Coming to you from the studios at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66, it's the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Hey, everybody, it's Ray the Roadie and I be Hollywood Mike. I be.

I be. Isn't it? A, B, C, D, something like that. Something like that.

So what's happening? Not much this week so far. It's only a Monday. Yeah, I know.

And both of us got stuck by the bridge today. I know. I hate that bridge.

I don't know what we're going to do about the bridges here now. I don't know. I've lived here for 25 years and thought the bridges were broken.

Within the past year, they go up almost every single time I head into downtown Joliet. Well, we got to do something to stop them boats from coming down here. It's actually something, it's fun to see it once.

Yeah. Right. Right.

Even downtown you see it and you go, hey, that's pretty cool. Okay. I'm done with that.

I don't need to see that anymore. Yeah. No kidding.

But I did find a workaround though. That helps a little bit. Okay.

That's very good. I can go around the outside of the city and come up the back way. Nice.

So I even got here and came in and Ron was here and I was like, oh, Ron's here. Our guest was here too already. First time a guest has beat us.

And who was our guest? Our guest is Pierce Crass. How you doing, man? I'm doing well. And he beat us all the way from Skokie.

All the way from Skokie, yeah. On a bicycle. No, I kid.

No bridges. No bridges. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, we have no bridges in Skokie. Yeah, that's right. Pierce Crass.

Did I tell you that? Yep. Pierce Crass. All right.

So tell us about yourself. Well, I'm originally from St. Louis. I've been in the Chicagoland area for almost four years.

I've been a professional musician since 1999 and I just put out a new record and life is good. All right. Yeah.

What brought you to Chicago originally? My wife found a job here in her line of work and we figured between that and the musical opportunities would be a good move. Right. Right.

Well, that's good. What were you doing before you decided to become a full-time musician? Oh, God. Well, I was a fry cook for a while, worked in construction for a little while.

I did as little as possible. Yeah? Yeah. Seems like a pretty similar story.

Yeah. Fry cook, waiter, construction, plumber, doing all that kinds of stuff. Yeah.

So you're not a Cubs fan? No. No. Yeah.

Sorry. Sorry about that. Are we in White Sox country here? This is White Sox country down here.

Yeah. Yeah. We're Cardinals.

My wife is from Minnesota originally, so we're a Cardinals and Vikings household. Oh, there you go. Very good.

So, yeah. No twins though, huh? No. Well, you know, that was kind of part of the deal is we don't ... I'm still ... I mean, I was 13 at the time.

I'm a little salty about the 87 World Series, the twins and the Cardinals. I don't know if you remember that. So, we don't really talk about the twins a whole lot.

How about that football team down in St. Louis? I mean, they're ... Oh, I'm sorry. We don't have one anymore. They're undefeated this year.

They're undefeated. Actually, the Vikings played a pretty good game on Sunday though. They did? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That was a good game. We got to see that one because the Bears weren't playing. I mean, they're not playing any other week, but I mean, they weren't playing really on Sunday.

No, they weren't. And then my backup team, the Cowboys, whoa, what a game. Oh, yeah.

That was a ... It was like 48 to 10 or something like that. That was such a whooping it got boring. It was.

Yeah. Yeah. It was.

The entire fourth quarter, it was all the second stringers and even they were scoring. I was like, this is sad. I know.

And there was less than two minutes left in the game and they scored again. Yeah. I was like, what are you going to do? Okay.

If you're not going to stop us from going down the field- Well, that's right. Right. We're trying to be gentlemen about it.

Can't run backwards. Yeah. So, let's get back to music.

Yeah. So, what are you ... I take it everything you do is all original? Well, there's one cover on the new record, a Steve Earle song called Sparkle and Shine. And I generally, depending upon the setting and the kind of gig and the length of a gig, I'd like to do all originals or whatever I want.

Yeah. Right. Okay.

Yeah. But if I'm way out in the burbs somewhere and I'm doing a three-hour bar gig or something like that, I'll do half and half just to keep people confused. Right.

So, where did you start when you first took up music? What were you doing? When I first started playing, it was all covers and I was doing just the kind of the usual suspects. All these have been acoustic or were you ever in a- I do have a band in St. Louis called Falling Martins. Okay.

And we do a little ... We do more of a rock kind of thing. Okay. I beg your pardon.

But yeah, mostly I play acoustic. Okay. Okay.

And what would you call your genre? Are you more country, rock and roll, Americana? What's your- Yeah. I'd say Americana. Yeah.

Americana with the blues. I would say blues influenced. Right.

Of course, just about everything is blues influenced. Right. But- Except the blues.

Yeah. That's jazz influenced. Yeah.

True. Okay. Yeah.

Right. Some people would call it blues. Some people call it country.

I hesitate to call it blues because I don't go strutting around the same town, but a guy lives in calling myself the blues. Right. Well, he just lives almost practically down the street.

Oh, does he really? Yeah. Oh, wow. He's not too far from here.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I was lucky enough to catch him at his club a few months ago. He'd just gotten back from Dubai or something like that.

Right. Right. Right.

He'd gotten off the plane and came. It was one of those Wednesday night open mic, or not open mic, but open jam things. Sure.

Right. He got off the plane and I guess he went right to the club. Yeah.

He does a residency there every January. This January he's doing it again and it's going to be his last one. Oh, wow.

Right. He's not going to do it after. I mean, what is he, 80 something? Yeah, 80 something.

Close to 90, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's going to be his last one. High 80s.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a great place to see him.

Yeah. He's almost always at his club on the night of the open jam. The first time I ever met him, first time I ever saw him, was literally an open jam.

This was his old club. The club that he's in now is the second one, but the old club, he would sit at the corner, you know, drinking his Heineken and his Hennessy VSOP, I believe is what it was, sitting in the corner like any bar owner and just listening to music and anybody could walk up to him and shake his hand and say hi and sit down next to him at the bar and he'll talk to you. I mean, just a great down to earth guy, but I'll tell you, if you do get a chance to see him in January, this January at his own club, there's nothing like seeing him playing at his own club.

Yeah, I'll have to. Yeah, I mean, you're just looking up there and there's this legend. Right, yeah.

And the place isn't big, so no matter where you are in the place, you're no more than 50 feet away from him, you know? Yeah. I know a couple of people that actually work there, one in particular, a good friend of mine, he's actually worked sound at the club and I've had the opportunity to sit in the VIP section on a couple of occasions and it's just so great to go and see him, so you should give it a shot. But you know, this whole Americana thing, I don't know where it came from or who kind of coined the phrase, but it started coming up about, I don't know, 15 to 20 years ago, people started describing, using Americana to describe music, exactly what we started talking about.

Oh, I don't know what to call it. It's kind of country, it's kind of blues, it's kind of rock and roll, and then everything just seemed to kind of come full circle and turn around. I mean, look at all the artists that are out nowadays, like Chris Stapleton just won another CMA award, and I don't know if I call him country, you know? I don't know if I call him blues, he's a little bit of all of it, and the whole thing kind of sandwiched in together, so yeah.

How you feeling about that? Was that just kind of like a natural thing that you progressed into, or were you always into that, or did you start going down that genre because it became the popular thing? How'd you come to that? I was always kind of into that, and you know, I was always, as a kid, I loved Chuck Berry and Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, and then the country guys, you know, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, and that kind of stuff, and so yeah, it just kind of was a natural progression. Didn't Chuck Berry play quite often in St. Louis? Yeah, I was lucky enough, actually, I got to open for him in 2005 with my band, yeah. It was always like the same place, or the same club.

Yeah, it was a place called Blueberry Hill in the Del Mar Loop. That's right, that's right. Gosh, I tried to get out there and see him so many times, and I just couldn't do it.

I used to go to St. Louis quite often, I never was lucky enough to do that. What was that like? Oh, it was cool. I mean, that place seats about a hundred.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So, a hundred people, and you're hanging out with Chuck Berry.

Yeah, and the stage is about as high as this table is for those who are listening. Right. Right, right, right.

Yeah, about two or three feet off the ground, and when we opened for him, he had his son playing bass with him. I'm sorry, no, his son was playing guitar, his daughter was playing harmonica. He had Bob Cuban, I don't know if you remember Bob Cuban had a big hit in the 60s called The Cheater.

Oh, yeah, right. Look out for the cheater. Right, right, right, right.

But he was a drummer, so Bob Cuban was playing drums. Wow. Wow.

Yeah. And it was cool. It was a good show.

His shows there were kind of, they could be really loose or, you know, this one was really good. Well, seeing him, seeing Chuck Berry there is like us going to Buddy Guy's Legends and stuff. Right, right.

You know, it's the same thing, you know. Right, yeah. People don't get to see that other places.

How often did he perform? Was that like once a month? That was once a month, I believe. Yeah, right, right. And what was, did you get a chance to just hang out with him and talk to him? We were told before the show that we wouldn't, like, you know, the rules were pretty strict.

Right. You know, if you see him backstage, don't address him. You know, don't look him in the eye.

Don't say his name. Wow. During your set.

Right. All that. And then after the gig, you know, we were just kind of hanging out.

And Joe Edwards, who was the owner of Blueberry Hill, was like, hey, Chuck wants to meet the band. He wants to meet the opening bands. We got to meet him.

He was super nice. Wow. No kidding.

You know, you hear all kinds of stories about Chuck, but he was super, super nice to us. He confused me for a drummer that he had in the fifties. No kidding.

Yeah. I was like 32 years old at the time and his son was like, dad, this guy's like 30 years old. He's like, no, you played with us in the fifties, right? And then at the, so we're working on it.

Okay. Yeah. Do whatever you say.

Before I took up guitar. You got it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So who were your influences growing up other than Chuck Berry? I mean, I guess who was the first person that inspired you to pick up the guitar and start playing and singing? Well, I'd say him or, you know, not that I play anything at all like Eddie Van Halen, but you know, I'd see the Van Halen videos, you know, on MTV and to do it professionally was a, I have a friend in St. Louis, whose name is Mark Mobeck and he was actually performing at one of the places I was a cook at. Okay. Right.

Right. Right. And I actually was cooking at two different places and he played at one on a Wednesday when I worked and he played the other one on a Thursday when I worked.

And he would, he would give me a ride home because I didn't have a car at the time. And then we'd kind of sit around and play and then one, one night at one of the places I was playing at, he got me up to play a couple songs and the owner of the place was leaving and he'd stopped at the front door and listened to me. And he's like, why is the cook playing Mark's guitar? And he listened to a couple songs.

He's like, man, we got to get you in here on an off night, like a Tuesday or something like that. And I was like, well, I don't own a guitar. I didn't have a guitar.

I didn't have a PA. I didn't have anything at the time because I, I had a pretty, pretty bad drinking problem at the time. And he's like, we'll come up here tomorrow and I'll have an envelope for you.

So I went up the next day to work and he had some cash in an envelope and I went to Guitar Center and bought a guitar and a PA and he let me work it off by playing gigs at his place every week. Wow. That's awesome.

That's wow. Yeah. No kidding.

You know, I bet you there's about a thousand people listening, man, I wish something like that would happen. Exactly. That's great.

That's great. Are you still in contact with him? Oh yeah. I see him every once in a while.

Yeah. Good. Good.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank him in the liner notes on the record.

But I'm showing my age because, you know, think I'm on the liner notes. Nobody has liner notes. Nobody sits down to do that anymore.

Our young audience is saying what? Yeah. What's a liner note? Yeah. Well, I'm anxious to actually hear you play, you know, I definitely want to hear you play a little bit.

I'd love for you to, you know, take a song, pick one, tell us a little bit about it, where it came about. Okay. Let's hear it a little bit.

I'm sorry. Okay. Is that coming through or do we need to? Yeah.

You know what I might do? Let's do this. And when you sing, you don't have to go right in the microphone like when you're speaking. In fact, you might want to back off a little bit anyway, because it's going to get a little loud.

Yeah. Well, this is an early tune of mine. Harmonica and everything.

Yeah. He's got gear. He's got the picks on his fingers and he's got the harmonica around his neck.

He's got a roadie, too. Did you see him? He's sitting over there. He's got a whole road troop.

Was that Ron? No. Oh, yeah. This is called Stone and Steel.

And I kind of wrote this when I first started writing songs. I'd actually wound up in jail due to my – on your third DWI, they tend to lose their sense of humor. Yeah.

Yeah. And maybe I sobered up after that, but I had to do a little stint in work release. So I was introduced to this as one of the few prison songs that was actually written in jail.

In jail. Wow. I didn't have to sit and imagine what it would be like to be incarcerated.

Did you have a guitar or anything in jail? I didn't. No. You just wrote it on a piece of paper.

Yeah. But they did let me out because it was work release. They did let me out.

Oh, that's – okay. They did let me out to play my gigs. So I had a friend that actually would come by with all my equipment in his car.

He would pick me up, take me to my gig, and then bring me back. Right. Right.

Right. Yeah. I mean, we're not enforcing being in jail at all.

No. And if you've got to be on a work release program, I can't think of a better work release. That's a good way to do it.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, they kept their eye on me, though.

Oh, I bet. They were waiting. They were waiting for me to come back inebriated.

Wow. It was not going to happen. Stone and steel.

All right. This stone and steel keeps me confined. They can take my time.

They can take my time. But not my mind, and I'll escape to sleep Running through green fields where they never keep any stone or steel. They can take my nights, take my days, but I got something they never take away.

Try to take my life, but I'm far from dead because you can't put bars inside my head. This stone and steel can only kill my right to live, but not my will. And, son, on my high, one day I'll feel on the other side of this stone and steel.

They can take my nights, take my days, but I got something they never take away. Try to take my life, but I'm far from dead because you can't put bars inside my head. But you can't tie me down because I can fly away.

I'd rather be leaving the ground. There's a world in my mind that's not so cold or real where you never find any stone or steel. This stone and steel can't keep me down because a brighter day is coming around.

When all of my wounds are finally healed, inflicted by this stone and steel. They can take my nights, take my days, but I got something they never take away. Try to take my life, but I'm far from dead because you can't put bars inside my head.

But you can't put bars inside my head. Magnificent. Outstanding.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Wow.

I saw the whole harmonica and everything come out, and I was like, OK, we're about to hear some whiny harmonica player, like Bob Dylan. Did I say that out loud? I guess I said that out loud. It was not that.

No, it was not that. That was excellent. Yeah.

Oh, I appreciate that. You do that extremely well. All right.

Thank you. God, there are so many people that try to play harmonica and play guitar and sing and do all that stuff at the same time. And there's usually one thing that they do better than others.

Wow. You did them all together. You did them all together, yeah.

I appreciate that. Man, for those of you out there, I swear on a stack of Bibles, there's only one guy here playing. That's it.

That wasn't us. Definitely wasn't us. Wow.

So when you're writing, are you a lyricist first, and then the music, or? You know, it happens differently sometimes. OK. Sometimes a musical idea will come, and sometimes a lyrical pop in my head, but mostly the music first.

OK. Right. In the case of that song, it was the lyrics first.

Right, right. That's why I asked you. Yeah.

You seem pretty open about your past, about having a drinking problem and spending time in jail and the whole bit. That has to have contributed a lot to the things that you're writing about and everything like that. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, definitely. What about in your performances and everything? Do you hide that? Do you talk to people about it? Do you tell people, hey, this is where this song came from? Yeah, a lot of times, yeah. All depending upon the venue.

But if it's a concert-type situation, yeah, certainly. Yeah, absolutely. How do people respond to that? Yeah, they love a good back story, you know.

Yeah, yeah. You know. That's why we're here.

Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, and that's the whole point of this is everybody, you know, they know your music, but they might not know who you are. Right.

I think it gives everybody a better appreciation for their music when they hear it again after they've listened to this and can identify a little bit more with it. That's great. Wow.

So you've got a new album out. Do you have anything before this one? Yeah, I've got that song was on my Black Label album, which was kind of my first record. Okay.

And let's see, then I've got a live album and then two EPs. Okay. Okay, excellent.

You do any national touring? Are you pretty much just working around this area? Oh, I'll go just about anywhere. This year I've made it out to as far west as Wyoming. Wow.

And then as far east as New Jersey. Wow. Are you going by yourself or are you bringing your band with you? I usually go by myself.

Sometimes I'll bring one other guy. Okay. Actually, the guy that produced the record, this last record, is a guy named Ellis Clark.

He's a brilliant musician, and he's a multi-instrumentalist, and sometimes I'll bring him with me. We'll do like a duo. Okay.

Keyboard, piano, and guitar. Were all of your albums recorded here? No, this one, the most recent one, was the first one I've recorded here in Chicago. In the Chicagoland area.

Okay. Yeah. What studio are you? I'm at Ellis' studio.

It is Ellis' studio. Okay. Angel City Studios it's called.

Okay, excellent. Wow, great, great. Everything else was down in St. Louis? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Hmm.

Well, I have to say I do love the genre and I love that sound. I love the sound that you have. Oh, right on.

Well, thank you very much. You're listening to the Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast. I'm Christy from Crime Cave Podcast.

I've had a huge interest in true crime since my days of watching marathons of Snapped back in the mid-90s. I needed an outlet to talk about the cases that have haunted me for a very long time. With each episode under 20 minutes, I shine a light on some of the most bizarre cases in the last 50 years.

Join me in the Crime Cave. Hi, I'm Rick Anthony. I'd like to thank my radio brothers, Ray the Roadie and Hollywood Mike, for allowing me to tell you about my podcast, the Someone You Should Know Podcast.

We spotlight musicians, authors, and interesting people. And we like to say we're making a difference one artist at a time. The podcast is heard twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays, and you can check it out on your favorite streaming platforms and on the web at someoneyoushouldknowpodcast.com. That's the Someone You Should Know Podcast with me, Rick Anthony, making a difference one artist at a time.

So these clubs that you're, that you play, you know, you know, as you're, as you're kind of like going on tours, musicians say, are they, are they pretty much just, you know, bar type stuff? Are you doing amphitheater type? Well, you know, I'll do just about anything. Let me try to think. Like when I went to Wyoming over the summer, that was a thing for the city of Rock Springs.

So in their little, if you've never been to Rock Springs, Wyoming, it's actually a fun little town. I may have been through there. Yeah.

It's right off of I-80. Okay. But yeah, they have like a little downtown area and they do concerts, downtown concerts kind of thing.

So I did that, you know, that was an outdoor gig kind of on a little stage there. Played some, I went to New Jersey most recently. That was another, that was a thing in Clinton, New Jersey.

And they have a place called the Red Mill Museum and village kind of thing. It's like an old, old, the preserved, like, what do you call that? Well, it's a mill. It's a mill that was being runs off the river kind of thing.

And it's all preserved. And then they do a concert series there. That was an outdoor concert kind of thing.

But, and then, you know, I'll play in sometimes more of a listening room kind of thing. There's a place in Fairfield, Iowa called Cafe Paradiso, which is a beautiful, small, it's like a coffee shop, but it's also a venue, beautiful stage and house sound. Right.

Right. Yeah. Nice.

What was your favorite gig? Oh, man, you know, that's tough. There's gotta be one that sticks out though. Well, I mean, of all time, I'd say opening for Chuck Berry would be a good one.

Oh, that's gotta be good. Yeah. Is there a favorite place you'd like to play here and in St. Louis? Well, I love playing at the Montrose Saloon.

I was just there last night, and I'll actually be there again Wednesday. Okay. Okay.

Which is in Albany Park, Montrose in Richmond. Okay. And, you know, I've got a, and that's kind of a different, because that's more of a dedicated music venue too.

So that's a fun place to play. And St. Louis, golly, I don't know, I've got a little bed and breakfast I play actually in Herman, Missouri. Okay.

Which is about an hour southwest of St. Louis. Okay. Yeah.

Which is the Captain Wolt Inn, and it's actually just a three hour, I don't know about background music gig, but it's, we present it as a concert. Right. But it's for the patrons of the, the guests of this bed and breakfast, but it's such a beautiful setting.

The owner is just so, the owner is just a very generous patron of the arts, and that's a cool spot. Yeah. That's always, that's always good to find somebody like that for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I was looking at your schedule.

You've got a lot of stuff coming up. Yeah. Yeah.

Very lucky. Are you, are you doing all that yourself? Do you have an agent or are you? Oh, we've got a few different people here in town that'll book me in different places. Okay.

In St. Louis, you know, I was there for so long. Right. It was just, yeah, those are, those I booked myself.

And then, but here I've got a few different places. Like, you know, a guy that books kind of the Western suburbs. Okay.

And guy that kind of books me up North. Then, you know, a guy who books kind of more downtown. There's, there's a few, I don't have a dedicated.

Sure. One dedicated booking agent. There always seems to be a guy that kind of.

Right. Well, when you first come to an area, you don't know the area. Yeah.

You got to find somebody to help you out with that. Yeah. You're probably choosing a lot of the avenues that a lot of local musicians go through.

Yeah. To book gigs in the whole bit. That's great.

That's great. So that was off that song. No, you wrote that one a few years ago.

Right. Yeah. I wrote that.

And, golly, 20 years ago. 20 years ago. Wow.

Yeah. Okay. You got something off of your, your current record you could play for us? Yeah, sure.

That'd be great. Let's do. We'll be right back.

Yeah. You're listening to the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Oh, look at this.

Yeah. He's got more gear. He does have more gear.

Yeah. We'll, do the title track here of the Rising River album. You know, this is the second week in a row that somebody's brought in kind of like one of these hybrid acoustic guitars.

I think I need to look into one of them. Possibly. We had a guy last week that came in, same thing, classical headstock, classical tuners on it, but steel strings, kind of a shout out.

Yeah. shallow body. It has a great sound.

It does. Yeah. I don't rec, what's the, what's the brand? I don't recognize.

Collings. Collings. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Wow.

Yeah. They make a great guitar. Yeah.

That's it. It sounded fantastic. Now we have a resonator.

We do. So for the second time this evening, it's Pierce Craske. All right.

All right. Right outside my door, trying to come inside, river right outside my door, trying to come inside, cause I got nowhere to hide, heaven show no mercy, never gonna stop the rain, heaven show no mercy, never gonna stop the rain, if the rain falls long enough, it just might stop the pain, river rising through my floor, taking everything that I own, river rising through my floor, taking everything that I own, let the river take me home, rising river, rising river, let the rising river take me home, let the rising river, the rising river, let the rising river take me home, let the rising river, the rising river, the rising river take me home, let the rising river, the rising river, the rising river take me home, let the rising river, the rising river, the rising river take me home, let the rising river, the rising river, let the rising river take me home. Wow.

Yeah. No kidding. You know, I hear that guitar and I'm walking down some dusty road past the shanties and I hear the music playing.

That's incredible. That brought me back home to the dirt road that I have spent many a days walking down barefoot. Yeah.

And through the bean fields and the cornfields and I just heard the gospel choir behind it. The whole thing. Yeah.

We did a kind of a bunch of vocals on the last part, I guess that would be the chorus. Right. On the record.

So there's a whole. Okay. Choir.

It's kind of a, it's just me overdubbing the vocals a whole bunch, but it sounds kind of like. Like a choir singing in the background. Yeah.

Right. Right. Well, I'm going to have to listen to that for sure.

I want to hear the whole thing. For sure. Oh, it sounds, he did a great job on the, on the production of it.

Yeah. So what was your inspiration on this album? Well, for this song in particular, I don't know if you know, I don't know if it happens down here, but in Skokie, this is going to be, this is going to be weird. This is coming.

It's going to come. When they built a lot of the houses in Skokie before they started building split level houses, our house, we just moved into it too, by the way, it was built in 1952 and they more or less put the floor drains in the basement. Again, I'm showing this for our listeners here.

I'm using visual aids, more or less level with the sewer line. Oh, great. Good.

Right. Yeah. And we didn't know about, we didn't know that.

And we didn't know, do they have standpipes down here? Yep. Okay. Right.

My wife is from Minnesota. I'm from St. Louis. We had never heard of a standpipe and never heard of one.

And it was actually laying in the corner of our basement. And that was two years ago. It was, I think it was, it was June of 21, June of 21.

Yeah. We had a horrendous storm. I don't know if you remember that or not, or it was up north, you know, in Skokie.

I think we got something like six inches of rain in an hour or something like that. And my wife and I were down in the basement and she started to hear because of, you know, the phone went off, go to your basement, you know, so we're down there with the cats and all my guitars are in the basement. And she said, I think I hear water coming up through the, through the basement, just the drain and the laundry room.

I said, nah, you're crazy. Yeah. I don't know.

And it's of course started to come up. She's like, we might want to get your guitars upstairs. Yeah.

It's on a little lady. Relax. Yeah.

We're good. I got this. It's made of metal.

And I took a, I took a broom and I'm started to push, push the water with the broom back into the, into the floor drain. And when it got up to past my ankles, I said, oh, oh my gosh, by golly, you might be right. Right.

Right. Oh, goodness gracious. Let us take these guitars upstairs.

So we, I have a few guitars. So I'm throwing the cases up the stairs and it got up, got up to about two or three feet basically. However, I don't know how tall a standpipe is, but you know, the standpipe works on hydrostatic pressure.

Right. So once it got up to that and whatever it was, 18 inches maybe, or two feet, it went back down. But yeah, we had, we had no clue.

Wow. And so I envisioned myself like, holy cow, what have that, what if I'd have been like, what if I lived by the river, you know, in St. Louis, we have a lot of floods. Sure.

Right. And what if I would have been living on one of these shacks by the Missouri river or the Mississippi river and this would have happened and, and I didn't have all these things to even, you know, protect. Right.

So it was kind of like, I was kind of being grateful that at least had a roof over my head and something like that and wasn't living in a shack. And yeah. Speaking of standpipes, when I, the house I grew up in, we had a standpipe in the basement too.

Every time, as soon as the rains came, my dad'd be down there putting that thing in the drain there. Right. Right.

And you've probably seen the world's largest standpipe and not even know it. The old water tower in downtown Chicago is actually a giant standpipe. It's not a water tower.

They call it the water tower, but it's a giant standpipe. Yeah. I had no idea.

Yeah. Retired firefighter. Oh yeah.

Wow. That's interesting. That's something.

Yeah. That makes total sense now to standpipe. Wow.

So yeah. So we had a, a company come in and install a giant vault man, kind of more or less a manhole in our front yard. Okay.

With a couple of backflow preventers and a pump in the manhole. So it's like six feet deep and that's supposed to, no, I beg your pardon. Actually, people are going to wonder what you just did because those noises never show up.

We hear them, but they don't show up. That's right. That's right.

There was no flatulence or anything. A truck just drove by. So yeah, I just kind of put myself in the, in the position, tried to put myself in the position of someone who, because I've, I've seen a bunch in St. Louis where the river, the river rises, even the Merrimack a few years ago.

And they just wipe people's homes out. You know, you see, see that footage of where it's just the whole houses get knocked off their foundation. Yeah.

I remember that. I, you know, I remember that flood because you remember at the time they were showing things like a, a super dogs was underwater and stuff like that. I remember all that stuff.

Yeah. I remember when the Mississippi was flooding a number of years ago, like it was, there were cemeteries along the banks there and the caskets were coming out of the ground and floating down the river. It's like, that was really weird.

That's actually how the Asian carp got into the Illinois river. Yeah. The Asian carp were actually in farms.

They were farming this carp when it flooded, the carp got into the river and started making its way up the, up the river. Right, right, right. Well, I was going to ask was, was that metaphorical or was that literal? But no, that song was basically literal, but you did a great job of taking a very, very urban experience and my mind went completely someplace else.

Yeah, that's what I was going for. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah.

Excellent. Well, you did, you did a good job. So I'm going to ask you to play another one, but before we do that, tell everybody how they can find you real quick.

Tell everybody about your social media. Piercecrask.com. P-I-E-R-C-E-C-R-A-S-K dot com. And then I'm on Facebook as well and Instagram is Piercecraskmusic.

And this podcast is going to debut what, in about a couple of weeks? December 5th. December 5th, all right. So what do you have coming up like December 5th and toward the end of the year and the whole thing? Let me take a look here.

Let's do that because people, people, people tend to listen to this, you know, it shocks us, but people listen to this podcast. Yeah. As we always say, our second biggest crowd is India.

Yeah. Yes, it is. Yeah.

And they're going to, they're going to love me in India. They really will. It's a, there's a noticeable whenever we have like blues or country musicians on, especially, especially original music, it's like spikes, right? Oh, wow.

Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

Very cool. Well, let's see here. Past the 5th of December, I'll be at Four Trays Tavern on Friday, December 8th.

Four Trays Tavern. Yeah. Which is in, I want to say it's Bucktown.

Is it Bucktown or Old Town? Okay. Right, right, right. And then I'll be back at the Montrose Saloon Tuesday, December 12th.

All right. I will be at a place called Hey Nani. Oh yeah.

Nice place. Yeah. And I'll be doing actually the after show.

So whoever's in the main showroom. Okay. They'll get finished about 9.30. I'll be over in the bar dining room area.

Okay. And I'll start at 9.30 and play from 9.30 to 11.30. Oh, nice. And that's on Saturday the 30th.

Yeah. Right. Excellent.

Excellent. So definitely get out and see him. We say that about everybody, but we're working so darn much.

You know, this is a great job. You know, just to be sitting here and listening to original music and you have an original artist in the studio who, man, I have to tell you, I absolutely love what you're doing. I appreciate that.

Thank you very much. Yeah. Very good.

So you got one more to take us out with? Sure, sure. You were looking something up. I'm always looking things up.

Yeah. I will do another one from the new record here. Maybe he'll get booked in India.

Yeah, maybe. That'd be great. Oh, I'll do this one.

This is called Anybody Out There. One, two. Who am I counting off to? I started tapping my foot right along with you.

Force of habit. Can't answer my prayer. Trapped alone on the inside.

With nowhere to go. Locked in a cage with nowhere to run or hide. And I just thought somebody should know.

Anybody out there? Anyone at all? Anybody out there that can answer my prayer? Trapped alone on the inside. Can't wait to break free. Here I am, locked in a cage with nowhere to run or hide.

Who did this to me? Is there anybody out there? Anyone at all? Hear me calling. Anybody out there that can answer my prayer? Anybody out there that can answer my prayer? Very good. Very nice.

Thank you. A little not the Rolling Stones. Yeah.

I like that. That was good. Well, Pierce, thanks a lot for coming out.

Thank you for having me. That sounds outstanding. Really enjoy your music.

I appreciate that. Thank you guys very much for having me. We encourage everybody to go out and see him somewhere.

He's everywhere. Yes. All the time.

Soon to be India. That's soon to be India. I'll get right on a plane.

Well, thanks a lot, Pierce. Thank you. Thank you.

Alrighty, there we go. I got to tell you, that second song, it resonates through me. Oh, absolutely.

Oh my God. That was, like I said, I felt like I was walking down some dirt road by the shanties and just listening to that music coming through the trees. Yeah.

You know what? When he started playing that song, two different movies started flashing through my head. Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? There's the scene in that movie where the sheriff finally catches up with him. And there's the guys singing like the baritone trio.

Oh, yeah. And I heard that at the end of that, for sure. And then the beginning of the guitar battle in, was it Crossroads? Was that the Ralph Macchio movie? Yeah.

Both of those movies were flashing through my head. Yeah. I was thinking the same thing, Crossroads.

Yeah. I didn't think about Brother, Where Art Thou, but yeah, that was a great movie, too. You know, his entire sound could have been in that movie.

Yeah. It has that cross-town feel. I was not expecting him to come out with the resonator and the slide and to do all that stuff.

Man, that was amazing. I enjoyed that. I could have listened to him play all night, actually.

Exactly, exactly. Now we got a whole new album to listen to. That's right.

We'll have to listen to that. You know, I don't even know if my new truck has a CD player in it. Oh.

I'm going to find out. I'm going to have to find out. I'm going to find out on the way home, for sure.

For sure. All righty, as usual, thanks for listening to our wonderful podcast. At least I think it's wonderful.

And make sure you tune in every Tuesday for another exciting new episode of the Rock & Roll Chicago podcast. See ya. The Rock & Roll Chicago podcast is edited by Paul Martin.

Theme song courtesy of M&R Rush. The Rock & Roll Chicago podcast does not own the rights to any of the music heard on the show. The music is used to promote the guests that are featured.

Rock & Roll Chicago. Rock & Roll Chicago, my hometown. When I was born in the city, going to rock the city of Chicago.