Lee Ritenour

Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the Bob Lefsetz Podcast. My guest today is Lee Rittenhour, who has a new album, Live at Ronnie Scott's. So, I got to ask you, Lee, we're here, you know, on the coast of Los Angeles. Were you affected by the fires?

Yes, of course.

I hardly, I don't know anybody in Los Angeles that is.

Somewhat.

You have to take a number to pick a fire now out here.

It's crazy, right?

And of course, the last few days we had rain, which was amazing. But yeah, we were a product of the Woolsey fire. I lost my studio and about 100 guitars. And I pulled out six that day. My wife and I left at 5 p.m. We were supposed to leave at 8 a.m. We kept going down to the beach just to make sure we had an escape route, and we did. But finally, it got so intense, we left at 5 o'clock, and the house burned at 5.30.

Wow.

And I think it was NBC News set up a camera— not a camera, a whole truck— video and they were filming. It was on the news and my assistant and my son, Wes, who couldn't get up here. He was in Santa Monica and he couldn't get up here. And he said, and our house was on the news burning that day, not because it was Lee Ridenour's house. It was just, here's another house in Malibu burning, happened to be ours on TV.

Okay. So what did you actually take with you?

Well, I took the two Les Pauls that were made for me by Mike McGuire from the Valley Arts fame, and he was the head of the custom shop at Gibson for years. And he made me two beautiful Les Pauls, both of which I still play and have. And then I took my 1949 L5, and that my dad got for me when I was 13 years old. And then I took the red 335, the 1960 L5, which was been on a million sessions. And that's the 1960 and the red dot inlay. And so that's sitting over there on the shelf. And then as I was driving down the highway with my wife and we'd gotten a couple of blocks and I said to her, I gotta go back.

And she said, why? I said, I gotta get one more guitar. And so I went back and I got the Ramirez guitar. classical guitar, which I paid 25 grand for. And so I grabbed that guitar. And the one that I forgot to grab, which was on many sessions, it was not sort of the go-to Lee Rittenhour guitar for my albums, but a very famous guitar nonetheless, was the Strat.

And that was early 60s. And I forgot to grab that one. And that went up in flames.

Okay, so I see a lot of guitars here. Are these all of the guitars that you took with you, or have you replaced some of the guitars?

No, I took about six or seven that day, and so these are replacements. What was incredible about everybody, including— and.

I lost all the amps.

Really?

Yeah, I didn't take any amps.

How many amps did you have?

Well, I had all the ones that mattered, you know, the Fenders and the Boogies and the Ladners, and those companies were very sweet. to immediately replace the amps, you know, the Mesa Boogie and the Fenders that are my choice, and the Ladners, which is a custom company from America, and a few others in between. But I never really counted.

Up how many amps I lost. It was probably.

15 or 20.

Now aren't weren't some of them vintage.

Uh yeah they were all yeah what would mean by vintage we mean i probably bought them new but i had them most of my life okay.

So Vintage by the fact that Lee Ridenour is old.

Okay, but you know, people have different viewpoints, just like with guitars. You know, what year they were built, tube, transistor, etc.

Yeah, no.

I mean, I prefer tube over transistor to this day, to solid state, yeah. And so almost all my amps are tube. Just for me, I find that those sound the best. And it's all about if the amp sounds good. I don't care if it's 1960 or 2026 you know if it's a gray sounding amp it's a gray sounding amp.

Okay tell me about because i'm not familiar with the amp behind you the blue that you mentioned.

That's the ladner andrew ladner and uh uh so the ladner father and son they're back east and they they came to a gig years ago somewhere back east and and uh uh you know asked if they could send me an amp and and they sent me an amp, and it was a 112 cabinet, I think, and it was just an amazing amp right off the bat. It was just, you know, one thing I can tell about the guitar and an amplifier is how musical it is, the relationship between the player, the guitar, and the amp.

All the effects in between, that's like the buttons on a shirt, you know, that's a, But compared to the actual amp and the actual guitar and the actual player, those are the three things that matter. And the Ladner father and son.

Makes an amazing amp.

And all these years, the father has remained kind of on the quiet side, just making one amp at a time. The Sun now works for Mesa Boogie, which is owned by Gibson.

Okay, so let's assume I wanted to buy one of those amps, which I'm not going to. How hard would it be for me to get one?

I would turn you on to the Latiners, and you would talk to them, and he would maybe turn you on to someplace where you could try it, besides Lee Rittenhour's studio. And there's quite a few people that play them.

Okay. Okay. The location we're at right now, is this where your house that burned down used to be?

Yes, uh-huh.

Yes. Okay, well, I'm kind of astounded because I know a lot of people's houses burned down that you've gotten so much built up already.

Yeah.

How did you get it done so fast?

Well, we were in the Woolsey Fire, not the Pacific Palisades Fire, which was only last year, right? And the Woolsey Fire was a number of years ago, and Somebody that's in the area called us up shortly after we lost the house and we were with State Farm, Stiller was State Farm, and they did actually an amazing job of.

Getting us the funds.

Also, you know, I was smart enough to hire some people who know how to talk to the people at the insurance company. I like to say, the insurance guys can't play in my band, and I can't play in their band.

Right.

But State Farm was amazing, actually, and they supported us, and we were able to get the funds to rebuild. And there's every kind of story out there. There's people that had no insurance. We actually lived at another house that burned down. in the Pacific Palisades fire. And that was at the top.

Of, uh, big rock.

And, um, and so, uh, it was a beautiful house up there. And, and this person lost her house last year to the, uh, to the Palisades fire. And we, we were, of course, no longer living there. We had since finished building our house and we had moved back in. But, um, But this person, unfortunately, did not have insurance on her house at all. And we didn't know that at the time, and we heard that later, and we felt very bad for her.

So we heard about stories like that.

And, you know, the Palisades, there were those blocks where those houses that had been there for decades and decades and handed down from family to family, A lot of them were on small lots, and they were expensive because they were in this golden, beautiful area. Some of the houses were very nice, don't get me wrong, but they're fairly small by L.A. standards, and they're on fairly small lots.

I heard from sources that they were handed down from the grandparents to the parents to the great-grandkids, you know. And now the kids were in their 20s or 30s and they had these houses and they went up. And sometimes they were not insured because they had been in the family for so long.

Well, I know people assume that everybody who lives in the Palisades is wealthy, but I know people like you. Certainly, you know, south of the boulevard, a lot of houses there they've had forever.

So.

The house that you've built here now, how similar is it to the house that was here?

Well, let me tell you that quick story.

So we had a wonderful architect named Mark Mack, who was the head of architecture at UCLA for years. And he's a very famous modern contemporary architect in the style of Berrigan and Legeret of the famous Mexican. So he combined Mexican architecture, with sort of the modern world that we live in today. And Mark is one of those guys, it's like in seconds he can draw anything that looks exactly like your house on paper. And he's an incredible artist.

You know, most of the young architects, they might be very talented, but a lot of them obviously are very well versed on the computer today. Naturally so, right? And Mark is old school, you know, well, what if we put the bathroom over here and it would maybe look like that?

And it was wonderful.

So he's become a really good friend. So when the house burned, my wife Carmen called Mark, I think either the same day or the very next day.

And before.

She said hello and he said hello, His first thing was, he said, I will rebuild your house.

Wow. And he did. So did you have to have a separate insurance policy for the equipment?

Yes, that was all separate. And another great company. And so the guitars and the amps, the studio was part of the house. But everything in it. And I had a Trident Series 80 board, a wonderful old school board. And, of course, we don't usually use those in the modern technology today because we're all on Pro Tools or Logic or whatever.

Okay. So you got paid for your loss. To what degree are you going to replace what you're talking? You got the amps from the companies. But to what degree are you going to replace the other equipment, the guitars, or they were all unique and you just can't replace them?

Well, like I said, the first six of them, what I consider the most important ones, got, uh, you know, got, uh, uh, I, I took them out and saved them from the fire. Uh, like this LS 13 Sadowski, this, this is another great friend and another amazing guitar craftsman, Roger Sadowski. And I've been playing Sadowski's guitars for, for years. And he replaced a couple that went up in the fire. And then this one was, uh, was, uh, since the fire and, uh, It's my go-to guitar on the road and in the studio.

Okay, so for those who are uninitiated, what is special about that guitar? It.

What is special about this guitar?

Well, I mean, I could technically say all the stuff. The sound is perfectly balanced. It's got the right tone. It's got the right balance. It's got the right weight. It feels good. The intonation is perfect on it.

And.

And that would be a technical description, but that really doesn't say it.

The main thing is that when.

A guitar player, any professional guitar player, whether it's Steve Lukather or Pat Metheny or whoever you're talking about, picks up a guitar and immediately there is a connection or not a connection between the player and the guitar and the hands and the and the relationship and of course, and, and how it sounds through the, if it's an electric guitar, how it sounds through the player's rig, which is a whole nother conversation. But the, the first thing that happens is when I pick this up with no sound, you know, how does it feel? And Roger Sadowski, he, he's been making me guitars for the last 40 years, acoustic guitars, uh, classical electric guitars, you know, uh, solid body classical electrics.

And, and, uh, he's just wonderful.

The other company that has always been a part of my life since the, since the seventies, uh, when I sort of first started going over to Japan is Yamaha. And, uh, Yamaha also helped out by coming to the rescue when all the guitars burned and replaced my Yamaha classical.

Which is, uh, It was right in this slot. It's somewhere else now.

But, you know, Yamaha's another one that I would go to Japan and go to the factory, and I would play their guitars, and maybe they would show me. There was one time in the room I had 20 Yamaha guitars, and I picked one out of those 20, and I couldn't probably tell you technically why it was better than the others, other than it was better for me.

Okay, in the old days, that was always the experience. Every guitar was unique. Now, 50 years later, 60 years later, is the quality control such that if you pick, if there are five strats there, they're going to be pretty similar?

Theoretically, yes. But again.

To the master player or the player that's been playing 100 years, one will pop out more than the other.

Okay. And the way you have– this is Quincy when he comes in and out of the screen here. The way you have your guitar set up, how might it be different from another person?

Well, you know, as far as talking about jazz for a second, I've never been the super, super traditional jazz player, right?

I've always been kind of a hybrid.

And if you talk about my studio career and then you talk about my records, I've been from A to Z. I've been kind of over the map. So I need a guitar that's set up so I can go all those places. So On the jazz guitar, which this I'm using as a jazz guitar, the LS-13 Sadowski, it's flatwounds on the bottom and plain strings on the top. And this is 12, 13, 17. So they're fairly thick. On my Les Paul, for instance, which I have the two Les Pauls that I saved out of the fire, and Mike McGuire made.

Those for me.

They're amazing guitars, and that's a more traditional... lighter gauge string, and I use D'Addario strings for both guitars, but those are wound to this 9, 11, 15, 26, 36, 46. But, you know, I think, you know, when people say, what's the gauge of your strings? I think that stuff is really. Not too important these days. I think the player, the 13-year-old out there going to high school knows exactly what gauge he wants to use, let alone the pro. So in today's world, everything's on your iPhone, everything's on your iPad and computer, and the kids picking up an instrument today they're already dialed into who they want to copy, who they want to be like, who they, what kind of music they want to write, you know, what kind

of strings they want to use, all that.

To what degree are you tech savvy or tech averse?

Um, I mean, compared to, uh, teenagers out there, we're all not tech savvy, but, uh, You know, I love Logic Audio. My engineer loves Pro Tools. We mix all our albums on Pro Tools. And the new album was recorded at Ronnie Scott's in London on Pro Tools by my engineer over there. And Decky recorded it. He's from Serbia.

And then Don Murray, who is my engineer, that has mixed all my albums since the late 70s. And Don probably mixed 40 of my albums and recorded most of them. So he records and mixes on Pro Tools.

Okay. You're obviously the player and the engineer, and this is a live album. He's recording that. To what degree did you go back and fix anything?

Uh, I don't think, uh, I set up the amps and fixed anything, re-recorded anything. Uh, we would, the nice thing about this project is that as an incredible young band, uh, we can talk about the band in a minute, but, um, We had already been playing on tour for the last year or two, and a lot of the material we had already been playing. When we got to Ronnie Scott's.

We did, I believe it was.

Eight shows, because we did two matinee shows on Sunday and two at night, and then the three other nights. So it was a total of eight shows. And so we were set up at Ronnie Scott's, which is an incredible, famous club, as you know.

For those who don't know, describe what makes it incredible.

Well, first of all, it has a history of being pretty much in the same location for decades and decades. Miles Davis is recorded there. Nina Simone is recorded there. Jimi Hendrix is recorded there. And everybody else in between.

And the.

the audience is so hip in London. I love the London audience, right? Because they're sophisticated, yet they're just great fans in general. And the club is nice because the first, I'm on stage here, and the first row is right.

There, you. And it goes all over the club.

And, you know, I love the interaction with the audience, and especially in London, it's one of those places places where, you know, they're part of the performance. And we didn't, when we mixed the album here at my studio in Los Angeles here.

We didn't.

Dial in the audience, the ambient sound with the audience as much. It almost sounds like a studio album until the audience comes in and claps. And And we had the option of all these ambient mics set up with our engineer over there. And so when Don and I mixed, we decided we kind of went tune by tune. Sometimes we brought in a little more ambient sound from the house, and sometimes we just kept it tight on stage. And that's what's nice about Ronnie Scott's. You can either dial in the ambient sound and have more of a room sound, if you will, Or you can keep it tight like it's almost in a studio.

To what degree do you play off or is the audience inspirational and change or improve your performance?

Well, always when you're out playing live, and I don't care what band you are, if the band. Unless you're just syncing to a track. But if your musician's playing live, which most of the good bands still do that, and whether you're talking about rock or R & B or electronic music or jazz or whatever kind of music you're playing, always the band feeds off the audience.

You cannot help it. And if you're having a bad night, the audience feels it and vice versa. And if everybody's in sync and everybody's having a good night, it makes a huge difference. And Ronnie's is one of those clubs, Ronnie's Costs, that you have to be on your A game to be at Ronnie's because everyone great in the world has played there. And then it inspires you to play better and be better And the audience comes in and they know everything about you. They know a lot of the music or most all of the music.

And it's really a special place.

Okay. You have a lot of experience, decades, both in the studio and on stage. You know you're going to do this recording. To what degree do you have anxiety or stage fright in advance?

Well, here's how I answer that question. an interviewer fairly recently asked, well, you sort of asked it, do you get nervous stage fright? But this particular interviewer asked, do you also get stage fright on big stages, like, for instance, the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, where it's 17,000 people?

And I said, For decades, I've never gotten nervous about performing in front of an audience. What I get nervous from is if the equipment's not going to work. Because you do a sound check, and especially on, you know, a lot of these big, you know, you go to Europe and you play these amazing, huge festivals where there's, you know, thousands of people, you know, because you're part of a festival. And, and so you sometimes, you know, you'll do the sound check early in the day, even late morning, and then you don't play until nine o'clock that night. And there's been five other bands and, you know, whatever. And, and you, even if you have a great crew, there's still, you're still rolling the dice a little bit. And so

you go out there. So I always, I don't get nervous about the audience or my own playing or, you know, this kind of thing. But I do get nervous about if the gear is.

Going to work.

And, you know, 98% of the time or 90%, let's say, it's usually flawless.

Okay. I've been to gigs where the equipment has definitely failed. Yeah. And then I've also been at gigs where the performer is hearing something. And they stop the show. They might spend minutes trying to fix it. Frequently unfixable. Just a regular gig for getting recording live. When you're in that situation, what do you do?

Well, the other night we played at Jazz Alley in Seattle. And we did six shows at Jazz Alley. This was last week. And another fantastic place, Jazz Alley. And I love that room and I love Seattle. And, uh, I love the audiences and, and it is a somewhat similar, uh, size to Ronnie Scott's might even be a little bigger.

And the audience is also kind of right in front of you all the way back, you know? And, uh, so you're surrounded by people. And I had something happen that, that I hadn't had happen in a long time. I had a guitar, bad guitar cable. And, uh, I was plugged into the rig. The sound check went fine. And I got up on stage and nothing, you know. And then my tech came out. And it's like you never, in today's world, you never think of like a bad guitar cable, you know. It's like something so simple. And so it turned out to be that. But it took us a minute to figure it out. And I had to make some jokes to the audience. And I said, wow, that was an old school.

you know, mistake.

Okay, the people who are coming to see you, are they people who are fans specifically of you, or are they jazz fans? What kind of person comes to see you?

Well, most of the time it's my fans that have been with me my whole life that I've been making music. You know, once in a while you get put in a situation where where you're on a huge festival and there's other headliners and, and people are there to see me, but they're also the fans of somebody else is there to see them. And so you, you, all of a sudden you have different fans hearing you. So, uh, and then that, that's a little harder because you got to try to win over the room, you know, but, uh, usually, uh, festivals are great because, uh, the fans are there to not only hear their favorite band, but, uh, to hear a bunch of other people too. So you, especially the jazz festivals, you know, if the players can play and,

and everything is, uh, happening, uh, you know, at, at once and, and it's all the cylinders are, are happening, then, uh, the, the audience and the players on stage, uh, enjoy each other.

Okay. I was once at this gig about 20 years ago. It was Def Leppard and Brian Adams who were flipping slots. Brian Adams was opening on this day. They're playing minor league baseball parks. And he's playing and the sun is out, whatever. And he's having a hard time. And he literally picks up the set list, rips it in half, looks at the band. and then just goes to win the act, the audience over. Nice. Okay.

Wow.

You're in that situation where you realize, hey, it may not be your fans. Do you have special techniques or things you do to try to win the audience over?

Well, you know, I.

I'm always coming from the point of view that I have to win the band over first.

Okay.

And if I win the band over and we're all in sync and we're all playing well, then usually the audience goes along for the ride and it's all good. The other thing that I do I almost never have a specific set list. So this drives, especially my young players that are on the, the guys like the Ronnie Scott's album or what I just, the guys I used recently in Seattle. And so there's a, a cast of consistency of players that I use, uh, more than not.

But, uh, But also.

There's always, there might be a new keyboard player or something, right? But it's people usually I've played with a little bit and people that were recommended. But my assistant sends out the production list of songs, the audio and the PDFs of the scores. And I say, here's the 20 songs that Lee's going to choose from. Make sure you know all of them because he'll, probably go through all 20 songs but you know in the course of one evening he'll play 9 or 10 right and so I'll have the master list up on my amp and I'm fairly consistent with the first song it's kind of a band tune and it's easy for everyone to play and kind of get warmed up but from there on it's anything can happen.

So how did you decide ultimately what songs were on this record well.

It's twofold.

The Live at Ronnie Scott's album has a lot of, well, again, sort of having the players and bringing out what they do best.

You know, that's one thing.

So, for instance, the singers, I brought up Tatiana Parr from Brazil. who's an incredible Brazilian singer, and she's on the Brazil album that I did with Dave Grusin two years ago. And then she's been on tour with me on and off whenever we can bring her up from Brazil. And she's very busy doing her projects and doing other people's projects as well in Brazil. And, of course, you have the expense of bringing somebody from.

Brazil up to the U.S. or to Europe or whatever. But we brought her up.

And so that made a decision that, okay, I'm going to feature a little bit of the Brazilian material because she's singing in Portuguese. And then our bass player, his name is Munir Hosan, and he's from the north of Brazil. And he's a very great bass player, but he's also a very good Brazilian singer. And so Tatiana and Munir were singing a number of songs. So at some point, somebody kept saying, Lee, why don't you do Is It You again?

And that was the hit I.

Had in 1981. It was a pop R & B hit, right? And it was top 10 around the world and did very.

Well for us. But it was an L.A.

Kind of Stevie Wonder-ish singer-songwriter that was working with me at the time. Eric Tagg sang it. Bill Chaplin from Chicago was also on it. David Foster was playing keys and helped arrange the tune. It had all these great players, Abraham Laborio, Alex Acuna. And so it was a very specific, almost LA sound, if you will, back then. So then I went through decades where sometimes I would perform the tune with the band and sometimes not. And then there was a lot of period where I did not do the song because I'd moved on to other kind of music.

But then I thought, well, maybe I'll pull it out with this band. I called Munir up, the Brazilian from the north of Brazil, who lives sometimes in Miami, but also lives in Spain sometimes and lives in Brazil sometimes. And I said, Munir, can I send you a song and see if we could do the song? Because we were going to do the Jack Jazz in Jakarta and he was in the band and the promoter, Izzy U, was a huge hit over there. And He said, Lee, you got to do that tune. I said, okay, let me see if we can pull it off. So I called Munir. I said, Munir, what do you think of this song? And he listened to it. He called me back.

He says, yeah. He said, Lee, I think that's a great tune.

What year was that? I said, 1981.

And he said, before I was born.

I said, yeah, I know.

And then he said, yeah, I think it'll be okay, Lee. He said, there's one thing I should tell you, though. There's one little problem. I said, you want to change the key.

You want to make it lower, right? He said, yeah, that. I said, yeah, that's not a problem. Anything else?

He said, yeah, there's one other problem. I said, what's that, Munir? He said, well, I've never sung a song in English. He sang songs in Portuguese. He sang songs in French. He sang songs in Spanish.

Not English.

And I laughed and I said, were you up for it?

And he said, yeah.

So anyway, the version you hear with Tatiana and Munir singing on the live album, they got this wonderful Brazilian, north of Brazil, Brazilian accent.

Both of them.

And so all of a sudden, Is It You has this kind of other charm. And it doesn't sound like the 80s version. It sounds like Kind of a Rittenhour meets Brazil meets R & B meets, you know, typical of what Rittenhour would be doing, you know, so I like it.

Okay. You know, Stevie Winwood has a Brazilian guitarist. What is it about Brazilian musicians?

Well, first of all, you know, we have to be careful when you're talking about Brazil and me.

My wife is Brazilian.

Okay, that begs the question, how'd you meet her?

Well, which question do you want to answer first?

Start with her.

Okay. Well, I'll tell you that story.

But also, I've been loving Brazilian music since the invention of the bossa nova when Tom Shobim and João Gilberto and all those players came up with, you know, the Girl from Ipanema and all that.

And, you know, that.

Groove was part of the culture. And that was in the 60s, right? And I was just a little kid. And I said, wow, what is that? And Stan Getz was playing saxophone and Astrid Gilberto was singing. And it was a huge pop hit, right? And Tom Shobim was the composer, Antonio Carlos Shobim.

So Brazilian music.

And it turns out AI. Went to work on my discography recently and came up with that. I was in Brazil, which I was in 1974. I went down there with my friend, Oscar Castro Nevis from Sergio Mendez and, uh, recorded, uh, a record in a couple of days. And, uh, that was technically, although it never made it out of Brazil, uh, my, my first album. And, um, and so, later on, I, I ended up doing some work with Sergio Mendez, and, and I, of course, I met Dave Grusin, and Dave was involved in Brazilian music, because he was the arranger on all that Showbeam material that was the big hits back then, and it was even on the Sergio Mendez cuts, uh, Dave was playing some of the keyboards for Sergio, and, and, uh,

but Sergio had the vision, and, and, uh, and, and had those, those commercial hits back then. So, um, and I met Carmen. I was at a concert in Los Angeles. I went to a concert to see my friend Jeff Lorber play, and Carmen was there with her brother.

I didn't know her.

And at an intermission, her brother recognized me, and we were all outside on the patio, and her brother said, oh, there's Lee Rittenhour. And Carmen, I had just done an album a couple years earlier, a few years earlier, called Rio, and I had recorded a lot in Brazil in 79. Now we're up to about 1984, and we're at this concert, and we're out on the patio, and she comes up to me, and she says, I'm a friend, we had friends in common, Arisi and Paulina da Costa. Paulina's, of course, one of the most famous percussionists in the world, maybe the most famous, and an incredible player that played on all of Quincy's stuff, and Quincy Jones' stuff, and.

I played on.

His records, and he played on my records, so Paulinho and Arisa have been dear friends over the years, and so. She came out to me, she said, we have this friend in common, and I said, of course, you know, and who is, and then I said to myself, wow, who's this lovely girl, and so she said bye-bye, and she didn't know anything about me, she thought maybe I was married or something, And the next day, we both call our friend to see, hey, what's up with that girl I met? And what's up with Lee? And it took us a while to.

Get together, but we got together.

What year is this?

When I met her?

Yeah.

That was 1984. Okay. Now, had she grown up in Brazil?

She grew up in Brazil, but her....

Her father was, uh, involved in, um, having, uh, they, they were involved in music and he had kind of a music company that at the time was, uh, putting music in big department stores. That was the first time that was kind of happening back then. And, uh, and her brother played guitar, still does. And, and, uh, so she was very involved. She, she has great ears and, and, uh, and then she ended up doing her own art and music projects through the years and she brought Joan Gilberto to New York to play and record and perform at her events so she's been very involved in music and then of course we have our son Wesley who has played in my band for years now and has turned out to be a great drummer and has his own

band and doing all sorts of stuff so Music's part of our life.

To what degree was it culture shock or things you had to work through being married or involved with a Brazilian woman?

That's an interview in itself.

I think Carmen was and is to this day very international in the sense that her family spent a lot of time in the States and Carmen has lived in New York and lived in L.A. and spent time in Europe. She's quite versatile. It was kind of perfect in the sense that I was already traveling the world. She was doing these art and music projects. in various places in Japan, in New York, in Brazil.

So it.

Was quite natural for us to get together. We had to chase each.

Other around the globe a little bit.

And in those days, the phones were not quite as friendly. So you spent a zillion dollars on cell calls.

And back then, you've been together 40-odd years. Did she go on the road with you, or did you always go out by yourself?

No, no. Carmen, to this day, travels quite a bit with me whenever possible. And now that Wes plays drums regularly with me, she tries to travel especially to the places she likes.

Okay, you mentioned this hit, which you've remade on the new Ronnie Scott's album. Irrelevant of you, your talent, your career, the business has changed. Anybody can record. We can record a song right now and get it on Spotify tonight. Okay. So the big issue is notice, attention. To what degree does that affect you knowing that it's harder to reach a larger audience?

So frame the question one more time. I understand the general.

household names, they can make a record today and no one will listen to it. Okay. Even the Rolling Stones had a recent record. If you look at the number of streams, really anemic. And they're the Rolling Stones. They want to go on tour. They can sell, you know, 50,000 seats in stadiums. Okay. But in this case, you're making a record. you had a certain level of commercial success in that sales heyday. We no longer live in that era. So a lot of those acts, they can't get motivated and they don't even make new records. Okay.

So where do you fit into all that?

Well, I think, uh, first of all, when the internet exploded years ago and music could be around the world in a second, uh, I considered that a good thing because the kind of music I make, some of it is vocal oriented and I don't sing myself, but I have guest singers and people that work with me who sing as we've talked about. But 80% or maybe more of my music is instrumental. And so the fact that all of a sudden the internet exploded and The music was in the U.S., but now it's in the Ukraine, or it's in Germany, or it's in Japan, or it's in China, or it's in France, or it's in South America.

It's all over the place, right? And so, especially for an instrumentalist, that I considered just a bonus, because it immediately went out all over the world for those fans of mine that followed Lee Rittenhour.

Or we're aware of Lee.

And I was making this kind of guitar-driven melodies and rhythms and.

Blah, blah, blah.

So that worked in all these different countries. As opposed to somebody singing just in French, right? Their music still didn't translate to Japan or maybe even the U.S. or other countries, right? So English obviously translates a little better, but still.

If you were a big U.S.

Playing Southern rock in the U.S. singing in English, it may not have been as popular in China. And I'm not saying my music was popular everywhere, but.

Some of my audience was everywhere.

Have you found there have been gig opportunities as a result of this? Oh, 100%. 100%.

So, you know, those of us that were players that loved to play and had good bands playing with us, young or old, whether it was Wesley Rittenhour or Dave Grusin, you know.

Then.

We could take this band and play anywhere.

Okay, so... Why record an album, live album now?

Well, first of all, that's an excellent question because every gig, the engineer for every band in the world is recording off the monitor desk and they have that nice performance and they go home with that. And on top of that, everybody takes out their phone and records the band if they want to. even though the promoter gets up and says, no recording here at this theater. And then the first thing, the artist gets up. But why did I decide to make a live recording and put it out?

And we'll find out ultimately if that matters to people.

But I think it does because my fans know that if I was serious enough to make a live record at Ronnie Scott's, it's a record that sounds, first of all, like the studio. It gets back to what I said, that the audience doesn't know that it's a live record until the audience sound comes in. It's like when I listen to, and I'm not putting myself in this category, God bless them, but when you hear the... amazing Keith Jarrett play the piano, and so many of his records are live, right? Because he's creating that music as part of that performance then, and it's like this incredible sound on the piano, and it's most of the time it's solo piano Keith Jarrett, and you're listening to this record, and then you forget that it's live, and you don't

even realize it's live until the very end where the audience comes in, and you know, and, and so a little bit, we went for that kind of thing where the, we wanted, I wanted to create the sound like a Lee Rittenhour record, because I'm, I'm kind of a, an audiophile nut, and my, my, a lot of my fans are, you know, a lot of people have used my, when they used to test records in stereo stores, one of the guys they used to use to test those records was Rittenhour Records. And so I'm very flattered by that because I'm a nut about having the sound really good.

And my engineer, Don Murray, is the same. So anyway, it's... I'm happy that we could make the live record and release it as a written hour live record, not just something off the board.

Okay. Now, many people, when they're going to release a record, we're talking here right now. That's part of promotion. But there are other people on social media. They interact with their fans on a regular basis. To what degree do you have a presence online today? And to what degree do you interact with your friends?

Okay, well, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked it. I'm terrible online. And I'll tell you the main reason is that, you know, and so many of the young artists and some very talented young artists, you know, and maybe also not so young artists, some established artists, they get online every morning and and all times of the day, and they're talking to their fans, and they're on the social media, and they're saying what they had for breakfast, and they're talking about their new song, and how they wrote it, and all that stuff. And I'm a little more private than that. I have no presence on social media.

My production manager that works for me, and my son, Wes, And, you know, I'm aware of my pages. It's not like I have nothing to do with it. But for me, it takes too much of my time. And I'd rather be playing the guitar and making music or writing a song.

Okay, so let's just say it's hypothetical. I said, Lee, if you spent an hour a day online, your audience would increase by 40%. What would you say?

Well, I should do that. And if you're the record company, that's what you would tell me, and I should definitely do that. Will I do it?

Probably not.

Okay, irrelevant of posting, to what degree do you utilize the Internet?

As far as social media?

No, anything.

Oh, well, just like ours. young assistant here, he's on his phone the whole time, you know? It's like, we're all on.

Our phones the whole time, you know?

Are you too?

Well, when I'm not playing the guitar.

And are you, do you have like some specific hobby you're looking up or is it guitar stuff or old friends? What tends to eat up your time on the phone?

No, it's, it's, it's more, it's probably my time gets eaten up like a lot of people. We, we read the news on the, on the phone and, keep up with all the crazy shit going on. And, um, so, um, and, and, and that's the way the morning with the morning coffee probably goes, you know, you, and, and, um, I'm kind of normal that way, but I, I don't think I'm, I'm crazier than most when it comes to reading the news in the morning. You know, we used to have a newspaper, an old fashioned newspaper, right? And, uh, uh, I was out of, friend's house, an older friend's house recently, and that person had a newspaper on their table. And I said to that person, I said, wow, the newspaper still exists. That's so cool.

Okay. We are not, LA is inherently a spread out place, but you're in the far out regions. Okay. The nature of being a musician is inherently social. You're playing in a band. You're going on the road. But in terms of personality, are you a homebody? Or are you getting together with people all the time? Or are you keeping up with your buds? What's your personality like?

Well, again, that's where the Internet comes in. You know, it's like we can.

Talk to people.

I have friends all over the world and sometimes relatives all over the world. And so you can stay in touch with a lot of people that way.

You know, even.

out here at the beach and, and, and I have friends in town, you know, you're on your iPhone with them either on video or audio more than driving through an hour and a half of traffic to go see them. You know, that's, that's just the way of the world.

Okay. But there are certain people you connect with every day.

Friends.

Yeah. Friends or musician friends, whatever.

Well, again, production people that work with me, because I work a lot.

You know, I like.

Okay, just to be clear, define work.

Making music.

Okay, you could be making music right here.

And the business of music.

Okay, so here's something we should actually, because I've got to go pretty soon, we can talk.

All day, and you're a great interviewer. Thank you. But the business of music.

is very important for the musician, whether you're just starting out or whether you're a seasoned pro. The music business is very important for the musician to control his own destiny. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a manager, that you shouldn't have an agent, that you shouldn't necessarily have a record company. All those things can make a huge difference.

You know, a music attorney, all the business of music, right? But I've always said that an artist, a musician, and you don't have to be an artist, you can be a sideman, or you can be a composer at home, you know, writing for movies or TV or for commercials or whatever your craft is in the music area, it's important, very important that you understand the business of what you're working in. if you are working professionally. Because what used to happen in the old days, I think it still happens now, but maybe in a different way. In the old days, you'd get a manager, and then the young artist would think, okay, now I can just concentrate on my music. And then And you'd expect, you'd think, well,

this manager did good for so-and-so and he was recommended or she was recommended. And so I'm going to sign with them and give them 15% of everything I make. And then I have an agent who also gets a percentage to get all the shows, you know. And so pretty soon, you know, a big percentage of your income is going to folks that if they're great, it makes a huge difference. But what used to happen in the old days is that sometimes the manager would not do so well for you, right? And then you wondered why your career was not going forward. And supposedly the manager was supposed to do everything and you're supposed to just make your music. That's not reality you know and so i had that experiment one time i signed with a

couple of managers back in the early uh 80s and i was having a lot of success and uh commercially and with the record company and in those days you were signed to a traditional record company and i was signed to electoral records and the president of the electorate that time was joe smith fantastic guy I had a great relationship with Electra Records, and I had a great relationship later with GRP Records, which was Dave Grusin's label with his partner, Larry Rosen. And the first label I was with was with Epic Records, and that was just for a couple of years before I moved over to Electra.

So for the most part, the labels have been very solid. But how you talk to the president, the vice president, the A & R guy that helps you choose the material, the... the production people who are helping you with the record, you know, now I'm on mascot records, which is a great guitar based record label out of Holland in Amsterdam. Right. And, uh, that's who this new record live at Ronnie Scott's. And I've worked with, uh, those guys before.

And they're all, they're all great people.

Cause they're also, most of them are players and, uh, and, uh, The president of the label really understands music and understands the guitar and understands the nature of what we're doing. So, you know, now there's more labels like that. Back in the day, in the 60s, well, starting.

In the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, all the way up, you know, a lot of those days, the label was saying.

Well, you should try to copy this guy and have a hit record like this.

Guy.

And you should be more like this person so we can sell more millions of records. And then the artist goes, well, I have nothing to do with that artist that they want me to sound like. And you want me to write those kind of songs? And you want me to record those kind of songs and get those kind of singers and And I don't even like that guy's stuff, you know. And then you try to explain what your creative thing is. And a lot of times in those days, you know, the manager was in the middle of supposedly helping you do this.

And it never worked. It never worked.

And so I had a couple of managers where finally I would ask them, I did an experiment. the last year I was with them, I said to myself, I'm going to do a little test. I would go to them and say, what do you think? Should I do this or should.

I do that?

The one guy would say, oh, you should definitely do this. Then I knew the opposite was the correct answer. Then when they said, oh, no, no, you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't do, no, don't do that.

Don't go there.

Then I knew that was the answer, that I should do it. And so I did this for about six or eight months with these guys. And then I realized, I said, wait a minute, I shouldn't be with these managers. But then what I really realized, because they were good managers for different kind of artists or different kind of songs and different genre. And they were very good professionals, but not for me. So that's the thing. You have to figure out where you're at musically and where you are business-wise and kind of where you fit in. And you can have a dream and you can try to get better. And there's always people that can help you get there. But picking the right people to help you get there is as hard as picking the right song.

So do you have a manager now? No. So you're the manager.

Yeah.

Is that working out for you?

Fantastic.

I have a production manager that works for me that goes and gets X, Y, Z done.

And we have a meeting many mornings and many afternoons.

And of course, in today's world, you don't have to have your production assistant sitting at a desk for eight hours a day.

That's for sure.

You know, really, Jazz Fusion came to the forum, front of the market with Miles Davis in the late 60s, 70s. Then, of course, we had Weather Report. We had the Mahavishnu Orchestra. What is the status of both? You said you're not really a jazz guy. We put jazz at extreme. We go to Jazz Fusion. We go down. That music on that end of the spectrum, what is the status of this today? And is it an issue of the audience not understanding it? And how could they be led to understand it?

Well, again, you know, that gets to where you start to either choose to have a smaller audience or a broader audience. And sometimes... having a broader audience means making some of the music more accessible, which maybe means making it more melodic or maybe making it more rhythmically interesting. And today is especially challenging because.

There is so much music out there.

And, you know, everybody can listen to 25 songs on their phone before they get to work, you know? And, uh, so it's, uh, so it's, it's, but I, I think those same things exist even for the young players and the young artists and, uh, uh, the people coming up, you know, because they are creating music, uh, um, in their bedrooms or in a bigger studio or on their phones or on their iPads and on computers and they're writing and they're getting together with people and still playing and sometimes going out on the road with their young band and making headway. And you still have to reach the people. Like, for instance, in 19... Let me make sure I got the year right. In 1977, now I'm going back 100 years.

Believe me, I was aware.

So I started to play with my own group a little bit around town, right? And I was already successful as a studio musician, but now I was starting to make my own records. The first album for Epic was called First Chorus. The second record was Captain Fingers. So I'm at the Roxy Theater on Sunset Boulevard, and all of a sudden, you know, Captain Fingers comes out and starts to make a little noise, and the record company's coming, but so is the audience coming, right? And so I play a tune called Morning Glory, which was, I think, on the Captain Fingers album. I'd also gotten signed, luckily, by JVC Japan, Around the same time, I got the Elektra deal, and Joe Smith was nice enough to say, can I do the JVC records for Japan and do

the rest of the records for you? And he said, and Japan was so far away in those days that Joe said, yeah, just make sure the records don't come over here.

And in those days, that could kind of work.

And so I was making two records a year, one for Elektra and one for JVC, so it was an incredible time. Anyway, so I came up with this tune, Morning Glory, and I'm at the Roxy playing this tune.

Oof, I'm out of tune here. I'm going to tune the guitar real quick here.

So....

And so on and so forth.

So the tune was my first kind of melodic melody where the audience recognized the tune. And I noticed, you know, some guys were saying, hey, Lee, what was that tune you played? That was such a cool tune. Play that tune again. And I said, well, that was called Morning Glory. And they said, yeah, man, that's a nice tune. And so that became on the JVC record and then on the U.S. record became a pretty popular tune for me an instrumental and then later we did a vocal version of it with uh bill chaplin with him singing the hook but um you know that was the first time i noticed that a certain song it was something that the audience was looking forward to hearing it didn't matter that i was playing instrumental i was playing a lot

of guitar stuff you know it was it was like and then before that, several years before that, before I had all these deals, I was playing every Tuesday night at the Baked Potato in Los Angeles. And the Baked Potato, still they're going strong. And Wes, my son, plays there with his band sometimes and everybody else plays there. And in those days, you know, every Tuesday night we'd play there for years. So we do sessions all day long and movie dates and record dates and, you know, working for Dave Grusin and Quincy Jones and and doing all these big records, and then go at 10 o'clock at night and play till four in the morning at the Baked Potato, and then get up and do an 8 a.m.

call for another movie date. You could only do that in your.

20s.

But those were great times, and people were coming into the Baked Potato to hear this fusion stuff and pop and funk and all the stuff we were playing. I wrote this tune that was kind of my first fusion tune. And at the time, Al DiMeola was coming out. John McLaughlin was coming out. Jeff Beck was more of jazz rock at the time. But some people were, and Weather Report, as you mentioned. So all these bands were coming out and guitar players and doing some kind of version of what we ended up calling fusion or jazz fusion. And so this one tune I wrote, and I was starting to play it every Tuesday night, and it was a hard tune to play, and sometimes you know, it ended up on the new live album, and we still play it.

And so the.

Title, and I'm going to tell you the title in a minute, was, it was, I had written the tune and I didn't have a title, so I'm playing it at the Big Potato in the 70s, right? And this one fan, and I never know who this fan was, and he kept calling me, hey, Captain, what's happening, Captain? What you playing tonight, man?

Come on, man.

I'm here every Tuesday to hear you play. And then I started playing this fast fusion tune, right? And I didn't have a title for it, and then he said, Captain, man, those fingers were flying tonight, Captain Fingers.

And so he named it. I have no idea where he is.

You know, if he hears this interview, he should surface. And I want to thank him for that title. And so anyway, that was funny how that period brought on all that fusion and combination of rock and jazz. And those club days were great at the Baked Potato then because Joni Mitchell would come in and Eric Clapton came in and all the weather report guys would come in, and it was quite a hang on Tuesday nights.

So is there any studio business, any gig business, playing with your friends, or is it really at this point in time just your career? Do people call you up for any kind of outside gigs, or is it just your music at this point?

It's mostly.

my music at this point, you know, I still get calls occasionally. Most of the time, um, you know, I, I just, I'm, I just say I'm, I'm not available because I, I don't do regular sessions anymore. Once in a while, some specialty, uh, project will come up where somebody wants me to do Lee Rittenhour on their record and be Lee Rittenhour, you know.

Uh, do I get called?

Just to be part of the orchestra to play in a regular part like I did in the 70s or 80s?

No.

And would I take that? Probably no.

Okay, so you've got this whole board of effects. What's going on down here?

Well, that's the little miniature board that goes on the road. It's amazing what happens in today's world. And then there's a bigger board over there and there's another board that I'm probably in about my you know, the boards used to be that big, you know, and Steve Lukather and I and Mike Landau and all the guys that were studio rats and, you know, we would just joke about this stuff, you know, of how big the boards were.

You know, sometimes the boards were so big because the effects were also bigger, you know, and they were taking up space. And even though you were sitting most of the time at a session reading a rhythm chart or a chart that had a lot of notes on it, Uh, you'd almost have to, you know, move your, have your chair on wheels so you.

Could move down the, you know, so I mean, so what.

Do you got here?

Well, you know, the, the, uh, you know.

I've got a, uh, This great Rodenberg that I've been working with, again, this is a distortion unit that Lukather and a bunch of people use.

Sorry, Quincy.

Quincy's used to loud sounds.

Anyway.

There's another pedal on the other side. What's the pedal on.

The other side?

Yeah, that's a wah-wah pedal. And then this is a little unit that's a digital unit that's called a tone print. and it's just a great little unit that has banks of sounds, and you just dial it in. Most of the time, this pedal board is designed for my live work. When I'm recording on my records, sometimes I just go straight into an amp, and I use the effects that are on Logic Audio or on Pro Tools or whatever.

And once in a while, I'll use an effects board, either this one or the slightly bigger one over there. And so it all depends on the music I'm making, you know. Every time is slightly different.

Let me ask you this. Jeff Beck famously went from a pick to no pick. And I talked to him a little bit. I didn't ever talk to him about that. What do you think was going on there?

Well, the same thing that goes on for so many players, you know.

It's like.

You know, Wes Montgomery was famous for, he.

Kept practicing.

He had three gigs that he was working in a factory. And, you know, it was before he was successful and before he was Wes Montgomery.

And so he and his.

Wife had a new baby and he had to practice softly in the living room. So he was using a pick, the way the story goes. But then he put the pick down because the pick was making too much noise. So he started practicing late at night with his thumb so he wouldn't wake anybody. And so that became his sound after a while. And then Joe Pass, the famous jazz guitar player, was doing so much chord melody work that he was also an incredible pick player, but he didn't need the pick half the time when he was doing all this stuff. you know, all this melodic stuff with the chords. So, you know, I have nails, you know, and I was trained classically with Christopher Parkening and other people when I went to USC.

And so....

And I go back and forth between the pick and the nails and then the thumb. Then I end up holding the pick between my fingers and... So. You know, most of the guys will tell you after they've been doing it a lifetime, like, however you can get the music out of the instrument, you're going to do it.

So going to college, plus or minus?

Going to music college?

Yeah.

Well, for me, music education is everything. So however you can get it. Now, I went and studied with a teacher.

My dad.

Was fantastic. My whole family was great about supporting me doing music.

What did your parents do for a living?

Well, my dad wanted to be a professional piano player and was a great kind of, for lack of a better word, a honky-tonk kind of piano player. And he grew up in Michigan, and when he was a teenager, he'd sneak into Detroit and go play with the bands and then come home late at night. And his parents found out that he was sneaking out as a teenager and going into town and playing and, and they weren't going to have anything to do with that. So they dissuaded him, you know, kind of tried to X him out of being a professional musician. And so when I showed a big interest in music.

Uh, what precipitated your interest?

Well, I grew up in the era of the guitar, right?

So, you know.

Okay, you're born in 52. Right. I'm one year younger than you. And there was, you know, Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie, Jan and Dean, whatever. Then the Beatles hit. Was it the same for you? Was there something specific there that said, okay, this is... Because all of us got electric guitars after the Beatles. You know, we formed bands. And you, I remember, I said, you know, I was playing with my friend.

He goes, now we're going to change keys. And I go, I'm out. Okay. But what was the tipping point for you? I think.

you know, I ended up getting an acoustic guitar when I was eight years old, we'd moved to a new neighborhood in Los Angeles, outside of LA and, uh, in a suburb.

And, uh, I was.

Introduced to a friend who was playing, uh, acoustic guitar and singing. And he, he, this, this young kid loved the Kingston trio and the Kingston trio was very.

Popular at the time.

And, uh, So, you know, my mom and dad got me an acoustic guitar and I'd go over to this kid's house and we'd play Kingston Trio tunes. Turns out, I soon got very interested in the guitar.

This was like a nylon folk string guitar?

Yeah.

And so all of a sudden I started taking lessons and I was going through the teachers like in the South Bay where I grew up. of Los Angeles, and I was going through the local teachers at these stores, left and right, you know? So pretty soon, I was better than the teachers.

Just to be clear. Quickly. You got the bug. Were you the kid who went to school and came home and practiced all day?

100%.

I was practicing. I had no interest in school, and I had no interest in social life. I got obsessed with the guitar. I was practicing 8, 10, 15 hours a day. you know, the parents got worried about me a little bit because that's all I did. That's all I wanted to do. And then it was an era where my father heard about a big band in the Torrance area of Southern California. It was called the Esquires.

And so I went down there and I was 13 years old or something. All the other players were in college. And And I was playing these parts and playing in this band and doing well. And then the college saxophone players in the band and the trumpet players and the keyboard players, everybody started asking me if I wanted to do what was called casuals. And casuals were where you'd go play at weddings and bar mitzvahs and birthday parties and whatever kind of event, you know, and.

You got paid for it.

So here I was, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 years old, driving all over town when I got my sister's car and playing at these places and playing all different kinds of gigs, playing all the standards and playing all the party tunes. But it was all about the guitar for me.

Okay, just to be clear, are you the only kid?

No, my sister, I have a wonderful sister who's four years older and she loved music, but she had nothing to do with music. And of course I was, and I tell the famous story because she still comes to the shows, right? And when she's in the audience, I introduce her and I tell the audience, like her name's Linda and Linda used to, I used to practice scale so much in the family room and I would practice through the amplifier, right? And, you know, I'm practicing these scales for hours and hours and hours. And she was trying to study for school or something and she'd come and slam the family room door and she said, is the only thing you know how to do is play scales?

Just to be clear, at that time, what was the dream?

What was the dream?

For you.

To be a professional musician.

Not to be a star on stage or that too? No.

I just wanted to be able to make a living playing the guitar.

Okay, so how'd you end up going to USC?

Well, so.

I had another person in that big band, the leader of the big band, say to my dad, at least you should study some classical guitar and some acoustic and classical guitar would be good for him and so my dad got me the classical guitar and then I started researching and there was a young guy who was just a few years older than me named Christopher Parkening and Christopher for years and decades now has taught at Pepperdine but he was.

Also in his early 20s.

And he was already recording on Capitol Records. And he was kind of the heir apparent to Segovia, a lot of people said. And his earliest records are amazing. But unlike me, he didn't want to be the artist. And his dad forced him to practice. And his dad sat in the room and watched him practice.

Like Andre Agassi or something.

Yeah. And so Chris wrote a book about this years ago, so I'm not saying anything I shouldn't because it's all been in print. And he did not want to be that artist. But for me, I wanted to do anything and everything. And so when I got my first record deal, that was fantastic. When I was doing three sessions a day times seven or eight, seven days a week sometimes, you.

Know, I was happy with that too. But I was always pushing to do a little more.

But how did you end up going to USC?

So Chris ended up teaching there. And he got a gig teaching there. So I said, I'm going where Chris Barkening is.

And was it worthwhile? Well, yes.

At the time, you know, USC was expensive, obviously still is. It's like a God, it's like buying a house now. And so, but they only had a classical department then. They had no pop department, no jazz department, no big band, nothing.

Classical.

And it was led by the strings, you know, the violins and violas and cellos and basses and then the orchestra. And then finally, Christopher Park, and they brought in classical guitar to have. And so I went there to study with Chris. And so Chris, I think, left shortly after, but I.

Stayed at the school. And then I.

Got so involved with the music department that I suggested, I said, what if you had a class for the classical guitar players to learn how to play something else besides classical music? So the fact that someday most of them, the majority of them, are not going to be the next Segovia or Christopher Parkin. They're going to have to earn a.

Living playing the guitar.

And so we brought in a guy that I had recommended that was Chris Parkin's uncle.

His name was Jack Marshall.

And I had met Jack along the way, probably through Chris, but also through Dave Grusin, who by that time I knew And Jack was scoring film scores and TV shows. And so Jack started teaching this class once a week to the classical guitar players to play something besides classical. That was going very well. And then two and a half years later, I did not finish the school. I'd only gone two and a half years to SC. I quit because already at 22, I was getting very popular as a studio musician. So I told my parents, I said, I gotta go work. I got all these opportunities to work with Grusin and Quincy Jones and Pink Floyd and Steely Dan and all this stuff and all these movie dates and TV dates. And my dad said, yeah, I

get it.

Okay. From the moment you drop out, does your career continue to go up? Were there ever moments you go, God, this is not going to work?

Yeah, this is a little bit egotistical of me, or it sounds that way. But fortunately, the trajectory was always up. But, you know, but I worked for it. I worked my ass off for it, you know.

And so, okay, you're a guy in school. You're playing casuals in the South Bay. How did you connect with Grusin in the studios?

Well, again, I met along the way. Remember when we were talking about the Bossa Nova?

Right.

And so.

I'd also be going to clubs, and I'd be hearing who else was playing. And somewhere along the line, I met this wonderful guitarist friend, Oscar Castroneves. And he was the guitarist for Sergio Mendes and for Shobim. And he was my connection to Brazil. And so when I went down to Brazil in 74, I was 22 years old.

And I fell in love with Brazilian music even that time. And Oscar was down there and he introduced me.

Why did you go?

Because I was in love with.

You know, apparently Brazil and Brazilian music. And that was before Brazilian music. I mean, Brazilian music had gotten popular in 68 with show beam and ostrich Roberto and, and all of that. And Oscar was part of that whole team. So, so then I went down there in 74 and, and, uh, recorded a little bit down there and, and hung out with Sergio Mendez and with show beam and, but mostly with my friend Oscar. And, uh, and, and, uh, and so when I came back, uh, I got on a session, Sergio hired me to play on a session, and I was 22 or something like that, and Dave Grusin had just done all this incredible work for Sergio Mendez, and they had the big hits with Sergio back in those days.

And so uh, Dave was on the session and I, I met Dave and, and the next thing, you know, uh, Dave called me for one of his movies. And, uh, I think it was, it was a movie that he did right. The big movie that I got to play on a lot was called three days of the condor. Sure. And terrific movie actually was with Redford.

Right.

And, uh, And so, and in those days, you know, Dave was just all the sound effects with the delays and the wah-wah pedal.

And all that stuff. And plus I could read very well, right? So I started.

Working for Dave and Dave's name, like it was for his whole life, was golden in this town. So all of a sudden I went from one session a week to working with Dave Grusin and everybody hearing, well, who's this 22-year-old working for Grusin? If he's good enough for Dave Grusin, he's good enough for us. So all of a sudden, the contractors, which were all the movie contractors that did TV shows and movies and stuff, started calling me, and I ended up working for everybody, you know, just like that.

How did that segue into working, as you say, with bands, Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, et cetera? Well.

Then I became a popular studio musician, right? And then I started to work with Quincy Jones.

You work in studio, you work in movies, TVs. How do you make that transition?

Well, the transition was, I mean, if you were part of the team that was working on the movie and the TV industry, but at the same time, I was also working on records that started with Sergio Mendez and then led to Dave Grusin and then Dave Grusin. led to Quincy Jones, and Quincy Jones led to everything. And so it was, you went from film and TV, but the records were, they were all kind of, everything wasn't too separate. It was all kind of together.

Okay, what I know about musicians is they're incredible networkers. Doesn't really happen by accident. So were you there, are you working it a bit?

Well.

Other than the fact that, you know, the.

Jay Graydons and the David Fosters and the Ray Parker Juniors and the Paulina DaCostas, the Michael Lamardians, all the Dean Parks, all the Larry Carltons, all those guys. We were in love with music and in love with making it and in love with doing as many cool things as we could.

Do, you know.

So, you know, I don't remember working it to work with Pink Floyd, but I got the call to lay on the wall to play some additional acoustic guitar, you know. And I used to get called for Steely Dan quite a bit, but they always called, like, what are you doing tonight? And I don't know if that meant I was the fifth call or the first call, but, you know, it was usually I was busy. So I only played on Asia, you know, and that was pretty much it.

You know, I got, I know I got called for other stuff, but I was rarely available. You know, Quincy was different in that sense that Rittenhour, what are you doing? I said, what are you doing today? I said, oh, Q, I'm sorry, man. I'm, I got two movie dates. I'm booked all day long. And he said, well, what are you doing later? I said, well, I don't think I get home until after 10 or 11 tonight.

And he said, that's okay. Come down afterwards. Quincy was incredible.

So you'd go down to some studio at, you know, sometimes at close to midnight, you know. He was something else.

Okay, so how did they decide whether to call you or to call Dean Parks or to call Ray Parker Jr.

Well, again, why do they call a certain actor to do a certain role?

The director, the producer.

Wants a certain look, wants a certain sound.

It's the same thing in music. Maybe I had a flavor....

That one of the other guys didn't, or they hoped I had some flavor that the other guys didn't, or, you know, or, or they needed somebody who could double the saxophone part and read.

Their ass off, you know, or, or there's a million reasons, you know?

Okay. So Luca, they're.

Back on Luca.

There's a pretty good friend of mine's telling me he was hot. He was working all the time. One of the older guys tapped him on the shoulder and said, Hey, Everybody's got their period of time, and then it's over. You're the hot guy now. You better find something else to do. And that turned into Toto, okay? So was it similar to you? How did you become less about working for other people and more of working for yourself?

Well, if you're a studio musician, there's two choices. There are several choices. You can stay as a studio musician forever, and have a very good career, and especially if you get established and you're able to work in multiple genres. Let's say you can work pop records, you can work R & B records, you can work rock records, and then you can work on TV and film scores. And so let's say you're doing all of it. Some guys choose just to do that. My buddies, Mitch Holder, Tim May, Tom Rotella, they're all amazing studio musicians. And some of them have careers where they've also did their own records. But, you know, a couple of those guys I just mentioned, they were studio, studio guys. Dean Parks has always, he's

always been the top studio guy, you know, and he remained that. And to my knowledge, he might have done one of his own records one time, but that wasn't really what Dean wanted to do. I wanted to make my own records. I wanted to have the Lee Rittenhour sound. I wanted to write songs. I wanted to produce. I wanted to travel the world. I wanted to keep growing, you know? So I was more like, we used to go hear Howard Roberts play at Dante's and Howard Roberts was, you know, making these kind of slightly corny records on Capitol, but he had the Howard Roberts sound and the Howard Roberts style and, and, My buddy again, Dave Grusin, was hiring Howard to play on those movie dates. Howard was one of the top dogs. And then Barney Kessel was

the same. That was before my time. But Barney was an amazing jazz player that played with everybody, but also an amazing studio player. So if you were in LA or New York, you usually, and if you were somewhat versatile, and you had something to offer these people, you had the choice, you know. Now, Victor Feldman, do.

You know who Victor is?

And so, Victor wrote Seven Steps to Heaven for Miles Davis when he was in his early 20s, right?

And Miles asked him to go on the road at that point.

Now, this was in, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think early 60s. And so... Victor was an incredible vibraphonist, drummer, piano player. Victor Feldman was the only piano player that played on every Steely Dan record.

That's saying something.

And because those boys had their favorite musicians, and Victor was just amazing.

So I, you know.

But the reason I bring him up is that he chose to be a studio musician and stay that way. In today's world, Steve Lukather, Lee Rittenhour, Marcus Miller, any of the guys that are in the last 10, 20, 30 years had the option of staying, working in the studios or being a producer or a writer or you know, or a producer and director. Uh, but a lot of us had the, the opportunity to start doing our own records, you know, look at, look at there, you know, he, he, he formed Toto along with David page.

And, and then he, Steve ended.

Up, uh, doing his solo records as well and doing tons of studio work. And, uh, so that's a little more modern musician, you know, uh, Ray Parker Jr., an incredible guitarist, and especially played this incredible rhythm guitar on so many hit records and was so successful. And so he as well chose to have his own records, you know.

He decided not to travel as much as some of us.

Lukather and I, you know, we're road rats, you know.

Okay, but all that business kind of dried up for the studio guys, right?

It still exists, you know. I mean, people.

reinvent themselves to... We're going to have to wrap this up.

I know I'm late.

Just a couple of questions and then we'll go.

They warned me about you, by the way.

They said, Bob really does these incredible interviews, you know, and he'll, he'll go on and he'll get you talking, you know, but it's been a pleasure, you know, but, uh, anyway, uh, whoops.

Let me put that back on the floor. Um, I'm not sure.

So is there a business for studio players? Yes.

Uh, I, I think, um, like one of the top, uh, studio guys, uh, Andrew Sinigo now is, is kind of like, a young Rittenhour and Lukather, and he's one of the guys that's doing it today. And so there's still young guys and established guys coming up still doing it. You don't hear about it, but, you know, movie soundtracks are still happening, right? And the difference is that there's big orchestra dates going on, And, and still that's happening with the string players and the horn players and the percussion sections and the big rhythm sections. But at the same time, there's a ton of composers that have a room like this in their house and are doing all the Netflix shows and prime shows and Apple TV shows. There's more

production than ever, you know?

Okay. Well, your first record deal was epic. Did they find you? How did that happen?

Um, There was a, kind of by chance, you know, there was a, I got called to play by a producer on an album by a jazz fusion drummer at the time, Alphonse Mouzon.

Right.

And I played on Alphonse's record, and there was a producer there, who had.

Uh, a deal.

He was an older guy and he was more of an executive producer. Jerry Schoenbaum, I believe was his name. And he had a deal at Sony. And so then all of a sudden, uh, you know, they, they, you know, they said, Lee, we could probably, and I was 23, I think. And, and, uh, you know, young and ready to go, you know, and, uh, So then at the time, they said, let's hook it up. So then I did the first album, then I did Captain Fingers with them, and then moved on from there.

So you say you're a road rat. How many gigs a year do you do?

You know, I'm, okay, the real road rat, the way we define road rat is B.B. King.

So B.B.

Used to, you know, How many days are there in a year? He would be out about 300 of those days.

And had about as many children too.

That's right.

But he was amazing. I used to play rhythm guitar on some of his records. And I don't mean to change the question you just answered about how many days I play on the road. But I got to tell one story about Bebe is that there's certain kind of genres that and the blues is one of them, but it can be any kind of genre in today's world.

Some artists are just more comfortable being out on the road all the time. I obviously love my studio. I love making records at home. I love being at home with my wife and my son, who's a drummer, as I said, and Wes has got his career going, and I got my golden retriever here, and so.

We're cool. So I like being home, but I also like being on the road. And so I'm.

More of a 50-50 guy. But BB King was always on the road. And so the guys used to tell me in BB's band and BB's crew, because he had this crew that kind of helped move him around the planet, that sometimes BB had his favorite bus. He had his own bus. That was kind of his bus. Then the band was in another bus, and the crew was in another bus, and they moved all over the U.S., right?

And so B.B., sometimes when he was rarely home for a while to take a break, the bus was parked in front of his house, and they would get the bus all cleaned up and take care of it and refresh it and stuff for the next tour. And if B.B. couldn't sleep in his own bed, He'd go out and sleep in the bus.

Willie Nelson, supposedly, too. Yeah, yeah.

No, Willie was completely like that.

Yeah, yeah.

I worked on a Willie Nelson record as well.

And, yeah, B.B.

And Willie cut from the same cloth.

That's not my cloth, you know. I'm not one of those guys.

Well, if there's 365 days in a year, how many do you want to work?

I'm probably out.

Wow, that's a good question. I don't know. You know, I do very often what I did this last weekend.

I was up in Seattle playing six shows for a long weekend and then come home. And then the next weekend I go someplace else and I'm home.

Then I go back. You know, today a lot of people do that. They're more in and out.

But I don't know, anywhere from 100 to 150, you know.

Okay, at this point in time, now you were a studio musician. Most of that stuff you don't get any royalties, okay? And you had your records. How's it worked out financially, and do you need to play these gigs to make it work?

Well, that's like in any field, you know. If your overhead is more than the money you're making, then you got a problem, you know.

Yeah, so, you know.

Are there any royalties coming in or not in your world?

Well, you know, there's SoundExchange, you know, which all of us get for also, you know, there is a Sideman SoundExchange rate and there's, you know, so it all kind of works out. You know, it's worldwide now, so it's different than, is it traditional in the sense that the royalty, you know, the other day I got a pretty big check from Japan Victor those folks over there and then also from Electra Records and so once in a while when you least expect it a check will show up and you go wow and you know it's hard to keep track of that stuff because you'd think you'd have some company monitoring that but About the time you think you'll never get paid again from one of these records, then some money shows up, you know.

So what about legacy? To what degree are you concerned about legacy?

Legacy for myself?

Yes.

Oh, I'm too young to think about that.

Well, let me ask the same question in a different way, where it's actually slightly different. Is there something, you know, you obviously are a player. You have all this history, all this experience. Is there something in your mind, a next step you want to get to?

I'm happy enough just to keep growing and keep making records. I always am thinking about another project and something that is somewhat unique, you know.

And I'd love to tell you the next idea, but I won't, you know.

And let's just stop for a second. You don't have to tell me, do you know what it is? Yes. Okay.

Definitely.

And, uh, so, um, um, I've always been a pretty good planner and thinker. And usually when I put something in my head that I want to do from a music point of view, it happens, you know? And, uh, so, uh, and that keeps me exciting and, and, uh, I still love playing the guitar. I think that's the most important thing, you know, that you kind of can keep the family balance and try to keep the money balance, which is hard in anybody's life today, you know, and survive in this world where everything is at our fingertip and yet everything seems far away. And, you know, and depending on your political spectrum, there's that whole thing too, you know, but, you know, we just keep going. But what I tell

the audience before I play a show these days is that I said, you're all here tonight and I appreciate that. And I said, let's concentrate on the music because everything else is so noisy. You know, that life is so noisy that, you know, the music is a nice thing to be. It's such a healthy thing for our lives to have music.

And do you listen to anybody's music other than your own?

Most of the time, I don't listen to my own.

What would you listen to?

Well, I listen to, have you got another hour?

I have another hour. You don't have another hour.

No, we have in our house, I'm lucky enough to have one of these great sound systems, the Sonos system. So not here in the studio because the studio is isolated for making music and recording music and mixing and whatever else. But in the rest of the house, the Sonos system's at a touch of our phone or iPad. And, you know, I'll go from listening to Bill Evans to Jimi Hendrix to you name it, you know. And Wes will put on his new bands. And, you know, we have music in the house. You know, I'll put on the African music and I'll put on jazz and we'll put on, sometimes some classical, depending on what it is.

And we just listen to everything, and it's floating through the whole house.

Is there music playing all the time?

All the time.

Okay, final question. Who are your guitar heroes?

Oh, man.

Well, of course, Mr. Wes Montgomery. We'll start with him. And then.

Howard Roberts from the earlier days, Joe Pass, who I studied with, you know. uh, Jim Hall for sure. Uh, those are the older guys. And, uh, uh, you know, there's Schofield and Matheny, all the, the guys that are Stern, all the guys that are my, uh, are at my age group and have done great things with the guitar.

I respect and love all those guys as well. And, uh, and then, you know, of course, Jeff Beck and Clapton and, and, uh, Luke, you know, and, uh, Gotta love Luke, you know. He's such an amazing guitarist and done such great music with his band. And then, and you know, not to diverge for one song or a second, but David Page, who was the other co-founder of Toto, David and I used to do casuals together when we were teenagers.

You know, so.

Really? Yeah, yeah. Well, You can still do that, but this doesn't work out.

Things don't work out. We can still maybe get a wedding gig.

But now, on the wedding gigs, everybody's on a click track, and they've got programmed stuff, and now it's much more produced.

Much more expensive for the person who books it. Okay, Lee, I know you've got to go. I want to thank you so much for taking this time with my audience. All right.

Well, Bob, you have Quite a podcast.

And congrats. And you're very knowledgeable about everything, you know. And the next time, we'll talk about Quincy. Quincy, stretch, stretch, stretch. I know.

He said, let's go, Dad. All right. Thank you.

Bye-bye. Till next time. This is Bob Lefsetz.

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