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A Conversation with Pat McLaughlin (continued)
PM: And can that be found?
Pat: No. Not at all. And then I got one because somebody gave me one. That's the reason I've got one.
PM: I'm going to find one. Believe me, I'm going to find one. [Paul Morrow wrote in to say that this CD can be found used at amazon or occasionally on ebay.]
Pat: I'll make you a copy off mine. We didn't sell any records. We made another record for Capitol. And Hale Milgrim had come in at that time and kind of cleaned house, let go of a bunch of acts. And I was one of the ones that got axed.
PM: That's weird, because you seem right up his alley, from what I know of Hale.
Pat: I had a lot of allies in the press, and one person really pinned him down on why I got let go. And he was very honest and said he didn't think the record that we had made was that great. So he listened, and he responded. And that's all you can ask for.
PM: It was a musical decision, at least. If you can get a musical decision out of the music business, you're lucky.
Pat: I felt really fortunate. I mean, in Capitol, they were great. They really tried hard. So then I came back home. Well, Capitol wanted to do some more recording, and Mitchell--by that time his relationship with them wasn't all that great, as I recall.
PM: Really?
Pat: And we didn't want to mess with it, so I kind of jumped in his camp, and I didn't want to mess with it either, because I was ready to come home, which was not the most shrewd business decision I've ever made in my life. But I'm not noted for those, and I certainly wasn't at that time in my life.
PM: So you came back to Nashville, and that must have been--
Pat: 1990. Then I kind of had my tail between my legs.
PM: Really?
Pat: Yeah, it's hard to get canned. You think you don't care, but when it happens, you go, "Oh, man, that hurts."
I had gotten to know this drummer in New Orleans, so I started going to New Orleans and playing clubs. I got a band there. I didn't ever move there, but '90 through '96 I went to New Orleans because I had a great drummer there. I eventually ended up with a real good band there, just started playing there.
PM: Wow. Who was the drummer in New Orleans?
Pat: Carlo Nuccio. He's phenomenal. He's in the Continental Drifters. And he has done a lot of great stuff. I met him in L.A. He's from New Orleans. When I came back here he had migrated home to New Orleans. And he's just one of those New Orleans drummers.
PM: Wow. So from '90 to '96 you were going down there to play. Was that a fun town to play in?
Pat: Yeah, it was fun. It's a great town to get to hang around in and not be on vacation and have a project. Like any place is fun to go when you're not on vacation.
PM: Right.
Pat: When you're mingling with the folks and working and--
PM: Digging in.
Pat: It was a gas, man. I got to know the city really well and made a lot of friends there, and just really--I just couldn't figure out how to get back into the deal here, and I didn't know really what was going on. I'd been out of it a little bit. And that drummer--I was hooked on that drummer--and he was down there.
PM: You were hooked on the drummer, wow. That's what happens to a groove guy.
Pat: Yeah, so--yeah.
PM: But all the time you were making records in the early '90s, right?
Pat: Well, I popped a couple of records out. Another Rooney record, and then--I made a record at my house with Ben Keith, which was real interesting for me, because Ben is so good. [legendary multi-instrumentalist, a signature melodic banjo stylist and pedal steel wonder, among other things]
PM: He's a bit of a genius, isn't he?
Pat: It was so much fun. God, he's so great. He's so much fun to hang out with. He's good. And my buddy David Ferguson and Rooney had both worked with Ben a lot. I had known Ben a little bit and I asked him to be producer. We got a deal with Dos, which was an Antone's label down in Austin. And Harry Friedman was running it. And he gave me a little budget to make the record. It's called Unglued. And we made it at the house. It was a good effort all around. And then Harry and Dos licensed the unreleased Capitol record.
PM: Really?
Pat: We put that out with very little fanfare or success.
[laughter]
PM: Yeah, one usually has a lot to do with the other.
Pat: It was about ten years ago. Nothing really happened, but it was fun.
PM: What was that called, the unreleased record?
Pat: Get Out and Stay Out.
PM: Yeah, I was listening to that on the way here. [There are a few clips from it on our Listen page.] That's one of the funniest titles for a record I ever heard in my life.
Pat: That record was the deal where you make the one record with all the studio guys and then your second one with your road band, because the band's all saying, "Hey, man, come on."
PM: [laughs] I know that one.
Pat: And you're thinking, "Well, it couldn't be any worse than the last one." So you go in with them, and they--I did have a great band. And Ian McLagan was the keyboard player.
PM: Oh, wow.
Pat: A fine player, and he's such a great guy, man. We kept telling him on his parts to, at this point in one song, "Just get out and stay out" until the end of the song.
PM: [laughs]
Pat: That's where the title came from. It didn't happen a lot, but there was this one song where he had to get out and stay out.
[laughter] continue
