Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today are Jimmy Buckett and Matt mcinally. We
Speaker 1: worked together and separately and make a great team. Gentlemen. Hello, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk with you. Mac. Where exactly are you
Speaker 1: right now? I'm in the Attic in Nashville, Tennessee. Uh,
Speaker 1: in a little overdub room where I try to make
Speaker 1: joyful noise. It's a regular place for me. Yeah. Do
Speaker 1: you live in Nashville or uh? You have a house
Speaker 1: in Mississippi, Alabama between here and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. My, uh,
Speaker 1: just cross pollin ad a couple of a couple of
Speaker 1: recording studios with beds in them. And for those who
Speaker 1: were uninitiated, how far is Muscle Shoals from Nashville? It's
Speaker 1: about two and a half hours, or maybe a third
Speaker 1: of a song if you're writing, you know, I tend
Speaker 1: to drive with my knees and play a mandolin back
Speaker 1: and forth and so. But but it's about a two
Speaker 1: and a half hour regular drive. And Jimmy, where are
Speaker 1: you right now? I am in sag Harbor, New York,
Speaker 1: Bob at my house here, summer house, and have you
Speaker 1: the entire coronavirus house now, well that's my question. Have
Speaker 1: you been there the whole time during since March in
Speaker 1: the lockdown? No? Actually, I got locked down in California
Speaker 1: for about almost three and a half months. I was
Speaker 1: visiting my kids when it all happened, and there two
Speaker 1: of my children are living out there, and we have
Speaker 1: a house out there to where my wife likes to
Speaker 1: go for like January April, so we were there, so
Speaker 1: we just stayed and then we came back here in May.
Speaker 1: And to what degree are you social distancing lockdown quarantining
Speaker 1: near in sag Harbor. I am. I'm at a bubble here,
Speaker 1: but it's a bit it's a pretty cool bubble, so
Speaker 1: I can do things that I want to do. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like being at camp. But to me,
Speaker 1: it's like, uh, you know, I've been talking about taking
Speaker 1: a year off for forty two years, but this is
Speaker 1: not what I intended to do. But you know, there
Speaker 1: are some silver linings in it that my kids are
Speaker 1: all here and I probably wouldn't see them this much
Speaker 1: ever for the rest of my life. And it's been
Speaker 1: great and uh and busy, and thanks to zoom and
Speaker 1: to Matt, we've been doing a lot of stuff out
Speaker 1: of this is a model my studio here in tach Harvard.
Speaker 1: So we're doing a lot of zoom and the stuff
Speaker 1: from Marguet Redeville Radio and margat Revill TV. Now you
Speaker 1: mentioned camp. Did you go to summer camp? Yes, nothing
Speaker 1: like this. Summer camp to me was in what Bellefontaine, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and a in a mosquito infested by you with the
Speaker 1: dormitory with ex World War two beds in it. You know.
Speaker 1: But I would look into my Boy Scout magazine and
Speaker 1: see these beautiful pictures of camps in Vermont and Maine.
Speaker 1: You had to sell Rick magazines to win a win
Speaker 1: a trip to those camps. I never made it. So
Speaker 1: one of my kids went off to one of those
Speaker 1: camps up here. You know, we dropped them off. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stay at least have breakfast because it looks really good. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the camp you went to, was it a boy
Speaker 1: Scout camp? No, it was a Catholic school camp, Camp Gravolin. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was like where all the parochial schools but from
Speaker 1: Mobile to Pascagoula to like Buluxie that's where you all
Speaker 1: went camping. And were there girls there? Yes, there were,
Speaker 1: and wrote life is just a time. No, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a top much. Cousin Baxter went to camp with me,
Speaker 1: but he got homestick after two days and I stayed
Speaker 1: the whole two weeks because I knew I had a
Speaker 1: little more sensitive benchure than he did. Well, I always felt,
Speaker 1: you know, I would someone said you want to go
Speaker 1: to summer camp for the rest of your life, I'd
Speaker 1: make that deal. But that's where I had my first
Speaker 1: real experiences with girls. How about you? No, No, this
Speaker 1: is tackling, Bob. Come on, you know this is another
Speaker 1: day in another time. I waited till I finished high
Speaker 1: school and moved to New Orleans in the French border,
Speaker 1: and I didn't and I made up for a lot
Speaker 1: of lost time. Well that begs the question, what's your
Speaker 1: view on Catholicism today? Well, uh, you know, I gotta
Speaker 1: say to this about that um being taught by the
Speaker 1: Sisters of Mercy and then the Jesuit's. Uh. They had
Speaker 1: kind of a superiority complex to the other orders in
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church, and they were educators and they were
Speaker 1: warrior priests, so I went along with it for a while.
Speaker 1: But then not now to what degreed you believe you're
Speaker 1: negatively inhibited or affected by your Catholic upbringing. Uh, let's
Speaker 1: see the good things. Where when we were alter boys,
Speaker 1: we had had a friend Ricky Benson, and we they
Speaker 1: they encourage you to have contest to say, you know,
Speaker 1: served as many masses as you could, you can win
Speaker 1: a Red Shandy second baseman's and mid for doing it,
Speaker 1: and I want it. And we served more masses during
Speaker 1: went than anyone. And then we got good at funerals,
Speaker 1: and so we got out of school to go serve funerals.
Speaker 1: So I was already making a high stuff anyway about it.
Speaker 1: Red shandyd you you who pronounced it better than I did?
Speaker 1: Were you a big baseball player as a second baseman?
Speaker 1: Red Shandy says, one of my heroes, Red Shandyson and
Speaker 1: Henry Aaron was from Mobile, so of course he was
Speaker 1: a big hero. I just remember was in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: two with Bobby Richardson. You know, caught the lines right
Speaker 1: from the Pirates to in the World Series. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, okay, So Mac, what you do during the
Speaker 1: summer growing up well, we uh we raised catfish uh
Speaker 1: in Mississippi is uh so we were We were farmers
Speaker 1: on several levels. We had about a five acre garden
Speaker 1: because my dad, you know, was sadistic that way. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of bending over, a lot of full of
Speaker 1: peanuts and potatoes. But we we raised cat fishings and
Speaker 1: that kind of took the joy out of fishing for
Speaker 1: me for the most part, because my dad would volunteer. Oh, Michael,
Speaker 1: go down the hill and catch a mess of fish
Speaker 1: for Mrs Woodruff and dress him and bring him up
Speaker 1: there and put them in the refrigerator. And that's that's
Speaker 1: a few hours work. That that sort of takes a
Speaker 1: little bit of the joy out of fishing. So consequently
Speaker 1: I took a guitar down the hill and entertained myself
Speaker 1: with that, mostly me in the shade, avoiding serious work
Speaker 1: playing guitar. That was pretty much my my childhood. I
Speaker 1: actually worked on a farm picking vegetables. Two days. That
Speaker 1: was enough for me. It's not where where was the farm, Bob.
Speaker 1: This was in Fairfield, Connecticut. You know, you need a
Speaker 1: summer job. Remember the guy next to me had a
Speaker 1: transistor in his pocket. But never again. I didn't even
Speaker 1: get paid the second day. I just went home. Forget
Speaker 1: it about raising raising catfish? Was that your father's mean business? Now,
Speaker 1: my dad was a school teacher and my mom was
Speaker 1: a gospel piano player, and he was a terrible business man.
Speaker 1: We raised catfish and gave him away. I don't think
Speaker 1: we ever sold a catfish, not one single catfish. He
Speaker 1: just had. You just had me dressed him like I
Speaker 1: was the entire staff, and and give him away. So
Speaker 1: so patients. I learned a lot of patients from my
Speaker 1: dad A little bit slower. How do you raise catfish? Well,
Speaker 1: you you go down to a to a lake that
Speaker 1: you either have or you made man made. We we
Speaker 1: hit an artesian well looking for a lake and made
Speaker 1: a couple of little lakes on the We had maybe
Speaker 1: thirty five forty acres and uh and and you you
Speaker 1: put catfish fingerlings in there and you feed them puring
Speaker 1: a catfish chow, which was another one of my chores.
Speaker 1: And uh and at that point, fishing is not really
Speaker 1: hard because they will just follow my ass around. You know.
Speaker 1: All I gotta do is walk around the lake and
Speaker 1: there's a dark cloud of catfish following me everywhere. I go,
Speaker 1: I could throw a raw treble hook out there and
Speaker 1: catch three fish on it. It was not really a
Speaker 1: great challenge other than I knew I was gonna have
Speaker 1: to dress him and give them to anybody, So I
Speaker 1: didn't even really want to catch him in the first place.
Speaker 1: But that's, you know, another story. But that's that's how
Speaker 1: it works. If you're in a catfish child, you gotta
Speaker 1: you gotta have it. Okay. So how many kids were
Speaker 1: there in your family. I was the oldest of three.
Speaker 1: I had two younger sisters, and uh, and I kind
Speaker 1: of was I kind of tormented them. I was probably
Speaker 1: not a good big brother. Uh Mississippi tradition, I'm guessing, uh, well,
Speaker 1: not big from Mississippi. What what is the tradition with
Speaker 1: older brothers. Well, I know that I pretty much they've
Speaker 1: come to like me in as an adult, my sisters,
Speaker 1: but it took a long time, took a few decades.
Speaker 1: I remember I remember spreading my baby sisters fingers out
Speaker 1: on the table with a dart and just kind of
Speaker 1: going between her fingers super fast, like like it was
Speaker 1: pulp fiction or something like that. And I said, if
Speaker 1: you don't move, it's gonna be fine, uh this, you know,
Speaker 1: I thought I knew this guy really did. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: just bring I'm bringing out some bad stuff, you know.
Speaker 1: But you aread cat cat child and sticking Darcia. I
Speaker 1: I was the oldest of three and had two sisters.
Speaker 1: That's nice to mom. Well I'm nice now, I know. Okay,
Speaker 1: since we're into this. Your two sisters, mac or how
Speaker 1: much younger than you? They're each were stacked in three
Speaker 1: year increments. So I'm I'm three years and six years
Speaker 1: older than my sisters, and you, Jimmy, I am two
Speaker 1: years older than my oldest sister and ten years older
Speaker 1: than my younger sister. Well, this begs the question. Usually
Speaker 1: the oldest, never mind a male, is the family favorite,
Speaker 1: and all the hopes and dreams of the parents are
Speaker 1: in the oldest and their supportive It was that your
Speaker 1: experience of the oldest of the oldest female. My my
Speaker 1: oldest sister was the dream girl. And uh, I was
Speaker 1: supposed to go and followed the buffet NaN's uh uh
Speaker 1: calling of going to the sea, and I was supposed
Speaker 1: to gone to the you know, enaval academy. That didn't
Speaker 1: work out. Okay, so you're the middle kid now, that's
Speaker 1: what I thought. But all the hopes and dreams were
Speaker 1: in the middle, sister, that pigs the pigs. The question
Speaker 1: who dominated your family at home? Your father, your mother, Well,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a mixer. And my mother worked.
Speaker 1: She worked, She ran labor relations at a shipyard and mobile.
Speaker 1: My dad was a project engineer home building ships. So
Speaker 1: they both worked and uh, we were banging, you know,
Speaker 1: so they kind of shared these. My father was a
Speaker 1: disciplinary and my mother was the artist. Okay, and were
Speaker 1: you this was a different era where you kind of
Speaker 1: a free range kid, where we were troublemaker, were a
Speaker 1: goody goody. Now I was like I was still you know,
Speaker 1: I was still an altar boy until I was like
Speaker 1: in high school. And know, I didn't I didn't do
Speaker 1: much and we spent a lot of time. I had
Speaker 1: no brothers, like I said, So I had cousins in
Speaker 1: Pascor Google. Uh, two cousins, the three actually, and I
Speaker 1: would go down to where my grandfather and grandmother lived
Speaker 1: and all the cousins would would go there. It was
Speaker 1: only but you know, my dad was from Pasca Google
Speaker 1: and my mom from Gulfport, so I had family in
Speaker 1: close proximity. But it was all on the Gulf coast,
Speaker 1: so we did a lot of moving between that, and
Speaker 1: then we go over and meet and see the wicked
Speaker 1: part of the family married into an Italian kind of
Speaker 1: low rent mafia group in New Orleans. Okay, And were
Speaker 1: you a good student? I made two a's, uh, and
Speaker 1: in high school it wasn't that interested in. One of
Speaker 1: them was an art and that was the the semester
Speaker 1: that we did float decoration from Marty Grath and type
Speaker 1: I did. I made a and type in him and
Speaker 1: a and float decoration. So that probably it says a
Speaker 1: little about me. Hey, And that was the best course
Speaker 1: I took in high school in retrospect with computers, just
Speaker 1: for just once again for the ignorant northerners, of which
Speaker 1: I include myself. How far is momobile from New Orleans? Okay?
Speaker 1: Going back to you, Mac, So your father was a teacher.
Speaker 1: What did he teach? Uh? You know it? I kind
Speaker 1: of caught it in a in a poor loop. He was.
Speaker 1: He was the elementary school principle when I was in
Speaker 1: elementary school, So I was what was that like being
Speaker 1: the son of the principle. I was watched, I was
Speaker 1: watched really close Uh, and I got beat up by
Speaker 1: about twenty kids the first day that I went to
Speaker 1: school because and then then once once they've realized my
Speaker 1: dad was the principal, it didn't never happen again. But uh,
Speaker 1: all the way through school, he would move up. You know,
Speaker 1: he moved up to Junior High when I went to
Speaker 1: junior High, and then he was a sister principal high
Speaker 1: school when I was in high school. And I I
Speaker 1: actually dropped out of high school to put to play
Speaker 1: in a band when I was in the lefth grade.
Speaker 1: And and I had to had to make a presentation
Speaker 1: to my dad to get permission. Uh, as a teacher,
Speaker 1: that was a pretty good deal. I had a little
Speaker 1: pie chart I had, you know it was it didn't
Speaker 1: I had a little pie chart? Yeah? Yeah, okay. And
Speaker 1: at what point did your father okay when you sold that?
Speaker 1: Was it like I'm done or if this doesn't work out,
Speaker 1: I'm coming back. No? No, Honestly, I wouldn't have done
Speaker 1: it without his permission because I knew he was going
Speaker 1: to catch the hell for me dropping out of school
Speaker 1: because you know, I was a teacher's kid. You're not
Speaker 1: supposed to drop out of school. You know, but I am.
Speaker 1: Probably if you talk to musicians every day, Bob, you're
Speaker 1: you're not going to talk to very many that are
Speaker 1: what their parents wanted them to be. I'm a musician.
Speaker 1: That is what my parents wanted me to be. They
Speaker 1: probably envisioned that I would be a youth minister or
Speaker 1: music minister at a church somewhere when they but they
Speaker 1: wanted me to a musician from the time I hit
Speaker 1: the ground. One one of my grandmothers said he's got
Speaker 1: the call to preach, which is, you know, a noble
Speaker 1: thing in North Mississippi. But the other grandmother, which I'm
Speaker 1: very grateful for, said no, he's got the call to
Speaker 1: preach music. The second grandmother, we're just about the same age.
Speaker 1: So to what degree were you affected by the Beatles
Speaker 1: or were you a big musician already before that? Well,
Speaker 1: we we were in sort of a valley, and I
Speaker 1: didn't really have much in the way of radio except
Speaker 1: we could get radio late at night, so I never
Speaker 1: I didn't hear we did gospel music at church, we
Speaker 1: did played gospel music at the house my mom. That's
Speaker 1: how we entertained ourselves. We were one of the last
Speaker 1: families in my hometown to get a television. So our
Speaker 1: entertainment in the evening, maybe three nights a week, was
Speaker 1: my mom would start playing piano, and our neighbors would
Speaker 1: just come over to the house with whatever instruments they had.
Speaker 1: They didn't necessarily fit together. It's just literally like the
Speaker 1: old joyful noise biblical thing. It might be a dulcimmer in,
Speaker 1: a soprano, saxophone, disparent instruments, just all clanging and smoking
Speaker 1: cigarettes and drinking coffee and singing songs. That's that's what
Speaker 1: happened in my house, like two or three nights a week.
Speaker 1: So actually, my first record I ever bought was Let
Speaker 1: It Be. In the Beatles had already broken up when
Speaker 1: you know, you know I got a Beatles. Yeah, mine
Speaker 1: went backwards. I started with Let It Be and went backwards,
Speaker 1: you know, because I was late to the game. I've
Speaker 1: been playing music. I mean I was playing. I was
Speaker 1: playing in bars before I had ever even really heard
Speaker 1: a lot of the songs that we were playing. Okay,
Speaker 1: were you a good student? Uh? I was a ridiculously
Speaker 1: good student until about the seventh grade, and when I
Speaker 1: was thirteen, I started playing in Honky talks at the
Speaker 1: State line. I played in church up till then and
Speaker 1: from thirteen. My my home county is a dry county.
Speaker 1: There was no legal alcohol sales, No, no honky talks. No,
Speaker 1: you couldn't buy a beer untilteen. You couldn't buy a
Speaker 1: beer in my hometown. But since you wrote about it,
Speaker 1: where is your hometown? Well, uh, Bell Mint, Mississippi, the
Speaker 1: very northeast corner of Mississippi is my hometown, not far
Speaker 1: from Tupelo, where Elvis came from. A matter of fact,
Speaker 1: we're we're sort of cousin in laws. Elvis and I.
Speaker 1: My aunt Maverine mcinally married Flavis Presley. A little bit slower,
Speaker 1: tell that part again. Well, Flavius Pressley, who was the
Speaker 1: first cousin of Elvis, married my aunt Maverin mcinnally. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so we were sort of cousin in laws, like,
Speaker 1: which is not rare in North Mississippi. Pretty much everybody
Speaker 1: we are cousins. Yeah, we've run back, Yeah we have.
Speaker 1: We have we have a blood connection, which is also Mississippi.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, Uh, Tupelo is where Elvis came from. Uh.
Speaker 1: But he got all the he had all the musical
Speaker 1: ambition in the family. I got maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: of the talent, but it was left, when did you
Speaker 1: start playing an instrument? In what instrument was that? It
Speaker 1: was piano first for me and my mom was she
Speaker 1: was a great gospel piano player, and she played both
Speaker 1: by ear and and the old fashioned shape notes, which
Speaker 1: is a whole that you could do a whole other
Speaker 1: podcast on shape notes. Sometimes I don't even know what
Speaker 1: that is? What is that? Uh? They there was a
Speaker 1: shape for every note of do REMI fossil la t do.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a triangle is dough and you know
Speaker 1: there's a different shape. And so it's very similar to
Speaker 1: the Nashville number system basically, like like if you're in
Speaker 1: the key of C, C is one in Nashville, and
Speaker 1: C F and G is one, four and five. Well,
Speaker 1: the shape notes, you can look at the shape notes
Speaker 1: and you can play in any key. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if you're looking at if the triangle is one, you
Speaker 1: can just you can just look at those shapes and play.
Speaker 1: My my mother played that way, but she wanted me
Speaker 1: to learn traditional classical, so she put me in what
Speaker 1: was to me much more boring piano lessons because she
Speaker 1: wanted me to learn correctly in a way that she
Speaker 1: felt like she had not. And I took those from
Speaker 1: like the fourth grade to about the sixth grade. And
Speaker 1: then I negotiated the guitar because you can take the
Speaker 1: guitar to the lake, and we didn't have air conditioning
Speaker 1: in our house and I wanted out. Uh So the
Speaker 1: guitar was a good trade. And and you know went
Speaker 1: from there. Okay, two questions. Were you a popular kid? No? No,
Speaker 1: I was an alien? Uh So are you more of
Speaker 1: a loner? Are you a guy who fits in with
Speaker 1: a group or what? I like everybody. I've always kind
Speaker 1: of gotten along with everybody. But but I honestly say
Speaker 1: I never really felt so much like I fit in.
Speaker 1: I wasn't part of any click. Uh And I and
Speaker 1: I Jimmy will tell you I'm pretty easily entertained. You
Speaker 1: can you can leave me on a porch for a
Speaker 1: week and I won't do anything. You said, find something
Speaker 1: to eat? You know, pretty bad. But he he won't
Speaker 1: wear a hat. And what is the what's behind that mac? Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's twofold one. As I an enormous head. I'm
Speaker 1: a big guy. They wanted me to play football in
Speaker 1: junior high school, and the high school did not own
Speaker 1: a helmet that would go on my head. I had
Speaker 1: this sort of tearful meeting with the coach. The high
Speaker 1: school coach came in there and said, son, you're a
Speaker 1: big boy, and we'd like to have you out there
Speaker 1: on the defensive line if you can get any one
Speaker 1: of these high school helmets on that junior high head
Speaker 1: of yours, I want you out there on the field.
Speaker 1: And uh, And sure enough, I sat there in the
Speaker 1: high school locker room when I pushed as hard as
Speaker 1: I could on every helmet at Belmont High School loaned
Speaker 1: and I got one down to maybe my forehead, and
Speaker 1: the fast face mask was actually all the way up
Speaker 1: above my hairline. And I go running out on the
Speaker 1: field and he's like, no, that's not on. I'm sorry son.
Speaker 1: I couldn't play football even in junior high because there
Speaker 1: was no helmet that would go on my head. Now,
Speaker 1: if someone sees you now, you do have quite a
Speaker 1: head of hair, quite a bush. Yeah, we had crew
Speaker 1: cuts back then, and it's the same. It might as
Speaker 1: well say spaulding up there is. It's just a big round.
Speaker 1: I would love to say there's a brain in there.
Speaker 1: That's the it matches it. But it's just grizzle. It's
Speaker 1: just a big hit full of gristle. And then just
Speaker 1: one final question on this topic. You played Hockey Talks.
Speaker 1: We always here and we see in movies even the
Speaker 1: Blues Brothers of the chicken wire and people throwing stuff.
Speaker 1: Is that real? I never had the chicken Go ahead,
Speaker 1: Jimy go, you take the first one. I'll take one too, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and uh I wrote I wrote it in a song
Speaker 1: called the pastor Google Run one time about because I
Speaker 1: had one of my uncles was a merchant seaman and
Speaker 1: he was kind of a little a bit of a
Speaker 1: wild person. And so he got off of a boat
Speaker 1: one time and came in two mobile and said, and
Speaker 1: as my dad saw, I said, well he maybe you
Speaker 1: need Jimmy to take to try to be the rest
Speaker 1: of the way at Pasca Google. These were in those days,
Speaker 1: and so I thought, and he had like a Triumph
Speaker 1: t R three because in whether it was stole owner
Speaker 1: or there, or they were after me or whatever. But
Speaker 1: I drove him to that and in the state line
Speaker 1: he stopped at every bar and that was the first
Speaker 1: place I saw chicken waring a bar in front of
Speaker 1: a van. And it's the first place where the guy
Speaker 1: there was a drunken there. I'll never forget this. And
Speaker 1: they threw the guy out and he came back with
Speaker 1: the chainsaw. I started cutting the bar whoa, and we
Speaker 1: got into Triumph and I drove him home. And I've
Speaker 1: been behind chicken wear too, Yes, spat Muse Louisiana and
Speaker 1: I can remember that yet, Mac, you wanted to add
Speaker 1: that or did Jimmy cover cover that? Well? No, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna add a little bit because it's it's it relates
Speaker 1: to him. I after after growing up only in church,
Speaker 1: I've never been to a hockey talnk. You had to
Speaker 1: go across the Tennessee line to get the one, which
Speaker 1: is about an hour away. I was thirteen. This guy
Speaker 1: came to our house and knocked on the door and
Speaker 1: introduced him off to my parents and told him that
Speaker 1: he had a band called Dean and the Reefers. Get that, Jimmy,
Speaker 1: that was the first band I was ever remember I
Speaker 1: of Dean and You were not my first reefer band. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the thirteen years old and he he had heard that
Speaker 1: I was a good piano player, and his piano player
Speaker 1: had quit. I was actually not a good piano player,
Speaker 1: but he had heard I was, and he made a
Speaker 1: pitch to my parents to let me play five nights
Speaker 1: a week at Iron City, Tennessee, at a place called
Speaker 1: the Circle E Club. And I had to go through
Speaker 1: muscle shoals to get there. But at any rate, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm figuring my my dad's about to throw this guy
Speaker 1: off the porch. Because my parents had never been to
Speaker 1: a honkey talk, We're never ever gonna go. All the
Speaker 1: years I played honkey talks, so they would never come
Speaker 1: and hear me play. They wouldn't walk in the door
Speaker 1: of one of those places. They were very religious. It
Speaker 1: was not their deal. And I'm thinking they're about to
Speaker 1: kick this guy out. But he he kept talking and
Speaker 1: he said, well, I'm a good Christian man, and I know,
Speaker 1: I know you want your boy to be a musician.
Speaker 1: He needs to learn to play with other musicians. And
Speaker 1: I will drive down here and pick him up, and
Speaker 1: I'll take him up to Tennessee and i'll bring him
Speaker 1: home and I'll make sure he behaves himself and uh,
Speaker 1: and I'll pay him two hundred and fifty dollars a week.
Speaker 1: And I was thirteen years old in nineteen seventy, and
Speaker 1: that was more money than my dad was making teaching
Speaker 1: school in Mississippi in nineteen seventies, more money than my
Speaker 1: mom was making at the Wrangler factory in Belmont making
Speaker 1: blue jeans. And something in that guy's presentation made an
Speaker 1: impression on my parents. And that Friday night, I was
Speaker 1: at the Circle E Club in Iron City, Tennessee, wearing
Speaker 1: a lime green leisure suit that was a hand me
Speaker 1: down from George Jones's band that did not fit, and
Speaker 1: I was playing songs that I've never heard in my
Speaker 1: life on the piano. And although I didn't have chicken
Speaker 1: wire there, there were live chainsaws in that club. There
Speaker 1: were a couple of guys that would rev up their
Speaker 1: chainsaw instead of applauding at the end of the song.
Speaker 1: So I was afraid, you know, I was. I was.
Speaker 1: It was like deliverance or something. I was a ready
Speaker 1: to get off stage. We would take a break and
Speaker 1: I would just go hide behind the piano and uh
Speaker 1: and wait un till he's played again. But but I
Speaker 1: made two or fifty bucks a week, got home about
Speaker 1: two thirty in the morning, and got up and went
Speaker 1: to school. Of seventh thirty in the seventh grade. Wow, Jimmy,
Speaker 1: So you went to Catholic school. Yeah, all twelve years. Okay,
Speaker 1: what kind of student were you? I was. I was
Speaker 1: an average student. And there there's something I loved history,
Speaker 1: and I would things that I that inspired me. I
Speaker 1: like I like in English, I like reading. I like
Speaker 1: reading all the classics. And so then that was my
Speaker 1: mother was the reader and the family and she at
Speaker 1: that point wanted me to be a you know, another
Speaker 1: Mississippi literary person, I think, because she adored the people
Speaker 1: like you do are wealthy and uh and and William
Speaker 1: Farker and people like that, and she made us read them.
Speaker 1: And then you know, and then the and the music
Speaker 1: you listen to is your parents music, because this is
Speaker 1: before there even and so they had great musical taste.
Speaker 1: And you know, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Rosemary Clooney, people
Speaker 1: like that that I heard. But Frank Sinatra I really
Speaker 1: liked as a kid. And then my grandfather would bring
Speaker 1: him all records because he was still a captain of
Speaker 1: a steamship and he his run was from New Orleans
Speaker 1: to uh down to the Caribbean to Argentina and Brazil,
Speaker 1: and he loved Clipso and Bossanova music, and he'd buy
Speaker 1: albums down there and bring them to my mom. And
Speaker 1: so that's where I first heard Caribbean music, was those
Speaker 1: records my grandfather broke back to my mother. And at
Speaker 1: what point did you start playing an instrument? I didn't
Speaker 1: play the guitar until I went to I went off
Speaker 1: my first year in college to Harvard University of Plays
Speaker 1: I did not want to go to, and i'd I'd
Speaker 1: blown the whole thing with the Naval Academy and uh,
Speaker 1: well wait, how serious was this Naval Academy thing? Well,
Speaker 1: it was serious in my parents eyes, but obviously not
Speaker 1: in seriously it should have been. And I, you know,
Speaker 1: the good news now is, uh, I'm kind of a
Speaker 1: part time uh instructor on on offshore sailing as as
Speaker 1: like what they call auxiliary at the Naval Academy. So
Speaker 1: I kind of I went from not men here to
Speaker 1: get in to being a sailing teacher there. So I'm good.
Speaker 1: Did you actually applied? Yes, you had to have a
Speaker 1: congressional appointment in those days, which I think you still did,
Speaker 1: and that was all politics, do it? You know? My?
Speaker 1: You know my? Like I said, my mom and dad
Speaker 1: worked at the ship, right, they knew some people had connections,
Speaker 1: but I blew it on the tests. And then so
Speaker 1: I went away to Auburn. What what what? What before
Speaker 1: you get there? You want to go to the Naval Ecademy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I guess not bad enough, huh. And so I
Speaker 1: wound up at Auburn, and um, you know, it's one
Speaker 1: of those first things. And I still was a pretty
Speaker 1: shy guy there. I mean, I you know, I went
Speaker 1: to one of those pledge parties plitched, you know, in
Speaker 1: the opening of school at this fraternity house, and there
Speaker 1: was a guy playing guitar, and all the girls were
Speaker 1: rather interested in what he was singing. And I noticed that.
Speaker 1: And and so when it when it came time to
Speaker 1: you know, pledge of fraternity, I knew nobody there. Knew
Speaker 1: nothing about the fraternity system because we never had those
Speaker 1: in in in Catholic school. So I said, you know,
Speaker 1: this guy was playing the guitar. I like this place.
Speaker 1: I'll pledge here. So ironically enough, when I did, they
Speaker 1: they gave you a room assignment in the house. And
Speaker 1: my room assignments wound up being with the guy named
Speaker 1: Johnny young Blood who was the guy playing on the guitar.
Speaker 1: So he I walked in the room, I show him
Speaker 1: a little and you know, they bought guitars and I
Speaker 1: kind of faith seeing Elvis songs and my parents parties
Speaker 1: or Marty raw Thing, but I never really played until
Speaker 1: I got to know Johnny young Blood And I said,
Speaker 1: how do you do that? How do you do And
Speaker 1: he said, I only know three course G, C, and D,
Speaker 1: and I would teach me those cords and that's about
Speaker 1: all I'll learned it all and with those three chords,
Speaker 1: and it worked out, and Johnny young Wood was ironically enough, uh,
Speaker 1: I was clear. I was, you know, doing some other
Speaker 1: chores around her, cleaning out guests and things that we're
Speaker 1: doing now. And I looked through a whole stack of
Speaker 1: letters that I had because I always used to keep
Speaker 1: all the letters, and I had letters from Johnny Youngwood
Speaker 1: because by that time he had had a little trouble
Speaker 1: in his life and had an alcohol problem and and
Speaker 1: was up and was in jail from anslaughter, but then
Speaker 1: cleaned up around the program in prison, and I got
Speaker 1: letters from him there. I don't know if he's still
Speaker 1: allowed now, but I'm gonna find out. I read that
Speaker 1: three days ago. Okay, your dream of going to the
Speaker 1: academy is dashed. Prior to picking up the guitar, did
Speaker 1: you have a vision what you wanted to do with
Speaker 1: your life? No, I knew. I knew I was in
Speaker 1: serious trouble because I did not tell my parents. I
Speaker 1: flunked out in the UH after in the middle of
Speaker 1: the second quarter. I knew it was not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: And by then I was playing with Johnny, and Johnny
Speaker 1: had had gigs in Panama City, so I kind of
Speaker 1: made a deal with him. I said, you know, the
Speaker 1: little bit of money my parents were sending me for school,
Speaker 1: I said, I'll let them keep sending it to you
Speaker 1: and I'll split it with it, but I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: down to Panama Sit and try to get into junior
Speaker 1: college down there because Vietnam was bubbling up and I
Speaker 1: can work down there. So that was my motus Opperremdi
Speaker 1: and uh it did not work out, and I kept
Speaker 1: trying it out at other junior colleges, UH that, and
Speaker 1: and finally it wasn't happening, and I knew I had
Speaker 1: to go home and face my father. And I drove
Speaker 1: normally I'd always drive Highway Downy along the coast because
Speaker 1: that's where all my family lived. But I was so
Speaker 1: depressed about what was happening. I said, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: home and join the Marines and go to Vietnam. I'm
Speaker 1: just blown everything. And Uh. On the way there, on
Speaker 1: the back road US eleven, I went to stop light
Speaker 1: and I look up and I see a sign says
Speaker 1: Pearl River Junior College. And there's this very charming and
Speaker 1: very pretty girl walking through the cross walk and smiled
Speaker 1: and wait at me. I went, I don't know, So
Speaker 1: I pulled in. I went to the admissions that what
Speaker 1: does it what does it take to get in here?
Speaker 1: And they said a point five nine overall, and I went,
Speaker 1: I got a point six and it was It turns
Speaker 1: out it was a flunky school for everybody from l
Speaker 1: s U or Old Miss or anybody. So they were
Speaker 1: in junior college to stay out of Vietnam. And I
Speaker 1: signed up and I went to Pearl River Junior College
Speaker 1: and there was a guy there I started playing with.
Speaker 1: So I continued playing there, met people, then went to
Speaker 1: the University of Southern Mississippi just up the road, and
Speaker 1: by then I've been in New Orleans kind of playing
Speaker 1: and hoot Danny Knights for free, you know, for for
Speaker 1: the pickup nights. And I at that point New Orleans
Speaker 1: is already in there, and I knew that's what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. Then, Okay, were you a popular kid
Speaker 1: in school? Kind of but not? You know, I was okay,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't like kind of running then. I wasn't
Speaker 1: a class blown and I wasn't an a student, so
Speaker 1: I was somewhere in the middle. Now, okay, so what
Speaker 1: point in this his era do you decide that you
Speaker 1: want to be a musician professionally? I knew. I knew
Speaker 1: it because I was working by that time. We had
Speaker 1: a band and we were we were working. Uh very
Speaker 1: I was gonna tell the Beatles story I had was that,
Speaker 1: Uh I was, I was working on Bourbon Street and
Speaker 1: in the folk group. And when the Sergeant Pepper came
Speaker 1: out and by that time, I'm at school in Hattsburg, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: but basically living in New Orleans and driving back and forth.
Speaker 1: And uh, Sergeant Pepper came out and we bought it,
Speaker 1: and we and we said, you know, we gotta chank,
Speaker 1: we gotta become a folk rock band, and we bought
Speaker 1: the Sergeant Pepper album and we said, all right, here's
Speaker 1: the plan. We're gonna drop acid to night and learn
Speaker 1: this entire album and go in and audition the next
Speaker 1: day to the club owner and say we want to
Speaker 1: play next store at the Gunga then and and be
Speaker 1: it because we knew they had an opening for a
Speaker 1: band there, and so we did it. We staid, and
Speaker 1: then back at school, well a little bit lower. Hey,
Speaker 1: did you smoke a lot of dope and drop a
Speaker 1: lot of acid before this? Uh? Not. I didn't smoke
Speaker 1: a lot of week because I never smoked cigarettes. But yeah,
Speaker 1: during that time, yeah, I took a little acid at
Speaker 1: the time. But then you know, then I kind of
Speaker 1: you know, that's enough of that. But the fun thing
Speaker 1: was that at this point I was day to a
Speaker 1: girl in the theater department, and I knew that there
Speaker 1: were costumes in the theater department. So after we learned
Speaker 1: the album, we drove back to Pettisburg. She gave me
Speaker 1: the key and we went in and borrowed outfits that
Speaker 1: looked similar to what the Beatles had on. Sergeant Pepper
Speaker 1: put those outfits on, who ran back to New Orleans
Speaker 1: audition and got the job, and you played Sergeant Pepper.
Speaker 1: Yes everything, We played the entire album. We became a
Speaker 1: very popular Beatles cover band, and we started playing fraternity
Speaker 1: parties all through that part of the South. Okay, you
Speaker 1: graduated from college, yet how do you stay out of Vietnam? Um?
Speaker 1: At that time you had to fill out forms for deferments,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh, and and by that time I
Speaker 1: started flying. I had two roommates who were in r
Speaker 1: RTC at the Mississippi Southern, and they were flying in
Speaker 1: a little a little airport in Hannisburgh, English flying Service
Speaker 1: because it was part of the Navy program. So I could,
Speaker 1: and I was making a little little money then, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to find my dad was a fly or
Speaker 1: in the war. And uh, he was the only one
Speaker 1: that didn't go to see you. He flew. And so
Speaker 1: I started flying a little bit. And so when it
Speaker 1: came around, Uh, what happened was I was late for registering,
Speaker 1: and you had a register for the draft in and
Speaker 1: this girl in the office admissions helf has just gave
Speaker 1: me all the forms. And I looked at him, and
Speaker 1: I thought, man, that's I'm not supposed to be filling
Speaker 1: this app that that's the uh, that's the selecting service
Speaker 1: for him. I filled it out. It was this was
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight and it put expected data graduation. I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to graduate and six at the end of sixty eight,
Speaker 1: I put in nineteen seventy two, and I just I
Speaker 1: forgot about and nothing ever happened, you know. But the
Speaker 1: thing of it was, by that time I was playing
Speaker 1: in a bar in Hattisburg and Camp Shelby had a
Speaker 1: had a jungle warfare training facility there and there were
Speaker 1: people coming back from Vietnam who were training people to
Speaker 1: go and they became clientele and this are and that's
Speaker 1: the first time because I was always thinking what they
Speaker 1: get caught. I can fly now and I will go
Speaker 1: and they want you don't go there. And that's the
Speaker 1: first time I heard soldiers telling me not to go
Speaker 1: to war. And so that was a very there's a
Speaker 1: there's a chapter in the first book or for Vietnam Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and that's what it was about. So by that time, Okay,
Speaker 1: I get ready to graduate. A call comes in to
Speaker 1: go to the office and there's the head of our
Speaker 1: OTC with my form that I had forge and he said,
Speaker 1: not only am I going to see that, you go
Speaker 1: uh into the arm I'll make sure you're in the
Speaker 1: infantry and you go to the front lines to Vietnam
Speaker 1: for full inness off. And I went hell with that.
Speaker 1: So I went over to the naval recruiter, passed the
Speaker 1: task as I've flown some to go to officer candidate school.
Speaker 1: Said if I'm gonna go, I want to go as
Speaker 1: a flyer, and so I passed that. Went for the
Speaker 1: physical wound up. I had a peptic ulcer pod from
Speaker 1: drinking too much in New Orleans when I was eighteen
Speaker 1: and I was one. While that was it. I never
Speaker 1: saw another thing there just was lucky for you. Wow,
Speaker 1: you were really lucky. And then I went right back
Speaker 1: to New Ords and just kept playing. Oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: was like the greatest day in your life. That point
Speaker 1: you've been okay, going back to you back you're playing
Speaker 1: piano in this band, but a right, you would really
Speaker 1: viewed yourself more as a guitarist. At what point do
Speaker 1: you start writing songs and at what point do you say, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to be a singer songwriter or what do
Speaker 1: you say to yourself? Well, I was Jimmy says he
Speaker 1: was a bashful kid. I would have been competitively bashful.
Speaker 1: I was really bashful and uh, and I gotta say
Speaker 1: to you also, Jimmy, I was in Dean and the Reefers.
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing about Dean and the Reefers is
Speaker 1: a Dean, the lead singer, did not know what reefer was.
Speaker 1: He just thought it was a cool word. He was
Speaker 1: extremely straight laced, with a crew cut, and you know,
Speaker 1: butch wax on his hair, and and he had Dean
Speaker 1: and the Reefers painted on our van. And he could
Speaker 1: never figure out why all the long hairs gave us
Speaker 1: the peace sign when we drove by, Like why did
Speaker 1: they do that? You know? He had a different observation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh, but my I was I wanted to be
Speaker 1: a guitar player, but I couldn't be. If you knew
Speaker 1: the notes on a piano, you were sort of the
Speaker 1: piano player. And in bands up there because everybody played guitar,
Speaker 1: and whoever was the worst guitar player played bass. That's
Speaker 1: just the way it went. You heard the old Willie
Speaker 1: Nelson line. Ray Ray Price asked, Willie said, can you
Speaker 1: play bass? And Willy said can't? Everybody? Uh, in reality
Speaker 1: that not many people can play bass, but but it
Speaker 1: was perceived that anybody could play bass. Back then. I
Speaker 1: I would play piano, and when we took a break,
Speaker 1: I would sit down behind the piano and pull out
Speaker 1: my acoustic guitar and and and try to practice fingerpicking
Speaker 1: when I was at these nightclub gigs and just the
Speaker 1: physics of doing that. Uh. The guys from muscle shows,
Speaker 1: the muscle shows, Rhythm section, guys that Roger Hawkins and
Speaker 1: David Hood and those classic musicians, if they wanted to
Speaker 1: play live, they had to go to the Tennessee Line too.
Speaker 1: They went up above the honky Tonks. They would come
Speaker 1: up there and sit in That's how I met those guys.
Speaker 1: And they would come and say this idiot kids sitting
Speaker 1: behind the piano playing acoustic guitar on the breaks. They
Speaker 1: just come and see what I was doing, and and
Speaker 1: they decided that I could play a little bit. And
Speaker 1: they said, hey, man, would you would you like to
Speaker 1: play in some studios? Shoot you out? And I didn't
Speaker 1: you know, I knew what was going on in muscle shows,
Speaker 1: but at that time, for all the music that was
Speaker 1: happening in muscle shows, there wasn't really a dedicated acoustic
Speaker 1: guitar player. Uh, And so they said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: give us your number and we'll call you and you
Speaker 1: come play some acoustic guitar. And you know, Dwayne Almand
Speaker 1: had already gone from there, but there were great guitar
Speaker 1: players there. Pete Carr was there, and and uh, Tippy
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Eddie Hinton and Larry Byron from Stepping Wolfe
Speaker 1: was still in in in town. But there wasn't an
Speaker 1: acoustic player. So I started at fifteen. I started playing
Speaker 1: Muscle Shoals sessions as an acoustic player, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know what in the hell I was doing, but I
Speaker 1: was in the in the presence of some people who
Speaker 1: really did. I got to work with Rick Hall, and
Speaker 1: I got to work with Terry Woodford, Clayton Ivy and
Speaker 1: and Jerry Wexler, and great record producers came to Muscle
Speaker 1: Shoals and I got to sit at the feet of
Speaker 1: those guys and just be a sponge. And I didn't.
Speaker 1: I was too bashful to say I want to be
Speaker 1: a songwriter or a singer or the guy in the
Speaker 1: middle of the stage. And to this day, I'm extremely
Speaker 1: grateful to have this guy over here in the zoom
Speaker 1: meeting to stand next to and uh and draft off
Speaker 1: of in the in the NASCAR sense of drafting, because
Speaker 1: Jimmy has that kind of ambition that I was born without.
Speaker 1: My ambition is just to make music and try to
Speaker 1: make it a little bit better tomorrow than I did today.
Speaker 1: That's what drives me. And the fact that I get
Speaker 1: to to be a coral reefer. Uh men. And and
Speaker 1: in the cracks of Jimmy schedule say the little things
Speaker 1: that pop in my head every few years and and
Speaker 1: go play a solo show and sing that to the
Speaker 1: listening room full of folks that want to hear. That
Speaker 1: makes me about as lucky a guy as I could
Speaker 1: possibly be for for what I like, I wouldn't change
Speaker 1: anything about my life. So, Jimmy, were you always ambitious?
Speaker 1: I think so? I mean, yeah, I learned, you know,
Speaker 1: because after that kind of you know, we I was
Speaker 1: always you know, taught to the industrious. And I did
Speaker 1: small jobs because I wanted my independence in my own money.
Speaker 1: So you know, I've worked in I was a bag
Speaker 1: boy horse store on Mode lawns and that as a kid.
Speaker 1: And uh and you know when when when school came along,
Speaker 1: I could I could work again in the shipyard, but
Speaker 1: I was going off to school and make some decent
Speaker 1: money to help my parents because they were trying to
Speaker 1: trying to send me to school. So but the thing
Speaker 1: of it was when I started playing, um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: kind of had more ambition than the other people I
Speaker 1: was playing with. So it kind of made me the
Speaker 1: leader because I would get stuff together. I wouldn't do
Speaker 1: the set list. I would, you know, I would say,
Speaker 1: these are the songs we ought to be playing. And
Speaker 1: then you know, when it when it came time to
Speaker 1: have a real band and we were going to really
Speaker 1: go for this, I was still kind of working at
Speaker 1: this show. You know, I had like real jobs then,
Speaker 1: and so I had I had actually a credit at
Speaker 1: the music store and mobile. So when we started to
Speaker 1: do this, I said, well, we're gonna need a sound system,
Speaker 1: and uh, everybody else had went well, I'm very I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'll I'll get and I went on and I applied
Speaker 1: for a loan and I got a book full and
Speaker 1: I got a credit that was a Bogan p A
Speaker 1: system and I bought and I said, well, I bought
Speaker 1: the A system. So that I'm gonna have to be
Speaker 1: the leader of the band because I'm not gonna let
Speaker 1: you all break my p A system and I gotta
Speaker 1: pay for it. And so you know, I liked being
Speaker 1: the leader of the band and it worked out. Okay.
Speaker 1: A couple of questions. While you were playing in New
Speaker 1: Orleans and in this era after college, do you ever
Speaker 1: have a day gig? Uh in New Orleans? No? I played,
Speaker 1: h I played, you know, I played honors other you know,
Speaker 1: the only thing I had to I could make extra
Speaker 1: money by when we were off. We played a half
Speaker 1: hour on half hour off, you know, like nine to
Speaker 1: nine at night at two in the morning. But I
Speaker 1: could get it making extra money going out and being
Speaker 1: the barker on the street on Bourbon Street. And I
Speaker 1: think that kind of that kind of sharpened my edge
Speaker 1: or being a shameless performer because you had to be
Speaker 1: shanless go out into that. But I had fifty extra week. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I could never do that like the guy standing on
Speaker 1: the corner in the subway outfits, etcetera. So at what
Speaker 1: point does it turn from a band into a singer
Speaker 1: songwriter thing? For me? Yeah? Yeah, for you, Jimmy, well,
Speaker 1: everything to have the band broke up as they do,
Speaker 1: as they will, and the band oca and uh, so
Speaker 1: I still had made connections with agents that booked some
Speaker 1: of these other bands playing, which this was like the
Speaker 1: big when folk music was still big and and folk
Speaker 1: rock was big. These two clubs, and you gotta remember
Speaker 1: at that time Bourbon Street was just about as much
Speaker 1: music given out, more so on Bourbon Street as you know,
Speaker 1: strip joints and beer parlors, because Pete Fountain Alhert had
Speaker 1: a club there. Uh you know, um and the Neville
Speaker 1: Brothers were playing at the Ivanhoe. Uh Preservation Hall was there.
Speaker 1: Um Allen Toussaint had a stuck Cosmo Studios downtown. So
Speaker 1: there was a lot more music that was going on
Speaker 1: on that street. So I was immersed in and I
Speaker 1: loved that stuff. So when the band broke up, I
Speaker 1: mean I immediately went back down there and tried to
Speaker 1: get a job in a band, and I played drums
Speaker 1: one night in the band. They fired me after the
Speaker 1: first step, and I remember I was playing local up
Speaker 1: by Sergio Mendez, and that's I thought I was doing
Speaker 1: a good job. And because I played drums and the
Speaker 1: third grade marching bandage, so Anyway, I had connections up there,
Speaker 1: and I had been't doing solo gigs, and so I
Speaker 1: found that this booker up in Minnesota that could put
Speaker 1: me on the road doing doing stuff. And I played
Speaker 1: that and then those those shows when I could. Then
Speaker 1: I went back to Mobile when I graduated from college,
Speaker 1: kind of figure out what what else to do, and
Speaker 1: I got a job at a bar called the Adimal
Speaker 1: Sims Hotel, in a hotel right downtown Mobile, and I'm
Speaker 1: uh again. I was following a friend of mine who
Speaker 1: had worked in New Orleans together and he's the one
Speaker 1: that brought me up to kind of jam. Next thing
Speaker 1: I knew when he left town. I had the job
Speaker 1: and I've worked there for almost a year and I
Speaker 1: created a following this as a solo act and people
Speaker 1: my parents friends at first within you know, it was
Speaker 1: on a soul out every night and uh, and that
Speaker 1: kind of worked. I was And from there I wanted
Speaker 1: to make a record to sell in the bar, and
Speaker 1: I went into a little uh record coming Audiomobile Records,
Speaker 1: and this guy Milton Brown heard me play and said
Speaker 1: that's pretty good, and he had Nashville connections, and Milton
Speaker 1: eventually took me to Nashville to do demos there, and
Speaker 1: that's how I got to Nashville. Okay, what was the
Speaker 1: dream at this point, Since we've established you're a very
Speaker 1: ambitious person. I wanted to be the next modern Lightfoot. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to you. Mac. You know you're very
Speaker 1: humble guy. But at a very young age, you get
Speaker 1: you get record deals. You're making records, so you may
Speaker 1: be Bashville, but something is happening. Well, but the way
Speaker 1: I got a record deal isn't just ridiculous. Because we're
Speaker 1: sitting We're sitting in muscle shows and I'm I'm the
Speaker 1: acoustic player on a on a session and the artist
Speaker 1: misses a plane in doesn't show up. So we're just
Speaker 1: a band sitting in a studio with nothing to do.
Speaker 1: And they start asking, Okay, who's since we're here, let's
Speaker 1: cut something. Who's got a song? And all the other
Speaker 1: guys were the regular guys. I was the new guy,
Speaker 1: and they had already cut everything they had they had
Speaker 1: already cut, so they said you got any songs? And I,
Speaker 1: being the way I am, I said no, I don't
Speaker 1: have anything. And they went around the room about three times.
Speaker 1: I said no three times kind of biblically and then uh,
Speaker 1: this this engineer, Steve Moore was the engineer in the
Speaker 1: studio and he had played in a couple of bands
Speaker 1: with me, and he says, this guy or here is
Speaker 1: just bashful. I know he got songs. I know he
Speaker 1: writes songs. And they made me play a song, and uh,
Speaker 1: and I pulled up my guitar and I played this
Speaker 1: little song called It's a Crazy World that I wrote
Speaker 1: when I was sixteen, and they went, jeez, we're just
Speaker 1: gonna make a record on you. That was it. I
Speaker 1: played a song for them that I had never played
Speaker 1: for my parents. I had never done a gig, I'd
Speaker 1: never been in a and I'd never played a gig
Speaker 1: and sung a lead vocal as me in my life anywhere.
Speaker 1: My sisters had never heard that song, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they cut a record on me and went
Speaker 1: to l A and got a record deal. And I
Speaker 1: mean it took about three Old Testament miracles Daisy chain
Speaker 1: together for me to have a record deal, because I
Speaker 1: would have never gone anywhere and asked anybody to listen
Speaker 1: to me and said, you know, even though I wasn't
Speaker 1: that far from Nashville, I never would have gone to Nashville.
Speaker 1: The fact that I could go to Muscle Shoals, which
Speaker 1: was forty minutes from my hometown and and fail and
Speaker 1: be back home by supper time made the physics of
Speaker 1: it more workable for me. And and somehow or other,
Speaker 1: I got a record deal and and they put out
Speaker 1: It's a Crazy World as the first single, and that
Speaker 1: was a chart record. And and I'm riding around the
Speaker 1: country and my granddad's hand me down overalls with a
Speaker 1: Scottish afro, a pretty easy to spot, might as well
Speaker 1: have been on Mars. But I was in l A
Speaker 1: at the Larramattage with this room that came with a
Speaker 1: Bentley and a driver. Nobody in my family had ever
Speaker 1: been driven by a driver, and nobody in my family
Speaker 1: had ever been on a plane. I mean they when
Speaker 1: I when I flew to l A to sign the
Speaker 1: record deal, they like broke out into prayer groups, wondering
Speaker 1: whether I was gonna crash on the way out there
Speaker 1: or get killed by the folks in Los Angeles. One
Speaker 1: of those two things was almost a certainty. And so
Speaker 1: it was it was sort of like Marco Polo, you
Speaker 1: know who played you that record? Bob Who, Uh, Howard
Speaker 1: Stark and Jay Lasker. Wow, ready for this? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: my ears are open. Uh. So I was doing okay
Speaker 1: by then and uh him Al was on ABC Dunhill.
Speaker 1: They signed me in Nashville. Didn't know what to do
Speaker 1: with me, but they got a corp. Donnyhue, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you ever ran into corp. He kind of
Speaker 1: took a liking to me. And uh and and I
Speaker 1: was in Key West by that time, living you have
Speaker 1: a bar gig in the daytime, were working on cocktails
Speaker 1: perfect were cocktail out of five to nine. And then
Speaker 1: I go out and raise hell and I get up
Speaker 1: on a fishing boat and worked forward to working offshore,
Speaker 1: charter fishing and playing at a bar. So I didn't
Speaker 1: want to go anywhere else. And this guy said we
Speaker 1: need to come up to New York. And I went
Speaker 1: and played, uh Sam Hoods Max's Kansas City and the
Speaker 1: next thing I knew, they took me to l A.
Speaker 1: They signed me, and you know, and Jim Croachy was
Speaker 1: still going there at the time, and uh, you know
Speaker 1: they were they were kind of I wasn't a little
Speaker 1: bit slower. How do you get from Key West to
Speaker 1: New York. I was, I was told I was called
Speaker 1: because I did White Sport Cone, a pink crust station.
Speaker 1: We did the album in Nashville for three days and
Speaker 1: eleven thousand dollars, and I saved some money and got
Speaker 1: the key West, paid off my student loans, and bought
Speaker 1: boat and so I figured that was my insurance policy.
Speaker 1: So I was down there and living the life when
Speaker 1: I get a call from Corbe Donohue, astead of Artist
Speaker 1: Relations at ABC. Doniel said, this is not a country record.
Speaker 1: This is really good and we want to get behind this.
Speaker 1: We're taking over from from l A. So they didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do with in the Nashville and so,
Speaker 1: long story short, had a nice run there with when
Speaker 1: Jay and Howard were running ABC Dunhill and then they
Speaker 1: got fired and then they had what was it the
Speaker 1: name of the audio Ariel Ariola America, Ariola America. So
Speaker 1: I just was, you know, I was. I was doing
Speaker 1: well then, but I'd always go see those guys because
Speaker 1: Jay Lasker was the guy said Jimmy, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna try to take your money from it.
Speaker 1: Your job is to find out how we're doing it,
Speaker 1: and so I had a great relationship with those guys,
Speaker 1: you know, and and I went to see them and
Speaker 1: they said, come in here, come in. You gotta hear this.
Speaker 1: You know, you're the next Jim Approach. This is the
Speaker 1: next Yu And they played me It's a Crazy World
Speaker 1: and that Mac that album with him and those overalls
Speaker 1: on it, and I went, that that kid write songs
Speaker 1: like William Flinger a book. I gotta find out where
Speaker 1: he is. And they said he's trying to miss a
Speaker 1: simpy like you. And I went, I went in search
Speaker 1: of back back and now I found him. Okay, in
Speaker 1: this peripatetic journey. You get married? What's going on there?
Speaker 1: How old were you when you got married? Yeah? What Jimmy, Jimmy? Oh?
Speaker 1: I was was I was? I think twenty one or something.
Speaker 1: You know. I've been a crazy musician and I thought
Speaker 1: I needed a stable the Catholic girl to settle me down.
Speaker 1: And I knew a sus and then I was going
Speaker 1: to Nashville and uh, she was my girlfriend at the
Speaker 1: time that she's gone off to be a t wh Stewards.
Speaker 1: And I drove from Mobile to Kansas City and asked
Speaker 1: her to marry me and come back. You know, by
Speaker 1: the time we got married, went, oh, that wasn't such
Speaker 1: a good idea. But she's a great girl. We were
Speaker 1: last we went to Nashville together. She wound up working
Speaker 1: in the music business and actually wound up being a
Speaker 1: pretty big executive with Capital and was married to Bob Mercer.
Speaker 1: I don't remember Bob Mercer Frum who ran Capital, but uh,
Speaker 1: we we have. We stayed in touch and then you know,
Speaker 1: after that was over, then best when I went to
Speaker 1: key West. How long were you actually together? Two years? Okay,
Speaker 1: how did it end? Uh? It ended? Let's say it
Speaker 1: ended amicably after the event that ended it because by
Speaker 1: that time I was also working for Billboard. Then you know,
Speaker 1: I had to get a had to get a day
Speaker 1: job there. And when I out answered an ad in
Speaker 1: the National Banner and said journalism degree needed the reporter
Speaker 1: I want, I got a journalism degree and it was
Speaker 1: Billboard Magazine and I went to work for Bill Williams,
Speaker 1: the southern eritor Billboard and taught me more about how
Speaker 1: the music business is stacked against you and anything. That's
Speaker 1: where I learned about the music there. So you know, um,
Speaker 1: Margie was working at Capitol Records. I was there and uh,
Speaker 1: and that that's you know, and then so we were
Speaker 1: we were kind of, you know, when we're getting along,
Speaker 1: and it was Jerry Jeff Walker came to town and
Speaker 1: a friend of mine was hosting him, who worked at
Speaker 1: ascap Of course, we went out to the bar that
Speaker 1: night and Jerry Jeff wound up at my house and uh,
Speaker 1: and it was not a very uh, it was a
Speaker 1: very good waking up call from my life at the time.
Speaker 1: And so we kind of knew we were kind of
Speaker 1: going in separate ways, and so I was trying to
Speaker 1: be nice. But at that time, everybody had a Mercedes
Speaker 1: in Nashville. I wanted to look good, so I bought
Speaker 1: a old Mercedes that we shared. So part of the
Speaker 1: deal was I said, you know, I'm I'll send you
Speaker 1: some half of whatever I make. Now we'll figure out.
Speaker 1: We had no kids, and she wanted to stay there.
Speaker 1: I was gonna go to Key West and try to
Speaker 1: find work, and uh, so I borrowed I said, kind
Speaker 1: of borrow the car for one more night and just
Speaker 1: before I leave down so I went out my friend
Speaker 1: Tod Andrews, who played in Mother Earth at that time,
Speaker 1: and as we were, I was kind of sneaking home
Speaker 1: to get out. I opened the door and a car
Speaker 1: came by and knocked the driver's side door off of
Speaker 1: the car. And I'm still kind of drunk from night before.
Speaker 1: I went out until we went somewhere, found duck tape
Speaker 1: and disc gleen and I taped it up and left
Speaker 1: the note there said I'm really sorry about this, but
Speaker 1: I'll send you some money when I gets to working.
Speaker 1: Us and I went to Fariva and then we eventually
Speaker 1: got a divorce, and uh, but we remained friends. Okay, back, Uh,
Speaker 1: So you get a record deal, and during act you
Speaker 1: have some success. You have Minimum Love that is a
Speaker 1: hit with a radio charting track with Geffen. You continue
Speaker 1: to put out solo record, You have some success us
Speaker 1: on the country chart. You know, at that point do
Speaker 1: you see yourself as an act? At that point do
Speaker 1: you see yourself as a side man? What's going through
Speaker 1: your head? Well, you know, I also married young and
Speaker 1: had and was having kids, and I tried to Uh, well,
Speaker 1: let's slow down a little bit. How old were you
Speaker 1: when you got married? I was I was two weeks
Speaker 1: from twenty one. I was I was short of twenty one. Okay,
Speaker 1: A couple of questions. How experienced in that realm were
Speaker 1: you when you got I was not very experienced in
Speaker 1: that realm. Uh, as evidenced by the fact that I
Speaker 1: got married two weeks from twenty one. But but how
Speaker 1: long did that last? That lasted twenty three years because
Speaker 1: we were both really stubborn. Uh. She's she's awesome, and
Speaker 1: were We still do family vacations together with the kids
Speaker 1: and everything. She's amazing. But uh okaykay wait, waitit, so
Speaker 1: did she get remarried? No? Did you get remarried? Both
Speaker 1: both have a significant other. But but everybody, everybody hangs out.
Speaker 1: We do family meals and birthdays and holidays and all that.
Speaker 1: And how many kids? I've got three daughters, And how
Speaker 1: old are they? Let's see, thirty eight, thirty three, and
Speaker 1: thirty Okay, are they on the family payroll or the independent? Uh?
Speaker 1: My youngest daughter is production assistant for FOR. I occasionally
Speaker 1: am in what I called the produce section as in
Speaker 1: Mr Buffet's records, to be a co producer for for
Speaker 1: for Jimmy's records. She but she you know, she works
Speaker 1: for several producers here in town. Busier than me, and
Speaker 1: she occasionally books her old man on a on a session.
Speaker 1: But uh, but I've got one that one in the business,
Speaker 1: and uh and and one at the moment, a journalist
Speaker 1: and a nurse. So I got all three gainfully employed daughters. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you were telling a story before I interrupt you
Speaker 1: toy to slow down, so you get married and you
Speaker 1: were talking yes, uh and I the nice thing about
Speaker 1: muscle shows is that you you know, you could play
Speaker 1: most everything that came to and still have time too
Speaker 1: to write songs for yourself and go out on the road.
Speaker 1: And it was the pace of that worked pretty well.
Speaker 1: But when when the kids started coming, uh, I kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to be homeboar, and so I kind of
Speaker 1: I stopped doing really much in the way of road.
Speaker 1: And I was always, I don't want to say, a
Speaker 1: reluctant performer because I like it, but uh but but
Speaker 1: I always I really liked the studio, I really like
Speaker 1: record and I like it writing and arranging, and I
Speaker 1: sort of felt more like that was my calling. And
Speaker 1: uh so I stayed home and watched the kids grow
Speaker 1: up and and made records less frequently, and and started
Speaker 1: writing songs for other people because my My contracts that
Speaker 1: I had signed were such that I was never gonna
Speaker 1: make enough money to pay the electric bill. Jimmy could
Speaker 1: he could elaborate on the No. Nobody taught me about contracts.
Speaker 1: I was. I signed one that's on the wall of
Speaker 1: a lot of lawyers, like watch out, or this can
Speaker 1: happen to you. It's got my name on it. But
Speaker 1: uh at any rate, uh Uh. Being home and watching
Speaker 1: the kids grow up, I started writing songs that other
Speaker 1: people began to record, and I had some hit records
Speaker 1: and and made a living kind of as a songwriter
Speaker 1: publisher and and sitting around and making records for people.
Speaker 1: A couple of my friends started saying, well, you help
Speaker 1: me produce this. We and I've been around studios so
Speaker 1: long at that point to be a relatively young guy. Uh.
Speaker 1: It turns out I knew most of the things that
Speaker 1: you needed to know to at least half as producer
Speaker 1: record and became kind of a record producer. And I
Speaker 1: didn't really do much traveling until Jimmy called, Okay, the
Speaker 1: songs that you wrote that were hits. Two questions, how
Speaker 1: did you get them to the artists? Indeed, deal own
Speaker 1: them out writers or a publisher involved. Early on, there
Speaker 1: was a publisher involved, and then and then later on
Speaker 1: it was my policing company. But uh, it uh oddly
Speaker 1: enough that the beginning of it came out of uh
Speaker 1: when I went out to meet with David Geffen, when
Speaker 1: I signed the deal with Geffen Records and he was
Speaker 1: just starting Geffen. He had, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: my contract. I was the first artist. I was before
Speaker 1: John Lennon or or Elton John or any of the
Speaker 1: folks that he signed there. My contract says too and
Speaker 1: as yet unnamed joint venture between Warner Brothers and David Geffen.
Speaker 1: He didn't know it was going to be Geffen Records yet.
Speaker 1: But uh, but I met with him at his house
Speaker 1: and he said, uh, something I'll never forget, actually, because
Speaker 1: nobody had ever said anything like this to me. He said,
Speaker 1: I think you are a real artist, and I would
Speaker 1: like to be an old fashioned patron of the arts.
Speaker 1: I would like to be associated with you, and whatever
Speaker 1: you do, I'll never tell you what to do. I'll
Speaker 1: never tell you how to do it. I just want
Speaker 1: to be connected to it. So you go home and
Speaker 1: do whatever you do. And nobody had ever said anything
Speaker 1: like that to me. At that time, I had people saying,
Speaker 1: we want you to be the next Jackson Brown, or
Speaker 1: we want you to be the next whatever. Uh, we'd
Speaker 1: like for you to dress this way and you know,
Speaker 1: and cut your hair this way, and uh, and I
Speaker 1: did not. You can, and jim You'll tell you this.
Speaker 1: You can ask me to do anything and I'll do it.
Speaker 1: You can tell me to do exactly the right thing,
Speaker 1: and I'm probably not going to. I just don't take
Speaker 1: direct authority very well. Uh, But Geffen said, go do
Speaker 1: what you do, and and I went home and just
Speaker 1: had this burst of songwriting. And some of those songs
Speaker 1: were country songs, and I didn't have a country record deal,
Speaker 1: so I was playing on a lot of country records
Speaker 1: and and so by virtue of that, occasionally people say
Speaker 1: you have any songs? And sometimes people would just cut
Speaker 1: a song off one of my albums, which happened a
Speaker 1: few times. Jimmy did that with It's My Job. That
Speaker 1: was our first connection. But uh, but people, I had
Speaker 1: a couple of songs, and Alabama cut a song of
Speaker 1: mine called Old Flame and had a number one record.
Speaker 1: And then after after you have a number one record,
Speaker 1: other people say, what do you got and I would
Speaker 1: give them a song, and and I had some more
Speaker 1: number one records, and and all of a sudden that
Speaker 1: I was making actual money. You know that that was
Speaker 1: you know, put me up legitimately into the middle class
Speaker 1: of muscle shows Alabama. And uh. And I could stay
Speaker 1: home and watch the kids. And and I also like
Speaker 1: it's sort of it was Pavlovian for me. And from
Speaker 1: that point forward, if I wrote something that sounded like
Speaker 1: a hit, I would rather give it to one of
Speaker 1: my friends that has a personal trainer and a bus
Speaker 1: or an airplane and some ambition that I don't have. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it works out better for everybody. I got to
Speaker 1: watch my kids grow up in a way that no
Speaker 1: really unemployed person gets to spend as much time with
Speaker 1: their kids as I did. You would have to be
Speaker 1: unemployed or or a trustafarian, you know, to be able
Speaker 1: to see your kids like I did growing up. So
Speaker 1: I was really blessed in that way. You have a
Speaker 1: country hit with back where I come from, and then
Speaker 1: ultimately Kenny Chesney covers it. How do you how do
Speaker 1: you have the solo record? Then how does he come
Speaker 1: to cover it? Uh? You know, the solo record was
Speaker 1: I was writing some songs and Jim Ed Norman at
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers Records. Uh, we got to be friends. And
Speaker 1: the bad record deal that I had signed got drug
Speaker 1: across several label deals. But it ended in a way
Speaker 1: that the guys that had signed me to this horrible
Speaker 1: record deal had had taken a budget from David Geffen
Speaker 1: to make an album and they blew it and then
Speaker 1: they filed bankruptcy. So I owed, I owed a record
Speaker 1: that I couldn't make, and and jim Ed Norman. I
Speaker 1: saw the bind that I was in. I couldn't finish
Speaker 1: my obligation to them to get out of this production
Speaker 1: deal that I had signed, and I owed David Geffen
Speaker 1: a record, and jim Ed Norman came to me and
Speaker 1: David Geffen to Geffor together and said, if I let
Speaker 1: Mac Mac make his pop album that he owes you,
Speaker 1: will you let me make a country out? Will you
Speaker 1: loan him to me like a cup of sugar and
Speaker 1: and let me make let me make a country album
Speaker 1: on him with these other songs he's got that we
Speaker 1: think our hits, and and Geffen's like, yeah, I always
Speaker 1: knew he listened to him talk. I always knew he's
Speaker 1: you know, he's got this country thing. I mean, Geffen
Speaker 1: thought the Eagles were country anyway. Uh, But so so
Speaker 1: Jim ed let me make my last pop album my
Speaker 1: obligation to Geffen Records. He gave me the Wonder Brothers
Speaker 1: studio and my my just departed. Buddy and Alan Shulman
Speaker 1: and myself went in there and made that record. I
Speaker 1: played pretty much everything and Alan recorded it. And and
Speaker 1: at the same time we made the album Simple Life
Speaker 1: that had back where I come from and down the road,
Speaker 1: and that album was full of songs I honestly probably
Speaker 1: never intended to sing myself. But over the years, the
Speaker 1: the eleven songs on that album have been recorded like
Speaker 1: thirty nine times. I've had thirty nine cuts from that
Speaker 1: one album, uh, with various you know, some number one
Speaker 1: records and a bunch of album cuts. And and Kenny
Speaker 1: at that Kenny told me this. I didn't know it
Speaker 1: till later, but Kenny cut a record and Barry Beckett
Speaker 1: Fromussele Shuls was producing Kenny, and he gave him a
Speaker 1: copy of That Life, that Simple Life album of mind.
Speaker 1: And Kenny had to drive to Canada to play a
Speaker 1: gig and the only thing he had in his car
Speaker 1: was that that record, and he learned that album. He
Speaker 1: pretty much memorized it, and and he he recorded back
Speaker 1: Where I Come From that Barry Beckett produced it on him,
Speaker 1: and we became buddies after that, and and then from
Speaker 1: that we he and I did a duet of down
Speaker 1: the Road that was a number one record later on,
Speaker 1: like twenty years later. Uh. That that was also on
Speaker 1: that same album. And he's he's just been a great
Speaker 1: advocate of a couple of my best songs. And anybody
Speaker 1: that knows Kenny knows what a great guy is. So
Speaker 1: I've had between David Geffen and Jimmy Buffett and and
Speaker 1: Chesney as well, and and jim ed Norman and David Geffen,
Speaker 1: I've I've been I've been so shepherded. Uh, in the
Speaker 1: context of my total ineptitude about business, I've been very
Speaker 1: shepherded through the business. And I'm so grateful for that
Speaker 1: because there's not many other ways that I could possibly
Speaker 1: be here talking to you guys. Okay, So, Jimmy, how
Speaker 1: do you end up deciding you want Mac in the band? Um?
Speaker 1: I knew that day the the Jay and Howard played
Speaker 1: me the record I got and they gave me the record.
Speaker 1: I went on and then I started going to two
Speaker 1: friends I knew and said connections I had in Nashville,
Speaker 1: and said, who is this where is this guy? You know?
Speaker 1: And and now now because I didn't really know because
Speaker 1: the time, it took a long time to get him
Speaker 1: to come to work for me, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: I had kind of sherry picked some people and we
Speaker 1: we've done some band reconstruction and and the first person
Speaker 1: I really wanted in my band was Michael Uvely because
Speaker 1: you know, he had worked for Jerry WEXLERND and I
Speaker 1: met him in Miami when he was part of the
Speaker 1: Dixie Flyers and and uh and he and he eventually
Speaker 1: he was working with Chris and Read at that time.
Speaker 1: And then uh, he came to work for me. So
Speaker 1: I had Utly in there. And I wanted him because
Speaker 1: he was such a solid person experience, like Max said,
Speaker 1: And I I didn't know then that Mac had been
Speaker 1: in the studio since he was fifteen. But I learned
Speaker 1: pretty quickly and and I we just you know, I
Speaker 1: got him on the phone, I got a number, and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, if you ever want to come play,
Speaker 1: and it was a while and he'd come out two
Speaker 1: shows occasionally to see us in the band. And and
Speaker 1: then you know, now I know that he wanted to
Speaker 1: stay at home with with with with his kids more
Speaker 1: than that, but he was, you know, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: quite understand why didn't work in the Croprim band go
Speaker 1: on the road. And now I know because he wanted
Speaker 1: to stay at home and raising his kids, you know,
Speaker 1: and me me having that nomad gene, you know, Uh,
Speaker 1: it bothered you. It gets in the way of some
Speaker 1: things at that time, like so um and we just
Speaker 1: I stayed in contact with him, but there was no
Speaker 1: pressure to do it, and I said, if you want,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, come out and try it, if
Speaker 1: you want to do it, and then makes some extra money,
Speaker 1: and uh, we could really use you because I knew
Speaker 1: how good a songwriter he was and how the good
Speaker 1: of a range and just but I've also seen him
Speaker 1: do solo gigs. I go him to some of the
Speaker 1: solo gigs and he you know, that's one thing he
Speaker 1: as we all know, he's a very shy man. And uh,
Speaker 1: but he's probably one of the top solo performers I've
Speaker 1: ever seen take a stage and with an audience and
Speaker 1: know how to work an audience and has more ability
Speaker 1: on a guitar than I could ever possibly uh have.
Speaker 1: And I was in awe of his solo performances and
Speaker 1: I didn't want him to. I said, you know, you
Speaker 1: just go do that whatever, because you're good at it.
Speaker 1: And and uh, but if you want to come playing
Speaker 1: the band, we love to have. But I think that's
Speaker 1: the where it went. It is. And to how many
Speaker 1: years before? Did you ask before he became a permanent
Speaker 1: member of the band, I'd have to ask the uh,
Speaker 1: my wing man here, how how long you know it
Speaker 1: was at while there? But uh, but you know we
Speaker 1: did we did a little thing during the band transition.
Speaker 1: We did a thing together called the living Room Tour
Speaker 1: in nine nine and uh and and my last my
Speaker 1: my youngest daughter was born in eighty nine. And but
Speaker 1: we in the winter of eighty nine we went out
Speaker 1: and did you know, half dozen shows or what We
Speaker 1: rehearsed and did a half dozen shows there and just
Speaker 1: the two of us with living room furniture, and uh,
Speaker 1: you remember, Jimmy, we're following Hunter Thompson around. He used
Speaker 1: our set on a couple of those shows. Playing colleges
Speaker 1: and theaters and uh, and that was just a blast.
Speaker 1: You know. I always knew, and I think Jimmy always
Speaker 1: knew we we were going to get along and that
Speaker 1: that we were going to be of used to one another.
Speaker 1: Me and because he has a zillion ideas and and
Speaker 1: he's got all this talent and all this inner g
Speaker 1: and and and I my nature is is I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit more of a finished carpenter. So so sometimes
Speaker 1: the idea is that that Jimmy has it are great
Speaker 1: and gets up and running, I can I can sit
Speaker 1: there and and spackle for a while and maybe put
Speaker 1: a little bit better shine at the end of him
Speaker 1: because I was there. So we provide a great service
Speaker 1: to one another, because he just generates all this energy
Speaker 1: and and and I'm kind of a one track mine.
Speaker 1: Who can you know, I'll sit there for the next
Speaker 1: two and a half months and and try to make
Speaker 1: it this much better or whatever. So we got a
Speaker 1: good team. And do you remember what year you became
Speaker 1: full time coral reefers? Uh? You know, we went out
Speaker 1: and did the live album Feeding Frenzy, and then I
Speaker 1: think it was ninety five was my first full time
Speaker 1: year and I don't know if you remember what you
Speaker 1: actually asked me, Jimmy, but you said, if you're ready
Speaker 1: to come out, and your kids can come out. My
Speaker 1: kids are gonna come out. I only want you to
Speaker 1: play two songs and the intermission of the show. That's
Speaker 1: all I want. That's all you gotta do is just
Speaker 1: come out. We'll do two acoustics songs together in the
Speaker 1: middle of the show. And I don't believe I've been
Speaker 1: off stage since then, except the except the weekend I
Speaker 1: had the heart attack. Uh, had to cancel one. But
Speaker 1: I like to play. I would rather play than stand
Speaker 1: on the side of the stage and wait to play.
Speaker 1: But but he initially asked me just to play a
Speaker 1: couple of histic songs in the middle. UH, And I
Speaker 1: was and I was honored about that. But but I
Speaker 1: love to play, So I'm really happy to get And
Speaker 1: the Coral Reefer Band and and team and crew is
Speaker 1: second family. They are my second family, and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: change the thing about any of them. So, Jimmy, what
Speaker 1: motivates you to go on the road, and obviously not
Speaker 1: during the COVID era. What keeps you going in that avenue? Um?
Speaker 1: I think Mom it's just that having been so lucky
Speaker 1: to have learned from people before and mistakes. It's like
Speaker 1: we're talking about about Geffen and uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: always bring my sea Geff and I bring Mac up
Speaker 1: to me. He smiled. He's still has a warm place
Speaker 1: in his heart. And I thought, I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: amazing that somebody is as successful as David has been.
Speaker 1: I saw that artist in Matt, you know that that's
Speaker 1: that says something about both of them to me, and
Speaker 1: knowing them both pretty well, I like the fact that
Speaker 1: how in the hell David, Geffen and mc mcilly get
Speaker 1: in a room again, that's pretty cool, so you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was it was just the as it
Speaker 1: as it went on, the fact that it was to
Speaker 1: me performers. If you're a performer and cam wright and
Speaker 1: sing that, that's okay. But learning to be a performer
Speaker 1: was what got me there. And two years of working
Speaker 1: on Bourbon Street. I couldn't have learned that in any
Speaker 1: finishing school or music school ever, because I knew that,
Speaker 1: you know, I had learned to to have to play
Speaker 1: when you don't want to play, and uh, and have
Speaker 1: to play things you don't want to really do because
Speaker 1: you want to do your own stuff. But if you
Speaker 1: do own stuff, they will fire you. So that that
Speaker 1: gauntlet of performing, that that I was lucky enough to
Speaker 1: get into an eye and I knew that if I
Speaker 1: could make my way up the ladder of success in
Speaker 1: that little locale and to the top club in New
Speaker 1: Orleans from from then you know, a hooting and United singer.
Speaker 1: You know, That's all I really wanted to do at
Speaker 1: that time, because I thought, well, that's pretty good and
Speaker 1: people have come here. You're making good money and people
Speaker 1: are coming and to see you. But that's what it
Speaker 1: is when you when you start performing. To me like that,
Speaker 1: you connect with an audience, uh, in a true and
Speaker 1: authentic way. It's not something that's that's put on television
Speaker 1: and you create something. Uh. I think that audiences can
Speaker 1: can can connect you know, as someone said, it goes
Speaker 1: in here as well as here, it goes heart as
Speaker 1: well as your years. And and I think that that's
Speaker 1: what keeps me out there is you have the success.
Speaker 1: You know, the part the part about the success I
Speaker 1: learned a Nationville from Bill Williams and others that the
Speaker 1: music business basically as such sacked against you, and you
Speaker 1: better hold onto as much of your own creative stuff
Speaker 1: as you can, and that that you know, that worked
Speaker 1: well for me and I never and then, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to rent a piano from a promoter
Speaker 1: who charged me back for it. I bought one and
Speaker 1: put it in a bus and paid for it in
Speaker 1: in about two months and sold it to Billy Joel
Speaker 1: for timing tim grant. He sold it back to me.
Speaker 1: It's in the studio Key West now, So you learn
Speaker 1: those things come along. But it's part of the fun
Speaker 1: of doing it to me, you know. And so there's
Speaker 1: some nights you have to play and you have to
Speaker 1: play hurt, but you don't ever ever show it. And
Speaker 1: that's that's that's what real performers do. And it's still
Speaker 1: and in this day and time, we simply have nothing
Speaker 1: to prove out there anymore. So for me for a
Speaker 1: good time and having Mac and having only my friends,
Speaker 1: my my compadres, my wingman who I can take I
Speaker 1: can take orders from and and and will because I
Speaker 1: know they know more about certain aspects of this than
Speaker 1: I do. You know, I can, I can certain I
Speaker 1: can start some ship. Then they can make something out
Speaker 1: of it, you know, And uh, having that and the
Speaker 1: camaraderie of like Max said, the band is our second family.
Speaker 1: And uh now we have nothing to prove. So all
Speaker 1: I want to do is is make things that people
Speaker 1: that really like what we do can add to their collection.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got I've got a segment of the
Speaker 1: following and called the Church of Buffet that doesn't think
Speaker 1: we did anything worth the ships. And since nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: I mean since nineteen seventy five or something, you know that,
Speaker 1: But the Church of Buffet they're still there for that.
Speaker 1: I love having that, you know, you don't you know
Speaker 1: they're they're still fans of certain things, and you know,
Speaker 1: but I think it's an artist you have to evolve,
Speaker 1: but you've got to try to say true to who
Speaker 1: you are. It's just simply tried to do that. And
Speaker 1: I've been very lucky, and I've got people around me
Speaker 1: from you know, a lot of friends and band members,
Speaker 1: my my lovely wife Jane, who who keeps try us
Speaker 1: to keep a tight collar on me, but sometimes I
Speaker 1: can leggle loose. But all of that, all of that
Speaker 1: is part of this. And I don't see any you
Speaker 1: know anything. I can't wait to get back and I
Speaker 1: tell people, you know, there there will be an end
Speaker 1: to this at some point, you know. And I've been
Speaker 1: lucky enough to uh to have the success that I
Speaker 1: can take care of the people around me, my band
Speaker 1: and my crew and stuff. As we go through this
Speaker 1: and wiggle our way through. Where can we play? What's it?
Speaker 1: What's gonna be left for us to do until we
Speaker 1: can get back on that stage and do the show
Speaker 1: that people really like, you know, and so that that's
Speaker 1: what we're working on now. And just you know, and
Speaker 1: you know, so you know, there's everbody's got ideas, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to kind of think about doing
Speaker 1: shows without people, but you may have to do them.
Speaker 1: But I can remember with great audiences, and in behalf
Speaker 1: to I'll up there and do it to remember them.
Speaker 1: And I'll do a show for two people as well
Speaker 1: as twenty thou people. I'll give him the same show.
Speaker 1: So that's that's I gotta I gotta interject and brag
Speaker 1: on this guy a little bit. That's what he has
Speaker 1: from building that muscle, playing playing bar gigs, good and
Speaker 1: bad bar gigs. You you have to have both of
Speaker 1: those things. There's no treadmill that teaches that entertainers that
Speaker 1: you can't build that muscle any other way than by
Speaker 1: succeeding and failing on stage. And I will say about
Speaker 1: Jimmy because I'm a solo performer as as he was,
Speaker 1: to the fact, the fact that he cut his teeth
Speaker 1: in those small rooms making everybody feel like that they
Speaker 1: got something personal and unique in that room has has
Speaker 1: developed into him being able to sit there in front
Speaker 1: of thirty five thousand people and make them go home
Speaker 1: thinking they got a unique, individual, intimate performance. And and
Speaker 1: that's a trick. But I don't know anybody else that
Speaker 1: can do I don't know another magician that can make
Speaker 1: thirty five thou people feel like they just saw a
Speaker 1: small gathering, private concert that was just for them. And
Speaker 1: he can do that, and he can repeat it, he
Speaker 1: can and and he can do it on a good day,
Speaker 1: and he can do it on a bad day when
Speaker 1: he's when he's got a sore throat, doesn't It's it's
Speaker 1: no different. And yeah, I'm proud to know him because
Speaker 1: of that, because I don't think anybody else in the
Speaker 1: business does that. Okay, So, Jimmy, how do you decide
Speaker 1: after seven years to make a new album? Well, it was.
Speaker 1: We had talked about it because there were some other
Speaker 1: busy things that I wanted to do. The Broadway thing
Speaker 1: was something that came to me with and my mother
Speaker 1: had taken me as a kid to see every road
Speaker 1: show of Broadway and she was she played any Name
Speaker 1: and uh and Mobile Theater Guil, she was Bloody Mary
Speaker 1: and South Pacific and I had to go see those
Speaker 1: shows and I really liked musical theater thanks to her.
Speaker 1: So off I go, and somebody tells you they want
Speaker 1: to take you to Broadway. I want hell, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try that. You know. I knew what was up
Speaker 1: there too. It wasn't like this is gonna be ruffles
Speaker 1: and flourishes, because they were not to jukebox musicals was
Speaker 1: the term that was already being spread around. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to try it. And so that took about five
Speaker 1: years of a lot of work on getting the getting
Speaker 1: the writers to the show to get from yeah we're
Speaker 1: gonna do it, so yeah we got the money to
Speaker 1: yeah we got the cast, so oh we got to
Speaker 1: rewrite this. That was like five years of steady work
Speaker 1: as well as going out on the road. So you know,
Speaker 1: and most of my creative energies was going to that.
Speaker 1: So I didn't feel I had really good songs at
Speaker 1: that time, and I just didn't want to put out
Speaker 1: anything just to go fill the gap. Okay, before we
Speaker 1: move on, what did you learn from doing the Broadway
Speaker 1: show and what are your thoughts about it now? Well,
Speaker 1: I was very happy with it. I would uh when
Speaker 1: I do it again, Yeah, I probably would have somebody
Speaker 1: asked me to do it. Uh. But the thing of
Speaker 1: it was, again, it regardless of what you know, it was,
Speaker 1: it was a critic. It was not a critical because
Speaker 1: success in New York. But everybody, the politicicket of that
Speaker 1: show loved that show because it was happy and it
Speaker 1: was fun. And but I knew that going the end
Speaker 1: and we were gonna you know. But the thing of
Speaker 1: it was we we played for almost nine months on Broadway,
Speaker 1: and uh and when we came out we had two years.
Speaker 1: I knew we would work on the road, would work
Speaker 1: so and it was working very very well. Uh when
Speaker 1: when we had to shut it down Albuquerquin, New Mexico
Speaker 1: because of COVID. So um, and I still love the
Speaker 1: theater and I'm I'm invested in a couple of shows
Speaker 1: now and I still love. I love the fact of
Speaker 1: it is that there's so much talent and those kids
Speaker 1: that don't really make a lot of money, and the dedication. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was my friend Frank Marshall, you know who's
Speaker 1: my partner, my long friend, movie producer. Yeah, he hired people.
Speaker 1: I could so many people whose careers he made. He
Speaker 1: went to New York to find actors, not movie stars.
Speaker 1: That's what he told me and so and then when
Speaker 1: we go through the process of auditioning, there's so much
Speaker 1: more talent there than I ever thought about having in
Speaker 1: my little finger. I just I'm an admiration of that.
Speaker 1: And I love those kids and how hard they were
Speaker 1: for so little Okay, so now once you pass that hump,
Speaker 1: you say it's time to make a new record. How
Speaker 1: does Paul Breedy become a part of this? Yeah? Uh,
Speaker 1: Paul Gray came came to us through Martin and Mark. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll start from the beginning. Jimmy, is there anybody you
Speaker 1: don't know? Let's see, I want to know, not really know. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how do you know Martin Boffler? I I know him,
Speaker 1: know him from the fact that I was a huge,
Speaker 1: huge fan and at one point time he had passed through.
Speaker 1: We we did the Volcano album in George Martin studio
Speaker 1: in Montserrat, and we were the only American band to
Speaker 1: ever go down there. But mccargan did an album there,
Speaker 1: Clapton did an album there, and and our strikes my
Speaker 1: brothers in arms when we met there somewhere in an occasion.
Speaker 1: And then he was using musicians and his bands from Nashville,
Speaker 1: great players that we all know that our friends and Max,
Speaker 1: and he's a great admirer of Max too. So uh,
Speaker 1: I think we met the first time through chet Atkins,
Speaker 1: who I knew pretty well in those days, and and
Speaker 1: we just became friends and state in touch with each other.
Speaker 1: And so when when we started to go over to
Speaker 1: you know, we every year, we almost ten years, we
Speaker 1: played Paris every year and just for the fun out
Speaker 1: it and and but the shows became like things people
Speaker 1: had to have other bucket list. So we know, hadn't
Speaker 1: played England in a while, so we went to London
Speaker 1: and we hadn't played Dublin, and I wanted to play
Speaker 1: because the Irish would come to to the shows in
Speaker 1: Paris and hang banners over the balcony going and they
Speaker 1: sit there in the middle of Finns when everybody's going
Speaker 1: completely crazy and like this, and with a sign on
Speaker 1: a flight said, the Irish are patiently waiting. And they
Speaker 1: got to me and I went, I'm coming. So we went.
Speaker 1: So where we went, Um, you had to have an
Speaker 1: opening act and so and I knew that like going
Speaker 1: to Australia or New Zealand, you take local acts on
Speaker 1: there and it's a great thing, you know, for people
Speaker 1: to support their local talents. And so I didn't know
Speaker 1: whether they needed one or not in Dublin. So I
Speaker 1: just was in touch with I was talking to Mark
Speaker 1: about something else, and you know, we worked at his
Speaker 1: studio over there and stayed in touch. And I said,
Speaker 1: you know, you know my band and you know me
Speaker 1: and you know what we do. And I said, we
Speaker 1: had to have an opening act, Uh to go to Dublin.
Speaker 1: Before I finished the sentence, he said, Paul eighty. Now
Speaker 1: I've heard about Paul Brady from Bonnie Ray and they
Speaker 1: wrote some things together and then he was he was
Speaker 1: in Nashville. Uh, who does he stay with? Mack? Uh?
Speaker 1: He stays with Jerry Douglas somebody Jr. Bara Douglas is
Speaker 1: a good buddy, so I knew a little about him,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know the depth of his material. So
Speaker 1: I started getting it. I went up on Spotify and
Speaker 1: I got a Paul Brady Settlers and by this time,
Speaker 1: I'm now in California, kind of running around and driving
Speaker 1: back and forth listening to and I went this, I
Speaker 1: felt the same way everybody when I heard Paul Brady
Speaker 1: song where I did when I heard uh Mac's first album.
Speaker 1: And I said, I gotta get in touch with him.
Speaker 1: And then uh Mark gave me his number and I
Speaker 1: called him and I said, you know, Martin Novel gave
Speaker 1: you your number and I said, he said, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, as I just got back from New Zealand,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, we're coming to Dublin. We're
Speaker 1: playing one night at at the Olympia in uh I Love.
Speaker 1: We need an opening act and I would just luck
Speaker 1: for you to open for us there. And I heard
Speaker 1: him laughing on the phone. And this is the first
Speaker 1: time I ever spoken to him. We did shange email
Speaker 1: and he said, well, you know, Jilly, uh last time
Speaker 1: I Plater did ten nights there. Oh you don't open
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going, you know, and he just laughed.
Speaker 1: He said, but maybe I could do a joke up
Speaker 1: on that, you know. And then by that time I
Speaker 1: heard the songs and there's incredible, unbelievable, unbelievable material. And
Speaker 1: then so he we did. We went over and he
Speaker 1: opened for us, He came, he did a couple of
Speaker 1: songs in the show, and uh, and then I was
Speaker 1: just then at that point and knew about the material,
Speaker 1: and I said, up, it inspired me to go back
Speaker 1: to start writing stuff again. I had a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff there that I thought was pretty good stuff. But
Speaker 1: listening to him and going back and listening to a
Speaker 1: couple of us earlier um uh uh Mac albums and
Speaker 1: earlier novel albums and earlier Gordon life. But I went
Speaker 1: back and listen to those guys that I really wanted
Speaker 1: to be like a write like, a play like and
Speaker 1: it got me going again. And so I started churning
Speaker 1: out some some pretty good stuff for this and as
Speaker 1: as well as and then Paul sent me a song
Speaker 1: called out the Lotty Donard w wasn't finished and uh,
Speaker 1: we finished it together. So it is now like you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of those people you meet once and you
Speaker 1: know them for fifty years. Well, you know, I know
Speaker 1: him an email and he sent me the world is
Speaker 1: what you make it. And I was on my computer
Speaker 1: and on a different screen I had to and I said, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: what's going on here? Really cracked me up? Well, that
Speaker 1: that song was that song got to me. You know,
Speaker 1: that is a great I mean to me, what I
Speaker 1: like in a song. It's a very very strong point
Speaker 1: of thing to say, but it is it is. It
Speaker 1: is uh is presented and in a fashion and it's
Speaker 1: a great song and you're gonna wind up listening to
Speaker 1: it and later on going man that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of me that there are a lot of media that though,
Speaker 1: you know, which is that? To me is what Bob
Speaker 1: Marley is so great. He was a political force, but
Speaker 1: he gave it to you in the really wonderful songs
Speaker 1: that had you know, people singing before they knew what
Speaker 1: he was talking about. And I think Paul writes the
Speaker 1: same way. Okay, so Mike and Mac produced the record.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Were you really hands off? What
Speaker 1: was the process there? I know what I know what
Speaker 1: I do best, and I know what they do best,
Speaker 1: you know, And as producers we've done this for a
Speaker 1: long time, and you know, it's it's to us, it's
Speaker 1: an extension of writing a settlers for a show. Now
Speaker 1: it's you've got to have a certain amount of energy
Speaker 1: and for a certain amount of recognition and a show.
Speaker 1: And so I looked at, you know, getting a song
Speaker 1: one together because I wanted it to be a project
Speaker 1: and and uh, the the original title was gonna be
Speaker 1: slack Tied because I've written the song slack Tied and uh,
Speaker 1: and then you know, we wound up another title. But
Speaker 1: we started writing together and Paul was in the mix,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of felt really good the preparation
Speaker 1: and now but you know, and this is before coded time,
Speaker 1: and but we were all exchanging kind of ideas and
Speaker 1: songs were coming together. So I put together what I
Speaker 1: thought were the best songs to do going to the
Speaker 1: studio in the fourteen or sixteen tracks, and we hadn't
Speaker 1: been a studio with our band and their people. Everybody.
Speaker 1: This band can play way above what is required for
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett songs, and I, you know, I dine out
Speaker 1: on that because you get them in the studio and
Speaker 1: they can really shine, but they stay they stay true
Speaker 1: to you know what people like to hear us play,
Speaker 1: and it's just a great experience to go into the
Speaker 1: studio with these musicians you've been with us for you know,
Speaker 1: from Robert Greenwich to Eric Darthan and mac Ugly to
Speaker 1: the Mayo Brothers. I mean, it's an amazing lucky guy.
Speaker 1: I am that you're standing in front of that band.
Speaker 1: But everybody was really in the same mood to go
Speaker 1: in and do this, and we cut how many sixteen
Speaker 1: tracks in four days? I think, yep, ye, you're behind
Speaker 1: the board. What are you doing as a producer on Jimmy?
Speaker 1: I'm not behind the board. I'm sitting on a guitar.
Speaker 1: You don't you don't want me. There's there's no empty
Speaker 1: hands in the studio. Everybody's playing something. So what is
Speaker 1: your role other than playing on Jimmy's record. Well, because
Speaker 1: we're writers and we like from from the from the
Speaker 1: German nation of these songs, Jimmy and I and and
Speaker 1: Utly are sending, we're sending things around. There's you know,
Speaker 1: they're parcel songs are going for for a while, you know,
Speaker 1: as they're being written, and some of them weren't written
Speaker 1: until we didn't weren't finished until in the studio too.
Speaker 1: But the the love jury of of being a Coral
Speaker 1: Reefer is the fact that that band can go in
Speaker 1: and create and listen and play at the same time.
Speaker 1: And we we we were confident going in that we
Speaker 1: had we had the great the shell of a really
Speaker 1: good album. You know, we had we had the cornerstone
Speaker 1: songs that the you know and and I think you
Speaker 1: know we Jimmy, because of the nature of the business
Speaker 1: the last few years, there was a couple of times
Speaker 1: he said, I don't know if people are even gonna
Speaker 1: make albums anymore, and I go, you, you got fans
Speaker 1: that want them. I still, you know, I grew up
Speaker 1: listening to albums sitting in the middle of a sofa
Speaker 1: holding an album cover, double folded out. And I don't
Speaker 1: multitask if I'm listening to music. I'm listening to music.
Speaker 1: I'm not sweeping the floor and listening to music. I
Speaker 1: listened to an album, and I still want that, even
Speaker 1: though I know there's a whole generation that maybe has
Speaker 1: never even done it. I still want it to be
Speaker 1: an album. I want there to be a thread. And
Speaker 1: we have that in common, he and I and ugly
Speaker 1: the same way. So we were we were conscious about
Speaker 1: that in product from the very beginning, and to have
Speaker 1: it all come together kind of in a hurry, you
Speaker 1: still get that rush of energy. There's there's still a
Speaker 1: couple of brand new songs, and then there's some things
Speaker 1: that we've been looking forward to cutting for four or
Speaker 1: five months because we've been working and polishing, so so
Speaker 1: you you get different levels of gratification from that, the
Speaker 1: cornerstone pieces and the brand new pieces that like, you know,
Speaker 1: slack Tide wasn't actually finished until the very last day,
Speaker 1: so and and that was the album title, and it
Speaker 1: just kept getting better and kept getting better until until
Speaker 1: I get chill bumps thinking about the actual track going
Speaker 1: down right now, just telling you guys about it. Uh
Speaker 1: And and Jimmy was there. There's there's some chill bumps
Speaker 1: on that, you know, and coming from the whole band.
Speaker 1: And and the fact that it was it was hypothetical
Speaker 1: until it was magical, and and the fact that we
Speaker 1: got to experience that, and you know in a little
Speaker 1: concrete block building and Key West, I will not ever forget.
Speaker 1: So you know, me being in what I call the
Speaker 1: produce section is mainly me just having a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of joy at being in the proximity of well made
Speaker 1: music played by phenomenal musicians. Well, I gotta tell you
Speaker 1: about when you get out of the studio, you just
Speaker 1: you hand something over there. It's life, he said, He's
Speaker 1: the he's the Finnish guy, you know. And somebody's got
Speaker 1: to do the vocal comps, somebody's got to do the mastering.
Speaker 1: Somebody do that. I just I put it in their
Speaker 1: hands and they called me if they need anything, because
Speaker 1: I trust them they know what to do with with that. Because,
Speaker 1: as as Max said, you make magic in in a
Speaker 1: studio like that, and we're not the only ones that
Speaker 1: do it, but that's there's something about camaraderie and music
Speaker 1: together that you can if you can do that once
Speaker 1: or twice in your life. And I've been lucky enough,
Speaker 1: I think they do it four or five times on
Speaker 1: records that were truly magical. And this one album well,
Speaker 1: and and there's there's a really almost a generation of
Speaker 1: artists who who don't have that as part of their experience,
Speaker 1: sitting in a room full of phenomenal musicians playing and
Speaker 1: listening at the same time. That doesn't happen as much
Speaker 1: as it used to happen. Well, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say that. I mean, really that's almost almost like a
Speaker 1: lost art. Anyway, simultaneously you're working on and you put
Speaker 1: out an album just very recently. How long have you
Speaker 1: been working on that and what were your thoughts? Well,
Speaker 1: my records traditionally are are kind of spackled into a
Speaker 1: schedule of other things that I'm doing. Uh, And it's
Speaker 1: just just as well for me, because I considered a
Speaker 1: luxury that I don't make a record based on having
Speaker 1: a tour that I have to support, or a record
Speaker 1: deal deadline that I have to make, or or you know,
Speaker 1: as as Jimmy does, which I'm grateful that he does,
Speaker 1: a pile of employees that you have to make viable
Speaker 1: business wise. I only make a record when I when
Speaker 1: I think maybe I've collected enough things that I have
Speaker 1: something to say, and and that usually takes three or
Speaker 1: four years of life for me to cook down into
Speaker 1: a reduction sauce of thirty forty minutes of music. That's
Speaker 1: the way it historically has worked for me. That Uh,
Speaker 1: this particular record is uh. We we started cutting tracks
Speaker 1: I think June of last year, and of the twelve songs,
Speaker 1: I think nine are are just myself and Eric Darkin,
Speaker 1: who's our percussionist in the Coral Reefer Band. My show,
Speaker 1: my life show these days is just the two of us.
Speaker 1: I'll do half an hour by myself and then bring
Speaker 1: Eric up and and we you know, we we make
Speaker 1: a fair amount of noise for two guys. It's sort
Speaker 1: of impressive what we're able to do from a stage.
Speaker 1: But but the record itself, at the core is the
Speaker 1: two of us. He added some percussion that's more than
Speaker 1: he can play at once, and I might play a
Speaker 1: bass in another couple of guitars and and and some
Speaker 1: harmony vocals, but it's really the core of it is
Speaker 1: just the two of us. There's one track that's the
Speaker 1: whole Coral Reefer band, and and one acts an old demo,
Speaker 1: But but in general it's it's it's us and and
Speaker 1: the pandemic. As bad as it is for for on
Speaker 1: so many levels, it actually afforded me the opportunity to
Speaker 1: to finish this one out in the same way that
Speaker 1: I finished Jimmy's Out. Sometimes sometimes I hurry mine, but
Speaker 1: this one because because I was sitting around here at
Speaker 1: the house. I got to I got to a stay
Speaker 1: true to my original perception that it be primarily simple
Speaker 1: just myself and Eric and be. I got to I
Speaker 1: got to really you know, I had to sing some
Speaker 1: high harmonies that God never intended me to sing, uh,
Speaker 1: because I'm the only guy in the damn house, and
Speaker 1: I and I got to play some bass that I
Speaker 1: should probably shouldn't have played. But but on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it is it is me and probably closer to my
Speaker 1: total vision of the of these songs than I usually
Speaker 1: get to do on a record. I was I was
Speaker 1: afforded some time that that I don't always have. So
Speaker 1: I feel pretty good about this record being similar to
Speaker 1: what it was in my head when the songs were born. Now,
Speaker 1: what are your expectations in terms of reaching audience? You know,
Speaker 1: for me, Bob, from the beginning, I just wanted out
Speaker 1: of my head into some other storage medium. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm thank God for binary code because I got terrible handwriting.
Speaker 1: I never wrote songs down in the beginning. I just
Speaker 1: figured if I couldn't remember them, I didn't have the
Speaker 1: right to inflict them on any any of the public.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm I'm in my sixties. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna I'm not gonna buy a tour or or get
Speaker 1: a personal trainer or or a tour bus or but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play shows. I've got some folks who who
Speaker 1: like what I do, and I can you know, it's
Speaker 1: It's not an enormous group of folks, but it's enough
Speaker 1: folks that I can make a living just doing that.
Speaker 1: If if that's but I don't want to do just that.
Speaker 1: I don't want to just be a mac artist. I
Speaker 1: want to be a coral reefer. And I want to
Speaker 1: play on George Strait albums and kenn each As the albums.
Speaker 1: I want to strump beside my buddies. So my particular
Speaker 1: life works so that I could do those things at
Speaker 1: that level, and I can play awesome little listening rooms
Speaker 1: and small theaters and and get whatever self aggrandizement that
Speaker 1: comes from being in the middle of the stage and
Speaker 1: having somebody overly brag on me every once in a while.
Speaker 1: That's that's cool. But I don't I don't anticipate a
Speaker 1: mass audience or I don't pine for one. I'm really
Speaker 1: grateful for folks that connect and that my songs mean
Speaker 1: something too, and I'm super grateful that that I can
Speaker 1: be the rhythm guitarists in the Coral Reefer band and
Speaker 1: and and play on other folks records as well, and
Speaker 1: still write a song for somebody and every once in
Speaker 1: a while, Like I said, I have the ideal life
Speaker 1: for the way that I'm built. Okay, just one question
Speaker 1: relative to that. Once you get it out of your head,
Speaker 1: you put it on the record, you ever listen to
Speaker 1: it again? Uh? If I gotta relearn it, like about
Speaker 1: to have to learn how to play some of this
Speaker 1: tough live, I gotta go listen to it again. What
Speaker 1: it's What the hill did I do sitting up there?
Speaker 1: Or why did I? Why did I sing that? Now
Speaker 1: that I gotta go out and do it on the road,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm doing here too. But I'm I'm learning
Speaker 1: these songs very well, the ones that I wasn't that
Speaker 1: familiar with. I mean, if I got to do cussing Island,
Speaker 1: I gotta go and learn it again, you know. But
Speaker 1: that's a big mouthful. But you're gonna do it. We're
Speaker 1: gonna make you do it. But I gave the Mac
Speaker 1: album and listen, I took it out of the boat
Speaker 1: with my with some man and my daughter and her husband, Josh,
Speaker 1: and we gave him. We gave it worked very well
Speaker 1: on the boat. But I just I love the fact
Speaker 1: that I knew there was just the two of them,
Speaker 1: but it sounded that's what my kids are going. Boy,
Speaker 1: is that the band I went on one cut and
Speaker 1: you know the best of what Matt can really do.
Speaker 1: But you know, as the as the owner of mail
Speaker 1: Bowl Records, I'm glad that I'm in the same category
Speaker 1: as Dave Deaf that I let this man be an
Speaker 1: artist and didn't put any you know, do it when
Speaker 1: you turn it in, when you're finished, okay, flipping it
Speaker 1: over to you, Jimmy. Uh, the bit you may or
Speaker 1: may not have changed, sort of like the Joe Walsh's
Speaker 1: song Life is Good, but the scene is completely changed.
Speaker 1: The records in the Spotify Top fifty have never been
Speaker 1: so small and cultural impact, not like when the sixties
Speaker 1: said that you had to hit. Everybody knew it, so
Speaker 1: you said earlier, you have a good opinion on it.
Speaker 1: You're making this for your audience. But to what degree
Speaker 1: do you pine, if at all, for a larger impact,
Speaker 1: which is difficult for anybody, Never mind people irrelevant of
Speaker 1: the quality of the record, you know. You know, like
Speaker 1: I said, I'm seventy three now, and and I've been
Speaker 1: a lucky, lucky boy from from those early days, you know.
Speaker 1: And and uh again, it's like, there's not really much
Speaker 1: out there that I haven't done that I want to do.
Speaker 1: I want to go to space, that's the one thing
Speaker 1: I would like to do that. And I did you
Speaker 1: sign up for Virgin Galactic? I did? And uh and
Speaker 1: uh I've actually played a show for it, and uh,
Speaker 1: I had a deal with Richard Bramson and I got
Speaker 1: But anyway, but Johnny Glenn Win he was he was
Speaker 1: seventy seven and I'm seventy through. So I'm you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's like one thing. But as far as and
Speaker 1: you know, the way the business thing is is gone
Speaker 1: and stuff that was just a byproduct of a brand
Speaker 1: that was basically authentic in the beginning. And you know,
Speaker 1: you see so many other people trying to create something
Speaker 1: that's authentic. It doesn't happen that way. It's got to
Speaker 1: be authentic, you know, and and and so um, you know,
Speaker 1: there's not that much left to do. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what I'm thinking about, right now is because of the
Speaker 1: roadblocks against that that have been put up by the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. The world that we live in, of music
Speaker 1: getting out there, of love music being played by bands
Speaker 1: and and clubs, you know, and I understand why you
Speaker 1: can't do it, but I'm also looking at how can
Speaker 1: you do it safely and reach your audience? And so
Speaker 1: I leaned back to for whatever reason, I'm the reason
Speaker 1: I started radio. Margaint read bills because it can never
Speaker 1: get on the radio. And I came back from Australia
Speaker 1: where I heard, you know, there were twelve radio stations
Speaker 1: in Australia in those days, but they programmed for what
Speaker 1: what the hours people were listening And I got that
Speaker 1: idea in my mind. And when when the Internet came
Speaker 1: out and I started seeing it radio stations, I went,
Speaker 1: We're just gonna do one of our own up there
Speaker 1: and find find out if anybody wants to listen, and
Speaker 1: they do, so, you know, with with that and with
Speaker 1: Margaint Red build TV. Right now, we're basically supplying those
Speaker 1: two entities we started fifteen twenty years ago with products
Speaker 1: like Max album comes out on that and then you know,
Speaker 1: we've got we've got we do wednesdayson Saturday nights and
Speaker 1: replaying shows so our au and so I know we're
Speaker 1: still out there. So my job right now is to
Speaker 1: stay in touch with the loyal parent head audience. And
Speaker 1: I get sneaky, got sneaky things that I can go
Speaker 1: out and do, like uh, you know other people are
Speaker 1: you get on other people's tracks. And it didn't hurt
Speaker 1: that Alan Jackson asked me to come come played all
Speaker 1: five o'clock somewhere and and there's something else coming out
Speaker 1: now that you get people that are doing duets and
Speaker 1: being honored by other people. That's enough to kind of
Speaker 1: stay uh, to stay current, you know, and and not
Speaker 1: have just your audience to be people your age. And
Speaker 1: I think we we have gone generational by just being
Speaker 1: who we are and people being able to play their
Speaker 1: music for their kids. And we're like four fits generation
Speaker 1: and we see it in the shows when we go
Speaker 1: out there, and so I'm just gonna still keep doing
Speaker 1: that in the limited way that we have we are
Speaker 1: able to do it now waiting for that day. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not going back until people going to parking lot
Speaker 1: and tail game, because that's part of the show. I mean,
Speaker 1: un two of you do that, it's a half as
Speaker 1: show as far as I concerned, because people aren't getting
Speaker 1: the bank or the buck that they want. And when
Speaker 1: it's safe to do that and we can do it,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll go back and do big shows. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, Like Max said, you know, we both have
Speaker 1: avitability to play solo or with smaller bands. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at that very very closely because I love
Speaker 1: to do it, and because that's all you can do now.
Speaker 1: And if you don't have an audience, we better in
Speaker 1: a club then you got one up online. So I'm
Speaker 1: looking at being able to utilize what's what it's available
Speaker 1: to us now in order to get back to where
Speaker 1: until we can get back to where we want to be,
Speaker 1: this question go on, mac I was just gonna interject though,
Speaker 1: that in in the context of of whether you want
Speaker 1: a larger audience or not. He did. He did just
Speaker 1: have the number one country album with Life on the
Speaker 1: Flip Side, and the number two pop album behind Lady Gaga.
Speaker 1: Who's who's not you know, you know she she's no slout,
Speaker 1: She's amazing. But uh, but the folks, at the point
Speaker 1: Jimmy is in his career that are that are having
Speaker 1: number two pop albums and number one country albums. Uh
Speaker 1: are are rare. I'll be surprised if too many, too
Speaker 1: many folks get to match that. Okay, uh both of
Speaker 1: you grew up in the South, and needless to say,
Speaker 1: from when you were little children is not today. But
Speaker 1: what does the rest of the country not understand about
Speaker 1: the South? WHOA, that's you got about eight hours. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you the one thing they don't understand that there's
Speaker 1: more Souths than you can possibly imagine. It's not one place.
Speaker 1: And as a traveling musician, I know Matt knows that,
Speaker 1: and I know that, and that would be the one
Speaker 1: thing about it is like you know, living in the
Speaker 1: Northeast as long as I have, you know, New York
Speaker 1: is not New York. New York is boroughs and neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: So they people tend to think of the South as
Speaker 1: a place. And you know, and if you go back
Speaker 1: to the Civil rights movement started in the South, you know,
Speaker 1: out of brave people like mar lud King and John
Speaker 1: Lewis and and you know, and John Siginfaller a good
Speaker 1: friend of ours. And I admire those people because I
Speaker 1: was I was brought up by my parents, not to
Speaker 1: heke and what Mac, Do you have anything to add
Speaker 1: to that about people not knowing about the South, Well,
Speaker 1: I think, uh, you know, through through the things that
Speaker 1: we've done poorly and the things that we've done correctly
Speaker 1: over the years and learned hopefully from mistakes, uh, slower
Speaker 1: than we should have learned. The one thing that that
Speaker 1: comes out of here is because the South as segregated
Speaker 1: as schools where the South has been generally rural and
Speaker 1: and not necessarily affluent. I believe that that people from
Speaker 1: the South have a sense of community that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: all over the world. I think it's spread. That part
Speaker 1: spreads well that what's Jimmy's talking about their South in
Speaker 1: the rest of the world, those folks that have gone
Speaker 1: out have have represented the best of what the South
Speaker 1: has in a good way, whether it be literature arts.
Speaker 1: I joke about spare time being the major export of Mississippi. Uh,
Speaker 1: but uh, it kinda is. But but you look at
Speaker 1: what's come from that. Uh. And And as you said, Jimmy,
Speaker 1: I I although Mississippi doesn't have a great total track
Speaker 1: record in regard to civil rights, a lot of civil
Speaker 1: rights was born out of it. In my particular family,
Speaker 1: we're just so wonderful, and in saying that we were,
Speaker 1: you know, nobody's better than anybody else. We all need
Speaker 1: one another, we all have a use for one another,
Speaker 1: and we all have an obligation to one another to
Speaker 1: make everything work. And you can see that in a
Speaker 1: small town, in a small community in a way, sometimes
Speaker 1: it might not be so obvious in a in a
Speaker 1: pile of millions of people. You know, if you if
Speaker 1: you're sitting in New York City, which I love New
Speaker 1: York City, but if you walk out the door and
Speaker 1: you decide you're gonna punch out the first person that
Speaker 1: comes down the street, there may literally be no repercussion
Speaker 1: from that. But if you go out the door in
Speaker 1: a small town and you punch the first person, not
Speaker 1: only do you know that person and you know their
Speaker 1: family and your family and how those two family intersects.
Speaker 1: You see the effects of your accents. You see the
Speaker 1: effects of what you do, and you see how it's
Speaker 1: better to get along than to not get along. Even
Speaker 1: if there's some of those folks as you don't care for,
Speaker 1: it's better to get along than not get along. And
Speaker 1: that that as just a singular, abiding message would would
Speaker 1: benefit the world a lot right now, If every if
Speaker 1: everybody took a little bit more of a grip of that,
Speaker 1: I think it'd be we'd be better off than we are. Okay,
Speaker 1: needless to say, we have a very fractured country. And
Speaker 1: uh so, Jimmy, hey, do you believe music has a
Speaker 1: part in this forthcoming election and bringing our country together?
Speaker 1: And I don't mean to be all kumbaya, but nettles
Speaker 1: to say we grew up. We could we could point
Speaker 1: out that people are on the other team now, they're
Speaker 1: music fans that are both on both sides of the fence. One,
Speaker 1: to what degree do you feel an obligation to go
Speaker 1: on the record? Do you feel it works? To what
Speaker 1: degree you inhibited? Because obviously your entire audience doesn't feel
Speaker 1: the same way. Yeah, you know, I've always been uh
Speaker 1: you know, my politics. I've never taken on the stage
Speaker 1: because I believe that there's a place oasis is are
Speaker 1: there for reasons people to rest and uh and I
Speaker 1: believe that that's what we are. And everybody tends to
Speaker 1: go into the political world of it, but uh, music
Speaker 1: is is the universal language. I've I've I've lived it,
Speaker 1: I've experienced it. I've going around the world, uh and
Speaker 1: play places where I can sing in other languages and
Speaker 1: where I can or I can I can listen to
Speaker 1: songs that I don't know what they're saying, but I
Speaker 1: love what it's the way it's making me feel. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's to a degree. You know, I think
Speaker 1: there's been a little too many celebrities getting into the
Speaker 1: political world. And then you know, in the beginning it
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting. And and of course politicians want your
Speaker 1: audiences because they think they're there's uh and I've done
Speaker 1: that and uh, you know, but my polife were like
Speaker 1: I said, I was raised not to hate in the
Speaker 1: South by my my mother and uh and and friends
Speaker 1: around her. She worked in labor relations in a shipyard
Speaker 1: to was segregated. So I came up that way, and uh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay that way. And yeah, I'm gonna go.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go do work I always have in the past.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you don't like it, I don't
Speaker 1: see how I'd like to see less equating politics with music. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know that sounds weird because protests songs have gone
Speaker 1: out there, but and done, done good. But in this climate,
Speaker 1: you know, there's has to be some agreement on something
Speaker 1: which there's a very little degree on. But I think
Speaker 1: people can agree on bands and probably their favorite baseball, football,
Speaker 1: or basketball team. And if that's what we got, that's
Speaker 1: our job right now. Well, gentlemen, this has been wonderful.
Speaker 1: We've explored stuff that certainly I wasn't aware of, and
Speaker 1: I really thank you for taking time out of your
Speaker 1: day to appear and tell us your stories. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for being Bob Lester's absolutely and I also
Speaker 1: want to want to thank you, Bob for for for
Speaker 1: the the letter last week, the kind words and uh,
Speaker 1: because as you know at this point you you're bound
Speaker 1: to know how terrible of a self promotor I am.
Speaker 1: So the fact that you're helping is much appreciated from
Speaker 1: the mcinally daughters for sure and myself as well. That's uh,
Speaker 1: it comes straight from the heart. I mean, it's you
Speaker 1: look for things to connect with, you know. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like people say, kids today have a really short
Speaker 1: attention spin no, they just have an incredibly good ship detector.
Speaker 1: They go no, no, no, and if they find something
Speaker 1: they like, like a series, I'll watch all day I
Speaker 1: am looking for those tracks, and when I find a track,
Speaker 1: I will literally play it out infinitum. I made a
Speaker 1: Spotify playlist of those three tracks. When Hiking in the
Speaker 1: Mountains played only those three tracks. They set a mood.
Speaker 1: I will play them into the ground. You'll get a
Speaker 1: few thousands of a penny from Spotify for me, but
Speaker 1: it's certainly hit me emotionally. Well. That's music is one
Speaker 1: of the only things in the world that can make
Speaker 1: bad good. It can turn bad into good, and we
Speaker 1: get to be associated with that. And I know I
Speaker 1: know from your letters over the years that you're passionate
Speaker 1: about it. I know that this guy in the in
Speaker 1: the florally in the pretty shirt. You got a pretty
Speaker 1: shirt there, Jimmy, that guy, I must to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a costume. And I know what it means
Speaker 1: to me, and I know how grateful that I am
Speaker 1: that we all get to talk about it and go
Speaker 1: out and do it again tomorrow. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: doing this. Until next time. This is Bob left Sex