Video Interview: Dan Sadowsky

Dan Sadowsky

Interviewed by Jan Garrett

May 2023

2025.016.0003

Jan Garrett [00:00:10] So welcome everybody. I am very pleased to be here today with the very famous and infamous Dan Sadowsky.

Dan Sadowsky [00:00:18] Uh, I, uh, in my own world, I thought I was famous for a minute there, I don’t know.

Jan Garrett [00:00:27] No, no, you are well known and well loved. Well known, well-loved in this and any world.

Dan Sadowsky [00:00:34] Yeah. Well, we were going to talk about the good old days. That includes the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, which was a sweet spot in Aspen. We both lived pretty close, either in or pretty close to Aspen at that time, and played a lot of gigs, played a lot of music. Your gigs, the ones that I was able to get to, were mystifyingly fabulous. And I’m thinking about Dave Schappert, the tremendous harmonic master and genius, who laid out some of the most beautiful piano accompaniment that… imaginable.

Jan Garrett [00:01:22] Dave was an absolute and utter genius. Those of you who don’t remember Dave Schappert, this was mostly in the, well, ’70s, I’d say, and on into the ’80s, fabulous world-class jazz piano player. And I was so happy that I got to play with him. Yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:01:42] Well, this is one of the aspects of Aspen that we hold dear, is that in this sweet spot, in this 25 or so years that we had when Aspen had real people in it and quote unquote “real things” were going on. We were able to get an inhabitation of the most amazing characters, one of which was the guy I mentioned, Dave Schappert, who was a well-known nutbag.

Jan Garrett [00:02:26] {laughter} Yes.

Dan Sadowsky [00:02:29] We loved him for that, but along with that, he… former musical director for Carmen McRae, one of the great female jazz vocalists of all time, had many, you know, pop hits as well. Well, he played for you and when I listened to him, I just absorbed so much magic because he was able to find his way around a chord progression that was, you know, completely familiar, and he turned it into magic. So we had guys like that, and we had… when I arrived in town….

Jan Garrett [00:03:17] Yes. When was that, Dan? When did you actually arrive in Aspen?

Dan Sadowsky [00:03:22] Oh, I got here to stay for good in, deep in the winter of ’78.

Jan Garrett [00:03:28] ’78. Okay.

Dan Sadowsky [00:03:30] Although, I had been coming to town for this and that, you know, earlier, ’74, ’75, I was hanging around.

Jan Garrett [00:03:40] Right.

Dan Sadowsky [00:03:41] You know, so I knew I knew who some of the players were. We had a long list of amazing players. You remember how great Kristi Kranz was when she fronted her rock and roll band? And all of these guys played in a scene which is now gone dark, which is, thinking about the après ski scene.

Jan Garrett [00:04:08] Yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:04:12] There was steady money to be made in playing après ski and then playing another gig at night. So we did, we all did a lot of doubles.

Jan Garrett [00:04:24] Yeah. Well, can you give me a sense? I mean, when you were up here in the mid ’70s, were you playing with any local people or just kind of hanging out?

Dan Sadowsky [00:04:35] No, I wasn’t playing with local people in the mid ’70s, but, you know, I put my foot on the accelerator in order to suck up to the guys who were already playing music in après ski bands and that whole scene that I just described when I got here to live here in ’78, and it happened pretty quick. You know, I joined up with some bands, and I also pretty much had my own band. And I do have somewhere, which I forgot to bring with me, an image of the very first band which was called Professor Metronome.

Jan Garrett [00:05:17] Oh my gosh. I don’t know how I missed that, Dan. Tell me a little bit about that band.

Dan Sadowsky [00:05:23] Well, we didn’t play much. We… I came here because I had a gig. My good friend, Jane Reed, who played vibraphone.

Jan Garrett [00:05:34] Oh, yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:05:35] I don’t know if you’d remember Jane.

Jan Garrett [00:05:36] I know Jane, you bet. Yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:05:38] Yeah. She’s still around, and she is a great painter. She really is a tremendous artist, and I don’t know what she’s doing musically, but she was farting around with vibraphone. And we had played together in Boulder in the past. And she said, “You know, I could probably get us a gig at The Highland Inn,” which is now also completely gone. It is plowed under. But this edifice held so much Aspen history. The Highland Inn out at the Aspen Highlands, which is… the foundation of which is now plowed under, and sitting on top of it are zillion dollar houses, which have been sold for real estate in order to make that whole rehabilitation at the base of Highlands work for the developer. Not for me, but for the developer. So this Highlands Inn was great because we not only had a venue to play music, but guests, of course, could stay at the Highland Inn and enjoy their hot tub out in the front, which was infamous. And also, ski patrollers and ski instructors lived at the Highland Inn, and across the street at the… what was the name of the place across the street? The, um…

Jan Garrett [00:07:17] It’s lost to history possibly, Dan. I don’t remember.

Dan Sadowsky [00:07:21] No, it’s in my head. And I’ll probably blurt it out in some inappropriate places.

Jan Garrett [00:07:25] Blurting is fine. You may blurt at any moment. Yeah. It’s fine.

Dan Sadowsky [00:07:27] Okay, I’m blurting at will. But anyway, we played at this place, and we had a funny little band. Tom Paxton played bass.

Jan Garrett [00:07:38] Oh, wow.

Dan Sadowsky [00:07:39] Bob Funk played trombone.

Jan Garrett [00:07:43] Oh, Bob Funk, man.

Dan Sadowsky [00:07:46] Yeah, Bob Funk who was…

Jan Garrett [00:07:46] What a fine… yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:07:48] …a member of the Uptown Horns who toured for 18 months with the Rolling Stones in the mid ’80s. And, of course, he’s a great trombone player and is playing now, for all sorts of gigs, including a thing called the Hollywood All-Stars.

Jan Garrett [00:08:08] Oh, yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:08:08] And that is a big horn band, and he gets to play in that. Anyway, Bob Funk, and I played guitar, and we had Mr. Valentine on drums.

Jan Garrett [00:08:23] Oh, sure. Paul Valentine. Great guy.

Dan Sadowsky [00:08:26] Paul Valentine played drums, and I think that that was it. But we had some very humorous eight by ten headshots made, which, one of which still exists, and I still have it. Yeah.

Jan Garrett [00:08:41] Cool.

Dan Sadowsky [00:08:42] Professor Metronome. Of course, the band blew up immediately. The gigs disappeared, and we went on to other things. But I guess what that did for me is it proved to everybody else who was playing rock and roll and playing the scene that, you know, I could front a band.

Jan Garrett [00:09:00] Well, Dan, and just to say to the people who don’t, Dan is amazing at fronting anything, but also I want to just give a shout out to your amazing guitar playing, you know, because you actually read music, you can actually write charts that are impeccable. And I love your guitar playing, to say nothing of your singing and just your presence as the main guy.

Dan Sadowsky [00:09:25] Well, here’s the thing. You know, I came from Boulder, where I was… where I worked it for about, a little over four years with a band called Ophelia Swing Band. And we played swing music, acoustic swing music. A very rare thing, to play acoustic music in a string band that is playing old swing tunes. And I made it my mission to do this weird thing, and I lucked out by getting a bunch of great musicians to play with me, including Tim O’Brien when he was a very young boy.

Jan Garrett [00:10:10] Tell about Tim O’Brien, who has been in the bluegrass world forever. Very talented guy, obviously. Was he playing… what was he playing?… fiddle with you guys? What?

Dan Sadowsky [00:10:21] Yeah, the whole idea was to get a couple of fiddles because they play in double stops to play horn lines.

Jan Garrett [00:10:31] Oh.

Dan Sadowsky [00:10:32] And he switched off on fiddle and mandolin. Now, he joined the band when he was just freshly 20 years old.

Jan Garrett [00:10:40] Wow.

Dan Sadowsky [00:10:41] And worked it for that many years with us. We were a hard luck band. And I was playing big, fat swing chords.

Jan Garrett [00:10:51] Yeah, I love it.

Dan Sadowsky [00:10:52] And forcing my buddy Tim O’Brien and my very good bandmates to play these tunes, and you know, we all got on board and we made two albums, which I’m very proud of, even though they show off my youth and overexcitement pretty, pretty prominently. Nonetheless, there’s some great moments in those two albums that remain.

Jan Garrett [00:11:23] Of course, and maybe at some point we can tell people, are they still available? Can people still get those albums?

Dan Sadowsky [00:11:30] Unbelievably, yes.

Jan Garrett [00:11:32] And how would they get those albums, Dan?

Dan Sadowsky [00:11:35] Well, you gotta type in Ophelia Swing Band into Google, and it comes right up. Here we are back in Aspen, and for decades, what’s been going on is that these guys are playing their own music, much of which is great, but it’s… compared to what I was up to, you know, there’s… you’re dealing with three chord songs, four chord songs.

Jan Garrett [00:12:07] I’m going to have to stop you right there. Because there was, in the mid ’70s and on through, my band Liberty was playing the same kind of stuff you guys were. I mean, we were playing western swing, we played country music and blues and, you know, a whole array of music that was acoustic music, which was mostly what was going on in Aspen, really.

Dan Sadowsky [00:12:30] That’s right. Yeah.

Jan Garrett [00:12:31] So when you came…

Dan Sadowsky [00:12:33] Think back to John Denver, and his role in making acoustic music okay to play in a bar at night, and you could sit and listen to John Denver, who was a magical performer.

Jan Garrett [00:12:53] Right.

Dan Sadowsky [00:12:54] And the rest of us sort of coat tailed on his, the thing that he did: making acoustic guy with a guitar okay to listen to in a bar.

Jan Garrett [00:13:06] Yeah. And to have vocals. And that’s where I will say too, Dan, the times I’ve gotten to play with you, which are so fun, and I actually have to get out my mandolin, oh my God, and remember the chords. Because, dude, you know, you like add in some, some different spicy things in terms of harmonies and chords, you know.

Dan Sadowsky [00:13:31] Well, compared to real jazz guys, it’s a… what I love is hot jazz. I love hot jazz and swing, and I’m unapologetic about loving traditional New Orleans jazz and hot jazz and swing. And that era is what I will always love. And guys who like cool jazz and jazz from the, you know, Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock and stuff like that, have a funny attitude toward the fact that these guys are… guys like me are just fine playing music like that, you know, instead of moving on toward cool shit.

Jan Garrett [00:14:24] Well, can I just say a thing about that? You know, kind of the cooperation that has happened, and the fact that, especially during those years, like the ’70s, ’80s and on through, the people who were playing music here were playing with so much heart. It wasn’t about that competitive thing that I think does happen with some of those dudes you’re talking about, that it’s just like, how many notes can you squeeze in? And there’s just like, who does a better solo? Because when you first came to town, people were supportive of each other, I felt like musically. Would you agree with that?

Dan Sadowsky [00:14:59] I think so, yeah. Right. And look it, I just want to mention the historic meeting of Liberty and the Ophelia Swing Band. Look it, the ’60s and ’70s in Aspen, and some of the ’80s, there was magic here. I mean, you could… if you had the right receptors, you could feel it. And it was a time where you could kind of peek over the edge and see the town before it went dark in 1893.

Jan Garrett [00:15:50] Right.

Dan Sadowsky [00:15:50] You could sort of sense the ghosts of that period, and then that long fallow period where this town was just ready for nuts like us to take it over. {laughter} We roared in in the ’70s and ’80s and said… uh, ’60s/’70s, and we said, “The hell with the real world.”

Jan Garrett [00:16:24] Right.

Dan Sadowsky [00:16:25] Let’s make our own world.

Jan Garrett [00:16:26] Right.

Dan Sadowsky [00:16:27] And let’s make it with all the stuff that we like. All of the fun and stuff that’s in our souls. And it was a beautiful thing, you know? There were pitfalls, but there was magic.

Jan Garrett [00:16:47] Well, that magic, to me, had a lot to do with the, as you’re talking about, there was a camaraderie and a kind of sense of fun, improvisation and kind of a generosity. Because it was like you weren’t standing alone being cool, but you were kind of inviting everybody else in. Would you… I mean, can you talk a little about Doctor Sadistic? I mean, that was slightly later, but I know you’re famous for that. I think the people should know.

Dan Sadowsky [00:17:15] I guess. I’m going to finish my thought, though, and it won’t take long.

Jan Garrett [00:17:19] Oh, sorry.

Dan Sadowsky [00:17:20] The very, very early Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Liberty played.

Jan Garrett [00:17:29] Right.

Dan Sadowsky [00:17:30] And Liberty played, and then there was an after party up, you talk about magic, at a place called Dunton, which is now a corporate retreat, but at the time, it was nothing but funk. There were a bunch of… it was a… I don’t know how it came to be, but a little town out in the middle of the White River National Forest with its own hot springs and a series of beat-up cabins and a kind of a meeting house, which was great, and I guess a little infrastructure for a commercial kitchen. Anyway, the owner of that place staged a Telluride Bluegrass Festival after party that was freaking legendary.

Jan Garrett [00:18:23] Right.

Dan Sadowsky [00:18:24] And so I met you because you, I think you had the lower bunk and I had the upper bunk in this cabin that was tilty-wampus and smelled like skunk. And we woke up, and there you were, this incredibly beautiful woman whom I’d seen on stage. And we, you know, we played some music, and we tooled around in this old ghost town, and it… and magic, absolute magic. It was great.

Jan Garrett [00:18:55] Well, even though Telluride was, you know, at a distance from Aspen, that still I feel is part of the magic of that whole era and this kind of intermountain west, you know, where that magic happened. I mean, an early Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and as you’re saying, the after party and then we all came back to Aspen again and played music.

Dan Sadowsky [00:19:15] Yeah, yeah. Well, you asked about the… Doctor Sadistic and the Silver Queen Crybabies was a fake punk band. We played the role, we got ourselves into character, and we played the role of a bad punk band, which we thought was hilarious because we thought every punk band was bad, that there was no such thing as “Hey, that’s really good punk music.” It all stinks, on purpose. On purpose, it stunk on purpose. And that was the whole idea of it, and so we thought it’d be hilarious if we played up the role of being a bad punk band. It still makes me laugh, and what we did is we wrote original tunes, and we recorded two albums’ worth of original bad punk music. But we chose as our subject matter, everything that we could that was weird about Aspen.

Jan Garrett [00:20:30] Yeah. Yeah. It’s important. Could you name a title or two from those? There’s something about a hot tub?

Dan Sadowsky [00:20:38] Well, “Dead Weight in the Hot Tub.”

Jan Garrett [00:20:40] “Dead Weight in Hot Tub,” yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:20:41] Beautiful tune. I made literally $100 from that tune. So, you know, don’t make fun of it. “Dead Weight in the Hot Tub.” Um, “EST Holes on Parade.” We had this movement in Aspen called EST, which was wonderful. It was so stupid, I can’t believe it, where they locked you in a conference room for 48 hours without water or… I don’t know, did they feed you? And you had to “get it.”

Jan Garrett [00:21:16] It was like a… yeah, it was like a self…

Dan Sadowsky [00:21:19] You had to “get it.”

Jan Garrett [00:21:20] Yeah, it was EST, Erhard Seminar Training. Yeah. And it was like a self-improvement thing. I did not do it personally.

Dan Sadowsky [00:21:33] Thank God.

Jan Garrett [00:21:33] No, I didn’t… I never “got it.”

Dan Sadowsky [00:21:36] I never “got it.” And you couldn’t make me “get it.”

Jan Garrett [00:21:40] But “EST Holes…” go ahead about the other names of…

Dan Sadowsky [00:21:43] We called them EST holes. You know, all these guys who “got it,” you know, and they wanted, they knew they were somehow a little bit better than real people because they had already “gotten it,” and we didn’t. So we called them EST holes. So we did “EST holes on Parade,” which was a lovely march. And “All Men Are Beasts” was sung by the incredibly beautiful and talented Kristi Kranz. The song I wrote from something that my girlfriend at the time just tossed off and said to me. She said, “All men are beasts.” And I went, “Oh God, that’s a song.” And yeah, we wrote all these weird, bizarre tunes.

Jan Garrett [00:22:34] Well, I know at some point, not to interrupt, but at some point you sort of segued, and this would go back to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, into Pastor Mustard. That was another name.

Dan Sadowsky [00:22:44] Well, Pastor Mustard was another character that I came up with for myself because I had a radio show on in Telluride. I lived in Telluride… before I came to Aspen, I lived in Telluride just for a year, but it seemed like three.

Jan Garrett [00:23:03] Right.

Dan Sadowsky [00:23:04] It seemed like three, baby, because it was rich with detail. So here’s this other ghost town where most of the side streets were not paved. In fact, they had just finished paving Main Street, and I had gotten a gig with the Telluride… well, no, this was before that. I was playing some music in Telluride, but I went down to the radio station and got chummy with the guy who was running it. He was a beautiful man… he’s passed on now… by the name of Terry Selby, and he said “Here,” you know, “I think we got a slot on Sunday morning.”

Jan Garrett [00:23:52] Wow.

Dan Sadowsky [00:23:54] Oh, oh. This is great.

Jan Garrett [00:23:55] Yeah. Perfect.

Dan Sadowsky [00:23:56] Because on Sunday afternoon, late on Sunday afternoon, about 2:00, there was a character, who was a bible thumping, hellfire and brimstone preacher, and his name was Brother Al. And on this radio station, on this ten watt,  we called it “ten mighty watts,” ten watt public radio station, they allowed Brother Al to go on and on about Jesus, and how everybody’s going straight to hell, and you got to straighten up right now, and stuff you would normally hear while driving across Missouri or Kansas or something like that where there’s a lot of Christian radio stations. So Brother Al was on, so I got on Sunday morning and decided on my way to the radio station, I remember it well, walking down the hill to the radio station, that I had to counterweight Brother Al somehow. Beautiful as he was, I had to provide some sort of black to his white or red to his blue. And so I said, “Well, I guess I’m going to be somebody.” I’d been doing puppet shows, and you had to be a character, so I decided, bing, right there, I was going to be Pastor Mustard. {laughter} Pastor Mustard.

Jan Garrett [00:25:42] That was a quick birth. That was a spontaneous birth.

Dan Sadowsky [00:25:44] Yeah. So anyway, I got on, and I had a funny voice that I used, and I just played a lot of tunes that I liked to listen to, probably a lot of bluegrass and a lot of goofy tunes, including tunes you might hear on… who’s the guy who plays all the oddball tunes? But you know, a lot of that stuff… plus a lot of call-ins. So we had call-ins, folks would say stuff to me, and I would make an attempt at humor as a response, a little back and forth. Call-ins turned out to be pretty popular.

Jan Garrett [00:26:33] Oh, God.

Dan Sadowsky [00:26:34] And when it’s the only radio station you can get in a town of maybe 2000 regular residents, you know? 1750, 2000, 2200, that’s about it. We’re all in this together. Man, it is all an inside joke. So I had a regular feature on the radio show called, “Abuse That Artist.” So rather than holding it back and, you know, saying only nice things about an artist, you could say what you really can’t stand about so-and-so, an artist who’s big time. The thing is that the artist was always Neil Young.

Jan Garrett [00:27:25] Oh my God. Don’t get me started. Do you know how much I used to love Crosby, Stills and Nash? Do you know how much? I felt like that the trio was perfect and that… so I should… You know, I think, Dan, at this moment…

Dan Sadowsky [00:27:42] Yeah, you would be a caller. You would call in and say, you know, “Jesus, he screwed up CSN, and the whole “Y” part of it is just a lot of crap. And I’ll tell you why.” And you could go on and on about it. And then we would play a Neil Young song, and at the end, we would go, “Oh God.”

Jan Garrett [00:28:04] And people could hear for themselves.

Dan Sadowsky [00:28:06] And then we’d go on to the next thing So that was a feature. And so we had people calling in as Neil Young’s mother…

Jan Garrett [00:28:13] Oh, dear God.

Dan Sadowsky [00:28:15] …saying, “You know, you shouldn’t say these things about my boy. I’m listening to you, and I just came to town, and Neil tries his best to…,” you know.

Jan Garrett [00:28:27] This is part… and here I will also tell the people who are listening, you brought this with you to Aspen, and therefore you really added to the essential insanity, good humor, et cetera, et cetera.

Dan Sadowsky [00:28:45] Yeah. Thanks.

Jan Garrett [00:28:46] So, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to have a transformation happen here. We’ve been talking so much to Dan Sadowsky, and I know he’s played so many roles as we go along. So Dan, we’re kind of starting to segue into maybe Pastor Mustard.

Dan Sadowsky [00:29:04] Pastor Mustard.

Jan Garrett [00:29:06] Yes. And your incredible bluegrass show on KAJX, but do you want to do your different persona? I mean, it’s up to you.

Dan Sadowsky [00:29:13] Oh, well, you know, Pastor Mustard wore a big old hat. He was a friendly man. He’s known for his banjo playing. {banjo chords play}

Jan Garrett [00:29:29] You know…

Dan Sadowsky [00:29:31] Banjo!

Jan Garrett [00:29:32] Banjo.

Dan Sadowsky [00:29:33] Hey, let’s… if we’re having…

Jan Garrett [00:29:36] What’s an interview with Dan Sadowsky…

Dan Sadowsky [00:29:37] … people need to go home?

Jan Garrett [00:29:39] They may have. What’s an interview with Dan Sadowsky without a banjo? So, yeah, I think we’re starting to kind of wrap it up, but it’s important to give you time to say whatever you want to say about music, about the soul of Aspen, about the fact that you’re still playing music, and you’re still doing great things in this valley. So…

Dan Sadowsky [00:30:01] I still want to play great old tunes that have been largely forgotten because I’m stuck there, and I’ll never get out. And there’s so much great stuff that has been written, and I had t-shirts made up once, me and Washboard Chaz, we played a gig together, and I had t-shirts made up that said, “Old Music Rules.” Old music rules. So I don’t know what part of our show here we have lost, but, you know, if I went into every origin story of every freaky character that I’ve brought to the highly tolerant audience of Aspen, it would take a long time. I’ll say this, I had a radio show, and I was asked by Aspen Public Radio to take over an existing radio show which had already been in existence for 17 years. And oddly, my show on Aspen Public Radio also lasted about that long. Yeah.

Jan Garrett [00:31:28] One of my favorite things to do on a Sunday morning, Dan… or was it Saturday? It was Saturday morning… was to tune in to the “Bluegrass with Mustard” show.

Dan Sadowsky [00:31:37] Thank you.

Jan Garrett [00:31:38] Yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:31:39] Thank you. It was totally worth it. I worked hard on it. You know, I made a point of bringing to it some of the aspects of radio that I’ve enjoyed over the years because, you know, people wonder if radio is dead and that sort of thing. Well, you know, crappy radio is dead. If you put together good radio, that’s hilarious and entertaining, and that’s got surprises and crazy things going off all the time, that’s not dead. That’s great radio.

Jan Garrett [00:32:20] Well, so let me ask you a question, Dan, is that… because I don’t think that’s happening at the moment on KAJX… but is there a way that people might access…? Did you record those shows? I mean, is there a way that they might access those shows? Because they’re just priceless.

Dan Sadowsky [00:32:35] Well, no. You know, you’d have to get… here’s the thing. I did aircheck every single radio show that I ever did. So if you wanted to go into my extensive archives and find something…

Jan Garrett [00:32:52] Yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:32:53] …I have them. I have them on CD and DVD, but you know, even CD and DVD will be lost to history. There is no website that allows me to put these things, to make these available to you, because of digital royalty penalties that that I will incur. I mean, I’ll have some digital policeman coming up to me in the wee hours of the night, dragging me out of bed and saying, “You owe all of these artists that you played on your radio show. You owe them an enormous amount of money.” So that’s the state that we’re in right now, and I can tell you the date that that came to an end, where you could do a podcast with music.

Jan Garrett [00:33:59] Yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:34:01] That came to an end on May 7th, 2005.

Jan Garrett [00:34:05] Oh, no. Wow.

Dan Sadowsky [00:34:07] Yeah. That was the date that the federal government said that it was okay for their… I can’t remember the name of the outfit… Sound something or other. Anyway, these guys are in charge of making you pay for digital royalties. I can’t do it.

Jan Garrett [00:34:31] Wow. Damn. Well, I don’t know. All I can say is, maybe we just really need to bring live music back to Aspen.

Dan Sadowsky [00:34:41] Live music’s dead.

Jan Garrett [00:34:41] Say that again?

Dan Sadowsky [00:34:42] We, you and I, Jan, lived in a magical, mystical…

Jan Garrett [00:34:52] Yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:34:53] …time, and it’s over. And when I got to Aspen, you were already here, and live music was, it was a paradise for a guy with a guitar or some idea for playing live music. It was a paradise because everybody was hiring. I walked into Andre’s with my band, Ophelia Swing Band, just when we were starting up, and we had thrown our sleeping bags into a field over by the Aspen Institute, and we were just cruising town and playing on the street. We were busking. And I walked into Andre’s, which was a happening place, you know, a nighttime disco. And that was a great breakfast and lunch spot, and said, “Can we…? I want to play music at your place. And we got this little band. We’re great.” And he said, “Sure.” Just like that.

Jan Garrett [00:35:57] Probably because the real estate had not yet gone nuts, right? And people could actually afford to have a club, to have a restaurant, and have enough money left over to hire a band. Right?

Dan Sadowsky [00:36:08] Right. Yeah. And you know, I think he paid us 75 bucks a man, which in 1974, I think it was, if you add inflation, was approximately 400, 300, 400 bucks a person to play. And I don’t even know if there was a sound system. You know, we just got up there, and we played our funky tunes, and people sat around and ordered drinks, and there you go. That’s what we did.

Jan Garrett [00:36:52] So there’s a part of me that is just hoping that something is still alive. You know, that there’s still that sense of, you know, fun and well-being and musical talent that somehow… I mean, I guess I’m just putting the hope out there that somehow, something, a new iteration of this might happen. I don’t know.

Dan Sadowsky [00:37:13] That is a beautiful sentiment. And it’s going to have to be elsewhere.

Jan Garrett [00:37:21] Oh.

Dan Sadowsky [00:37:22] Look it, I’m just going to say this real quick.

Jan Garrett [00:37:24] Please do.

Dan Sadowsky [00:37:26] I have a son-in-law who I love. Brilliant guy, does a lot, very talented, does a lot of things. His gig… You know, we used to haul a PA, a van full of crap, PA, microphones, cables, all the stuff for AC, our guitars, our amplifiers, our cases, blah, blah, blah. We used to bring all of that to a gig.

Jan Garrett [00:37:58] Right.

Dan Sadowsky [00:37:59] Right? And this is what he brings to a gig as a DJ, and he’s a good DJ, everybody’s moving and grooving to his stuff all night long, right? He brings a memory stick…

Jan Garrett [00:38:11] Yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:38:12] …to his gig. And he gets paid 750 bucks a night, which, adjusting for inflation, was a little bit better than we would get paid for a solo gig if we played in the mid ’70s.

Jan Garrett [00:38:30] Well, maybe this memory stick that he’s using, maybe we have… these memories that we have, maybe we’re all supposed to write books. I don’t know, maybe we’re all supposed to, you know, do podcasts or something so that what was alive and well and flourishing during those early years can somehow continue. That’s my hope.

Dan Sadowsky [00:38:49] We might have to open a club, you know?

Jan Garrett [00:38:52] We can. Let’s open a club. Let’s do it.

Dan Sadowsky [00:38:56] My dream would be to hit the lottery and open a live music venue in a series of towns that have gone dark, the way that Aspen has gone dark. So that you could stroll in and shut up and drink and listen to music.

Jan Garrett [00:39:13] Yeah.

Dan Sadowsky [00:39:15] Because it’s no longer about what’s happening on stage. It’s all about, you know, drinking and being big and showing up yourself.

Jan Garrett [00:39:31] So the music lives on and will live on, even though it’s dormant in certain places at the moment. But hopefully it’ll come back again. Do you have anything else to say, hello, goodbye, to these lovely listeners who’ve been…

Dan Sadowsky [00:39:43] Well, I ran my radio show for 18 years, both on Aspen Public Radio and on Carbondale Public Radio, and I had a lovely time with a swing band that I put together in, sometime in the last decade, and we played a lot of very fun gigs at the Wheeler Opera House with… we brought in swing dancers from Denver and pulled the crowd out of their seats. And so there’s still folks who think, you know, maybe there is talent right here, local talent. Right now, talent is imported into Aspen, rather than coming up out of the cracks in the sidewalk. But it’s still around, and so if folks have the idea that there are creative people dying to do things, you know, you have to stand up, let your creative freak flag fly, and make it go. Whether it’s in theater, dance, live performance of some sort, you have to insist. So you’re going to have to look for ways to do it like that, and it’s going to take some energy, baby. It’s going to take some…

Jan Garrett [00:41:16] But I think that maybe part of it is like Aspen not being anymore what Aspen used to be. We moved down valley, there’s a lot going on further down valley, I’ll just say that.

Dan Sadowsky [00:41:27] Carbondale is an extraordinarily welcoming place for that kind of energy.

Jan Garrett [00:41:32] Exactly.

Dan Sadowsky [00:41:33] It really is. And we still have venues like Steve’s Guitars, and there’s a couple others, where you can insist that cool stuff goes on.

Jan Garrett [00:41:48] Yeah. So I think maybe it’s time to say thanks to everybody.

Dan Sadowsky [00:41:53] Thank you, everybody.

Jan Garrett [00:41:54] And we’ll insist on it. And we’ll just be so glad you all are with us. Jan Garrett, and this is Dan Sadowsky.

Dan Sadowsky [00:42:02] Let me just say one thing.

Jan Garrett [00:42:04] Yes.

Dan Sadowsky [00:42:04] Ladies and gentlemen, {singing and playing banjo} “Happy trails to you, till we meet again. Happy trails to you.” So long folks. “Keep smiling until then.” Yeah, you know the rest.

Jan Garrett [00:42:27] Love you.

Dan Sadowsky [00:42:28] See ya.

Jan Garrett [00:42:29] Adios.