David Mac (DM): Joe, I think our readers have pretty darn good taste in music, so for the most part they are likely familiar with your band, The Cash Box Kings. However, they may not know that much about you.  So, let’s start out with some basic biographical information.

Joe Nosek (JN): I’m 42 years old. I have three kids…little boys. They are seven, five and one is about a year old.

DM: That’s wonderful.

JN:I’m very lucky. They are really cute and fun.

DM: A lot of folks aren’t comfortable with sharing that they have a life outside of music. They think that it deludes their” blues” mystique or something. You have an interesting day job which I’d like to ask you about, if you want to talk about that.

JN: I’m fine with that. I am a faculty associate at the University of Wisconsin. I teach writing classes for international students and I teach people who want to be teachers. I teach people who want to teach English when they grow up. So, I teach people how to teach. I love my job. It super cool and really rewarding. I really dig it.

DM: A college campus is one of the great atmospheres in all of America for a variety of reasons. When I travel I often will go to that town’s college or university campus. Some are more beautiful than others, but in general, it is such a wonderful environment. I have never been to Madison, but I’ve heard it is a charming place and, of course, I would love to visit the campus of that great seat of learning. What a delightful place to work.

JN: I feel really fortunate. I never didn’t want to go to work here. There are times when I’m tired, but when I get on campus I’m rejuvenated. It’s an exciting, vibrant place to work. I love it.

DM: There is something just plain fun and energizing about being around young people.

JN: Exactly!

DM: You have another job though, which is why we are visiting today. Let me begin that area of discussion by asking you what were some of your first exposures to music?

JN: It may have come from listening to my dad’s old Rolling Stones records. He had Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. I loved those records when I was about seven or eight years old. I was listening to Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, the Who all that stuff. But mostly the Stones. When you go back and start listening to their older stuff, especially with the Stones for instance, you start seeing song writing credits that aren’t Jagger/Richards. Names like McKinley Morganfield and Chester Burnett start to pop up.

DM: …and Willie Dixon

JN: Oh yeah. I liked those songs, but I couldn’t figure out who those guys were. So, I end up going to the library to try and find out who wrote those songs. You could check out those records at our public library. Mixed right in the with the blues stuff was real old jazz records by Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong. I’d listen to that as well.

DM: Let me stop you right there and back up just a bit. I’m eighteen years older than you. This music, the Stones, the Who and others were huge when I was in high school. Now you come along and let’s face it, you are listening to old stuff. Were you ostracized for listening to all this old sh*t? What was going on musically in those days with your peers?

JN: I grew up in a small Wisconsin town of about 15,000 people and, as you might suspect was pretty much ostracized for my musical tastes, no question about it. My friends were listening to all this bullsh*t music like Whitney Houston and stuff like that. Absolutely the worst, absolute bullsh*t music you could imagine.

DM: Most people crave music so badly they will consume anything that is forced down their throat by the mass media…I get it. Guys like you and me just decided some time ago not to play along.

JN: Things changed for me when I moved to Chicago when I was fourteen. I went to a Catholic boys high school.  My friends were open to a lot of different musical ideas and not stuck on the “Top 40” like up in Wisconsin. These were some pretty cool guys and good friends. They were all super hip to all this good music. Some of these guys played instruments and were in bands. We’re still good friends in some cases. A bunch of these old friends showed up at Buddy Guy’s to hear the band the other day.

Moving to Chicago was a big deal for me. I had been their many times as a kid, but had never lived there. So, I had to learn to take the “L”, ride the bus and so on. I was living with my aunt and uncle in Chicago and they worked all the time, so I had to learn to cook and do my own laundry at a young age. I opened my own bank account. It taught me to be very self-reliant at a pretty young age.

DM: You started playing music at a pretty young age as well.

JN: Yeah, I started out playing trumpet and piano in band at school. I was also kind of a jock as a kid. I played soccer in high school. Sports kind of competed with music for my attention and it was a real close second place there for awhile. I decided when I went to high school that I would play in the band and play soccer. So, I signed up for band and joined the soccer team.

One day my band teacher told me where he wanted me to be for these various car washes that were fund raisers for band. I told him that I couldn’t make it because I had soccer matches. He said, “What do you mean, soccer? You can’t play soccer and be in band.” So, I thought well I could always play music on my own and teach myself, but you really need a team to play soccer.

That’s when I quit band. I then picked up a guitar and harmonica. I was really into Neil Young and Bob Dylan so I was doing the rack harmonica thing.

DM: I’m guessing being in the big city you started to avail yourself of the live music you could experience there.

JN: Oh yeah…that’s when I started listening to a lot of blues. I remember going to the Chicago Blues Festival every year. It was (still is) in June, right after school lets out for the summer. I would get there every year and be there for the first note and stay until the whole thing was over.  

DM: Back then you had all the real deal guys still alive and playing that thing every year.

JN: Oh my God! It was awesome! I would get to hear Otis Rush, Robert Junior Lockwood, Jimmy Rogers, Sunnyland Slim, Brownie McGhee…and on and on. So, by this time as much as I dug Neil Young, his music started to take a back seat to the blues. I mean Dave, you know what I’m talking about, after you hear Otis Rush sing, I Can’t Quit You Baby, Led Zeppelin ain’t going to work.

DM: (laughing) Oh, I know Joe.

JN: I had a buddy who was a few years older than me and he started going to the Kingston Mines, The Checkerboard, Buddy Guy’s and places like that. He then told me that he could sneak me into this club or that club through the side door or where ever. I was eighteen and nineteen at the time.

DM: Let’s talk about some of your early band adventures that would of course lead you to the Cash Box Kings.

JN: Well in those days I was playing a lot of guitar. I soon realized that so was everybody else. There were a lot of guitar players out there. I thought if I’m going to stand out in any way I may want to put the guitar down and focus on the harmonica.

DM: Was there any recording that you can recall that had an impact on your playing?

JN: The one album that really grabbed me was Muddy Waters’ King Bee album. It was one of those records he did for the Blue Sky label.

DM: It was the last of three he did for that label and the last record he ever made. It came out in 1981 and he died just a couple of years later.

JN: He had Jerry Portnoy on most of it and Cotton plays on a couple of tracks. I thought right then that this Neil Young/Dylan noodling around is cool, but I really need to focus on the harmonica and elevate my playing. It was a very conscious decision.

Around this time, I started looking for a college to attend. I chose the University of Wisconsin for several reasons. My parents still lived up there and it isn’t that far from Chicago. Plus, the tuition was only a $1,000 per year. It was insanely inexpensive.

DM: Not any more.

JN: I know. Our priorities are so f*cked up in this country.

DM: True that. However, you got a great, relatively inexpensive education. Let’s talk about your college years.

JN: I was thinking about being a music major. This is a pretty wild story. In my freshman year, I took a course in music theory in baroque, chamber music. I walk into class and look at the teacher and I said, 'Holy sh*t, that’s Jim Schwall.' I recognized him immediately. He is pretty recognizable. He had that old hippie look to him. So, there I am in class saying to the kid next to me, ‘Check it out man that’s Jim Schwall,’ and he said, ‘Who the hell is Jim Schwall?’ I said, ‘Come on man you never heard of the Siegel- Schwall Band?’

DM: At about this time, if it hadn’t dawned on you already Joe, you realized that the music we love is not universally appreciated, as Jim Schwall had been a mainstay of the Chicago blues scene since the mid-60’s. I’m sure you saw him perform at least once at the Chicago Blues Festival. 

JN: Oh yeah, I knew who he was, but had never met him before. He’s teaching a class on 18^th Century music that has NOTHING to do with blues music. I hated it. There were all these rules. It was very rigid, mathematical…I would submit my compositions and Schwall would shred them with a red pen. He called me to his office. I got there and asked what the Wolf was like and he lit up and said, ‘Oh man, he was great…but we have to talk about this diminished fifth in this bar.’ Then I would ask him about Muddy and he’d go there for a minute, but then kept coming back to what I was doing wrong in his class. So, it occurred to me that this music is way too mechanical for me. If I’m going to do anything with music it’s going to have to be my own thing, go my own way.

DM: As you might suspect I’ve always been fascinated by language. I loved the way your class was described as musical theory. It’s not a theory at all. Like you said, it is rigid, mathematical and there is only one way to do it.  We are taught that European classical music is superior to the music brought to the world by people who can trace their ancestry to the African Continent. What is more complex than slurred notes, string bending or improvisation not to mention all the various poly rhythms, syncopations and all the other real complexities that go into blues and jazz music. Blues is a language that has multiple esoteric dialects. I better get off my soapbox before it breaks. Sorry…

JN: No, I get it. That’s the way I see it anyway.

I did join a band at this stage that is kind of hard to describe. Picture Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention doing hip hop. I mention this because playing in this band helped me to get over my stage fright. I would come out on stage wearing these crazy wigs and a lab coat. We were kind of popular in Madison with the underground rock scene. Artsy type people kind of dug it. I did like the reaction I got from a crowd and that furthered my desire to hone my art.

I started getting really serious about my blues music after I got my Masters in English Linguistics. I was kind of tired of school as I had been going since I was six years old. I had wanted to quit a couple of times and just play music, but my mother kept saying, ‘You’ve come this far…stick it out and get your Masters.’

I was ready to join a band and that’s what I did. It was a blues band called The Lucky Stiff Blues Band. The lead guitar player was a really good guy, but he was playing kind of in a Gary Moore type of vein. So, I knew this wasn’t my final destination. He was good at booking gigs, so I was getting paid to blow harp. 

DM: Were you singing in this band as well as blowing harp?

JN: Yeah, I did most of the singing. Not that I was great singer, but it kind of forces you to step up to the mic. It taught me a little about fronting a band. I cut my teeth with that band.

It was also somewhat fateful because we were asked to open a show for a great community radio station up here, 88.9 WORT. The station had a 25^th anniversary bash. We opened for Mississippi Heat and Billy Boy Arnold. I got to go backstage and meet Billy Boy Arnold who is one of my idols. So, we got to hang out and talk with him which was great. Also on drums that night with Billy Boy was Kenny Smith. I had heard him play before live and, of course his dad Willie, I thought was the coolest guy ever.

DM: He was in fact the coolest guy ever. I met him a couple times when he would play out here at the old Long Beach Blues Festival. He is everything you would want one of your heroes to be.

JN: Willie was AWSOME! I’ve got to slip in my Willie “Big Eyes” Smith story here, if you don’t mind.

DM: Let ‘er rip,

JN: Dave, I’ve got to tell you my humbling experience playing drums for Willie. If Kenny for some reason couldn’t make a gig with the Cash Box Kings he would have Willie sub for him. The first time this happened I was in shock for most of the show. The fact that this guy would come play for us at a hundred-dollar gig in Chicago someplace still blows me away.  He is a legend as a blues drummer. But as you are probably aware Dave he was starting to blow a lot of harp and sing towards the end of his life. He knew I could play drums a little, so part way through the gig he said, ‘Let me get up there and blow and you can play drums.’

Willie is a little guy and he used to use this old school contraption on his drum kit. He had a rope that he tied around the stool and kick drum. It kept the stool from sliding around. The problem with this makeshift contraption was this old rope that had to be 80 years old or something was NOT adjustable. So, I went back there and after about three minutes my right thigh would be so cramped. By the time we got to the second song I was in such pain that I wanted to pass out.

DM: (laughing) He must have known this. He has a drum kit that virtually nobody could play but him…and there is no way in hell you are going to f*ck with his kit.  

JN:  No way…that would be like messing with B.B. King’s amp or changing his guitar settings…not going to happen. So that’s my brush with greatness; playing drums on the great Willie “Big Eyes” Smith’s drum kit. I was simply mortified.

DM: That’s great and it also leads us to you meeting Willie’s son Kenny who has emerged as a terrific drummer in his own right.

JN: Kenny and I are about the same age. We both liked the old school stuff, so he said to me, ‘I really dig your harp playing.’ I told him that I really wanted to start an old school blues band. He gave me his card and told me to call him if I ever got anything going. He went on to tell me that the only people he gets to play with are his dad and his friends like Pinetop (Perkins). These guys are literally 40, 50 and even 60 years older than he was.

So, the same night I met Kenny at that Billy Boy Arnold gig this other guy comes up to me and said, ‘You’ve got to meet this guitar player. His name is “White Lightning.”’

DM: Oh brother…

JN: That’s what I thought too…sounds like a real jag-off. He comes from this little town of Janesville, Wisconsin, which is just a little north of Rockford, Illinois, and I know, you know where that is. It’s not exactly known as a mecca for blues guitar players. We get introduced and I ask him who his favorite blues guitar players were. I fully expected him to give me the usual Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix response. But he said, ‘Robert Lockwood, Robert Nighthawk and Luther Tucker.’ I thought, ‘Holy sh*t… maybe this guy is kind of cool.’ So, we exchanged phone numbers.

He turned out to be Travis Koopman and one of the founding members of the Cash Box Kings. He is a bad *ss cat. He can play any old school guitar lick, including slide…Nighthawk, Muddy Waters, Elmore James…he can also play Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton stuff.  He was a good singer and really good songwriter too. He had a real bravado and was kind of a ballsy, in your face front man.

So we, along with Todd Cambio, who grew up around Chicago and ended up going to the University of Wisconsin, started the band. He was actually a roommate of Joel Paterson. He and Joel used to play on the street.  He would play upright bass with a rack harmonica and Joel would play a national steel.

The other original member was Chris Boeger. He and Todd would switch-off between bass and guitar. That was the original Cash Box Kings. We were a Madison, Wisconsin, based band that just LOVED old school blues.

DM: Maybe it’s important to note that we have here in America what is known as college towns. Madison with the huge University kind of personifies this as much as anyplace. I mean, everybody knows about Austin, Texas, but Madison is kind of like that…with mittens.

JN: (laughs) That’s a good way to put it. We do have winter up here, but it’s a pretty hip place. Luther Allison would stay up here in the summer. The first gig he ever had under his own name, as a band leader was in Madison. He would tour around the country and come back to Madison to fish during the week. He would also play his blues jam up here.

I played with him shortly before his passing. He was very complimentary about my playing. I just assumed he was just trying to nice, but as the evening progressed, I noticed he didn’t say anything like that to anybody else, except Joel Paterson, who was playing guitar on the gig.

DM: Did you know Joel at this time?

JN: Not really.  As you know Dave, from your interview with Joel a few years back, he grew up in Madison. However, about the time I moved back there from Chicago to go to college, Joel was getting ready to move to Chicago. We overlapped in Madison for about a year. But I remember very vividly that Luther Allison went out of his way to single out Joel and tell him that he could really make it as guitar player. He did the same with me as it relates to my harp playing earlier in the evening. That meant so much. 

DM: Clyde Stubblefield lived in Madison from the very early 70’s up until the time of his death earlier this year.

JN: The Funky Drummer! He of course toured and recorded with James Brown and even played with Otis Redding in Macon, Georgia, before that. He had a regular Monday night gig in downtown Madison for years. Their regular harp player would let me sit in with Clyde and his band. He was still in his prime and really bringing it. I was only 18, 19 years old at the time.

I also got on a music committee at the University of Wisconsin and was responsible for them putting on a once a month blues show. I booked Hubert Sumlin, John Brim, Phil Guy, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith and others. So, I was able to meet these guys, rub elbows a little bit and would always try and weasel my way on stage so I could play with these guys. This too had a big impact on my playing and development. I was very lucky to have these opportunities that I don’t know I would have had if I went to college in Chicago, as there were probably a lot more guys clambering for attention and trying to get on stage with these guys. I kind of stood out in Madison.

DM: At some point, we should bring Oscar Wilson into the conversation. As you know I have talked to Oscar and you guys do not have one darn thing in common as it relates to your background and upbringing.

JN: That’s very true, except we are both big White Sox fans.

(End of Part One)

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