The Sound of Gold with guest The Boondock Sinners

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0:51 Hi, welcome to the Sound of Goals. I'm so happy you're here. I am here in my home studio and I'm here with my cat, cat who like staplay piano, and sometimes I love to do this show, and I do it for you because I want you to know that there are so there's so much out there in our communities that when it comes to music, it's all around us. And for us musicians, it's kind of like in our veins to always like reach out and seek out music venues or to surround ourselves with music, influence, music friends.

1:35 For those of you. Out there that are wanting to get involved in the community, wherever you are calling in or listening in from, I promise you there is a venue in your community that has maybe an open mic or has a place where you can go and listen to live music. There's so much talent in our communities that my purpose for. Doing this show, it's to shine light on the talent that's in our communities because there is so much. And I'm so excited to be here with you today because I not only love to play piano and love to represent my musician. I would say extended family friends, and today I would like to invite on my show the Boondog Sinners.

2:26 There is Donna. And Paul and I know we haven't talked in a while, and I'm so excited you made the time to be on our show today. Are you backstage? Can you join me today? Yes, there you are. Thank you, Lisa, thank you for having us. Absolutely and like I said, thank you for making the time to be here. There's so many questions I have for both of you. And Donna. We had met years ago. I was trying to remember how many years we've known each other, and especially enough we share the same birthday, which is cool. I know, that's very very cool. I'm thinking it was maybe five or six years ago. Yeah, i'd we met, Yes, Yes, and you've grown so much and you do so much in our community and You're not only here in Florida, you travel. I guess for our audience, because some of our listeners are perhaps friends of ours, or some of our listeners are just tuning in and maybe are more or less amateurs that are wanting to get involved in music. So I'm going to ask different questions just to help our listeners learn more about us, and then also to for our extended family friends and friends who know us. They can kind of get a little bit more information about who we are and kind of like what's brought us to where we are today. So I guess the best question to ask is from both of you. I guess you choose your starts, whether it's Donna maybe or Paul, Like, where

3:56 did you begin with your journey with music? I think both of us started on the younger side. I'll let him talk about his journey. I know that I was when I was maybe six or seven. My dad just had this vision. My dad was into music and wanted a family band. So you worked on that, and my siblings and I took instrument lessons, and eventually we did play together as a band for a really long time through high school. That's fun. So for me, that's that was my start. My start was. Probably watching Ed Sullivan in nineteen sixty four, like so many other people of our generation, some of the Beatles, and all of a sudden, I wanted to be a Beatle.

4:43 I wanted to play a guitar. I just wanted to be. Involved in music that way too, And so I started singing in grammar school pretty early. And it was a parochial school. And I ended up doing a lot of singing in grammar school, which I liked. It still wasn't as fulfilling as being a beatle. You had a band in high school? Yeah, I had a band in high school, and things like that wonderful. So you were both influenced, Donna. You were influenced by family and then Paul your influence from television and Sullivan. So both of you had. Great inspirations to go by and to live by. And I know I mentioned in previous shows as a musician for those that are tuning in that are not musicians, that are wanting to be musicians, you know, it's a passion that we that we drive by, I would say, or not drive by, but drive on and thrive on.

5:42 So what Donna, when you played with your family. What instrument did you play and did you sing and play an instrument? Well, when I was young, I took accordion lessons for like eight years. I didn't really enjoy I wanted. I saw myself more as like a Carol King playing board, so accordion didn't quite cut it. But then my dad taught me to play the guitar, and so for the most part traveling with the family, I played guitar and I sang and my mom sang, and so there was there was a lot of music going on there. And then sometimes I would maybe play the accordion just to to keep him happy, But I was really more about singing and playing guitar. That was, you know, and you know the and the Carly Simon's and Emmy Lou Harris.

6:29 You know, those were the people that you know, really drove me to want to be like them. Yes, yes, that's wonderful. And Paul, you were in a like a high school band. And then what inspired you from there? Did you just kind of beat off of friends and family or. Did you have other inspiration on television? Well, I think once I had my first guitar, I just wanted to kind of keep going musically, and I bought my first guitar with newspaper route money from the seventh grade. And I was in a band in junior high school, which really didn't go anywhere, but it was still fun and an eye opening experience.

7:14 In high school it. Was a little bit more advanced and the players were more advanced, and it was a challenging but fun to get people together to make a sound that everybody had their little piece together, everybody contributed and it was just it just felt fulfilling. And they were amazing. I've heard, I've heard you know, tapings of things, you know, concerts and things that they did very good. You know, you get into the music scene, you live there for a while, you have fun, you realize maybe you're not going to make a living in some cases, so you settle down. You get married, you have a family, you have kids, and the music is set aside for a little while. Sure, whether it's intentional or not, it's just the way it works out. And then later in life, as things kind of settled down, you said, you know what kind of misplaying the guitar, I miss singing. So I started back out on a path where as a soloist because situation doesn't really allow you to join up with a bunch of people that are that have families to raise and things like that, Scheduling becomes an issue.

8:18 So solo work was my next step. Okay, and so and then I'm going to ask you a similar question, don but Paul, going on that, like, what was so our listeners get an idea if they're wanting to venture out and learn how to or get involved with playing in the community, what was it that you seem like, what secrets could you share with us that helped you to maybe get into venues or connect with other musicians. You know, I don't really have any great secrets to share. When I first started doing this, I was late twenties, maybe early thirties, and I would just make myself available.

9:00 I did a lot of coffeehouse stuff back. In the eighties, late seventies and eighties, and it was easier then. It seemed easier. There were venues, but not as many musicians that were willing to get out there and try. So it's basically, you know, swallow your fear, I guess, and put one foot in front of the other and go in and ask places if they could use a musician. That's really and it was. It was nerve wracking, but you walk through it anyway and done. What about your family? I mean, you had this whole the whole group of you. Did you do you remember what steps your your family might have taken to connect and make it happen that you were playing out different places.

9:41 Well, for us, my first I had done it, and then my brother and I because he played he played fiddle. We did a local TV show in Boston that was pretty well known in the area. It was like a it was like an early American idol kind of thing. Oh yeah, he actually won the show. And so then we started getting phone calls from people who were looking to book folks out in We were doing hospitals like VA hospitals, nursing homes, we were doing benefits for people who's had lost their homes in a fire. So we played all around New England and you know, things just it was kind of that one foot in front of another thing too. We got some exposure and then we started getting phone calls, and so we played out a lot and I think, honestly it was it was a great experience to grow musically and you know, performance wise in that kind of way. You know, at that time in my life I enjoyed. I had really major stage fright, but it was good. I had to push through it every time, and so I think, I think it was really good. And then later I did some solo work sort of probably the same timeframe that Paul was doing it, because that was it was easier in some cases to secure some gigs. And you know, I think it's what there is now that there really wasn't back then, or

11:13 like open mics okay for a great place to take your music out, and you know, you obviously have to pay your dues. You have to get yourself to the point where you're good enough that somebody would want to hire you for two to three hours or more of work. Sure. Sure, And going back to what Paul said, you know it's so true. Well, a few things I want to comment on. First of all, we can all agree that they say that the COVID time like after like the post COVID time, so many more musicians like came out of that because we were all stuck at home, So people got more involved with like being at home and just making things happen.

11:56 So I think since then there's like this this garden of musicians that we didn't see. Before, or maybe we don't think about it because we were all kind of zigzagged during that time. And then I also wanted to mention, you know, it's so true for all of us, like we we all have this evolution of being human and having you know, families and responsibilities that sometimes our goal for being a musician has to be set aside to really focus on priorities. And as a musician, it never goes away. It's almost like a vein that you get to just practice on and sometimes just have to put on hold during you know, priority times of families or the things.

12:47 That I mean, family comes first. I mean that's we all know that. But other than that, you know, Donna, I know you you know five six years which we mentioned, and I I know, well, I have so many other questions. You both met over the past few years, and would you like to share that story because you're both musicians, you both play. How did you meet? How did you How did we get to be where we are now? We actually met about sixteen years ago through a friend, a neighbor, a friend that I grew up with who was working, you know with Paul, and through that connection we learned that each of us were musicians, and he was running an open mic in Salem, mass That was yeah.

13:40 For fourteen years, he was running an open mic. Okay, Salem, Massachusetts. And in one of those open mic nights, our mutual friend Donna was visiting from Florida to New England, and our mutual friend brought her over to the open mic that I was hosting, and that was our first face to face meeting after being friends a little it on Facebook for a while. Okay and so, so, Donna played a couple of tunes. She borrowed my guitar, my brand new guitar too. I didn't have a guitar with me. I had just traveled up from Boston, so I was I was traveling pretty pretty light, and at the time, I was evaluating if I was going to uh, you know. A few years later, I actually went back up north for a while to help my parents, uh sort of transition from their house and all the things. And so I was going to some open mics. When I got back into town playing with my brother, and he was playing with another musician. They were a duo, and we he had asked us a couple of times to open my brother and I had open for his band, so we had kind of started that way, just you know, he played with his music partner and I played with my brother, and eventually we something happened with the other situation, and then he had some gigs and said, well, what if we do them together? You know, we can get together some rehearsal, we can do, you know, do some concentric

15:11 circles of what music we both already know, and then some solo songs. So that's kind of how we started. And you know, we're going to put a point on that is that it was twelve years ago yesterday that we played our first engagement together. That's right at coffee House in Lynn, Massachusetts, and that was one of those gigs where I played some solo, DOWNA played some solo. Most of the show was you know, us playing some songs that we had cobbled together from our mutual set list. And we noticed and other people noticed that our vocals went well together, so people said, you should do more songs together. And then it just we had one gig after another and it just kind of continued to where we're like, I think we have a band here and we need to name.

15:55 It, which didn't happen for five months until five months after the first gig. Yeah. Sure, but looking back, that five months must have must have went by really fast. Because we were rehearsing and you know, just we were doing. We were still playing, you know, a lot, and. We labeled ourselves as Paul Duffy and Donna Landry. At the time. At the time. Yeah, so yeah. Then then once we got the band thing squared away, then you know, we were we were up and rolling. Yeah, and then things have just continued since then, and you just get better as you play more together, you just get better and you get better and you almost get to where you can kind of predict each other's thoughts and it helps.

16:43 It helps when you're trying to do harmony. We do a lot of harmony in our music. It's important to us. That's that's what makes our sound maybe a little different than some others. Now, what kind of music do you play? Thank goodness, We we sort of run the gamut. We do everything from Everly Brothers and some of the earlier you know, Statler Brothers kind of thing too. We do Noah Khan, you know, we do some fairly current. But I think in general what we like is a lot of the classic kind of you know, folk rock stuff from seventies, eighties, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, and you know, I.

17:25 Guess we market ourselves as a classic rocket pop country shod. We even have a couple of disco tunes in there. We're all over the map. We're hard to categorize. But everything we do, pretty much, everything we do has harmony and two guitars and our own little spin on it. And we work hard. You know, we work hard before we put any music out there, before we perform it. You know, we've worked on it for quite a while, and you know, we have it to where we're off book. You know, we're just getting up and we're winging it. So we put a lot of time into the song before they get out there. And sometimes they make it and they're great and they'll be on the setlist forever.

18:06 And sometimes it's like nah, not so much now. For our listeners that are just tuning in, our listeners that have been tuned in. I want to mention as a musician, like you said, you know, practicing together you. Get better and better. There's really like no end when it comes to music, Like, it's not like Okay, here's the recipe, bake the cake. Okay, cakes, ready, you can eat it now. Music is like you're we're always growing and it's so fascinating. And I absolutely love that about music that there's like no end in sight. You can always be so creative. You can add to it, you can you know, deduct from it. Because once you know I tell as a teacher, I tell my students, once you know the rules, you kind of know how to break them, and you kind of know like what you can add and what you what you can improvise, and what you can take out a little bit.

18:55 So when you take more chances and more risk, Yeah, or you've been doing something, there's like there's like a confidence that starts to really build in there and then you just you start taking some risks and sometimes it's those are very very fun things that come out of that. It's true what you said, though, Lisa, like the more you learn, the more you learn, the more you're able to learn. It's yeah, weird how exponentially it grows once you start to play and develop as a musician. Yeah, I don't know how else to explain it. But you know, I've we've been up on seventy years old, and I still feel like I'm learning, and I feel like I'm learning at a higher rate than I used to. Okay, yeah, that's great, and that's that's what it's all about.

19:38 I mean, I'm always I've. Been playing piano for over forty five years and I still take lessons. I'm still like hungry to learn, and it's like, well, how could I change this? How could I change that? Or it's just fun because when you well, I'll speak for myself, there's you know, if you're given sheet music to learn somebody song or if you played vi ear, you know, there's the beginning, the middle of the end of the song, but when you get to improvise in it, there's like. No limit and there's so much freedom. There's so much freedom to express. And it's just I love I love playing. I encourage everybody to play an instrument and to learn. Please tell us for our listeners, especially if there's a venue that is tuning in, how can they reach out to you? And where where are you playing these days?

20:28 The two questions. It's pretty easy to reach us if you you know, go on your browser and look for the Boondock Sinners. We're going to show up with a web page. We're going to have a Facebook page, Instagram. You can always go to YouTube www dot Boondockcenters dot com. If and then there's a contact you know, the phone numbers there. Everything you need to contact is in the website. So we're pretty easy to find. Yeah, and it would give somebody an idea of venue, you an idea of where we're at, just by sort of looking at what's going on on our website. We have some video there of late.

21:08 We are monthly playing at the Gardens Green Market. In Palm Beach Gardens. Yes, a Sunday gig. It's four hours in the morning and it's a bit of a challenge we do. And we are now residencing at Harry and the Natives in Hope Sound. We're there one Friday month and they've also booked us for a breakfast gig. We'd like to hit the brew House Gallery from time to time as well in Lake Park. They've been a wonderful part of our growth here in Florida. Have opportunities to play and to meet people. It's just a wonderful place. And then in the summer months, like you know, now it's to two months in the summer. We book ourselves straight out in New England, so we do everything from the main Lobster festival and other fairs and there's a farm that we play. There are all these places and we book up pretty pretty solidly for two months we work.

22:06 That's where we work the most, and then we come home and then I'm you know, we're kind of looking to take it break. So that's why we don't we don't book ourselves flat out solid and while we're home, you know, we do enough just to keep ourselves in practice and you know, playing playing out. But when we're up north, it kind of is hard to breathe sometimes because we're we're playing so many, so many gigs over over a two month period. Now you're in Massachusetts or I don't know, actually. Yes, we we we base ourselves out of Massachusetts and we play in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts. We play you know, sometimes we drive a good distance to some of the gigs that we play. Sometimes we play in western Massachusetts, but you know that's that's the time we do that, and we also have family in the area, and you know, it gives us the opportunity to connect with our family for for a while and then we come home.

23:10 That's where we got our start was in eastern Massachusetts, and we were well established long before I moved to Florida. Right, So most of our early fan base and followers were New England, primarily north of Boston North Shore. So it's easy to reconnect with those venues when we traveled north. It's just pretty easy. But we love the growth that we've seen down here as well in Florida. Florida's home for us. Now, okay, now up north. Some of the places that you played and also Donna, I remember years ago you played. At did you play at the South Florida Fair? Yes? Yes, actually we played the Fair a couple of years ago. Yeah, But earlier on I did some some fair work with MJ Okay.

23:59 So what what were your ways for our listeners of making connections to make that happen? Or did you just pick up the phone and say we play we want to play there? I mean, was it that simple? You know what? In nineteen seventy five, that was how you had to do it. You had to pick up the phone or you had to go to a venue and meet somebody face to face. It's a little easier to make the connections now because of the Internet and email, okay, and you know and Facebook and all these things. You can get messages to people. But I still think a person. To person contact is your strongest gives you the strongest chance to make a connection to play somewhere. And in some cases it's word of mouth for us, or you know, somebody who knows somebody you can introduce you to a venue, or somebody that books for a venue, okay.

24:50 And Paul's kind of taken that role, you know, for the most part with the duo, so that we're not both at cross purposes. You know, he's generally the person who connects, and but ignored it was it was certainly easier because we already had established all those inroads and now, you know, sometimes people wondering when we're going to be back, and so that we can can book into some of the places. Sure, now, Paul you had mentioned earlier. And it's also I will also say I'm sorry today I cut you off. Downa no no no you. Had mentioned earlier about you know, people have this vision of playing full time and making it a full time career. However, it's for most of us. It's not that case for most of us. Again, I'm going to focus on me.

25:42 It's you know, it's not it's a get to and it's not about the money. It's about sharing. My passion or sharing my passion to play with my audience and to have them enjoy the music. However, the pay is not necessarily you know, you're concert income. However, you do have some some things lined up where it is more consistent. Not everybody has that. I'm kind of asking in a roundabout question to share with the audience that wants to get into this, and I'm telling them in a certain way, like you said, it's you know, you can't go into this thinking it's going to be your income to start off with right away.

26:24 We have the benefit of being retired, so you know, we're able to do this as our full time thing. But I certainly think I can't really speak for you over time. But at a couple of different points in my life, I had thought I had decided to ditch the day job and just try to make it with music, and I found that that changed the whole vibe of everything I was doing, because now I needed to make X amount of money to pay my bills, and then it became I would use the term work as opposed to play and enjoy, and all of the times that I did that in my life, I ended up getting fairly burnt out, and then just you know, went back to doing the day job, and then eventually kind of got back into doing the music. I don't know if you ever even tried.

27:14 That or were smarter than not necessarily say that I was smarter, but I didn't have the same aspirations, and I didn't think that I was good enough for one thing, to be a professional musician, and I didn't have frankly, I didn't have the drive the people that I see succeeding and who are full time musicians, they're talented, they have drive, and they have personality that can get them in the door too. But I was content, like you said, Lisa, to share my music with others. And I like to see smiling faces in a venue or people who are singing along to whatever we're doing, tapping their feet. I mean, our passion is to just perform live music.

27:56 In front of people. We don't really even record much. We like to play out. Sure, and donnad what you said. You know, it's so true because I think for all of us, whether you're a musician or you're doing something else in life, that how did I see this? Okay, focusing on just the music, it's yeah, going into it, like you said, like quitting the job and just jumping in and making it a full time. Yeah, you can get burnt out. You can take some of the pleasure away because now you're focused too much on how much you have to play and how much money you need to make per we you know, it starts to become a you know work I guess, and a frustrating type because it's the nature of the business. The places that you play will go out of business, or maybe they change their minds about what they want for music. They're just gonna, you know, do a jukebox or a DJ or you know. So I think if you don't.

29:04 Have that. Need to make a certain amount of money, then you can just have a good time with it. You know. You can the gigs that you get, you can be happy about them, but you're not feeling like it's going to pay the rent or not pay the rent. Right, because then it kind of takes the joy out of it. It did for me. You know, maybe not for everyone, but it certainly did for me. Not that this is about me, however, I want to remark on what you're saying. I don't know if you know, but some of my friends know. I'm also a hairdresser. So for many years I was teaching playing doing the hairdresser. And then a couple of years ago, I promised myself, you know what, I just want to do music. I want to focus. However, I knew that I didn't have to wonder if I was going to, you know, if I was going to get that gig or not get that gig, or have that other income, because I had kind of like a waiting less of students that wanted to sign up. And I'm making that a mention because for listeners out there that just want to jump in, quit their job and do music, it's really healthy to line yourself up with knowing what you've got coming in because all of us, you know, we we have to go to the grocery store to get food, We've got to put gas in our car, we have to pay the rent or pay the mortgage. So you want to have that that ground to stand on and know that you have that that financial coming in and not to let your joys of playing or being a musician or

30:35 wanting to be you know, the next Billy. Joel or Elon John. You know you you want to know that you have the backing for that or the ground for it. So, like you said, just making a point, because yeah, I agree with you, it can become Anything we love to do can become a burden if we depend on it for life survival. It's true. I'll have to say that I've never enjoyed playing music more than I do now we have this thing. It's been going twelve years. Neither of us is working anymore, retired four years ago and a half years ago, and we get to do this for both for fun and for some extra money.

31:18 And it takes a lot of the pressure. Off knowing that we're just doing it for the enjoyment and not for uh, not depending on it for income. Sure, the money is great, you know, it's nice to when you're on a fixed income, it's really nice to be able to have you know, the kind of you know, some other money coming in that you can just do a little bit more than just the basics. So so it does work that way for us too, But we know, like U said, there's that other you know, the other money coming in. That's that we worked hard to get retirement accounts and all of that. So now we can read the benefit of that. And then also because we're just we're grateful and lucky that we can continue to do what we're doing at the level that we're doing it.

32:06 And when you when you were working, you were still playing. However, probably I'm I guessing not not as much, but sure, because you have to live life. Right, just safe to say, yeah, and I would end up traveling for work on the calendar was certainly more critical back then as far as availability, but now it's not a factor really, it's it's how much we want and it's a good position to be in. That's beautiful, that's beautiful, but you know not but you've worked to be where you are now. I always say that, like when you've when wherever you are in life, whether for our listeners, both of you, myself, like we work to get to where we are.

32:52 It's not just like we were born this morning and and you know. We're here in this space and place, like it's taken work to get here and even practicing. I always mentioned him to the audience, is that being a musician, it's not like taking out the trash, but it's it's practice. You have to put in the time, you have to put in the energy, you have to put in the dedication and the focus to be disciplined, to practice, to get. Better, to learn more, to share more. And it has to be ongoing because even once you've got to a certain level, you can start to lose it if you're not, you know, keeping up and practicing, even with some of the things you've already done. We have a few guitars on the wall back here, and every day he'll pick up one of the guitars and he'll just run through some instrumental things, and you know, sometimes we'll work on it together, but sometimes he needs the time to work on the fills and all the things that he has to do to make a song work.

33:52 And I know how dedicated he is. I see I watch him, so you know it is it's definitely if you want to become a good player and you want to stay there, it is that commitment, yes, And if you love doing it, then it doesn't feel as much like a commitment. It just feels like you're doing something you love and it's and. The more you do it, like we said earlier, the more you do it, the more the more attached. At least I feel it this way. The more attached I am, the more I want to grow, the more I want to learn, because I find I end up surprising myself at what I can play. Because we're playing an instrument. I mean, without us physically touching the instrument, the instrument does nothing. So it's like we are the magicians and the musicians that bring the instrument alive.

34:40 So it's it's all about the energy you put into it. Sometimes it's awesome to just hear what comes of your music or you know, for us, it's like sometimes we'll do songs and we'll get goosebumps because we're so amazed at how well it's coming out. And it's fun for us too for that to happen. Now, where where did you come up with the name Boondocks? And uh yeah, Boondocks. Well, when we decided that the band had enough legs that we were going to keep continuing to play engagements together, we've decided we needed a name. So we yanked together a list of about eighty names on a piece of paper and then just kept checking them off one by one, said, somebody's already got that, somebody's already got this, got that name.

35:29 Can tell it the meaning of the name. You came up with that name. So it was a takeoff on a Boston crime movie called the Boondocks Saints Oh Wow the mid eighties was Willem Dafoe, and regionally in New England it played well, so said we're not We're not going to be Saints, we can be the Boondock Sinners. So that was early, early on the list, but it was the last one to stay on the list. They'll have to be crossed them all off. And the other thing was that nobody else had Boondock Centers dot com as a domain name, so that kind of said something right there. We were trying to be aware, you know, because there you know, there are other people that even if you don't know who they are, there are other bands that may have the same name, and so we kind of wanted to make sure there wasn't a lot of the same name out there, just just trying to do our due diligence. But it was definitely his idea and it was after the a takeoff on the Boston crime based movie in the mid eighties called The Boondock Saints.

36:30 She puts up with a lot of my ideas, say that. That's great, that's great, I love it, So please share with our audience. Again, how how does someone reach out to connect with you or even to listen to your music? Probably just looking at our website Boondockcenters dot com. And we have everything attached to that, so there's all the information you need on the website. And also there are buttons that will take you off to our Facebook. Page or our Instagram YouTube, all from the homepage. And once you canted, then you know, Paul's very good at putting events out there on Facebook, and our website is always up to date, and whatever the gig list is at the moment, usually in very short order. If we have an addition to it, we put it. I have it on the website. But between those, you know.

37:20 Here's a recommendation. If you're not a solo musician and you're working with others, try to split the workload. So Donna takes care of the website and Instagram for the most part. I handle Facebook and YouTube, but it's you know, it's a leveling. Of the load. If you're trying to do it all by yourself, you're going to end up frustrated, I think, because it's a lot. It's a lot more than you think it. Is, and you need these things now. You need electronic presence, you need you know, what they call the ePK, which your website can do. It's you know, electronic press kit, and people will ask for that. And there are some places that we have come to play where, you know, another band, it wouldn't be the that we were really any better than they were, but we had that kind of information that they wanted because I think a lot of these festivals and you know, they don't really have the time to get involved and go see you somewhere they want they want it all. Just just send me all of your stuff and we'll decide, and it gives you legitimacy and professionalism. So that's that's generally how these things have come through for us.

38:26 Awesome. Awesome. So one of a couple other questions before we finish up. Today, you play classic rock, do you depending on the venue do you have do you kind of just feed off of the audience or do you have like a set list that you go into. That's a good question. That's a very good question. And we have we have a set list. We have like over four hours of music that we could do at any given point. Some songs come and go, but we've got a good, solid four hours. But we absolutely we'll feed from the audience. You know, we start to get a sense of the songs they're responding to, and then we we automatically just kind of seem to know that.

39:13 We look at each other and say, all right, let's keep doing those. So if they're liking all the old Simon and Garfunkle and you know, Prize Mihistles and Nash and you know, then we will continue to do those. So we are fortunate enough that we have enough music that we could continue in a vein that people seem to be enjoying. And if it's like a crowd that really likes country, then we'll start focusing all of those of those songs so to the best that we're able. We generally have a we start somewhere and then we see how everybody is responding, and then we gear the night to that.

39:53 So we generally have in front of us all we have electronically is a phone with a set list on it, and we can pick in that set list, there's easily four hours worth of material, maybe more. But I know that we have done four hour gigs on the regular without looking at an iPad or without looking at music. But we have this whole list, and if we see, like Donna said, if it's a younger crowd, we might play more contemporary stuff. If it's an older crowd, it's going to be the Beatles and Bad Finger, or if it's a country crowd, you know we're. Going to pick those out of the list. But the list is always there to help us. And sometimes we'll even have somebody come up and if we've done like an Everly Brothers tune and they're like, we never hear that, thank you so much for playing that, Then that kind of gives us a sense it's like, okay, let's let's do all the songs we know that person and those folks are going to like. So it's kind of fun in that way too, that you can customize and kind of and try to read the crowd. And if it's a balladi crowd, if it's a restaurant and they just want background music, we can do that. If it's someplace that people really want to be getting up and you know, moving around, we can do that.

41:06 See big festival with professional sound. We generally go with a fixed set list. Yeah, okay, we're not reading a crowd there. We're just we maybe have an hour or a ninety minute show and we've we've got a fixed set list that we'll work from. Yeah, you need to. Give a shout out to somebody up north that plays with us from time to time. We have a place there. Occasionally joined the band and that's so much fun. His name is Peter Caravo. He's a singer songwriter out of Maine. He's an award winning songwriter and I think he likes to change it up every now and then and play bass with us. Well, he was in his high school band, was a bass player man, he was the bass player. So we sort of reconnected with him in.

41:47 Twenty twenty one or so and he's. Been playing with us like at the Northern at our Northern venues and that's that's been a lot of fun too. So if you go out to Peter, shout out to Peter Caravo. He's so if you see our YouTube page. You'll see times where there's others collaborating with us and it looks like a full band. Okay, well, we totally totally enjoy having other musicians with us. The Boondog Centers basically is. Are the duo. Yeah, because we need to be able to not rely on others, because it's not like people can always make whatever gigs that you know that we choose, so we start with that and then anything else is just is gravy.

42:32 Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun, it really does. It is. Now, when you're practicing just the two of you, do you have favorites that Okay, we'll ask it the long way. When I sit down in and I practice, I practice certain things, but every now and again I just want to pull out old stuff and just play and just like kind of escape life. And so do you have a favorite that you love to play. Or you just whatever the day brings? We always say that are in general, the majority of our rehearsals are with new material. Okay, wow, Once we have some of the other material down, we don't generally go over it unless he's working the instrumental kind of thing.

43:22 We're always working on new material, always so we always have four or five, maybe six songs that we are working on, and we we really need the time to focus on those, and then usually a few of them rise to the top and then we're able to really pull those off. And but that's always kind of what we're rehearsing is the new things that we're working on, or on occasion, if there are a few songs on the list that haven't been played for a while for whatever reason, they haven't been played in a few three four months, then like even today. We did that just you refresh them a little bit.

44:02 I said, let's go back and look at those again, because we haven't played them in maybe three four months. And you know, if somebody were to ask for those songs, or if we happen to need them, because maybe the audience was that type that those were songs we knew they would like. So so sometimes we have to go back to the older things and play them. But the majority of the time we're working. On new material and new material and somebody asks us what our favorite song is, we tell them whatever it is we're working on now, what it is. It becomes literally our favorite thing, our favorite song for a while until and. How often do you practice. I mean, we understand you're at the phase where you're retired and so you get to kind of make your own schedule. However, you know, we don't for our listeners, a lot of us don't know what it takes as far as practice.

44:56 How much. Together? We practice about three or four times a week together. I'm apt to pick up a guitar five or six times a week just so I can work out fills or basslines or arrangements. Right, Yeah, but we always have time together to work on new material together, probably three or four times a week. Sometimes it's a half an hour, sometimes it's three hours. It depends upon what we might have going on, right. And it's nice that because we have guitars just available and we're living together, you know we're together. It's like it just you can just pick up a guitar. There's no having to schedule. Like band members don't live together, you have to sort of schedule with them. When can we get together, When can we do a rehearsal. So we have the advantage that sometimes maybe we'll only rehearse for ten minutes. We'll just run through a song or two.

45:54 A busy day and the other times it's like, all right, let's seriously hit all these songs that we're trying to get from this place to our list. Nice even you know, we're the people that are even when we're driving somewhere, we have a list on Spotify and it's called you know, those songs we're working on, and we do a pool work out in the morning, we drive different places. We have that list on loop. So there will be like maybe ten to twelve songs on that list, and we'll listening to them just so when we're not playing guitar, we can really get some phrasing and get some of the subtleties. Like sometimes we'll be listening when we're in the pool and we say, oh, did you hear Okay, they do this right here, or there's a vocal that comes in. This is a cool little harmony right here.

46:49 And then we'll come back and work on it and try it. Songs. Driving in the car from New England to Florida, you pick us. We hear a song that we like so much, we just play it over and over and the next thing you know, we've got the lyrics memorized, we've got harmonies, and I can hear the chords in my head. We'll arrange that when we get home. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, Thank you so much the both of you for being on the show today. The Boondock Centers and you can find them in Florida here in South Florida, and you can find them in Massachusetts. And please share with us in closing the website that they can find you at.

47:31 It's www dot Boondockcenters dot com. Well, thank you so much, Donna and Paul and I look forward to. Seeing you soon for having us. We appreciate it absolutely so much. Yes, thank you so much for tuning in today. Paul and Donna are a wonderful duo, a wonderful couple, and wonderful people. And I always love being inspired by my musician friends. Thank you for tuning in Today and tune in next week to help me keep music alive and find out who my guest is next week