working for happy. Playing live is you know, it's about connecting with an audience and really connecting with the people that you're playing with. It starts there. You know, there has to be a real sympatical with the people that you're playing for, and then that magic or that feeling or that flow can move on out to the audience and you can see it affect an audience one way or the other. You can also see it affect an audience if they're not happy with what they're hearing.
One of the things that came out of Things to and the Whiskey experience was you got on the radar with this great man, Peter Asher. Tell me about that experience.
Yeah, that's that's true. Actually, the Whiskey. The basic connection that I had with someone that was great coming out of the Whiskey was David Crosby. David I met David and Steven and Graham kind of around the same time, basically through my wife Leah, who was Cass Elliott's sister. So I was privy to being at Cass's house and meeting lots of incredible people during that time. Right after the ur State at the Whiskey, and David took a took notice of me and he produced the Things single for the Things to Come, He produced a few things and he was a real champion of me and my band. At time after that, I was working for a man named John Stewart who has replaced Dave Guard in the Kingston Trio, and he had just had an album put out an ALM on Capitol called California Bloodlines. And I had met John through Henry Gilts and he asked me to come on the road with him to promote his album. And was rehearsing with John for some show and Peter Asher came to town and contacted his friend Chris Darrow, who was also playing with John as a great fiddle player, and he told Chris that he was looking for musicians to record with his new artist, James Taylor, and he was specifically looking for a drummer, and Chris said, come to our rehearsals there's a great drummer playing with us now. And Peter came to the rehearsal and liked what he heard, and like you've seen the documentary, he asked me to play on the album. And he doesn't really think that John ever forgave him that. I think he kind of did it.
So he is such a treasure, isn't he, Peter, Yes, absolutely absolutely he.
Without Without Peter's kind of intervention in my life and my career, just you know, kind of being at the right place at the right time and a little bit of serendipity, my career wouldn't have been anywhere like it is today. So he was a major factor, and so was Lou Adler.
Tell me about Lou as a producer and what you learned from him, Well, Lou.
And Peter are very much the same. They they knew to stay out of the way of the artist and let the artists do their art. And they were great organizers. You know, you have the great producers or cheerleaders, you know, Jimmy I been, pauls into that category as well, So does Jimmy Bowen. You know, Richard Perry, A lot of the great producers that I've worked with They all have that same quality. They're cheerleaders and they stay out of the way of the art.
So tell me how you remember the first sessions with James Taylor well, because.
I have to say, you know, that period of time, there was a lot of invibing going on, so I don't remember every single bit of it, but I remember that it was an exhilarating experience to play those songs with James and Carol and Danny. I think we recorded that album inside of a week. Everything was recorded. We recorded at Sunset Sound and it was magical, you know, it really really was. But it's hard to recall just exactly what you were feeling something that happened over fifty years ago, you know. But I know I was there, and I know I was thankful. I mean, if there was a word that I can use of my dominant emotion, it was gratitude, just thankful to be there, you know. And not until many, many years later that I realized the impact or the significance that that music has had, you know, on the world, and I'm eternally grateful for that.
Then there's the first album that I ever bought and wore the grooves off of is this little number called Tapestry by Carol King.
Can you talk about how magical? That was? Very similar to recording the Sweet Baby James album. It didn't take a long time to record Carol. It was very prepared. She had gone over the songs with Lou at her house and all what Lou wanted to do, like he says in the documentary, is just recreate what she was doing at her house, you know, playing the piano, just adding the instruments that they deemed to be necessary around the songs. I didn't play on the whole album. Joe Bishop O'Brien played. I think he actually played on more songs than I did on Tapestry. But but it was again, it happened very quickly, and this was kind of the same group of people. You know, James was there playing on some of it. Jonie was there, you know, doing some of it. Danny was there, I was there. She used She didn't use Leland on that, She used Charlie Larky as the bass player, and Ralph Shuckett played some other keyboard parts, and lots of lots of other wonderful background singers and horn players from LA. But it was very similar to Sweet Baby James. It happened quickly, and again, you know, in hindsight, when you look back, you kind of have an oh my god moment that you know that record was so satisfying to so many people.
We'll be right back with more of the Taking a Walk Podcast. Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Is there a similar zone like athletes talk about that a musician a drummer gets into, either in a session or in a live performance.
Is it the zone? I refer to it as a flow, and yeah, of course, yeah, But you know I try to get into that thing in everything that I do, you know, whether I'm surfing or swimming, or working out or writing or playing an playing an instrument. Yeah, you definitely want to find that place and stay in it for sure.
Can you talk about the experience that happened in a session in New York City that included the likes of George Harrison and Bob Dylan.
I was in New York with Peter. He took me to New York to play drums on a Tony cossen Act record, an artist he was producing. This was after Sweet Baby James, after the James Taylor albums, and we had finished recording, and I was in my hotel. We were leaving the next day and Peter called me and said, put your put your drums in a cab and come down two CBS studios. And I said, what happened? We were cutting more tracks. He said, no, you're gonna play with Bob Dylan and George Harrison. They're in the studio and they need a drummer. So they called me. So after I composed to myself, I got my drums down to the studio and took him inside and sat them up, and I'm jamming, I mean with Bob Dylan and George Harrison. Bob wanted to play Beatles songs and Elvis Presley songs, and George wanted to play Dylan songs, and so they kind of just traded back and forth. I think Al Cooper was there playing Oregon. Charlie Daniels was there, I think, playing bass at that time. And then that same configuration of people were called back by Bruce Johnston, who is not Bruce Bruce Johnson, Bob who produced Bob Johnson exactly, Bruce Johnson's and the Beach Boys. Is it ruling Bob, remember right exactly? He called me two months later to come to New York and play on the New Morning album with the same group of people. You know, I had the headphones on and I have George Harrison in one ear and Bob Dylan in the other, and I, you know, if I don't know how I kept my head from exploding, but it was a magnificent experience, to say the least. And I think there's a bootleg of some of that stuff that came out at some point. I seem to remember hearing some of it.
I was going to ask you, because over time, Bob has continually released you know, treasures that were from sessions and whatnot. So I have a feeling some of that keeps popping out as well, and it really, you know, of course, it showcases his brilliance in so many ways.
You know, you know, as I as I get older, I started to realize that I don't like things that are perfect. I so much of music today it's perfect. It's absolutely in tune, absolutely in time. It's all matched up to a grid, and I think there's something lacking in that, you know. I think, however far we've gone down that road, I hope that jump off of it. Bob Dylan was never that way and then, and I think that that is part of his greatness is that he didn't want anything to be perfect. The only thing that I could say that would approach being perfect are the amazing lyrics that he's written. You know, what he was able to do with putting words together to tell a story or create an emotion or a feeling. I don't know that anybody's done it any better. But doing those sessions with him and playing on New Morning and the sessions with Harrison, you only played a song one time like he would. He would on the New Morning sessions. We would jam something like we would be playing a Buddy Holly song or something, and then all of a sudden he'd throw in a new song like you never saw it coming. He would just go over to the piano and he starts playing you know, uh winter Loo, you know, and all of a sudden, you just you jump in and hang on. And every time he did that, I would just I was going, God, if we could just do that one more time? Now, I know what I want to play, but he doesn't. He didn't want that, And that's I see the genius in that. Now, you know, there's so many mistakes that I think are mistakes on what I played on those songs on that album, but apparently no one else thought they were.
So did you do work on the soundtrack of Peck Garrett and Billy the Kid.
I did. Jim Keltner and I both played on that on a few songs of that soundtrack. Yeah, that was pretty amazing experience as well amazing seeing Bob acting too, you know. Oh yeah, well he's very good, you know, as his leve on for sure. Yeah.
Tell me about the Blue Session with Joni, which you know, to this day people talk about that, you know, in her of course, in reverence. You know, she's so amazing. What do you remember about the Blue Session which you played on.
Well, again, when it was going on, you it was just another day, you know. I had been working with James, I was friends with Steven and David and Graham and Neil, and we were in and out of the same studios. And I got a call to come down to A and M and and I knew Joan and to come down and play on some recordings that she that she was doing at the time, and I overdubbed on some pre existing things and we played a couple of things live and Steven and I overdubbed together. Steve she had Stephen playing bass on on on a couple of things, and I was playing kunga's and percussion and I play I think I played drums on one or two songs. But the the percussion and the drum accompaniment on Blue is very subtle, you know, it's it's it's mixed exactly in the right way. And uh again, when you when you look back on that time, I had, I had no idea that those songs. I've worked on a little bit of Ladies of the Canyon as well, but I had no idea that those songs were going to the album Blue is going to have the significance that it has, you know, and again, just unbelievably grateful that I was there, you know, there but for fortune.
Who are the drummers that have impacted you past and present and maybe particular work by them that has impacted you.
Oh well, it starts with Ringo, Charlie Watz, Jim Kelton, Jeff Picaro, Levon Helm, huge influence, every every drummer that you would think, you know, Philly, Joe Jones, Joe Jones, Louis Belson, Buddy Rich, Jing Krupa, you know, for all the reasons that you would imagine, you know, the body of just the body of work that that Charlie and Ringo and Jim Keltner and Jeff Bacaro have played on is you know, it is enough. You know, I'm quite fond of Dave Grohl as well. But Dave is more than just a drummer, you know, He's He's just a He's a great human, a great talented individual.
You obviously observe the brilliance and the tragedy.
Of Jim Gordon as someone in your profession. I should have mentioned him because he was a huge influence on me.
Talk about his work obviously, which is pretty mind blowing.
Well, the first time I became really aware of Jim Gordon was on Dave Mason sung only you know, and I know, and that rolling snare drum part that he decided to play on that no one ever did that before, you know. And it was that whole period of time of Delaney and Bonnie and all the musicians and Leon Russell and everybody that came in and out of that camp and then Delaney and Bonnie. You know, then that kind of gave birth to mad Dogs and Englishmen and just that that whole group of musicians were incredible and I loved every bit of it. But Jim Gordon's session work, I mean, he's well known for his work with Clapton and stuff like that, but he he played on so many records. I mean, he was in the studio kind of at the same time that Howe was in the studio, maybe a little bit after that, and a little bit before me before I started working a lot in the studio. And he had he had a great groove. He had just a great pocket, you know. And and it's tragic what happened to him. It almost seems like it's like it's a movie instead of reality. But because he seemed to be such a nice guy, it's like a bad dream. But everyone has a good yeah, everyone potentially can have demons, so he's got the best of them. Man, that was that story just chilling, you know.
Yeah, absolutely, talk about the joy you're experiencing with immediate family. I love the documentary also as well, And I love what you guys are up to, the camaraderie, the vibe, the spirit of it.
Talk about how you love it well, these are guys that I've spent the better part of my musical career with in one configuration or another. So for us to have a chance to do something of our own, it was really it was really great. Kind of started right before COVID and having a new band during COVID kind of kept us all sane, and we recorded a lot of videos, and we did a lot of recording, kind of sending each other bits and pieces, and we did a lot of writing during that time. And it's it's been a fun journey, it really really has. Being fortunate enough to have the documentary documentary made about us, it's profound. I mean, how lucky are we? You know that Denny wanted to do it, that he felt that there that was a story that needed to be told, and in a lot of ways it's It frightened me the first time that I saw it, because I felt like, not only was I looking at my life, and when you look at something that kind of spans a period of time, especially when you get to be my age, you're kind of you have less time to look at than you do than you've lived. And so it was a reminder, I guess our of my mortality and the mortality of my friends. So that's the thing that hit me about it, you know, like, oh, okay, I'm old enough now to where somebody thought we should make a documentary about the music that you played on. So but yeah, it's every time we get a chance to play it's it's really fun. We really have a great time doing it, and I hope we get to do more in the future. Do they all make you a better player? Oh? No, you can't get away with anything in this band. No, you can't make a mistake. You don't want to make a mistake because you're trounced on immediately. So yes, they do. They We make each other accountable. Who's the toughest, though, Well, Waddie and Danny can be a little tough. They're they're particular in the ideas of the things that they want, you know, so I let them. I let them rant and rave, and then I play what I want to play.
Anyway, Any particular traits that you have taken on from anyone in particular you've worked with in your career.
That you can highlight traits, Well, I've learned a lot of stuff from a lot of people, you know, learned a lot from Stephen Stills learned a lot from David and Graham learned a lot from Neil. I've learned a lot from the producers that I worked with. I've learned a lot from Jimmy Bowen, from Jimmy Ivan, from Peter, from Lou Ladler, and I guess, and I've learned a lot. I've learned a lot from my friend Danny korchmore about songwriting, you know. And so I guess I've taken bits and pieces of the things that I've learned from everyone and kind of tried to mold them into how I do those things, you know. And yeah, I definitely picked up stuff along the way. What did you learn from Zeeva on what I learned from Warren Yvon?
Wow?
Genius comes in all different kinds of colors, Bravo.
Yeah, Are you going to show up in the new spinal tap?
I don't believe so, although I did get. One of my dear friends is CJ. Vanston, and he's been involved with the guys for many, many years, and he was just down in New Orleans where they were doing some shooting, and he sent me a little video that he made of all the guys saying hi, to me, so that was and they were all in costume, so that was a nice thing to get. But no, I don't believe so. Was Henry Dilts in New Orleans per chance while they were shooting. I'm not sure. I don't know.
I think we interviewed him for an upcoming episode. He said he was heading down there. He wasn't quite sure what was going to happen, whether he would be on the cutting floor or not. But needless to say, he was, just as Henry is, wild eyed and enthusiastic.
He was looking forward to it. Henry Dilts is beautiful human being and I'm so glad to see him getting the recognition that he so deserves. Roona Elliott just sent me a signed copy of the C. S. N Y the book Love the One You're With, which is amazing, amazing stuff. He's a treasure.
What do you think keeps him with that wild eyed enthusiasm?
You know that he I'm sure started with his spirit. He loves life. You know, he's a happy man. You know he's he's in a good place. He's a good man, and he definitely is.
In closing What do you want to learn that you haven't necessarily learned at this point in career, in.
Life, to not be afraid of the things you don't know, you know, to not fear fear. You know, there's no way of there's no way of knowing what's going to happen the next minute, So I just try to concentrate on really enjoying the one that I'm in. I enjoyed this moment I've been in immensely. Well, thank you, boss, thanks for wanting to do this with me. I'm just grateful that you came on the podcast. It's my pleasure, my pleasure.
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