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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets podcast. Those

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Speaker 1: people who follow me in my writing know that I'm

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Speaker 1: a huge Doobie Brothers fan. I was not initially, I

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Speaker 1: certainly like listen to the music, and then they were everywhere,

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Speaker 1: so that any band that's everywhere, it has that many hits,

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Speaker 1: maybe doesn't deserve my attention. But I spent the best

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Speaker 1: month of my life in nine and a condo and

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Speaker 1: Mammoth Mountain, which is a big ski area that you

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Speaker 1: can usually skip to July four in California, and the

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Speaker 1: guy brought his eight tracks, and he brought this eight

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Speaker 1: track was a combination of what were once vices and

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Speaker 1: the Captain and me, and it just totally closed me.

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Speaker 1: I mean, this morning, I played isaas Silver on my

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Speaker 1: Amazon Echo show. So it's a great thrill and an honor.

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Speaker 1: And this is not b sing because I'm a huge

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Speaker 1: fan to have from the Doobie Brothers, the legendary voice

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Speaker 1: Tom Johnston. Thank you glad to be here. Okay, So

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Speaker 1: we always started at the beginning. We're you know, like

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Speaker 1: that old Cheech and Chong number. Where was your born? Uh?

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Speaker 1: Just north of l a At, well not just north,

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Speaker 1: but in the Central Valley and by Celia, by Celia

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Speaker 1: for those people were not California savvy. Tell them how

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Speaker 1: far from Los Angeles? That is probably about two hours

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Speaker 1: north of l A. Okay, that's the old day. I

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Speaker 1: don't know about now, but that's what he used to be. Okay.

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Speaker 1: But when you grow up in Vasilia, what does your

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Speaker 1: father do for a living? He had an aircraft shop, untilarry,

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Speaker 1: an aircraft shop, well, he worked given an aircraft repair shop,

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Speaker 1: made a shop for crop desting and private aircraft. That's

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Speaker 1: where I worked my own childhood. That's what. Okay. So

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Speaker 1: if he's repairing those things, one would think that was

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Speaker 1: he was a pilot too. He was a pilot. And

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Speaker 1: are you a pilot? No? Yeah, I never did it.

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Speaker 1: I don't know why I thought about it, but I

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Speaker 1: didn't give it. I wanted to motorcycle wars. You wanted

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Speaker 1: to stay on the ground and have danger on the ground.

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Speaker 1: I got flying nuts, so that wasn't a problem. Right.

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Speaker 1: But okay, so your father is an airplane mc pchanic

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Speaker 1: and your mother worked outside the home. She was a homemaker,

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Speaker 1: but she had a degree in teaching and stuff. They

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Speaker 1: both came from Little bitty towns in Missouri, and they

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Speaker 1: came out in nineteen thirty three and um, him to

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Speaker 1: get his degree in aeronautical engineering and her to be

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Speaker 1: his wife. I guess I mean. But they met back

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Speaker 1: in Missouri. Oh yeah, Soliman and Bourbon to eighty bitty

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Speaker 1: little towns right on what used to be Highway sixty six.

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Speaker 1: Well you've certainly been there. Oh yeah, Okay, the relatives

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Speaker 1: are still there, the ones that are still hanging in Yeah, okay.

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Speaker 1: So they come to word, does he get his degree

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Speaker 1: in California? You know, I'm a little unclear as to

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Speaker 1: where he got it. I was not born yet, and

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Speaker 1: this was quite a while ago. Um, I'm not really

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Speaker 1: sure where he guys. And they came for opportunity to California,

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Speaker 1: well him specifically a good yeah, to get the gig

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Speaker 1: with get his degree, and then he went up to work.

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Speaker 1: Nobody's gonna know what I'm talking about here, but he

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Speaker 1: went up to work. Eventually invited sell at an airport

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Speaker 1: called that was run by Tex rank And who was

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Speaker 1: a World War two guy. And this was in World

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Speaker 1: War two and he was a mechanic for so Okay,

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Speaker 1: if you're growing up in Vizilia, and your mother did

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Speaker 1: teach or she stayed at home. She didn't teach at

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Speaker 1: any time after I was taking air as it were. Okay,

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Speaker 1: she sometimes went over and did the books at the

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Speaker 1: shop from my dad. Okay, So how many kids in

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Speaker 1: your family? Three and you're we're in the hierarchy at

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Speaker 1: the bottom. You're the baby of the family. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think it's more. I think it's more like a mistake

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Speaker 1: that wasn't supposed to have any how much older. Your

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Speaker 1: other siblings brothers nine years older than me and my

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Speaker 1: sister seven years older than me. It does sound like

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Speaker 1: you're a mistake. And what are your brother and sister

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Speaker 1: if they're still with us, what are they up to?

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Speaker 1: My brother took over the shop, and my sister ends

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Speaker 1: up in Oregon. She lives over there, close to the coast.

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Speaker 1: And Okay, I grew up in Connecticut, fifty miles from

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Speaker 1: New York City, so we got New York TV, New

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Speaker 1: York radio. But you're living in Vesalea. What were you

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Speaker 1: getting your radio from? And your TV? God, Fresno and

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Speaker 1: it's I sell you right between Bakersfield and Fresno. So,

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Speaker 1: as I recall, it wasn't on radio coming out of Bakersfield,

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Speaker 1: but Fresno had a big station and a TV station,

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Speaker 1: and so you were listening to that. But there was

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Speaker 1: also a period of time when I was in my teens.

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Speaker 1: There's a little bit town called Fowler, California, but I

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Speaker 1: don't know, he probably wouldn't. Um that had this great

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Speaker 1: blue station. That's all he played all day. And the

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Speaker 1: guy's name was Happy hair Eld's House of Blues, and

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Speaker 1: so I would listen to that a lot. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: you're the youngest. Traditionally, the baby gets their way. The parents,

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Speaker 1: you know, they're tired for the other two children, they

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Speaker 1: give you a little slacked if the other kids didn't

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Speaker 1: get is that true. I don't know, because I didn't

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Speaker 1: have that. They were so far ahead of no comparison. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you know I followed my brother around when I

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Speaker 1: was young and kind of got away and stuff. But um,

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Speaker 1: I have to thank him for turning me on A

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Speaker 1: Little Richard. That's how I got now was like nine

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Speaker 1: years old, and that that was the first time I

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Speaker 1: ever got to hear a Little Richard. And he brought

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Speaker 1: the album home and he played it a couple of times.

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Speaker 1: I played it every day. So it's kind of like

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Speaker 1: the Beatles. The Beatles started with Little Richard. Prior to

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Speaker 1: that was their music in the home, there was uh,

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Speaker 1: dixie Land, primarily my dad with Dixie Land buff. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so until the Little Richard Richard came along, you were

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Speaker 1: not a big music radio listener. You were not. I

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Speaker 1: listened to whatever was on, but nothing really grabbed me

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Speaker 1: until a Little Richard and Bo Diddley and and even

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Speaker 1: Elvis press leaders really stuff. Okay, so that is all

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Speaker 1: pre Beatles stuff. What at what point do you then

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Speaker 1: pick up an instrument? Well, I was playing clarinet and

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Speaker 1: stuff all against my will. I did not want to

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Speaker 1: do this. This is from age eight. Tell freshman in

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Speaker 1: high school, I played that, and I played sax and

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Speaker 1: then uh, at age twelve, I started playing guitar. And

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Speaker 1: I didn't take lessons on purpose, and I just said,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this myself. Okay, let's go back. You

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Speaker 1: took saxophone and clarinet in school, so you learned how

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Speaker 1: to read music for a while. Yeah, I've asked my questions.

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Speaker 1: Could you read music now? Now? Okay, so you pick

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Speaker 1: up a guitar your parents bought you of the guitar. No,

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Speaker 1: I bought it. You bought it? Where'd you get the money?

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Speaker 1: It was only twelve bucks. It wasn't too bad. I

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Speaker 1: bought it from a bass player friend of mine, uh

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Speaker 1: in high school. I mean we weren't in high school, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I ended up being high school and then we

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Speaker 1: were in bands together, and um, twelve bucks for a

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Speaker 1: crack in the top old arch back harmony. And the

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Speaker 1: dream was what it really wasn't so much of a dream.

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Speaker 1: It was just kind of think of a rebellion thing.

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Speaker 1: Maybe I just didn't want to be associated with those

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Speaker 1: other instruments. Actually I didn't mind the sex so much,

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Speaker 1: but I really didn't like the clarinet. So the guitar

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Speaker 1: is my thing. Nobody was telling me to do this,

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Speaker 1: and this is totally exploration for me. So that's what

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Speaker 1: it became. And how did you learn? You said you

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Speaker 1: wanted to teach yourself. I listened. I listened. I figured

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Speaker 1: it out on and I listened to like Jimmy Reed.

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Speaker 1: I started with Jimmy Reid's It's pretty basic and sit

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Speaker 1: down and figure it out on the guitar, which really

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Speaker 1: wasn't that tough. And then I'd start building on that

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Speaker 1: as the years went by, and pretty soon by the

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Speaker 1: time he had high school, you're in high school bands

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Speaker 1: and you're playing okay, but British Invasion and went ahead. Okay.

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Speaker 1: But I just remember because certainly after the Beatles, we

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Speaker 1: all got guitars and we all formed bands. And I've

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Speaker 1: told this story before. I was in the bedroom of

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Speaker 1: a friend of mine and we're playing guitars. He goes, now,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna change key and I said, WHOA, I'm out.

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Speaker 1: I don't have that patrol ability. So some people have

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Speaker 1: natural ability. Would you consider yourself to have that? I

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Speaker 1: never really thought about it. I guess out to a point. Um,

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Speaker 1: I could hear this stuff. It's nobody explained it to

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Speaker 1: me so much. The only thing I ever learned from

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Speaker 1: anybody about playing guitar, at least especially in those days,

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Speaker 1: with how to make a bar accord, and then after

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Speaker 1: everything else, I just kind of figured out, Okay, so

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Speaker 1: you had this twelve dollar guitar and you're practicing in

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Speaker 1: your room. At what point do you graduate to another

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Speaker 1: guitar and start a band. Um, as soon as I

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Speaker 1: could afford another guitar, which basically was a single pick

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Speaker 1: up electric k and a crumming little lamp from the

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Speaker 1: music store in town. Do you remember the brand of

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Speaker 1: the app? You know, I don't because whatever it was

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Speaker 1: really off brand. It wasn't mainstream. Remember was a Marshal

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Speaker 1: right exactly? And oh yeah, you were saying, Um, I

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Speaker 1: didn't really started playing with people till I was probably

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Speaker 1: a freshman in high school. So freshman in high school?

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Speaker 1: What year is that? You mean? What year is like? Okay,

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Speaker 1: so probably this is pre Beatles. So you had to

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Speaker 1: know how to play Hideaway by Freddie King by that

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Speaker 1: That was my question. So you play that? What else?

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Speaker 1: I played a lot of blue stuff as best I

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Speaker 1: could At that point. I wasn't way a dance but

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Speaker 1: um I had also by that time as a freshman

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Speaker 1: in high school, I had a kind of a life

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Speaker 1: altering experience that buddy of mine I used to hang

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Speaker 1: with all the time, who was a senior when I

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Speaker 1: was a freshman, was way off into James Brown. And

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Speaker 1: so James Brown comes to town on his first Apollo

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Speaker 1: Theater album, to ur town being Fresno, and he says,

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Speaker 1: we gotta go see him. I said, all right, because

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Speaker 1: I already heard the album by then it was pretty amazing.

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Speaker 1: So we went up and signed and I never seen

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Speaker 1: anything like that in my life. It was amazing. I mean,

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Speaker 1: the guy never stopped moving, just constant power, constant um God.

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Speaker 1: Besides screaming and the amount of talent he had in

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Speaker 1: those days, he was even singing more than he did

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Speaker 1: later on when he got into the heavy funk stuff.

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Speaker 1: But a huge show. He had like two drummers, bass player,

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Speaker 1: two guitar players, chick singers and they would come out

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Speaker 1: in layers that like before he even did his show.

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Speaker 1: That was like forty five minutes of I think they

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Speaker 1: were called the Black Perris came out and sang and

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Speaker 1: his band played, and then he came out and played

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Speaker 1: organ which was a little questionable. But when he hit

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Speaker 1: the stage, it was just like a tornado hit the stage.

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Speaker 1: It was insane, and there was people standing on top

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Speaker 1: the Civic Center. Then there they were up on top

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Speaker 1: of these old wood, wooden, armed ironed like seats just

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Speaker 1: and they weren't all you know, it was like black white,

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Speaker 1: every everybody going nuts, going absolutely insane. Let's go a

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Speaker 1: little bit slower. I've driven through Brazili. I don't really know,

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Speaker 1: is it an integrated town. Is it all white? Now?

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Speaker 1: Vice Alia was not at that point in time. I

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Speaker 1: don't know what it's like. No, I hardly ever go there.

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Speaker 1: PACTA basically don't. Um. Hillary had a lot of black center.

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Speaker 1: So to get to Fresno and Fresno, how did you

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Speaker 1: get to Fresno for that gig? Drive up the highway?

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Speaker 1: But somebody had somebody had a license at that point,

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Speaker 1: Oh Bobby did. Yeah, Okay, he was a senior. I

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Speaker 1: was a freshman. I didn't have a license. That's why

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Speaker 1: I figured. That's how I asked you was taking a

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Speaker 1: freshman and you're at the Civic Center in Fresno. Exactly

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Speaker 1: how integrated is the audience? It was probably three quarters

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Speaker 1: to a quarter o. The west side of Fresno is

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Speaker 1: basically African American and um, but I there wasn't a

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Speaker 1: lady next to me. She must have at that time.

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Speaker 1: She seemed old to me looking back on it and said,

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Speaker 1: let's define old. But she was probably in her fourties

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Speaker 1: and she was standing on her seat just like doing.

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Speaker 1: I don't believe that it was amazing, it really was.

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Speaker 1: She was into it, man. Okay, So any fear coming

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Speaker 1: from Vezilia being in an integrated audience. Never thought about it.

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Speaker 1: I never thought about it. The racism was not an issue.

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Speaker 1: No one you know what talked to you. Okay, So

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Speaker 1: you come home from the big and you say to yourself,

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Speaker 1: what that's more of what I was trying to, Um,

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Speaker 1: take away from what I just went through. That was amazing.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I can't be It was a live faltering event.

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Speaker 1: You know if people don't realize the men they talk

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Speaker 1: about it. But we used to go see bands. There

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Speaker 1: were no video, no internet whatever, and the experience would

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Speaker 1: hang with us. We talked to people they wouldn't really

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Speaker 1: know I was talking about. It's like you could even

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Speaker 1: play the record and get the same experience. Well, they

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Speaker 1: were the people that I hung away in school, had

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Speaker 1: no idea what I was talking about. They didn't even

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Speaker 1: know who James Brown was. So it was I mean,

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Speaker 1: other than Bobby, who also went to same high school

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Speaker 1: I did. But um, it was kind of a small

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Speaker 1: cult if you will, that knew what that was about.

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Speaker 1: And as time went on. In high school bands I

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Speaker 1: would play little blues, mostly rock and roll, anything from

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Speaker 1: Chuck Berry to the Birds to Box Tops two, a

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Speaker 1: little bles too, and then we do the other half

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Speaker 1: of the gig would be James Brown muth. Really, I'm

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Speaker 1: the one that handled that end of it. You could

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Speaker 1: give us a little demonstration, now, I don't think so. Okay,

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Speaker 1: at what point in your okay, so what kind of

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Speaker 1: gigs you playing? Like high school dances and stuff? But

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Speaker 1: in your community were you known as like the musician

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Speaker 1: the star? Was there any stature or just another guy

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Speaker 1: playing music with a lot of musicians playing. I mean

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Speaker 1: for that side of community. I mean I was down

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Speaker 1: the ladder from other guys that I knew. They were

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Speaker 1: the older and had established names in right exactly. But

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Speaker 1: it's also an era where you could be a king

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Speaker 1: of your own town. And since your mother was a teacher,

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Speaker 1: are you doing well in school? I was doing, Okay,

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Speaker 1: you've done okay, I was done a big fantasychool. Okay,

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Speaker 1: you're not a big fan. But uh, it's not like

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Speaker 1: you got into music and then all of a sudden

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Speaker 1: you stopped paying attention to school. No, No, I didn't.

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Speaker 1: My ear and his best I gave it a good shot. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So then, uh, what point do you think it doesn't

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Speaker 1: even happen? At that point you say, whoa this could

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Speaker 1: be a career. I didn't think that way in those days. Um,

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Speaker 1: Although we did cut a record when I was a sophomore,

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Speaker 1: but that was just kind of a fluke thing. And

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Speaker 1: I cut another one when I was eighteen, and I

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Speaker 1: did go down and try and stop it here in

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Speaker 1: l A. As a matter of fact, with a friend

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Speaker 1: of mine. Nothing came of either one of my Well

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Speaker 1: what did you do? Just looked up record companies and

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Speaker 1: knocked on the door, well and got total rejection. Absolutely yeah,

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Speaker 1: And that didn't discourage you. Not really. I didn't expect

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Speaker 1: much to happen. Um. I had nobody representing me whatsoever,

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Speaker 1: and I was on my own, and I was with

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Speaker 1: this guy that had played drums and bassed on the

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Speaker 1: song when I was eighteen. And did you write the song? Yeah? Okay,

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Speaker 1: when did you start writing songs? Probably when I was fifteen,

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Speaker 1: I guess. And did you take it seriously? Right? One

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Speaker 1: after an other? Are just now and again. I would

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Speaker 1: write stuff for the band that I was in, you know,

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Speaker 1: and we, in essence we kind of all wrote it,

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Speaker 1: but I would write the lyrics such as they were,

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Speaker 1: and it was kind of an offshoot of a Chuck

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Speaker 1: Berry kind of thing, and the other side was kind

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Speaker 1: of a quote unquote half soul half rock and roll thing.

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Speaker 1: And uh it sounded very amateur, okay, because usually the

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Speaker 1: initial songs you think are great, but really they suck.

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Speaker 1: Now they were pretty bad, okay. And at what point

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Speaker 1: in this history to the Beatles hip sixty two, as

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Speaker 1: I recall, Oh, I mean for you at sixty two

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Speaker 1: was loved me do. But in the UK the Sullivan

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Speaker 1: at sixty four. So in sixty four you're still in

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Speaker 1: high school, yeah, I was. So it was this a revelation.

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Speaker 1: Did you watch them, mom, ed Sullivan? I did, And

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Speaker 1: we had all these kids in school that were following

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Speaker 1: the Beatles ardently, um, wearing the paraphernalia that you know,

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Speaker 1: the hats, the beetle boots, the frank. I thought it

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Speaker 1: was a little hicky, but whatever, I thought they were. Okay.

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Speaker 1: I thought they were you know something. You were not

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Speaker 1: a big Beatles fan, No, I was more of a

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Speaker 1: blues And how about the Stones Stones I liked, okay,

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Speaker 1: so they were blues. Yeah, that's why I mentioned back.

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Speaker 1: I mean they used to have the Battle of the

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Speaker 1: Beans on Saturday night on the radio, Stones versus the Beatles. Well,

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Speaker 1: the Beatles developed and I became a serious fan. Oh really,

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Speaker 1: when did you become a Beatles fan? Probably by the

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Speaker 1: time I was hitting freshman in high school. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's given me a freshman in college, and that would

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Speaker 1: be which Beatles songs? Which Beatle albums? If you remember,

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Speaker 1: I didn't own any I just listened to him, but

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Speaker 1: I wasn't a die hard be What songs did you say? Hey,

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Speaker 1: this is pretty good? Uh let me think hard days night?

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Speaker 1: Uh eler Rigby Okay, relatively early, but not the initial stuff. Okay.

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Speaker 1: And you go to college and you go to college where,

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Speaker 1: first of all junior college and vice he had a place,

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Speaker 1: c Os College is quas okay, and you stay there

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Speaker 1: for how long? Two years? And so you're living at

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Speaker 1: home and what's going You're playing music? And are you

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Speaker 1: riding motorcycles? Yet? I did buy one finally, after all

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Speaker 1: the years of working. My dad shot much, but I

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Speaker 1: did buy one. Okay. If that's something that's stuck with

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Speaker 1: you forever to this day, write anymore? When did you stop?

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Speaker 1: I quit in two thousand and three, and it's a

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Speaker 1: it's not because of you know you're gonna break your

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Speaker 1: neck or any of that kind of stuff. We had

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Speaker 1: to move out of the house for a year to

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Speaker 1: have it worked on, and we got back in and

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Speaker 1: I looked down and I said, I'm done. Be you're done,

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Speaker 1: because you figure you'd beat the odds, And maybe it

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Speaker 1: really wasn't. It's like somebody just turned the switch off.

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Speaker 1: The interest wasn't there anymore. How much did you ride

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Speaker 1: before you? Uh? Did the switch did go off? I

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Speaker 1: would call it weekend warrior kind of writing. I mean

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Speaker 1: I had various friends guys in the band I would

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Speaker 1: ride with, as well as a lot of guys that

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Speaker 1: I knew around town and stuff. It's all in northern California, um,

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Speaker 1: and we go right up and down the coast and

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Speaker 1: stuff like that. But I never took trips across out

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Speaker 1: the country or any of that kind of Did you

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Speaker 1: ever have an accident? I had a couple. And does

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Speaker 1: your body still suffer the consequences? Not that I'm aware of.

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Speaker 1: Let we'll take a quick break and come back with

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Speaker 1: more of my conversation with Tom Johnston to the Doobie Brothers.

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Speaker 1: I love getting people's stories, whether they're a famous performer, manager,

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Speaker 1: record label exec or tech star. I want to know

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Speaker 1: what makes them tick and how they became successful. This week,

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Speaker 1: Tom Johnson tells us about going to college, informing the

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Speaker 1: Doobie Brothers, and a fifty year career that came thereafter.

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Speaker 1: You can dial up by other conversations with artists like

356
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Speaker 1: Paul Rodgers, Cascade, and Shirley Manson by subscribing to the

357
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Speaker 1: podcast on tune in, Apple or your podcast player of choice.

358
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Speaker 1: While you're there, be sure to rate and review the podcast. Okay,

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Speaker 1: let's get back to more of my conversation with Tom Johnston.

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Speaker 1: So you're in junior college, you're playing in bands. You

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Speaker 1: finished two years of junior college, and then one um,

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Speaker 1: I went to San Jose. And why Santa Jose of

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Speaker 1: all the other places, well as one of two places

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Speaker 1: that got accepted that I had a lot to do

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Speaker 1: that they were Sant JOSEVI. What was the other choice? Oregon?

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Speaker 1: And Okay, I went up there and and I said,

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Speaker 1: I don't think so, because by that time I had

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Speaker 1: already met my sister lived in Santose, and I had

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Speaker 1: already met this bunch of people up there who lived

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Speaker 1: up in Santa Cruz Mountains. And I didn't not skip

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Speaker 1: yet but I would not long after that, and um,

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Speaker 1: that's Skip Speps the originally for the movie Grape. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I there was this whole community that she knew and

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Speaker 1: hung with, which I became involved with before I ever

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Speaker 1: moved up to I used to go up there while

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Speaker 1: I was in high school. And how far is that

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Speaker 1: from Brazilia? That's about what three and a half for

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Speaker 1: It's relatively far. Yeah, And we would drive up there

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Speaker 1: on on the weekends and he'd let us crash in

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Speaker 1: her place and then we go hang out and say hey,

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Speaker 1: and go to the film War and watch whoever was playing,

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Speaker 1: watch all this stuff in the streets, take it all in,

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Speaker 1: go back and be vice for the rest of the week.

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Speaker 1: It's a big difference. Yeah, people have no idea what

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Speaker 1: you're talking about. So you go to San Jose primarily

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Speaker 1: because you get in there and you have a whole

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Speaker 1: social scene started. Yeah. And I was a graphic design

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Speaker 1: major and they had a good department for all that.

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Speaker 1: But then the first question, did you finish the Jose State?

390
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Speaker 1: I finished it time wise. I was a semester short

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Speaker 1: of the degree, simply because I got some bad advice

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Speaker 1: and I took an industrial design class that did me

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Speaker 1: no good at all finishing. I did all the rest

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Speaker 1: of the requirements. Okay, bad advice me, And you thought

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Speaker 1: this would help you graduating It didn't, meaning I had

396
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Speaker 1: no idea what what I needed to do and what

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Speaker 1: was required. This guy says, oh, you should take this,

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Speaker 1: my counselor at the point at that time, take this

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Speaker 1: industrial design class and you know this is something you're

400
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Speaker 1: gonna need. Well, that turns out it kept me from

401
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Speaker 1: graduating when I was supposed to graduate because it didn't

402
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Speaker 1: fit in the curriculum of graphic design. So did you

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Speaker 1: ever get a degree? No? Okay, you guys freaks. Bruce

404
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Speaker 1: Freakstein's mother says, you can still go back everybody back.

405
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Speaker 1: Yeah I can, But I don't think it was tough.

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Speaker 1: I gotta say there was a lot of really good

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Speaker 1: artists out there, really people that could really draw, I

408
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Speaker 1: mean ragular drawing, you know, like radar type stuff and amazing.

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Speaker 1: But they would have been good in the other field

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Speaker 1: as well. I probably would ended up doing pay steps.

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Speaker 1: I wasn't okay artist, but I wasn't okay. But while

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Speaker 1: you're going to San Jose State, are you is your

413
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Speaker 1: then music career? Burgeoning such as you think, well, maybe

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Speaker 1: this graphic design, think it is not my future. The

415
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Speaker 1: way that all came about, Um, I went to you know,

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Speaker 1: I did the classes, but I was also I was

417
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Speaker 1: like half doing that and half hanging out in the

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Speaker 1: Santa Cruz mountains, hang on Santose, playing in a couple

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Speaker 1: of bands in Santose. All this is all going on simultaneous. Um.

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Speaker 1: I have to say that that's probably one of the

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Speaker 1: best times I've read. There's a lot of fun. Um.

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Speaker 1: I had a forty dollar room and it was on

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Speaker 1: twelve Street where everything started for the band. But it

424
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Speaker 1: was kind of a music center, and there was always

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Speaker 1: people in their places in San Jose and Santose. Okay,

426
00:22:23,920 --> 00:22:26,879
Speaker 1: just for those who also don't know how far to

427
00:22:26,920 --> 00:22:30,760
Speaker 1: get from San Jose to Santa Cruz, oh, shooting those days,

428
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:36,400
Speaker 1: probably twenty five minutes Santa Cruz the town not much

429
00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:38,080
Speaker 1: more than that really, probably half an hour. And then

430
00:22:38,119 --> 00:22:39,640
Speaker 1: if you're not talking about the time, you talk about

431
00:22:39,640 --> 00:22:42,159
Speaker 1: the mountains, I'm talking about Santa Cruz mountains. That's not

432
00:22:42,320 --> 00:22:43,960
Speaker 1: saying in Santa Cruz, I'm not gonna get the same

433
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:47,679
Speaker 1: ideas there's a ridge of mountains between San Jose and

434
00:22:47,720 --> 00:22:50,840
Speaker 1: then the beach. But I'm not a big expert there either.

435
00:22:51,359 --> 00:22:54,800
Speaker 1: There are certainly roads, but there aren't that many businesses there, right, No,

436
00:22:55,119 --> 00:22:58,720
Speaker 1: there was. It was pretty rustic, okay, but there were

437
00:22:58,720 --> 00:23:00,680
Speaker 1: no gigs that you were doing up in the mountains

438
00:23:00,760 --> 00:23:03,520
Speaker 1: or not at that time. No, okay, So you're living

439
00:23:03,560 --> 00:23:06,280
Speaker 1: the life and you're supporting yourself being a musician, or

440
00:23:06,280 --> 00:23:10,320
Speaker 1: your parents are sending your money. Actually they did help

441
00:23:10,359 --> 00:23:12,000
Speaker 1: support me as long as I was going to school.

442
00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:15,280
Speaker 1: As soon as I stopped going to school, that was gone.

443
00:23:15,600 --> 00:23:17,479
Speaker 1: So what I would do And the other thing is

444
00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:20,680
Speaker 1: after the semester of school, you got this time to

445
00:23:20,760 --> 00:23:22,680
Speaker 1: kill for summer. Well, I said, I'm not going back

446
00:23:22,720 --> 00:23:25,159
Speaker 1: to sell you. When I left that town it was

447
00:23:25,240 --> 00:23:29,520
Speaker 1: review here. I didn't want to go back, and so

448
00:23:29,680 --> 00:23:32,960
Speaker 1: I would either work in cannaries the first time, which

449
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:36,480
Speaker 1: was well that's hard work. It was hard work. Good

450
00:23:36,480 --> 00:23:40,120
Speaker 1: money though, no, I know, and you know when Alaska

451
00:23:40,119 --> 00:23:42,640
Speaker 1: it's good money, but no, not that kind of cannriies.

452
00:23:42,680 --> 00:23:45,159
Speaker 1: Now this is uh, you know, like I don't know,

453
00:23:45,280 --> 00:23:48,120
Speaker 1: dole or whatever it was. We're processing all this fruit

454
00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:50,480
Speaker 1: and stuff and you had to be there at five

455
00:23:50,520 --> 00:23:51,919
Speaker 1: in the morning and then you'd worked till two in

456
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:55,520
Speaker 1: the afternoon, and lots of incentive to do something different. Yes,

457
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:58,040
Speaker 1: here was and then after that I did construction the

458
00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:01,399
Speaker 1: next year, and uh anything, so I didn't have to

459
00:24:01,400 --> 00:24:04,960
Speaker 1: go back too If I say not that I hated

460
00:24:04,960 --> 00:24:06,919
Speaker 1: by saying that much. I just there was nothing for

461
00:24:07,040 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: me there. So okay, So how much How long did

462
00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:12,879
Speaker 1: you work in construction and at the Canary one summer

463
00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:17,280
Speaker 1: and one one summer and the other. Um, so now

464
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:19,960
Speaker 1: you're out of school, then what's the next thing after

465
00:24:19,960 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 1: when you're out of school. Well, we got we got

466
00:24:23,480 --> 00:24:27,280
Speaker 1: our first album in seventy one. The band got together

467
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:31,919
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy. We're talking to Doobie Brothers. Um, I

468
00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:34,440
Speaker 1: was in two bands before that. Well, let's go a

469
00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:37,480
Speaker 1: little bit slower. So how long after college did the

470
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:40,479
Speaker 1: Doobie Brothers started. Actually I was still in college when

471
00:24:40,480 --> 00:24:43,520
Speaker 1: they do we rather started. Okay, but but you were

472
00:24:43,520 --> 00:24:45,800
Speaker 1: still going to school. So tell us about the two

473
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: bonds before that, they were just local bands. Uh. There

474
00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:52,520
Speaker 1: was an old one called South Bay Experimental Flash. I

475
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:56,760
Speaker 1: was in for a month and you know, they were

476
00:24:56,760 --> 00:24:59,000
Speaker 1: just passing fancies. There was another one I don't recall

477
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:00,960
Speaker 1: the name of because it didn't als much longer than that.

478
00:25:01,040 --> 00:25:02,840
Speaker 1: And then there was PUD, which was the band that

479
00:25:02,960 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 1: was based in Twelfth Street, in the house on twelve Street,

480
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:09,119
Speaker 1: and that's what John Hartman who came who was the

481
00:25:09,119 --> 00:25:12,880
Speaker 1: first drummer of the band, came out from Falls Church,

482
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:17,280
Speaker 1: Virginia along with his buddy who played bass, Greg Murphy,

483
00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:20,880
Speaker 1: and I went and picked them up with a friend

484
00:25:20,920 --> 00:25:22,920
Speaker 1: of mine in a van and Sam. They were living

485
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:25,480
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, Hay, I would call living. They were

486
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 1: staying in San Francisco, and we threw him in a van.

487
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:31,800
Speaker 1: We took him down and they took up residency in

488
00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:33,560
Speaker 1: twelve streets. How did you even know who they were?

489
00:25:34,760 --> 00:25:38,920
Speaker 1: I want to say Skip had something to do with Okay.

490
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:44,159
Speaker 1: So Skip spends legendarily not rooted to the planet and

491
00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 1: uh in mbi Grape which last for braver. Time you

492
00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:51,560
Speaker 1: meet him? When what is his status? When you meet him?

493
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:53,960
Speaker 1: He was on his own. He had just finished cutting

494
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:59,480
Speaker 1: Ore in Nashville solo album. My sister introduced me to him.

495
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:03,639
Speaker 1: Um just really sisters a hip pivotal. Yeah, she was

496
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:09,240
Speaker 1: pivotal moment meeting him because because of him, I met

497
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 1: a lot of other people and and all these players

498
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:14,159
Speaker 1: that were in the Santa Cruise Mountains and in bands

499
00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:16,960
Speaker 1: like Mountain the Current and Chocolate Watch Band, all of

500
00:26:16,960 --> 00:26:18,840
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that was around there. Okay, you

501
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 1: meet him, he's older than you would assume, you're somewhat gnaw.

502
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:26,000
Speaker 1: I was otter of fact that he was a kind

503
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 1: of a chrismatic character. Anyway, he went into your average Joe.

504
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:32,320
Speaker 1: He besides being a little out there and as he said,

505
00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:34,879
Speaker 1: not necessarily in touch with the planet. We didn't know

506
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 1: that back then. We're younging down and we believe anything,

507
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:41,200
Speaker 1: but he was. He just had this chrisma like people

508
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:43,879
Speaker 1: would flock to. This guy was amazing, It really was. Okay,

509
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:46,840
Speaker 1: was it you asking for things? Or is he the

510
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:48,639
Speaker 1: type of guy was giving to Hey, you got to

511
00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 1: know this person. It just happened. Like a lot of

512
00:26:52,359 --> 00:26:54,440
Speaker 1: stuff in my life in that period of time, things

513
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:57,680
Speaker 1: would just happen. It's not really that I asked for anything.

514
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:00,400
Speaker 1: It's just we would jam together a lot. We played

515
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:02,679
Speaker 1: him a couple of throw together bands, which is how

516
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:07,160
Speaker 1: I met Pat. We were I'm sorry I should clear

517
00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:10,960
Speaker 1: that up. Um. He was in a band called Pachuco

518
00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 1: with If I started naming the people out, nobody's gonna.

519
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:18,080
Speaker 1: I don't bother the um okay, but you're in you go.

520
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:20,360
Speaker 1: You got to get the two guys from Falls First Church,

521
00:27:20,480 --> 00:27:23,280
Speaker 1: Virginia who you know through Skip Spence. You moved them

522
00:27:23,280 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 1: into twelve Street. What is twelve Street? Like twelve Street

523
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 1: the epicenter of hip hip area of San Jose or

524
00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:31,560
Speaker 1: is that just where you live? It was a student

525
00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:34,720
Speaker 1: get him. It was like what three blocks from the school.

526
00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:39,040
Speaker 1: But for whatever reason it became kind of a musical

527
00:27:39,119 --> 00:27:41,600
Speaker 1: meca for a lot of musicians. I'm not saying everybody

528
00:27:41,640 --> 00:27:45,560
Speaker 1: that played something lived there, they didn't. But we had

529
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 1: a basement and in that basement there was always a

530
00:27:48,040 --> 00:27:51,560
Speaker 1: jam session. And I could come home from school and

531
00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:54,960
Speaker 1: there'd be one going on. I could, you know, do

532
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:57,600
Speaker 1: whatever I did for the for the art program. And

533
00:27:57,640 --> 00:28:00,359
Speaker 1: I usually would take whatever it was and would work

534
00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 1: for two or three classes, which freed up my time

535
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:06,080
Speaker 1: a lot more. This weeat deal, you know, and and

536
00:28:06,119 --> 00:28:08,480
Speaker 1: I would be down to jama and Skip would be

537
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:10,399
Speaker 1: in the heart of it. Sometimes. Other times we have

538
00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:13,159
Speaker 1: horn players that we had a band, the band I

539
00:28:13,240 --> 00:28:19,679
Speaker 1: mentioned which was PUD was a power rock trio, but

540
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:23,520
Speaker 1: we also sometimes had some check singers. We also sometimes

541
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:25,479
Speaker 1: had a horn section, so it would like veer off

542
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:28,040
Speaker 1: into like R and B land. It was kind of

543
00:28:28,040 --> 00:28:31,400
Speaker 1: a mismash everything. And how much were you gigging? Not

544
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 1: that much when you stop and thinking that we did.

545
00:28:33,600 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: We did play, but we didn't play a lot. We

546
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 1: played you know, Ricardo's Pizza parlier when we played at

547
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:42,440
Speaker 1: the Student Union at San Jose. We didn't have a

548
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:44,800
Speaker 1: lot of gigs. And at this point in time, this

549
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:48,719
Speaker 1: is just an advocation. You're really a student pretty much. Yeah, okay,

550
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 1: so that you're in PUD at the next trigger moment

551
00:28:51,600 --> 00:28:55,080
Speaker 1: is meeting Pat. Yeah I'm at Pat when we played

552
00:28:55,160 --> 00:28:57,440
Speaker 1: over at the Gaslight Theater in Campbell one night, and

553
00:28:57,520 --> 00:29:01,800
Speaker 1: that we're as Campbell. Keep yeah, I do this, I

554
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 1: have attendency. Oh you know where I'm talking about. This

555
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:07,400
Speaker 1: is is just part of Santose really, I mean it's

556
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:10,040
Speaker 1: all one big city now anyway, But back then San

557
00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 1: Jose was a very small town, or was not small

558
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:15,000
Speaker 1: tam It was a small city, nothing like it is

559
00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:17,280
Speaker 1: now being the you know, the tech boom and all,

560
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:23,280
Speaker 1: but um Campbell was out west of downtown Santose where

561
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:26,480
Speaker 1: I lived, and they had that, but it was just

562
00:29:26,520 --> 00:29:29,480
Speaker 1: a little club slash theater kind of plays more of

563
00:29:29,520 --> 00:29:32,719
Speaker 1: a club. And Pat Simmons was playing with a guy

564
00:29:32,800 --> 00:29:35,640
Speaker 1: named Peter Grant and they were doing uh, what would

565
00:29:35,640 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 1: be called americana now what we used to call folk

566
00:29:37,880 --> 00:29:40,320
Speaker 1: music sort of but a lot of fingerpicking, and that's

567
00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: pretty much all I was. Peter Green was a banjo

568
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:46,360
Speaker 1: player and Pat was playing guitar, and they were both

569
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:50,000
Speaker 1: really really good. And I was there with John Hartman,

570
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:54,240
Speaker 1: Skip Spence and I think Greg was playing bass, Greg Murphy.

571
00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:56,720
Speaker 1: I should have clarified, I don't know what happened Greg

572
00:29:56,760 --> 00:30:01,320
Speaker 1: Murphy and got a clue. Um. So we're playing rock

573
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:04,240
Speaker 1: and roll and I was singing. I was doing the singing,

574
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:09,560
Speaker 1: and and we watched them play. I think they played

575
00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:11,280
Speaker 1: before we did. And then we got up and played

576
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:12,959
Speaker 1: and we were taking somebody else at the place who

577
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:17,680
Speaker 1: couldn't make the game. Serendipity, Yeah, And so you know,

578
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 1: we got to talk and Pat and I got talking

579
00:30:19,440 --> 00:30:23,360
Speaker 1: to John. John was part of that, and we invited

580
00:30:23,440 --> 00:30:26,040
Speaker 1: him to come over. And jam was Pat going to

581
00:30:26,080 --> 00:30:28,480
Speaker 1: school or anything. He was as same as they said, well,

582
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:30,880
Speaker 1: although I never knew that at the time, I never

583
00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 1: saw him. Everybody's big enough school where that was easily,

584
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 1: it wasn't hard to do. So you invite him to

585
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:37,840
Speaker 1: come to jam in the basement, right, and he did,

586
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: and we did that a few times, and eventually we

587
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:43,120
Speaker 1: all just said, you know, kind of decided let's let's

588
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:45,520
Speaker 1: start a band. Okay. So it wasn't a light bulb moment,

589
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:48,800
Speaker 1: just it was it was what i'd call him movement.

590
00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:50,800
Speaker 1: It was another one of those things that just happens,

591
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: no plans, no destination, Let's just do this, okay. And

592
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:59,120
Speaker 1: at what point you formed the band? At what point

593
00:30:59,120 --> 00:31:02,480
Speaker 1: do you think, well, this this could be something. I

594
00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:05,360
Speaker 1: don't know that I ever really thought that at that point. Really,

595
00:31:05,440 --> 00:31:07,880
Speaker 1: I was so happy to play, and we played quite

596
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 1: a bit. We played every place around there, and then

597
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:12,760
Speaker 1: we eventually ended up in the Chateau Libreta, which became

598
00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: like the center point for so many bands in the

599
00:31:16,320 --> 00:31:21,240
Speaker 1: area from all over San Jose, Santa Cruz, San Francisco,

600
00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:24,520
Speaker 1: a little bit, not a lot um, and it was

601
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 1: just so much fun to do that and hang out

602
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:29,080
Speaker 1: up there. I mean, it was just a lifestyle. I

603
00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 1: didn't owe money for anything. I didn't have any money,

604
00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:34,360
Speaker 1: but it all kind of worked out. I didn't. It

605
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:37,240
Speaker 1: was probably the freest time in my entire life. But

606
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 1: you were making money being the band when you did

607
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:41,200
Speaker 1: play that could pay your bills. Yeah, but not a lot.

608
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:43,720
Speaker 1: I mean, we weren't getting rich by any means. Man.

609
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 1: We were just hasn't have to pay the rent and

610
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 1: and buy food, and that was pretty much. That's a big,

611
00:31:50,320 --> 00:31:53,440
Speaker 1: big change in America today. I mean, you're from California,

612
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:56,720
Speaker 1: but statistically people don't leave where they grew up because

613
00:31:56,720 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 1: I don't have the money. Whereas you know, getting in

614
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:01,720
Speaker 1: your car and driving places in the sixties seventies was

615
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:05,840
Speaker 1: a big movement. In addition, it was much cheaper to live. Well, god, yeah,

616
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 1: I mean today he asked, well, you could go what again?

617
00:32:10,360 --> 00:32:12,400
Speaker 1: I mean today, you know you could have a job

618
00:32:12,440 --> 00:32:17,560
Speaker 1: and you still gotta live at home. I've heard about that. Yeah, So, okay,

619
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 1: you formed the band. At what point do they become

620
00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:25,200
Speaker 1: the Doobie Brothers. Uh. We had a gig to play

621
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:28,960
Speaker 1: one night and we were sitting around the breakfast at

622
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:30,360
Speaker 1: the table in the kitchen. We call it at the

623
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 1: breakfast table. Whatever the everything table, and I want to

624
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:39,120
Speaker 1: say there was some combustibles being used, and uh, one

625
00:32:39,160 --> 00:32:40,720
Speaker 1: of the guys that lived in the house, it wasn't

626
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:42,280
Speaker 1: part of the whole music scene, but just lived in

627
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 1: the house, came in with his dog, which he was

628
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 1: wanting to do at any given time, and he said,

629
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:49,360
Speaker 1: you guys ought to call yourself the Dowey Brothers. You're

630
00:32:49,360 --> 00:32:52,440
Speaker 1: always doing this and we all liked it. And he said,

631
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: that's a really stupid name, man, but we don't have

632
00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: a name, and we didn't um, and we had a

633
00:32:58,240 --> 00:33:00,840
Speaker 1: gig that night. All right, we'll use it for tonight.

634
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 1: And we never got rid of the name. Okay, so

635
00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:06,640
Speaker 1: you become the Dewbie Brothers Drewbie Brothers. At what point

636
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:11,160
Speaker 1: do you have two drummers that happened god, I would

637
00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:15,120
Speaker 1: say late seventy one. Mike Cossack. We knew from cutting

638
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:18,360
Speaker 1: our first album up at Pacific Studios in sam Mateo.

639
00:33:19,080 --> 00:33:22,000
Speaker 1: He was in a band called Morning Rain. There's a

640
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:24,480
Speaker 1: lot of people up there at that studio. Santana cut

641
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:28,640
Speaker 1: his first album there. Um Keith Canuson, who was a

642
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:31,080
Speaker 1: drummer later on, was in a band called Mental Bomb.

643
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 1: They were up there Uh, that's where we ended up.

644
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:36,280
Speaker 1: Skip turned us onto the guy that owned the studio,

645
00:33:36,560 --> 00:33:38,880
Speaker 1: and we went up there and cut a demo. The

646
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:41,880
Speaker 1: guy sent it to Warner Brothers. We got sold on

647
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:44,520
Speaker 1: the basis of that. We got it's a little bit slower.

648
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:47,240
Speaker 1: How long had the band been together before you cut

649
00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:53,840
Speaker 1: the demo? Probably a year? Okay? And did you have

650
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 1: a manager at that point? Let's define the word manager.

651
00:33:56,840 --> 00:33:58,840
Speaker 1: We had a guy that hung around, if you want

652
00:33:58,880 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 1: to call that a manager. So then Skips advice, you

653
00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:05,240
Speaker 1: go to the studio and you cut how many tracks?

654
00:34:05,280 --> 00:34:07,080
Speaker 1: It wasn't really advice, he just turned us down the

655
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:09,360
Speaker 1: guy that had the place, Okay. So how many tracks

656
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:14,040
Speaker 1: did you cut? Jeez? Probably five or six? And any

657
00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:20,600
Speaker 1: of those that appeared on the album? Ultimately, Um, nobody? Okay, nobody,

658
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:23,359
Speaker 1: which is on the first album and it was so

659
00:34:23,560 --> 00:34:26,600
Speaker 1: Quicksilver Princess might have been on the first album. Okay.

660
00:34:26,640 --> 00:34:29,439
Speaker 1: How do you get it to Warner Brothers? The guy

661
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: that owned the studio sent it okay? And how long

662
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:36,400
Speaker 1: after he said it did you hear it back? Jeez?

663
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:39,360
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, it could have been a month.

664
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:42,120
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure we would be doing that all

665
00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:44,880
Speaker 1: the time, so it was probably about them. You were

666
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:48,400
Speaker 1: busy doing what sending me. Okay, you're busy playing. But

667
00:34:48,480 --> 00:34:50,280
Speaker 1: in terms of the demo, this is the only demo

668
00:34:50,360 --> 00:34:53,080
Speaker 1: you cut and you only send it to Warner Brothers.

669
00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:58,879
Speaker 1: We didn't send it any uh. And Lenny Wankers and

670
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:01,719
Speaker 1: Ted Templeman came up to listen to the band in

671
00:35:01,800 --> 00:35:04,799
Speaker 1: the studio just Fast. It was pretty weird, yeah, because

672
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:10,080
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen. But they liked what they heard and

673
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:13,279
Speaker 1: it was basically Lenny was running the show. And uh,

674
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:17,239
Speaker 1: so they came up and watched Just play. And then

675
00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:19,480
Speaker 1: Joe Smith is the one that signed the band, but

676
00:35:19,680 --> 00:35:21,719
Speaker 1: that was his position in the company at that time.

677
00:35:22,520 --> 00:35:24,440
Speaker 1: We didn't know what any of this man. We were

678
00:35:24,480 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 1: green as green could be if he had no idea

679
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:29,719
Speaker 1: and uh, but you must have been very excited. We were.

680
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:33,000
Speaker 1: We were said, I can't believe this is happening. Um.

681
00:35:33,080 --> 00:35:35,760
Speaker 1: At the same time, partly was going it isn't happening.

682
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:38,400
Speaker 1: You just think it's happening right right right. If you do,

683
00:35:38,440 --> 00:35:41,759
Speaker 1: you still think maybe it's just happening. No, No, I

684
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:45,440
Speaker 1: put in too many miles by now. Okay, and the

685
00:35:45,520 --> 00:35:48,480
Speaker 1: guy who owns the studio, he's doing you a solid,

686
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:50,239
Speaker 1: or he wants a piece of what goes for. He

687
00:35:50,280 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 1: definitely got a piece of it, while not at the

688
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:55,480
Speaker 1: I don't think he got a piece of ya. With

689
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 1: Wonder Brothers probably wouldn't have allowed that to happen, But

690
00:35:57,800 --> 00:36:02,440
Speaker 1: he did make a boot album off of the demo tape.

691
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 1: He wasn't a stand up guy. Let's just put it

692
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:08,040
Speaker 1: that way. And uh, he did that. Santani did it

693
00:36:08,080 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 1: as he did it some a couple of other bands

694
00:36:10,239 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 1: that had used his studio just to make money. And

695
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:15,600
Speaker 1: when it came to getting the front money that we

696
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:18,399
Speaker 1: got from Warner Brothers, I think we got twenty seven

697
00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:22,000
Speaker 1: dollars a piece, and we thought Jesus were rich. So

698
00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:24,400
Speaker 1: we all went straight to Leo's and bought new guitars

699
00:36:24,400 --> 00:36:27,120
Speaker 1: and right right, right, right right. They, on the other hand,

700
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:29,839
Speaker 1: got the lion's share of whatever the sun was. I'll

701
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:32,839
Speaker 1: let me know, Uh, one one of the guys, I'm

702
00:36:32,840 --> 00:36:34,840
Speaker 1: not gonna give up names here, but one of the

703
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:37,480
Speaker 1: guys bought a car which he wrecked within a week

704
00:36:37,520 --> 00:36:41,880
Speaker 1: and a half. The guy that on the studio, he

705
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:44,319
Speaker 1: just probably bought more gear for the studio. I don't

706
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:51,160
Speaker 1: know you're listening to my conversation with Tom Johnson of

707
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:54,360
Speaker 1: the Dubie Brothers, recorded live at the twot In Studios

708
00:36:54,400 --> 00:37:00,960
Speaker 1: in Venice, California. I hope you were joining this episode

709
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:03,600
Speaker 1: of the Bob Left Sets podcast. If you want to

710
00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:07,120
Speaker 1: see videos and photos and hear sound bites from Tom

711
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:09,480
Speaker 1: and our other guests as they joined me in the studio,

712
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:14,959
Speaker 1: visit at tune in on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Now

713
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:18,120
Speaker 1: more of my conversation with Tom Johnston on the Bob

714
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:23,720
Speaker 1: Left Sets podcast. Okay, so they signed you. The first

715
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 1: record is cut? Wherewith who? It was cut in that

716
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 1: same studio in Pacific Studios in San Mateo with Lenny

717
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 1: warren Cer and Ted Templement. Lenny Warrenker was the head

718
00:37:35,040 --> 00:37:39,200
Speaker 1: producer and Ted was actually under the tutelage. I guess

719
00:37:39,239 --> 00:37:41,239
Speaker 1: you could say of Lenny at that he'd been in

720
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:44,200
Speaker 1: Harper's Bazaar. Correct with the fifty n st Bridge song?

721
00:37:44,400 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: You're cutting the album? The album is done? Are you

722
00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:50,600
Speaker 1: happy with the album? We were ecstatic? Okay, we yeah,

723
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 1: We've never been in the studio first of all, so

724
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:56,920
Speaker 1: this is all newdad, and we've been playing every place

725
00:37:57,000 --> 00:37:59,840
Speaker 1: you could find for probably more than a year actually,

726
00:38:00,200 --> 00:38:03,279
Speaker 1: and that was our existence. And we were driving around

727
00:38:03,320 --> 00:38:05,399
Speaker 1: in a van, which the bass player at that time,

728
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 1: Dave Chagrin, his dad bought for him. And that was

729
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:13,400
Speaker 1: our life. And then the rest of the time of

730
00:38:13,440 --> 00:38:15,680
Speaker 1: the twelve Street and Pat didn't live at twelve Street,

731
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:20,440
Speaker 1: but um, everything happened around that that that house, and

732
00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:22,520
Speaker 1: we just kept doing. Even after we made the record,

733
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 1: we went right back to doing what we were doing

734
00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 1: because you can't stop what you're doing. You gotta pay

735
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:30,040
Speaker 1: the bill, so to speak. Okay, so the record is made,

736
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:34,520
Speaker 1: how long until it comes out? Um, geez, I don't know.

737
00:38:34,640 --> 00:38:38,839
Speaker 1: Probably a couple of months, three months, honestly, don't know.

738
00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:41,440
Speaker 1: But did you you were happy with a record? Did

739
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:44,879
Speaker 1: you believe it would be a hit? I think at

740
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:46,560
Speaker 1: that time in your life being is how you have

741
00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:50,319
Speaker 1: no idea what a hit is? Uh? The first song

742
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:53,799
Speaker 1: I got put out was nobody answered, oh man, that's great,

743
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 1: this is gonna do something. Hopefully it didn't. The album

744
00:38:58,280 --> 00:39:01,600
Speaker 1: didn't do anything. Nothing did anything. It was it went

745
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 1: as I called teflon. Uh. Okay, Well, the funny thing

746
00:39:05,080 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 1: is that is a great track. Okay, it was you know,

747
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:10,600
Speaker 1: on your box set from like twenty years ago. That's

748
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:13,520
Speaker 1: a leadoff track and it really hooks you. So the

749
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:16,360
Speaker 1: track was good enough, Why do you think it didn't happen?

750
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:21,040
Speaker 1: I don't know, um, any one of a number of reasons.

751
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:24,799
Speaker 1: We re cut that song twice actually I think about

752
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:27,320
Speaker 1: it once in two thousand ten and then again in

753
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:31,360
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen for the country covers of with

754
00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 1: a bunch of country artists, um, which actually is my

755
00:39:34,719 --> 00:39:39,319
Speaker 1: favorite version of that song. Okay, So the album comes out,

756
00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:42,720
Speaker 1: it's a stiff YEP. What does the label say, because

757
00:39:42,760 --> 00:39:45,359
Speaker 1: theoretically they can say we're due. This is the time

758
00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:48,040
Speaker 1: period when you could get away with that, and um,

759
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:50,880
Speaker 1: we were allowed to do another album, so we did.

760
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:54,760
Speaker 1: We started working on our own. We didn't have a producer,

761
00:39:55,080 --> 00:39:59,279
Speaker 1: which was a huge mistake. And why Well, because we

762
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:01,839
Speaker 1: didn't know what we were doing. Okay. Was there there

763
00:40:01,960 --> 00:40:05,520
Speaker 1: no one to you know, control the catch? Yeah? I

764
00:40:05,560 --> 00:40:07,440
Speaker 1: mean what we'd had on the first album, for instance,

765
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:11,320
Speaker 1: we had a lot of guidance, uh from Lenny and

766
00:40:11,520 --> 00:40:15,000
Speaker 1: it was we were being cast as an acoustic driven band,

767
00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:18,200
Speaker 1: which really wasn't what we were, but that's what he

768
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:20,880
Speaker 1: heard and I said, Okay, at least it's a professional.

769
00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:23,560
Speaker 1: We're we're doing something. It's real, let's go do it.

770
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:26,400
Speaker 1: And we did some electric stuff, but mostly it was

771
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:29,200
Speaker 1: kind of a lot of acoustic stuff, and everything I

772
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:32,040
Speaker 1: wrote was kind of based around acoustic guitar and everything

773
00:40:32,080 --> 00:40:34,000
Speaker 1: that pat Rod was kind of based on acoustic guitar

774
00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:37,319
Speaker 1: and more comfortable. He was more comfortable with that than

775
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:39,440
Speaker 1: I was, not because I didn't play a lot of acoustic,

776
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 1: but because that was his main instrument where I did.

777
00:40:44,120 --> 00:40:46,960
Speaker 1: I did both, but I wasn't as fluid on acoustic

778
00:40:47,040 --> 00:40:50,360
Speaker 1: as pat was. Mine was all about rhythm, the strumming

779
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:53,439
Speaker 1: style stuff, and his was fingerpicking, which he was really

780
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:57,239
Speaker 1: good at and still is really good at, and um

781
00:40:57,680 --> 00:40:59,800
Speaker 1: but I was also way off into the electric blue

782
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: in soul music and R and B and all the

783
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:06,320
Speaker 1: rest of it, and eventually rock and roll with Cream Hendrix,

784
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:08,919
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Okay, so you start making

785
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,040
Speaker 1: the second record alone and it's a disaster. Yeah, we

786
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:15,480
Speaker 1: needed guidance. They did well. We got We kept a

787
00:41:15,520 --> 00:41:17,400
Speaker 1: couple of songs out of the batch of songs we

788
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: started with only a couple, and then one of them,

789
00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:24,440
Speaker 1: White Sun, we kept I can't remember what the other

790
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:28,000
Speaker 1: one was. At the moment um, they they said, you

791
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:29,560
Speaker 1: guys are spending a lot of it. We were wally

792
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:32,680
Speaker 1: Hiders in San Francisco and he says, you guys he

793
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:36,879
Speaker 1: they Warner Brothers said you're kind of blowing it. You're

794
00:41:36,920 --> 00:41:39,480
Speaker 1: you're spending a lot of money. And we sent him

795
00:41:39,600 --> 00:41:43,399
Speaker 1: tapes and said, no, I don't think so. So they

796
00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:49,640
Speaker 1: gave ted the job of going to corralis get us

797
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:52,320
Speaker 1: going in the direction. And I gotta say, you know,

798
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:54,480
Speaker 1: I don't know if we were his first band, because

799
00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 1: I know he did um um, thank you very much.

800
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:01,320
Speaker 1: Yes he did, and Morrison, I want to say it

801
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:03,919
Speaker 1: was around that era, but you were his first hint

802
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:09,120
Speaker 1: as a band. Yeah, and he really helped. He had

803
00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:12,080
Speaker 1: ideas that to this day just blow me away. Give

804
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:15,000
Speaker 1: me an example of one idea. Well, harmony ideas, although

805
00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:16,919
Speaker 1: we were a big harmony band anyway, but he would

806
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:18,640
Speaker 1: say when to do it, when not to do it,

807
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:20,640
Speaker 1: let's say, or maybe that's too much. At that point,

808
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:23,880
Speaker 1: he being a former drummer himself, would have tons of

809
00:42:23,960 --> 00:42:27,920
Speaker 1: drum ideas, um and just how a song was going

810
00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:31,359
Speaker 1: and says, what if you put the chorus. Here put

811
00:42:31,400 --> 00:42:36,440
Speaker 1: the two verses, then the course and maybe um assault

812
00:42:36,680 --> 00:42:39,080
Speaker 1: this is your basic standard right out here. This is okay,

813
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:42,360
Speaker 1: you're gonna do verse one. Then you're gonna have the

814
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:46,440
Speaker 1: the section between verse one of your verse two, and

815
00:42:46,520 --> 00:42:48,160
Speaker 1: then you're gonna have the pre course, and you're gonna

816
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:50,120
Speaker 1: have the course. Then there is a solo, then you're

817
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 1: gonna have the course, and this is all the stuff

818
00:42:51,640 --> 00:42:55,800
Speaker 1: that's supposed to hook everybody, right, And we kind of

819
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:59,719
Speaker 1: had the idea of that mostly, but not the way

820
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:01,920
Speaker 1: that he would come up with ideas on how to

821
00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:04,359
Speaker 1: do it, and it really helped. It helped a lot,

822
00:43:04,440 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 1: and it continued to help progressively as we got more

823
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:13,680
Speaker 1: into UM writing better songs, more professional songs. I guess

824
00:43:13,680 --> 00:43:16,840
Speaker 1: you could say just from we started touring bang on

825
00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:20,560
Speaker 1: the first album. We started touring and uh we started

826
00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:23,759
Speaker 1: learning stuff about you know, from other guys and other

827
00:43:23,880 --> 00:43:26,640
Speaker 1: bands that we were playing with on the road. Uh.

828
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:30,360
Speaker 1: First one being Mother Earth UM in nine, which was

829
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:34,400
Speaker 1: an eye openers first time we'd ever toured, and by

830
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:38,239
Speaker 1: the time we did to lou Street, UM and Ted

831
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:44,800
Speaker 1: became involved. For whatever reason, it instigated the writers to

832
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:47,600
Speaker 1: do better stuff. I have to say that's that is

833
00:43:47,640 --> 00:43:50,320
Speaker 1: a fact. Okay, So the album is called to Louse Street.

834
00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:52,319
Speaker 1: Y Well is the name of one of the songs

835
00:43:52,360 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 1: on the album. I know, but I mean, if you know,

836
00:43:54,200 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 1: I was stunned. I was in New Orleans and you

837
00:43:56,120 --> 00:44:00,200
Speaker 1: see the sign, but you're living in northern California. Why

838
00:44:00,560 --> 00:44:05,600
Speaker 1: is one of the songs In nine We flew down

839
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:13,680
Speaker 1: to New Orleans to supposedly play with the Eagles and

840
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:19,040
Speaker 1: Chuck Berry. I believe it was in some like football

841
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:21,360
Speaker 1: stadium thing or something, and we got rained out, so

842
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:24,040
Speaker 1: we didn't play anything, but we did get our first

843
00:44:24,120 --> 00:44:27,759
Speaker 1: dose of New Orleans, which is a very intoxicating thing.

844
00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 1: New Orleans is so picturesque, there's so much history. The

845
00:44:33,160 --> 00:44:36,200
Speaker 1: music of New Orleans is phenomenal. I immediately fell in

846
00:44:36,280 --> 00:44:39,440
Speaker 1: love with all that stuff, and so we kind of

847
00:44:40,560 --> 00:44:44,239
Speaker 1: became a Southern band, if you will. Wow, you know,

848
00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 1: I picked it up, picked up the vibe, if you will,

849
00:44:46,600 --> 00:44:49,279
Speaker 1: and the bands at all would come through that whole area,

850
00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:54,279
Speaker 1: but not just there, but oh Mississippi, New Orleans, um,

851
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:57,799
Speaker 1: the Carolina is all the Southern rock scene was. Well,

852
00:44:57,840 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: then you have to ask you do have two drummers?

853
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 1: Because the Allman Brothers had two drummers. No, we did

854
00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 1: it because we thought we had John. Oddly enough, it

855
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:08,480
Speaker 1: was John Hartman's idea to bring in another drummer for

856
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:14,120
Speaker 1: more power. John was always into like Mountain Cream, hendricks Um,

857
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:18,799
Speaker 1: Jethro Toll, whatever. And I have to say it ended

858
00:45:18,880 --> 00:45:21,680
Speaker 1: up being a really good idea and I wasn't against it.

859
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:24,200
Speaker 1: I just hadn't thought of it, and we were using

860
00:45:25,080 --> 00:45:26,840
Speaker 1: The first night we ever did that was up at

861
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:28,960
Speaker 1: the Chateau, which was not a big room. It's a

862
00:45:29,040 --> 00:45:32,160
Speaker 1: tiny little room. Ceiling was right above your head if

863
00:45:32,200 --> 00:45:36,000
Speaker 1: you're standing on the stage, and um, we brought my

864
00:45:36,120 --> 00:45:39,840
Speaker 1: Cossack into play with us and we didn't rehearse with

865
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:43,640
Speaker 1: it or anything. We just did it and it was

866
00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:47,520
Speaker 1: pretty crazy, but it felt good. So we adopted doing that,

867
00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:50,120
Speaker 1: and then that became part of the whole. When you're

868
00:45:50,120 --> 00:45:53,200
Speaker 1: writing the songs, you would include that whole scene going on.

869
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:56,839
Speaker 1: And we of course knew who the Almond brothers were.

870
00:45:56,960 --> 00:45:59,840
Speaker 1: We were huge fans, but it wasn't the driving for

871
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:02,719
Speaker 1: us for having two drummers. Um. And then we continued

872
00:46:02,760 --> 00:46:07,120
Speaker 1: doing that for years and years. So the songwriting was

873
00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:08,839
Speaker 1: it shared by the group. Where the people who wrote

874
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:12,160
Speaker 1: the songs. The songwriting basically would be a guy comes

875
00:46:12,200 --> 00:46:14,600
Speaker 1: in with an idea. It sounds like it started a

876
00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:18,560
Speaker 1: good jail, right, But this happened before we even went

877
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:22,640
Speaker 1: up to Pacific Studios. I would write stuff and bring

878
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 1: it in, and that would bring stuff in. This is

879
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 1: all before we ever made the demo, and we would

880
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:29,919
Speaker 1: work it up as a band. You know, the bass

881
00:46:29,920 --> 00:46:31,720
Speaker 1: player would co up with the basse idea, that drums

882
00:46:31,719 --> 00:46:33,600
Speaker 1: would come up with their version of an idea for

883
00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:36,080
Speaker 1: what we unless we had something very specific in mind,

884
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:38,120
Speaker 1: and it was all trial and air, trial and air,

885
00:46:38,320 --> 00:46:39,640
Speaker 1: and we get it to where we thought it would

886
00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:43,360
Speaker 1: sounded the best. And then that never really changed for

887
00:46:43,400 --> 00:46:45,840
Speaker 1: a very long time. I mean Toalu Stree, Captain and

888
00:46:45,920 --> 00:46:50,560
Speaker 1: me Vices and habits Um. But by then, of course

889
00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:53,520
Speaker 1: you had the direction of a very good producer and

890
00:46:53,680 --> 00:46:56,560
Speaker 1: a very good engineering Don Landy So and then but

891
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:58,480
Speaker 1: in terms of this late date, because when the hit

892
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 1: stop credits are important, Okay, so the song credits as

893
00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:06,200
Speaker 1: the money shared as you see on the album, or

894
00:47:06,239 --> 00:47:08,719
Speaker 1: is it shared with everybody who it was from the

895
00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:10,760
Speaker 1: album that south album sales. That sort of thing points

896
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 1: you mean, I mean the songs, not the album whoever

897
00:47:14,080 --> 00:47:16,680
Speaker 1: wrote it as the one that got the publishing. Okay,

898
00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:19,200
Speaker 1: so now you do to lose street. You've done one

899
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:22,840
Speaker 1: album that you were happy with that's stiffed the second

900
00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:26,600
Speaker 1: album you've made not. What are your thoughts? Well, I

901
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 1: think we grew a lot with that album. I don't

902
00:47:29,520 --> 00:47:31,480
Speaker 1: think I know we did. And I think I give

903
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:34,120
Speaker 1: a lot of the credit uh for that number one,

904
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:37,439
Speaker 1: to being in a better studio, but mostly from hanging

905
00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:39,840
Speaker 1: out with Ted and hearing his ideas, because he was

906
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 1: hanging around with some heavyweights in l A and he

907
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:44,439
Speaker 1: was learning some really good stuff and and he brought

908
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:47,000
Speaker 1: that in and I think it changed the band, the

909
00:47:47,120 --> 00:47:49,320
Speaker 1: quality of the band. And that's why I said I

910
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:51,359
Speaker 1: think we upped our game as far as our writing. Okay,

911
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:53,359
Speaker 1: but when the record is done, do you now say, oh,

912
00:47:53,480 --> 00:47:55,440
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a hitter. You say, I've had

913
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:57,720
Speaker 1: one stiff? Who the hell knows. I don't think anybody

914
00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:00,160
Speaker 1: really cared that much. I don't mean that in uh,

915
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:02,840
Speaker 1: I don't care about this thing. I just nobody was

916
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:05,960
Speaker 1: so uh fixated on the idea we gotta get hit,

917
00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:08,440
Speaker 1: gotta have it, got it, I wouldn't like that. It's yes,

918
00:48:08,520 --> 00:48:12,799
Speaker 1: we we We cut the songs and I wrote one

919
00:48:12,840 --> 00:48:15,279
Speaker 1: song which is listening to music, and I called ted

920
00:48:15,440 --> 00:48:17,560
Speaker 1: up at three in the morning and played fun this is.

921
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:20,160
Speaker 1: I wrote it in my bedroom on twelve Street, which

922
00:48:20,239 --> 00:48:22,359
Speaker 1: is why I wrote long train runners, where I wrote

923
00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:24,640
Speaker 1: China Growths, where I wrote maybe you got to move

924
00:48:24,719 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 1: back there, maybe, well, there's a different time period. What

925
00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:30,400
Speaker 1: you're doing in your life really effects what you're right.

926
00:48:30,560 --> 00:48:33,200
Speaker 1: I gotta say that's that's one thing I've learned. But um,

927
00:48:33,480 --> 00:48:35,880
Speaker 1: I wrote a lot of songs in that room and anyway,

928
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:38,399
Speaker 1: so I called him, woke him up, which he wasn't

929
00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:40,919
Speaker 1: happy about, and I played it for him over the phone.

930
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:42,839
Speaker 1: I said, this is a single and it's the only

931
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:45,800
Speaker 1: thing I've ever called in my life that I did know,

932
00:48:45,920 --> 00:48:48,319
Speaker 1: at least for me, I know. No, I'm a big

933
00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:50,279
Speaker 1: believer in that when it comes to art, when you

934
00:48:50,400 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 1: hit it, when you get in eleven, you know, and

935
00:48:53,040 --> 00:48:54,799
Speaker 1: when people you tell you they don't know, either they've

936
00:48:54,840 --> 00:48:56,960
Speaker 1: never had an eleven or they're not a real artist.

937
00:48:57,440 --> 00:48:59,520
Speaker 1: And you wait for those moments you know, you don't

938
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:01,600
Speaker 1: know where they come from. You don't and that's the

939
00:49:01,680 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 1: best ones because you're channeling whatever that energy exactly. How

940
00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:08,680
Speaker 1: spooky that sounded a weird hippie. I totally agree, I

941
00:49:08,719 --> 00:49:12,279
Speaker 1: believe it. Okay, So listen to the music is on

942
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:16,480
Speaker 1: the album. How long after the album is released do

943
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:18,319
Speaker 1: you start to realize listen to the music is going

944
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:20,360
Speaker 1: to be a hit. When I heard it on the radio,

945
00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:24,879
Speaker 1: that's when I knew something that's gonna happen. And um,

946
00:49:25,400 --> 00:49:27,560
Speaker 1: I was in my Volkswagen, which I think you've actually

947
00:49:27,600 --> 00:49:31,000
Speaker 1: written about it. I was in my Voliswagen driving down

948
00:49:31,040 --> 00:49:35,680
Speaker 1: the road somewhere around Santa's and on comes listen to

949
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:41,600
Speaker 1: the music coming, Holy ship, that's us. Pull the car

950
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:44,320
Speaker 1: over and you know, turn it off, crank the radio

951
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:46,319
Speaker 1: and sit there and going, I don't believe it. We're

952
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:49,919
Speaker 1: on the radio. That was a big deal then, Oh yeah.

953
00:49:50,680 --> 00:49:53,680
Speaker 1: It was also an interesting era because that was the

954
00:49:53,880 --> 00:49:57,480
Speaker 1: FM AM area era, and most of the FM bands

955
00:49:57,520 --> 00:50:00,279
Speaker 1: did not have hits that translated to a M video,

956
00:50:00,600 --> 00:50:03,440
Speaker 1: whereas listening to the music did, and the Dewly Brothers

957
00:50:03,480 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 1: were gigantic seemingly overnight. What did it feel like on

958
00:50:07,239 --> 00:50:11,560
Speaker 1: your rend? It really didn't happen overnight for one thing,

959
00:50:11,680 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 1: but it was certainly a start. And after that came

960
00:50:16,800 --> 00:50:19,600
Speaker 1: Jesus Just all Right, and also Rocking down the Highway,

961
00:50:19,680 --> 00:50:22,319
Speaker 1: which was not as popular as those two, and Listening

962
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 1: to Music being the most popular out of that bunch,

963
00:50:25,480 --> 00:50:29,160
Speaker 1: and Um, which led to another album. Okay, before you

964
00:50:29,160 --> 00:50:30,920
Speaker 1: get to the next album. Now you're on the road,

965
00:50:30,960 --> 00:50:33,520
Speaker 1: you're headlining all the time, and your headlining or opening.

966
00:50:34,080 --> 00:50:38,120
Speaker 1: We started out opening and we played with anybody and everybody.

967
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:42,239
Speaker 1: We played opening for Ronnie Montrose, who at that time

968
00:50:42,400 --> 00:50:47,239
Speaker 1: had Sammy agar re lead vocalist. We played with Rare

969
00:50:47,320 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 1: Earth a lot, who I loved out. They were a

970
00:50:50,080 --> 00:50:52,040
Speaker 1: great band. I didn't care if they did coverage. How

971
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:56,880
Speaker 1: did they killed Red Bone? We played with people may

972
00:50:56,920 --> 00:51:01,120
Speaker 1: not know who I'm talking about something. Um, trying to

973
00:51:01,160 --> 00:51:03,839
Speaker 1: remember some of the other bands we played with, Oh,

974
00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:07,680
Speaker 1: Steely dan Um, they were just getting started at that

975
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:12,040
Speaker 1: period in time. Um do it again, I think was

976
00:51:12,080 --> 00:51:14,520
Speaker 1: the first thing I heard by him and reeling in

977
00:51:14,560 --> 00:51:18,200
Speaker 1: the years after that, and okay, so you do you

978
00:51:18,239 --> 00:51:23,640
Speaker 1: remember who your agent was? No, you want to know,

979
00:51:23,719 --> 00:51:26,040
Speaker 1: I don't remember because I paid zero attention to that

980
00:51:26,120 --> 00:51:28,840
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Okay, at the time, we live in

981
00:51:28,920 --> 00:51:32,800
Speaker 1: the life. Yeah, we were. We were kind of the

982
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:35,000
Speaker 1: low end of it. I'm not saying we were. We were.

983
00:51:35,920 --> 00:51:37,719
Speaker 1: We were getting our feet wet, much more so than

984
00:51:37,760 --> 00:51:41,000
Speaker 1: we had on the first album. But until the Captain

985
00:51:41,080 --> 00:51:43,759
Speaker 1: and Me came around, we didn't really get to the

986
00:51:44,040 --> 00:51:46,799
Speaker 1: stadium scene or the big halls and all that kind

987
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:49,440
Speaker 1: of stuff. And headlining okay, but for other than the

988
00:51:49,560 --> 00:51:51,640
Speaker 1: money that might come in from that, assuming get trickles

989
00:51:51,680 --> 00:51:56,080
Speaker 1: down to you, there's the drugs, there's the sex, etcetera.

990
00:51:56,760 --> 00:51:59,600
Speaker 1: Are you partaking of those? It was rock and roll

991
00:52:01,760 --> 00:52:06,200
Speaker 1: and you enjoyed it. I did. I have to say that. Um,

992
00:52:08,000 --> 00:52:10,400
Speaker 1: after a while, the way we were touring, which was

993
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:12,799
Speaker 1: over two Hunter days year around two Hunter days a year,

994
00:52:13,760 --> 00:52:18,480
Speaker 1: happened very rapidly, and when that happens, everything turns into

995
00:52:18,520 --> 00:52:23,640
Speaker 1: a blur. And in that way of living, of doing

996
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:26,120
Speaker 1: playing that many shows, always being on the road. I

997
00:52:26,160 --> 00:52:28,880
Speaker 1: mean we were in seventy two we were driving Winnebay

998
00:52:28,920 --> 00:52:32,920
Speaker 1: goes around and then that morphed into driving i mean

999
00:52:33,040 --> 00:52:37,680
Speaker 1: skinny into flying on on airlines, which frankly wasn't that

1000
00:52:37,800 --> 00:52:40,960
Speaker 1: much fun. And we were touring with people like Mark

1001
00:52:41,080 --> 00:52:44,560
Speaker 1: volunteer acts and stuff like that, and and we were,

1002
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:47,640
Speaker 1: you know, getting around some heavier people and because Ringo

1003
00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:53,719
Speaker 1: back then are backed Mark Bowling and um. But all

1004
00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:56,960
Speaker 1: the same, you were playing constantly and it wasn't two

1005
00:52:57,040 --> 00:53:00,120
Speaker 1: on one off like nowadays. It was five and oh.

1006
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:02,240
Speaker 1: And then you get a day off and your voice

1007
00:53:02,320 --> 00:53:04,839
Speaker 1: is gone and you're a shot and you're pretty much

1008
00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:10,640
Speaker 1: you know, you're pretty tired. And that continued to all

1009
00:53:10,719 --> 00:53:12,719
Speaker 1: the rest of the albums that you know, and up

1010
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:17,439
Speaker 1: to up to and including Stampede as far as the life,

1011
00:53:17,480 --> 00:53:21,600
Speaker 1: I mean, you you toured for that amount of gigs

1012
00:53:21,719 --> 00:53:24,839
Speaker 1: every year, and then when you weren't doing that, you're

1013
00:53:24,880 --> 00:53:27,640
Speaker 1: in the studio making another album except for a little

1014
00:53:27,680 --> 00:53:29,719
Speaker 1: time at home. So I'm trying to I look back,

1015
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:31,480
Speaker 1: I said, when the hell did we write the songs?

1016
00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:35,640
Speaker 1: Because it frankly is a blur. I mean, I don't

1017
00:53:35,719 --> 00:53:38,040
Speaker 1: there's a lot of songs that I look back, except

1018
00:53:38,040 --> 00:53:40,960
Speaker 1: for a couple that have special stories attached to them.

1019
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:44,839
Speaker 1: I don't remember anything about doing that, about writing that song.

1020
00:53:44,920 --> 00:53:46,560
Speaker 1: It's just part of the whole my asthma of what

1021
00:53:46,800 --> 00:53:48,879
Speaker 1: was going on. Okay, But you know, people wonder why

1022
00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:52,360
Speaker 1: musicians do drugs, and I always say, okay, get off stage.

1023
00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:55,760
Speaker 1: We're ten thousand people think you're god. You may even

1024
00:53:56,000 --> 00:53:59,600
Speaker 1: you know, have some sexual activity. After that, then you're

1025
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:01,560
Speaker 1: in the v cool with the same assholes you've known

1026
00:54:01,640 --> 00:54:04,800
Speaker 1: for years, and you can't come down from the energy.

1027
00:54:05,400 --> 00:54:06,799
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, it's the next day,

1028
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:12,560
Speaker 1: so you start with drugs just to wind down, uh

1029
00:54:13,719 --> 00:54:17,719
Speaker 1: to a point. Um, it was just it was just

1030
00:54:17,840 --> 00:54:20,879
Speaker 1: like a scene and whatever was going on is whatever

1031
00:54:20,920 --> 00:54:22,399
Speaker 1: it was. You know, It's like he just partly took

1032
00:54:22,440 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 1: of the scene and sometimes it was pretty nuts, which

1033
00:54:27,280 --> 00:54:30,400
Speaker 1: kind of slowed down much later on. And yeah, and

1034
00:54:30,480 --> 00:54:32,280
Speaker 1: there was the chicks and it was all that stuff,

1035
00:54:33,040 --> 00:54:35,600
Speaker 1: but it was, you know, from one day to the next.

1036
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:38,920
Speaker 1: It really wasn't outstandingly different. It was just all part

1037
00:54:38,960 --> 00:54:41,080
Speaker 1: of the same thing. Okay, so tell me about making

1038
00:54:41,160 --> 00:54:44,239
Speaker 1: the Captain and me, well, okay, we come off the road,

1039
00:54:44,920 --> 00:54:46,799
Speaker 1: we write the songs. I mean, one time, I can

1040
00:54:46,840 --> 00:54:50,840
Speaker 1: definitely tell you I remember writing China Growth in the

1041
00:54:50,920 --> 00:54:53,919
Speaker 1: same room as the other one. You don't you didn't

1042
00:54:54,000 --> 00:54:56,880
Speaker 1: upgrade your digs now since you're a big Tory musician,

1043
00:54:58,120 --> 00:55:01,560
Speaker 1: I didn't st we weren't making that much money. Everybody

1044
00:55:01,600 --> 00:55:03,600
Speaker 1: seems to think you get instantly rich. That's not the case.

1045
00:55:03,920 --> 00:55:08,480
Speaker 1: That's not the case at all. Um. I wrote the

1046
00:55:08,560 --> 00:55:10,879
Speaker 1: songs that I mentioned earlier on I think I wrote

1047
00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:13,480
Speaker 1: Listen to Me to the China Grove Long Train Running

1048
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:15,960
Speaker 1: wasn't really a song in my book anyway. That was

1049
00:55:16,000 --> 00:55:19,279
Speaker 1: a jam, and I questioned ted about putting that on

1050
00:55:19,360 --> 00:55:22,399
Speaker 1: a record. I said, we've been playing this is seventy one.

1051
00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:25,120
Speaker 1: I make up the words every night. The only thing

1052
00:55:25,200 --> 00:55:29,600
Speaker 1: that is uh constant is without where would you be now?

1053
00:55:30,520 --> 00:55:33,719
Speaker 1: That's all we got. That's it, And and then we'd

1054
00:55:33,719 --> 00:55:36,000
Speaker 1: play it for like twenty minutes, you know, on and

1055
00:55:36,120 --> 00:55:39,120
Speaker 1: on on. So I didn't consider that a real song.

1056
00:55:39,200 --> 00:55:41,320
Speaker 1: So I didn't consider a real song too either. So

1057
00:55:41,400 --> 00:55:44,440
Speaker 1: it's interesting to hear. Yeah, that's really how I went down.

1058
00:55:44,520 --> 00:55:46,279
Speaker 1: And I had to be talked into cutting that song.

1059
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:48,399
Speaker 1: He said, I don't know, man, he said, really hits

1060
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:52,480
Speaker 1: me as a jam. He said, well, why don't you go.

1061
00:55:53,200 --> 00:55:55,920
Speaker 1: We were working at Amigo Studios, which became Warner Brothers Studios,

1062
00:55:55,960 --> 00:55:59,880
Speaker 1: which was on Constant, which is all all that's gone now.

1063
00:56:00,040 --> 00:56:02,840
Speaker 1: But that was a real cool studio. This is in

1064
00:56:02,960 --> 00:56:06,440
Speaker 1: the valley Valley and of course Harlot Gut We did

1065
00:56:06,480 --> 00:56:09,919
Speaker 1: the album called Amiko after cutting the record there well,

1066
00:56:10,000 --> 00:56:12,399
Speaker 1: and he played on one of our albums. He really Yeah.

1067
00:56:12,440 --> 00:56:16,000
Speaker 1: We toured with Harlo and U j. D. Salad was

1068
00:56:16,080 --> 00:56:18,399
Speaker 1: hanging around there right, Couter was hanging around there. Randy

1069
00:56:18,480 --> 00:56:20,600
Speaker 1: Human knew I was hanging around there, James Taylor was

1070
00:56:20,680 --> 00:56:23,400
Speaker 1: hanging around. Who is all these people? All right? You

1071
00:56:23,440 --> 00:56:25,680
Speaker 1: know it sounds like fun? It was. We had a

1072
00:56:25,719 --> 00:56:27,640
Speaker 1: really good time. I enjoyed working There was a really

1073
00:56:27,640 --> 00:56:30,640
Speaker 1: a lot of So you're cutting Captain and me yep,

1074
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:35,360
Speaker 1: and I talked. Ted liked that song as well. He

1075
00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:38,640
Speaker 1: didn't think it but at first I didn't think it

1076
00:56:38,680 --> 00:56:40,920
Speaker 1: was a single. Leader and and I wrote it in

1077
00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:43,440
Speaker 1: the bedroom and I wrote it on acoustic, and I said, no,

1078
00:56:43,600 --> 00:56:45,480
Speaker 1: this is an electric song. So I went and grabbed

1079
00:56:45,560 --> 00:56:48,279
Speaker 1: John out of his room. I said, we're going down

1080
00:56:48,320 --> 00:56:50,000
Speaker 1: to the basement and we're gonna we're gonna play this

1081
00:56:50,080 --> 00:56:53,000
Speaker 1: electrically and we're gonna play really loud. And so we did.

1082
00:56:53,440 --> 00:56:56,480
Speaker 1: So I had drums and me John Hartman. I should

1083
00:56:56,880 --> 00:56:59,200
Speaker 1: mention his name was a while some people know who

1084
00:56:59,280 --> 00:57:01,520
Speaker 1: I'm talking about instead of me. Just going through what

1085
00:57:01,600 --> 00:57:05,880
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, um, and we were playing it was probably

1086
00:57:05,920 --> 00:57:07,520
Speaker 1: one or two in the morning, and you know, it

1087
00:57:07,640 --> 00:57:10,160
Speaker 1: was pretty loose in that area as all students and

1088
00:57:10,239 --> 00:57:12,640
Speaker 1: data really didn't care. They weren't bothered by it, and

1089
00:57:14,239 --> 00:57:17,960
Speaker 1: it was kind of a wild neighborhood. And uh so

1090
00:57:18,240 --> 00:57:20,440
Speaker 1: that was the beginnings of that until we got it

1091
00:57:20,520 --> 00:57:22,760
Speaker 1: into the studio, though it didn't come to fruition as

1092
00:57:22,800 --> 00:57:25,600
Speaker 1: a song. And as far as the lyrics to that

1093
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:28,600
Speaker 1: after We've been touring in seventy two and Winnebagos. At

1094
00:57:28,640 --> 00:57:31,080
Speaker 1: some point in time, we were driving down the road

1095
00:57:31,120 --> 00:57:33,400
Speaker 1: that goes into San Antonio, Texas, and there was a

1096
00:57:33,560 --> 00:57:37,040
Speaker 1: road sign that said China Grove. I didn't remember it

1097
00:57:37,640 --> 00:57:41,240
Speaker 1: at all. I had no memory of that. However, I

1098
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:44,640
Speaker 1: friendly believe that that planet is see That popped out

1099
00:57:44,680 --> 00:57:47,240
Speaker 1: later on with Billy Payne, who played the piano on it,

1100
00:57:48,360 --> 00:57:51,040
Speaker 1: uh as he did on from Little Feet, who played

1101
00:57:51,080 --> 00:57:54,120
Speaker 1: on basically most of our albums. He was a keyboard

1102
00:57:54,160 --> 00:57:57,200
Speaker 1: player and he came up with incredible parts, and he

1103
00:57:57,280 --> 00:58:00,960
Speaker 1: and table to workout stuff and and so in the

1104
00:58:01,720 --> 00:58:05,400
Speaker 1: bridge of that song before it had words, in other words,

1105
00:58:05,440 --> 00:58:07,200
Speaker 1: is what I've been saying. I didn't have any lyrics

1106
00:58:07,280 --> 00:58:10,760
Speaker 1: for that song. And when that didn't, that didn't, that didn't.

1107
00:58:11,040 --> 00:58:13,600
Speaker 1: He did that, I went wow. So I went off

1108
00:58:13,640 --> 00:58:16,000
Speaker 1: and wrote all this stuff about the Sheriff's with the

1109
00:58:16,040 --> 00:58:18,880
Speaker 1: Samurai soars and I was crazy, little town called China Grow,

1110
00:58:19,680 --> 00:58:22,160
Speaker 1: and I thought I was making it up, and uh,

1111
00:58:23,560 --> 00:58:25,320
Speaker 1: at that time, I was making it up as you

1112
00:58:25,320 --> 00:58:28,280
Speaker 1: would with anything else. But uh, I got told by

1113
00:58:28,360 --> 00:58:31,280
Speaker 1: a cab driver in Houston a year later, he says, no,

1114
00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:34,360
Speaker 1: there really is a China Grow. I said, get out

1115
00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:36,280
Speaker 1: of here. He says, no, I'm serious. It's right down

1116
00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:39,640
Speaker 1: there by San Antonio. So that's why I said, it's

1117
00:58:39,680 --> 00:58:41,480
Speaker 1: got to be something that I saw on the road

1118
00:58:41,520 --> 00:58:46,080
Speaker 1: sign and okay, the album cover you're on the freeway

1119
00:58:46,120 --> 00:58:50,640
Speaker 1: that is not finished. I think up near Pasadena or something. Um, yeah,

1120
00:58:50,800 --> 00:58:53,560
Speaker 1: see Lamar or something like right, So, how did you

1121
00:58:53,640 --> 00:58:56,960
Speaker 1: decide to do that? We didn't. That was Warner's idea. Um,

1122
00:58:57,760 --> 00:58:59,760
Speaker 1: and they were I had to say at that point.

1123
00:58:59,800 --> 00:59:02,160
Speaker 1: And the record company was your manager, and they did

1124
00:59:02,240 --> 00:59:05,440
Speaker 1: everything I did, not only the artwork, but they also

1125
00:59:05,520 --> 00:59:06,920
Speaker 1: got you know, a lot. They'd hook you up with

1126
00:59:06,960 --> 00:59:10,200
Speaker 1: the with the promoters and and all that kind of stuff,

1127
00:59:11,080 --> 00:59:15,480
Speaker 1: totally different scene from what's going on now, and so

1128
00:59:15,560 --> 00:59:17,200
Speaker 1: they came up with this idea to go out. This

1129
00:59:17,480 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 1: was from an earthquake in I think it was left

1130
00:59:21,200 --> 00:59:24,560
Speaker 1: over from that and uh, so they wanted to take

1131
00:59:24,640 --> 00:59:28,520
Speaker 1: pictures on top of that stretch of road that just

1132
00:59:28,640 --> 00:59:31,160
Speaker 1: fell off. And we did that, and they brought out

1133
00:59:31,760 --> 00:59:34,760
Speaker 1: from the movie studios. Wondered by thes movie studios. They

1134
00:59:34,800 --> 00:59:37,520
Speaker 1: brought out all the clothes we were wearing. They brought

1135
00:59:37,600 --> 00:59:42,160
Speaker 1: out the horse team and that stagecoach and we did

1136
00:59:42,240 --> 00:59:46,200
Speaker 1: that shot down below the freeways as it is on

1137
00:59:46,240 --> 00:59:47,920
Speaker 1: the front of the album cover. But we also did

1138
00:59:48,000 --> 00:59:51,400
Speaker 1: the shots on the centerfold whatever you want to call

1139
00:59:51,440 --> 00:59:54,360
Speaker 1: at the inside of the album. Um that was up

1140
00:59:54,440 --> 00:59:57,800
Speaker 1: on top and this big old table Chalice is and

1141
00:59:57,880 --> 01:00:02,680
Speaker 1: all this stuff and top pads and so, uh that

1142
01:00:02,840 --> 01:00:05,160
Speaker 1: album comes out. Are you aware it's going to be

1143
01:00:05,240 --> 01:00:09,720
Speaker 1: such a monster? You know? People ask you that a lot.

1144
01:00:09,800 --> 01:00:12,560
Speaker 1: It's like somebody asking you, did you have a think

1145
01:00:12,800 --> 01:00:16,920
Speaker 1: when you wrote whatever that it would still be played

1146
01:00:17,480 --> 01:00:19,880
Speaker 1: almost fifty years I said, Hill, No, how could you

1147
01:00:20,000 --> 01:00:24,240
Speaker 1: possibly know? There's it's unknowable. That's not something you could say,

1148
01:00:24,240 --> 01:00:27,280
Speaker 1: Oh fifty years and now this song is. Nobody knows

1149
01:00:27,320 --> 01:00:29,320
Speaker 1: those kind of things. It's impossible to all those kind

1150
01:00:29,360 --> 01:00:32,840
Speaker 1: of thing um, so it's always an interesting question when

1151
01:00:32,920 --> 01:00:38,080
Speaker 1: people ask you that stuff. So suddenly you are literally everywhere.

1152
01:00:38,320 --> 01:00:40,960
Speaker 1: I remember in concert on TV. Seemingly every time you

1153
01:00:41,000 --> 01:00:43,800
Speaker 1: turn on the TV, you guys are on. So at

1154
01:00:43,840 --> 01:00:47,000
Speaker 1: that point you must feel pretty good. It was me.

1155
01:00:47,360 --> 01:00:49,280
Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun. Plus we had gun

1156
01:00:49,360 --> 01:00:51,560
Speaker 1: International by then and we were playing, you know, over

1157
01:00:51,640 --> 01:00:54,480
Speaker 1: the Pond. We played it at the Rainbow in in

1158
01:00:54,920 --> 01:00:58,040
Speaker 1: uh London, which was really the in spot to play

1159
01:00:58,080 --> 01:01:01,640
Speaker 1: in that period in time. We also played and a

1160
01:01:01,680 --> 01:01:04,240
Speaker 1: lot of other towns in England. We also played in Germany,

1161
01:01:04,320 --> 01:01:07,280
Speaker 1: and we played in France. We played in Paris. All

1162
01:01:07,320 --> 01:01:10,400
Speaker 1: this stuff like was growing and it it happened really fast.

1163
01:01:11,240 --> 01:01:12,720
Speaker 1: You didn't have time to think about it, just all

1164
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:15,040
Speaker 1: of a sudden you're there and you're doing it. And

1165
01:01:15,280 --> 01:01:18,520
Speaker 1: that crazy Warner Brothers tour in seventy four with six bands,

1166
01:01:19,800 --> 01:01:23,080
Speaker 1: it was really a lot of fun to remember what

1167
01:01:23,760 --> 01:01:27,040
Speaker 1: it was called the Warner Brothers Music Tour, and it

1168
01:01:27,200 --> 01:01:29,360
Speaker 1: was to promote everybody that was on it. And we

1169
01:01:29,440 --> 01:01:31,560
Speaker 1: were supposed to lead a lead band, but Little Feet

1170
01:01:31,640 --> 01:01:33,640
Speaker 1: was on it and they were incredible. This is while

1171
01:01:33,680 --> 01:01:37,160
Speaker 1: they were really hot. Uh, Tower Power was on it.

1172
01:01:38,200 --> 01:01:42,880
Speaker 1: Um Montrose was on it. Uh, Larry Graham's Graham's Simpler

1173
01:01:42,920 --> 01:01:47,320
Speaker 1: Stations and a band called Bonarut. And so what we

1174
01:01:47,360 --> 01:01:50,280
Speaker 1: would do is each night we would play, they would

1175
01:01:50,560 --> 01:01:53,000
Speaker 1: do not a lot everything, but they would change out

1176
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:55,000
Speaker 1: the guys that were going to be the three bands

1177
01:01:55,040 --> 01:01:58,400
Speaker 1: were gonna play, and so everybody played with everybody on

1178
01:01:58,520 --> 01:02:00,880
Speaker 1: one night or another. And I remember one night we

1179
01:02:00,960 --> 01:02:03,560
Speaker 1: played in Leeds and Elton John showed up and he

1180
01:02:03,680 --> 01:02:06,320
Speaker 1: played with all three bands that were playing that night,

1181
01:02:06,400 --> 01:02:09,960
Speaker 1: which was us, I want to say, maybe Little Feed

1182
01:02:10,320 --> 01:02:15,280
Speaker 1: and on Rue kind of unclear because it changed on regularly,

1183
01:02:16,080 --> 01:02:18,000
Speaker 1: but he got up on stage with each band and

1184
01:02:18,160 --> 01:02:19,920
Speaker 1: then I ended up riding back to London in the

1185
01:02:20,000 --> 01:02:22,360
Speaker 1: back of his P five roll along with Jeff Baxter,

1186
01:02:22,680 --> 01:02:26,919
Speaker 1: and uh, that was my first time around Alton John.

1187
01:02:27,200 --> 01:02:31,000
Speaker 1: And then see you. Stuff like that happened a lot,

1188
01:02:31,280 --> 01:02:36,000
Speaker 1: and that tour was insane. It was crazy, but at

1189
01:02:36,080 --> 01:02:40,200
Speaker 1: the same time, Uh, you learned stuff doing that and

1190
01:02:40,520 --> 01:02:42,960
Speaker 1: songs got written on that tour, not for the Doobies.

1191
01:02:43,360 --> 01:02:46,360
Speaker 1: But I remember sitting down with Larry Graham and Butch

1192
01:02:46,480 --> 01:02:49,400
Speaker 1: his B three player, and he wrote this Ain't Nothing

1193
01:02:49,440 --> 01:02:52,200
Speaker 1: but a Warner Brothers Party, which came out to describe

1194
01:02:52,280 --> 01:02:55,920
Speaker 1: that tour. It was a great tune, funky tune, and

1195
01:02:57,160 --> 01:02:59,400
Speaker 1: I was I was playing guitar and you know, helping

1196
01:02:59,480 --> 01:03:02,080
Speaker 1: with a rhythm of it, and uh, just a lot

1197
01:03:02,120 --> 01:03:04,880
Speaker 1: of camaraderie, hanging out with guys that you really respected

1198
01:03:04,880 --> 01:03:07,800
Speaker 1: a lot as musicians and really like their music. And uh,

1199
01:03:08,360 --> 01:03:11,520
Speaker 1: it's a very cool thing. I really enjoyed it. Okay,

1200
01:03:11,680 --> 01:03:15,200
Speaker 1: but it now, is there any blowback from other musicians

1201
01:03:15,200 --> 01:03:18,440
Speaker 1: because you're so successful? No, I don't recall that ever,

1202
01:03:18,520 --> 01:03:22,880
Speaker 1: Han't you mean other bands? No, not at all. Huh.

1203
01:03:24,080 --> 01:03:26,680
Speaker 1: And now that you're so big, you know, I don't

1204
01:03:26,720 --> 01:03:28,520
Speaker 1: know that we were as big as you're implying that.

1205
01:03:29,520 --> 01:03:31,600
Speaker 1: And listen, you're this is even when I write something

1206
01:03:31,640 --> 01:03:34,000
Speaker 1: that I'm not have a you know, a minimal amount

1207
01:03:34,040 --> 01:03:37,000
Speaker 1: of reach compared to you. But when you're the creator,

1208
01:03:37,040 --> 01:03:39,520
Speaker 1: you're at the eye of the hurricane. People are talking

1209
01:03:39,600 --> 01:03:41,560
Speaker 1: about you all the time and there that you have

1210
01:03:41,760 --> 01:03:44,560
Speaker 1: no idea of I was just gonna say, you're not

1211
01:03:44,640 --> 01:03:46,600
Speaker 1: aware of it. No, you're completely unaware what it is.

1212
01:03:46,680 --> 01:03:48,120
Speaker 1: You know, you're just with the same guys. You know

1213
01:03:48,400 --> 01:03:50,640
Speaker 1: you're doing playing a gig and you're still going to

1214
01:03:50,680 --> 01:03:52,840
Speaker 1: the next time. You didn't change anything. No, I mean

1215
01:03:52,880 --> 01:03:56,080
Speaker 1: there was a moment. I very vividly remember when Captain

1216
01:03:56,200 --> 01:03:59,120
Speaker 1: Me came out. It was seemingly everywhere, and it was

1217
01:03:59,200 --> 01:04:01,760
Speaker 1: one track after or another on the radio on all

1218
01:04:01,880 --> 01:04:05,040
Speaker 1: formats and Doobie Brothers, you know, they'd had the hit before.

1219
01:04:05,040 --> 01:04:07,320
Speaker 1: We listen to the music, but it was really the tip.

1220
01:04:07,400 --> 01:04:10,200
Speaker 1: So then you have another album coming up to follow

1221
01:04:10,280 --> 01:04:13,160
Speaker 1: that up, which is what were one Spices are now

1222
01:04:13,240 --> 01:04:16,640
Speaker 1: Habits the title they as came up with that title. Okay,

1223
01:04:17,560 --> 01:04:23,480
Speaker 1: it was an apt title. Okay, now I love that album,

1224
01:04:24,400 --> 01:04:27,360
Speaker 1: But at first the album did not live up to

1225
01:04:27,560 --> 01:04:32,400
Speaker 1: its uh financial uh what people thought it might be.

1226
01:04:33,680 --> 01:04:36,640
Speaker 1: The first track was another Part Another Sunday, which I

1227
01:04:36,920 --> 01:04:39,840
Speaker 1: love I played all the time to this day, but

1228
01:04:40,480 --> 01:04:43,320
Speaker 1: that didn't make it as far as the other tracks. Well,

1229
01:04:43,480 --> 01:04:46,400
Speaker 1: and the best of my understanding, because it's a little

1230
01:04:46,480 --> 01:04:48,960
Speaker 1: unclear to me, but that got yanked off the radio

1231
01:04:49,560 --> 01:04:53,680
Speaker 1: by warners. Not it wasn't there I did he yank

1232
01:04:53,680 --> 01:04:56,400
Speaker 1: it off the radio. It's supposedly from being under pressure

1233
01:04:56,440 --> 01:04:59,160
Speaker 1: by radio stations saying you can't have a song that

1234
01:04:59,240 --> 01:05:01,400
Speaker 1: says in the radio. It just seems the radio just

1235
01:05:01,480 --> 01:05:04,120
Speaker 1: brings me down. You can't do that. That's what I

1236
01:05:04,200 --> 01:05:05,680
Speaker 1: was told. I don't know if that was jib or well,

1237
01:05:05,840 --> 01:05:07,320
Speaker 1: but that's what I got. That might have been the party.

1238
01:05:08,560 --> 01:05:12,200
Speaker 1: So the flip side of it was Blackwater, which started

1239
01:05:12,240 --> 01:05:15,840
Speaker 1: in Rollingo getting spins by a local DJ, and it

1240
01:05:15,920 --> 01:05:19,520
Speaker 1: started gaining popularity and getting listens and people liked it,

1241
01:05:20,600 --> 01:05:25,360
Speaker 1: and then it's somehow morphed into Minnesota I think it was,

1242
01:05:26,000 --> 01:05:29,040
Speaker 1: and started getting real heavy rotation, and the next thing,

1243
01:05:29,120 --> 01:05:31,840
Speaker 1: you know, as a nationwide hit. It was our first

1244
01:05:31,920 --> 01:05:35,280
Speaker 1: number one record. Okay, I gotta believe you'd never thought

1245
01:05:35,320 --> 01:05:37,919
Speaker 1: that was gonna be a hit. I didn't think about

1246
01:05:37,920 --> 01:05:40,800
Speaker 1: it one way the other. I didn't. I wasn't choosing singles,

1247
01:05:40,840 --> 01:05:44,280
Speaker 1: they were choosing singles. I just wrote songs that I wrote. Okay,

1248
01:05:44,440 --> 01:05:46,320
Speaker 1: But all of a sudden, you know, I remember being

1249
01:05:46,960 --> 01:05:49,120
Speaker 1: that's when I first moved to l A. Remember, you know,

1250
01:05:49,200 --> 01:05:50,640
Speaker 1: the song would come on the radio and the people

1251
01:05:50,680 --> 01:05:54,160
Speaker 1: in the car would literally seeing different parts. Yeah, it

1252
01:05:54,320 --> 01:05:57,560
Speaker 1: was around. It was an exactly. It was really big

1253
01:05:58,000 --> 01:06:01,360
Speaker 1: and did you then see that the band was any

1254
01:06:01,400 --> 01:06:03,120
Speaker 1: bigger than it had been, or you already felt you

1255
01:06:03,160 --> 01:06:06,440
Speaker 1: were at a certain level. Once again, when you get

1256
01:06:06,480 --> 01:06:08,360
Speaker 1: to a certain place, we're on the road all the time.

1257
01:06:08,600 --> 01:06:10,720
Speaker 1: Everything is everything. You don't really pay attention to that.

1258
01:06:11,440 --> 01:06:12,919
Speaker 1: And at what point did you move out of twelve

1259
01:06:12,960 --> 01:06:17,560
Speaker 1: St Okay? And you move where to Marin County, Okay?

1260
01:06:17,840 --> 01:06:21,360
Speaker 1: So at this point you have money. I had some money.

1261
01:06:22,400 --> 01:06:25,240
Speaker 1: I wasn't wealthy, but I had some money I could pay.

1262
01:06:25,800 --> 01:06:28,640
Speaker 1: I bought a house, so I had enough money to

1263
01:06:28,720 --> 01:06:31,480
Speaker 1: do that. In those days, it wasn't like buying a

1264
01:06:31,560 --> 01:06:33,640
Speaker 1: house would be in Fairfax, which is where I moved,

1265
01:06:34,200 --> 01:06:36,880
Speaker 1: would be now right, and you buy a good car.

1266
01:06:38,840 --> 01:06:42,280
Speaker 1: I did buy a car, Yes, I bought an Audi

1267
01:06:42,800 --> 01:06:47,960
Speaker 1: early AUTI and um. So I had enough money to

1268
01:06:48,000 --> 01:06:51,840
Speaker 1: do those kinds of things. And mostly I would spend

1269
01:06:51,840 --> 01:06:55,680
Speaker 1: a lot of money on guitars and amps and Okay,

1270
01:06:55,680 --> 01:06:58,120
Speaker 1: at this late date, how many guitars do you have then?

1271
01:06:59,080 --> 01:07:01,960
Speaker 1: Before I really went's doing that, I probably had five

1272
01:07:02,120 --> 01:07:04,720
Speaker 1: times fives. I had probably ten guitars, and how many

1273
01:07:04,760 --> 01:07:10,240
Speaker 1: you have now? Ah, I went through the phase where

1274
01:07:10,280 --> 01:07:13,200
Speaker 1: I had forty guitars and left behind and got rid

1275
01:07:13,240 --> 01:07:16,080
Speaker 1: of most of them. But um, at this point, I

1276
01:07:16,160 --> 01:07:19,280
Speaker 1: probably have twenty guitars and now and when you go

1277
01:07:19,400 --> 01:07:22,000
Speaker 1: on the road, how many do you bring? And then

1278
01:07:22,240 --> 01:07:26,880
Speaker 1: they're already out there. They stay in Nashville where our

1279
01:07:26,920 --> 01:07:31,280
Speaker 1: stuff is. All our stuff is drums, keyboards, guitars, amps, everything,

1280
01:07:31,760 --> 01:07:34,040
Speaker 1: So it's all sitting in a locker. And when you

1281
01:07:34,120 --> 01:07:37,200
Speaker 1: go out, then the stuff gets on you know, it

1282
01:07:37,280 --> 01:07:39,120
Speaker 1: is put on the truck and it's driven to wherever

1283
01:07:39,160 --> 01:07:42,320
Speaker 1: you're going to practice before you start digging, and then

1284
01:07:42,400 --> 01:07:45,400
Speaker 1: you do the rehearsals and you started playing. So your

1285
01:07:45,480 --> 01:07:48,720
Speaker 1: home now, which is where I live up in Marine County,

1286
01:07:49,320 --> 01:07:52,120
Speaker 1: different town, but but you have guitars in the house now,

1287
01:07:52,360 --> 01:07:55,200
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Okay, I have a studio upstairs at the

1288
01:07:55,280 --> 01:07:58,000
Speaker 1: writing studio. It's not a full on studio, but that's

1289
01:07:58,040 --> 01:08:00,720
Speaker 1: where I do my writing now. Okay, the next album

1290
01:08:00,840 --> 01:08:04,800
Speaker 1: is Stampede. Okay. Jeff Baxtre suddenly of the band. He

1291
01:08:04,880 --> 01:08:07,840
Speaker 1: was already in the band. Jeff started hanging around with us.

1292
01:08:07,920 --> 01:08:10,800
Speaker 1: We had been playing with Steely Dan and he would

1293
01:08:10,840 --> 01:08:13,320
Speaker 1: come over and hang out with us when he wasn't

1294
01:08:13,320 --> 01:08:15,080
Speaker 1: doing them. In fact, he would go on are some

1295
01:08:15,240 --> 01:08:17,519
Speaker 1: of our tours when they went off the road, which

1296
01:08:17,560 --> 01:08:20,960
Speaker 1: I think was probably late seventy three, yearly seventy four,

1297
01:08:21,880 --> 01:08:24,880
Speaker 1: and U and he ended up on stage with us playing,

1298
01:08:24,920 --> 01:08:28,320
Speaker 1: and he was a phenomenal player. He played pedal steel,

1299
01:08:28,439 --> 01:08:32,400
Speaker 1: He played great leads, and he also played polsterring, which

1300
01:08:32,439 --> 01:08:34,400
Speaker 1: is something I was unfamiliar at that time, which was

1301
01:08:34,479 --> 01:08:38,439
Speaker 1: a telecaster strap was hooked up to a uh like

1302
01:08:38,960 --> 01:08:42,360
Speaker 1: a well, I at strap lock, but if you pulled

1303
01:08:42,400 --> 01:08:44,800
Speaker 1: on it to change the tones on it. Really yeah,

1304
01:08:44,840 --> 01:08:46,479
Speaker 1: it sounded like a pedal steel. It was a really

1305
01:08:46,479 --> 01:08:48,920
Speaker 1: an interesting device, and I haven't seen it since it

1306
01:08:49,040 --> 01:08:51,439
Speaker 1: was on a telecast. Okay, how come he doesn't play anymore?

1307
01:08:51,479 --> 01:08:54,240
Speaker 1: Do you have any contact with him? I played a

1308
01:08:54,360 --> 01:08:58,240
Speaker 1: benefit with him about god four months ago. Now he

1309
01:08:58,360 --> 01:09:02,880
Speaker 1: still plays, He still play is great. Uh. He's has

1310
01:09:02,960 --> 01:09:05,519
Speaker 1: done some things that have been pretty interesting with the

1311
01:09:05,560 --> 01:09:07,680
Speaker 1: Pentagon and all the rest of that. But he he

1312
01:09:07,840 --> 01:09:09,919
Speaker 1: just finished moving back. I want to say to Virginia

1313
01:09:10,000 --> 01:09:13,560
Speaker 1: to be with his daughter and his grandchild. Okay, you

1314
01:09:13,720 --> 01:09:17,280
Speaker 1: cut Stampede. Are you as happy with Stampede as you

1315
01:09:17,400 --> 01:09:20,040
Speaker 1: are with the previous record? I was you were. I

1316
01:09:20,160 --> 01:09:23,439
Speaker 1: was enamored with it because I got to do take

1317
01:09:23,479 --> 01:09:26,960
Speaker 1: Me in Your Arms Number one. That was that. That's

1318
01:09:27,000 --> 01:09:28,760
Speaker 1: my I take claim for that because I had tried

1319
01:09:28,840 --> 01:09:30,120
Speaker 1: for a couple of years to get the band to

1320
01:09:30,160 --> 01:09:33,720
Speaker 1: do that and I wasn't getting any takers initially, and

1321
01:09:33,760 --> 01:09:37,080
Speaker 1: then eventually I guess Ted came to bad for me

1322
01:09:37,320 --> 01:09:39,479
Speaker 1: and they liked It's not they didn't like it that

1323
01:09:39,600 --> 01:09:41,320
Speaker 1: he just maybe didn't hear what I heard. I said,

1324
01:09:41,360 --> 01:09:44,240
Speaker 1: this would be killer. And then the arrangement, well, the

1325
01:09:44,320 --> 01:09:47,600
Speaker 1: arrangement took place in the studio with Ted overseeing the

1326
01:09:47,640 --> 01:09:51,519
Speaker 1: whole thing, and he brought in some chick singers who

1327
01:09:51,560 --> 01:09:56,600
Speaker 1: were fabulous, um I think it was and out the

1328
01:09:56,680 --> 01:09:59,880
Speaker 1: field Shirley Matthews and one other guy wasn't clydie King

1329
01:10:00,080 --> 01:10:01,640
Speaker 1: and I can't remember who her name was, but boy,

1330
01:10:01,720 --> 01:10:05,800
Speaker 1: they were something else. For that album we had that

1331
01:10:06,520 --> 01:10:09,600
Speaker 1: had an exploration song called music Man where I got

1332
01:10:09,680 --> 01:10:12,960
Speaker 1: to play backwards solos more than one. So was my

1333
01:10:13,080 --> 01:10:15,160
Speaker 1: Hendrix moment, if you well, that was a big deal

1334
01:10:15,240 --> 01:10:16,720
Speaker 1: to me. But it was a cool song and it

1335
01:10:16,840 --> 01:10:20,960
Speaker 1: also had Curtis Mayfield did the strings on it. Really

1336
01:10:21,080 --> 01:10:23,280
Speaker 1: Unfortunately I didn't get to go to that set. It

1337
01:10:23,320 --> 01:10:25,960
Speaker 1: was in Chicago, Teddy flew back to Chicago. They did

1338
01:10:26,000 --> 01:10:29,320
Speaker 1: the strings and he had his wah wah Watson whoever

1339
01:10:29,400 --> 01:10:33,479
Speaker 1: it was guitar player that did the the wa. Uh

1340
01:10:34,160 --> 01:10:36,200
Speaker 1: wasn't really strumming, it was more of a sound effect.

1341
01:10:36,280 --> 01:10:38,200
Speaker 1: It was really cool. It sounded like, all of a sudden,

1342
01:10:38,200 --> 01:10:40,160
Speaker 1: we were doing a Curtis Mayfield song, but rock and

1343
01:10:40,280 --> 01:10:43,759
Speaker 1: roll and Uh. I was very enamored with that tune.

1344
01:10:43,760 --> 01:10:45,400
Speaker 1: And it was never a single anything. It was just

1345
01:10:45,479 --> 01:10:47,800
Speaker 1: fun to do. And then there was another song that

1346
01:10:47,920 --> 01:10:51,800
Speaker 1: that we cut just extemporaneously. It was cut in a

1347
01:10:51,920 --> 01:10:57,439
Speaker 1: garage in Nashville. We were there a year and a half,

1348
01:10:57,479 --> 01:11:01,439
Speaker 1: two years before guy's name was buzz Case On. It

1349
01:11:01,560 --> 01:11:04,519
Speaker 1: was out on Murphysboro Road and I was with the

1350
01:11:05,160 --> 01:11:11,160
Speaker 1: former drummer of of Mother Earth, Carl Himmel, and he

1351
01:11:11,560 --> 01:11:13,120
Speaker 1: he was just hanging out. We were just hanging out

1352
01:11:13,200 --> 01:11:16,080
Speaker 1: with nobody's idea to do anything. We ended up a

1353
01:11:16,160 --> 01:11:18,800
Speaker 1: buzz Case on studio. He had a sixteen track out there.

1354
01:11:19,439 --> 01:11:21,599
Speaker 1: Tyran was with us, and so the three of us

1355
01:11:22,040 --> 01:11:24,360
Speaker 1: put this track down that we just made up on

1356
01:11:24,479 --> 01:11:28,200
Speaker 1: the spot. I made up the words on the spot,

1357
01:11:28,320 --> 01:11:30,759
Speaker 1: which never really got written. So they stayed those words,

1358
01:11:31,400 --> 01:11:34,400
Speaker 1: and then we added those check singers. This happened in

1359
01:11:34,439 --> 01:11:37,479
Speaker 1: seventy three, by the way, and that two years later

1360
01:11:37,640 --> 01:11:40,519
Speaker 1: ended up on Stampede and it was called Working on

1361
01:11:40,680 --> 01:11:42,360
Speaker 1: You and it was just a fun song to do,

1362
01:11:42,560 --> 01:11:45,120
Speaker 1: and it ended like an old man Assis ending or something.

1363
01:11:45,120 --> 01:11:47,160
Speaker 1: Everything just kind of falls apart of That's funny you

1364
01:11:47,280 --> 01:11:49,920
Speaker 1: mentioned that the first double album, the Manassa's album. I

1365
01:11:49,960 --> 01:11:53,200
Speaker 1: don't exactly you're talking about, great record, Okay, then its

1366
01:11:53,560 --> 01:11:57,400
Speaker 1: then it all falls apart, right my ulser he bloomed. Yeah,

1367
01:11:57,479 --> 01:12:01,000
Speaker 1: I had an ulcer in high school and due to

1368
01:12:01,080 --> 01:12:03,640
Speaker 1: the frantic living pace of you know, being on the

1369
01:12:03,720 --> 01:12:05,519
Speaker 1: road all the time and all the crazy stuff that

1370
01:12:05,560 --> 01:12:08,280
Speaker 1: went along with that, it got worse and it got

1371
01:12:08,320 --> 01:12:11,280
Speaker 1: pretty bad, and so I had Right when the tour

1372
01:12:11,800 --> 01:12:14,960
Speaker 1: for Stampede was taken off, I had to leave. And

1373
01:12:15,080 --> 01:12:20,759
Speaker 1: that was a drag, but that's what happened. So that's

1374
01:12:21,280 --> 01:12:24,800
Speaker 1: when they first they just started doing it on their own,

1375
01:12:24,800 --> 01:12:30,519
Speaker 1: and then they Jeff Baxster suggested bring in Michael Donald

1376
01:12:31,200 --> 01:12:34,240
Speaker 1: just to play keyboards and sing backgrounds, and that's how

1377
01:12:34,280 --> 01:12:37,719
Speaker 1: it was for that tour. Who sang your parts? Pat

1378
01:12:37,800 --> 01:12:39,840
Speaker 1: did a lot of it. Pat Simons did a lot

1379
01:12:39,920 --> 01:12:41,840
Speaker 1: of the singing and I wasn't there to watch any

1380
01:12:41,880 --> 01:12:45,559
Speaker 1: of this, but that's my understanding. And then they started

1381
01:12:45,600 --> 01:12:48,719
Speaker 1: working on Taking to the Streets, which is when Michael

1382
01:12:50,240 --> 01:12:55,760
Speaker 1: contributed as a songwriter and UM which that song being

1383
01:12:55,800 --> 01:12:57,840
Speaker 1: one of them Taking to the Streets. I had one

1384
01:12:57,880 --> 01:13:03,720
Speaker 1: song on that album and that's all I contributed. And

1385
01:13:03,920 --> 01:13:05,680
Speaker 1: by the so by the time they go out for

1386
01:13:05,720 --> 01:13:08,439
Speaker 1: a spring tour, I went out with him. I did,

1387
01:13:08,880 --> 01:13:11,479
Speaker 1: and we did this before the album came out. No,

1388
01:13:11,640 --> 01:13:13,479
Speaker 1: the album was out, okay, I remember the Spring of

1389
01:13:13,560 --> 01:13:17,240
Speaker 1: seventy remember, and it sounded so different from what came before.

1390
01:13:17,760 --> 01:13:21,080
Speaker 1: It was very different from what came before. UM on

1391
01:13:21,280 --> 01:13:23,200
Speaker 1: the road with him I did. I did that tour

1392
01:13:23,320 --> 01:13:26,920
Speaker 1: with him, and then I stayed with the band UH

1393
01:13:27,040 --> 01:13:28,800
Speaker 1: and had I think four or five songs for the

1394
01:13:28,880 --> 01:13:31,320
Speaker 1: next album, which was Living on the Fall Line, which

1395
01:13:31,400 --> 01:13:35,519
Speaker 1: I don't think did that well all things considered, UH,

1396
01:13:36,640 --> 01:13:40,080
Speaker 1: especially after Taking to the Streets was pretty successful in

1397
01:13:40,160 --> 01:13:45,400
Speaker 1: all the previous albums had been pretty successful. UM, and

1398
01:13:45,479 --> 01:13:48,680
Speaker 1: I just decided I'm going to withdraw for right now.

1399
01:13:49,360 --> 01:13:51,639
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I feel a part of this musically.

1400
01:13:51,640 --> 01:13:53,600
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I'm in the right spot, and

1401
01:13:53,680 --> 01:13:56,840
Speaker 1: I just wanted to break. So I left and I

1402
01:13:57,720 --> 01:14:02,280
Speaker 1: spent a year playing baseball, lifting way. It's um getting

1403
01:14:02,320 --> 01:14:07,000
Speaker 1: healthy again if you will, and um, And then I

1404
01:14:07,080 --> 01:14:09,200
Speaker 1: started writing again, and the next thing you know, I'm

1405
01:14:09,240 --> 01:14:12,720
Speaker 1: doing a solo album in seventy nine with Ted So

1406
01:14:12,880 --> 01:14:15,360
Speaker 1: at all, you know, I didn't stay away very long.

1407
01:14:19,360 --> 01:14:21,960
Speaker 1: We'll stop here for a brief moment and get right

1408
01:14:22,000 --> 01:14:28,720
Speaker 1: back to my conversation with Tom Johnston. For those who

1409
01:14:28,720 --> 01:14:32,360
Speaker 1: are unaware, I'm primarily a writer and have a newsletter

1410
01:14:32,479 --> 01:14:35,160
Speaker 1: called the Left Sets Letter. You can sign up and

1411
01:14:35,240 --> 01:14:37,720
Speaker 1: read the history of my work at left sets dot

1412
01:14:37,800 --> 01:14:43,560
Speaker 1: com in addition to experiencing my commentary on music, business, technology,

1413
01:14:43,920 --> 01:14:46,160
Speaker 1: and my life. You'll be the first to find out

1414
01:14:46,200 --> 01:14:48,920
Speaker 1: where we've published a new episode of the podcast. Go

1415
01:14:49,080 --> 01:14:51,400
Speaker 1: to left sets dot com and sign up for the newsletter.

1416
01:14:51,760 --> 01:14:55,200
Speaker 1: I know you'll enjoy it. Now more with Tom Johnston

1417
01:14:55,320 --> 01:14:57,920
Speaker 1: of the Doobie Brothers, recorded live at the tune In

1418
01:14:58,040 --> 01:15:02,519
Speaker 1: Studios in Venice, California. Okay, so once again, now you

1419
01:15:02,560 --> 01:15:04,800
Speaker 1: were sold a walk. What are your expectations and what's

1420
01:15:04,840 --> 01:15:09,000
Speaker 1: it like? It's pretty different. Remember, first of all, you're

1421
01:15:09,000 --> 01:15:13,280
Speaker 1: in the Driver's Seat and um, it was an exploration

1422
01:15:13,320 --> 01:15:15,000
Speaker 1: album as well. I look back at it now that

1423
01:15:15,160 --> 01:15:18,559
Speaker 1: they weren't the greatest songs ever, and I hadn't been

1424
01:15:20,320 --> 01:15:22,400
Speaker 1: planning on doing it and then I ended up getting

1425
01:15:22,479 --> 01:15:24,839
Speaker 1: to do it. So I kind of wrote the songs hastily,

1426
01:15:24,920 --> 01:15:29,280
Speaker 1: if you will. Um. But it had one song that

1427
01:15:29,520 --> 01:15:33,400
Speaker 1: did fairly well, which was Savannah Knights, and it was

1428
01:15:33,479 --> 01:15:35,360
Speaker 1: all kind of an R and B sh album. But

1429
01:15:35,439 --> 01:15:36,720
Speaker 1: I got to do a lot of stuff that I

1430
01:15:36,760 --> 01:15:39,960
Speaker 1: always wanted to do but never could doobies. I got

1431
01:15:40,040 --> 01:15:42,160
Speaker 1: to use towers horn section and like I said, David

1432
01:15:42,160 --> 01:15:46,000
Speaker 1: Garibaldi on drums and Cheese Toudakov from a band called

1433
01:15:46,040 --> 01:15:48,160
Speaker 1: Crack and played bass, and it sounded sort of like

1434
01:15:48,320 --> 01:15:50,080
Speaker 1: rockle So I wanted to be like a Tower Power

1435
01:15:50,160 --> 01:15:54,360
Speaker 1: kind of unit. Um. The song started off sounding like

1436
01:15:54,439 --> 01:15:56,960
Speaker 1: a Temptation song, ended up sounding like a James Brown.

1437
01:15:59,040 --> 01:16:03,280
Speaker 1: Yeah it was I don't how that happened. But none

1438
01:16:03,320 --> 01:16:05,680
Speaker 1: of these are singles. They were just fun to do

1439
01:16:06,240 --> 01:16:09,080
Speaker 1: and we used so many different players. That's another thing.

1440
01:16:09,120 --> 01:16:10,599
Speaker 1: I wasn't you. I mean, we thought we'd had other

1441
01:16:10,640 --> 01:16:13,240
Speaker 1: guys come in and on the albums through the period

1442
01:16:13,280 --> 01:16:16,880
Speaker 1: of three or four albums in there who were studio guys.

1443
01:16:16,920 --> 01:16:18,880
Speaker 1: We had Right Couter play on an on an album.

1444
01:16:19,000 --> 01:16:23,040
Speaker 1: We had the Gutty playing an album. We had um Mac,

1445
01:16:23,200 --> 01:16:26,519
Speaker 1: Malcolm Cecil and as a Bob margol if I think exactly.

1446
01:16:26,680 --> 01:16:30,160
Speaker 1: They came in and said yeah, and they step with

1447
01:16:30,200 --> 01:16:33,840
Speaker 1: Stevie wondering right. They set up the synthesizer and I

1448
01:16:33,960 --> 01:16:38,160
Speaker 1: played the keyboard horn parts on on Captain and me

1449
01:16:38,880 --> 01:16:43,680
Speaker 1: Um for Natural Thing and Yukaya. I love Natural Thing.

1450
01:16:45,760 --> 01:16:48,840
Speaker 1: It was fun to do. I had no idea what

1451
01:16:48,920 --> 01:16:51,280
Speaker 1: these guys were all about. They just showed up and said,

1452
01:16:51,320 --> 01:16:55,240
Speaker 1: up this big monster thing. Okay, I'll play it on keyboards.

1453
01:16:55,240 --> 01:16:56,599
Speaker 1: Oh when you're in the heat of the moment, did

1454
01:16:56,600 --> 01:16:59,519
Speaker 1: you say, but now suddenly you're out of The Doobie

1455
01:16:59,600 --> 01:17:02,800
Speaker 1: brother and the Jubie Brothers have a renaissance and they're

1456
01:17:02,800 --> 01:17:05,880
Speaker 1: as successful as you were. You they were very successful.

1457
01:17:05,960 --> 01:17:08,400
Speaker 1: Not the same sound, but it's called the Doobie Brothers.

1458
01:17:08,680 --> 01:17:11,759
Speaker 1: How do you feel about that? It was pretty different,

1459
01:17:11,840 --> 01:17:13,880
Speaker 1: and it's like an adjustment that you have to make.

1460
01:17:15,080 --> 01:17:17,320
Speaker 1: But I didn't want to change what I was about

1461
01:17:17,439 --> 01:17:19,880
Speaker 1: and what I was musically. Where I came from and

1462
01:17:19,960 --> 01:17:22,519
Speaker 1: the interesting part about all that is both Michael and

1463
01:17:22,600 --> 01:17:25,120
Speaker 1: I are R and B guys. I have a lot

1464
01:17:25,160 --> 01:17:28,200
Speaker 1: of R and B influences. His was a little different

1465
01:17:28,280 --> 01:17:30,479
Speaker 1: in mine. Mine was like I started with Little Richard

1466
01:17:30,520 --> 01:17:33,320
Speaker 1: and worked my way up through Joe tex and and

1467
01:17:33,840 --> 01:17:36,000
Speaker 1: and Wilson Pickett and all those kind of guys. He

1468
01:17:36,160 --> 01:17:38,920
Speaker 1: was more into the Ray Charles and the more gospel

1469
01:17:39,080 --> 01:17:42,720
Speaker 1: kind of things. So you could have that much variation

1470
01:17:43,040 --> 01:17:46,120
Speaker 1: and go in completely different directions. And he was a

1471
01:17:46,200 --> 01:17:49,880
Speaker 1: keyboard player. I was a guitar player. UM, So that

1472
01:17:50,040 --> 01:17:54,560
Speaker 1: was probably the difference um and stylistically, song wise, it

1473
01:17:54,640 --> 01:17:57,479
Speaker 1: was very different because I still had a rock and

1474
01:17:57,600 --> 01:17:59,360
Speaker 1: roll edge to a lot of this stuff I did.

1475
01:18:00,520 --> 01:18:05,240
Speaker 1: And so when it came time to do solo albums,

1476
01:18:05,720 --> 01:18:08,040
Speaker 1: as I said, the first one was an experiment, a

1477
01:18:08,160 --> 01:18:10,120
Speaker 1: lot of fun I had. I had a ball doing

1478
01:18:10,160 --> 01:18:11,960
Speaker 1: that album. That was so much fun. I got to

1479
01:18:12,000 --> 01:18:14,160
Speaker 1: play with guys, some of which I didn't even know it.

1480
01:18:14,560 --> 01:18:21,240
Speaker 1: David Page played on it, Um Yeah, a plethora of Dummer's.

1481
01:18:21,280 --> 01:18:23,920
Speaker 1: Keith played on it, Michael playing on that album at

1482
01:18:24,000 --> 01:18:30,880
Speaker 1: some point, Um Path playing on that album. Um Rick

1483
01:18:30,960 --> 01:18:32,760
Speaker 1: Slauser played on a lot of the tracks, I'm not

1484
01:18:32,800 --> 01:18:37,200
Speaker 1: sure what happened to Rick Mark, because Mark Jordan was

1485
01:18:37,200 --> 01:18:39,880
Speaker 1: a keyboard player. He was really good and he played

1486
01:18:39,880 --> 01:18:44,519
Speaker 1: on a lot of stuff. Um Towers Horns used Memphis

1487
01:18:44,560 --> 01:18:47,680
Speaker 1: Horns on a couple of the songs. So you've got

1488
01:18:47,800 --> 01:18:53,320
Speaker 1: this plethora of really top notch players, and that, to

1489
01:18:53,439 --> 01:18:55,400
Speaker 1: me is what that experience was all about. It was

1490
01:18:55,439 --> 01:18:57,400
Speaker 1: a growth period, and then we went out. I went

1491
01:18:57,439 --> 01:18:59,840
Speaker 1: out and toured on it and did a lot of

1492
01:19:00,280 --> 01:19:06,080
Speaker 1: with um various bands. UM Kenny Loggins was one of

1493
01:19:06,240 --> 01:19:08,640
Speaker 1: my toured with for a while and it was a

1494
01:19:08,800 --> 01:19:14,559
Speaker 1: pretty wild and wooly tour. You got the band such

1495
01:19:14,640 --> 01:19:18,839
Speaker 1: as it was, which was me, three Memphis Horns, John Hartman,

1496
01:19:19,160 --> 01:19:24,840
Speaker 1: and Um something. Anderson on the other said, we had

1497
01:19:24,840 --> 01:19:29,439
Speaker 1: two drummers again, uh, Mike White on bass. Probably nobody's

1498
01:19:29,560 --> 01:19:32,240
Speaker 1: not gonna be filming familiar with these names. They were

1499
01:19:32,320 --> 01:19:35,320
Speaker 1: in household names. But so we went out and toured,

1500
01:19:36,000 --> 01:19:37,680
Speaker 1: so the crew and the band are all on the

1501
01:19:37,760 --> 01:19:43,519
Speaker 1: same bus every night, and it was lunacy. That lasted

1502
01:19:43,640 --> 01:19:45,760
Speaker 1: for a month and a half and then that was

1503
01:19:45,840 --> 01:19:48,360
Speaker 1: the end of the touring for that album, and then

1504
01:19:48,840 --> 01:19:51,920
Speaker 1: I did another solo album with a different producer, so

1505
01:19:52,000 --> 01:19:55,080
Speaker 1: that's another big step. And those were actually, in a

1506
01:19:55,160 --> 01:19:57,840
Speaker 1: sense more commercial songs. But the album didn't do very well,

1507
01:19:58,560 --> 01:20:01,880
Speaker 1: and I was told that it sounded too much like

1508
01:20:02,000 --> 01:20:04,640
Speaker 1: to Do You Brothers. I said, it was that a

1509
01:20:04,680 --> 01:20:06,680
Speaker 1: good thing? I am? I don't know if that is

1510
01:20:06,720 --> 01:20:08,599
Speaker 1: good or bad and different. I said, I'm not trying

1511
01:20:08,640 --> 01:20:10,800
Speaker 1: to do anything in particular. I'm just writing songs and

1512
01:20:10,840 --> 01:20:16,240
Speaker 1: here's what they sound like. And uh so that one

1513
01:20:16,360 --> 01:20:19,360
Speaker 1: was produced by Michael o'martin, who did Christopher Cross and

1514
01:20:19,439 --> 01:20:23,800
Speaker 1: some other people like that. And then after that I

1515
01:20:24,000 --> 01:20:26,400
Speaker 1: just kind of played around Maran and hung out with

1516
01:20:26,439 --> 01:20:28,960
Speaker 1: a band called Border Patrol and we did gigs and

1517
01:20:29,040 --> 01:20:33,160
Speaker 1: stuff and that lasted until a D seven And then

1518
01:20:33,240 --> 01:20:35,920
Speaker 1: in a D seven Keith had this idea. The band

1519
01:20:35,960 --> 01:20:39,000
Speaker 1: by the way, they right there, Okay, you make two

1520
01:20:39,080 --> 01:20:41,439
Speaker 1: solo records. Then Warner Brothers says they we don't want

1521
01:20:41,439 --> 01:20:46,360
Speaker 1: to make anymore. Right, Okay, now you don't have you're

1522
01:20:46,400 --> 01:20:49,599
Speaker 1: not at the level you were before without a recording deal.

1523
01:20:49,680 --> 01:20:52,679
Speaker 1: You try to get a recording deal with somebody else. No, okay,

1524
01:20:52,920 --> 01:20:56,040
Speaker 1: do you have enough money to get you through? I did, Okay,

1525
01:20:56,120 --> 01:20:58,800
Speaker 1: I wasn't like large and in charge, but I getn't

1526
01:20:58,800 --> 01:21:02,920
Speaker 1: buy and okay, So then get to eighty seven. Okay, Well,

1527
01:21:02,960 --> 01:21:06,599
Speaker 1: the band, the Doobie Brothers, they ended. They split up

1528
01:21:06,720 --> 01:21:11,680
Speaker 1: in ninety two. They did a farewell tour ascuse me

1529
01:21:13,080 --> 01:21:15,040
Speaker 1: and they did a farewell tour which I went and

1530
01:21:15,080 --> 01:21:17,200
Speaker 1: played on one of the last gigs with him over

1531
01:21:17,320 --> 01:21:19,840
Speaker 1: in Berkeley, and um, which was a lot of fun.

1532
01:21:19,880 --> 01:21:23,960
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed. You remain friendly with these guys pretty much? Yeah, yeah,

1533
01:21:24,080 --> 01:21:26,000
Speaker 1: I mean I I sad him with him in Seattle

1534
01:21:26,080 --> 01:21:27,760
Speaker 1: one night when they were playing with John k and

1535
01:21:28,560 --> 01:21:30,519
Speaker 1: he was doing a solo album thing, and you know,

1536
01:21:30,640 --> 01:21:32,120
Speaker 1: I didn't sit there with him a lot, but once

1537
01:21:32,160 --> 01:21:33,760
Speaker 1: in a while I would show up. And when the

1538
01:21:33,880 --> 01:21:36,920
Speaker 1: night they got their first Grammys and stuff, I was

1539
01:21:37,000 --> 01:21:40,840
Speaker 1: on that first solo tour and I ended up in Bakersfield,

1540
01:21:40,920 --> 01:21:42,840
Speaker 1: drove down to l A And went to the after

1541
01:21:42,960 --> 01:21:44,600
Speaker 1: party and hung out with all the guys in the

1542
01:21:44,680 --> 01:21:48,760
Speaker 1: band and lost and and everybody else was there. So yeah,

1543
01:21:48,840 --> 01:21:52,120
Speaker 1: we stayed on good terms. And then in seven there's

1544
01:21:52,160 --> 01:21:55,720
Speaker 1: this idea. There was an idea by Keith Canudson, who

1545
01:21:55,760 --> 01:21:57,800
Speaker 1: had read a book which I don't remember the title of,

1546
01:21:58,600 --> 01:22:01,280
Speaker 1: about guys who had out in Vietnam and what they

1547
01:22:01,320 --> 01:22:05,519
Speaker 1: were going through and the problems they were having health wise,

1548
01:22:06,439 --> 01:22:08,760
Speaker 1: housing wide, you name it. They were having all kinds

1549
01:22:08,800 --> 01:22:11,280
Speaker 1: of problems. And he called each one of us in

1550
01:22:11,360 --> 01:22:14,479
Speaker 1: the band and said, would you be interested in getting

1551
01:22:14,520 --> 01:22:17,800
Speaker 1: together and doing a gig to raise money for these guys,

1552
01:22:19,000 --> 01:22:23,120
Speaker 1: And everybody said, sure, why not? And that included four

1553
01:22:23,200 --> 01:22:28,000
Speaker 1: drummers for a guitar player, one bass player who was

1554
01:22:28,080 --> 01:22:30,760
Speaker 1: tyrant because Willie Weeks had been playing bass for the

1555
01:22:30,800 --> 01:22:35,120
Speaker 1: band at the end, and Um Michael of course on

1556
01:22:35,240 --> 01:22:38,080
Speaker 1: one side and Cornelias Pumpus on the other side playing keyboards,

1557
01:22:38,080 --> 01:22:41,240
Speaker 1: and then Cornelias played sax. So we had this huge

1558
01:22:41,960 --> 01:22:44,439
Speaker 1: conglomerate on stage, which was insane. So we had to

1559
01:22:44,479 --> 01:22:48,040
Speaker 1: rehearse that get the songs together, which is everything from

1560
01:22:48,080 --> 01:22:51,080
Speaker 1: nobody to admitute by a minute, all of it one

1561
01:22:51,200 --> 01:22:56,880
Speaker 1: night and the first um the first gig was a

1562
01:22:56,960 --> 01:23:01,240
Speaker 1: trial gig before we did the Hall with Bowl, which

1563
01:23:01,400 --> 01:23:04,240
Speaker 1: was the prize. That was when we wanted to get

1564
01:23:04,280 --> 01:23:08,040
Speaker 1: the money for the Vietnam vets from. So we played

1565
01:23:08,960 --> 01:23:10,880
Speaker 1: in San Diego, the place we used to play all

1566
01:23:10,920 --> 01:23:12,640
Speaker 1: the time. I think it was called a Porratorium if

1567
01:23:12,640 --> 01:23:16,040
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken. And uh so we get there and

1568
01:23:16,200 --> 01:23:19,400
Speaker 1: we walk on stage expecting absolutely nothing because we hadn't

1569
01:23:19,720 --> 01:23:23,400
Speaker 1: done anything in all the formats at once, for sure,

1570
01:23:23,600 --> 01:23:25,599
Speaker 1: and we had never done anything with that many guys

1571
01:23:25,640 --> 01:23:28,920
Speaker 1: on stage, and the band had been apart for a while,

1572
01:23:29,000 --> 01:23:31,040
Speaker 1: so nobody's really expecting a heck of a lot of anything.

1573
01:23:31,600 --> 01:23:34,280
Speaker 1: And we get this standing ovation we had not let

1574
01:23:34,400 --> 01:23:36,920
Speaker 1: us start playing. It was a ridiculous. Everybody looking to going,

1575
01:23:37,000 --> 01:23:42,360
Speaker 1: what is going on? Man, this is crazy. Nobody hadn't

1576
01:23:42,439 --> 01:23:45,600
Speaker 1: inkling anything like that was gonna happen. So apparently the

1577
01:23:45,680 --> 01:23:48,240
Speaker 1: band had been missed in its absence, but we didn't

1578
01:23:48,240 --> 01:23:50,880
Speaker 1: know it. And uh so we ended up playing the

1579
01:23:50,920 --> 01:23:55,639
Speaker 1: show they were The crowd was ecstatic. So we left

1580
01:23:55,720 --> 01:23:59,000
Speaker 1: that thinking, wow, that's amazing. I wasn't expecting that, and

1581
01:23:59,040 --> 01:24:02,280
Speaker 1: I mean everybody's saying that was something, right. And so

1582
01:24:02,439 --> 01:24:06,680
Speaker 1: the next show is probably the next night actually at

1583
01:24:06,720 --> 01:24:09,200
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Bowl, and it was the second fastest selling

1584
01:24:10,080 --> 01:24:12,800
Speaker 1: show they'd had behind the Beatles. That was the fastest one,

1585
01:24:13,880 --> 01:24:17,320
Speaker 1: and it was packed and we played the show made

1586
01:24:17,360 --> 01:24:21,720
Speaker 1: a ton of money for the Vietnam debts, and we

1587
01:24:21,880 --> 01:24:25,320
Speaker 1: played one more for the Stanford Children's Hospital, which was

1588
01:24:25,439 --> 01:24:30,600
Speaker 1: one of our pet charities. After that, and then we

1589
01:24:30,640 --> 01:24:34,080
Speaker 1: played ten shows to pay for all this because it

1590
01:24:34,200 --> 01:24:36,799
Speaker 1: cost a force to do all the rehearsing and everything

1591
01:24:36,920 --> 01:24:40,080
Speaker 1: and everybody, the whole routine, the multiple drummers, Guitarsit went

1592
01:24:40,120 --> 01:24:44,120
Speaker 1: on all those gigs and we played them like you

1593
01:24:44,200 --> 01:24:46,040
Speaker 1: with a small tour, you know, we played and that

1594
01:24:46,160 --> 01:24:49,400
Speaker 1: was no but that's just the way it ended it up.

1595
01:24:49,560 --> 01:24:52,080
Speaker 1: And because we had this huge debt, we had incurred

1596
01:24:52,120 --> 01:24:55,320
Speaker 1: putting this together. But while we were doing the rehearsals

1597
01:24:56,280 --> 01:24:59,599
Speaker 1: putting this together and doing the songs from the early

1598
01:24:59,680 --> 01:25:03,440
Speaker 1: do we period, Ted was there for all the rehearsals

1599
01:25:04,080 --> 01:25:06,200
Speaker 1: and he came up to all the guys from the

1600
01:25:06,240 --> 01:25:09,960
Speaker 1: original band. He said, what would you think about reforming

1601
01:25:10,040 --> 01:25:15,080
Speaker 1: the band in this original form and doing an album?

1602
01:25:16,240 --> 01:25:18,479
Speaker 1: At that point, none of us were doing anything that

1603
01:25:18,680 --> 01:25:24,120
Speaker 1: really added and we all said sure, why not? So

1604
01:25:24,280 --> 01:25:28,439
Speaker 1: we did and that was supposed to happen. It didn't

1605
01:25:28,439 --> 01:25:31,439
Speaker 1: happen until Lady nine and Ted wasn't the producer and

1606
01:25:31,520 --> 01:25:34,599
Speaker 1: we were not Warner Brothers. Stuff changed from the idea

1607
01:25:34,720 --> 01:25:37,200
Speaker 1: until it actually happened. By then we were on Capitol.

1608
01:25:37,840 --> 01:25:39,160
Speaker 1: Do you think it would have been different if Ted

1609
01:25:39,200 --> 01:25:43,240
Speaker 1: had been the producer? I do, I do, um, because

1610
01:25:43,280 --> 01:25:46,439
Speaker 1: we started off with a couple of producers at one time,

1611
01:25:46,920 --> 01:25:50,519
Speaker 1: Eddie Schwartz and Charlie Midnight, and then that morphed into

1612
01:25:50,600 --> 01:25:52,840
Speaker 1: Rodney Mills and then he did the second album that

1613
01:25:52,960 --> 01:25:56,040
Speaker 1: was on Capitol and we the first album was Cycles,

1614
01:25:56,080 --> 01:25:58,320
Speaker 1: and it did pretty well and it had the Doctor

1615
01:25:58,439 --> 01:26:01,920
Speaker 1: on it, which I with those two guys if I

1616
01:26:02,000 --> 01:26:04,439
Speaker 1: hadn't written it with those two guys, because I had

1617
01:26:04,439 --> 01:26:06,200
Speaker 1: written this song for a band I was playing in

1618
01:26:06,240 --> 01:26:09,479
Speaker 1: and Marin, but it didn't have that chorus and it

1619
01:26:09,520 --> 01:26:11,960
Speaker 1: didn't have some of those lyrics. Those that had not

1620
01:26:12,120 --> 01:26:14,519
Speaker 1: been added, that song wouldn't have been ahead. That was

1621
01:26:14,640 --> 01:26:17,200
Speaker 1: the catch the catchy part of it for then. I

1622
01:26:17,240 --> 01:26:20,400
Speaker 1: mean they hadn't added that those core structures and stuff,

1623
01:26:20,439 --> 01:26:24,400
Speaker 1: which I thought, that's really poppy. It's like almost bubble gum.

1624
01:26:25,360 --> 01:26:28,679
Speaker 1: But um, it did well and it served its purpose

1625
01:26:29,720 --> 01:26:32,639
Speaker 1: and uh and the band was back, if you will.

1626
01:26:33,200 --> 01:26:35,519
Speaker 1: Then we did the second on which was Brotherhood, and

1627
01:26:35,800 --> 01:26:37,880
Speaker 1: do so well, and then we just have been on

1628
01:26:37,960 --> 01:26:40,920
Speaker 1: the road since. Okay, so a couple of questions. Now,

1629
01:26:41,600 --> 01:26:43,479
Speaker 1: let's stay with the recording. Do you make a recording

1630
01:26:43,560 --> 01:26:48,840
Speaker 1: sibil sibling rivalry ivalry I believe in and there are

1631
01:26:49,040 --> 01:26:50,720
Speaker 1: I believe that record is very good. But there are

1632
01:26:50,800 --> 01:26:53,679
Speaker 1: multiple writers. So when you have there was no producer,

1633
01:26:54,640 --> 01:26:56,519
Speaker 1: and I was against that. I didn't think that was

1634
01:26:56,520 --> 01:26:58,519
Speaker 1: a good idea, but this is what they wanted to do.

1635
01:26:58,600 --> 01:27:01,240
Speaker 1: They wanted to try doing it with the producer. I said, Okay,

1636
01:27:02,040 --> 01:27:04,400
Speaker 1: so you do get multiple writers, you also get multiple

1637
01:27:04,520 --> 01:27:08,760
Speaker 1: sounds because you got four guys singing lead. And I

1638
01:27:08,760 --> 01:27:10,479
Speaker 1: didn't think that was a great idea, but I didn't

1639
01:27:10,560 --> 01:27:14,200
Speaker 1: raise a ruckus about it too much. Um. So the

1640
01:27:14,280 --> 01:27:16,439
Speaker 1: album really didn't do anything, and we weren't really on

1641
01:27:16,520 --> 01:27:19,640
Speaker 1: a label. It got put out by Rhino, but we

1642
01:27:20,160 --> 01:27:22,120
Speaker 1: were doing it with a guy from Florida was just

1643
01:27:22,240 --> 01:27:27,040
Speaker 1: a money guy. Much like what we did. Um ten

1644
01:27:27,120 --> 01:27:29,320
Speaker 1: years later, Okay, you make a record ten years later,

1645
01:27:29,320 --> 01:27:31,240
Speaker 1: but at this time it is with Ted Templeman. It

1646
01:27:31,439 --> 01:27:34,080
Speaker 1: was with Ted Templeman. It was not a Warner Brother,

1647
01:27:34,160 --> 01:27:35,880
Speaker 1: it was not any label. It was once again a

1648
01:27:35,920 --> 01:27:40,479
Speaker 1: money guy who was from Texas. And uh, we were

1649
01:27:40,800 --> 01:27:43,640
Speaker 1: with what they called themselves a record company, but they

1650
01:27:43,680 --> 01:27:46,560
Speaker 1: really weren't. And it's too bad because that really was

1651
01:27:46,640 --> 01:27:48,760
Speaker 1: a good record. It had good songs on it. They

1652
01:27:48,800 --> 01:27:51,840
Speaker 1: were well thought on. Billy came out and Billy Payne

1653
01:27:52,080 --> 01:27:54,479
Speaker 1: came out and played on it. I had written four

1654
01:27:54,560 --> 01:27:57,760
Speaker 1: songs on keyboards, and so I just said, here, you're

1655
01:27:57,800 --> 01:28:02,200
Speaker 1: the guy, you play these. But I had already UH,

1656
01:28:02,640 --> 01:28:05,200
Speaker 1: but I'd written him on keyboards and by then I'm

1657
01:28:05,240 --> 01:28:09,080
Speaker 1: working with uh digital performer and I could play all

1658
01:28:09,120 --> 01:28:11,639
Speaker 1: this stuff because of Mittie allows you to play bass,

1659
01:28:11,720 --> 01:28:14,560
Speaker 1: allows you play drums, you play keyboard parts, and you

1660
01:28:14,640 --> 01:28:16,320
Speaker 1: could fudge it. And so if you can't really play

1661
01:28:16,400 --> 01:28:18,840
Speaker 1: the part you're not fluid or not, you slow it

1662
01:28:19,000 --> 01:28:20,760
Speaker 1: down and you play the part and needs speed it

1663
01:28:20,800 --> 01:28:24,160
Speaker 1: back up again. So you're down here in l A

1664
01:28:24,280 --> 01:28:29,760
Speaker 1: now for writing sessions. What would these songs be for? Uh,

1665
01:28:30,000 --> 01:28:33,719
Speaker 1: we'd like very much to put out at this point,

1666
01:28:33,880 --> 01:28:37,439
Speaker 1: probably an EP because people don't buy albums anymore. They

1667
01:28:37,479 --> 01:28:42,320
Speaker 1: don't care about that and UM, to me, it's important

1668
01:28:42,439 --> 01:28:45,519
Speaker 1: to stay valid. To me, if you're a musician, if

1669
01:28:45,560 --> 01:28:48,720
Speaker 1: you just sit around and rest on your laurels, you're

1670
01:28:48,760 --> 01:28:51,640
Speaker 1: not growing and you're not getting the job done. We

1671
01:28:51,800 --> 01:28:55,679
Speaker 1: play plenty of gigs every year and we love playing

1672
01:28:55,720 --> 01:28:58,439
Speaker 1: for people. That's what's kept the band thriving and alive.

1673
01:28:59,680 --> 01:29:02,880
Speaker 1: But I think there's something as a musician. It's not

1674
01:29:03,000 --> 01:29:04,720
Speaker 1: just me that feels this way. We all feel this

1675
01:29:04,800 --> 01:29:08,760
Speaker 1: way that in order to be valid you need to

1676
01:29:08,840 --> 01:29:10,599
Speaker 1: put out new stuff. It's you know, in this day

1677
01:29:10,640 --> 01:29:12,680
Speaker 1: and age, it's probably not gonna do anything per se.

1678
01:29:12,760 --> 01:29:16,400
Speaker 1: It's not going to be some humongous hid but people

1679
01:29:16,520 --> 01:29:20,000
Speaker 1: know you're still making an attempt to be honest about

1680
01:29:20,040 --> 01:29:22,960
Speaker 1: your music, and that to me is important. And on

1681
01:29:23,080 --> 01:29:25,679
Speaker 1: one hand you say nothing's gonna happen, but another hand,

1682
01:29:25,760 --> 01:29:28,320
Speaker 1: I don't know what. But in the other hand, if

1683
01:29:28,320 --> 01:29:30,599
Speaker 1: you're actually doing it, you must have an inner flame

1684
01:29:30,720 --> 01:29:33,120
Speaker 1: saying well, I would like alway that yeah, at this

1685
01:29:33,240 --> 01:29:35,519
Speaker 1: point in the game, Yes, there's always that hope. And

1686
01:29:35,560 --> 01:29:37,840
Speaker 1: then I had that for World Gone Crazy. I thought

1687
01:29:37,840 --> 01:29:40,040
Speaker 1: that album was gonna do something. I was really disappointed

1688
01:29:40,040 --> 01:29:42,080
Speaker 1: when it did so. In this particular case, since you

1689
01:29:42,080 --> 01:29:44,840
Speaker 1: would be doing an EP somewhere between four and six songs,

1690
01:29:45,560 --> 01:29:48,519
Speaker 1: is there a desire to hit a certain level of

1691
01:29:48,680 --> 01:29:53,240
Speaker 1: quality to give your project a better shot in the marketplace.

1692
01:29:54,080 --> 01:29:56,800
Speaker 1: In some ways, I don't think that's ever change. You

1693
01:29:56,880 --> 01:29:59,800
Speaker 1: always want to do the best you can do where

1694
01:29:59,840 --> 01:30:02,360
Speaker 1: you're at at that time, with the knowledge you have

1695
01:30:02,640 --> 01:30:05,560
Speaker 1: with the songs that you're writing, and that's what you know.

1696
01:30:05,600 --> 01:30:07,519
Speaker 1: I'm co writing at this point, which is something I've

1697
01:30:07,560 --> 01:30:11,200
Speaker 1: never used to do. And uh, I really enjoyed the

1698
01:30:11,280 --> 01:30:12,880
Speaker 1: two songs that I've written down here in l A

1699
01:30:12,960 --> 01:30:17,360
Speaker 1: with with John and it's it's been just for those

1700
01:30:17,400 --> 01:30:20,880
Speaker 1: people who are not up to speed, and um, guys

1701
01:30:21,000 --> 01:30:23,439
Speaker 1: got a lot of vision. It reminds me of Ted.

1702
01:30:23,560 --> 01:30:26,000
Speaker 1: You didn't have personality, is like night and day from

1703
01:30:26,439 --> 01:30:28,920
Speaker 1: not at all like, but he has vision and he

1704
01:30:29,080 --> 01:30:31,439
Speaker 1: hears things and it's it's mind blank because you're doing

1705
01:30:31,520 --> 01:30:35,040
Speaker 1: it in his studio and he's got an engineer and

1706
01:30:35,400 --> 01:30:38,080
Speaker 1: as you're tracking, I mean, as you're writing the song.

1707
01:30:38,680 --> 01:30:42,240
Speaker 1: It's kind of what reminds me of my my writings

1708
01:30:43,040 --> 01:30:45,720
Speaker 1: sessions in Nashville, and that you've got two or three

1709
01:30:45,760 --> 01:30:48,240
Speaker 1: guys in the room all at the same time writing stuff.

1710
01:30:48,600 --> 01:30:51,880
Speaker 1: So as you're writing the chords, you're writing the verses.

1711
01:30:51,960 --> 01:30:55,680
Speaker 1: That's something I never did before in life. It was

1712
01:30:56,320 --> 01:30:59,320
Speaker 1: I would write the songs generally first, the whole damn thing,

1713
01:31:00,040 --> 01:31:03,280
Speaker 1: and say, Okay, what's gonna work on this. But that

1714
01:31:03,479 --> 01:31:07,120
Speaker 1: type of writing, when you've got more than yourself, you've

1715
01:31:07,160 --> 01:31:09,200
Speaker 1: got anywhere from two to three people in the room.

1716
01:31:09,920 --> 01:31:13,200
Speaker 1: It's like you get this first stretch of the song, Okay,

1717
01:31:13,240 --> 01:31:15,800
Speaker 1: let's write the verse. I said, well, we don't have

1718
01:31:15,880 --> 01:31:19,519
Speaker 1: a song. Yeah, this is how we do it back

1719
01:31:19,560 --> 01:31:22,479
Speaker 1: here whatever. And so it's a learning it's a learning

1720
01:31:22,520 --> 01:31:25,000
Speaker 1: curve for me. And it was really interesting. And that

1721
01:31:25,120 --> 01:31:27,760
Speaker 1: was with Jeffrey Steele and who has had a lot

1722
01:31:27,800 --> 01:31:31,920
Speaker 1: of success back to l A Boy originally, and um

1723
01:31:33,680 --> 01:31:37,599
Speaker 1: Um wrote with Chuck Cannon wrote with Bob d. Pierre.

1724
01:31:37,760 --> 01:31:40,599
Speaker 1: You guys are all successful back there in Nashville, most

1725
01:31:40,640 --> 01:31:42,720
Speaker 1: of his country. And this is all for the same theoretically.

1726
01:31:42,880 --> 01:31:45,599
Speaker 1: P No, this was just for me to go back

1727
01:31:45,680 --> 01:31:48,040
Speaker 1: and write with people, just to do it. And what's

1728
01:31:48,080 --> 01:31:53,000
Speaker 1: happened to those songs so far? Nothing? They are saying

1729
01:31:53,080 --> 01:31:54,960
Speaker 1: one of them might get used. I don't know. Yeah,

1730
01:31:55,000 --> 01:31:59,600
Speaker 1: I there's one of my things is a possibility for

1731
01:31:59,680 --> 01:32:04,679
Speaker 1: what we're doing, okay. And also you switched managers relatively recently.

1732
01:32:04,720 --> 01:32:07,920
Speaker 1: What was that about. We had reached a place with

1733
01:32:08,040 --> 01:32:10,760
Speaker 1: our former manager where we just thought it was time

1734
01:32:10,800 --> 01:32:14,479
Speaker 1: to cut ties. And actually I had been thinking that

1735
01:32:14,600 --> 01:32:17,080
Speaker 1: for a while, and without getting into depth about this,

1736
01:32:18,360 --> 01:32:21,639
Speaker 1: some things occurred that convinced other people in the band

1737
01:32:21,720 --> 01:32:24,800
Speaker 1: that it was time to do that, and we did,

1738
01:32:25,320 --> 01:32:29,200
Speaker 1: and so I took it upon myself to make some

1739
01:32:29,320 --> 01:32:33,479
Speaker 1: phone calls. And so the decision to cut ties was

1740
01:32:33,640 --> 01:32:39,400
Speaker 1: before you had a new person, okay. And both the

1741
01:32:39,439 --> 01:32:43,320
Speaker 1: people that I called were receptive and positive about it.

1742
01:32:43,600 --> 01:32:46,960
Speaker 1: And the last person that we spoke with, and the

1743
01:32:47,040 --> 01:32:49,200
Speaker 1: last person I called and that we went and sat

1744
01:32:49,240 --> 01:32:52,000
Speaker 1: down at a meeting with was Irving. He's off and

1745
01:32:53,760 --> 01:32:57,519
Speaker 1: he was great. He knew all about the band. He says,

1746
01:32:57,600 --> 01:33:01,519
Speaker 1: I know what you've been doing. Uh Um, I'd like

1747
01:33:01,600 --> 01:33:03,840
Speaker 1: you to meet our staff, and which is the same

1748
01:33:03,920 --> 01:33:07,720
Speaker 1: thing I did with with another manager in Nashville, and

1749
01:33:08,560 --> 01:33:11,120
Speaker 1: he came out to us in in St. Louis and

1750
01:33:11,200 --> 01:33:13,720
Speaker 1: we had a big meeting. They were great, They really were,

1751
01:33:13,760 --> 01:33:15,479
Speaker 1: I mean, they were first class about the whole thing.

1752
01:33:15,560 --> 01:33:20,560
Speaker 1: Both guys um and it just seemed to me that

1753
01:33:20,680 --> 01:33:22,320
Speaker 1: it was a better fit. And after I got the

1754
01:33:22,360 --> 01:33:24,960
Speaker 1: guys down to l A and they saw what Irving

1755
01:33:25,120 --> 01:33:28,280
Speaker 1: was all about and how things were done and his

1756
01:33:28,520 --> 01:33:31,160
Speaker 1: people that did online presence and as people who did

1757
01:33:31,240 --> 01:33:35,880
Speaker 1: this and did that. Um, they kind of agreed, and

1758
01:33:36,320 --> 01:33:40,479
Speaker 1: so we chose Irving. And so since you've been with Irving,

1759
01:33:41,120 --> 01:33:45,040
Speaker 1: what operation, how is it different from your previous life? Uh?

1760
01:33:46,040 --> 01:33:48,920
Speaker 1: Touring is still touring. That had never changed. But as

1761
01:33:49,000 --> 01:33:51,559
Speaker 1: far as the quality of how things are done, it's

1762
01:33:51,680 --> 01:33:56,280
Speaker 1: night and day. Uh. From the business standpoint, it's on

1763
01:33:56,360 --> 01:34:00,680
Speaker 1: another planet. So and we also changed book agencies. We

1764
01:34:00,720 --> 01:34:03,479
Speaker 1: went from Paradigm to C A A, which has also

1765
01:34:03,560 --> 01:34:05,680
Speaker 1: been a really neat thing for us to do in

1766
01:34:06,000 --> 01:34:11,240
Speaker 1: a very positive jump. And um, so it's all changed, right.

1767
01:34:11,439 --> 01:34:15,559
Speaker 1: And then so the band has been back together its

1768
01:34:15,600 --> 01:34:18,000
Speaker 1: original format a close there to for a better part

1769
01:34:18,040 --> 01:34:20,720
Speaker 1: of thirty years. How many days a year do you

1770
01:34:20,840 --> 01:34:23,400
Speaker 1: do gigs? We do about eighty shows a year. And

1771
01:34:23,439 --> 01:34:28,160
Speaker 1: how do you come up with that number? Uh? I

1772
01:34:28,200 --> 01:34:31,519
Speaker 1: don't know, it's not really we haven't got to a

1773
01:34:31,560 --> 01:34:33,760
Speaker 1: point where we sit down, I won't do more than this.

1774
01:34:34,520 --> 01:34:36,960
Speaker 1: It's just that's what we've been doing for a while

1775
01:34:37,000 --> 01:34:41,160
Speaker 1: and or between eighty two shows up till about five

1776
01:34:41,280 --> 01:34:43,080
Speaker 1: years ago, six years ago, and then we were kind

1777
01:34:43,120 --> 01:34:47,479
Speaker 1: of trying to keep it down to eighty. UM. At

1778
01:34:47,520 --> 01:34:49,880
Speaker 1: one point we talked about seventy and in fact, since

1779
01:34:49,920 --> 01:34:51,920
Speaker 1: we've been with everyone. We were talking about with seventy

1780
01:34:52,000 --> 01:34:55,200
Speaker 1: but it hasn't happened. Yeah, we're still doing eight because

1781
01:34:55,240 --> 01:34:56,720
Speaker 1: shows come up you don't want to say no to.

1782
01:34:56,960 --> 01:35:00,160
Speaker 1: That's pretty much. They don't want to say no because, well,

1783
01:35:00,200 --> 01:35:03,320
Speaker 1: there there, you want to go play with these people. Perhaps, Um,

1784
01:35:04,200 --> 01:35:06,400
Speaker 1: shows come up all the blue that you don't know

1785
01:35:06,439 --> 01:35:08,800
Speaker 1: we're gonna happen, like some of the stuff we did,

1786
01:35:08,880 --> 01:35:12,080
Speaker 1: like those classic gigs for instance, they got interjected into

1787
01:35:12,120 --> 01:35:15,360
Speaker 1: a tour we were doing with Chicago at the time. Um,

1788
01:35:16,160 --> 01:35:19,160
Speaker 1: where are you gonna go play with um Steely Dan

1789
01:35:19,280 --> 01:35:22,160
Speaker 1: and the Eagles the day that you play, get on

1790
01:35:22,240 --> 01:35:23,920
Speaker 1: a plane and fly back to Detroit to play the

1791
01:35:24,000 --> 01:35:28,840
Speaker 1: next gig that night after you're done, and and other

1792
01:35:28,920 --> 01:35:31,080
Speaker 1: things like going to Europe. Uh. And we played with

1793
01:35:31,240 --> 01:35:33,880
Speaker 1: Steely Dan and then we did a European tour by

1794
01:35:33,920 --> 01:35:36,439
Speaker 1: ourselves in places of some of the places I'd actually

1795
01:35:36,600 --> 01:35:39,120
Speaker 1: never played before. It was kind of hip. Really enjoyed that.

1796
01:35:40,240 --> 01:35:43,280
Speaker 1: And then and this now, when you're singing, listen to

1797
01:35:43,360 --> 01:35:46,080
Speaker 1: the music. You're singing one of your big hits. What

1798
01:35:46,240 --> 01:35:48,280
Speaker 1: you have to sing otherwise the audience is going to

1799
01:35:48,400 --> 01:35:51,200
Speaker 1: revolt are you think, are you thinking about doing your

1800
01:35:51,280 --> 01:35:54,040
Speaker 1: laundry or you think about other stuff? Are you still

1801
01:35:54,280 --> 01:35:56,719
Speaker 1: know it's it's still a thrill to do those songs.

1802
01:35:56,800 --> 01:35:59,280
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you why, because it could be exactly

1803
01:35:59,360 --> 01:36:00,960
Speaker 1: like you just just gribe. I can see where that

1804
01:36:01,000 --> 01:36:04,559
Speaker 1: would happen. It's because of the response the crowd gives

1805
01:36:04,600 --> 01:36:07,719
Speaker 1: you when you play those songs. So in essence, every

1806
01:36:07,880 --> 01:36:10,800
Speaker 1: night that song takes on a life of its own

1807
01:36:11,000 --> 01:36:13,960
Speaker 1: because of the people in front of you, not because

1808
01:36:14,000 --> 01:36:16,000
Speaker 1: you're playing it. God, you know the thing and you sleep,

1809
01:36:17,160 --> 01:36:20,600
Speaker 1: but when the crowd is singing along with you, and

1810
01:36:21,240 --> 01:36:23,799
Speaker 1: in particular a couple of songs, they're anthemic and nature

1811
01:36:23,920 --> 01:36:28,920
Speaker 1: for the that very reason. How can you not be

1812
01:36:29,040 --> 01:36:32,240
Speaker 1: happy with that? Man? It's pretty hard. Okay, So generally speaking,

1813
01:36:32,320 --> 01:36:34,880
Speaker 1: let's talk about when you're playing with another band, how

1814
01:36:34,960 --> 01:36:38,559
Speaker 1: far can you stretch it before the audience. I don't

1815
01:36:38,560 --> 01:36:39,880
Speaker 1: want to say tunes out, but we all go to

1816
01:36:39,920 --> 01:36:42,680
Speaker 1: shows these days, and you're on stage whatever. There's the

1817
01:36:42,760 --> 01:36:45,160
Speaker 1: casual fan of knows the hits, and then there's the

1818
01:36:45,240 --> 01:36:48,000
Speaker 1: die hard fan. So when you don't play and a

1819
01:36:48,080 --> 01:36:51,599
Speaker 1: few people who don't really know any of the hits, right, So, hey,

1820
01:36:51,720 --> 01:36:53,920
Speaker 1: to what degree do you feel you want to convince

1821
01:36:54,040 --> 01:36:56,920
Speaker 1: the fans bring them along, or to what what's it

1822
01:36:57,040 --> 01:36:59,599
Speaker 1: like being on stage when you're not playing the big hits.

1823
01:37:00,520 --> 01:37:03,040
Speaker 1: It might be songs that you really dug as album

1824
01:37:03,080 --> 01:37:07,000
Speaker 1: cuts in the first place. In particular, things like for me,

1825
01:37:07,680 --> 01:37:09,760
Speaker 1: dark Eyed Cajun Woman or something like that meant a

1826
01:37:09,840 --> 01:37:13,519
Speaker 1: lot to me alone as a person because it was

1827
01:37:13,600 --> 01:37:15,640
Speaker 1: the blues and it was a tip of that had

1828
01:37:15,680 --> 01:37:18,160
Speaker 1: to be be king. And it's the only time I

1829
01:37:18,280 --> 01:37:20,760
Speaker 1: ever got to write a blue song that was a

1830
01:37:20,880 --> 01:37:22,960
Speaker 1: really that really was a blue song. Is there a

1831
01:37:23,080 --> 01:37:25,599
Speaker 1: dark eyed Cajun woman? There is a dark eyed Cajun

1832
01:37:25,600 --> 01:37:27,920
Speaker 1: woman that really exists. It came off of Captain and me.

1833
01:37:28,200 --> 01:37:30,400
Speaker 1: We'll be doing that. I have been doing a lot.

1834
01:37:30,680 --> 01:37:32,560
Speaker 1: I mean, is there a woman who? Oh no, it

1835
01:37:32,720 --> 01:37:38,080
Speaker 1: was all fictitious, But that was a big seminal moment

1836
01:37:38,160 --> 01:37:40,280
Speaker 1: for me in the studio. Not for anybody else probably,

1837
01:37:40,320 --> 01:37:43,120
Speaker 1: but for me it was. So you'll enjoy playing that live,

1838
01:37:43,320 --> 01:37:45,320
Speaker 1: I do. I mean, there's a lot of songs I

1839
01:37:45,400 --> 01:37:48,120
Speaker 1: enjoyed playing live. It's just how you build a set

1840
01:37:48,200 --> 01:37:50,200
Speaker 1: in order to how you know, take the crowd on

1841
01:37:50,320 --> 01:37:52,479
Speaker 1: there on this little journey with your sot A spirit,

1842
01:37:52,520 --> 01:37:55,200
Speaker 1: And do you find if you headline that the fans

1843
01:37:55,240 --> 01:37:57,479
Speaker 1: are a little more die hard as opposed to play

1844
01:37:58,400 --> 01:38:02,880
Speaker 1: if you're opening Let's say, for uh, when the first

1845
01:38:03,320 --> 01:38:05,600
Speaker 1: tour we did when we got with Irving was with

1846
01:38:05,720 --> 01:38:10,280
Speaker 1: Journey and um and it was us and and Dave

1847
01:38:10,360 --> 01:38:12,679
Speaker 1: Mason played before we did, and we played, the Journey played,

1848
01:38:12,960 --> 01:38:16,719
Speaker 1: and so every night to places, which as they always

1849
01:38:16,720 --> 01:38:18,080
Speaker 1: are in any of these kind of ship gigs, are

1850
01:38:18,080 --> 01:38:21,559
Speaker 1: always packed pretty much, and uh, we were getting really

1851
01:38:21,600 --> 01:38:24,280
Speaker 1: great response, so it was it was not you know,

1852
01:38:24,360 --> 01:38:26,240
Speaker 1: we were this this is an extension of what we've

1853
01:38:26,240 --> 01:38:28,439
Speaker 1: already been doing anyway, so it's more of the same

1854
01:38:28,520 --> 01:38:32,320
Speaker 1: but different bands than we had played with before. We'd

1855
01:38:32,320 --> 01:38:34,439
Speaker 1: played with Dave before, but we've never played with Journey

1856
01:38:35,040 --> 01:38:40,040
Speaker 1: since way back when, and then um, this last year

1857
01:38:40,120 --> 01:38:42,560
Speaker 1: we've been with Steely Dan. We just just finished that

1858
01:38:42,600 --> 01:38:44,880
Speaker 1: two our month ago. We were out for over two

1859
01:38:44,880 --> 01:38:49,519
Speaker 1: and a half months straight and wide swath musically, I mean,

1860
01:38:49,560 --> 01:38:53,120
Speaker 1: you've got jazz rock and all these phenomenal players on stage,

1861
01:38:54,120 --> 01:38:59,160
Speaker 1: and Donald still sounds great as ever and really a

1862
01:38:59,240 --> 01:39:02,280
Speaker 1: killer band, but completely musically different from what we did

1863
01:39:03,000 --> 01:39:05,800
Speaker 1: and the crowd loved it, which was very cool. So

1864
01:39:05,920 --> 01:39:08,360
Speaker 1: it all works. We had You've had a lot of hits,

1865
01:39:08,439 --> 01:39:10,800
Speaker 1: so at this Okay. A couple other questions. How many

1866
01:39:10,840 --> 01:39:13,760
Speaker 1: times you've been married? Once? Really? Uh? And I'm still

1867
01:39:13,840 --> 01:39:16,920
Speaker 1: married to her now. We've been married for over thirty years. Okay.

1868
01:39:17,000 --> 01:39:19,880
Speaker 1: So because most bands, seems the band goes on the road.

1869
01:39:19,920 --> 01:39:22,000
Speaker 1: Remember Metallica, They went on the road for extended period

1870
01:39:22,000 --> 01:39:24,800
Speaker 1: of time, they came home, everybody got divorced. How did

1871
01:39:24,840 --> 01:39:27,760
Speaker 1: you how did you maintain that relationship in the face

1872
01:39:27,840 --> 01:39:31,600
Speaker 1: of this crazy lifestyle. Well, it's not that crazy nowadays.

1873
01:39:31,680 --> 01:39:34,080
Speaker 1: It's it's work, you know. I mean, you're out making

1874
01:39:34,120 --> 01:39:37,400
Speaker 1: a living. It's not the days of the seventies and

1875
01:39:37,439 --> 01:39:39,519
Speaker 1: the hey day. You know, sex, drugs and rock and

1876
01:39:39,600 --> 01:39:43,400
Speaker 1: roll are gone. Um, it's just it's a job. But

1877
01:39:43,520 --> 01:39:46,639
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the job. I love playing music and I love,

1878
01:39:46,840 --> 01:39:49,920
Speaker 1: as does everybody else in this band, interacting with the crowd.

1879
01:39:50,640 --> 01:39:53,599
Speaker 1: And to me as a musician, when I'm on stage,

1880
01:39:54,600 --> 01:39:57,800
Speaker 1: the prenuptialate job that you have is to get that

1881
01:39:57,880 --> 01:40:02,240
Speaker 1: crowd up every single night and barring security guys and

1882
01:40:02,360 --> 01:40:04,920
Speaker 1: a place that won't allow him to get up even

1883
01:40:04,920 --> 01:40:08,600
Speaker 1: and then I still try, but the idea is to

1884
01:40:08,680 --> 01:40:11,880
Speaker 1: get him up dancing, say along with you if they

1885
01:40:11,920 --> 01:40:15,519
Speaker 1: know the songs, which in a lot of cases they do. Um,

1886
01:40:16,360 --> 01:40:18,960
Speaker 1: that's an every night thing. And on that note, what

1887
01:40:19,080 --> 01:40:22,000
Speaker 1: a better time to end with the pinnacle moment of

1888
01:40:22,080 --> 01:40:24,519
Speaker 1: what's still going on the road. You can certainly see

1889
01:40:24,560 --> 01:40:26,719
Speaker 1: the Doobie Brothers on the road, as we said, eighty

1890
01:40:26,800 --> 01:40:29,920
Speaker 1: times a year. They come to your marketplace eventually. But

1891
01:40:30,040 --> 01:40:33,040
Speaker 1: even so, the records, I really would say go back

1892
01:40:33,080 --> 01:40:37,160
Speaker 1: to listen to those early records Vices and to Lose

1893
01:40:37,240 --> 01:40:39,960
Speaker 1: Street and the Captain Me. They don't really sound like

1894
01:40:40,040 --> 01:40:42,720
Speaker 1: anything else in the marketplace. There's a unique sound and

1895
01:40:42,760 --> 01:40:45,080
Speaker 1: as a results are also not dated. It also has

1896
01:40:45,160 --> 01:40:47,160
Speaker 1: something to do with the level. They're the high level

1897
01:40:47,200 --> 01:40:50,560
Speaker 1: that recorded on but really satisfying music. I mean, I

1898
01:40:50,960 --> 01:40:52,559
Speaker 1: literally play them all the time. So it's a thrill

1899
01:40:52,640 --> 01:40:55,880
Speaker 1: to have you here. Thanks so much, Tom, appreciate if

1900
01:40:55,920 --> 01:40:58,200
Speaker 1: I play here until next time. It's Bob left Sets.

1901
01:40:58,240 --> 01:41:01,080
Speaker 1: You're listening to me on my own podcast recorded live

1902
01:41:01,160 --> 01:41:08,479
Speaker 1: here at tune In Studios in Venice, California. How great

1903
01:41:08,600 --> 01:41:11,760
Speaker 1: was that? Listen? I'm a huge Doobie Brothers fan to

1904
01:41:11,880 --> 01:41:14,200
Speaker 1: sit here and get answers to some questions I've had

1905
01:41:14,240 --> 01:41:17,200
Speaker 1: for decades and listen to Tom talk about what it's

1906
01:41:17,240 --> 01:41:18,720
Speaker 1: like being in the band and being on the road

1907
01:41:19,240 --> 01:41:23,000
Speaker 1: was very special and stimulating. I know you loved it too.

1908
01:41:23,560 --> 01:41:42,960
Speaker 1: Until next time, I'm Bob. Leff says, don't know