Name: Bill Burr - Drummer Chris Layton Part 3
Uploaded: 2015-01-22T16:08:47.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bill Burr - Drummer Chris Layton Part 3' from Bill Burr Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-01-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bill Burr - Drummer Chris Layton Part 3' from Bill Burr Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-01-22. Transcript available.

so uh so you Tommy and Stevie play and then eventually uh so how long did you
you jam for
like I know like um I know I'm going through all this shit I'm getting self-conscious
here that
I'm dragging you through the same stuff no it's okay I'm you know I'm gonna try
to ask different
questions everybody knows the story the David Bowie stuff and all of that you
know David Bowie
saw you uh actually would you mind telling the getting booed in France thing
just because people
know me for getting booed in Philly no yeah I gotta tell you this this was
hilarious because
the woman Lou Ann Barton I had to say it we fired her from the band for misconduct
if you will
and she gets a big record deal from Jerry Wexler wait where was she in the band
she was the triple
threat yeah and she was originally in double trouble for just a little bit and
she was the lead singer
she sang most all the material okay so she's out of the band she gets a deal
with with Jerry Wexler
discovers her in New York gets her deal on electric she does this record's got
the Muscle Shoals
rhythm section uh Don Fry sings all these all these people come in so when her
record release comes
to be she goes she goes you guys want to play my record release party I was
like yeah okay
oh yeah I guess you let her you let her go yeah no no right she didn't did she
do it out of spite
you think or no well yeah hell I don't know you know maybe I could call her and
ask her but um
but we're there playing and Jerry Wexler's there and he's like out there
dancing and he says
great band um you know what you guys need to go to Montreux Switzerland he goes
I'm going to call my
friend Claude Knobbs I'm going to talk to him about all this well he does it
shorter a couple days
later we get an invitation to go they got a spot we've never been signed wait
it was that gig was
in Switzerland it wasn't in France no yeah it was Montreux Switzerland oh yeah
yeah yeah all these years
I thought it was France well here we go okay so we go and we're the only
electric band on this night
because he just slotted us in because there was a time slot and it's a jazz
festival well you know
it used to be Montreux jazz and they call it international music festival so it's
kind of a mix of a lot of
stuff but that night was all like acoustic blues upright and piano and guitar
sitting on
stools and that kind of thing traditional traditional there's that word again
we get up coming back to
haunt you guys it's coming to haunt us again so we get up there we got all
these electric instruments
and stuff and we start playing and people are like you think like they're like
they're sitting in a
hurricane or something they're like what the hell they go boo you know it's
like we're like shit
I've seen that you can actually get this on DVD and yeah no it's and it's a bummer
because see
we're back in Texas making like three four five hundred dollars a gig and our
man the owners of our
management group loaned us 15 grand to do this whole trip we took everything
over there because
we can't be without our gear you know it's like wow um and we're sitting
backstage and stevie looks
at me he goes well I didn't think we sounded that bad and I went I didn't
either and all of a sudden
it's like yeah they go David Bowie would like to meet with y'all which David
Bowie and they went
David Bowie the accountant like yeah no the rock star David Bowie the wrestler
yeah and so that's
kind of how that started you know we were there another night we played
downstairs we didn't have
a gig we were just lollygagging on this loan and so we played down in the
musicians bar it's at
Jackson Brown and his guys came through and he said hey you're in LA you can
have my studio which
we did we just recorded some tapes and you know all this there's a whole bunch
of this story but
they just kind of sat there until we went back to John Hammond said hey Stevie's
looking to do
this thing but we got these tapes that we recorded legitimate tapes and he's
and John Hammond was our
he was our our white knight he was our champion he loved all of us he loved the
band he thought
Stevie was one of the greatest guitar players he'd heard since Robert Johnson
wow and he went to
he went to epic Sony epic CBS excuse me and there was a guy there Greg Geller
he said Greg you need to
sign these guys up he said yeah I'll do it because I'm getting ready to get
fired anyway because I'm
going to reissue the whole okay label because it's been out of circulation they're
going to fire me for
that so I'll let him also fire me for this and he did that and that's what
happened and the record
came out and um you know Stevie didn't go work with Bowie after the record didn't
do the tour and
off we were you know now you know what I loved about that whole uh that whole
watching the concert
footage of you guys when you get booed there in Switzerland for all these years
I thought it was
France is the fact that you could see it affecting you guys because you guys
would play the song and then
then you'd boo or whatever they'd boo and then but then when you guys you like
one time I saw Stevie's
shoulders kind of slump a little bit but the second he goes to do a song you
count off the song you guys
played you didn't hold back at all and he just went just as hard all you guys
uh if you didn't hear
this there's the sound of the crowd you would think that the way you guys were
playing that you were doing
what you always did which was was kill it and I got a lot of inspiration out of
out of watching that um
just doing what I do or auditioning or stuff you know sometimes I get these
acting gigs I got to do
some crazy stuff that I'm sitting there in your head going like oh my god this
is outside my comfort
zone and like seeing stuff like that it's just like just plow through this um
fuck them you know
what that was inspirational to me because I learned something there and I saw
it in action it wasn't told
to me is that he had this passion and commitment if he was sitting over there
on the that couch playing
the guitar he'd have he put he put the same thing into it as he is he would if
we were playing for a
hundred thousand people because that's just how he lived and I'm like man that's
a great example
you know because like yeah I kind of do this when he see when the stakes get
higher I'll kind of put a
little bit more juice into that kind of wishy-washiness he was like full-on a
hundred and ten percent all
the time so when you guys are riding on a tour bus when he's noodling around it
sounds like he's
already playing the show yeah because he's got the same passion and the focus
and the commitment to
what he's doing is he's not performing you know I mean he's not just been
incredible to be around
it's awesome is I mean you know I was spoiled right off the bat you know it's
like I go you know
this is early in my career and it's funny I talked to Mitch Mitchell about this
about the you
know the death of Jimi Hendrix and it's like it's a hard deal when you lose
somebody like that and
you were you come to in my case I came to go you know I was grateful that I had
the whole experience
like it was a hard thing to lose but there were so many things that I got from
that just simple
lessons and you know I think they were in me they'd been they'd been
demonstrated but they hadn't
really taken root but when you live them and you go man this is a great way to
be and you see
that you get the result on every level we're not talking about money success or
our success
was that our music was successful to us it meant everything to us we had a
great time doing it
together and that you just go this is it's self-evident right now and you know
if somebody leads that
typically somebody's there to show you something you go wow you know what I dig
that that touched me
that meant something and I'm going to grab onto that and that's these are the
great things in life
yeah and then unfortunately you don't really you fully realize it after the
just this the profoundness
of losing somebody I lost a great friend Patrice O'Neill a few years ago yeah
and he was the guy
like I would compare like he was like the Stevie Ray Vaughan level guy except
doing like stand-up
and um you know you just don't expect him he was like 41 years old you're not
thinking
that this is going to be the last time I get to see him perform and that type
of thing so it
ends up having uh when you really go back and examine the whole ex basically
experience because
I don't know if Stevie was the same thing like being friends with Patrice was
beyond being friends
with him it was like it you you walked out in public with him and him just
messing with people
was this experience that like I I've tried to tell the stories on the podcast
and try to explain what
it was like it's you just can't when you're around that level of uh artist or
just just greatness or
whatever I know the words were there's on of course you know that's that thing
that you don't know what
you got till it's gone you know it's kind of cliche yeah it's cliche as hell
but it's true you know
that's why it sticks it's like man that was fabulous yeah I learned that awful
lesson that like
you're like you're friends it's like it it's I can't explain that the
friendship is not yours it's
like it's like this thing that's given to you and you just have to enjoy it and
then you got to be
enjoying it because it's just taken away or it goes in a different direction
whatever you want to say
and then you're just kind of left there like you know well you know living in
the moment being able
to actually live in the moment and I know to be grateful for your surroundings
because we can get
you know I get on my pity potty and all this shit and go back to my catholic
guilt and shame and
I'll go ah you know you know I mean I mean it's true I mean Steve I was like
when after he died I was
like god that guy really meant a lot in my life and I go half the time I wanted
to strangle him
and I go we were like brothers like the brother you know he was like a brother
I never had he had a
brother you know a real brother and but I go you know it was it's everything it's
always everything
there's the our our perception of the good and the bad or whatever it is but
essentially it's like
everything was wonderful it was life and it was really wonderful I've always
wondered like that's
the time like you know the loneliness of being a comedian on the road but
whenever I hear stories
of bands you know being in a van together just traveling and and you know the
just all the shit
that you guys go through like I've traveled with other comedians and stuff and
there's like
there's that thing where you just have to after a while be like okay there's
going to be the late
guy there's going to be the addict there's going to be the pussy hound there's
going to be the ego
maniac the dude who's got to sleep till four like there's just going to be that
and you got to
understand that you're that guy somehow but you can't see it because you're in
yourself so you're
absolutely something you're doing that is annoying the shit out of somebody
else and you have to
somehow uh like I got to be honest with you like after years of touring with
other comics and
everything this past year I did a tour with this comic uh Paul Verzi and um he's
a New York guy
I'm a Boston guy whatever he always argues sports and we went up to uh toward
all of Canada and we
basically spent every waking moment essentially with each other for about 10
days and we never argued
once and all I it was just through years of being he's also a really easy guy
to get along with but we
just we we had we ended up having a couple of inside jokes that we had which
always seems bands
always have like inside jokes and oh yeah your own catchphrases and we just
kind of tore through
Canada making each other laugh uh throughout the whole thing and uh and it wasn't
until the end he
actually Verzi actually mentioned he's like dude you realize we've been we've
done like 20 shows
together it's toward all over this goddamn tundra we haven't argued once and I
was yeah you know I
didn't even notice that we're doing this stupid fake crying thing that was just
making each other laugh
just saying over the top sensitive stuff like I just really like you as a
friend
oh that dumb shit oh we had all that stuff just kept you going yeah you have we
had like these
alternate personalities when we when we realized that we were like really going
insane on each other
uh-huh you know mine was Harold or as he called me Harold what's Harold doing
and I go I don't know
what you doing Brady and the Brady's or Brady's just trying to have a good time
you know and we get
and we would actually stay in these characters for like an hour I'm going god
how sick are we
and then we come out of it we could actually live with our circumstances
because you know it gets
tight you know and you're you realize like not only is that genius comedically
that's also if I had
some sort of you know psychology background that's also probably red flags of
slowly going insane
no I'm I am insane I'm I'm I think I've been actually somewhat restored to
sanity but you know
I'm still working on it right it all goes to the seven deadly sins you know I'm
trying to sort
it out over here Bill oh I know Jesus don't even talk to me about those

Bill Burr -  Drummer Chris Layton Part 3

so uh so you Tommy and Stevie play and then eventually uh so how long did you
you jam for
like I know like um I know I'm going through all this shit I'm getting self-conscious
here that
I'm dragging you through the same stuff no it's okay I'm you know I'm gonna try
to ask different
questions everybody knows the story the David Bowie stuff and all of that you
know David Bowie
saw you uh actually would you mind telling the getting booed in France thing
just because people
know me for getting booed in Philly no yeah I gotta tell you this this was
hilarious because
the woman Lou Ann Barton I had to say it we fired her from the band for misconduct
if you will
and she gets a big record deal from Jerry Wexler wait where was she in the band
she was the triple
threat yeah and she was originally in double trouble for just a little bit and
she was the lead singer
she sang most all the material okay so she's out of the band she gets a deal
with with Jerry Wexler
discovers her in New York gets her deal on electric she does this record's got
the Muscle Shoals
rhythm section uh Don Fry sings all these all these people come in so when her
record release comes
to be she goes she goes you guys want to play my record release party I was
like yeah okay
oh yeah I guess you let her you let her go yeah no no right she didn't did she
do it out of spite
you think or no well yeah hell I don't know you know maybe I could call her and
ask her but um
but we're there playing and Jerry Wexler's there and he's like out there
dancing and he says
great band um you know what you guys need to go to Montreux Switzerland he goes
I'm going to call my
friend Claude Knobbs I'm going to talk to him about all this well he does it
shorter a couple days
later we get an invitation to go they got a spot we've never been signed wait
it was that gig was
in Switzerland it wasn't in France no yeah it was Montreux Switzerland oh yeah
yeah yeah all these years
I thought it was France well here we go okay so we go and we're the only
electric band on this night
because he just slotted us in because there was a time slot and it's a jazz
festival well you know
it used to be Montreux jazz and they call it international music festival so it's
kind of a mix of a lot of
stuff but that night was all like acoustic blues upright and piano and guitar
sitting on
stools and that kind of thing traditional traditional there's that word again
we get up coming back to
haunt you guys it's coming to haunt us again so we get up there we got all
these electric instruments
and stuff and we start playing and people are like you think like they're like
they're sitting in a
hurricane or something they're like what the hell they go boo you know it's
like we're like shit
I've seen that you can actually get this on DVD and yeah no it's and it's a bummer
because see
we're back in Texas making like three four five hundred dollars a gig and our
man the owners of our
management group loaned us 15 grand to do this whole trip we took everything
over there because
we can't be without our gear you know it's like wow um and we're sitting
backstage and stevie looks
at me he goes well I didn't think we sounded that bad and I went I didn't
either and all of a sudden
it's like yeah they go David Bowie would like to meet with y'all which David
Bowie and they went
David Bowie the accountant like yeah no the rock star David Bowie the wrestler
yeah and so that's
kind of how that started you know we were there another night we played
downstairs we didn't have
a gig we were just lollygagging on this loan and so we played down in the
musicians bar it's at
Jackson Brown and his guys came through and he said hey you're in LA you can
have my studio which
we did we just recorded some tapes and you know all this there's a whole bunch
of this story but
they just kind of sat there until we went back to John Hammond said hey Stevie's
looking to do
this thing but we got these tapes that we recorded legitimate tapes and he's
and John Hammond was our
he was our our white knight he was our champion he loved all of us he loved the
band he thought
Stevie was one of the greatest guitar players he'd heard since Robert Johnson
wow and he went to
he went to epic Sony epic CBS excuse me and there was a guy there Greg Geller
he said Greg you need to
sign these guys up he said yeah I'll do it because I'm getting ready to get
fired anyway because I'm
going to reissue the whole okay label because it's been out of circulation they're
going to fire me for
that so I'll let him also fire me for this and he did that and that's what
happened and the record
came out and um you know Stevie didn't go work with Bowie after the record didn't
do the tour and
off we were you know now you know what I loved about that whole uh that whole
watching the concert
footage of you guys when you get booed there in Switzerland for all these years
I thought it was
France is the fact that you could see it affecting you guys because you guys
would play the song and then
then you'd boo or whatever they'd boo and then but then when you guys you like
one time I saw Stevie's
shoulders kind of slump a little bit but the second he goes to do a song you
count off the song you guys
played you didn't hold back at all and he just went just as hard all you guys
uh if you didn't hear
this there's the sound of the crowd you would think that the way you guys were
playing that you were doing
what you always did which was was kill it and I got a lot of inspiration out of
out of watching that um
just doing what I do or auditioning or stuff you know sometimes I get these
acting gigs I got to do
some crazy stuff that I'm sitting there in your head going like oh my god this
is outside my comfort
zone and like seeing stuff like that it's just like just plow through this um
fuck them you know
what that was inspirational to me because I learned something there and I saw
it in action it wasn't told
to me is that he had this passion and commitment if he was sitting over there
on the that couch playing
the guitar he'd have he put he put the same thing into it as he is he would if
we were playing for a
hundred thousand people because that's just how he lived and I'm like man that's
a great example
you know because like yeah I kind of do this when he see when the stakes get
higher I'll kind of put a
little bit more juice into that kind of wishy-washiness he was like full-on a
hundred and ten percent all
the time so when you guys are riding on a tour bus when he's noodling around it
sounds like he's
already playing the show yeah because he's got the same passion and the focus
and the commitment to
what he's doing is he's not performing you know I mean he's not just been
incredible to be around
it's awesome is I mean you know I was spoiled right off the bat you know it's
like I go you know
this is early in my career and it's funny I talked to Mitch Mitchell about this
about the you
know the death of Jimi Hendrix and it's like it's a hard deal when you lose
somebody like that and
you were you come to in my case I came to go you know I was grateful that I had
the whole experience
like it was a hard thing to lose but there were so many things that I got from
that just simple
lessons and you know I think they were in me they'd been they'd been
demonstrated but they hadn't
really taken root but when you live them and you go man this is a great way to
be and you see
that you get the result on every level we're not talking about money success or
our success
was that our music was successful to us it meant everything to us we had a
great time doing it
together and that you just go this is it's self-evident right now and you know
if somebody leads that
typically somebody's there to show you something you go wow you know what I dig
that that touched me
that meant something and I'm going to grab onto that and that's these are the
great things in life
yeah and then unfortunately you don't really you fully realize it after the
just this the profoundness
of losing somebody I lost a great friend Patrice O'Neill a few years ago yeah
and he was the guy
like I would compare like he was like the Stevie Ray Vaughan level guy except
doing like stand-up
and um you know you just don't expect him he was like 41 years old you're not
thinking
that this is going to be the last time I get to see him perform and that type
of thing so it
ends up having uh when you really go back and examine the whole ex basically
experience because
I don't know if Stevie was the same thing like being friends with Patrice was
beyond being friends
with him it was like it you you walked out in public with him and him just
messing with people
was this experience that like I I've tried to tell the stories on the podcast
and try to explain what
it was like it's you just can't when you're around that level of uh artist or
just just greatness or
whatever I know the words were there's on of course you know that's that thing
that you don't know what
you got till it's gone you know it's kind of cliche yeah it's cliche as hell
but it's true you know
that's why it sticks it's like man that was fabulous yeah I learned that awful
lesson that like
you're like you're friends it's like it it's I can't explain that the
friendship is not yours it's
like it's like this thing that's given to you and you just have to enjoy it and
then you got to be
enjoying it because it's just taken away or it goes in a different direction
whatever you want to say
and then you're just kind of left there like you know well you know living in
the moment being able
to actually live in the moment and I know to be grateful for your surroundings
because we can get
you know I get on my pity potty and all this shit and go back to my catholic
guilt and shame and
I'll go ah you know you know I mean I mean it's true I mean Steve I was like
when after he died I was
like god that guy really meant a lot in my life and I go half the time I wanted
to strangle him
and I go we were like brothers like the brother you know he was like a brother
I never had he had a
brother you know a real brother and but I go you know it was it's everything it's
always everything
there's the our our perception of the good and the bad or whatever it is but
essentially it's like
everything was wonderful it was life and it was really wonderful I've always
wondered like that's
the time like you know the loneliness of being a comedian on the road but
whenever I hear stories
of bands you know being in a van together just traveling and and you know the
just all the shit
that you guys go through like I've traveled with other comedians and stuff and
there's like
there's that thing where you just have to after a while be like okay there's
going to be the late
guy there's going to be the addict there's going to be the pussy hound there's
going to be the ego
maniac the dude who's got to sleep till four like there's just going to be that
and you got to
understand that you're that guy somehow but you can't see it because you're in
yourself so you're
absolutely something you're doing that is annoying the shit out of somebody
else and you have to
somehow uh like I got to be honest with you like after years of touring with
other comics and
everything this past year I did a tour with this comic uh Paul Verzi and um he's
a New York guy
I'm a Boston guy whatever he always argues sports and we went up to uh toward
all of Canada and we
basically spent every waking moment essentially with each other for about 10
days and we never argued
once and all I it was just through years of being he's also a really easy guy
to get along with but we
just we we had we ended up having a couple of inside jokes that we had which
always seems bands
always have like inside jokes and oh yeah your own catchphrases and we just
kind of tore through
Canada making each other laugh uh throughout the whole thing and uh and it wasn't
until the end he
actually Verzi actually mentioned he's like dude you realize we've be