Mitch Kashmar: A Tone for the Past

Each night, soundmen and producers help musicians paint a varied and unpredictable canvas in clubs and studios. Some nights, that canvas of sound is dark and heavy, especially when unschooled production turns the nuances into mushy garble. At other times, it delivers transcendent moments where each vibration divinely connects.

Having painted on such canvases for nearly 30 years, Mitch Kashmar has heard both the highs and the lows of sound mixing as well as everything in between.

Kashmar, who began his musical journey at the piano, is gaining respect today for his cutting-edge harmonica playing. Because the harmonica is such an intimate instrument ‹ it's powered by a player¹s inhalations and exhalations, after all tonal distinctions are crucial. No other wind instrument relies as much on minute details of tone.

“The sound can vary from good to unbelievably awful,” Kashmar says. “Sometimes at festivals, they mix real heavy on the bass and kick drum, and it knocks the foundations off the music. That¹s awful for playing tasteful blues.”

Kashmar recently returned from his third trip to Russia, where, he says, the nightly variance in sound can be a blues musician¹s nightmare. “Russia is always a beating, because the soundmen will not work with you. They tell you they work for the house, and their job is to bump those walls down. Alex Schultz and I played one place called the Roadhouse that was a good-sized wooden place with a low ceiling. I try to play there every time, because they hire a good sound engineer. When you find a club with good sound, you want to stay there every night, because you can really reach your potential.”

Often, good sound equals low volume, Kashmar explains.

“I love that jazz-band volume, when the drummer plays way down and I can play a festival like I¹m playing to a room of 100. After thousands of out-of-control gigs that were way too loud, I would love to play my shows like that.”

One such experience happened just after his return from Russia, when he took part in a Harmonica Blow-Off with Rod Piazza, James Harman, and John “Juke” Logan. “That’s a perfect example,” he says. “In past years, I’d bring bigger amps like the Fender Bassman. It sounded good, but there was kind of a muddy thing going on. This year, I brought my favorite little brown Princeton. The soundman got it up to where it had a lot of presence in the big system. Guys were coming up to me all night long talking about this wicked sound.”

Kashmar is finally getting the opportunity to show off his skills, and the blues world is taking note. Last year, Kashmar¹s Nickels & Dimes, released by Delta Groove Productions, was nominated in the Blues Music Awards for Best New Artist Debut. That honor took Kashmar to Memphis, where he opened the BMA ceremony and played a showcase with his labelmates.

“I got to see my old hero, Kim Wilson,” Kashmar says of the event. “We grew up in the same town [Santa Barbara, California], and although he’s older, I started listening to him when I was about 17, after the T-Birds made their second record. Kim was the first white guy, along with William Clarke, that I got into who was a funky player.”

When Wilson visited Santa Barbara from his new home of Austin, Texas, he’d sit in with Kashmar’s early five-piece band and, later, the Kashmar-fronted Pontiax. “I learned a lot from late-night jams after the gigs, but I was also able to teach myself very well from what these guys said on their
records,” says Kashmar.

Something in the Southern California water seems to produce great harmonica players. Of course, it could also be a result of the lasting influence of George “Harmonica” Smith. When Smith moved to Los Angeles in the 1950s, he asserted himself as a West Coast harmonica fountainhead, begetting a generation of musical children ranging from Piazza and Harman to Clarke and Wilson, and now to Kashmar.

“The way George attacked a note ‹ he¹d put his lips on the harp real relaxed and play from way down in his tum is the quality that make this Southern California harp different,” Kashmar says. “George was very open in letting a lot of musical breezes in from outside. We all sound they way we do because, like George, we listened way beyond harmonica. There¹s a problem with harp players who only listen to other harmonica players.”

To that end, Kashmar learned from guitarists such as Junior Watson, John Marx, and Rick Holmstrom, all of whom know how to play with a traditional feel. “Young harmonica players have to reach back before loud rock music took hold of the blues,” says Kashmar. “Check out the music when guys had the volume to reach a room of 40 people. Guys like Junior are so deep into that music.”

Kashmar was born in 1960 and studied piano as a youth. “I never took my hands off it,” he says. “What I didn¹t know was that the piano was going to inform everything I do on the harmonica.” When his older brothers took up the acoustic guitar during the ‘60s folk revival, Kashmar decided to give the harmonica a try, looking first to Sonny Boy Williamson I and other prewar harp players for inspiration, and later to amplified players. He also listened to artists he considered great singers, such as Little Milton, Roy Brown, Bobby ³Blue² Bland, Johnny Adams, and Little Willie John. “I used to say that if God told me I could sing like Little Willie John for five minutes, and the price was to go down into the hole tomorrow, I¹d do it,” he says.

As solitary study morphed into onstage performance, Kashmar thrived as the leader of three different versions of the Pontiax, one of the West Coast’s top blues bands of the era. Between 1982 and 1999, the Pontiax shared stages with blues legends such as Lowell Fulson, Pee Wee Crayton, Big Joe Turner,Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Roy Gaines, and Charlie Musselwhite.

“The only chance to survive through all those gigs was to try to stay creative,” Kashmar says today. “It boils down to the fact that I’ve been doing all these gigs with many different people, so it keeps my repertoire going with songs. When we call off one of those traditional grooves, I’ve practiced them so often that it¹s like breathing.”

If it’s excellence of sound Kashmar¹s looking for, most would agree he’s found it on Nickels & Dimes and his latest album, Wake Up & Worry, both which bring together Kashmar¹s original tunes, a group of first-class engineers and musicians, and a high level of quality control. “Everything was top-shelf,” he says of the sessions that produced his recent discs. “Randy [Chortkoff, who founded the Delta Groove label] gets good people who know what they¹re doing around the studio, so I only have to be concerned with playing and singing and writing.”

Kashmar was, in fact, the first artist Chortkoff signed to Delta Groove.”About 24 years ago, I’d heard about this great singer and harmonica player named Mitch Kashmar fronting the Pontiax. I went to see them play in this little Santa Barbara bar, and he blew me away.” Chortkoff subsequently invited Kashmar to participate in a series of Little Walter tribute concerts he was staging in Los Angeles.

“When I got Randy¹s call, I was absolutely nowhere,” Kashmar says. “I was a little over the edge in terms of staying creative and not stagnating. But I did grow in those years. It gave me time to practice, learn my techniques, and be ready for the game.”

But with opportunity comes the prospect of having to rise to meet expectations. “We had to make the songs good, because the record¹s getting promoted. I love the fact that it was Œpressurized’ in that way, because that intensity comes across in the vibe. You can feel these sessions boiling at the right temperature. When it was time to make a record, we got into the studio and burned no punching, real organic. I love the fact that all the seasoning and years and flow are there. If there are mistakes and stumbles, they can stay. That¹s fine with me.”

Besides performing as a bandleader, Kashmar has just signed on to play harp with the latest touring incarnation of War, the long-running funk-rock act best known for hits such as “Low Rider” and “Spill the Wine.” Mostly, though, Kashmar is just happy to get some hard-won recognition especially
>from those who pay close attention to the nuances of his performance. “I’m delighted that people are hearing that I have different things going on when I’m playing harmonica,” he says. “That it sounds Œold,’ but with twists that make it sound natural. Those twists have been a long time in the making.

It’s nice to get heard like that.”