Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Chris Robinson of the Black Ros,
Speaker 1: who have a new album, Happiness Bastards.
Speaker 2: So, Chris, what's your favorite Grateful Dead album?
Speaker 3: Live Dead has to be the best one.
Speaker 4: I mean, wait, wait, wait, wait, we're talking about the
Speaker 4: initial Life Dead sixty.
Speaker 3: Five, Dead ninety. Yeah. I mean you can argue eure
Speaker 3: up seventy two. My wife's going, e're rope seventy two.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I get that. But there's something about Live
Speaker 3: Dead because you know, in a way it's it is
Speaker 3: It's like that's a that's an avant garde, acid driven
Speaker 3: punk commune like anarchists sort of manifesto. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think that's the record where they're really wild, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Like the music is wild and
Speaker 3: it's unruly, and I think that's kind of the thing
Speaker 3: that interests me in rock and roll anyway, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. Like, I you know, it's funny because
Speaker 3: I meet people and depending really on you know, where
Speaker 3: you grew up, like everyone in Long Island, whether you
Speaker 3: like them or not, new the Grateful Dead because they
Speaker 3: played them on those radio stations, and they even outside
Speaker 3: of their underground sort of significance to people or their
Speaker 3: cult popularity. In Atlanta ninety six rock God bless them,
Speaker 3: they're playing Radar Love and Sugar Loaf and shit, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, They're not I'm not hearing any
Speaker 3: of that music in the same way that people in
Speaker 3: southern California would have known the Grateful Dead, you know,
Speaker 3: even by the by the time Don Henley is referencing
Speaker 3: them in a song or something, you know. So, but
Speaker 3: when I finally found my way to it, I I
Speaker 3: I think that's the I mean, especially that Dark Star,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, that's the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the first side, like twenty five minutes or something.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's funny. A couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 3: we my wife and I went to the uh Los
Speaker 3: Fieleas Theater. It's part of the Aero Theater whatever they
Speaker 3: call that thing where they you know, it's art house cinema,
Speaker 3: but they play old moves and we went to see
Speaker 3: Antonioni Zabrinsky point. And I had seen the film, you know,
Speaker 3: on DVD or you know, smaller scale, not on the
Speaker 3: scale that it was meant to be seen. And when
Speaker 3: they get to the love scene. Uh, you know, Jerry Garcia.
Speaker 3: They flew him down from San Francisco and he had
Speaker 3: one he had his twin reverb and he had his
Speaker 3: strat at the time, and they just played the love
Speaker 3: scenes from the desert on a loop for him and
Speaker 3: he just improvises those beautiful little short bursts of notes,
Speaker 3: these little melodies and stuff. And anyway, that's also my favorite,
Speaker 3: grateful to record, even though it's Jerry and on a
Speaker 3: sound stage just improvising to this beautiful, you know, art film.
Speaker 2: Really, you know, I gotta stop you there for a
Speaker 2: second because I have to tell the story. This is
Speaker 2: the only time it's ever come up. When when I
Speaker 2: was in school in junior high, there was a girl,
Speaker 2: Cynthia Fraschett, and we used to call her Behemoth, which
Speaker 2: is terrible, but she was a real outcast. And she
Speaker 2: told us my brother's gonna be in a movie. He's
Speaker 2: gonna be in a movie star. We say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: And her brother was Mark Foschett, who's the star of
Speaker 2: the really.
Speaker 3: And you you just thought it was completely like, oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. Person. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I tell you, it's funny that the movie really is
Speaker 3: much maligned film back when it came out, and I
Speaker 3: still think there's an air of I don't know if
Speaker 3: people can really grasp the scale of it, which, by
Speaker 3: the way, to me makes it holy psychedelic. I mean,
Speaker 3: who said they're supposed to be an answer in the mythtic?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? We suggest, because we live
Speaker 3: in an era where you know, you have so much
Speaker 3: information at the tip of your fingers in an instant,
Speaker 3: that they're supposed to be answers. But I mean, personally,
Speaker 3: I find very little interest in that. I find a
Speaker 3: lot of arrogance and science and in like things like
Speaker 3: archaeology and anthropology and things, even though the solid base
Speaker 3: of it obviously is really important and significant to our
Speaker 3: understanding of the world around us. But we have seemed
Speaker 3: to drift away from being able to appreciate the great
Speaker 3: mystery of things.
Speaker 2: Just to stop. Are you a big movie fan or
Speaker 2: are you a historian? Have you seen all this?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I'm a huge you know. My My three the
Speaker 3: three uh deep interests that branch out into many other
Speaker 3: things have always been music, literature, cinema. That's the what
Speaker 3: when I'm not making music. Those are the things that
Speaker 3: I'm deeply interested in. But then that turns into history
Speaker 3: and travel and food and UH and all sorts of
Speaker 3: different esoteric interests.
Speaker 2: Okay, your two favorite movies of all time?
Speaker 3: Okay, well it's okay. My my favorite movie of all
Speaker 3: time maybe is Marcel Carn's The Children of Paradise. I
Speaker 3: think it's a movie that never fails to bring me
Speaker 3: into a world that that doesn't exist, bring me into
Speaker 3: a world of you know, the early days of the
Speaker 3: stand age and UH in Paris on the Boulevard to
Speaker 3: Crime with all these characters. You know, it's funny. A
Speaker 3: lot of people maybe who don't know the film. You know,
Speaker 3: when Bob Dylan is wearing the white makeup and the
Speaker 3: hat with the flowers, he he that's Baptiste, one of
Speaker 3: the main three characters in that film. He is the
Speaker 3: soul of the art. He is the he is the
Speaker 3: one that can reach anyone, you know, with his art
Speaker 3: and his UH and his magic. You know. So, and
Speaker 3: it's it's funny. There's a lot of UH that movie,
Speaker 3: in that era of Bob Dylan, and and it's fun
Speaker 3: I also I have a poster made it. You know,
Speaker 3: that film was made at the very end of the
Speaker 3: Nazi occupation of Paris. So by the time it comes
Speaker 3: out that there's some posters in the world that are
Speaker 3: reprinted on like, you know, the poster for the film
Speaker 3: is reprinted on another poster, you know, so if you
Speaker 3: get in the light right you can see it. They
Speaker 3: didn't have the materials. And the guy who sold me
Speaker 3: that poster many years ago, he was like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: this poster is pretty rare, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: he goes, I've only ever sold one other them. I
Speaker 3: was like, oho, he said, do you mind telling me?
Speaker 3: Said I sold it to Bob Dylan, and I was like,
Speaker 3: I was like, how cool. My second favorite movie of
Speaker 3: all time is I would say the film called with
Speaker 3: Nell and I. I don't know if you know that
Speaker 3: movie about two Oh yeah, fantastic movie. Bruce Robinson directed
Speaker 3: and wrote the script. But that's more obscure. Let's just
Speaker 3: let's just call it what it is. My second favorite movie,
Speaker 3: a movie that is the funniest movie ever made. Bit
Speaker 3: for bit, gag for gag, joke for joke, minute for
Speaker 3: a minute is Young Frankenstein and.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 3: My wife and I read The Airport recently and I
Speaker 3: was doing some stick from Young Frank Sotin and some
Speaker 3: lady goes, oh, that, what is that. I'm like, I said,
Speaker 3: Young Frank. Soon she goes, well, I'll have to write
Speaker 3: that down. And I'm like, what what world are we?
Speaker 2: How old is your wife?
Speaker 3: My wife is forty four. It wasn't her. My wife
Speaker 3: and I were together and someone else she knows. Of
Speaker 3: course she knows what it is. I wouldn't have married
Speaker 3: someone who doesn't know what Young Franke's done it. It
Speaker 3: was a random person over here, I said, I said,
Speaker 3: we were doing a bit from the movie.
Speaker 2: So what bit were you doing?
Speaker 3: Oh? I don't know? My bit that My favorite bit
Speaker 3: from the movie are always the small details. Of course,
Speaker 3: the funniest thing to me in the whole movie is
Speaker 3: when they wheel the guy out at the beginning of
Speaker 3: the movie and they're like, mister.
Speaker 5: Whatever here is you know gonna be as experiment and
Speaker 5: he's like, if you just hop off the table, and
Speaker 5: the guy like slides off the table and gene Wider's like,
Speaker 5: nice hopping, and that really gets me. And when Peter
Speaker 5: Boyle from the original movie is about to throw the
Speaker 5: little girl into the pond and drown her or whatever,
Speaker 5: but they cut to her parents because she the mother.
Speaker 5: The mother comes down the stairs and the father is
Speaker 5: hammering boards.
Speaker 3: Over the window, and she goes, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: And he goes, when monsters are loose, boards must be tight.
Speaker 3: That's okay.
Speaker 2: Let's switch gears. Give me two of your favorite books.
Speaker 3: Oh dear, Oh dear, Oh dear. That's that's it, you
Speaker 3: know that one starts to becomed. I guess I could
Speaker 3: go more in like what and I can access what
Speaker 3: I've read in the last you know, wild that is
Speaker 3: stuck with me because I read so much. I love
Speaker 3: this book called Naples forty four and it's about this
Speaker 3: British he was in in the Military Police. He was
Speaker 3: a high ranking officer in the Military Police and he
Speaker 3: is assigned to Naples right after the Allied and invasion
Speaker 3: repels the Germans and the fascists and they're retreating nor
Speaker 3: you know, they're fighting the battle to go up the
Speaker 3: Italian peninsula and he's stuck there. It is it's one
Speaker 3: on one that it's a chilling horror story about the
Speaker 3: you know, the horrors of war are happening with the
Speaker 3: violence and the and the run. You know, what's going
Speaker 3: on in those in those dramatic moments, but it's also
Speaker 3: the aftermath of that that becomes the real you know,
Speaker 3: where you see the you see the human condition at
Speaker 3: its most tender and it's most poignant, but you also
Speaker 3: see it at its most vile, destructive and evil. And
Speaker 3: I think the juxtaposition of those things in terms of
Speaker 3: just also being very interested in the subject, interested in
Speaker 3: the time, very interested in Italian culture, and many good
Speaker 3: friends from Naples, especially just an incredible, incredible book. And
Speaker 3: I can't say enough about a guy passed away a
Speaker 3: couple of years ago named Dale Pendle. I believe the Pharmacopoeia.
Speaker 3: He has a three volume set that's basically an encyclopedia
Speaker 3: on chemicals drugs, whether it be caffeine, amphetamines, LSD, DMT, heroin, cocaine, tobacco, anything,
Speaker 3: any small thing. But he writes his text is very
Speaker 3: much alive in the way Robert Graves. I don't know
Speaker 3: Robert Graves. He's a poet. He intertwines his story with
Speaker 3: a sort of history of human beings and their pursuit
Speaker 3: for bliss. And you know, the book starts that he
Speaker 3: retreats to some cabin way up in northern California to
Speaker 3: have peace away from everything, to start to put this
Speaker 3: book together. And he puts a sign over the front door.
Speaker 3: Are all demons welcome. And I just always found that
Speaker 3: to be amazing visual. They're very hard to find, and
Speaker 3: they're they're kind of expensive. Now they're a trilogy, and
Speaker 3: but they it's not they're in They're just beautiful and interesting.
Speaker 3: And again I look for I really like things that
Speaker 3: are alive, and I've had the unique opportunity and perspective
Speaker 3: maybe because I, you know, am dyslexic, that I've been
Speaker 3: able to read between the lines or put myself as
Speaker 3: an outsider and see the fire and light within sometimes
Speaker 3: that maybe other people wouldn't. I don't know.
Speaker 2: What is going on in your house growing up that
Speaker 2: you have these interests.
Speaker 3: Uh Well, like I said, I I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 3: I mean my parents had a lot of books. And
Speaker 3: I always laugh, you know what I mean, because when
Speaker 3: you're when you're a kid and there's shelves and books,
Speaker 3: my eye goes directly to helter skelter and I'm like
Speaker 3: looking at all the crime photos and like the Vanson
Speaker 3: murders and stuff. But I always had I think growing
Speaker 3: up in Atlanta, and I think when you're a child,
Speaker 3: obviously the filters aren't there. And growing up in a
Speaker 3: city that I was very aware of for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: that had been punished and had been burned to the ground.
Speaker 3: The phoenix was something that I really understood as a
Speaker 3: symbol early on, because that's the symbol of Atlanta. But also,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, and my dad, Rich and
Speaker 3: I are third generation Atlantin's. We also my grandfather was
Speaker 3: Schmada business, a Jewish guy, Ike Robinson, So I have
Speaker 3: that side of the Atlanta experience. But being around in
Speaker 3: the woods and stuff and seeing ghosts and feeling them
Speaker 3: and no knowing that you know that people lost their
Speaker 3: lives in these trenches and stuff. You know, I just
Speaker 3: have always had a very active imagination we had. And
Speaker 3: I think the other main trust me my parents, you know,
Speaker 3: like I said, being dyslexic, like I couldn't tie my shoe,
Speaker 3: But I really knew a lot about zulus in kindergarten,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. It was like, why is
Speaker 3: your kid the only kid who can't tell time, but
Speaker 3: he knows a shit ton about zuluz? You know, Like,
Speaker 3: so who knows the way the mind works, well, I
Speaker 3: guess scientists, but in my case, I know, but my
Speaker 3: mom and dad also when they got together, had a
Speaker 3: lot of records, you know what I mean. I read
Speaker 3: an article not too long ago that the average family,
Speaker 3: like in the fifties or late fifties to the mid
Speaker 3: sixties maybe had eight or nine records, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. That would be your little record collection on
Speaker 3: those little.
Speaker 2: Of course ten things.
Speaker 3: We probably have two hundred and fifty records, which isn't
Speaker 3: a lot to me now, but at the time, and
Speaker 3: it was like, you know, I was just had a
Speaker 3: I wanted to explore. So it's like, you know, like
Speaker 3: this is oh, Jimmy Reid and Mose Allison and Lester Flatten,
Speaker 3: Earl Scrugs and the Luvin brothers and uh more. You know.
Speaker 3: I still have my dad's copy of the first Buffalo
Speaker 3: Springfield mono copy with this for what It's worth sticker
Speaker 3: on crossby Stills, Nash and Young signed a family stone.
Speaker 3: You know. So there was a lot of different Johnny Guitar,
Speaker 3: Watson records. You know, all sorts of things come to
Speaker 3: mind when I think of and then as we get
Speaker 3: as I get older, I'm obsessed with music, and you know,
Speaker 3: these were the things that I could understand, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, These were things that made me feel
Speaker 3: and made me feel a part of the world and
Speaker 3: whatever little whatever that means. Looking out from a place
Speaker 3: like Atlanta at that time, you know, I remember having
Speaker 3: a distinct feeling of being very far away from the
Speaker 3: rest of whatever America must feel like or look like.
Speaker 3: And then at that time, you know, I luckily find
Speaker 3: Kerouac and Burroughs and Ginsburg and like thousands of others
Speaker 3: of us, Bob Dylan mins my dad. My dad was
Speaker 3: the kind of guy who didn't buy Blonde on Blonde
Speaker 3: because it wasn't the same Bob Dylan, you know. So
Speaker 3: I grew up with that person that felt that kind
Speaker 3: of as if rock and roll wasn't pure enough. You know.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you're going to school, did you know you
Speaker 2: were dyslectic? Then they had tests or you only know
Speaker 2: in retrospect.
Speaker 3: My mom knew something was different, and because of teachers saying, like,
Speaker 3: you know, he really excels at this, but he's really
Speaker 3: having trouble with some of these things. And you know,
Speaker 3: this diagnosis takes place in the early seventies, you know,
Speaker 3: and in the Deep South, I mean a I'm fifty seven.
Speaker 3: We would be the first generation. I could be wrong,
Speaker 3: but I know people a little bit older than me
Speaker 3: who have subsequently been diagnosed as dyslexic and then being dyslexic.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of It's not just one thing, of course,
Speaker 3: but that I would be one of the first generations.
Speaker 3: And my mom, in her tenacity and her wisdom, wanted
Speaker 3: some answers, you know what I mean, and she found them.
Speaker 3: And I was very lucky that there's a school in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: It's still there, Skank Schooled. Unfortunate name for doctor Skanks.
Speaker 3: But I would go to school and then go there
Speaker 3: after school three days a week to you know, to
Speaker 3: try to turn around what I could, and it never
Speaker 3: The biggest gift of that was reading, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. But then again, the like part of my
Speaker 3: thing is like I'm an avid reader. I can retain
Speaker 3: a lot of information I've been, but I cannot spell,
Speaker 3: to say, I mean, you know, when I when I
Speaker 3: met my wife, I was like, listen, I'm going to
Speaker 3: ask you to spell things and cleats. Just try to
Speaker 3: refrain from disgust to shame or laughing at me. You know,
Speaker 3: it just goes. I've never been able to do it.
Speaker 3: But my mom recognized that, and she, you know, she
Speaker 3: was calling, you know, from Atlanta in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 3: She's calling people at Harvard University to get answers, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. So I get the cerebral side
Speaker 3: from my mom, and then I get something, you know,
Speaker 3: I get something else from you know, talking about the
Speaker 3: records and stuff. That my other earliest memories. My dad
Speaker 3: was a folk singer. He was on ABC Paramount. He
Speaker 3: had a group called the Appellations. They made two sides,
Speaker 3: you know, and it was funny because he was immersed
Speaker 3: in like traditional folk music, so his presentation would be
Speaker 3: very unlike the kind of commercial folk records. You know.
Speaker 3: He was kind of doing that serendipity sing sid rock
Speaker 3: is you know, sid right down, bit let your yeah
Speaker 3: girl in those big twelve stringth That kind of commercial
Speaker 3: folks sound would be the couple of records he made.
Speaker 3: But and you know, in the fifties, he he had
Speaker 3: a hit record with a song called Booma. Dip Dip
Speaker 3: was the top forty hit and it was more like
Speaker 3: a I would consider like a Bobby Darren kind of
Speaker 3: rock and roll song, you know, a little edge of
Speaker 3: what was left of do wop and cool. It's a
Speaker 3: really cool song. And he cut some other singles that
Speaker 3: didn't do as well. But when he ended up back
Speaker 3: in the South after the rock and roll phase, he
Speaker 3: was in folk music and you know, when he was
Speaker 3: home on a Saturday morning, whatever, he would pull out
Speaker 3: the you know, his Martin is nineteen fifty three Martin,
Speaker 3: which my brother you know, wrote she Talks Angels and
Speaker 3: played on All Our still played on this newest record,
Speaker 3: and he would sing and it would just open up
Speaker 3: all of this because he would also my dad was
Speaker 3: he would explain, like, okay, so this song comes from
Speaker 3: originally is like what someone in Wales was singing like
Speaker 3: a couple hundred years ago, and then by the time
Speaker 3: it gets on a boat and comes here and it
Speaker 3: ends up in Appalachia, it turns into this and that
Speaker 3: kind of connection I always found not just interesting, but
Speaker 3: very comforting in some weird way, you know. And I
Speaker 3: think I had a a nate understanding that the song,
Speaker 3: if you're a singer and a musician, that the music
Speaker 3: we played in the song we sing is just this
Speaker 3: one big song that's been going on for ever, you know,
Speaker 3: since there's been people. And I loved murder ballads, and
Speaker 3: I loved like the really dark side and stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: I loved all those kind of songs and so and
Speaker 3: then he would play records a lot too, and that
Speaker 3: would be that would be you know, I learned so
Speaker 3: much from that. I don't even know I'm learning at
Speaker 3: the time, but I'm being able to put together and
Speaker 3: you know, the Alan Lomack song of the South Box
Speaker 3: that is still like a holy relic or something to me,
Speaker 3: you know. And I still have my dad's copies of
Speaker 3: those records.
Speaker 2: So what kind of kid are you? Do you have friends,
Speaker 2: do you play sports? Or you alone in your room?
Speaker 3: What do you like? I played sports. I was the skinniest, scrowniest,
Speaker 3: weirdest kid out there, but I had a lot of guts.
Speaker 3: I played sports because it was fun. But I also
Speaker 3: played sports for my dad, because you know, he was
Speaker 3: scared to death that he would come home and I
Speaker 3: would look like a you know, sixteenth century French duke
Speaker 3: under a tree eating strawberries and lace things, reading poetry
Speaker 3: or something. He had really been upset. But I love sports.
Speaker 3: I had friends when we were little always, but you know, yes,
Speaker 3: you know, the world was different in the last century
Speaker 3: and a lot of your friend group were just whatever
Speaker 3: kids you didn't want to beat up in the neighborhood
Speaker 3: or didn't want to beat you up, and you know,
Speaker 3: so I think it's different now, but I always managed
Speaker 3: to find the kids that were you know, I'm sure
Speaker 3: the kids that I was friends with were always a
Speaker 3: little bit on the outside like me and being but
Speaker 3: being able to laugh and being able to see to
Speaker 3: be you know, that was another big thing. My dad
Speaker 3: loved Jonathan Winners and Don Rickles and George Carlin and
Speaker 3: you know Richard Pryor records. Growing up, I mean, I
Speaker 3: had access to some very saucy language, but mom and
Speaker 3: dad knew in some way that I had a more
Speaker 3: adult relationship with the language, and I found it very funny,
Speaker 3: very humanizing that he could take his pain and turn
Speaker 3: it into something like that. You know, but you know,
Speaker 3: you know, I guess we were weirdos. You know, we
Speaker 3: looked normal on the outside, but we were pretty weird.
Speaker 2: Have you always been this verbal?
Speaker 3: Yes, of course. I just told you I can't spell anything.
Speaker 2: Okay, some people could come to it later in life.
Speaker 2: So you're obviously very intelligent. But being this verbal has
Speaker 2: it always worked for you or sometimes it works against you.
Speaker 3: It still works against me. I have to learn, and
Speaker 3: you know, it's hard because in one way, I've always
Speaker 3: felt that being a verbal creature like I am has
Speaker 3: been in my sonar in a way, like a bat
Speaker 3: trying to get through a dark you know, get out
Speaker 3: of the cave, mouth about hitting U stalag tight or something.
Speaker 3: You know, it's how I of course, as I've gotten older,
Speaker 3: I have a little more control over it if I choose,
Speaker 3: But you know, my again, it gets down to the
Speaker 3: simple things. I find the love of my life seven
Speaker 3: years ago, and like Camille is so wise and she
Speaker 3: has such a depth of understanding, and if I get
Speaker 3: if she's the first one to say, you know, you
Speaker 3: can you know, kind of snap out and well just
Speaker 3: put me in a perspective to realize. Like when I
Speaker 3: was younger, I you know, it's like a young wizard
Speaker 3: with his first power to like, you know, blow up
Speaker 3: the castle tower. You know, your words can hurt, you know,
Speaker 3: the poet's words are are his weapons as well. And
Speaker 3: I felt that I probably use that, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean? And so I mean, I know I did,
Speaker 3: I know, I've I can upset people and hurt them
Speaker 3: with the things I say just as much as I
Speaker 3: can entertain them, enlighten them, and encourage them, you know,
Speaker 3: So it becomes more of the poet's responsibility.
Speaker 2: Really, have you been to therapy?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, I spent a lot a lot of years
Speaker 3: in therapy, which really helped. And I think to be honest,
Speaker 3: without that, and without the sort of awakening that like
Speaker 3: finding my real partner represented, I don't think I could
Speaker 3: have ever even actually been in a real, sincere place.
Speaker 3: And I think my true character is is I would
Speaker 3: like to think I have an authenticity that is uh,
Speaker 3: that is obvious, you know, but that being that not
Speaker 3: being a part of it, I couldn't be in a
Speaker 3: place where Rich and I actually could be where we
Speaker 3: are today, and I think Rich would be way more
Speaker 3: available for it, you know what I mean. I don't
Speaker 3: think it was an impossibility. I just didn't have I
Speaker 3: just didn't see the roses, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I didn't see the forest for the trees in that instant.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, So famously, your relationship with Rich has been contentious.
Speaker 2: I have two sisters. I'm the middle kid. I do
Speaker 2: not have brothers, so that whole experience is only something
Speaker 2: I can hear about. I didn't have it. Ay, to
Speaker 2: what degree is the suppressed story? To what degree do
Speaker 2: you get along? To what degree is therapy and anything
Speaker 2: mellowed you such that you can get along? What's going
Speaker 2: on here?
Speaker 3: I mean I don't. I wouldn't say that, like you
Speaker 3: have to. It's like anything else. You know, if you
Speaker 3: want to progress or if you want to change, it's
Speaker 3: available for you. But you know, anything else is just
Speaker 3: fucking lip service, right we you know, being of a
Speaker 3: certain age, being Southern, I joke, but you know it's
Speaker 3: a very English place, the South, the Atlanta we grew
Speaker 3: up in, and English people, you know, usually aren't you know,
Speaker 3: like it doesn't matter. It's like everyone all of a
Speaker 3: sudden is the Queen of England. I don't care how
Speaker 3: anyone feels. I'm queen. You know. It's like so I
Speaker 3: don't think we were given the tools and or I
Speaker 3: don't even think we knew that there were the tools
Speaker 3: for that, just because of the way it was. And
Speaker 3: then you throw in there, you know, it's funny with
Speaker 3: my brother. He's really very when you're with Rich one
Speaker 3: on one, he's very fun very open, charming guy, very intelligent, talkative.
Speaker 3: But if you're but if you don't get that he
Speaker 3: you know, he would have social anxieties that I don't have.
Speaker 3: So for many years, you know people you know, and
Speaker 3: then here's a guy who feels like that, who's thrust
Speaker 3: into the world of and I'm I'm your partner in
Speaker 3: the in the band, and I'm your brother, and I
Speaker 3: you know, my dressing room, I like to play Funkadelic
Speaker 3: records at full blast, have people dancing. I like to
Speaker 3: get my my vibe going. Rich likes it to be
Speaker 3: like his acoustic guitar, very calm, very mellow. He doesn't
Speaker 3: like a lot of things coming around, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. And in the past I would kind of be,
Speaker 3: you know, people like what's up with him and be
Speaker 3: like I don't know what the fuck? You know what
Speaker 3: I mean, Like why aren't you like this? And then
Speaker 3: in his mind he would be like, why do you
Speaker 3: have to be like that, you know, all the time?
Speaker 3: Can it just be like peaceful one time? And like,
Speaker 3: to me, that is my plays. So I think when
Speaker 3: we're younger, and then you throw in the high Velocity
Speaker 3: Avalanche that was our early success. You want that shit.
Speaker 3: And you think you read the you read the Jim
Speaker 3: Morrison book and you read the fucking you know, True
Speaker 3: Adventures on the Rolling Stones or whatever. You think you
Speaker 3: know what it's going to be, but it's not, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was funny at the end. In the
Speaker 3: beginning of nineteen ninety, we're out here getting ready to
Speaker 3: start the whole first album tour and stuff, and Rich
Speaker 3: and I were staying at this Lee Bag motel that's
Speaker 3: now the parking lot that used to be by the
Speaker 3: Tower Records down there, and bless you, my love, and
Speaker 3: we get a phone call. It's like Izzy Stradlin wants
Speaker 3: you guys to come over from Guns n' Roses, and
Speaker 3: like they're you know, they're fucking guns and Roses now,
Speaker 3: but they were really fucking guns n' Roses in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty nine or whatever, you know. I mean, like that
Speaker 3: shit was still like uh, you know, and we love
Speaker 3: guns and Rows and we go to his house and
Speaker 3: we're like, wow, this is cool, man. And I always
Speaker 3: thought it was cool because he was lifted listening to
Speaker 3: aftermath that stones record and that's what And I was like,
Speaker 3: all right, cool, I'm digging this. You know, it's not easy.
Speaker 3: And I'm like okay, and he's like, but we start talking.
Speaker 3: He goes, you, guys, you don't you won't be prepared.
Speaker 3: But when your rocket ship blast off, just hang on, man,
Speaker 3: hang on for dear life and rich and I are like,
Speaker 3: what is he talking about? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: There was no there were only besides ourselves. There were
Speaker 3: only you know, like George d two people in the
Speaker 3: world that believed that we would do the things that
Speaker 3: we ended up doing. But I always look back on
Speaker 3: that and said, hey, he told us. You know what
Speaker 3: I mean. We had no you know, we had really
Speaker 3: no way of understanding what he was telling us. But
Speaker 3: that was all I always thought. Hey, so if you run, Itzy,
Speaker 3: say thanks man.
Speaker 2: You know, so what was it like?
Speaker 3: Well, it was you know. The other thing is I
Speaker 3: think we were you know, I tell people and it
Speaker 3: seems weird. Now there's reality TV famous and TikTok famous,
Speaker 3: and there's like this kind of famous and celebrity famous
Speaker 3: and blah blah blah, and we were rock and roll famous,
Speaker 3: you know, and it was different. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: the one thing that was that was a challenge to
Speaker 3: get over is Okay, so you're famous. Not only are
Speaker 3: they playing your records on radio stations all over the
Speaker 3: world all the time, but now you're on MTV. And
Speaker 3: when you're on MTV, that means I'm on there with
Speaker 3: with a lot of other bands, and so the people
Speaker 3: can see the Young Black Crows on jealous again, hard
Speaker 3: to handle that all that shit can come on MTV
Speaker 3: and they'll see. But that also gives the person at
Speaker 3: the bar you go to, like, I fucking don't like
Speaker 3: that song, you know what I mean. So because you're
Speaker 3: on MTV, because it's a visual medium, you're also now
Speaker 3: having to deal with not you know, hey, man, backstage
Speaker 3: everyone loves you. When you go after the show to
Speaker 3: some rock and roll bar, there's gonna be some dude
Speaker 3: in a Motorhead shirt that just doesn't like your jib,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, or like whatever. So that
Speaker 3: was something to deal with.
Speaker 2: Okay. Was that really just jealousy of the fact that
Speaker 2: you were famous as opposed to what your music sounded
Speaker 2: like at who you really work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, either way, we were still sort of
Speaker 3: coming out of our you know, living in the undesirable
Speaker 3: part of town, no money. You know, we were pretty
Speaker 3: for suburban kids. We were pretty street wise and we
Speaker 3: were tough, and we didn't really we hadn't learned that
Speaker 3: if somebody gets in your face that you don't like,
Speaker 3: you know, fight or what you know, give them a
Speaker 3: smack back or whatever. You know. So, yeah, you're absolutely
Speaker 3: right about that, but we were in no position to
Speaker 3: really see that then. We were just knew that there
Speaker 3: was a threat.
Speaker 2: Okay, so is he tracks you down before your record
Speaker 2: after your record hits, which is very quickly. What are
Speaker 2: some of the good things that happened?
Speaker 3: Unimaginably beautiful things happened. Number One, we had. Number One,
Speaker 3: we when like when the van went down to Orange
Speaker 3: County to open for Junkyard on the first night in
Speaker 3: the Shake Your money Maker tour. If nothing had ever
Speaker 3: happened after that tour, we would have honestly felt in
Speaker 3: our minds we did. What we really set out to
Speaker 3: accomplish was to get out of Atlanta. And maybe this
Speaker 3: goes back to you know, the Beatnick and me. I
Speaker 3: wanted to get out on the road. I wanted to
Speaker 3: see what it's about I wanted to I wanted to
Speaker 3: feel what it's like, and we wanted to work hard,
Speaker 3: and we knew that there was something there. I don't
Speaker 3: think we knew that we would have to deal with
Speaker 3: that on the first record. I thought maybe, like some
Speaker 3: other bands, you make a record, people like it, you
Speaker 3: make another one, you figured it out, you have a
Speaker 3: little trajectory that's not just you know, neither. It doesn't
Speaker 3: matter because that's exactly what happened, and that's the most
Speaker 3: beautiful thing that could ever happen. But like, you know,
Speaker 3: I can almost remember the entire uh, it's inerary because
Speaker 3: we were in a van and you know, the first
Speaker 3: time you're in San Diego, first time I'm in Phoenix,
Speaker 3: first time I'm in Texas. You know, like this is Texas,
Speaker 3: Like what the fuck? You know? But the real special
Speaker 3: things would be the laughing would be the fucking frust tired.
Speaker 3: You know, where's one point of that first leg of
Speaker 3: the tour. We did eighteen nights in a row, and shit,
Speaker 3: you know, and starting to you know, our entrance into
Speaker 3: the music business as well, figure out like, oh, we're
Speaker 3: at the distributors of convention and now we're at Howard Stern,
Speaker 3: I mean, Howard's Stern, and we're doing all all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. But the things that will always resonate
Speaker 3: and I'll always remember, like the very first time we
Speaker 3: played in Austin, Texas, we didn't even have a dressing room.
Speaker 3: We were in the room changing where like the ice
Speaker 3: machines were so people kept coming in and filling up
Speaker 3: the ice buckets. But we were changing and there's a
Speaker 3: knock on the door and some security guard who didn't
Speaker 3: know he goes, hey, there's some guy named Ronnie Lane
Speaker 3: out here. He wants to see you. And we were like,
Speaker 3: he didn't know who he was, you know, like, fuck me, really, Ronnie.
Speaker 3: And we opened the door and there's Ronnie. You know,
Speaker 3: he's at the end of his life and m ass
Speaker 3: is really debilitating horrible disease. I don't really know any
Speaker 3: good diseases. But he was in his wheelchair and his
Speaker 3: partner brought him and we were just stunned. And he
Speaker 3: said and we were like, well, yeah, mister Lane, lovely
Speaker 3: to meet you. And he was like, oh, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: I just wanted to come down here and meet you guys,
Speaker 3: you know, because we said so many great things about
Speaker 3: my bands and my music, and you know, I just thought, well,
Speaker 3: if they're in town, I just want to come over
Speaker 3: and say hello. And we were. I mean, my heart
Speaker 3: was just like wow, I loved that music. I love
Speaker 3: that music. And as I've grown older, I realized, like
Speaker 3: that was so special, and you know, and then the
Speaker 3: other one I remember is by the time we get
Speaker 3: through Atlanta and we come up the East Coast and
Speaker 3: we get to New York, and we played this place
Speaker 3: that used to be there called the Cat Club, and
Speaker 3: we had played CBGB's as Mister crows Garden, and we
Speaker 3: played a place called Drums as Mister Crow's Garden. So we,
Speaker 3: you know, if we could get a gig in New York,
Speaker 3: we'd drive sixteen hours for one gig, you know, and
Speaker 3: we would spend a few days just getting completely out
Speaker 3: of our heads, you know, but not rich, but all
Speaker 3: the rest of us. But we're in the same situation.
Speaker 3: We finished the show, we go to the dressing room,
Speaker 3: going to change, hit the club, hit the town, you know,
Speaker 3: and there's a knock on the door and it's Ian Hunter,
Speaker 3: you know, the great one of the great rock and
Speaker 3: roll lyricists, great front man, I mean, Matha Hoople his
Speaker 3: first solo records, one of my favorite rock and roll
Speaker 3: records ever made. I mean, and he there he is.
Speaker 3: He's standing there with the Ian Hunter hair. He had
Speaker 3: a black velvet. I mean, he looked amazing and he
Speaker 3: was like, all right, see here the Black Crows. I
Speaker 3: just wanted to meet you guys, like I haven't heard
Speaker 3: a real rock and roll band in a while, and
Speaker 3: that was fucking great and stuff. And I was just like,
Speaker 3: holy shit, man, Ian Hunter wanted to meet us, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Like it really, I'll always remember
Speaker 3: that because he was like a you know, and he
Speaker 3: still is a real hero and one of my favorite.
Speaker 3: He wrote great rock and roll lyrics, you know, and
Speaker 3: he still does. My brother and I are on his
Speaker 3: new record coming out.
Speaker 2: Okay. Under the best of circumstances, being on the road
Speaker 2: is hard. They have all the satulation at the show.
Speaker 2: Then you get in the van with same people you've
Speaker 2: known for too many years. Takes hours to come down.
Speaker 2: You can't sleep. However, many people start taking drugs to cope,
Speaker 2: and many people partake of the fruits of the road.
Speaker 2: This was before cell phone cameras, so you are a
Speaker 2: bona fide rock start, to what degree are you living
Speaker 2: the rock lifestyle of sex and drugs.
Speaker 3: Well, to me, I've always the drugs were always far
Speaker 3: more important than casual sex. I mean, let's be honest,
Speaker 3: I had priorities. But the Shaker money Maker tour, we're
Speaker 3: so busy and we're still on ten dollars a day.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, by the time we're on tour
Speaker 3: with Aerosmith, you know, we're in a tour bus with
Speaker 3: a truck and we're opening for Ariosmith and we're making
Speaker 3: five hundred dollars a night. I mean, we're in debt
Speaker 3: pretty much until the end of nineteen ninety when the
Speaker 3: record starts, you know, really selling big numbers, and then
Speaker 3: our of course, our guarantees are going up. So I mean,
Speaker 3: the it's still just pretty innocent psychedelics, weed, a lot
Speaker 3: of booze, some pills occasionally some coke and stuff. We
Speaker 3: and but by the time we know, by the time
Speaker 3: all the accounting is done for that record and we've
Speaker 3: moved on into the next phase, at least for me
Speaker 3: and some of the members in the band, Yeah, we've
Speaker 3: moved on too much. I mean, the booze, the weed,
Speaker 3: the acid, the shrooms. They're all still happening, but we've
Speaker 3: really amped it up with like the other sort of
Speaker 3: powders and pills and things. Again, you know, it's funny.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess there would be an argument about
Speaker 3: substance abuse, and I've seen it, and we've all lost friends.
Speaker 3: It's and we've lost family members and it's a it's
Speaker 3: a real subject matter, and I don't take it lightly.
Speaker 3: But during that time also, I you know, to me,
Speaker 3: I would say by the end of the nineties, I
Speaker 3: was getting to a point where I was kind of like,
Speaker 3: I'm really I don't know why my heart is so broken.
Speaker 3: I'm really disillusioned, and I'm really depressed, and I think
Speaker 3: probably at that point in my life, I'm definitely not
Speaker 3: enjoying it. I'm just keeping up with, you know, just
Speaker 3: chasing something that probably had eluded me earlier in the decade,
Speaker 3: which was just like a derangement of the senses. Is
Speaker 3: a powerful tool for the poet, for the artists. My
Speaker 3: heroes are, you know, my I have three heroes that
Speaker 3: like encompass a lot, sid Barrett Graham Parsons and Alex Chilton.
Speaker 3: And then above that, in the archetypes. There's Keith Richards
Speaker 3: and Jerry Garcia. So it's like, I I'm not you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not. I'm not trying searching for them. I'm searching
Speaker 3: for there must be something in this, and I did.
Speaker 3: I found incredible inspiration. You know. I'm one of those
Speaker 3: people who I had a fucking amazing time, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. Like and and I was always the
Speaker 3: kind of person always in my mind, I don't have
Speaker 3: that Puritan streak, that inebriation or anything like that denotes
Speaker 3: weakness or a bad quality in a person, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. Of course, if your subsequent behavior turns
Speaker 3: into something negative for the people around you, or if
Speaker 3: you're drunk and kill someone, I'm not talking you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. I'm just talking about I was also
Speaker 3: surrounded in the Black Crows submarine, in the Cult of
Speaker 3: the Black Crows, so we were, you know, safely in
Speaker 3: our own cocoon in a way, right, And and you know,
Speaker 3: especially the early most of the nineteen ninety to nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety nine, you know, not everyone is built for the road,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. Like, I've seen a lot
Speaker 3: of talented people, really talented people, really sturdy people, solid people,
Speaker 3: and they're like, man, I just can't do this. I
Speaker 3: don't want to do this, you know, because it's talk
Speaker 3: about a derangement of the senses. I mean, I remember
Speaker 3: I didn't know what a panic attack was, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, Who fucking cared when it's nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: and you're like, going, you have to get on stage
Speaker 3: at the Hammerstein Odium in London and you're like, I've
Speaker 3: been I'm I would just go in a hotel and
Speaker 3: lay on the floor in my clothes and stare at
Speaker 3: the ceiling and hope when I opened my eyes that
Speaker 3: I wasn't dead or crazy, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: But that's normal. That was part of it. I mean,
Speaker 3: I thought that would just be okay.
Speaker 4: So you have a glass of water going to you know,
Speaker 4: give yourself a little like all right. And it wasn't
Speaker 4: just drugs or alcohols, just the constantly moving, constantly, flying,
Speaker 4: constantly on a bus, new hotel, new hotel, do the gig,
Speaker 4: geta ring, do the gig.
Speaker 3: Do hotel. And like I said, I would never change anything,
Speaker 3: and it was I'm but we did have a certain
Speaker 3: mentality of and as he Straddling said, you just hang
Speaker 3: on for dear life, you know, and luckily, I think
Speaker 3: Rich and I have always had this great passion gets
Speaker 3: back to the mystery. You know, we've we've felt it
Speaker 3: in a way that definitely felt anti authority, but we
Speaker 3: also felt like that we had one innate understanding is
Speaker 3: that the music business has no soul. It's just business.
Speaker 3: And the only way we could protect something that we
Speaker 3: felt was very pure and this thing that we felt
Speaker 3: that music gave us that music if we were going
Speaker 3: to be a part of this. You know, my record's
Speaker 3: in the same record store as the Loneous Monk. My
Speaker 3: record's in the same record store is Skip Spence or whatever.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter that there was some you know, not
Speaker 3: to repeat myself, but there was something holy about that
Speaker 3: as well, and something very deeply involved in natural magic,
Speaker 3: and that if we could tap into that and be
Speaker 3: a part of that, that we would be very defensive
Speaker 3: and very protective of whatever. You know. It's like the
Speaker 3: movie Quest for Fire when the guy has the little
Speaker 3: fire and the thing and they're trying to save it
Speaker 3: from the other people and it like goes out and
Speaker 3: they're all like, you know, like we didn't want it
Speaker 3: to go out. And no matter what we've been through,
Speaker 3: and even on our own, I don't think we've allowed.
Speaker 3: I think it's remained that that's a certain purity and
Speaker 3: a certain I don't know, I think a certain reverence
Speaker 3: that we get to make music and be a part
Speaker 3: of this vibration.
Speaker 2: You know, Okay, Sure, I'm ten dollars a day. You
Speaker 2: have this mega successful album, You're on the road constantly.
Speaker 2: Are you seeing any money? Are you being ripped off?
Speaker 2: Are you blowing the money? Are you banking the money?
Speaker 3: I'm it's funny because you're talking to somebody who I
Speaker 3: don't really have a relationship with money that would allow
Speaker 3: me to give you a solid answer. I'm getting better
Speaker 3: as I get older, but part of how I work
Speaker 3: and my mind works, and it has been difficult. And
Speaker 3: to be honest, I'm sure I've been ripped off. I'm
Speaker 3: sure there's been unfair things in my life. I'm sure
Speaker 3: I've seen things, uh fall through the cracks and I
Speaker 3: didn't even know they were falling, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's I can live with that. It was always I
Speaker 3: just I and and maybe in my naivete I didn't
Speaker 3: want to be a part of that. So If anything,
Speaker 3: the great mistake I made was in my laziness, in
Speaker 3: my sort of to be blissfully unaware doesn't really isn't
Speaker 3: an excuse. I can't say that someone ripped me off.
Speaker 3: I can't say that, but I'm sure within but between
Speaker 3: then and there's you know, but I think we you know, also,
Speaker 3: we were set up like a real band, like you know,
Speaker 3: hey man, the fucking Beatles split everything, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, Like we didn't know about fucking publishing and
Speaker 3: fucking partnerships and you know what I mean, we were
Speaker 3: really uh, we just we were really focused on the
Speaker 3: on the craft, and then we were focused on building
Speaker 3: the culture and the art around the craft. You know.
Speaker 3: So I think Rich was probably a little more savvy,
Speaker 3: but I would We didn't go to the London School
Speaker 3: of Economics.
Speaker 2: Well do you still own your publishing and would you
Speaker 2: ever sell it?
Speaker 3: I did? We do, and yes I would at some point,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, if it seemed like, I mean,
Speaker 3: the world has changed so much. You know, when I
Speaker 3: got into the business, that was the one cardinal sin
Speaker 3: that you would never ever do that, and now that's
Speaker 3: really been reversed, and I you know, to me, it
Speaker 3: would have to be, you know, we'd have to see
Speaker 3: what the circumstance is. And also in my situation, you know,
Speaker 3: I have a partner who feels as deeply about all
Speaker 3: of this as I do in my brother, and you know,
Speaker 3: I think the great gift of this reconciliation is that
Speaker 3: we're available for each other to to make good decisions,
Speaker 3: you know, to make and we're surrounded by people in
Speaker 3: our careers that are facilitating good decisions and nurturing our
Speaker 3: relationship because you know what, it proves to benefit everyone.
Speaker 3: And again, no matter what we've been through, no matter
Speaker 3: what the world looks like, no matter how people listen
Speaker 3: to their music, no matter blah blah blah, it all
Speaker 3: started because Rich and I thought we could write a song.
Speaker 2: Okay, So in this thirty years thirty five years of
Speaker 2: your fame, have you ever woken up one day and say, fuck,
Speaker 2: I'm broke, I gotta go to work, or I got
Speaker 2: to sell my house for my car, or has there
Speaker 2: always been enough cash there to make it work.
Speaker 3: I've sold a house, but I've had to get rid
Speaker 3: of a house, you know what I mean. I've I've
Speaker 3: had yes, of course, I don't think there's anyone who's
Speaker 3: survived a thirty year plus career who can't, you know,
Speaker 3: look back at some point and see when things were
Speaker 3: threadbare and when things were in full bloom, you know.
Speaker 3: But then again, I, you know what, nothing can it's
Speaker 3: nothing can touch my Uh yes, that's that's so, That's
Speaker 3: something that happens to lots of people. And then there's
Speaker 3: other people who are dealing with you know, abject you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. So it's like I, I've always
Speaker 3: been prepared for whatever fate puts in front of me,
Speaker 3: you know, and I want to be I want to
Speaker 3: be able to be. I don't want to become so
Speaker 3: myopic about uh one thing that I don't see everything else.
Speaker 3: You know. Again, as I've gotten older and I have
Speaker 3: people around, I make much different decisions and I'm much
Speaker 3: more aware of like what the future looks like, you know,
Speaker 3: uh and for the things that I want to accomplish,
Speaker 3: wish personally with taking care of my wife as we
Speaker 3: get older, and my kids and stuff, you know, like
Speaker 3: things like that.
Speaker 2: Okay, the reunion, you know, the business is flipped where
Speaker 2: now it's about the road and promoters are always looking
Speaker 2: for acts to consell tickets. Was the reunion driven by
Speaker 2: the promoter? And why did you decide to do it
Speaker 2: at this point?
Speaker 3: I mean, and nothing is. You have to understand how
Speaker 3: crazy rich and I are. Nothing is ever driven by
Speaker 3: anyone except how we feel and what we what we
Speaker 3: you know, the real It's not like it's not like
Speaker 3: you know, yeah you know this. You know when I
Speaker 3: blew up the band and said, you know, you guys
Speaker 3: want to continue doing this, you give me some more money.
Speaker 3: I did that because I knew everyone would fucking shit
Speaker 3: a brick and I was never going to get that money.
Speaker 3: But I did it just to be like, you know,
Speaker 3: this is how I'm going to put the brakes on
Speaker 3: because I know this will be unacceptable to everyone. But
Speaker 3: that next, you know, if that was January first, the
Speaker 3: next January first promoted, Hey there's money and if you
Speaker 3: guys want to get out there, because like you said,
Speaker 3: we're worth something in the marketplace, right, every every little
Speaker 3: piece of time, there was offers on the table for
Speaker 3: us to get back together. I was happily involved with
Speaker 3: my solo group. I wasn't even adjacent to the regular
Speaker 3: music business. I was out on my own in the
Speaker 3: most DIY independent way I could find having nothing to do.
Speaker 3: If I when we started my solo project, the CRB,
Speaker 3: if I went to a little club in Santa Cruz, California,
Speaker 3: and on that fly or that newspaper, if I even
Speaker 3: saw the fucking word black crows, we would pack up
Speaker 3: and not even do the soundcheck, you know, And that's
Speaker 3: the way I wanted that. But that same time, every
Speaker 3: year it's coming up through some source or another. So
Speaker 3: you know, again, as I just told you about my
Speaker 3: relationship with some things, Rich and I, we're not like
Speaker 3: we really do dance to the beat of our own drummer,
Speaker 3: and things have to really feel right, and we have
Speaker 3: to there's an altruism that just exists Enrich and ize.
Speaker 3: It doesn't take away from our ambition, it doesn't take
Speaker 3: away from drive or anything we want, but we feel
Speaker 3: that way. So you know, after from twenty thirteen to
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen and all the things I haven't spoken to
Speaker 3: Rich I haven't, you know, it just so happens that
Speaker 3: things coalesce in a certain way, and that my wife
Speaker 3: opens up my heart and my life and my mind
Speaker 3: and my soul to like a lot of new things
Speaker 3: and thinking a different way. And getting out of my
Speaker 3: own way and the importance of family, and you know,
Speaker 3: and I could start to break it down and look
Speaker 3: at things in a different perspective. I could start to
Speaker 3: miss rich and feel rich, and you know, and then
Speaker 3: what's the itch? You know, Like, our lives as family
Speaker 3: are intertwined together because of the music we've made and
Speaker 3: the experiences that we've shared, and the laughs that we've
Speaker 3: had and the fights that we've had. And you know,
Speaker 3: you know, our dad passed away eleven years ago, and
Speaker 3: our mom's in Nashville, and you know, she's in her
Speaker 3: mid eighties, you know what I mean. So it was
Speaker 3: just time for everything to sort of start to heal
Speaker 3: itself and come together. I mean, I couldn't have done
Speaker 3: that by myself. Again, I'm lucky to have so much
Speaker 3: love in my life and stuff. I would tend as
Speaker 3: a sagittarian to dig my heels in the dirt and
Speaker 3: be very stubborn, you know.
Speaker 2: Okay, So why make a record now number one?
Speaker 3: Because no matter what anyone says, thanks buys whatever we
Speaker 3: write songs and the mode to us, even though it
Speaker 3: might be antiquated or archaic or whatever you want to say,
Speaker 3: is I still think that put in your best ten
Speaker 3: eleven songs, twelve songs, whatever, wrapping that up into album
Speaker 3: is still a viable way to represent where we are
Speaker 3: as artists and songwriters that we have the opportunity to
Speaker 3: do that still is special and unique. And like I
Speaker 3: said a little earlier, that's Rich and ize entrance into
Speaker 3: the entire world that is, you know, that we've lived
Speaker 3: in for the last three and a half decades. Damnit,
Speaker 3: you're cool. It's my dog. Sorry, And of course, given
Speaker 3: of course Rich and I are going to write. That's
Speaker 3: what we do, that's what we love, you know, And
Speaker 3: no matter what's happened, and took me a while because
Speaker 3: I wanted to get away from it and do something else.
Speaker 3: But you know, when Rich Rich plays Rich can play
Speaker 3: me like the very first little thing on a guitar,
Speaker 3: and it instantly sets the stage for like emotional content,
Speaker 3: for the image and the scene I want to write,
Speaker 3: the visual and all that stuff comes together very quickly.
Speaker 3: But the unique part of it is or or again,
Speaker 3: to get back to the magic or the mystery of
Speaker 3: it is, I don't know. You know, Rich might think
Speaker 3: in his mind that song is a love song, or
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know. Maybe he thinks this song
Speaker 3: of I don't. We don't discuss that. We don't discuss
Speaker 3: the idea. Rich plays me something and it and it
Speaker 3: inspired and it clicks something in me, and then I
Speaker 3: start feeling something and then I start writing and singing.
Speaker 3: And we've never discussed it, and I don't think we
Speaker 3: ever will. It's something we do. I tell you this.
Speaker 3: We know when we like it, and we know when
Speaker 3: something's good, and we know when something's not good. We
Speaker 3: know when something needs you know, and we work hard
Speaker 3: at that. You know, George du Coulius taught us back
Speaker 3: in the eighties. You know, one of our first, our
Speaker 3: first singles, jealous Again from Shaking Moneymaker, And I remember
Speaker 3: I always look at jealous Again as a really important
Speaker 3: song because you know, we were a band up until
Speaker 3: that point, we were one thing. And then that was
Speaker 3: like the first song that that showed up like That's
Speaker 3: how I always referred to it, semi jokingly. That's our
Speaker 3: first grown up song we wrote, and that we found
Speaker 3: like some stuff that works for us and the griff,
Speaker 3: the lyric, the melody that you know, all the things.
Speaker 3: But while we're working on that, you know, we didn't
Speaker 3: sit down and write that song in one go. We
Speaker 3: would have that song and we you know, George would
Speaker 3: be in Atlanta, but he was still he was A
Speaker 3: and R and A and Records in New York, so
Speaker 3: we was still living in New York. So we would
Speaker 3: you know, I have a little you know, boom box
Speaker 3: in our room and we would with the condensed mic
Speaker 3: and the cassette, we would record what we were working
Speaker 3: on and jealous again, well I will. It's just a
Speaker 3: great example of you know, we'd be like, yeah, this
Speaker 3: is this is good, and then we'd send it to
Speaker 3: him and get on the phone when he got to
Speaker 3: be like, that's pretty good, but maybe you should get
Speaker 3: back in there, and we'd go fuck and we'd get
Speaker 3: in there and then maybe we had another little bit
Speaker 3: pretty good, but it's not dood, you know. So he
Speaker 3: instilled in us this work ethic of leaving no stone
Speaker 3: unturned but also trusting your you know, it wasn't like
Speaker 3: we we don't. We don't. We won't suffer to go
Speaker 3: down the road of something we know isn't feeling good
Speaker 3: to us. We're not mathematician musicians, we don't we're not
Speaker 3: formulaic in that way. I mean, yes, in the verse chorus,
Speaker 3: versus chorus, solo kind of out that kind of shit,
Speaker 3: but not in the way that we get from point
Speaker 3: A to point b as songwriters. It's all visceral. It's
Speaker 3: all feeling, and it's all kind of you know, it's
Speaker 3: an overused word, but it's for us. It's a vibe thing.
Speaker 3: It's vibe.
Speaker 2: Okay. So when do you guys start writing songs you
Speaker 2: reunite prior to COVID is it something you've been doing
Speaker 2: for years or you said, listen, it's time to make
Speaker 2: a record.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, because we didn't speak from you know,
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen to twenty nineteen so or twenty fourteen, whenever
Speaker 3: that tour was over, not that we spoke that much.
Speaker 3: You know, Rich is just like I am. I'm constantly.
Speaker 3: I mean, I wrote hundreds of songs for my solo project.
Speaker 3: He was doing his. But wow, when this starts to
Speaker 3: come about, you know, he's got riffs, he's got pieces,
Speaker 3: he's got ideas, and I always have ideas and I
Speaker 3: have my little lyric pieces and stuff. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think one of the the other things that makes this record,
Speaker 3: our new record, so powerful is we really went, you know,
Speaker 3: as the years went by and we get into the
Speaker 3: two thousands, I'm bringing a song occasionally. We're continuing to
Speaker 3: write together, but Rich'll have one by himself that he
Speaker 3: wrote the lyrics and singings and not you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. We have we're starting to move into that,
Speaker 3: but for this I felt, you know, I mean, I
Speaker 3: haven't picked up a guitar since this started, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. And I was playing guitar in the
Speaker 3: Black Crows at the end of the last thing, and
Speaker 3: I was like, I want to get back to what
Speaker 3: I feel is really the pure thing of the Black Crows,
Speaker 3: you know, and that's Rich And I was writing and
Speaker 3: then for me to get on stage and be the
Speaker 3: front man, because I think the front the type of
Speaker 3: performer that I am is also something kind of of
Speaker 3: the past. So while I am available to do it,
Speaker 3: I want to do it in a way that I
Speaker 3: feel excited about, you know. And I want to get
Speaker 3: up there and do the thing that I think maybe
Speaker 3: makes me different from the other singers as well. You know.
Speaker 2: Okay, how do you literally do it? You have Elton John,
Speaker 2: Bernie Topping. Bernie Topin writes lyrics one place he Gizzendale
Speaker 2: now works on the piano. He's got a song. There
Speaker 2: are certainly people who say, not so much recently, I'm
Speaker 2: in cycle. I got to deliver an album. I'm going
Speaker 2: to write now, so I record. There are other people
Speaker 2: say I'm waiting for inspiration. In Nashville, they literally have
Speaker 2: songwriting sessions. What happens with you?
Speaker 3: None of that applies to us. I'm constantly inspired by
Speaker 3: everything going around me. My imagination is working in overtime
Speaker 3: at all times. I live breathed music, and you know,
Speaker 3: everything around me has the possibility of being beautiful. You know,
Speaker 3: I've hate in a weird way. And because we are
Speaker 3: record company, because the Black Crows are Silver Arrow Records,
Speaker 3: there's and we don't take big advance. We didn't take
Speaker 3: an advance, you know what I mean. That shit's gone
Speaker 3: and that's kind of the best part of the modern thing.
Speaker 3: I think there's too much sort of I'm glad everyone
Speaker 3: has access for but not everything is interesting and not
Speaker 3: everything is good. You know, that idea that I was saying,
Speaker 3: that George pushed us to work and work and work
Speaker 3: and work, is why that record resonated at a certain
Speaker 3: frequency with people right and and if you know, if
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine was today, maybe those songs that we
Speaker 3: didn't didn't make better would be the ones that are
Speaker 3: out there, you know what I mean. And I know
Speaker 3: that sounds old fashion or whatever, but I believe in
Speaker 3: the craft, and I believe in hard work. Is the
Speaker 3: difference between something that's okay and something that could be
Speaker 3: on the verge of greatness.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's get a little more granular. Your brother sent
Speaker 2: who will file, or he comes to your house and
Speaker 2: plays the guitar.
Speaker 3: We do both. I mean during COVID. During COVID, we
Speaker 3: obviously couldn't be together. He was in Nashville and I
Speaker 3: was living in northern California in West Marine County. Just
Speaker 3: so happened that my neighbor had a really nice little
Speaker 3: home studio in his in his place there, so Rich
Speaker 3: could send the files I could work on them. Hold
Speaker 3: on a second, bam, Hey, sorry, my Jamaican street dog.
Speaker 3: That's the mind of her own, believe it or not. Ideally,
Speaker 3: it's better when Rich and I are in a room
Speaker 3: because we have a psychic I don't know if it's
Speaker 3: obviously it's because we're related, but maybe some of it
Speaker 3: is something else. But we can do things you know
Speaker 3: on the you know, sin me stuff, But it seems
Speaker 3: like all the details and all the important stuff gets
Speaker 3: done in a room together.
Speaker 2: How do you end up using gay Joys?
Speaker 3: Uh? Well, Jay, you know, we had a short list
Speaker 3: of very talented, amazing producers, and we had great, great
Speaker 3: meetings and we I mean it was like it was
Speaker 3: it was kind of cool to be the bell of
Speaker 3: the ball, you know what I mean. We were like
Speaker 3: and again there was just some vibe with Jay that
Speaker 3: was super cool, and I really felt in our initial
Speaker 3: conversation that he understood a little bit about about what
Speaker 3: we were trying to do. I mean, you know, we
Speaker 3: we we knew Rich and I had conceptualized making a
Speaker 3: very up tempo energy a rock record, you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think that was the playing Shake Your money Maker
Speaker 3: every night for two years. I realized, like, wow, that's
Speaker 3: what we did then, and would be cool to continue
Speaker 3: this next part of whatever we are or whatever we're
Speaker 3: going to be in the same manner, not revisiting anything,
Speaker 3: not going back in time, not plagiarizing ourselves. But we
Speaker 3: want that energy of like you know that that's what
Speaker 3: fuels rock and roll. I want it to almost be
Speaker 3: falling off the track, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 3: we want it to be rough. And you know, in
Speaker 3: the same way that when we go when we've done
Speaker 3: the touring, not in just the past, but in the
Speaker 3: recent past since we've got back together. I mean, I
Speaker 3: don't know how many concerts you go see, but most
Speaker 3: bands today don't even use amps. They put digital referencing
Speaker 3: their guitars through the PA and it's very quiet on
Speaker 3: stage and everyone has inner monitors and and we don't
Speaker 3: do that. We are chaos machines on stage. There's sound moving,
Speaker 3: there's ams blowing sound and monitors and no thing in
Speaker 3: our ears, and it's just a lot that's more alive
Speaker 3: to us as well. And we need that for the
Speaker 3: kind of you know, we need that to set the
Speaker 3: scene we want to set, you know, I mean, we
Speaker 3: believe in that. Still we were that way, you know,
Speaker 3: we were the first band. I remember by the time
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two comes around, people from other bands would
Speaker 3: see us and they're like, you guys don't have Chordlet
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, We had chords attached to
Speaker 3: everything and we were trying to go you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, we've always been and not on any sort
Speaker 3: of agenda. We've just always kind of been the opposite
Speaker 3: of whatever's going on. You know, that's probably the definition
Speaker 3: of dyslexia.
Speaker 2: I think, Okay, how's your hearing?
Speaker 3: I mean, my hearing is pretty good. Knock on wind.
Speaker 3: I hear all the high end stuff I hear. You know.
Speaker 3: I work still in the studio and we're fucking loud.
Speaker 3: But I you know, when I'm in a crowded restaurant
Speaker 3: and it's like a den of noise everywhere, I'll be like,
Speaker 3: what did you say? You know, but our hearings, my
Speaker 3: hearing's good, you know what I mean. I'm okay.
Speaker 2: So what is j at in the studio?
Speaker 3: Jay is a person who well, number one, he's very
Speaker 3: easygoing guy, you know, and you work. We were working
Speaker 3: at Neon Cross his studio in Nashville. So he's completely
Speaker 3: dialed in in a technological way, in an engineering way,
Speaker 3: and he has like a team of It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: I've never been in a recording session and like if
Speaker 3: you break a string, it's like a NASCAR pit crew.
Speaker 3: There's like three guys over there and everybody's like, you know,
Speaker 3: on the clock, you know. But and I imagine Jay
Speaker 3: adjusts to the different temperaments and attitudes of whatever artist
Speaker 3: he's working with. But for us, you know, like I
Speaker 3: think Rich really felt heard and he got to express
Speaker 3: his ideas. I'm the way I am as you can tell,
Speaker 3: I'm like a little more like what about that? My
Speaker 3: information comes really fast and Jay's kind of in the middle.
Speaker 3: So it was a really good tempo, you know, to work.
Speaker 3: And I think Jay also brought a real discerning ear
Speaker 3: to helping sort of pick the material out of the
Speaker 3: lot of songs we had. I mean, I think by
Speaker 3: the time we were with Jay, we've kind of narrowed
Speaker 3: it down to eighteen twenty things, and then by the
Speaker 3: time we're get to the studio, we've narrowed it down
Speaker 3: to twelve things. And by the time we finished the
Speaker 3: record in two and a half weeks, and then it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: this is like a real record and it's gonna be
Speaker 3: ten songs, you know.
Speaker 2: Okay. Also, Jay is a songwriter, not only a producer.
Speaker 2: So what degree did he change the songs.
Speaker 3: I don't think he'd changed the songs that much. I
Speaker 3: think he added some musical architecture, maybe that rich and
Speaker 3: I wouldn't. I don't. I don't. I wouldn't say they
Speaker 3: were compositional in that way, but I would say he
Speaker 3: But you know what, that was a good thing too,
Speaker 3: because he pushed us into like, well, maybe you could
Speaker 3: have something a little more in that than just what
Speaker 3: you're doing. Maybe there's something musical there, maybe there, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. Maybe, And I think it's very
Speaker 3: sophisticated what he does, but it's very natural to him.
Speaker 3: And that was and he you know, he can he
Speaker 3: plays guitar, some little bit of guitar. Here's keyboards there.
Speaker 3: So I think because of his knowledge, it really it's
Speaker 3: not like he's just sitting behind a board. He's really
Speaker 3: a part of what's going on in the musical language
Speaker 3: of it. And I and again, you know, it's nice
Speaker 3: that the dynamic works out so easy because you know,
Speaker 3: it's I part of our us versus them, especially in
Speaker 3: the first decade of the band with not being able
Speaker 3: to really trust people there. You know, I always thought,
Speaker 3: I mean my thing forever was if somebody from the
Speaker 3: record company told me anything, I'd be like, why the
Speaker 3: fuck would I listen to you? Man? I mean, you
Speaker 3: have thirty bands on your roster forty bands, fifty bands,
Speaker 3: I have one band, I'll if any And what's the
Speaker 3: answer from the guy from the record company. You're making
Speaker 3: a big mistake. I said, well, that's my fucking mistake
Speaker 3: to make, not yours, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: That's that's kind of it. Sounds like we were being
Speaker 3: like horrible, But I thought there was a real pragmatism
Speaker 3: to that in terms of what I could live with
Speaker 3: down the road, you know, and what I'm the one
Speaker 3: who has to live with the album, not you. You'll go
Speaker 3: on to the next thing and the next thing, and
Speaker 3: you'll drop the you'll drop the band that didn't meet
Speaker 3: those financial expectations, those commercial expectations, and so that I again,
Speaker 3: I was there was nothing about me, you know. I
Speaker 3: always hate like you see like these I hate. I
Speaker 3: shouldn't say. I just don't understand. When you see like
Speaker 3: a documentary about a metal band or something, they're like,
Speaker 3: I mean, and then when their careers are going down,
Speaker 3: they're like, it's like the label didn't even care what
Speaker 3: we did. I'm like, why would you think they ever
Speaker 3: gave a shit? What are they your cousin? You know
Speaker 3: what I mean? I knew one thing when I when
Speaker 3: I started in the bit, when we were we were
Speaker 3: outside the business, and then you're making when you're only
Speaker 3: in the music business, when you're making the music businesiness money.
Speaker 3: Now you're in the music business, right. I mean it's
Speaker 3: oversimplifying things, but but I was always like, yeah, you
Speaker 3: think these this is a real conversation. I'm not having
Speaker 3: a real conversation. This is like, uh, this is a
Speaker 3: made up conversation. These are pleasantries, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: They love the record that sold the most. They don't
Speaker 3: care what it sounds like, what it looked like, what
Speaker 3: it is anything, you know what I mean. And I'm
Speaker 3: just not like that. I wanted. I wanted. I want
Speaker 3: to sell a lot of records. I want to be popular,
Speaker 3: but I'm not going to be something. I'm not for
Speaker 3: someone else to do it. And that still is kind
Speaker 3: of strong with us.
Speaker 2: Told me about a couple of arguments you had with
Speaker 2: the label.
Speaker 3: The way. It's funny because you know, you know Mark
Speaker 3: to do he was he was the one. It wasn't
Speaker 3: an argument. But I was always mad that when our
Speaker 3: third record of Marca came out, everyone was looking for
Speaker 3: the big chorus, this is like the grunge like it's
Speaker 3: the avalanche of grunge. It's the flannel avalanche culturally, and
Speaker 3: I thought that the one written so A Conspiracy is
Speaker 3: a song that's the first single on that record. And
Speaker 3: I was furious because the album starts with a track
Speaker 3: called Gone, and that was my manifesto to be a
Speaker 3: part of like the same sort of I don't know,
Speaker 3: heroin chic or whatever. I just thought that culturally politically,
Speaker 3: that was the track we lead with, and and and
Speaker 3: you know, that was one of those things that like Nope, nope,
Speaker 3: you're wrong. And then then I always thought A Conspiracy
Speaker 3: was a weak single. Uh, that would be like an argument.
Speaker 3: I mean we've made whole records that were and we
Speaker 3: make a record before a Marca that we called Tall,
Speaker 3: and that record was just no, no, it's doesn't sound
Speaker 3: I'm like you you know, and I would be like,
Speaker 3: you know, there's no big guitar riffs, there's none of that,
Speaker 3: and that would like infuriate me. But then that would
Speaker 3: like people around also would be like, oh, get to
Speaker 3: Rich and say, hey, you know, your brother, you know,
Speaker 3: that doesn't sound like remedy or whatever. You know, and
Speaker 3: on things like, oh, Columbia Records was a fucking nightmare.
Speaker 3: People like Donnie Heiner, you know, fucking go to his
Speaker 3: fucking office. Here he is living this giant like this
Speaker 3: is the ship. I'm happy he's gone in the music business.
Speaker 3: Don Heiner in his big office and his fucking hovercraft
Speaker 3: and his helicopter and all that bullshit. You know what
Speaker 3: I mean? Fuck you, man, who the fuck are you?
Speaker 3: What do you know about anything? You'd be selling fucking
Speaker 3: of admits or fucking snow tires or something. He didn't
Speaker 3: give them. Fuck well, you're going to talk to artists
Speaker 3: like this, and uh, you know I remember they were
Speaker 3: like you should he like, you should cover a rocks
Speaker 3: Off by Primal Scream. I was like, they're fucking copying me.
Speaker 3: I'm not kidding. Have you heard it? You know it's
Speaker 3: a cool song or whatever, good for Primal Scream. But
Speaker 3: I'm like, man, you didn't fucking you didn't get the
Speaker 3: memo about the Black Crows, did you? You know what
Speaker 3: I mean? Like, so shit like that would be like
Speaker 3: just make me infuriated, you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 3: why am I? Why am I in this guy's office?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, why am I sitting here
Speaker 3: with his fucking babe ruth baseball bat or whatever the
Speaker 3: fuck he had on the wall, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I was like, I want to, I want to I
Speaker 3: want to be backstage with George Clinton right now.
Speaker 2: Okay, were your manager and each and other people on
Speaker 2: your side or they were taking the label song.
Speaker 3: I think they were taking that how can we get
Speaker 3: the most cash out of this side? And you and
Speaker 3: we were just you know, we were just whatever, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, And that's leaping I do. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's no fault. That's just the way it was.
Speaker 3: If it was anyone's fault, it's me and for me
Speaker 3: and rich not being sort of area died enough to
Speaker 3: you know, make changes or choices or you know what
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: But I think that was kind of the.
Speaker 3: Nature of I think that's just the nature of of
Speaker 3: course of the business. We've seen that greed and avarice
Speaker 3: sort of you know, and I say all the time,
Speaker 3: like we where we are like today I was telling
Speaker 3: you is like I think we feel so taken care
Speaker 3: of and you know, I mean, you know, we've known
Speaker 3: marked idea. It's been managing us now since twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: since nineteen eighty nine when we were marched into his
Speaker 3: office when he was the radio guy at Geffen, like
Speaker 3: who are these kids? They? Who are you? And we
Speaker 3: hit it off and we had a relationship, and you know,
Speaker 3: we there's none of our success from that day without
Speaker 3: someone like Mark Deda, you know what I mean. So,
Speaker 3: but now because we're all grown ups and we've gone
Speaker 3: through it, we've gone through we can be in a
Speaker 3: much easier working environment. And you know what where a
Speaker 3: lot Mark's been through it too, all the things that
Speaker 3: acts he's managed, the labels he's run, and you know,
Speaker 3: he's a warrior of the music business past, present and future.
Speaker 3: And it allows Rich and I also to make better decisions,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, because we don't. We feel
Speaker 3: there's a level of trust and we feel there's a
Speaker 3: level of understanding, you know, but that goes with our
Speaker 3: with everyone around us. You know, that goes to our
Speaker 3: our lawyer, that goes to our agents, and you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, that goes down to the how we
Speaker 3: want to go about merch deal or whatever. You know
Speaker 3: what I mean. So I think Rich and I are
Speaker 3: far more savvy as well in terms of being able
Speaker 3: to negotiate some of the murky waters.
Speaker 2: So how does Leanie Wilson end up on this record?
Speaker 3: Because we become out of sheer her sheer kindness. We
Speaker 3: went we played the CMTS last year and this is
Speaker 3: even before Jay was on board, and uh, just out
Speaker 3: of completely random placement, Camille and I went to do
Speaker 3: the red carpet and you know, you get out of
Speaker 3: the thing and there's Lani's right there and she's like
Speaker 3: she entered. We were just she was just very nice,
Speaker 3: and you know, she's like, I'm from a small town.
Speaker 3: I grew up listening to the Black Crows. And we
Speaker 3: got to just meet for a few uh seconds and
Speaker 3: talk a little bit, and then you know, she went
Speaker 3: down the line doing her press and just was like
Speaker 3: said really nice things like, oh my god, I met
Speaker 3: you know, Chris Robinson. Oh, and then we end up
Speaker 3: with Jay and then we have this song and then
Speaker 3: it just kind of comes together and Jay's like, I
Speaker 3: think she Laney would be amazing on this, and we
Speaker 3: were like, I mean, Lane's amazing on everything she's doing,
Speaker 3: so's if she wants to do it, of course, let's
Speaker 3: do it. And you know it's kind of really the
Speaker 3: way things happen like that, it's very easy. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's not like we're releasing a duet country single at
Speaker 3: country rating, you know what I mean. It's way more
Speaker 3: casual and way more organic than something like that. So
Speaker 3: things just fall in your lap in the best way sometimes.
Speaker 2: Okay, you grew up with a father who's very into
Speaker 2: the music, has classic blues records. What do you think
Speaker 2: about today's country music?
Speaker 3: Well, I think, like anything else, it's not just one thing.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not just one thing. And you know,
Speaker 3: I think when you see Luke Combs and you see
Speaker 3: Jelly Roll, you see Laney, you're seeing like this next generation.
Speaker 3: It's kind of I mean, they still have like the
Speaker 3: kind of brogue country stuff and this kind and this
Speaker 3: other sort of things and the more established acts. You know,
Speaker 3: country music really cycles through people in a different way.
Speaker 3: But I mean, I you know, look at Luke Combs, man,
Speaker 3: I mean, that guy has connected with people on such
Speaker 3: a deep level. He's a beautiful singer. He's a very
Speaker 3: sincere songwriter. And you know that speaks volumes, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. It's it's not a it's not just showbiz.
Speaker 3: It's not a put on. There's not a lot of
Speaker 3: To me, I might be wrong, it doesn't look like
Speaker 3: there's a lot of fucking puppet masters behind them. You know,
Speaker 3: pay no attention to the man behind the green curtain
Speaker 3: pulling all the strings. I mean, he's just connected with
Speaker 3: people in a global way with that music. And then
Speaker 3: you see someone like Laney who's just ultimately very talented
Speaker 3: and she draws people in and she's very you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. So she has that and now she
Speaker 3: goes from success to superstarto. And then you see people
Speaker 3: like Jelly Roll, whose story is incredible, and then at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, that kid has a beautiful voice.
Speaker 3: That kid can really sing, you know. So I think
Speaker 3: you're starting to see I mean, I think, you know,
Speaker 3: Nashville is always going to be its own entity and
Speaker 3: it's going to have its own way of doing things.
Speaker 3: And but you have to also, you know, I also
Speaker 3: appreciate that, uh there's people in those bands playing real drums,
Speaker 3: playing a fucking bass, playing a fucking mandolin, playing a guitar,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean you look at that and you
Speaker 3: think that sounds like, like, what's the big deal about that?
Speaker 3: Isn't that how it's always been. It's like not when
Speaker 3: you see you know, the laptop nation, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. Like there's bands who can't do their show
Speaker 3: if the laptop doesn't work. I mean, cool, but that's
Speaker 3: not for me, man, you know what I mean. I'd
Speaker 3: like to you know, I don't we That's the other thing.
Speaker 3: It's not out of an arrogance or any thing about that.
Speaker 3: It's just you know, rich and I. If all the
Speaker 3: power went out or whatever, had a gig, we could
Speaker 3: sit at the front of the stage with an acoustic
Speaker 3: guitar and sing our songs and it would entertain people.
Speaker 3: And I think it would you know, touch, So it
Speaker 3: wouldn't be the same. Some people would be like, fuck you,
Speaker 3: I want my money back, but some people would actually
Speaker 3: really feel it, you know, I mean, and I think again,
Speaker 3: that's what everyone's looking for, you know. So country music
Speaker 3: is in good hands obviously, and they're doing big business.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you make this record, you make it on
Speaker 2: your old dog, you make the record you want. The
Speaker 2: record releases into a completely different landscape from nineteen ninety Okay,
Speaker 2: prior to MTV, we had AM and FM. MTV closes
Speaker 2: the model culture if you're a hit on MTV, everybody
Speaker 2: in the world knows you. Okay, at the end of
Speaker 2: the reign of MTV, hip hop becomes a big thing.
Speaker 2: Prior to the Internet, there was a new sound every
Speaker 2: three or four years. There's certainly not a new sound
Speaker 2: that breaks big every three or four years now. So
Speaker 2: you're putting out a record, they have something, and you
Speaker 2: talk about a radio format, even though radio means less,
Speaker 2: but it's a category. There's active rock. If you listen
Speaker 2: to that music, a lot of it is Metallica derived,
Speaker 2: fast noisy, etc. Straight ahead rock. You were almost the
Speaker 2: sole outpost of that nineteen ninety so. Now it's twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four and nobody is as big as they were
Speaker 2: in the MTV era. Taylor Swift may be doing incredible gross,
Speaker 2: but when you had those successful records off your first album,
Speaker 2: everybody knew those records. Everybody whereas as big as Taylor
Speaker 2: Swift does an only user because she's very successful, but
Speaker 2: I can use a million other names Beyondy Morgan Wallen.
Speaker 2: If you don't want to hear it, you don't have to.
Speaker 2: So you're putting a record into the marketplace that is
Speaker 2: the Black Crows business. Which isn't really exactly like anything else.
Speaker 2: How does that feel?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think it feels amazing because you know, again,
Speaker 3: part of the machinery of the era of making those
Speaker 3: kind of records wasn't just selling the records. It was
Speaker 3: You're going to be in the studio for six months.
Speaker 3: It's going to cost a million and a half dollars. The
Speaker 3: guy's gonna rent drums. That's going to be another eight
Speaker 3: thousand dollars you're gonna get, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: The whole system was built up in this grandiose money thing,
Speaker 3: and so in one level, I think I don't feel
Speaker 3: that I didn't you know, we didn't take a million
Speaker 3: dollars to make this record, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So we we within our inner workings, we're very aware of,
Speaker 3: you know, this is what we can afford. And you
Speaker 3: know what, it's lucky that where where we are, that
Speaker 3: we write the songs we write, that we play the
Speaker 3: way we play, and that we've done many we've made
Speaker 3: many records and done many sessions in and out of
Speaker 3: the Black Crows that we can utilize. I kind of
Speaker 3: look at the music business in some ways as a
Speaker 3: science fiction narrative, you know, like of some spaceship and
Speaker 3: crashed on a desolate alien planet ten thousand years ago,
Speaker 3: but the inhabitants of that planet can still get in
Speaker 3: there and take some wires and like you know, a
Speaker 3: knife or whatever, and they you know, the infrastructure is
Speaker 3: still available for survival. I think that in our situation,
Speaker 3: we're very lucky to be from the past where and
Speaker 3: we've brought an audience and we're and you know, and
Speaker 3: that audience changes, stays the same and changes. But you
Speaker 3: know what, really all we've ever been able to have
Speaker 3: control over is our presentation, which is the music and
Speaker 3: the live and luckily we were always interested in going
Speaker 3: out and playing live. That's where we are the Black
Speaker 3: Crow since day one. That's where we've always I think
Speaker 3: that's where we've always proved ourselves. And so I mean
Speaker 3: to me, you know that the Black Crows in the
Speaker 3: year twenty twenty four, like you said, it's the formats
Speaker 3: have changed, the whole idea has changed. But we're on
Speaker 3: charts and we're on weird things. We're on Radio Sydney.
Speaker 3: They never played us. And when we were the biggest
Speaker 3: band in the world in nineteen ninety two, right, they
Speaker 3: didn't play us or things in England and Germany. I mean,
Speaker 3: our records are like in charts that we've never been
Speaker 3: in before. And I'm not saying like that means anything
Speaker 3: other than wow. That means that this band, who plays
Speaker 3: a pure guitar driven rock and roll sound and incorporates blues, funk, soul, country,
Speaker 3: roots music influences, still can still create some interest. And
Speaker 3: I know this. I know that even on Active Rocker
Speaker 3: and with the band you're talking about, how different does
Speaker 3: our record sound when the DJ puts it on the
Speaker 3: station twice a day. I mean that wanting and waiting
Speaker 3: is popping out of there like something a lot of
Speaker 3: people and younger people have never heard before. So again,
Speaker 3: something you know that puts us I think, in my
Speaker 3: humble opinion, back in the we're in the spearhead of
Speaker 3: what you know, and hopefully that I would like to
Speaker 3: think again, maybe super egocentric, that our example could prove
Speaker 3: to people that you don't have to make fucking producer
Speaker 3: driven bullshit. You don't have to do it the way
Speaker 3: some guy told you to. You know what I mean,
Speaker 3: That's been my whole thing. No one we got into
Speaker 3: a band because no one. I didn't like to be
Speaker 3: told what to do. And then, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: It's like, so we could come up with this band,
Speaker 3: and guess what if we're successful and we work hard
Speaker 3: and people like it, no one can tell you what
Speaker 3: to do with your art, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And I think again it gets to like compliant, being
Speaker 3: compliant or being defiant, And we've always been defiant in
Speaker 3: the pursuit of whatever we want our art to look like,
Speaker 3: smell like, feel like, move like. And I think what
Speaker 3: you see today is you know, only compliance only What
Speaker 3: can I do for more viewers? What can I do
Speaker 3: for more lights? What can I do? You know what
Speaker 3: I mean? And it's like so much music that we
Speaker 3: liked was almost made. They demanded you as a certain
Speaker 3: person in the marketplace, like you know what I'm making.
Speaker 3: That's difficult for you. I like that, you know, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. It wasn't just about saccarin and
Speaker 3: sweet hits and you know what I mean now, the
Speaker 3: cutesy things and everything in the third person, and woe
Speaker 3: is me? You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Okay, you know you work with Jimmy peach Page got
Speaker 2: together with Robert Plea. They went on the road, and
Speaker 2: as the tour evolved, they've played less and less new music.
Speaker 2: The album comes out. You're on the road, you're gonna
Speaker 2: play the new music no matter what, because you.
Speaker 3: Have a lot of hips.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of people don't, but you do.
Speaker 3: I don't think we would. Yes, we're going on tour.
Speaker 3: We're going to play a lot of songs on this record,
Speaker 3: but we will incorporate that into of course, we have
Speaker 3: to play the hits. Of course, we have to play
Speaker 3: the songs that mean the most of people. Of Course,
Speaker 3: we you know, I don't think I think when we
Speaker 3: were younger, we would be more flipping about, well, you
Speaker 3: know what you can hear she talks to angels next week.
Speaker 3: We're not going to play it every night, But now
Speaker 3: I also realize the reverence of that song not and
Speaker 3: its popularity. But we have to play that. It's our
Speaker 3: and I play it with I enjoy singing it every night.
Speaker 3: I have to we have to play Hard to Handle,
Speaker 3: we have to play Remedy, we have to play Jealous
Speaker 3: again twice as our You know, there's just certain things
Speaker 3: that uh that the audience expects, and you know, I
Speaker 3: think we're we I think for the first time we
Speaker 3: know with certainty that that's what we have to give them. Ah,
Speaker 3: but we do have this new record, and you know what,
Speaker 3: it just so happens that these new songs they can
Speaker 3: live side by side with this, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: And we have occasion here and there for the deep
Speaker 3: fan and for the person who's interested in the Black
Speaker 3: Crows catalog to play something that maybe you didn't think
Speaker 3: we were going to play. You know, I think within
Speaker 3: our within what we're doing, we can hit a lot
Speaker 3: of notes that way without really deviating from playing our
Speaker 3: most beloved songs. You know, I think we can make
Speaker 3: everyone happy. And you know, yeah, let's be honest. Once
Speaker 3: this happened, as Bastard's tour over, I'm sure we'll go
Speaker 3: back to a more hit related presentation, throwing in, like,
Speaker 3: you know, the songs from this record that work the best.
Speaker 3: But for right now, we've we've moved from the bigger
Speaker 3: venues to theaters because we know we're gonna do something
Speaker 3: a little bit different, a little looser than than the
Speaker 3: greatest hits kind of vibes we've been doing the last
Speaker 3: couple of years.
Speaker 2: Okay, as you say the ethos has completely changed. You
Speaker 2: have a pure rock and roll ethos. What do you
Speaker 2: think about sponsorship in privates?
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, if you could book some far
Speaker 3: as I would be appreciated. I mean, if you could
Speaker 3: hook me up with I don't know, something like a.
Speaker 3: I think the world has changed. My attitudes have changed
Speaker 3: the you know, it's funny privates used to really I
Speaker 3: used to feel some sort of like, oh, this is
Speaker 3: like ripping out my integrity. And now, you know what,
Speaker 3: I meet a lot of nice people. You know, we
Speaker 3: play our heads. It's nice. People are nice and they
Speaker 3: enjoy themselves, and I know we're different than the other
Speaker 3: things they see. And you know, I'm not the only
Speaker 3: you know. I'm like, we just put out wanting and waiting.
Speaker 3: I'm like, it can't be wanting and waiting for the
Speaker 3: new BMW, you know what I mean, Like, I'm not
Speaker 3: opposed to it. And actually, I think the one funny
Speaker 3: thing is because we were always so opposed to it
Speaker 3: and we had made such a fucking stink about it
Speaker 3: is I don't think anyone wants to deal with us.
Speaker 3: You know, the corporate memory is much longer than the
Speaker 3: average persons I think, you know, I wouldn't know, but no,
Speaker 3: I mean again, and they these are all the you know,
Speaker 3: without the the benefit of some of those things, then
Speaker 3: we find ourselves in a place where we're not being
Speaker 3: able to finance albums and tours and you know, keep
Speaker 3: the business going. So there is a pragmatic reason to
Speaker 3: do it. That's not just for our own wealth or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's also to keep the show going. You gotta do
Speaker 3: some things that we wouldn't have done when we were kids.
Speaker 3: And by the way, if you're going to do them,
Speaker 3: you have to do them with because you're happy to
Speaker 3: do it, you know. And I think that's probably the
Speaker 3: difference between where we were and like the even in
Speaker 3: the first two thousand and five twenty ten era to today,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, we happily do the things that
Speaker 3: we agree to.
Speaker 2: Okay, switching gears a little bit. You famously had a
Speaker 2: long relationship with Kate Hoodson. Earlier in the podcast, you
Speaker 2: say you're having all these hits. You go to the
Speaker 2: local bar, there's people who are giving you shit. I
Speaker 2: hate your music. I see you on.
Speaker 3: MTV, and I'm going to say that would happen like that?
Speaker 3: That would be the negative to being famous, That's what
Speaker 3: I meant. And did it happen that often?
Speaker 2: Well, I guess. You know, you're not the first musicians
Speaker 2: involved with a movie star, and certainly rock stars. We
Speaker 2: had Peter Wolf had fade done away obviously with what
Speaker 2: goes on one in one, in the bedroom and in
Speaker 2: your regular life is one thing. But being a musician
Speaker 2: with a movie star or especially Kate Hudson's sort of
Speaker 2: America Sweetheart? Did you feel that you got untoward abuse?
Speaker 2: Was that a good experience? How was it being in
Speaker 2: the bubble?
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, I mean well, I mean it was
Speaker 3: a good experience until it wasn't, I tell you. And
Speaker 3: the reality is, you know, we're still good friends and
Speaker 3: we have a beautiful, beautiful son who is still like
Speaker 3: you know, our lives are very separate, of course, but
Speaker 3: you know, still the the only important thing really about
Speaker 3: Kate and relationship twenty something years ago was our son,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, and that we can be
Speaker 3: on the same page and that's really all that's important.
Speaker 6: But I think other than that, I think I've always
Speaker 6: I've always found it fairly easy to maintain my own personality,
Speaker 6: and I know, you know, maybe it changes, of course
Speaker 6: with time, but I've pretty much always.
Speaker 3: Known who I am and what's going on. And I've
Speaker 3: also never been afraid to follow my heart and to
Speaker 3: see where that leads me. You know, it wasn't until this,
Speaker 3: you know, until my wife today, that I've ever felt
Speaker 3: I've actually made the right decision about that. But I
Speaker 3: can't look you know, I only look back at I
Speaker 3: am one of those people too that I don't look
Speaker 3: back with anger. I don't look back with resentments and things.
Speaker 3: I tend to just remember the you know, the best
Speaker 3: stuff and the best and the best thing.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And the only thing is that you know, he's not
Speaker 3: a he's a young man now, he's not a kid anymore.
Speaker 2: Okay, but that's a classic example where the issue of
Speaker 2: acceptance comes up. You're a rock and roller of the
Speaker 2: old school. Are you fine if everybody's pissed off at
Speaker 2: you or if they don't accept you? Say this is
Speaker 2: just who I am? Or is there a part of
Speaker 2: you say, hey, I.
Speaker 3: Want to be loved. Well, I mean, I'm I think
Speaker 3: I'm I think I'm very loved. But with the intimate
Speaker 3: relationships around me, friendships and not just my you know,
Speaker 3: my my wife and and things like that. But well,
Speaker 3: I do I do have to say that, you know. Yes,
Speaker 3: of course I want to be liked. Of course I
Speaker 3: want to be appreciated. Uh. But then again, I also
Speaker 3: under stand and not everyone's gonna, uh get my humor.
Speaker 3: Not everyone's gonna you know, I'm not afraid to be me,
Speaker 3: and I don't. And again it gets back to I'm
Speaker 3: not going to pretend to be someone else to make
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm talking about it in the general way,
Speaker 3: not in like I don't want to make someone on,
Speaker 3: you know, and whatever I mean, I I hardly uh,
Speaker 3: I hardly think of myself. You know. I travel around,
Speaker 3: I go anywhere I want. No one bothers me, no one,
Speaker 3: you know, people who know the band know me, and
Speaker 3: they're always lovely, you know what I mean. And I
Speaker 3: always have time for them, and I always you know,
Speaker 3: I meet people at airports, I meet people at hockey games.
Speaker 3: I meet people at I met you know, we're at
Speaker 3: clubs all the time in LA looking at young bands
Speaker 3: and young artists and friends with these people and inspired
Speaker 3: by what they're doing. And really it's beautiful to see.
Speaker 3: But but but then there is a side of if
Speaker 3: you know, you don't like the way I dress, you
Speaker 3: don't like what I said. Yeah, you know that's kind
Speaker 3: of still like, you know, I didn't get into rock
Speaker 3: and roll because I was conforming to anything. I got
Speaker 3: into rock and roll because I was a nonconformist. I
Speaker 3: had problems with authority. I didn't like you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. I'm a person who you know, is a
Speaker 3: subject to dandyism and you know, I mean, I think
Speaker 3: the difference also as being young, and we don't really
Speaker 3: talk about is you know, I like millions of people.
Speaker 3: I still I don't know if I would say I
Speaker 3: suffer from depression, but I definitely have moments. But I'm
Speaker 3: not completely I'm not doing drugs every day. I'm not
Speaker 3: drinking every day. I'm not you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And that only compounded sort of the depression into being
Speaker 3: lashing out and being more negative socially or in interviews,
Speaker 3: or you know, not being patient or you know. But
Speaker 3: those are things also like that I hope you leave
Speaker 3: behind as you move into you know, a real adulthood,
Speaker 3: you know, And I don't need to have those attitudes,
Speaker 3: and I'm far more open and available for all sorts,
Speaker 3: for all manner of things. That's something that would make
Speaker 3: me really upset when I was twenty seven, I would
Speaker 3: just you know, water off my back at this point,
Speaker 3: you know. But but like I said, I do think that,
Speaker 3: you know, there's still a little bit of rock and
Speaker 3: roll that you'ld be like, yeah, well fuck you, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Like, not in like a violent
Speaker 3: way or weird way, but just like, oh really you
Speaker 3: don't like that? Well, you know, And I know that
Speaker 3: sounds like.
Speaker 2: I don't believe me, I know, but there are very
Speaker 2: few people who still adhere to that, you know, poor
Speaker 2: and therefore they saw you know, that's why Neil Young
Speaker 2: can away draw a big audience and crawls. He's not
Speaker 2: with us, but still's a Nash can't draw anywhere near
Speaker 2: that audience because he stayed true to the vision. So
Speaker 2: do you take medication for your depression?
Speaker 3: No? No, it's different now that I'm older, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. Now it's just and when it rears,
Speaker 3: it's ugly had it's more just like a hazy melancholia
Speaker 3: as opposed to something that might be on the verge
Speaker 3: of debilitating, you know. But then again, that's part of
Speaker 3: the weird thing. Of when you're young, you get up,
Speaker 3: you're on fucking tour for ten years, and if you
Speaker 3: if you don't feel good or you're you're having something
Speaker 3: going on, no one gives a fuck. You get a gel,
Speaker 3: get it, You did a gig, man, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean? And I really appreciate now that younger people,
Speaker 3: and I mean, I do think it's funny too. It's
Speaker 3: like they cancel the tour because they're like depressed. I'm like, wow,
Speaker 3: that must be nice. We were watching documentary about like shoegazs,
Speaker 3: the history of shoegaze music. I think it was if
Speaker 3: It's not the if it wasn't the guy from the
Speaker 3: Cocktail Twins, it was the guy from My Bloody Valentine
Speaker 3: or something. They were and they were like, yeah, things
Speaker 3: were going so well, and then you know, then things weren't,
Speaker 3: and then you got to keep going. And then you're
Speaker 3: back in the studio and everyone's fighting and that guy's
Speaker 3: in a spiral and I'm on drugs and whatever, and
Speaker 3: he goes, Man, no one ever just said we should
Speaker 3: take six months off. I was like six months. It
Speaker 3: took six weeks. But you know what's funny, You hear
Speaker 3: that story a lot from people, and I can identify
Speaker 3: with that. Yeah, you know, if we just looked at
Speaker 3: each other and said, let's take thank you, let's take
Speaker 3: six months off and get clear our heads or whatever,
Speaker 3: and you just never did back then.
Speaker 2: So how'd you meet your wife?
Speaker 3: Now we're coming full circle to the Grateful Dead. I
Speaker 3: was in a yurt in Big Sur. We met in
Speaker 3: a yurt, and sir.
Speaker 2: How were both of you in that yup?
Speaker 3: Because she had she's an artist and had made some
Speaker 3: posters for my solo group, the CRB, And we played
Speaker 3: in Big Sur every year. We had a little thing
Speaker 3: that started just as us. And then before the end
Speaker 3: of that band, I put on a little homegrown festival
Speaker 3: every year called Freaks for the Festival and that was
Speaker 3: but this was right before that, and there's we played
Speaker 3: and she came and we were just friends at that time,
Speaker 3: but we danced all night and that kind of was
Speaker 3: the dance started. And we're still dancing.
Speaker 2: So when you met her, were you single?
Speaker 3: When we met we were friends and I was not,
Speaker 3: And yeah, I wasn't single at the time.
Speaker 2: Did you get divorced because you met Camille?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, you talked about George Clinton backstage as a fan.
Speaker 2: Tell me two shows that you've seen that were like the.
Speaker 3: Best shows you've ever seen. Wow, well, I'll tell you this.
Speaker 3: I saw Depeche Mode about a month ago at the Farm.
Speaker 3: That's one of the best shows I've ever seen. Incredible,
Speaker 3: just incredible. I mean, Dave Gahan, incredible front man, hit
Speaker 3: after hit of like these amazing songs. I was truly
Speaker 3: blown away. Let me think what and then maybe maybe
Speaker 3: one of the other best things that I got to
Speaker 3: see the late Great Least Scratch Perry at Wetlands in
Speaker 3: New York at the like around ninety eight, maybe twenty
Speaker 3: seven ninety eight, And that was three hours of we
Speaker 3: went from the depths of the invocation of the human
Speaker 3: being in Africa to our ascent into outer space in
Speaker 3: three hours. It was life changing and life It just
Speaker 3: was like I never I just couldn't believe it. I've
Speaker 3: never saw anything like it. And I will say I'll
Speaker 3: throw this into I know you said too, But I
Speaker 3: saw Camille and I saw Bob Dylan at the London Palladium.
Speaker 3: Not this last October, but you know, October twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: I might have seen Bob more than any other like artist.
Speaker 3: You know, I probably first saw him in like, you know,
Speaker 3: not in them, of course, but like nineteen ninety or
Speaker 3: ninety one or something. But was sublime. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was so good and I was And it's funny because
Speaker 3: I was lucky enough to have dinner. We had dinner
Speaker 3: with Jimmy Page the next night, and he had been
Speaker 3: to the show the night before I saw him, and
Speaker 3: all he wanted to talk about was Bob Show, you know.
Speaker 3: So it was fantastic because it was you know, I
Speaker 3: look at someone who's been you know, who who truly
Speaker 3: has done it all, you know, and the the spell
Speaker 3: that he evoked at that concert was mesmerizing and and
Speaker 3: I just couldn't believe it. I like floated out of there,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: So it doesn't bother you that the songs are rearranged.
Speaker 3: Not at all. Bob Dylan's not He's not the you know,
Speaker 3: he's not that kind of performer. You know, he's the
Speaker 3: world's greatest living songwriter. So I don't you know, I
Speaker 3: don't think that, and I think for many years now,
Speaker 3: you know, you're not going to see Bob and he's
Speaker 3: going to sound like he did in nineteen sixty six
Speaker 3: or nineteen seventy six or nineteen eighty six or nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six, they would be very different presentation. I think
Speaker 3: once you relinquish yourself to Bob's vision or what he
Speaker 3: wants to say, then you can really get something out
Speaker 3: of it if you go and you have expectations that
Speaker 3: or other than whatever that artist, that particular artist too. Hey,
Speaker 3: who wields the power and who wields the talk about
Speaker 3: someone who doesn't give a far. He doesn't give a far.
Speaker 3: That's what he's going to do. That's the way he
Speaker 3: wants to do it, and that's you know again, that's
Speaker 3: just one of the reasons why he remains one of
Speaker 3: my heroes and one of the great inspirations, not just
Speaker 3: as a singer, songwriter, lyricist, but.
Speaker 2: Just as an artist. Have you met him, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I met him. I met him at So did you
Speaker 2: find him to be open with you? Because he could
Speaker 2: famously be non responsive.
Speaker 3: I was terrified when I first met him because of
Speaker 3: the things I've heard, and over the years, the few
Speaker 3: times that I've got to talk to him for a
Speaker 3: little bit, he's He's always been very open, always very cool,
Speaker 3: always a handshake. He always says. You know, the first
Speaker 3: time I met him, he goes, hey, Chris, I'm Bob,
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh shit, I am Chris. Always
Speaker 3: been very cool and we've been lucky to like run
Speaker 3: into each other, you know, go to gigs. But I've
Speaker 3: run into him and all sorts of weird situations that
Speaker 3: I never would have thought as a kid running into
Speaker 3: Bob Dylan, and you know, it just it makes me
Speaker 3: laugh too, that one of the great I was friends
Speaker 3: with David Crosby for since nineteen ninety one or whatever,
Speaker 3: and I'm very sad when he left. And I know
Speaker 3: a lot of people have opinions about the cross, but
Speaker 3: I'm a Bird's fanatic. Crosby, Steals and Nash, if I
Speaker 3: can only remember my name is one of the most
Speaker 3: beautiful records. And I was lucky enough to sing on
Speaker 3: a live record that he released in the mid nineties
Speaker 3: called It's All Coming Back to Me Now, and I
Speaker 3: got to sing with it. I sang with him a
Speaker 3: few times throughout my career. But Crosby, Seals, Nash and
Speaker 3: Young were playing when they toured last maybe it was
Speaker 3: ninety nine and they played at Madison Square Garden, and
Speaker 3: I've also been very lucky in my life to meet
Speaker 3: the Great Jim Keltner, who is another one of my
Speaker 3: musical heroes. And the rhythm section was another one of
Speaker 3: my heroes again, the late Great Duck Dune Donald Duck Dunn,
Speaker 3: and I got to be friends with Duck, and that
Speaker 3: was also another very special relationships to me. But I
Speaker 3: took a friend. We all go down to Madison Square
Speaker 3: Garden and I, you know, I have my lamb and
Speaker 3: it's my tickets, and we go backstage and I was
Speaker 3: just I've never gone anywhere expecting anyone to say hello,
Speaker 3: to meet anyone, any of that. You know, I don't
Speaker 3: have those expectations. But I did know I was going
Speaker 3: to go say hey to Duck because I'm Duck. We
Speaker 3: were friends. Uh. Duck's son, Jeff was the Black Cros's
Speaker 3: front of house for like the first eight years of
Speaker 3: our career, so that's how I know him. So as
Speaker 3: I'm walking backstage, it's like before the show, every you know,
Speaker 3: I see Cross and he's like, yeah, Chris, how are you?
Speaker 3: And he gives me a hug, and Stills is like, hey, Chris,
Speaker 3: I'm Steven. We've never met before, you know, but I
Speaker 3: hear you're the rocker. I'm the rock and roll dude.
Speaker 3: You're the right, you know. I had met Neil before,
Speaker 3: and Neil was very friend. Hey, Chris, how's it going, man?
Speaker 3: I was like hey, And then Graham Nash. I had
Speaker 3: met with David once, and I'm like, if you had
Speaker 3: told my thirteen years you know what I mean. I
Speaker 3: was like that it was it was surreal. And the
Speaker 3: music that they've made together, the music they made on
Speaker 3: their own, that every one of them my name came
Speaker 3: out of their mouths, was like like such a just
Speaker 3: such a head trip, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 3: I really was one of those nights. I was like,
Speaker 3: I'll always remember this, you know.
Speaker 2: So were you a led Zeppelin fam How did you
Speaker 2: end up working with Jimmy p.
Speaker 3: Of course we love led Zeppelin. We work with Jimmy
Speaker 3: because I think maybe that's hard to remember which time,
Speaker 3: but Robert Plant brought Jimmy down when we played the
Speaker 3: Royal Albert Hall in the nineties late nineties, and because
Speaker 3: we had, you know, known Robert for a minute, and
Speaker 3: Jimmy was like he really liked the show. And then
Speaker 3: you know, in the dressing room. He really I back
Speaker 3: then was I always had like a couple hundred CDs
Speaker 3: and cases and hysteria and we're always playing music. And
Speaker 3: he I think he was, you know, like impressed and
Speaker 3: with my CD collection and with the stuff we talked about.
Speaker 3: And we went out and we were playing at the
Speaker 3: Zeneth in Paris the next like in the you know,
Speaker 3: a couple of days later, and our dear friend, the
Speaker 3: photographer Ross Halfin, was like, Jimmy wants to come around.
Speaker 3: We're coming to the show. And I was like, I'll
Speaker 3: hook up everything, well, hit the you know, hit the
Speaker 3: town afterwards. He goes, if you ask him, maybe he'll
Speaker 3: get up. And so he was there and I said,
Speaker 3: you want to play? You know, we played. We played
Speaker 3: like woke up this morning, you know, the BB King song,
Speaker 3: and there's some blues that we had in the set.
Speaker 3: Might even been like a Champion Jack two press. I
Speaker 3: don't know what. I don't actually remember, but he was
Speaker 3: like yeah yeah. And then I said, all right, well
Speaker 3: maybe we'll do shake your money Maker too, olmar James
Speaker 3: say yeah, yeah, whatever you want to be great. So
Speaker 3: I'm like ladies and gentlemen, you know, Jimmy Page, and
Speaker 3: we're in the Zenith in Paris and people are fucking
Speaker 3: losing their minds and we went out and had a
Speaker 3: great night together. And then the next thing that happens
Speaker 3: with us is there's a benefit in London and we're
Speaker 3: on tour with Aerosmith and doing stadiums and stuff in
Speaker 3: ninety nine, and it comes up there's like, well, they
Speaker 3: would like to get Jimmy and you guys are gonna
Speaker 3: you guys are in town, maybe you guys can collaborate
Speaker 3: with Jimmy on something. And we were like, I mean, yeah, fuck,
Speaker 3: of course, that's really where it comes from. So we
Speaker 3: rehearsed a little bit and we did a couple of
Speaker 3: things out the gate, and then it was just kind
Speaker 3: of like poking around after that. And then there we
Speaker 3: were in a rehearsal space in New York before roseland
Speaker 3: with Jimmy Page for eight days, learning the led Zeppelin
Speaker 3: catalog and teaching him she talks to angels and shit,
Speaker 3: and again we just got on. Jimmy's a wonderful guy
Speaker 3: and you know, taught me many valuable lessons. So that's
Speaker 3: a guy that Jimmy Page is the legend dairy person
Speaker 3: that he is because is he talented most definitely, does
Speaker 3: he have a vision for that talent? Most definitely, that
Speaker 3: he also works very hard. I never rehearsed that heart
Speaker 3: in my life. I never. I didn't even know that
Speaker 3: was possible, you know what I mean. We were from
Speaker 3: the rolling Stone school of yeah, we'll do it when
Speaker 3: we get up there, you know. And Jimmy a lot
Speaker 3: of things happened up there that had nothing to do
Speaker 3: with the rehearsal either, but that he really I was like, Wow,
Speaker 3: he's the most maybe one of the most famous, you know,
Speaker 3: arguably the greatest rock guitarist of all time. And he
Speaker 3: takes it seriously and works hard. And that is always
Speaker 3: always been a part of something that I took from
Speaker 3: Jimmy as well.
Speaker 2: So were you the last man standing, the last exponent
Speaker 2: of rock and roll? Or is there a hope for
Speaker 2: rock going on?
Speaker 3: There's yeah, there's totally hope, man, there's totally hope. It
Speaker 3: might not be exactly what we thought it would be
Speaker 3: or remember it as, but there's lots of kids with
Speaker 3: there's always kid with a guitar who wants to make
Speaker 3: a noise, you know what I mean. There's always you know,
Speaker 3: a bunch of kids who like are kind of have
Speaker 3: that little punk attitude and they want to like everyone's
Speaker 3: going up the street, They're going to go down the street,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. There's always going to be
Speaker 3: a troublemaker. There's always going to be the outsider, you know.
Speaker 3: You know, last I was in Hollywood seeing this kid,
Speaker 3: Billy Tibbles that I produced his last two records and
Speaker 3: put them out on Silver Arrow. And he's like young kid,
Speaker 3: he moved to LA when he was eleven from England
Speaker 3: and he writes great. I mean we we kind of
Speaker 3: consider him. What did we say? He's garage glam hunk
Speaker 3: show tunes kind of you know. And and the guy
Speaker 3: these band the Uni Boys that play here in LA.
Speaker 3: And I'm working with this really special artist named Dagger Polyester.
Speaker 3: And and although these young people are coming, you know,
Speaker 3: there's power pop and punk and glam and this and
Speaker 3: that and avant garde music, and like all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: someone's mentioning Terry Riley and then there's like you know,
Speaker 3: the Walker Brothers or whatever. But there's there's a real
Speaker 3: there's a you know, ay you always will see you know,
Speaker 3: when we were in Nashville. I went out and saw
Speaker 3: cool bands. You know where I lived to go see bands.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: You know, we just saw the Charlatan's UK and Ride
Speaker 3: at the Wiltern. Next week I'm going to see Tye
Speaker 3: Sigall and White Fence and you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So there's always sells, Queens of the Stone Age recently,
Speaker 3: you know, amazing concert So from the littlest, from the smallest,
Speaker 3: little fucking stinky dump to the big thing, there's still
Speaker 3: music happening in guitar music, different ages, different different worlds sometimes,
Speaker 3: but it's alive and it's well, you know I said
Speaker 3: a million times, if you go to go to a
Speaker 3: MEBA right now, you're gonna fucking stand in line with
Speaker 3: your stack of shit to pay for it, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. Because people are buying records, Vinyl records,
Speaker 3: old ones, new ones, reissues, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: There's someone still you know that, you know there's a
Speaker 3: kid who still goes out and buys a poster lou
Speaker 3: Reid and puts it on his wall, and that's important.
Speaker 2: Wow, we could go on for ever, Chris, but we've
Speaker 2: covered so much. I'm gonna let you go. This will
Speaker 2: be fascinating for my audience. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: spending time with me. Thank you, I'm much appreciated. Thanks
Speaker 2: for the conversation.
Speaker 3: I thank you. I'm gonna get off of this and
Speaker 3: start making borshed. So you didn't know that about.
Speaker 2: My grandfather used to eat borshed and therefore I could
Speaker 2: never eat borshed again. I ate it like eight five yeah, no.
Speaker 3: No, five year old except in Siberia likes beets. You
Speaker 3: know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, okay, Chris, until next time. This is
Speaker 2: Bob left sets