TAGQ (That's A Good Question)

Ben Johnston talks to his father Scott about improv comedy, forestry and landscaping, as well as computing, cooking, and music, and whatever else these characters are interested in.

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TAGQ (That's A Good Question)

Band Together Right Now

February 01, 2026 • Ben Johnston & Scott Johnston • Episode 46

0:00 | 43:00

We swap stories with Max Tomlinson about starting bands, writing mysteries, and why community keeps both alive. From London’s free shows to San Francisco’s 1977 streets, we map how scenes, jams, and practice shape skill and voice.

• Colleen Hayes series set in 1977 San Francisco
• London music roots and first bass gigs
• Lo‑fi aesthetics and the Trogs’ influence
• Jam structure, curation, and learning by doing
• Song‑first practice tactics and confidence
• Blue Bear network and seed bands
• Rehearsal spaces, logistics, and momentum
• Festival shout‑outs and scene building
• Gear wish list and lighthearted plugs

Max Tomlinson@WordPress.com

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Meet Max: Music And Mystery

Scott 0:02

Okay, cool. Well, uh good morning, and welcome to the I don't know, probably 46th podcast of uh That's a Good Question. And I'm Scott Johnston, and my son Ben's not here today. We're doing another one of these one-on-one interviews. And today might and I always find interesting people to have them with. Today's guest is Max Tomlinson. Let's say hello, Max. You're sitting sitting there. Hi, yeah, thanks for having me. Morning. Max has been a friend for a long time. Most of this millennium, I'd say. Yep. And and and I've gotten to know him better recently because we have a lot of shared activities, I'd guess I'd say it, right? That's right. Reasons to get together and hang out. Music and hiking. Culinary. And culinary. Wow. It's just like sounds like you have a good social life, but it's just all well, half of it's your wife who's that's right. Our wives, spouses. Our wives, yes. Who were friends and coworkers long before. So Max always was playing in bluebear bands, and and for 10 years he said, Yeah, you should try it. And I was always like interested and always like, yeah, that's I'll do that someday. And then and then one day I had retired because I had to work on my father's estate. And instead of working on my father's estate, I started playing bass.

Max 2:03

Yeah.

Scott 2:04

And uh been playing bass in bands with Max ever since. So how long has that been now? A few years? Twenty-two.

Max 2:14

Twenty-two, yeah.

Scott 2:16

So this is twenty-six.

Max 2:18

So yeah. You've done a number of bluebears, right? Sometimes more than one at a time.

Scott 2:25

I did yeah, I did nine as a bass player, and I'm starting my second one as a drummer. Yeah, great next week. So, and you've been real supportive all along the way from you know being the guitar guitarist, the rhythm guitar, no lead guitarist in the first workshop. I've always felt lucky to have someone I know in each step of the way.

Max 2:54

You know, yeah, same here. It helps to have kind of people you know and and you know can get along with. And you know, like they say that talent isn't usually the issue, it's usually personalities in these bands. Yeah.

Scott 3:11

And the attitude, I think it helps just like, oh, we're just there to serve the song. Yeah. It's not about me and my excellent bass playing skills, you know, or not. You know, I started playing late enough so that I have like a or I started playing, let's say, with large amounts of practice time only in whatever, 2022. So I have kind of like a you know, like the average 16-year-old has only been playing bass for four years. It's like, yeah, I'm that good. Have you seen those 16-year-olds on YouTube? They're pretty good. I know it can it can be humbling. Yeah. Well, I was humbled with a household of when I first started playing guitar. My oldest Peter was like in fourth or fifth grade, and I gained a bit of skills, and then he and his friends like just rocketed by me.

Max 4:21

Oh yeah, I think yeah, yeah, he's definitely a special case. He's uh professional level, but you know, you guys encouraged him too, too. Yeah.

Scott 4:30

I kind of made I had the whatever latent music encouraging. I guess it was kind of obvious. And Max is also an author with with published mystery books. That's right. And my wife is loves reading all your books. She's read them all.

Max 4:57

She's been great uh like that, Laura. Uh been very supportive.

Scott 5:02

I'm slowly like working through well, the main trilogy, it would seem, in my mind. Seems like what with your main trilogy is the Colleen, right?

Max 5:17

Well, that's actually a five-part series. I started okay. I started off doing like a South American suspense series. I read those. Yeah, which I really enjoyed doing, but what I found is that you know, most most American readers really want to read about American characters. So they didn't uh they didn't get the traction I wanted. So then in 2019, I I got a a publishing deal for Colleen Hayes books, and I've published five of those and then published a sequel, and now my agent is retiring, so I need to find another agent. So there's any literary agents out there I have. Or Net Netflix. You want Netflix to call, right?

Scott 6:07

And yeah, Netflix. I'm kind of keeping the line open. I mean, it's a cool series, it's set in San Francisco with uh a local person's perspective on

Writing The Colleen Hayes Series

Scott 6:20

it.

Max 6:20

Yeah, set in 1977, which was a really interesting time in San Francisco, I think. I like where were you in 1977? I was I was in San Francisco and was living out in the Excelsior district and finishing up college, went to college late and sharing a house with uh a bunch of guys, and San Francisco was just a really interesting place back in the late 70s because the 60s were done. So there was all the other things bubbling up, you know, there was the gay culture, there was the punk rock scene, there was all this stuff, and San Francisco was still affordable then, you know. Basically, you could just come here and get a job and do your own thing, and there was still a lot of local middle class people living here. It was it was a really kind of a cool place.

Scott 7:15

Yeah.

Max 7:16

Maybe like New York in the 80s, I don't know. It was it was it was an interesting place.

Scott 7:22

And you were born in San Francisco, right? I was, and but when did you get back to San Francisco?

Max 7:33

Uh back around 77 or what? Yeah, so yeah, my family I was born in San Francisco, and my folks decided in the early 60s that my dad had had a little bit of a windfall. He had started a travel magazine and he'd sold it. And so he and my mother said, Oh, we're gonna go to Europe for a few months, and they took two of us, two of the the younger kids who couldn't survive on our own. So we went to Europe for a few months. Do you have older siblings that that behind? I'm the baby. I've got oh well, two sisters and a brother. Oh. So '62, we moved to Europe, and they didn't come back until the 90s. We never came back. So around the mid-70s, we were living in Britain, and uh I decided I I gotta go to school. So I I came back to the states in 75 and uh 76, sorry, and started going to school and working my way through school. So that's I got reintroduced to San Francisco. Did you have culture shock? Oh yeah. Yeah, because I had we had moved to Britain in the 60s. I was 11. So okay. A little young to hang out with the with the stones, but you right. But I loved all that stuff. I mean, the 60s in in in England for music was just did you ever take time to be there, even if you were a kid. Did you ever see the kinks? Never saw the kinks. I saw the stones at the famous Hyde Park concert. Wow, what year is that? I was 15. Ah. Yeah, that was something. That's like going to Woodstock, man. They used to Hyde Park, they used to have free concerts in Hyde Park all the time at that during that period. So saw so many bands that would tour. It was it was a great time. And and you there were so many little venues there.

Scott 9:47

So did but growing up a little kid in London, did you have the same thing like me? Like I want to go to San Francisco and be a rock musician.

Max 9:56

I I I always wanted to come back, you know. Did you want to play did you want to play music secretly? Oh, sure. I mean, we had a we had a little band in high school, you know. And I played bass. Yeah. Did played bass. We played a lot of cream covers. Yeah. Remember Disraeli Gears had just come out. So we played a lot of those.

Scott 10:24

I w I was incapable of thinking I could play an instrument back in high school. Oh. But I could I was in choir, a cappella choir, so that's where I I have those teenage neurons that involve rhythms and chords.

Max 10:40

And I think singing is much harder than playing an instrument. So I think playing an instrument, you can kind of fake it and you can kind of do it until you get it. But with singing, you've got you've got to kind of know what you're doing.

Scott 10:54

Well, I've found that it with acquiring the skills on an instrument, it it only when it becomes like singing or becomes like dancing, uh, does it feel is it like feel good, or you know, you get confidence in it. You know, that's the pocket. The pocket makes it feel like dancing. Yeah.

Max 11:15

But you've got to have some innate talent, you know, where I think sometimes some instruments you can you can learn, you can be dogged and just fight your way through. But I think singing, you've got to have some innate talent.

Scott 11:29

And I was in a barbershop quartet in high school. So do you remember the name of your band in high school?

Max 11:41

Yeah. Uh-huh. It was picked by the guitarist who was really into the psychedelic thing. We were called Vosnik Aubergine. V-O-S-N-I-C aubergine, and we played one gig. Aubergine is is like what? Eggplant. Eggplant, yeah. I think the popular thing there was to pick like a totally unrelated word and a color, right? So that's what it is.

Scott 12:12

It is a color too, I think. Aubergine.

Max 12:14

Bosnick Aubergine. So and we played, we played one gig. It was a uh 21st birthday party, and we had one set and we had to play it twice. But it didn't matter because every everybody was so drunk that they they loved it. Were they covers or original songs? No, they were all covers, mostly cream covers.

San Francisco In 1977

Max 12:40

Uh yeah, we had our guitarist was very, very good, so he was able to carry the rest of us. And I played bass, and then another friend played drums, and then the guitarists. Cousin sang, and we practiced for months without a singer because she was at college. She was older. Uh-huh. So we just practiced all these songs without any lyrics. We would just play them through. We play like Sunshine of Your Love. We play all the verses without lyrics. And then he played the solo, and we played the it was basically like playing the whole song without any vocals. And then she showed up at the last minute, and we did like a rehearsal with her singing. Okay, good to go.

Scott 13:28

Yeah.

Max 13:28

And it was good fun. Wow.

Scott 13:33

That's uh that's a good story. You couldn't, you couldn't you can write about English, you can write about English people. The Americans suck that stuff up.

Max 13:44

Yeah.

Scott 13:45

Yeah.

Max 13:46

Well, one of one of my books, one of my Colleen books, takes place partially in London in the 60s and 70s with a kind of a washed-up rock and roll star who gets embroiled in a what appears to be a kidnap event of his daughter. I I know the character. I'm kind of trying to put together. And he was and he was based on the Trogs, who were one of my favorite 60s groups. Huh. Do you know the Trogs? No. Wild Thing? Oh, okay. Everybody's heard that song. I will. I don't know. Yeah. And his his his story was he started off, they started off as like a local band. They were construction workers, and they were one of these bands that got like 15 minutes at the recording studio to record their song, and they recorded their song, and it became a big hit, and then they became stars. And then they were, you know, they had a number of hits through the 60s. Wild Thing was their biggest one.

Scott 14:57

Uh-huh.

Max 14:58

And then they soon passed. They didn't kind of graduate into the psychedelic era. And their singer changed his name to Reg Presley, changed his last name to Presley, because he thought that with having dad as his last name, it would attract people for his songwriting. So he'd write a song and it would say Presley on it, you know. Like that was in the hope. And that was in the hopes that he would attract uh. Yeah, kind of interesting. But anyhow, it's like Elvis Costello. Yeah.

Scott 15:36

The other way around.

Max 15:37

Yeah. So so and then I so by the 70s, he was working as a bricklayer again, you know? And then one of the songs he wrote, uh Love is all around, was picked up by Four Weddings and a Funeral. Remember that movie?

Scott 15:55

Yeah.

Max 15:56

So it was picked up by the movie, and he won an Ivory Novello Award and was suddenly wealthy.

Scott 16:04

Again. Yeah.

Max 16:06

And he spent all the money on crop circle research and UFO research. Oh no. And he's his songs since passed, very colorful character. And they were from a town called Andover, which is a big military town in England. And I don't know if REM have an album called Athens to Andover. And the Andover part is paying tribute to the Trogs. Because the Trogs were considered like one of the first garage bands, anyhow. Right.

Scott 16:43

Where that's interesting. So it's an it's a aesthetic, aesthetic where you're going to appreciate that this is underpolished. Yeah. That was their thing. That here's a song you're still going to like. And I've always I've always whatever been a fan of that because uh, you know, I spent decades like going, well, if I ever start playing music, it's it's gonna be rough. So I like rough music.

Max 17:18

Yeah. I've always liked I've always liked music that's lo-fi. And so yeah, yeah, that the Trogs, that was their big appeal, you know, that they were.

Scott 17:29

I was gonna ask you if you wanted to go see on March 13th, which probably means no. Um Humphreys McGee at the guild. Well, they are, sure. Have you did I talk to you about them? No. They're they're like a a a jam band on steroids. Okay. Like they've done that stuff. They've been I don't know, like they started a podcast in 2009 of nothing but live recordings and they kept it up for ten years. Humphreys McGee. Umfries, like Humphrey without the H.

Max 18:14

Okay.

Scott 18:15

And they can just play everything, and and they've got a really well-developed sense of they have their own theory of s of song composition, their own approach of using like jazz like improv to build songs that then they can reproduce. And like when I saw them this summer, what their core was just perfect rendition of that Alman Brothers song. The one with the like mostly instrumental Traveling Man? No.

Max 19:06

Not doing very good stuff. Not Traveling Lord, I was born a traveling man.

Scott 19:12

Yeah, I don't know what it was. There's a lot of instrumental in that. It was just incredible instrumental, and they're just like, oh no, we this is what we do. We we have the ears to perfectly reproduce that, and then we just make up whatever else we want to do. But we have a show the next day, so we do. We might be focused. Yeah, I don't I don't know if I should.

Max 19:35

It should be a good show. I'm excited about it.

Scott 19:37

Yeah. I think we're gonna do really well. We're in a band called which I guess I called the point at the points, but it works. The group didn't disband over me picking that name.

Max 19:51

No. You know what I was gonna ask, you know who's on in July? Is uh let me just check here. I guess they do it every year. The the Mosswood meltdown in Berkeley is like a three-day event. Three-day heard of that. So anyhow, on Saturday, July 18th, the headliner is Iggy Pop. Okay. And they've got other bands like the dirt bombs, the fadeaways, the primitives, the spits.

London Roots And First Bands

Max 20:30

It's you know, and it's cheap.

Scott 20:32

So it sounds like let's okay. See, at part of this podcast, we always sponsor something. Yeah. So this would be a good thing this to sponsor.

Max 20:44

It's we just sponsored that.

Scott 20:46

Yeah.

Max 20:47

Get free tickets. The Mosswood, what's it called? The Mosswood Meltdown, hosted by John Waters. And it's a three-day event. They have Friday is pavement headlines, Saturday is Iggy Pop, and Sunday is Bikini Kill. Yeah. Bikini Kill. What do you think? Yeah, Sunday. Let's see if I can send you the Okay. Sunday what? June, you said? June the Sorry, July the 18th.

Scott 21:21

Oh.

Max 21:23

I'm gonna send you the darn it. I'll send you the promo. I just saw it, and are you not gonna be around?

Scott 21:32

I'm not gonna be around, but that's that's uh I would love to see bikini kill. Where are you gonna be? Oh, probably Wisconsin, you know. Gotta go to Wisconsin. Okay. Look at water. Oh yeah. Get away from the I have to take a break from this rock and roll lifestyle. I know it's it's stressful. But I'd almost fly back for that one.

Max 22:02

Yeah, I mean Iggy Pop, have you ever seen him?

Scott 22:06

No.

Max 22:07

He's he's definitely worth seeing, even as uh who is the guy we saw the day I got COVID at the Oh that was uh the guy from the MC5 Kramer.

Scott 22:20

Kramer. Who's since passed on? Yeah. But they're in the same vintage and location, aren't they? Yeah. Detroit. Detroit. Lo-fi. Before it was punk rock or yeah. They're the they're the United States equivalent of the Trogs, right?

Max 22:40

Well, the Trogs are were sixties, so they were probably a little more refined than when did Iggy pop start? In in Well I 70s, early 70s was really his Dave Bowie discovered him or made him or promoted him and made him big. The Stooges were Yeah, those I guess the Stooges were late 60s, you know, and early 70s, and then but he's done so many things. Anyhow, well that's too bad because I think that's it's gonna be a great show, and the tickets aren't that expensive. And I think he uh and it's moss, moss whatever it was called. Uh they do it the Mosswood Meltdown. Mosswood Meltdown in Berkeley. Mosswood Park, Oakland. Sorry, Oakland. Okay, and it's hosted by John Waters.

Scott 23:34

Better yet, this sounds like worth making travel plans for.

Max 23:40

That was a very good commercial, by the way. Um I just noticed it yesterday, and I've been trying to uh to find people who might want to go.

Scott 23:50

That's the only editing I do in the of the podcast, is I insert a little clip of usually Peter's music. Well, I'm sure I'm sure they can use the get you into roll you in and roll you out of the pod out of the commercial.

Max 24:05

I'm sure they can use the the plug. Yeah. Let me see if I can send that thing to you. It looks great.

Scott 24:13

Yeah. There, just send it to your phone. You're you're the lead guitarist type of player. Yeah. Where can you? Oh there you go. Were you were you looking for those? I'm just trying to ask a good question about that. Yeah. What's what's your favorite solo that you've done? Or that you've heard that you currently know?

Max 24:57

Currently. I think I I think the jam last weekend I really liked doing the Who song. Behind Blue Eyes, the electric part. Yeah. I mean, that's pr that song is primarily acoustic, but then there's the rock and roll part towards the end.

Scott 25:17

Okay.

Max 25:19

And originally John Sweet, who kind of curates the jam.

Scott 25:26

Yeah.

Max 25:27

Then I don't know if your listeners know about the jam.

Scott 25:35

Okay. But we've discuss I've discussed it. It's like this the musicians who get together to play for each other. Right. Every every song run through is like a first practice, but people really put in the effort before they get together so that it usually all the songs get pulled off.

Max 25:56

Right. And and there's one guy who kind of curates the Yeah, one guy sets up the schedule. Sets up maybe a dozen songs, and then people can volunteer and say, Oh, I'd like to play guitar on this or drums on this or sing on this. And it's just you can rehearse them if you have time and the ability, or you can just show up and play.

Scott 26:20

It's an amazing opportunity for musician networking. Yeah. Because it's not a just a party where you're sitting and drinking and trying to socialize. It's like, no, we're just all here to like talk in between people playing music and talk about music.

Max 26:39

So and it's a great way to learn because sometimes they have songs where they they can't find people. So John will reach out and say, Could you play on this? And like, well, I normally wouldn't play that song, but sure. And so you actually learn vicariously by playing stuff that you wouldn't necessarily gravitate towards, which is good. Anyhow, he he had he somebody brought up Behind Blue Eyes, and nobody was volunteering for that guitar part. And he kind of reached out and said, I can't believe people aren't jumping on this, you know. And I said, I'm a little intimidated by it. He said, No, no, no, you could do it. So I did it and I thought it came off well, and I was really pleased with that. So that's my favorite solo right now.

Scott 27:25

I I really like that idea of, I mean, what's really worked for me is is that I pick songs that I like, and later I figure out, oh, that's going to be hard to learn on the bass, or that's gonna be hard to learn on the drums. And that's what pushes me along is first the desire to play it comes, and then I dig in and go like like for this last jam, we didn't I was doing drumming on Linger, which I just liked the song, and it was the bass player, she wanted to play a cranberry song, so it was like, Yeah, let's let's do that. And then I learned like, oh, it's all 16th notes on there. But it sounded good, it worked, yeah. But it took like two months of practice to to get to learn that skill. And it like opened up a whole new area. It's like, oh, now I can, you know, a lot of Phil's on drumming are 16th notes. So it's like, oh, I can get back to it faster. But I I'm la the joke is that I spring this on myself unintentionally again and again. Like, oh, you just picked a song where you have more to learn than you thought you did.

Max 28:46

But sometimes you get lucky. Like I know I found once I dug into that Who song, it's like, oh, that bridge is actually easier than in sounds.

Scott 28:56

Yeah, everything's easier, or like on bass, it's like, oh, they're getting that done because it's an open note alternating with this with a fretted note. Yeah that's how they do it that fast, you know.

Max 29:10

So sometimes you get lucky and you can learn little tricks.

Scott 29:14

Yeah.

Max 29:15

We're still looking for a bass player, by the way. We uh for Monday night. I'd have to drop out a choir.

Scott 29:23

Oh choir. I'd be tempted, but I'm I've got this commitment to this singing group in the same time. So I'm going from being on Monday nights? Yeah, I'm spending two hours drumming and then two hours singing on Monday nights. Oh, where's the choir? Not two hours, one hour. It's down the hallway toward room Z, it's the big room before that. So it's the same time as the eight o'clock. Exactly. Well, it's 7 30 to 9, yeah. Aren't our listeners? Yeah, because we got together.

Max 29:59

Oh, one thing we found out, you know, we're always looking for places to rehearse. Yes. If if bluebear has the room available, yeah, they'll rent it to you for $25

The Trogs, Lo‑Fi Aesthetics, And Influence

Max 30:10

an hour. How many? $25. So we rented the what do you call the that room at uh Bluebear where the auditorium? The hall or room Z? They're both the hall. So we rented it yesterday for two hours. Of course, it's not as a it's more available the week before classes start. So but if they have it, it's it's an alternative. Yeah, because I know the points are always looking for places to rehearse because of the yeah, everybody's so spread out.

Scott 30:46

Yeah. Can I tell the story of why we're named the points? Yeah. Do you know the do you know the reason? I do. Okay. Because I live on the east side of the peninsula in San Carlos, and our drummer lives in on the ocean in half moon bay, and you guys live, you know, around this the city. And so it's like we're just around the peninsula, and and then I thought, okay, we could be the peninsularians, or you know, just didn't work. It's like it would be a bad band name. So the points, oh, that'll work. So it works.

Max 31:37

Yeah. What's the it's kind of it's appropriate to the kind of music we play, I think, to have a name like that. Yeah, it's ungoogleable. It's not like Voznik Opergine.

Scott 31:49

It's ungoogleable, which is, you know. But of course, the Instagram will just be the points SF. This all you have to do is like take your band name and add your city initials and just be humble. It's like, yeah, we're the only points in San Francisco.

Max 32:09

That's what we did for Jack's Garage, because we found out that there's like a Jack's Garage everywhere, and so we just change it to Garage 415. I see. Although Jack's Garage was a great name because we did practice in Jack's Garage, but so did a lot of other people, Nashville.

Scott 32:31

Tell me what happened to all those people in that band, Jack's Garage.

Max 32:35

Well, Gina, you know, she's singer with the points. The points. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so she was. We had an iteration of singers, but she was definitely our kind of main one. Yeah, she's the one. Jack, you'd know what happened to. He's off in the splinters. Splinters. Splinters. Junhee. Which is she's a Sheba. Yeah. It's one of the seven Shebas. And then Paul was the drummer, and he's the drummer. You're kidding me. I didn't know that. He's the drummer with the aggressive monks. Oh, I didn't know any of this.

Scott 33:18

Wow. Wow, this is a real, this is like one of the it's a is a uh, what do you call a seed band?

Max 33:25

A yeah.

Scott 33:28

Wow.

Max 33:28

Yeah, it's kind of kind of like what is it? Who's the British guy? John Mayall, right? Or Peter Green's the bluesbreakers, or we we we we just grow uh bands anyhow. Yeah. And then we had several bass players. We had we had a bass player who wanted to be a guitarist, so he quit. And then we had a another bass player who's a a good friend of mine, who was the one I was telling you about that might be interested in doing some rockabilly. And then we had a third bass player, and at some point Jack's garage or garage 415 just kind of yeah, we had a good run. We were a pandemic band. Maybe maybe you're the Maven.

Scott 34:15

Maybe. You're the you're the one facilitating all these all these people. You can take over for John Sweet.

Max 34:24

That's a hard job. You know, he actually got that jam idea from Bluebear. Yeah, from T Lynn. Yeah, because Bluebear tried that at first, and it great idea, but it just never it never took off, I guess because of the time constraints or something. Yeah.

Scott 34:42

Which is interesting. This person who started it, this woman have I've never met, is she left San Francisco and moved to like the middle of Minnesota.

Max 34:55

Like I I was in a couple workshops with her. She was around, she used to play, she used to do everything. She played drums, played harmonica, played tambourine, whatever.

Scott 35:06

Wow. She was a grave all-rounder. She lives she lives now about 30 miles away from where my wife was born. Which is like that's just an odd coincidence. I stalk her on Facebook, but you know, she doesn't know who I am. She came to the jam once.

Max 35:27

I don't know if she was there.

Scott 35:29

She sometimes comes out to the Bay Area, and to the Bay Area. I saw that. It just must be an interesting person, or she just had this idea to set up this okay, everybody, we're just gonna have a list of songs and sign up people to play it.

Max 35:45

Play whatever I and I think where it when she did it, it was pretty much limited to bluebear. So there probably weren't enough people to to fill it out. But with the new iteration, it's like there's this whole network of bluebear alumni. And yeah. So there's a much bigger network of musicians to draw upon. So I think it's much easier now to fill out all the songs. Bluebear alumni group.

Scott 36:13

Yeah. In a way, but not everybody. Not everybody gets into this via that. That's uh that's that's amazing. I I didn't know that like the piano, the keyboard player in the seven Shebas. I didn't know if you were connected to her. Yeah, Jimmy. I could walk up and say, hi, I'm I'm in a band with Gina and Max, and then we could talk. She would tell me stories about you.

Max 36:44

Yeah.

Scott 36:45

Yeah.

Max 36:45

Yeah. She was. And the reason that band started was uh 2019, beginning of the pandemic. We were Jack and Gina wasn't there yet, but Jack and Junhee and Paul of the Gress, we were all together, and then the band just had to stop because of the shutdown, the lockdown. So then Jack lives in Tiburon in a house on a hill with a big garage, and we're like, oh, we can rehearse there with the garage door open and not bother. Okay, before we were so rudely interrupted. Yeah. Your video, your video is still off though. Oh, it is? It must that must be the default. Okay.

Scott 37:44

Yeah, as as a podcast host, I was supposed to like give you a warning. One thing I like about this podcast is we break rules all the time. So we're always looking for rules to make up. Break. So this break 'em. And now we're breaking the 40-minute rule, which is good. You know, we can always how about WhatsApp?

Max 38:07

To what? Well, I mean, for my writers group, yeah, uh, you we use WhatsApp because there's no time limit. And you can get the same recorder. I don't know about recording. That's a good point. That's a good point. I don't know, but you can get video or just audio, and so we're able to go for a couple hours. But yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know about recording. I'd have to look into that.

Scott 38:34

You were talking about the seminal band, Jack's Garage, that would practice on a hillside in Tiburon. Tiburon. Looking at the bay. Did you have a view of the bay out the garage?

Max 38:45

San Quentin.

Scott 38:46

View of San Quentin, okay. Yeah, that's very rock and roll.

Max 38:51

Yeah.

Scott 38:52

Yeah.

Max 38:53

And so, and then I don't know if you knew JT, who was one of the instructors at Bluebear.

Scott 39:00

No.

Max 39:02

He he's since moved on. He's in Portland now and he works, teaches remotely through Bluebear. But uh he was our instructor, so he kind of finished out the semester with us in Tiburon. I see. Then we broke away from Bluebear, and we would just kind of hired him to manage us for a couple of quarters or whatever they were. And then he we found some gigs and stuff, and he kind of coached us through the first couple gigs, and we had a pretty good run.

Scott 39:41

I see. You were you were seminal then in that this idea of yeah.

Jam Bands, Umphrey’s, And Live Craft

Scott 39:51

It was good for all these bands coming up, you know, and playing cover bands playing in the city. It's like It's cool.

Max 40:02

Now it's a thing.

Scott 40:03

Yeah.

Max 40:04

And I think that the pandemic probably attracted a lot more people to it because people wanted uh event places to play and so they came to Bluebear.

Scott 40:16

Yeah. Yeah, the original School of Rock. I mean, they were doing this teaching people how to be a band thing way before the first School of Rock existed. In the 70s. Yeah.

Max 40:36

Yeah, it's a great institution. And as you know, we get we get a lot a lot out of it. It's good fun and you meet people and it's almost like we're doing a second ad here.

Scott 40:49

Oh would you another sponsor would be breaking rules. Oh, okay. Save that for next time. Is it a rule that you can only break one rule per podcast? I don't know. I'll have to have a high-level meeting with this.

Max 41:06

Well, maybe we could break maybe we could do a third plug, you know, Gibson Les Paul. If anybody's looking to give away, if Gibson is looking to give away Les Paul guitars, I would be willing to evaluate one.

Scott 41:21

Okay, I will, you know, when they get in touch with us here. Jaguar too? Can we plug Jaguar? What color of each would you like? Of what, a Jaguar? And the Les Paul.

Max 41:37

Oh, a lemon yellow, I think. Yeah. Dirty lemon, lemon burst. But I'm not too fussy. Okay. That's a guitar, right? So there's jaguar and who else? Cadillac? Nah. Nobody wants a Cadillac anymore.

Scott 41:55

We can't park it in the city. That's kind of pointless. Okay, well, thank you, Max.

Max 42:02

Yeah, thanks. Good fun. Maybe we'll thanks for listening, everybody. You can do more repeat guests, you know. Oh, can I can I plug in my website?

Scott 42:13

Yes.

Max 42:13

Okay, it's it's Max Tomlinson at WordPress.com. And you go there about my writing and various specials and sales going on and things like that. Cool.

Scott 42:26

I will go there and pick up the next book to read. Okay. I'm sorry. I've been spending a lot of time playing music, so it really cuts into the reading.