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Paul Dean · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set's podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Paul Dean of lover Boy. Paul,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: do you have a new lover Boy movie?
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Tell me about it. You know, we recorded this back
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: in eighty eighty one, I guess eighty two, yeah, because
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: it's called Live in eighty two. So yeah, it was
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: eighty two in Vancouver where I am right now, and
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: we recorded it on film. I think that probably the
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: only thing that we've ever recorded on film, other than
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: maybe a local thing boy back, but nothing that I
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: had had access to. And it was it was released
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: back in the day on super low Deth. You know
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: what it was like back back in eighty two. It
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: was one dot per inch kind of definition of pretty low.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: And I somehow got hold of the film. There was
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: something like fifteen cans of film, and I can't remember
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: how I got them. And I carried them around and
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: I lived in I lived in Calgary, and I lived it,
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: I lived everywhere, and I carried these things around with me.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Moved four or five houses. And what am I carrying?
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: These big can It was like three big cans, like
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: massive cans with all these little guys inside I don't
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: even think I looked inside them all. I thought I
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: had three majrou you know, two inch. I didn't know
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: what was in them. So anyway, I opened them up
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: and I went, oh, that's cool. And I didn't really
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: know what to do with it, but you know, I
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: was keeping kept getting these messages on Facebook going, how
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: come you guys don't have a you never released a
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: live DVD or and I it was just that was
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: a great idea. I don't know why. So I took
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: the film out and I found a place here in
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Vancouver and they transferred it. It took me two or
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: three places to find the right place, and they took
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: it and they transferred it. This is to It was
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: sixteen milimeter film to digital, and that was great. And
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: the beauty of it was we recorded twenty four track
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: at the same time and for the original recording, so
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: and somehow I had that tape too, and I had
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: that transferred to digital when I was in Calgary, not
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: knowing what I was going to do it along with
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: my other two hundred and thirty two inch tapes from
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: the Lover, but I had the whole archive that I
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: once again carried it around with these three tape cans
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: from town to town, and so yeah, I found a
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: studio they gave me a great rate in Calgary and
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: we bounced it or recorded it on the digital. So
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: I had forty years of music, including fairly relative you know,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the last what do you call it? The analog recordings
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: I did on two track or two inches, and that
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: was what year would I don't know, eighty something. So
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I had all those and I put them on one
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: hard drive. So from two hundred and thirty tapes to
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: one little hard drive. It's like insane and super high
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: deft as well. So I had that and I just
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: had this idea says, you know, this is let me
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: see what it looks like. I didn't even I had
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: no idea what ook. I knew what was on it
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: because I'd seen it before. Obviously it was I've seen
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: the laser disc and it's pretty low deaf, and of
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: course there was on It's still on YouTube and it's
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: super low deaf. So I figured, let me see what
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: I can do with this, and so I got brought
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: it all home. I learned how to edit it. And
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: the kicker was, there was no this is getting a
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: little high tech stuff. But there was no timecode on
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: any of the songs, so I had to read Reno's
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: lips to find out even what song we were in
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: little you know, and then what section? And okay, there's
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: a solo? What am I playing? What song is this?
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: And there's Matt doing this amazing drum fill and I
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: think that might be you know, it's your life or something.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: So that was a real that was a big job.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: It was during the pandemic, so by nothing but time anyway,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: So that was cool, but it was it was a
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: real mind burner. You know. I'd work on it for
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: like twenty minutes at a time and I'd just get
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I'd get brainedd for it after twenty minutes agoing, Okay,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: what song is this? Where's it going? Nudget a little bit,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: get it in time with it with the try and
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: it's a little bit slower. Now I got to just
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: move it a little bit. And it was, it was,
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: it was. It was a great learning experience, but man,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: it was a it was a brain frier. But it
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: took me a long time to do it. It took me.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know how many hours I put in it.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: But once again, like I said, I was the pandemic
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: and I wasn't playing live, and I wasn't seeing any
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: of my friends. We're homebound, house bound for like whatever.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: It was two years unreal. So I learned how to
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: edit it in Da vinci uh and I uh also
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: learned how to do a surround sound mix with in logic,
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: So it was like a I was self taught. I
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: went back. I went back to school for a couple
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: of years and learned all this high tech stuff how
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: to do it, and I finally got it to where
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: I thought it worked well. I got all the edits
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: and give everybody in the band equal time as much
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: as I could and uh uh. Then I found a
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: couple of places here in town in Vancouver, one that that,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: like as I say, did the transfer. And then I
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: took it to this studio and they did a thing
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: what they call color correction. They make the blacks black
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: instead of gray, and the reds like everything really bright
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: and and uh vibrants. So they did that and uh
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: the same place they did the h I gave him
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: my what they call stamps. I gave him the six stamps,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: two surround tracks and the left right and then the
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: center for Reno and me singing, and and then the
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: sub for the kick drum, a little bit of bass,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: a little bit of synthesizer, and they they took all that,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: all the elements, all the the place called it is
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: called the elemental Posts. It's a funny thing to be
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: coincidentally called that. So I took all the elements there,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: and they put it together and gave me a reference.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Try a reference. Blu Ray finally had a blue ray,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: not just a DVD, but a blue ray, so full Death,
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: and I just thought it was time to do it,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: and that we shopped it around and ear music out
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: of Germany loves it. Then we're putting it out in June.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you have a band. A lot of this
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: you did at home, but how do you agree to
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: get the band to pay for it? And how does
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the band ultimately approve it.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: I started to Reno that I paid for it. It
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: was it wasn't that much money. It was like two sessions,
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: one session to do the transfer, and then a couple
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: of sessions, and then I went back and we retouched
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: it and I played it for Reno and he blew
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: him away, and that's it.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, So you talk about Facebook. How active are you
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: on social media and how active are the over Boy fans? Well,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: pretty active. I have my own my own Facebook page.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: I'm very rarely on it, but I got a couple
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: of things to talk about, so I'm going to probably
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: get back on it again shortly. When you say you
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: have a couple of things, talk about the movie, what else.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: I'm working on a instrumental album myself. It's it's going
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: to be we're going to call it lover Boy Instrumental,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: which is it's kind of these songs are instrumental to
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: my success, and I wanted to record them soundtracks see
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: if anybody wanted to use it, because you know, a
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: lot of times when you have a like if you
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: have working for the weekend or something on a movie
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: they want they got to turn it way down because
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: they don't want it to interfere with the dialogue. So
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: I figured, let me see if anybody's interested, and and
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: it plus, it's for our fans. It's all lover boys
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: playing on it. The only one who's not on it,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: ironically is Reno, and he's totally he's done with it.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: He's totally cool with it. With their concept and some
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: that's that's in the works. That's been in the works
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: for a while. I started recording it on the road
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: last summer with Foreigner in my hotel room and I
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: once again, it's took a lot of those tracks off
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: that one hard drive from from a lot from our
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: archives from way back. There's two or three tracks with
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Scott Smith playing bass on it, and uh so I'm
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: doing that and I have a I have another band
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: that I that.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Were wait before we get to the other band. Yeah, yeah,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: this is an instrumental version of lover boy music. Is
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: it stuff that was all previously recorded or you re
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: recording it?
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: It's all been it was all it was all recorded.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: It was it's all live recordings that I've recorded over
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: the years.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, but they're without vocals, correct. And you say there's
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: a demand for this with stinks, with movies, et cetera.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: I'm hoping. I mean, we've working for the weekend and
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Jemy Lucy has been a lot of movies and a
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: lot of commercials and stuff like that, and it's just
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: something once again that you know, when I'm not touring
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: or even what I am to and it's just something
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: I like to do. I like to really like to
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: keep busy. I'm a bit of a I guess you
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: could call me a workaholic perhaps.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, since you're a workaholic. Are you married?
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Oh? I am, and I have a son, and yeah.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: How many times you've been married?
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Well, you know what, I got to admit it, we're
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: not really married. We've been living together for fifty one years.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, So just to stop here for a second, as
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: your has your partner ever been married before she was
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: with you?
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Nope?
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Have you ever been married before you were with her?
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Nope?
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: And you choose not to get married because.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be rude here, but none of
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: your goddamn business, Bob, No, that's not Wait.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: If you don't have to answer anything, you don't want
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: to answer them. I have been married, and I am divorced,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: and my girlfriend is has been divorced twice. We lived together,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: it's been nineteen years, and we're not married.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: So on some level, I don't want to go through
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: another divorce. On another level, I come from the Joni
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Mitchell school. If we don't need no piece of paper
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: from the upstairs choir keeping his tide and true.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: So I was just asking.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's why I was asking. I'm not probing for
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: any dirty.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: I know, I'm just giving you a hard time, but
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: the exactly how I feel it's really it's it's between
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Denise and me. It's got nothing to do with anybody else,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: you know. And I don't need to go and take
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: a bow, and I make my bow to her. I
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: don't make it to anybody else.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Well, the reason I bring up marriage, you say you're
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: a workaholic, You're a touring musician that is hard on relationships.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: So how does it end up working in your relationship
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: which obviously works for fifty one years?
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Hey, Denise, no, wow. I like to think that we're
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: pretty reasonable people. And she is really Denise is really giving,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: and she understands and she wants she's a fan. She
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: wants me to succeed she and she supports me in
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: whatever I do. And I call her level one. She's
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: she's kind of you know, what do you think about
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: this idea? And she'll just she'll either love it or
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: she'll luke warm it or she'll hate it. And I
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: really lean on that on those those decisions, you know
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: those She's pretty smart cookie.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: And what is your son up to.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: He's right now. He's working on getting a making a
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: board game. He's written that board game and he's a
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: he said, he said artist as well, and he's worked.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: That's what he's working on. So we'll see where that comes.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: I support him on that. I think it would be
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: pretty cool. He bought a Dungeons and Dragons game I
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: think it was, AND's this massive box in all this
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: friends play it and everybody has fun. And this you know,
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: it comes with three hundred pieces of men and and
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: maps and a rule book like like like the Bible.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: And he's basically he's written the rule book. And I'm
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: you know, supporting them. And I'm saying, come on, if this,
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: if these guys can put this box out, I look,
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: I tell him. He says, you know, I started as
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: a as a guitar player, but I started as a songwriter.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I didn't have anything. I didn't know what I was doing.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: I just started doing it. Eventually I figured it out,
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: and this is a really good start. I said, I
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: support this creative thing because either or do you know
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: you want to work a Best Buy again? And no, Dad,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: So that's what he's doing.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the sync your songs? Do
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: you own your rights in your songs?
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: I own all the rights to the live recordings.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: I guess, so, I guess what I'm saying is the
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: songs themselves turn it loose, working for the weekend, etc.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: There's a right in the song. Sometimes people have publishing
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: deals so they just have the writers share. There could
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: be in America there's a reversion.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Then there are people who sell the rights. So at
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: this point in time those songs, who owns those songs?
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Sony owns the masters, the original masters that we recorded
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: in up until eighty what was eighty five? I guess
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Love and Every Minute of It, or maybe maybe a
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: couple albums after that, they owned the rights of those
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: because we were under contract with them. But since then
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: we own everything. We own all the all the rights,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: all the publishing, all the masters, all everything.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Well, the songs are a separate right from the albums.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Does Sony own the songs or do you own the songs?
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: We have? We share them with Sony? Okay, but I
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: think maybe you're you might be getting at Do I
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: want to sell my catalog? How come I haven't sold
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: my cattle? I don't know if you wanted to go
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: there or not, but.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Well I wanted to go there. That was not where
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: they You know, I was asking earlier because a lot
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: of people have been through twists and turns. They've given
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: up things they didn't want to give, et cetera. But
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: since you brought it up, would you sell your rights?
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's worth it, really, to be honest. Plus,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: the way I look at it, my son he's young enough,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: and he would he can benefit from this fifteen, eighteen,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: twenty years old. Whatever is the going rate, and they're
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: not from my experience or from what I've looked into,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: is you're going to get what you make times those years.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: And then in other words, if you make I won't
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: throw any figures out, but whatever you make, if you
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: multiply that times twenty or fifteen or whatever, that's the
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: size of your check, and then you give a big
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: chunk of that to the government, then well you do
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: that anyway, that's no big deal. But in twenty years
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: from now, when my son is, you know, still going
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: he's going to you're twenty one, he's still going to
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: be making the same amount of money tax wise, it's
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: a little different, but there's still going to be an
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: income coming from that. So that's that's kind of how
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: I look at it.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: I don't believe in selling either. Are your songs lucrative
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: enough that you don't have to have other sources of income?
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I make a really good living off my publishing
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: for sure, off of my song working for the Weekend
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: in particular, it's ridiculous how much a song that's forty
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: years old can still generate. It's really great, amazing.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, talking about record royalties, you know, people are bitching
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: about Spotify payments and in truth, a lot of people
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: never even made it into royalties in the old days.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Do you still get royalties on the records that Sony
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: owns or do they say you're still in a negative position.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: No. I think the negative position would be you haven't
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: recouped yet, you haven't paid back what invest And that
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: was long ago, like that was the first six months
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: the way they were recouped. And so yeah, we get
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: paid from Sony and from all these different collection agencies
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: for sure.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: And now that COVID is over, when or how frequently
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: might people be able to see lover Boy?
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: We have right now, we're sitting at close to fifty
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: shows coming up, and we typically in non COVID years
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: will play fifty shows. Fifties pretty comfy. Sixties Still okay,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: we did. We did a tour, We did eighty shows,
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: and I really didn't want to play Turn Me Loose
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: again that year. By the end of the hour, I
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: was pretty much done, for example. But fifty or sixty
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: plus it. You know, if you're on the if you've
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: got eighty shows, that means you're and getting back to
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: marriage and everything. That means you're on the road for
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: more than half the year. And if it's if it's
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: in the States, then then immigration doesn't smile too kindly
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: if you're If you're more than half a year in
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: the US, there it's not a good thing.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: So at this point, how do the members of the
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: band get along? There are a lot of bands where
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: they hate each other, but they do it for the money.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: How about Lover Boy.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: I'm sure the money is a factor, there's no question
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: about it. But I can only speak for myself. I
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: just love to play, and I'm not real crazy about
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: the hours in spent flying around and busting around, but
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: that's the price should pay for the joy of playing music.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: I love to play guitar, and I love to play.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: My songs are songs, I should say, and I love
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: to play with these guys. I mean, it's a hell
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: of a band. It's a really good band. And I
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: make sure it's different every night. For me, it's different
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: every night, even though we play basically the same songs forever,
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: you know, but there's little things and different different crowds
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: and different mixes, and but I try to play it
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: slightly different every day. There's certain things that you don't
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: want to mess with, you know, don down down, down
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: down down. You don't you know, you got to play
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: the theme. But the rest of it it's pretty much open,
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: open season, you know.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: And do you rehearse when you're not on the road.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Do you play the guitar?
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: I practice at home. I working on new songs, griffs,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: physically working on my guitar. I'm a I'm a tinkerer.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: I guess I'm called. I built my first guitar in
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: the twelfth grade and the teacher said, if it works,
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: you pass, and I passed. So that was but I'd
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: already been playing guitar. I remember I bought a Fender
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: jazz Master was five hundred and forty bucks, and this
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: is in nineteen sixty two. I bought a brand new,
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: brand new jazz Master. I was. I was raised in
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: the in the in the mountains of British Columbia, and
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: we used to go into Calgary twice a year and
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: one of those times I went, I was looking for
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: a strat like the I wanted to get a salmon
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: colored strat like the Shadows played. At the time. I
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: was ah still ambit was a huge Shadows fan, but
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: they didn't have any so they had a jazz Matter
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: which was kind of a Ventures guitar, and I was
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: a big fan of the Adventures too, so I brought
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: bought that guitar with my I the way I got
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: paid working for my parents at this twenty two acre
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: resort that they bought for forty thousand dollars in nineteen
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: fifty three on the on the lake front, if you
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: can imagine that forty grand but anyway, and we had
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: we had sixteen cabins and a campground and my job
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: was to deliver They all had wood stove, so my
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: job was to deliver paper and kindling and a little bit
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: of wood and take the garbage out every day. That
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: would be the thing. And I had this cart that
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: I would carry around shard, I should say. And the
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: and the way I got paid was I would collect
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: all the beer bottles. And my dad said, you can
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: have all the money from the beer bottles. And so
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: I was making, you know, through four hundred dollars a summer,
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: just a kid, a kid, A seventeen year old kid,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: sixteen year old kid, you know, uh, throw out of
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: money back then. Plus I was living at home or whatever.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: And I remember I brought that I had the jazz Master.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Man I wanted to figure out how it worked, so
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: I took it all apart complete.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Since since we're on the jazz Master, what were you
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: doing for an amp if you had what.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: I started out with a with a silver tone amp
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: that I got from the catalog the Eating series. It
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: was just actually it was called I think it's either
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Sears or Eating. So I can't remember, but we'll say
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: serious because it's a everybody can relate to what that is.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: So I had a harmony guitar, a two pickup harmony
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: guitar like a guitar, and uh, this this amplifier, and
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: so I graduated to this this jazz master, and I
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: brought it home and I took it all apart, and
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: my mom and dad came in, and my mom and
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: she was freaking, what have you done. You've taken this
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: five hundred and forty dollars guitar and you're completely apart?
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Are you insane? Well? And then I, I was working
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: in an industrial arts and I painted it. I repainted it,
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: I painted it. I don't know. I painted a baby
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: blue to start with, and I went and I put
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: it back together. I went, oh, that sucks. And then
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: I painted it red and I went, yeah, that's the
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: that's that's me, that's a that's a good good color
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: for me. So and that I had that guitar for
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: for a long time.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, you brought the guitar home, you stripped it all down.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: There was no fear, no hesitation in the process, no
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: worry that you might have screwed it up.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: No, And that's what That's exactly what my mom was saying.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: I'm sure is what have you done? You idiot? And
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: she didn't say that, but she was cool if you
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: never said that. But yeah, I wasn't worried about it.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: So on the strength of that knowing how the mechanics work.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I was confident in building a guitar and industrial arts
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: in grade twelve.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the beginning. Did your parents
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: bought this resort at age seven? Where did you live
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: before that?
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: Born in Vancouver, lived here for two years, for two
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: or four years, I don't know, and then we moved
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: to Calgary. My dad was a salesman for Johnson's Wax.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: He was a traveling salesman. He would take the train
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: from Calgary to Edmonton and Regina and Saskatoon, and I
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: don't know if you got as far as Winnipeg. But
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: that was his gig. And he was like me, except
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: him I work on the weekends. He would be working
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: for the weekend. He would be out selling this Johnson's
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: wax and he would come home every weekend and he
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: went Eventually, I guess we're speaking to continuing the marriage thing.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know whether my mom and he had a
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: serious talk and my mom took him to task and say, look, look, pal,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: it's either you start staying home with the family or
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: we're out of here. I really doubt it, but who knows.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: But they had this discussion unbeknownst to me, but they
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: must have had it because we stayed at this resort.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: We had two weeks. So we stayed at this resort
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: in I think in fifty two and fifty three, and
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: then I guess it was in fifty four. Maybe I
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: can't remember. It was fifty three or fifty four that
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: they said, let's see if this place is for sale
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: where we always stayed these cabins. Let me let's see
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: if we can if the guys would sell it, and
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: they the guy says forty K and my dad somehow
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: raised the down payment and made pay You know, I
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: what did I know. I was just a kid. I
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: wasn't tuned into that stuff at all, So I just
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: I had my daily chores of delivering kindling.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, not everybody south of the border is super sophisticated
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: about Canada in general, never mind the geography. So from
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: this camp, how far to the nearest town, how far
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: to the next major town?
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Calgary was a major town, three hour drive, and that's
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: where we went. We would we would go into Calgary,
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: or in Spokane, we would go down to Spokane. It
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: was pretty much the same distance. So if you could
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: kind of triangulate that it's on the It's in the
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: Columbia River Valley on the Columbia River in British Columbia,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: in between the Selkirk and Rocky Mountains.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're living there. Is there a community? What
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: about school, et cetera. Yeah, we had a school. We
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: had a school bus that I would walk up the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: hill fifty five below fahrenheit one morning, I remember the
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: coldest day I have every experienced walking up the hill.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: It was a quarter mile walk from the lake where
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: we lived up to the highway and I would catch
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: the school bus and I would do that except on
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: my fourteenth birthday. I missed the Boss because on my
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: fourteenth birthday was my parents gave me an acoustic guitar,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: and I'm probably, I'm sure I missed the Boss that day.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: I was over the moon on this finally got a guitar.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: And Okay, well, let's let's stay on that topic. So
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: was there music in the house. When did you become
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: enamored of music?
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: My mom got her singing voice from her dad, my grandpa,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: and she's a pretty good, really nice voice, and could
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: play the piano a little bit. And my sister could
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: play the piano a little bit. She could do a
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: little bit of the left hand, do it that kind
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: of rock and thing, you know, And she and I
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: would play some tunes soil. We'd play these old folk
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: songs and so that that's kind of how I got
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: my feet got started in you know, playing with other people.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: But before that, I was just playing the records like
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: the aforementioned Shadows and Ventures and Johnny the Hurricanes.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: And okay, you're in the hinter lands. Most people in
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: that era learnt about music from the radio. What was
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the radio situation.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: K x l Y Spokane was a country station and
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: the only station we could get, and that was only
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: on a clear night, and you know, it would fade
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: out during the day. So that was that was my
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: That was my first real you know, Johnny Cash and
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: uh Don't take your Guns to Town and and uh
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: walk the Line and those those two. I learned how
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: to play all those instrumentally. It wasn't it wasn't any
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: singing at the time. I just was into learning how
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: to play guitar boogyrself down and and probably a lot
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: slower than that. But that's that's how where I started playing,
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: and and then I then then on one of those
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: trips to Calgary, I would I hit one of the
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: music stores and I discovered the Ventures and the Shadows
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: and the what was that other band? Oh man, it'll
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: come to me there was an another band from I
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: think sata Fe someplace. Anyway, it'll it'll spring into spring
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: to mind, hopefully. And I just learned learned all those twos.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: I learned all the parts. I had a set of
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: drums set up. I learned how to how to play drums.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Much to my parents' chagrin. They moved me out out
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: of the house into the shed in the back. But
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: at least I got the Actually I ended up playing
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: one gig on drums. I only had one gig on
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: drums as a drummer when I moved to Vancouver years later.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: But so I you know, I dissected these instrumental albums.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: There are two guitars, bass and drums, all of them,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: and maybe they one of them would have a sax,
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: and one of them and they might have an organ.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: But mainly my favorite get our favorite, I should say,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: bands two guitarist, bas and drums. And of course the
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: Beatles said the same thing, and I learned the Beatles songs.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, so you didn't play an instrument until you
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: were fourteen.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: I got a I gotta wind up ukulele, I think
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: for my thirteenth Christmas, I'm guessing, which is two months
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: before my birthday. It was the weirdest thing. It had
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: a little crank on it. It would you turn and
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: god that it was, and it had a cowboy motif
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: on it. It was the crazy. But at least they played.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: They had nylon strings, and I learned how to play
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: oh my dar and oh my d like these two
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: chord songs, learned how to pick those out. It kind
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: of went from there.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: So you didn't play any bands in high school?
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: I did. I was in two bands.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Okay. How many people lived in this community? About a
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: thousand maybe, Okay, so people from the community, you put
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: together a band of music. We're playing instrumentals, surf music,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: it's all all. We didn't have a bass player. We
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: had two guitars and drums. But the first man I
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: was in we were called Chicks Country Gentleman, and he
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: was the guitar player, a guitar that he built and
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: he played through an amplifier that he built. So that
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: was a real inspiration to me.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: And I was playing excuse me, I was playing a
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: bass that he built through and once again an amplifier
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: that he built. And he took what he did. He
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: took a he took a juke box apart to build
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: to make the bass app and then build a little
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: box of the speaker and used to use the app
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: for the from the from the jukebox. So I played
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: bass and when he would he would play trumpet on
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: one tun and then I would move over to guitar
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: and we would do it was called we would play
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: the twist or something like that. It's we're talking the
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Chubby Checker era. And uh so I played bass and
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: I think I played sacks in one track on one
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: cut too one one song, and that was that was
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: And then then then we rebelled that the drummer was
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: his son, and he we rebelled. We got we hired
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: another guitar, got a whole of another guitar player, so
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: we had two guitars and drums, and we started another
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: band called the Twilighters because we wanted to do something
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: a little more current. Back in Chicks Kunter Gentlemen, we
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: were playing red sales in the sun set that sleepy time.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: But we wanted a rock out, so we we got
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: the two guitars and drums.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: So how did you first hear the Beatles?
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Had to be radio. But that's a really good question. Wow.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: I just remember hearing I Want to Hold Your Hand
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: and being blown away by the rhythm track. I guess
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: it was Lennon playing rhythm. It was so cooking. We
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: we had we used to have saw cops at the
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: school and I was the I was the empty I would,
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: I was I would, that was the jock jockey, and
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: we had the we had the house PA set the
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: gym PA, and we had a little turntable on I
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: remember where it was a saw cop at noon. We'd
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: have them every Thursday or every Friday in the gym
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: for an hour and at noon. And so I remember,
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: I can't remember what tune it was, but I remember
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: playing the Beatles and I couldn't believe it. You know,
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: you know how the Beatles would be playing along you
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: you you'd be watching a video today, you watch a
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: video and they'd be playing a long and then this
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: this tension would build up with the girls and it
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: would build and build and building. Then it was the
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: explode into a scream. Everybody would scream at the same time,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: and then I would kind of die die down on it.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Then it would slowly build up again. So three or
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: four times during the tune, whether it was Paul McCartney
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: doing the high falsetto scream or or they can imagine,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: well I don't. I don't even know if they must
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: have been on Ed Sullivan, so maybe they imagine it
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: was Ringo shaking his head in this part. But so
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: I'm playing the record and there's no other reference. It's
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: not live, there's no video to go by, and the
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: tension is building, and I swear to god, all the
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: girls screaming at the same time. I want what is
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: going on here? And it's just just an observation. I
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: just it was just blew me away. The psychology, I
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: guess of it. How that can how how does that happen?
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: And Okay, so you graduate from high school, what's your
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: next move?
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: Or do UBC said goodbye to my mom, got on
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: the my mom and dad. My mom was had tears,
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: you know, because her little boy was leaving forever, as
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: it turns out, And so I I got to got
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: to my staying at a friend's place, and I went
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: to a I guess they call it a mixer where
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: it's like a frost week of freshman week. I don't
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: know what what do you guys call it, but call
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: it Frost week. So the big big community, the big
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: hall at the UBC, and I'm there and uh, there's
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: a band play and then they're you know, there are
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: me band And I have no idea what rhythm and
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: blues is. I don't have a clue about that. I'm
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: a surf guy. I've been playing surf for three four
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: years something like that. And uh, and I knew the
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: sax player. He was a friend of the family of
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: Brian Tansley, and he, you know, we started talking to me.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: He said, he says, you know, I play guitar. Now
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: he says, really, he says, we're actually looking for a
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: guitar player or this guitar player. Our guitar players quitting
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: next week. Would you want to check it out? So
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: I joined that band, the band with the three Bryan's
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: and and me and me and the drummer, and did
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: that end try to figure out what R and B was,
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: what that groove was, and how to play rhythm guitar.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: I didn't really have a clue. I was into playing lead,
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: you know, and just soul look, but I didn't know
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: how to play a hold on a rhythm. But I
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: figured it out, you know, and they were really patient
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: with me. And we did that for a while, and
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: then we got a singer, Kenny Steele, so we were
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: called Kenny Steele and the Chantells. Jamaican guy. He funny,
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: hilarious guy and a great He was a James Brown
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: fan and he would do all James Brown steps and
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: the splits and I'm sure he split his fans more
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: than once doing that on stage. And we were part
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: of the R and B scene in Vancouver. There was
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: probably eight of us or something eight of these bands,
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: and we'd do the circuit. We'd play, we'd play at
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: the UBC, at the frats and those were a blast.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: You'd get just ship faced at those. There was a
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: lot of fun and and we played we played the arenas,
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: uh with multi band things. I promoted one when I
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: was in with Candy Steel. I promoted it Kendy Soon
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: I promoted it and we hired the other bands and
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: we hired a hall and it's called Land of a
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Thousand Dances or something after the after the Wilson Pickett song.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: I can't remember what what they what they gig was called,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: but it caught on, and I think we might have
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: even got a bet of radio radio stuff. And we
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: hired it. Like I said, we hired this hall and
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: we there was like four or five R and B bands,
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: and we probably I'm pretty sure we headlined it. I mean,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: why wouldn't we. We took a big chance. But and
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: it worked out great. Yeah, So that was that was
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: a fun thing to do. I've ember doing that.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: And what about school? Were you going to school?
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Kind of, you know, I want to you. I
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: went to UBC. You know, I figured since I'm a writer,
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: I was. I figured I was pretty literate kind of
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: guy at the time, so I didn't really pay much
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: attention to English, but I aced everything else. I'd ace it.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: I passed everything else at physics and history and all
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: this other stuff. But I didn't pay attention to English,
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: so I flunked English, so I couldn't go on the
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: second year. So I went. So I I think it
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: was it was something like that's a long time ago
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: about it's a really long time ago. But so I
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: I did that, but it wasn't it wasn't happening. I
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: my heart wasn't it. I just wanted to play music.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: And from there I went to UH. I went to
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: b C i T, and I was I wanted to
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: get into I wanted to get into into it's a
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: British Columbia Institute Technology. I wanted to be a cameraman,
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: like in a TV studio. That's kind of what I
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: thought would be a really cool, cool show, cool gig dab.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: But I couldn't. I couldn't get into b C I
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: T because my marks weren't good enough in high school.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: I guess that's yeah. That was after after UBC, so
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: I enrolled in a night class. Of the task was
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: create a campaign to sell craft peanut butter and jel jam.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: So that was you know, me and my three partners.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: We came up with this this this I don't know
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: thing to do, not a great story.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: So you wanted to become a cameraman. You were playing
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: this R and B band. At what point do you say, no,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to focus on the music.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: You know. I had a lot of a lot of
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: jobs I I went. I had my last job. I
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: was working on a bunch of warehouses. My last job,
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: I was working for the Coca Cola company. Were delivering
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: I was the delivery guy and six o'clock wake up
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: and seven o'clock start and we would drive her on
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: in the truck and you know, all these cases of
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Fanta and whatever and take him into the local stores.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: And I, because I was playing at night, I would
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: had had a gig. I don't think it was with
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: the Chantellas, there was. It was a splinter group from that,
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: and I was playing. I got a gig playing six
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: nights a week in a club in Vancouver, well Ken Harry's.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: We had a we had a trio, guitar, bass and drums,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: really great band. And I was doing that every night.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: And then I was driving home, uh, staying with my
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: aunt uncles, and that was like a half hour drive
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: or whatever. Get into bed at three, up at six.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: You know how long that lasted. So I fell asleep
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: in the cab and then the guy they fired me
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: right there on the spot and I'm you're useless, get
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: out here. That was my last gig. I went, you
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: know what, I'm just gonna I'll be okay, I'm just
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: going to play this, play these six nights a week,
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: having a blast loving it. What do I want to
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: have a street gig for? Okay, So what's the next band?
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: Well I got I got a job playing bass again
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: in a in a band called Glasshouse, and we were
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: playing the what was the name of it, I can't
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: remember the name of the club, and six nights a
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: week we had. There's no shortage of work in Vancouver
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: at the time. There were so many clubs playing six
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: nights a week, three sets. It was fantastic never you know,
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: and then Sunday off and then back at it. And
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: so this this trio that I had it, uh, I
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: don't really I can't remember the timeline if if the
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: trio was before it, or I suspect it was probably after.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: But anyway, I had this gig, and now it's coming
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: to me. I had this gig with the drummer and
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: I was playing bass with the guitar player. There's probably
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: a key opener or something, and the guitar player wanted
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: to go on holidays, so we went on holidays per
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: week and I moved over to guitar and somebody else
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: played bass and the guitar player came back, and unfortunately
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: he didn't have a gig anymore, and it was his gig.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: So I feel a little bit bad about that, but
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: that's kind of how it works, you know. And I
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: hooked up with the drummer, and so the drummer and
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: I we moved from from that club to All Kind
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Harry's and we were we had a band called Fat Soul,
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: and we had two big guys sitting up singing out front,
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: and so we call ourselves Fat Soul. And then that
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: didn't work out for whatever reason. I think one of
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: the guys maybe went to jail and got deported or something,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: and so it's kind of it's a little bit gray
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: for me in that how that all came about. But
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: suffice to say that, and this is going to lead
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: me up to my original co about that other band.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: So we we were building back, the drummer and I
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: were playing together, and then I guess for somehow Brian
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Newcomb came onto the scene. He was the bass player
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: and we had a different keyboard player, and then that
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: keyboard player went away and we got we got this
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: dude from Tacoma, Clyde Harvey, playing keyboards and singing, and
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden we were doing we were really
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: doing it. We started doing all original tunes we do.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: We did a couple of covers. We did a really
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: cool combination of of day Tripper into Lickingstick James Brown song,
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: and we did a we did a cover of sing
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: a simple song. But we had an albums with the stuff,
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: so we rehearsed it and we ended up got together Maca.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: We ended up we toured across Canada. We played in
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: calg We opened for Steppenwolf and we and we opened
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: for the Get Sue, who were humongous at the time,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: and UH in Edmonton and UH we played the what's
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: called the Festival Express in Calgary with Janis Joppelin and
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Grateful Dad. That was unreal, and then UH we we
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: moved to Toronto and we started playing around there. We
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: had I was in charge of accommodations, so somehow I
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: had a knack for finding houses that were either free
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: or two hundred bucks a month or three hundred bucks
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: a month. And we're there's five guys in the band.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: We had two ladies living with our manager Lou Blair,
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: so we had to it had to be a pretty
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: big house. But I found I found a condemned house
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: that we all lived in. It was in Toronto, and
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: uh so we're you know, we used to practice. We
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: set up in there and we'd played. We had a
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: few gigs. We then one time we got a gig
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: in in Ottawa. It was it was playing at the
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: at the university there, and so we went up there.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: It was two nights, so we went up there and
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: stayed overnight and did the two nights and we came
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: back to our house that was free. And the reason
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: it was free was because there was no plumbing, but
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: it had electricity for some reason. So we had a
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: hot we had a hot plate, and we had a
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: milk cooler you know where they put the big jugs
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: and milk in for in a restaurant. That was our fridge.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: I don't know how we got that. And there was
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: a this is pretty yeah, this this is really down.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean we were, we were. We didn't care.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: We really had no pride. We didn't care. And the
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: only running water was at the gas station on the corner.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: And we used to go down there every morning a
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: night or whatever and get our get our water for
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: our our coffee and stuff and so, and we would
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: we would practice in there, and we would jam. We
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: would jam for hours. And so we finally got this
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: gig up and up and in Ottawa and Carl to
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: the university. So we're up there and we come back
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: and our house free house that we're not paying any rents,
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: so we have absolutely no claim to has been taken
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: over by four or five speed dealers and fetamine dealers.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: And I was a little freaky if they'd taken all
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: our stuff and moved it into one of the bedrooms
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: and set up their their place. And Lou Blair, if
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: if anybody knows Lou Blair, Lou is a wass his
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: bless his heart. He's a big guy. He's like six
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: three and he's a big guy and you don't mess
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: with Lou and a real he could bust balls. So anyway,
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: I just remember him taking a mic stand, because we
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: had everything in our in our van, taking a mic
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: stand into the into the house, and that kind of
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: solved the problem for us and we were able to
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: move back in the house again. So and of course
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: the irony is that we ended up driving these guys
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: to their next house. They found another dilapidated place where
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: they could take over. So we ended up driving them
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: and their gear back and then we were back in
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: our free house.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, And how does this eventually turn into lover Boy?
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: Just just let me let me say so. We we
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: were lucky enough to get a recording deal with Louis
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: lou Blair as well, and we recorded an album and
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: that album is going to be released shortly if I
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: did a complete restoration on it, like over the Pandemic,
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: like I did on the Live in eighty two, and
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: that's that's going to come out shortly. So from there
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: I joined a band called Scrubble Okaine and it was
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: in that band for three years and we played Toronto
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: in Winnipeg and that and also recorded an album for
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: the same company RCA, which became Sony, And from that
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: I then I moved to Then that band sort of
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: fell apart, and then I met Matt for Nat Loveboy drummer.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: He's playing in a band called Great Canadian River Race
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: in Edmonton. And I had no no gigs. I was
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: I was phoning all the agents around Canada wondering if
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: any if they knew anybody that was looking for a
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: guitar player, and they they said, the Great Canadian River
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: it is is looking for guitar players. So I went
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: and auditioned them as they auditioned me, and uh it was.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: The music was a bit of a stretch. There was
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: a couple of the originals and was Stevie Wonder, which
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: I'd never done to Steely Dan, which I'd never played
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: that kind of a little more jazzy. But I was
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: up for the challenge. But the main thing is I
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: wanted to play with Matt, because Matt. When I played
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: with Matt, it was like an automatic thing. It was
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: we locked into the groove, no question, like no other
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: drummer I'd never played with. So I went, well, you know,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: let's see where it goes. So we rolled that for
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: a couple of years and then I got a call
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: late night from the Streetheart Guys and Matt and I
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: joined that band for I guess a couple of years.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: So I was fired from that band, but I was
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: still working with Lou Blair, the manager. He was he
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: was a huge support of me all through my whole
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: career and he had this nightclub called the Refinery Club
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: in Calgary, and behind it was a body an old
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: body shop was It wasn't a body shopping, but it
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: was a shell of a body shop. And he said,
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: I was working on a solo album at the time.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: To be honest, I had been fed up with working
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: the lead singers and have him quit or fire me
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: or do something, you know. So I said, you know what,
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: I'm going to beat the singer hell with it. So
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: I started working on tunes and singing them and doing
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: demos for them. I got a hold of a four
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: track in this warehouse, and then I got I had
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: this gig once again, a bass player working for the
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: a CDC cover band. And we were rehearsing one night
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: in this warehouse in the monkst you know, in between
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: me working on my own stuff, and Mike Reno came
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: by and he used to work with the guitar player
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: and yeah, because he just left his band Moxie in Toronto,
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: just just right right then, so he was he was
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: at odds and so was I. We didn't have anything
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: going on really, so he would he and uh. Then
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: the guitar player were in the in the second room.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: They were jamming, and I heard Mike sing and I
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: said to myself, you know, this guy has got an
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: amazing voice. Wow. I was like, he blew me away.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: It's kind of like when I played with Matt. It
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: was like an automatic. This is amazing, This is like,
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: this is where I'm at. And I heard him sing
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: and I approached him and I says, you know, blah
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: blah blah, you're what an amazing singer. We shouldn't you
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: want to get together and see if we can you know,
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: do something. He says, yeah, sir, he says, I'll come
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: back tomorrow. So he came back tomorrow the next day,
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: I should say, and we wrote two songs together on
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: the first night, and that was That was the beginning
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: of That was it. It's never never turned back and
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: never looked back.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, prior to this, how do you view yourself as
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: an itinerant musician or are you still looking for your
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: one big break to become famous?
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: Well you mean at that point, yeah, I would. I
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: had this naive thing that every band I was in
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: right from the get go, well maybe not the first
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: of the three I was in and WHINEVERBC. But when
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: I moved to Vancouver, you know, we did some recording there.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: I figured this is great. We got all the elements.
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: You know, we got good songs, good players, decent image,
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: this is this is going to be great. And then
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: that was in every band I was in. I was
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: always that belief that I'm gonna this, this band is
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: going to take me over the dog. And I typically
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: I would give a band three years to arvich like
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: the time, and if it didn't happen for whatever reason,
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: because there's conflicts or we just couldn't get up, people
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: didn't like it enough, they weren't really responding to it,
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: or you know, and I would move on. And uh,
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: and I was I guess I was probably thinking the
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: same thing with working with Mike. We'll give it see
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: where it goes. And we we just we started playing
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: together and we auditioning drummers, and uh, Doug Johnson was
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: already I'd already done some of those demos before I
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: met Mike. He and I Doug Johnson, the loved Boy
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: keyboard player. He and I did some demos together, so
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: I knew Doug and it was the same thing. Doug
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: was it is It wasn't is the most amazing creator.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: It's so creative and a great technician and great sounds
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: and really good player, so you know, and then we
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: we auditioned Mike and I. We auditioned a bunch of
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: bass players, a bunch of drummers, and finally, just you know,
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: Matt left Streetheart after I got the boot from it.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: He stayed around for a year, a year or two,
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: and I guess he finally got disillusioned. Then he moved
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: back to Vancouver, where he was from and where Mike
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: and I and Doug had moved to. We moved to
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: be near Bruce Allen, who I think you might know who.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: He is pretty famous dude manager Michael Buble and Exit
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: Bran Adams, and he was managing us, so we wanted
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: to be near him, so we moved.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: Wa wa wa. Believe me, I know Bruce a little
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: bit slower. Lou Blair is working with you. How do
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: you end up working with Bruce?
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: Bruce and Lou knew each other from the clubs in Vancouver.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: I know that we were working one club called the
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: Cave and Lou was a bounce there. That's when I
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: met him. Yeah, this is way back. They knew each
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: other forever, and uh so we were we put the
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: band together. We had Doug and Mike and me and
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: then we had a phil and bass player who later
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: quit what he wanted to be a stockbroker and said,
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: which is cool, but we never really had a drummer.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: But Lou in his wish and said, you know, I
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: got a lot of connections, but I don't have Bruce
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: Allen's connections. I want to bring Bruce Allen in on
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: this and co manage you guys. If you're cool with that, well,
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know. You're the manager, dude, You need you
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: think you should do?
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: So I didn't know Bruce and Lou suggested that we
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: moved to Vancouver so that we could be available should
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: something happen. Plus, It's was much more of a center
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: for musicians and studios and everything. It was a center
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: of Western Canada still is. So we moved there and Uh,
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: then we we got to play, used to rehearse. Uh
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: we had. We had the most amazing drummer before Matt
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: left Streetheart, Brian to Loud McLeod. He was the guitar player,
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: drummer from Chilliwac uh and incredibly talented guy. He produced
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: my first solo album, Actually Hardcore with and Uh taught
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: me a lot of stuff. He had, he had a
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: he had a great boat. He used to record on
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: his boat, and he used to live on his boat,
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: and he had his amplifier, his marshall amp in the
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: hold of the boat with the with the cover over it,
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: and he would record on this boat. Can't imagine his
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: neighbors at the you know, at the marina. McCleod shut up,
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: you know, but so he was anyway, he decided, Brian
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: decided that he didn't want to be a drummer. He
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: didn't want to be our drummer. Or he didn't want
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: to be a drummer, and he gave us his notice.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: But we weren't playing. We were just learning. Still, we
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: were writing songs. I think we're probably up to maybe
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: ten songs by then, and Brian Brian walked, so we
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: didn't have a drummer. But right at that point, Matt
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: moved back to Vancouver. So Mike and I went and
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: we wooed him back into you know, well let's try it.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: Come on, man, try it. You might try it, you
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: might like it. And he was really, really reticent. He
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: was like, I don't want to I don't know if
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: I want to be in a band again. And I
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: just got went through this street yard thing and it
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: was a nightmare. I don't want but anyway, we well
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: what he got to lose. Plus he had a house
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: that we could rehearse in, so that was a that's
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: a real bonus force and uh we but before that,
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: before we moved into his house to we had this
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: rehearsal place in North Vancouver somewhere. And the bass player
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: at the time, Vern Wills. He amazing singer and amazing
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: bass player, but he wanted to be a guitar player
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: and he wanted to front his own band, which he's
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: totally capable of doing. So that fell apart. So we
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: didn't have a bass player or a drummer, but we
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: still let the core, the writing core, Doug and Mike
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: and me, and we wrote basically all the songs. We've
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: done a couple of covers in our career, but mainly
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: it's the three of us would do all the rating.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're living in Vancouver, Blue hooks you up with Bruce.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: What happens after that career wise.
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: Well, just to cut the shory, start Matt. Now we
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: had Matt, and then we needed a drummer, and Mike
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: and I went to we heard about this great funky
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: bass player played with it, an act got a tronic
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: called Lisa DelBello, and I think this is way back.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: We were still living in Calgary at the time, because
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: it was in Red Deer, which is just about I
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: don't know, sixty miles or something north of Calgary. So
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: we drove up there and we were blown away by
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: this guy. And we didn't meet him. Wait, I think
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: we just watched him. Yeah, this guy's cool. So we
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: we called him up afterwards and invited him to come
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: out to Calgary, and I just remember when I picked
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: him up at the airport, and I remember meeting Scott
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: uh dearly departed Scott Smith, and it was like a
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: long lost brother meeting him with the right off the bat.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: It was like instant ease. Just couldn't have a better
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: rapport with the guy. It was just magic. Same with
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: all the other guys. It was just just magic, totally
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: on the same pH musically. So then we started rehearsing
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: for real once we had We're all in Vancouver by
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: this time, and we had some of that. We had
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: every record company come up and come to our rehearsals.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: I remember a couple of guys that come up and
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: they're in they're New York big for coats, and they're
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: standing around and looking all ritzy and and stuck up
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: and holier than now. And it passed and you know,
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: they don't have any attitude. They suck or I don't know,
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: we don't get it. So that was that we we
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: just we decided though, that we we figured we had
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: what it. We had enough songs, we had definitely had
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: the band. We had had had the songs. We had
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: an offer from Capitol Records, and they said, here's X
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: number of dollars, which was really not very much money,
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: not enough to finish the album. Here's X number of dollars.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: And we figured it three albums, you'll probably be you know,
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: you might get a hit, you might hopefully you'll have
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: a hit by three. And we said, excuse me, no,
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: we were we were pretty cocky. You know, we figured
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: we weren't going to wait on for three. So Columbia
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: came to the party with some decent money, and but
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: we hadn't signed the deal yet, and we were talking
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: about we're going through negotiations back and forth, lawyer to
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: lawyer or whatever, I don't know, or manager to lawyer,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: I have no idea, but we booked the studio and
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: we started recording before we had a contract. That's how
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: cocky we were, how sure we were that we were
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: had something going on. So that was the first album
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: we recorded.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: Well, okay, wait, wait, wait, you meet Mike Reno. How
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: long after that do you go into the studio that
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: you're just talking about.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: Well, it's probably a year and a half. It seems
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: longer than that, but when I'm trying to do the math,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: you know, I met him in seventy eight, and we
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: recorded in seventy nine and it came out in eighty
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: you know, so somewhere on there.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, was the band ever playing live or were you
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: just wood shedding writing songs and rehearse.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: We were playing live. Our very first show, we opened
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: for Kiss at the coliseum or one of the big
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: rooms in back in those days in Vancouver, opened for Kiss,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: and I guess their opening act got busted at the
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: border or couldn't get across the border or something like that.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: And Bruce Allen being tied in the way he is
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: and was at the time, I mean he was he
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: had just come off off of bto so huge, humongous
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: talk about contacts. He knew everybody, every promoter in every
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: room to play, and he knew the promoter and he says,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: I got the perfect thing for it. We love her, boy?
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: What okay? Whatever do you say? So Bruce and we
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: that was our first show and after so that opened
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: the door for us. It's like, here they are the
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: band that opened for Kiss, playing at your local bar
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: six nights a week. How can you how can you know?
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: How can you miss this? You know? So that was
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: then we started playing. We played in a bunch of
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: club shows, club dates. The night that we were auditioning
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: for columb be A, the A and R guy Jeff
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: Burns came out to see us in the he work
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: he worked for Columbia Records in Toronto. He came out
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: to see us, and he loved it. He basically signed us.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: And then, as I say, we had to work out
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: the details. But I remember at that same show, or
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: maybe the next night or something, I pulled all our fans.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: I said, here's the list of the songs we just played.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: Pick your favorite ten and I gave it to everybody,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe thirty people and just random like
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: and everybody was cool with it, and they ticked it
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: off and I went, okay, well then this one, this one,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: there's our ten right there, and we that's the songs
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: that we recorded.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, there's a lot going on here in the background. Bruce.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: Now, Bruce.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: Being to the Canadian label.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: If you remember, we auditioned, as I were saying, we
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: auditioned for every label either it was sending them tapes,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: showing up in their office. Me and Mike we did
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: a thing at Capitol Records. Uh, just the two of
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: us with Lou and we we uh we used to
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: record on this little ghetto blaster, just the guitar and vocals,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: and we took that in and we played it for Capital.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: The guy at Capitol us and he passed. He says,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: there's no attitude. I don't hear it. Whis fair enough?
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: I mean it was, you know, it was a live
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: to guys singing and a little an electric guitar.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: Let's go to the recording. You end up working with
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: a murderer's row of talent behind the board. You are
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: the first band that works with all these people. Bruce Fairbairn,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: Bob Rock, Mike Frasier, bit around how did that all
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: come together?
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: We actually, we weren't the first we were. We followed
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: prism Oh right, yeah, and I and Bruce laid that
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: album on. He says, check out this album. It sounds
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: pretty good. And I know the team. You know, I'm
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm tied into the team. What do you think?
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: And Mike and I listen and we went, yeah, this
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: is amazing, uh, song wise whatever, But technically it sounded great.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: You know, the drums, all the instruments sounded really killer.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: So we said, let's go. That was that and they
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: were you know, so they were, they were. Everybody was
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: on board. Those three guys that you mentioned were we
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: recorded the album with, and then we recorded the second
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: album with him as well.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's start with the first album. What was the process?
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: What did Bruce and Bob ad if anything? At the time,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: Bruce is a he is a uh his real love,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: I think besides being a producer of US infantile rock
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: and Rollers, he his gig was it was a soccer
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: coach for kids, so he knew how to manipulate kids.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: And we weren't far from that. Even though I was
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: thirty three at the time, it still had that fourteen
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: year old mentality, you know, and all of us were
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: like that, cocky and disrespectful and just rock and roll
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: guys and didn't want to hear from me, hear anything.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: But Bruce had this way of getting the best out
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: of Matt. That was his main thing, you know. He
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: would I don't know what he said to him, but
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: he would go out and he would he would crank
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: him out, just like he would crank up the forward
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: and the soccer team or whatever. I don't even know
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: what if there are forwards in a soccer team, but
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: he would. He would use that psychology, his his child psychology, honestly,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: and it worked great, and we would once we had
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: the drums down, then it was it was and usually
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: typically I would I would guess that Matt probably spent
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: two days in the studio maybe three to get all
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: that the nine tracks down, and of course I being
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: a co producer, I would be in there for the
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: next two months every day, you know. But Matt did
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: his three days and see you thanks suckers, and he'd
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: be gone, which is fine because we had it down,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: and then we would then we would go and we
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: would you know, patch up everything that if we screwed up.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: And to what degree did Bruce work with or change
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: the material?
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: I think the main thing, the coolest, one of the
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: coolest things he did was he said, the kid is
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: hot tonight is too fast. It needs to be slower,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: and we're going, oh, come on, man, really no, he says,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: no here and I'd probably click it on the mic.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: He says, doubt dun dun dun dun dun dun dun
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: da da da da dun dun da and we're going
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: dun dun dun dun dun dwn. I rock on around
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: and frantic, you know, and he says, you gotta sit back.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: It's gotta be rent dun da da da dun dun.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: So we recorded it like like Bruce said, basically the
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: that was that was a huge contribution.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, what about turn me loose? That sounds like to
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: a degree a studio creation with the synth intro. When
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: you went into the studio, how much of that track
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: was already established.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: Hundred percent because we had played it live, we'd already
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: demoed it with a different drummer. We demoed it on
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: an eight track exactly like that, Exactly.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Like that with the synth intro and everything.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: Synth intro, dun Da Dunda on the bass, and with
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: Verne playing bass and another drummer uh playing drums who
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: I forgot Bernie Auvin. He plays with the headbins now
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: and a real good friend. He was our drummer for
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: a while and he so we cut that demo. And
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: the funny thing is that Reno did that flame anyway,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: that really high fly with my way. He did it
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: off the cuff. It's like, okay, what wasn't thinking about it?
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: He just came out and then he had to reproduce it.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: Okay. So how long did it take to do the
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: album from start to finish?
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: I don't know, probably a month, it wasn't that long.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: How long after that month was it released.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: It wasn't very long because it was only released in Canada.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: That's getting back to an earlier question. We auditioned all
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: these US labels and they all passed, so we said, well,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: screw it, we'll release it in Canada. We'll do so
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: much damage in Canada they don't they won't be able
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: to refuse us. That was our cock sure method, you know,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: that's how we felt. That's truly how we felt, we're
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: not going to wait around. We want to get this
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: out now, get it out while it's fresh, and get
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: and then on to the next one, you know. And
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: if it's not going to be in the States, so
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: be it. But we wanted to get it out. But
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: we figured it's got to get it released in the
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: States because Mike and I went to this the same
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: the day before we went to Capitol Records with our
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: little ghetto blass or cassette demo. We went to this
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: big thing in La It was with Van Halen and
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: and uh Oh Cheap Trick and Oh Addy Money, all
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: these great bands at the coliseum I think it's called
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: with that big huge outdoor. M is it still called that? Yeah, okay,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: And we looked at each other half with you and she's, yeah, well,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: this is what we do. We're right in there with
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: these guys. I mean, we have our own unique slant
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: on it, but we're not We're not like a country band,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: We're not a we're not a ballad band. We're not
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: an R and B band or a rock band. This
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: is what we do. We could open play with these
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: guys any day. When turns out we actually had but
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: over the years.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: But okay, the album is done before where it's released.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: All I remember is that summer of nineteen eighty, Turn
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Me Loose is like a one list in Smash. You
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: only have to hear it once. Did you guys know
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: that hearing the track before it was released?
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: Well, we put it it opened. It opened the album,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: so I think it opened out.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: No, the kid is hot, the kid is hot today.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: That opened the album. Oh, you're right, You're right. Because
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: we had that, we had to pace it fast slow, fast,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: low fast slow. Yeah, like we still do, like we
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: do live still, fast, slow, fast, slow. I don't know.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess we're pretty happy with it. And
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: everybody we played it for we're like, yeah, you know what.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: What really gave me an indication that we were doing
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: something right. There's a record store called it, I think
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: A and A Records here in Vancouver down on Seymour
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: and or Gramble and something long gone. Somebody painted the
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: album cover on the outside wall. I went, what are
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: they doing? This is what a huge honor for somebody
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: to do this. And I don't know whether it was
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: the record got the record promotion guys said let's do this,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: or if it's just some fan or the owner. They
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: just they you know. So not only did we get
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: front Rock, but we had a freaking album cover on
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: the side of the like a billboard that somebody painted
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: on the side of their building. That blew me away.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, what about the video that was one of the
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: first videos before MTV.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it was just just when MTV came out.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: We had a gig in Wichita, opening for probably opening
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: for Kansas, and we hadn't done any videos. What's a video?
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: What do you do? You know, there's no shindig or
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: anything like that, or you know, to do a video
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: for So I remember flicking around board out of my
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: brains on a day off and stumbling across MTV. I
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: couldn't believe it. I probably watched it all day. I
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: was just blown away. And I swear probably the next week,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: Columbia was calling us up saying, we want you guys
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: to do a video. We've got a storyline for it.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: We want you to come to New York. I think
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: it was a Beacon theater. We want you to come
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: to the theater and we're gonna shoot the video. So
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: we we just we got the video and we got
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: a lot of flak for the slapstick of it, but
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: we didn't care. This this is our big chance. And
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: I knew who We all knew who MTV was. They'd
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: all been out maybe for I don't know, maybe a
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: month or something, but we were we were ready. I mean,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: we're crank to do that. So we were happy.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, from the outside it looks like overnight success. What
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: was it like?
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: From the inside, it was overnight success. It really was
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: another indication of our early you know, something was really happening.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: Was We're playing a club in Lethbridge, Alberta. And we
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: had a gig opening for Toronto in Edmonton. So it
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: was like a four hour driver or whatever it was.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: It was a long ass drive to get and I
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: remember pulling into Edmonton on the day of the show
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: and they were playing the Kid Is Hot Tonight on
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: the radio. I've never heard any of my songs ever,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: and I've been in the business. I was thirty three
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: at the time, and I'd done so many recordings with
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: different bands. I might have heard on a special show.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: I think they had a streetheart. They played a couple
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: of days, but this was the first thing, the first
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: lover by we'd heard and I was, this is it, baby,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: we're there, you know, And then we do and did
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: our show and whatever. But that it was a great thing,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: no real landmark, you know.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, the first album comes out, it's gigantic. Do you
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: have to sit down and write the songs for the
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: second album? Where do you get these songs for the
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: second album?
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: We had a lot of them written, and we were
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: we were playing the clubs and we would try them out.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: I remember one day we were playing I don't know
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: if we were warming up, but we were playing in
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: a fairly big room in Vancouver, and we were working
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: on trying to work out the bugs and working for
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: the weekend. And we were doing it at sound check
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: and I remember Lou standing there listening and he came
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: up to me and he was rating about it, said
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: this is this is great. So he got it right away.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: But we were writing on the road. We were we
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: were rehearsing as we're opening for probably opening for Easy Top,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: we're playing the arenas. I can remember setting up getting
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: the crew accept all the drums and keyboards and guitars
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: and amps and everything in the shower of the gig.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: The shower room. You know, it's where the where the
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: basketball players or whatever would would get chased, and we
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: were rehearsing Lucky Ones and the Lucky Ones that the
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: intro came from a jam on stage in Montreal when before,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: you know, when we were touring on the first album,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: so we were writing on the road. We knew what
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: we had to do and we were we had it
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: down though, but you know, by the time we went
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: in to the studio, we had three weeks to mix it,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: to record it, and mix it three weeks complete because
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: we had a gig opening for Journey and we wanted it.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: We had to make that deadline. I mean, who wouldn't
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: pass up a gig opening for Journey?
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: So what's the backstory? How did you I'm up with
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: working for the weekend.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: I was walking down to the beach where I lived. Uh,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: it was a Wednesday, and I'm walking along and I'm
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: what the hell is everybody? This place is usually packed
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: and there's nobody on the beach, nice decent day, no
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: one on the streets. Well, I guess everybody's waiting for
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: the weekend. Oh hello, that's kind of a cool line.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: So I've you know, packed that away. In my p
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: brain and uh so that was the start of it.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: And uh then I took it and I was working
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: at in my in my house on my ghetto blaster
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: once again, and my I used a metronome for the drums,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: and I left to guitar through a tiny little lamp,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: and I would just sing the song, and I had
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: dad they call the chords and the melody and and
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: the and the and then the beast the beepart waiting
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: for the weekend. And then, uh, I didn't know what
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: the words were dead, and I had h and I
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: had a kind of roughed out. I had all the
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: all the bits and pieces, but that I didn't have
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: him in the proper order. And just speaking about that
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: time in Montreal when I wrote that that the intro
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: the Lucky Ones on stage, and remember of going to
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: Doug and saying, what are these notes? I don't have
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: my recorder, Dan, what are these notes? So he wrote
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: it out on a napkin for my reference down the road.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: So I had that part. But so it's either later
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: that night or maybe the next night in Montreal, and
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: I had I had my ghetto blaster around my guitar,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: my whatever, and I remember finally putting it together, the
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: puzzle together, all the parts, all the key changes and
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: the breakdowns and the little the little wah wah part
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: in the in the middle, and all the parts Kiss
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: came together. I still didn't have the lyrics, but I
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: had all the music and most of the lyrics done.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: It's so at that point I'd spring it on Reno.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: Then he goes, well, what about working for the weekend?
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: And I went okay, not knowing, not thinking, what a
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: brilliant line that was, what a great although I still
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: think everybody's waiting for the weekend, which is also true,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: but working gives it a different, completely different slant. So uh,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: thank you, Reno. Good good one. And then we needed
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: we needed We were recording it actually, and we had
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: all the lyrics and we needed one more line. And
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: I remember sitting here at Mushroom Studios. I know earlier
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: I said we recorded the second album at Little Mountain,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: But we recorded the album at Mushroom and mixed it
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: at Little Mountain with that same team.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, you do three albums with that same team. Their
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: biggest successful. There are a lot of bands. They're working
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: so hard on the road, they're recording songs. They really
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: don't know what the hell is going going on. They
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: don't know if they're being ripped off, they're making any money.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: What was your experience?
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: We had and still have total trust in Low and
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: Bruce that they would take care of us. They invested
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: twenty thousand dollars into us before we were working. They
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: were I was making like, not a whole lot, but
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: I was making subsistence. I was making They were paying
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: everybody in the band like a hundred bucks or two
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: hundred bucks a week. I can't remember what. It was
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: enough to pay the rent and you know, help out
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: out of their pockets, out of their faith. And they
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: we did that for over a year of writing the
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: first and part of the second album, and and then
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: they you know, they made they took care of us.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: They made sure that that we got paid and they
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: and Bruce already knew all the promoters and he wasn't
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: going to work with anybody shady. That said, we have
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: had a couple of promoters bail on us, but in
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: you know, not that many considering the thousands of shows
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: we done. I can remember two instances where the promoter
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: was this, you know crook.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: So When did you finally see some money.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: I guess it was probably after Get Lucky, because we'd
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: sold We sold five hundred thousand albums of the first
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: album in Canada alone, which is five times platinum. Maybe
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: it's six times plat. I don't know what it is now,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: but pretty amazing. And we'd been so we were touring,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: but you know, it was really expensive because we were
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: as a warm up situation. But we started getting a
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: bit of relative money. And I remember the first thing
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: I bought about a Harley and paid cash for and
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: I was so proud of that. It was like thirteen
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: thirteen thousand dollars on the barrel and I was like wow.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: And I think Reno bought the two of us bought
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: Harley's on the same day from the same dealer cash.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay. If I don't know anybody who's on the motors,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: likely luas and dumped it, whether it be their fault
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: or somebody else's.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: What was your experience, I'm alive and kicking, still here
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: to tell the tale. No, I never one time, one
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: time I had a bagger. It's kind of the big
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: extra faring on the front and the big bags on
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: the back. And the humongous seat, and my wife Denise
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: was on the back, and we were going to one
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: of the dealerships here in Vancouver just to check out
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: the new bikes. It was like, I don't know, demo
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: day at their local Harley dealer. I remember pulling up
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: around the corner and we kind of had to hurry
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: because there was a bus coming up the lane. So
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: we had a scooter around the corner and we got
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: caught in a kind of a groove for somehow, and
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: of course everybody, all the bikers are lined up waiting
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: for their turn. They're all standing outside the store watching
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: me dump the bike with my wife on the back.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: That that was pretty pretty humiliating, but whatever, you know,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: at least we didn't we didn't get hurt. I mean,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: we got hurt, but I wasn't bad. You know, It's
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: not like we broke anything that we had Bruce's and
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: egos mainly, but that's really touchwood. That's the only time
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: I've really, you know, dumped the bike a motor tircle.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, the fourth album, you switch it up, you don't
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: work with Bruce and Bob anymore, and you have a
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: song written by Butt laying so what's the backstory there?
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: Personally I wanted and I don't know how it happened,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: but I really wanted to do and this is this
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: goes back to a night that I spent with Billy
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: Gibbons when he got me my first guitar deal and
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: he arranged that. But we were we were talking about
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: his album and he was saying, I just wanted to
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: have more guitar man, more guitar. Of course, what else
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: is he gonna have. He's a guitar band. There's no
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: keyboards in that. So I just took that to heart
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: and I went, yeah, I like that content. I'd like
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: to make a more of a guitar album, more of
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: a guitar riff album as opposed to do Do Do
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: some kind of guitar riff based album. And so we
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: we started doing that and we figured who's the guy,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: who's the who's the guitar producer? Who would who could?
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: Actually this came it was Tom album, of course, but
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: before that we wanted to do we still want to
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: do a guitar album, and we wanted to who can
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: we get to produce and engineer this album that is
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: from that school, and we thought, why don't we see
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: if we can get Mutt Lang And Mutt Lange went, no,
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: I'm busy or whatnot interested not whatever reason, you know,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: but he somehow he said, but you could, you could
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: use my engineer, Mike Shipley, who's also a producer in
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: his own right and an amazing engineer. And I went
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: close enough, it's really really great. So we worked with
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: Mike and we worked at the studio in Montreal, and
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: we worked there for a month and it didn't work out.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: I won't get into any further, but it didn't have
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: the groove, it didn't have the production. It had the sound,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: but we just couldn't get the groove going. There was
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: something to do with the sampling of the dramas and
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: it was too weird. So we took those demos as
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: it turned out to be demos, back to Vancouver. So
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: we had all a bunch of the tunes ready to
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: go written well at least, and then we went, okay, well,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: let's let's go here in Vancouver. Let's try somebody else.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: So we called up Tom l and he came and
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: produce go produce the album and that's that's what happened there.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: And where did the butt laning song come from?
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: Ah? From Mike Shipley. Mike, in his wisdom, said, you
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: don't have it. You don't have the single. Guys, you
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: got a lot of really good songs, I guess, but
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: you don't have the single. He says, let me call
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: Mutt and see what he can come up with. So
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: Mutt does his absolute total magic and he calls us
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: in the studio. So I'm on the phone and he says,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: check it out, and he plays, and I went, holy crap,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: this is amazing. Can you can you phone me back
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: in ten minutes? I want to set up a recording
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: for it with it throughout the tech here at the studio.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: So they set up and they could record off the
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: phone onto a I don't know, some cassette player or something.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: So he did that. He called us back and so
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: but it was a real crap because the telephone only
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: goes down, so you don't get any low, low and low,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: and we couldn't hear what the base was doing. So
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: we went all right, but at least we can cut it.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: So we took that track that cassette and Matt and
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: what we all we played along to that and cut
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: the track playing along the Mutts demo. That was kind
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: of our click track, just played along to that, but
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: we still couldn't hear the bottom, so we waited. We
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: put it in a request of Mike, can you please
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: send us a quarter into the real tape, full frequency
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: tape so we can hear what the hell's on the track,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: so we can duplicate it. And he was very gracious
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: and send it to us, And so that was one
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: track we ended up re recording it, but at least
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: we had we had the anchor for that album.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, So then the next album you go back to
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: Bruce and Fairburn, and this time John bon Jovi and
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: Richie Sambora help you write. Note Warrius was the hit track.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: How does that come together?
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know how I got John's phone number, probably
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: through maybe through Bruce. I don't know. It was slipper
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: slippery when we out then, I don't think so I
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: can't you know, I don't slippery when Wet was already
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: out by that point. Yeah, okay, so through through Bruce,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: Bruce Fairburn's connection through with Slippery when wet, Uh, he
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: gave me John summer and I call up John and
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: he said, yeah, come on out. So I I think
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: I stayed at his place and where I was there
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: for two or three days and we wrote Notorious and
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: a couple other things didn't make the grade, but we
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: we wrote it with Richie and Desmond Child came in
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: on the second day. If you could imagine that being
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: in the room with Desmond Child. That guy is a monster.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: He's had so many well, so it's towards John and
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: Richie obviously, so you know, I was in a really
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: good company with those guys. But that's funny because Desmond
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: gave me sword and Stone. He says, you should you
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: should take this to the guys see if Brino wants
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: to sing that. And I didn't know that Kiss had
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: written it, or or that it had all been already
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: been released, but didn't matter. I thought it was a
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: great song. And I took it to Mic and he
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: went out, it's too something. I can't remember what he said,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: but it just wasn't it wasn't up his up his alley,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: you know. So anyway, I've recorded it myself on hardcore.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: But okay, so how do you decide to go back
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: to Bruce after Tom.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: I have no idea. That's a really good question. I
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: don't know. Maybe maybe because we thought he could connect
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: with Matt or he was a he was a he
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: he you could get it done on budget. That was
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: probably it because they're they're loving every minute of an album.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: Cost us a ton of money because we did that
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: whole session a month at the studio and didn't get
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: anything out of it, so that was really expensive. And
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: I'm sure that's what I was. So probably Bruce and Lou, Bruce,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: Allen and Lou are going, We're not going to spend
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: that kind of money, are we please? And yeah, okay,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: So I'm sure that's why we went because we knew
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: that Bruce could do it on time and on budget,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: and Bruce agreed. But the one cavity he says, you
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: don't have the songs, but once again, you don't have
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: the anchor, So come up with one more song. So
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: I wrote Hometown Hero and that was that was enough
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: for Bruce to commit.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you make five albums with Columbia, they all
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: have status gold better then for ten years you don't
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: make another record. What happened with the band.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: Just got other interests. I guess got some just other interests,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: who knows. I mean, I kept writing, but I don't know,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: just distractions. Living just didn't have that that that desire for.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: Well, well, did the band have a meeting and break up?
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: We had a meeting with Bruce when when uh Nirvana
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: hit and he said, we were we were in the
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: throws of planning of our biggest tour ever for us.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: It was gonna we were gonna have moving stages and
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: I mean the whole not the big production, and Nirvana
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: came out and completely stole our thumb and everybody else
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: who had big hair basically, and so that was that
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: was pretty much that and we and Bruce said, you know,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: radio stations aren't going to play your ship. They're they're
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: not into that. They're into there in the grunge you
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: guys are You don't. They're not going to play your stuff,
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: So why why bother? I guess it's like you're wasting
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: your time. You're not going to get any airplay. I
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: kept writing in that, but we never it just kind
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: of I'm trying to think of the timeline on that.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: If we stopped touring, if we just I guess we
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: did I guess we just it took the win out
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: of completely out of ourselves. Oh well, I guess we'll
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: hang it up then. And that's and then I went.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: Mike did a couple of solo albums. I did, uh
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: some solo stuff. I put a band together, played around
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: Western Canada, Matt and played with Tom cochran and Kim
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: Mitchell and Doug who is an amazing He does soundtracks,
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: he always has done and still is. So he just
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: did that. He didn't care. So we were basically finished.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: You know, we're all kind of like. It's not like
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: we hate each other or we were broken heart at
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: It was just like, okay, well that was a fantastic run.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: And then Brian Adams called us up and he said,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: you know, Brian McLeod has cancer and he can't he
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: needs some funds. He needs some help financially so he
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: can get the treatment. And I want to throw a
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: fundraiser for him at eighty six Street here in Vancouver,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: and would you guys play? And one time we hadn't
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: played together in more than two years or three years,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: can't remember, and of course what a great idea. So
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: we put it back together again. I remember we didn't
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: actually rehearse, but I got together with Doug to figure
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: out just to kind of brush up on our parts,
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: the guitar versus keyboards, what we were doing, what we
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: did live, because it was a little bit different on
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: the record. And that wait, so that was one after
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: and I think we did maybe four songs and Bto
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: was there. I mean, I mean a member standing on
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: stage with Fred Turner, who was one of my all
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: time idols, and hearing him sing the hot those screaming
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: ie notes and me standing right beside him and probably
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: no louder than what I'm talking right now, and this
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: blood curdling scream is coming out of him, and I went, Wow,
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: such a great singer. And we raised a bunch of money.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: But the thing is, we had such a good time
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: doing it. We went, well, that was dumb. What the
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: hell did we hang it? This is too much fun.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: We forgot it. We forgot about that aspect. Guys, this
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: is really fun to do. What a great thing to
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: go out and play music. Why don't we test the waters.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: Let's get a little tour. We'll play the interior of
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: which is a Canadian way of saying what I don't know. Well,
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: maybe you say it. Every time I say it, people
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: go the interior. Yeah, the interior British Columbia. That's Kamloops
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: and Cologna and there's small towns and just you know,
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: not make it, keep it low key and just feel
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: it out. See how we feel about it, See if
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: we enjoy it as much as we think we might.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: And we had a blast, and that was in ninety
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: two and we never stopped. We just kept going, never stopped. Well, pandemic,
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: we stopped.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: Do you think if Lover Boy was an American band,
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: people's attitudes towards it and its legacy would be different.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: I don't think so, because haters are going to hate
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: and fans are going to love you no matter what.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know we got. I don't I think so
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: because people that come to our shows are the same everywhere,
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: everywhere in Canada or you know, it's still they respond
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: the same way. So it's we communicate to them and
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: they communicate back. It's the same thing. And they're limited
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: tours in Europe. Same thing.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, at the end of the day, decades later, lover
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: Boy the name plus minus or irrelevant.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: You know, I thought the Beatles was a weird name,
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: Rolling Stones? What what is what kind of name for
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: a band is that? You know, we're back in my
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: day everybody who had named a for cars Chevelle's and
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: whatever and surf names, and the Beatles came out. I
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: want that sowhere. But you know, first first gig we had,
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: we were called lover Boy. We're playing all original music
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: and the people in the audience were pelting us with
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: whatever they had, mainly ice cubes. They hated it. But
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: it just becomes it's like Kleenex, you know what, You
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: got to know what the product is. Kleenex by itself
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: is what is that? You've scrubbed your house with it?
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: You know? And so it's it's just a brand. It's
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: a pretty cool brand. It's because it does elicit you know,
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 2: either they hate it or they love it, or they
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: don't care. They just they just remember the music and
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: they don't associate the name just with anything else.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, coming up with the band name is not easy.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: Usually come up with list and people say yes, and
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: people say no, how did you come up with lover Boy?
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: And how hard was it to get the band to
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: agree on it?
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: Well, it's just Mike Mike and Doug. I mean, so
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: it wasn't really a band. We were thinking of calling
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: a Dean Renal band or a Renal Dean band, because
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: it was just Mike and me. And Doug was kind
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: of he was working with another band. He wasn't really committed,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: but he had helped me out on so he was
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: in our minds he was part of the band, but
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: in his mind he wasn't really part of the band yet.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: So it's just Mike and I had to make all
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 2: the decisions. And I tried it out on Denise's my wife,
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: Denise's younger brother. He was, I don't know, fifteen or whatever,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: and I said, so with your back off, and I
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: went Dean Ring. Nobody went okay, complete like over whatever
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: kind of name. I went, well, that ain't gonna fly.
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: So I'm looking at my at at Denise's magazines, and
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: she's got Chateolaine and all these Vogue and all these
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: Girl Lady magazines. And on the back cover is a
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: ad for cover girl. I want cover girl, cover cover boy,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: cover boy. Oh that's a great wait cover we don't
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: want to be doing Wait, obviously, what the next step
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: is the lover boy? So I went, this is a
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: good name. This is what my mommy used to tease
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: me with when I was a kid. Hey, lover boy,
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: let's go. I don't know why, but that's stuck in
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: my head. And I sprung it on a Reno and
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: Lou and everybody went, fine, now we know who we are.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: Okay to what the degree did being Canadian in the
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: Canadian scene contribute to the success of the band or
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: the success of your career you personally?
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I've always said that it's just a line on
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: a map. We're so close musically. I don't know political whatever,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: but musically we're so close to people in every place.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: Why is this border here? Why don't have to be
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 2: Canadian and you guys have to be American? And I
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: got to jump through all these hoops to come down
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: and play for you and try and get all the
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: business done, and that it was just it was. It
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: was frustrating, but at the time, but I wasn't worthy,
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: you know, all the other stuff I'd done wasn't worthy
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 2: of of. We could barely get a recording deal in Canada,
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: let alone breach the Great Divide and get into into
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: the States or UK or wherever else. So I just
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 2: remember our first show in the States was at the
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: Tacoma Dome, opening for Sammy Hagar. It's funny, and here
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: we are. We're back playing with him again this summer,
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: but opening for Sammy and Mike and me getting dressed
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: and we're in the shower because they all they have
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: this the best sound and we're singing, we're singing your
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: national anthem. I mean, we probably didn't know the words
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: for it. I still don't, but we're singing, we're singing
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: your national anthem in the soul blown away that we're
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: finally here, we are, we made it. We're playing the USA. Man. Wow,
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: it was a big deal for us. It really was,
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: because we'd been stuck and not stuck. We were always
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: doing what we wanted to do, and we're never tied
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: down by being Canadian. There was always acceptance. Not I
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: mean if we suck, we suck, but any of the
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: good stuff we did, there was always acceptance. Far it.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: Well, you certainly have success. And it's funny because from
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: bands of that era, you know a number of your
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: songs have lived on where those have died. So Paul,
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: I want to thank you so much for taking this
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: time to speak with my audience.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: Well, it's been an honor and I've I've been following
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: your days in Aspen. And let me tell you one
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: thing that you taught me, Bob. The best thing I
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: think you taught me. People don't want albums, they would
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: just want singles. And that's been my mantra for ten years.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: That's why we don't have hardly any albums. We just
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: keep throwing singles out when we get around to it,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: you know, so thank you for It's made so much
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: sense to me. I mean, i'll score, I'll look for
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 2: an album, i'll play, I'll whip through bam bam, bam
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: bam bam. Oh there's one song that like and get
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: rid of the rest of the playlist, you know. So
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: it's really if you can get put out one song.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: What a great song. Wow.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: I think I'll leave it at that. Thanks so much
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: for any event. Until next time. This is Bob left
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: Sets