California Wine Country with Steve Jaxon is nominated again in the 8th annual Taste Awards, in four categories: Best Critic or Review Series, Best Single Topic Series, Best Radio Broadcast and the Ferrara Flame Award for Best City or Regional Program. The awards ceremony will take place in February 2017 in Hollywood, CA.

“The Annual TASTE AWARDS are the original awards for the Lifestyle Entertainment Industry, and the highest awards for creators, producers, hosts, and directors of Lifestyle Programs, Series, Shows & Cinema.

Also known as the Tasty Awards, they are the premier broadcast awards show celebrating the year’s best achievements in Food, Fashion, Home and Lifestyle programs on Television, in Film, in Online Video, and in Apps, Radio, Podcasts and Photography.”

(from the Taste Awards website http://www.thetasteawards.com/about/)

Steve Jaxon on the red carpet at the 2014 National Taste Awards in Los Angeles, where he took home the prize for Best Critic and Review Series.

Yesterday, Steve Jaxon interviewed Mario Batali, who talked about his career and his new Big American Cookbook. Clark Wolf, Culinary Commodore and regular guest on The Drive, joins Steve for the interview. (Interview length: 13:08)

Mario Batali’s Big American Cookbook.

Steve Jaxon:
Joining us right now from, I do believe, his hometown in Seattle, the one and only Mario Batali. Mario!

Mario Batali: Hi, How are you guys? It’s nice to be here.

SJ: Good! Clark Wolf is with me.

Clark Wolf: Yeah, we just said hello. Hey, you know, I was just telling Steve that I’ve been to every one of your restaurants everywhere, Pó and Lupa and Babbo and Del Posto and the ones in Vegas and, I mean, you may be opening one right now as we’re speaking in a hotel, and also you’ve written a lot of books. And in all of your places, have a distinctly Mario version of Italian spirit and heart.

MB: Well, thank you!

CW: And they’re delicious, by the way. And you’ve decided to write a book that’s about American food. What’s the deal?

Clark Wolf

MB: Well, in traveling around and promoting all those books and opening all of those restaurants, I often wanted to escape the five-diamond five-star experience and go to where the locals ate, wherever they ate, whatever it was they ate. And in travelling that way and because I’m kind of a collector and a little bit of a hoarder, I’ll admit, I collected recipes from all these places that I went. I never asked them to write them down. I just asked them to tell me about the dishes. And I kind of studied them and I collected about a thousand, so we edited it down to about two-fifty. And these are kind of from all over the country in places I stopped, not necessarily fancy dishes, not necessarily tongue-in-cheek funny dishes, these are just dishes that I found to be the most delicious and the most ones that expressed to me the way the wind smells on a Thursday afternoon on Main Street in Des Moines.

SJ: Very cool.

CW: Depending on where you’re standing.

SJ: And the book is out now, and folks, if you buy a ticket and see Mario with Dusky on Thursday, you get a copy of the brand new book as well.

Let me ask you this, man. You were raised in Seattle but somehow you ended up attending high school in Madrid. How did that happen?

High School in Madrid

MB: Yeah, very lucky. Well, my Dad worked with Boeing, and we had this big chance to move to Spain and Dad would travel around and kind of understand, managed the heat treatment facilities, how they took airplane parts and made them stronger by heating them up and then dipping them into other things. And they built factories around Europe, in France and in Spain and in Israel, and at the time in Yugoslavia, and so we traveled a little bit but we stayed centered in Spain. We were lucky enough to get there about the time that Franco died. And we just had… it was an eye-opener for our family, because at that point Spain didn’t really have much TV. So at the end of the dinner every night, we were stuck talking to each other. For two or three years on end! So we really got to know each other in a better way and it was a different experience for all of us. Plus, we got to really see and understand gastronomy from a European point of view, which was just a fascinating wake-up.

SJ: Wow, that is so cool. And, back to Dusky Estes and John Stewart, her husband, you know them, apparently. Dusky was in last week and said that you taught John how to gut a pig.

Mario Batali: Yeah, we’re old friends from a long… many many pigs ago. And we’re just friends in the restaurant industry. We work on many things in very similar veins. Their food is as delicious as I hope my food is and they’re both fun and funny and smart and everything American cooks should want to be. They’re true idols of mine and I’m looking forward to being able to hang out with them.

CW: They are great friends and they are great family members in the family of food.

MB: Right.

CW: In Casa Mono, a restaurant you’ve been involved with, I don’t know how you’re involved with it still, but you had a lot to do with the beginning of that restaurant, right?

MB: I still own it.

CW: Oh, all right, well then there is that! There is a kind of a Spanish sensibility which is now a little bit more explained by your long evenings with the family,

MB: Right.

CW: …but there’s still a personal sense of that restaurant. How do you think this new book reflects your experience in a personal Mario kind of way?

MB: Well, as I’ve travelled around and seen all of these dishes, in their place, I was very intent not on Mario-izing them. These aren’t really jacked up, they aren’t really changed from their very traditional thing, but what you’ll see at the bottom of a lot of the recipes, in orange print, is a little suggestion on how I might make it a little more like what I would make if I wasn’t following the recipe.

CW: Ah!

MB: My advice to people is, once a month, try to cook exactly from a recipe book exactly as it is, measuring everything, following the timing and cues, because as we cook, all of us, we develop our own personal styles, and even though we look at cookbooks, we don’t really follow the recipe. If you follow the recipe I think you’ll find different kinds of flavor palettes than you expected. Because we tend to put the same amount of lemon or the same amount of salt or cook things for the same amount of time when we cook them at our house. So we have things that we find are pleasing and delicious to us, but if you follow the recipe exactly, I think you’ll find a whole new thing goes on in your palette.

SJ: Wow. Well put.

MB: Thank you!

SJ: I’m big on people’s history. So, you grew up in Seattle, wound up doing high school in Madrid. After Madrid, what happened and how did you become who you are today?

Falling in Love with New Jersey

Mario Batali: Well, I went to Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey. I’d never even been to the East Coast. When I went to college, the furthest east I had ever been was Idaho. I fell in love with New Jersey, I fell in love with proximity to New York, I fell in love with the whole kind of Italian-American experience, I fell in love with Bruce Springsteen, the Jersey Shore, egg cream, pastrami sandwiches, the Jewish deli experience, and it really further just reinstated my love for food. And I realized by the time I graduated from college, that I wasn’t going to go into either some academic or kind of a financial management field, that I really wanted to be a cook.

While I was studying in college, I was working in a pizzeria in New Brunswick, New Jersey, called Stuff Your Face, making strombolis and pizzas and I fell in love with this passionate experience called dinner rush, every night. So that’s what really got me kicked off.

CW: All right, Mario, while we have you for a second. How do you explain the fact that you’ve been on all kinds of television shows and you’ve never made me feel like you weren’t really you, on that show. You know, so often, when you get in front of, when people get in front of the camera, they tend to do this thing, that distorts who they really are in a way that makes… I don’t know, you know what I’m talking about.

MB: Yeah, yeah, of course.

CW: And you’re always the guy on the show that manages to ask a real question in a real way, entertaining and engaging but not phony. How do you do it?

Mario Batali and his famous orange Crocs.

MB: You know, I’m lucky, I’ve been on a lot of camera, in front of a camera a lot. What being in front of a camera a lot does, or any media form, is it makes you more like you. It won’t make you more or less shy, it won’t make you more or less entertaining. But it gives you the opportunity to relax into your own skin. And I’m just lucky enough to feel very relaxed. I’m also very inquisitive, I’m very curious about other people’s stuff. I love to hear other people’s stories and their travels and their things. So I think it’s my natural inquisitiveness that makes everyone kind of feel relaxed like they’re already comfortable when I’m talking.

SJ: Well, you come across as such a nice guy too, I bet you’re a sweetheart, I can’t wait to meet you. It’s Mario Batali and The Big American Cookbook, 250 favorite recipes from across the USA. If you buy a ticket to see Mario with Dusty Estes at the LBC Thursday, you get a copy of the book too and you’ll be doing some book signings and such afterwards.

MB: Fantastic.

SJ: Didn’t you study in Europe after college, at some point?

MB: After college I went to the Cordon Bleu in London and I studied there for about six of the eight months, then I dropped out and I worked for a guy named Marco Pierre White.

CW: Whoa!

MB: At that point he still wasn’t famous but he was really talented. And what you can learn from a guy like Marco Pierre White is often how not to treat people as much as how to cook, so I learned both from him.

CW: Folks, the translation is that Mario’s a sweetheart and the other chef was, let’s just say, a little bit difficult with some folks. I’ve got to ask you about Otto, which is one of my favorites of your restaurants, which is on 8th Street, just off 5th Avenue. In fact, it’s in a building called One Fifth Avenue. You put vegetables in a little ramekin and offered ten or twelve different kinds, and you were the first person to serve olive oil ice cream, or gelato, in America. Was that a little freaky? Did people respond with their eyes crossed, at first?

MB: I think people appreciated the idea of the variety. They weren’t necessarily ready to go and have five different kinds of vegetables as their only antipasto. So we snuck in some head cheese and some prosciutto and some salami along the side. So Otto was a little bit ahead of its time, now its in the middle of its time. So people really understand how delicious and light food can be and how vegetable-forward it can be without having to say, We don’t want to be a vegan restaurant. We don’t want to be a vegetarian restaurant. But we want to be able to serve vegans and vegetarians in a way that makes everybody satisfied and no one feels like they’re missing out on anything.

CW: I love the idea that you don’t want Otto to peak too soon.

MB: Yeah, exactly. It’s twelve years old and we’re still climbing.

CW: You did another thing that makes you look great. What Frank Bruni called Four Star food with Rock-and-Roll at the bar. You created a three-star restaurant that people really loved to be able to come back to. And I’m talking about Babbo.

MB: Yes, I remember that review very clearly. He said, this could be a four-star restaurant, but can you really eat your bucatini while they’re blasting the Black Crowes. And the answer was, Well, Frank, if you’re going to have to take a star away from me for something, I’m happy that it’s the Black Crowes. I felt really good about it. The restaurant is still a three-star restaurant. It’s delightful hospitality. There is definitely a point of view. We definitely play music. It’s a palpably energetic restaurant when you walk in. You know you’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. It’s really a New York City experience.

SJ: Mario Batali, the Big American Cookbook, the brand new book, 250 favorite recipes from across the USA.

I’m looking at the Amazon website. It says this was over two years in the making and I can understand, I mean, you travelled all over the country. So it was two years of traveling? How did…

MB: No, they’re crazy, it was like eighteen years of travelling. It took me two years to edit the one thousand recipes down to 250 that I thought would be absolutely perfect.

SJ: That makes sense.

CW: All right, what’s next? What do you want to do next? I mean, this is a great American think and it’s just exactly where Americans want to be right now, they’re getting back in the kitchen. I’m sure that Blue Apron will license some of these recipes for around the country. But if you were going to do another restaurant, somehow you’ve managed, in New York City, to open a restaurant, every time there seems to be a gap we didn’t know we had.

MB: I think right now what I’m concentrating on is trying to make sure that we’re ready to deal with all kind of increases in the costs and still have a sustainable opportunity to do it. Our next three projects that are already under construction are Eataly, in Boston, Los Angeles and Toronto, and I think that’s going to take me about a year. So I’m kind of holding the restaurants off and making sure we can still make profit and figure out how well we can do what we need to do.

SJ: Wow. Well, it’s Mario Batali, his new book, Big American Cookbook, 250 favorite recipes from across the USA. Are you wearing orange Crocs right now?

MB: I am wearing orange Crocs right now.

SJ: That is so cool. Every time I bring your name up over the last three weeks, everyone says, “Oh, orange Crocs!”

MB: Even Michelle Obama, in my introduction at the White House state dinner that I cooked last Tuesday, introduced me as the guy with the funny shoes.

SJ: I’m glad you brought that up because I meant to, thinking about it this morning, I wanted to ask you that and might have spaced it. Explain how that came about and what you did. It was a big tent on the White House lawn, right?

Cooking for the White House

MB: Ah, yeah, it was. I’ve known the Obamas since they first started in because I was a helper in their Let’s Move program. Mrs. Obama has been to the restaurant a couple of times in each of them and we just have a nice little rapport. Her team called and asked if I’d like to cook the last state dinner and it happened to be for Prime Minister Renzi of Italy. And it was so much of a resounding yes, I’ll do whatever you want. It didn’t even occur to me to ask if I could bring prepared food in, which of course, you can’t. I had to order all of the raw ingredients and take my crew of four down there to hand make three thousand agnolotti the day before the event. So, it was a lot more of a commitment than I thought, but it was so much fun and so cool to see Barak Obama wandering the halls of his home on his way to a press conference. It’s like, oh my god, I can’t believe it, it’s the greatest thing that ever happened.

SJ: Wow, man!

CW: I love the idea that, you have to remember, you have to bring the stuff in, because they don’t have tasters there.

MB: Right.

CW: We’ll all still wonder if Michelle had orange Crocs on under that Versace dress.

MB: Oh, boy, it looked good, didn’t it?

SJ: Mario Batali, the new book, The Big American Cookbook, 250 recipies from across the USA. He will be in conversation with his friend Dusky Estes at the LBC this Thursday, with Copperfields.

Mario, thank you so much for taking the time, man.

MB: Thanks for having me, guys, it’s always a pleasure.

SJ: We’re coming up on four o’clock, Clark… we’ll see you soon. [end]

For more information about Mario Batali, visit his website at www.mariobatali.com.

For more information about Clark Wolf, visit the website of The Clark Wolf Company.

Jesse Ventura is back on The Drive with Steve Jaxon, yesterday to discuss his new book, Jesse Ventura’s Marijuana Manifesto.

Steve Jaxon: All right! He’s been with us before, it’s always great to talk to our first guest, he’s an American former professional wrestler, actor, political commentator, author, naval veteran and he was the thirty-eighth governor of the state of Massa… sorry, Jesse, The Great State of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura is back with us. How are ya doin’, man?

Jesse Ventura: Hi Steve, in fact, I’ll surprisingly say the home of the unbeaten Minnesota Vikings.

SJ: I know, I saw that this morning because I’m a Lions guy, I grew up in Detroit. Yeah, I didn’t know that they were 3-0. That’s cool.

JV: Well, considering they’ve lost three number one draft picks to injuries.

SJ: Yeah, and they’ve had a rough few years but I’d love to see them do something.

JV: Well, anyway, that aside, let’s get down to what you want to talk to me about.

SJ: Yes. Jesse’s new book is Jesse Ventura’s Marijuana Manifesto and I was readin about it and can’t wait to read it. Tell us why you decided to do this. I know a lot of it has to do with you’ve always been against the War on Drugs (myself included, I think it’s ridiculous) and we’re about to flip the switch here in California in November.

The story behind the book

Jesse Ventura: Well, I hope so. What really got me focused on it, you know, I’m 65 years old, now I actually went on Medicare this year, believe it or not. But my quality of life had been taken from me. And I owe my quality of life given back to me to marijuana. And I’ll explain. It wasn’t me but someone close to me, developed an epileptic seizure disorder. And this person was seizing upwards of three to four times a week. I was involved directly in care, which is why I’m saying both of us lost our quality of life.

The person was put on four different pharmaceutical medicines one after the other, because each one failed and each one had horrible side effects and the seizures continued. I finally took the person to Colorado, got what’s deemed “medical marijuana,” at the time three drops of it under the tongue three times a day. The seizures stopped. Now it’s available in Minnesota but it’s very expensive because we are very restricted here. What the person could get for $30 a month in Colorado would cost $600 a month here. Your insurance won’t pay for it even though it works. The person is now completely seizure free, is completely off all pharmaceutical medicine and has not had a seizure now in over two and a half years.

SJ: And these drops are probably CBG which means they’re not…

JV: Well they’re not drops any more, it’s a pill now, a pill in the morning, a pill at night.

SJ: But it’s not like they get stoned, there’s not much THC in these

JV: No, there’s not, in fact, this person can’t have THC at all, doesn’t like it at all, that’s why it’s very expensive, it’s the straight CBG. Even still. Let me quote my friend Tommy Chong, who’s an expert too.

SJ: He was just on with us and we talked about that.

JV: Tommy lets you know in no uncertain terms that the entire plant is medical. Those that smoke it for the euphoric feeling, that’s mental health. You know, I have a quote. I like to say my quote. I grew up in the 60s, marijuana is to rock and roll what beer is to baseball. Imagine if they took away beer at the ball game!

SJ: Good point, Jesse!

JV: Well, it’s right on.

SJ: It’s true. I agree!

A winning focus issue

JV: You know, and it’s time for us. This could be a focus issue. Let me explain why here, Steve. Our government is being our parent here. Over 50% of Americans are for full legalization of marijuana yet it’s our federal government standing in the way. Well, this could be the issue that we rise up – the revolutionary issue – to let our federal government know that we are the boss and that they work for us and that they’re there to carry out our wishes and not their own agenda. This could be a key issue to do it, because, it’s ridiculous.

Let me make this… you know, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Ben Franklin, today – today – if they lived today, would be raided by the DEA, they’d be prosecuted and they’d be doing 10 to 12 years in federal prison as major drug dealers.

The Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Betsy Ross’ flag are all made out of marijuana. Marijuana was the economic backbone of our nation for 160 years. I was astounded when putting this book together, to learn the history, which no one knows because our government and the media won’t educate us on marijuana. There was a time we were ordered by the British to grow it, as a colony, because we had the space to do it and you could trade marijuana in lieu of money, with the British. They needed it for their ships so they could colonize the world.

SJ: Well, as you point out, it’s a cash crop, which means it’s bad for the pharmaceutical industry. Big pharma pressured the government to continue this charade.

Compared to What?

JV: Oh, of course That’s the other thing, Steve, is that… here’s the deal. I always like to make the comparison to prostitution and people go, “What?” Here’s the deal. OK. Two people could meet on a street corner and they could have consensual sex all night long, right? They might not even know each other and that’s fully legal. But if during that process there’s an exchange of money, then it becomes prostitution and illegal. So the sex itself isn’t illegal, it’s just the exchange of money that makes it illegal. The government wants a cut (thus being the pimp).

Well, the same holds true with marijuana. My mother used to… I lived in south Minneapolis, city center, we had a small, little tiny back yard. She’d grind up a third of the back yard and plant tomatoes every summer. Well, you could do the same thing with marijuana. You could grow it, for your four plants, or whatever your needs would be, and it wouldn’t cost you a thing. The government wouldn’t make anything off it, thus pharmaceutical wouldn’t control it, and that’s the rub. If government could charge you for the air you breathe, they would. And so “nothing else do they want you to be buy with that they don’t get paid on” (sic).

And that’s one of the big reasons they won’t legalize. Plus, if they did legalize now, how do they justify all the people who spent 20 or 30 years in jail. That’s why they’ll never move. It’s going to be us, the people, voting, state by state, getting it legal state by state like what’s happening. And hopefully California will follow suit this Fall. And when that happens, it will force the feds into finally complying with our wishes.

And it’s an issue that can give us back our dignity of being able to say, you know what? You work for us, we don’t work for you.

SJ: Right on. Well, you know, the other thing is…

JV: I should have run for president, shouldn’t I?

SJ: I’d have voted for you. Especially this year! You missed it, man! And now we’ve got Trump! Good God!

Jesse Ventura: Well that’s why I’m voting for Gary Johnson. He’s the only candidate who openly says he will end the war on drugs and openly says he will end the wars in the Middle East and bring our kids home. And that to me are the two main issues. And the other two candidates the wars, both wars, are going to continue on and continue to deplete the finances of this country.

Illegal Schmillegal

SJ: And of course the DEA recently decided to keep marijuana as the illegal drug that it is in the same category and in my opinion it’s just they want the money from Washington to keep the DEA going and God knows what they do when they bust a bunch of people.

Jesse Ventura: You’re absolutely correct. Their jobs depend upon it. And get this: marijuana is the only thing where law enforcement determines its fate. Anywhere else, the legislature has to make laws. The elected officials have to do those things. But with marijuana they allow a conflict of interest. The DEA – who, like I said, they would be imprisoning George Washington and Thomas Jefferson today, they’d be doing 10 to 12 as major drug dealers – … (sic)

And people need to know why it happened. It happened in the ‘30s, William Randolph Hearst, he owned 26 newspapers and thousands of acres of timber land. Well, in the true capitalistic American way, he wanted to control the industry so he paid off the politicians who made hemp marijuana illegal then, which forced us to buy his timber land to make paper. And he used his 26 newspapers to bastardize marijuana as the devil weed of the minorites.

SJ: And then he paid…

JV: He attached it to black people, to brown skinned people in his newspapers, so that the white ruling people would go, “Oh, we need to outlaw this substance because of those horrible black and brown skinned people,” and at that time, we were dominantly a white controlled nation.

SJ: And he paid Harry Anslinger some money and he’s the guy who did the whole campaign, I think.

Jesse Ventura: Yup, exactly. Once you read… did you know it was the backbone of our economy for 160 years? I was astounded to learn that cotton only surpassed marijuana only once they invented the cotton gin. (tbc)

Ottmar Liebert visited The Drive with Steve Jaxon yesterday, to talk about his show last night at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma. He spoke with Steve, played a song and they gave away a pair of tickets to the show. Here is a transcript of the interview.

Ottmar Liebert on The Drive with Steve Jaxon

Steve Jaxon: We’re honored to have as our first guest today, the wonderful guitarist Ottmar Liebert. Welcome and a pleasure to meet you.

Ottmar Liebert: Thanks very much, nice to be here.

SJ: He will be at the Mystic tonight, folks, we’re going to be handing out a pair of tickets plus a CD and a chance to meet up with Ottmar tonight at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma. OK, the new album, “Waiting n Swan.”

OL: Say it fast.

SJ: Waiting and So On.

OL: “Waiting and so on.”

SJ: Waiting and So On. Very clever!

OL: It’s Caribbean. I didn’t come up with it. It’s Caribbean Creole.

SJ: So you were telling me, off air, how this kind of came about. Talk about it, because it’s mostly Bob Marley tunes that we all know and love.

OL: Right. Well, I wanted to do something that showcased the rhythm called Tangos, which is a Flamenco rhythm, always sounded similar to Reggae to me. And so I discovered that the rhythm was actually brought to Spain by sailors from the Caribbean, and then it became Tangos Flamenco, and I wanted to show how those two rhythms even to this day hundreds of years later, they really relate, they work together. So we’d have on the record, we’d have the drum kit would play Reggae and the percussion would be in Flamenco Tangos rhythm. Or one guitar would play Tangos and the other would play Reggae. And the reason I liked this idea so much is that, you know, we always think of some of these things, whether it’s Flamenco or Bluegrass as these pure traditions, but when you go back far enough, there’s always a meeting of different cultures that came, and people found something that other people were doing. “Oh that’s really cool.” When you think about it, that’s what America is.

SJ: Rock and roll!

OT: Lots of different foods, and Rock and Roll has, you know, its influences from all kinds of other places,

SJ: Very cool. How long have you been doing this now, I know you started at least playing guitar at a really young age.

OL: Yeah, and my first record came out I think in 1990 so even that is now 26 years. It’s crazy!

SJ: And, this is fascinating to me too. You were born in Cologne, Germany. Your father was Chinese German and your mother was Hungarian.

OL: Right.

SJ: Wow. What was that like growing up? How long did you live in Germany?

OL: I left when I think I was 19. I, uh, my grandfather obviously spent most of his time in China, so I had heard about him traveling back and forth on the Trans-Siberian train and so I got myself a ticket from Cologne. There’s a Paris-Moscow express, took a train to Moscow, and then the Trans-Siberian train to Nakhodka, which is near Vladivostok, it’s the harbor, the civilian harbor, and from there I took a boat to Yokohama and basically travelled around Asia for a year until I was 20 years old, then I came here at some point.

SJ: And now you live in the US, don’t you?

OL: Yeah! I have lived in Santa Fe for thirty years now.

SJ: That’s what I figured because I know this album was recorded in Santa Fe. Very cool.

OL: I tried to leave but I can’t find anything like it.

SJ: That’s how I feel about this place, you know? This area is like…

OL: The food, the culture, the landscape…

SJ: Tonight at the Mystic, this is going to be great, are you going to be solo?

OL: No, we’ll have, I have a great band, I play guitar obviously, John Gagan has been playing bass since 1989 and he was on the very first album, then the last four or five years we’ve played with Chris Steele, who plays Flamenco percussion but he was also for years and years in a Reggae band, so he’s one of the few people who can actually handle both, which is great. And then this year we added Peter Adams, who plays accordion and keyboard that it just gives it that vibe. For some reason the accordion… You know, most people think of accordion as more of a Polka thing, but there’s a whole other part of playing it that I discovered years ago that, for example, the Algerians do, sort of an Arabic version of the accordion and it just fits great with the music.

SJ: Very cool. Tonight, at the Mystic in Petaluma, and live here in the studio with his guitar, the great Ottmar Liebert, on The Drive.

(Ottmar Liebert plays the guitar, from 4:33 to 7:15)

SJ: That guitar is custom made, I assume?

OL: Yeah.

SJ: And the strings look interesting.

OL: I think it was a thing in the ‘60s where they had black nylon, and I think this company, D’Addario, is making those again as Flamenco strings and they just sound great.

SJ: Yeah, they really do.

OL: I really like the way they stay in tune.

SJ: OK, 636-1350, we have a pair of tickets for the show tonight at the Mystic, Ottmar Liebert, and also you can meet Ottmar and you get a copy of his new CD. So give us a call right now and jump in on it, the first person in will grab it. We’re a little short on time, so just talk to Mike and he’ll make it happen. And can we do one more?

OL: ahh

SJ: You’ve got to do a sound check?

OL: Yeah, we’ve go to go back.

SJ: We’ll play some more from the album. Ottmar Liebert, tonight!

OL: Thanks, man. Thanks very much.

SJ: Great to meet you, man.

OL: Thanks very much.

SJ: I’ve really been a fan for years. Tonight, the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma. All right, we’ll be back on The Drive. Stay tuned.

(Music plays)

For more information about Ottmar Liebert, visit his website http://ottmarliebert.com/index-html5.php.

Author Dave Barry visited The Drive yesterday while promoting his new book, “A Florida Man Defends His Homeland: Best State Ever.”

Steve opens by reading a quote from Dave Barry’s website www.davebarry.com which begins, “Dave Barry has been a professional humorist ever since he discovered that professional humor was a lot easier than working,” and adds, “Amen to that, brother!”

Dave Barry and Steve Jaxon

Steve notes that he and Carl Hiassen are both southern Floridians and Dave says, “Carl is a good friend of mine. We both worked for the Miami Herald. So we are sitting on the mother lode of weirdness.” Dave remembers the Gore-Bush presidential election in 2000 as “a disaster” for Florida and says that, “Florida has lived up to its official state motto, “Florida: you can’t spell it without ‘da.’ We’ve been a punching bag for the rest of the nation for the last fifteen or sixteen years, so I decided to write a defense. I will admit that a lot of weirdness exists in the state of Florida. We have only six percent of the nation’s population and we produce fifty-seven percent of the nation’s weirdness. That’s a fact, that’s a statistical fact, and it’s on the radio now so it must be true.”

“My argument is… a lot of the people doing weird things in the state of Florida are from other states. (…) It’s not our fault, we’re like the Ellis Island for weird, stupid people.”

The Story of International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Steve then says, “One of the columns that you wrote back in the day was largely responsible for the movement to observe International Talk Like a Pirate Day and I’ve got to tell you, Dave, I’m never going to forgive you for that.”

Dave replies, “That is correct. It’s one of those things. When you write a weekly column, I wrote hundreds and hundreds of them, you never know what the results of the column are going to be. Usually nothing. But in this case, I wrote this column; these two guys wrote me a letter saying ‘hey we think everyone should talk like a pirate on September 19, that being one of their ex-wives birthdays. That’s why they chose that date! And I said, oh yeah, sure, I’ll write a column about it, you know, I’m looking for a concept. And I forgot about it. And it comes, that first September 19, and I, this is back in the days of answering machines. And I come into my office and punch the button on my answering machine and I had like forty-eight messages that all went, ‘Arrr!’ People were talking like pirates! And now, for some reason it caught on, it’s celebrated internationally, actually all these bars and restaurants celebrate it. Dunkin’ Donuts gives away donuts that day. I don’t know why! People felt this need to talk like pirates even though the truth is, nobody really knows, once they get past ‘Arrr’ and ‘Ahoy matey’ they run out of pirate language. I know that 100 years from now, nobody will have the faintest idea who I was, but I think that September 19, people will still be talking like pirates.”

Weird Things About Florida

Steve asks about the new book and reads this quote, “Sure, there was the 2000 election, people also seem to take their pants off for no reason, it has flying insects the size of Le Bron James, but it’s a great state… from the earliest history to the fun fair of weirdness and gunfire, and the motto of Florida now according to Dave is, ‘Come back, we weren’t firing at you!’ ”

Dave continues, “A lot of the book is like a travelogue. There are a lot of weird places in Florida that people don’t know about. People, when they come to the state of Florida, a lot of tourists come straight to Orlando… then they’re gone. They’ve kind of missed a lot of the state. So I drove around the state, went to a lot of places that people don’t ordinarily get to or aren’t as familiar with, like Weeki Wachee, a mermaid spring where you can sit in an underwater theater and watch women wearing rubber tails swim around underwater… These old tourist attractions are kind of losing traction and I kind of celebrate them in this book.”

The Rock Bottom Remainders

Steve then asks, “You were part of that band, The Rock Bottom Remainders, with Stephen King, Amy Tam… are you guys still doing anything from time to time?” Dave replies, “…about every two years we get together and play. We played last year in Miami. What we don’t do is rehearse… I’ve been told that there are bands who practice the songs first and then they play them. What we do is we play the songs and then we go, ‘man, we should have rehearsed.’ That’s the key to our sound, that’s why we call it Hard Listening music.”

Steve asks Dave to tell what a Rock Bottom Remainder is. “It’s all authors, almost all authors. A remainder is a book that doesn’t sell. When you go to a bookstore and there is a whole stack of books that are $2, $3, and they were originally $27 hardbacks, those are called remainders. They’re kind of leftover books. So we call ourselves The Rock Bottom Remainders and we like to think that because we mean it ironically but in fact a lot of us have had remainders, so it’s not as funny as it might be for some of us.”

“Tell me again how that came about, it was quite a while ago,” asks Steve. “Yeah, it was back in 1992, when we started. A woman named Kathy Goldmark who lived in San Francisco, was a media escort, which means, when you’re an author on book tour, as I am now, somebody picks you up at the airport and takes you to your various interviews and makes sure you get to the signing in time, makes sure you get to the airport on time, that person is called a media escort. And Kathy did that but she also played in rock bands, she was into the San Francisco music scene. And over the years she found that a lot of the authors who came around either had been in bands, or liked to go listen to bands. And she had this idea in 1992, wouldn’t it be cool to get a bunch of authors with musical talent together, and for one night have a benefit concert to raise money for literacy. The flaw in that plan is that none of us have any musical talent. Actually some of us have minimal… but we’re not a good band. But we have so much fun, as Amy Tan put it one time, ‘I would do this to kill the whales!’ So we kept on playing. And here it is going on 25 years later and we still sometimes get together and play. But we haven’t gotten any better.

“Good, that’s the way we like it. I’ve seen you guys on some videos and it’s really cool,” says Steve, and Dave replies, “It’s a shame, we don’t want, we tried to destroy the videos, but…” and Steve says, “You didn’t get them all.”

Steve Jaxon welcomed Carl Hiaasen on The Drive today. Here is a complete transcript of their conversation. For more information about Carl Hiaasen, visit his website, http://www.carlhiaasen.com/index.shtml.

Steve Jaxon: I’ve wanted to talk to this guy for many many years. The great Dave Barry, who was in the studio with us not too long ago, will be back in town on Monday, as part of the Copperfield’s Books series, the author’s series, he’ll be at the Montgomery Village Copperfield’s. But tomorrow night at the Central Library, Copperfield’s is presenting one of my favorite authors of all time. I have read all but one of his books and I plan to, spend time this weekend not watching movies or looking at my phone and I’m going to read the new one, Razor Girl. I can’t wait. He is the author of 13 novels, including Bad Monkey, Star Island, Nature Girl, Skinny Dip, one of my favorites, Sick Puppy, oh I love that one, Basket Case, I think was one of the first Carl Hiaasen books I read, but (I’m) just a huge fan and it’s an honor to have him on the show, Carl Hiaasen. How are you sir?

Carl Hiaasen: Hey Steve, how are you? Thanks for having me.

SJ: Hey, it’s our pleasure, as I said, I’m just a huge fan. Give us some of the background before we get into talking about the new book, but you’re still doing a Sunday column for the Miami Herald, right?

CH: Yeah, I’ve still got sort of one toe in the newspaper business. I’ve been there a long time and it’s hard to give it up and so I get a fair amount of material for the books just coming in off the transoms in Florida, you know, “The Punch Line State” as Dave (Barry) would say.

SJ: It really has become one of the Punch Line states, there’s no question. Yeah, born and raised in South Florida, right? And you were just a kid when you first started at the Miami Herald.

CH: Yeah, I was, I won’t tell you when it was, yeah, I’ll tell you, it was ’76 when I started, so I kind of grew up in the newsroom and it does get in your blood a little bit, what’s left of the newsrooms in this country, sadly. But, you know, I do the one column a week in the Herald and the rest of the time I work on these disturbing novels.

SJ: They’re just delightfully, wonderfully disturbing and it’s right in my wheelhouse, which is why I’m one of your biggest fans. But I …

CH: Thank you so much, thank you.

SJ: The characters are so amazing and I don’t know how you come up with (them), it just blows me away. Skink was one of my favorite characters.

Characters drive plot development

CH: Yeah, he’s the old ex-governor of Florida. He pops in and out of several of the novels. He’s one of my favorites too and certain scenarios call for him to show up and then I give him a rest for a while. But I get a lot of mail about that one and especially with the state of politics being what they are in Florida and the rest of the country right now. But he’s one of my favorites. Characters are… I start with a list of characters but I don’t start with a plot and the plot sort of happens, but it’s because of the characters, sort of the reverse way that a lot of writers do it. But it’s fun for me.

SJ: What was your childhood like? I mean, you know, how did these, how did this all come to be that you could think up these amazing stories?

CH: You want a psychiatric explanation?

SJ: Yeah, exactly!

CH: Well, I was a pretty normal child. I mean, we, I grew up on the edge of the Everglades, west of Fort Lauderdale, I mean I spent all of my time outdoors fishing and catching snakes and all of the things that kids do when they’re young. So it was a special place to me and a lot of it disappeared under concrete when I was (young) so I guess I got a little pissed off, and as early as I can remember I was so angry about seeing some of these beautiful places wrecked that I, you know, that fuels a lot of humor. And I think Dave will tell you this too. A lot of humor, especially satire, comes from sort of a deep seat of anger or outrage over something and humor becomes not only your therapy but your weapon.

SJ: Yeah, I can see that as therapy but also as a weapon. That’s well put. Well, these books are amazing and I know I’ve been hearing from a lot of people since we made the announcement earlier in the week that you were going to be with us today, so there’s a lot of folks listening and very excited, and about the new book, Razor Girl. Like I said, Copperfield’s dropped it off yesterday so I’m going to start tonight and I can’t wait. Give us a little rundown on Razor Girl.

CH: Well, it’s the first time, Steve, that I’ve ever taken a protagonist from the previous novel and put them in this consecutive novel and in this case it’s a guy named Andrew Yancy who was in Bad Monkey. I ended up liking him enough and I kind of felt sorry for where I left him at the end of Bad Monkey and he’s a cop, an ex-cop who got busted down to roach patrol, a restaurant inspector. And he’s trying to do the honorable job and at the same time fighting to get his real badge back and I sort of left him in that sort of unsavory position and I just thought he was interesting to me, so I thought I would just continue with him. I’ve never done it before, so it’s kind of experimental but I had fun. I haven’t grown tired of him and he gets in enough trouble to keep me amused too.

SJ: Yeah, and everyone else, when they read it. I love your names that you always come up with. We mentioned Skink, but Lane Coolman, Buck Nance and Blister, a street psycho known as Blister, these are all in the new book. And the plot itself, well, it’s another south Florida-based novel, right?

CH: Right, it starts out with a very unusual car accident, which was based on something that really happened down in the Keys. And then I sort of took that idea and ran with it. And it becomes not an accident at all but an intentional crash and they grab, Lane Coolman is a Hollywood agent who represents a redneck reality TV – and I can say “redneck” because I’m from south Florida – but I mean, a redneck reality TV star named Buck Nance who has gotten in some trouble down in Key West… they couldn’t find enough authentic rednecks so they had to hire a bunch of “other” necks for the reality show. So that’s why he’s not really a redneck but he now thinks he’s one.

SJ: And the detective Yancy, I’m just reading from the liner notes here, he got busted down to the Roach Patrol, he’s been with a duster.

CH: Yeah, that was in Sad Monkey, he was trying to do something chivalrous, he thought she was being hurt by her then-husband and the only tool he had was a Dust Buster but it was a somewhat proctological aspect to the assault and so Yancy got into trouble and that led to his being, you know, ending up on, you know, restaurant inspection detail. In Florida, all the restaurant inspections are posted on line, the results of them. They can be harrowing. I don’t recommend anybody who is going to Florida necessarily read them, but that’s the sort of research I did to discover what these people who do this very difficult job had to put up with.

SJ: Also, the title character, Razor Girl, it says she’s named for an eye-popping twist on an otherwise unexciting scam.

CH: She actually turns out to be one of my, she sort of takes control of the novel for a while. That’s always fun for a writer, when a character surprises you and you sort of end up falling for them and she’s a, I really liked her too, so I had fun writing it and I hope people will (have fun reading it too).

SJ: I’m sure we will. The great Carl Hiaasen will be in town tomorrow at the Main Library downtown beginning at 7, it is brought to you by Copperfield’s Books and the Sonoma County Library and some of the proceeds will go to help fund the Sonoma County Libraries. And they’re going to have a pop-up bookstore set up at the event, where you can buy a copy of Razor Girl, as well as most of other of Carl’s books. You’re going to talk then obviously a Q and A and book signing.

CH: Yeah, that’s the fun part, is the Q and A. I don’t read a lot from the books, I just talk generally about where they got started and the characters and tell some true life stories from Florida and then we’ll have a Q and A, it will be great. It’s a great store and a great locale. For me it’s always fun to come to California.

SJ: And Dave Barry following you on Monday, that’s going to be cool too.

CH: Yeah, it’s like an overdose, I apologize in advance, poor California, you’ve got to listen to Florida stories for two days. We’ve got plenty of them, though. This election year it’s just, it’s even more spectacular if you write satire for a living.

SJ: Exactly. The wonderful Carl Hiaasen, the new book is Razor Girl, available everywhere, but better yet, help support the County library and go tomorrow night. Doors open at 6, the event starts at 7. First come, first sit general admission, so you can go to events @ copperfieldsbooks.com and make sure you go to carlhiaasen.com and get a copy of Razor Girl. I’ll review it and talk about it a little more Monday or Tuesday when I finish it because that’s about all I have planned for the weekend, is to read Razor Girl.

CH: Well, I sure hope you like it. It’s pretty twisted. I think it’s right up your alley.

SJ: Exactly. Actually I’ll see you tomorrow night, Carl and I’m looking forward to meeting you in person.

CH: Yeah, that will be fun. Thank you!

SJ: All right. Carl Hiaasen, tomorrow night. Thanks, Carl!

CH: All right, see you guys then.

SJ: All right, take care.