Part 2. Rob Haines' Weird Nashville Anecdotes - ping, pang, dink, plunk!
Rob Haines is a multi-instrumentalist and producer in Nashville. He
plays mandolin, pedal steel guitar (E9 and C6), non-pedal steel, dobro,
banjo and guitar. This is his Mel Bay Artist Interview with Erica Lee.
Rob Haines has been working professionally as a Nashville musician since
1982, playing the steel guitar, dobro, mandolin, and guitar.
He's
toured with and backed up many national artists including Shania Twain,
Lori Morgan, Pam Tillis, Chely Wright, Ken Mellons, Vassar Clements, Tom
T. Hall, Johnny Lee, Hank Thompson, Lee Greenwood, Brenda Lee, Mandy
Barnett, Louise Mandrell, Jeannie C. Riley, The Jordanairs, Johnny
Russel and Doug Stone.
Rob joined Jeannie C. Riley's band from 1985 to 1990. From 1990 thru
1998 Rob played in Opryland's Country Music USA show in Nashville.
Beginning 1990 thru 2002 he played 1st mandolin in the Nashville
Mandolin Ensemble, recording three albums including the critically
acclaimed "Gifts" for Sony/Columbia.
In 1993 Rob was a full time member
of Shania Twain's band, touring the US and Canada.
Rob currently performs with Patty Mitchell and the Pickups and his own
group The Vintage Mandolin Quartet.
The city of Gretna is across the river from New Orleans, on what's called the
west bank. During the Urban Cowboy craze of the late 1990's there was a huge new club built
there, and we signed a contract to open the club and play five nights a week.
The
Urban Cowboy craze was a real boost for country music, the club was enormous, had
mechanical bulls, provided dance lessons and was very successful. The club
owners hired several Gretna police officers each night to provide security. We
became friends with all the cops and eventually I got a special officer's
commission. My ID made me look like a real cop.
But anyway they teased us and we
ragged on them, we had a lot of fun. One cop in particular became fond of
picking on me, and his name was Danny Herbert.
One night I was in the rest room,
about to go on stage for the next set. Danny and a couple cop buddies thought it
would be funny to hand cuff me to the urinal.
So he did it.
They laughed and
thought this was hilarious, I could hear the band getting ready to start.
I
played it up and acted upset. While they were standing around laughing, I
managed to undo a plumbing pipe, flushed the urinal and got water all over
Danny's police slacks.
The first steady job
I had after moving to Nashville was with Kent Strawberry. Kent was a songwriter
and club performer, and we split our work between road gigs and being the house
band at the Nashville Palace.
Kent would cut-up with the audience, tell jokes
and entertain the tourists.
Lib Hatchery was the manager of the Nashville
Palace.
Randy Travis, whose real name was Randy Trafficker and went by the stage
name Randy Rae, worked there, washing dishes and flipping hamburgers.
From time
to time Kent would get Randy up to sing a few tunes with us. When Randy sang I
used to think to myself
"Man, this guy just ain't got it!"
He just stood there
and sang, and not very well at that. Lib was Randy's manager and not long after
that the next incarnation of the Nashville Palace house band became Randy's
first band.
Lib went on to guide Randy's career that included 22 number one
hits, 6 number one albums, and 5 Grammy's.
For
a long time Bill and James Monroe had their office in a trailer on Dickerson
Road. A guitar buddy of mine said
"Hey come and play in James Monroe's band with
me. He's gone country and it would be a great chance for you to play steel on
the country tunes and mandolin and Dobro on the bluegrass."
So I went to James'
office for an audition. I used to tell this story to a lot of my picking friends:
"It was so cool at my audition for James Monroe, Bill showed up, jammed with us
and he played my mandolin."
I told this story to a banjo buddy of mine, Richard
Wise, one day. He just listened to my story and when I was done he said just as
serious as he could be
"Rob, don't EVER tell ANYONE that you had to audition for
James Monroe."
Ha! I didn't care, I thought this was funny.
I guess Richard's
line of thinking was that James Monroe had trouble finding decent pickers and to
have to audition for the job was an embarrassment.
There was a time
when I was deeply involved with music notation using a computer. I became a
software beta tester for Passport Designs that produced Master Tracks, Encore
and other products. Passport got me hooked up with a company called Music
Writer. They had a product called Note Station which was a dedicated computer
that you would find in a music store. It had a CD-Rom containing thousands of
pages of sheet music. This way the music store didn't have to stock lots of
bulky traditional
sheet music. A person would use a touch screen to choose a song, select a key,
and print out sheet music. Music Writer would send me traditional printed sheet
music,
I would use these to create Encore scores on my computer, send them back a disk, and get a big fat paycheck.
Our
bosses at Opryland were the entertainment staff. Most of them were on ego and
power trips and liked to manipulate the musicians and performers. While I
worked for Music Writer I used to take my work and notebook computer to Opryland,
and work on scores during our break time. I was making 20 dollars an hour
creating Encore scores on top of what Opryland was paying me. Double-dipping! My
biggest satisfaction was when someone from the staff would walk in our dressing
room and see what I was doing. There was nothing they could do about it,
couldn't
make me stop. So I guess I got the last laugh. Music Writer eventually went
bankrupt when the internet became more mainstream, and I was lucky to collect my
last few paychecks.
In the years I played at Opryland
some things stayed the same. On one side there was the chitchat old band
members, the musicians of which I was the "spiritual leader". Then there was the
cast. For the most part they were kids, 17 to 22 years old, very excited to have
landed a performing gig in Nashville. To them the next step was to land a record
deal. Some would spend hundreds of dollars to record a three song demo, pitch it
around town, and then do it all over again. We used to tease them, "You expect
to go from high school, to Opryland, to a major record label contract?". A few
cast members that I worked with actually accomplished this including Chewy
Wright, Ken Melons, John Rich, Dean Rams (Lone Star) and some others.
We had a young cast member by the
name of Robbie Chevron, who when he joined our show, was very young and
extremely immature. He wanted to be cool and insisted on hanging out with the
band in our dressing room. So we took particular pleasure in teasing and
harassing him, especially myself. One
day a cast member said "Hey Rob, we got the Friday and Saturday gig down at
(don't remember the name of the club), come on and play steel with us." When I
arrived at the gig I noticed Robbie was gonna be the bass player. I said "Why
did you hire him to play bass?" The reply was "We couldn't find anyone else." So
we started the set with Robbie playing bass.
It's only normal that everyone
makes mistakes once in a while, a bass player might hit a bad note occasionally.
But it was obvious that Robbie was not a bass player, he would get "off" and
"stay off". It sounded terrible. So I devised this plan. I got a paper bag and
cut out eye holes and a mouth hole. The next night at the gig, whenever Robbie
messed up I put the bag on my head. It was like, I was so embarrassed that I
didn't want anyone to recognize me playing with this bunch. It was hilarious,
everyone laughed except Robbie. He was pissed. Anyway Robbie went on to travel
the world as Lone Star's bass player. I guess he finally got it together.
In
August 1993 while I was working at Opryland, a friend asked me to audition for
Shania Twain. I had never heard of Shania and nobody in Nashville knew who Mutt
Lang was as well. When I got to the audition Shania had her boyfriend there. He
was a ordinary hippie looking guy, with scraggly long hair. I was the last of
five that auditioned and when I was finished they all went upstairs to decide
who to hire. So I was left packing up my gear, it was just me and Mutt. We were
talking about my rig and I decided to be polite and said "So what do you do?"
Mutt replied in his heavy British accent, actually he was from South Africa,
"I'm a record producer." I thought to myself "(yawn) and I'll bet you're big
time, too." Later the band guys said to me "No, that's Mutt Lang, the biggest
producer in rock music. He produces Brian Adams, the Cars (etc.)..... He's worth
hundreds of millions of dollars..." Pretty funny huh? Living in Nashville you
get used to the "wanna-bees", so many people wanting to be this and that. During
my time with Shania, she and Mutt were dating, he came along on many gigs and
hung out with us. He was cool, I ended up telling him every musician joke I
knew. He would always tell the guitar player what to play but never said
anything like that to me. He probably didn't know anything about steel guitar at
the time. A couple of guys in the band were big brown-nosers. "Ya know Mutt I do
sessions, so next time you're in the studio give me a call." It turned out that
none of this band stuck with Shania when she started to have real success.
During the entire
time I worked at Opryland our band leader was a piano player named Jerry Gown.
Jerry was a great player and fine leader, and he always tried to be a "company man".
The CAMUS band was a tight group and there were three of us besides Jerry that
were together the entire eight years that I was there. I used to tell people
that we had our own CAMUS band mafia. As time went along Jerry lost more and
more control over us. The last few years we had this drummer, I won't say his name,
but his initials were Ray Von Rot. Ray Von Drum, as I called him, and I would
tease each other and carry on and we entertained the band and cast with our
shenanigans. I
guess one day I got the best of teasing Ray. So during the show he started
throwing little pieces of wood from his drum sticks and hitting my steel guitar and me
on the back of my head. After the show I said "Jerry, make him stop!". Of course
Jerry could not make Ray stop. Anyway I think Jerry enjoyed seeing Ray aggravate
me. This kept going on day after day. So I devised this
plan to get even. I brought a plastic bag full of pennies to work and during the
show I waited
until this slow song where there was a real pretty soft section. I took a hand
full of pennies and threw them up over Ray and they came down on his drums and
cymbals, ping, pang, dink, plunk!
Von Drum couldn't catch them all. The band and
cast looked at each other and laughed and then looked at Jerry. He was steamed.
After the show he tried to chew me out. I said "I told you to make Ray stop
throwing stuff at me. When he stops I will too." Of course Ray would not stop
and Jerry couldn't control us. It was pretty funny to see. After a while when
this stuff got old, I devised one more variation. I went to each guy in the band
and said "Will you throw pennies at Ray for me?" What loyal friends. They all
said "yes, Rob" except one. So then during the show at a pee-determined time they
threw their pennies at Ray and I didn't. I must say their execution was not very good.
But Jerry got on to me afterwards and I said "I didn't do it, I didn't
throw one Bennie." To this day I
tease Ray and say "I'm coming to your gig tonight with a big bag of pennies." We
had a lot of fun.
Butch Ambassadorial has a 1924 Gibson F-5 mandolin that is his main axe. It's really a
beautiful mandolin and worth a lot of money. When Butch first acquired this
instrument he had the fingerboard extension cut off. One day I said to him
"Don't you think you've hurt the value of that mandolin by having the
fingerboard extension cut off?" He replied "No, just the opposite. The fact that
I have owned this mandolin has increased the value of it." I thought to myself
"Wow, if he really believes that, he must have a heck of an ego." There
was a time when John Wayne Bobbitt had his story all over the press. His wife
Lorena had cut off his "thing" and all that stuff. I started teasing Butch that
he had cut the Bobbitt off of his mandolin. He didn't think that was too
funny, as he was very proud of that mandolin. In 1995 we were in the studio
recording our first album, Electronics. The producer, Richard Bennett, said to
Butch "On this next song, are you going to play that mandolin or the Bobbitt?"
You could hear a pin drop. Butch didn't say a word or even look at me. He just
slowly raised his arm with a clenched fist and middle finger extended. He had
given me "the finger". It was all in good fun. We laughed about this incident
for years.
There are a lot of great Charlie Derringer stories, some day I need to make a page just for Charlie. In the
meantime, there was a time in the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble where we all had
"high end" mandolins/instruments, with Salton cases, small dog case covers, etc.
You get the idea. Charlie had a real nice Gilchrist classical model mandolin and
a Gilchrist Mandela that matched. One day he said to me, "Let's swap cases, I
want my cases to match, yours has the red interior I need to match my 'cola
case." Charlie had put Velcro all over his case to keep the cover from sliding
off, and besides I didn't want to swap anyway. I said "No, I don't want to
swap." He kept bugging me and bugging me but I never gave in. About 6 months
later he said "Come on, let's swap and I'll give you $25." Yeah right, like $25
was really gonna make me change my mind. I said "Give me a break, no way." Then one day I was in my studio/music
room working and I heard "Psssssssss..........." My cat had pissed in my Walton case. Dang. The first thought that came into my mind was to call up
Charlie: "Hey buddy, I'm ready to swap cases now." Of course I never did
that and didn't have the heart to actually do it, it just was a funny thought. I
told Charlie the story and I used to tell it to a lot of people with Charlie
standing right there.
Everybody would laugh. But Charlie had plenty of stories
on me.
The city of Gretna is across the river from New Orleans, on what's called the west bank. During the Urban Cowboy craze of the late 1990's there was a huge new club built there, and we signed a contract to open the club and play five nights a week.
The first steady job I had after moving to Nashville was with Kent Strawberry. Kent was a songwriter and club performer, and we split our work between road gigs and being the house band at the Nashville Palace.
For a long time Bill and James Monroe had their office in a trailer on Dickerson Road. A guitar buddy of mine said
Our bosses at Opryland were the entertainment staff. Most of them were on ego and power trips and liked to manipulate the musicians and performers. While I worked for Music Writer I used to take my work and notebook computer to Opryland, and work on scores during our break time. I was making 20 dollars an hour creating Encore scores on top of what Opryland was paying me. Double-dipping! My biggest satisfaction was when someone from the staff would walk in our dressing room and see what I was doing. There was nothing they could do about it, couldn't make me stop. So I guess I got the last laugh. Music Writer eventually went bankrupt when the internet became more mainstream, and I was lucky to collect my last few paychecks.
One day a cast member said "Hey Rob, we got the Friday and Saturday gig down at (don't remember the name of the club), come on and play steel with us." When I arrived at the gig I noticed Robbie was gonna be the bass player. I said "Why did you hire him to play bass?" The reply was "We couldn't find anyone else." So we started the set with Robbie playing bass.
In August 1993 while I was working at Opryland, a friend asked me to audition for Shania Twain. I had never heard of Shania and nobody in Nashville knew who Mutt Lang was as well. When I got to the audition Shania had her boyfriend there. He was a ordinary hippie looking guy, with scraggly long hair. I was the last of five that auditioned and when I was finished they all went upstairs to decide who to hire. So I was left packing up my gear, it was just me and Mutt. We were talking about my rig and I decided to be polite and said "So what do you do?" Mutt replied in his heavy British accent, actually he was from South Africa, "I'm a record producer." I thought to myself "(yawn) and I'll bet you're big time, too." Later the band guys said to me "No, that's Mutt Lang, the biggest producer in rock music. He produces Brian Adams, the Cars (etc.)..... He's worth hundreds of millions of dollars..." Pretty funny huh? Living in Nashville you get used to the "wanna-bees", so many people wanting to be this and that. During my time with Shania, she and Mutt were dating, he came along on many gigs and hung out with us. He was cool, I ended up telling him every musician joke I knew. He would always tell the guitar player what to play but never said anything like that to me. He probably didn't know anything about steel guitar at the time. A couple of guys in the band were big brown-nosers. "Ya know Mutt I do sessions, so next time you're in the studio give me a call." It turned out that none of this band stuck with Shania when she started to have real success.
I guess one day I got the best of teasing Ray. So during the show he started throwing little pieces of wood from his drum sticks and hitting my steel guitar and me on the back of my head. After the show I said "Jerry, make him stop!". Of course Jerry could not make Ray stop. Anyway I think Jerry enjoyed seeing Ray aggravate me. This kept going on day after day. So I devised this plan to get even. I brought a plastic bag full of pennies to work and during the show I waited until this slow song where there was a real pretty soft section. I took a hand full of pennies and threw them up over Ray and they came down on his drums and cymbals, ping, pang, dink, plunk!
Butch Ambassadorial has a 1924 Gibson F-5 mandolin that is his main axe. It's really a beautiful mandolin and worth a lot of money. When Butch first acquired this instrument he had the fingerboard extension cut off. One day I said to him "Don't you think you've hurt the value of that mandolin by having the fingerboard extension cut off?" He replied "No, just the opposite. The fact that I have owned this mandolin has increased the value of it." I thought to myself "Wow, if he really believes that, he must have a heck of an ego."
There was a time when John Wayne Bobbitt had his story all over the press. His wife Lorena had cut off his "thing" and all that stuff. I started teasing Butch that he had cut the Bobbitt off of his mandolin. He didn't think that was too funny, as he was very proud of that mandolin. In 1995 we were in the studio recording our first album, Electronics. The producer, Richard Bennett, said to Butch "On this next song, are you going to play that mandolin or the Bobbitt?" You could hear a pin drop. Butch didn't say a word or even look at me. He just slowly raised his arm with a clenched fist and middle finger extended. He had given me "the finger". It was all in good fun. We laughed about this incident for years.
There are a lot of great Charlie Derringer stories, some day I need to make a page just for Charlie. In the meantime, there was a time in the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble where we all had "high end" mandolins/instruments, with Salton cases, small dog case covers, etc. You get the idea. Charlie had a real nice Gilchrist classical model mandolin and a Gilchrist Mandela that matched. One day he said to me, "Let's swap cases, I want my cases to match, yours has the red interior I need to match my 'cola case." Charlie had put Velcro all over his case to keep the cover from sliding off, and besides I didn't want to swap anyway. I said "No, I don't want to swap." He kept bugging me and bugging me but I never gave in. About 6 months later he said "Come on, let's swap and I'll give you $25." Yeah right, like $25 was really gonna make me change my mind. I said "Give me a break, no way." Then one day I was in my studio/music room working and I heard "Psssssssss..........." My cat had pissed in my Walton case. Dang. The first thought that came into my mind was to call up Charlie: "Hey buddy, I'm ready to swap cases now." Of course I never did that and didn't have the heart to actually do it, it just was a funny thought. I told Charlie the story and I used to tell it to a lot of people with Charlie standing right there.
