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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left That's podcast.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is John Hall, musician, politicians, ski instructor. John.

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Speaker 1: Good to have you on the podcast. Thanks about good

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Speaker 1: to be here. Okay, you have a long history and

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Speaker 1: political causes, no nukes, things on the local level, and

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Speaker 1: Socrates also a member of Congress for four years. Given

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Speaker 1: today's landscape, are you optimistic or pessimistic? In between? I

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Speaker 1: think there's reason for optimism. There's also a reason for pessimism.

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Speaker 1: But I fall on the optimistic side because I believe

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Speaker 1: when it comes down to it, people, when they understand

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Speaker 1: the stakes, will do the right thing. And especially I

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Speaker 1: believe that parents and grandparents will want to see their

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Speaker 1: kids and grandkids have a livable world to grow up

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Speaker 1: in and to maybe have kids themselves and grandkids themselves.

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Speaker 1: And so that's that's kind of what's to stake in

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Speaker 1: terms of the environment and climate change, which is uh,

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Speaker 1: maybe the most important thing in my opinion right now. Okay,

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Speaker 1: speaking of climate change, when while we're doing this, it

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Speaker 1: hasn't been that long ago that the U N released

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Speaker 1: their Climate Report. It said we can never get back

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Speaker 1: to where we once were, and we have to take action.

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Speaker 1: Needless to say, there are people who believe this, and

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Speaker 1: there are people who are dragging their feet. How will

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Speaker 1: we literally make progress? Because if we wait long enough

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Speaker 1: for everybody to wake up, might that be squandering too

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Speaker 1: many years? Well a lot of years have been squandered already.

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Speaker 1: But I think that people are getting their own ox score.

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Speaker 1: That's usually what happens with with anything political or terms

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Speaker 1: of activists and community organizing whatever. I when I first

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Speaker 1: got into politics, it was at the local level. My

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Speaker 1: next do our neighbor started crushing a hundred junk cars

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Speaker 1: on his lawn one Sunday summer morning when I was

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Speaker 1: having coffee and the windows were open. This is before

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Speaker 1: you needed air conditioning in the Woodstock, New York area.

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Speaker 1: Everybody just had their windows open and got screens and

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Speaker 1: cross ventilation and that was cool enough. But but anyway,

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Speaker 1: you know, when talked to my neighbor, and he was

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Speaker 1: kind of upset that I had an opinion about what

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Speaker 1: he was doing on his property, even though it was

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Speaker 1: in violation of the state Junkyard ordinance. And so I

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Speaker 1: organized a bunch of people to to stop it. And

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Speaker 1: you know, he had to comply with state law. And

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Speaker 1: that was the beginning of by figuring out that I

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Speaker 1: could exercise that that political muscle that starts out Really

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Speaker 1: it's just a just an individual citizenship muscle, but it's

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Speaker 1: kind of intoxica. And when you figure out you could

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Speaker 1: actually change things in your neighborhood or in your town,

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Speaker 1: and that, what's your appetite for trying to have more

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Speaker 1: effect on things you care about? So so I think

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Speaker 1: people who are being flooded, people are having their houses

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Speaker 1: burned and losing their life savings that was in their property.

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Speaker 1: People who are look and at you know, hurricanes, and

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Speaker 1: I mean the heat waves that are going on right now,

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Speaker 1: the deaths. UH. Heat is one of the most deadly

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Speaker 1: UH kinds of extreme weather. I think more people die

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Speaker 1: from extreme heat than any other women weather phenomena already

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Speaker 1: and right now from the northwest United States and British

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Speaker 1: Columbia to New England, across the entire top tier of

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Speaker 1: the States. It's a top tier of the states. It's

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Speaker 1: a heat wave. And you know, not only is UH

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Speaker 1: is Turkey and our Turkey and Greece burning. Siberia and

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Speaker 1: Russia has UH more acreage burning right now than all

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Speaker 1: the other fires in the world combined, including California and

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Speaker 1: Oregon in Washington, and it's just it's Odd's starting to

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Speaker 1: get obvious even to people who weren't thinking about it. Okay,

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Speaker 1: what do you believe the steps and in what order

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Speaker 1: we should take to ameliorate this problem. Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: we need to make a transition off of fossil fuels

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Speaker 1: to renewable energy and to storage, but even more so

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Speaker 1: to conservation. Any kill a lot that you save is

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Speaker 1: cheaper and has less environmental impact environmental impact than a

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Speaker 1: new one that you that you generate, whether you're generating

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Speaker 1: with with solar or wind, or or coal or oil,

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Speaker 1: it's it's still it's faster and cheaper and less environmentally

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Speaker 1: impactful to not use that in the first place. So

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to really make an effort to, like, when

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Speaker 1: I leave home, have everything on a power strip and

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Speaker 1: turn it off so my electronics don't stay on when

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Speaker 1: I'm out of the house or when I'm gone for

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Speaker 1: the weekend or on the road or whatever. You uh

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Speaker 1: driving the most efficient car that I can drive that

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Speaker 1: meets my needs, and I'm trying to you keep the

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Speaker 1: air conditioning a little warmer in the summer and the

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Speaker 1: heat a little bit cooler in the winter, so that

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Speaker 1: I use personally, I use less energy, and I'm leading

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Speaker 1: eating a lot less meat than I used to because

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Speaker 1: the rainforest in Brazil is being cut down for for

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Speaker 1: grazing cattle for meat for McDonald's and other fast food

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Speaker 1: restaurants and stores and so on, And so you can

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Speaker 1: vote with your dollars. And that's what way I think

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Speaker 1: about it for things that have less of a carbon

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Speaker 1: emission footprint. Okay, what kind of car do you drive.

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Speaker 1: I'm driving a Honda plug in hybrid, a Clarity plug

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Speaker 1: in gets forty eight miles on all battery. So when

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Speaker 1: I'm driving around town, you know, I can go to

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Speaker 1: the bank, the post office, the supermarket, go to the

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Speaker 1: other side of town, visit, you know, visit friends, come back.

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Speaker 1: You know. I basically don't use any gastling. I plug

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Speaker 1: it in overnight and it charges up, and when I

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Speaker 1: go out of town I use gastling on the highway

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Speaker 1: and even then it gets forty two miles per gallon.

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Speaker 1: As a hybrid, This car, you know, it was I

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Speaker 1: wouldn't recommend this for anybody in terms of financing. It

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Speaker 1: went up in forty. I think it forty three grant.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not saying this that brag or whatever

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Speaker 1: about it's just that, what, it's not that much more

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Speaker 1: expensive that a lot of other vehicles nowadays, especially when

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Speaker 1: you consider how much less gasoline you have to buy. Okay,

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Speaker 1: let's talk about finances just for seconds. Since you bring

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Speaker 1: that up. A who owns your publishing catalog? Most of

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Speaker 1: it is UM Well, Johannah, my first wife and co writer,

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Speaker 1: and I own half of it. UM. The publishing that

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Speaker 1: what they split it in the business center, the writer's share,

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Speaker 1: which is on the publishing share, which is we've had

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Speaker 1: a co publishing deal with Sony was e M I

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Speaker 1: before they were bought by Sony. Every every corporation gets

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Speaker 1: conglomerated and you know, acquired by another one sooner or later.

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Speaker 1: Same thing in the music business. But but so you know,

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Speaker 1: Sony owns a big good chunk of it, and Johannah know,

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Speaker 1: and the rest of our of our best known songs,

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Speaker 1: and then there are some songs before that that I

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Speaker 1: owned by a different publisher. I want to mention that

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Speaker 1: I never see statements on or you know, uh not

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Speaker 1: not a penny from and then there's some newer songs

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Speaker 1: that I wrote that I still owned the writing and

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Speaker 1: the publishing on myself. So that's complicated answer. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: but since some of these songs are of a certain

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Speaker 1: age that the reversion rights, have you gotten the total

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Speaker 1: right back? I know trid run when he gets it

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Speaker 1: back and then sells it back. But have you hit

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Speaker 1: the reversion point and tried to get the full rights back?

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Speaker 1: I believe that we felt in between. We didn't. We

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Speaker 1: weren't aware of that and weren't hit to it soon

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Speaker 1: enough to do something about it, given the years that

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Speaker 1: these songs were written and copyrighted. So uh no, we

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Speaker 1: haven't gotten it back. But I can't complain. You know,

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Speaker 1: I've had a career of writing songs and playing music

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Speaker 1: and and that's really all I ever won, Okay? Is

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Speaker 1: I mean there are people who have only written one

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Speaker 1: hit song who can live off that money for the

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Speaker 1: rest of their lives. Still the one is ubiquitous, and

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Speaker 1: of course dance with me and some of these other

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Speaker 1: Orleans songs, some of which you wrote, some of which

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Speaker 1: you didn't. Is there enough money to earn a living

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Speaker 1: just from the songwriting? Yeah? I think so. Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean Johanna. The first song we ever wrote was

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Speaker 1: called half Moon. We wrote it for Janis jopl She

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Speaker 1: asked us to write it for her. And that's a

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Speaker 1: long story which I don't know if you want to

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Speaker 1: hear it, but I definitely want to hear it. Tell

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Speaker 1: it well. Johanna was a journalist for the Village Voice

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Speaker 1: before we met and got married and started working together,

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Speaker 1: and she wrote a good review of Janice's Cosmic Blues album,

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Speaker 1: the first record after she left Big Brother in the

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Speaker 1: Holding Company. Most of the critics thought that she had

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Speaker 1: ended her brothers in the commune and she should go

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Speaker 1: back to San Francisco and be with Big Brothren. And

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Speaker 1: Johanna was one of a few writers who said, this

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Speaker 1: is a great album, and it's it's easy to see

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Speaker 1: why she wanted to move on and have horns in

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Speaker 1: the band and have a different level of musicianship and

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Speaker 1: and production and so on. So so Janice asked for

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Speaker 1: an interview with Johanna, and the publicists set it up

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Speaker 1: and and she left. Johannah left to go take a

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Speaker 1: bus across town from our place on the Lower East

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Speaker 1: Side to a uh to a Greek restaurant on the

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Speaker 1: west side of Manhattan, and and I was sitting home

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Speaker 1: playing the guitar. And an hour or two later, the

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Speaker 1: door opened and came Johannah with Janis Joplin behind her,

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Speaker 1: and she was already a big star. I the first

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Speaker 1: thing I thought was, I wish I had changed the

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Speaker 1: cat box. But uh, but you know, I I played

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Speaker 1: her some songs. We sat around. It was before Christmas.

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Speaker 1: We and blues versions of a Little Town of Bethlehem

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Speaker 1: and other Christmas carols and and we're just having fun.

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Speaker 1: And I played a couple of songs that I had written.

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Speaker 1: The music and the lyrics were and she said, I

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Speaker 1: like the music, but the lyrics sound like a young

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Speaker 1: man wrote him. And I said, well, that's me. I

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Speaker 1: was twenty two at the time, I think. And she

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Speaker 1: said to Johanna, you're a woman, you're a writer. Why

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Speaker 1: don't you to write me a song? And so we

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Speaker 1: wrote this song, half Moon. Johanna gave me the lyric

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Speaker 1: on the back of an envelope, which is something she's

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Speaker 1: prone to doing. Happened was still the one too, but

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Speaker 1: but anyway, it's, uh, you know, it's a good poetic,

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Speaker 1: image laden lyric. And I had a guitar leak that

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Speaker 1: came off of a song I wrote for an off

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Speaker 1: Broadway show that ran in Philadelphia for previews and never

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Speaker 1: made it to New York. And and so I lifted

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Speaker 1: the guitar leak from that and built the song around it,

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Speaker 1: and half Moon was you know, Janice loved it, rehearsed

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Speaker 1: it with their band, did it on the Pearl album.

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Speaker 1: It was the B side of me and Bobby McGee,

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Speaker 1: and then it was recorded by the Fifth Dimension at

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Speaker 1: Chaka Khan and James Brown did an organistrumental version of

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Speaker 1: it and so on. And that song maybe, you know,

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Speaker 1: could have supported us. I mean it did for years

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Speaker 1: because that was the first hit we had. So it's

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Speaker 1: a you know, We've been fortunate to have hits by

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Speaker 1: Millie Jackson and The Times and and you know, various

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Speaker 1: other artists as well as as by Rolans. So you know,

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Speaker 1: writing has really been my job for a long time. Okay,

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Speaker 1: prior to Janna's Joblin's uh saying that Johanna should write,

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Speaker 1: did she write? Did you write songs together? It was

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Speaker 1: that the advent of that. That was the first one.

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Speaker 1: Johanna says. It's like bowling a strike your first time out,

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Speaker 1: and then you have to roll gutter balls while you

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Speaker 1: figure out how to get the ball back up on

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Speaker 1: the on the alley and in the strike zone. And

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Speaker 1: we wrote some lousy songs after that, because you know,

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Speaker 1: it was luck of the draw. But we've gotten a

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Speaker 1: lot better at it. Now. We basically don't finish the

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Speaker 1: song if it's not that good, So you still write

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Speaker 1: songs together. We just wrote a song together for this record. Actually, now,

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Speaker 1: more than ever, I'm reclaiming my time. This is the

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Speaker 1: first song that Joanne I've written together in a couple

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Speaker 1: of decades. Uh, after we divorced. It was a little difficult.

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Speaker 1: It's just a very intimate thing writing songs with somebody,

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Speaker 1: especially if you do it a lot. It's uh there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of talk and a lot of soul bearing

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Speaker 1: that goes into getting to a place where you can

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Speaker 1: write a soul bearing song. And that's what I'm interested in.

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Speaker 1: I was a fan of Jackson Browns and and uh

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Speaker 1: Tony Mitchell's and you know, as well as the Beatles

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Speaker 1: and all the Motown people and Beach Boys and so

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Speaker 1: on and so forth. But the songs that really moved

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Speaker 1: me are the ones where somebody talks about what's what

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Speaker 1: they're really feeling. So that's kind of something that you know,

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Speaker 1: when you work with another writer, you you bear your

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Speaker 1: soul a little bit. So how do you get yourself

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Speaker 1: into that place? I guess trying to be self aware

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Speaker 1: and trying to write with people that make you comfortable

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Speaker 1: enough that you don't have to say this is embarrassing,

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Speaker 1: but what do you think of this? Or this is

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Speaker 1: really stupid. But here's a direction. I mean, a lot

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Speaker 1: of times one has to start with something pretty common

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Speaker 1: to write a song and then substitute. It's kind of

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Speaker 1: like chord substitutions and music musicians, jazz musicians especially like

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Speaker 1: to play a blues and then substitute for each chord,

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Speaker 1: they'll substitute a whole bunch of other chords that resolved

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Speaker 1: at that chord. Uh. Chord substitutions is a big thing.

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Speaker 1: And lyrics you can substitute too. I think the most

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Speaker 1: famous one that that I heard of anyways, Paul McCarty said,

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Speaker 1: when he was writing yesterday, the dummy lyric was scrambled

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Speaker 1: eggs today for breakfast, I had scramble then, you know,

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Speaker 1: and he had the verse and the melody written out

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Speaker 1: with that as a placehole there, and then he substituted

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Speaker 1: lyrics until he got the song yesterday. And uh, and

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Speaker 1: so you know, you have to be able to do that.

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Speaker 1: And sometimes when you're writing with someone else, you have

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Speaker 1: people say this isn't it? But how about this for

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Speaker 1: a starting point? You know? And uh, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: a it's an interesting process. I do write. A couple

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Speaker 1: of songs on my new record are written just by me,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of them basically all the rest of

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Speaker 1: them our collaborations with various people. So which do you prefer?

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Speaker 1: What do you think gives you a better result? It

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Speaker 1: depends on the song. Um, I like writing with other people.

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Speaker 1: But I wrote the song Saved the Monarch on this

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Speaker 1: record myself, by myself. And I also wrote the song

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Speaker 1: Welcome Home to a veteran Vietnam veteran friend of mine. Um,

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Speaker 1: that's the last song on the record, and I wrote

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Speaker 1: that by myself. But everything else I collaborated with my

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Speaker 1: best my best friend John Paul Daniel uh with a

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Speaker 1: songwriter written with from what Sagritys area in New York.

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Speaker 1: Ted Richards is not just an artist or a sculptor,

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Speaker 1: you know, a poet, but he's a really good lyricist

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Speaker 1: and uh and teach his creative writing at Barrard College.

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Speaker 1: And and I wrote the first track I think of

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Speaker 1: you was Sharon Vaughan's a Hall of Fame songwriter. You know,

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Speaker 1: I don't know sixty probably sixty I think number one

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Speaker 1: country hits and a bunch of hoppits as well. You know,

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Speaker 1: She's just somebody that I met, you know, asked faster

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Speaker 1: should go out. Let's break it down. If you're gonna

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Speaker 1: do collaboration, one, do you do it in the same

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Speaker 1: room or you do it via email or other technical

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Speaker 1: for doing in the same room. And most writers do.

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Speaker 1: But with Johannah we wrote now more than ever on

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Speaker 1: this new record. We started out sitting at it Able

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Speaker 1: together and writing, and we had both been really careful.

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Speaker 1: Was right at the beginning of the lockdown from the pandemic,

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Speaker 1: and or maybe it was like a week before we

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Speaker 1: got to start on it. She had the idea of

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Speaker 1: now more than ever, we've got to we've got to

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Speaker 1: get together, and and then it just took on a

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Speaker 1: whole thing about like we have to stand together during

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Speaker 1: this pandemic. We have to uh, we have to be

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Speaker 1: able to unite enough uh and and communicate well enough

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Speaker 1: to be and it's it's speaking as a couple to

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Speaker 1: the song could be read as somebody talking to their

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Speaker 1: significant other, you know, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, um.

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Speaker 1: But it also could be read as h as people

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Speaker 1: in society and a community, as different political parties talking

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Speaker 1: to each other, as different countries talking together. That's that's

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Speaker 1: really what's going on now with the climate is you know,

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Speaker 1: countries are gonna have to be able to talk to

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Speaker 1: each other and and listen as well as talk. And Okay,

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Speaker 1: let's go back to the process. If you're writing in

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Speaker 1: the same room, you need to make an appointment to

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Speaker 1: do that writing alone. So that's two part question. When

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Speaker 1: you write alone, are you waiting for inspiration or you

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Speaker 1: say no, I'm sitting down at noon today and I'm

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Speaker 1: not gonna get up until sixth I have something, or

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Speaker 1: sit down at six and get up at ten or notever.

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Speaker 1: But I don't know what your hours are. I do both.

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Speaker 1: I do both. I I have made and you know,

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Speaker 1: frequently do make an appointment to right appointment, meaning like hey,

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Speaker 1: John Paul let's uh, let's go for a walk this

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Speaker 1: morning and then go sit with our guitars and see

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Speaker 1: what happens. Uh. Sometimes it's a publisher making a day.

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Speaker 1: You know. I've had dates that my publisher made with

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Speaker 1: you know, with another writer from another publishing company or

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Speaker 1: from their same publishing company. So but most of all,

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Speaker 1: it's it's people I know who I ask, uh. And

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Speaker 1: in between, I'm always thinking about ideas and and and

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Speaker 1: writing them down or recording, never speaking into a phone

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Speaker 1: or some kind of digital device. I a chordal idea

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Speaker 1: melodic idea, or a lyrical idea, so that the next

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Speaker 1: time I do have an appointment with somebody, I can

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Speaker 1: come in with a start on something. It's much more

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Speaker 1: fun writing with somebody who has that. So when I

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Speaker 1: work with Sharon vonn Er, you know, or usually with

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Speaker 1: John Paul or or you know, most of the writers

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Speaker 1: that Steve Warner and I wrote. You know, we wrote

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Speaker 1: a couple of songs together number one you Can Dream

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Speaker 1: of Me back in the eighties, and a number of

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Speaker 1: songs since then. And we wrote this song another Sunset together,

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Speaker 1: and it's on this new record, Reclaiming My Time. And

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Speaker 1: you know, I I had the idea for that chorus,

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Speaker 1: and I had a date to write with. See, we

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Speaker 1: had made plans for me to come down to this

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Speaker 1: house and and I showed up and I had that

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Speaker 1: melodic idea and just the concept of it, and and

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Speaker 1: then he was totally involved in um in a partner

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Speaker 1: and the rest of the song. And okay, let's talk

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Speaker 1: about the new album. What at this late date motivate

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Speaker 1: you to make new music because generally speaking, there's not

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Speaker 1: that much money in it. Well, I didn't start playing

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Speaker 1: music to make money. When I was twelve years old,

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Speaker 1: I strapped down a guitar and said, in my room,

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Speaker 1: you know, playing a lot. It was an electric guitar,

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Speaker 1: stood up and looked in the mirror while I was

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Speaker 1: playing it. And imagine that that weekend at the high

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Speaker 1: school dance. That maybe you attract some some young ladies.

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Speaker 1: But I'd love the creative process. And uh, and I

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Speaker 1: love music. I started, you know, playing piano and a

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Speaker 1: score and it was entertainment to me. I just entertained

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Speaker 1: myself by playing the Marines syn with both hands, and

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Speaker 1: my parents sent me for piano lessons, and you know,

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Speaker 1: I studied piano and French horn and taught myself guitar

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Speaker 1: and bass and drums and and it's a you know,

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Speaker 1: so today I write for the same reasons I right,

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Speaker 1: because I love writing and because I love I love

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Speaker 1: music and seeing an idea take shape and become a

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Speaker 1: thing that is external for me that I can play

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Speaker 1: for people or record and sent to somebody. It's a

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Speaker 1: or now it's post online. So that's the thrill in itself.

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Speaker 1: If it makes money, great, Okay. There's a record company involved,

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Speaker 1: Sunset Boulevard Records, which is not a major record company.

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Speaker 1: How did it come to be that with them? Were

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Speaker 1: you making something you placed it or they looked out?

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Speaker 1: And who paid for the recording of the record? I

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Speaker 1: paid for the recording of the record. Sunset bobar As

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Speaker 1: the record that was founded by Glenfica, who's the manager

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Speaker 1: of the band or Leans. And in fact, the last

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Speaker 1: Orleans album, doubled CD called No More Than You Can

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Speaker 1: Handle is on his label, and you know, I've gotten

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Speaker 1: to know him and trust him, and he spilt this label.

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Speaker 1: Episode has a lot of the people we work with

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Speaker 1: that we through concerts with, like Firefall Up, Peer, Prairie Ley, Um,

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Speaker 1: Atlanta Rhythm Section, the babies. You know, these are all

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Speaker 1: seventies early eighties and bands. They're kind of in his

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Speaker 1: stable of of management artists and but he's also putting

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Speaker 1: their records out in US. Is licensing Masters by Fast

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Speaker 1: Domino and by Elmore James, and by Willie Nelson. He

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Speaker 1: just put on Willie Nelson and worked directly with William

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Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's becoming a label that is

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Speaker 1: not just a vanity label and or a tiny Indian.

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Speaker 1: It's becoming a pretty visible, respected Indian. I think he's

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Speaker 1: doing a real good job. It's you know, I put

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Speaker 1: out and Orleans has put out self released records. I

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Speaker 1: had a little record LI called Siren Songs Records that

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Speaker 1: released a couple albums of mine, uh Love Doesn't Ask

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Speaker 1: and Recovered, which was an acoustic album of me doing

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Speaker 1: songs that other artists had had covered and I recovered them,

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Speaker 1: uh and Uh. I also put out a couple of

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Speaker 1: Joan l Mostar records on Siren Songs Records, And you know,

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Speaker 1: they they sold a little bit, and they helped I

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Speaker 1: think helped her and and her fans and my fans.

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Speaker 1: Bottom Uh. They never got really the exposure they would

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Speaker 1: have had if they'd been with a label likes, said Boulevard.

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Speaker 1: I've also been with you know, with Colombia and with

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Speaker 1: Asylum Records is now part of the Warner Brothers Warner

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Speaker 1: Music family. Uh. I've been with MGM Records, have been

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Speaker 1: ABC Records. Uh. You know that all those companies had,

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Speaker 1: especially at the time, they had a lot more money

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Speaker 1: to throw behind and personnel throw behind promoting a record

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Speaker 1: than what we have now. But the world is different,

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Speaker 1: and the business is different, and and also the listening

401
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Speaker 1: process that people can find anything now. If you want

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Speaker 1: to find the John Hall of Record in Orleans record,

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00:23:37,680 --> 00:23:40,920
Speaker 1: you can find it on YouTube or or Apple or

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Speaker 1: Amazon or Spotify, all the different streamers. So it really is,

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Speaker 1: it's possible. So many young kids and young bands are

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Speaker 1: doing this, making a record in the closet on a

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Speaker 1: phone or on a laptop or iPad or something and

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Speaker 1: putting it out and and getting almost the same sort

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Speaker 1: of wide band distribute that that Big Are Seven and

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Speaker 1: Big labels. Okay, so you recorded the new record, you've

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Speaker 1: been working dates. How much of the new music do

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Speaker 1: you play? Well, we're not doing any of my reclaiming

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Speaker 1: my Time record yet because the shows that we do.

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Speaker 1: We usually well, first of all, we've had one rehearsal

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Speaker 1: since the end of you know, since we started working

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Speaker 1: in June after the pandemic let up a little bit.

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Speaker 1: You know, already thought okay, now we're going to be

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Speaker 1: back to business as usual, but unfortunately, thanks to delta variant,

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Speaker 1: it's it's not yet. And but we do. We do

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Speaker 1: shows that range from an hour to maybe an hour

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Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty minutes. And we have a lot of

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Speaker 1: songs we have to do that people know, or Leans

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Speaker 1: support if they want to hear. That takes time. So

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Speaker 1: the one dance would be let to be music cap moon, Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know various other songs said, there's a list of

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Speaker 1: them and there, uh, there's a show that we've worked

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00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:06,840
Speaker 1: up that's pretty pretty high powered. Um, and we're working

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Speaker 1: on a couple of my songs that any any day now,

429
00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:15,480
Speaker 1: any concert now, we're gonna start doing a couple of them.

430
00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:19,359
Speaker 1: But you know, it takes The songs in this record

431
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:25,439
Speaker 1: are not and that as simple as as they might sound,

432
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:29,359
Speaker 1: at least not alone too long and well, the mean

433
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:33,040
Speaker 1: imagine there's a lot of acts, heritage acts as they

434
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:37,760
Speaker 1: would say, who uh, make new music and then they

435
00:25:37,760 --> 00:25:40,120
Speaker 1: play the new music and the audience doesn't pay attention,

436
00:25:40,280 --> 00:25:42,720
Speaker 1: which is difficult for the act. So that's why I'm

437
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:45,720
Speaker 1: bringing it up. Yeah, we do new something, newer songs.

438
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:49,240
Speaker 1: We do a song called Beautiful World that fly and

439
00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:52,040
Speaker 1: Marrow or the other guitar player and I and my

440
00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:56,920
Speaker 1: partner Lance happened wrote together. And that song it's not

441
00:25:57,040 --> 00:25:59,359
Speaker 1: as wasn't on any of our big records that came

442
00:25:59,400 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 1: out in this Sunset Boulevard released uh double CD that

443
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:08,680
Speaker 1: came out a couple of years ago. But they loved that.

444
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:11,680
Speaker 1: You know, it goes over great. Uh. There's a song

445
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:13,639
Speaker 1: called no more Than You Can Handle? What's the title

446
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:17,400
Speaker 1: of that package and the song that Lance wrote with

447
00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:22,119
Speaker 1: his brother Larry Hoppin before Larry passed away. Unfortunately Larry

448
00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:25,000
Speaker 1: was one of the original four members of the band

449
00:26:25,640 --> 00:26:29,760
Speaker 1: died and and but this song has been out for

450
00:26:29,800 --> 00:26:33,520
Speaker 1: a couple of years now and uh and Lance sings

451
00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:36,159
Speaker 1: that and people love it and ask for when they

452
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:38,560
Speaker 1: come by the merchandise table of her signing autographs or

453
00:26:38,600 --> 00:26:40,800
Speaker 1: whatever you they they said, which one is that song?

454
00:26:41,720 --> 00:26:43,359
Speaker 1: And they want to buy that? And they want to

455
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:46,040
Speaker 1: buy a beautiful world, So it's a it's not a

456
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:50,359
Speaker 1: total I guess you know. I heard Jackson Brown and

457
00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:54,399
Speaker 1: James Taylor Chicago a couple of weeks ago, um or

458
00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: maybe it was just last week, and Jackson's got a

459
00:26:58,840 --> 00:27:02,560
Speaker 1: new record out on Hill from Everywhere, and he did

460
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:06,000
Speaker 1: a few songs from that in the early part of

461
00:27:06,040 --> 00:27:09,800
Speaker 1: his show, and the audience was, Yeah, I think they

462
00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:11,720
Speaker 1: were happy at Jackson's audience loves him and he can

463
00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:13,360
Speaker 1: kind of do whatever he wants. But I think they

464
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:18,360
Speaker 1: really wanted to hear the old, familiar songs, and he

465
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 1: gave them to him, but not until after they listened

466
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:22,720
Speaker 1: to some of the new stuff. And that's that's one

467
00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:25,000
Speaker 1: way to do it. We kind of mixed them in

468
00:27:25,800 --> 00:27:28,200
Speaker 1: throughout the show. Okay, let's go back to the beginning

469
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:30,879
Speaker 1: you were talking about. So you grew up where elmar

470
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:33,960
Speaker 1: in New York, Okay, and your parents did what for

471
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:38,280
Speaker 1: a living? My dad is a physicist electrical engineer PhD

472
00:27:39,240 --> 00:27:43,119
Speaker 1: worked for Westinghouse, mainly on contexts for NASA and the

473
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:47,600
Speaker 1: Defense Department. He designed or led the design team that

474
00:27:47,760 --> 00:27:50,240
Speaker 1: built the camera for the first Moon landing. When Neil

475
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:54,840
Speaker 1: Armstrong walked on the Moon. They couldn't send somebody up there, Uh,

476
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: to go down and you know, put the tripeout on

477
00:27:57,280 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: the ground and then go back up the ladder again

478
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:01,640
Speaker 1: and say, now here comes the first man on the moon.

479
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:04,679
Speaker 1: So they had to ride on the strut of the lander,

480
00:28:05,320 --> 00:28:07,480
Speaker 1: so it would already be down there when the armstrong

481
00:28:07,520 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: came down the ladder, and it had to withstand the

482
00:28:09,760 --> 00:28:12,159
Speaker 1: shock of the landing and the the heat of the

483
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:14,160
Speaker 1: blast off and the cold of the trip, and still

484
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:18,520
Speaker 1: worked perfectly when somebody pushed her remote button. And so

485
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:22,800
Speaker 1: he but he also has his name on patents for

486
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:25,960
Speaker 1: lance at satellite cameras and and for a night vision

487
00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:29,640
Speaker 1: devices and all kinds of imaging namely was his thing.

488
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 1: My mom uh and masters in English and creative writing,

489
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:38,880
Speaker 1: and also later in divinity. She wanted all three of

490
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:42,400
Speaker 1: her sons to be priests. My dad wanted all three

491
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: of his sons to be scientists or mathematicians. My older

492
00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:49,360
Speaker 1: brother was an actuary, my younger brother a priest, and

493
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 1: I fell in the middle somewhere writing songs that people

494
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:56,479
Speaker 1: said were too preachy. Okay, so you talked about picking

495
00:28:56,520 --> 00:29:00,720
Speaker 1: up an electric guitar, A how did you acquire that? Literally?

496
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 1: And b what inspired you because this is pre beatles right. Well,

497
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:07,160
Speaker 1: first I picked up an acoustic it R my parents

498
00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:10,520
Speaker 1: bought my brother, Jim. My older brother had UH nylon

499
00:29:10,640 --> 00:29:15,760
Speaker 1: straining classical guitar from Sears, Roebuck and Uh. And they

500
00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:17,600
Speaker 1: asked if he wanted lessons and he said, no, I'll

501
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:20,800
Speaker 1: just give it to John. He'll figure it out. So

502
00:29:21,160 --> 00:29:26,160
Speaker 1: I got to play his birthday guitar and Uh, that's funny.

503
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:28,480
Speaker 1: I just assumed they sent it to you tuned. It

504
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 1: came in a cardboard box. We didn't have a case

505
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:34,200
Speaker 1: for it, and so I tuned each string to the

506
00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 1: note that it was closest to and made up a

507
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:40,200
Speaker 1: bunch of fingerings for that tuning. And for a couple

508
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:42,120
Speaker 1: of weeks, Jim went to the library and found out

509
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:44,400
Speaker 1: what the real tuning and the guitar was. And I

510
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: was crushed because none of my fingerings worked anymore. So

511
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:49,440
Speaker 1: I had to start over again with the correct tuning.

512
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 1: But but you know, I've had enough piano and enough

513
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:56,160
Speaker 1: music theory at that point, you know, studying since I

514
00:29:56,240 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 1: was five till I was twelve when this happened, so

515
00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 1: I knew what notes went together for record and I

516
00:30:02,520 --> 00:30:06,480
Speaker 1: figured out how to finger them and and what it

517
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:09,880
Speaker 1: became an electric guitar. The same same thing worked. So

518
00:30:10,240 --> 00:30:14,760
Speaker 1: that was really how I started. My grandmother in Providence,

519
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:18,240
Speaker 1: my father's mother, had an old r C a radio,

520
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 1: the kind of waste high one that's wood with the

521
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: grill cloth and carvings on it, in a big fifteen

522
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 1: inch speaker. It was wonderful thing. And and she had records.

523
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:32,960
Speaker 1: My dad had plugged in a hot wired in the

524
00:30:33,040 --> 00:30:35,520
Speaker 1: turntable so they could play through that. And she had

525
00:30:35,520 --> 00:30:39,120
Speaker 1: records by ched Atkins and by the Weavers with Pete Seeger,

526
00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:43,080
Speaker 1: and so I heard Pete doing this Land as your

527
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:46,280
Speaker 1: Land and little Boxes. And when I was five and

528
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 1: I heard Jed Atkins doing glow Worm from that same age.

529
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:52,360
Speaker 1: And we went to her house on the way out

530
00:30:52,400 --> 00:30:56,600
Speaker 1: to Vacation Island off the coast of Massachusetts, Cutey On Island,

531
00:30:57,560 --> 00:31:00,240
Speaker 1: and uh so the night before in the night after

532
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:02,960
Speaker 1: we were on the island for a vacation, I would

533
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:06,200
Speaker 1: always get to listen to these records. And by the

534
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:08,760
Speaker 1: time I was able to play guitar, I was able

535
00:31:08,800 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: to sit in front of her her radio and turntable

536
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 1: and and try to play along, and that's really learned,

537
00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: you know, acoustic guitar uh skills and electric guitar stills,

538
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 1: you know from that. So chet Chet Atkins was listened

539
00:31:27,800 --> 00:31:29,960
Speaker 1: to it by a lot of guitar players, including obviously

540
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:33,720
Speaker 1: George Harrison, and you know he influenced many and many

541
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:36,840
Speaker 1: other players. You know, when I heard Chuck Barry, I

542
00:31:37,840 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 1: could figure that out because I had listened to chet Atkins. Okay,

543
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:46,160
Speaker 1: so what inspired you get an electric pre Beatles? And

544
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 1: once the pre beat Once the Beatles arrived in six four, hun,

545
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: did that change your vision and playing? Well? Um, my

546
00:31:55,600 --> 00:31:59,160
Speaker 1: little brother Jerry wanted the guitar, and when he had

547
00:31:59,200 --> 00:32:02,720
Speaker 1: a birthday that is old enough, my parents gave him

548
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:05,400
Speaker 1: an electric guitar. It was also a Sears Ropebuck silver

549
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:10,240
Speaker 1: tone electric guitar um, which are actually valuable nowadays. They're

550
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:13,760
Speaker 1: kind of rare. No, it's kind of funny, yeah, but

551
00:32:13,760 --> 00:32:15,560
Speaker 1: but I borrowed it. It was kind of the same thing.

552
00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: He was always here, John, show me how to do this,

553
00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 1: and I, okay, did you have the did you have

554
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:21,760
Speaker 1: the one with the speaker and amplifier in the case.

555
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 1: I didn't have that. You know, Springsteen had one of those,

556
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:28,719
Speaker 1: and I always wanted one. But but Brusa, Yeah, I've

557
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:33,040
Speaker 1: done a bunch of work with him, and and I

558
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:38,600
Speaker 1: know other people who've had them too. But but but anyway,

559
00:32:38,600 --> 00:32:40,720
Speaker 1: I was a high school dance was the occasion where

560
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:43,560
Speaker 1: you had to play electric guitar. You could sit around

561
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:46,720
Speaker 1: doing folk music with an acoustic guitar, and that's all

562
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:48,840
Speaker 1: well and good, but you want to play in the

563
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: band with drums, it's electric guitar through some kind of amplifications.

564
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:57,320
Speaker 1: So so I started doing that and uh, you know,

565
00:32:57,520 --> 00:33:03,479
Speaker 1: probably you know, fourteen fifteen years old in high school

566
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:06,600
Speaker 1: when I first heard a bass guitar. I was playing

567
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:10,400
Speaker 1: in a school gymnasium in Olmar, New York, and some

568
00:33:10,520 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 1: kid came up from Sarah, Pennsylvania, across the border and

569
00:33:14,600 --> 00:33:17,120
Speaker 1: brought his Ampeg B fifteen and a Fender base, and

570
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, that's like the the earth is moving.

571
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:24,080
Speaker 1: The frequencies are so low. And you know, once you

572
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: hear that, you never want to be in a band

573
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 1: without a bass guitar again. And so that my horazons

574
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:34,560
Speaker 1: horizons broadened. There wasn't a lot of adventurous music in Elmira,

575
00:33:34,640 --> 00:33:37,160
Speaker 1: New York at the time, so I wound up hearing it.

576
00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 1: When I went to college, I went up hearing it

577
00:33:39,920 --> 00:33:44,280
Speaker 1: and playing it there. And when I went to I

578
00:33:44,360 --> 00:33:46,000
Speaker 1: dropped out of college after a year and a half.

579
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:49,240
Speaker 1: I went to Notre Dame University for a year South Bend,

580
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:53,320
Speaker 1: Indiana and played in every band I could get into.

581
00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:57,719
Speaker 1: A blue grass band, you know, football, pep band, uh,

582
00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:00,200
Speaker 1: a couple of rock and roll bands, sanging into up

583
00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:03,800
Speaker 1: you know group, a capella group, and and then went

584
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 1: to Loyola for a semester in Baltimore, and and found

585
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 1: out that a club called the Pepperint Lounge on M

586
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 1: Street and Georgetown was having auditions for a house band,

587
00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:18,560
Speaker 1: and got a band together, corrupting my big brother by

588
00:34:18,600 --> 00:34:22,000
Speaker 1: getting him to play bass in it. And uh and uh,

589
00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:25,320
Speaker 1: you know, found another guitar player in the drummer audition

590
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:28,000
Speaker 1: and got the gig and dropped out of college to

591
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:31,799
Speaker 1: play the six nights a week in the club. And

592
00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 1: Georgetown at a time when Andy Lou Harris was you know,

593
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 1: was playing at the Silver Dollar and knows often was

594
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:41,560
Speaker 1: playing in town Rugby Cannon was playing a place called

595
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:45,839
Speaker 1: the Silver not the Silver Dollar. The remember the name

596
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:49,080
Speaker 1: of the h of the club he played. It was

597
00:34:49,080 --> 00:34:51,960
Speaker 1: out of town a little bit in Bladensburg, Maryland, and

598
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:58,000
Speaker 1: and and so, you know, played in bands there. And

599
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 1: then the guitar player was working with Eddie Spilios, and

600
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,960
Speaker 1: I hopped a Greyhound bust in New York and started

601
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:07,640
Speaker 1: playing at the Cafe One in Credits Village with a

602
00:35:07,640 --> 00:35:11,440
Speaker 1: couple other players. We picked up played UH. I was

603
00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:14,080
Speaker 1: playing bass in that band, and there was some of

604
00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:17,960
Speaker 1: the guitar player and a drummer was Norman Smart, who

605
00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:20,919
Speaker 1: played with went on to be the drummer and UH

606
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:25,560
Speaker 1: Mountain with Leslie West, the original drummer from Mountain and

607
00:35:25,719 --> 00:35:28,920
Speaker 1: UH playing a bunch of records by other people as well.

608
00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 1: Barbara Keith played acoustic guitar, rhythm guitar and sang and

609
00:35:33,719 --> 00:35:37,719
Speaker 1: wrote some songs and and I wrote, you know, collaborating

610
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:42,080
Speaker 1: with with other people in the band and and by myself,

611
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 1: you know mainly. But we made an album for MGM

612
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:51,839
Speaker 1: Records to spand wound up being called Kangaroo and and

613
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:55,319
Speaker 1: made an album for for MGM, and we we had

614
00:35:55,360 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 1: a tour quote unquote that consisted of playing at UH

615
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:05,840
Speaker 1: the Mjam Records convention in Las Vegas, uh and then

616
00:36:05,960 --> 00:36:08,400
Speaker 1: at the Singer Bowl the World's Fairgrounds, opening to the

617
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,719
Speaker 1: doors and the Who and then going back to the

618
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:15,759
Speaker 1: Cafe Wall where we actually were alternating sets at the

619
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:19,000
Speaker 1: Cafe Well for quite a while with the various bands,

620
00:36:19,080 --> 00:36:23,680
Speaker 1: but the one that people by remembers the Castiles, which

621
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:28,440
Speaker 1: was Bruce Stings, Bruce Springsteen's span from New Jersey. It

622
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,440
Speaker 1: was underage club where that teeny boppers came in for

623
00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 1: Jersey and from Long Island and could listen to music

624
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 1: all day for five bucks or whatever it was admissioned.

625
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:43,440
Speaker 1: Maybe it was less than that. Probably was. Each member

626
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:46,759
Speaker 1: of each band got six dollars a night and all

627
00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:49,480
Speaker 1: the potato chips and ice cream they could eat there was.

628
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:51,279
Speaker 1: There was no real food there and there was no

629
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:56,200
Speaker 1: alcohol obviously, so so you know, but it was for

630
00:36:56,360 --> 00:36:58,279
Speaker 1: a guy that was you know, I was a team

631
00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:00,680
Speaker 1: and I started playing there and it was I could

632
00:37:00,680 --> 00:37:03,839
Speaker 1: actually live on six dollars a night as long as

633
00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 1: I found someplace to sleep a friend's couch or sometimes

634
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:10,879
Speaker 1: at rooftop or a park bench, you know. And and

635
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:15,080
Speaker 1: it's the glamorous side of the music business. But you know,

636
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:18,480
Speaker 1: it's a start, okay, going back. If you do your

637
00:37:18,480 --> 00:37:23,279
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page, it says you skip two grades. Is that true? Well,

638
00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:25,279
Speaker 1: I skipped senior in high school. I took fourth and

639
00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:30,760
Speaker 1: fifth grade in the same year. So yeah, okay, let's

640
00:37:30,800 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 1: go back to your in New York. So you make

641
00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:38,560
Speaker 1: the Stiff album with MGM. What do you say to yourself?

642
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:40,640
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a performer, I'm gonna be a songwriter.

643
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:43,160
Speaker 1: I'm looking for another record deal. How does it play

644
00:37:43,200 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 1: out from there? Uh, Johanna and I met, Actually, we're

645
00:37:47,560 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 1: introduced by Barbara Keith, uh singer and Crusi guitar player

646
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:56,280
Speaker 1: from from Kangaroo And Barbara and she had both worked

647
00:37:56,960 --> 00:38:02,400
Speaker 1: at Women's Day mag is and and and at the

648
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:05,160
Speaker 1: Village Voice and knew each other from that. And they

649
00:38:05,200 --> 00:38:07,920
Speaker 1: both wear leather miniskirts and had posters of Bob Dylan

650
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:11,560
Speaker 1: over their desks and and uh, you know, so they

651
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:15,080
Speaker 1: Johanna came to a show and Barbara introduced me to her,

652
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 1: and we became friends, and I started, you know, asking

653
00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:25,920
Speaker 1: her out. We wound up becoming a couple and uh

654
00:38:26,640 --> 00:38:28,879
Speaker 1: and living together in apartment on the Lower East Side

655
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:33,600
Speaker 1: where Jannis Joplin wound up eventually coming in and asking

656
00:38:33,680 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: us to write a song. It was just the right

657
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:44,480
Speaker 1: place at the right time. Uh, serendipity, Uh, the higher power,

658
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:47,520
Speaker 1: you know it. So it wasn't It was a plan

659
00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 1: that I couldn't have made up. So okay, So how

660
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:54,320
Speaker 1: did it become more leans? It took a while. Johanna

661
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:58,040
Speaker 1: and I, you know, we're writing songs. I was playing

662
00:38:58,040 --> 00:39:01,080
Speaker 1: guitar with raious other people. I played on sessions in

663
00:39:01,120 --> 00:39:04,320
Speaker 1: New York City. I was a hired gun for guys

664
00:39:04,360 --> 00:39:07,439
Speaker 1: like Charlie Collelo who are producing lu Christie and Raus

665
00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:13,480
Speaker 1: other artists I wand up playing on. Well, we moved

666
00:39:13,520 --> 00:39:16,400
Speaker 1: to Woodstock. I was asked by John Simon, who I

667
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:21,000
Speaker 1: had worked with on a Sales and Crofts album that

668
00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:26,719
Speaker 1: he was producing in Northern California while the Hyder's studio. Uh,

669
00:39:26,920 --> 00:39:30,839
Speaker 1: I played. You wind up playing on a couple of

670
00:39:31,640 --> 00:39:34,840
Speaker 1: a couple of sessions in l A. I made it.

671
00:39:34,840 --> 00:39:37,720
Speaker 1: I made a solo record for Columbia after after Kangaroo

672
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:41,040
Speaker 1: called action. Harvey Brooks who played with the Electric Flag

673
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:43,840
Speaker 1: and played bass on Dylan's Blonde on Blonde album, and

674
00:39:44,680 --> 00:39:46,600
Speaker 1: you know he worked with Paul Butterfield, less of other

675
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:52,320
Speaker 1: great It was the basis on Supersession too. That's correct. Harvey's,

676
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:59,160
Speaker 1: you know, very influential and well known great bass players.

677
00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:02,160
Speaker 1: So uh. He had been hired by Clive Davis to

678
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:05,760
Speaker 1: be a A and R production guy at Columbia Records,

679
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:08,880
Speaker 1: and he was looking for people to sign and my

680
00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:11,239
Speaker 1: manager at the time told me to go Sam and

681
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:14,120
Speaker 1: I did and play some songs for Harvey, and he

682
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:17,319
Speaker 1: signed me and we wound up going to l A

683
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:19,560
Speaker 1: and making part of the record there and making part

684
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:24,080
Speaker 1: of it in northern California. And and the drummer on

685
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:26,399
Speaker 1: a good part of their record was Wells Kelly, who

686
00:40:26,400 --> 00:40:29,359
Speaker 1: went on to be the first drummer in Orleans. Uh.

687
00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:31,279
Speaker 1: He went to California with us and we were playing

688
00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: gigs out there. Wells asked his astrologer what he should do,

689
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:38,399
Speaker 1: and as a strologers said go east. So he quit

690
00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:41,239
Speaker 1: the band and went to France and played in the

691
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:43,759
Speaker 1: band called King Harvest there with his brother, Sherman Kelly,

692
00:40:43,800 --> 00:40:46,600
Speaker 1: who had written the song Dancing in the Moonlight, which

693
00:40:46,640 --> 00:40:50,440
Speaker 1: became a hit for the band King Harvest. Uh. We

694
00:40:50,520 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 1: got another guy, Greg Thomas, playing drums and went on

695
00:40:54,120 --> 00:40:57,520
Speaker 1: to play in Tash my husband with me and John Simon.

696
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:00,880
Speaker 1: Simon had done some work with j and while we

697
00:41:00,920 --> 00:41:02,759
Speaker 1: were in Northern California, I played on the Seals and

698
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:06,279
Speaker 1: Crofts Down Home, Down Home album, their second album that

699
00:41:06,400 --> 00:41:09,319
Speaker 1: John Simon produced. So he came back from all that

700
00:41:09,360 --> 00:41:13,920
Speaker 1: stuff too, New York and John Simon lived in Woodstock,

701
00:41:13,960 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 1: and he asked me and Johannah to come up and

702
00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:18,560
Speaker 1: stay at his house because he was putting together a

703
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:22,640
Speaker 1: band to play and record at Bearsville Studios. Albert Grossman

704
00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:28,760
Speaker 1: and the manager who who managed Butterfield the band, Bob Dylan, Dejanis, Joplin,

705
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:34,200
Speaker 1: uh Todd Rundgren, Peter Paul and Mary et cetera built

706
00:41:34,200 --> 00:41:39,120
Speaker 1: this studio, Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York, and he

707
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:42,040
Speaker 1: needed a band to go in there as guinea pigs

708
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:44,360
Speaker 1: so they could test everything out and make sure it

709
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:47,560
Speaker 1: all work. They can't charge two or fifty bucks an

710
00:41:47,560 --> 00:41:50,279
Speaker 1: hour or whatever it was for people to come in

711
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:52,680
Speaker 1: and book a recording session. If the headphones are going

712
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:56,879
Speaker 1: to feedback, or you plug the bass drumm into track one,

713
00:41:56,880 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: it comes out of track, it has to be somebody

714
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:03,080
Speaker 1: has to be the guinea pigs. So John Simon Harvey Brooks,

715
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:06,719
Speaker 1: Greg Thomas, the drummer, Paul Harris is wonderful Oregon and

716
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:10,600
Speaker 1: keyboard player, and I were the guinea Pigs and we

717
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:13,719
Speaker 1: recorded while we're there, recorded a version of Dancy in

718
00:42:13,719 --> 00:42:18,960
Speaker 1: the Moonlight as a John Hall record that was never released. Uh,

719
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:21,920
Speaker 1: you know, was in the can. I some day I

720
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:23,799
Speaker 1: have to get it out and listen to it see

721
00:42:24,640 --> 00:42:27,719
Speaker 1: see how it is, because at this point, lots of

722
00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 1: people have done that song, Hooty and the Blowfish and

723
00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:34,960
Speaker 1: King Harvest. Obviously Orleans did a version of That's the

724
00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:39,480
Speaker 1: title track of one of our CDs, and so but

725
00:42:39,560 --> 00:42:42,239
Speaker 1: this was all the process of learning how to be

726
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:44,480
Speaker 1: in the studio, learning what you can do in the studio.

727
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:48,880
Speaker 1: It started out with Kangaroo, which was really education and recording,

728
00:42:48,920 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 1: and then my record, the Action Album was another one.

729
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:55,440
Speaker 1: I think of it now. I mean John Simon played

730
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:59,080
Speaker 1: on that. John Sebastin played harmonica on it, and guitar

731
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:02,560
Speaker 1: and and uh, Richard Green, the fiddle player from Sea

732
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:04,719
Speaker 1: Train played on it. As you know, a lot of

733
00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:09,440
Speaker 1: a lot of pretty wonderful musicians are on that record.

734
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:13,799
Speaker 1: And but it was really not until I got into

735
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:18,200
Speaker 1: Barsbal Studios with John Simon that I started to really

736
00:43:18,280 --> 00:43:21,840
Speaker 1: understand what the studio can do as a tool for

737
00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 1: musicians and for songwriters and producers. And and uh, while

738
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 1: we were there, our apartment on the Lowery sykept broken into,

739
00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 1: and Johanna and I wound up uh driving back down

740
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:41,200
Speaker 1: to the city, loading everything into a car that we

741
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:44,359
Speaker 1: cared about from our apartment and driving back up north

742
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:46,560
Speaker 1: to Woodstock and taking the first rental we could find.

743
00:43:47,120 --> 00:43:50,359
Speaker 1: And we lived in Woodstock in rentals for a couple

744
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:52,879
Speaker 1: of different places and like a year and a half.

745
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 1: And then when Janesis version of Half Moon came out,

746
00:43:56,640 --> 00:43:59,320
Speaker 1: unfortunately it was posthumous. She had died before the record

747
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:04,480
Speaker 1: was released, which is in addition to her popularity was

748
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:08,719
Speaker 1: somebody dies. And then that first postumus record comes out

749
00:44:08,719 --> 00:44:12,040
Speaker 1: of Races to the Top, and we got a first

750
00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:14,319
Speaker 1: royalty checked from Half Moon, and we bought a house

751
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:17,640
Speaker 1: to Socrates and she's still living there today and we

752
00:44:17,760 --> 00:44:24,120
Speaker 1: lived there together for almost thirty years. So how do

753
00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:29,280
Speaker 1: you feel when the Columbia album is not successful? Uh? Well,

754
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 1: I was not happy, but you know, I still um

755
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:40,239
Speaker 1: it was under contract to them, and and we had

756
00:44:40,280 --> 00:44:43,160
Speaker 1: an idea about you know, forming a band. I've done

757
00:44:43,160 --> 00:44:45,640
Speaker 1: this record as a John Hall record, but we cut

758
00:44:45,640 --> 00:44:49,240
Speaker 1: a bunch of other things with Paul Harrison uh Wells

759
00:44:49,320 --> 00:44:52,280
Speaker 1: and then Greg Thomas on drums and and with Harvard

760
00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:54,800
Speaker 1: Brooks on base. We're gonna try to be a band.

761
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:57,600
Speaker 1: And the best name we came up with was thunder Frog,

762
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:00,960
Speaker 1: and Columbia didn't care for that idea, so you know,

763
00:45:01,080 --> 00:45:04,560
Speaker 1: wound up not being signed to them anymore. And and

764
00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:09,279
Speaker 1: but there's always another song, there's always another gig, there's

765
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:14,680
Speaker 1: always hopefully another band to put together. And I want

766
00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:19,800
Speaker 1: on tour with Taj Mahal, playing all around the country

767
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:27,640
Speaker 1: three month on three month long tour. And Uh. After

768
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:30,960
Speaker 1: that we recorded a double live album that was Fillmore

769
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:35,560
Speaker 1: East and Fillmore West called The Real Thing. Uh. The

770
00:45:35,640 --> 00:45:38,680
Speaker 1: guy promoted the original Woodspot Fest, but one of the

771
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:42,400
Speaker 1: three promoters at the Woodstock Festival, Michael Lang, had a

772
00:45:42,400 --> 00:45:46,279
Speaker 1: little record labelist starting called Just Sunshine, and he asked

773
00:45:46,280 --> 00:45:48,960
Speaker 1: me if I would play on a record vice Karen Dalton,

774
00:45:49,480 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 1: a singer he was it signed to his label. A

775
00:45:53,600 --> 00:45:57,040
Speaker 1: wonderful combination of sort of jazz Billy Holliday kind of

776
00:45:57,120 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: jazz and folk music, contemporary ones and a friend of

777
00:46:02,080 --> 00:46:06,799
Speaker 1: his and Tim Harden's, and you know, she was a

778
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:09,560
Speaker 1: very quirky, unique singer. I played on her record and

779
00:46:09,560 --> 00:46:12,319
Speaker 1: then I was asked to go to Europe on tour

780
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:14,520
Speaker 1: with her, and so I did. And we had a

781
00:46:14,520 --> 00:46:19,640
Speaker 1: band with Bill Keith, famous banjo and steel player who

782
00:46:19,719 --> 00:46:24,040
Speaker 1: unfortunately passed away a year or so ago, he said, ah,

783
00:46:24,960 --> 00:46:28,600
Speaker 1: but known by every banjo player in the world and

784
00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:31,960
Speaker 1: played with Ian and Sylvia banjo and Steele guitar with them.

785
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:36,320
Speaker 1: And and uh so Bill was playing in that band,

786
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:41,080
Speaker 1: and um Denny Sywell, who wanted to play drums with

787
00:46:41,160 --> 00:46:43,560
Speaker 1: McCartney and Wings, was playing drums in that band. And

788
00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:48,480
Speaker 1: we opened to Santana all over the continent. Um, and

789
00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:52,279
Speaker 1: we're supposed to play in England and after we did

790
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:57,240
Speaker 1: the European continent. Uh. Karen never got a soundtrack, although

791
00:46:57,239 --> 00:46:59,480
Speaker 1: she was told she was going to. And when we

792
00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 1: played Montro, Switzerland, she refused to go on. It was

793
00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:05,440
Speaker 1: at the twelfth time in a row, I think, with

794
00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:07,800
Speaker 1: no sound check, and she just got mad and walked

795
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:10,040
Speaker 1: out and took off down the street and didn't come back.

796
00:47:10,080 --> 00:47:14,319
Speaker 1: And the promoter came backstage and said Santana's not ready yet.

797
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:17,840
Speaker 1: There's a big crowd here. Somebody's got to do a show.

798
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:20,840
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'll do it. And I wanted

799
00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 1: to play. I would actually like music enough. I wanted

800
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:27,080
Speaker 1: to get on stage and play something. And so we

801
00:47:27,160 --> 00:47:29,480
Speaker 1: got out there. I was playing my stratocaster through a

802
00:47:29,520 --> 00:47:34,760
Speaker 1: little Princeton Appen through Santana's big sound system, and Bill Keith,

803
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:37,400
Speaker 1: the steel player and get You Eventual Player, played bass,

804
00:47:38,239 --> 00:47:41,680
Speaker 1: and Danny Hankin, a friend of Karen's, was playing acoustic rhythm,

805
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:45,760
Speaker 1: played rhythm, and we did Jimmy Reid songs and and

806
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 1: Marvin Gay songs, and we did a Ray Child's song,

807
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:52,839
Speaker 1: it feels so good. It feels like a ball game

808
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:55,839
Speaker 1: on a rainy day. You know, I feel feel so bad.

809
00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:58,279
Speaker 1: I feels like a ball game on a rainy day.

810
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:02,480
Speaker 1: And uh. And then we finished with Doom Bargard that

811
00:48:02,600 --> 00:48:05,879
Speaker 1: joint my friend, which they all knew. The audience knew

812
00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:09,040
Speaker 1: it from Easy Rider. I didn't realize that. So we

813
00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:11,279
Speaker 1: finished and I waved goodbye and went down to the

814
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:13,120
Speaker 1: dressing room and the promoter came. I said, you have

815
00:48:13,200 --> 00:48:15,600
Speaker 1: to do an encore and went upstairs and people were

816
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:18,840
Speaker 1: stamping and holding up lighters and and I went, wow,

817
00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:21,520
Speaker 1: you know it's amazing. I just thought I was going

818
00:48:21,560 --> 00:48:24,040
Speaker 1: to get away with it, with killing it, you know,

819
00:48:24,120 --> 00:48:27,720
Speaker 1: forty minutes of time so that Fantana could be ready.

820
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:30,400
Speaker 1: But so we did another Jimmy Reids song for an

821
00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:33,400
Speaker 1: encore and and then what you know went off and

822
00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 1: Karen got kicked off the tour because no headliner once

823
00:48:37,040 --> 00:48:39,680
Speaker 1: an opening act, you won't go on. And uh so

824
00:48:39,719 --> 00:48:42,520
Speaker 1: I was flying home after that show, and uh and

825
00:48:42,680 --> 00:48:45,839
Speaker 1: thinking on the plane, I should start a band and

826
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:47,879
Speaker 1: do our own sign and Johannah had written so many

827
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:49,879
Speaker 1: songs at that point, we had plenty of songs to do.

828
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:54,200
Speaker 1: And uh so I started playing with the different combinations

829
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:59,160
Speaker 1: of of musicians in Woodstock and that was the one

830
00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:03,000
Speaker 1: and U in December seventy when Wells Kelly joined and

831
00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:05,400
Speaker 1: he came back from King Harvest in Europe, and I

832
00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 1: been playing with Howie Wyath on drums, and a guy

833
00:49:08,719 --> 00:49:13,920
Speaker 1: in Buffalo Gelbert Bill nickname was Buffalo Bill Gelbert playing bass,

834
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:21,000
Speaker 1: and how we quit, uh and and Buffalo quit for

835
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:22,960
Speaker 1: different reasons. And it was me and Wells in our

836
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:26,040
Speaker 1: basement Johanna's my basement and Socrit. He's looking at each

837
00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 1: other going now what um, and and Well said, uh,

838
00:49:31,960 --> 00:49:34,920
Speaker 1: I know this guy in Ithaca named Larry Happen. He

839
00:49:34,960 --> 00:49:38,719
Speaker 1: plays anything, plays guitar, plays keeper, it plays bass, Lay

840
00:49:38,719 --> 00:49:41,719
Speaker 1: was trumpet, can sing great, And I said, well, why

841
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:44,800
Speaker 1: don't you call him? So? So he called Larry, and

842
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:46,759
Speaker 1: Larry came down and the three of us made our

843
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:50,640
Speaker 1: first did our first performance, our first show as Orleans

844
00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:55,680
Speaker 1: in January of nine. We shall be fifty years this January,

845
00:49:56,480 --> 00:49:59,600
Speaker 1: and why we're leads. We were playing a lot of

846
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 1: we didn't have quite enough original songs to do all originals.

847
00:50:03,719 --> 00:50:06,520
Speaker 1: We would have to do two shows or maybe three

848
00:50:06,560 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 1: touch shows sometimes at clubs to keep people dancing to

849
00:50:10,000 --> 00:50:12,440
Speaker 1: drink enough that the club owner would be happy and

850
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:16,400
Speaker 1: invite his back. And uh, so we were doing covers

851
00:50:16,400 --> 00:50:18,920
Speaker 1: of R and B songs and reggae songs, and we

852
00:50:18,920 --> 00:50:22,399
Speaker 1: were doing a lot of New Orleans uh influenced music,

853
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:27,600
Speaker 1: a lot of Neville's, Neville Brothers, meters al to st stuff.

854
00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:30,880
Speaker 1: And so you know, every band I think sits around

855
00:50:30,880 --> 00:50:33,879
Speaker 1: and tries to think of names, and um, usually two

856
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:36,839
Speaker 1: people hate it and one guy likes it. And so

857
00:50:36,920 --> 00:50:39,920
Speaker 1: one night, Well said We had a gig that weekend

858
00:50:39,960 --> 00:50:43,920
Speaker 1: in Oswego, New York, and he said, how about Orleans.

859
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:46,759
Speaker 1: We went, okay, we'll use that. So we went up there.

860
00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:49,239
Speaker 1: We had a really good gig. In fact, our last show,

861
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:52,839
Speaker 1: I met somebody who was there at that gig who's

862
00:50:52,880 --> 00:50:55,120
Speaker 1: on the radio now in Pittsburgh. We were playing in

863
00:50:55,200 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 1: kitt and in Pennsylvania outside just east of Pittsburgh. But

864
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:02,120
Speaker 1: I was at that show in us we Goo where

865
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:06,480
Speaker 1: he was going to college, and and uh. For the

866
00:51:06,520 --> 00:51:08,480
Speaker 1: next few weeks, we kept saying, we're gonna we better

867
00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:11,200
Speaker 1: change the name if we're going to change it, and

868
00:51:11,200 --> 00:51:13,480
Speaker 1: and but that guy in us Weego wanted to hire

869
00:51:13,560 --> 00:51:16,520
Speaker 1: us back, and he had to use Orleans again or

870
00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:18,400
Speaker 1: people wouldn't know who to come see, you know, And

871
00:51:19,040 --> 00:51:21,640
Speaker 1: so we did and it wound up taking on the

872
00:51:21,719 --> 00:51:26,160
Speaker 1: meaning that you know, that became Orleans identity. It's a

873
00:51:26,840 --> 00:51:29,239
Speaker 1: you know, it's fine. There was a fad for a

874
00:51:29,239 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 1: while of naming bands after cities like Chicago or after states,

875
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:41,919
Speaker 1: you know, Boston and uh, uh, Alabama, Uh, and then

876
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:47,400
Speaker 1: it was Continents and uh. So it's funny. I always

877
00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:51,080
Speaker 1: thought maybe it was Orleans from Cape Cod that on

878
00:51:51,200 --> 00:51:54,480
Speaker 1: Cape cod That was a lot of a lot of

879
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: states have in Orleans, just like every state seems to

880
00:51:56,880 --> 00:51:59,400
Speaker 1: have a woodstock in it. It's just people aren't very

881
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:08,480
Speaker 1: original naming towns. Okay, so played out to getting a

882
00:52:08,520 --> 00:52:12,520
Speaker 1: record deal with Orleans. Well, we played as a trio

883
00:52:12,640 --> 00:52:18,000
Speaker 1: for nine months. Lance Hopping, Larry's younger brother, graduated from

884
00:52:18,040 --> 00:52:21,520
Speaker 1: high school on Long Island, and the Hopping brothers grew

885
00:52:21,600 --> 00:52:25,840
Speaker 1: up and their sister also Linda, grew up with parents

886
00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:27,960
Speaker 1: who were both musicians who had met on a gig

887
00:52:28,200 --> 00:52:31,120
Speaker 1: and they both taught music, so they all had this

888
00:52:31,440 --> 00:52:36,280
Speaker 1: incredible knowledge and proficiency and various instruments and and Lance,

889
00:52:36,840 --> 00:52:41,319
Speaker 1: after nine months of our being a trio came up

890
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:45,439
Speaker 1: an auditioned in September seventy two, Uh in Johannes Semi

891
00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 1: basement on Base and he played bass really well and

892
00:52:48,640 --> 00:52:53,120
Speaker 1: sang harmony great, and Uh and Larry got along great

893
00:52:53,120 --> 00:52:56,400
Speaker 1: because they were brothers. And we just became a quartet

894
00:52:56,480 --> 00:53:00,520
Speaker 1: like that, and then became a quintet for the fourth album,

895
00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:04,040
Speaker 1: The Waking and Dreaming out with with Jerry Moratta playing drums,

896
00:53:04,120 --> 00:53:08,239
Speaker 1: and then you know, went back to quartet after that.

897
00:53:09,040 --> 00:53:12,320
Speaker 1: Um and then I left and went solo for a

898
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:14,319
Speaker 1: couple of records and John Hall Band for a couple

899
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:19,120
Speaker 1: of records, and and the band continued without me and

900
00:53:19,120 --> 00:53:21,560
Speaker 1: and had another top ten hit with Love Takes Time,

901
00:53:21,719 --> 00:53:24,800
Speaker 1: which Larry wrote with his wife at the time, Maryland.

902
00:53:25,480 --> 00:53:30,840
Speaker 1: And so you know, we just we got back together

903
00:53:30,920 --> 00:53:34,359
Speaker 1: after Wells passed away. I'm really sorry. We all were

904
00:53:34,400 --> 00:53:37,399
Speaker 1: incredibly sorry. Wells was probably the guy in the band

905
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:39,719
Speaker 1: I was closest to in the beginning, and like a

906
00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:42,279
Speaker 1: brother to me. I used to say, at his parents house,

907
00:53:43,280 --> 00:53:45,440
Speaker 1: you know, and and with his brothers and his sister

908
00:53:45,560 --> 00:53:48,279
Speaker 1: when we played in Ithaca, New York, which was in

909
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:51,200
Speaker 1: the beginning, was like once a month we played in Ithaca.

910
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:54,759
Speaker 1: We're working New York State and New England. You know. Uh,

911
00:53:54,920 --> 00:53:56,960
Speaker 1: in the beginning, we're kind of a regional band. And

912
00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:04,359
Speaker 1: so Wells passed away in and I uh saying at

913
00:54:04,520 --> 00:54:10,719
Speaker 1: his memorial with with Larry and Lanson was the first

914
00:54:10,760 --> 00:54:12,799
Speaker 1: time we had gotten on stage and sung together and

915
00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:15,200
Speaker 1: in a few years, and we went, wow, that sound,

916
00:54:16,320 --> 00:54:18,640
Speaker 1: you know it was it took I guess it's a

917
00:54:18,719 --> 00:54:22,960
Speaker 1: well Stein for us to say, you know, there's something

918
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:26,239
Speaker 1: here we should really be doing together, and we were

919
00:54:26,280 --> 00:54:28,200
Speaker 1: all too big for that band. It was too big

920
00:54:28,239 --> 00:54:30,799
Speaker 1: for our bridges and we needed a but we needed

921
00:54:30,800 --> 00:54:33,440
Speaker 1: a therapist more than a manager, you know, we needed

922
00:54:33,480 --> 00:54:37,680
Speaker 1: somebody to say, you guys are nuts. You know, you've

923
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:40,959
Speaker 1: pushed this rock up the hill and gotten a rolling

924
00:54:41,000 --> 00:54:43,319
Speaker 1: down the hill to the point where you've got a

925
00:54:43,400 --> 00:54:45,560
Speaker 1: couple of Time Top ten records in a row and

926
00:54:45,680 --> 00:54:48,520
Speaker 1: albums that are selling well. You're on the same label

927
00:54:48,520 --> 00:54:51,439
Speaker 1: with the Eagles and Jackson Brown and Joni Mitchell. What

928
00:54:51,480 --> 00:54:55,560
Speaker 1: the hell do you think you're doing? But you know,

929
00:54:56,600 --> 00:54:59,040
Speaker 1: a lot of bands break up because the personnel, you know,

930
00:54:59,600 --> 00:55:01,640
Speaker 1: tricks and stuff like that, and then some of them

931
00:55:01,680 --> 00:55:05,520
Speaker 1: get back together. We're the one of the ones that did. Okay,

932
00:55:05,520 --> 00:55:07,560
Speaker 1: how do you get the deal with ABC? And how

933
00:55:07,600 --> 00:55:10,840
Speaker 1: do you go from ABC to Asylum? We got that

934
00:55:10,920 --> 00:55:15,600
Speaker 1: deal with ABC by auditioning or playing showcases at clubs

935
00:55:15,600 --> 00:55:17,640
Speaker 1: in New York. We we played first of all at

936
00:55:17,680 --> 00:55:23,760
Speaker 1: a place called the Mercer Arts Center. Uh. We actually

937
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:28,000
Speaker 1: around a double bill there with Manhattan Transfer and they

938
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:30,600
Speaker 1: had no no deal before that, and needed did we.

939
00:55:30,760 --> 00:55:33,280
Speaker 1: But they were signed and we got signed by ABC

940
00:55:33,480 --> 00:55:36,840
Speaker 1: coming out of that showcase and shortly after that the

941
00:55:36,880 --> 00:55:38,759
Speaker 1: building fell down, and we'd like to say we brought

942
00:55:38,800 --> 00:55:41,239
Speaker 1: the house down right. Also, that's where the New York

943
00:55:41,320 --> 00:55:44,879
Speaker 1: Dolls started too, they did. It was for a brief time.

944
00:55:44,880 --> 00:55:49,280
Speaker 1: It was a very hot place for bands to be discovered. Uh.

945
00:55:49,400 --> 00:55:54,839
Speaker 1: And then we were actually originally wooed by Cashman and West,

946
00:55:54,880 --> 00:56:00,120
Speaker 1: who had uh, Tommy West and Paul was a all

947
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:05,600
Speaker 1: cash Yeah, I think that's right. So anyway, we wound

948
00:56:05,640 --> 00:56:08,200
Speaker 1: up deciding we wanted Barry Beckett and Roger Hawkins to

949
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:11,840
Speaker 1: produce us for ABC drummer and piano player from the

950
00:56:12,320 --> 00:56:15,040
Speaker 1: Muscle Shoals rhythm section, and we wound up going down

951
00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:17,279
Speaker 1: to Muscle Shoals and making that first or Leans album

952
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:20,960
Speaker 1: there with Barry and Roger producing. And we had been

953
00:56:21,000 --> 00:56:24,400
Speaker 1: big fans of their work with the Staples singers and

954
00:56:24,440 --> 00:56:26,759
Speaker 1: with Wilson Pickett and with you know, a lot of

955
00:56:26,760 --> 00:56:28,719
Speaker 1: the R and B stuff we were doing wound up

956
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:32,799
Speaker 1: being things that they had played on, so uh, they

957
00:56:32,840 --> 00:56:36,880
Speaker 1: weren't used to not playing on records. They sat in

958
00:56:36,960 --> 00:56:39,440
Speaker 1: the Barry and Rogers sat in the control room, and

959
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:41,440
Speaker 1: we were all a little nervous. Well, Skelly, I think

960
00:56:41,480 --> 00:56:43,799
Speaker 1: that our drummer was especially nervous because he was such

961
00:56:43,840 --> 00:56:47,640
Speaker 1: a fan of Rogers playing. But you know, a lot

962
00:56:47,680 --> 00:56:50,960
Speaker 1: of people, a lot of our hardcore longtime fans still

963
00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:54,399
Speaker 1: think that first or Leans album was our best record ever.

964
00:56:56,600 --> 00:56:58,400
Speaker 1: So they ended up doing a good job even though

965
00:56:58,440 --> 00:57:01,359
Speaker 1: they weren't playing in your Oh yeah, you know, they

966
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 1: know what they're doing, M and H. And we played

967
00:57:06,640 --> 00:57:09,000
Speaker 1: well enough that that the record worked and they were

968
00:57:09,000 --> 00:57:12,840
Speaker 1: happy with it. And but you know, ABC put it

969
00:57:12,880 --> 00:57:14,480
Speaker 1: out and had we kind of a regional hit in

970
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:17,920
Speaker 1: the Northeast with it, and it did well in the

971
00:57:17,960 --> 00:57:25,560
Speaker 1: Netherlands and battle luxe countries. But um, but they decided

972
00:57:25,560 --> 00:57:28,320
Speaker 1: with our second album that we released. We recorded for

973
00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:33,280
Speaker 1: self produced our second album at Bear's Ball Studios in Woodstock, Uh,

974
00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:36,240
Speaker 1: where I had learned a lot about recording and so

975
00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:40,520
Speaker 1: uh and that's that record had the song let there

976
00:57:40,520 --> 00:57:42,200
Speaker 1: Be Music on it and the song danced with me

977
00:57:42,240 --> 00:57:45,240
Speaker 1: on it in an earlier version. But ABC heard and

978
00:57:45,320 --> 00:57:48,200
Speaker 1: said we don't hear a hit, and they dropped us.

979
00:57:48,320 --> 00:57:52,880
Speaker 1: And we did another showcase after that and in New

980
00:57:52,920 --> 00:57:55,880
Speaker 1: York at Maxis Kansas City, and there were a couple

981
00:57:55,920 --> 00:57:59,080
Speaker 1: of a and our people, Mary Martin from Warner Brothers

982
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:02,640
Speaker 1: and Chuck clock In from Asylum Records who heard us there,

983
00:58:03,600 --> 00:58:05,880
Speaker 1: and there was a little bit of a I don't

984
00:58:05,880 --> 00:58:07,200
Speaker 1: know it was a bidding work, but there was a

985
00:58:07,240 --> 00:58:13,200
Speaker 1: competition between Warners and and Asylum, which was an indie

986
00:58:13,280 --> 00:58:16,520
Speaker 1: label at the time, and and we decided to go

987
00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:20,520
Speaker 1: with Chuck clock In an Asylum. And we're glad we

988
00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:23,080
Speaker 1: did because Chuck is the first producer I've ever worked with,

989
00:58:23,160 --> 00:58:25,760
Speaker 1: and I think for Larry and Lance and Wells was

990
00:58:25,800 --> 00:58:28,120
Speaker 1: the same thing. Who could really tell us something that

991
00:58:28,200 --> 00:58:32,800
Speaker 1: we didn't want to hear and and impress us or

992
00:58:33,680 --> 00:58:36,680
Speaker 1: be knowledgeable enough and able to explain himself enough that

993
00:58:36,720 --> 00:58:41,680
Speaker 1: we would listen. And and that's invaluable to a developing artist.

994
00:58:41,880 --> 00:58:43,760
Speaker 1: Do you remember something you might have said that you

995
00:58:43,760 --> 00:58:47,439
Speaker 1: didn't want to hear? The song give One Heart, which

996
00:58:47,480 --> 00:58:49,680
Speaker 1: was on our third album, let the music album The

997
00:58:49,960 --> 00:58:53,560
Speaker 1: One Would Answer Great cover by Linda Ronstad. Linda recorded

998
00:58:53,560 --> 00:58:56,680
Speaker 1: it after she heard it on that record, But Johanna

999
00:58:56,680 --> 00:58:59,240
Speaker 1: and I had written a song that had a whole

1000
00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:02,640
Speaker 1: bridge the song that's not in that record. And you know,

1001
00:59:02,760 --> 00:59:05,320
Speaker 1: Chuck came to us and said, this is a wonderful song,

1002
00:59:05,720 --> 00:59:08,440
Speaker 1: but the bridge belongs to another song, just get rid

1003
00:59:08,480 --> 00:59:12,160
Speaker 1: of it. And the b section to the verse should

1004
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:15,400
Speaker 1: be the course, and then the course should be the bridge.

1005
00:59:16,280 --> 00:59:18,959
Speaker 1: So the b section was that was to give one

1006
00:59:19,120 --> 00:59:23,440
Speaker 1: high get back to you. That's the paradox of fin

1007
00:59:25,000 --> 00:59:28,600
Speaker 1: and Chuck said, make that the course, which of course

1008
00:59:28,640 --> 00:59:31,320
Speaker 1: it is, and it should have been all along and

1009
00:59:31,400 --> 00:59:35,200
Speaker 1: I can't stop saying it. I love you used to

1010
00:59:35,240 --> 00:59:37,360
Speaker 1: be the carse when we first wrote it. He said,

1011
00:59:37,440 --> 00:59:40,400
Speaker 1: that's got to be the bridge, and that's what we recorded,

1012
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:42,200
Speaker 1: and that's what Linda Ross that fell in love with

1013
00:59:42,360 --> 00:59:46,080
Speaker 1: she recorded it. So you know, Chuck actually was able

1014
00:59:46,120 --> 00:59:51,080
Speaker 1: to listen with objectivity to things that we were too

1015
00:59:51,120 --> 00:59:55,840
Speaker 1: close to and couldn't see it for us. For the trees. Okay,

1016
00:59:56,240 --> 01:00:01,200
Speaker 1: So how does still the One come together? And what's

1017
01:00:01,200 --> 01:00:04,600
Speaker 1: going through your mind when it becomes such an uber success. Well,

1018
01:00:04,600 --> 01:00:06,840
Speaker 1: it came together because Chuck did the same thing with that.

1019
01:00:06,920 --> 01:00:11,439
Speaker 1: I mean, h Johanna write the lyric Friends of Ours

1020
01:00:11,640 --> 01:00:14,240
Speaker 1: used to live downstairs in the village from us was

1021
01:00:14,280 --> 01:00:17,880
Speaker 1: getting divorced from her husband and asked her had to

1022
01:00:17,880 --> 01:00:20,080
Speaker 1: write a song about people saying together because there's so

1023
01:00:20,080 --> 01:00:23,520
Speaker 1: many songs about people breaking up, and Johanna wrote that

1024
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:25,120
Speaker 1: lyric and handed it to me on the back of

1025
01:00:25,160 --> 01:00:27,920
Speaker 1: an envelope. I wrote the music to it in about

1026
01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:34,720
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. And and while we were cutting it, none

1027
01:00:34,760 --> 01:00:36,520
Speaker 1: of us knew how important it was going to be

1028
01:00:36,720 --> 01:00:41,080
Speaker 1: to us. We were actually thinking and the label was thinking,

1029
01:00:41,160 --> 01:00:44,360
Speaker 1: maybe spring Fever will be the first single, or maybe

1030
01:00:45,160 --> 01:00:50,600
Speaker 1: you know, uh, some other songs say. There were various

1031
01:00:50,600 --> 01:00:53,720
Speaker 1: tunes that were in the running. Check knew that was

1032
01:00:53,760 --> 01:00:56,080
Speaker 1: going to be it, and he said, we cut it

1033
01:00:56,120 --> 01:01:01,080
Speaker 1: three times, the first time with Wells playing Uh. I

1034
01:01:01,080 --> 01:01:03,040
Speaker 1: think we cut the first time with Wells and Jerry

1035
01:01:03,080 --> 01:01:05,439
Speaker 1: both playing drum kits. We were performing at the time

1036
01:01:05,480 --> 01:01:07,520
Speaker 1: with Jerey m Rad and Wells s Kelly of playing

1037
01:01:07,840 --> 01:01:10,240
Speaker 1: double drums on a lot of stuff and then sometimes

1038
01:01:10,280 --> 01:01:12,640
Speaker 1: one would play percussion and the other would play drums.

1039
01:01:12,680 --> 01:01:15,960
Speaker 1: So first it was two drummers. It didn't work. Then

1040
01:01:16,000 --> 01:01:17,840
Speaker 1: we cut it. Chuck said, you gotta cut it with,

1041
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:21,280
Speaker 1: you know, with one drummer and percussion. So we tried

1042
01:01:21,280 --> 01:01:23,000
Speaker 1: it with Welles playing drums and he was playing a

1043
01:01:23,000 --> 01:01:25,640
Speaker 1: shuffle like the old fashioned kind of that that that

1044
01:01:25,880 --> 01:01:31,800
Speaker 1: that that on the high at shuffle and UH and

1045
01:01:31,840 --> 01:01:34,520
Speaker 1: we were both times We're like, Okay, there's a good drag,

1046
01:01:34,600 --> 01:01:37,919
Speaker 1: and Chuck went, Nope, that's not a good track. That's

1047
01:01:37,960 --> 01:01:43,040
Speaker 1: not it, and he asked everybody to leave and go

1048
01:01:43,080 --> 01:01:47,000
Speaker 1: out for lunch except me and Jerry Morada and and

1049
01:01:47,080 --> 01:01:49,280
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry and I took it apart with the

1050
01:01:49,320 --> 01:01:53,000
Speaker 1: beat apart. And Chuck's the kind of guy who was

1051
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:54,840
Speaker 1: a man in the street listener, and he would drum

1052
01:01:54,920 --> 01:01:57,680
Speaker 1: on his knees. You could tell that he was into

1053
01:01:57,720 --> 01:02:00,240
Speaker 1: it and the music was making him happy as he

1054
01:02:00,280 --> 01:02:02,640
Speaker 1: was drumming it on his knees while we're playing. But

1055
01:02:02,880 --> 01:02:04,600
Speaker 1: we get we started to instill the one with the

1056
01:02:04,720 --> 01:02:06,600
Speaker 1: other two things that he stopped drumming on his knees

1057
01:02:06,600 --> 01:02:10,560
Speaker 1: and held like what just happened? And so so he

1058
01:02:10,600 --> 01:02:14,480
Speaker 1: was going, you just gotta have this doom to you know,

1059
01:02:14,840 --> 01:02:20,000
Speaker 1: none of this that that that that that shuffle. So

1060
01:02:20,000 --> 01:02:23,200
Speaker 1: so we developed this thing where Jerry's playing straight eight

1061
01:02:23,240 --> 01:02:26,479
Speaker 1: beats on the high head and backbeat on the snare

1062
01:02:26,560 --> 01:02:30,920
Speaker 1: drum and the bass drums going boom baboom boong baboon,

1063
01:02:31,080 --> 01:02:36,960
Speaker 1: boom boom boom baboon. Just it's like a drum machine

1064
01:02:37,240 --> 01:02:38,800
Speaker 1: and Jerry was one of the guys who has worked

1065
01:02:38,800 --> 01:02:41,520
Speaker 1: with Peter Gabriel shows it. You know, before there was

1066
01:02:41,560 --> 01:02:43,880
Speaker 1: a drum machine. Jerry could play like a drum machine.

1067
01:02:44,320 --> 01:02:46,120
Speaker 1: He didn't feel that he had to do fills or

1068
01:02:46,160 --> 01:02:48,600
Speaker 1: that he had to play something fancy. Was just like

1069
01:02:48,680 --> 01:02:51,560
Speaker 1: slugging it out, you know. And still the one is

1070
01:02:51,640 --> 01:02:54,400
Speaker 1: that the drum part is that. And then I had

1071
01:02:54,400 --> 01:02:56,440
Speaker 1: the idea of playing the upbeat piano. I've done that

1072
01:02:56,480 --> 01:02:58,200
Speaker 1: on a demo of the song, so it's think too

1073
01:02:58,360 --> 01:03:04,080
Speaker 1: but that but that that on the vendor Rhodes and

1074
01:03:04,080 --> 01:03:07,880
Speaker 1: and the guitar was doing Chuck Parry. It just came

1075
01:03:07,920 --> 01:03:11,080
Speaker 1: together like a machine and everybody else came back from

1076
01:03:11,160 --> 01:03:13,800
Speaker 1: lunch and Jerry played the drums and Wells played tamburin

1077
01:03:13,880 --> 01:03:17,160
Speaker 1: on it, and that was the third time and the

1078
01:03:17,280 --> 01:03:20,880
Speaker 1: version that's on the record. But it's amazing things that

1079
01:03:20,880 --> 01:03:24,080
Speaker 1: can happen in the course of recording a song that

1080
01:03:24,200 --> 01:03:28,080
Speaker 1: most people would never If you weren't there, you wouldn't

1081
01:03:28,080 --> 01:03:30,880
Speaker 1: know what a journey was. That it was a dropout

1082
01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:34,000
Speaker 1: on Larry's lead vocal on that song. We had the

1083
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:37,360
Speaker 1: whole thing done. We triple track the backup vocals we

1084
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:40,040
Speaker 1: had done the double league guitar. First I played the

1085
01:03:40,080 --> 01:03:42,880
Speaker 1: melody on the lead, and then Larry harmonized with it,

1086
01:03:42,960 --> 01:03:48,080
Speaker 1: and and and we get to the end, and we're

1087
01:03:48,120 --> 01:03:51,520
Speaker 1: almost ready to mix. And we've been told the songs

1088
01:03:51,520 --> 01:03:53,800
Speaker 1: too long. It needs to be under four minutes, need

1089
01:03:53,840 --> 01:03:56,280
Speaker 1: to be three and a half minutes for AM radio

1090
01:03:56,360 --> 01:03:58,880
Speaker 1: something somewhere around there. This was back when AM radio

1091
01:03:58,960 --> 01:04:07,960
Speaker 1: was so and so Uh. Val Garande was engineering UH

1092
01:04:08,080 --> 01:04:10,280
Speaker 1: and mixing the record, and we put it on the

1093
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:12,920
Speaker 1: two inch tape, and he got the spicing tape out.

1094
01:04:12,960 --> 01:04:16,000
Speaker 1: We said, this first course of the fade, we take

1095
01:04:16,040 --> 01:04:17,800
Speaker 1: that out because we've got to make the whole thing

1096
01:04:17,800 --> 01:04:23,200
Speaker 1: shorter and still get to the ending. And so so

1097
01:04:23,320 --> 01:04:25,479
Speaker 1: Val cuts the chorus out. He's got the tape hanging

1098
01:04:25,480 --> 01:04:27,680
Speaker 1: around his neck. He puts the butt ends of the

1099
01:04:28,080 --> 01:04:30,680
Speaker 1: two inch tape together in the spicy block, takes a

1100
01:04:30,760 --> 01:04:34,840
Speaker 1: piece of splicing tape, tamps it down, and UH takes

1101
01:04:34,840 --> 01:04:36,920
Speaker 1: it back up and rolls it back on the reel

1102
01:04:37,240 --> 01:04:39,680
Speaker 1: and then hits play and it goes over the head.

1103
01:04:39,760 --> 01:04:42,880
Speaker 1: And when Larry's seeing in the end of the bridge. Uh.

1104
01:04:43,040 --> 01:04:47,560
Speaker 1: Even though we grow old, it grows new. Use still

1105
01:04:47,840 --> 01:04:51,360
Speaker 1: the one it goes the ill, the one like Buddy Holly.

1106
01:04:51,400 --> 01:04:53,560
Speaker 1: There's a hiccup in it, and we're going to know

1107
01:04:54,040 --> 01:04:57,160
Speaker 1: what happened. And Val pulls out the spice and looks

1108
01:04:57,200 --> 01:04:59,480
Speaker 1: at it, you know, in the light, and says, a

1109
01:04:59,520 --> 01:05:01,440
Speaker 1: little piece of ox eyde came off it. We just

1110
01:05:01,520 --> 01:05:03,760
Speaker 1: run it back and forth over the house so many

1111
01:05:03,760 --> 01:05:06,320
Speaker 1: times that is coming apart. We better mix this thing

1112
01:05:06,360 --> 01:05:09,560
Speaker 1: before the whole thing falls apart. And we wait, wait,

1113
01:05:09,760 --> 01:05:11,880
Speaker 1: can't we find that isn't on the floor. And because

1114
01:05:12,480 --> 01:05:15,440
Speaker 1: it's a shag rug, that's a little piece of oxide

1115
01:05:15,440 --> 01:05:18,160
Speaker 1: from the tape, no one will ever hear it. And

1116
01:05:18,200 --> 01:05:21,720
Speaker 1: we're going, you're kidding. I mean, we all heard him

1117
01:05:21,760 --> 01:05:26,120
Speaker 1: saying still a little one and instead of still, it

1118
01:05:26,240 --> 01:05:29,960
Speaker 1: has the little Buddy Alley thing in it. Nobody has

1119
01:05:30,000 --> 01:05:33,160
Speaker 1: ever mentioned it to me after all these years I

1120
01:05:33,720 --> 01:05:36,720
Speaker 1: heard it. I thought it was it was intentional. Everybody

1121
01:05:36,800 --> 01:05:39,240
Speaker 1: thought it was intentional, you know, I mean I I

1122
01:05:39,280 --> 01:05:41,720
Speaker 1: even did at Facebook contest back a few years ago,

1123
01:05:41,760 --> 01:05:43,680
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, the first person can tell

1124
01:05:43,720 --> 01:05:46,840
Speaker 1: me where the dropout is in Larry's vocal gets a

1125
01:05:46,960 --> 01:05:50,440
Speaker 1: free pair of tickets to this show. And people guessed

1126
01:05:50,480 --> 01:05:53,680
Speaker 1: everywhere else in the song, but that, you know, and

1127
01:05:53,800 --> 01:05:57,120
Speaker 1: it's just amazing how close you can get to a

1128
01:05:57,160 --> 01:06:00,080
Speaker 1: project that you don't see the big picture. And al

1129
01:06:00,120 --> 01:06:03,120
Speaker 1: Garay was absolutely. I mean, val actually did one mix

1130
01:06:03,160 --> 01:06:06,480
Speaker 1: of it. And this is before automation. We had you know,

1131
01:06:06,560 --> 01:06:09,080
Speaker 1: Valve was working the lead vocal and the guitars, and

1132
01:06:09,360 --> 01:06:11,560
Speaker 1: I had the tom Tom said, Larry at the backup

1133
01:06:11,600 --> 01:06:14,600
Speaker 1: vocus was behind the console reaching over from the back

1134
01:06:14,600 --> 01:06:17,680
Speaker 1: of the council riding the backup vocals, and you know,

1135
01:06:17,720 --> 01:06:20,840
Speaker 1: everybody had something and we rehearsed it and then we

1136
01:06:20,960 --> 01:06:24,360
Speaker 1: rolled it. And before it even rolled back on the

1137
01:06:24,400 --> 01:06:26,640
Speaker 1: two the two track tapes that we could hear the

1138
01:06:26,720 --> 01:06:29,480
Speaker 1: mix valid his code on and his girlfriend was the door,

1139
01:06:29,480 --> 01:06:31,280
Speaker 1: and he said, we're going to lunch. I'll see and

1140
01:06:31,560 --> 01:06:33,240
Speaker 1: we'll do the next song in an hour or two

1141
01:06:33,600 --> 01:06:35,640
Speaker 1: and we're going feil that might not be it. Well,

1142
01:06:35,680 --> 01:06:38,160
Speaker 1: you gotta stay here, you know, we're paying you a

1143
01:06:38,240 --> 01:06:41,520
Speaker 1: lot of money to mix this stuff. And he said,

1144
01:06:41,960 --> 01:06:45,240
Speaker 1: my hands were shaken. That was it, and he left,

1145
01:06:45,600 --> 01:06:48,680
Speaker 1: And that's the record. I mean, it's just you know,

1146
01:06:49,360 --> 01:06:53,240
Speaker 1: sometimes you need a professional better at some things than

1147
01:06:53,280 --> 01:06:55,240
Speaker 1: you are to come in and do them, and we

1148
01:06:55,360 --> 01:06:59,480
Speaker 1: just had been you know, we had been running our

1149
01:06:59,480 --> 01:07:03,520
Speaker 1: own ship for a little too long. Okay, then it

1150
01:07:03,560 --> 01:07:07,240
Speaker 1: becomes a gigantic kit. What's it like riding a gigantic

1151
01:07:07,280 --> 01:07:15,280
Speaker 1: kit and then trying to follow it up? Well, uh,

1152
01:07:15,640 --> 01:07:18,600
Speaker 1: you know the thing is that we the songs on

1153
01:07:18,680 --> 01:07:20,880
Speaker 1: that record, we're you know, we're already recorded. The follow

1154
01:07:20,920 --> 01:07:23,520
Speaker 1: up had to be on the record, and the single

1155
01:07:23,560 --> 01:07:28,800
Speaker 1: that followed it was it was reached and uh, you know,

1156
01:07:28,840 --> 01:07:32,920
Speaker 1: perhaps what we should have done was wait until the

1157
01:07:33,040 --> 01:07:35,120
Speaker 1: until the spring and put out spring Fever or the

1158
01:07:35,200 --> 01:07:38,680
Speaker 1: lake winter put out spring Fever. You knows, hindsight will

1159
01:07:38,720 --> 01:07:42,840
Speaker 1: will never know what might have happened. But reached it

1160
01:07:42,880 --> 01:07:45,320
Speaker 1: pretty well. It's a top forty record that got into

1161
01:07:45,840 --> 01:07:47,800
Speaker 1: you know, the upper reach of the church in the

1162
01:07:47,840 --> 01:07:52,640
Speaker 1: southeast was. It was a big hit Florida, the Carolina's Virginia,

1163
01:07:53,040 --> 01:07:55,280
Speaker 1: you know, but not as big a national hit as

1164
01:07:56,840 --> 01:08:02,040
Speaker 1: as still the one. And then we did a lot

1165
01:08:02,120 --> 01:08:04,040
Speaker 1: of touring. We went on tour with Jackson Brown and

1166
01:08:05,440 --> 01:08:07,800
Speaker 1: it was the running on empty tour of Jackson's. We

1167
01:08:07,880 --> 01:08:10,439
Speaker 1: opened to him all over the country three months tour

1168
01:08:11,240 --> 01:08:15,320
Speaker 1: and uh, it was a great package. Uh and great

1169
01:08:15,320 --> 01:08:20,519
Speaker 1: exposure for us. But you know, and then another year

1170
01:08:20,520 --> 01:08:22,680
Speaker 1: of touring after that, before we were getting ready to

1171
01:08:22,680 --> 01:08:26,000
Speaker 1: go in the studio, and some stuff happened between us

1172
01:08:26,200 --> 01:08:30,960
Speaker 1: on the road in the band that that convinced me

1173
01:08:31,160 --> 01:08:35,880
Speaker 1: a combination of things starting to be competition for getting

1174
01:08:35,920 --> 01:08:39,680
Speaker 1: songs on the album. And you know, when Johanna and

1175
01:08:39,680 --> 01:08:41,680
Speaker 1: I've been making money from writing songs for years, so

1176
01:08:41,800 --> 01:08:44,320
Speaker 1: it was it was not unusual for us to make

1177
01:08:44,320 --> 01:08:47,760
Speaker 1: a living from writing songs. But when still the one

1178
01:08:48,200 --> 01:08:50,160
Speaker 1: came out, well to ask with me first on the

1179
01:08:50,160 --> 01:08:52,639
Speaker 1: third album, and then stroll the one on our fourth album,

1180
01:08:52,680 --> 01:08:56,320
Speaker 1: and uh and Johanna and I were making more money,

1181
01:08:56,360 --> 01:09:01,320
Speaker 1: you know, geometrically, more money from from those songs as writers,

1182
01:09:01,479 --> 01:09:03,720
Speaker 1: in addition to whatever artist royalties were going to come.

1183
01:09:04,840 --> 01:09:10,600
Speaker 1: And there were wives and girlfriends on the bus who

1184
01:09:11,080 --> 01:09:14,320
Speaker 1: would actually kind of egg the men on, the male

1185
01:09:14,400 --> 01:09:17,519
Speaker 1: members of the band on and there were a lot

1186
01:09:17,520 --> 01:09:22,240
Speaker 1: of yokos in the band at that point. But I

1187
01:09:22,320 --> 01:09:25,120
Speaker 1: wound up deciding I wanted to make a record of

1188
01:09:25,160 --> 01:09:28,880
Speaker 1: my solo records so that I could put Johanna. I

1189
01:09:28,960 --> 01:09:30,760
Speaker 1: had more songs than we could possibly put on a

1190
01:09:30,800 --> 01:09:36,360
Speaker 1: single record anyway, and on an album anyway, And and

1191
01:09:36,520 --> 01:09:40,160
Speaker 1: the discussion about what songs really should be on our

1192
01:09:40,200 --> 01:09:43,120
Speaker 1: next record was taking a turn that in my opinion

1193
01:09:43,160 --> 01:09:47,800
Speaker 1: and Chuck Platkin's opinion also didn't necessarily have to do

1194
01:09:47,920 --> 01:09:51,519
Speaker 1: with what's the best song. Uh, but you know that's

1195
01:09:51,520 --> 01:09:54,640
Speaker 1: a matter of opinion. It's always subjective. How did No

1196
01:09:54,800 --> 01:09:58,880
Speaker 1: Nukes come together? And how hard was it to pull together? Well?

1197
01:09:58,920 --> 01:10:01,559
Speaker 1: I made the first sol my first solo record for Asylum.

1198
01:10:01,560 --> 01:10:04,120
Speaker 1: I was still under contract to them, you know when

1199
01:10:04,160 --> 01:10:06,639
Speaker 1: you talk about when I was talking about actually needing

1200
01:10:06,640 --> 01:10:09,400
Speaker 1: a therapist instead of a manager or a record label

1201
01:10:09,640 --> 01:10:12,160
Speaker 1: or a producer, I mean the Asylum Records. When I

1202
01:10:12,200 --> 01:10:14,679
Speaker 1: told him that I was gonna quit Orleans and go solo,

1203
01:10:14,760 --> 01:10:17,320
Speaker 1: they went great. Now we've got two bands instead of one,

1204
01:10:17,400 --> 01:10:19,880
Speaker 1: you know, two acts. And you know they should have

1205
01:10:19,920 --> 01:10:24,240
Speaker 1: said wait a second, you know. But anyway, so I

1206
01:10:24,280 --> 01:10:28,040
Speaker 1: made a record for them. It was just called John Holland, Uh,

1207
01:10:28,280 --> 01:10:32,679
Speaker 1: Steve god Wilton, Wilton Felder, Joe Sample, Dave Sandborn, Michael Brucker,

1208
01:10:32,840 --> 01:10:36,720
Speaker 1: you know playing on it. All kinds of wonderful musicians contributing,

1209
01:10:36,840 --> 01:10:41,400
Speaker 1: and and then I could have made another record for them,

1210
01:10:41,439 --> 01:10:45,320
Speaker 1: I was signed for another Asylum album. But Cavallo and Ruffalo,

1211
01:10:45,360 --> 01:10:51,280
Speaker 1: who managed me and Orleans, we're saying uh uh. They also,

1212
01:10:51,360 --> 01:10:53,519
Speaker 1: by the way, said great now we've got two bands

1213
01:10:53,520 --> 01:10:57,880
Speaker 1: instead of but but they were saying, you know, we

1214
01:10:57,960 --> 01:11:01,679
Speaker 1: got earth Wind and Fires new label. This juryed by Columbia.

1215
01:11:01,720 --> 01:11:05,400
Speaker 1: It's called a r C American Recording company. Uh. And

1216
01:11:05,720 --> 01:11:08,080
Speaker 1: they talked me to leaving Asylum and making a record

1217
01:11:08,120 --> 01:11:11,519
Speaker 1: for a r C UM. There was a picture in

1218
01:11:11,560 --> 01:11:14,479
Speaker 1: billboard of me and Maurice White from Earthmen and Fire

1219
01:11:14,640 --> 01:11:18,840
Speaker 1: with the signing White inks Hall was the caption, you know,

1220
01:11:19,880 --> 01:11:23,400
Speaker 1: signing the contract with with a ARC to make a

1221
01:11:23,439 --> 01:11:26,720
Speaker 1: record for them through Columbia. And that record was called

1222
01:11:26,760 --> 01:11:30,000
Speaker 1: Power and the song Power was the title track obviously,

1223
01:11:30,000 --> 01:11:33,759
Speaker 1: and the song Plutoniums whoever was on there also both

1224
01:11:33,800 --> 01:11:38,280
Speaker 1: written about nuclear power and about various kinds of pollution,

1225
01:11:38,439 --> 01:11:42,840
Speaker 1: especially radioactive pollution, and there are plenty of others. The

1226
01:11:42,880 --> 01:11:46,680
Speaker 1: song called Cocaine Drain, which was about a couple of

1227
01:11:46,720 --> 01:11:49,920
Speaker 1: friends of mine and later became that guy who were

1228
01:11:50,439 --> 01:11:55,720
Speaker 1: was doing too many chemicals, too many street drugs too

1229
01:11:57,439 --> 01:12:00,000
Speaker 1: to be able to function very well at that point.

1230
01:12:00,000 --> 01:12:02,599
Speaker 1: And I, you know, was playing rack up all everybody,

1231
01:12:02,600 --> 01:12:05,920
Speaker 1: and I was in the straight and narrow. But but

1232
01:12:06,439 --> 01:12:12,280
Speaker 1: that's another long story. Um. So the Power album comes out,

1233
01:12:13,120 --> 01:12:15,439
Speaker 1: and I'd already been doing I've been gotten involved with

1234
01:12:16,000 --> 01:12:18,479
Speaker 1: uh the anti nuclear movement. When the New York State

1235
01:12:18,560 --> 01:12:24,320
Speaker 1: Power Authority decides to build a nuclear station UH about

1236
01:12:25,040 --> 01:12:29,080
Speaker 1: UH six miles north of where Johanna and our daughter

1237
01:12:29,120 --> 01:12:33,639
Speaker 1: Sophie and I were sleeping, and I decided I didn't

1238
01:12:33,640 --> 01:12:36,080
Speaker 1: want it as a neighbor, and I went to hearings

1239
01:12:36,160 --> 01:12:38,720
Speaker 1: and you know, wound up getting the impression that they

1240
01:12:38,720 --> 01:12:40,479
Speaker 1: were that they were going to put it in by

1241
01:12:40,520 --> 01:12:42,320
Speaker 1: hell or high water, and they had to be stopped.

1242
01:12:43,280 --> 01:12:49,479
Speaker 1: And so I I UH started organizing people, and you

1243
01:12:49,479 --> 01:12:51,640
Speaker 1: know the same kind of community organizing thing as the

1244
01:12:51,720 --> 01:12:58,640
Speaker 1: Junkyards wound up joining and or helping to start a

1245
01:12:58,640 --> 01:13:02,720
Speaker 1: group called Mid Hudson Nuclear Opponents and doing fundraisers for them. H.

1246
01:13:02,800 --> 01:13:04,720
Speaker 1: Bonnie Ray came up and did a fundraiser with me

1247
01:13:04,760 --> 01:13:08,040
Speaker 1: for that and UH in Pockepsie, New York at the

1248
01:13:08,080 --> 01:13:12,520
Speaker 1: Theater and and we wound up doing a show in Manhattan,

1249
01:13:13,120 --> 01:13:16,559
Speaker 1: Jackson Brown and James Taylor and I think Kylie Simon

1250
01:13:16,640 --> 01:13:20,280
Speaker 1: was there. And Jesse Colin Young and it was a

1251
01:13:20,320 --> 01:13:24,640
Speaker 1: benefit for the Karen Silkwood Fund and a lot of

1252
01:13:24,640 --> 01:13:27,920
Speaker 1: people No Karen or you certainly learned about it from

1253
01:13:27,960 --> 01:13:33,320
Speaker 1: the movie Silk Would And uh So my album Power

1254
01:13:33,439 --> 01:13:35,120
Speaker 1: was getting ready to come out, and I was singing

1255
01:13:35,160 --> 01:13:38,519
Speaker 1: Power had some Power at the Seprit Nuclear Reactor big

1256
01:13:38,560 --> 01:13:42,000
Speaker 1: demonstration to the clamshow. Alliance organized their twenty five thousand people,

1257
01:13:42,960 --> 01:13:45,120
Speaker 1: you know, state troopers and guard drugs on the other

1258
01:13:45,160 --> 01:13:47,720
Speaker 1: side of the fence and helicopters buzzing overhead. It was

1259
01:13:47,800 --> 01:13:53,040
Speaker 1: me and Pete Seeger and Jackson Brown with Pete's singing

1260
01:13:53,560 --> 01:13:56,519
Speaker 1: you know his songs and and this Land is Your

1261
01:13:56,600 --> 01:13:59,639
Speaker 1: Land whatever else he was doing in Jackson singing before

1262
01:13:59,680 --> 01:14:03,040
Speaker 1: the Luchon and me singing Power. We sang that the

1263
01:14:03,160 --> 01:14:07,360
Speaker 1: debut in public of the song Power was Pete and

1264
01:14:07,400 --> 01:14:10,080
Speaker 1: Me and Jackson singing the Course because there were no

1265
01:14:10,280 --> 01:14:12,960
Speaker 1: verses yet. This was before I recorded it and before

1266
01:14:13,040 --> 01:14:18,240
Speaker 1: Johanna and I finished a verse to that song. So

1267
01:14:18,240 --> 01:14:22,559
Speaker 1: so the Power album came out two weeks before Three

1268
01:14:22,600 --> 01:14:29,720
Speaker 1: Mile Island happened in March of nine, and uh and

1269
01:14:29,800 --> 01:14:33,280
Speaker 1: it went up the charts and every radio station was

1270
01:14:33,280 --> 01:14:37,880
Speaker 1: playing this song power coming out of the news about

1271
01:14:37,960 --> 01:14:42,720
Speaker 1: the partial meltdown in Pennsylvania at three Mile Ound and

1272
01:14:42,720 --> 01:14:45,080
Speaker 1: and so we were doing this fundraiser for the Karen

1273
01:14:45,160 --> 01:14:47,960
Speaker 1: Silquin funded Afterwards there was the Palladium in New York

1274
01:14:47,960 --> 01:14:50,559
Speaker 1: where backstage afterwards and everybody's going to what do we

1275
01:14:50,600 --> 01:14:52,479
Speaker 1: do now? And I said, let's just call everybody we

1276
01:14:52,520 --> 01:14:54,840
Speaker 1: know it go to the Medicine Square Garden, you know.

1277
01:14:54,960 --> 01:14:57,599
Speaker 1: And it's like, I know how we'll save the school.

1278
01:14:58,280 --> 01:15:00,760
Speaker 1: We'll put on a show. And so we did. And

1279
01:15:00,760 --> 01:15:02,840
Speaker 1: it started out as one night at the garden, went

1280
01:15:02,920 --> 01:15:05,920
Speaker 1: up being five, you know, wound up being a record

1281
01:15:05,920 --> 01:15:10,680
Speaker 1: in a Warner Brothers movie and having a ton of

1282
01:15:10,680 --> 01:15:14,800
Speaker 1: incredible musicians, you know, many of them I didn't know

1283
01:15:14,880 --> 01:15:19,240
Speaker 1: before we worked together on that Jackson and Bonnie I did.

1284
01:15:19,439 --> 01:15:26,240
Speaker 1: And but that's basically how it started. And you know,

1285
01:15:26,400 --> 01:15:29,679
Speaker 1: I I brought in a couple of people who everybody

1286
01:15:29,760 --> 01:15:33,160
Speaker 1: was assigned to ask certain people, and you know, I

1287
01:15:33,160 --> 01:15:38,320
Speaker 1: I asked Chaka Khan and and Ray Parker and Radio

1288
01:15:38,360 --> 01:15:39,960
Speaker 1: who were on the record, who were managed by my

1289
01:15:40,080 --> 01:15:46,280
Speaker 1: manager's Coval and Muffalo and and also uh Peter tosh

1290
01:15:46,560 --> 01:15:51,639
Speaker 1: Uh you know, Jackson as Springsteen and Tom Petty and uh,

1291
01:15:51,800 --> 01:15:54,120
Speaker 1: you know, Bonnie was asking different people and James was

1292
01:15:54,120 --> 01:15:56,000
Speaker 1: asking different people, and it was just we all just

1293
01:15:57,320 --> 01:15:59,760
Speaker 1: pulled together and the words started to get around and

1294
01:16:00,200 --> 01:16:04,240
Speaker 1: wound up becoming crowsby Sils and Nash and the Dubie Brothers,

1295
01:16:04,960 --> 01:16:09,880
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, it was we had people dropping

1296
01:16:09,880 --> 01:16:12,960
Speaker 1: in even without being announced, like like you know, Paul

1297
01:16:13,040 --> 01:16:16,120
Speaker 1: Simon getting up and doing meal and Julio you know,

1298
01:16:16,240 --> 01:16:19,679
Speaker 1: unannounced with just him and an electric guitar and twenty

1299
01:16:20,040 --> 01:16:24,240
Speaker 1: people singing along, and and it's just took on a

1300
01:16:24,280 --> 01:16:28,200
Speaker 1: life of its own, and it's it's something that, uh,

1301
01:16:28,320 --> 01:16:30,240
Speaker 1: some people say it was sort of the beginning or

1302
01:16:30,280 --> 01:16:35,240
Speaker 1: one of the first of the sort of giant benefits

1303
01:16:35,439 --> 01:16:41,280
Speaker 1: for a cause. Um so. And also you know it

1304
01:16:41,360 --> 01:16:46,200
Speaker 1: was it was it raised enough money actually for over

1305
01:16:46,240 --> 01:16:48,920
Speaker 1: a million dollars was given away in grants. Bonnie and

1306
01:16:48,960 --> 01:16:51,799
Speaker 1: I were the only two musicians said on the foundation

1307
01:16:51,880 --> 01:16:55,200
Speaker 1: board as well as the production board of MUSE Musicians

1308
01:16:55,320 --> 01:17:00,000
Speaker 1: United for Safe Energy, and and I went up reading

1309
01:17:00,479 --> 01:17:05,040
Speaker 1: hundreds of grant proposals and voting on who to give

1310
01:17:05,040 --> 01:17:07,800
Speaker 1: that million dollars away too, and grants that range from

1311
01:17:08,080 --> 01:17:12,720
Speaker 1: a thousand bucks to maybe ten bucks. UH, local and

1312
01:17:12,760 --> 01:17:17,120
Speaker 1: regional groups that we're working on education about renewable energy

1313
01:17:17,240 --> 01:17:23,840
Speaker 1: and UH efficiency and the drawbacks of power that was

1314
01:17:24,439 --> 01:17:28,160
Speaker 1: generated by splitting the atom and creating radioactive waste. And

1315
01:17:28,240 --> 01:17:33,680
Speaker 1: so it's a it was successful on that point of view. Um,

1316
01:17:33,720 --> 01:17:35,920
Speaker 1: I'm proud today the fact that the song power has

1317
01:17:36,800 --> 01:17:39,080
Speaker 1: give me the warm power of the sun, restless power

1318
01:17:39,080 --> 01:17:41,880
Speaker 1: of the wind, and you know a lot of renewables

1319
01:17:41,880 --> 01:17:47,360
Speaker 1: mentioned in it. UH. But it's a shame that it's

1320
01:17:47,360 --> 01:17:52,080
Speaker 1: taken this long for us to get as aware of

1321
01:17:52,120 --> 01:17:57,080
Speaker 1: the of the limitless potential of solar and wind and

1322
01:17:57,080 --> 01:18:01,760
Speaker 1: the other renewable sources of energy as it has. So

1323
01:18:01,920 --> 01:18:04,160
Speaker 1: how do you end up getting into skiing and being

1324
01:18:04,160 --> 01:18:08,000
Speaker 1: a ski instructor? I'm a very avid skier. I followed this.

1325
01:18:08,040 --> 01:18:11,960
Speaker 1: I want to know the story from the source. I Well,

1326
01:18:12,080 --> 01:18:18,640
Speaker 1: my daughter Sophie was six or seven years old, I

1327
01:18:18,720 --> 01:18:23,439
Speaker 1: think always seven, and her school group was gonna she

1328
01:18:23,520 --> 01:18:26,439
Speaker 1: went to a a little the Woodstock children sent a

1329
01:18:26,479 --> 01:18:32,240
Speaker 1: little private grade school in Woodstock, and they were sending

1330
01:18:32,280 --> 01:18:36,280
Speaker 1: a group to to Cortina Valley, which is right near

1331
01:18:36,720 --> 01:18:41,680
Speaker 1: a hundred mountain. Little feeder area learner area and uh,

1332
01:18:43,439 --> 01:18:46,519
Speaker 1: but they said they needed chaperones. And Sophie came home

1333
01:18:46,520 --> 01:18:49,040
Speaker 1: from school saying, Dad, if you go as a chaperone,

1334
01:18:49,080 --> 01:18:52,559
Speaker 1: I'll go otherwise I don't know, you know, And I

1335
01:18:52,560 --> 01:18:55,479
Speaker 1: said I can't deprive her. I had one experienced scheme

1336
01:18:55,520 --> 01:18:57,680
Speaker 1: when I was playing with Taj. We played it some

1337
01:18:58,520 --> 01:19:01,559
Speaker 1: college in New England where they had it's probably uh

1338
01:19:02,600 --> 01:19:05,400
Speaker 1: maybe Middlebury was someplace where they had a total I

1339
01:19:05,439 --> 01:19:07,600
Speaker 1: went to I went to Middlebury. Believe me, I know

1340
01:19:07,680 --> 01:19:10,880
Speaker 1: the Middlebury snowble. My daughter went to Middlebury. I didn't

1341
01:19:10,920 --> 01:19:15,280
Speaker 1: know that. Yeah, well here did you graduate? Oh jeez,

1342
01:19:16,439 --> 01:19:21,960
Speaker 1: I should know this right. Uh, she's graduated from high

1343
01:19:22,000 --> 01:19:25,439
Speaker 1: school and I think it was eighty nine, okay, and

1344
01:19:25,960 --> 01:19:31,160
Speaker 1: she was a double major and uh English creative writing

1345
01:19:31,200 --> 01:19:37,040
Speaker 1: and double minor in Spanish and political science. So why

1346
01:19:37,080 --> 01:19:39,640
Speaker 1: didn't you go to Middlebury? Did she ski when she

1347
01:19:39,720 --> 01:19:41,760
Speaker 1: was there? And she considered the whole thing to be

1348
01:19:41,800 --> 01:19:48,240
Speaker 1: a good She was a ski instructor before she went there. Um,

1349
01:19:48,360 --> 01:19:52,599
Speaker 1: she learned to ski with me. I started getting after

1350
01:19:52,640 --> 01:19:55,040
Speaker 1: we went to Katina Valley for these six Thursday nights

1351
01:19:55,040 --> 01:19:57,639
Speaker 1: in a row, and I had had a bad skiing

1352
01:19:57,640 --> 01:20:01,160
Speaker 1: experience on a ski toe up Vermont when I was

1353
01:20:01,160 --> 01:20:03,720
Speaker 1: playing with Taj and his road manager was some guy

1354
01:20:03,760 --> 01:20:07,240
Speaker 1: from the Sierras who was a good skiered We're we're

1355
01:20:07,280 --> 01:20:09,360
Speaker 1: in a locker room for the dressing room playing in

1356
01:20:09,360 --> 01:20:12,400
Speaker 1: the gymnasium at this college, and there was a pair

1357
01:20:12,400 --> 01:20:14,240
Speaker 1: of skis there were taller than I was, you know,

1358
01:20:14,320 --> 01:20:18,080
Speaker 1: and and some lace up boots and boot you know,

1359
01:20:18,160 --> 01:20:20,720
Speaker 1: bear trap bindings. And the guy was going to come on, John,

1360
01:20:20,720 --> 01:20:23,280
Speaker 1: I'll teach you to ski. And I fell down, you know,

1361
01:20:23,320 --> 01:20:26,360
Speaker 1: twenty times going up the rope toe and had a

1362
01:20:26,360 --> 01:20:28,679
Speaker 1: hard time getting up again, and then fell down thirty

1363
01:20:28,680 --> 01:20:30,559
Speaker 1: times coming down the hill, and I just never did

1364
01:20:30,560 --> 01:20:33,519
Speaker 1: a second run. I thought, I'm too uncoordinated, I can't ski,

1365
01:20:34,200 --> 01:20:36,760
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, a bad experience. I'll put you

1366
01:20:36,800 --> 01:20:39,040
Speaker 1: off like that. But but when I went with my

1367
01:20:39,120 --> 01:20:43,560
Speaker 1: daughter uh as part of the school dress a chaperone,

1368
01:20:43,880 --> 01:20:46,479
Speaker 1: I put on the little short skis with their parabolic

1369
01:20:46,600 --> 01:20:50,519
Speaker 1: side cut, and the kids all had balloons and those

1370
01:20:50,640 --> 01:20:53,600
Speaker 1: bright colored vests on so people wouldn't run into him.

1371
01:20:53,640 --> 01:20:56,120
Speaker 1: And they were sneaking down they can wedge turns behind

1372
01:20:56,120 --> 01:20:59,000
Speaker 1: the instructor and I just did what they were all doing. Yeah,

1373
01:20:59,000 --> 01:21:01,880
Speaker 1: he said, now make a pizza. You know, pretty shot

1374
01:21:01,920 --> 01:21:04,639
Speaker 1: your right ski. Pretend you're spreading peanut butter and bread

1375
01:21:04,720 --> 01:21:07,120
Speaker 1: with the tail of your ski, like you know, and

1376
01:21:07,160 --> 01:21:08,880
Speaker 1: I was. I got down to the lift and I said,

1377
01:21:08,920 --> 01:21:13,320
Speaker 1: I can do this. I actually can ski. And so

1378
01:21:13,360 --> 01:21:16,200
Speaker 1: I just six weeks of that, and then we started

1379
01:21:16,240 --> 01:21:19,920
Speaker 1: going to two Hunter Mountain and UH, which is a

1380
01:21:20,000 --> 01:21:23,160
Speaker 1: bigger mountain and you know, actually has black diamonds and

1381
01:21:23,200 --> 01:21:25,800
Speaker 1: double black diamonds on it, although west they might not

1382
01:21:25,840 --> 01:21:31,439
Speaker 1: be double blacks. But so I I took so many

1383
01:21:31,520 --> 01:21:33,280
Speaker 1: lessons there that I had friends in the ski school

1384
01:21:33,320 --> 01:21:34,559
Speaker 1: they said, why don't you give it up and just

1385
01:21:34,600 --> 01:21:36,759
Speaker 1: come out for the ski school. You get to ski

1386
01:21:36,800 --> 01:21:40,200
Speaker 1: free and you get the clinic with the best. And

1387
01:21:40,240 --> 01:21:41,640
Speaker 1: so I did it, and I wound up, you know,

1388
01:21:41,680 --> 01:21:47,040
Speaker 1: getting first of all, UH, passing the mountains test, and

1389
01:21:47,080 --> 01:21:49,240
Speaker 1: then passing the p s a test for level one,

1390
01:21:49,280 --> 01:21:53,680
Speaker 1: and then passing level two, which was yeah, I had

1391
01:21:53,720 --> 01:21:56,840
Speaker 1: to take a level two twice that because I learned

1392
01:21:56,920 --> 01:22:00,360
Speaker 1: late at my my body wasn't used to and my

1393
01:22:00,439 --> 01:22:04,160
Speaker 1: joints weren't used to the kind of flexibility and the

1394
01:22:04,200 --> 01:22:07,519
Speaker 1: kind of rotation they need to do. Uh, I could.

1395
01:22:07,560 --> 01:22:11,080
Speaker 1: I had the body mechanics down. I could analyze somebody

1396
01:22:11,080 --> 01:22:17,080
Speaker 1: else's skiing. I understood the theory of it, and and

1397
01:22:17,200 --> 01:22:19,360
Speaker 1: I could ski a lot of terrain, you know. But

1398
01:22:19,439 --> 01:22:22,760
Speaker 1: I uh, but for a while I was I was

1399
01:22:22,880 --> 01:22:26,080
Speaker 1: only able to really teach beginners and sort of lower intermediates.

1400
01:22:26,160 --> 01:22:28,000
Speaker 1: But but I got to the point where I was

1401
01:22:28,040 --> 01:22:30,400
Speaker 1: teaching everybody from the top of the mountain and U

1402
01:22:31,800 --> 01:22:36,120
Speaker 1: and skiing pretty much anywhere I wanted to. Okay, So

1403
01:22:36,479 --> 01:22:39,280
Speaker 1: how much did you ski? How much did you teach?

1404
01:22:39,400 --> 01:22:43,680
Speaker 1: And when your daughter leaves the nest, did you were

1405
01:22:43,680 --> 01:22:46,960
Speaker 1: still a skier and he's still skiing? Structor? Yeah, um,

1406
01:22:49,240 --> 01:22:53,200
Speaker 1: I wound up giving up skiing when I went into Congress.

1407
01:22:53,560 --> 01:22:57,240
Speaker 1: It's one of the terrible things about politics. But I

1408
01:22:57,360 --> 01:23:02,280
Speaker 1: actually uh, probably on snow ninety or ninety a hundred

1409
01:23:02,320 --> 01:23:06,439
Speaker 1: days a year, and uh, and I taught a ninety seven.

1410
01:23:06,520 --> 01:23:08,200
Speaker 1: I was instructor of the year a hundred mountain. I

1411
01:23:08,240 --> 01:23:10,160
Speaker 1: know't if that means I taught better lessons or just

1412
01:23:10,280 --> 01:23:12,880
Speaker 1: more or lessons than anybody else, because I would take

1413
01:23:12,920 --> 01:23:16,600
Speaker 1: lessons when nobody else would. Swading no problem, you know,

1414
01:23:17,560 --> 01:23:19,800
Speaker 1: A bus group from New York on a rainy day. Hey,

1415
01:23:19,840 --> 01:23:22,640
Speaker 1: I'll take it. And you learn a lot doing that.

1416
01:23:22,720 --> 01:23:25,919
Speaker 1: And there's nothing like teaching anything to help you understand

1417
01:23:25,920 --> 01:23:31,160
Speaker 1: how to do it yourself. Well, the mountains are still there. Yeah,

1418
01:23:31,360 --> 01:23:41,080
Speaker 1: my knees are waiting for some surgery. Take us through

1419
01:23:41,080 --> 01:23:45,719
Speaker 1: the arc of your political career to ultimately getting into Congress. Well,

1420
01:23:45,880 --> 01:23:50,080
Speaker 1: in the county was trying to start to stick a

1421
01:23:50,120 --> 01:23:54,840
Speaker 1: giant landfill and incinerator on the last undeveloped town, undeveloped

1422
01:23:54,880 --> 01:23:57,960
Speaker 1: farm in the town of Segrids that was on the

1423
01:23:58,000 --> 01:24:02,200
Speaker 1: National Historic Register, and it was on it had it

1424
01:24:02,320 --> 01:24:05,759
Speaker 1: was named the Winston Farm. M James Winston, who built

1425
01:24:05,760 --> 01:24:09,200
Speaker 1: the reservoirs and aqueducts that bring Catskill Mountain drinking water

1426
01:24:09,680 --> 01:24:13,000
Speaker 1: to New York City, owned that farm and it's named

1427
01:24:13,000 --> 01:24:20,200
Speaker 1: after him. And UH and the county legislature decided that

1428
01:24:20,320 --> 01:24:23,200
Speaker 1: was the best place to put two d two hundred

1429
01:24:23,240 --> 01:24:26,519
Speaker 1: thousand tons of garbage a year for twenty years. Uh

1430
01:24:26,560 --> 01:24:30,519
Speaker 1: and built two incinerators with smokestacks three feet tall, which

1431
01:24:31,160 --> 01:24:33,719
Speaker 1: by far would have been the highest structure in the county.

1432
01:24:33,800 --> 01:24:37,439
Speaker 1: And I just once again, I said, I don't want

1433
01:24:37,439 --> 01:24:39,600
Speaker 1: to have to drive past this. I don't. I was

1434
01:24:39,680 --> 01:24:42,160
Speaker 1: driving my daughter to high school past every day, passed

1435
01:24:42,160 --> 01:24:45,840
Speaker 1: this site, and uh, and I just said, it's me

1436
01:24:46,040 --> 01:24:49,559
Speaker 1: or it and organized a group kind of grew out

1437
01:24:49,560 --> 01:24:53,839
Speaker 1: of the Junkyard anti Junkyard group called the Winston Farm Alliance.

1438
01:24:53,880 --> 01:24:57,160
Speaker 1: And we had everybody in the town including you know,

1439
01:24:57,760 --> 01:25:02,440
Speaker 1: both Republican and Democratic, town can Midias, the Little Garden Society,

1440
01:25:02,560 --> 01:25:06,720
Speaker 1: that the Knights of Columbus, the you know church groups, uh,

1441
01:25:07,840 --> 01:25:11,519
Speaker 1: the Police Benevolent Association. Everybody in the town was did

1442
01:25:11,560 --> 01:25:17,680
Speaker 1: not want this, and and we stopped. At about the

1443
01:25:17,720 --> 01:25:21,840
Speaker 1: same time I got elected. People in the midst of

1444
01:25:21,880 --> 01:25:25,560
Speaker 1: all this came to me and said, the current representative

1445
01:25:27,040 --> 01:25:30,640
Speaker 1: representing Saugers and the county legislature voted for this. He

1446
01:25:30,760 --> 01:25:34,840
Speaker 1: voted for the consultant who recommended this site, and then

1447
01:25:34,840 --> 01:25:37,479
Speaker 1: he voted for another five million bucks to them again

1448
01:25:37,640 --> 01:25:42,519
Speaker 1: after they recommended it in his hometown. You know. At

1449
01:25:42,560 --> 01:25:44,280
Speaker 1: the first day, said we gotta find somebody to run,

1450
01:25:44,320 --> 01:25:46,559
Speaker 1: and I said, well, good luck, I got a career,

1451
01:25:46,640 --> 01:25:51,000
Speaker 1: you know, and and uh, in a family, I just

1452
01:25:51,000 --> 01:25:53,040
Speaker 1: didn't really want to do it. And then that month

1453
01:25:53,120 --> 01:25:55,280
Speaker 1: or two later they came back and said, we can't

1454
01:25:55,280 --> 01:25:59,160
Speaker 1: find anybody else. If you don't run, he's gonna have

1455
01:26:00,120 --> 01:26:05,040
Speaker 1: tested walk over election. And I said, well, I can't

1456
01:26:05,040 --> 01:26:08,760
Speaker 1: have that, So I ran and everybody voted for me.

1457
01:26:08,880 --> 01:26:11,920
Speaker 1: Was mad at him, and you know, God bless me.

1458
01:26:11,960 --> 01:26:13,960
Speaker 1: He's a good guy. He's not. You know, it was

1459
01:26:14,040 --> 01:26:18,479
Speaker 1: just he wasn't up to the task of understanding what

1460
01:26:18,560 --> 01:26:21,720
Speaker 1: this was really going to go to the town, because no,

1461
01:26:21,720 --> 01:26:26,760
Speaker 1: no good kinds of development wouldn't come in. No no

1462
01:26:26,960 --> 01:26:32,320
Speaker 1: artistic development, no nice housing, no recreational stuff, it would say,

1463
01:26:32,400 --> 01:26:35,080
Speaker 1: once you put that kind of well, they are expanded

1464
01:26:35,120 --> 01:26:38,519
Speaker 1: the the toll booth, the right side of the toll booth,

1465
01:26:39,400 --> 01:26:42,920
Speaker 1: so that oversized trucks could get there right across, come

1466
01:26:43,080 --> 01:26:45,040
Speaker 1: out of the through way right across from this bark,

1467
01:26:45,840 --> 01:26:48,200
Speaker 1: easy and easy off. You know. New York City garbment.

1468
01:26:48,280 --> 01:26:51,360
Speaker 1: That's what we were sure what's happening, because Fresh Kills

1469
01:26:51,400 --> 01:26:54,559
Speaker 1: was being closed, the big landfill and fresh Kills, and

1470
01:26:54,840 --> 01:26:57,519
Speaker 1: they were, you know, New York City was shipping garbage

1471
01:26:57,520 --> 01:26:59,360
Speaker 1: as far as the Midwest. You know, they were shipping

1472
01:26:59,400 --> 01:27:03,080
Speaker 1: to Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, you know, out of state, and we

1473
01:27:03,200 --> 01:27:06,400
Speaker 1: just saw it coming our way and so I ran,

1474
01:27:06,479 --> 01:27:08,960
Speaker 1: I got elected. I served one term in the county legislature.

1475
01:27:08,960 --> 01:27:12,400
Speaker 1: I had no desire for a career politics at that point.

1476
01:27:12,400 --> 01:27:14,519
Speaker 1: I was just you know, well, okay, so we stopped

1477
01:27:14,520 --> 01:27:18,559
Speaker 1: the dump. I actually was on its Community Affairs committee

1478
01:27:18,600 --> 01:27:23,120
Speaker 1: that that wrote the first recycling law for the County

1479
01:27:23,120 --> 01:27:29,519
Speaker 1: of Ulster, and uh, you know, I was oversaw. Was

1480
01:27:29,560 --> 01:27:33,280
Speaker 1: on the committee that oversaw the method of Maintenance program.

1481
01:27:33,280 --> 01:27:36,360
Speaker 1: And I had an interest in UM trying to wean

1482
01:27:36,400 --> 01:27:39,559
Speaker 1: people not just off of drugs, but off of method

1483
01:27:40,400 --> 01:27:43,800
Speaker 1: which can be done as long as you have the

1484
01:27:43,840 --> 01:27:47,400
Speaker 1: resources to have real treatment and talk therapy, uh, and

1485
01:27:47,479 --> 01:27:50,680
Speaker 1: not just say okay, we're cutting you off. And so

1486
01:27:50,840 --> 01:27:53,280
Speaker 1: I did some good things there and then I decided

1487
01:27:53,320 --> 01:27:55,840
Speaker 1: not to run for re election. A couple of years later,

1488
01:27:55,920 --> 01:27:59,160
Speaker 1: my daughter had gone through freshman, sophomore, and junior year

1489
01:27:59,160 --> 01:28:02,479
Speaker 1: of high school on an austerity budget because the school

1490
01:28:02,479 --> 01:28:06,439
Speaker 1: board couldn't come up with a budget the taxpayers would pass. Uh,

1491
01:28:06,479 --> 01:28:10,439
Speaker 1: and so you know, you wind up with larger class sizes,

1492
01:28:10,520 --> 01:28:14,479
Speaker 1: with the computers being old, with tennis balls that are dead.

1493
01:28:14,520 --> 01:28:16,479
Speaker 1: She was playing on the tennis team and they were

1494
01:28:16,560 --> 01:28:18,640
Speaker 1: practicing with dead ball. So when they got into a

1495
01:28:18,640 --> 01:28:21,000
Speaker 1: match and open account of real tennis balls. They would

1496
01:28:21,000 --> 01:28:24,280
Speaker 1: bounce over her racket and and you know, just but

1497
01:28:24,439 --> 01:28:29,639
Speaker 1: every you know, like advanced placement languages, all these kinds

1498
01:28:29,640 --> 01:28:33,160
Speaker 1: of things. Uh, you lose when you go on a stairity.

1499
01:28:33,600 --> 01:28:37,200
Speaker 1: And so I decided to run for school board. And

1500
01:28:37,240 --> 01:28:40,200
Speaker 1: I was determined to get a budget that would pass

1501
01:28:40,200 --> 01:28:42,840
Speaker 1: her senior year of high school would not be in

1502
01:28:42,920 --> 01:28:45,880
Speaker 1: a stait. And I ran and I won, and I

1503
01:28:45,920 --> 01:28:47,680
Speaker 1: was there for four years. And every year was there,

1504
01:28:47,680 --> 01:28:50,360
Speaker 1: we passed a budget and the first year we cut

1505
01:28:50,400 --> 01:28:53,360
Speaker 1: taxes by two percent. At the same time, I mean,

1506
01:28:53,720 --> 01:28:57,000
Speaker 1: you can really do this stuff if you if you

1507
01:28:57,080 --> 01:29:00,960
Speaker 1: dig into it. And we had a good superintendent. I

1508
01:29:01,080 --> 01:29:04,240
Speaker 1: knew where the bodies were buried and where money was hidden,

1509
01:29:04,280 --> 01:29:08,719
Speaker 1: and and we were able to, you know, to get

1510
01:29:08,760 --> 01:29:13,200
Speaker 1: the educational job done and actually lower property texas for

1511
01:29:13,240 --> 01:29:17,439
Speaker 1: people in the town. Okay, you do that for four years.

1512
01:29:17,880 --> 01:29:24,400
Speaker 1: Next step back to playing music. And Johanna and I

1513
01:29:24,680 --> 01:29:28,920
Speaker 1: separated and divorced, and I wound up living on a

1514
01:29:28,920 --> 01:29:31,519
Speaker 1: boat for a couple of years, sailing money. At the

1515
01:29:31,560 --> 01:29:34,400
Speaker 1: time thirty eight foot sail boat from the Hudson River

1516
01:29:35,560 --> 01:29:38,719
Speaker 1: to Key West and over to Havana and humanitarian aid mission.

1517
01:29:39,720 --> 01:29:41,759
Speaker 1: Uh knew enough to get a permit from the Treasury

1518
01:29:41,800 --> 01:29:45,880
Speaker 1: Department as a humanitarian need. But we were able to

1519
01:29:45,920 --> 01:29:49,240
Speaker 1: deliver medical supplies and musical supplies from Key West to

1520
01:29:49,320 --> 01:29:53,439
Speaker 1: Havana and be exempt from the embargo because both of

1521
01:29:53,479 --> 01:29:56,840
Speaker 1: those things are exempt from the Apartment. So and then

1522
01:29:56,880 --> 01:30:00,479
Speaker 1: sailed back across the Gulf Stream to Florida, back up

1523
01:30:00,520 --> 01:30:05,120
Speaker 1: to Martha's Vineyard and uh Johnny Oak Island, where I

1524
01:30:05,120 --> 01:30:08,240
Speaker 1: grew up having vacations with my family and still have

1525
01:30:08,360 --> 01:30:11,920
Speaker 1: relatives today, and then down at Long Island and the

1526
01:30:11,960 --> 01:30:14,439
Speaker 1: coast of Jersey and up to Delaware Bay and across

1527
01:30:14,479 --> 01:30:17,120
Speaker 1: the canal to just Beat Bay and down to Annapolis.

1528
01:30:17,160 --> 01:30:21,200
Speaker 1: Has sold the boat in Annapolis. And meanwhile I had

1529
01:30:21,240 --> 01:30:26,200
Speaker 1: met my second wife, Melanie, who uh I met her

1530
01:30:26,200 --> 01:30:29,719
Speaker 1: in Nashville, and we're living in Nashville for a while.

1531
01:30:29,960 --> 01:30:36,799
Speaker 1: And uh but um, let's see, what was the question,

1532
01:30:37,120 --> 01:30:40,400
Speaker 1: how did you end up running for Congress? Okay, so

1533
01:30:40,600 --> 01:30:45,240
Speaker 1: we decided to move back. Her dad passed away, her

1534
01:30:45,280 --> 01:30:47,400
Speaker 1: mom was moving back to New York, her siblings were

1535
01:30:47,439 --> 01:30:50,280
Speaker 1: in New York, and nieces and nephews and everything, and

1536
01:30:50,479 --> 01:30:54,320
Speaker 1: and my daughter was coming to visit Johanna and Insaugrity's

1537
01:30:54,360 --> 01:30:56,640
Speaker 1: pretty frequently, and I thought, well, New York is a

1538
01:30:56,680 --> 01:30:58,920
Speaker 1: better place. So we moved to New York, but to

1539
01:30:58,960 --> 01:31:00,799
Speaker 1: the east side of the hus and in Dutchess County

1540
01:31:01,760 --> 01:31:07,120
Speaker 1: town UH called go over plans. And so I got

1541
01:31:07,160 --> 01:31:09,160
Speaker 1: there and we were unpacking boxes and steadily, and I

1542
01:31:09,160 --> 01:31:11,840
Speaker 1: went out, Yeah, I wonder who my congressperson is. And

1543
01:31:11,880 --> 01:31:14,439
Speaker 1: it turned out was a twelve year incumbent and Sue Kelly,

1544
01:31:14,479 --> 01:31:17,880
Speaker 1: who had voted for the Republican member of the the

1545
01:31:17,960 --> 01:31:21,519
Speaker 1: gang Rich class, the Contract with America or Contract on

1546
01:31:21,640 --> 01:31:26,000
Speaker 1: America as I called it, class of Congress. She had

1547
01:31:26,080 --> 01:31:27,880
Speaker 1: voted for the war in Iraq and she voted for

1548
01:31:27,960 --> 01:31:32,600
Speaker 1: drilling for oil in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge, both of

1549
01:31:32,600 --> 01:31:36,599
Speaker 1: which I thought were mistakes. And and once again I thought,

1550
01:31:36,600 --> 01:31:38,920
Speaker 1: I'm gonna help somebody else win. You know, I don't

1551
01:31:38,720 --> 01:31:41,240
Speaker 1: don't really want to run myself, but I knew there

1552
01:31:41,280 --> 01:31:44,040
Speaker 1: were other people running. So I started having coffee or

1553
01:31:44,120 --> 01:31:49,800
Speaker 1: lunch with with candidates. Were already four members for a

1554
01:31:49,880 --> 01:31:53,360
Speaker 1: Democratic candidates in a primary to run against the incumbent

1555
01:31:54,439 --> 01:31:59,080
Speaker 1: congress Swimming Kelly. So I wound up thinking, after talking

1556
01:31:59,080 --> 01:32:00,760
Speaker 1: with each of these Canada IT said I would be

1557
01:32:00,760 --> 01:32:03,720
Speaker 1: probably a better candidate and maybe a better congressman too,

1558
01:32:03,760 --> 01:32:07,880
Speaker 1: because I just kept running into blind spots in their

1559
01:32:07,960 --> 01:32:12,519
Speaker 1: knowledge of the issues. And a d Triple C that

1560
01:32:12,560 --> 01:32:16,120
Speaker 1: Democratic Congressional campaign community out of Washington at the time

1561
01:32:16,160 --> 01:32:20,479
Speaker 1: being shared by Romamanuel, who wanted being President Obama's chief

1562
01:32:20,479 --> 01:32:23,120
Speaker 1: of staff and then went on to be to be

1563
01:32:24,160 --> 01:32:28,840
Speaker 1: mayor of Chicago. Rom had already endorsed in the Triple

1564
01:32:28,880 --> 01:32:31,800
Speaker 1: C IT endorsed to candidate and started training her and

1565
01:32:31,840 --> 01:32:36,600
Speaker 1: sending money her way and everything. And so when I

1566
01:32:36,640 --> 01:32:39,639
Speaker 1: decided that I met with her too, and I said,

1567
01:32:40,360 --> 01:32:42,400
Speaker 1: you know, I told her we were talking about health here.

1568
01:32:42,439 --> 01:32:44,400
Speaker 1: She said, how are you gonna pay for it? And

1569
01:32:44,439 --> 01:32:47,120
Speaker 1: I said, well, we're starters by not building that anti

1570
01:32:47,160 --> 01:32:50,519
Speaker 1: missile system we're building in Alaska that doesn't work and

1571
01:32:50,560 --> 01:32:53,280
Speaker 1: it's failed, all of it says. She said, we're building

1572
01:32:53,280 --> 01:32:56,680
Speaker 1: it and I said, yeah, we started under George w

1573
01:32:56,840 --> 01:33:00,360
Speaker 1: in his first term. And I had billion, said, ollar,

1574
01:33:00,439 --> 01:33:02,600
Speaker 1: is they going to that we can pay for healthcare with?

1575
01:33:03,560 --> 01:33:07,400
Speaker 1: At least the healthcare would probably work? And so I met,

1576
01:33:07,560 --> 01:33:09,000
Speaker 1: I went to d C and I met with Round

1577
01:33:09,000 --> 01:33:12,000
Speaker 1: Emmanuel and and he said, what's the matter with Judy?

1578
01:33:12,080 --> 01:33:14,280
Speaker 1: And I said, she doesn't know. We're building an outide

1579
01:33:14,280 --> 01:33:18,439
Speaker 1: missile system in Alaska, you know, among other things. And

1580
01:33:18,439 --> 01:33:20,200
Speaker 1: he said, well, just try not to have a primary.

1581
01:33:21,439 --> 01:33:23,160
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'm happy to not have a

1582
01:33:23,200 --> 01:33:26,880
Speaker 1: primary if everybody else drops out at the prime. But

1583
01:33:26,880 --> 01:33:29,680
Speaker 1: but if I run, I'm not running to loose, you know.

1584
01:33:30,280 --> 01:33:32,519
Speaker 1: I mean, I learned to ski, I become instructor of

1585
01:33:32,520 --> 01:33:35,519
Speaker 1: the year. I you know, write songs. I write good

1586
01:33:35,560 --> 01:33:39,240
Speaker 1: songs that become hits. I I don't like not doing

1587
01:33:39,280 --> 01:33:41,640
Speaker 1: things right. And I said, I'm just gonna really and

1588
01:33:41,680 --> 01:33:44,639
Speaker 1: he said, okay, well, if you can raise fifty grand

1589
01:33:44,680 --> 01:33:49,680
Speaker 1: by January one of two thousand six. This was October

1590
01:33:50,800 --> 01:33:53,599
Speaker 1: five when I was talking to him. He said, if

1591
01:33:53,600 --> 01:33:56,200
Speaker 1: you could raise fifty grand by the first of the year,

1592
01:33:56,760 --> 01:33:59,519
Speaker 1: I'll take you seriously. So I go home and I

1593
01:33:59,520 --> 01:34:03,640
Speaker 1: start trying raise money. And you know, they say you

1594
01:34:03,680 --> 01:34:07,200
Speaker 1: have to start with your own Rolodex or your own

1595
01:34:07,200 --> 01:34:10,719
Speaker 1: phone book, your own you know context. Now it would

1596
01:34:10,720 --> 01:34:13,719
Speaker 1: be in my phone because if you can't ask family

1597
01:34:13,760 --> 01:34:15,519
Speaker 1: and friends to give you money, who are you going

1598
01:34:15,560 --> 01:34:17,720
Speaker 1: to get to do it. You know, you have to

1599
01:34:17,760 --> 01:34:21,719
Speaker 1: convince them to practice and be able to convince other people.

1600
01:34:23,000 --> 01:34:27,639
Speaker 1: So I did that, and you know it started started

1601
01:34:27,720 --> 01:34:31,360
Speaker 1: raising money, but was having a tough go of it. Uh.

1602
01:34:31,600 --> 01:34:35,439
Speaker 1: And on December thirty one, New Year's Eve two thousand five,

1603
01:34:36,360 --> 01:34:40,800
Speaker 1: a couple hours before Ram's deadline, I had thirty five

1604
01:34:40,840 --> 01:34:46,000
Speaker 1: thousand dollars ranged raised and I went on to Act

1605
01:34:46,040 --> 01:34:48,760
Speaker 1: Blue and they had at the time it was like

1606
01:34:48,760 --> 01:34:53,840
Speaker 1: a two thou limit money. It was the the uh

1607
01:34:53,920 --> 01:34:55,519
Speaker 1: the campaign law at the time was, I think you

1608
01:34:55,560 --> 01:34:59,879
Speaker 1: were limited to for both the primary and the general

1609
01:35:00,000 --> 01:35:03,760
Speaker 1: should put together. So I UH, I got them to

1610
01:35:03,920 --> 01:35:09,839
Speaker 1: lift the computer cap on that. Because I was donating

1611
01:35:09,880 --> 01:35:12,439
Speaker 1: to myself, I could go over that limit. And I

1612
01:35:12,479 --> 01:35:15,719
Speaker 1: put fifteen thousand dollars donations to myself on my American

1613
01:35:15,760 --> 01:35:19,000
Speaker 1: Express card at ten o'clock in the evening. So when

1614
01:35:19,160 --> 01:35:22,320
Speaker 1: Ron came in the office in January first day, he

1615
01:35:22,400 --> 01:35:27,400
Speaker 1: would see I get the fifty grand. And I still

1616
01:35:27,439 --> 01:35:30,000
Speaker 1: had a hard time. And I got a really good

1617
01:35:30,200 --> 01:35:32,960
Speaker 1: fundraiser after that who helped me a lot. But we're

1618
01:35:33,000 --> 01:35:37,280
Speaker 1: still kind of struggling and things didn't clear up until

1619
01:35:37,360 --> 01:35:41,759
Speaker 1: Jackson Brown called. You know, I had told my friends

1620
01:35:42,840 --> 01:35:47,080
Speaker 1: that I was going to do this, and and late

1621
01:35:47,760 --> 01:35:50,719
Speaker 1: late May, I get a call from Jackson. He says,

1622
01:35:51,120 --> 01:35:54,800
Speaker 1: how's it going? And I said, honestly, I don't know

1623
01:35:54,840 --> 01:35:56,479
Speaker 1: if I can do this. I've I've already got to

1624
01:35:56,520 --> 01:36:00,240
Speaker 1: the point where I've written a speech to withdraw from

1625
01:36:00,240 --> 01:36:02,680
Speaker 1: the race. I'm thinking I might have to do that

1626
01:36:02,720 --> 01:36:05,599
Speaker 1: because I can't. And I told us to a couple

1627
01:36:05,600 --> 01:36:08,880
Speaker 1: of people. I told it to Congressman RECENTI rest his soul.

1628
01:36:09,000 --> 01:36:11,000
Speaker 1: He was kind of my mentor, and all this political

1629
01:36:11,040 --> 01:36:17,200
Speaker 1: stuff and uh and I and I told Jackson this

1630
01:36:17,320 --> 01:36:20,960
Speaker 1: and he said, what can I do? And I said,

1631
01:36:21,479 --> 01:36:24,679
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh. He said, are there any venues

1632
01:36:24,720 --> 01:36:26,439
Speaker 1: I could come in and do a fundraiser for you?

1633
01:36:27,520 --> 01:36:30,280
Speaker 1: And I said, We've been thinking about doing some fundraisers

1634
01:36:30,320 --> 01:36:34,679
Speaker 1: and converted barns. There's a number of people have offered.

1635
01:36:34,720 --> 01:36:37,840
Speaker 1: Did they have a barn that you know has been

1636
01:36:37,880 --> 01:36:39,760
Speaker 1: converted to have a wooden floor now? And it's not

1637
01:36:40,439 --> 01:36:44,599
Speaker 1: it's not straw on on mud, you know? So? And

1638
01:36:44,600 --> 01:36:48,840
Speaker 1: he said, well, I get the weekend of I think

1639
01:36:48,880 --> 01:36:54,200
Speaker 1: it was June and sixte I forget what the dates

1640
01:36:54,200 --> 01:36:57,559
Speaker 1: were in June of two thousand and six, and I'm

1641
01:36:57,560 --> 01:36:59,800
Speaker 1: gonna come there for two days. Set up whatever you

1642
01:36:59,800 --> 01:37:03,160
Speaker 1: can set up. And we set up four barn concerts

1643
01:37:04,160 --> 01:37:09,160
Speaker 1: and uh we sold the tickets for as much as

1644
01:37:09,160 --> 01:37:12,320
Speaker 1: we could get for him, and UH and they sold out,

1645
01:37:13,920 --> 01:37:17,920
Speaker 1: and UH, Jackson and Pete Seeger came and we had

1646
01:37:17,920 --> 01:37:19,400
Speaker 1: a kind of in the round except what was sent

1647
01:37:19,479 --> 01:37:23,720
Speaker 1: the line. It was Darr Williams and Jackson and John

1648
01:37:23,720 --> 01:37:27,720
Speaker 1: Pou said dark and Pete and me and you know,

1649
01:37:27,880 --> 01:37:33,000
Speaker 1: and a couple of hundred people in each barn and uh,

1650
01:37:33,960 --> 01:37:36,840
Speaker 1: and the first one, we're in Orange County, in a

1651
01:37:36,880 --> 01:37:41,200
Speaker 1: barn somewhere in Warwick, New York or something. And we

1652
01:37:41,360 --> 01:37:45,799
Speaker 1: finished and take a bow after everybody's played their songs

1653
01:37:45,840 --> 01:37:49,439
Speaker 1: and and people are standing up and cheering as somebody

1654
01:37:49,439 --> 01:37:54,080
Speaker 1: in the back goes, take it easy, and Jackson says

1655
01:37:54,080 --> 01:37:57,320
Speaker 1: how much and the guy says, what's the max? And

1656
01:37:57,400 --> 01:38:01,759
Speaker 1: Mone of my staff goes, the guy says, I passed

1657
01:38:01,760 --> 01:38:03,400
Speaker 1: in a check up, and he writes a check for

1658
01:38:04,479 --> 01:38:07,840
Speaker 1: so Jackson goes, I'm running down the road trying to listen,

1659
01:38:07,960 --> 01:38:10,960
Speaker 1: my lord, and everybody's singing along and the check gets

1660
01:38:11,000 --> 01:38:14,720
Speaker 1: passed up, and then somebody else goes the pretender a

1661
01:38:14,840 --> 01:38:18,200
Speaker 1: just and says how much and they say how about?

1662
01:38:19,320 --> 01:38:20,960
Speaker 1: And they passed the check up and he sings that,

1663
01:38:21,040 --> 01:38:23,920
Speaker 1: and everybody sings lying, stands up and cheers. He's auctioning

1664
01:38:23,960 --> 01:38:28,120
Speaker 1: songs of And then it happened for like four shows

1665
01:38:28,120 --> 01:38:30,800
Speaker 1: in two days, and I had like a couple on

1666
01:38:31,080 --> 01:38:33,920
Speaker 1: grand in a weekend, and all of a sudden, people

1667
01:38:33,960 --> 01:38:37,280
Speaker 1: started giving me money. Because people won't give money if

1668
01:38:37,280 --> 01:38:39,920
Speaker 1: they don't think you can raise money. It's really the

1669
01:38:40,000 --> 01:38:43,440
Speaker 1: chicken and the egg. You have to have a demonstrable

1670
01:38:43,479 --> 01:38:45,840
Speaker 1: ability to raise money or the people with a really

1671
01:38:45,920 --> 01:38:50,080
Speaker 1: big bucks won't open up their checkbook. And Jackson opened

1672
01:38:50,080 --> 01:38:54,080
Speaker 1: the door. And that's just an amazing thing. I just

1673
01:38:54,240 --> 01:38:56,800
Speaker 1: I would never could have done it, uh, you know,

1674
01:38:56,920 --> 01:38:59,880
Speaker 1: And that's you know, it's a little help, my friends.

1675
01:39:01,240 --> 01:39:03,479
Speaker 1: It's true in life, of so many things, you really

1676
01:39:03,479 --> 01:39:07,240
Speaker 1: need to have people you can count on. And Jackson

1677
01:39:07,280 --> 01:39:10,360
Speaker 1: and Bonnie and you know, Graham Nash and David Crosby

1678
01:39:10,439 --> 01:39:15,200
Speaker 1: and and James, you know other people just came through

1679
01:39:16,600 --> 01:39:20,639
Speaker 1: and uh, and so that's that's really what made it possible.

1680
01:39:21,479 --> 01:39:23,400
Speaker 1: You know, I said I didn't have accident and mobile,

1681
01:39:23,920 --> 01:39:28,120
Speaker 1: but I had Jackson and Bonnie. It's an amazing thing,

1682
01:39:28,280 --> 01:39:30,760
Speaker 1: which are more powerful. They touched your soul and heart. Okay,

1683
01:39:30,760 --> 01:39:34,519
Speaker 1: so you get elected, you're in there for two terms. Hey,

1684
01:39:34,600 --> 01:39:37,479
Speaker 1: what's the learning curve and what do you learn there?

1685
01:39:37,640 --> 01:39:39,920
Speaker 1: In terms of the process. I mean, since you've been there,

1686
01:39:39,920 --> 01:39:42,439
Speaker 1: we get these bozos. So what's it like being in

1687
01:39:42,479 --> 01:39:45,400
Speaker 1: the belly of the beast? Well, they call it drinking

1688
01:39:45,439 --> 01:39:48,160
Speaker 1: from a fire os. I mean, campaigning is the easiest thing.

1689
01:39:48,400 --> 01:39:51,080
Speaker 1: I think Donald Trump found that out. You know, if

1690
01:39:51,120 --> 01:39:53,120
Speaker 1: you're used to being on stage, which I was, and

1691
01:39:53,160 --> 01:39:55,080
Speaker 1: which he was used to being on camera, you know,

1692
01:39:55,479 --> 01:39:57,599
Speaker 1: it's like it doesn't bother me to have to improvise.

1693
01:39:57,640 --> 01:40:00,400
Speaker 1: I'm used to being heckled. I've played bars with through

1694
01:40:00,479 --> 01:40:03,040
Speaker 1: tomatoes at the stage or beer bottles at the stage,

1695
01:40:03,280 --> 01:40:06,400
Speaker 1: and I know how to dodge him. So standing up

1696
01:40:06,400 --> 01:40:10,880
Speaker 1: and debating somebody doesn't bother me. But once I won,

1697
01:40:11,200 --> 01:40:14,120
Speaker 1: you had like an incredible volume of stuff to learn

1698
01:40:15,040 --> 01:40:19,920
Speaker 1: and about. You know, well two months you know, I

1699
01:40:20,000 --> 01:40:23,160
Speaker 1: was the auction was November second, I think, and and

1700
01:40:23,200 --> 01:40:28,200
Speaker 1: I got swear in a January second, so uh, you know,

1701
01:40:28,280 --> 01:40:32,080
Speaker 1: and then you learn from your staff, each member of

1702
01:40:32,120 --> 01:40:34,439
Speaker 1: Congress is only good to such staff. And I was

1703
01:40:34,520 --> 01:40:37,000
Speaker 1: fortunate enough to get a sheep of staff who had

1704
01:40:37,000 --> 01:40:40,760
Speaker 1: worked as the New York State Office coordinated for Chuck

1705
01:40:40,840 --> 01:40:47,840
Speaker 1: Schumer UH Senator Schumer, and and she UH moved to

1706
01:40:47,880 --> 01:40:51,559
Speaker 1: Washington and ran my Washington office for a couple of years.

1707
01:40:51,640 --> 01:40:56,400
Speaker 1: And I had a UH she found she helped me

1708
01:40:56,439 --> 01:41:00,200
Speaker 1: to find when we had resume submitted. Everybody who gets

1709
01:41:00,240 --> 01:41:04,080
Speaker 1: elected the Congress have like an avalanche of resumes from

1710
01:41:04,479 --> 01:41:08,880
Speaker 1: young people, mostly fresh out of college, who want a

1711
01:41:09,040 --> 01:41:13,120
Speaker 1: job somewhere in in government. And they start out as

1712
01:41:13,160 --> 01:41:15,439
Speaker 1: interns and they got a lot experience and then they

1713
01:41:15,439 --> 01:41:18,840
Speaker 1: get to be paid staffers. And so I had a

1714
01:41:18,920 --> 01:41:24,440
Speaker 1: really wonderful staff and and UH in particular, my legislative

1715
01:41:24,479 --> 01:41:28,439
Speaker 1: directors were really good. And also UH, I had a

1716
01:41:28,479 --> 01:41:31,519
Speaker 1: woman who worked on veterans affairs for me who was

1717
01:41:31,640 --> 01:41:34,599
Speaker 1: just had the Midas touch. She knew when to stamp

1718
01:41:34,640 --> 01:41:36,960
Speaker 1: on somebody's desk at the v A and went to

1719
01:41:37,040 --> 01:41:40,600
Speaker 1: sweet talking, and she got mountains moved at the v

1720
01:41:40,720 --> 01:41:43,840
Speaker 1: A and h Speaker Pelosi when her first time around

1721
01:41:43,840 --> 01:41:47,720
Speaker 1: a Speaker UM asked me to chair a subcommittee on

1722
01:41:47,800 --> 01:41:51,879
Speaker 1: Veteran's Disabilities, which was under the full Veterans Affairs Committee,

1723
01:41:52,479 --> 01:41:54,519
Speaker 1: and that's really where I did, by probably my most

1724
01:41:54,560 --> 01:41:58,040
Speaker 1: important work. I mean, yes, I contributed to the Affordable

1725
01:41:58,080 --> 01:42:00,519
Speaker 1: Character and I voted for it. Yes, I worked on

1726
01:42:00,560 --> 01:42:04,559
Speaker 1: the Waxman Marquis Environment and Climate you know, an energy bill.

1727
01:42:05,439 --> 01:42:11,080
Speaker 1: But uh, the Veterans Claims Modernization Act of two thousand eight,

1728
01:42:11,080 --> 01:42:13,360
Speaker 1: which I was the prime author of, came out of

1729
01:42:13,439 --> 01:42:17,479
Speaker 1: my subcommittee, passed unanimously in the House and the Senate.

1730
01:42:17,720 --> 01:42:22,519
Speaker 1: Every Republican, every every Democrat voted yes, and President George W.

1731
01:42:22,680 --> 01:42:24,799
Speaker 1: Bush sign it into law and called it good government.

1732
01:42:25,000 --> 01:42:27,160
Speaker 1: And I was like, wow, blow me over with a

1733
01:42:27,160 --> 01:42:31,000
Speaker 1: feather because I kind of ran against George W. And

1734
01:42:31,320 --> 01:42:33,680
Speaker 1: But the fact is there is common ground, and there

1735
01:42:33,720 --> 01:42:35,559
Speaker 1: are things that make sense, and you just have to

1736
01:42:35,600 --> 01:42:39,160
Speaker 1: be able to cut through the noise and find a

1737
01:42:39,160 --> 01:42:43,160
Speaker 1: way to talk to people about them and disarmed them.

1738
01:42:43,400 --> 01:42:47,240
Speaker 1: It's uh, you know, it's something that I wish more

1739
01:42:47,240 --> 01:42:49,040
Speaker 1: people were able to do now, although I would say

1740
01:42:49,080 --> 01:42:53,560
Speaker 1: that Joe Biden's seems to be doing pretty well with it. Okay,

1741
01:42:53,560 --> 01:42:58,360
Speaker 1: you're elected. Classic question, do you do what is right

1742
01:42:58,479 --> 01:43:02,200
Speaker 1: in your heart? Do you worry about what you're obviously

1743
01:43:02,200 --> 01:43:04,840
Speaker 1: were about both. But when they're not in the same place,

1744
01:43:05,040 --> 01:43:07,000
Speaker 1: do you do what's right? You're already do what your

1745
01:43:07,000 --> 01:43:10,280
Speaker 1: constituents want. I believe you do what's right in your heart.

1746
01:43:10,360 --> 01:43:12,519
Speaker 1: And uh, most of the time it's the same thing,

1747
01:43:12,760 --> 01:43:14,960
Speaker 1: because people elected me because I told them what I

1748
01:43:14,960 --> 01:43:17,200
Speaker 1: would do if I got in. So most of the

1749
01:43:17,200 --> 01:43:22,360
Speaker 1: time my constituents, most of them agreed with me. UM.

1750
01:43:22,520 --> 01:43:26,920
Speaker 1: For example, where it was not the case was the

1751
01:43:26,960 --> 01:43:30,200
Speaker 1: bailout of GM and Chrysler and the banks. Uh and

1752
01:43:30,280 --> 01:43:34,840
Speaker 1: the Great Recession when yeah, Nancy Polosi called an emergency caucus.

1753
01:43:34,880 --> 01:43:36,519
Speaker 1: We were getting ready to leave for a weekend, and

1754
01:43:36,680 --> 01:43:40,599
Speaker 1: you know late was it was after President Obama had

1755
01:43:40,600 --> 01:43:45,000
Speaker 1: won the election, I believe, if I recall correctly, And

1756
01:43:45,600 --> 01:43:49,559
Speaker 1: but George W. Bush was still president. So it was

1757
01:43:50,280 --> 01:43:53,880
Speaker 1: the end of two thousand seven. And Uh, she said

1758
01:43:53,960 --> 01:43:59,320
Speaker 1: that she had gotten a call from uh Larry Summers

1759
01:43:59,439 --> 01:44:03,320
Speaker 1: and it wasn't there somebody it was, It was it

1760
01:44:03,479 --> 01:44:10,080
Speaker 1: was George ws uh Paul Vulker, and it was like

1761
01:44:10,120 --> 01:44:13,240
Speaker 1: the head of the Fed and the treasure Secretary and

1762
01:44:14,160 --> 01:44:17,080
Speaker 1: saying that they need to have an immediate meeting with

1763
01:44:17,120 --> 01:44:21,120
Speaker 1: her about urgently needed legislation and she said, well, let's

1764
01:44:21,160 --> 01:44:23,439
Speaker 1: have a meeting on Monday were every We're sending everybody

1765
01:44:23,479 --> 01:44:26,040
Speaker 1: home for the weekend, and and then we'll talk about

1766
01:44:26,040 --> 01:44:29,400
Speaker 1: it money. She said. They said to her matter speaker,

1767
01:44:29,479 --> 01:44:34,000
Speaker 1: we may not have an economy by monday, and and

1768
01:44:34,120 --> 01:44:38,000
Speaker 1: she said, uh, come over now. And they came over

1769
01:44:38,040 --> 01:44:39,679
Speaker 1: and they told her what was going on in terms

1770
01:44:39,680 --> 01:44:42,599
Speaker 1: of the collapse of the banks and Lemon Brothers going under,

1771
01:44:42,600 --> 01:44:44,599
Speaker 1: and how the rest of there was like a bunch

1772
01:44:44,600 --> 01:44:47,679
Speaker 1: of dominoes getting ready to fall, and GM and Chrysler

1773
01:44:47,720 --> 01:44:52,880
Speaker 1: getting ready to go bankrupt. And and uh so we

1774
01:44:53,000 --> 01:44:55,360
Speaker 1: stayed through the weekend, and everybody in the house stayed

1775
01:44:55,360 --> 01:44:58,000
Speaker 1: through the weekend, and we pushed put together this. What

1776
01:44:58,160 --> 01:45:01,720
Speaker 1: started as a two page bill that the Treasury and

1777
01:45:01,880 --> 01:45:05,839
Speaker 1: the bed brought to Nancy became like a hundred pages

1778
01:45:05,880 --> 01:45:08,719
Speaker 1: with various caveats and all the loans being paid back,

1779
01:45:09,479 --> 01:45:12,040
Speaker 1: you know, all GM and Chrysler and the banks, everybody

1780
01:45:12,040 --> 01:45:14,840
Speaker 1: paid back their loans with interest to the treasury. But

1781
01:45:15,200 --> 01:45:18,479
Speaker 1: still it was not something that a lot of people

1782
01:45:18,520 --> 01:45:20,679
Speaker 1: wanted to do. But people, you know, people don't feel

1783
01:45:20,680 --> 01:45:26,439
Speaker 1: that great about about banks making gazillions of dollars when

1784
01:45:26,479 --> 01:45:29,040
Speaker 1: times are good, and charging everybody in armor a leg,

1785
01:45:30,000 --> 01:45:34,880
Speaker 1: and and not paying enough interest, and and charging too

1786
01:45:34,920 --> 01:45:36,960
Speaker 1: much interest, and then all of a sudden coming with

1787
01:45:37,000 --> 01:45:39,559
Speaker 1: their hand out when things are bad, and uh. And

1788
01:45:39,600 --> 01:45:42,720
Speaker 1: people felt kind of the same way about GM and Chrysler.

1789
01:45:43,280 --> 01:45:46,680
Speaker 1: Ford didn't ask for Baila, GM and Chrysler, and so

1790
01:45:46,720 --> 01:45:51,200
Speaker 1: we wound up putting those things together. And I voted

1791
01:45:51,200 --> 01:45:55,120
Speaker 1: for them. But my friend Congress Memory Sinshi from Ulster County,

1792
01:45:55,120 --> 01:45:59,439
Speaker 1: New York, he um, he was against it. He voted

1793
01:45:59,520 --> 01:46:03,240
Speaker 1: no both of those bills. And I said why And

1794
01:46:03,240 --> 01:46:05,920
Speaker 1: he said, because if we spent all these billions of

1795
01:46:05,960 --> 01:46:08,519
Speaker 1: dollars to bail out the banks and bail out g

1796
01:46:08,720 --> 01:46:11,480
Speaker 1: M and Chrysler, we will have no money left for healthcare.

1797
01:46:13,400 --> 01:46:16,000
Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, but I didn't come here to

1798
01:46:16,040 --> 01:46:18,679
Speaker 1: watch a train wreck, you know. And the way it's

1799
01:46:18,680 --> 01:46:22,160
Speaker 1: explained to me, if the banks go down, nobody's credit

1800
01:46:22,200 --> 01:46:24,160
Speaker 1: card wild work or defit card would work. The banks

1801
01:46:24,200 --> 01:46:26,760
Speaker 1: will close the lobby. Because you want people to make withdrawals.

1802
01:46:27,320 --> 01:46:30,920
Speaker 1: What's the average person going to do? You know, everybody's

1803
01:46:30,920 --> 01:46:33,000
Speaker 1: going to If we could say let the bankers go

1804
01:46:33,040 --> 01:46:35,960
Speaker 1: to hell in a hand basket, that people might agree

1805
01:46:36,040 --> 01:46:38,120
Speaker 1: with that. But if everybody's going to hell in a

1806
01:46:38,160 --> 01:46:40,439
Speaker 1: handbasket with them, that's not what I came here for.

1807
01:46:41,520 --> 01:46:44,000
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I had people yelling at me

1808
01:46:44,000 --> 01:46:47,000
Speaker 1: in my district. I had a restaurant omer and tort

1809
01:46:47,080 --> 01:46:49,960
Speaker 1: Jervis all the way up by the Delaware River and

1810
01:46:50,000 --> 01:46:53,960
Speaker 1: the western part of my district saying to me, where's

1811
01:46:54,000 --> 01:46:56,320
Speaker 1: my bailout? How could you vote to bail them out?

1812
01:46:57,040 --> 01:46:59,320
Speaker 1: I've had this restaurant my whole life and struggled and

1813
01:46:59,479 --> 01:47:02,840
Speaker 1: where's my bail you know? And people were upset, but

1814
01:47:02,960 --> 01:47:05,000
Speaker 1: I think they would have been as much or more

1815
01:47:05,080 --> 01:47:07,960
Speaker 1: upset if the other thing had happened. So in that case,

1816
01:47:08,040 --> 01:47:09,880
Speaker 1: I had to do what was my conscious was telling

1817
01:47:09,880 --> 01:47:14,679
Speaker 1: me to do. Okay, so you've had hit records, Ski

1818
01:47:14,720 --> 01:47:20,160
Speaker 1: Instructor of the Year elected to Congress. Muse, what are

1819
01:47:20,160 --> 01:47:25,240
Speaker 1: you most proud of? Oh boy, Chuck Pluckin said, when

1820
01:47:25,439 --> 01:47:28,200
Speaker 1: Johanna and I had our daughter. Uh, now you can

1821
01:47:28,200 --> 01:47:32,000
Speaker 1: say you really produce something. And I guess I'm really

1822
01:47:32,000 --> 01:47:35,519
Speaker 1: most proud of my daughter and my granddaughter. But but

1823
01:47:35,800 --> 01:47:38,559
Speaker 1: I think you know, writing songs that people sing on

1824
01:47:38,600 --> 01:47:40,519
Speaker 1: the other side of the world in other languages, that

1825
01:47:41,520 --> 01:47:45,000
Speaker 1: you know, Johannes thought that when we toured Japan and

1826
01:47:45,360 --> 01:47:48,280
Speaker 1: the whole audience would be singing along fonetically to every song.

1827
01:47:48,720 --> 01:47:51,600
Speaker 1: Some of them they understood I think probably some. You know,

1828
01:47:52,120 --> 01:47:54,519
Speaker 1: a lot of the people and especially in the cities

1829
01:47:54,560 --> 01:47:58,720
Speaker 1: like Tokyo, understand English as well, but as singing it phonetically.

1830
01:47:58,760 --> 01:48:03,040
Speaker 1: But but that means you've reached beyond your your family

1831
01:48:03,080 --> 01:48:06,639
Speaker 1: and your friends. There's no relation between me, at least

1832
01:48:06,720 --> 01:48:09,799
Speaker 1: UH and UH and these audiences in Japan. So that's

1833
01:48:09,800 --> 01:48:13,080
Speaker 1: incredibly gratifying. Okay, this has been wonderful. I know you

1834
01:48:13,120 --> 01:48:16,400
Speaker 1: have to hit the road imminently, so I'm gonna let

1835
01:48:16,439 --> 01:48:19,880
Speaker 1: you go. John, thanks so much for doing this. You're welcome.

1836
01:48:19,880 --> 01:48:22,639
Speaker 1: Bath thanks for asking me, and I'll I will look

1837
01:48:22,680 --> 01:48:26,599
Speaker 1: forward to talking. Maybe we just finished our first Orleans

1838
01:48:26,760 --> 01:48:31,200
Speaker 1: Christmas album and it will be out in October. Maybe Lance,

1839
01:48:31,320 --> 01:48:33,160
Speaker 1: my partner, Lance Hopping, and I can speak to you

1840
01:48:33,880 --> 01:48:36,120
Speaker 1: about that if you have time in the fall. Well,

1841
01:48:36,160 --> 01:48:39,320
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens. We'll certainly look for you on

1842
01:48:39,439 --> 01:48:43,200
Speaker 1: the road until next time. This is Bob left Sex