Bob DeVos - Interview by Rick Holland   
 
Rick Holland, JR247: Bob welcome to JR247’s interview forums. We appreciate your being a part of this process.
BTW-great new release, I really loved your sound and note selection, and sense of phrasing.
First question, who were some musicians who influenced you as far as sound conception? You get a clean crisp, and articulated sound. Yet, there is lots of beauty in your sound as well.

Bob DeVos: Thanks so much for these words; my sound is a critical part of who I am as a musician. The guitarists that initially influenced me were Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, and Jim Hall. I remember reading a Jim Hall interview where he talked about practicing and concentrating on the sound of the pick striking the string and trying to get that sound to disappear so that just the note would come out. It’s a Zen-like concept that really struck home with me. Of course, in Wes’ case he didn’t use a pick at all and got that beautiful fat, round sound.

As with these guitarists, I listen extensively to horn players and try to get away from the mechanics of the guitar in terms of sound, articulation and phrasing. At an early stage in my playing I picked almost every note. I then went through a period of playing Charlie Parker heads and soloing along with his recordings. I found that I had to alter my picking technique drastically, using combinations of slurs, pull-offs, etc. to match Bird’s phrasing on the recordings. My early style of picking didn’t work at all for me in this respect. After spending many months working to develop this new method of articulation I felt that I really had something that allowed me to better express myself. So my right hand picking approach developed through my musical sensibility, that is, how I wanted to hear music, rather than some technical method. I also learned a lot about developing my personal sound through this process.

JR247: I love your note selection, sense of phrasing, and attention to modern harmony. Can you tell our listeners part of the process in learning how to apply harmony to your improvisational style? Was a lot of this conceived through transcribing?

BD: Yes, transcribing was a big part of my process of teaching myself to improvise. Actually, when I first picked up a guitar at 12, I started teaching myself solos off of records; I didn’t know the word transcribing or what it was. It was just a natural process for me to work this way from the very start. When I began learning Wes Montgomery and other solos, I started writing them down. And, I was reading in Downbeat interviews that transcribing was key with the great musicians I was listening to on records.

I feel it is real important to transcribe; it is the reverse process from reading music. Transcribing compels you listen to rhythms very closely and to be able to write them down. Plus, you are developing your ear, you have to hear what fits, what notes to select.
Now, I don’t transcribe whole solos, I don’t have the time, but I will sometimes transcribe part of something that really interests me, like 4 or 8 bars of Herbie Hancock or McCoy Tyner things.

In the early 1980s, my guitar students at William Paterson University were learning melodic minor scales for improvising. But I had taught myself to solo by using the notes that fit the chords, figuring it out for myself, and by transcribing Coltrane and Wes and many other players. I would play something for a student or write out a melodic line to fit a Dominant 7th #5#9 chord and say, “try this”.

One student said, “Oh, you are using a minor melodic scale”. But, I didn’t think that way then; I hadn’t learned by a system, I worked out those scales for myself by playing the chord and experimenting with lines that fit in with those chordal structures. John Coltrane and Wes were playing all of this and I figured out for myself what would work before learning theory or systems. I have heard that Wes didn’t even know the names of chords, but he sure sounds like he knew enough.

I later studied these scale systems, but it was a reinvestigation using this academic approach, because I had already been playing all of it, especially when I was playing vibraphonist Dave Samuel’s tunes when we were both members of Timepiece.
JR247: Bob, please share with us some of your important memories with playing with the Jimmy McGriff - Hank Crawford quartet and how this group influenced your musical evolution?

BD: I worked with Jimmy and Hank in the late 1980s. Jimmy, of course, calls himself the “King of the Blues Organ” and, believe me, I never would have gotten the gig if my blues chops hadn’t been already strongly honed on the organ circuit. So, I hope it is ok if I talk about my musical evolution prior to Jimmy and Hank and then get back to them.

As a kid, I started in jazz touring with the Trudy Pitts and Mr. C Trio and then worked with Richard “Groove” Holmes and Sonny Stitt. Those audiences and the musicians were, well let me say, very demanding. I was playing 4 shows a night, 7 nights a week with a matinee on Sundays, then going back to a dingy hotel room and working on repertoire, transcribing all day. This on-the-road organ circuit training was very different than going to Berklee or a college jazz program. If you didn’t get it right, the musicians would yell at you on the bandstand or drop you off at the Greyhound bus station mid-tour. (I was in his van when Charles Earland drove up to the Greyhound depot in Harrisburg, PA and said to the drummer, “this is your stop, you’re getting off here, find your way home.” We went on to our gig in New York City, I hired Buddy Williams to play drums, and the other drummer was not missed.)

And, to survive you had to know how to really play the blues. The music and the lifestyle co-existed.

Younger readers are less likely to be familiar with Sonny Stitt and he was one of the real greats. But, again, he was not exactly what we would call a mentor in terms of positive reinforcement. He would gave you a look-or worse-- and you had to figure it out on your own or you were out. But that kind of training meant that you could cut it with anyone, anywhere.

After “Groove” Holmes- Sonny Stitt, I worked with Charles Earland in the 1980s and would later work and record with him extensively in the 1990s. And, Charles was a powerful blues musician and all his sidemen had to be, too. He would yell at other musicians from the bandstand to “play the blues, mother-f---,” but he never yelled at me. I already had it.

To get back to Jimmy and Hank: It was great to play with each of them. I was ready for it when I got the call, I was recommended by guitarist Phil Upchurch and Jimmy knew me from my work with Charles Earland. On my first night with them I met them at the gig at Birdland in Los Angeles and we were all hanging out backstage and talking about news back east. One of my friends was backstage with me. As we started out on the stage, my friend said, “But they never said anything about the music, what are you going to play?“ And they never talked about music. The feeling was that the only reason to talk about the music was if something was wrong with it.

We got on stage; Jimmy pointed to an F with his left hand; we started playing. Somewhere mid-tune, both Jimmy and Hank were smiling at me, so I knew everything was fine, I had passed the test.

I really appreciated Jimmy’s bass lines; he and “Groove” Holmes and Jack MacDuff were originally bass players and they all had very strong bass lines which anchored, gave a solid foundation, to their playing and the overall group sound. Jimmy used the colors of sound on the organ really well; he got a lot of variation out of the drawbars. Many organists just use one sound.

And, as noted above, everything in this group was blues-oriented; whether it was a standard or whatever was being played. This took me even deeper into the blues vocabulary. I had started listening to B.B. King and Albert Collins and all of the great blues guitarists when I was a kid starting out, but at this time in the late1980s I went back and listened to them with a keener ear.

As to Hank, his phrasing was like a singer’s; he could work a melody like Aretha Franklin, especially on ballads. I learned a lot about phrasing from Hank and how important it is to be a storyteller as I play. Hank was very important to how I convey my thoughts through my music.

As to specific memories, when we did the PBS documentary jazz series, Live at Elario’s (a San Diego club), the producer of the show needed a set list to plan the program. Jimmy never would go on a bandstand and have a preplanned idea of what to play. So, I remember Jimmy sitting down at a table and it was torture for him to put pencil to paper and do something he never did. He finally got a set list together, but writing out a set list was so contrary to Jimmy’s approach, which was all about being spontaneous, about responding to an audience and knowing just what to play next.

I have watched this tape in recent years-- my wife who I met in 2000 wanted to hear and see it—ordinarily I never watch myself. My sound and vocabulary have changed a lot since then but it is a good document of a place and a time. I still see Jimmy; he was honored at An Organ Summit Supreme in 2005; I was musical director. Hank and I talk periodically.

JR247: Bob, you have a lot of Blues in your vocabulary. This is evident in both your repertoire and your note and phrase choices. Can you deliberate on what the Blues can do for the Jazz improviser?

BD: Well, as you can gather from what I said above, I either was going to learn how to play the real blues or I would get fired or get shot by someone at the bar. (This last was effectively expressed as “white boy better play the blues…”) This said, I deeply feel that the blues has to be at the heart of jazz or it just does not have soul. I don’t care how sophisticated the composition—mine or that of others-- the blues has to be implied somewhere in my playing.

If you listen to all the great jazz musicians, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane—all great blues players. There is a way to integrate blues vocabulary where it is not obvious in your improvisations that you are playing blues licks: you twist the blues vocabulary to fit the chord changes you are playing over. I do this everywhere; it is a natural part of my playing and improvising be it on Miles Davis’ “Nardis” or a standard like Jimmy Van Heusen’s ballad “But Beautiful” on my current CD.

JR247: Many may or may not know, but you also have playing affiliations with people like Ron McClure, Eric Alexander, Jim Rotondi and a host of other modernists. How important is it for you to play in different musical climates?

BD: First, let me say that it is terrific to work with each of these three musicians you cite. I have played and recorded with all of them and wrote or arranged the tunes Eric plays on Shifting Sands with his sound specifically in mind.

I have always played in many, many musical climates and am comfortable in just about any jazz setting. Practically speaking, it is vital to me as a working musician to be able to step into any situation and immediately contribute, which I can do. And, I take something from each setting. In some ways, who we are as musicians is shaped by those we play with.

Musically speaking, working with these musicians or groups allow for all possibilities. For example with the Ron McClure Quartet, or when I play with Billy Drummond and Mike McGuirk in trio, these are musicians who can play anything. With the McClure group, Ron, Jed Levy and I shared compositional duties for our two SteepleChase CDs, Match Point and Age of Peace. These musicians open up all the possibilities of what you can write and bring to a rehearsal and it sounds good right away. Interestingly, Ron, Jed and I all tend to write very challenging and complex compositions but the execution masks the challenges as does our predisposition to maintaining a melodic flow. What I mean is the harmonic structures are very challenging, not your ordinary II-IV jazz, but by design the melody lines make the music more accessible.

This means I am writing music that works for listeners of every degree of sophistication. These same characteristics are true of how I compose and arrange for my organ trio.

JR247: Bob, I also wanted to point out to our listeners the newest CD, Shifting Sands, has a wonderful ‘feel’. I noticed you were quoted as saying you “like to arrange and explore the ‘new’ potential of the Hammond B-3 organ, without it losing its tradition”. It’s interesting, that’s exactly how I took “Shifting Sands” when I first heard it. Traditional, yet with a modern harmonic twist. Can you elaborate on this concept?

BD: All of us on Shifting Sands have played traditional organ music in that “grits and gravy style” and I want elements of that in the composition and performance—especially in the foundation, the “feel”. But I also want more.

I think you can hear what I mean by listening to my “Lost and Found” on the current CD. I wanted some of the feeling of Eddie Harris and his “Listen Hear”. “Listen Hear” is a fairly simple three-chord tune. In contrast, my tune “Lost and Found” has a melody that appears simple, but if you listen to the chord changes, it is a very deceptive simplicity. These are very difficult chords to solo over. One guitarist wrote me that he tried to transcribe the tune and couldn’t get past measure three. Now, this is not complexity for the sake of complexity. It is what I hear, the colors I want, and I can only get those colors with modern, sophisticated chords.

I think this concept of “a new potential without losing the tradition, the soul and guts of the organ genre” is even more clear if you listen closely to the title tune “Shifting Sands”. Here I wanted and I think I got a very strong gospel feel; audiences respond intensely on first hearing. But the harmonies on “Shifting Sands” are very complex; I describe them as treacherous territory to solo over. Not every organ player could play this tune, I can only think of a few. In this respect, organist Dan Kostelnik’s abilities help me attain this goal.

My goal is to give the organ genre a depth that goes beyond soul jazz; it brings to the organ genre what I play and hear in classical music and play in straight ahead jazz groups. My idea of a CD where both the compositional elements and musicianship are fully realized is on Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil.

To take this further, I lot of what I learned about writing comes from transcribing Monk, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, to name a few, as well as what I learned from studying composition with Edgar Grana –a classical composer—and analyzing classical compositions—Debussy, Chopin, Ravel, Bach, Elgar, Schumann. I pay a lot of attention to form and devices of shifting key centers. So, I that is the music I listen to and that is what I want to bring to the organ genre.

Obviously, my musical sensibility is different from somebody who exclusively is listening to Jimmy Smith tunes. But, I’ve transcribed Jimmy Smith tunes and played with all the legendary organists in the Jimmy Smith “school”, so both sides are part of who I am as a person and as a player.

JR247: You obviously love organ trio, how did this all start?

BD: I came from a working class family and no one played an instrument. I started guitar at 12 and was playing in an R&B band in high school. So that was my first real exposure to music and one the organist in the band had a Jimmy Smith record with Kenny Burrell and Grady Tate. This music appealed to me and was not a far stretch from what I was playing. I was living outside of Paterson, NJ and it was the tail end of the glory years of the organ clubs in Paterson, Newark, Philadelphia, Harlem, Pittsburgh, upstate NY etc. Soon, I was touring, but when home, I started going to the clubs in Newark to hear Pat Martino and Grant Green. That meant I was hearing Dr. Lonnie Smith, Trudy Pitts, Jimmy McGriff, “Groove” Holmes, Charles Earland, Jack McDuff. Very soon, I went on to play and/or record with all of them.

There is also a practical, working side of playing with organ trios, too. I have been supporting myself as musician since I was a teenager and the guitar performs an important function in the organ trio. I was playing with Rhoda Scott and Bill Doggett and Jimmy McGriff at an organ summit. The organizers had failed to hire a guitarist for Jack MacDuff, the fourth organist.

As Jack put it, “You got to have the guitar with the organ, without the guitar, there’s no organ,” as only Jack could say it. Meaning most organists need the guitarist to comp during their solos since they are playing left hand bass and can’t comp for themselves. Needless to say, I played with Jack that day, too. What I am getting at is as a guitarist in jazz, the organ setting is the one setting which needs the guitar and I needed to work.

JR247: Let’s turn our attention to Shifting Sands. Tell our listeners about its evolution and your playing relationship with organist Dan Kostelnik and drummer Steve Johns.

BD: Before 1999, I was touring extensively with my great friend Charles “the Mighty Burner” Earland and playing locally as a leader. Charles produced and played on my first HighNote/Savant CD as a leader, Breaking the Ice, in 1999. It took me a long time to see myself being a leader and I am really grateful to Charles. He died just when the CD was being released and I miss him deeply as a friend and as a musician.

After Charles died, I realized, I was long overdue to form a real working group and record as a leader. I had a fully developed sense of myself as a musician and had written many very well received tunes, some recorded by other musicians such as tenor great Bob Sheppard.

I needed an organist who was both able to handle sophisticated harmonies and who was serious about being part of my working group. As a student of Harold Mabern’s at William Paterson, Dan Kostelnik had heard my work on many CDs and was anxious to work with me. I heard many things in Dan’s playing I liked and I heard a great potential as well. He is also a superb pianist, and I wanted an organist who was both. He has mastery over both the traditional organ idiom as well as well as the harmonically sophisticated structures I talk about above.

Steve and I had been on many gigs together for years. Steve, too, wanted to be part of my working trio. Steve is a complete musician with a wide experience playing and recording in a wide range of styles; he has listened to many great drummers. I really like Steve’s feel, dynamics, support, and that he has his own voice. Like Dan, he is totally committed to our being a working band—The Bob DeVos Organ Trio. The three of us share musical goals and really like working together. Dan, Steve, and I are all pretty busy on our own, but both of them want to come over and rehearse my new music and I really appreciate their time and input. Plus we really like being on the bandstand together. At heart, all three of us live to perform.

I hadn’t recorded my own CD in a couple of years when I made Shifting Sands with Dan and Steve and Eric Alexander as guest tenor and Gary Fritz, a terrific percussionist, on some tracks. I was waiting to find the musicians who could play my tunes and arrangements. More important, I was writing tunes with Dan’s, Steve’s and Eric’s playing specifically in mind.

JR247: In your liner notes, you say your emphasis is to continue in the Young-Green-Jones tradition of organ playing. (for those who do not know-I assuming that’s Larry Young, Grant Green, Elvin Jones) Tell us why? And what makes this tradition aka-post Coltrane appealing to you?

BD: Larry Young was an organist who didn’t fit the traditional mold of the soul jazz thing. He was listening to Monk, and Trane, Bud Powell, McCoy Tyner. Obviously Elvin Jones played with Trane in his quartet, and was part of Coltrane’s sound. Grant Green had a modern, horn like sound on all those great Blue Note records. For example listen to this trio and Larry’s tune “Paris Eyes”-- Young’s compositions have a Monk–like sound which really appeals to me.

The Young-Green-Jones organ group was way ahead of their time in the 1960s, and represent the approach to music, to jazz, to the organ trio that I talked about earlier in this interview.

JR247: Bob, can you address comping? You do it so tastefully, and after listening to you, I know I’d really like the richness you provide as a soloist. What are some things you teach your students to consider when playing accompanist in a rhythm section?

BD: When I first started out in jazz as the guitarist for the Trudy Pitts-Mr. C Band, if I wasn’t comping the way they wanted, drummer Bill (Carney) would yell at me on the bandstand. I didn’t like being yelled out, so I learned how to comp. There are some very specific comping styles you have to learn to fit the organ genre, such as the “Charleston comp” and the “Freddie Green” style, so I learned these basic styles.

More important, Trudy (who is also a classically trained pianist) didn’t like the way any guitar players comped and told me to listen to piano players. I listened to Red Garland, Wynton Kelly, Herbie, and McCoy Tyner and that Is how I learned to comp. This is one of the reasons I can comp very comfortably for piano players and have really like playing with pianists such as Don Friedman and Onaje Allan Gumbs—Onaje and I have been on many records together and I am on his current CD, Sack Full of Dreams. When the pianist and guitarist listen and leave space for each other, it is a beautiful combination.

When I teach my students, I emphasize that everything is based around the thirds and sevenths of the chord.—those are the important notes that tell you if the chord is major or minor, if the chord is major 7th or Dominant 7th. Those are the notes where you hear the resolutions in the chord progressions. This is not a big secret but it is critical. When I comp I base everything around those notes, the other notes in the chord are the colors. This concept also carries over into soloing.

JR247:“Mojave” is a Jobim tune I did not know. Where did you pick this one up? And, do you play much Latin styles of music?

BD: I like playing in many musical settings and with jazz musicians from many backgrounds and traditions. Since about 2000, I have been performing a few times a year at the Van Dyke Café in Miami Beach, often with Brazilian musicians or jazz players there like bassist Don Wilner who are deeply immersed in Brazilian music and Brazilian jazz. I am not a Brazilian-style guitarist but the musicians there especially want me as a soloist. These Miami Beach engagements meant my immediate, on-the-bandstand immersion in a broad repertoire of Jobim tunes and other Brazilian works not usually played by mainstream jazz musicians. I took strongly to Mojave the first time I played it. My wife happened to be at that gig and months later the tune and my solo came back to her and she asked me to start playing it and it is a great tune. I need tunes I can improvise on in many different ways so that I don’t get bored playing—Mojave really works for me.

Similarly, in Miami, you just feel Latin rhythms somewhere in the ether and I sometimes play Latin Jazz. Trumpet great Ray Vega sometimes plays with me in organ settings.

JR247: I’m anxious to hear some more of your work, because I hear a lot of modern harmony within your solo’s. Tell us about some of the projects you’ve been involved with, including the Ron McClure Quartet.

BD: Ron is a great bass player and a very complete musician—an outstanding soloist and a fine composer. As noted above, Ron, tenor saxophonist Jed Levy, and I share compositional duties on the two CDs we have made for Steeplechase Records, Match Point and Age of Peace, Jeff Brillinger was the drummer. Both CDs were very well reviewed in Europe but had limited distribution here, which is too bad. Ron had been playing with Jed for a long time, and knew my work from our having done freelance performances together. When Ron decided a few years ago to form a new band, I was really honored to get the call. We have done some great gigs together and, you know, I didn’t think of it until now, but I think that call and the writing and rehearsing and performing also fed into my developing my own band and making Shifting Sands.

I always look forward to playing as part of the Ron McClure Quartet. Ron really stretches and challenges all the musicians he works with. As a musician, I want to always be evolving.

I also play in trio with Billy Drummond on drums and Mike McGuirk on bass. Jed Levy joins us in jams at Billy’s and we all look forward to also working as a quartet with Jed on tenor.

Billy is a close friend, lives close by and we are both pretty serous audiophiles. Billy, Mike and I play a very challenging repertoire. We return to the Kitano Jazz Room on April 11 and I hope some of your readers come by. They are both very open players and since I am playing the only chordal instrument, I can go anywhere I want to take it.

Another great collaboration has been with Hendrik Meurkens. We heard one another play live about a year ago, started talking, and Hendrik has come in as a guest with my trio. I really like the sound of vibes with the Hammond B3 and Hendrik’s solos on harmonica on some of my tunes. Hendrik is doing a live recording at Cecil’s Jazz Club with Mike LeDonne on Hammond and Jimmy Jackson and me. Mike is one of the real greats; I get to play with him often on his regular Tuesday night Organ Grooves at SMOKE on upper Broadway in NY. So I am really looking forward to these dates in mid-April.

As mentioned above, I am a guest on Onaje Allan Gumbs’ current CD, Sack Full of Dreams and have been on a number of the CD release events lately. Playing with Onaje is very satisfying; he combines a lot of musical elements that we both share.

So, it is really gratifying that you want to hear my work in other musical settings as well as with my trio and I look forward to hearing your reaction to any of the above.

JR247: Composition is very important to you; I’ve noticed you devote time to study and reflection in this regard. You’ve been recognized by the New Jersey Council of the Arts. A lot of this composition seems very progressive. Can you talk about who has influenced you of late, and whom you think we should all consider to spend time with their compositional work?

BD: Thank you, it is progressive and I really appreciate how closely you have listened to my playing and your insights here and throughout this interview.
I think your readers have gathered that the classical composers, especially, Debussy, Chopin, Ravel, Bach, Elgar, Schumann that I mentioned before are important to me as a jazz composer. I especially listen a great deal to Mauricio Pollini playing Chopin and Debussy and Beethoven. I play Bach-- poorly-- on piano but it turns my brain to a certain kind of order when I compose. I have also been playing Bach Violin Sonatas and Partitas on guitar as part of my practice routine. Glenn Gould’s Well Tempered Clavier recordings are as heavy as any jazz recording.

Some of my tunes I hear almost fully conceived in my head, others I work out on guitar and others on piano. Piano slows my playing and thinking down, which can be good when I write. I guess by now, the readers also have an idea of the jazz artists I spend time with. But, any composition you hear that you like, you should you write it out, learn it out, analyze why is appeals to you.

JR247: Tell us some of your plans for 2007 and beyond?

BD: I have begun thinking about the music I want to record next and I have been writing tunes for my next CD.

I am looking forward to performing in concert with my organ trio at a number of jazz festivals nationwide, including the Lake George Festival in mid September, and gigs in the NYC-Philadelphia area. I look forward to hearing audience response to the new tunes I have added to our book, which is already pretty expansive. Eric Alexander will be with us on some of these performances and it will be great to play with him live with this group.

In addition, I will be going into the San Diego Art Museum and the Jazz Bakery with Eric as special guest in early June. I lived in L.A. for three years in the late 1980s and played often with drummer Joe LaBarbera who, along with organist Joe Bagg, will be on these California gigs. I also have some upcoming performances with Mike McGuirk and Billy Drummond, most notably at the Kitano Jazz Room in NYC on April 11. Our previous nights there have been very well received.

Later in April I will be one of the featured guitarists in the Wes Montgomery Tribute at the Cape May Jazz Festival, that includes Pat Martino. As noted above, Wes is king around our house; this will be terrific.

I will be part of the JVC Jazz Festival at the Van Dyke in Miami Beach, leading on Thursday May 17 with Gerry Niewood as special guest and with Hendrik Meurkens on Saturday, May 19. Bassist Don Wilner, the musical director there will be playing both nights along with my great friend, drummer Rudy Petschauer, with whom I have played often for years.

Coming up on April 14 I will be on a live Hammond B3 recording that Hendrik Meurkens is leading with Mike LeDonne on organ and legendary organ drummer Jim Jackson. As noted, I really like playing with Hendrik; I like the sound of both his vibes and harmonica with my group. Mike has a regular Tuesday night organ grooves at SMOKE on the upper West side and I play with him in that setting, often in trio, often with Eric on tenor. That is always great. Mike has tremendous energy and—as a pianist-- brings a great, distinctive dimension to his organ style

In November I will be touring largely In Belgium with Belgium Hammond player Dirk Van der Linden. I look forward to playing for these audiences and this trip has special meaning for me, as my godparents brought my father to the US as a young child from Belgium decades ago, but I have never played there before.

The calendar is on my website, www.Bobdevosjazzguitar.com which is updated often. I know many of your readers will be guitarists are interested in gear and I have a discussion of what I use on my site that they may like to check out. One thing that doesn’t come out in many interviews is that I have very strong feelings about my amplifiers and build or totally rebuild my own to get the sound I really want.

Again Rick, thanks you very much for this interview and your perceptive questions.

Bob DeVos