Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Melissa Etheridge

Transcript

Melissa Etheridge · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, brolcome back to Bob Left Podcast. My guest today,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: You've but one and only Melissa Et Melissa, you have
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Ethridge Island coming up on Labor Day. What's that all about? Uh?
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: This is sort of a little dream come true, you know. Um,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: you know, as as I have gone through this music business,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I have seen, uh it changed how you connect with
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: your fans. Used to be through radio and uh, you know,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: record companies, and now I have a direct connection with
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: my fan base. And for the last about five years,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I've done about four cruises, at which I said I'd
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: never do. But when I can be so connected with
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: my fans, I can let them know, hey, going on
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: a cruise to my super duper fans will join me
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: on that. And I used to joke with them someday
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get an island and we're all gonna go away,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: leave this crazy world and we're just gonna, you know,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: play music. And so the people that the production company
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: sixth Man that I did my uh cruises with, said,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: you know what, we can actually get an island that
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: has a resort on it. It's off it's off of Cancun,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and it's a dreams and secrets. Uh, resort there. And
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: so now I have Ethridge Island and it's a festival
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's music. It's myself and Annie DiFranco
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: and l King and Larkin Poe and some great great artists.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Everyone's welcome. Uh. You can go to Ethridge Island dot com.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Check it out right now, get a room, go here. Music.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of wellness, you know, yoga, food and
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff going on too. But it's just
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: super serving my fans and people that really love music. Okay,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: what's the capacity for the event? Well, there's eight hundred rooms,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: so that's uh. I'd say it's about two thousand people
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: are so two thousand give or take. So how many
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: hardcore Melissa Ethridge fans are there? Ah, there's thousands of
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: hardcore and they're all over the world. You know, we've
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: done I've done things with about four thousand people or so,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I'd say, let's say right about
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: that those that there's some that I've known for years,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: you know, the really hardcore ones that come to see
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of shows. You get to know them,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: you get to know their children and you know, so
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I have some really really big fans. So talking about
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: the change in the business and the technological changes, you
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: can literally have access to your fans. How do you
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: do this? Do you have an email list? Is it
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: more on social media? How do you get the message
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: out different ways? I? UM, I was fortunate enough back
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: in I had one of the first artist websites that
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: that was made. I was approached by a company at
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: the time, fan fan Asylum was the name, and and
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: and this is you know, the internet wasn't he was
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: just barely getting started and they said, we'd love to
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: make a fan club. And I was like, fan club,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: you know, this is rock and roll. What are you
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: talking about? But I said, okay, fine it it. What's
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: it gonna hurt? And they built and and a mask,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: you know, email, email addresses and and a way to
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: connect with people. And it became one of the number
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: one fan sites on the Internet for a long time.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: And you know, since then, we have kept that email list.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: And I myself, UM, I have lots of social media outlets.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I have people that run that, but I myself run
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: my Twitter. I like to know that there's one place
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: that they know it's actually me responding, reading and and
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: right there with him. I I don't I don't do Facebook, Instagram,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: but I'm on those through my management. They run that
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: and keep that going and inform people. But if you
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: want to really hear what I have to say about something,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: it's on Twitter. So you're one of the early technological
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: adopters from an out facing way, like having a website.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Are you personally very into technology or you someone who
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: served the web and it's infancy, well, because I, um,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: actually I did. Yeah, in the nineties. I was very
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: interested because I could for the first time, I could
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: actually get instant feedback from real people, you know, before
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the Internet. I would go do a show and the
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: only review I saw was the guy that was, you
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: know as signed to cover my show that night, and
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: who knows if he even stayed for the whole concert,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: you know, And I do this great show, and sometimes
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I'd get these really weird reviews from you know, one person,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: or or reviews on an album. You get one person
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: listening to the album. That's the only feedback I used
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: to get, except for when I'd be in concert and
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: see the people and then I have this other reaction,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: you know, live and then I'd leave in four days
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: later I could read a review and I was like,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: oh my god, what was the guy at the same
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: show as I was? So it was so refreshing too
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: in the nineties to go on a O L to
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: go on the fan the Melissa Ethridge, you know board,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: and actually see what people were saying. It was the
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: first time I got to see kind of instantly how
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: people felt about my music as someone with a profile,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: pretty high profile and experience, you know, a couple of things.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: One for nine positives, there's always somebody negative and then
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: negative person is twisting the knife. So how do you
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: cope with the negative? And to what degree do you
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: change your behave You're based on this feedback not only
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: the negative, positive too. Oh I, um, well, I went
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: through my own personal kind of transformation. I had cancer
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: eighteen years ago, cancer free for eighteen years now, and
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: um having gone through that, I realized I had to
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: let go of really what other people thought about me,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: because that would make me crazy. And the more that
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: I have seen social media come up and again this
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: instant response to something, and when I went on social
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: when I went on Twitter, you know, ten years ago
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: or whatever, I realized right away, oh, you're gonna get unfiltered.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: You know, response is positive and negative. And whereas before
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: cancer I would let the negative get to me, I
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: would uh, I would, you know, really just think I
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: would let all the positive go by, but boy, that
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: one negative person I would focus on that and it
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: would make me crazy. And it's just a really sad
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: way to kind of do your work when one negative
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: thing can mess you up. And I realized I needed
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: to focus on on what I love. I needed to
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: make sure that the music I was making, the performing
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I was doing made me happy. And as long as
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I had that, as long as I could get out
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: there do my best. I knew that whatever anyone else
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: was experiencing was their experience going through their filter. Maybe
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: they had a bad day, maybe they're having a bad
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: year or life, you know, and that's their filter. And
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: if they if they don't, you know, feel the love
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: and the you know, the creativity and what I put
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: into it. If if it's not for them, then so
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: be it. And what other people think about me is
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: really none of my business. I really need to make
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: the music, make the the creativity that I love. It's
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: very difficult as an artist in the commercial space to
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: totally divorce oneself from the audience. So it's just like
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: playing live, you know what works. But let's say there's
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: a direction you want to go in or a song
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: you want to play and it's either not resonating or
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: you're getting negative feedback online. Would that inhibit you from
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: playing it? Would you stop playing? Or would you say
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: this is what I want to do? Oh? I would
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: if I if I had a lot of feedback, if
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: if maybe if I saw people that were normally uh,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: you know, flowing with the work that I was doing
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: having a very negative response to it, then I would
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I would think, Wow, what what did I overlook on this?
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: What what am I not seeing? That is is you know,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: people are misinterpreting And I would go back and check
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: and see and and really kind of, uh, look at that.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I what if it was more. But if it's just
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: a handful of people that I can tell are are
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: just kind of miserable in nature and they're there are
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: people that kind of just want to go around stomping things.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: If it's if it's that, I really let that be.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I don't mess with that energy. I believe that you know,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: whatever you pay attention to you get. So I I
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: really try to try to look at you know, keep
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: my my gaze and my attention going towards you know, positive,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: good feeling things. But if I were to see a
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: massive amount of not feeling things, I would have to
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I would have to look at myself and go, Wow,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: what am I putting out that I that I don't
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: see here? Let's go back to Twitter. How often do
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: you post on Twitter? And what kind of stuff? Oh? Wow? Um,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: I it can be up to one or two times
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: a day. And then lately, I, you know, I kinda
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: I kind of had to take a break off of
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Twitter because you know, my own Twitter is fine. I can,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: you know, post something and then read what people say.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: But boy, once I go into my feed and all
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: of a sudden I start reading the news and everything,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: I just go down into a doom scroll hole, and uh,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I need to give myself a break on that every
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: now and then. So, um, I would say I at
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: least post once a week. Um, during football NFL football season,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I'll post a lot because I'm a big Kansas City
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Chiefs fan and my uh my, my fans know that,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: and so I have a whole section of of Kansas
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: City chi fans that follow me that that might not
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: be as familiar with my music, but they know that
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: we are, you know, in in the in the fandom
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: together in the arrowhead, you know. So I'm a big
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: fan of that. So I'll post about that. I'll post
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: about shows I'm doing. Every night, after a show, I'll
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: take what we call a melfie and it's just a
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: little like twenty video of me and the audience, so
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: that if you were at the show, you could have
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: a little thing. It's like a selfie with me and
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the audience at every show. So I'll do that every
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: after every show. But you know, on the road, I'll
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: tweet once a day. I guess, how about a filter?
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: You know, they're different philosophies about how much to reveal
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: about your personal life. Do you feel everything's up for
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: grabs or do you have a wall? Well, I have
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: lived my life in such a way since the nineties
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: that I was very open about my personal life. I
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: felt that there's power in that that if I had
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: if I had kept uh, you know, silent and hidden
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: about my sexuality or or anything, and you know, they
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: come and find you. They they that sort of thing
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: you start worrying about it. So I said, look, I'm
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: just gonna be honest about myself about everything, so the
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: good and the bad. You know, every time I had
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: a breakup, it was public, and you know those aren't
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: very much fun. And and then when my son died
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, that was no fun when
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: that went public because it was you know, it was
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: opioid addiction. And you know, there's so much judgment or not.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: But again, it is my job as as my own
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: human as a human being, I need to take care
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of my inner self. I need to know that people.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I will never be able to get people to you know,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: see my way or or you know that they're always
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: going to have their own opinions and they are welcome
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: to them. I just don't have to give my attention
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: or my gaze to that. I can keep it on
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: what I know and my loved ones, who are you know,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: connected to me. So going back to the chiefs, was
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Shottenheimer just a loser? Or or as Mahomes just that good? Oh,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: you know, we've had coaches, We've I've see I was
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: born and raised in Leavenworth, Kansas. So my father was
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: a huge Kansas City Chiefs fan. I remember the first time, well,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: no that the first time we won the Super Bowl.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: The second time we were in the super Bowl. But um,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: you know, nine seventy I remember that game, Lenny Dawson
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: and everybody, and then um, then fifty years went by,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: fifty and I know them. They were my years when
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: you know, you every year would see we we will
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: get close. And for the last you know, decade, we
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: we would get close. We would have some bad season,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: but we would get really close. And then, man, once
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Andy Reid came, he made a big difference in coaching,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: absolutely makes a difference. And and the the the you know,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: the culture in that locker room. And you could just
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: see the team changing when Andy came and put his
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: coaches together and it was a you could feel, you know.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: And we went through Andy, we went through uh Alex Smith,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and boy, once we got Patrick Mahomes, things just quickly
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: changed and you realized what what one player can do
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: with it in that position to reach the other talent
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: that we You've got me talking football, man, I can
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: talk this all all day. Okay. Do you know the
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Chiefs personally? I do not. I I have hugged Andy
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Reid numerous times because every time I sing the national anthem,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: which I love to do, which has been about three
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: times now. Um, he's always right in front of me
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: when I sing. They've got me up on a pedalt
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: you know this, uh Riser. I'm singing to the crowd
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: of sixty people, but the team and Andy Reid is
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: right in front of me. Now, I don't dare look
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: any team member in the eye because you know they're
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: concentrating on the game. But Andy Reid always came over
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: and gave me a big hug. And I know his wife,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: So that's that's as close as I've gotten. Do you
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: have season tickets or you just know when you want
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: to go you can get a ticket. Yeah, well I
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: live in Los Angeles, so I don't have season tickets
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: to Arrowhead. I Um, whenever I am playing or in
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: the area and there's a game, I know who to
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: call it ask for tickets. But there they also play
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the Chargers, you know, twice a year and once here
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: in l A. So now I can go to Sophie.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I haven't been there yet because of COVID. We didn't
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: we couldn't go. But this year I'm going I'm going
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: to be there. Okay, are you basically a fan? Now?
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Of course we're all older at this point, you and myself,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: um or you were? You? Were you very athletic as
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: a child. Oh? Uh, My father was very athletic. He
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: he loved uh. He was a basketball coach actually for
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: the high school, for the high school team, and he
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: took him to state in the sixties and early seventies.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: He was beloved coach Ethridge. He he taught the swimming.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: He he played softball. He taught me how to play softball.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: I learned. I'm a good lesbian. I learned how to
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: play softball. I loved it. It was fantastic. Um basketball,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: I could, I could do a jump shot really great.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: But I wasn't big at running, so I wasn't I
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: wasn't terribly athletic. And I certainly enjoyed music more than
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: I did the the sports. And so when it came
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: to high school, I had to choose. We couldn't do
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: both because you couldn't do all those electives, and I
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: definitely chose music. So the sports kind of went, you know, away,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and so I became an observer of sports instead of
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: a participant. Unfortunately, you know your son passed, but he
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: was trying to be a professional snowboarder. Was that a
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: family activity or that was just something he did by himself. Well,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: when he was younger, I I was. I used to
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: ski a lot, and UM I would take him up
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: and he loved snowboarding so much when he was very young,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: ten eleven years old, and I would take him up
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: as much as I could. And then UM, as a
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: young teenager, he started going on his own. And then
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: when he was about seventeen, he uh, well, before then,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: he would go to like camps where he met these
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: professional people and they invited him to come to Aspen
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: and train, and he did for one season and then
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: they invited to come back and maybe UM sort of
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: start to be with the team when he was about seventeen,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: and that's when he heard his ankle really bad. How
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: does one cope with the passing of a child. I
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: don't know the best that one can just it. There
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: is not even a word for it. You know, you
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: have the word for losing your your partner, your your
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: widow or or you know a widow or you know
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: or or or when you lose your parents you're an orphan.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: But when you're a parent that loses a child, there's
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: not even a word for it in in the language.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: So um, it is so not supposed to be your
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: your You're not supposed to outlive your children. And um,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: you know the the when when you weigh up and
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: you know that someone who you've seen come into the
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: world and live for a couple of decades, when they're
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: not you know, when they're not around anymore, it's not right.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: It doesn't feel right, and so every day you just well.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: The way that I coped with it, I don't you know,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: everyone has their own way. But the way I coped
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: with it was to understand that he he is not
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: gone forever and ever his that that spirit which he was,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: that that light that he was beyond all his addictions
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: and troubles. Um, that light is is still alive and
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: it has always been in existence that spirit and I
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: and my deep my own spiritual beliefs are one of
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: you know, we are here in the physical, and then
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: there is a a place that is the non physical,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: where all that spirit lives. So I I do, I
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: believe that I will and still am in some way
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: spiritually connected and that helps me. That is a that's
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: a comfort to me. Your sister, uh, if you go online,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: went to Columbia, what is she up to? I know
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: a story of my own life identical to this. There
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: were twins though, and one o deed and one is
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: a very successful medical doctor of the same vintage as
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: your children. So what is your daughter up to? And
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: how does she cope? If you know? With the passing,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: it was very very hard on my daughter. They were close.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: They they used to be considered twins because they look
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: so much alike, and they're they're only about a year
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: and a half apart, and so they were very close.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: And it's very very hard. And I can't speak for her,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: but I do know that, you know, there's a there's
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: a painful part in her heart and and she she
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: you know, deals with that on her own and and
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: and and with us together, we as a family have
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: agreed that that we're not going when we talk about him,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: we're not going to be sad. We're going to remember,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: you know, lovingly the fun things. You know, and I
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: have whether children their fame now they'll be sixteen soon,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: they are twins, and um, you know they we we
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: talked about him, and oh, well, Beckett, we would have
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: done this or oh Beckett used to do this, and
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: we tell stories and and it's very loving. And when
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: we do that, we feel he's close to us. Um,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: you know, my daughter, I just I just love her
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: as much as I can. And yet you I certainly
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: have learned that when when you hear someone in a
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: family as has addiction issues, uh, or you know, forbid
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: they they have lost someone to an opioid addiction, you know,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: I no longer look to blame anyone it is. It
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: is a personal issue. Families deal with us all the time.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: You know, Bailey grew up under the same roof, and
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: she is highly successful. Uh not only did she graduate Columbia,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: but she got her masters at the London School of Economics.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: And and she's just you know, she's just my delight.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: And and you know, people make different choices. Beckett made
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: a different choice and and um, you know, he left
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: us way too early. So we as a family, we
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: hold him, We love him, we remembered, we cherish our
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: memories with him, and uh, you know, we keep him close.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: So you had two children with one partner and two
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: children with another a partner and ultimately broke up with
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: both partners. How did you manage the children and being
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: closed and who had custody and all kinds of things. Ah, well,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: the uh, the first one, the first two that was
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: a little more well, okay, I don't really want to
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: go into details on it because it's so it's so
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: cretty kind of and um the what I always had
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: fifty custody that it was always I definitely wanted to say, look,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: these are these are my kids also, and you know,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: even though I'm not blood related to them, I am
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: their mother, And every single one of them would would
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: look at you funny if if if somehow you said
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: I wasn't there, like, oh no, she is. And know
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I I shared custody. The too older I actually ended
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: up having more custody for many different reasons. They actually
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: ended up staying at my house more. The two younger ones,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: I get along with their mother a little better. And
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: I kind of learned from the first one that that
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: any conflict you have, any sort of pulling and tugging
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: and and trying to prove something, only hurts the children.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: I really saw that, I really saw how hard it
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: was on the children. So the second time and I
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: didn't expect to go through it, but I did. The
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: second time. I was like, Okay, now I'm gonna this
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: is gonna be a lot easier. I'm going to be
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna push against things. I know that children
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: they go where it's warm, you know, I'm just gonna
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: love them. I'm gonna do the best I can. And um,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: I really believe that the less conflict they have in
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: their life, the better it is for them. And it
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: has it has proven out there two delightful children and
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: they're almost sixteen, and you know, they're they're becoming young adults,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: and I'm just very pleased. Now, did you ever consider
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: or why did you not have biological children yourself? Oh? Um,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: First of all, I uh, I when I was hunger,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: you know, in the seventies, late seventies, early eighties, when
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: you decided, not decided, when you realized you were gay,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: it meant you weren't going to have kids. That was
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: part of the deal of being gay, and that was
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: part of the things that mothers would cry and go,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to have grandchildren, you know, stuff like that.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: And so as the eighties went on, we realized that
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: well as women, we could still have children, you know,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: we can make this work and and and a lot
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: of people started doing that, and so um when my
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: partner at the time then I discussed children she wanted
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: to carry, and I was fine with that because I
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: never really had that urge. And then later when I
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: was thirty five six, I started having um uh uter
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: insists and things like that. So I actually ended up
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: having a hysterectomy at my late thirties, so I couldn't
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: have to I wouldn't have been able to have children anyway.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: But you know, and it didn't bother me at all.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Believe me. I was there when they came into this
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: world and I saw it, and I've never felt not connected,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: you know, biologically to my children at all. Okay, so
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: how did you cope with COVID? I know you did
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of live shows on the internet. You know,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: what was it like for you? Ah? I remember when
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: everyone started talking about it, and my first couple of
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: gigs started to get canceled because we were going out
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: at the end of March of twenty and we were
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: gonna tour all summer and we were gonna go to Europe,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: and it was everything was planned and and the first
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: few dates started being canceled and I said, oh, okay,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: well this is only gonna be a couple of weeks.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: You know, I had no idea of what it would be.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: And when I realized after well actually after a few
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: days when they started canceling them, I I went on
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: my Facebook because everyone seemed to be kind of it
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: was really scary what was happening, like real things shutting
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: down and people not being able to meet and and
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: so I said, you know what, I'm gonna go on Facebook,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: on my little Facebook page, and you know, for I'm
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: gonna sing a song or two. I'm just going to
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: connect with my fans every day until this is over,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: you know. And so I started doing it, and you know,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: after a couple of weeks, I started realizing, wow, we're
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: in this, and so I I actually went every single
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: day at three o'clock on Pacific time. I went online
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: for fifty eight days in a row. And then that's
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: when my son died, and so I I stopped and
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: for about four weeks, we mourned, We we UH got
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: that together. But I came out here. Actually I'm in
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: my UH garage studio, which then I took my my sadness,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: my grief and my oh my gosh, what am I
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: gonna do now? My son's died and I can't go anywhere,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I can't go perform, you know, and make myself feel better. UM.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: So I cleaned out this part of my garage and
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: made a studio and sound proofd it, and um, I
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: learned everything about streaming, about cameras, about sound I started
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: doing my own guitar teching and I built this studio,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: which as I was doing and I was realizing I
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: was kind of doing what nobody else had done before
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: because we didn't Streaming was kind of a not a
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: thing that many people did. They would do it every
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: now and then, but it wasn't a real thing. And
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: now with COVID it was becoming huge. So I ended
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: up having steven cameras and uh, you know professional soundboard
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: that I hooked up that my sound man in Florida.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: We we figured a way to have him run the
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: sound connect through the internet, him run the sound in Florida,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: and we presented a thing we called Ethridge TV and
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: we did it five five days a week. It kept
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: me and my wife saying I would do Tuesday's were
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: cover days, and so I would learn like four or
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: five cover songs that that I hadn't been singing other
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: people's material for decades, and it was really enjoyable and
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: I connected with the fans. I now have this, you know,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: two years of content now of me singing all kinds
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: of stuff and and doing stuff with my wife, and
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: it just it kept our creativity going, It kept me saying,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: it kept me connected, it got me through grief. It
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: was just it was actually a really great experience. And
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: what about monetization, Well, yeah, then there was that because
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: because I did realize that after those fifty eight days,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I went, oh my god, I'm not working this year,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: and touring is my bread and butter. Touring pays the bills,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: and I thought, oh my, how am I going to
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: pay the bills? And so we Ethirds TV. We ended
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: up charging a subscription and for fifty dollars a month,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: you've got five shows a week, and people were willing
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: to do that, and so we actually were able to
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: pay the bills for a year and a half off
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: of that. How many people subscribe over a thousand, you know,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: So yeah, let's go back to the beginning. How did
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: your family end up in Leavenworth. My father was born
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: in St. Louis, Missouri too, you know, migrant farmers, very
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: very poor. He was just you know, poverty. He came
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: from there. Uh. My mother came from Arkansas, where she
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: grew up, you know, not as poor. Her father was
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: an insurance salesman, so she kind of was. And she
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: ended up going to college at Henderson University in Arkansas.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: And my father got a scholarship because he was athletic,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: and someone in his high school helped him to understand
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: that he could go to college on an athletic scholarship.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: So he goes there, they meet, he gets a job
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: coaching in Leavenworth, Kansas, And so I have no other
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: family in Leavenworth, but they ended up, you know, settling
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: down in leveryone because he could get a job there.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I've been to Ksey many times, and I've certainly been
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: to Lawrence. I've never been to Leavenworth. But all anybody
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: knows about Leavenworth is the prison. Yeah, that's something. Is
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: that something if you live there that you don't even
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: think about or is that you know, impact the whole town?
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: You don't think about it because that prison. The Federal
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Penitentiary is huge, and it was about two blocks from
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: my house and I used to ride my bike by
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: it all the time, and I just that's just the prison,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: and everybody has a prison in their town. I thought,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: you know, it was just it was totally normal. But
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: as i um, as I grew, I actually was a
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: part of a little talent show that became a variety
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: show and we would go and perform at the prisons.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: So I realized that not only do we have the
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Federal penitentiary there, we have the Army penitentiary, the Fort
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Leavenworth has an Army penitentiary there. We have the U
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: in the little town right next to us Lansing. We
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: have the Kansas State Men's Prison, and then the women's
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: penitentiary used to be there. It's in Topeka now, but
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: it used to be there. So I would go around
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: and I would perform in all of these prisons. And
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: we're actually looking to um to create a little documentary
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: and having me go back and performing in the women's
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: penitentiary there. But yeah, it's everybody's family, you know. They
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: had their fathers were guards or something at the penitentiary.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Every now and then you'd hear about a break out.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: You know, one of my friends actually was picked up
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: a hitchhiker, which you're not supposed to do around my town,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: and and he had escaped and he kind of kidnapped
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and forced him to drive him to Nebraska. But he
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: was fine, you know. So so when you went to
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: the prisons, what age were you and were you anxious scared?
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: I was not at all. I was I was about
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: I'd say. And I gotta tell you, the audience was amazing.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, talk about a captive audience, right, But they
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: were so thrilled to just be entertained that they were
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: hooting and hollering. Of course, I was thirteen and a
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: young girl or whatever. I didn't I didn't take it
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: as that. I just took it as this was a
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: whole lot of energy that was really loved, that was
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: loving being entertained. So how far is Leavenworth from Kansas City.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: It's about well, I just knew it's about a forty
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: five minute drive, maybe an hour. It's it's right up
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: there on the bight of Kansas and Missouri. The Missouri
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: River is part of Leavenworth, and and you crossed the
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Missouri River and you're in Missouri, and how often growing
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: up there as a teenager would you go to Kansas City? Um?
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: I I played in bands as a teenager, and I
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: would work in Kansas City a lot. I would work
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: in the Ramada in or the you know, I would
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: play the ski club dances, and so I would go
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: there once a week, I guess. Okay, So how many
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: kids in the family. I have one sister, one older sister.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: And how many years between the two of you? We
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: were exactly four years apart. We were born on the
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: same day, but four years apart, okay, and so four
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: years is a lot when you were a kid. So
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: what was your relationship with your sister growing up? Well,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: it was not a good relationship. She was troubled also,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Um and uh, we were not close at all. But
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: she used to listen to the coolest music. She had
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Led Zeppelin, she had Humble Pie, she had Rolling Stones,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Exile on Main Street. You know, she had all these
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: great records that me, as a eleven year old, didn't
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: quite you know, I wouldn't not to find it, but
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: I would listen to them, go whoa, this is amazing,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: and so hearing those and then my parents music was
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: you know Mom's and the Papas and Neil Diamond and
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Aretha Franklin. So I got this really great mix of
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: music in the house and then the radio. So even
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: though I wasn't close to my sister, her music really
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: influenced me, the music that she listened to. You reference
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: her as troubled and refer to yourself as trouble. What
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: does that mean troubled? Troubled? Well, she um, I was.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say I was troubled. I was actually was
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: a very good child. I didn't mean to say that
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: I was troubled. Um, I was only troubled in that. Uh.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to get away from that small town.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: I had a big dream of you know, fame and
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: fortune and I could be a rock star. Somehow. She
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: was troubled in that, Um. You know there it was drugs,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: it was I think she had an abortion when she
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: was sixteen. It was you know, she constantly fought with
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: my parents, she dropped out of high school. You know,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: she's still having a hard time. So it's just it's
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: just just that kind of you know, choices that were made,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: and what's your relationship with her now? Not much? I
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: um uh, I know her daughter more. I her she
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: had two children, her her oldest son also died of
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: a overdose. I know, it's it's everywhere and um and
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: but her youngest was really amazing and it helps a lot.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: And so I I connected with her and through her,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: I'm still connected with my older sister. But I realized
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: a long time ago, I I, you know, you don't
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: choose your family, and you know, so sometimes they're they're
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: just not the ones that you are are really connected with.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: You know, I really sort of built my own family.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: So you grew up in a middle class family, certainly
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: in the sixties, and then you had great financial success.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Did you give your sister money? Did you buy things
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: for your parents? Well? Yes, I was a good rock star,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: you know, of course. Yeah, that's that's where coming from
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: a place where we we didn't have that much money.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: We were lower middle class and my father was a teacher,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: and it was it was but we we we were
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: never went hungry, so that that was fine and and
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: it was great. So the minute I got some money,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: I'm like, WHOA, you know, this is amazing. I can
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: I I bought my sister a car. I ended up
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: buying my parents house when they wanted to retire, and
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: I kind of did that for a while, and then
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: I realized, I'm not really well with my parents. It
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: was fine because they had worked hard all their life
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: and and and I felt, you know, that that was
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: not a problem, you know. And I ended up supporting
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: my mother until she passed away a few years ago.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: But my sister, I realized, wait, but I'm not helping
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: my sister because she's not doing anything, you know, and
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: she's unhappy and and she's still you know, she was
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: having her own drug issues and her kids. And I
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: ended up taking her daughter out of her home for
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: a while and and putting her in her boarding school
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: and helping her. So when I realized that my this
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: sort of enabling my sister financially was not helping her,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: and I, like I said, when I went through cancer,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: I had a real kind of spiritual um m hmm
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: enlightenment about, Oh, it's not my job to save anybody
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: else or fix anybody else. They have to, you know,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: go through what they need to go through. I finally
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: called her and said, Okay, you've got a roof over
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: your head. That's it. I'm not there's not another dime,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: and I don't want to hear from you. And I didn't,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: you know, and she's you know, like I said, I
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: go through her daughter. Her daughter now takes care of
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: her more. And UM, you know you just sort of
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: you just let that be. So what kind of kid
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: were you going up? Were you like running around the
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: neighborhood with good student, bad student, loaner, life of the party. Um.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: I was a friendly child. I was a happy child. Uh.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: I love music from early on earlier, from my first
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: memories were the Beatles singing I want to hold your hand,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: you know. That's that's so. I was just obsessed with music.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: I was a good child because I saw my sister
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: causing so much havoc and the family. I sort of
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: just stayed quiet and did my own thing. And I
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: got along with my father really well. Uh I you know,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: I I didn't cause any trouble. Um in high school,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: I was friends with everyone. I was known. I mean,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: if you ask anyone, nobody is surprised that I became
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: successful because I was the girl that would walk around
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: the halls with my guitar case all the time, you know,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: and I was missy that you know, made music and
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: everybody knew that. And I knew the sporty kids. I
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: knew the the pot smoking kids outside, I knew the
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: brainy kids. I knew the music and drama geeks, and
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: and we all hung out. It was, you know, even racially.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: I had black friends. I had all all kinds of friends.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Yet I was kind of a loner when it really
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: came down to it, because I would go off on
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: the weekends and and play in my bands, and I'd
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: make money, so I didn't socialize as much as most
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: kids do. And um, but you know, I look back
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: and I didn't cause any trouble. I wasn't a straight
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: a student by any means, but I did fine. You know,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: So when did you start playing an instrument? Ah? The
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: first instrument I played was a guitar. I took guitar
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: lessons at age eight. The guy didn't want to teach me.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: He said my fingers would bleed and i'd quit. I said, no,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I won't, No, I won't, he said, I was too young,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: and my fingers bled. But I didn't quit, and I
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: just kept going and now I have huge calyss. But um,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: but then I learned clarinet in school and uh, then
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: that became I also learned saxophone. I learned all kinds
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: of stuff, and in like junior high, I was very
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: interested in all kinds of music. I taught myself how
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: to play the piano. I made the drummers in my
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: bands teach me how to play the drums. I just
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: wanted to learn everything. So I you know, I'm I'm
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: very good at a couple of instruments, and I'm okay
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: to a few, and I could make sound out of others.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: You know. Okay, so you're playing the guitar. At what
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: point do you form a band? Ah? Well, I tried
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: to form form a band when I was in in
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: like early school, like when I was twelve or thirteen,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: but I just couldn't get any of my other friends,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: you know interested. I did say, come on, you know here,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: play the play this, and I ended up teaching my
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: best friend how to play bass because I wanted him
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: to play with me. And then when I finally met
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: professional musicians through this variety show and and met professionals
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: that I mean professionals as in guys that had other jobs,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: but on the weekends they would go out and and working.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: These were grown ups with families, but they would play
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: on the weekends at dances and would make extra money.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: And my mother wasn't supportive of it, but my father was,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: and so we won that argument, and uh, I ended
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: up playing with professional musicians. And so the first band
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: I played in I was I was about thirteen, and
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: it was a country band, you know as Chuck Hamersmith
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: and the Wranglers, and but these cats could play. They
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: were good and they're still they're old guys now playing
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: you know in Leavenworth, but they were great. And then
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: I went on from there and played in a couple
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: of other bands until I had like my own band
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: of these grown ups, UH that I played until my
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: senior year. Then when I was a senior in high school,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I said I want to be a normal kid, and
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: I stopped playing in bands. Well, when you would play
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: in bands, since he was, were all professionals. How much
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: rehearsal would you do during the week? We rehearsed once
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: a week. We rehearse on Wednesdays, so my father would
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: drive me there and then on weekends my father would
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: go to every single show. I never played any anywhere
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: that my father didn't go. That's a pretty dedicated father. Wow, absolutely,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: I owe the performer you see today is because my
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: father was willing to do that and he loved it too,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: and we were very close. It was wonderful. And uh,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: what role did you play in these bands? Well? First
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: I was just the singer, the girls singer, and I
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: would get up and sing Tammy Wynett, you know, stand
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: by your man and um. Then as the band's pur gressed,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: it got a little bit more pop music and I
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: we would play guitar. I would play rhythm guitar. Then
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: in one of my bands, the organ player taught me
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: how to play bass. And he taught me, uh organ
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: and you know, synthesizers stuff, and so I would I
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: would also double He would play bass and I would
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: double on the keyboards and um. So eventually I was
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: a keyboard player, organ player. I didn't play much bass
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: because I was a little but guitar player and singer,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: you know, lead singer. And at what point did you
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: start writing songs? Well, let's started writing when I was
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: about ten or eleven. Of course they were very simple
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: songs and and the the beauty of playing in cover
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: bands is you learn about songs. You play other people's
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: songs that are popular, and you learn it just becomes
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: obvious to you what makes them good. You you learned
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: the form of a song, long you learn the power
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: behind the song. You know. You keep being playing other
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: people's material until you start writing and going okay, this
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: is this is how it is. And it wasn't until
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: I started playing solo in my twenties that I actually
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: played my original music for people. Okay, so you're in
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: high school. Both your parents graduated from college. What were
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: the expectations and how did you deal with that? Oh,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: I was supposed to go to college because my sister
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: was disappointing, and she was she didn't even graduate high school,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: so you know, I was supposed to go to college. Well.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: As as my high school years went on, my mother
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: saw that I was not interested in anything but music.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: She insisted I go take like music theory courses at
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: the University of Missouri, you know, Kansas City, the Conservatory
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: and stuff, and so I took some and then she said,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: you know, then when they said you're going to go
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: to college, I looked at it as well, that'll get
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: me out of this little town. And so we went
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: and looked at colleges but in nine you couldn't. You
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: couldn't major. You couldn't. I would have had two major
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: in singing. They only had voice and it was all
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: operarettic and I was not an opera singer at all.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: And so the only college was this kind of new
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: college in Boston called Berkeley College of Music that was
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: a jazz h college and they I could major in guitar.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: So uh, I'm like, all right, sign me up. And
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: I didn't even go check out the school. I just
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: you know, we paid the tuition. At the time, it
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: was just you didn't even have to audition. They just
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: took whoever wanted to come. And um, I got in,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: and you know, my life changes. I'm in Boston, I'm
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: on my own. It's I'm eighteen, nineteen years old. And
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: uh so I went to Brooklyn College Music for about
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: one semester. That was about it. And then I dropped
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: out and started working and playing in a restaurant and
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: making a living. So my parents couldn't say anything. They said,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: as long as yourself sufficient, okay, but you know, there
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: you go. Okay, needless to say, the odds of success
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: in the music business as a performer, to say they're
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: low is you know, gross understatement? So along the way,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: did people say did you tell them your dream and
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: then they like roll their eyes and say, You're never
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: gonna make it? Did you ever think of going straight?
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Did people for they say you should go straight? You know?
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: When I was very young and I'd say, oh, I'm
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: going to be a singer, I got a lot of
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: eye rolling or a lot of really confused people like
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: what you're gonna be? What you know, no girls are
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: nurses or you know, teachers or something. But the older
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: that I got and the more that I was actually
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: performing in bands, people would go, well, good luck, you know,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: and even my parents, even my mother, who was not supportive,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: she would not tell me, you know, you can't make it.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: I remember actually asking her once I was about fourteen
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: or fifteen, I said, do you think I have a
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: chance of making it in the music business? And she said, well,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a one in a million, but who's
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: to say you're not that one? And that was enough.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: That was enough to give me. Well, then you're saying
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: there's a chance, you know, and and so I was like, yeah,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: who's to say I'm not the one in the in
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: the million, and so I just it was such a
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: huge desire and calling that I was just I just
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: was gonna do it wherever it took me. Did you
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: ever have a straight job? Yeah, I had a couple,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: Like when I told you, I didn't play in bands
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: when I was in my senior year in high school
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: because I wanted to be a kid and go to
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: the football games and stuff. I worked at the Kentucky
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: Fried Chicken and I was a packer back, which is
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons I'll never eat it a Kentucky
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Fried Chicken. But I worked there. And then when I
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: moved to Boston, when I was at Berkeley, I wanted
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: to get an apartment, and so first I got a
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: job as a as a security guard at a at
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: a hospital, which was really difficult work, and I was
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: making seven dollars an hour. And that's when I I said,
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna take my guitar and I'm
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: gonna go down to the subway station. I'm gonna open
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: it up and I'm gonna sing in the subway. And
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: I made for an hour, I made seven dollars, and
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: I went, Okay, I can make the same money that
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: I'm making you know, doing that, and I'm gonna I'm
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: gonna try music. And that's when I walked down to
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: a few restaurants on Boylson Street in Boston and I
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: found one an audition that I got a job and
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: I was making twenty five bucks a night. So I
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: and after that I never had a real job. Okay,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: anything positive about going to Berkeley other than the fact
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: that got you to Boston, Um, well, I could have
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: made it more positive now that I you know, look back,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: I think i'd be more a bit more of a
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: uh a better, more um educated guitar player had I
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: gotten into it. But at the time I was one
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: of like two guitar women guitar players, So it was
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: it really wasn't a place for me now, but I
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: mean then, but now, man, it's it's a great, great school.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: I I they gave me an honorary doctorate, so you know,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: I'm good. Did your mother live long enough to see that,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Yes she did? And it was really it was great.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: It was wonderful that look mom, now my kids now
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: of course, and my daughter's like, Mom, that's not real.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I know, I know, don't worry. You have
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: your masters it's all beautiful. It's okay. So how hard
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: a decision was it? And what was the process deciding
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: to drop out? Oh, it was not hard at all.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: It just happened, you know. I I had um, I
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: had gotten the job at this restaurant was called Kins
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: by George, and I was playing in the lounge and
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: one evening one of my teachers came in and sat
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: and had a couple of drinks with someone there, and
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, that's my you know,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: uh arrangement teacher or something. And I remember singing and like, oh,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: he's gonna recognize me. And he never recognized me. He
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: never like realized that I was a student in his class.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: And I was like, I am just invisible at Berkeley.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: And I didn't I didn't enjoy breaking music down into
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: theory and you know, the jazz theory of you know,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: one chord has to go to another, and it was
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: all this rules on music and I really wasn't into
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: it at all, and it was just kind of sucking
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: my energy out and I just went, you know what,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: I'm making a living. I'm self sufficient, and I just
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: stopped going. I just stopped. Okay, what kind of material
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: were you playing? Oh, I was. It was all cover material.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: It was you know, it was lounge music. I was
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: playing Barry Manilow and Barbara streisand and Neil Diamond and uh.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: It was nineteen seventy nine eighty at this point, and
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: so it was you know, the Doobie Brothers. It was.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: It was just whatever was popular at the time and
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: a bunch of show tunes. And was it always on
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: the guitar? Do you have a keyboard too? I had
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: a piano. Most of it was piano. But I did
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: set up my guitar and play that and and and
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: the people liked me, and I started to get a following. Okay,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: so you've established a base. You made a tweet addition
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: from Berkeley to being self sustaining. How long do you
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: do that? And you're earning money? But it's not quite
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: the path of your dream. Yeah, And I couldn't see
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: how I could get to my dream, which was that
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: you know California seventies, uh, folk rock sound, you know
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: the Eagles, the the you know Fleetwood, mac Bob Seeger,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen. This this that was who was calling me.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: And that was not the scene. This was nineteen eighty
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: in Boston, so it was punk, it was uh you know,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: and I was playing pop show tunes in you know,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: a restaurant. So that was not what I wanted. So I, um,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: I went back to Kansas City, got a job at
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: a hotel They're called the Granada Royale. I played in
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: the Lavaranda Lounge, made some more money, bought a car,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: and then in too drove to l A where I
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: was going to be discovered and you know, be somehow
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: meet up with all these you know, uh rock you know,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: acoustic rock musicians. But when I got to l A two,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: it was all spandex and hair and heavy metal bands,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, So I found work in
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: women's bars, in lesbian bars around Los Angeles, like in
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: Long Beach in Pasadena, and um I worked for five
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: years in those uh bars, but was able to play
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: my original music, was able to start performing. The performer
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: you really see today really came out of the bars
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: where I felt comfortable, where I've supported, and um I
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: sort of created my own path like that, and over
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: the years, many record companies came out to see me,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: you know, and whether they didn't sign me because I
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: was gay, I don't know, but they didn't hear the hit.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: And UM, finally Chris Blackwell in six late early UM
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: signed me. And he said, I don't know why someone
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: hasn't signed to you yet. You're amazing and and he
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: said to me, he goes, I think the future of
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: rock and roll has a female face, and I want
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: you to be on my label. Let's go back a chapter.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: You buy a car, you drive to l A. Do
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: you know anybody in El? Yes, my my father's sister
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: and brother. Uh, my aunt and uncle. They were separate.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: My my aunt. I slept on her couch for a
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: few weeks until I got a job in a in
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: a bar and then I moved down to Long Beach.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: But um, yeah, I knew her so but that was
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: all I only knew her. Okay, you talk about the
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: lesbian bars. At what age did you realize you were gay? Oh?
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: My gosh. You know, it was hard to realize you
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: were gay in the seventies because there was no talk
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: of gay. You didn't hear it anywhere except the you know,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: derogatory comments that oh, she's a lazzie. And I remember going,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: what's a leazie? You know? And well that's somebody who
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: you know, likes girl. That's a girl who likes girls.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: I was like, hm, you know. And it wasn't until
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: high school when I realized all my um, all my
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: uh m friends were getting kind of boy crazy and
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: I wasn't. And I just sort of talked it up
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: too well, I have this different life where I go
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: out in the weekends and play an adult, you know bars.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: But I still I really wasn't boy crazy at all,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: but I really needed to be around some girls that
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: I really liked, you know. And and so as I
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: grew kind of older in high school, I started to
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: kind of think, you know, I think I'm different. You
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: you just you feel different. And then you know, my
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: senior year, my when I turned seventeen, actually I I
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: kissed a girl and it was like, oh my god,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: I'm that whatever that is. And I just knew that.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: I remember seeing h I think it was Time magazine
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: had a cover. It was it is said the Gay Liberation.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: You know, it's ninety nine when that was starting. So
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: it was the first time I ever saw that when wait,
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: there's more people like me. So I knew I had
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: to get to like a big city. And once I
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: went to Boston. It was like, oh, yeah, you're gay.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: So I don't know, I could say I knew I
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: was gay at thirteen, I could say seventeen, I'm not sure. Okay,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: how did you end up kissing the girl? Well, she
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: was my best friend, you know, kind of that obsessive
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: best friend that and um, you know, we went everywhere,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: I did everything together when I was like sixteen. And
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: then on my seventeenth birthday, Um, you know, we're girls,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: are are lucky. We can you know, hey, we're having
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: a sleepover, you know. And well that sleepover on my
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: seventeenth birthday involved a kiss. So okay, but you know,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: literature and movies are riddled with people who kiss somebody
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: and then that person that they kiss pull away and
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: all kinds of negative things happened. So inspired no, it was.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: It was definitely, uh went both ways. And we were
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: we were tortured girlfriends my whole senior year of high school.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: We were you know, we couldn't tell anybody we we were.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: We were. We went to a church, you know, we
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: were involved in church, and and there was a lot
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: of ice. I saw a lot of I don't know,
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of fear, and it was
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of secrecy, and it's one of the reasons
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: that I really I'm really grateful that more of the world,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: that the people are coming out now and helping younger
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: gay people, because it's pretty tortuous, you know, to to
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: be different like that, and I feel like you have
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: no place and you have to keep something secret. So
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: you know, it was like that for a year, and
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: then when I left for Boston, it was it was
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: much better. I was. I was never in the closet
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: again after that. Once I went to Boston, I was okay.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: So you went to Boston, but still, I mean, I
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: was living in Los Angeles, which was relatively free Los Angeles,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: New York and San Francisco at the time. What was
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: it like being gay in Boston? Oh, fantastic. It was.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: It was disco. There was gay bars, you know down
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: the street from me. You know, a couple it was.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: It was still you weren't public about it, you weren't
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: out about it, but it was a strong community. Every
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: night you could go to the bar. I'd go after
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: I play, I'd go around the corner to the Prelude
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: that was the women's bars. Buddies was the men's bar
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: just up the street, and you know, it was it
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: was community. There was more people, okay a little earlier
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: than you. Uh. The biggest gay artists were in the
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: folk world, like Holly Neia. So who did you did?
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: You say? Well, you know, who did you model yourself over?
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: And you say, well, this being gay doesn't matter? And
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: I mean not to mention the fact that was Ian Wilson.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: But there weren't you know, a plethora of successful female
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: rock artists. Yeah, yeah, it was. Um, I didn't see.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't even know the female artists that the lesbian
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: music scene until I got to long Each, you know,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: in Los Angeles and was asked to play a women's
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: music festival. I didn't even I hadn't even heard of
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: Chris Williams and and you know, all these great lesbian artists,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: this strong sort of lesbian folks scene. Um. I was
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: a bit of an outcast because I was rocking and
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: playing and kind of different. But it was very exciting
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: to the audience, I um. And then other than that,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, I was I became a Janis Joplin fan
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: because I was like, that's the rock I want to do,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: you know. I and I would sing a lot of
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: her songs. Um. Other than that, you know, Linda Ronstaff
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: was one that I really, you know, enjoyed as a singer.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: But there was there was not a lot of women
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: their heart um Pat Benatar, you know, but there was
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: There really wasn't any that was doing exactly what I wanted,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: the songwriting and the acoustic rock and roll that I felt.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: I I didn't see that anywhere. Okay, you're living in
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: Long Beach, which has certainly been a gay stronghold since
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: I lived in southern California, and the world is different
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: because of the Internet now, but long Beach. I've a
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: friend who lives in Long Beach. Now I feel the
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: same thing, you know. You know, it might as well
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: be San Diego and the music businesses in West Hollywood,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: Hollywood now the West side of Los Angeles. To what
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: degree do you feel displaced? Do you try to integrate,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: do you try to make it? Yeah? I still felt
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: like I was outside of Hollywood. But I realized very
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: quickly when I got here in the early eighties that
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: you can't make any money unless you are a known artist.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: You you can go once a month, maybe you could
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: go play the the club, you know, the cabaret somewhere
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: or uh god, not even the troubadoor. You couldn't even
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: get a job at the trouba door. You but you know,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: there was a couple of bars you can play, but
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: it was paid to play. So there was no way
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: I was going to be able to make a living
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: and you know, work that sort of circuit. So I
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: started playing in the in the in these bars I
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: actually created that they didn't have music. I walked in
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: and said, hey, can I set up my equipment in
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: your corner and play and you can pay me twenty
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: five bucks? And they were like okay. So I played
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: it different different clubs, you know, a couple of nights here,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: a couple of nights there. I ended up playing five
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: nights a week and making a living. But again I knew, okay,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: no record executive is gonna accidentally walk into a lesbian bar.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: You know, that's just not gonna happen. So but I
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: did believe that as long as I would, you know,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: play my music and do a good job, then someday
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: someone's gonna know somebody who knows somebody who's brother is
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: in the music business. You know, it's going that's going
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: to happen. People are gonna talk, they're gonna bring people down.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: And that is what happened after about a year. Um
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: a soccer team, the women's soccer team that used to
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: come after the games on Saturday would come in and
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: have a few drinks and and watch me play. One
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: of their coaches was married to a manager in the
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: business and he used to manage bread. His name was
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: Bill Leopold. They finally talked him into coming down to
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: see me in a lesbian bar and he came in
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: and he was blown away and he said, look, this
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: is this is gonna be hard. I don't know if
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: it's going to take a year or ten years, but
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: I think that you can make it. And he signed
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: me as a as as my manager. He was my
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: manager for thirty years after that, and he he was
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: the one who brought He would bring record companies to
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: me in these bars. He said, look, you're making a living.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: I don't want to take you out of that. If
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: they have a problem with it, well there you go.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: And I tell you every single record in Los Angeles
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: over those five years came to see me and I
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: would go all the way up and then they bring
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: the head guy out. And then they'd all say no
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: over and over and over. And I don't know how
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: much was because I was gay or how much because
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: they just couldn't see the hit. But um, it wasn't
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: until Chris Blackwell he heard four songs. He came in
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: and heard four songs and went, well, yeah, I want
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: you on my label, and that was it. Boom done. Okay,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: So you never did the go to labels with your
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: cassette demo, get to know the people yourself. No, No,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: he was he Uh Bill Leopold had enough contacts and
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: knew enough heat, he had had enough artists that he
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: had friends and said hey, and then word of mouth
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: got around. No, I never did another demo. Well I
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: did do a demo, but they was always horrible on
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: demos because I didn't it wasn't me. I would always
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: let somebody else may and it was the eighties and
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: they were horrible eighties demos, and um, I just it wasn't.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: It was my live performance that was the best and
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: it still is. And um that's what Chris black Well
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: saw and you never wavered, you stayed this is the dream,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it. Yeah, And I was Hey. It
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: was enough of the dream to show up in a
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: bar to know that there were people there just to
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: hear me sing, which was huge because before, when I'd
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: be playing in bands, I was the background music. You know,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: in high school, I was the I wasn't the reason
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: you would go to the show. It was a dance,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: you know. We were we were our job was to
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: keep people dancing. This was me by myself in the
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: corner of a bar, and people would come sit and
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: watch me. And that was amazing and I could have
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: done that. I would still be doing that if, you know,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: if nothing else happened, because that was that was enough
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: of a dream of how people come to see me. Okay,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: legendarily you cut the album that was scrapped, and we
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: cut the album in a matter of days. Now that
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: I have you here, what exactly happened? Yes, that is
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: what happened. I Chris Blackwell comes in, and Chris Bogwell
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: is a man of mystery and and he's a wealthy
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: he owns Island Records and Island Pictures and he's just
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: this guy. And so he goes, yes, I want you
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: all my label and then he runs off to Jamaican
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: I don't see him for months, and so I'm like, okay,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: I'm supposed to make a record and I don't know how.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: And so, um, my manager knows a producer named Jim Gaines.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: Fine producer. He produced uh Steve Miller band. He engineered.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: He's more of an engineer that then became a producer
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: and you know, so he worked on you know Journey.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: He was a Northern California kind of San Francisco sound
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: kind of guy, and at the time, again it's there's
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: a very eight sound going on. So he brings these
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: musicians together, and um, I I insisted on certain drummer
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: and bass player that I had in my over my
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: years there in l A. I had done some demos
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: and they were they were just two of the greatest
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: musicians I've ever worked with. It was Craig Cramp, who
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: was this amazing studio musician, and Kevin McCormick, who's this
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: you know, Jocko Pastorius type bass player. He was amazing.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: And so I said, okay, well, I want these two
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: guys at least to you know, play, and so we
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: bring them out and then he hires a guitar player
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: and a keyboard player and I go into the studio,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: the famous record plant up in Saclito. You know, all
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: these famous people have been in there. I'm just so
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: delighted to being there. And he cuts the record and it's, um,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: it's you know, you play the track, and then the
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: keyboard player comes in and he lays it just hours
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: and hours of keyboard sounds. And I think there was
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: a bit of cocaine happening too, because it kind of
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: got kind of crazy. And then after days I would
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: come in and sing and my voice would just kind
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: of be all processed on the top. And so we finally,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: you know, got enough tracks together after a couple of weeks,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: and I took him to Chris Blackwell and he said, mmmmm,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: I hate this and I was like, oh no, I've
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: lost my chance. He was very very so when the
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: drummer in the Basebaer Kevin and Craig said, look, we
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: understand because they had been to the bar to hear
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: me sing live. They said, I think we know what
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: Chris Blackwell wants. Tell him to give us four days
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: in the studio. That's all we need, and we'll cut
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: an album for him. And so I went back to Chris.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: I said, please just give me four days cheap studio,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: l A. I don't care. Just four days, he said, okay,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: and he sent one of his people to bring in.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: I had already done the photo shoot for the album
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: cover and we had chosen that remember that red photo
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: of course, yeah, that you know, and I've got my
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: head up like that. He the woman actually brought it in.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: She put it on the the a console in the
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: studio and she said, Chris Blackwell wants you to make
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: this album. So it was that picture he wanted, that
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: rock and roll picture, that woman that he saw in
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: the bar. That's what he wanted. And so we went
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: in and drums, bass and guitar. That was It was
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: just me, Kevin and and Craig and we recorded all
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: day long and we recorded those ten tracks on that
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: first album. And we and we brought Wady walk Tell
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: in to just play some guitar, which you know, he's
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: legendary guitar player, so that you know, bring me some
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: water and and like the way I do, that's him playing.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: And we added a little bit of keyboard later just
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: for some pad turned it in, he loved it, and
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: the rest is history. And how did Nicolo get involved.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Craig and Kevin knew him, and they said, this is
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: the guy we want to engineer because Ko was a
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: madman and he would he would do Neil Young and
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: Crazy Horse, so he knew he knew how to make
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: a small live band sound huge, and that's exactly what
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: he did. He was so good. He he took all
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: the effects off my voice. If you listen, my voice
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: is so dry. It was. It was revolutionary at the time.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: Nothing else was sounding like that. So I was so
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: grateful for Nico. Okay, give Me Some Water? Was that
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: written before the red cut? Actually, yes, it was. It
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: was the original songs after after he didn't like that
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: first record. I had a few weeks before we went
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: back into the studio again, and that's when I wrote
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: bring Me Some Water. And I'm so grateful for that
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: because that ended up being, you know, the huge hit.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: And um, I just I just was sitting in my
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: living room and it was like it was kind of
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: like a blues riff, but it was, you know, I
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: sped it up a little bit and dat you know,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: just this bluesy rock riff, simple song. My girlfriend at
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: the time was off with somebody else. I was burning
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: Alive really easy to write the song. And when we
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: went back in the studio, said, hey, I've wrote this song.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: What do you think? And we just bamed. We just
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: recorded it and there it was. But let's just go
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: back to the inspiration. Your girlfriend? What was too? You know,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: what got you going? Uh? Well? I was, Um, how
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: do I say? I was? I was in a non
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: monogamous relationship. But we lived together and um for years,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: for four or five years we were together, and um,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: she was wonderful and I really liked her. But we
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: both you know, we were young, we were in our
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: twenties and you know, experimenting and moving, just meeting other people.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: And she would go off to these uh women's music
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: festivals by herself, and you know, I just knew that
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: she was because we had this open relationship. It's like, okay,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're doing. That's why bring me
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: some water? Is you know tonight? I feels so weak,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: but you know, all in love is fair. You know,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: I turned the other cheek. But man, this sucks, you know,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: and and I know you're only human. I haven't got
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: talking rome because I've had other girlfriends and all kinds
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: of stuff so and so it's just like I don't
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: like this. I can't. I can't say I'm totally been
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: done wrong because you know I'm doing it too. But
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: somebody bring me some more. I'm just I just don't
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: like this. Okay, So that's your first hit. Subsequent to that,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: how do you write your songs? Do you wait for
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: the inspiration? Do you sit down and say I need
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: ten songs? How do you do it? Oh? Well, by
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: that point I would write all day long. I would.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: I I had my job at the bar five nights
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: a week, but I'd wake up at you know, ten
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: eleven noon, and I'd have a couple of hours. I'd
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: make myself some food and I would just sit down
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: and write, and it was whatever I was going through.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: Sometimes like bring me some water and like the way
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: I do and songs like that. I had specific things
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: that I got to write about this. Other times it
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: was just mining, you know, what was inside? What were
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: my questions, what were my desires, what were my pains,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: what were my hopes? You know, and and just writing
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: from that. But I wrote all the time. That was then.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: But then as time plays out, how do you write? Oh? Yeah,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: much different now, mama has to make time. Okay, okay, kids, wife, family, managers, everybody.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: I'm working from ten to two, do not you know,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: and disrupt me. Yeah, I used to. I laugh about that.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: I said, Oh my god. I used to have my
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: notebooks all over my bed and I just all day long,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: just you know, just wrote, and I had nothing but that.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: Now I have to make time, and you make time.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: It's a start from scratch. Or are you in the
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: shower and you get an idea and then have to
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: run to the piano, or oh my gosh, why is
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: it that the shower is so inspirational? The shower and
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: driving the car the two times that I can't stop
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: and you know, write anything down is when the best
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: inspiration comes. But thank goodness, you know the last decade.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: We have a voice memo now because I can just
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: I can just turn that on and sing the idea
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: in there and then go back and check it later.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: That's that helps me a lot. I have notes and
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: voice memo that I keep all these little pieces of inspiration.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: Is there happening, whether I'm cooking dinner, I'm like, oh
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: my god, that's great, I need to uh and I
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: just catch it and then when I have the time,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: I'll take all those little pieces and I'll put them together. Okay,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: So is it more constructing the songs out of your
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: notes or is it more sitting there with a blank
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: piece of paper I need to write X number of
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: songs for a new album. M Well, I try. I've
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: always tried not to make it a job or make
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: it something I had to do. Uh. I'm grateful when
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: I get to have it. It's very meditative being by
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: myself and hooking up to that creative flow that is
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: there and then using my craft to make a song.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: That's that's my happy place, other than being on stage.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: That's that's the other place I love. And if it's
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: isn't happening, I go okay, not today, and I walk away.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: I don't ever, I'll never call it I have writer's
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: block or anything like that. It's it's it's just very
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: you know, this is what I you know I want
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: to do and um and so I I enjoy it
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: now very much. So okay, so you deliver the album
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: to Chris Blackwell, then what happens, Well, then then the
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: whole another world starts. I the album. Let's see I
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: my I get put on my first tour he Chris album.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: Chris black Will always thought that I would break huge
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: in England first, like like Chrissie Hines or Jimmy Hendrix
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: or there's something you know He's He thought that that's
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: where they were really gonna get me. So he put
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: me on as an opening act with a band called
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: Martin Stevenson and the Dainties, which was very unknown than two.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: So I'm the opener for an unknown band, so you
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: just you can't get lower on the wrong. And yet
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: I'm playing these little clubs in you know, I'm going
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: to Leads, you know, and and uh Birmingham and Manchester,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: and I'm playing all over England and in the meantime
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: the record is just starting to be played and every
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: English speaking country and some aren't, like you know, Holland
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: and Germany and but Australia and Canada and even America,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: all of them are playing my Bring Me Some Water. England, nothing, Zeros, nothing,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: And it's still to this day nothing, you know. And
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: I have like a small cult following there. I can tour,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: I can play London and maybe another city. But it
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: was so funny, so they took me off of that
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: tour when things started happening in America and I got
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: on my own tour and I played. I started playing
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: clubs and it was just wonderful. And then I got
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: a I got the opening act for Bruce Hornsby when
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: his music was just taken off. So I did some
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: of that. I came back to Europe. I opened for
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: Huey Lewis. That was big, and so you know, I
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: got to play the big things, and then my own
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: when I would play my own gigs, it went from
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: the clubs to theaters and it was just a slow,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: wonderful experience. Well, the record was successful pretty early in
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles. How long did you work that record and
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: then in the back of your mind you had to
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: cut another record? Oh well, I was. I was working
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: the record, and I had songs. I was already playing
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: songs live that weren't on the first record. I was
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: already playing No Souvenirs and Brave and Crazy and skin Deep.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: These songs were part of my act already, and so
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: I'm like, when do we get to go back in
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: the studio. I'm ready, I'm ready. So we were in
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: the studio recording the second or actually I was rehearsing
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: to go into the studio when I got the news
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: that I had been nominated for Grammy for Best Rock Female,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: and that that performance on that Grammys really sent my
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: career into another I just it went crazy after that,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: not crazy, but you know, it really took a big leap,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: and so I went back in the studio, recorded and
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: just kept I'm basically toured for eight years straight, just touring,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: going back in the studio for a couple of weeks,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: touring for a year, the album comes out, touring just
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: all the way up til my like you know six.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: That was basically the whole thing. So what's the backstory?
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: Do you can sleep while I drive? Oh? See? That
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: was I wrote that when I was on tour with
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: Martin Stevens in the Dainties. I'm in um England for weeks, right,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: and this is England and there is not Yeah, I mean,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: you know the English are are food challenged, right, they
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: just they just I mean I can only eat so
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: many Indian food dinners, you know. But I really was
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: missing America. I was missing American food. I was missing America.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: I was missing my relationship. And I knew, oh, a
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: non monogamous relationship where I'm gone for six weeks. I
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: know she's with somebody doing something and it you can
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: sleep while I drive. Was written in England and Germany
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: when I was thinking about a trip I had taken
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: in America with my girlfriend where we drove from California
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: to New York City and back and I played little
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: clubs along the way. This was right when Chris black
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: Will found me. But I had booked this little tour
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: for the summer because I had to get out of town.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: I was just crazy. So I was now in England
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: looking back, saying let's take that trip again. Come on,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: let's let's go do this and you can sleep while
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: I drive. It's like yet, I know she's she's you know,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: fading away. So and in the end I'm like, well,
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: if you won't take me with you, I'll go before
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: night is through and you can sleep while I leave
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: and I drive. Okay, that album has some success, not
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: as much as the debut album. Third album comes out
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: theme Team, They're really first, how do you decide to
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: be nude on the cover or the album? That was
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: just that was me. It was the same photographer I
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: had used for the second album, so I was very
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: familiar with the wonderful guy. I don't remember his name
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: right now, but um, it was. It was just me
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: and him in the studio and we've been taking pictures
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: and I'm of course an absolute Springsteen you know, fan fanatic,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: and one of my favorite pictures is him turning around
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: and that guitar slinging wright that and so I said,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: I said, dude, I wanna I wanna like kind of
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: give a nod to that picture, but I want to
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: do my own way. I said, what if I take
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: my shirt off? And he's like cool, but you know
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: I'm not. You know, it was basically, okay, you turned
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: around and I took I took it off, and I
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: got I got already and he was, you know, twenty
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: behind me taking the picture. So and there was no
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: one else there, so there wasn't anything like that, but
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: it was my idea. We did like, you know, ten
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: shots of of that, and we then we did some
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: with my shirt on. And then when he developed the pictures,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: I was like, that's cool, come on, let's do that.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: And I didn't realize that there was a tiny because
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: it was it was for C d S, which is
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: you know, it was a tiny picture. It wasn't until
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: I had a huge poster of it that I realized, oh,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: there's a little bit of my girls showing right, you know, right,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: just just a tiny bit. Many women, almost all women,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: are anxious about being photographed without clothing. Was that's something
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: that crossed your mind? Was there retouching the ultimate product? No? No, no,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: we let it. We totally let it fly. And it
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: wasn't to me. It was just my back, you know,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: it wasn't. I didn't think of it as like, oh,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: you know, naked e like you know, a playboy or something.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: It was there was some power in it. You know,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: my hair was all long, there was my guitar. I
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: just didn't have a shirt on, and um, it seemed
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: powerful to me. I remember at the time when it
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: came out, there was a moment when Walmart was threatening
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: to not put it on its on the shelves, and
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: I was like what And I had to like call
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: the head of the Walmart and I talked, and I
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: think it was a woman and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: it's and I calmed her down and they ended up
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: selling it. But man, if you don't have Walmart, you're
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: you're in trouble. Absolutely. So from the outside, it looks
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: like the third album is not as commercially successful as
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: the two previous albums. Was that your sensation or it
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: wasn't that way? From the inside, it was my sensation.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: At this point, I had UH. I had a certain
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: amount of success, but it was still that sort of
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: I had not broken through rock RADI I played rock radio,
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: but I had no pop airplay. I had UH. And
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: then there was this new you know, grunge music was
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: coming out, and I'm like and and alternative, and I
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: was like, hey, I'm alternative. I'm about as alternatives you
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: can get, you know. And I hadn't come out as
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: gay yet. But I at that point, after three albums,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I'm done writing genderless and and speaking
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: in you know, riddles and things, you know. And and
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: I told myself, I'm going to come out publicly on
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: this next record. I'm just gonna do it. And I
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: had a plan to do it on the Arsenio Hall
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: Show because he would actually sit and talk to me.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: He was the only late night talk show hosted otherwise
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: you know, Letterman and Leno, you just you. I would
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: just sing and and that's it, and I Ar Senior
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: would talk to me. So I was like, Okay, when
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: the album comes out, I'm going to come out on
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: their center hall. Well, in the meantime i'm making the album,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: I'm working with some of the great LGBT leaders, uh,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: you know in our community, Orbis Evade and and Alan
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: hergot in these and they keep calling me to do oh,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: come do a benefit for this. And I'm really deep
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: in the in the political because AIDS is raging, you know,
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: and it's it's this is nineteen and I'm feeling very
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: called by the community. And so I helped them. And
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: in ninety two I helped uh the Clinton Gore campaign
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: and all the the gay communities that was coming together
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: to help them get elected. And so I do a
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: bunch of benefits and I'm politically involved, and I get
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: invited to the Clinton inauguration and so um, when I
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: played the night before the inauguration, I do that. I'm
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: one of the people in the show. It's Michael Jackson
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: and Ray Charles and all these great singers and things,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: and and I'm part of it and I'm loving that.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: And then the next day is the inauguration. And then
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: that night at the inaugural balls, and the gay community
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: is having a triangle ball. It's the first gay inaugural ball.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: Was the first time we were invited to Washington, and
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: so I'm there with my friends and I get handed
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: a microphone and I say, oh, I'm just so happy
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: to be lesbian, and bam, that was me coming out.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: The next day, you know, the newspapers are all, you know,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: Clinton inauguration, and there's a little tiny little blurb says
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: and at the gay triangle ballm Melissa Ethridge comes out.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: And so that started a whole another area of my
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: life that people wanted to talk about now. And so
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: once my album came out a few months later, I
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: had a whole new platform. I was out, I had recorded,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: I had gone to the studio without Um. Kevin wasn't
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: going to produce anymore. Kevin had been co producer on
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: my first three and UM. We were trying something new.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: Chris Blackwell said, you know, I want to bring in
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: Hugh Pagum, who had done Sting and so many great records.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: He was a very successful producer, and it was a
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: different experience. We worked at A and M and UM.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: You know, making these these songs, and so when Yes
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: I Am comes out, it's kind of okay, it's a
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: different ballpark. The record company is ready to make it,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: take a jump, make it, you know, be big. And
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: it took over a year for anything to really for
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: it all to go. And I never had a top
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: ten hit on Yes I Am, but I had the
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: record for a long time of the of Come to
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: My Window was the held the record for being on
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: the charts for the longest time because everyone never played
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: it together. You know how you get all the radio
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: stations and then you get your number one. I was
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: always you know, number twenty or thirty or something, but
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: every radio station ended up playing my music. So it's
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: this sort of long haul, like Yes I was never
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: nominated for a Grammy, you know, the album wasn't. The
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: song Come to My Window was, And I did win
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: for that, but um, you know, but that was a
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: whole new chapter. I had a whole new band because
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: Kevin got mad and left, so I put a whole
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: new band together. So after that third album, making of
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: and the release of Yes I Am, was a whole
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: new chapter in my life. Yeah, Okay, whose decision was
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: it to be and I used my air quotes here
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: people can't see closeted. Prior to the fourth album, that
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: was uh yeah, that was sort of you know, the
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: first of the late eighties. You you didn't come Nobody
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: came out. No one was coming out. You know. It
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: wasn't something you did. It was either you were either
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: found out there was either a tabloid that that found
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: you and did a story. But I wasn't famous enough
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: for tabloids to come chasing after me, and um. I
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: remember having a meeting with my uh my record company,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: in my management. We're all sitting around to you know,
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: a conference table, and they said, well, what are we
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: gonna do about this gay thing? And I was like
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: this gay. I said, well, I'm not gonna be anything
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: but what I am. I'm certainly not going to, you know,
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: pretend to date the boy ors thing. That's not gonna happen.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: They said, well, okay, is as long as you don't
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: flag wave was what they said. And I was like, okay,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: you know whatever that means. And of course four years
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: later I'm flag waving. But you know, at that point,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: by the time I came out, I remember calling them
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: all and going okay, well, um, I think I came out,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: so I just want you all to know, and they're like, okay,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: we'll tell publicity, we'll just take it from there, and
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: they made it something that worked for me and I
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: went from selling less than a million albums to six
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: million albums. So it was a great thing. But it's
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: not like from you telling the story. It's not like
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: you were hiding it. You were involved with the organizations.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: How did you get involved with Clinton's campaign? Right? Well, Um,
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: that was that was definitely the gay organizations. And at
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: the time, I swear it was sort of like, don't ask,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: don't tell. No one asked me, so I didn't have
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: to lie. I didn't and I didn't tell. I didn't
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: open up any then going hey I'm gay now and
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about it. It just wasn't ever asked. So, Um,
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: these organizations, the in g LTF and the Human Rights Campaign,
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: all these people were so these great political leaders of
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: the of the community, we're calling me in and that's
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: when they said, look, you know, this is the first
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: presidential candidate that even mentioned gay and lesbian. First time
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: we've ever heard it come out of a politician's mouth,
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: and he's willing, and he made of course, he made
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: the community all these promises and ultimately broke them all.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: But at least he you know, acknowledged that we were
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: a voting base that he wanted to uh have on
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: his side. So we got out. I I played uh
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: many benefits for him and just raised a lot of money.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: Well as a lay person from the outside, he was
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: constantly mentioned name you, you know, bringing up what kind
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: of relationship did you actually have with him? And after
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: he got elected, what was your relationship? Like? Oh, well,
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: I saw him. I went to visit in when I
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: did Woodstock, so that was I went to visit him
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: in the in the White House. And he was just
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: such a He was such a it's hard to explain
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: he was. And I'm sure you've always heard people talk
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: about what a figure he was, what an imposing figure,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: But he was very warm and very Arkansas. So you
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: always felt like you were his best friend. But still
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: you were just in awe of him, and he held
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: that power and he was very much like that. So,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: you know, the couple of times that I did meet him,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: I was still like that, you know, because he just
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: had this thing about him, you know, subsequent to Clinton.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: W Actually he's thirty years ago. Now to what degree
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: have people called you for political activity and have you
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: participated since then? Oh my gosh, Well, I like to
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: al Gore, and I became actually closer than I ever
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: was with Clinton because I I tell people I helped
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: get him elected in two thousand to be president. But
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: of course we know what happened, and you know he
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: Uh so I helped him with his campaign. I've helped
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: oh you know Senators Feinstein and Boxer in California. I've
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: I'm you know, any any any politician who who has
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: a track record of you know, lgbt Q rights and
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: and things like that. I will. I don't do it
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: as much anymore because I was doing a lot and
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: it sort of waters it down. But um, you know,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: I I definitely worked for Obama. I definitely helped him.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: That was important to me. And um I did some
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: work for him lurry, you know, and uh you know.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: And so that brings us right up today. Okay, well,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: you know we're living in this tumultuous time. Is there
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: any candidate that you would be aligned with for the
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: national stage? Well, as we as we I mean, as
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: we come into the next election. Yes, yeah, well, um,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: I do know Gavin Knewsom very well. I see him
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: making moves and kind of conceee where that's going. So
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: I would definitely support him. He not only has been
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: LGBTQ friendly, but he's he's a cannabis friendly, which which
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: really we need to move forward on that and um,
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: you know, women's rights absolutely, so I would definitely help him. Um.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: You know, at this point, you know, as I look
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: at the political parties, you know, I threw my weight
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: behind you know, Joe Biden because it was important to
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: get him elected, even though he was way behind on
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: on cannabis reform and everything. It was just really important
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: to get you know too, because I you know, I
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: understand politics enough to you know that it's important to
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: get that party in power. So and that's kind of
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: how I'm approaching it now. A good friend of mine,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: had the Mazier, is running against Andy Harris for Congress
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: in Maryland, and so I give her a lot of
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: help because she's actually a very close friend of mine.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: But um, yeah, you'll see me out there. I think
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: it's important to you so support How did you how
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: did you meet al Gore and established such a relationship.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: Oh well, I met him through when he was vice
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: president and he he was always of the two. He
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: was so very gay friendly. He really it became close
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: friends with friends of mine who ran the Human Rights
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: Campaign and camp and fund and um. And so then
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: after after I helped him, I was on the patreo
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: with him for a while after we did that, and
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: he lost and then he threw his work into the
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: environment and his his climate change. Uh. He called me
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: in like two thousand five and and said, look, they're
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: they're making a documentary of my slide show on climate change.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: And I said, you know, to myself, I'm like, well
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: that'll be shown in some high schools or something, you know,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: and and um. And he wanted a song for it,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: and I said, well, I would be honored. I would
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: be honored to write a song for it. So, you know,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: so they put, you know, put it together and they
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: sent it to me, and I was like, this is
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: really good. And they were called it, you know, an
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: Inconvenient Truth, and I was like, well, that's a really
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: difficult title to work into a song, but I'll do
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: my best. And so I wrote I need to wake
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: Up and to my surprise. It ended up winning an Oscar.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: And I ended up winning an Oscar, and that was
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: a complete surprise to me. I had no idea that
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: that little project was going to do that. So what
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: was it like winning an Oscar? Yeah? That was fun.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: That was a dream come true. It was it was
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: after I had gone through cancer, because cancer really really
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: changed my life and and I just stopped, you know,
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: chasing this sort of I need to be the biggest
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: rock star. You know. It changed that sort of dream
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: into wait, you know, I need to do what makes
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: me happy and what fulfills me and what makes me
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: grow and and um. And I remember thinking, wow, okay,
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: what what are some things that I do want to
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: experience that I have? And I remember thinking, well, winning
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: an Oscar, that's one that was a childhood you know.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: I watched I always watched the Oscars. That was the
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: the height of the entertainment industry was the Oscars. And
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: so man, when I got nominated blew my mind and
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: I was just I couldn't believe it. And then when
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: I finally went there and and and realized, okay, I
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: am finally at this place that I always thought was
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: like the epitome of of of the entertainment business. I
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: realized this is just a TV show, that all this
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: is a TV show. Most of these people really don't
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: know each other. I knew more people than I thought.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, by that point, Steven Spielberg was a good
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: friend of mine. I knew you, I knew Okay, how
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: do you know? Okay, how do you do that? Because
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: I knew Tom Hanks, because I knew how did I
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: meet Tom Hanks? Uh? We shared the same lawyer, went
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: to dinner with it just because I lived in Hollywood,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: and you just you Brad Pitt was a good friend
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: of mine because I knew him before he was famous,
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: and because I hung out there was this young Hollywood Uh,
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: you know, a group of us that always hung out
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: together and as our fame group, like Ellen. I knew
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: Ellen when she was stand up Rosie when she was
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: a stand up. You know these I just knew all
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: these people. We've gone through the eighties and the nineties
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: together and so um so I knew half the people
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: at the Oscars. I knew John Travolta. You know, he's
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: the one who announced my name when I won. And
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: so at the end of the night, you know I'm
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: carrying it's the only place that they'll actually give you
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: the award that you could take it with you. And
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: it's heavy, and so my arm was sore by the
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: end of the night because I was carrying it all night.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: But you're not gonna let go because there it is
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: as my oscar. Hey, you know. And I had a
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: great time. It was a wonderful evening. You know, I
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: smoked a joint with Sean Penn and Harry Dean Stanton
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: and Bill Maher. You know, I just had this great
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: experience and that was that was like, look I did
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: that that, you know, let's bucket list off. That's great.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: But I realized it's not really a place. It's it's
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: a TV show. Where's the oscar right now? Oh, it's
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: an office on my on my shelf next to my
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: two Grammys. Okay. What was Kevin McCormick angry about. Well,
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: he was angry because, um, he didn't get to produce
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: the fourth record. And he was angry because Chris Blackwell
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: and Denny Cordell, who was the executive producer of the album,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: replaced all his parts with Pino Palladino coming in playing bass.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: Who's the greatest bass player in the world. And that
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: made him mad, and so he went away. Okay, he'd
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: already recorded the parts and then you know, re recorded them. Yes,
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: it was it was like, that's the businessman, that's the business.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: And what was it like working with you, Pagum And
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: what did he add? Oh? He was great. He was
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: so English, he was so uh. You know, he would
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: ask for his tuna tuna salad. He would complain because
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: you know, they bring in hot water for tea and
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: he's like, no, no, no, you bring in a kettle.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: I need it boiled. You know. It was very English
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: and um really brilliant with sound, just really creating a
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: live sound. And he let me. He did. He took
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: my acoustic um Ovation guitar, which is not the best acoustic.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: It's great electric, it's great on stage, but acoustically, you know,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: there's you know, your Martins and your Gibsons sound better.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: But he he made that Ovation sound wonderful. He took
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: the time. He took the time to find exactly the
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: right microphone. He came in one day and just microphones
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: were lined up and we just tried one at a
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: time to see which work. He was very meticulous and
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: he loved music. How did you end up playing an
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: Ovation which first had a bad reputation, then the reputation evolved. Yeah, well,
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: you know it was made from helicopter parts, you know,
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: but it fits. I was a young woman, young girl.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: I was fourteen when I played my first one, and
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: I was in love with twelve string guitar. So I
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: had bought a guild which was as big as me
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: and I couldn't I could barely get my arms around it,
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: and it was certainly really hard to play. And so
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: I took it back to the guitar store and that
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: I brought it from, and I knew the guy was
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: a local, you know, leven Worth store, and he said, well,
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: there's this new guitar called the Ovation guitar. And he
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: put one in my lap, and it's rounded back and
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: it had a smaller neck, and I went, this is
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: a guitar I can play and I could just plug
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: it straight in. It was electric, so I could use
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: it in my band. So it was perfect and I
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: have always played one since then. Okay, I was totally
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: aware of you, but I knew the fourth album was
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: gonna go. This is significant from my perspective. I'm interested
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: in your perspective. You went on Letterman and you played
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: m the only One, and you were you know, your
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: foot was stopping in time. It was like you really
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: meant it. It It was mind blow we I've only seen,
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: said O'Connor did her theme song from In the Name
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: of the Father on Letterman the Thief of My Heart
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: or something like that. Those are the two best performances
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: I ever saw on So was that just another night
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: or did you feel something too? Ah? Well, Letterman had
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: always been a supporter of mine. He was a fan
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: of mine, and so he was the first one I
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: ever played, Bring Me Some Water. He was the first
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: national television show I ever had, was the old one
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: he had before he you know, the late, Late, Late
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: Show or whatever he did. Yeah, And so when I
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: finally played I'm the only One, I was excited. I
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: was excited because I loved that song. That song was,
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: that was rock, that was me, and I just knew.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: I was like, that's why we thought that was to
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: be the first single. And well it was the first single,
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: but it didn't catch on and people started playing come
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: to My Window, and so they switched to come to
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: My Window. And then later released I'm the Only One again.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: But first I thought because I was like, that's that's
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: got to be the song. That's the great, you know,
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: I love that people are gonna love it. And so
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: I went on Letterman and it was just I just
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: wanted to grab people by the throat and go, you're
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: gonna remember this, and and I was very excited. I
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: knew it was a big time and I've recently actually
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: on YouTube I saw that performance again and I was like, man,
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: I I was serious. I really I'm meant to whatever
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: I was doing. Okay, you work with you, then you
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: end up working with John Shanks. How do you end
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: up working with John Shanks? Ah, well, let's go back
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: to the first album, and let's go back to Kevin McCormick,
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: who I went to go see Kevin McCormick's band at
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: the time in he's playing and his band is called
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: the Uninvited and the band consists of him, Fritz Luik
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: on drums, who I eventually end up playing with. Craig
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: Cramp didn't tour with me. I Fritz played with me,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: and so Fritz was on my second and third and
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: fourth album. He plays on all those albums and Scott
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: Thurston who ends up being a Tom Petty in the
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: in the UH you know those guys, and UM, and
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: the guitar player is this kid from l A named
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: John Shanks. And so for my very first tour in
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: I I saw John and I went, I want him
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: to be UH in my band. So I tell people
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: I discovered John Shanks at Madam Wong's right, Madam WANs
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: in Santa Monica. He comes, he does my first tour
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: with me, and he had some troubles, him and Kevin
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: and but he had some trouble so he went away.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: And then when Kevin left and and I needed to
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: put a new band together for the Yes I M tour,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: I run into John Shanks at some little place and
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: he's he's got his life together, he's trying to get
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: back into the business. He's playing for UM for a
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: singer that I don't know, but he was kind of
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: playing with someone and I said, well, I'm about to
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: go on tour, come be my guitar player again. So
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: from nine three to about two thousand, it's about two
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: thousand one, he was my guitar player. He played, he
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: did my whole Yes I Am tour Your Little Secret,
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: and then he then when it came time to do
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: my Breakdown album, I tried to work with somebody and
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: it didn't work, and John said, look, let me produce.
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: I've been doing, you know, a couple of little projects,
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: but let me produce your album. So I said okay,
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: And Breakdown was his first full album. So you did
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: discover him. I did totally. And from that he just
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: went off. He was he's winning Grammys, he's doing stuff
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: and and him and I have worked together on and
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: off many many of my He did Fearless Love, He's
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: did songs on Lucky, you know, He's done a whole
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff with me, Medicine Show. Yeah. Okay. So
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: ultimately Ellen comes out, But prior to that and for
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: years thereafter, you are the face of gay in America.
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: Is that a good thing or a not good thing? Personally? Well,
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: personally it was, it was good for a while in that. Um.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: The part that was hard is that for a couple
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: of years, that's all I talked about. Any interview was
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: about being gay, and they were asking me questions that
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: everyone wanted to know about being gay, because no one
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: was willing to sit down and talk to anybody about
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: being gay. And so it was like you know, Rolling Stone, uh,
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: you know, every newspaper of every town, everything would talk
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: to me. And then I would finally do like you know,
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: the Advocate that out magazine, these gay publications. So I
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: talked about being gay for years and it was like, okay,
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm a musician too, we can talk about
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: the music too, and the goodness. You know, when Ellen
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: finally came out and it started to the other people did,
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: it was like, okay, I'm not the only one anymore.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: And and then it it changed. And once I actually
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: went through cancer in two thousand four, then I started
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: talking about cancer. So I had cancer, gay and music.
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: And now you know, cancer, gay music, cannabis. And now
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: it's cancer, gay music, cannabis, opioid addiction. You know. So
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: I have lots of things that I can talk about.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: But for a while there it was it was just gay.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: And it what got really hard is when I went
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: through my first divorce, because I was, you know, being
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: held up as this gay you know, this perfect relationship
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: and we had children and then it all went away.
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: It was bad, So I didn't that was hard. You know,
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: the story that came out was that you were with
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: the therapist. And Julie said, well, I'm not really feeling
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: the gay thing? Is that? Is that true? It was
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: part of it. She was this kind of an unhappy person. Um.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: She did go on to marry a man and uh,
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: spend most of that in straight relationships. Although you know,
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: I would say she's bisexual. She um, yeah, And I'm
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: less concerned what was going through her head? This was
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: going through your head to what the we were you shocked?
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: And were you shocked in the therapist? Did you see
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: it coming? What was your Yeah? Yeah, she yeah, I
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: did see it coming. She Oh, you know where do
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: you think? So songs like I'm the only One you
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: know came from and and you know, and someone told
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: me you lose them how you get them? And I
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: met her when she was married. She was married to
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: a movie star. I met her that way. I'm married
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: to a man, you know, And so now I know, oh,
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: you're not ever going to change these people. And so
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: she kind of had that thing going on where she
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: was always looking somewhere else and then some something else,
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: and you know, it would be good for a few months,
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: and then oh something would happen, and and you know,
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: I was on the road a lot, and that was
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: just gonna it's it's just And then I thought when
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: we had kids that I was like, okay, so you're
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: you're you're done with all that, right, We're having kids
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna be together. Oh yeah. Well after we
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: had kids, of course, now she's not happy. She's not happy.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: And when someone's not happy, you're just okay. There's nothing
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: I can't make her happy, you know. So how did
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: you discover you had cancer? Ah? Well, you know, after
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: that breakup, that was really depressing. I got and you know,
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: I I was it was just it was just hard.
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: And music was changing. It's just two thousand, you know,
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: everything's changing. Everything seems to be just falling apart. In
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: this family that I thought I had, all of a sudden,
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: I only see them half the time. It was just horrible.
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm really depressed. And I start a new relationship
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: with a totally gay person, you know, and I'm like, okay,
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: I'm doing the right thing now, and but I'm I'm
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: not happy now. I've I've lost all my Mojoe and everything,
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: and and um, I uh, I actually I um I had.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: I started right before I was diagnosed. I started, uh
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: smoking cannabis, I had. I had never really done it much.
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: I did it socially a little bit of my life,
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: but I I started like doing it every weekend and
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: it was really fun and I enjoyed myself on it.
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: Just stopped for a second. Were you a drinker? No,
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: I was not a drinker. You were. You were basically clean.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: So what was this transition into smoking cannabis on the weekends. Well,
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: my my partner at the time was I was like, yeah,
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: I like this as something someone had act actually given
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: me as a gift, a whole bunch. And I was like, okay,
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: well let's once, you know, when the kids go to
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: the other house, let's try this. And I had so
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: much fun and it was like this is great. And
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: so after a few weeks um I said, have you
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: ever done, like, uh, pot brownies or cookies or something?
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: And she's like no, And I'm like, let's bake cookies.
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: And she's a baker, and so she we end up, oh,
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: well we're supposed to put this much in. Well, if
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: that much is good, we'll let's put a bunch of
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: So she makes these amazing cookies and I like eat
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: three of them because they're delicious. And I have what
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: I now call a heroic dose of cannabis. And I
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: am one of those people. You hear them all that,
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: you hear recordings of people who are like, I'm dying.
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: I've taken too much, you know, I'm too high and
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: I'm dying. Because it was this mind blowing, mind altering journeys.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: So I have this huge spiritual awakening, a light, you know,
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: and and I started going, wait a minute, my life
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: is totally not what I think it is. And a
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: few weeks later, I'm diagnosed with cancer. So it's like
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: I I become spiritually a where I have this new
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: sort of outlook on life. And then oh, I've got
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: this disease, this this thing. And so I walked through
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: the whole process of of cancer. I stop touring, I
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: stop everything, my whole life stops for the first time
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: in what thirty years, you know, and I I find
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: this all my answers sort of, all all my inspiration
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: comes back, just roaring back after after I really I
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: go through cancer. I I do about five chemo treatments.
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: I'm bald. I sing on the grammys. I have this
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: wonderful experience, and I realized that my health is absolutely
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: the most important thing, and my health it has everything
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: to do with my happiness. So my happiness is the
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: most important thing. And I start walking this journey with that,
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: and I start enjoying cannabis so much more regularly. It
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: like gets me through chemotherapy. It helps me with pain
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: and depression and appetite. And I through that and I
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: become a huge plant medicine advocate and I still am.
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm very and it's part of what Ethics Foundation
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: is is um we we helped research for people to
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: get people off of opioids, and you know your heroines
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: and methodones and thing they by using a nature, nature
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: based medicines and plant medicine. So that so the the
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: cannabis and the cancer sort of hand in hand. Was
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: this whole life changing experience for me. How did you
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: literally find out did you find a lump? No? I
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: had actually just had a physical a few months before
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: and everything was fine, and I was out on tour
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: and it was really really not happy. And I was
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: in the shower in the morning and actually felt it
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: on my breast and went, wow, that wasn't there yesterday.
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: It felt like I didn't hadn't noticed it. And it
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: was a lump. It was a big lump too. And
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: then I just went to the doctor and I was like,
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: what's this and they were like, I think I know
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: what that is. And it was wonderful. The the woman
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: who biopsy did this doctor I hadn't realized she had
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: had a double mestecht to me and she goes, look,
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: you're gonna be fine. This is the worst that can
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: happen to you. And she showed me her double mistech
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: to me and I was like, okay, great, I'm gonna
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: be fine. I'm gonna die, so let's, you know, let's
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: move through this and see what happens. So you never Okay,
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: I have cancer and I got it subsequent to me
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: getting it twelve thirteen years ago. A lot of my
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: friends have got it. I would say I got it
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: early with the air quotes. But the first thing that
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: happens is, and I'm good, is that you realize you're
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: not gonna be here forever. You're gonna die. Yeah, we
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: are mortal, Yes, we are mortal. Where we are, We're
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: all gonna die. That's something and and for us to
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: spend our whole lives afraid of when we're gonna die
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: is ridiculous. That life is worth living every we're all
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: gonna die. Okay, that's a given. So let's just let's
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: just leave that over here and then be in the moment,
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: be right now. And being in the moment is a
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: huge healer for all the worries I think. I think
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: my cancer came from worry, from sadness, from uh, my
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: eating habits and and so much of of you know,
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: putting myself last, putting everybody else first, and trying to
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: fix everybody else. And finally when I just pulled that
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: all back into myself, that's when I really found health
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: and power. Now, you're a very outgoing, verbal person, magnetic,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: but you mentioned and of course anybody would be depressed
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: with what you went through with those times. Are you
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: generally prone to depression or you've always upbeat like this?
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: I'm upbeat like this is my natural state. I love.
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: I believe in the goodness of the world. I believe
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: in in happiness. I believe that the point of living
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: is to find happiness and joy. I believe joy is
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: is is a human uh blessing in a state that
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: that one is in and and is where health and
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: longevity starts. Okay, let's go back to something you said
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: earlier about the change in the music business really started
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: with Napster the year two thousand. As time goes by,
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff changes. The heritage artists from the seventies,
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: they put out new albums, crickets, the most famous people,
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: most of them stop making records. Then as we ultimate
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: believe all to Spotify. A lot of them are and
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of people who made it before or anti Spotify,
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: But all of a sudden we wake up and rock
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: is not the dominant format it was previously. What are
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: your thoughts about all this, Well, having been a musician
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: through all of it, I I have seen how I
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: reach people change, you know. I no longer there's no
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: there's no rock radio. There's not even record companies really
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: anymore that do that. They're all focused on fifteen year olds,
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: you know, and where they can sell this product. And
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: then I realized that, oh I was a product to them,
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: and I'm I like, when we started this conversation, it's
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: I can reach my fans directly, and I know and
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: my whole goal has been to be an artist that
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: when they hear I'm coming to town, they're like, oh,
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: that's a good show. I want to go see that.
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: I've either seen it before or I've heard that this
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: is a good time. And if I have that reputation
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: as a live artist, you can't replicate that. So I
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: think in this business the winners are the rolling stones. No,
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: they're not making any new records and we're not hearing
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: them on the radio, but they are selling out you know, stadiums. Uh,
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: these artists. Because you cannot replicate live music on a
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: computer in your bedroom. You know you can. You can
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: make songs that people like to hear, and you can
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: make moods and you can do that, and that's all good.
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: It's the longevity lives in the artists that connect with people,
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: that treat them coming to see them as as a gift.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: I'm so grateful every audience that comes to see me,
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: but every audience I play for, no matter where, no
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: matter how small, those I want those people to want
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: to come back and see me. So that's my career,
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: is the live performing and and I get I still
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: get to make albums. I still get to to make music.
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: And release it and have new things and presented. I still,
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: you know, I'll present that. Of course every show, I'm
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: playing my my hits, because you know, we all want
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: to see come to my window and wave our arms
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: and stuff and and that's part of it. But I
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: my job is to entertain you and for you to
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: leave and go, oh, that was great. I can't wait
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: to see it again. So you're still just as motivated
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: to record music. Yeah, it's different. And I'm actually in
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: a place right now where I'm in a in a
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: writing cycle where I am writing. But I do have
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: the question of wow, do I just release one song
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: at a time? Now? Is the album actually dead? You know?
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: And I have realized that I have a choice. I
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: can I can do ten songs and put out an album,
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: or I can do four and put out an EP.
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: I can just release one. I have all these choices.
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: So as I'm writing, I'm gonna see my preference is
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: to do an album because I think I think my
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: my fans love to get a collection of songs that
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: represent what I'm going through and at the times, and
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: something they can sit and listen to and have an
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: hour with, you know. So Deborah Tan and this is
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: not a pop psychologist is a degreed person. She wrote
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: a book you just don't understand difference between men and women,
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: and you talked about men are always needing a career
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: arc that goes up, where women can go up and
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: go down. So you have these huge triumphs which to
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: a great degree are not available to anybody anymore. How
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: does it feel do you look back and say, well,
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: I was there and now I'm here. How do you go? Oh?
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: Very much so, because looking back is is not I
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: don't ever compare myself to you know what. I celebrate
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: what I used to do. I look at I still
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: got goals in front of me. I just got offered
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: uh to play at stage Coach a festival here, and
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: that's my That's the first big festival of this sort
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: of festival era, you know, the last ten twenty years
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: that has asked me to play. And I'm excited. I'm like, yes,
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: I finally have reached that level. And I'm always I'm
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: always looking to expand and and I love that I have.
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: I have younger people coming to see me. The younger
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: generation is finding me, and so there's still so much
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: to do and so much I want to do? And
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: how much long are you going to do this? Oh,
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: I'll go until I can't. I will never say I'm
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: to retire. You'll never hear me say that, because I
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: think that's silly. I mean, how do you retire from music?
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: You know? And and I see my older peers, you know,
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: as long as Bruce goes, I'm gonna go definitely, But
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: who knows I will go? I I you know, I
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: did you see you know Joni Mitchell just let the
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: Newport you know. Yeah, that was beautiful. It made me cry.
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: It was just gorgeous. You know. I'm my job is
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: to keep myself healthy and have joy and longevity in
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: my in my life. Well, you talk about stage coach.
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: You know, this term from the movie has been overused,
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: but it represents the concept better than anything else, which
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: is bucket list. Anything you haven't done personally as well
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: as in your career that you would like to do
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: in the time you have left. Not a whole lot,
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: because really I've done, you know, I got the Grammys,
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: I got the Oscar I uh oh, I think I'd
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: like a tone. I'd like an egot. I would like
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: to be one of the under twenty people who have
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: an egot. I think that would that that's something that
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: I'd like. Yes, well, you know a lot of acts
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: of your vintage UH have gone to Broadways. That's something
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: on your horizon, Yes, sir, that is, that's something we're
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: working on right now. You might hear about that in
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna do
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: something the end of this year off Broadway and hopefully
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: bring it to Broadway. And you're very involved in your career.
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: But what do you do when you're not working? I
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: do my family. I love my family and I do
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of that, and I do a lot of
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: um gardening. I love my I just love my house.
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: When i'm I love traveling with my my family. It's
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: mostly my family and work. That's really what I am.
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: And anywhere you haven't been you want to go. I
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: would like to go to UH, South Africa. I know
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: I have fans there, I have fans in Brazil, never
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: been there, and the Asian country has never really been
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: there either. Okay, Melsta, this has been wonderful. I want
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: to thank you for taking the time. You know, you're
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: very articulate, very positive, a joy to talk to. Thank
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: you so much. What a pleasure to go through my
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: life with you, my friend. It was great for me too,
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: So until next time. This is Bob Left sex