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be. It’s a classic style of playing. Very old school. He inhabits a song rather than attacking it. He’s always done that with me.

How have you spent the last couple of months home-sheltered in Malibu?
Have you been able to weld or paint?

Yeah, a little bit.

Are you able to be musically creative while at home? Do you play piano and
tool around in your private studio?

I do that mostly in hotel rooms. A hotel room is the closest I get to a
private studio.

Does having the Pacific Ocean in your backyard help you process the
Covid-19 pandemic in a spiritual way? There is a theory called “blue mind” which believes that living near water is a health curative.

Yeah, I can believe that. “Cool Water,” “Many Rivers to Cross,” “How Deep
Is the Ocean.” I hear any of those songs and it’s like some kind of cure.
I don’t know what for, but a cure for something that I don’t even know I have. A fix of some kind. It’s like a spiritual thing. Water is a
spiritual thing. I never heard of “blue mind” before. Sounds like it could be some kind of slow blues song. Something Van Morrison would write. Maybe
he has, I don’t know.

It’s too bad that just when the play “Girl From the North Country,” which features your music, was getting rave reviews, production had to shutter because of Covid-19. Have you seen the play or watched the video of it?

Sure, I’ve seen it and it affected me. I saw it as an anonymous spectator, not as someone who had anything to do with it. I just let it happen. The
play had me crying at the end. I can’t even say why. When the curtain came down, I was stunned. I really was. Too bad Broadway shut down because I
wanted to see it again.

Do you think of this pandemic in almost biblical terms? A plague that has
swept the land?

I think it’s a forerunner of something else to come. It’s an invasion for sure, and it’s widespread, but biblical? You mean like some kind of
warning sign for people to repent of their wrongdoings? That would imply
that the world is in line for some sort of divine punishment. Extreme
arrogance can have some disastrous penalties. Maybe we are on the eve of destruction. There are numerous ways you can think about this virus. I
think you just have to let it run its course.

Out of all your compositions, “When I Paint My Masterpiece” has grown on
me over the years. What made you bring it back to the forefront of recent concerts?

It’s grown on me as well. I think this song has something to do with the classical world, something that’s out of reach. Someplace you’d like to be beyond your experience. Something that is so supreme and first rate that
you could never come back down from the mountain. That you’ve achieved the unthinkable. That’s what the song tries to say, and you’d have to put it
in that context. In saying that though, even if you do paint your
masterpiece, what will you do then? Well, obviously you have to paint
another masterpiece. So it could become some kind of never ending cycle, a
trap of some kind. The song doesn’t say that though.

A few years ago I saw you play a bluegrass-sounding version of “Summer Days.” Have you ever thought about recording a bluegrass album?

I’ve never thought about that. Bluegrass music is mysterious and deep
rooted and you almost have to be born playing it. Just because you are a
great singer, or a great this or that doesn’t mean you can be in a
bluegrass band. It’s almost like classical music. It’s harmonic and meditative, but it’s out for blood. If you ever heard the Osborne
Brothers, then you know what I mean. It’s an unforgiving music and you can only it stretch so far. Beatles songs played in a bluegrass style don’t
make any sense. It’s the wrong repertoire, and that’s been done. There are elements of bluegrass music for sure in what I play, especially the
intensity and similar themes. But I don’t have the high tenor voice and we don’t have three-part harmony or consistent banjo. I listen to Bill Monroe
a lot, but I more or less stick to what I can do best.

How is your health holding up? You seem to be fit as a fiddle. How do you
keep mind and body working together in unison?

Oh, that’s the big question, isn’t it? How does anybody do it? Your mind and body go hand in hand. There has to be some kind of agreement. I like
to think of the mind as spirit and the body as substance. How you
integrate those two things, I have no idea. I just try to go on a straight
line and stay on it, stay on the level.

### - bob's alright, sane ;)

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