Chords for David Johanson

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ David Janz.
Should I sit here? _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
I am not now, nor have I ever been. _
_ _ _ _ But I know plenty of people who are.
_ _ _ _ We used to sit in tramps
_ way into the small hours of the day
_ _ often talking about music and experiences
and inventing things.
I think, I'm right [Ab] in saying that
the Buster Poindexter idea
came from your presence at tramps.
Correct, yeah.
_ [N]
I had been, first, you know
everybody knows I was in the New York Dolls
and we had kind of like a _ _ _
this _ sounds really sick
but we had kind of like a blessed existence _ _ and
_ we kind of got together
and rehearsed for a couple of days
and _ _ we were
the biggest thing in town two weeks later
so _ _ after that
whole thing transpired
that's when I really
kind of started paying my dues
and what I would do was
_ _ get in a van with about
six guys and
travel back and forth across the country
opening for heavy mental acts
in hockey rinks _
_ and kind of like officiating
at Hitler Youth Rallies and _ _
when I was home I used to
hang out at Tramps
because I lived around the corner _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ and Monday
there was nobody, everybody knows Tramps
right, I mean there was, you know, people would do
residencies there, Charles Brown would play
for a month and _
Big Joe Turner would play for
a month and _
Big Maybel would play for a month
and I used to hang out there and
_ read the paper to
Big Maybel and go to the track
with Charles Brown and it was great and
_ _ _ it was
open on Monday but there was nobody
singing on Monday
so I thought it would be a good idea to
do a show for _ four Mondays
at Tramps, which was the Buster thing
so we started out with like three guys and then
_ it got really popular and I started working
there two or three nights a week and I was making
as much as I was _ schlepping
_ [Cm] _
_ and I was actually able to
stay home and kind of get a life
if that's what you can call this and
_ _ here we are _ _
I see also, because you must
I didn't know that you had such a great interest in
songs and things because what you're doing now
is fundamentally based on
[A] collections of songs by
_ Harry Smith, how did that come about?
Yeah, well
we _ call the band, the new
band the Harry Smiths but it's not like we're
you know, devotees of his
record collection or anything, it's just kind of like
actually we were going to do a show
for Alan Pepper
and he called me up one day and he said, well [Eb] what do you
call it?
And I just said
the Harry Smiths and _ _ _ it's just
kind of like shorthand so people know we're playing
kind of like dark
old American songs
David, over all
these years now, what
I mean obviously you have a great love for music
otherwise you wouldn't be
_ still practicing
as you do, but what has your experience
been if you like
_ to shorten the time period from when
you first got interested in music
and what your interests in music are now? _
_ Well it's funny because
_ the Harry Smiths _ you know
I mean that by the name of my band
_ _ the music we're
playing is really the music I started
out with as a kid, you know the first music
I was really interested in so
it's kind of
come around full circle at this point you know _ _ _
it's just something that fell together
most of the things I do you know
they _ aren't planned
I just kind of start doing something
and _ see what happens
I'm not very good at making plans
when I make plans they're usually
turn out to be really
mundane and if I don't have a plan
_ something great usually
happens.
Was the
rock and roll
_ period that you had
was it something that you
looking back [F] to _ _ or _ _ _ _
over the years
what view have you gotten of that time?
_ The New York Dolls obviously are one of the most important
bands the city ever saw
did you know that by now?
I'm sure
you know I kind of think of it as like my college
you know I guess
you know my college days
being that I went straight from
_ _ being a really
terrible student in high school to
being in the New York Dolls so
_ I kind of consider
my college days but we had a great time
but you know it's
not that much different than
what people do in a frat house _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ except in drag _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [N] _