Chuck Leavell: The Tree Man

I heard about...

this is just about Chuck Leavell

when he's working with the Altman Brothers.

The thing about Chuck is that

he is always playing a melody.

He's always playing a lyrical idea.

And you really are hard-pressed to find a guy

who can play with the honky-tonk, R&B,

blues bass that he has,

but also this incredibly melodic take on stuff.

You just don't find it.

Morning, darling.

Good morning!

We slept a little late last night,

must have been all that traveling we've been doing.

All right.

- Want some breakfast? - Yes.

- All right. - Breakfast is good.

My very secret ingredient.

I don't like people to know about. It's bacon.

How about a frittata this morning, Miss Rose?

- That would be great! - All right.

This kitchen used to end about right here.

It was teeny tiny and it must have been about, oh, 15 years or so ago.

We just took this whole section of the house off,

and we used our own wood, Charlane Plantation pine.

When I had the tour of the offices of Capricorn Records,

the doors open and there's two gorgeous women.

This black woman named Carolyn Brown.

That was Phil's assistant.

And my future wife to be, Rose Lane,

White at the time, who was working for Frank.

I was the first person you saw when you walked in the front door.

Phil and Frank were so wild,

and you know, back then there were a lot of drugs involved.

And they can remember, you know, from hour to hour

what was really going on sometimes.

Rose Lane had set up

a... the first... one of the very first,

um, simulcasts in the country.

I had 11 radio stations that we got to hook up across the United States

to do live in New Orleans with the Altman Brothers Band.

Some of the folks that knew Rose Lane said,

"Listen, you got to come down, you were responsible for setting this up.

You got to come to the show."

So some of the roadies drove her down

in her car, and she arrives there

and we had a dinner that night for the band.

I finally got up the courage to ask her out for a date,

and bottom line is we've been together ever since.

Rose Lane says I have a job security here because on a place like this,

there's chores to be done,

there's unexpected things that might happen.

And you get a weather event and then you all of a sudden

you got to be picking up trees off the ground and saw them up.

Everybody likes Chuck.

He's just a human being that you'd think doesn't exist anymore.

He's the kind of guy that makes you feel bad about yourself.

And you'd think it'd be the opposite,

a guy like Chuck makes you feel great.

He makes me feel bad because

a self-taught tree farmer,

a beautiful musician, beautiful human being,

when you look at the list of what he's got going on at any given moment,

it makes you think, "Well, I laid on my ass till noon",

and then I went in a do a couple of scenes and then went home

and watched sports and went to bed.

I see the male goose out there,

so that means a female is nesting somewhere.

There is no such thing as a day-to-day basis,

because Chuck and I are all over the place all the time. This is home base.

And so I think that whenever we get here it's like, "Oh."

It 'sthe Late Show with David Letterman!

Sitting in with the band right over there, Chuck Leavell,

ladies and gentlemen. Chuck, nice to see you.

Well, he's just this, uh,

rootsy guy from the South who came up...

in the relatively early days of rock and roll, '60s,

and has been at the top of his game all these years,

and he can play, you know, session in Memphis, Tennessee

or Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and then he can play in front of 40,000 people

with the Rolling Stones.

And I have a feeling, to him it's all the same, it's all music.

One of my favorite musicians of all time is going to sit in

and play with us tonight.

The guy's albums I listened to, uh,

listen to him and play on everything for many, many years.

Uh, he was, in a lot of ways, the soundtrack of my youth.

From everybody from The Altman Brothers to Rolling Stone,

Mr. Chuck Leavell is here on keyboard.

Kick us off, Chuck.

My band who's pretty, pretty, you know, confident bunch

and I did not exactly tell them to the first time he was going to sit in with us.

One of our mainly guitar players used to be in The Black Crowes,

The Doors, The Stones and so it was funny to watch

them fall all over their fucking sense

at Chuck Leavell walking on the stage.

I mean, like the goddamn king had walked out.

In that world, it was kind of a funny story

to see these professional musicians, seasoned,

played the arenas, played for everybody

just lay down their swords, you know, in front of Chuck.

Thank you!

I loved this, it was fun. It was fun.

Oh, man, good old H&H.

Let's go back. Say hey to Drew.

- Hey, man! How you doing, bud? - Doing good.

Beautiful morning to make biscuits at 5:30 in the morning.

- Is that what you were doing? - That's what we've been doing today.

We're rock and rolling here in the H&H.

Well, I'm ready for one of them biscuits.

Sounds good, we'll get you one real quick.

We'll go sit down.

Mama Louise, Louise Hudson used to

feed us when we were hungry and didn't have no money.

And she'd say, "Well, honey, you just come on in, you can pay me when you can,"

or "if you ain't got no money, just don't worry about it.

We're going to feed you, ain't nobody going to go hungry."

We'd order, and there was five or six of us,

and we'd order one plate of food

and we'd split it up with each, you know,

we'd split up and Mama H. Caught us doing it and she,

you know, I can't imitate her voice, but...

"My goodness, you boys. You can't be eating like this."

And she'd bring us all... she said,

"You guys hit the big time,

you can pay me back later."

And she'd bring us food.

And I love it, you know, she used to

charge you according to whether she likes you or not, you know?

Somebody was aggressive or she didn't like, it'd be, "Okay, ten dollars."

And if it was some of us, and "Well, $2.50."

- Same... same dish, it didn't matter. - Same dish.

Hey, Mama, it's Chuck.

- How you doing, darling? - I'm okay, baby. How are you?

Oh, I'm doing great. So good to see you.

- Good to see you. - Rose Lane.

- So pretty, as always. - Yeah.

I'm so glad to catch you here. That's wonderful. Thank you.

- You take care, man. - Okay. Great to see you all.

When I first started playing the piano...

my mom played, she was not a professional

or a teacher or anything, but she played for family enjoyment.

We had a little spinet piano in the house,

and, you see, I was the baby of the family.

My brother is 14 years my elder,

and my sister is about five years older than me.

So often times, it would be me and Mom in the house.

She would say things like, "Well",

Chuck, what do you think it would sound like?

If, uh, if there was a huge storm outside,

you know, and I'd rumble down for the thunder

and then do some lightning strikes up here.

"What do you think it would sound like if you hit a home run?"

She instilled that in me, and music has always been

more about emotions and colors and feelings

than it is about notes and chords.

Here we are at The Big House.

It's now a museum for the Altman Brothers Band.

Now when I first came to making the guys who were living here,

uh, most of them anyway,

we used to come, visit and have jam sessions here.

And through all the years,

it has become a museum,

there's a lot of memorabilia here from the Altman Brothers.

So come on in, let's look.

On our first trip to London, we played at Knebworth Park.

- Yeah? - In outside of London.

It would have been in '73, I think, right?

- Mahavishnu Orchestra. - Yeah.

No one had been outside of the United States.

Yeah, that was our first trip.

Here's a great one from Winterland.

I love those Bill Graham posters, they were always so cool.

This is what we used to call "the get out of jail free concert."

It was a free concert for the quality of life in Macon, Georgia.

And we gave money to the jail, gave money to

several different charities throughout the city.

And if anybody got in trouble, we could just say,

"Hey, don't forget we did this gig now."

I wanted to play with anybody that had anything to do with the Altman Brothers.

I don't care who says they're the biggest

Altman Brothers fan, they're wrong, I was.

After Duane had had this tragic motorcycle accident in 1971,

band went out as a five-piece with no replacement, very gutsy thing to do.

Well, I think all of us were wondering what

was going to happen after Duane passed.

You know, and it was just a revelation.

It was just... they picked up where just went to a slightly different road