Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Hey what's
Speaker 1: up y'all? March is Women's History Month. As we celebrate
Speaker 1: at LS, we're going to look back at this classic
Speaker 1: episode from twenty twenty two with Bonnie Raid discussing her
Speaker 1: journey and passion for helping blues legends benefit from their
Speaker 1: trail blazing.
Speaker 2: You look gorgeous.
Speaker 3: Oh thank you. You guys are be colorful and I
Speaker 3: was going to do the green and purple and red
Speaker 3: hair saying hello working for you.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, ladies and gentlemen, this is Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: My name, of course, it is Quest Love Jenkins. We
Speaker 1: are joined by the almighty Team Supreme members starting a
Speaker 1: power forward. My main man, unpaid Bill, How are you, sir?
Speaker 4: Fantastic power forward. I like it Number four, I'll take you.
Speaker 1: I'm proud to say that I've gotten unpaid Bill off
Speaker 1: the ledge and I think I made him watch his
Speaker 1: first episode of Euphouri last night to hold me. I'm
Speaker 1: on it, oh man.
Speaker 4: I had a full on panic attack and that turned
Speaker 4: it off.
Speaker 1: You four year is the new uh uh, it's to me.
Speaker 1: It's the new contraception, It's.
Speaker 3: The new don't do drugs.
Speaker 1: You have the new don't have daughter? Yeah, it's it's you.
Speaker 1: Four is the new do not have kids? Yes? Exactly.
Speaker 1: Laiah up next, she's our center.
Speaker 2: How are you on the boys and girls? I did?
Speaker 1: How did you know that? Yes? I just took a while. Guest,
Speaker 1: how are you this? Uh? This lovely evening.
Speaker 2: I'm trying not to embarrass y'all and break into tears
Speaker 2: as I am in the presence of a queen. So
Speaker 2: just just just bear with me because this is it's
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 1: Okay. So our our power forward is sugar Steve.
Speaker 5: You got to stop with the sports now, that's just
Speaker 5: your go to Steve. Like I'm a small for Yeah,
Speaker 5: I could shoot the three so it just passes me
Speaker 5: outside and uh oh okay. They used to call me
Speaker 5: downtown Stevie Brown.
Speaker 1: So all right, well I made you my power forward
Speaker 1: still Steve, of course, my my my shooting guard right
Speaker 1: here it Spawnico, Yes, indeed his own. How are you
Speaker 1: the shooters and the shooters only, I'm good man, I'm
Speaker 1: good man. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 6: This, this, this interview, this is this is gonna be
Speaker 6: a lot of fun because I remember looking in the
Speaker 6: paper as a kid and the Lucky to Draw album
Speaker 6: was always on the charts.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a ladies and gentlemen, I will say, I'll
Speaker 1: try not to show over the intro too long, but
Speaker 1: I gotta, I gotta pull out the commermative one for this.
Speaker 1: I'll say that our guest tonight probably the most truest
Speaker 1: sense of the word is an artist, and the truest
Speaker 1: sense of the word of artist that the industry has
Speaker 1: ever known. I think for the last five decades she's
Speaker 1: held the torch super high for I mean, just the
Speaker 1: lost art of sheer authentic blues madness. In addition to
Speaker 1: other genres of music. She's a supreme songwriter, bullseye vocalist,
Speaker 1: hands down all star level delta blues guitar mastery. And
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna I'm not gonna frame it like
Speaker 1: she can hang with the greats. As far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 1: the greats are trying to hang with her. Oh and
Speaker 1: after oh no, it gets even better. So after yeah,
Speaker 1: two decades, after a twenty year run of Critical Claim.
Speaker 1: At the Critical Claim release, I will that nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine the stars aligned when after nine or ten attempts
Speaker 1: I believe. I think it's your tenth album. The world
Speaker 1: finally caught up to her level of soulful rock and
Speaker 1: blues magic with a little bitty album called Nick of Time,
Speaker 1: which in my opinion is one of the most well
Speaker 1: deserved comeback stories. But you know, I know most artists
Speaker 1: like I never left. You know. It's not like an
Speaker 1: overnight success thing. It garnered her album of the Year accolades,
Speaker 1: platinum glory, a whole new fan base that resonated and
Speaker 1: related to her outlook of a generation getting mature in
Speaker 1: a new decade, which you know, the nineties were upon
Speaker 1: us by that point. Remember the nineties people years ago? Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: Not to be outdone, I'll say that her follow up
Speaker 1: album luck of the draw with the immortal classic I
Speaker 1: Can't Make You Love Me? Is it even bigger? Monster? Wait,
Speaker 1: it's just hit me right now that my third book
Speaker 1: might be named after a Bonnie rait Saw. I definitely
Speaker 1: remember one of the last conversations Rich and I having
Speaker 1: about naming something the food about, and I remember him,
Speaker 1: Bonnie raid So one of my last conversations with my
Speaker 1: manager before he passed. It's just hitting me right now.
Speaker 1: Her legend status of course, came full circle in two thousand,
Speaker 1: I believe, when she was inducted into the Rock and
Speaker 1: Ball Hall of Fame. I can say for myself personally
Speaker 1: that her actual story, her entire story, has been an
Speaker 1: inspiration for me as a kind of blueprint in terms
Speaker 1: of artists that are trying to stay true to their
Speaker 1: integrity without and trying to find a space to also
Speaker 1: make a living and connect with their fan base. Of course,
Speaker 1: this upcoming summer, she'll be conducting a tour with another
Speaker 1: great Nava Staples. I can go on and on and on,
Speaker 1: but please let's just get to it, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: Please welcome to QLs ten time Grammy winner, Master Musician, singer, songwriter,
Speaker 1: overall legend, Bonnie Raey.
Speaker 3: Thank you indeed, yes in the paint with my butts here,
Speaker 3: thank you?
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely yeah. Indeed where are you talking to us
Speaker 1: right now? From where are you at?
Speaker 3: I'm out in Marin County about fifteen minutes north at
Speaker 3: Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where it is truly
Speaker 3: beautiful and we got some much needed rain for a
Speaker 3: minute last night.
Speaker 1: Wholl I never heard of California and actually welcome rain.
Speaker 1: Normally it's the opposite where I hear them always complaining
Speaker 1: about rain.
Speaker 3: We need it. We're in a serious drought. Man, we've
Speaker 3: got You saw those terrible wildfires.
Speaker 1: On the fire in the west.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, we need some water.
Speaker 2: Season wins coming, all right?
Speaker 1: SONI have you how long have you lived lived out
Speaker 1: in that area?
Speaker 3: Well? I go back and forth to La, where I
Speaker 3: was raised. But I got too much traffic, too much
Speaker 3: show business. And once I got sober, about thirty five
Speaker 3: years ago, I went I was up in the daytime
Speaker 3: and I went, Man, this place, this is not beautiful.
Speaker 3: And I had been there so many years. I always
Speaker 3: wanted to move to where the redwoods were and where
Speaker 3: I could hike and breathe the clean air and be
Speaker 3: near the ocean. So I've been here like maybe a
Speaker 3: little over thirty years, and I go back and forth.
Speaker 3: When I rehearse and go into the show business world,
Speaker 3: I go down to LA and then up here I'm
Speaker 3: in the chill in the redwoods kind of.
Speaker 1: I love it to go to La, get your money,
Speaker 1: and then go back home. I love it. You got
Speaker 1: that right, So you're recommending that if I were to
Speaker 1: choose a place to live in California because I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll admit to you, I'm probably one of the few
Speaker 1: people that I might pretend to be. You know, everyone
Speaker 1: pretends that they're so jaded with LA, Like I can't
Speaker 1: stand it's so fake, so phony. Whatever I'm not because
Speaker 1: I don't live there, I still like look forward to
Speaker 1: always coming to La Like it's still there's still a
Speaker 1: little bit of magic luster to me.
Speaker 3: But you're feel the same way because I don't live
Speaker 3: there anymore. So when I go there, I get a
Speaker 3: kick out of it, and it's it's it's really there's
Speaker 3: a very There's some really cool stuff in La. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff, but it's really crowded and at
Speaker 3: some point when you're on the roads as much as
Speaker 3: I am, and in a hotel downtown, you know, sometimes you
Speaker 3: just want nature and you want some quiet, peace and quiet.
Speaker 3: But so are you going to ask where I would recommend? Yes, Well,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what, if I didn't have some success
Speaker 3: with nick of time, I probably couldn't afford to have
Speaker 3: moved here. So that was one thing. And you know,
Speaker 3: there's some communities that are affordable in California that are
Speaker 3: also beautiful, but man, that you have to go a
Speaker 3: long way to get there. So if you want to
Speaker 3: be near an airport and hospital, and I don't know,
Speaker 3: I think Marin County, Sonoma County, Napa County, those are
Speaker 3: all great. But you got to be worried about the fires.
Speaker 3: And you know, on the East Coast you get worried
Speaker 3: about flooding and some extreme weather that you guys have
Speaker 3: been having. But uh, I don't know. I just love
Speaker 3: I love all the parts of California for lots of
Speaker 3: different reasons, the same way I love all parts of
Speaker 3: this country. I just when people ask me, what's your favorite,
Speaker 3: I go, Man, the Northwest. No, it's New Orleans. No, No,
Speaker 3: it's Texas, No it's but northern California is where I
Speaker 3: choose to live because the weather's really nice. You can
Speaker 3: go outside every day, and you know, it's kind of
Speaker 3: in in the vicinity of some cool cultural scenes in
Speaker 3: Oakland and Berkeley and San Francisco. And yet I got
Speaker 3: the mountains and can have the solace of being in nature.
Speaker 1: Roger, Okay, so we're all moving next th to you
Speaker 1: right now, we can.
Speaker 2: Right That means Razis is coming, because man, that's the
Speaker 2: second highest place, you know, most expensively in the country.
Speaker 3: When I moved here, you know, I just on the
Speaker 3: tail end of where I thought was going to be
Speaker 3: a bunch of you know, hippies and drug dealers and
Speaker 3: shrinks and stuff and just but man, it got soccer
Speaker 3: mom pretty fast.
Speaker 1: I see, I see. So I start off every episode
Speaker 1: with the same question. So you're no exception to the rule.
Speaker 1: Could you please give me your very first musical memory.
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: I think my dad, who was a Broadway leading man,
Speaker 3: singing the songs from his show, with my mom warming
Speaker 3: him up on the panel. She was his musical director
Speaker 3: and rehearsal pianist. And I remember being really little and
Speaker 3: hearing this big, old booming voice singing these great Rogers
Speaker 3: and Hammerstein songs. So I'd have to say, my folks
Speaker 3: playing in the house.
Speaker 1: Were you? What was your siblings situation? How many were you?
Speaker 3: Two brothers, two brothers on either side, two years old
Speaker 3: or two years younger. I'm the only girl.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So okay, you were you were? What was
Speaker 1: that like for you, like in terms of trying to
Speaker 1: find in space? Oh?
Speaker 3: You know, I just ighlized my older brother and I
Speaker 3: went I was a serious tomboy. I got the I
Speaker 3: got the right after I stopped playing with dolls and stuff.
Speaker 3: I I scuffed up and just was got real good
Speaker 3: at sports and cut my hair just like my older brother.
Speaker 3: And uh, I just got the picture early on that
Speaker 3: women had to do all this stupid stuff to make
Speaker 3: themselves pretty and liked. And I just didn't dig it,
Speaker 3: you know. So I just sort of stayed with that
Speaker 3: one of the guys thing for a long time. And
Speaker 3: look how I ended up. I'm one of the guys
Speaker 3: in my band.
Speaker 2: Does that mean you can really fight Bonnie?
Speaker 3: We well, we were Quakers, so we did. That's right,
Speaker 3: That's right. I punched my little I got my little
Speaker 3: brother pretty bad some one time. But no, I just
Speaker 3: I think I love being the only girl in between
Speaker 3: my brothers. But you know when when you hit twelve
Speaker 3: and your brother ditches you because he's you know when
Speaker 3: when I'm ten and he's twelve and eleven thirteen, you know,
Speaker 3: they just sort of reject you, and then you're just
Speaker 3: left to going, oh my god, what's this puberty thing?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so all bets were off. I had to
Speaker 3: become a girl after all.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm actually glad you said that, because I'm
Speaker 1: currently dating a Quaker right now, get out of here.
Speaker 1: And this and this is one of those things that
Speaker 1: you know, like when someone's so obvious and you're afraid
Speaker 1: to ask questions because you feel like you should know
Speaker 1: it already. What exactly differentiates a Quaker from a civilian
Speaker 1: if you will, oh.
Speaker 3: Well, the short version of it for lay people is,
Speaker 3: my folks were both raised Scotch Presbyterian for my dad
Speaker 3: and my mom was the daughter of a Methodist minister,
Speaker 3: and they both after the Second World War they decided
Speaker 3: to become Quakers because they were really the it's not
Speaker 3: an anti religion, but there's no altar, there's no minister,
Speaker 3: there's no people sit in a circle and you just
Speaker 3: get Wyatt and anybody that's moved to stand up and
Speaker 3: speak can speak. There's a pacifist a belief in pacifism
Speaker 3: because there's that of God and every person, and if
Speaker 3: you love the divine then you don't want to kill somebody.
Speaker 3: The idea is to appeal to that of God and
Speaker 3: another person and reach a conflict resolution and treat like
Speaker 3: Jesus would you know, just see that of God and
Speaker 3: the other person and turn the other cheek and try
Speaker 3: to find a way to get along. So that's the
Speaker 3: short skim the stone across the lake version.
Speaker 1: But the.
Speaker 3: Social version of Quakers is they're the ones on the
Speaker 3: ponchos on the peace March that helped ban the bomb.
Speaker 3: They stood up for social justice, they stood up for
Speaker 3: humanitarian They go all around the world and are accepted
Speaker 3: in perias of conflict because they don't take sides.
Speaker 2: Always slavery.
Speaker 3: Quakers had a belief that everybody was equal and that
Speaker 3: nobody was above anyone else, and they got persecuted from
Speaker 3: it and shoved out of England because they wouldn't take
Speaker 3: their hat off to the king, and they were thrashed
Speaker 3: and flogged in public. So I like their kind of
Speaker 3: rebel spirit, and I like their the teachings of real
Speaker 3: nonviolence and love thy neighbor come to come to roost
Speaker 3: and the Quakers really well, so you're.
Speaker 1: Proud, Okay, you're okay, now, I get get it.
Speaker 2: Sounds so badass like Quakers.
Speaker 1: Oh, Gracie's trying to turn me into a Quaker. I
Speaker 1: get it now.
Speaker 3: Well, you don't have to listen to a boring sermon.
Speaker 3: That's for sure, but I'll tell you what I missed
Speaker 3: the music because there, you know, I listened to gospel
Speaker 3: music in la I turned on a black gospel station
Speaker 3: on Sunday mornings and go, man, that's I dig the
Speaker 3: Quakers and all that. But when you're when you're eight,
Speaker 3: you don't want to hold still for an hour, you know.
Speaker 1: So there was absolutely no musical worship, not none whatsoever.
Speaker 3: No none, none of that. But we, you know, we
Speaker 3: sure made up for it. I just remember playing a
Speaker 3: lot of ping pong in Sunday school.
Speaker 2: Really, she's about to turn a lit people.
Speaker 3: Well, well you know that your parents, you know, a
Speaker 3: Quaker meeting, you're really quiet. It's like meditation, a group meditation,
Speaker 3: and kids are squirmy, you know, so you're you're probably
Speaker 3: too squamy to be a Quaker.
Speaker 1: You This explains everything I didn't realize. This is where
Speaker 1: if my wife is headed.
Speaker 3: Yes, you could do worse. You could do worse. You know,
Speaker 3: Quakers are really cool there. They stand up for their beliefs. There,
Speaker 3: they go to jail and conscientious objectors and you know,
Speaker 3: they got a great history fighting slavery and being on
Speaker 3: the right side. And now Richard Nixon was a Quaker.
Speaker 3: But that's a different way, different different branch or Quakers
Speaker 3: that had a minister. And you know, they also are
Speaker 3: really simple. They don't believe in, you know, buying stuff
Speaker 3: and adorning themselves with things that you don't need. It's
Speaker 3: not as severe as the Shakers who don't even use buttons.
Speaker 3: Remember that Witness movie with Yes, I love that, I
Speaker 3: love that. But Ivan Neville was in my band for
Speaker 3: a long time and he said our expression was Alexander
Speaker 3: good Enough played the boyfriend that was pissed off that
Speaker 3: Kelly McGillis was harboring Harrison forties. He comes out wearing
Speaker 3: her ex husband, her dead husband's clothes and are way
Speaker 3: too small from and good Enough looks looks at him,
Speaker 3: goes very plain, very plain. So that's what I haven't said.
Speaker 3: I haven't said the rest of his time with us,
Speaker 3: I said, how you doing? He's going small?
Speaker 1: A small, little little quest of supreme tidbit trivia in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four. So for those I mean, for the
Speaker 1: three of you who listen to the show that don't
Speaker 1: realize my beginnings, I'm My father was a notable oldies
Speaker 1: duop singer back in the fifties. You know, kind of
Speaker 1: made a living in the in the seventies and eighties
Speaker 1: on the on the you know, on the on the
Speaker 1: duop circuit. As you know, you get up in age,
Speaker 1: like around your forties and your fifties, so does your
Speaker 1: fan base. And of course, like the way that my
Speaker 1: life is now, where you know, all the CEOs of
Speaker 1: all these companies or whatever like went to college back
Speaker 1: when the roots were first starting. Uh. My dad was
Speaker 1: actually offered the role of Danny Glover in Witness.
Speaker 3: Whoa Man.
Speaker 1: It's one of my big regrets when like some guy
Speaker 1: walked up to him like Lee, and he came to
Speaker 1: a show and was like, Lee, I'm such a fan
Speaker 1: of yours. And there's a script. They'd sent a script
Speaker 1: to Witness to the House, and I was like, so
Speaker 1: small you could do it. But you know, my my
Speaker 1: father was very insecure about his reading and talked himself
Speaker 1: out of Oh, like he what I call he manifuct it.
Speaker 1: He's said he was chicken. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I got offered a role by in a Day becomes
Speaker 3: Her There's a bartender. They ended up writing it out,
Speaker 3: but Tracy Ullman did it, but I was too chicken man.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm pretty ballsy on stage. You know, I
Speaker 3: got one personality. But in my real life, you know,
Speaker 3: acting is like, oh, turn the cameras on. I get nervous.
Speaker 3: So but I you know, there's I understand that getting
Speaker 3: too chicken when it comes down to being on a film.
Speaker 1: That reminds me that I'm currently reading a book right
Speaker 1: now that is sort of my bible. I gifted it
Speaker 1: to about two hundred of my friends for Christmas. It's
Speaker 1: written by an author called Gay Hendricks, and it's called
Speaker 1: The Good Friend of Mine. Yes four. Chapter four is
Speaker 1: about your story and it's just in me. I didn't
Speaker 1: even make the connection that I'm actually talking to you
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 3: But wow, I didn't even know he put me in
Speaker 3: a book. I hope it was all good, stuffy.
Speaker 2: It's about me.
Speaker 1: It was the chapter the Big The Big Leap is basically,
Speaker 1: you know, as I as I've a explain if there
Speaker 1: was ever a story that I wish that I could
Speaker 1: give to people, that I give the story to people
Speaker 1: that I feel that are on the rise to another plateau,
Speaker 1: because basically, Gay Hendrick says that we are psychologically programmed
Speaker 1: to not enjoy happiness for more than thirty seconds before.
Speaker 1: We instantly like I gotta have a moment right now
Speaker 1: where it's like, yo, I'm so excited to talk to
Speaker 1: Bonnie right right now. But then in the back of
Speaker 1: my mind, I'll say, oh shit, I forgot to turn
Speaker 1: the oven off, or is my mom okay? You stay
Speaker 1: in the moment, right And so it's it's because I
Speaker 1: know so many artists that are sort of subconscious self saboteurs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he talks y. So he talks about how you
Speaker 1: made a decision to leave your comfort zone, and he
Speaker 1: says that, uh, we all have something called the upper
Speaker 1: limit problem, which is exactly you get to a you
Speaker 1: get to a sky's a limit place where you're just
Speaker 1: like I'm comfortable here, I'm comfortable doing my podcast, I'm
Speaker 1: comfortable doing this, and I don't want to do anything else.
Speaker 1: And how you made an active decision to uh move
Speaker 1: into uncomfortable spaces and he basically said that you manifested
Speaker 1: your nick of time moment like literally you you you
Speaker 1: you saw yourself getting on stage accepting the award.
Speaker 3: I did well, I did. There was a cassette when
Speaker 3: I first got sober, I got a Lazarus you know
Speaker 3: some channel guy. Somebody gave me these cassettes and this
Speaker 3: guy was channeling this person who doesn't talk anything like
Speaker 3: this other guy. I don't know if you guys have
Speaker 3: ever heard anybody the channels someone from another realm and
Speaker 3: you don't even know what they care about.
Speaker 1: I do this all the time, Yes, I mean that
Speaker 1: was what's so cool?
Speaker 3: And I and I remember doing this thing like it said, concentrate.
Speaker 3: You know, picture yourself doing something that you really really
Speaker 3: would like, like either be married with kids and playing
Speaker 3: with them on the carpet, or something that is just
Speaker 3: out of the realm of possibility, but you wish what happened.
Speaker 3: And I said, oh, this is crazy. And you know,
Speaker 3: I had been dropped by my label. I hadn't made
Speaker 3: the album with nikked Times signed a new contract yet,
Speaker 3: and I just had this beautiful rebirth of being sober.
Speaker 3: I just took to it really well. And Mi I
Speaker 3: was healthy, I'd lost a bunch of weight, and I
Speaker 3: was just so grateful and I picture I said, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'll pick the wackiest thing I can think of. I'm
Speaker 3: standing on the stage at the Grammys in this gold
Speaker 3: jacket and I'm thanking people at the podium at the
Speaker 3: Shrine auditorium, and they said, now picture yourself and go
Speaker 3: up about thirty degrees and hold that image from the
Speaker 3: back as if you're looking down from another plane. And
Speaker 3: hold that for about thirty seconds, you know, a few
Speaker 3: times a day, and see what happens. So I did it,
Speaker 3: you know, just for a goof and then forgot all
Speaker 3: about it. And then it wasn't until luck of the
Speaker 3: draw that I turned to Don was and I said,
Speaker 3: oh my god. He said something about, you know, manifesting,
Speaker 3: and I went get out of here because I had
Speaker 3: totally forgotten that I had really just made that leap.
Speaker 3: And I remember Gay saying how. I asked him how
Speaker 3: he was doing, and Gay said, I'm really happy. I
Speaker 3: made a decision to be happy. He said, all you
Speaker 3: have to do is make a decision to overcome that
Speaker 3: self doubt in the back of your mind. And your dad,
Speaker 3: your dad could have been a movie star.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm literally that. I'll say that that book.
Speaker 1: There's about ten books I recommend, but of all, I'll
Speaker 1: say the forty books I've read in the last two years,
Speaker 1: basically since like March of twenty twenty, when the pandemic started.
Speaker 1: This is the book that I feel has resonated with
Speaker 1: my community, Like this morning, I gave it to Janelle James,
Speaker 1: you know, like the second, like the second that I
Speaker 1: hear any artists do a self doubt thing, Like we
Speaker 1: have a friend named j Nel James who's like excellent
Speaker 1: stand up comedian and she's now pivoting into uh comedic
Speaker 1: actress on a show called Abbot Elementary killing. It is
Speaker 1: killing that ship is the lead?
Speaker 3: Is she the lead of it? She is?
Speaker 2: She's really funny, She's like the.
Speaker 1: Cramer, right, And so I told her, like, you're so
Speaker 1: good that I will. I mean, I don't know why
Speaker 1: with with with the television Academy, I haven't been as
Speaker 1: vigilant as I've been with the Tony's and the Oscars
Speaker 1: and the Grammys. But I told her, I'm actually going
Speaker 1: to send it in my form so that I can
Speaker 1: vote for you to be Best Supporting Actress. But she
Speaker 1: kind of like duck and dies like oh no, you
Speaker 1: know whatever, And this that triggers me, And instantly I
Speaker 1: was like, nope, I'm giving you this book right now.
Speaker 1: Like nothing triggers more than self doubting people.
Speaker 2: So it's called The Big Lead to everybody listening, and
Speaker 2: it is available on iBooks and I'm buying it and
Speaker 2: not waiting to be the two hundredth and ten friend
Speaker 2: to get it.
Speaker 1: I will buy it before you.
Speaker 2: It's okay, well I got fifteen dollars, Come on, man, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Get no, seriously, it's it's a short book. It's I
Speaker 1: get an audio book. You'll be finished in two days.
Speaker 1: But it's probably the most crucial book. And literally the
Speaker 1: Bonnie Rate chapter is what I'm using right now. Cool
Speaker 1: for my situation in four weeks.
Speaker 4: So I like that Bonnie Rate didn't even know that
Speaker 4: there was a chapter about them.
Speaker 1: Me too, Yeah, I like that I didn't even make
Speaker 1: the correlation that the person that made me do my
Speaker 1: morning mirror exercise is. I'm talking to it and I
Speaker 1: totally forgot that it's good.
Speaker 2: And so what's this?
Speaker 3: This synchronicity of this stuff is pretty amazing, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Clearly you guys have your pastor over there in the corner.
Speaker 2: But wait, so, Bonnie, do you do more?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Do you do more manifesting? Do you do more?
Speaker 3: Kind of like you know, I try to try. I
Speaker 3: know that, I mean I can't really say I ever
Speaker 3: did that. I've told people about the miracle of that
Speaker 3: because I just because especially because I forgot about it
Speaker 3: and then that exact thing happened. But I think if
Speaker 3: you imagine something that you really want, Like when I
Speaker 3: have friends that are ill, I picture them up and
Speaker 3: about and recovered, and I picture that really hard and
Speaker 3: that trick about this not from Gay Hendrix, but the
Speaker 3: channeling Blizaarrest that's standing above and looking down at the
Speaker 3: you know, burning that into your mind that here's my
Speaker 3: friend who's ill. Not only is he out of bed,
Speaker 3: but he's walking around taking a you know, we're taking
Speaker 3: a walk in the park. I'm gonna go get some
Speaker 3: get a salad someplace, you know, and just imagine that.
Speaker 3: Just picture us and just picture it pictured. I think
Speaker 3: there's really great point.
Speaker 2: I'm doing it like I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: who are listening me play. When I get this kind
Speaker 2: of information music, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm chuckling because it's just hit me that this might
Speaker 1: be the six quest Love Supreme in a row that
Speaker 1: that has been more about self improvement, and like like
Speaker 1: we're about to be lifestyle improvement instead of music.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what you gotta fix. You gotta fix
Speaker 3: the inner, the inner to get the outer. You know
Speaker 3: what I mean, music comes to all comes from the
Speaker 3: same source. If you got, as Robert Johnson said, stones
Speaker 3: in my pathway, you know you got to move them
Speaker 3: out of the way and let that, let that flow happen.
Speaker 1: Absolutely I agree with you.
Speaker 3: I mean, self self doubt. Self doubt is an interesting
Speaker 3: source of songs. I mean, I wrote a funk jazzy
Speaker 3: song on my new record call waiting for you to
Speaker 3: oh about the little Devil on your shoulder, just going
Speaker 3: come on, I just I know you're gonna mess up.
Speaker 3: Come on, have another piece of pie, you know, stay
Speaker 3: up late, forget lie about returning those emails. You know,
Speaker 3: oh I meant I did send them. You know, all
Speaker 3: that ways that you you flirt with the dark side,
Speaker 3: and you know that's just part of being human and
Speaker 3: then you forgive yourself and pay attention and move on.
Speaker 3: But you know, you got to pay attention.
Speaker 7: I was excious to know Bonnie about your sobriety. You say,
Speaker 7: you know it spent thirty five years.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Sobriety is something that it's tough in any aspect, but
Speaker 7: particularly in the context of the music business, I imagine
Speaker 7: it's you know, even crazier.
Speaker 1: How have you say sober all these years?
Speaker 3: Well, for starters, that the inspiration of seeing how many
Speaker 3: people didn't make it, you know, losing friend after friend
Speaker 3: to either deliberate or accidental or just lifestyle caught up
Speaker 3: with them. And that doesn't even have to be you know,
Speaker 3: drugs and alcohol. It can be workaholism or you know,
Speaker 3: gambling or food or whatever. You know, the ways that
Speaker 3: you're just kind of filling that hole. And once you
Speaker 3: understand about the addictive personality that and you know a
Speaker 3: lot of us just developed an allergy to drugs and
Speaker 3: alcohol as we got in our For me, a lot
Speaker 3: of us in our late thirties couldn't get away with
Speaker 3: what we got away with for those first twenty years.
Speaker 3: And it just didn't look good. You know, I got fat,
Speaker 3: I got I mean, I wasn't messing up my shows.
Speaker 3: I mean, audiences love blues singers that are heavy, you know,
Speaker 3: and have man problems. Oh look at.
Speaker 1: Her, you know that's part of it. I mean, ye,
Speaker 1: that's the Mary J. Blige syndrome. We seemed only like
Speaker 1: her when she's depressed. What She's said, you know.
Speaker 3: What, you know, Eda lost a lot of weight. She said,
Speaker 3: I wonder if people are still gonna want to come
Speaker 3: see me, you know, I said to the girl. So anyway,
Speaker 3: how I stay sober? I's it wasn't. I was really
Speaker 3: lucky and really blessed because there's a whole lot of
Speaker 3: people in our industry who had to stop. And I'm
Speaker 3: one of the people that needed to stop. It worked
Speaker 3: better for me right away. And because of those people
Speaker 3: in those rooms, in those meetings, there are professional partiers,
Speaker 3: so their stories are better, they're funnier, they're you know,
Speaker 3: we all help each other, so it's not something you
Speaker 3: do alone. But it's really the community. I know anywhere
Speaker 3: in the world when I have issues, I can go
Speaker 3: to any meeting, either virtually or in any town. I've
Speaker 3: been in meetings in Russia and Australia with like pirates
Speaker 3: down by the docks, you know, guys that look like
Speaker 3: Popeye with no teeth, with one hundred and fifty tattoos,
Speaker 3: you know, like, and you hear those stories about how
Speaker 3: they stay sober. You know, it's kind of a cool fellowship.
Speaker 3: So it was. It was an unexpected, non cult kind
Speaker 3: of a thing I thought. I thought it was going
Speaker 3: to be a bunch of moonies talking about Jesus all
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 1: So it's not. I always wondered about that because there
Speaker 1: been a few times where I thought that I too
Speaker 1: would have to sort of flirt with circles of meetings
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And then I always taught myself out of it,
Speaker 1: because you know, I felt like post social media age,
Speaker 1: like there's no such thing as being anonymous. But there
Speaker 1: was never there was never any trepidation of like, you know,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's fucking violent rate sitting here in
Speaker 1: our circle with you know, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Or I was really nervous about it, which is why
Speaker 3: in my case and a lot of my other friends,
Speaker 3: there was a musicians meeting. You know, I know there's
Speaker 3: lawyers ones, there's doctors ones, because doctors are afraid they're
Speaker 3: going to run into their patients, right, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying. That's my mom And it didn't go well.
Speaker 3: You know now, I know why. You know, in the laws,
Speaker 3: I never thought about it. I mean, imagine going to
Speaker 3: an AA meeting and senior the judge that sent you
Speaker 3: your other away, you know what I mean. So I
Speaker 3: could dig why people go to a community industry in
Speaker 3: our industry. So I've been doing a zoom meeting with
Speaker 3: people that are in the industry, and people are really
Speaker 3: respectful and we all need the same thing. So the
Speaker 3: musicians meeting really gave me the confidence in the anonymity
Speaker 3: and took the pressure off. But then I just wear
Speaker 3: a hat and I don't even People don't know it's
Speaker 3: me when I go on the road. If I go
Speaker 3: to a meeting, you know, they just don't. They're only
Speaker 3: interested in your first name and your story. So but
Speaker 3: you know, if I've walked down Fifth Avenue with Whoopy Goldberg,
Speaker 3: I don't think she could ever disguise herself. So, you know,
Speaker 3: Ques Love, you might have a hard time being anonymous,
Speaker 3: but I think if you just pick and you get
Speaker 3: used to it, it's after about the second meeting, you
Speaker 3: don't even think about it.
Speaker 1: Okay, No, No, I've gotten away with many a non
Speaker 1: crime crime in terms of his hat game. Sarcastic, I'm surious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all bad hats, and for me, it's covering
Speaker 3: up this little skunk streak. I want the only real
Speaker 3: color I have on my head. But the and if
Speaker 3: I don't wear I make up.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: People do not get it. But when I check in
Speaker 3: my luggage outdoors on the cat and the curb at
Speaker 3: the airport, guy's going give them something to talk about.
Speaker 3: The porters always skycaps, always know it's me. Now we
Speaker 3: just check in, check in with a you know, kiosk.
Speaker 1: But can you tell me do you remember the first
Speaker 1: record that you ever purchased?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was Odetta Wow Getta. It was like I
Speaker 3: didn't have a lot of money, but I spent my
Speaker 3: allowance on a record store where we could go into
Speaker 3: Wallack's Music City and put the headphones on, and I
Speaker 3: went to summer camp while my dad was on tour
Speaker 3: doing Broadway shows in regional theaters and summer stock.
Speaker 1: John Reid, we should also mention that your father's the
Speaker 1: legend Daria John Raye, theater actor.
Speaker 3: And Broadway music leading man. Yeah, from Carousel and Pajama
Speaker 3: Game and Oklahoma. So he made his living touring three
Speaker 3: months every summer. And their friends had a Quaker friends
Speaker 3: had a camp with all counselors from all around the
Speaker 3: world and un kids. You know, just every every stripe,
Speaker 3: every possible permutation of religion and color and background, and
Speaker 3: we all went to this camp, and our counselors were
Speaker 3: mad for folk music, so that's how I got way
Speaker 3: into it, and I idolized my counselor, and she turned
Speaker 3: me onto Odetta and Joan Baez, and I went home
Speaker 3: and begged for a guitar for Christmas and just sat
Speaker 3: there and taught myself to play till my little fingers
Speaker 3: were bleeding. And that was that Odetta record. She continued
Speaker 3: to be an inspiration to me, but that was I
Speaker 3: never heard a voice like that in my life.
Speaker 1: So you were self taught or did you have any
Speaker 1: lessons at all?
Speaker 3: I had piano lessons for five years, but the teacher
Speaker 3: didn't want to let me learn. Back then, they didn't
Speaker 3: let you learn pop music, so I switched. I had
Speaker 3: gotten pretty good on the guitar, taught myself to fingerpick,
Speaker 3: but I never had any lessons, so I do positions
Speaker 3: of the chords and the slide guitar. I play on
Speaker 3: the wrong finger because I taught myself entirely in my
Speaker 3: room without anybody showing me, and I played by ears.
Speaker 3: So by the time I was around other guitar players
Speaker 3: and saw that you'd play e in this position, and
Speaker 3: you're supposed to use your fingers for this for that
Speaker 3: chord too late. I already was doing it.
Speaker 1: So you know, every time I've heard you speak about
Speaker 1: music either, you know, like you'll do these shows where
Speaker 1: you'll tell stories and whatnot, Like I always felt like
Speaker 1: you were a serious musician and a serious advocate for
Speaker 1: like all these blues grates that you know that aren't
Speaker 1: really championed by like the mainstream press and whatnot. But
Speaker 1: I always wanted to know, because I mean, you're coming,
Speaker 1: you're coming of age when the bridg this invasion starting
Speaker 1: and all these things, like in your teen years, like
Speaker 1: you just didn't listen to like the Archies, Yummy Yummy yummy,
Speaker 1: or just like just like pop music.
Speaker 3: You know, LA was all that. When I was in
Speaker 3: junior high school, it was a super fad for the
Speaker 3: beach boys, and surfing came in, so all the guys
Speaker 3: had their hair like Dennis Wilson and bleached to blonde,
Speaker 3: and you know, it just was too plastic instead of
Speaker 3: At the time, I wanted to be a beatnik and
Speaker 3: a jazzer, and I was. I was a member of
Speaker 3: Core and Snick and you know, because we were Quaker
Speaker 3: I just couldn't wait to get old enough to go
Speaker 3: to Dantas Village and yeah, come back, and I was
Speaker 3: like reading sing Out magazine and I just wanted I
Speaker 3: went to camping that yeah, in the East Coast with
Speaker 3: all these liberal, lefty international counselors and campers, and I
Speaker 3: and La just seemed really plastic. So I loved when
Speaker 3: people have asked me, how did you get into R
Speaker 3: and B and blues? And I said, you know, early on,
Speaker 3: I knew the difference between Bill Haley and Little Richard
Speaker 3: and Pat Boone. And you know, Fats Domino was like
Speaker 3: a god to me. You know, Chuck Barry, come on,
Speaker 3: Chuck Berry was like the most gorgeous guy I'd ever seen,
Speaker 3: and he played the hell out of the guitar. His
Speaker 3: grooves were hilacious. So Fats. You know, Lloyd Price, oh
Speaker 3: my god, I mean. And then somebody gave me when
Speaker 3: I was twelve, a guy who sold Channel Master TV
Speaker 3: Antennas gave rca own the channel Master and he said, hey,
Speaker 3: Bonnie likes music, and he gave me a box of
Speaker 3: twelve Ray Charles albums that I you know, at that age,
Speaker 3: at twelve, I would have never been able to afford
Speaker 3: or even knowing about. So I got Genius plus soul
Speaker 3: equals jazz. I got Ray Charles and Betty Carter, the
Speaker 3: album dedicated dedicated to you, you know, all the yeah
Speaker 3: named after the cities. I mean, you talk about learning
Speaker 3: how to sing? That was between listening to gospel on
Speaker 3: Sunday on the radio and all of the R and
Speaker 3: B records that I just mentioned, you know, Major Lance,
Speaker 3: and then Motown came in. That was it. I was
Speaker 3: just the Motown until Loretha Franklin and Stacks and Sam
Speaker 3: and Dave. Total soul music hound. But I didn't hear
Speaker 3: about electric blues until the Rolling Stones played Little Red
Speaker 3: Rooster and Holland Wolf and Muddy Waters, and then I
Speaker 3: got I think, like a lot of kids in the
Speaker 3: mid sixties, we got turned onto our own musical heritage
Speaker 3: by the Brits. So I was just a total blues hound.
Speaker 1: Okay, I was going to stay that. I worked with
Speaker 1: Marshall Chess a few times, you know, in the early Arts,
Speaker 1: and he was telling me stories about trying to convince
Speaker 1: his dad and a lot of the older blues artists
Speaker 1: on that label to sort of loosen up and get
Speaker 1: with the times of like Black Psychedelic Rocket and all
Speaker 1: these things, Like especially with the Muddy Waters record. What
Speaker 1: was the wait, Steve, didn't you engineer that project? But
Speaker 1: uh we did, like it was Electric Mud, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Electric Mond stuff. So when I mean I didn't, I
Speaker 1: didn't engineer the original Electric.
Speaker 3: Mud I'm not, no, no, but yeah, that was one
Speaker 3: of the greatest fold out album cover pictures of all time.
Speaker 3: That in Isaac Cayes, the fold out picture that turned
Speaker 3: into a poster. I had him in my house, Isaac
Speaker 3: and Muddy like hello, really only no, no, I was out.
Speaker 3: I was out the house by then, Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: So what I wanted to know was okay, so as
Speaker 1: a true fan of the blues, like I know that
Speaker 1: older blues fans, some of them scoffed that, like yo yourself,
Speaker 1: like similar to to Dylan getting some pushback from going Electric,
Speaker 1: that there were some authentic blues fans that felt like,
Speaker 1: you know, like, now these guys are trying to sell
Speaker 1: out to get a younger, to get the hippies, and
Speaker 1: you know, to get a wider audience and all those things.
Speaker 1: But did those particular Now from my standpoint, I loved
Speaker 1: Electric Mud, Like half the first Cipercillo album is from
Speaker 1: you know, the Electric Mud record and what's the other title,
Speaker 1: what's his name? Hates? Well, no, no, there the titles.
Speaker 1: Really he hates this album. It was like a sarcastic
Speaker 1: album title, like Muddy Waters hates his second album more.
Speaker 3: Oh god, I don't know. I just didn't. I didn't
Speaker 3: relate to those records, so.
Speaker 1: Right, no, no, no, But I meant like for you to
Speaker 1: hear at least. I mean, never think that you released
Speaker 1: in your early teens when that came out, did you. Well?
Speaker 3: I was in the middle teens, and I didn't dig it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I love those early Muddy Waters records, I mean as
Speaker 3: some of the greatest playing of any band ever, Hallan Wolf,
Speaker 3: Muddy Waters, Johnny Hooker's original records, Oh geez, Electric Mind. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm not a big psychedelic I didn't like I got
Speaker 3: the playing on some I didn't. I haven't heard Electric
Speaker 3: Mond in a long time. I did buy it, but
Speaker 3: I haven't heard it in a long time. But I
Speaker 3: did have that the album in the robes, I mean,
Speaker 3: and his hair come on it was and then I
Speaker 3: had no idea I'd be like, really good friends with
Speaker 3: Muddy all those years later, so you know, we we
Speaker 3: I wanted to have an open mind about the sessions
Speaker 3: that they did with you know, English guys, and I
Speaker 3: just didn't think it sounded as good as the originals.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 3: I was prejudiced the other way, you know, as.
Speaker 1: Or because even now with hip hop, like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of our greats that you don't have decisions to make,
Speaker 1: like should they readjust their like For example, Nas is
Speaker 1: a great example of that. Like right now, Nas is
Speaker 1: about to see probably some of his best success sort
Speaker 1: of getting a little younger with who's producing this record
Speaker 1: hit boy with hip Boy, which of course, you know,
Speaker 1: his older fans are like, you know the album that
Speaker 1: Na's made twenty five years ago is like, you know,
Speaker 1: that's their north star. And you know, I'm happy for success.
Speaker 1: I'm happy for success now, but you know, but I
Speaker 1: also feel like maybe that's us also secretly just saying
Speaker 1: that we wish that time would stand still. That's exactly
Speaker 1: what it is. You can never compete with nobody's nostalge.
Speaker 3: Bro like you know ears, don't you know if your
Speaker 3: ears don't dig something. I mean, everybody's got the right
Speaker 3: to do whatever they do in their musical path, and
Speaker 3: nobody wants to get stuck or boor And people have
Speaker 3: the right to go more commercial if that if they're
Speaker 3: sick of being a obscure, it's you know, but you
Speaker 3: got to really dig it. You got to love what
Speaker 3: you're the combination of your new collaboration and being put
Speaker 3: through the new producers. You gotta love it and not
Speaker 3: do it for commercial reasons, in my opinion, is because you're.
Speaker 1: Not guarantegued to have that commercial success.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if your fans don't dig it, you know,
Speaker 3: that's you know, it's their choice to stick with the
Speaker 3: older stuff, you know, but.
Speaker 2: Be rate of it, right, Like that's what you were
Speaker 2: talking about earlier about what's special about your music in
Speaker 2: a way is because when and that's what Amir was saying,
Speaker 2: when you can stay true to yourself and still reach
Speaker 2: these levels of success and you know, crossover, but you're
Speaker 2: not changing who you are.
Speaker 3: Well, that was a lot of things happened at that
Speaker 3: particular time where my my guild, you know, the Recording
Speaker 3: Academy gave me some props at a time when the
Speaker 3: public at largic I've never been nominated for a People's
Speaker 3: Choice or American Musical ord or any of that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. So it was really five thousand people were
Speaker 3: voting for Grammys, and I think Don and Tom Petty
Speaker 3: probably canceled each other out and I just kind of
Speaker 3: eked by by a few, you know, got me out
Speaker 3: a year. I mean it sold a million before.
Speaker 2: You're the people's champ.
Speaker 3: No, I like being a cult artist. And after that
Speaker 3: initial first two albums with Nick of Time and look
Speaker 3: at the draw, and then all of the regime that
Speaker 3: promoted me got fired at Capital and I had eight
Speaker 3: presidents in the fifteen years that I was on that label.
Speaker 3: I don't even think I was on there that long.
Speaker 3: And every time you make a relationship with radio and
Speaker 3: they come to your shows after the show on tour,
Speaker 3: and you have these relationships with the promotion people, and
Speaker 3: then they fire everybody and bring in new people that
Speaker 3: have no relationships. My third album that should have done
Speaker 3: just as well, would Love Sneaking Up on You on it,
Speaker 3: you know, went from seven million records to two million
Speaker 3: because there was nobody coming to the shows. It was
Speaker 3: no relationship. I didn't go to the radio stations. They
Speaker 3: didn't have any free tickets for me to say low
Speaker 3: to them afterwards, and you know, it just petered out.
Speaker 3: And then frankly, the agism and the music business. You know,
Speaker 3: at forty five, almost every woman especially gets booted off,
Speaker 3: even VH one, so you become the legacy artist. But
Speaker 3: you know, I'm happy selling three thousand seats at the
Speaker 3: Beacon Theater two nights at the Beacon. That's a hell
Speaker 3: of a crowd, you know.
Speaker 1: For me.
Speaker 3: So I'm grateful to have no pressure. I never wanted
Speaker 3: the pressure of having to follow up another record with
Speaker 3: it be compared to how successful this one was. I
Speaker 3: just want to artistically keep getting good reviews and having
Speaker 3: people go, she did it again. There she goes, she
Speaker 3: did it again. But you know, like everybody else, I
Speaker 3: have my favorite albums of my favorite artists. And while
Speaker 3: I'm on that, I just have to say this show
Speaker 3: has had some of the most incredible conversations with people
Speaker 3: that I love and goes so deep. The one with
Speaker 3: Bruce Hornsby just slayed me. Oh man, Oh wow, that's
Speaker 3: my jam. If I can have one, If I can
Speaker 3: only have one artist on a desert island for the
Speaker 3: rest of all life, it would be Bruce Hornsby, Why
Speaker 3: Bruce does just listen to the introduction of I Can't
Speaker 3: Make You Love Me? Or the end of Innocence Mandolin Rain.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Oh my god, that's the one for me.
Speaker 3: Shaka and you guys talked about that on the show.
Speaker 3: I learned a whole lot on the show was great.
Speaker 1: Wow, thank you. I'm glad.
Speaker 3: You talk about basketball. There was a lot of basketball
Speaker 3: in that show too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, thank you a basketball player.
Speaker 4: I feel like we should end this interview right now.
Speaker 4: That's a pretty good exactly.
Speaker 1: So can you tell me what led to your signing
Speaker 1: to Warner Brothers in seventy one? In the beginning, yeah,
Speaker 1: what the process was?
Speaker 3: Well, because I wasn't expecting to do this for a living,
Speaker 3: and I just happened to be dating the Dick Waterman
Speaker 3: who managed Son House and Mississippi, Fred McDowell, and had
Speaker 3: helped rediscover Son the father of Delta Blues, and brought
Speaker 3: him out and put a lot of the blues artists
Speaker 3: under one agency so that these club owners couldn't say, Hey,
Speaker 3: we've already had our older black guy this month, why
Speaker 3: should we pay you guy eight hundred bucks? And we
Speaker 3: got him for five hundred you know, excuse me. So
Speaker 3: he consolidated him in kind of a guild of badass
Speaker 3: and Ray kept their prices up and didn't didn't get
Speaker 3: them these young blues fans that were managing these guys,
Speaker 3: was running them ragged. They were like in their sixties
Speaker 3: and making him play three shows a night and taking
Speaker 3: half their money. And anyway, it's a sordid story, but
Speaker 3: Dick Waterman was really instrumental in bringing Buddy Guy and
Speaker 3: Junior Wells out of Chicago. Big Barthur crued up. He
Speaker 3: got the royalty, finally got royalty reform in Elvis Presley. Finally,
Speaker 3: after after Arthur died, they settled the estate with Elvis
Speaker 3: Presley and they finally got some money for That's all right, mama,
Speaker 3: I mean just the man was so I had I
Speaker 3: had access to opening the shows for my heroes. I didn't.
Speaker 3: I wasn't threatening. I was cheap. I played my own guitar,
Speaker 3: you know, I carried my own guitar. I didn't need
Speaker 3: a band, and I got my foot in the door
Speaker 3: just opening for my heroes. And somebody, Dick's lawyer, Nat Weiss, well,
Speaker 3: it was the lawyer that was handling. He was Brian
Speaker 3: Epstein's partner in the States, and he George Harrison wanted
Speaker 3: Buddy Guy on Apple and Eric Clapton wanted him on
Speaker 3: rso so they were they they brought Dick and I
Speaker 3: went to the meeting when when and Nat wise said no,
Speaker 3: I think you should sign with Atlantic. And meanwhile we
Speaker 3: became friends, and I was playing the gas Light opening
Speaker 3: for Fred McDowell and Nat came down and he went, oh, man,
Speaker 3: you got you got something there. And so he called
Speaker 3: all these record labels and had them send scouts down.
Speaker 3: And the other scouts saw the other scout and they went,
Speaker 3: what did this guy know? You know? So he drummed
Speaker 3: up this interest in me. But I always knew I
Speaker 3: wanted to go with Warners because they had Ry Cooter
Speaker 3: and Randy Newman and James Taylor. And I went out
Speaker 3: to La on Capitol's Dime and played at the Troubadour
Speaker 3: and did a showcase. But in the afternoon I snuck
Speaker 3: over to Warner Brothers and said, I want to come
Speaker 3: on your label. So I asked, I asked for a
Speaker 3: hundred I asked for one hundred percent total artistic control.
Speaker 3: I said, don't give me. I'll just give me the budget.
Speaker 3: I'll make the record, no advance. If I save anything
Speaker 3: after making the record, I'll buy myself a new Volvo
Speaker 3: or something. And I said, just get don't tell me
Speaker 3: when to play record with, who to work, what to sing,
Speaker 3: and how to look. And I work my ass off
Speaker 3: for you. And they went for it at twenty one.
Speaker 1: So wait a minute, you're saying that you were out
Speaker 1: there to to talk to Capital.
Speaker 3: They paid for the trip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, and instead you Wow.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean I was open. I was open to it,
Speaker 3: but in my heart if I could get Warner Brothers interested,
Speaker 3: Randy Newman and Right Cooter were like, you know, Apollo
Speaker 3: and Zeus to me, you know, that was just it
Speaker 3: and the and Warner Brothers that said, we make our
Speaker 3: money from Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. We don't care
Speaker 3: if you're not a hit record. You can do whatever
Speaker 3: you want. Wow, you know, little they had Little movie,
Speaker 3: you know they gave we believe in you. You're not
Speaker 3: a singles artist. We have the grateful debt. We'll make
Speaker 3: our money from these other guys. So I thought that
Speaker 3: was so righteous.
Speaker 1: Who was the CEO of a Warner at that.
Speaker 3: Time, well, Mo Austin and Joe Smith were the Raprise
Speaker 3: and Warner Brothers to pairs in the same funky old
Speaker 3: building that no longer exis, So they were a family
Speaker 3: kind of a joint, you know.
Speaker 1: It was like, so, yeah, can you also this is
Speaker 1: what I always wanted to know. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think one trip to Japan, I think I've ran across
Speaker 1: like a Warner Brothers e b K. Where not since
Speaker 1: the days of Motown did I see this thing where
Speaker 1: like all the Warner Brothers artists would travel together, Like
Speaker 1: I think I was looking looking up like old Graham
Speaker 1: Central Station footage, but it was like the Doobie Brothers,
Speaker 1: Bonnie Ray Graham Central Station. It was like, was it
Speaker 1: always like that where there was a Warner Brothers touring
Speaker 1: season where they Well, I.
Speaker 3: Didn't get to go. I had so many I worked.
Speaker 3: I was booked like six months in advance for the
Speaker 3: ten months of the next year. And I made six
Speaker 3: albums in seven years and stayed on the road to
Speaker 3: hold my old twenties. I don't know how I did it.
Speaker 3: But the Warner Brothers Music Show I didn't get to
Speaker 3: go on. They went to Europe. I don't know. They
Speaker 3: must well, you must have known if they went to
Speaker 3: Japan together. But it was little feet mantros to doobies.
Speaker 3: It was just like, yeah, and they had that thing
Speaker 3: where Team A would play this city with this set
Speaker 3: of equipment and then Team B would they'd leave the
Speaker 3: sound system and then swap it and take the train
Speaker 3: and go over. But I didn't I never heard of
Speaker 3: another label doing that. There was such a hip idea.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they were really they were really like a
Speaker 1: family based.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And then it was way before Warners was at
Speaker 3: the end of the seventies, Warners, Electra and Atlantic formed.
Speaker 3: We had a big, shiant corporate building and you know,
Speaker 3: Thriller and Rumors sold twelve million copies and Thriller was huge,
Speaker 3: and Miami sound Miami Vice soundtrack records just went were
Speaker 3: billions sellings. So then when I renegotiated my deal when
Speaker 3: I was up for resign, Walter Yettnikov tried to get
Speaker 3: me to come over to CBS. When he turned James Taylor,
Speaker 3: who had been languishing it Warner's, they made me. He
Speaker 3: was a big hit because and he said, I'll do
Speaker 3: for you what I did for James Taylor and Warners
Speaker 3: was so pissed they matched his offer and then they
Speaker 3: penalized me for it because it wasn't bringing in the
Speaker 3: big bucks. You know, I was going to say, it
Speaker 3: was all about it was all about money after that,
Speaker 3: you know, I.
Speaker 1: Was going to say, during that initial period, when you know,
Speaker 1: you had the you had the buzz, you had the
Speaker 1: critical claim. Shit, you even got the cover of Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone for you, did you were you personally like? Because
Speaker 1: oftentimes would like I have the same situation. Well not
Speaker 1: even I like both Fonte and I kind of came
Speaker 1: from situations where like, we have massive critical claims with
Speaker 1: our product, and oftentimes I think people would just come
Speaker 1: up to me like, yeah, but you guys don't care
Speaker 1: about that, because you guys are real artists. You don't
Speaker 1: need to grow a real artist.
Speaker 3: No, I would have liked to. I would have liked
Speaker 3: to given my band a raise, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah?
Speaker 3: And run Away my version of Del Shannon's Runaway, kind
Speaker 3: of like Love and Happiness. I did this kind of
Speaker 3: al green thing and had Michael, and you know, I
Speaker 3: thought it was a hip idea. It started one of
Speaker 3: many covers that I like to rearrange, and they in it,
Speaker 3: and it got up to number twenty, and then they
Speaker 3: just didn't put the damn records in the stores. You know,
Speaker 3: I wasn't a priority, and so that pissed me off.
Speaker 3: You know, it pissed me off that I was doing
Speaker 3: harder work than my record company wasn't following through all
Speaker 3: they needed to do. If I sold three thousand seats,
Speaker 3: there should be at least three thousand records in that
Speaker 3: town that people could go by after they see the show. So,
Speaker 3: you know, everybody bitches about being miss not promoted, but
Speaker 3: you know, I thought they didn't do as great a
Speaker 3: job as what I was hoping. But I agree that
Speaker 3: my music isn't that commercial and I don't look like
Speaker 3: Stevie Necks, you know what I mean. I mean, I
Speaker 3: didn't have that. I didn't have that thang that makes
Speaker 3: you go from a respected artist to you know, you know,
Speaker 3: like my other female compatriots.
Speaker 2: I was sitting here trying to think who who were
Speaker 2: buying these peers at the time, because you were talking
Speaker 2: about being on tours as you were twenty something. I
Speaker 2: heard all these male names and I'm like, well.
Speaker 3: Linda Ronstadt, Emmy Lou Harris, Phoebe Snow. You know, yeah,
Speaker 3: we were all we were all on tour all together.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: Okay, good, That's what I want to ask you. Did
Speaker 2: you get to tour with these ladies.
Speaker 3: No, we just went to each other's show because we
Speaker 3: had our own band and crew to pay for so
Speaker 3: we There wasn't until the Lilith Fair that we that
Speaker 3: they finally had women on the same bill.
Speaker 1: That didn't happen to Lilith Fair.
Speaker 3: But I mean I could have I could have done
Speaker 3: another woman, but it was made made for a better
Speaker 3: show if you had a little bit of a dis
Speaker 3: you know. Well, at first I was playing with Muddy,
Speaker 3: you know, I had Mos Allison, and I had Sippy
Speaker 3: Open and Ruth Brown and Charles Brown. So I had
Speaker 3: I had some debts to pay and showcase people that,
Speaker 3: you know, I wanted to showcase. But I had a
Speaker 3: lot of singer songwriters that that wrote the songs that
Speaker 3: I put on my records, and I owed it to
Speaker 3: them to give them as I build up my following.
Speaker 3: I love to be able to showcase Chris Smith.
Speaker 2: But the piece that you that was interesting that you
Speaker 2: said was since you toured, when you were twenty one.
Speaker 2: I was just curious because you were one of the
Speaker 2: only females on tour at that time, and you touring
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 3: Oh no, Emmy, Lou and Linda and Maria. We know
Speaker 3: there was lots of women touring and I'm sure country
Speaker 3: I don't follow country music much, but I think they
Speaker 3: were all touring, but not with you. No, no, wed Wow.
Speaker 2: So that's what I was saying, Like back in the day,
Speaker 2: it seemed like you were on tour. You know, it
Speaker 2: was a lot of fellas, a lot of folks that
Speaker 2: you looked up to. But that must have been an
Speaker 2: experience in itself and lessons that you learned in that way.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because you know, if you're if you're the
Speaker 3: only girl in the entourage, you look pretty good at
Speaker 3: two in the morning. I'm getting no, but I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not, I'm not. I'm just saying that sometimes you
Speaker 3: date within the which which you have to be careful
Speaker 3: because you're still on that bus together for another ten
Speaker 3: months if it doesn't work out, awkward.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm one of those people that can sort
Speaker 1: of attest to you know, I've been really careful on
Speaker 1: meeting my heroes. Some of them have been magical. Some
Speaker 1: of them have been not magical. Okay, yeah somewhere assholes.
Speaker 1: I know that because you're such a champion for like
Speaker 1: all these authentic blues artists, of them all, like who
Speaker 1: of that legendary circle that you grew up listening to
Speaker 1: from your childhood did you really bond with personally in
Speaker 1: your first time not post Nick of Time John Lee
Speaker 1: Hooker era, but like in your initial.
Speaker 3: Era and initially Mississippi. Fred mcdoll and I got to
Speaker 3: be very very close. He's one of my favorite of
Speaker 3: the Delta blues men and one of the only ones
Speaker 3: that was alive that I had access to, and we
Speaker 3: just clicked as I later in the nineties when I
Speaker 3: got to know him better and played a lot of
Speaker 3: shows together and did a duet, Johnley Hooker and I
Speaker 3: became really close, as did Ruth Brown and Charles Brown
Speaker 3: and I in the middle of the nineties, we all
Speaker 3: toured a lot together, but early on Fred mcdollan and
Speaker 3: Sippy Wallace and I toured together. Sippy came out of
Speaker 3: retirement in nineteen seventy two at the Annarbor Blues and
Speaker 3: Jazz Festival. I didn't even know she was alive. I
Speaker 3: cut three of her songs before I found out, looking
Speaker 3: to where to send the checks, and she came out
Speaker 3: on stage and was only going to do a gospel song,
Speaker 3: but she's she heard us rehearsing Women Be Wise her
Speaker 3: song in the trailer, and she said, oh, maybe I'll
Speaker 3: just had a soprano player come right up to her
Speaker 3: ear and she probably had sung it in thirty years
Speaker 3: and she said, well, I'll just do that one song,
Speaker 3: and then people went ape shit. And then she toured
Speaker 3: for the next fifteen years, including us together. And there's
Speaker 3: a classic David Letterman clip with Sippy Wallace and I
Speaker 3: singing Women Be Wise with Doctor John on the keyboards
Speaker 3: that you got to check out. It's like nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: one maybe or seventy nine, okay, but anyway, Mississippi from McDowall.
Speaker 3: He passed away when I was twenty one, like only
Speaker 3: a couple of a couple of years after I started
Speaker 3: being close friends with him and we toured together. It
Speaker 3: was a heartbreaking. I ended up losing a lot of
Speaker 3: the older semi grandparent figures in my life that I
Speaker 3: got close to. And you know, I was very close
Speaker 3: to Muddy Waters and he passed away. And thank goodness
Speaker 3: for John Lee and Ruth Brown and Charles Brown who
Speaker 3: I got to celebrate and have deep relationships with so
Speaker 3: my heroes.
Speaker 2: You know, I got to be friends with There's a
Speaker 2: lot of history that you know.
Speaker 1: Got Lee.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I was gonna ask your history and your relationship
Speaker 7: with another get tar god, Stevie Rayvaughn.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I'm gonna have to put lipsic on
Speaker 3: for that.
Speaker 7: Get your Would you like to know what was your
Speaker 7: relationship like working with him? What was your guys friendship like?
Speaker 3: We were mutual fans of each other. We got to
Speaker 3: be friends in Austin, Texas when I would come through
Speaker 3: and play, you know, one of my favorite hangouts and
Speaker 3: places to play where the music in New Orleans and
Speaker 3: Minneapolis and Austin, the black and white music scene was
Speaker 3: not so segregated. It was really a lot of interplay,
Speaker 3: not just in blues, but in all kinds of music.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: That's one of the reasons when I met Prince and
Speaker 3: he said, oh, I've always dug your music, you know,
Speaker 3: And I said, well, how did you hear about that?
Speaker 3: And you know, he said, what, you know, how did
Speaker 3: you anyway, It's one of those things where the fabulous
Speaker 3: Thunderbirds and I did a lot of touring together. But
Speaker 3: I first met them in Texas with the at Anton's
Speaker 3: Legendary Blues Club, and the word went out about Stevie
Speaker 3: Ray Vaughan, about the Vaughn Brothers, and his first album
Speaker 3: came out, and you know, if you're a blues guitarist
Speaker 3: and a fan, the word of Stevie Ray got blasted
Speaker 3: out into the stratosphere when he played guitar and Let's
Speaker 3: Dance by David Bowie. I mean, that's one of the
Speaker 3: baddest ass solos are performances. And then I met him,
Speaker 3: I saw him play. We toured together, we were party mates,
Speaker 3: and we were sober mates. You know, he got sober
Speaker 3: a few months before I did. Not long after our
Speaker 3: tour together, by the way, and I saw him come.
Speaker 3: He came out on stage and played the night he
Speaker 3: came out of rehab, and he just he was worried
Speaker 3: that he wasn't going to have the same edge, and
Speaker 3: he played. He burned a hole in the sun that night.
Speaker 3: It was incredible, as Mom was sitting right there on
Speaker 3: the side, just going and I said, Okay, that's it.
Speaker 3: That's all bets are off. This guy's on a comet.
Speaker 3: You know, the greatest guitar player in my lifetime that
Speaker 3: I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: When you're interacting with these with these blues grates, is
Speaker 1: it dismaying to them? Number one? Is it dismaying to
Speaker 1: them that they're not receiving more support from a black
Speaker 1: or fan base? I can. I can. That's sort of
Speaker 1: parallel to my situation, where like there was definitely a
Speaker 1: period where it's just like, you know, the first seven
Speaker 1: years of my career, I was just like, wait, I
Speaker 1: guess the music that we're doing really isn't attracting the
Speaker 1: fan base that looks like I do. And so is
Speaker 1: it mind blowing to them that this, like this white
Speaker 1: woman from from California is doing more of the knowledge
Speaker 1: than you know then other black people.
Speaker 3: But we talk about it.
Speaker 1: But my other thing is, and I really wish and
Speaker 1: I guess I have to also do the work because
Speaker 1: I'll say that the blues is probably the one area
Speaker 1: of music that I've really really haven't you know, sunk
Speaker 1: my teeth into what is what is the criteria in
Speaker 1: your mind for what makes a great blues man? Blues woman,
Speaker 1: a blues player, like are you listening for tone? Are
Speaker 1: you listening for dexterity?
Speaker 3: Like it just yeah, you know, it's it's that it's
Speaker 3: so ineffable. It's really hard to explain because when people
Speaker 3: say to you, you know, I want to send you
Speaker 3: on some songs, what are you looking for? I'm going well,
Speaker 3: And then people send me identical copies of something to
Speaker 3: talk about or I can't make you love me, and
Speaker 3: I go, you know, I already did that. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I gotta find something new. And what makes me go
Speaker 3: crazy for the people like liking Lightning Hopkins or Johnley
Speaker 3: Hooker's Crawling King Snake Blues or Mississippi Fred McDowell, it's
Speaker 3: the soul and the intensity of what is revealed in
Speaker 3: their vocal and their body language and their marriage. If
Speaker 3: they're a guitar player or a piano player. The it's
Speaker 3: one thing, you know, Memphis Slim was just you can't
Speaker 3: separate his body movements from his voice from his piano
Speaker 3: plan Fred McDowell, the same thing Johnley Hooker, Oh my god,
Speaker 3: you know it's the darkest haunting. I don't want to
Speaker 3: say it's the blues is only about the hurtful things
Speaker 3: or the pain that's so deep, because it's.
Speaker 2: So that like one of the reasons black people might
Speaker 2: not be just running to it is because we've been
Speaker 2: going through it and we made it.
Speaker 1: I was going to say that it's too much of
Speaker 1: a minder for me personally, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean it's it's the way that it
Speaker 3: came up when and when I started out was what
Speaker 3: right do you have to sing the blues? You're a
Speaker 3: white girl from California, daughter of a Broadway singer. For
Speaker 3: God's sake, how come you?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: I said, you know, I didn't even think about it.
Speaker 3: I just liked the music and I needed to teach
Speaker 3: myself how to play it to entertain myself in my room.
Speaker 3: I didn't ask to this. I didn't say I was great.
Speaker 3: I didn't say I had the right to do this.
Speaker 3: If you don't like the way I sing it, don't
Speaker 3: come to my gig, you know. But I'm not trying
Speaker 3: to be black. I'm not trying to usurp income. If anything,
Speaker 3: I was, I was made to be on the earth
Speaker 3: to showcase why artists of that generation never got royalties
Speaker 3: and why they rhythm and blues pioneers that line our
Speaker 3: record shelves never saw a penny because they're still in
Speaker 3: these oppressive, exploitive record contracts that they I didn't know
Speaker 3: any better, didn't have access to legal fee, lawyers advices.
Speaker 3: They just were not cutting people in more than two
Speaker 3: percent of royalties, and out of that they had to
Speaker 3: pay for everything. So, you know, in the early days
Speaker 3: when people would say, I would go up and ask
Speaker 3: Sippy and Fred and Muddy like, how do you feel
Speaker 3: when they look out there and see all those white people?
Speaker 3: And he goes, you know, I wasn't expecting to be
Speaker 3: invited to go to England or to go to invite
Speaker 3: it to the Newport Folk Festival. I didn't expect for
Speaker 3: CBS to offer me a record deal, you know, for
Speaker 3: Sunhouse and all this. A lot of these people were
Speaker 3: retired for twenty five years and they were rediscovered by
Speaker 3: young white blues fans and they they were delighted. He said,
Speaker 3: I love playing these colleges. All these girls like laying
Speaker 3: on my feet in the hotel room afterwards when I'm
Speaker 3: playing the blues all night long, and these guys are
Speaker 3: they're you know, treated me like I'm the second coming,
Speaker 3: you know, he said, you know what it's like to
Speaker 3: be ignored for all those years and not get to play,
Speaker 3: and then be celebrated and appreciated. He said, I don't
Speaker 3: care what color they are. I'm just glad they dig it,
Speaker 3: you know. But Muddy didn't have a problem with Stevie
Speaker 3: Ray or Liel George or Mike Bloomfield or me or anybody.
Speaker 3: If if somebody could play, they that's the thing. If
Speaker 3: you could sing and play and impress them, they were in.
Speaker 2: You were in that club, you better play.
Speaker 1: So without without me being really controversial with this next question, good,
Speaker 1: good problem here you go, No, no, no, no, because
Speaker 1: this is I think this is my one chance to
Speaker 1: ask this question. Okay, so back in nineteen ninety ninety one,
Speaker 1: when you know, my mind is getting more open to
Speaker 1: all types of music or whatever. So a guy like
Speaker 1: me will buy a copy of Physical Graffiti buys Zeppelin,
Speaker 1: and you know, and I think when you're a teenager,
Speaker 1: like between twelve and twenty two, your mind is just
Speaker 1: open to everything, especially if your music fan. Like if
Speaker 1: you look at my record collection from twelve to twenty two,
Speaker 1: it'd be somewhere between the Ohio players and Debbie Gibson
Speaker 1: and no, but just like Lightning Hopkins, like I was
Speaker 1: just open to everything. So my oh yes, exactly. So
Speaker 1: my whole thing is, you know, I I can't divorce
Speaker 1: myself from really being in love with like Jimmy Page's
Speaker 1: guitar work on the Zeppelin records. And it's only when
Speaker 1: I got older when I started like going back and
Speaker 1: reading old reviews, like of course we're revisioning his history,
Speaker 1: like Rolling Stone will say, you know, Rolling Stones will
Speaker 1: do complete issues dedicated to Zeppelin, but back then, just
Speaker 1: how much of a like this is fraud? Like in
Speaker 1: the same way where hip hop heads might call out
Speaker 1: an MC who isn't really of the ilk of the
Speaker 1: culture that you know got more success and whatnot, you know,
Speaker 1: got so. But the thing is is that even now
Speaker 1: when I still listen to Zeppelin, like I can't and
Speaker 1: there's still older cats are just like, man, fuck that shit,
Speaker 1: that's fake blues like listening to the real shit. But
Speaker 1: it's like, am I wrong in thinking that? And I'm
Speaker 1: using like in My Time of Dying as an example
Speaker 1: where they're doing like Bottleneck Blue Slides and all those things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like is where critics just hard and guarding the gate
Speaker 1: or was that a problem with a lot of the
Speaker 1: English blues guys. And I'm talking about Clapton, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about age, Like, what are your feelings on those like on?
Speaker 3: You know, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton and Keith Richards
Speaker 3: are just I mean, when people fall in love with
Speaker 3: music and they adopt a style that's not comes from
Speaker 3: where they grew up. Somehow, the whole culture got the
Speaker 3: blues somewhere in the mid sixties, we all got discovered
Speaker 3: and everybody was just nuts for it. And so it's
Speaker 3: a question of what you do with that appropriate you know,
Speaker 3: it could be appropriation or it could be just absolute passion.
Speaker 3: But I think it's a good idea to try to
Speaker 3: give it back and share the stage and pay props
Speaker 3: to the people that originated the music. In your interviews
Speaker 3: and in your songwriting credits, you don't take credit for
Speaker 3: a song that Willie Dixon wrote only settled thirty years later.
Speaker 3: So you know, there's just basic shit like don't steal
Speaker 3: people's stuff. You know, I'm not saying I'm not saying
Speaker 3: they did. I'm just saying I'm okay. So, but I'm
Speaker 3: just saying how did I feel about the do I did?
Speaker 3: I like the way they.
Speaker 1: Played, like his musicianship, like and when you're.
Speaker 3: Jimmy Page is unbelievable, unbelievable. Yeah, yeah, no, and Eric
Speaker 3: clapped in unbelievable Stevie way, Jimmy Hendrix. You know I didn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't look at it as colors. I didn't look
Speaker 3: at his gender. I just went this guy's a badass,
Speaker 3: you know that kind of thing. So, but in terms
Speaker 3: of the debt that white artists, oh black artists, these
Speaker 3: music they are making money from, you better start sharing.
Speaker 3: You take a knee financially as well.
Speaker 1: Right, But you created that always, Yeah, I just always
Speaker 1: wanted to know, like, were they authentic in their presentation?
Speaker 1: In addition to I think.
Speaker 3: They I think they built on they built something completely different,
Speaker 3: you know, like when the Stones do you Gotta Move?
Speaker 3: I mean they're not doing it exactly. They can't sound
Speaker 3: exactly like some older guy. But you just do the interpretation.
Speaker 3: And if you don't like hearing, you know, it's just
Speaker 3: up to the listener whether they think it's authentic, if
Speaker 3: it moves you or not, if they mean it. I
Speaker 3: think that's got it's got a valid, a valid reason
Speaker 3: to to exist. And you know, brilliance is brilliance no
Speaker 3: matter what genre comes stems out of you know, So
Speaker 3: I may not be I may not be answering that
Speaker 3: breat no.
Speaker 1: No, no, I get it. I got to get it.
Speaker 1: So okay, as many people know what the show, I
Speaker 1: bleed Purple. And you know, one of the very first
Speaker 1: times that I've heard about you in my teen years
Speaker 1: was when Prince was going to sign you to Paisley Park.
Speaker 1: And I've heard those demos, I've heard I need a man.
Speaker 1: I've heard at least four or five of the songs
Speaker 1: he was going to submit to you. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about that? What was what was that whole period like
Speaker 1: when you were about to sign the Paisley Park.
Speaker 2: Well, it.
Speaker 3: It never got that far. I mean I had been
Speaker 3: dropped by Warners right when I was getting ready to
Speaker 3: go on tour with Stevie Ray Vaughan, and you know,
Speaker 3: we had six months of band and crew work and
Speaker 3: I had to pull out because without any promotion or
Speaker 3: any album to sell, we just weren't going to be
Speaker 3: able to promoter didn't want to take an act that
Speaker 3: didn't have support from a record company. So he pulled
Speaker 3: the rug out of me and twenty five people, and
Speaker 3: I had to go on tour just as a duo
Speaker 3: with a bass player and try to make a living
Speaker 3: and pay my bills. But everybody else was out of work,
Speaker 3: and we were normally touring all the time. We didn't
Speaker 3: sell records. We just made our living touring. So somewhere
Speaker 3: in a couple of years in Prince called and said, man,
Speaker 3: you got a raw deal. Why don't you come on
Speaker 3: over to Paisley Park and warners will have to take
Speaker 3: a little lesson on how to treat somebody. So we
Speaker 3: talked about it. I said, I don't want to go
Speaker 3: do a whole prints record, and I know you don't
Speaker 3: want to come over in my wheelhouse. So if we
Speaker 3: can really meet in the middle and come up with
Speaker 3: something that's equally mine in yours, that would be great.
Speaker 3: And you know, we had some couple of wonderful evenings
Speaker 3: together playing music and watching slicestone and staple singers and
Speaker 3: screens that were the size of the wall, you know,
Speaker 3: And I got to go in his closet and see
Speaker 3: his clothes and see just you know, it was really
Speaker 3: fun to get to know each other and we had
Speaker 3: a lot of music that we loved in common, and
Speaker 3: so I had a solo acoustic, a duo gig and
Speaker 3: Colorado playing ballrooms and ski resorts, which I could make
Speaker 3: good money because I didn't have to pay for the band,
Speaker 3: so my fans got to see me up close and
Speaker 3: do acoustic versions of my songs. So I was doing
Speaker 3: really well. But I went on a ski. It took
Speaker 3: a ski lesson and fell on the skis and broke
Speaker 3: my landed on my thumb with my weight of my body,
Speaker 3: and I pulled my thumb off ligament and I could play.
Speaker 3: So I called Prince and said we got a postpone it.
Speaker 3: But you know what I did. It turned out to
Speaker 3: be a blessing in disguise. And because I was heavy
Speaker 3: and I wanted to I said, Man, if this works out,
Speaker 3: I got to make a video with this guy. And
Speaker 3: I'm like thirty forty pounds overweight, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: take this opportunity while I got this cast on to
Speaker 3: go to get to the musicians meeting and hang out
Speaker 3: with my old buddies that I used to party with,
Speaker 3: but just be sober with them and I'll, you know,
Speaker 3: ride my bike and lose some weight and by the
Speaker 3: time I see Prince, I'll be ready to be filmed,
Speaker 3: or at least more ready. So that was a blessing.
Speaker 3: And then I went to Minneapolis and he had already
Speaker 3: cut the songs and you know, did all the tracks
Speaker 3: but in the wrong key, so they weren't in my key,
Speaker 3: and there wasn't any place for me to add any
Speaker 3: musical ideas except just to play some slide on a
Speaker 3: couple of things right. But there was one of the
Speaker 3: sets of lyrics with something I would never You know, honey,
Speaker 3: you can mess around all over town, but we're still
Speaker 3: cool because there's something I like about be in your fool,
Speaker 3: But you know, I need a a n real man.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was funky ass Minia. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: he's just We could have done some really cool stuff together.
Speaker 3: And he went off on tour in the summer. We
Speaker 3: made plans. I canceled my tour with my band and
Speaker 3: went to called my brother in Minneapolis. I said I'm
Speaker 3: on my way, and he said for what. Prince extended
Speaker 3: his tour and never called me. So I put my
Speaker 3: guys out of work to make the record with him,
Speaker 3: and he never called me. And just stayed over in Europe.
Speaker 3: So it was not it was not a happy ending,
Speaker 3: but still great artists, great artist did a lot of
Speaker 3: wonderful things for women guitar players.
Speaker 4: Honnie, when did you pick up the slide? When did
Speaker 4: that become a thing in your arsenal? I have a theory.
Speaker 4: You were talking about matching guitars with voices. I feel
Speaker 4: like for some in some way the side stunk your voice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's thank you. That's how I feel about it.
Speaker 3: And I like the tone that I pick is because
Speaker 3: it's how I hear. It picks up where I leave off.
Speaker 3: You know, so I and Lowell George from Little Feet
Speaker 3: is the one who gave me a compressor so I
Speaker 3: could hang the note longer because I asked him, I said,
Speaker 3: how are you holding that note? Because Fred mcdalla shouldn't
Speaker 3: do that? And you know Ry Coooter and Lowell George
Speaker 3: are the masters. And then now we got Derek Truck.
Speaker 3: So just but anyway, I heard I heard slide guitar
Speaker 3: when I was about fourteen, when I got some country
Speaker 3: blues records and I taught myself to play. I tuned
Speaker 3: to an open tuning and I soaked the label off
Speaker 3: a chorus seat and cold bottle, and I put on
Speaker 3: my middle finger and I just I played. I didn't
Speaker 3: have any lessons, but I hadn't seen anybody do it,
Speaker 3: but I imagined it was like my grandpa had a
Speaker 3: lap steel that he'd played hymns on where he drew
Speaker 3: the bar across the neck of the guitar. So I
Speaker 3: just pretended that that was it and just listened to
Speaker 3: that record and went quite and I taught myself to
Speaker 3: play from those records and then just honed it down.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Eventually I had to go to electric because a lot
Speaker 3: of the keys of the blues that I like are
Speaker 3: my voice is five keys up and if I put
Speaker 3: the KPO halfway up the neck, I can't get the
Speaker 3: octave without on a longer neck. So that's why I
Speaker 3: went electric.
Speaker 1: You of course, Uh, well, I'm safer end of the
Speaker 1: show because he hasn't done a show yet. But Steve
Speaker 1: and I worked with our with our good friend Don
Speaker 1: was could you talk about the relationship with Don and.
Speaker 3: Hal Willner blessed rest in Peace the Great?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 3: He called Don up and said I would love to
Speaker 3: have you and Bonnie rates saying baby mine from Dumbo
Speaker 3: for this Disney tribute I'm doing, and he called me
Speaker 3: and said the same thing. He said, I don't know. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: I'm like a complete was not was Hound, you know
Speaker 3: that's right. That is my jam. Those guys, those lyrics
Speaker 3: with that singer, those singers and the music. I went
Speaker 3: nuts for them, and so on the session it went
Speaker 3: so beautifully. It's one of my favorite tracks I've ever cut,
Speaker 3: This beautiful Disney tribute Little One Close. Ah. We did
Speaker 3: like a baby oh mine, you know right now?
Speaker 1: That did it too?
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you. I never thought Don would turn out.
Speaker 3: He was a big fan of my early records, and
Speaker 3: he couldn't believe that I was a fan. I could
Speaker 3: like quote every Dad I'm in jail, you know, I
Speaker 3: could quote all these was not was songs.
Speaker 4: So we were.
Speaker 3: It was a love affair, you know, and we just
Speaker 3: he came to my acoustic show outside of l We
Speaker 3: were playing this club called the Coach House, and I
Speaker 3: think he came to that and he saw me just
Speaker 3: playing my stuff with just in the guitar like I
Speaker 3: did the first four years of my career before I
Speaker 3: could afford a band, and he said, you know, let's
Speaker 3: make and I said, would you want to do a
Speaker 3: record together, and he said, yeah, but I want to
Speaker 3: do a record where let's base it on if you
Speaker 3: could sing the song on the guitar or the piano
Speaker 3: and make me know that it's a Bonnie Ray song,
Speaker 3: then forget that, forget the who's in the band, just
Speaker 3: start with what you Let's pick the songs that work,
Speaker 3: just by yourself. Even though we used a band, that's
Speaker 3: how we made Nick of time. We didn't have a
Speaker 3: big budget. And I suggested my drummer, Rookie Fetar and
Speaker 3: you know Hutch Hutchinson, and we had benmont Tench, and
Speaker 3: we had Mark Goldenberg and you know, we just had
Speaker 3: a stellar group of players, including Randy Jacobs. But he
Speaker 3: might have been unlucky the draw from what was not
Speaker 3: was So I told him he didn't know about Ed Journey,
Speaker 3: and I said, man, there's this engineer that does ry
Speaker 3: Cooter and David Linley lreo X Records. We got to
Speaker 3: see if he would do this, because you know he
Speaker 3: did get Rhythm by Rykooter. That album is one of
Speaker 3: my favorites. And so we met ed and the three
Speaker 3: of us just hit it off and we went in
Speaker 3: the studio together and we just we love each other.
Speaker 1: It showed up in the music.
Speaker 2: It show did I was just thinking that.
Speaker 1: In making that record for you, the temptation to go
Speaker 1: to your sweet spot, which is the authentic blues, that
Speaker 1: the that authentic raw sound. At any point did you
Speaker 1: were you nervous about kind of And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: cleaning it up as in, you know, compromise, but there's
Speaker 1: definitely a noticeable sonic difference in that record and your
Speaker 1: previous albums, So the like, what can you from hitting
Speaker 1: your upper limit in.
Speaker 3: Terms of oh, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1: What what like you know, like this is too clean?
Speaker 1: Like this not bluesy enough.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean I don't do only blue songs, so
Speaker 3: you know, I always have a there's a Jackson Brown
Speaker 3: and Eric cat Love has No Pride and Angel from Montgomery.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's there's a breadth of R and B
Speaker 3: and rock and roll like n RBQ songs and you know,
Speaker 3: fabulous Thunderbirds and Chuck Berry kind of thing, and then
Speaker 3: there's funk tunes and there's a lot of the ballads
Speaker 3: are very stripped down, you know, the ones that I
Speaker 3: did on the Glow, and almost every record has some
Speaker 3: kind of heartbreak song that's stripped down to just guitar,
Speaker 3: piano and bass. And so for me that the way
Speaker 3: we approached Nick of Time wasn't that different than some
Speaker 3: of the other records that I've done. And it's just
Speaker 3: song driven, you know, whatever the song needs. And in
Speaker 3: terms of the sound of it, that's ed Cherney is
Speaker 3: really know, he knows we want to really organic sound
Speaker 3: and you get the right players and I don't know
Speaker 3: if it works for you guys, but if you get
Speaker 3: the right song and the right players in the room,
Speaker 3: and you get an engineer that knows where to put
Speaker 3: the mics and which mics to use on which instruments,
Speaker 3: and you just let it happen.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: You don't rehearse, you don't open the oven door and
Speaker 3: try to mine, you know, you just set the stage
Speaker 3: and let it go.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: That's how That's how I'd been making records for since
Speaker 3: the green Light album and later the you know, earlier
Speaker 3: the Glow, I did a record with Peter Asher, who's
Speaker 3: known to be, you know, a pretty slick producer. But
Speaker 3: I just said I want to do everything live, so
Speaker 3: anyway that I didn't. I mean the bluesy thing. The
Speaker 3: only blues song on that record is the Road's My
Speaker 3: middle Name. And I wanted to do that with the
Speaker 3: fabulous Underbirds in Texas, so we went down there and
Speaker 3: did that. But that Jerry Williams song, real man, man,
Speaker 3: that's just that's right, and that's that's my I could
Speaker 3: have done that song at any point in my career.
Speaker 3: And similarly with thought Ain't Gonna Let You Break My
Speaker 3: Heart Again? With Herbie. Oh, you know, we just got
Speaker 3: really lucky with both those lucky the drawing nick of
Speaker 3: time and you know, the subsequent records. We great songs,
Speaker 3: great players, and I find the songs and bring them
Speaker 3: and I and we had the terrific core band, So
Speaker 3: I don't want to I gotta pay props. People don't
Speaker 3: pay enough props to the band because that's what those
Speaker 3: That's why that music is so special too.
Speaker 7: So how does your how did your life change like
Speaker 7: to take us through, you know, from going just from
Speaker 7: you know, all those years going from Warner and just
Speaker 7: going through that journey to finally getting paid dirt?
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 3: Right? Well, I got a lot less free time, because
Speaker 3: when when you're a political activist that use your your
Speaker 3: voice and your money and ability to fundraise. When I
Speaker 3: didn't mean so much, I didn't get so many tribes
Speaker 3: calling me for Native American justice benefits and planned. You know,
Speaker 3: when I when I was a bigger deal, I could
Speaker 3: when I go on I'd got invited on the Tonight Show,
Speaker 3: and I got invited on Good Morning America, and I
Speaker 3: could we had just formed the Rhythm and Blues Foundation
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty eight, and I could go on every
Speaker 3: TV show and talk about how those artists that we
Speaker 3: owe everything too never got paid, and let's make a
Speaker 3: donation and do the benefit for you know, health, get
Speaker 3: some health insurance for some of these icons that we
Speaker 3: all love so much. And I make my living doing
Speaker 3: the songs of so Anyway, the biggest difference was lifestyle.
Speaker 3: You know, I could have some financial security, I could
Speaker 3: move up to Northern California, I could pay my band better.
Speaker 3: I could really raise money and attention for the causes
Speaker 3: that I love. But I got really busy and in demand.
Speaker 3: And that's sometimes I look back at being more care
Speaker 3: free when I was less of a big deal, and
Speaker 3: I wish sometimes I could go back to that that
Speaker 3: easier time, but it's not. I don't spend a lot
Speaker 3: of time looking back.
Speaker 1: At the highlight what was like the highest of highs
Speaker 1: in terms of well, I mean, I would imagine that
Speaker 1: being a critical favorite and a favorite of the industry,
Speaker 1: that you pretty much met your peers, But just like,
Speaker 1: was there someone that you finally got to work with
Speaker 1: or at least become friends with that you're otherwise pre
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine life couldn't imagine, you know, were you
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good thing, buddies, or you know, I'm
Speaker 1: playing like yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I hear what you're saying. Well, I was
Speaker 3: blessed with being respected by so many musicians that I
Speaker 3: wanted to work with it. I really did. If you
Speaker 3: look at my guest discography, you know, there's like a
Speaker 3: lot of people who I wished I could have signed
Speaker 3: with that I you know, Willie Nelson and all kinds
Speaker 3: of blues artists and R and B artists. So I
Speaker 3: did get to record with a lot of people already
Speaker 3: be even before that, but afterwards making a record with
Speaker 3: my dad and getting them a record deal on Angel
Speaker 3: Records in the middle of the nineties and singing Hey
Speaker 3: there with a forty two piece orchestra. That was some heavy,
Speaker 3: beautiful stuff because I you know, here I am helping
Speaker 3: Ruth Brown and Charles Brown, and I would say that
Speaker 3: singing Merry Christmas Baby with Charles Brown and we got
Speaker 3: to move to the outskirts of town with Ruth Brown
Speaker 3: two of the great highlights of my life. To be
Speaker 3: able to showcase and take on the road Ruth Brown
Speaker 3: and Charles Brown. Put them in hotels they deserve to
Speaker 3: stay in the whole time, give them a tour bus
Speaker 3: that they couldn't even believe they were in. And at
Speaker 3: that point in their life. For me to be able
Speaker 3: to turn around and do something for some people that
Speaker 3: mean so much to me, that was the high point
Speaker 3: of that success. And singing with my dad and Ruth
Speaker 3: and Charles and okay, John Lee, you can It's just
Speaker 3: it was deep. It was deep and still deep. And Tuts,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, the house.
Speaker 1: That's right, You're part of the other. How won the project? Right?
Speaker 1: How's always putting weird albums together? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well I had. I had cut True Love Is Hard
Speaker 3: to Find on nine Lives in eighty five, Yeah, eighty six,
Speaker 3: and then Tuts and I did it and then and
Speaker 3: you want to gram me on that album Reggae, you know,
Speaker 3: True Love, which is all duets, you know, to have
Speaker 3: John Prine and Toots Gone, I mean, and how yeah.
Speaker 3: I wrote a song on my new album called Living
Speaker 3: for the Ones who didn't make it. It's all about that, honey.
Speaker 2: What is your dad? I want to ask you this
Speaker 2: earlier on is your dad and your mom?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: What did they think about where your music went? Since
Speaker 2: he came from them? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: You know when I started doing I'm Built for Comfort
Speaker 3: and Not for Speed, you know Willie Dipson song that
Speaker 3: Wolf did, and they were they were in the audience
Speaker 3: at the Second Fret, you know, in Philadelphia off a
Speaker 3: Rittenhouse Square, and they came to my first gig and
Speaker 3: I wasn't going to do Spider in the Fly by
Speaker 3: the Rolling Stones, but I ended up singing built built
Speaker 3: for Comfort, not for speed, just me and acoustic guitar
Speaker 3: and a bass. I think that embarrassed my dad a
Speaker 3: little bit. So I think here's how they felt. They
Speaker 3: were delighted that the world thought I was talented. They
Speaker 3: were dismayed I didn't finish college, but then they could
Speaker 3: tell that it was I got lucky and that the
Speaker 3: lifestyle I was living, partying a lot. And I don't
Speaker 3: think they I don't think they dug that too much.
Speaker 3: So my dad always said, if you want to sing
Speaker 3: better and not worry about losing your voice or catching
Speaker 3: colds on the road, just take a little bit better
Speaker 3: care of yourself. And they were really happy when I
Speaker 3: quit trashing myself, which wasn't all the time, but after
Speaker 3: the shows, you know, right, yeah, after the shows. I
Speaker 3: never let anything get in the way of my show
Speaker 3: because I didn't sell records, so I you.
Speaker 1: Know, that show was everything.
Speaker 3: I had to be really good every damn show. And
Speaker 3: that's what my dad taught me. Every night is opening night.
Speaker 2: And why it should be mentioned didn't graduate. You did
Speaker 2: go to some really amazing colleges, right.
Speaker 3: So I did go to Harvard for a couple of years.
Speaker 3: But man, this college of Johnny Hooker and being on
Speaker 3: the road with Mississippi Fred McDowall was a better college
Speaker 3: than any you know, And and I yeah, and I
Speaker 3: wish and they all wish that Blues was not a
Speaker 3: bad experience for most black people. They would have been
Speaker 3: great if their grand niece and grandchildren wanted to go
Speaker 3: into it. You know what I mean, it's an institutional
Speaker 3: racism that in the community where blues people should be
Speaker 3: on stamps and taught in the schools, and blues artists
Speaker 3: should be revered and paid and treated like that jazz
Speaker 3: is treated in Europe, you know what I mean. It
Speaker 3: should we should just be lifting up roots music of
Speaker 3: all kinds, not just blues, and the people who it
Speaker 3: should be taught so that little kids can really appreciate
Speaker 3: their own heritage and you know, and dig BB King
Speaker 3: and actually go see him, you know. So you have
Speaker 3: to be just being me and Eric Clapton talking about
Speaker 3: BB King.
Speaker 2: Now you want to add more to the curriculum the
Speaker 2: critical race theory, no, no boon?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, okay. A question always wanted to know in
Speaker 1: your post nineteen ninety one life. Is there any concert
Speaker 1: that you've ever given in which your fan base is
Speaker 1: fine if you don't do I can't make you love me? Oh,
Speaker 1: He's always wanted to know. With signature songs, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a point where Nirvana just stopped doing smells like
Speaker 1: teen Spirit, and sometimes artists will shy away from doing
Speaker 1: their signature song all the time. But for you, how
Speaker 1: do you feel about that song of all of.
Speaker 3: Your Oh, I would not do a show without Angel
Speaker 3: from Montgomery or I Can't Make You Love Me because
Speaker 3: those people, a lot of them haven't seen me in
Speaker 3: a long time.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 3: Some people didn't see me last time through, and maybe
Speaker 3: they haven't seen me in six or seven years, and
Speaker 3: they love that song. And so I got to do
Speaker 3: it for the people that you know, and I try to.
Speaker 3: I try to be as real and new every single night,
Speaker 3: every song. I don't ever post.
Speaker 1: You have to, Yeah, you have to. It's the opening
Speaker 1: night every night. Yeah, someone is I mean.
Speaker 3: And I remember I remember being on both sides of
Speaker 3: that I can't make you Love me, I haven't it,
Speaker 3: you know where somebody said I had to tell them
Speaker 3: I didn't love him that way anymore, and and they
Speaker 3: and they said, could you just could you still stay
Speaker 3: through Christmas? Oh man, that was some you know what
Speaker 3: past the piece and you're looking at the person's mom
Speaker 3: and you just you just you just broke their heart.
Speaker 3: And then I've been on the side where my heart
Speaker 3: was broken, where someone said, you know, I love you,
Speaker 3: but not that way anymore. It's just not working out,
Speaker 3: you know, somebody that can stay home and cook for me, right,
Speaker 3: you know, we can't even talk about that song.
Speaker 2: Like literally, I was sitting in my living room with
Speaker 2: my seventy one year old mother her seven year old friend,
Speaker 2: and we were talking about your music, and she was
Speaker 2: like that one song. She's like, don't I'm about to
Speaker 2: go it is and bring a tear song? Do you
Speaker 2: know this is the blue I do?
Speaker 3: And I know how many men cry when they hear
Speaker 3: that song because I get the letters saying I've never
Speaker 3: seen my husband cry. And when I turned and looked
Speaker 3: at him and there were tears, you know that, she
Speaker 3: said it repaired a whole lot of hurt that we had.
Speaker 2: Ya, I mean, I mean it makes sense. It makes sense.
Speaker 3: And you know who wrote that song is a guy
Speaker 3: who used to be in the Cincinnati Bengals. What was
Speaker 3: a professional so what that was written by? Mike Read
Speaker 3: was a Cincinnati Bengal and Alan Shamblin wrote the words.
Speaker 3: And those two guys and and Mike Read wrote a
Speaker 3: song on nick of Time called too Soon Toll but
Speaker 3: no of course, because he wrote I can't make you
Speaker 3: love me too? And he's like this big bear of
Speaker 3: a guy. Oh, I love it, and he writes this
Speaker 3: and he has a voice break your heart like Michael McDonald.
Speaker 3: I know, Michael McDonald, excuse me. I'm right with you, Leah.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that I love even though I love,
Speaker 1: I can't make you love me for me too soon
Speaker 1: to tell is my favorite song of yours.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I love that song. And wait till you way do
Speaker 3: you got to call Mike Read and tell him how
Speaker 3: much you love those songs?
Speaker 1: He now knows it because we just said it. That
Speaker 1: that that is mind That is mind blowing to me.
Speaker 3: I mean it's yeah, because you know, six foot four
Speaker 3: football player does not normally sit down and write. But
Speaker 3: then look at Hornsby.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Yeah, big people have heart.
Speaker 4: I'm saying.
Speaker 1: A big club, Bill, get out of here. I thought
Speaker 1: Bill was trying to say.
Speaker 3: I'm saying like he's like, my guys, you guys, I
Speaker 3: should just I'm just gonna sit back and let you
Speaker 3: guys clown because this is too good terrible.
Speaker 5: Are you all?
Speaker 3: Are you all in the same city?
Speaker 1: No, some people are like three people are I'm in
Speaker 1: New York right now, I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love Carolina Park. Yes, I'm in the Park.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wrap this up surdly, but I definitely have
Speaker 1: to ask, how did you feel when you got inducted?
Speaker 1: It's like, how do you think she felt? A mirror?
Speaker 1: But how did for you to be inducted in the
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Speaker 3: It was outrageous, And you know, I don't know if
Speaker 3: I really deserve to be in, but I knew that
Speaker 3: I had lasted a long enough time to qualify and
Speaker 3: they didn't have enough women yet. And as a woman
Speaker 3: lead guitar player, as a champion of unpaid royalties and
Speaker 3: debts to artists that didn't get their props, it just thought,
Speaker 3: why that damn museum is there? And the organization so
Speaker 3: a role model for activism and guitar play and leading
Speaker 3: a band. I'll take it because I want to inspire
Speaker 3: the next generations of women musicians and activists and righteous
Speaker 3: people trying to get that royalty reform and get the
Speaker 3: songwriters paid by the streaming service directly and not go
Speaker 3: through the record labels. Come on, I mean, there's all
Speaker 3: these people that wrote the songs that I made my
Speaker 3: career on that haven't seen a penny from all those streams,
Speaker 3: so you know, I'm not going to shut up about it.
Speaker 3: So anyway, I was happy to be in there because
Speaker 3: I didn't read a lot of negative press about she
Speaker 3: doesn't deserve it, So that was I was worried about that.
Speaker 3: And you know, we all get worried about social media
Speaker 3: because my feelings get hurt. So I don't look at
Speaker 3: I don't look at a lot of the responses in
Speaker 3: case people saying I wish you'd just shut up about
Speaker 3: Native Americans, you know, pipelines, you.
Speaker 2: Know, listen. Meanwhile, I was about to ask you what
Speaker 2: causes are closest to your heart? Right now?
Speaker 3: We need to know election protection, okay, okay, okay, Democracy
Speaker 3: is a good one. Democracy is nice when that works.
Speaker 3: So election protection, the climate climate you know, fiasco, and
Speaker 3: and the fact that food and access to health care
Speaker 3: and education, the inequities and income and opportunity are just
Speaker 3: number one. You know, we just got to get there's
Speaker 3: just too many justice, equal pay for everybody, but you know,
Speaker 3: the health care system what you name it, but food
Speaker 3: equity and health care equity and education equal a equal opportunity.
Speaker 3: Climate change, but man, the democratic hijacking of democracy in
Speaker 3: this country by the right wing is just you know,
Speaker 3: we got fascism on our door right here, you know,
Speaker 3: knowing kids yourself did that. We got to get everybody
Speaker 3: out to the polls Purple.
Speaker 2: That's where we live.
Speaker 1: It is it is weird that just the basic, just
Speaker 1: basic human needs are now seen as justice causes. It's crazy.
Speaker 3: It is crazy for you.
Speaker 1: For you now, is there anything in your career that
Speaker 1: you have yet to bucket list that you you wish
Speaker 1: to to achieve?
Speaker 3: Oh, I've never been asked that.
Speaker 1: I love your passive aggressive way. I'm here of asking you.
Speaker 1: At with Bonnie Rae, we did.
Speaker 3: Get to play They backed me up on Used to
Speaker 3: Rule the World. It was a badass version too. It
Speaker 3: was really great. I would love to work with Keith.
Speaker 3: I would love to. I would really love to re
Speaker 3: up the Womad Festival where there is an unbelievable collaborations
Speaker 3: of like Paul Brady, Habib Corte from Molly, Paul Brady
Speaker 3: from Ireland, Liz Wright, you know, Esperanza, me a Mere
Speaker 3: you know reggae guys. I would have put bolts in there,
Speaker 3: but you know what I'm saying, Like a touring womad
Speaker 3: across pollination of fertilization of music, that it doesn't matter
Speaker 3: what genre it is. It's just great where we can
Speaker 3: hear each other every night. I mean Jackson Brown, Sean Colvin,
Speaker 3: Bruce Hornsby and myself with David Linley went on tour
Speaker 3: as a supergroup in nineteen ninety. It was just fantastic.
Speaker 3: In the summer, we just had a little window of
Speaker 3: time and we all got to sing and play on
Speaker 3: each other's songs. And I'd like to do that again.
Speaker 3: I don't know. That was probably too amorphous an answer,
Speaker 3: but do you guys know what what womad was. It
Speaker 3: was fantastic.
Speaker 1: When you say Keith who what Keith?
Speaker 3: Keith Richard's you know, I forgot, I forgot where I was. No, No,
Speaker 3: I you know, I was just thinking on the top
Speaker 3: of my head. I said, Keith. But you know, in
Speaker 3: my world there's one Keith, but there's more Keith Sweat.
Speaker 3: You're right, Keith Urban.
Speaker 1: I was thinking Keith Thomas as well, the producer.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, thank you for remind give me a
Speaker 3: reality check. No, I mean that guy who together we
Speaker 3: will stand there and be weathered together. You know, I
Speaker 3: don't know if you. He loves playing the piano and
Speaker 3: singing almost Hogy Carmichael kind of stand and he's really
Speaker 3: good and I love the versions of that he does
Speaker 3: of those songs. It would be really fun to do
Speaker 3: to do something with him.
Speaker 1: Well, we we now know that you have manifest magic, so.
Speaker 3: You can make that wal Mad festival. But we have
Speaker 3: to keep COVID under control so we can go across
Speaker 3: borders and be safe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I say by May that it'll I'm saying right now,
Speaker 1: I am you're manifesting. I'm manifested by May, mainly so
Speaker 1: we can get Fante at the house in time for
Speaker 1: the roots picnicking.
Speaker 7: Talk about it, and we was all thinking, it's out there,
Speaker 7: it's outside, man, it's outside, it's cool.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I don't do end of If it's outside,
Speaker 1: it's it's cool. Now, I will say this COVID and
Speaker 1: no COVID two days don't Yeah, I don't know. I'm cool,
Speaker 1: but not two days two day. Oh No, I've been
Speaker 1: having the time my life. By ray, there you go.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: I could go to so many places right now, but
Speaker 3: I just met so I'm not going to go there.
Speaker 3: But in my mind I have got I'm going in
Speaker 3: my mind about what you've been up to.
Speaker 1: Ben's been self work, just working on myself. You know.
Speaker 1: It gave me time just to slow down. I dropped
Speaker 1: like forty pounds and spend more time with my family. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm cooling.
Speaker 3: There's been some good stuff about it. For sure. I
Speaker 3: made a record surprise, and I'm probably I probably would
Speaker 3: have made a different kind of a record, but you know,
Speaker 3: it's been nice to have. But I missed touring, Oh
Speaker 3: my god, I miss playing live. Yeah, And I just
Speaker 3: got to say, I tape your show every night and
Speaker 3: watch it the next day, and I love you guys.
Speaker 3: I wish I could have a whole separate series of
Speaker 3: when you guys play on the you know with Jimmy
Speaker 3: the show. I wish we could hear you're playing all
Speaker 3: the way through. John Baptiste too, those guys, you do
Speaker 3: all that work and those tunes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, we had him on the show too. It
Speaker 2: was a really good show.
Speaker 1: Yes We're good boy.
Speaker 3: That that that video for Freedom and the videos on
Speaker 3: his record he was. I mean, I wish to just
Speaker 3: let him dance around for a while and make me happy.
Speaker 1: I hope this is his. I hope this is his
Speaker 1: nick of time year for the Grammys.
Speaker 3: Wow, I hope so too.
Speaker 1: I'm going there nomination, so.
Speaker 3: You know, I know, Okay, No, he's gonna. Oh and
Speaker 3: can I just thank you for Summer Soul.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: And I know you're gonna this is gonna be your
Speaker 3: nick of time at the Oscar.
Speaker 1: Yes, talk about it, come.
Speaker 3: Up top now.
Speaker 1: Anyway, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: I just have to ask you, did you have to
Speaker 3: tune in with Sly and all those guys that much
Speaker 3: in tune on every damn note. You don't have to answer.
Speaker 1: Here's the fun I'm so glad you only because you
Speaker 1: asked that question. All right, I'm gonnadmit one cheat that
Speaker 1: I did once. I did only two cheats on the
Speaker 1: on the movie because uh, sing a simple song was
Speaker 1: an e. I cheated the intro drone that they did
Speaker 1: to that key and the cat because they did it
Speaker 1: that the drone was in another key and they went
Speaker 1: too then they went to sing a simple song.
Speaker 3: But no, no, no, I mean very cool, very cool.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, I will say that everything
Speaker 1: that you heard was this one from the soundboard in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. Like literally, damn, he did maybe zero
Speaker 1: point one percent of mixing, like we we barely touched
Speaker 1: touched the board man.
Speaker 3: Now does that guy does the guy who mixed that
Speaker 3: and recorded that, did he get a little taste?
Speaker 1: Yeah, give the engineer.
Speaker 3: So here you go, my big baby, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Gi me, the legendary jim Jimmy Douglas. He did. He
Speaker 1: did amazing grace for me, the Franklin like Jimmy Douglass
Speaker 1: has been all the timberlands like early stuff. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: he's been for fifty years, like the man. So yes,
Speaker 1: he he was my.
Speaker 3: Engineer, the original guy, the original origin.
Speaker 1: Believe it or not. That was a rough mix, Like,
Speaker 1: gives me a rough paycheck. Then dude, he's dead. He
Speaker 1: got well.
Speaker 3: I gotta say that was a really great Yes, he
Speaker 3: does have family. That was a great mix.
Speaker 1: And thank you.
Speaker 3: Some of the baddest singing live I've ever heard in
Speaker 3: my life.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: We really are so grateful. And when you say there's
Speaker 3: more footage.
Speaker 1: I get, yes, there's more, and we'll I can make
Speaker 1: an announcement and like may for after after the oscars,
Speaker 1: I'll make.
Speaker 3: I'm manifesting that right, now now I will take you.
Speaker 1: Yes, I will take all your infestations.
Speaker 3: Come and see us with We're going to be with
Speaker 3: Lucinda in New York, but then we're going to be
Speaker 3: with Mavis on the road, and you'll probably still be
Speaker 3: to be You'll be you'll be having to be in
Speaker 3: New York doing your nightly gig.
Speaker 1: No, I will come to see and to my area.
Speaker 1: I will see this because I'm all about flowers. To
Speaker 1: to our to our great.
Speaker 3: Said you want to, oh sake you. I was thinking Mayvis,
Speaker 3: would you know, but I thank you for considering that.
Speaker 3: I'm that, I'm all the things that you said the intro.
Speaker 3: I'm really very very very tight.
Speaker 1: I do not not anybody gets on the show, you know,
Speaker 1: like we we have to love you. And well Bill
Speaker 1: Sherman was our first guest. So there you.
Speaker 2: And there you go. And get the new album too.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna mention the new album. I was
Speaker 2: playing ahead just like that. Just make sure you go
Speaker 2: get the new.
Speaker 1: Bonnie Ray album.
Speaker 3: Oh I hope you dig it.
Speaker 2: I do it delivers. I will say this, it delivers.
Speaker 2: It definitely does. I was like, Bonnie has given us
Speaker 2: what we need.
Speaker 3: There's a great soul ballad on there called Blame It
Speaker 3: on Me. That's there's a funk tune that I wrote
Speaker 3: that mixes Eddie Harris Lesmacann with the Commodores, So you
Speaker 3: gotta check it out called Waiting for You to Blow.
Speaker 3: And I'm really proud of it because I wrote every
Speaker 3: little drum part and every keyboard part, every little horn part.
Speaker 3: So anyway, blame on me?
Speaker 1: Who? What were you? Did you write? Blame it on me?
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I didn't. A guy who wrote it sang it on
Speaker 3: the two guys wrote it and sang it on a
Speaker 3: Facebook performance and they sent me the link and I went,
Speaker 3: what wow? Yeah, And you know what's really fun about
Speaker 3: this week? And I know we got to go, but
Speaker 3: this is the week as the record comes out and
Speaker 3: the middle of April and the single hits this week,
Speaker 3: I could call because the streaming services are going to
Speaker 3: start listening listing the tracks. So I got to call
Speaker 3: the songwriters that didn't know I cut their song. And
Speaker 3: I've chad since last June. I knew I was gonna
Speaker 3: Did I cut it right? So I had to sit
Speaker 3: on it and I got to make that call on Hi,
Speaker 3: It's Bonnie I know, you know, we don't know each other,
Speaker 3: but I really loved that song that I heard back
Speaker 3: in nineteen, you know, two thousand and nine, and I
Speaker 3: ended up cutting it, and this guy's just flipping out.
Speaker 1: Man, that's life changing, that billy.
Speaker 7: Now, Bonnie, I just want to say, I just you know,
Speaker 7: I just remember I just got up on your early
Speaker 7: ketog maybe probably like ten years ago. And you know
Speaker 7: it was a good buddy, a guitar player friend of mine,
Speaker 7: Chris Berner. He put me up on like your early
Speaker 7: records and just for me, just a part of my childhood.
Speaker 7: Just again, luck of draw, luckily Draw Nickel time. Those
Speaker 7: records were everywhere. You couldn't escape them. And so you're
Speaker 7: just definitely someone when I talked to younger artists, I
Speaker 7: definitely mentioned you was just you know, an example of
Speaker 7: perseverance and how just staying in the game. You just
Speaker 7: never know, like I had no idea. I mean, I was,
Speaker 7: you know, ten when Nikko Time came out. I thought
Speaker 7: you were a new artist. I had no idea, you
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: And so just to see yeah, and you know it
Speaker 3: wasn't I lucky to be forty when I got it,
Speaker 3: because I would have fucked myself up if I don't
Speaker 3: know if you can say that, Oh no, say that,
Speaker 3: but I'm saying that. You know, the people that can,
Speaker 3: like Taylor Swift and Nora. I mean, a bunch of
Speaker 3: people have gotten really famous early. They're handling themselves much
Speaker 3: better than my generation would have done. And if I
Speaker 3: had hit it big.
Speaker 2: Y'all didn't have social media.
Speaker 3: I'd be dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah for real.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well but you know, we thank you very much for
Speaker 1: your artistry and this is definitely an island having you on, Michelle.
Speaker 1: Thank you for ladies and gentlemen on behalf of of
Speaker 1: course Love Supreme, fant Ticcolo, you Unpaid Bill and Sugar, Steve,
Speaker 1: the Great Bonnie Radio. My name is Questlove. We will
Speaker 1: see you on the next Goverent welcome.
Speaker 3: All right, you guys, God, bless day, safe.
Speaker 1: M's Love Supreme is a production of iheartnet Radio. For
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