Bronson Arroyo was the last member from the Red Sox’ curse-breaking 2004 World Series team to retire from Major League Baseball.
Back when he he was proving himself in the minor leagues, he taught himself how to play guitar.
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He ended up winning a World Series and making an All-Star appearance while sticking with guitar playing as a hobby.
Here’s a discussion with Arroyo about his musical life, lightly edited for length and clarity.
So, Bronson, you’re playing at Hot Stove Cool Music on Saturday. Tell me about what Hot Stove means to you.
“Hot Stove in a lot of ways is the inception of my music career. Back in 2003, I was in the house at the Paradise just to watch the show. I was in town getting the minor league pitcher of the year award from Bud Selig, and Peter Gammons happened to ask me ‘hey, don’t you play a little bit?’ I said yeah. He said ‘do you want to get up on stage and play a song?’
“That kind of kicked off my music career in a lot of ways. But not only that, the guys I always play Hot Stove Cool Music with as a band are all from New England. These guys have played for a long time and they’re now in my band Bronson Arroyo and the ‘04. We all met that year. We all feel very indebted to Theo Epstein’s Foundation To be Named Later. To come back and play this every year feels like a joy.”
You first picked up guitar playing as a hobby when you were in the minors with the Pirates right? What’s your musical background?
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“As a kid, I had a lot of music around my house. My father played in bands in high school. I didn’t get to personally see that a lot, but he was always singing around the house and in the truck. My mother was playing the piano and my sister was playing the piano, so it was always music around. My grandmother, I was in her house a good bit as a kid, and she was a music teacher in Key West Florida for 17 years. There was always music around me, but I was always that kid who liked to ride his bike, climb trees, and play sports. You didn’t think much about the musical side of yourself. But, when I was 22 pitching in the Pirates organization somebody hands me an acoustic guitar. I just started hacking away at the guitar and it became an obsession, a magic trick in a lot of ways. You can sit on top of a roof in Pittsburgh and make these sounds come out of your hands and your voice and for somebody who never really delved into music at all it was such a great feeling.”
How’d you learn to play? Are you self-taught?
“Totally self-taught. Just from looking up the tablature. I can remember the specific times when lightbulbs would go off in my head and it would be like, this would’ve been a lot easier if someone would have told me that. I remember playing this song called “What’s This Life For” by Creed. And the verses are the same as the chords of the chorus, but the chorus was played on the barre chords and vice versa. When I realized you could play a G in two different places, it just blew my mind. It was like somebody unlocked Pandora’s box. It would have been nice to have some lessons, but it feels very satiating to know that everything I’ve learned on the guitar is by my own trial and error down in my basement working it.”
How did you manage to learn an instrument while being on an MLB schedule?“Learning was no problem, it was like having a companion on the road with you. It was something to do all the time, which a lot of guys may do with a Nintendo or an Xbox or something, but for me, it was the guitar. Playing the actual shows, once I got to the point when I was out in public playing music it did become hard to balance that. In 2005, Theo Epstein told me I was going to have to shut down the music. I went on an off day and played up in Portland Maine, about 5,000 people showed up and I was jamming with my buddy (saxophonist) Elon Trotman. We jammed for these people and Theo saw that as a way that people could look into my life on TV and say if he gets his butt kicked in real life against the Yankees it’s probably because of the music. And so he wanted me to quiet it down. But fortunately later in my career being more established at the Major League level the Reds didn’t mind, and the Diamondbacks didn’t mind at all..”
What’s Theo Epstein like as a guitar player?“He’s kind of a standard rhythm guitar player. Theo is a very calculated guy in a lot of ways. His guitar playing feels like his personality. Rhythm guitar player, very smart guy, he probably knows all the pentatonic scales and everything. Doesn’t play enough to really give you a stage performance. You feel like he’s comfortable in his skin doing that. He’s always felt a little uncomfortable but it’s partially because he just doesn’t play enough. I don’t think he really wants to play. The last couple of times I asked him to come up on stage he told me he’s retired from playing. He probably only does it a few times per year, to be honest.”
Take me inside some of the jam sessions you had with other MLB guys. What was it like jamming with other great baseball players who picked up music like you did?“It’s fun. Over the years, running across hundreds of baseball players and only a handful of guys have the nerve to do it at a level where they’re going up on stage. Jake Peavy is one of those guys. Barry Zito, I’ve had some jam sessions with him. Bernie Williams is probably the most talented guy out of all of us. He’s classically trained as a jazz musician. On the Diamondbacks, we had a couple of guys who played and we had a jam room that Kirk Gibson our manager didn’t mind us going out to before games and jamming. I remember jamming with Barry one time and he was like, ‘dude how do you remember the words to all these songs?’ He knew all the songs but he wouldn’t be able to sing them because he couldn’t remember the words. That was kind of my forte.”
Are there any other baseball players out there who would blow us away with their musical talents?“Other than the guys I’ve mentioned they’re very hard to come by. I’ve taught David Wells, I’ve taught David Ross, I taught Chris Denorfia, and Johnny Damon. A lot of these guys love to play but a lot of times their right hand will not keep time and rhythm. So I’ve had a hard time finding guys that will really shock you. There were guys in the minor leagues who I may have forgotten their names, they were usually the best musicians that I would come across and they never made it to the major leagues. Some of them branched off and did music after baseball. I would say Bernie is by far the most talented that I’ve ever played with. [Jake] Peavy’s voice stands up in the world. It’s got a good texture to it. He’s fun to be around. Other than that, there’s no one that I can think of that’s absolutely amazing. Most guys if they’ve played enough the word has leaked out.”
What was it like trying to teach Johnny Damon music?
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“Johnny is a strange dichotomy of a guy who loves music more than anybody I know, wants to sing karaoke every single night, but has a really hard time staying on key. We used to laugh. I’d get a guitar and play one line, and I’d say Johnny just copy this. His wife would be right there and we would try but it was really hard. We’re all very different. I can’t sing harmony and am limited in what I do and you try to do the best you can, but Johnny his ears don’t hear notes too good.”
I read a Cincinnati Enquirer story that said Dusty Baker met Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers through you? How’d that happen?
“It’s kind of a funny coincidence. I woke up with a text message a few days ago from Dusty that said ‘Hey, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are staying in our hotel, do you think you can make a call and get us some tickets for the night?’ I hadn’t heard from him since they won the World Series. Dusty is the greatest manager I’ve ever had, just an eclectic guy and a beautiful soul to be around, and I’ll do anything to help him out. But, back in 2012 the Chili Peppers were in town playing Cincinnati and I had a friend, Josh Klinghoffer, who was in that band for a decade. So, I brought the guys down, they took batting practice and I’ve got a video of Flea hitting and a post-interview with him and Dusty got to meet all the guys there.”
You mentioned that the guys in your band are all from New England. How’d you all meet? “It was spring training of 04. My drummer Eric Gardner and the guitar player Jamie Arentzen, they were playing in Jamie’s original band American Hi-Fi and they were opening up for Fuel. Since I was the resident music guy in the locker room, they came to me and said, ‘hey there’s some musicians here today, you need to show them around the stadium.’ We became fast friends. I met those two and then my other guitar player, Clint Walsh, was introduced to me a few weeks later. He was in town to see a Red Sox game and we ended up jamming at the house after the game and he was showing me different things on the guitar. And so, we just started hanging out in the offseason and playing Hot Stove Cool Music. It’s been really beautiful to not have a bunch of musicians who are hired guns, but a bunch of guys who I have this beautiful relationship with over the past 20 years. For the meat and potatoes of my career, these guys were at my house for playoff games, and when I beat [Madison] Bumgarner 9-0 in San Fransisco in 2012. Klinghoffer from the Chili Peppers was in the house that night too with a broken ankle. Those times were some of the best memories of my career.”
How was the process of putting together your most recent album ‘Some Might Say?’ And what makes you proud of it?
“What I’m really proud about is that earlier in the process I didn’t have a way of finishing songs. I could write kids’ songs because they were very literal. If you’re saying eat your fruits and vegetables and go to sleep at night that’s very easy. But if you’re trying to make something that someone can sing along with it felt like a little bit more of a challenge. And so what I did was, I noticed that everybody else always seems to write with somebody. They’re always writing with a partner. And so, like, I started taking these little riffs that I got from the guys in the band or I came up with myself and I would take them over to my buddy Elliot Sloan from Blessed Union of Souls here in Cincinnati. Elliot has just been a great friend over the years since I was in a Reds uniform and we always kind of messed around and played music together. He helped me realize that in four hours I could come to his house with an idea of what I wanted to write about or a riff and we could get a junky demo by the time I left that day. And so I got addicted to that process. From top to bottom these stories don’t feel conjured. They feel authentic. They came from seedlings in my mind observing the world and historical events and kind of weaving who Bronson Arroyo is through these songs in a real slight way.”
Who is Bronson Arroyo in his own words?
“Who I am in real life, is a present tense guy who is super optimistic and just thinks about death a lot. I think about the fact that I blink and I’m 23 and I just made it to the big leagues and now I’m 46. I’m double the age I was when I got to the major leagues and the time has gone by so fast and you hear your parents say it all the time. We continuously ignore the fact that we’re sliding down this slide to death. I want to have magic moments with the people I enjoy being around before we’re all gone. A lot of me in this record is me being in these moments, enjoying these moments, not being fearful of what will happen in the future, or being angst-ridden about things that happen in the past. That’s basically who I have been and why I could survive being in baseball for so long as well.”
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