What have you learned about the music business that has surprised you?

Nothing surprises me anymore. The way the business goes now I’ve learned not to be surprised. Like I say, right from my first days when I got to New York – studios were gone, live playing was just about nil. But I got to play a lot of other things in the studio that was equivalent to playing live. And as a matter of fact I did get to play a live radio show because for five years I was in a band of Garrison Keillor’s Show; it’s now called the Prairie Home Companion. But for five years he tried to get this thing going in New York and he called it the American Media Theater or something and it was a great gig. It was a sixteen piece band and we got to play all kinds of music, Americana, Ragtime, all kinds of stuff. We got to improvise, we got to read some tough stuff, we got to do stuff on the spot and it was all like the old radio days because everything was live and what you heard is what we played. So that was a nice taste. But things change so dramatically, Broadway has always kind of stayed pretty much the same but even that’s changed. Fortunately, I was in on that for 35 years, did a lot of shows, and built up a pretty good pension plan but even that, the changes that are happening now are unbelievable because all the media that they’re using, sound… When I started playing on Broadway it was all, more or less, acoustic and now its sound and the musicians are in other rooms and a different hall or upstairs in the theater and they’re not even in the pit, it’s not live playing anymore. So, what surprised me? I’d say I’d be surprised if you could surprise me.