and said “hey, man, why don’t you come to this little theatre that holds about 200 people and jam with me.” Then he wanted me to bring a tiny am- plifier... I asked him why? He said bring some- thing tiny because he was playing real quiet on stage. I had this little, tiny Fender amp and it had one little ten in it. J.J. had this little Peavy that you could almost put in your back pocket. (Laughs) He is playing on that little thing and his drummer is playing on a snare turned bot- tom side up’ards with a brush and his girlfriend is playing an electric guitar but is not plugged up. They were just doing this groove stuff on- stage and I joined them and played 3-4 songs and played really quiet. (Laughs)
Mark Knopfler. He may be my favorite guitar player or at least
in the top three. We have known each other for a long time- over there in London in the studio hanging out. It started years ago and he gave me a guitar, a beautiful acoustic guitar. He was doing a show with Chet Atkins and he came out to the house and of course we had to build a fire and get outside and crank a couple of acoustics up and have a few cold ones. Knopfler was out under the moon with a fire going and did the song “Brothers In Arms,” which is one of my fa- vorites - it doesn’t get much better than that. Then we went downstairs into my studio and I had this old blonde 330 Gibson that I had used back in the Texas days. He started playing it and would not put it down and he just couldn’t quit playing it. So he got ready to leave the next day and I told him to take that Gibson and put it in the car with him. He said “No,” he didn’t think he could take it. I told him to go ahead and take it and it would be in good hands. I went out by the campfire the next afternoon
and just kind of sitting there by myself and there were guitar licks laying everywhere. (Laughs) Knopfler knows so many licks that they just fall out of his pockets. (Laughs)
Ray Charles. Not only did I know him but I was in Australia
with him a few months ago at a big outdoor festi- val. Jody, my son and I went to see him in the trailer in the back and he had this guy with him, a bodyguard and we sat there for about 25 min-
utes going over tunes that he had done of mine. He did an unreal version of “Rainy Night in Geor- gia.” I mean it’s up there with Brook Benton’s. He
loves 3/4 time. It was kind of a country tune re- ally, and I thought about Waylon when I wrote it and then Ray came out with it and won Country Music Video of the Year with it. Ray says that that song was his life and that I wrote his life right there. I look back on those early days in Texas when Ray came out on that album of all those country hits, “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” and all that. I will never forget how good that was. I’ve got to renew my CD’s because I have burned them up. I will never forget “Born To Lose” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You” all those tunes. The country side was not any stranger to him at all.
Let’s talk about the new album... what in- spired you to get together with all these
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