Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left That's podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is John Hall, musician, politicians, ski instructor. John.
Speaker 1: Good to have you on the podcast. Thanks about good
Speaker 1: to be here. Okay, you have a long history and
Speaker 1: political causes, no nukes, things on the local level, and
Speaker 1: Socrates also a member of Congress for four years. Given
Speaker 1: today's landscape, are you optimistic or pessimistic? In between? I
Speaker 1: think there's reason for optimism. There's also a reason for pessimism.
Speaker 1: But I fall on the optimistic side because I believe
Speaker 1: when it comes down to it, people, when they understand
Speaker 1: the stakes, will do the right thing. And especially I
Speaker 1: believe that parents and grandparents will want to see their
Speaker 1: kids and grandkids have a livable world to grow up
Speaker 1: in and to maybe have kids themselves and grandkids themselves.
Speaker 1: And so that's that's kind of what's to stake in
Speaker 1: terms of the environment and climate change, which is uh,
Speaker 1: maybe the most important thing in my opinion right now. Okay,
Speaker 1: speaking of climate change, when while we're doing this, it
Speaker 1: hasn't been that long ago that the U N released
Speaker 1: their Climate Report. It said we can never get back
Speaker 1: to where we once were, and we have to take action.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, there are people who believe this, and
Speaker 1: there are people who are dragging their feet. How will
Speaker 1: we literally make progress? Because if we wait long enough
Speaker 1: for everybody to wake up, might that be squandering too
Speaker 1: many years? Well a lot of years have been squandered already.
Speaker 1: But I think that people are getting their own ox score.
Speaker 1: That's usually what happens with with anything political or terms
Speaker 1: of activists and community organizing whatever. I when I first
Speaker 1: got into politics, it was at the local level. My
Speaker 1: next do our neighbor started crushing a hundred junk cars
Speaker 1: on his lawn one Sunday summer morning when I was
Speaker 1: having coffee and the windows were open. This is before
Speaker 1: you needed air conditioning in the Woodstock, New York area.
Speaker 1: Everybody just had their windows open and got screens and
Speaker 1: cross ventilation and that was cool enough. But but anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, when talked to my neighbor, and he was
Speaker 1: kind of upset that I had an opinion about what
Speaker 1: he was doing on his property, even though it was
Speaker 1: in violation of the state Junkyard ordinance. And so I
Speaker 1: organized a bunch of people to to stop it. And
Speaker 1: you know, he had to comply with state law. And
Speaker 1: that was the beginning of by figuring out that I
Speaker 1: could exercise that that political muscle that starts out Really
Speaker 1: it's just a just an individual citizenship muscle, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of intoxica. And when you figure out you could
Speaker 1: actually change things in your neighborhood or in your town,
Speaker 1: and that, what's your appetite for trying to have more
Speaker 1: effect on things you care about? So so I think
Speaker 1: people who are being flooded, people are having their houses
Speaker 1: burned and losing their life savings that was in their property.
Speaker 1: People who are look and at you know, hurricanes, and
Speaker 1: I mean the heat waves that are going on right now,
Speaker 1: the deaths. UH. Heat is one of the most deadly
Speaker 1: UH kinds of extreme weather. I think more people die
Speaker 1: from extreme heat than any other women weather phenomena already
Speaker 1: and right now from the northwest United States and British
Speaker 1: Columbia to New England, across the entire top tier of
Speaker 1: the States. It's a top tier of the states. It's
Speaker 1: a heat wave. And you know, not only is UH
Speaker 1: is Turkey and our Turkey and Greece burning. Siberia and
Speaker 1: Russia has UH more acreage burning right now than all
Speaker 1: the other fires in the world combined, including California and
Speaker 1: Oregon in Washington, and it's just it's Odd's starting to
Speaker 1: get obvious even to people who weren't thinking about it. Okay,
Speaker 1: what do you believe the steps and in what order
Speaker 1: we should take to ameliorate this problem. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to make a transition off of fossil fuels
Speaker 1: to renewable energy and to storage, but even more so
Speaker 1: to conservation. Any kill a lot that you save is
Speaker 1: cheaper and has less environmental impact environmental impact than a
Speaker 1: new one that you that you generate, whether you're generating
Speaker 1: with with solar or wind, or or coal or oil,
Speaker 1: it's it's still it's faster and cheaper and less environmentally
Speaker 1: impactful to not use that in the first place. So
Speaker 1: I'm trying to really make an effort to, like, when
Speaker 1: I leave home, have everything on a power strip and
Speaker 1: turn it off so my electronics don't stay on when
Speaker 1: I'm out of the house or when I'm gone for
Speaker 1: the weekend or on the road or whatever. You uh
Speaker 1: driving the most efficient car that I can drive that
Speaker 1: meets my needs, and I'm trying to you keep the
Speaker 1: air conditioning a little warmer in the summer and the
Speaker 1: heat a little bit cooler in the winter, so that
Speaker 1: I use personally, I use less energy, and I'm leading
Speaker 1: eating a lot less meat than I used to because
Speaker 1: the rainforest in Brazil is being cut down for for
Speaker 1: grazing cattle for meat for McDonald's and other fast food
Speaker 1: restaurants and stores and so on, And so you can
Speaker 1: vote with your dollars. And that's what way I think
Speaker 1: about it for things that have less of a carbon
Speaker 1: emission footprint. Okay, what kind of car do you drive.
Speaker 1: I'm driving a Honda plug in hybrid, a Clarity plug
Speaker 1: in gets forty eight miles on all battery. So when
Speaker 1: I'm driving around town, you know, I can go to
Speaker 1: the bank, the post office, the supermarket, go to the
Speaker 1: other side of town, visit, you know, visit friends, come back.
Speaker 1: You know. I basically don't use any gastling. I plug
Speaker 1: it in overnight and it charges up, and when I
Speaker 1: go out of town I use gastling on the highway
Speaker 1: and even then it gets forty two miles per gallon.
Speaker 1: As a hybrid, This car, you know, it was I
Speaker 1: wouldn't recommend this for anybody in terms of financing. It
Speaker 1: went up in forty. I think it forty three grant.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not saying this that brag or whatever
Speaker 1: about it's just that, what, it's not that much more
Speaker 1: expensive that a lot of other vehicles nowadays, especially when
Speaker 1: you consider how much less gasoline you have to buy. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about finances just for seconds. Since you bring
Speaker 1: that up. A who owns your publishing catalog? Most of
Speaker 1: it is UM Well, Johannah, my first wife and co writer,
Speaker 1: and I own half of it. UM. The publishing that
Speaker 1: what they split it in the business center, the writer's share,
Speaker 1: which is on the publishing share, which is we've had
Speaker 1: a co publishing deal with Sony was e M I
Speaker 1: before they were bought by Sony. Every every corporation gets
Speaker 1: conglomerated and you know, acquired by another one sooner or later.
Speaker 1: Same thing in the music business. But but so you know,
Speaker 1: Sony owns a big good chunk of it, and Johannah know,
Speaker 1: and the rest of our of our best known songs,
Speaker 1: and then there are some songs before that that I
Speaker 1: owned by a different publisher. I want to mention that
Speaker 1: I never see statements on or you know, uh not
Speaker 1: not a penny from and then there's some newer songs
Speaker 1: that I wrote that I still owned the writing and
Speaker 1: the publishing on myself. So that's complicated answer. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but since some of these songs are of a certain
Speaker 1: age that the reversion rights, have you gotten the total
Speaker 1: right back? I know trid run when he gets it
Speaker 1: back and then sells it back. But have you hit
Speaker 1: the reversion point and tried to get the full rights back?
Speaker 1: I believe that we felt in between. We didn't. We
Speaker 1: weren't aware of that and weren't hit to it soon
Speaker 1: enough to do something about it, given the years that
Speaker 1: these songs were written and copyrighted. So uh no, we
Speaker 1: haven't gotten it back. But I can't complain. You know,
Speaker 1: I've had a career of writing songs and playing music
Speaker 1: and and that's really all I ever won, Okay? Is
Speaker 1: I mean there are people who have only written one
Speaker 1: hit song who can live off that money for the
Speaker 1: rest of their lives. Still the one is ubiquitous, and
Speaker 1: of course dance with me and some of these other
Speaker 1: Orleans songs, some of which you wrote, some of which
Speaker 1: you didn't. Is there enough money to earn a living
Speaker 1: just from the songwriting? Yeah? I think so. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Johanna. The first song we ever wrote was
Speaker 1: called half Moon. We wrote it for Janis jopl She
Speaker 1: asked us to write it for her. And that's a
Speaker 1: long story which I don't know if you want to
Speaker 1: hear it, but I definitely want to hear it. Tell
Speaker 1: it well. Johanna was a journalist for the Village Voice
Speaker 1: before we met and got married and started working together,
Speaker 1: and she wrote a good review of Janice's Cosmic Blues album,
Speaker 1: the first record after she left Big Brother in the
Speaker 1: Holding Company. Most of the critics thought that she had
Speaker 1: ended her brothers in the commune and she should go
Speaker 1: back to San Francisco and be with Big Brothren. And
Speaker 1: Johanna was one of a few writers who said, this
Speaker 1: is a great album, and it's it's easy to see
Speaker 1: why she wanted to move on and have horns in
Speaker 1: the band and have a different level of musicianship and
Speaker 1: and production and so on. So so Janice asked for
Speaker 1: an interview with Johanna, and the publicists set it up
Speaker 1: and and she left. Johannah left to go take a
Speaker 1: bus across town from our place on the Lower East
Speaker 1: Side to a uh to a Greek restaurant on the
Speaker 1: west side of Manhattan, and and I was sitting home
Speaker 1: playing the guitar. And an hour or two later, the
Speaker 1: door opened and came Johannah with Janis Joplin behind her,
Speaker 1: and she was already a big star. I the first
Speaker 1: thing I thought was, I wish I had changed the
Speaker 1: cat box. But uh, but you know, I I played
Speaker 1: her some songs. We sat around. It was before Christmas.
Speaker 1: We and blues versions of a Little Town of Bethlehem
Speaker 1: and other Christmas carols and and we're just having fun.
Speaker 1: And I played a couple of songs that I had written.
Speaker 1: The music and the lyrics were and she said, I
Speaker 1: like the music, but the lyrics sound like a young
Speaker 1: man wrote him. And I said, well, that's me. I
Speaker 1: was twenty two at the time, I think. And she
Speaker 1: said to Johanna, you're a woman, you're a writer. Why
Speaker 1: don't you to write me a song? And so we
Speaker 1: wrote this song, half Moon. Johanna gave me the lyric
Speaker 1: on the back of an envelope, which is something she's
Speaker 1: prone to doing. Happened was still the one too, but
Speaker 1: but anyway, it's, uh, you know, it's a good poetic,
Speaker 1: image laden lyric. And I had a guitar leak that
Speaker 1: came off of a song I wrote for an off
Speaker 1: Broadway show that ran in Philadelphia for previews and never
Speaker 1: made it to New York. And and so I lifted
Speaker 1: the guitar leak from that and built the song around it,
Speaker 1: and half Moon was you know, Janice loved it, rehearsed
Speaker 1: it with their band, did it on the Pearl album.
Speaker 1: It was the B side of me and Bobby McGee,
Speaker 1: and then it was recorded by the Fifth Dimension at
Speaker 1: Chaka Khan and James Brown did an organistrumental version of
Speaker 1: it and so on. And that song maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: could have supported us. I mean it did for years
Speaker 1: because that was the first hit we had. So it's
Speaker 1: a you know, We've been fortunate to have hits by
Speaker 1: Millie Jackson and The Times and and you know, various
Speaker 1: other artists as well as as by Rolans. So you know,
Speaker 1: writing has really been my job for a long time. Okay,
Speaker 1: prior to Janna's Joblin's uh saying that Johanna should write,
Speaker 1: did she write? Did you write songs together? It was
Speaker 1: that the advent of that. That was the first one.
Speaker 1: Johanna says. It's like bowling a strike your first time out,
Speaker 1: and then you have to roll gutter balls while you
Speaker 1: figure out how to get the ball back up on
Speaker 1: the on the alley and in the strike zone. And
Speaker 1: we wrote some lousy songs after that, because you know,
Speaker 1: it was luck of the draw. But we've gotten a
Speaker 1: lot better at it. Now. We basically don't finish the
Speaker 1: song if it's not that good, So you still write
Speaker 1: songs together. We just wrote a song together for this record. Actually, now,
Speaker 1: more than ever, I'm reclaiming my time. This is the
Speaker 1: first song that Joanne I've written together in a couple
Speaker 1: of decades. Uh, after we divorced. It was a little difficult.
Speaker 1: It's just a very intimate thing writing songs with somebody,
Speaker 1: especially if you do it a lot. It's uh there's
Speaker 1: a lot of talk and a lot of soul bearing
Speaker 1: that goes into getting to a place where you can
Speaker 1: write a soul bearing song. And that's what I'm interested in.
Speaker 1: I was a fan of Jackson Browns and and uh
Speaker 1: Tony Mitchell's and you know, as well as the Beatles
Speaker 1: and all the Motown people and Beach Boys and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. But the songs that really moved
Speaker 1: me are the ones where somebody talks about what's what
Speaker 1: they're really feeling. So that's kind of something that you know,
Speaker 1: when you work with another writer, you you bear your
Speaker 1: soul a little bit. So how do you get yourself
Speaker 1: into that place? I guess trying to be self aware
Speaker 1: and trying to write with people that make you comfortable
Speaker 1: enough that you don't have to say this is embarrassing,
Speaker 1: but what do you think of this? Or this is
Speaker 1: really stupid. But here's a direction. I mean, a lot
Speaker 1: of times one has to start with something pretty common
Speaker 1: to write a song and then substitute. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like chord substitutions and music musicians, jazz musicians especially like
Speaker 1: to play a blues and then substitute for each chord,
Speaker 1: they'll substitute a whole bunch of other chords that resolved
Speaker 1: at that chord. Uh. Chord substitutions is a big thing.
Speaker 1: And lyrics you can substitute too. I think the most
Speaker 1: famous one that that I heard of anyways, Paul McCarty said,
Speaker 1: when he was writing yesterday, the dummy lyric was scrambled
Speaker 1: eggs today for breakfast, I had scramble then, you know,
Speaker 1: and he had the verse and the melody written out
Speaker 1: with that as a placehole there, and then he substituted
Speaker 1: lyrics until he got the song yesterday. And uh, and
Speaker 1: so you know, you have to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: And sometimes when you're writing with someone else, you have
Speaker 1: people say this isn't it? But how about this for
Speaker 1: a starting point? You know? And uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an interesting process. I do write. A couple
Speaker 1: of songs on my new record are written just by me,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them basically all the rest of
Speaker 1: them our collaborations with various people. So which do you prefer?
Speaker 1: What do you think gives you a better result? It
Speaker 1: depends on the song. Um, I like writing with other people.
Speaker 1: But I wrote the song Saved the Monarch on this
Speaker 1: record myself, by myself. And I also wrote the song
Speaker 1: Welcome Home to a veteran Vietnam veteran friend of mine. Um,
Speaker 1: that's the last song on the record, and I wrote
Speaker 1: that by myself. But everything else I collaborated with my
Speaker 1: best my best friend John Paul Daniel uh with a
Speaker 1: songwriter written with from what Sagritys area in New York.
Speaker 1: Ted Richards is not just an artist or a sculptor,
Speaker 1: you know, a poet, but he's a really good lyricist
Speaker 1: and uh and teach his creative writing at Barrard College.
Speaker 1: And and I wrote the first track I think of
Speaker 1: you was Sharon Vaughan's a Hall of Fame songwriter. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know sixty probably sixty I think number one
Speaker 1: country hits and a bunch of hoppits as well. You know,
Speaker 1: She's just somebody that I met, you know, asked faster
Speaker 1: should go out. Let's break it down. If you're gonna
Speaker 1: do collaboration, one, do you do it in the same
Speaker 1: room or you do it via email or other technical
Speaker 1: for doing in the same room. And most writers do.
Speaker 1: But with Johannah we wrote now more than ever on
Speaker 1: this new record. We started out sitting at it Able
Speaker 1: together and writing, and we had both been really careful.
Speaker 1: Was right at the beginning of the lockdown from the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and or maybe it was like a week before we
Speaker 1: got to start on it. She had the idea of
Speaker 1: now more than ever, we've got to we've got to
Speaker 1: get together, and and then it just took on a
Speaker 1: whole thing about like we have to stand together during
Speaker 1: this pandemic. We have to uh, we have to be
Speaker 1: able to unite enough uh and and communicate well enough
Speaker 1: to be and it's it's speaking as a couple to
Speaker 1: the song could be read as somebody talking to their
Speaker 1: significant other, you know, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, um.
Speaker 1: But it also could be read as h as people
Speaker 1: in society and a community, as different political parties talking
Speaker 1: to each other, as different countries talking together. That's that's
Speaker 1: really what's going on now with the climate is you know,
Speaker 1: countries are gonna have to be able to talk to
Speaker 1: each other and and listen as well as talk. And Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the process. If you're writing in
Speaker 1: the same room, you need to make an appointment to
Speaker 1: do that writing alone. So that's two part question. When
Speaker 1: you write alone, are you waiting for inspiration or you
Speaker 1: say no, I'm sitting down at noon today and I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna get up until sixth I have something, or
Speaker 1: sit down at six and get up at ten or notever.
Speaker 1: But I don't know what your hours are. I do both.
Speaker 1: I do both. I I have made and you know,
Speaker 1: frequently do make an appointment to right appointment, meaning like hey,
Speaker 1: John Paul let's uh, let's go for a walk this
Speaker 1: morning and then go sit with our guitars and see
Speaker 1: what happens. Uh. Sometimes it's a publisher making a day.
Speaker 1: You know. I've had dates that my publisher made with
Speaker 1: you know, with another writer from another publishing company or
Speaker 1: from their same publishing company. So but most of all,
Speaker 1: it's it's people I know who I ask, uh. And
Speaker 1: in between, I'm always thinking about ideas and and and
Speaker 1: writing them down or recording, never speaking into a phone
Speaker 1: or some kind of digital device. I a chordal idea
Speaker 1: melodic idea, or a lyrical idea, so that the next
Speaker 1: time I do have an appointment with somebody, I can
Speaker 1: come in with a start on something. It's much more
Speaker 1: fun writing with somebody who has that. So when I
Speaker 1: work with Sharon vonn Er, you know, or usually with
Speaker 1: John Paul or or you know, most of the writers
Speaker 1: that Steve Warner and I wrote. You know, we wrote
Speaker 1: a couple of songs together number one you Can Dream
Speaker 1: of Me back in the eighties, and a number of
Speaker 1: songs since then. And we wrote this song another Sunset together,
Speaker 1: and it's on this new record, Reclaiming My Time. And
Speaker 1: you know, I I had the idea for that chorus,
Speaker 1: and I had a date to write with. See, we
Speaker 1: had made plans for me to come down to this
Speaker 1: house and and I showed up and I had that
Speaker 1: melodic idea and just the concept of it, and and
Speaker 1: then he was totally involved in um in a partner
Speaker 1: and the rest of the song. And okay, let's talk
Speaker 1: about the new album. What at this late date motivate
Speaker 1: you to make new music because generally speaking, there's not
Speaker 1: that much money in it. Well, I didn't start playing
Speaker 1: music to make money. When I was twelve years old,
Speaker 1: I strapped down a guitar and said, in my room,
Speaker 1: you know, playing a lot. It was an electric guitar,
Speaker 1: stood up and looked in the mirror while I was
Speaker 1: playing it. And imagine that that weekend at the high
Speaker 1: school dance. That maybe you attract some some young ladies.
Speaker 1: But I'd love the creative process. And uh, and I
Speaker 1: love music. I started, you know, playing piano and a
Speaker 1: score and it was entertainment to me. I just entertained
Speaker 1: myself by playing the Marines syn with both hands, and
Speaker 1: my parents sent me for piano lessons, and you know,
Speaker 1: I studied piano and French horn and taught myself guitar
Speaker 1: and bass and drums and and it's a you know,
Speaker 1: so today I write for the same reasons I right,
Speaker 1: because I love writing and because I love I love
Speaker 1: music and seeing an idea take shape and become a
Speaker 1: thing that is external for me that I can play
Speaker 1: for people or record and sent to somebody. It's a
Speaker 1: or now it's post online. So that's the thrill in itself.
Speaker 1: If it makes money, great, Okay. There's a record company involved,
Speaker 1: Sunset Boulevard Records, which is not a major record company.
Speaker 1: How did it come to be that with them? Were
Speaker 1: you making something you placed it or they looked out?
Speaker 1: And who paid for the recording of the record? I
Speaker 1: paid for the recording of the record. Sunset bobar As
Speaker 1: the record that was founded by Glenfica, who's the manager
Speaker 1: of the band or Leans. And in fact, the last
Speaker 1: Orleans album, doubled CD called No More Than You Can
Speaker 1: Handle is on his label, and you know, I've gotten
Speaker 1: to know him and trust him, and he spilt this label.
Speaker 1: Episode has a lot of the people we work with
Speaker 1: that we through concerts with, like Firefall Up, Peer, Prairie Ley, Um,
Speaker 1: Atlanta Rhythm Section, the babies. You know, these are all
Speaker 1: seventies early eighties and bands. They're kind of in his
Speaker 1: stable of of management artists and but he's also putting
Speaker 1: their records out in US. Is licensing Masters by Fast
Speaker 1: Domino and by Elmore James, and by Willie Nelson. He
Speaker 1: just put on Willie Nelson and worked directly with William
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's becoming a label that is
Speaker 1: not just a vanity label and or a tiny Indian.
Speaker 1: It's becoming a pretty visible, respected Indian. I think he's
Speaker 1: doing a real good job. It's you know, I put
Speaker 1: out and Orleans has put out self released records. I
Speaker 1: had a little record LI called Siren Songs Records that
Speaker 1: released a couple albums of mine, uh Love Doesn't Ask
Speaker 1: and Recovered, which was an acoustic album of me doing
Speaker 1: songs that other artists had had covered and I recovered them,
Speaker 1: uh and Uh. I also put out a couple of
Speaker 1: Joan l Mostar records on Siren Songs Records, And you know,
Speaker 1: they they sold a little bit, and they helped I
Speaker 1: think helped her and and her fans and my fans.
Speaker 1: Bottom Uh. They never got really the exposure they would
Speaker 1: have had if they'd been with a label likes, said Boulevard.
Speaker 1: I've also been with you know, with Colombia and with
Speaker 1: Asylum Records is now part of the Warner Brothers Warner
Speaker 1: Music family. Uh. I've been with MGM Records, have been
Speaker 1: ABC Records. Uh. You know that all those companies had,
Speaker 1: especially at the time, they had a lot more money
Speaker 1: to throw behind and personnel throw behind promoting a record
Speaker 1: than what we have now. But the world is different,
Speaker 1: and the business is different, and and also the listening
Speaker 1: process that people can find anything now. If you want
Speaker 1: to find the John Hall of Record in Orleans record,
Speaker 1: you can find it on YouTube or or Apple or
Speaker 1: Amazon or Spotify, all the different streamers. So it really is,
Speaker 1: it's possible. So many young kids and young bands are
Speaker 1: doing this, making a record in the closet on a
Speaker 1: phone or on a laptop or iPad or something and
Speaker 1: putting it out and and getting almost the same sort
Speaker 1: of wide band distribute that that Big Are Seven and
Speaker 1: Big labels. Okay, so you recorded the new record, you've
Speaker 1: been working dates. How much of the new music do
Speaker 1: you play? Well, we're not doing any of my reclaiming
Speaker 1: my Time record yet because the shows that we do.
Speaker 1: We usually well, first of all, we've had one rehearsal
Speaker 1: since the end of you know, since we started working
Speaker 1: in June after the pandemic let up a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, already thought okay, now we're going to be
Speaker 1: back to business as usual, but unfortunately, thanks to delta variant,
Speaker 1: it's it's not yet. And but we do. We do
Speaker 1: shows that range from an hour to maybe an hour
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty minutes. And we have a lot of
Speaker 1: songs we have to do that people know, or Leans
Speaker 1: support if they want to hear. That takes time. So
Speaker 1: the one dance would be let to be music cap moon, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know various other songs said, there's a list of
Speaker 1: them and there, uh, there's a show that we've worked
Speaker 1: up that's pretty pretty high powered. Um, and we're working
Speaker 1: on a couple of my songs that any any day now,
Speaker 1: any concert now, we're gonna start doing a couple of them.
Speaker 1: But you know, it takes The songs in this record
Speaker 1: are not and that as simple as as they might sound,
Speaker 1: at least not alone too long and well, the mean
Speaker 1: imagine there's a lot of acts, heritage acts as they
Speaker 1: would say, who uh, make new music and then they
Speaker 1: play the new music and the audience doesn't pay attention,
Speaker 1: which is difficult for the act. So that's why I'm
Speaker 1: bringing it up. Yeah, we do new something, newer songs.
Speaker 1: We do a song called Beautiful World that fly and
Speaker 1: Marrow or the other guitar player and I and my
Speaker 1: partner Lance happened wrote together. And that song it's not
Speaker 1: as wasn't on any of our big records that came
Speaker 1: out in this Sunset Boulevard released uh double CD that
Speaker 1: came out a couple of years ago. But they loved that.
Speaker 1: You know, it goes over great. Uh. There's a song
Speaker 1: called no more Than You Can Handle? What's the title
Speaker 1: of that package and the song that Lance wrote with
Speaker 1: his brother Larry Hoppin before Larry passed away. Unfortunately Larry
Speaker 1: was one of the original four members of the band
Speaker 1: died and and but this song has been out for
Speaker 1: a couple of years now and uh and Lance sings
Speaker 1: that and people love it and ask for when they
Speaker 1: come by the merchandise table of her signing autographs or
Speaker 1: whatever you they they said, which one is that song?
Speaker 1: And they want to buy that? And they want to
Speaker 1: buy a beautiful world, So it's a it's not a
Speaker 1: total I guess you know. I heard Jackson Brown and
Speaker 1: James Taylor Chicago a couple of weeks ago, um or
Speaker 1: maybe it was just last week, and Jackson's got a
Speaker 1: new record out on Hill from Everywhere, and he did
Speaker 1: a few songs from that in the early part of
Speaker 1: his show, and the audience was, Yeah, I think they
Speaker 1: were happy at Jackson's audience loves him and he can
Speaker 1: kind of do whatever he wants. But I think they
Speaker 1: really wanted to hear the old, familiar songs, and he
Speaker 1: gave them to him, but not until after they listened
Speaker 1: to some of the new stuff. And that's that's one
Speaker 1: way to do it. We kind of mixed them in
Speaker 1: throughout the show. Okay, let's go back to the beginning
Speaker 1: you were talking about. So you grew up where elmar
Speaker 1: in New York, Okay, and your parents did what for
Speaker 1: a living? My dad is a physicist electrical engineer PhD
Speaker 1: worked for Westinghouse, mainly on contexts for NASA and the
Speaker 1: Defense Department. He designed or led the design team that
Speaker 1: built the camera for the first Moon landing. When Neil
Speaker 1: Armstrong walked on the Moon. They couldn't send somebody up there, Uh,
Speaker 1: to go down and you know, put the tripeout on
Speaker 1: the ground and then go back up the ladder again
Speaker 1: and say, now here comes the first man on the moon.
Speaker 1: So they had to ride on the strut of the lander,
Speaker 1: so it would already be down there when the armstrong
Speaker 1: came down the ladder, and it had to withstand the
Speaker 1: shock of the landing and the the heat of the
Speaker 1: blast off and the cold of the trip, and still
Speaker 1: worked perfectly when somebody pushed her remote button. And so
Speaker 1: he but he also has his name on patents for
Speaker 1: lance at satellite cameras and and for a night vision
Speaker 1: devices and all kinds of imaging namely was his thing.
Speaker 1: My mom uh and masters in English and creative writing,
Speaker 1: and also later in divinity. She wanted all three of
Speaker 1: her sons to be priests. My dad wanted all three
Speaker 1: of his sons to be scientists or mathematicians. My older
Speaker 1: brother was an actuary, my younger brother a priest, and
Speaker 1: I fell in the middle somewhere writing songs that people
Speaker 1: said were too preachy. Okay, so you talked about picking
Speaker 1: up an electric guitar, A how did you acquire that? Literally?
Speaker 1: And b what inspired you because this is pre beatles right. Well,
Speaker 1: first I picked up an acoustic it R my parents
Speaker 1: bought my brother, Jim. My older brother had UH nylon
Speaker 1: straining classical guitar from Sears, Roebuck and Uh. And they
Speaker 1: asked if he wanted lessons and he said, no, I'll
Speaker 1: just give it to John. He'll figure it out. So
Speaker 1: I got to play his birthday guitar and Uh, that's funny.
Speaker 1: I just assumed they sent it to you tuned. It
Speaker 1: came in a cardboard box. We didn't have a case
Speaker 1: for it, and so I tuned each string to the
Speaker 1: note that it was closest to and made up a
Speaker 1: bunch of fingerings for that tuning. And for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, Jim went to the library and found out
Speaker 1: what the real tuning and the guitar was. And I
Speaker 1: was crushed because none of my fingerings worked anymore. So
Speaker 1: I had to start over again with the correct tuning.
Speaker 1: But but you know, I've had enough piano and enough
Speaker 1: music theory at that point, you know, studying since I
Speaker 1: was five till I was twelve when this happened, so
Speaker 1: I knew what notes went together for record and I
Speaker 1: figured out how to finger them and and what it
Speaker 1: became an electric guitar. The same same thing worked. So
Speaker 1: that was really how I started. My grandmother in Providence,
Speaker 1: my father's mother, had an old r C a radio,
Speaker 1: the kind of waste high one that's wood with the
Speaker 1: grill cloth and carvings on it, in a big fifteen
Speaker 1: inch speaker. It was wonderful thing. And and she had records.
Speaker 1: My dad had plugged in a hot wired in the
Speaker 1: turntable so they could play through that. And she had
Speaker 1: records by ched Atkins and by the Weavers with Pete Seeger,
Speaker 1: and so I heard Pete doing this Land as your
Speaker 1: Land and little Boxes. And when I was five and
Speaker 1: I heard Jed Atkins doing glow Worm from that same age.
Speaker 1: And we went to her house on the way out
Speaker 1: to Vacation Island off the coast of Massachusetts, Cutey On Island,
Speaker 1: and uh so the night before in the night after
Speaker 1: we were on the island for a vacation, I would
Speaker 1: always get to listen to these records. And by the
Speaker 1: time I was able to play guitar, I was able
Speaker 1: to sit in front of her her radio and turntable
Speaker 1: and and try to play along, and that's really learned,
Speaker 1: you know, acoustic guitar uh skills and electric guitar stills,
Speaker 1: you know from that. So chet Chet Atkins was listened
Speaker 1: to it by a lot of guitar players, including obviously
Speaker 1: George Harrison, and you know he influenced many and many
Speaker 1: other players. You know, when I heard Chuck Barry, I
Speaker 1: could figure that out because I had listened to chet Atkins. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what inspired you get an electric pre Beatles? And
Speaker 1: once the pre beat Once the Beatles arrived in six four, hun,
Speaker 1: did that change your vision and playing? Well? Um, my
Speaker 1: little brother Jerry wanted the guitar, and when he had
Speaker 1: a birthday that is old enough, my parents gave him
Speaker 1: an electric guitar. It was also a Sears Ropebuck silver
Speaker 1: tone electric guitar um, which are actually valuable nowadays. They're
Speaker 1: kind of rare. No, it's kind of funny, yeah, but
Speaker 1: but I borrowed it. It was kind of the same thing.
Speaker 1: He was always here, John, show me how to do this,
Speaker 1: and I, okay, did you have the did you have
Speaker 1: the one with the speaker and amplifier in the case.
Speaker 1: I didn't have that. You know, Springsteen had one of those,
Speaker 1: and I always wanted one. But but Brusa, Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: done a bunch of work with him, and and I
Speaker 1: know other people who've had them too. But but but anyway,
Speaker 1: I was a high school dance was the occasion where
Speaker 1: you had to play electric guitar. You could sit around
Speaker 1: doing folk music with an acoustic guitar, and that's all
Speaker 1: well and good, but you want to play in the
Speaker 1: band with drums, it's electric guitar through some kind of amplifications.
Speaker 1: So so I started doing that and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: probably you know, fourteen fifteen years old in high school
Speaker 1: when I first heard a bass guitar. I was playing
Speaker 1: in a school gymnasium in Olmar, New York, and some
Speaker 1: kid came up from Sarah, Pennsylvania, across the border and
Speaker 1: brought his Ampeg B fifteen and a Fender base, and
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, that's like the the earth is moving.
Speaker 1: The frequencies are so low. And you know, once you
Speaker 1: hear that, you never want to be in a band
Speaker 1: without a bass guitar again. And so that my horazons
Speaker 1: horizons broadened. There wasn't a lot of adventurous music in Elmira,
Speaker 1: New York at the time, so I wound up hearing it.
Speaker 1: When I went to college, I went up hearing it
Speaker 1: and playing it there. And when I went to I
Speaker 1: dropped out of college after a year and a half.
Speaker 1: I went to Notre Dame University for a year South Bend,
Speaker 1: Indiana and played in every band I could get into.
Speaker 1: A blue grass band, you know, football, pep band, uh,
Speaker 1: a couple of rock and roll bands, sanging into up
Speaker 1: you know group, a capella group, and and then went
Speaker 1: to Loyola for a semester in Baltimore, and and found
Speaker 1: out that a club called the Pepperint Lounge on M
Speaker 1: Street and Georgetown was having auditions for a house band,
Speaker 1: and got a band together, corrupting my big brother by
Speaker 1: getting him to play bass in it. And uh and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, found another guitar player in the drummer audition
Speaker 1: and got the gig and dropped out of college to
Speaker 1: play the six nights a week in the club. And
Speaker 1: Georgetown at a time when Andy Lou Harris was you know,
Speaker 1: was playing at the Silver Dollar and knows often was
Speaker 1: playing in town Rugby Cannon was playing a place called
Speaker 1: the Silver not the Silver Dollar. The remember the name
Speaker 1: of the h of the club he played. It was
Speaker 1: out of town a little bit in Bladensburg, Maryland, and
Speaker 1: and and so, you know, played in bands there. And
Speaker 1: then the guitar player was working with Eddie Spilios, and
Speaker 1: I hopped a Greyhound bust in New York and started
Speaker 1: playing at the Cafe One in Credits Village with a
Speaker 1: couple other players. We picked up played UH. I was
Speaker 1: playing bass in that band, and there was some of
Speaker 1: the guitar player and a drummer was Norman Smart, who
Speaker 1: played with went on to be the drummer and UH
Speaker 1: Mountain with Leslie West, the original drummer from Mountain and
Speaker 1: UH playing a bunch of records by other people as well.
Speaker 1: Barbara Keith played acoustic guitar, rhythm guitar and sang and
Speaker 1: wrote some songs and and I wrote, you know, collaborating
Speaker 1: with with other people in the band and and by myself,
Speaker 1: you know mainly. But we made an album for MGM
Speaker 1: Records to spand wound up being called Kangaroo and and
Speaker 1: made an album for for MGM, and we we had
Speaker 1: a tour quote unquote that consisted of playing at UH
Speaker 1: the Mjam Records convention in Las Vegas, uh and then
Speaker 1: at the Singer Bowl the World's Fairgrounds, opening to the
Speaker 1: doors and the Who and then going back to the
Speaker 1: Cafe Wall where we actually were alternating sets at the
Speaker 1: Cafe Well for quite a while with the various bands,
Speaker 1: but the one that people by remembers the Castiles, which
Speaker 1: was Bruce Stings, Bruce Springsteen's span from New Jersey. It
Speaker 1: was underage club where that teeny boppers came in for
Speaker 1: Jersey and from Long Island and could listen to music
Speaker 1: all day for five bucks or whatever it was admissioned.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was less than that. Probably was. Each member
Speaker 1: of each band got six dollars a night and all
Speaker 1: the potato chips and ice cream they could eat there was.
Speaker 1: There was no real food there and there was no
Speaker 1: alcohol obviously, so so you know, but it was for
Speaker 1: a guy that was you know, I was a team
Speaker 1: and I started playing there and it was I could
Speaker 1: actually live on six dollars a night as long as
Speaker 1: I found someplace to sleep a friend's couch or sometimes
Speaker 1: at rooftop or a park bench, you know. And and
Speaker 1: it's the glamorous side of the music business. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's a start, okay, going back. If you do your
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page, it says you skip two grades. Is that true? Well,
Speaker 1: I skipped senior in high school. I took fourth and
Speaker 1: fifth grade in the same year. So yeah, okay, let's
Speaker 1: go back to your in New York. So you make
Speaker 1: the Stiff album with MGM. What do you say to yourself?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a performer, I'm gonna be a songwriter.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for another record deal. How does it play
Speaker 1: out from there? Uh, Johanna and I met, Actually, we're
Speaker 1: introduced by Barbara Keith, uh singer and Crusi guitar player
Speaker 1: from from Kangaroo And Barbara and she had both worked
Speaker 1: at Women's Day mag is and and and at the
Speaker 1: Village Voice and knew each other from that. And they
Speaker 1: both wear leather miniskirts and had posters of Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: over their desks and and uh, you know, so they
Speaker 1: Johanna came to a show and Barbara introduced me to her,
Speaker 1: and we became friends, and I started, you know, asking
Speaker 1: her out. We wound up becoming a couple and uh
Speaker 1: and living together in apartment on the Lower East Side
Speaker 1: where Jannis Joplin wound up eventually coming in and asking
Speaker 1: us to write a song. It was just the right
Speaker 1: place at the right time. Uh, serendipity, Uh, the higher power,
Speaker 1: you know it. So it wasn't It was a plan
Speaker 1: that I couldn't have made up. So okay, So how
Speaker 1: did it become more leans? It took a while. Johanna
Speaker 1: and I, you know, we're writing songs. I was playing
Speaker 1: guitar with raious other people. I played on sessions in
Speaker 1: New York City. I was a hired gun for guys
Speaker 1: like Charlie Collelo who are producing lu Christie and Raus
Speaker 1: other artists I wand up playing on. Well, we moved
Speaker 1: to Woodstock. I was asked by John Simon, who I
Speaker 1: had worked with on a Sales and Crofts album that
Speaker 1: he was producing in Northern California while the Hyder's studio. Uh,
Speaker 1: I played. You wind up playing on a couple of
Speaker 1: a couple of sessions in l A. I made it.
Speaker 1: I made a solo record for Columbia after after Kangaroo
Speaker 1: called action. Harvey Brooks who played with the Electric Flag
Speaker 1: and played bass on Dylan's Blonde on Blonde album, and
Speaker 1: you know he worked with Paul Butterfield, less of other
Speaker 1: great It was the basis on Supersession too. That's correct. Harvey's,
Speaker 1: you know, very influential and well known great bass players.
Speaker 1: So uh. He had been hired by Clive Davis to
Speaker 1: be a A and R production guy at Columbia Records,
Speaker 1: and he was looking for people to sign and my
Speaker 1: manager at the time told me to go Sam and
Speaker 1: I did and play some songs for Harvey, and he
Speaker 1: signed me and we wound up going to l A
Speaker 1: and making part of the record there and making part
Speaker 1: of it in northern California. And and the drummer on
Speaker 1: a good part of their record was Wells Kelly, who
Speaker 1: went on to be the first drummer in Orleans. Uh.
Speaker 1: He went to California with us and we were playing
Speaker 1: gigs out there. Wells asked his astrologer what he should do,
Speaker 1: and as a strologers said go east. So he quit
Speaker 1: the band and went to France and played in the
Speaker 1: band called King Harvest there with his brother, Sherman Kelly,
Speaker 1: who had written the song Dancing in the Moonlight, which
Speaker 1: became a hit for the band King Harvest. Uh. We
Speaker 1: got another guy, Greg Thomas, playing drums and went on
Speaker 1: to play in Tash my husband with me and John Simon.
Speaker 1: Simon had done some work with j and while we
Speaker 1: were in Northern California, I played on the Seals and
Speaker 1: Crofts Down Home, Down Home album, their second album that
Speaker 1: John Simon produced. So he came back from all that
Speaker 1: stuff too, New York and John Simon lived in Woodstock,
Speaker 1: and he asked me and Johannah to come up and
Speaker 1: stay at his house because he was putting together a
Speaker 1: band to play and record at Bearsville Studios. Albert Grossman
Speaker 1: and the manager who who managed Butterfield the band, Bob Dylan, Dejanis, Joplin,
Speaker 1: uh Todd Rundgren, Peter Paul and Mary et cetera built
Speaker 1: this studio, Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York, and he
Speaker 1: needed a band to go in there as guinea pigs
Speaker 1: so they could test everything out and make sure it
Speaker 1: all work. They can't charge two or fifty bucks an
Speaker 1: hour or whatever it was for people to come in
Speaker 1: and book a recording session. If the headphones are going
Speaker 1: to feedback, or you plug the bass drumm into track one,
Speaker 1: it comes out of track, it has to be somebody
Speaker 1: has to be the guinea pigs. So John Simon Harvey Brooks,
Speaker 1: Greg Thomas, the drummer, Paul Harris is wonderful Oregon and
Speaker 1: keyboard player, and I were the guinea Pigs and we
Speaker 1: recorded while we're there, recorded a version of Dancy in
Speaker 1: the Moonlight as a John Hall record that was never released. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, was in the can. I some day I
Speaker 1: have to get it out and listen to it see
Speaker 1: see how it is, because at this point, lots of
Speaker 1: people have done that song, Hooty and the Blowfish and
Speaker 1: King Harvest. Obviously Orleans did a version of That's the
Speaker 1: title track of one of our CDs, and so but
Speaker 1: this was all the process of learning how to be
Speaker 1: in the studio, learning what you can do in the studio.
Speaker 1: It started out with Kangaroo, which was really education and recording,
Speaker 1: and then my record, the Action Album was another one.
Speaker 1: I think of it now. I mean John Simon played
Speaker 1: on that. John Sebastin played harmonica on it, and guitar
Speaker 1: and and uh, Richard Green, the fiddle player from Sea
Speaker 1: Train played on it. As you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of pretty wonderful musicians are on that record.
Speaker 1: And but it was really not until I got into
Speaker 1: Barsbal Studios with John Simon that I started to really
Speaker 1: understand what the studio can do as a tool for
Speaker 1: musicians and for songwriters and producers. And and uh, while
Speaker 1: we were there, our apartment on the Lowery sykept broken into,
Speaker 1: and Johanna and I wound up uh driving back down
Speaker 1: to the city, loading everything into a car that we
Speaker 1: cared about from our apartment and driving back up north
Speaker 1: to Woodstock and taking the first rental we could find.
Speaker 1: And we lived in Woodstock in rentals for a couple
Speaker 1: of different places and like a year and a half.
Speaker 1: And then when Janesis version of Half Moon came out,
Speaker 1: unfortunately it was posthumous. She had died before the record
Speaker 1: was released, which is in addition to her popularity was
Speaker 1: somebody dies. And then that first postumus record comes out
Speaker 1: of Races to the Top, and we got a first
Speaker 1: royalty checked from Half Moon, and we bought a house
Speaker 1: to Socrates and she's still living there today and we
Speaker 1: lived there together for almost thirty years. So how do
Speaker 1: you feel when the Columbia album is not successful? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I was not happy, but you know, I still um
Speaker 1: it was under contract to them, and and we had
Speaker 1: an idea about you know, forming a band. I've done
Speaker 1: this record as a John Hall record, but we cut
Speaker 1: a bunch of other things with Paul Harrison uh Wells
Speaker 1: and then Greg Thomas on drums and and with Harvard
Speaker 1: Brooks on base. We're gonna try to be a band.
Speaker 1: And the best name we came up with was thunder Frog,
Speaker 1: and Columbia didn't care for that idea, so you know,
Speaker 1: wound up not being signed to them anymore. And and
Speaker 1: but there's always another song, there's always another gig, there's
Speaker 1: always hopefully another band to put together. And I want
Speaker 1: on tour with Taj Mahal, playing all around the country
Speaker 1: three month on three month long tour. And Uh. After
Speaker 1: that we recorded a double live album that was Fillmore
Speaker 1: East and Fillmore West called The Real Thing. Uh. The
Speaker 1: guy promoted the original Woodspot Fest, but one of the
Speaker 1: three promoters at the Woodstock Festival, Michael Lang, had a
Speaker 1: little record labelist starting called Just Sunshine, and he asked
Speaker 1: me if I would play on a record vice Karen Dalton,
Speaker 1: a singer he was it signed to his label. A
Speaker 1: wonderful combination of sort of jazz Billy Holliday kind of
Speaker 1: jazz and folk music, contemporary ones and a friend of
Speaker 1: his and Tim Harden's, and you know, she was a
Speaker 1: very quirky, unique singer. I played on her record and
Speaker 1: then I was asked to go to Europe on tour
Speaker 1: with her, and so I did. And we had a
Speaker 1: band with Bill Keith, famous banjo and steel player who
Speaker 1: unfortunately passed away a year or so ago, he said, ah,
Speaker 1: but known by every banjo player in the world and
Speaker 1: played with Ian and Sylvia banjo and Steele guitar with them.
Speaker 1: And and uh so Bill was playing in that band,
Speaker 1: and um Denny Sywell, who wanted to play drums with
Speaker 1: McCartney and Wings, was playing drums in that band. And
Speaker 1: we opened to Santana all over the continent. Um, and
Speaker 1: we're supposed to play in England and after we did
Speaker 1: the European continent. Uh. Karen never got a soundtrack, although
Speaker 1: she was told she was going to. And when we
Speaker 1: played Montro, Switzerland, she refused to go on. It was
Speaker 1: at the twelfth time in a row, I think, with
Speaker 1: no sound check, and she just got mad and walked
Speaker 1: out and took off down the street and didn't come back.
Speaker 1: And the promoter came backstage and said Santana's not ready yet.
Speaker 1: There's a big crowd here. Somebody's got to do a show.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'll do it. And I wanted
Speaker 1: to play. I would actually like music enough. I wanted
Speaker 1: to get on stage and play something. And so we
Speaker 1: got out there. I was playing my stratocaster through a
Speaker 1: little Princeton Appen through Santana's big sound system, and Bill Keith,
Speaker 1: the steel player and get You Eventual Player, played bass,
Speaker 1: and Danny Hankin, a friend of Karen's, was playing acoustic rhythm,
Speaker 1: played rhythm, and we did Jimmy Reid songs and and
Speaker 1: Marvin Gay songs, and we did a Ray Child's song,
Speaker 1: it feels so good. It feels like a ball game
Speaker 1: on a rainy day. You know, I feel feel so bad.
Speaker 1: I feels like a ball game on a rainy day.
Speaker 1: And uh. And then we finished with Doom Bargard that
Speaker 1: joint my friend, which they all knew. The audience knew
Speaker 1: it from Easy Rider. I didn't realize that. So we
Speaker 1: finished and I waved goodbye and went down to the
Speaker 1: dressing room and the promoter came. I said, you have
Speaker 1: to do an encore and went upstairs and people were
Speaker 1: stamping and holding up lighters and and I went, wow,
Speaker 1: you know it's amazing. I just thought I was going
Speaker 1: to get away with it, with killing it, you know,
Speaker 1: forty minutes of time so that Fantana could be ready.
Speaker 1: But so we did another Jimmy Reids song for an
Speaker 1: encore and and then what you know went off and
Speaker 1: Karen got kicked off the tour because no headliner once
Speaker 1: an opening act, you won't go on. And uh so
Speaker 1: I was flying home after that show, and uh and
Speaker 1: thinking on the plane, I should start a band and
Speaker 1: do our own sign and Johannah had written so many
Speaker 1: songs at that point, we had plenty of songs to do.
Speaker 1: And uh so I started playing with the different combinations
Speaker 1: of of musicians in Woodstock and that was the one
Speaker 1: and U in December seventy when Wells Kelly joined and
Speaker 1: he came back from King Harvest in Europe, and I
Speaker 1: been playing with Howie Wyath on drums, and a guy
Speaker 1: in Buffalo Gelbert Bill nickname was Buffalo Bill Gelbert playing bass,
Speaker 1: and how we quit, uh and and Buffalo quit for
Speaker 1: different reasons. And it was me and Wells in our
Speaker 1: basement Johanna's my basement and Socrit. He's looking at each
Speaker 1: other going now what um, and and Well said, uh,
Speaker 1: I know this guy in Ithaca named Larry Happen. He
Speaker 1: plays anything, plays guitar, plays keeper, it plays bass, Lay
Speaker 1: was trumpet, can sing great, And I said, well, why
Speaker 1: don't you call him? So? So he called Larry, and
Speaker 1: Larry came down and the three of us made our
Speaker 1: first did our first performance, our first show as Orleans
Speaker 1: in January of nine. We shall be fifty years this January,
Speaker 1: and why we're leads. We were playing a lot of
Speaker 1: we didn't have quite enough original songs to do all originals.
Speaker 1: We would have to do two shows or maybe three
Speaker 1: touch shows sometimes at clubs to keep people dancing to
Speaker 1: drink enough that the club owner would be happy and
Speaker 1: invite his back. And uh, so we were doing covers
Speaker 1: of R and B songs and reggae songs, and we
Speaker 1: were doing a lot of New Orleans uh influenced music,
Speaker 1: a lot of Neville's, Neville Brothers, meters al to st stuff.
Speaker 1: And so you know, every band I think sits around
Speaker 1: and tries to think of names, and um, usually two
Speaker 1: people hate it and one guy likes it. And so
Speaker 1: one night, Well said We had a gig that weekend
Speaker 1: in Oswego, New York, and he said, how about Orleans.
Speaker 1: We went, okay, we'll use that. So we went up there.
Speaker 1: We had a really good gig. In fact, our last show,
Speaker 1: I met somebody who was there at that gig who's
Speaker 1: on the radio now in Pittsburgh. We were playing in
Speaker 1: kitt and in Pennsylvania outside just east of Pittsburgh. But
Speaker 1: I was at that show in us we Goo where
Speaker 1: he was going to college, and and uh. For the
Speaker 1: next few weeks, we kept saying, we're gonna we better
Speaker 1: change the name if we're going to change it, and
Speaker 1: and but that guy in us Weego wanted to hire
Speaker 1: us back, and he had to use Orleans again or
Speaker 1: people wouldn't know who to come see, you know, And
Speaker 1: so we did and it wound up taking on the
Speaker 1: meaning that you know, that became Orleans identity. It's a
Speaker 1: you know, it's fine. There was a fad for a
Speaker 1: while of naming bands after cities like Chicago or after states,
Speaker 1: you know, Boston and uh, uh, Alabama, Uh, and then
Speaker 1: it was Continents and uh. So it's funny. I always
Speaker 1: thought maybe it was Orleans from Cape Cod that on
Speaker 1: Cape cod That was a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: states have in Orleans, just like every state seems to
Speaker 1: have a woodstock in it. It's just people aren't very
Speaker 1: original naming towns. Okay, so played out to getting a
Speaker 1: record deal with Orleans. Well, we played as a trio
Speaker 1: for nine months. Lance Hopping, Larry's younger brother, graduated from
Speaker 1: high school on Long Island, and the Hopping brothers grew
Speaker 1: up and their sister also Linda, grew up with parents
Speaker 1: who were both musicians who had met on a gig
Speaker 1: and they both taught music, so they all had this
Speaker 1: incredible knowledge and proficiency and various instruments and and Lance,
Speaker 1: after nine months of our being a trio came up
Speaker 1: an auditioned in September seventy two, Uh in Johannes Semi
Speaker 1: basement on Base and he played bass really well and
Speaker 1: sang harmony great, and Uh and Larry got along great
Speaker 1: because they were brothers. And we just became a quartet
Speaker 1: like that, and then became a quintet for the fourth album,
Speaker 1: The Waking and Dreaming out with with Jerry Moratta playing drums,
Speaker 1: and then you know, went back to quartet after that.
Speaker 1: Um and then I left and went solo for a
Speaker 1: couple of records and John Hall Band for a couple
Speaker 1: of records, and and the band continued without me and
Speaker 1: and had another top ten hit with Love Takes Time,
Speaker 1: which Larry wrote with his wife at the time, Maryland.
Speaker 1: And so you know, we just we got back together
Speaker 1: after Wells passed away. I'm really sorry. We all were
Speaker 1: incredibly sorry. Wells was probably the guy in the band
Speaker 1: I was closest to in the beginning, and like a
Speaker 1: brother to me. I used to say, at his parents house,
Speaker 1: you know, and and with his brothers and his sister
Speaker 1: when we played in Ithaca, New York, which was in
Speaker 1: the beginning, was like once a month we played in Ithaca.
Speaker 1: We're working New York State and New England. You know. Uh,
Speaker 1: in the beginning, we're kind of a regional band. And
Speaker 1: so Wells passed away in and I uh saying at
Speaker 1: his memorial with with Larry and Lanson was the first
Speaker 1: time we had gotten on stage and sung together and
Speaker 1: in a few years, and we went, wow, that sound,
Speaker 1: you know it was it took I guess it's a
Speaker 1: well Stein for us to say, you know, there's something
Speaker 1: here we should really be doing together, and we were
Speaker 1: all too big for that band. It was too big
Speaker 1: for our bridges and we needed a but we needed
Speaker 1: a therapist more than a manager, you know, we needed
Speaker 1: somebody to say, you guys are nuts. You know, you've
Speaker 1: pushed this rock up the hill and gotten a rolling
Speaker 1: down the hill to the point where you've got a
Speaker 1: couple of Time Top ten records in a row and
Speaker 1: albums that are selling well. You're on the same label
Speaker 1: with the Eagles and Jackson Brown and Joni Mitchell. What
Speaker 1: the hell do you think you're doing? But you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of bands break up because the personnel, you know,
Speaker 1: tricks and stuff like that, and then some of them
Speaker 1: get back together. We're the one of the ones that did. Okay,
Speaker 1: how do you get the deal with ABC? And how
Speaker 1: do you go from ABC to Asylum? We got that
Speaker 1: deal with ABC by auditioning or playing showcases at clubs
Speaker 1: in New York. We we played first of all at
Speaker 1: a place called the Mercer Arts Center. Uh. We actually
Speaker 1: around a double bill there with Manhattan Transfer and they
Speaker 1: had no no deal before that, and needed did we.
Speaker 1: But they were signed and we got signed by ABC
Speaker 1: coming out of that showcase and shortly after that the
Speaker 1: building fell down, and we'd like to say we brought
Speaker 1: the house down right. Also, that's where the New York
Speaker 1: Dolls started too, they did. It was for a brief time.
Speaker 1: It was a very hot place for bands to be discovered. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we were actually originally wooed by Cashman and West,
Speaker 1: who had uh, Tommy West and Paul was a all
Speaker 1: cash Yeah, I think that's right. So anyway, we wound
Speaker 1: up deciding we wanted Barry Beckett and Roger Hawkins to
Speaker 1: produce us for ABC drummer and piano player from the
Speaker 1: Muscle Shoals rhythm section, and we wound up going down
Speaker 1: to Muscle Shoals and making that first or Leans album
Speaker 1: there with Barry and Roger producing. And we had been
Speaker 1: big fans of their work with the Staples singers and
Speaker 1: with Wilson Pickett and with you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: the R and B stuff we were doing wound up
Speaker 1: being things that they had played on, so uh, they
Speaker 1: weren't used to not playing on records. They sat in
Speaker 1: the Barry and Rogers sat in the control room, and
Speaker 1: we were all a little nervous. Well, Skelly, I think
Speaker 1: that our drummer was especially nervous because he was such
Speaker 1: a fan of Rogers playing. But you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people, a lot of our hardcore longtime fans still
Speaker 1: think that first or Leans album was our best record ever.
Speaker 1: So they ended up doing a good job even though
Speaker 1: they weren't playing in your Oh yeah, you know, they
Speaker 1: know what they're doing, M and H. And we played
Speaker 1: well enough that that the record worked and they were
Speaker 1: happy with it. And but you know, ABC put it
Speaker 1: out and had we kind of a regional hit in
Speaker 1: the Northeast with it, and it did well in the
Speaker 1: Netherlands and battle luxe countries. But um, but they decided
Speaker 1: with our second album that we released. We recorded for
Speaker 1: self produced our second album at Bear's Ball Studios in Woodstock, Uh,
Speaker 1: where I had learned a lot about recording and so
Speaker 1: uh and that's that record had the song let there
Speaker 1: Be Music on it and the song danced with me
Speaker 1: on it in an earlier version. But ABC heard and
Speaker 1: said we don't hear a hit, and they dropped us.
Speaker 1: And we did another showcase after that and in New
Speaker 1: York at Maxis Kansas City, and there were a couple
Speaker 1: of a and our people, Mary Martin from Warner Brothers
Speaker 1: and Chuck clock In from Asylum Records who heard us there,
Speaker 1: and there was a little bit of a I don't
Speaker 1: know it was a bidding work, but there was a
Speaker 1: competition between Warners and and Asylum, which was an indie
Speaker 1: label at the time, and and we decided to go
Speaker 1: with Chuck clock In an Asylum. And we're glad we
Speaker 1: did because Chuck is the first producer I've ever worked with,
Speaker 1: and I think for Larry and Lance and Wells was
Speaker 1: the same thing. Who could really tell us something that
Speaker 1: we didn't want to hear and and impress us or
Speaker 1: be knowledgeable enough and able to explain himself enough that
Speaker 1: we would listen. And and that's invaluable to a developing artist.
Speaker 1: Do you remember something you might have said that you
Speaker 1: didn't want to hear? The song give One Heart, which
Speaker 1: was on our third album, let the music album The
Speaker 1: One Would Answer Great cover by Linda Ronstad. Linda recorded
Speaker 1: it after she heard it on that record, But Johanna
Speaker 1: and I had written a song that had a whole
Speaker 1: bridge the song that's not in that record. And you know,
Speaker 1: Chuck came to us and said, this is a wonderful song,
Speaker 1: but the bridge belongs to another song, just get rid
Speaker 1: of it. And the b section to the verse should
Speaker 1: be the course, and then the course should be the bridge.
Speaker 1: So the b section was that was to give one
Speaker 1: high get back to you. That's the paradox of fin
Speaker 1: and Chuck said, make that the course, which of course
Speaker 1: it is, and it should have been all along and
Speaker 1: I can't stop saying it. I love you used to
Speaker 1: be the carse when we first wrote it. He said,
Speaker 1: that's got to be the bridge, and that's what we recorded,
Speaker 1: and that's what Linda Ross that fell in love with
Speaker 1: she recorded it. So you know, Chuck actually was able
Speaker 1: to listen with objectivity to things that we were too
Speaker 1: close to and couldn't see it for us. For the trees. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how does still the One come together? And what's
Speaker 1: going through your mind when it becomes such an uber success. Well,
Speaker 1: it came together because Chuck did the same thing with that.
Speaker 1: I mean, h Johanna write the lyric Friends of Ours
Speaker 1: used to live downstairs in the village from us was
Speaker 1: getting divorced from her husband and asked her had to
Speaker 1: write a song about people saying together because there's so
Speaker 1: many songs about people breaking up, and Johanna wrote that
Speaker 1: lyric and handed it to me on the back of
Speaker 1: an envelope. I wrote the music to it in about
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. And and while we were cutting it, none
Speaker 1: of us knew how important it was going to be
Speaker 1: to us. We were actually thinking and the label was thinking,
Speaker 1: maybe spring Fever will be the first single, or maybe
Speaker 1: you know, uh, some other songs say. There were various
Speaker 1: tunes that were in the running. Check knew that was
Speaker 1: going to be it, and he said, we cut it
Speaker 1: three times, the first time with Wells playing Uh. I
Speaker 1: think we cut the first time with Wells and Jerry
Speaker 1: both playing drum kits. We were performing at the time
Speaker 1: with Jerey m Rad and Wells s Kelly of playing
Speaker 1: double drums on a lot of stuff and then sometimes
Speaker 1: one would play percussion and the other would play drums.
Speaker 1: So first it was two drummers. It didn't work. Then
Speaker 1: we cut it. Chuck said, you gotta cut it with,
Speaker 1: you know, with one drummer and percussion. So we tried
Speaker 1: it with Welles playing drums and he was playing a
Speaker 1: shuffle like the old fashioned kind of that that that
Speaker 1: that that on the high at shuffle and UH and
Speaker 1: we were both times We're like, Okay, there's a good drag,
Speaker 1: and Chuck went, Nope, that's not a good track. That's
Speaker 1: not it, and he asked everybody to leave and go
Speaker 1: out for lunch except me and Jerry Morada and and
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry and I took it apart with the
Speaker 1: beat apart. And Chuck's the kind of guy who was
Speaker 1: a man in the street listener, and he would drum
Speaker 1: on his knees. You could tell that he was into
Speaker 1: it and the music was making him happy as he
Speaker 1: was drumming it on his knees while we're playing. But
Speaker 1: we get we started to instill the one with the
Speaker 1: other two things that he stopped drumming on his knees
Speaker 1: and held like what just happened? And so so he
Speaker 1: was going, you just gotta have this doom to you know,
Speaker 1: none of this that that that that that shuffle. So
Speaker 1: so we developed this thing where Jerry's playing straight eight
Speaker 1: beats on the high head and backbeat on the snare
Speaker 1: drum and the bass drums going boom baboom boong baboon,
Speaker 1: boom boom boom baboon. Just it's like a drum machine
Speaker 1: and Jerry was one of the guys who has worked
Speaker 1: with Peter Gabriel shows it. You know, before there was
Speaker 1: a drum machine. Jerry could play like a drum machine.
Speaker 1: He didn't feel that he had to do fills or
Speaker 1: that he had to play something fancy. Was just like
Speaker 1: slugging it out, you know. And still the one is
Speaker 1: that the drum part is that. And then I had
Speaker 1: the idea of playing the upbeat piano. I've done that
Speaker 1: on a demo of the song, so it's think too
Speaker 1: but that but that that on the vendor Rhodes and
Speaker 1: and the guitar was doing Chuck Parry. It just came
Speaker 1: together like a machine and everybody else came back from
Speaker 1: lunch and Jerry played the drums and Wells played tamburin
Speaker 1: on it, and that was the third time and the
Speaker 1: version that's on the record. But it's amazing things that
Speaker 1: can happen in the course of recording a song that
Speaker 1: most people would never If you weren't there, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: know what a journey was. That it was a dropout
Speaker 1: on Larry's lead vocal on that song. We had the
Speaker 1: whole thing done. We triple track the backup vocals we
Speaker 1: had done the double league guitar. First I played the
Speaker 1: melody on the lead, and then Larry harmonized with it,
Speaker 1: and and and we get to the end, and we're
Speaker 1: almost ready to mix. And we've been told the songs
Speaker 1: too long. It needs to be under four minutes, need
Speaker 1: to be three and a half minutes for AM radio
Speaker 1: something somewhere around there. This was back when AM radio
Speaker 1: was so and so Uh. Val Garande was engineering UH
Speaker 1: and mixing the record, and we put it on the
Speaker 1: two inch tape, and he got the spicing tape out.
Speaker 1: We said, this first course of the fade, we take
Speaker 1: that out because we've got to make the whole thing
Speaker 1: shorter and still get to the ending. And so so
Speaker 1: Val cuts the chorus out. He's got the tape hanging
Speaker 1: around his neck. He puts the butt ends of the
Speaker 1: two inch tape together in the spicy block, takes a
Speaker 1: piece of splicing tape, tamps it down, and UH takes
Speaker 1: it back up and rolls it back on the reel
Speaker 1: and then hits play and it goes over the head.
Speaker 1: And when Larry's seeing in the end of the bridge. Uh.
Speaker 1: Even though we grow old, it grows new. Use still
Speaker 1: the one it goes the ill, the one like Buddy Holly.
Speaker 1: There's a hiccup in it, and we're going to know
Speaker 1: what happened. And Val pulls out the spice and looks
Speaker 1: at it, you know, in the light, and says, a
Speaker 1: little piece of ox eyde came off it. We just
Speaker 1: run it back and forth over the house so many
Speaker 1: times that is coming apart. We better mix this thing
Speaker 1: before the whole thing falls apart. And we wait, wait,
Speaker 1: can't we find that isn't on the floor. And because
Speaker 1: it's a shag rug, that's a little piece of oxide
Speaker 1: from the tape, no one will ever hear it. And
Speaker 1: we're going, you're kidding. I mean, we all heard him
Speaker 1: saying still a little one and instead of still, it
Speaker 1: has the little Buddy Alley thing in it. Nobody has
Speaker 1: ever mentioned it to me after all these years I
Speaker 1: heard it. I thought it was it was intentional. Everybody
Speaker 1: thought it was intentional, you know, I mean I I
Speaker 1: even did at Facebook contest back a few years ago,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, the first person can tell
Speaker 1: me where the dropout is in Larry's vocal gets a
Speaker 1: free pair of tickets to this show. And people guessed
Speaker 1: everywhere else in the song, but that, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's just amazing how close you can get to a
Speaker 1: project that you don't see the big picture. And al
Speaker 1: Garay was absolutely. I mean, val actually did one mix
Speaker 1: of it. And this is before automation. We had you know,
Speaker 1: Valve was working the lead vocal and the guitars, and
Speaker 1: I had the tom Tom said, Larry at the backup
Speaker 1: vocus was behind the console reaching over from the back
Speaker 1: of the council riding the backup vocals, and you know,
Speaker 1: everybody had something and we rehearsed it and then we
Speaker 1: rolled it. And before it even rolled back on the
Speaker 1: two the two track tapes that we could hear the
Speaker 1: mix valid his code on and his girlfriend was the door,
Speaker 1: and he said, we're going to lunch. I'll see and
Speaker 1: we'll do the next song in an hour or two
Speaker 1: and we're going feil that might not be it. Well,
Speaker 1: you gotta stay here, you know, we're paying you a
Speaker 1: lot of money to mix this stuff. And he said,
Speaker 1: my hands were shaken. That was it, and he left,
Speaker 1: And that's the record. I mean, it's just you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you need a professional better at some things than
Speaker 1: you are to come in and do them, and we
Speaker 1: just had been you know, we had been running our
Speaker 1: own ship for a little too long. Okay, then it
Speaker 1: becomes a gigantic kit. What's it like riding a gigantic
Speaker 1: kit and then trying to follow it up? Well, uh,
Speaker 1: you know the thing is that we the songs on
Speaker 1: that record, we're you know, we're already recorded. The follow
Speaker 1: up had to be on the record, and the single
Speaker 1: that followed it was it was reached and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps what we should have done was wait until the
Speaker 1: until the spring and put out spring Fever or the
Speaker 1: lake winter put out spring Fever. You knows, hindsight will
Speaker 1: will never know what might have happened. But reached it
Speaker 1: pretty well. It's a top forty record that got into
Speaker 1: you know, the upper reach of the church in the
Speaker 1: southeast was. It was a big hit Florida, the Carolina's Virginia,
Speaker 1: you know, but not as big a national hit as
Speaker 1: as still the one. And then we did a lot
Speaker 1: of touring. We went on tour with Jackson Brown and
Speaker 1: it was the running on empty tour of Jackson's. We
Speaker 1: opened to him all over the country three months tour
Speaker 1: and uh, it was a great package. Uh and great
Speaker 1: exposure for us. But you know, and then another year
Speaker 1: of touring after that, before we were getting ready to
Speaker 1: go in the studio, and some stuff happened between us
Speaker 1: on the road in the band that that convinced me
Speaker 1: a combination of things starting to be competition for getting
Speaker 1: songs on the album. And you know, when Johanna and
Speaker 1: I've been making money from writing songs for years, so
Speaker 1: it was it was not unusual for us to make
Speaker 1: a living from writing songs. But when still the one
Speaker 1: came out, well to ask with me first on the
Speaker 1: third album, and then stroll the one on our fourth album,
Speaker 1: and uh and Johanna and I were making more money,
Speaker 1: you know, geometrically, more money from from those songs as writers,
Speaker 1: in addition to whatever artist royalties were going to come.
Speaker 1: And there were wives and girlfriends on the bus who
Speaker 1: would actually kind of egg the men on, the male
Speaker 1: members of the band on and there were a lot
Speaker 1: of yokos in the band at that point. But I
Speaker 1: wound up deciding I wanted to make a record of
Speaker 1: my solo records so that I could put Johanna. I
Speaker 1: had more songs than we could possibly put on a
Speaker 1: single record anyway, and on an album anyway, And and
Speaker 1: the discussion about what songs really should be on our
Speaker 1: next record was taking a turn that in my opinion
Speaker 1: and Chuck Platkin's opinion also didn't necessarily have to do
Speaker 1: with what's the best song. Uh, but you know that's
Speaker 1: a matter of opinion. It's always subjective. How did No
Speaker 1: Nukes come together? And how hard was it to pull together? Well?
Speaker 1: I made the first sol my first solo record for Asylum.
Speaker 1: I was still under contract to them, you know when
Speaker 1: you talk about when I was talking about actually needing
Speaker 1: a therapist instead of a manager or a record label
Speaker 1: or a producer, I mean the Asylum Records. When I
Speaker 1: told him that I was gonna quit Orleans and go solo,
Speaker 1: they went great. Now we've got two bands instead of one,
Speaker 1: you know, two acts. And you know they should have
Speaker 1: said wait a second, you know. But anyway, so I
Speaker 1: made a record for them. It was just called John Holland, Uh,
Speaker 1: Steve god Wilton, Wilton Felder, Joe Sample, Dave Sandborn, Michael Brucker,
Speaker 1: you know playing on it. All kinds of wonderful musicians contributing,
Speaker 1: and and then I could have made another record for them,
Speaker 1: I was signed for another Asylum album. But Cavallo and Ruffalo,
Speaker 1: who managed me and Orleans, we're saying uh uh. They also,
Speaker 1: by the way, said great now we've got two bands
Speaker 1: instead of but but they were saying, you know, we
Speaker 1: got earth Wind and Fires new label. This juryed by Columbia.
Speaker 1: It's called a r C American Recording company. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they talked me to leaving Asylum and making a record
Speaker 1: for a r C UM. There was a picture in
Speaker 1: billboard of me and Maurice White from Earthmen and Fire
Speaker 1: with the signing White inks Hall was the caption, you know,
Speaker 1: signing the contract with with a ARC to make a
Speaker 1: record for them through Columbia. And that record was called
Speaker 1: Power and the song Power was the title track obviously,
Speaker 1: and the song Plutoniums whoever was on there also both
Speaker 1: written about nuclear power and about various kinds of pollution,
Speaker 1: especially radioactive pollution, and there are plenty of others. The
Speaker 1: song called Cocaine Drain, which was about a couple of
Speaker 1: friends of mine and later became that guy who were
Speaker 1: was doing too many chemicals, too many street drugs too
Speaker 1: to be able to function very well at that point.
Speaker 1: And I, you know, was playing rack up all everybody,
Speaker 1: and I was in the straight and narrow. But but
Speaker 1: that's another long story. Um. So the Power album comes out,
Speaker 1: and I'd already been doing I've been gotten involved with
Speaker 1: uh the anti nuclear movement. When the New York State
Speaker 1: Power Authority decides to build a nuclear station UH about
Speaker 1: UH six miles north of where Johanna and our daughter
Speaker 1: Sophie and I were sleeping, and I decided I didn't
Speaker 1: want it as a neighbor, and I went to hearings
Speaker 1: and you know, wound up getting the impression that they
Speaker 1: were that they were going to put it in by
Speaker 1: hell or high water, and they had to be stopped.
Speaker 1: And so I I UH started organizing people, and you
Speaker 1: know the same kind of community organizing thing as the
Speaker 1: Junkyards wound up joining and or helping to start a
Speaker 1: group called Mid Hudson Nuclear Opponents and doing fundraisers for them. H.
Speaker 1: Bonnie Ray came up and did a fundraiser with me
Speaker 1: for that and UH in Pockepsie, New York at the
Speaker 1: Theater and and we wound up doing a show in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: Jackson Brown and James Taylor and I think Kylie Simon
Speaker 1: was there. And Jesse Colin Young and it was a
Speaker 1: benefit for the Karen Silkwood Fund and a lot of
Speaker 1: people No Karen or you certainly learned about it from
Speaker 1: the movie Silk Would And uh So my album Power
Speaker 1: was getting ready to come out, and I was singing
Speaker 1: Power had some Power at the Seprit Nuclear Reactor big
Speaker 1: demonstration to the clamshow. Alliance organized their twenty five thousand people,
Speaker 1: you know, state troopers and guard drugs on the other
Speaker 1: side of the fence and helicopters buzzing overhead. It was
Speaker 1: me and Pete Seeger and Jackson Brown with Pete's singing
Speaker 1: you know his songs and and this Land is Your
Speaker 1: Land whatever else he was doing in Jackson singing before
Speaker 1: the Luchon and me singing Power. We sang that the
Speaker 1: debut in public of the song Power was Pete and
Speaker 1: Me and Jackson singing the Course because there were no
Speaker 1: verses yet. This was before I recorded it and before
Speaker 1: Johanna and I finished a verse to that song. So
Speaker 1: so the Power album came out two weeks before Three
Speaker 1: Mile Island happened in March of nine, and uh and
Speaker 1: it went up the charts and every radio station was
Speaker 1: playing this song power coming out of the news about
Speaker 1: the partial meltdown in Pennsylvania at three Mile Ound and
Speaker 1: and so we were doing this fundraiser for the Karen
Speaker 1: Silquin funded Afterwards there was the Palladium in New York
Speaker 1: where backstage afterwards and everybody's going to what do we
Speaker 1: do now? And I said, let's just call everybody we
Speaker 1: know it go to the Medicine Square Garden, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's like, I know how we'll save the school.
Speaker 1: We'll put on a show. And so we did. And
Speaker 1: it started out as one night at the garden, went
Speaker 1: up being five, you know, wound up being a record
Speaker 1: in a Warner Brothers movie and having a ton of
Speaker 1: incredible musicians, you know, many of them I didn't know
Speaker 1: before we worked together on that Jackson and Bonnie I did.
Speaker 1: And but that's basically how it started. And you know,
Speaker 1: I I brought in a couple of people who everybody
Speaker 1: was assigned to ask certain people, and you know, I
Speaker 1: I asked Chaka Khan and and Ray Parker and Radio
Speaker 1: who were on the record, who were managed by my
Speaker 1: manager's Coval and Muffalo and and also uh Peter tosh
Speaker 1: Uh you know, Jackson as Springsteen and Tom Petty and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Bonnie was asking different people and James was
Speaker 1: asking different people, and it was just we all just
Speaker 1: pulled together and the words started to get around and
Speaker 1: wound up becoming crowsby Sils and Nash and the Dubie Brothers,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, it was we had people dropping
Speaker 1: in even without being announced, like like you know, Paul
Speaker 1: Simon getting up and doing meal and Julio you know,
Speaker 1: unannounced with just him and an electric guitar and twenty
Speaker 1: people singing along, and and it's just took on a
Speaker 1: life of its own, and it's it's something that, uh,
Speaker 1: some people say it was sort of the beginning or
Speaker 1: one of the first of the sort of giant benefits
Speaker 1: for a cause. Um so. And also you know it
Speaker 1: was it was it raised enough money actually for over
Speaker 1: a million dollars was given away in grants. Bonnie and
Speaker 1: I were the only two musicians said on the foundation
Speaker 1: board as well as the production board of MUSE Musicians
Speaker 1: United for Safe Energy, and and I went up reading
Speaker 1: hundreds of grant proposals and voting on who to give
Speaker 1: that million dollars away too, and grants that range from
Speaker 1: a thousand bucks to maybe ten bucks. UH, local and
Speaker 1: regional groups that we're working on education about renewable energy
Speaker 1: and UH efficiency and the drawbacks of power that was
Speaker 1: generated by splitting the atom and creating radioactive waste. And
Speaker 1: so it's a it was successful on that point of view. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm proud today the fact that the song power has
Speaker 1: give me the warm power of the sun, restless power
Speaker 1: of the wind, and you know a lot of renewables
Speaker 1: mentioned in it. UH. But it's a shame that it's
Speaker 1: taken this long for us to get as aware of
Speaker 1: the of the limitless potential of solar and wind and
Speaker 1: the other renewable sources of energy as it has. So
Speaker 1: how do you end up getting into skiing and being
Speaker 1: a ski instructor? I'm a very avid skier. I followed this.
Speaker 1: I want to know the story from the source. I Well,
Speaker 1: my daughter Sophie was six or seven years old, I
Speaker 1: think always seven, and her school group was gonna she
Speaker 1: went to a a little the Woodstock children sent a
Speaker 1: little private grade school in Woodstock, and they were sending
Speaker 1: a group to to Cortina Valley, which is right near
Speaker 1: a hundred mountain. Little feeder area learner area and uh,
Speaker 1: but they said they needed chaperones. And Sophie came home
Speaker 1: from school saying, Dad, if you go as a chaperone,
Speaker 1: I'll go otherwise I don't know, you know, And I
Speaker 1: said I can't deprive her. I had one experienced scheme
Speaker 1: when I was playing with Taj. We played it some
Speaker 1: college in New England where they had it's probably uh
Speaker 1: maybe Middlebury was someplace where they had a total I
Speaker 1: went to I went to Middlebury. Believe me, I know
Speaker 1: the Middlebury snowble. My daughter went to Middlebury. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. Yeah, well here did you graduate? Oh jeez,
Speaker 1: I should know this right. Uh, she's graduated from high
Speaker 1: school and I think it was eighty nine, okay, and
Speaker 1: she was a double major and uh English creative writing
Speaker 1: and double minor in Spanish and political science. So why
Speaker 1: didn't you go to Middlebury? Did she ski when she
Speaker 1: was there? And she considered the whole thing to be
Speaker 1: a good She was a ski instructor before she went there. Um,
Speaker 1: she learned to ski with me. I started getting after
Speaker 1: we went to Katina Valley for these six Thursday nights
Speaker 1: in a row, and I had had a bad skiing
Speaker 1: experience on a ski toe up Vermont when I was
Speaker 1: playing with Taj and his road manager was some guy
Speaker 1: from the Sierras who was a good skiered We're we're
Speaker 1: in a locker room for the dressing room playing in
Speaker 1: the gymnasium at this college, and there was a pair
Speaker 1: of skis there were taller than I was, you know,
Speaker 1: and and some lace up boots and boot you know,
Speaker 1: bear trap bindings. And the guy was going to come on, John,
Speaker 1: I'll teach you to ski. And I fell down, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty times going up the rope toe and had a
Speaker 1: hard time getting up again, and then fell down thirty
Speaker 1: times coming down the hill, and I just never did
Speaker 1: a second run. I thought, I'm too uncoordinated, I can't ski,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, a bad experience. I'll put you
Speaker 1: off like that. But but when I went with my
Speaker 1: daughter uh as part of the school dress a chaperone,
Speaker 1: I put on the little short skis with their parabolic
Speaker 1: side cut, and the kids all had balloons and those
Speaker 1: bright colored vests on so people wouldn't run into him.
Speaker 1: And they were sneaking down they can wedge turns behind
Speaker 1: the instructor and I just did what they were all doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, now make a pizza. You know, pretty shot
Speaker 1: your right ski. Pretend you're spreading peanut butter and bread
Speaker 1: with the tail of your ski, like you know, and
Speaker 1: I was. I got down to the lift and I said,
Speaker 1: I can do this. I actually can ski. And so
Speaker 1: I just six weeks of that, and then we started
Speaker 1: going to two Hunter Mountain and UH, which is a
Speaker 1: bigger mountain and you know, actually has black diamonds and
Speaker 1: double black diamonds on it, although west they might not
Speaker 1: be double blacks. But so I I took so many
Speaker 1: lessons there that I had friends in the ski school
Speaker 1: they said, why don't you give it up and just
Speaker 1: come out for the ski school. You get to ski
Speaker 1: free and you get the clinic with the best. And
Speaker 1: so I did it, and I wound up, you know,
Speaker 1: getting first of all, UH, passing the mountains test, and
Speaker 1: then passing the p s a test for level one,
Speaker 1: and then passing level two, which was yeah, I had
Speaker 1: to take a level two twice that because I learned
Speaker 1: late at my my body wasn't used to and my
Speaker 1: joints weren't used to the kind of flexibility and the
Speaker 1: kind of rotation they need to do. Uh, I could.
Speaker 1: I had the body mechanics down. I could analyze somebody
Speaker 1: else's skiing. I understood the theory of it, and and
Speaker 1: I could ski a lot of terrain, you know. But
Speaker 1: I uh, but for a while I was I was
Speaker 1: only able to really teach beginners and sort of lower intermediates.
Speaker 1: But but I got to the point where I was
Speaker 1: teaching everybody from the top of the mountain and U
Speaker 1: and skiing pretty much anywhere I wanted to. Okay, So
Speaker 1: how much did you ski? How much did you teach?
Speaker 1: And when your daughter leaves the nest, did you were
Speaker 1: still a skier and he's still skiing? Structor? Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I wound up giving up skiing when I went into Congress.
Speaker 1: It's one of the terrible things about politics. But I
Speaker 1: actually uh, probably on snow ninety or ninety a hundred
Speaker 1: days a year, and uh, and I taught a ninety seven.
Speaker 1: I was instructor of the year a hundred mountain. I
Speaker 1: know't if that means I taught better lessons or just
Speaker 1: more or lessons than anybody else, because I would take
Speaker 1: lessons when nobody else would. Swading no problem, you know,
Speaker 1: A bus group from New York on a rainy day. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'll take it. And you learn a lot doing that.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing like teaching anything to help you understand
Speaker 1: how to do it yourself. Well, the mountains are still there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my knees are waiting for some surgery. Take us through
Speaker 1: the arc of your political career to ultimately getting into Congress. Well,
Speaker 1: in the county was trying to start to stick a
Speaker 1: giant landfill and incinerator on the last undeveloped town, undeveloped
Speaker 1: farm in the town of Segrids that was on the
Speaker 1: National Historic Register, and it was on it had it
Speaker 1: was named the Winston Farm. M James Winston, who built
Speaker 1: the reservoirs and aqueducts that bring Catskill Mountain drinking water
Speaker 1: to New York City, owned that farm and it's named
Speaker 1: after him. And UH and the county legislature decided that
Speaker 1: was the best place to put two d two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand tons of garbage a year for twenty years. Uh
Speaker 1: and built two incinerators with smokestacks three feet tall, which
Speaker 1: by far would have been the highest structure in the county.
Speaker 1: And I just once again, I said, I don't want
Speaker 1: to have to drive past this. I don't. I was
Speaker 1: driving my daughter to high school past every day, passed
Speaker 1: this site, and uh, and I just said, it's me
Speaker 1: or it and organized a group kind of grew out
Speaker 1: of the Junkyard anti Junkyard group called the Winston Farm Alliance.
Speaker 1: And we had everybody in the town including you know,
Speaker 1: both Republican and Democratic, town can Midias, the Little Garden Society,
Speaker 1: that the Knights of Columbus, the you know church groups, uh,
Speaker 1: the Police Benevolent Association. Everybody in the town was did
Speaker 1: not want this, and and we stopped. At about the
Speaker 1: same time I got elected. People in the midst of
Speaker 1: all this came to me and said, the current representative
Speaker 1: representing Saugers and the county legislature voted for this. He
Speaker 1: voted for the consultant who recommended this site, and then
Speaker 1: he voted for another five million bucks to them again
Speaker 1: after they recommended it in his hometown. You know. At
Speaker 1: the first day, said we gotta find somebody to run,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, good luck, I got a career,
Speaker 1: you know, and and uh, in a family, I just
Speaker 1: didn't really want to do it. And then that month
Speaker 1: or two later they came back and said, we can't
Speaker 1: find anybody else. If you don't run, he's gonna have
Speaker 1: tested walk over election. And I said, well, I can't
Speaker 1: have that, So I ran and everybody voted for me.
Speaker 1: Was mad at him, and you know, God bless me.
Speaker 1: He's a good guy. He's not. You know, it was
Speaker 1: just he wasn't up to the task of understanding what
Speaker 1: this was really going to go to the town, because no,
Speaker 1: no good kinds of development wouldn't come in. No no
Speaker 1: artistic development, no nice housing, no recreational stuff, it would say,
Speaker 1: once you put that kind of well, they are expanded
Speaker 1: the the toll booth, the right side of the toll booth,
Speaker 1: so that oversized trucks could get there right across, come
Speaker 1: out of the through way right across from this bark,
Speaker 1: easy and easy off. You know. New York City garbment.
Speaker 1: That's what we were sure what's happening, because Fresh Kills
Speaker 1: was being closed, the big landfill and fresh Kills, and
Speaker 1: they were, you know, New York City was shipping garbage
Speaker 1: as far as the Midwest. You know, they were shipping
Speaker 1: to Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, you know, out of state, and we
Speaker 1: just saw it coming our way and so I ran,
Speaker 1: I got elected. I served one term in the county legislature.
Speaker 1: I had no desire for a career politics at that point.
Speaker 1: I was just you know, well, okay, so we stopped
Speaker 1: the dump. I actually was on its Community Affairs committee
Speaker 1: that that wrote the first recycling law for the County
Speaker 1: of Ulster, and uh, you know, I was oversaw. Was
Speaker 1: on the committee that oversaw the method of Maintenance program.
Speaker 1: And I had an interest in UM trying to wean
Speaker 1: people not just off of drugs, but off of method
Speaker 1: which can be done as long as you have the
Speaker 1: resources to have real treatment and talk therapy, uh, and
Speaker 1: not just say okay, we're cutting you off. And so
Speaker 1: I did some good things there and then I decided
Speaker 1: not to run for re election. A couple of years later,
Speaker 1: my daughter had gone through freshman, sophomore, and junior year
Speaker 1: of high school on an austerity budget because the school
Speaker 1: board couldn't come up with a budget the taxpayers would pass. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so you know, you wind up with larger class sizes,
Speaker 1: with the computers being old, with tennis balls that are dead.
Speaker 1: She was playing on the tennis team and they were
Speaker 1: practicing with dead ball. So when they got into a
Speaker 1: match and open account of real tennis balls. They would
Speaker 1: bounce over her racket and and you know, just but
Speaker 1: every you know, like advanced placement languages, all these kinds
Speaker 1: of things. Uh, you lose when you go on a stairity.
Speaker 1: And so I decided to run for school board. And
Speaker 1: I was determined to get a budget that would pass
Speaker 1: her senior year of high school would not be in
Speaker 1: a stait. And I ran and I won, and I
Speaker 1: was there for four years. And every year was there,
Speaker 1: we passed a budget and the first year we cut
Speaker 1: taxes by two percent. At the same time, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can really do this stuff if you if you
Speaker 1: dig into it. And we had a good superintendent. I
Speaker 1: knew where the bodies were buried and where money was hidden,
Speaker 1: and and we were able to, you know, to get
Speaker 1: the educational job done and actually lower property texas for
Speaker 1: people in the town. Okay, you do that for four years.
Speaker 1: Next step back to playing music. And Johanna and I
Speaker 1: separated and divorced, and I wound up living on a
Speaker 1: boat for a couple of years, sailing money. At the
Speaker 1: time thirty eight foot sail boat from the Hudson River
Speaker 1: to Key West and over to Havana and humanitarian aid mission.
Speaker 1: Uh knew enough to get a permit from the Treasury
Speaker 1: Department as a humanitarian need. But we were able to
Speaker 1: deliver medical supplies and musical supplies from Key West to
Speaker 1: Havana and be exempt from the embargo because both of
Speaker 1: those things are exempt from the Apartment. So and then
Speaker 1: sailed back across the Gulf Stream to Florida, back up
Speaker 1: to Martha's Vineyard and uh Johnny Oak Island, where I
Speaker 1: grew up having vacations with my family and still have
Speaker 1: relatives today, and then down at Long Island and the
Speaker 1: coast of Jersey and up to Delaware Bay and across
Speaker 1: the canal to just Beat Bay and down to Annapolis.
Speaker 1: Has sold the boat in Annapolis. And meanwhile I had
Speaker 1: met my second wife, Melanie, who uh I met her
Speaker 1: in Nashville, and we're living in Nashville for a while.
Speaker 1: And uh but um, let's see, what was the question,
Speaker 1: how did you end up running for Congress? Okay, so
Speaker 1: we decided to move back. Her dad passed away, her
Speaker 1: mom was moving back to New York, her siblings were
Speaker 1: in New York, and nieces and nephews and everything, and
Speaker 1: and my daughter was coming to visit Johanna and Insaugrity's
Speaker 1: pretty frequently, and I thought, well, New York is a
Speaker 1: better place. So we moved to New York, but to
Speaker 1: the east side of the hus and in Dutchess County
Speaker 1: town UH called go over plans. And so I got
Speaker 1: there and we were unpacking boxes and steadily, and I
Speaker 1: went out, Yeah, I wonder who my congressperson is. And
Speaker 1: it turned out was a twelve year incumbent and Sue Kelly,
Speaker 1: who had voted for the Republican member of the the
Speaker 1: gang Rich class, the Contract with America or Contract on
Speaker 1: America as I called it, class of Congress. She had
Speaker 1: voted for the war in Iraq and she voted for
Speaker 1: drilling for oil in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge, both of
Speaker 1: which I thought were mistakes. And and once again I thought,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna help somebody else win. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: don't really want to run myself, but I knew there
Speaker 1: were other people running. So I started having coffee or
Speaker 1: lunch with with candidates. Were already four members for a
Speaker 1: Democratic candidates in a primary to run against the incumbent
Speaker 1: congress Swimming Kelly. So I wound up thinking, after talking
Speaker 1: with each of these Canada IT said I would be
Speaker 1: probably a better candidate and maybe a better congressman too,
Speaker 1: because I just kept running into blind spots in their
Speaker 1: knowledge of the issues. And a d Triple C that
Speaker 1: Democratic Congressional campaign community out of Washington at the time
Speaker 1: being shared by Romamanuel, who wanted being President Obama's chief
Speaker 1: of staff and then went on to be to be
Speaker 1: mayor of Chicago. Rom had already endorsed in the Triple
Speaker 1: C IT endorsed to candidate and started training her and
Speaker 1: sending money her way and everything. And so when I
Speaker 1: decided that I met with her too, and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I told her we were talking about health here.
Speaker 1: She said, how are you gonna pay for it? And
Speaker 1: I said, well, we're starters by not building that anti
Speaker 1: missile system we're building in Alaska that doesn't work and
Speaker 1: it's failed, all of it says. She said, we're building
Speaker 1: it and I said, yeah, we started under George w
Speaker 1: in his first term. And I had billion, said, ollar,
Speaker 1: is they going to that we can pay for healthcare with?
Speaker 1: At least the healthcare would probably work? And so I met,
Speaker 1: I went to d C and I met with Round
Speaker 1: Emmanuel and and he said, what's the matter with Judy?
Speaker 1: And I said, she doesn't know. We're building an outide
Speaker 1: missile system in Alaska, you know, among other things. And
Speaker 1: he said, well, just try not to have a primary.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'm happy to not have a
Speaker 1: primary if everybody else drops out at the prime. But
Speaker 1: but if I run, I'm not running to loose, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I learned to ski, I become instructor of
Speaker 1: the year. I you know, write songs. I write good
Speaker 1: songs that become hits. I I don't like not doing
Speaker 1: things right. And I said, I'm just gonna really and
Speaker 1: he said, okay, well, if you can raise fifty grand
Speaker 1: by January one of two thousand six. This was October
Speaker 1: five when I was talking to him. He said, if
Speaker 1: you could raise fifty grand by the first of the year,
Speaker 1: I'll take you seriously. So I go home and I
Speaker 1: start trying raise money. And you know, they say you
Speaker 1: have to start with your own Rolodex or your own
Speaker 1: phone book, your own you know context. Now it would
Speaker 1: be in my phone because if you can't ask family
Speaker 1: and friends to give you money, who are you going
Speaker 1: to get to do it. You know, you have to
Speaker 1: convince them to practice and be able to convince other people.
Speaker 1: So I did that, and you know it started started
Speaker 1: raising money, but was having a tough go of it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And on December thirty one, New Year's Eve two thousand five,
Speaker 1: a couple hours before Ram's deadline, I had thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars ranged raised and I went on to Act
Speaker 1: Blue and they had at the time it was like
Speaker 1: a two thou limit money. It was the the uh
Speaker 1: the campaign law at the time was, I think you
Speaker 1: were limited to for both the primary and the general
Speaker 1: should put together. So I UH, I got them to
Speaker 1: lift the computer cap on that. Because I was donating
Speaker 1: to myself, I could go over that limit. And I
Speaker 1: put fifteen thousand dollars donations to myself on my American
Speaker 1: Express card at ten o'clock in the evening. So when
Speaker 1: Ron came in the office in January first day, he
Speaker 1: would see I get the fifty grand. And I still
Speaker 1: had a hard time. And I got a really good
Speaker 1: fundraiser after that who helped me a lot. But we're
Speaker 1: still kind of struggling and things didn't clear up until
Speaker 1: Jackson Brown called. You know, I had told my friends
Speaker 1: that I was going to do this, and and late
Speaker 1: late May, I get a call from Jackson. He says,
Speaker 1: how's it going? And I said, honestly, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I can do this. I've I've already got to
Speaker 1: the point where I've written a speech to withdraw from
Speaker 1: the race. I'm thinking I might have to do that
Speaker 1: because I can't. And I told us to a couple
Speaker 1: of people. I told it to Congressman RECENTI rest his soul.
Speaker 1: He was kind of my mentor, and all this political
Speaker 1: stuff and uh and I and I told Jackson this
Speaker 1: and he said, what can I do? And I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh. He said, are there any venues
Speaker 1: I could come in and do a fundraiser for you?
Speaker 1: And I said, We've been thinking about doing some fundraisers
Speaker 1: and converted barns. There's a number of people have offered.
Speaker 1: Did they have a barn that you know has been
Speaker 1: converted to have a wooden floor now? And it's not
Speaker 1: it's not straw on on mud, you know? So? And
Speaker 1: he said, well, I get the weekend of I think
Speaker 1: it was June and sixte I forget what the dates
Speaker 1: were in June of two thousand and six, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna come there for two days. Set up whatever you
Speaker 1: can set up. And we set up four barn concerts
Speaker 1: and uh we sold the tickets for as much as
Speaker 1: we could get for him, and UH and they sold out,
Speaker 1: and UH, Jackson and Pete Seeger came and we had
Speaker 1: a kind of in the round except what was sent
Speaker 1: the line. It was Darr Williams and Jackson and John
Speaker 1: Pou said dark and Pete and me and you know,
Speaker 1: and a couple of hundred people in each barn and uh,
Speaker 1: and the first one, we're in Orange County, in a
Speaker 1: barn somewhere in Warwick, New York or something. And we
Speaker 1: finished and take a bow after everybody's played their songs
Speaker 1: and and people are standing up and cheering as somebody
Speaker 1: in the back goes, take it easy, and Jackson says
Speaker 1: how much and the guy says, what's the max? And
Speaker 1: Mone of my staff goes, the guy says, I passed
Speaker 1: in a check up, and he writes a check for
Speaker 1: so Jackson goes, I'm running down the road trying to listen,
Speaker 1: my lord, and everybody's singing along and the check gets
Speaker 1: passed up, and then somebody else goes the pretender a
Speaker 1: just and says how much and they say how about?
Speaker 1: And they passed the check up and he sings that,
Speaker 1: and everybody sings lying, stands up and cheers. He's auctioning
Speaker 1: songs of And then it happened for like four shows
Speaker 1: in two days, and I had like a couple on
Speaker 1: grand in a weekend, and all of a sudden, people
Speaker 1: started giving me money. Because people won't give money if
Speaker 1: they don't think you can raise money. It's really the
Speaker 1: chicken and the egg. You have to have a demonstrable
Speaker 1: ability to raise money or the people with a really
Speaker 1: big bucks won't open up their checkbook. And Jackson opened
Speaker 1: the door. And that's just an amazing thing. I just
Speaker 1: I would never could have done it, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's you know, it's a little help, my friends.
Speaker 1: It's true in life, of so many things, you really
Speaker 1: need to have people you can count on. And Jackson
Speaker 1: and Bonnie and you know, Graham Nash and David Crosby
Speaker 1: and and James, you know other people just came through
Speaker 1: and uh, and so that's that's really what made it possible.
Speaker 1: You know, I said I didn't have accident and mobile,
Speaker 1: but I had Jackson and Bonnie. It's an amazing thing,
Speaker 1: which are more powerful. They touched your soul and heart. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you get elected, you're in there for two terms. Hey,
Speaker 1: what's the learning curve and what do you learn there?
Speaker 1: In terms of the process. I mean, since you've been there,
Speaker 1: we get these bozos. So what's it like being in
Speaker 1: the belly of the beast? Well, they call it drinking
Speaker 1: from a fire os. I mean, campaigning is the easiest thing.
Speaker 1: I think Donald Trump found that out. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're used to being on stage, which I was, and
Speaker 1: which he was used to being on camera, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like it doesn't bother me to have to improvise.
Speaker 1: I'm used to being heckled. I've played bars with through
Speaker 1: tomatoes at the stage or beer bottles at the stage,
Speaker 1: and I know how to dodge him. So standing up
Speaker 1: and debating somebody doesn't bother me. But once I won,
Speaker 1: you had like an incredible volume of stuff to learn
Speaker 1: and about. You know, well two months you know, I
Speaker 1: was the auction was November second, I think, and and
Speaker 1: I got swear in a January second, so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and then you learn from your staff, each member of
Speaker 1: Congress is only good to such staff. And I was
Speaker 1: fortunate enough to get a sheep of staff who had
Speaker 1: worked as the New York State Office coordinated for Chuck
Speaker 1: Schumer UH Senator Schumer, and and she UH moved to
Speaker 1: Washington and ran my Washington office for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: And I had a UH she found she helped me
Speaker 1: to find when we had resume submitted. Everybody who gets
Speaker 1: elected the Congress have like an avalanche of resumes from
Speaker 1: young people, mostly fresh out of college, who want a
Speaker 1: job somewhere in in government. And they start out as
Speaker 1: interns and they got a lot experience and then they
Speaker 1: get to be paid staffers. And so I had a
Speaker 1: really wonderful staff and and UH in particular, my legislative
Speaker 1: directors were really good. And also UH, I had a
Speaker 1: woman who worked on veterans affairs for me who was
Speaker 1: just had the Midas touch. She knew when to stamp
Speaker 1: on somebody's desk at the v A and went to
Speaker 1: sweet talking, and she got mountains moved at the v
Speaker 1: A and h Speaker Pelosi when her first time around
Speaker 1: a Speaker UM asked me to chair a subcommittee on
Speaker 1: Veteran's Disabilities, which was under the full Veterans Affairs Committee,
Speaker 1: and that's really where I did, by probably my most
Speaker 1: important work. I mean, yes, I contributed to the Affordable
Speaker 1: Character and I voted for it. Yes, I worked on
Speaker 1: the Waxman Marquis Environment and Climate you know, an energy bill.
Speaker 1: But uh, the Veterans Claims Modernization Act of two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: which I was the prime author of, came out of
Speaker 1: my subcommittee, passed unanimously in the House and the Senate.
Speaker 1: Every Republican, every every Democrat voted yes, and President George W.
Speaker 1: Bush sign it into law and called it good government.
Speaker 1: And I was like, wow, blow me over with a
Speaker 1: feather because I kind of ran against George W. And
Speaker 1: But the fact is there is common ground, and there
Speaker 1: are things that make sense, and you just have to
Speaker 1: be able to cut through the noise and find a
Speaker 1: way to talk to people about them and disarmed them.
Speaker 1: It's uh, you know, it's something that I wish more
Speaker 1: people were able to do now, although I would say
Speaker 1: that Joe Biden's seems to be doing pretty well with it. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're elected. Classic question, do you do what is right
Speaker 1: in your heart? Do you worry about what you're obviously
Speaker 1: were about both. But when they're not in the same place,
Speaker 1: do you do what's right? You're already do what your
Speaker 1: constituents want. I believe you do what's right in your heart.
Speaker 1: And uh, most of the time it's the same thing,
Speaker 1: because people elected me because I told them what I
Speaker 1: would do if I got in. So most of the
Speaker 1: time my constituents, most of them agreed with me. UM.
Speaker 1: For example, where it was not the case was the
Speaker 1: bailout of GM and Chrysler and the banks. Uh and
Speaker 1: the Great Recession when yeah, Nancy Polosi called an emergency caucus.
Speaker 1: We were getting ready to leave for a weekend, and
Speaker 1: you know late was it was after President Obama had
Speaker 1: won the election, I believe, if I recall correctly, And
Speaker 1: but George W. Bush was still president. So it was
Speaker 1: the end of two thousand seven. And Uh, she said
Speaker 1: that she had gotten a call from uh Larry Summers
Speaker 1: and it wasn't there somebody it was, It was it
Speaker 1: was George ws uh Paul Vulker, and it was like
Speaker 1: the head of the Fed and the treasure Secretary and
Speaker 1: saying that they need to have an immediate meeting with
Speaker 1: her about urgently needed legislation and she said, well, let's
Speaker 1: have a meeting on Monday were every We're sending everybody
Speaker 1: home for the weekend, and and then we'll talk about
Speaker 1: it money. She said. They said to her matter speaker,
Speaker 1: we may not have an economy by monday, and and
Speaker 1: she said, uh, come over now. And they came over
Speaker 1: and they told her what was going on in terms
Speaker 1: of the collapse of the banks and Lemon Brothers going under,
Speaker 1: and how the rest of there was like a bunch
Speaker 1: of dominoes getting ready to fall, and GM and Chrysler
Speaker 1: getting ready to go bankrupt. And and uh so we
Speaker 1: stayed through the weekend, and everybody in the house stayed
Speaker 1: through the weekend, and we pushed put together this. What
Speaker 1: started as a two page bill that the Treasury and
Speaker 1: the bed brought to Nancy became like a hundred pages
Speaker 1: with various caveats and all the loans being paid back,
Speaker 1: you know, all GM and Chrysler and the banks, everybody
Speaker 1: paid back their loans with interest to the treasury. But
Speaker 1: still it was not something that a lot of people
Speaker 1: wanted to do. But people, you know, people don't feel
Speaker 1: that great about about banks making gazillions of dollars when
Speaker 1: times are good, and charging everybody in armor a leg,
Speaker 1: and and not paying enough interest, and and charging too
Speaker 1: much interest, and then all of a sudden coming with
Speaker 1: their hand out when things are bad, and uh. And
Speaker 1: people felt kind of the same way about GM and Chrysler.
Speaker 1: Ford didn't ask for Baila, GM and Chrysler, and so
Speaker 1: we wound up putting those things together. And I voted
Speaker 1: for them. But my friend Congress Memory Sinshi from Ulster County,
Speaker 1: New York, he um, he was against it. He voted
Speaker 1: no both of those bills. And I said why And
Speaker 1: he said, because if we spent all these billions of
Speaker 1: dollars to bail out the banks and bail out g
Speaker 1: M and Chrysler, we will have no money left for healthcare.
Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, but I didn't come here to
Speaker 1: watch a train wreck, you know. And the way it's
Speaker 1: explained to me, if the banks go down, nobody's credit
Speaker 1: card wild work or defit card would work. The banks
Speaker 1: will close the lobby. Because you want people to make withdrawals.
Speaker 1: What's the average person going to do? You know, everybody's
Speaker 1: going to If we could say let the bankers go
Speaker 1: to hell in a hand basket, that people might agree
Speaker 1: with that. But if everybody's going to hell in a
Speaker 1: handbasket with them, that's not what I came here for.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I had people yelling at me
Speaker 1: in my district. I had a restaurant omer and tort
Speaker 1: Jervis all the way up by the Delaware River and
Speaker 1: the western part of my district saying to me, where's
Speaker 1: my bailout? How could you vote to bail them out?
Speaker 1: I've had this restaurant my whole life and struggled and
Speaker 1: where's my bail you know? And people were upset, but
Speaker 1: I think they would have been as much or more
Speaker 1: upset if the other thing had happened. So in that case,
Speaker 1: I had to do what was my conscious was telling
Speaker 1: me to do. Okay, so you've had hit records, Ski
Speaker 1: Instructor of the Year elected to Congress. Muse, what are
Speaker 1: you most proud of? Oh boy, Chuck Pluckin said, when
Speaker 1: Johanna and I had our daughter. Uh, now you can
Speaker 1: say you really produce something. And I guess I'm really
Speaker 1: most proud of my daughter and my granddaughter. But but
Speaker 1: I think you know, writing songs that people sing on
Speaker 1: the other side of the world in other languages, that
Speaker 1: you know, Johannes thought that when we toured Japan and
Speaker 1: the whole audience would be singing along fonetically to every song.
Speaker 1: Some of them they understood I think probably some. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the people and especially in the cities
Speaker 1: like Tokyo, understand English as well, but as singing it phonetically.
Speaker 1: But but that means you've reached beyond your your family
Speaker 1: and your friends. There's no relation between me, at least
Speaker 1: UH and UH and these audiences in Japan. So that's
Speaker 1: incredibly gratifying. Okay, this has been wonderful. I know you
Speaker 1: have to hit the road imminently, so I'm gonna let
Speaker 1: you go. John, thanks so much for doing this. You're welcome.
Speaker 1: Bath thanks for asking me, and I'll I will look
Speaker 1: forward to talking. Maybe we just finished our first Orleans
Speaker 1: Christmas album and it will be out in October. Maybe Lance,
Speaker 1: my partner, Lance Hopping, and I can speak to you
Speaker 1: about that if you have time in the fall. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens. We'll certainly look for you on
Speaker 1: the road until next time. This is Bob left Sex