Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Pat Simmons

Transcript

Pat Simmons · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set Pod. Next,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: my guest today was Pat Simmons of the Doobie Bills. Pat,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: it's a thrill to talk to you. I thank you,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Bob appreciated your ticket the time with me. So you
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and Tom have a new book about the Doobie Brothers
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Long Tream Running. How did that come to be? Let's see, Well,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: you know, I always thought I would write a book
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: about the band, and then I you know, I kind
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: of started doing stuff for years ago and never really happened.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: And then I thought, you know, it's probably never gonna happen,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: and I was doing let's see, I I was, I was.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: This is a little convoluted here, but I was on
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: a at a motorcycle event. It was something called the
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Cannonball Uh antique motorcycle and Earns run and my wife
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: and I have done it quite a few times, and
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: it's a motorcycle ride across country on antique motorcycles. I've
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: been into old bikes forever and so we were on
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: our old bikes. I had my nineteen fourteen Hourly to
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Speed and she was on her nineteen twin and we
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: had made it. Oh gosh, kind of a cross country.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I think my bike had blown up by that time,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: but she was still riding her bike. And we we
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: had scheduled to do an interview with a guy from
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: the Huffington Post and his name is Crips Chris Epting,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: and he wanted to do an article about the ride
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: and about our participation, and it came through, you know,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the the band's publicist at the time, and so he
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: showed up. We were sometime somewhere down out in the
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Palm Desert, somewhere. We had made it that far, and
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: uh so, Chris showed up and he took some pictures
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: and started talking with us, and we did this interview
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: and it came out in the Huffington Post and it
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: was just a really nice little article about the ride
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: and my wife and I ended up being more about
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: my wife than me. So uh So, then we played
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: in San Diego, probably I don't know, a week later.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I went right back on the road from this ride,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: ridden across country and then boom, I'm back on tour
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: with the band and we're in San Diego playing and
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Chris lives down there. He said, you know, I'd like
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: to come to the show. And so came to the
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: show and after sometime during the course of events, while
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: he was there, it around in our my hotel room.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: My wife and I were both there, and he said,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: you know, do you guys have a biography about the band?
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Anybody ever write a book about the band? I said no,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: and told him the same thing I said to you
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: that it was always something on my bucket list, but
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I had never done any goes. Well, you know, I
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: just got done writing a book with John Oates kind
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: of about his life and you know, his take on
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: his participation in Hall of Oates. And he said, you know,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: I you know, if you're into it, I could help
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: you get started on something. So I said, well, you know,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: maybe we could talk to the rest of the band,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: and so we went in. I had a little meeting
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: with myself and Tommy and John McPhee was there as well,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: and started talking about it, and Chris said, I could
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: you know, I could help you. I could either you
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: could do interviews with me and I could uh, you know,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: right stuff and it would sort of be He said,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: I think it would be most interesting to have it
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: from your you guys joint vantage point, you know, Tommy
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: and I you you started the band and you're still
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: doing it, so it would be you know, you'd have
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: a really great overview. So um, that was how it
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: came about. And in the end, you know, I would
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: say Tommy and I probably wrote more than Chris in
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: the end. He would write, he wrote things, and he's
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: a great writer, and but sometimes he'd send me something
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: back and I think that's not the way I would
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: tell that story. And then I would just sit down
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: at my computer and I would retype, you know, the
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: whole thing kind of more a little bit more from
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: my perspective or more in my own voice. And but
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: it was really Chris's prompting that that helped us to
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: put it together, helped us to you know, dust off
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the cob webs and remember events. It was funny, you know,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: we as we did it. Uh. We we wrote things
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: and I would think, well, that's good, there's a story.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: And then i'd I'd read it and I'd go, oh,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: I forgot about this or I forgot about that, and go, Christal,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I have time to put this in. And you go, sure,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: you know you want to write it or you want
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: me to interview in. We'll put it together and I go, well,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: let me try it, and so I would sit down
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: and write and it became a It was a lot
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: of work because it took us literally years to do it,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: but it was fun at the same time to to
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: remember things and and it was from from my perspective anyway,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: it was something that I originally wanted to do myself.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: So being having that opportunity to actually sit down with
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: my own in my own voice and with my computer
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: to write it myself, I enjoyed that aspect of it.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: So so that was it. And uh, you know, um,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: you've got to thank Chris for you know, prodding us
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: to get the project going, because really, I don't I
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: don't know if it would have ever gotten off the
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: ground if it hadn't been for him. Now, the two
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: points in the book that stuck out for me were
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: the transition from Tom to Michael McDonald. There was a
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: lot more detail than we've ever seen in the press,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and a number of negative comments about Skunk Baxter at
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the end of his tenure. How did you feel about
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: writing that stuff? Was that something well, I'm just writing
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: the truth, or you were fearful that Skunk would not
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: like it? What was going through your mind all of that. Absolutely. Um,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: I h that was a very difficult time and a
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: difficult um you know, with with Tommy leaving the band,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: that was a horrible time for me personally. UM. Thanks
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: to Jeff for really uh standing by me and and
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: you know I got a hand it to him. I
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: think he was really strong at that point in at
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: that transition as it as it turned out, you know,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: it just kind of went to went to hell in
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: terms of his relationship with with the band. You know,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: in the end, kind of sad I was. I didn't
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: know exactly how to present that in the end. I
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: just kind of wrote it up the way it happened.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: You know. That was probably the only real kind of
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: negative moment for me with anybody in the band in
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: terms of kind of a rough road to maneuver. But
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: you know, I felt like that was that was the
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: way it went, and that was the way I wrote it. Now,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: subsequent to the band breaking up in the early eighties,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: and there were a couple of charity gigs. Have you
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: seen Skunk? Do you have any relationship with Skunk? I
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: have seen him, Yeah, sure, UM, not not a lot. Ideologically,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: we don't. We don't mesh. You know, Um, I don't
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: know how far to get into politics because it really
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: is political and you know what I mean, well, I
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: won't say political ideological, but but these days, you know,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: ideological and political are kind of the same thing. So
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: um yeah, I just I don't I don't buy the
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: right wing, you know, sort of militaristic, ah intolerant if
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: you will, attitude about that part of our of our country.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to the motorcycle. So how did you
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: get into motorcycles? Let's see, Well, you know, kind of
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: I had friends in high school that that row, and
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: they were always encouraging me to get into bikes. And
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I my first, you know, probably serious girlfriend's brother, um
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: road with He had an old gosh, it was in
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty forty one Knucklehead Harley that he wrote that
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: was his everyday transportation. Really, I don't even think he
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: had a car at that point. And I loved that bike.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I just admired the bike so much. And I had
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I had ridden, um you know, Hondas and stuff, and
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: um not nothing I ever owned. It always belonged to
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: my friends, and I rode and then one day this
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: buddy of mine, Bill said, you know, I have a
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: B S A four. He went, Victor, it's up in
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: northern California at the guy's house and I loaned it
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: to him to ride. And uh, I can't remember. We
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: had probably talked about it at one point, he said,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: but that bike's up in northern California. He said, I
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: gave it to him to ride, and he's not riding it.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: So you know, if if you want to ride that bike,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: all you gotta do is go up and get it
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: and you can ride it. So I said, oh, let's go.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: So we jumped in. I had a little MGB hatchback
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: and we jumped in that car and we drove up
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: to Crescent City, which is way up in northern California,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: right on the Oregon border. And uh. We got to
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: the guy's place late at night and he said, you know,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: where's the bike. He said, Oh, it's in over and
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: my dad's business. It's in the garage. His dad had
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: some kind of a of a business, screen door business
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: or something. He goes over there and we can go
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: get it in the morning. So so we stayed the night.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: We got up in the morning, we went over there
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: and we walked and go where's the bike and he
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: points over in the corner. He goes, it's over there,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: and we look at a bunch of cardboard boxes and
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the bike was completely disassembled. So there's the engine here,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: the frames laying there and stuff is you know, not
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: completely the engine had not been disassembled. Luckily, it was
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: still in one piece. So anyway, we we Uh. My
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: buddy says, well, we're taking the bike and he goes, yeah, well,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: I tried to fix it. He goes, I was gonna
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: I'm fixing it. He goes, if you're fixing it, why
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: did you tear it all to apart? And he goes, oh,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: you know, we just thought that's what we needed to do.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: And he goes, I shook our heads. So put it
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: in the back of my hatchback and I, you know,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I tied the back. It couldn't even fit it in there, really,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: so it's hanging out the back. And we drove back
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: up north and we got to San Jose and there
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: was still it was in those days, it was late sixties,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: there was still a B. S. A dealership in San Jose.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: So we stopped either and I picked up a manual,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: a repair manual, took it home, laid it all out
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: and started putting it together. I had my manual there
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: and I started putting the bike together, and then my
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: girlfriend's uh brother came over and he kind of gave
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: me a few pointers. All I really had for tools
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: was like a couple of screwdrivers and a pair of
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: pliers in a crescent ranch. That was kind of the
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: extent of my tool collection. But believe it or not,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: you can do a lot with with that. And so
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I started putting the bike together. I put it all together,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: put it back together, and I couldn't get it started.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: It wouldn't start. And then so I'm looking through, well,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: it could be this, it could be that, and uh
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: so I I just started take went down to the
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: b s A shop. I said, give me a give
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: me this or that and different parts, and started replacing
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: parts in the bike. And every time I would replace
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: a part, I try to start it and try to
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: start it. And then finally it started and it wasn't
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: you know, it was running really rough, but I dialed
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: it in and had a little uh you know, British
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: carburetor on it. I forget what they call those carburetors,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: but anyway, and just started, you know, tweaking on it,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: and dialed it in, got that bike running, and I
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: rode the bike for the next couple of years. That
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: was not my main motor transportation, but at times it
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: was because my car would break down and then I
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: have nothing but that that motorcycle. So um and it
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: was a single cylinder bike with it had was supposed
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: to have a compression release because they are super high compression,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: and the compression release was broken. So when you started,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: it would kick back, and sometimes it would kick back
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: and just about send you over the handlebars, you know,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: it kicked back so hard. And anyway, I learned a
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: lot about, you know, mechanics on motorcycles. I already understood
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: a certain amount of mechanics. I had worked in gas
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: stations and stuff. But uh so I really cut my
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: teeth on that bike. And then years later I got in,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: you know, I went out and bought a Harley. When
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I finally made some money with the band, I went
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: about Harley Davidson. But but that old B S A
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: was a great, great old bike. It was fun. You
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: could you could it did a lot, you know. It
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: was a good street bike. You could take it in
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: the dirt. It was just a lot of fun. It
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: was a neat bike, and I had another one until
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: recently I just sold it. But anyway, that's kind of
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: my beginning. That's how I got into bikes. You worked
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: in gas stations and you rebuilt this motorcycle. Were you
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: also a tinker with your musical equipment a little bit? Uh?
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: You know, Uh, I didn't really, I I was. I
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: started playing guitar when I was eight years old, so
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I had to learn about the ins and
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: outs of replacing strings and tuning and and you know,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: parts of the guitar. I never really built or rebuilt guitars. Um.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: You know, I just my guitars were all always stock
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: instruments pretty much. Um. If I had anything you know,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: crazy I want to do, I would send it to
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: a you know, an expert, you know, somebody that had
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: a guitar shop or something, you know where they worked
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: on instruments. But yeah, you know, in terms of you know,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: really tinkering, I don't think I ever really. I mean,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: I've taken guitar guitars completely apart and put them back
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: together again, uh you know, but they were always with
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: the same parts that that came out of them pretty much.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: So how many motor cycles you own now, I don't know.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Quite a few I've got, I've got, you know, a
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: garage I keep mad. I don't know, probably thirty or forty,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: about forty forty, probably closer to forty. Okay. I don't
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: know anybody who's ever owned a motorcycle who hasn't dumped frequently,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: not even their fault. Fault is a driver in a car, whatever,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: what has been your experience. There's only two types of bikers,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the ones that have been down and the ones that
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: are going down. You know, it's uh, it's something that
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: kind of comes with the territory and and really you
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: have to I don't think everybody has to take a
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: spill on a bike, but often, you know, you you
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: push the envelope and that's where the problem is starting.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: It's usually often you're not going that fast. Um, you know,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: most people dump a bike in the gravel and they
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: may be only going a couple of miles an hour,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: but bikes get really squirrely in the gravel, and if
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: you hit the brake, especially the front break, you're probably
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: gonna go down on the bike on the street. That's
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: often when you you're you know, maybe you're you're out
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: on a wet road, or you're you're somewhere where somebody
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: has been parked or dropped some oil and you happen
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: to go through that that spot. Um Probably most often
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: it's when people are going too fast on a bike
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and they you know, coming into a corner. That's often
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: a place where people lose it on motorcycles. I've really
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: learned a lot about safety equipment, wearing the right clothes.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: I didn't used to wear a helmet in the old day.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: After friends of mine had some horrible accidents and were
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: wearing helmets, I decided, I'm going to go, you know
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: with with the helmet, and I'm glad. I had one
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: spill and I was wearing a helmet, and I don't
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: think I actually hit my head, but I was really
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: happy I was wearing a helmet and and and wearing
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: all the equipment that I needed. I had the leather
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: pants on, and I know, skidded on the road, and
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: you know, I actually my toe in my boot, which
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: is a steel toe boot, wore all the way through
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the leather to the steel toe and scraped. So you know,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: we're having the right equipment is really important on a bike.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I have gloves on as well, you know, so I
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: didn't sustain any injuries. I kind of squashed squashed my
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: toe in my boot and my toe hurt for a while.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: And but the bike was fairly well scraped up and
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: you know bent bent components and so on. So you know,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: there's safety is an issue, and the proper clothing can
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: really make a big difference. And how you you know
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: what happens to you in that instance. So what motivated
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: you to play the guitar at AG Well, let's see,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: I had taken piano lessons when I was a little kid, uh,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and I you know, I just loved music, Um, I had.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: I've listened to music all my life, you know, since
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: I was a small child, and so I've always been
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: inspired by by music in general, all kinds of music, uh,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: specifically rock music in the fifties. You know, I probably
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: had a similar kind of experience that that Tom had,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: and that I had a you know, an older friend.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: I think it was his brother that probably turned him
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: onto some of the the coolest music. But I we
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: I had a friend of the family that had come
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: to stay at our house he was in the middle.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: He was just going into the army and he came
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: stayed to our house a little bit, and then he
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: left his entire record collection of forty five and it
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: was just all the best songs from the area, you know,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: the Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bobby Darren, the Coasters,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Connie Francis, too too many to even remember. But so um,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I list sat there and listen to those records for
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: every day, for hours. I would just sit and listen,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: you know, until I was exhausted, you know, from listening,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: and uh, across the street one you know, I met
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: the kid across the street and I around the same time.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Everything kind of clicked at once I went over to
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: his house. I had met him, you know, playing outdoors.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: We just moved into the neighborhood and went over to
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: his house and walked. He took me into his bedroom
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: and sitting there in the corner was a guitar and
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: it was, you know, an arch top harmony guitar, but
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: kind of a upper upper end harmony. It was a
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: nice guitar for the times. And I just I froze,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: you know when I saw the guitar, because I had
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: never I've never seen a guitar in up in person,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: you know. I've seen him on television and of course
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: new people played guitars here him on records, but I
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: had never seen one. And there it was in the corner.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: I'm just like, it was magical, you know this, wow,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: there it is. We had a piano and that that
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: was pretty magical too, But guitar, there's something about it.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: They're just called to me. And so I said, you know,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: can I touch it? Yeah, go ahead to pick it up,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: you know, strum it if you want to. So I
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: took it overset on his bed and he put the
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: guitar in my hands and and I just, you know,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I strummed it. And he goes, you want me to
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: teach you a chord? And I go yeah. So he
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: taught me a g chord and that was the beginning.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: And I was there every day at his house after that.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Every Hey, Ronnie, can I can I come in look
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: at your guitar player? Guitar? Sure, come on in. And
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: he had his dad had a guitar to his mom.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: His mom and dad were sort of country folk musicians
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: and they had a band or had had a band
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: at one point or another, and so his dad had
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: a guitar too, So we sat there together and he
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: would he taught me chords, and then pretty soon we
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: were playing so looks together. He taught me songs and
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: that was it. I was off from there on. I
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: was you know, live, eat, breathe, guitar songs music. You know,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: that was okay. So this was in the state of Washington.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: It was in California nineteen fifty eight probably, but you
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: were born in the state of Washington. Is I was
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: born in the state of Washington. And how did you
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: end up moving to California. My father was an educator.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: He was a teacher, and my mother was also and
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: my father had I went to school to my dad
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: in Washington for a little bit. He was a principal
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: at a school I attended when I was just a kindergartener,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: and that's how I came to play the piano a
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: little bit. My dad would take me to some uh
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: one of the students parents and lived nearby, and this
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: kid's grandmother was there, and somehow my dad became acquainted
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: with her and asked her if she would keep an
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: eye on me. After I got out of class. I
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: would go half a day, and then my dad was
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: there all day until about three or four in the afternoon.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: And so about noon I would go to this lady's
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: house and really like the first couple of days we
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: were there, I saw her piano sitting in the living
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: room and I went over and I tinkled on. I
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: can remember really memorable going over and you know, hitting
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: the keys. And she said, oh, do you play the piano?
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: And I go, Now, we my sister plays. She was, oh,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: you have a piano at home. I go, yeah, she said,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: what would you like to learn? I go sure, She said, well,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: I I teach piano among other things, and you I'd
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: be glad to you know, your hair every day, you know,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: would you like to learn to play? And I go,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: she goes, I love. I love to teach piano. So
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: she started teaching the piano, and I was there every
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: day for the next I don't know how it was,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: probably however long you go for a year, eight months
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: or something, but five five days a week I was
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: there at her house, playing the piano and loving it,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: you know. And then she was more than she was
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a teacher, but she was a mentor as well, so
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: she you know, we would spend a half hour on
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: the piano and then it was a cool routine. Every
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: day I looked forward to it. We would play a
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: little piano and then she would say, okay, time for
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: cookies and milk. And so then we'd sit and she
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: turned on the radio and every day, you know, the
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Liberaci at a radio show, and she loved that, being
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: a anno person, music person. And we'd listened to Libracci
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: live on the radio and you know, he would play
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: and he was of course, he was fabulous musician and
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: funny too, you know, so it was entertaining for all,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: for both of us. But you know that it was
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: you know, great applic you know, really uh direct application,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: you know. So I would learn and then I would
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: listen to what you know, what could happen if you
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: continued in music, you could be playing like and she
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: would she told me, you know, if you if you
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: keep going, you know you could you could do this too,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: if you if it's in your you know, if it's
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: something that calls you, you know you could you could
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: be a great piano player. So I never I loved it.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: But then when we ended up in California, my dad
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: got an offer for a job in California. So I
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: was so happy because I was in Aberdeen, Washington, which
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: is like, you know, arguably the rainiest part of the state.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: You know, it's the Pacific rainforest near the coast, and
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: pretty much my memories are rain every day. You know,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: it rained every day in my rain really hard some days.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: But even if it wasn't raining hard, it was sprinkling
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: or something. It was just always wet, always misty. And so,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: you know, come in California was like I had heard
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: of California. It was like, you know, that's where the
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: cowboys go, you know, that's where they take their cattle.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: And so we ended up in Palaulto, kind of south
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: of San Francisco there, and we spent a year there
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and then ended up in San Jose. And when I
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: was about six, I guess six seven, we ended up
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: moving to San Jose and I grew up there. That's
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: where I was through high school and college, through San Jose,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: all through you know, getting together with with the band
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: the Doobie Brothers. I was, you know, I'm a San
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Jose guy. Okay, So you're in school, good student, popular,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: bad student, unpopular. I was a good student. I don't
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: know what popular is. I wasn't as popular as I
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: as I wished I was, you know. Um, but I
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: did well in school, and I love sports. I participated
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: in everything, you know, student council. I was always involved,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: you know, and that that aspect of school and you
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: finished college. I did not finish college. I went until
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I got a high lottery number in the draft. You know,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: I kind of thought I would go back. I I
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: the whole time, I should say, I was playing music,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: like continuously really, from the time I was eight years old,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: playing the guitar. I just played, you know, every day,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: all the time until I could really perform, you know,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: until I could get up in front of an audience
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: and and entertain. Um. I think my my parents sort
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: of encouraged me in that aspect for a while until
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: I until I reached high school, and you know, everything
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: kind of changed culturally too, you know, long hair and
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: psychedelics and stuff, and then it became a different you know,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: they were freaked out by that, of course, Um, but
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: pretty much, you know, continually continually played music and and
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: that was always part of it. And so so I
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: love college, love learning. And when I went I ended
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: up at San Jose State UM, and you know, had
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: all intentions of getting a degree, and as time went
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: on UM music became more of a focal point for me.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I thought, you know, if I, if I don't pursue this,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I could see people around me who were, you know,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: having success in music, and I didn't think we're that great.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: And then so I thought, you know, I you know,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: I may, I may never get rich doing this, but
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: at least I can uh maybe make a living around town,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: you know, I can get some gigs at clubs, and
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: I did. I was able to work, you know, so
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: to me, you know, I've always had jobs, you know,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: hourly jobs, but none was as satisfying as as playing
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: you sick, and you know, you make you make more
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: money per hour, you know, playing music than then you're
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: going to make doing almost any well, not almost anything else,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: but certainly minimum wage jobs at least. Okay, I'm a
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: little younger than you, and you know, the early sixties
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: was the folk boom. Everybody was playing a nylon string guitar.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: The Beatles hit boom, everybody gets an electric guitar, everybody's
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: forming bands. Ay were you playing out before the Beatles? B.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: What was it like when the Beatles hit for you?
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: I was already playing electric guitar. I kind of I
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: went from acoustic guitar. I was kind of a roots guy.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: I I played, you know, a little bit of country
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: music when I was very young, and then when the
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: folk boom came about in the early sixties, I love
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: that music. I mean I you know, they were TV
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: shows that you know, every week that portrayed music, the Limelighters,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: and you know, there were some successful groups in the
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Kingston Trio. Um, this is earlier, kind of pre there.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: I kind of there was a delineation from more ah,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: what would be the word real early American folk songs?
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Would he got three um pete seeger Odetta. I'm trying
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: to think of people that were, you know, within that context,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: even people like Johnny cash Um. I can't remember some
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: of some of the names, but people that sang more
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: traditionalist word it's more traditional music. It's it's early American music,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: older songs, things that were written at the turn of
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: the century and then came a more modern era with
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: I would think probably the most obvious proponent or you know,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: someone to site would be a band like Peter Paul
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: and Mary who suddenly were writing more contemporary songs and
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: and UM singing songs by contemporary writers, Bob Dylan being
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: the obvious writer, and so that UM really appealed to me.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Those new songs. I had been singing, you know, early
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: American folk songs, burl ives kind of stuff. I had
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: teachers that that loved that early music, and I loved
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: it too, you know. And and then suddenly there was
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: this new uh songwriting going on and kind of obscure
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: images that were not as obvious and what those songs
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: are even about. Sometimes probably for my young mind, I
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: didn't even know what some of those songs were about,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: but I knew that they connected with something, you know,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: in in my in my psyche and and my soul.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: And so that's where I started looking at another aspect
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: of of music, songwriting particularly. And then there were at
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: that same time here shortly after that, there was in
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: the British music scene with you know, the Stones, the Animals,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: um them uh and I love that, and I thought
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: that was a There were other artists that I had
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: been was familiar with that were more rock oriented artists
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: that were blues based, you know, um bo Diddley Chuck Berry.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: But in my mind those were kind of folk artists
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: as well. The songs that they wrote and sang, we're
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: reflective of our of our daily lives, you know, uh,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: certainly of their daily lives. Probably not my daily life.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: I was, you know, white kid in the suburbs. They
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: were black kids from you know, the south and the city,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: but certainly similar music, probably to some of the more
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: modern folk music that was coming out. So it all
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: it all for me, It's all jelled into a movement
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: in music that really spoke to me. And you know,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I began to two. I discovered the blues, you know,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: uh that that was really meaningful to me at that
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: moment in time. I had a friend that was a
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: singer at a folk club and I I went I
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: would see him play. It was an older guy and
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: he was singing the blues, and I thought, that is
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: there's there's some music that I aspired to, and so
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: I started taking lessons from him. He turned me onto
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: you know, different blues artists and and that, and that
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: became another focal part in my life. And then from
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: there I started looking around and realizing that there was
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: some you know, the British blues scene was so wonderful
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: because it it turned turned a lot of people onto
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: you know, really great people that we had probably not
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: I I certainly had not been aware of bb King
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: and Albert King and you know, Bobby Blue Bland and
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: so when I've heard their music, but only on the fringe,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: you know. And then suddenly that music came alive for me.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: And so I started listening to the blues and uh
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: and and learning the blues and you know Paul Butterfield,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Mike Bloomfield again that I bought that that first Butterfield album,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: and I listened to that album over and over and
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: over again. I was like, I wouldn't you know, it
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: was just such a wonderful album. And then being there
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: in the Bay Area when the Psycho, you know, when
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: the Bill Grahams and and all the San Francisco bands
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: began again that was the edge of folk and electric. Um.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: It was just such a you know, I was so
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: inspired by that, that whole movement, and I was there.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I was part of it in a sense that not
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: that I was, you know, in some really big band
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: at that time. I played with a few bands around
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: the area and play with the Chocolate Watch Band for
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: a little while, which was kind of a uh you know,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: a regional band there that had some success. But primarily
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: I was just out playing by myself with my guitar,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: and you know, I would sit in with people and stuff.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: But I recognized that if I was going to work, UM,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: I had better have it together myself by myself before
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: anything else. Because band sort of came and went and
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: the one you know, you join a band and then
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: it would fall apart, and you join a band and
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: it would fall apart. But I could always depend on
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: the fact that if I had some songs and I
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: could leaved, I could I could keep a band together,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: you know. So I did. I was able to make
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: a living and and do something I loved at that time.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: You know, so at that time, when did you stop
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: doing day gigs and just play music. In the mid sixties,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: I was well, let's see, I probably was in high
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: school then, um, and I was always working. I always
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: had a job part time. Uh, And so I would
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: work during the day and then I would play at night.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: I got gigs and clubs even as a kid. Uh.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Those are the days of coffee houses, so you could,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: you know, there was no nothing about age. You could
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: be as and in fact, being young sort of work
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: to my advantage. I was a the youngest kid on
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: the stage at most of these coffee houses. So it
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: enabled me to have a kind of a unique pres
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: since that, oh, here comes the kid, he's gonna play.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Are you working tonight? Yeah, I'm working, cool man, you know.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: And and so I would get these gigs as a kid,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: and I was able to work. It was just, you know,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: really great. And my parents were cool with it as
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: long as it was a weekend. They don't like me
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: working during the week because I had to go to school.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: But you know, I didn't make a ton of money,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: but uh, you know, I would work. I worked at
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: a gas station. I made a buck a dollar an hour,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: and I worked ten hours, ten twelve hour shift when
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: I was sixteen, make twelve dollars. And then you had
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: to pay you know, taxes and so security and all
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: that stuff. So maybe if I made nine bucks after
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: working ten hours, and even by the standards of the time,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: that wasn't much money. And although you know, it was
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: money that I made and it was mine, it was
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: in my pocket. I could do what I wanted with it.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: But if I played a gig, I could make ten
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: bucks in three hours. Uh, you know, at a club
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: and doing something I really love. So that was that
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: was what I wanted to do. Okay, one theme in
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: the book that is really camered and I mean that
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: in a good way, over and over And this is
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: the first time I've really seen it so consistently. Is
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: this love for Moby Grat tell me all about that.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: I had a friend who I played with in a
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: band in high school and uh, it must have been
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: I forget when that album came out, sixty sixty seven maybe.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: And now one day he calls, maybe, goes, Pat, I
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: got something you gotta listen. You gotta here, and I
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: said yeah. He goes, I'm coming over. So he comes
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: over and he goes, you gotta hear this. This is
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: He goes. You know, he had turned me on to
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: a big brother in the holding company. He told me,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: you gotta go up to this club in the Santa
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: Curus Mountain, the Barn, and here this band, big brother
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: in the holding company. And this was sixty six, he said.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: He goes, they've been playing up in San Francisco. He says,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: but they're act there down here and they're playing the
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: club in Scott's Valley, which was but twenty minutes from
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: my house, you know where I lived. So I drove
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: over and I sat there and here comes big brother
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: in the holding company of the Janis Joplin, and I
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: was cold. My friend, the same guy who brought me
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: the Moby Grape album, I sat there and listened to
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: the band. Never heard him before, was before they recorded,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: and it was like I never heard any any woman
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: singing like this in my life. This is again life
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: changing moment to hear that live. I think I paid
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: a dollar and a half or something to come in
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: and see him. It was the barn in Scott's Valley
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: was an old barn. I saw Country Joe there. There
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: are all these bands from San Francisco that used to
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: come and play. So anyway, the same guy who turned
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: me on to going to see Janis Joplin says, you
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: got to hear this record, and so we put it
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: on and it was the first Moby Grape album. He goes,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: what do you think? He goes, He goes, I think
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: it's the best San Francisco band of all of them.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: He goes, what do you think I go, I think
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: you're right. I think I go. There isn't a guitar
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: player in the whole state, in the whole you know,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: of all the guitar players I had heard, uh, there
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: probably wasn't a better rock and roll guitar player than
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Jerry Miller. And it stands up today. He listened to
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: the playing. You know, I love you know, I love
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Jerry Garcia, I loved your mcauchinan, I love Barry Melton.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Back then, I mean I was over the head over
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: heels for the San Francisco music, Gary Duncan. I loved
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: all those guys. I mean, they were great players, I thought,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I still love them to this day.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: But Jerry Miller, he was just amazing, A great sort
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: of bebop player, you know, like I'm trying to think
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: of the bop guitar players, you know, it doesn't matter,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: but just a great all around player, great blues player,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: a great jazz player, a great country player. Uh. He
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: blew my mind. And then the songs were and again,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: you know, this is something that probably our band is
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: all the guys in our band I think take to heart,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: and I certainly do. It's about the songs. That's what people,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: at least for for a band like ours, it's and
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: in my own mind it's always been about the songs.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: When I hear a great song, that's what stays with me,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: that's what I you know, uh, connects me to an artist.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: And the songs that Moby Grape had were just great
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: songs and all these different singers and players writers. It
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: was a phenomenally talented bunch of guys. Uh misguided in
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: terms of, you know, the business and their management and
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: everything else that went that goes with that aspect of
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: being an artist unfortunately, but musically, I to this day,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: I think they're one of the best of the San
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Francisco bands ever. And a lot of people don't aren't
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: that familiar with them because they never really made a
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: big splash nationally. They were limited by their own foibles,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: if you will, you know, the things that you know,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: the obstacles that they put in their own pathway. But
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: still a great band. I think people would do the
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: do yourself a favor, go back to go listen to
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: eight oh five by themby Grape by Skip Spence was
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: you know a crazy person, you know, you know, really
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: a wild guy. But Oh Maha is a song that
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: he wrote that I still think a great rock song.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: It just had it was magical for the times and
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: pretty modern for that era, you know, with feedback and
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: just just an odd rhythmic track. Really interesting production. David
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Rubinson was it was a great producer. So anyway, great
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: great band, great album. Okay, so you're playing solo, you
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: don't have to worry about the army. How do you
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: get involved in bands? And then how do you ultimately
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: meet Tom? I had regular gigs around San Jose Los
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: Gatos on my own as a as a solo guitar player.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: IM I have written songs and I was doing covers
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: at the time, and then I at one point I
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: played this little club in half Moon Bay and it
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: was called the shelter In and it was owned by
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: a guy that I was acquainted with. He had a
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: club in San Jose, also called the shelter In, in
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: downtown San Jose, and at that time, in that particular
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: club downtown San Jose, your mcachenen was playing um Dave Nelson,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: who ended up playing the new Writers of the Purple Stage,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: had a regular gig there with a band his the
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Pine Valley Boys. I think it was a blue grass band.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: I believe Skip Spence played there a time or two.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Ah gosh, some some other people that had that had
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: done well in the music business around the BA area
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: ended up playing there from time to time. Anyway, Mike
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: relocated to Half Bay. He sold the place to someone else,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: and then he opened another shelter, and I think the
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: shelter in San Jose finally closed. He opened another one
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: in half Moon Bay. So I went up there. I
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: had heard about it and auditioned, and I got the
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: gig and I started playing there. Well, it turns out
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Mike was a pretty good violin player, and he asked
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: to sit in with me. Um, this is the owner,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: And of course you don't refuse the owner sitting in
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: with you, so he said. And sure enough, he was
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: a really good violin players. So we started digging together
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: and I I had I got the gigs, and he
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: would join me. Um, and then he finally moved down
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: to Los Gatos, and then we ended up playing all
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: around San Jose and he one day he goes, you know,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: I know this guy is a great bass player. Um,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: you think you'd want to have a bass player play
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: was I go, of course, and that would be wonderful.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: So it goes. Let me call him, you know, and
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: see if he's interest in coming and sitting. We were
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: getting a little bit better, more high profile gigs paying
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: a little bit better. And then I had regular gigs.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: I was doing weekly, So I wasn't making a ton
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: of money, but it was regular money coming in for
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: for both of us. And so we called he calls
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: the bass player and he and this was Tyronne Porter,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: who ended up being the bass player for the for
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: the Doobies UH a couple of years later. So Tyrone
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: uh flew up. Those are the days you could get
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: a flight uh for dirt. You know, it's about fourteen
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: dollars to fly from l A to to San Jose.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: So we picked him up and we rehearse and started gigging,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: the three of us, and so he would come up
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: every weekend, and UH started gigging around San Jose and
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: and last adis Santa Cruz and we were doing pretty well.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: And so we ended up digging at the Chateau Liberty
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: and that was my first experience at that club. The
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: three of us gig in there. I think I had
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: gig there once by myself, um and then the three
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: of us. So we started digging regularly at the chateau,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: and Mike h Mike and I kind of broke up.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: The band broke up, the three of us. Tyronne had
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: something else going on, and I forget something happened with nothing.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Mike had other things to do. He ended up, I think,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: leaving town, and uh, so I was back on my own.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: So I started playing around town with this guy, Peter Grant,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: and Peter was he was a local I had known
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: for years. He was the banjo player, guitar player, he
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: had played. He was friends with some of the guys
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: in Grateful Dead. He had played on one of the
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Dead albums. He had taught himself to play pedal steel
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: and ended up on I think oxom oxiwa playing steel
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: and anyway a really decent banjo player. So I had
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: played with three different banjo players around town and doing
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: blue grass because I was kind of one of my things.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: I had made an effort to study a little bit
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: about blue grass, and I had friends that played, and
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: so I would just sit in and learn the you know,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: how to learn the songs. You know the lot of
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: instrumentals and stuff, and I learned that task myself with
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: learning and listening to blue grass. So um, playing with Peter,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: and one day we got this. I get this call.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: It's Mike Mindel, my ex middle player. He goes, I'm
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: opening a club in h Campbell. It's the old Campbell
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Theater was the downtown theater in Campbell, California, which is
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: kind of a suburb of San Jose. And I'm going
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: to call it the gas Lighter Theater. And I'd love
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: I love to have you come and play. What are
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: you doing now? And I said, well, I'm Paile playing
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: with this guy, Peter Grant. He goes, well, I'm trying
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: to book hot Tuna, and uh maybe you you guys
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: could come and open for hot Tuna. I go, yeah,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: of course that would be wonderful. So so we get
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: to the I told Peter Bouty goes, I go, how
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: much are you paying? He goes, I'm paying you know whatever.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: It was pretty good. I think he was paying me
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: like fifty bucks, which was a lot in those days.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: So um, we get there and uh, no, hot Tuna.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: Hot Tuna. They had a a commit that they had
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: to honor, and he couldn't They couldn't show up. So
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: he hired this other band, Pachuco. I go, well, I
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: know Pachuco. It's uh, Skip Spence and this guy, Bill
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: Andres was a guitar player in the band at the time.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: So um, I go, well, that's that's great. You know,
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: I love both those guys, and that will be great anyway.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: So um, so I had known Skip previously, and that's
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: another story in itself. But so we get there and
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: so Peter and I play, you know there, Skip's not
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: there yet. Peter and I set up and and we
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: do our set. We play an hour or so and
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: then I see Skip comes in, and I see these
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: other guys, and they go, well, where's Bill Andres. He's
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: not with them. So I go I talked to Skip.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: I go as the worst. Bill He goes, I he's
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: in jail. So I got these guys. This is you know,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, you didn't gotta meet these guys. Guys are great.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: I go, okay. Skip was really kind of high strung
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: at that point, and uh, he goes, this is Tom.
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: This is John. So I to He goes, hey, how
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: you doing? You know? He goes, and we caught you.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: We listened to your set coming in this man, you guys,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: you sounded great, you and Peter and you really you
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: really nailed it. It was really great, you know. And
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: I go, well, I'm anxious, you know, hear you guys,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: And he goes, yeah, well it's kind of loose. You know.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: We really haven't rehearsed much. We just you know, Skip
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: told us he, you know, that his regular band members
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: weren't going to show up, and so he called us
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: and asked us if we play with him. So he go,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: I go, well, whatever. You know, I was used to
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: see in bands like that that are kind of thrown together.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: And but I was anxious to see because I I
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: hadn't seen Skip for years, and I was anxious to
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: see him. And he had this guitar that he had built,
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: and it was a stratocaster. Somewhere he'd gotten these longhorn
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: cattle uh horns and had him grafted onto the guitar.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: It looked really demonic, you know, and it was painted
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: with you know, pin striping like they did on hot
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: rods and stuff. And he's wearing this long, this trench coat,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: and he's wearing a hat like I'm wearing, right, now
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: he had a beret on backwards. He looked great, you know,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: he looked every bit the rock star that he had
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: been and was. And uh so they get up there
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: and I can't even hear skips guitar. It's like, I
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: don't even I don't think it was plugged in. And
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: he's like doing all this you know stuff, and Tom
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: is up at the microphone own singing, and John and
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: they had a bass player with him, and they are
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: killing it. I mean, Tommy, you could tell that they
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: were whatever Skip was. These guys were rehearsed, and they
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: started playing kind of like like heavy metal, like cream.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: You know, it was before there was even a term
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: heavy metal. It was you know, hard rock trio just
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: killing it. I mean I was like, oh my god,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: these guys are really good. You know. It was not
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: my kind of music. I was like Peter and I
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: just got done doing traditional kind of a bunch of
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: traditional music and bluegrass and stuff, some blues a little bit.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: And these guys are killing it. And they're playing the
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: blues too. But it's like loud, you know to me,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: and as loud as they could get as he could
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: get his amplifier to go and they are killing it,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: and I'm just like going, man, where these guys come from?
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: You know. And so afterwards I go back, I go, good,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: you guys, you guys are great. You guys are really good.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: And what are you doing? You know? He goes, well,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm John. Was kind of a character, and
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: he was like really animated. He goes, yeah, I just
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: got here from uh, from Virginia, False Church, and I
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: just got into town. Yeah, I met I met up
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: with Skippy. Was kind of job. He's going, yeah, I
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: just made up a skip and we're putting a band together.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: It's gonna be like really big, really good. And uh,
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: we're looking for some other guys. And we saw you playing.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: We thought yeah, and then you know, this guy is
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: pretty good. You know, maybe you'd like to come in
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: and sit with us. You should come on, come by
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: the house. Man. We were we jam, we work out,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: we we play all the time. You know, just this
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: rapid speech, and I'm going I'm going, oh, I don't
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: know about this, but but I liked him, you know,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: I mean it was to me. They were really great
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: characters and really good musicians. And so I said, well,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: you know, I said, I I said I will come by,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: you know, I will come by sometime. He goes, well,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: maybe you'd like to. You know, we're trying to put
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: this band together. We could use another guitar player, and
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: you look like you'd fit right in with what we're
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: trying to do, you know, with Tom's rhythm and you
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: and your picking, man, we could we could have this
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: whole thing and be like Moby great. You know. We
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: get skipping and I go, well, I go, I have
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: a band that I'm playing with, you know, um and uh,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: I'm playing with Peter now. And I and I had
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: been playing on and off with Mike still the guy
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: that had the gas lighter, and Tyranne a little bit. Still.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: We didn't play all the time as much, but we
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: still did play around. I said, oh, I have these
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: other things I'm doing. But I said, I will come
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: by and we'll connect and you know, see where it goes.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: So so I never did. I never went by because
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I don't know, it's not I'm
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: not sure if it's my thing. So one day i'm
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: I'm at my house and knock, knock, knock. I lived
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: about about five blocks from from where those guys were living.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: And I get to hear this knock and it's John Hartman.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: And John he was in those days. He weighed about
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: three d and fifty pounds. He he was wearing clothes
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: that it looked like he'd slept in him, you know,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: lived in him. They were just, you know, like he
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: looked like a hell's angel, you know. And I was like,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: I loved what who he was and how he presented
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: himself that I was kind of like a little bit intimidated. Right,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: So he goes, hey, man, I thought you're gonna come
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: over to the house, you know. I go, uh, you know,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: I really I really wanted to. I just I've been busy,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: and you know I've been I had a job, I
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: was still working. I had a day job as well.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: So I go, you know, but I will, like I promise.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: He goes, well, you gotta come by, man. We have
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: these jams. I mean it is they're out of sight, man,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: and you would love it. You would love it. He goes,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: you know, you got an electric guitar. I going, well, no,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: I have this acoustic, but I do have a pickup.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: I had this darm and pickup that I put on
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: my guitar. So so I go. Finally, I go, I
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: got it. I can't keep I can't, you know, not
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: go by after all that. So I got I got
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: the address, and I go by and Tommy's here. He's, hey, man,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: come on in. You know. Yeah, I'm so glad you
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: came by. Hey, you want a jam, you know? I go,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: I go, yeah, I just brought my acoustic. Giuse well,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: come on out in the backyard. He says, I got
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: my acoustic too, and we'll just sit around a jam.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: What the hell you know, I want to smoke one.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: I go, sure, you know. So, so we go out
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: in the backyard and John brings the congo drum out there.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: Tommy is this acoustic. I got my acoustic, and we
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: start just playing. I played some of my songs. He's
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: playing some of his stuff, and we're just you know,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: backing each other up and having fun. And that was
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: the beginning of our relationship. I just I was wondering.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: We spent hours just doing that, you know, we didn't
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: we never set up and played electrically or anything. Tommy says,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: you gotta come back. Then we set up, we we jam,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: and other musicians combine. He goes, probably some people you know.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: He started name and name. It's like, oh, yeah, of
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: course I know that guy, this guy, and he goes, uh,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: he goes, we're playing at San Jose State. Uh, this weekend.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: You gotta come in and hear us. He goes, it's
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: it's different from what you heard was Skips. Skips not
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: in the band. So I go over. They play this
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: gig and it's like the trio again, but with a
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: horn section. It's so great. It's so real and amazing,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: you know. It was like the horn section was really good.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: So they're guys I knew already. They're surround town that
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: that I knew of them. They played in different bands
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: and I had played with. The sax player used to
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: come and sit in with me at a club I
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: played at, and so well rehearsed, they killed it. I
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: came away thinking, yeah, this is really good. This is
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: really something real. These guys are really they really got something.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it is, but and I don't
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: know how I might fit into it, but I loved
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: to be a part of this, you know. So I
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: started going over to the house and we would just jam,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: sit and I had my acoustic guitar with a pickup
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: on it. Somebody would have an amplifier. I think I
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: had an amplifier. I brought my aunt and we started
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: jamming and that was the beginning. And then one day
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: they said, you know, hey, uh. I can't remember exactly
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: how it came about that. Tom said, you know, we're
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: we we have a gig and we'd really like you
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: to play on the gig with us. And I said,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: who who's in the band and he said, well, it's myself,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: John and this bass player we got and the other
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: guy we had left. We got this new bass player.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: So I go over to the house and it's a
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: guy went to high school which was in the band,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: Dave Shogrin. So I didn't, you know, I wasn't close
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: friends with Dave, but I knew him. I had met
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: him here and there and remembered him from high school.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: He's to see him around the campus. And so that
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: was the band and we started. Uh. We we had
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: a gig, our first gig, I can't remember. It was
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: probably some club somewhere and we started playing and then
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: we just kept playing and we're still playing. Okay, so
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: you're playing because you've been doing it for a while.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: At this point, At what point you say, man, we
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: want to get a record deal or were you always
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: looking for a record deal? That is kind of a
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: fun story. Um, I was living in this house, the
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: house that John came and found me at in the house,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: and uh, one of the gals in the house played
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: in a band and the band was had been playing
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: around town. And I had known her for years, but
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: I never really knew she was a singer. And suddenly
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: she was in this band. And she's in a band
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: with other people that I knew, and they put they
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: started this band, and it was sort of bankrolled by
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: this guy who had inherited some money from his parents
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: somehow they had a trust fund or something, and so
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: they he went out and he bought them all instruments
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: and they started rehearsing, and they started gigging and getting gigs.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: And I went to see him and I thought, my friend,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: that singing is the best that this in this band.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: She's the best part of the band. She could sing
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: the rest of it. I'm not sure about, you know,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: And I'm not sure but the songs exactly how they're
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: you know, how they're getting these gigs because I'm thinking,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: but you know, those were the days when it really
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: didn't matter if you had a guitar and you could
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: you had something going on, you you could get gigs.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: But you know, I mean I liked them all. They
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: were all the good people and and uh as individuals,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: I had seen them in different entities and I thought, well,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: they're this guy is pretty good. That guy's good. But
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: as a band, I thought, I'm not sure about this band.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: So one day she comes home, she goes, Hey, we're
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: gonna go make we're making a demo at the studio
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: up in San Francisco. And the guys that are that
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: have the studio, they're here right now in the house.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: And I was there in the house because I shared
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: this house with her and a couple of other people.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: And um, we paid. We paid a hundred dollars a
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: month for the house and there were three three of
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: us that split the rent. It was thirty three dollars apiece,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: and somebody had to pay each each month. Somebody had
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: to pay the extra dollar, you know. So uh so
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: she comes in and with these two guys and they
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: introduced themselves. This is Marty, this is Paul, and uh,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: I go and they were kind of like yeah, well
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: yea audio only so they have their noses in the
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: airh yeah, okay. They're kind of like high rollers, you know,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: you know, elitist types. And she's going, we're going up
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: to make this demo tomorrow, and they're going, yeah this man,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: the guys are really good. And I go, oh cool,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm glad that's happening. So so, uh, they
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: go make the demo. I guess, and h I don't know.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I heard the demo was like,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: you know, not that great. So it's one name over
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: at at Tommy's in John's place and they go, hey,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: we made this demo. You know you want to hear it. Uh,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: you know, it's this two song demo and they he
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: puts it on and I go, yeah, that's pretty good.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like these He goes, yeah, I just
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: I just wrote the lyrics these. I don't even know
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: what I was talking about it. I just wrote these
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: lyrics in the studio, you know, we threw these things together.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: And I'm listening to him. I'm going that sounds pretty good.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: You know, those aren't bad, And he goes, yeah, the
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: guys that have the studio up in San Mateo and
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: and there look there they're they're letting bands come up
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: and and do demos, you know, And so I go,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: I guess wouldn't be named Marty and Paul. They ya,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: those are the guys. I go, how did you find
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: how'd they find you? And he goes, Skip found they
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: found Skip, and Skip found us and took and brought tom.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: It was Tom John and I think at that time
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: it was before Dave Chobrin they had made this demo.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: I go, yeah, I met those guys and they go, yeah, well,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: you know, we might be able to do some more demos.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: We're just kind of waiting to hear back. He goes,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: you would you want to, you know, play on something,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: and saying if if we get another opportunity, I go,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: of course, you know that that would be wonderful. So
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know. A few weeks later, Tommy calls me
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: and says, Skip just called us. He said we should
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: get up to the studio right away. He goes, they
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: want to do they want to do some more demos,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: And I go, really now and he goes yeah. I goes, wow,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: I got a gig. I'll cancel my gig and you
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: know we'll go do it. So so we drive up
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: to San Mateo and there's Skips there and and Marty
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: and Paul and we set up and we talked through
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: you know, what we're going to do. And so they say, well,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: you know, we have a deal here. If if we
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: give you the free studio time, you have to sign
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: this contract with us that we're going to be your
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: representatives and that whatever we whatever these demos are, that
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: we own them, uh in the capacity that we're allowed
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: to shop them for you. And so that sounded reasonable
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: to me. I didn't that we don't mean better offers.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: So so we went ahead and signed the contract and
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: then we go and start doing demos. So over a
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: period of three or four days, I guess, we threw
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: these demos together. It was a couple of songs of
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: mine and then four songs of Tom's. So, uh, weeks
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: go by. We heard the demos, we were like, wow,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: those sound really good. We we never thought we could
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: sound that good. And we're going, yeah, wow, amazing. You know,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe something will happen. You know, when we're playing
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: the demos for all our friends, you know, and they're
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: all going, wow, you guys are that sounds really good, man,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: you guys, you guys are really going to do something. So, um,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: weeks go by, months go by, we don't hear anything.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: I guess nothing's going to happen. And and then all
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: of a sudden we get a call from the studio
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: and they say, look, we got some interest from some
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: different parties. A and M as interested in it. They're
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: the first ones that called us. And so we spoke
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: to producer at A and M. And at that point
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: we we would have taken anything, you know. And uh,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: then we here that well, um, a couple of guys
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: from Warner Brothers that want to come and see you
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: guys play somewhere. People from and M. I think we
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: did alive in the studio where we played for them.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: We set up and then we did, you know. We
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: ran through a few songs and uh it was a
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: producer of note I can't remember his name. Was it
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: David Anderley? It was not David Anderley, it was I'd
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: know the name if I saw it. I think I've
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: seen it not that far in the in the past.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: But um, so then we hear that there are a
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: couple of guys from Warner Brothers are coming, So they're
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: going to come and see us play at the Chateau Liberty,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: which is this club we've been playing in the Santa
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: Cruz Mountains, which is kind of a hippie biker bar
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: really kind of ah a great place to hear music,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: but it's you know, a psychedelic inferno. And we're sort
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: of arguably the house band that we play there all
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: the time, but they love us there. We packed the
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: place and it's a small place, I mean full up.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: It would be you know, three people, maybe three or
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: four people, and they would be spilling out the doors,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: and we used to pack them in. I mean literally,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: you know, people were packed shoulder to shoulder in the club.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: So in walks ted Templeman and Lenny Warrenker and I
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: one of them was wearing like a white cardigan sweater
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: with with uh, you know, penny loafers and you know,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: Teddy had you know, longish hair, but not long. It
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: was kind of like and and and Lenny is like
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: straight as an arrow, and and he's I think his
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: his his sweaters like draped over his shoulders and the
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: sleeves are tied front of that kind of thing. And
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: they're looking around and here's like the Hell's Angels and uh,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: you know, hippies with you know, beards down to their
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: waist and you know, chicks with their boobs tips hanging out.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: And I mean it's a scene right and drinking and
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: and it's loud in there. And we were in there,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: and by that time I had an electric guitar and
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: that I had bought from the bartender, so I got
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: my ample and we're turned as loud as we could go,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: and we're blasting, we're rocking hard, you know, and I
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: look over and you could see these guys. They stand
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: out like a spotlights on and their eyes are as
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: big as saucers. And I'm looking at and they're kind
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: of like look, you know, looking cursory back and forth,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: like oh man, what have I got myself into? So
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: they're they're at They sit there through really the entire set.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: We do a whole set there there the whole time,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: and then finally, at some point, you know, we take
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: a break, we go over and meet and they're really nice,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: you know, very you know, complimentary. Man, you guys sound good.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: We heard your demos. We really we really liked the band.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: And my memory is somebody said we really like to
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: sign you guys. And we had talked to the people
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: at A and M and they had never said, we
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: really like to sign you guys. And UM, as far
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: as I was concerned, A and M was a great label,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: but Warner Brothers was, you know, a staple in entertainment industry,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: from films to some of the people that I that
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: I had admired were on Warner Brothers at the time.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: So we didn't take us long to decide, Yeah, Warner
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: Brothers is where we would want to be, so that
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: that's how we started. And you know, I think it
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: was just a you know, one of those random things
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: where our demo tape ended up at the right place.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: Ted was had had been his job was kind of
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: listening to new music that was being sent in through
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: from different artists, and ours happened to be in the pile.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: And from what he told me, he listened to you know,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: fifty plus artists today sending material. And he told me
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: the way he listened to music was he listened to
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: the first song and he would listen for you know,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: thirty seconds to a minute, and if it, if it
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: kind of he liked it, he would go on and
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: get to the middle of it and listen to some
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: of that, and that was it. If if he liked it,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: he knew it, and then he would go on and
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: listen to the whole thing. But he said, if it
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: didn't hit him within that first thirty seconds to a minute,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: it wasn't probably going to get go much further than that.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: So sort of neat knee jerk reactions to the music,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: which is I think probably how it really still is
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: that way in the music industry. Um, I find myself
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: listening that way a little bit. I listened further because
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: these days because I hear things that you know, maybe
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: there's something there that maybe I don't like it right away,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: but if I give myself a chance, uh, you know,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: there's there is something much deeper that you can discover
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: if you give yourself a chance. But anyway, that that
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: was our our experience. So the two of them produce
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: your first record, which I'm sure is a thrill You're High,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: has the single Nobody Everything Stiffs Okay, even though Nobody
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: is your set opener, now set opener of your box set?
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: What goes through your head? And then how much pressure
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: is there for the second album? I don't think we
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: were surprised necessarily. Um, it's you know, we were well
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: aware of how it works, how the music business works,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: and all the stories with that. People like to tell
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: you right away, you know, and don't don't get your
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: hopes up, kid. Um. And so when it didn't really hit,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: I kind of thought to myself, well, boy, that was
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: a great chance we had. And and we got to
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: make an album. How many bands get to do that
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: on a major label. You know, I'll always be able
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: to pull that album out and say, see look what
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: I did. I did once, you know. And but we
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: still love playing together, and so we didn't really give up,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: we thought, you know, um, Personally, I believed in Tommy Johnston.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: You know, I believe I still believe he's a great,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: uh songwriter, a great singer, a great stylist, a great poet.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: So to me that that, you know what, was meant
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: so much to me. And I just at that time,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: at that moment in time, I knew he had other
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: great songs that he would write. I just knew it.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: And I was still writing, and I felt like I
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: was getting better as a writer, and uh and I
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: and the whole process is a gift. You know what
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: I mean. Music is and was has always been a
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: gift for me. It's something that I didn't do because
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: I thought I was going to be Liberaci. I did
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: it because I love Liberacci. So you know, I want
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be able to do that much. I
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: wanted to be able to play and have fun and
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: if if there was any success that came with it,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: that was just frosting on the cake for me. So
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't know how long I would feel that way.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, I obviously there's a point in your life
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: where you're going to go, you know, give it up.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: You know you're not gonna make it. So but you know,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: I never happened. We kept on going and uh but
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: initially it was simply because I loved what we were doing.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: And and really through the years we've had moments where
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: we we haven't done quite as well. Um I could
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: say that now you know we're not. We haven't had
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: big hit records for a long time. You know, who cares.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: It's about whether or not somebody wants to come to
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: your gig and see a play, and whether or not
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: you know you can afford to pay the guys to
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: to to show up, you know. Um, so that it's
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: still kind of the same for me, But back then
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: it was it was simply just believe in in in
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: the Tommy, particularly as an artist. I knew that he
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: was going to write some good songs that I would
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: enjoy playing. You know, So the second album comes out,
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: I'd be pretty close to tension. If I ever read
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: anything about the first Black and White album cover that album,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: I don't remember. And I'm living in the hinter land
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: and out of nowhere. Listen to the music just black
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: you're reading about everywhere there's this band that do be
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: brubh blah blah blah blah. When you were cutting that album,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: did you know that? Listen to the music, man, this
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: is gonna be our ticket to paradise. I don't think
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: you can predict things like that. I certainly knew it
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: was a good song, and I knew that for our
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: band anyway, I don't think it it's funny because I
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: don't think our music is quite like a lot of
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: other bands. You know, we're a little more We're like
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: the the White Eisley Brothers, you know what I mean.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: In a way, we're kind of um. You know, you
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: could just you look at bands from the era, they
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: weren't doing quite as much UH pop R and B
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: maybe as we were doing at that time. A lot
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: of the music was more h I'm not sure. I
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: can't even you know, I can't even tell you what
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: was going on in the music world. But I knew
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: that we were we had a different take on what
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: we were doing and who we were. UM. Even as
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: as big a fans of the Moby Grape as we were,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: we weren't like the Moby Grape in that regard. We
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: were different, a different kind of a band. UM. But
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: I knew that that song listen to music, I just
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: knew it was a good song, and I knew it
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: was as far as what we were presenting, it was it.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: It exemplified the kind of music that we were doing. UM.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: And in a certain sense, that was an extension of
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: a song like Nobody. UM. We had another song on
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: that record called Feeling Down Farther. I think it was
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: more of a direct um result or not result, but
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: much more related to that that kind of a riff.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: But the riff was so catchy when I heard it,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: I thought, well, that that is who Tom is as
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: a guitar player he has that, you know, it's sort
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: of a signature kind of a way of playing. And
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: I loved that aspect I was so you know, it
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: was really uplifting for me personally to hear him recognizing
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: that aspect of himself that he did so well, and so,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: you know, I felt it was really good. And then
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: as a song, I just loved the you know, being
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: an old hippie and as as much of a hippie
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: then as I ever was, you know, it really had
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: a message that of goodness and peace and brotherhood that
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: that I believed and still believe in at the time.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I was able to jump in
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: head first and help to make it as as good
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: as we could possibly make it. So the song that
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: I play most on the album at this point in
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: time that really resonates and I'm not blowing smoke up
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: your grass is to Loose Street, which is your song?
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: Tell me the backstory on that. We had been on
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: the road with Mother Earth nineteen seventy one. I think
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: we went out on the road with them, traveling around
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: the country, and my memory is we did end up
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: in New Orleans briefly. I think we did a date there,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: I want to say, with Alice Cooper and UH and
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: Mother Earth maybe the three of us, and we were
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: we had done a tour called the Mother's Brothers Show,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: which was a series of dates sponsored by Warner Brothers.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: We both were UH kind of new acts for the label,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: and they were those are the days when they were
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: trying to break their acts in you know, different you know,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: going out at different ways. But anyway, they put up
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: the money for this tour and we went all over
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: the country, did about thirty shows maybe something like that,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: and we ended up in New Orleans. Well, of course,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: anyone that's been to New Orleans and knows what a
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: wonderful town it is, and so I basically fell in
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: love with it. So months later, after you know, the
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: album had um had kind of stiffed. I think by
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: that time, we were still booking shows everywhere, and we
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: got this offer to play these various venues around the South,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: and so we ended up somehow we went down to
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: New Orleans and we stayed in town there and then
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: we went out and we played these you know, Baton
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: Rouge and these little parishes that were had clubs, and
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: we were able to make enough money to we wandn't
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: make a lot of money, but we're able to make
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: money to UM pay for our overhead. And we took
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: albums down there, and we went into a record store
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: there and we tried to sell some albums in the
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: in the area. I don't know if we ever did.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: I think we went to ended up in a record
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: store like Spinal Tap and nobody nobody even came, you know.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: But so we're down there for quite a few days,
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: and I think we had already begun working on the
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: album to Lose Street, and I was walking just you know,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: walking around town and experiencing like a tourist New Orleans,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: and you know, eating at the gumbo shops and uh,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: you know, down in the French Market and taking the
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: street car and so on. And UM came away from
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: that experience just in love with New Orleans as as
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: a town, the people, the scene. UM and and wrote
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: that song and we went into the studio in San Francisco.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: Wally Hiders and Warners had been dumb enough to give
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: us a budget, and we ended up in the studio
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: there as our own producers. We decided we could do
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: it better than than Ted and Lenny and we UH
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: started recording songs, and out of all those songs, I
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: think we got three songs that ended up on Talu Street,
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: one being Talu Street, another something White Sun, and then
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: this song called snake Man that Tommy wrote, and they
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: were all ended up on the album, almost abbreviations of
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: what we had actually done in San Francisco, except for
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: Toulu Street. And I had written that song and we
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: went in and recorded it, and I had been playing
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: the flute. Somebody gave me a flute, and I had
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: learned to play taught myself to play the flute, and
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: we got UH. We had the record of the song
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: and I and I I realized it was in a
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: key that was good for the flute, and I said,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: the guys, the guys cure if I try a flute
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: on this song. So I went in and I played
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: the flute on it, and it was kind of the
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: perfect tonality and kind of mood for the song. So
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: it ended up on the record as well. UM and
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: then we've recorded that song, did the background vocals, the
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: three of us, and it was myself, Tom and Dave
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: Shogren and Dave was our bass player at the time,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: and he ended up playing acoustic guitar, and he did
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: picking guitar with mine as well, which was really added
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: to it. I never realized he could do that until
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: we did that record, and then so that ended up
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: being on the album. In the end, Ted said, yeah,
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: we're gonna put that out that on the record as well,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: and then we as we did the record, we realized
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: it was a real reflection of our love for Southern
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: music because there's so much on there. The blues based,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: uh and some kind of folky based stuff, but all
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: of it reflects kind of that Southern mentality and our
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: experience in the South. You know, I think we all
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: we all loved it h and had not we were
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: really California guys when we got down there. We weren't
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: California guys anymore. We were Southern guys. We kind of
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: we didn't reinvent ourselves. I think we found ourselves who
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: we who we had been all along, and uh, you know,
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: that's kind of where we are today. The second album,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: you almost can't ask for more success, but the third
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: album becomes ubiquitous with China Grove and Long Train Running.
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: But my favorite song on that album is the open
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: or natural thing. And if you go into the credits,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: it's Robert Margloff and Malcolm cec. Of course we're famous
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: for working with Stevie Wonder. How did those guys get involved?
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: We heard that Stevie Wonder album. Um, I want to
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: say songs in the Key of Life, but it might
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: have been something. I think it was talking book at
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: that point. That's right, That's right, that's it was. And
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: uh was just the most amazing record and the you
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: know whatever Stevie wondered us, it's amazing. But uh that
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: he for the first time, and I'm sure we had
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: heard the synthesizer before in music, but he it was
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: at the forefront of his record, and uh, you know,
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: start reading about it. I'm sure there was articles written
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: about it, and we heard about these guys and we
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: mentioned it Ted, Ted, we'd really like to graduate to this,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: you know, this instrument, and I don't know how we
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: can do it, how we can incorporate it into our music,
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: but we really feel strongly about moving in that direction.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: What do you think? And he said, absolutely, I know
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: about it as well, and uh, let's do it. So
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: we contacted them. I'm sure Ted contacted them because as
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: a producer. He was always at the forefront of helping
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: us to contact our resources and musicians and pull it
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: all together. He had this assistant, Benita Brazier, who was
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: this incredible assistant of his who was really um instrumental
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: and and doing so much for us. She's the one
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: who helped us put that album covered together for the
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: Captain and me among other things. But anyway, we contacted
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: UH Robert and Malcolm and and they came and brought
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: this This UH structure was huge. Um it was probably
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: you know, three ft high and four ft wide, and
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: it had all these plugs and they were you know, um,
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: quarter inch plugs like guitar type plugs, and that you
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: would they would plug. And then and then there was
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: a keyboard in front and a small keyboard. It was
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: maybe you know, a third of an actual piano keyboard
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: what you'd see a normal keyboard would be. And and
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: then they would take the plugs and they would plug
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: from one junction point to another in this UH the structure,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: and it would create waveforms. And every time they plugged differently,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: it would come up they'd come up with a new
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: waveform UH different. It was how they plugged it as
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: to how the the tones would change. So for a
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: low tone, they would plug it a certain way. For
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: a high tone, they'd plug it a certain wave for
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, for a a waveform that was uh,
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: you know, spiked kind of a form, they plug it
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: a certain way. So every form had a certain h
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: and they knew it. They knew the formula for how
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: to how to make the sounds, and so they just
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: started doing it. Well, what do you how do you
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: like this sound? How do you like that sound? What
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: do you what do you think of this sound? And
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: we would play, you know, we got to play the keyboard.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: We would play, or they would play, somebody would play
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: until we found that sounds that we that were generated
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: from this U synthesizer that we liked. And in that
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: with natural thing, it was a horn sound. I'm sure
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: Tom said, do you have something that's more brassy sounding
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: or horn like? And I'm sure he had something in mind,
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: something you'd heard on Stevie's record or something, And so
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: they came up with that horn sound for us, and
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: Tom said, I love that. That's that's it, that's it.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: And so Tommy played that he uh, and all you
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: could play was one note at a time in order
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: to get a chord. You'd play that one note and
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: then you'd have to double that note using another key
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: on the keyboard to get a harmony, and then you
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: just build it up until it made a complete chord.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: So I think that's probably three notes to build that.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: But by spreading it, you know, across the mix, it
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: makes it sound huge. And you know, Don Landy was
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: really good at product producing, making more out of a
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: sound than you had so with reverb and effects and
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: so on. So um, anyway, that's how that song was.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: That sound was created and we ended up using I
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: think we used it on three different tracks on the record.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: Uh Salsie Midnight Lady was another track, and there's something
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: else on that record. I don't remember those two songs.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: Those two songs, it stands out in the tracks, so
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: you can really hear what the synthesizers doing. But it
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: was life changing from us, you know. So you go
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: from nowhere to somewhere to being so ubiquitous. This is
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: now and we have Friday and Saturday night music shows
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: on TV. You're on those that there's almost a Doobie
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: Brothers backlash because you're so big what's it like on
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: the other side of the footlights? Okay, what's it like
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: being in the middle you're finally making some money in retrospect,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: when you're ripped off where you're so busy working that
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: you didn't know which end was up? What was it
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: like for you? Boy? Good question. You know, I think
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: I was so happy just to have some success at
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: what we were doing. I don't ah, certainly, you know,
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: you get tired, and you know, things get a little
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: you know, um foggy as it were. But I enjoyed
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: every minute of it. I just kind of went, you know,
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: this is what we worked towards. And I knew I
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: always in the back of my mind, I always felt, well,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: this you know, it took us a long time to
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: get here, but at any moment, you know, it could end,
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: and so you know, enjoy every moment of it, get
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: get the most out of it that you can. Um.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: I I really didn't second guess it. You know, I
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: recognized that it was probably taking away from other aspects
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: of my life that I was missing, you know, some
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: of the some of the ride, but I really didn't
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: care to be honest with the music. Was I was
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: married to music? And everything else sort of took a
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: back seat. So I think I just enjoyed every bit
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: of it, you know, I mean, I love to travel.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: I got to go back to New Orleans. I love
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: that I go there a lot. Still, Um, I loved California,
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: so you know, I got to got to see California
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: for you know, the place it really is. You know,
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: most people, you know, you live one place and it's
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: a it's a great state to live in. But you know,
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: to to get around and see from one end to
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: the other, and to see the whole planet from one
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: end to the other became, you know, something that I
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: never in my wildest imagination could have could have foreseen. Um.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm a hopeless collector. I collect stuff, right,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: I collected stamps when I was a kid. So I
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: saw the planet in little you know, one by one
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: squares for a good portion of my child my life.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: And to be you know, seeing places that I've only
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: seen in postage stamps, you know, was beyond what I
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: had ever hoped for. So you know, I love what
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: I do. You know, I love what we do. Okay,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: Captain Me almost couldn't be more successful. Doobie Brothers, one
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: of the biggest beings in the land. You put out
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: the next album, What were one's vices are now habits?
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: I don't care what anybody says. It's the Apotheosius, the
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: best album from that era, and there was a lot
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: of print type about it. And the song is going
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: to be another Park another Sunday. You know, Tom has
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: told me that, you know, their issues with radio stations
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: took it off because you know, what's the lyric in
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: the song. Whatever its stalls. The album comes out in February,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden November, Blackwater comes on and then
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: just sustains it becomes a classic. So just a few
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: questions on that album. One did you feel the pressure? Two?
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: Were you disappointed? Three? Tell me the backstory on Blackwater? Well,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: you know that that album, Uh, it took a long
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: time to get going. Um, and I think there was
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: a certain disappointment obviously. You know when you're a musician
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: an artist that you know you've been riding the gravy
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: train for a while and then suddenly it's like, where's
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: the hit? You know, I don't think I worry about
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: the hit. I think I you The whole thing for
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: me personally is the act of creativity. So I worry.
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: I worried more about the fact that will we be
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: able to continue our creative process, because you know, I hit,
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: HiT's a hit, but it's just another song that we made.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: Albums we didn't make, you know, hits. We wanted to
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: make records, and you get a hit. It's the thing
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: that drives your career. And so the career being making music.
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: You know, it's not making hits or making money, it's
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: making music. And so I that's probably was, if anything,
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: that's probably the thing that I was most concerned about.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: I wanted to keep making music, certainly want to make
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: a living, but you know, how much money do you need?
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: Who cares? You know, it's more about are you happy
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: and are you doing the thing something that you love?
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: And so that was a concern to me. So when
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: when the record petered out a little bit, I kind
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: of thought, well, you know, we gotta go back in
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: and make another record. That's all, you know, the big deal.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: You know, that's what we would want to do. And
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: if you know, how many of those are we going
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: to get a chance to do, we better do it
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: while we have a chance. So so I was ready
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: to kind of go back in. I was right, you know,
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: writing more songs myself, and I think Tommy was probably
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: you know, we probably had that discussion at some point. Yeah,
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: it looks like we're maybe not going to get a
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: hit off this record. Maybe we need to, you know,
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: get go in and write some more songs. And then
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: we were we were in Europe, I think, doing we
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: we got this invite to do this again. Warner Brothers
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: are so innovative in terms of what they do and
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: at that time how much money they were spending on
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: their artists. They took the Doobie Brothers, Little Feet, Tower Power, Montrose,
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: uh Graham, Central Station, and a band called Bonnaru to
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: Europe to do this tour. Um. And we were there
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: doing that tour when one day somebody came in and said, hey,
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: looks like you got a hit. Really, what what's going on?
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: They said Blackwater? I go, I don't think so, you know,
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: we all we're looking at another song. I was anyway
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: thinking there's other songs that could be hits off the record.
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: That wasn't one of them. Um. But I kind of
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: took you with a grain of salt, because you know,
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: people say stuff like that doesn't mean it's true, and
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: we just kind of continue the tour and you know,
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: we're it was good news if it was true, but
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: if it wasn't true, you know, we're here are doing
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: something really cool that we love and with all these
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: great bands. And so it turns out it was true.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: We got back and the record was getting played. It
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: was just, you know, a big surprise, and I told
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: the guys see all along, I was it was me,
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: it was but you know, so that we lucked out
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: on that one. How was that song created? Kind of
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: the same way to Louse Street was created? The song
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: to Louse Street down in New Orleans. Um, I had,
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: I had the riff and I played it for Ted
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: in the studio one time. I think we were making
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: uh we were in the studio doing the Captain and
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: the album and I had that riff way back then
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: and I was fiddling around between takes on something else.
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: I was putting some guitar on something and I was
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: fiddling with the riff and that's what is that? And
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: I go, just, you know, some riff that I have,
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: and that's really cool. You should think about writing a
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: song with that. And I go, yeah, I'd like to
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, I've been trying so anyway,
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: got down to New Orleans and still fiddling around with
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: that riff. And really I have always kind of written
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: songs in two different ways. One way, I'll write, you know,
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: chords and try to lay lyrics on top of that
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: with melodies and other what times I'll write poetry and
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: then bring the poetry back and see if I can
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: fit it in somewhere with with something I'm working on.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: In the case of Blackwater, I started writing images and
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: poetic themes, and I think the first thing I remember
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: writing was I was going up to the uptown on
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: on the street car goes up St. Charles Uptown towards uh.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: I think it's two lane University up there, and I
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: was riding on the car and it was raining outside,
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: and I had a piece of paper and I always
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: used to carry a pad and paper around within those days.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: I wrote, if it rains, I don't care, don't make
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: no difference to me. I'll take I'm taking that street
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: car that's going uptown And that was the beginning of
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: the song. That's kind of how it started. And I
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: got to the laundry mat I was going uptown to
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: do my laundry, and uh, I started continuing to write
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: stuff and and wrote some more images. And you know,
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: I always loved you know, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: and the books. And I wrote something about, you know,
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: building a raft and and you know, floating on the Mississippian.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: And I had heard the term black water somewhere and
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: it really was really in regards to the Mississippi River
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: Old black water. And I don't know whether I heard
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: a song or a poem or a story, and so
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: I incorporated that into it as well. And then I
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: wrote the song and came back and put it together
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: in the studio, you know, as as we usually do
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: with things, you know, we kind of either rehearse a
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: little bit and then we go in the studio. And
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: but a lot of it came together in the studios
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: as it as it turned out. Um, but I had
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: I had the lyrics, and I had the melodies, and
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: I had the guitar changes in the chords and so
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: on going in and then it was just a matter
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: of nuance and arrangement these songs. This is almost fifty
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: years ago, and I vividly have a memory of the
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: song was living in Los Angeles and I went to
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: live with these guys because my sister moved where I
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: was living with her and another woman. And I lived
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: with these guys all of three weeks. But we were
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: going up in my car. Blackwater came on and different
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: people in the car. There were three people the car
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: were seeing different parts and it was a good car stereo.
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: You could hear, you know, the left and right. Whose
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: idea was to do all that? I had the idea
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: for singing around like that. I I didn't think it
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: would go into an acapella section, which I which I love,
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: and that was really Ted's idea I had. My concept
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: was it was going to go into a you know,
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: five piece Dixie Land band. So I was going to
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: take the guitars and everything to a clarinet, uh, you know,
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: a trumpet, a tube, a band joe, that kind of thing,
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: and do a traditional dixieland uh kind of an arrangement
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: behind it while singing those vocals. And Ted said, well,
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: that's a it's a cool idea, But do you mind
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: if I if I try some other ideas that I
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: have And I go no, of course not, because by
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: that time we had recognized Ted's it was a brilliant
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: producer and that you know, when Ted said something, listen
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: to what he's saying, because you know, it could be
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: a really good idea. And so um, we decided that
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: it would be better as an acapella thing, and uh,
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: I didn't Again, I didn't think it would break down
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: totally to an acapella because it really I always envisioned
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: at least some rhythm or something going on, and it
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: works perfectly in that and that doing that, it's really
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: that street corner thing that I love. That anyway, And
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: and then Ted brought in um someone to play viola
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: on it, which I thought was Again I wasn't sure
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: about the instrument because you know, violin is something I
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: always was familiar with, but viola that's a little darker.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: And why why a viola instead of a of a violin?
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: And and is it going to be a Cajun thing
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: or what are you gonna do? Well, it turns out
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: it's really not a Cajun thing. It's really more melodic
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: and totally different. And Ted had been producing this band
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: Chunky Nova and Ernie, so that is no v I
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: can't remember how you pronounce her lasting narvo narvo or
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: something like that, Um playing the viola, and of course
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: when I heard it, I flipped. I thought, oh my god,
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: this is so perfect. This is exactly where it should go,
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: and the right instrument, the right player, every you know,
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: just was like, you know, a dream come true for me. Okay,
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: the next album once again, my favorite song is yours.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: Not that it was the one on the radio, but
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: well I told you it was Nils fan Dangle. Tell
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: me the story of Niels fan Dango. Oh gosh. Well,
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: I was a huge fan of Jack Caro Whac and
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: all those guys had a presence there in San Jose
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: and the Santa Cruz Mountains with unbeknownst to me, I
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: always thought they were, you know, San Francisco, the the
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: Beat generation. And I learned that Neil Cassidy. In fact,
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: I saw Neil Cassidy at that venue I was talking
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: about with where I went to see Janis Joplin. There
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: was Neo Cassidy walking around with a washing machine and
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: some kind of a tube going to some kind of
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: a gas mask that he had. Just a crazy, crazy artist,
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: you know, nonconformist guy. Um. But as I read those books,
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: I recognize that Neil Cassidy was this really character. Of course,
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: and then later on when I began reading, uh, you
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: know about the electric kool Aid ascid test, and I'm
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: trying to think, I I learned about Neil Cassidy before
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: I even read that book. He was a legend in
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: where I lived around the area there as to being,
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: you know, the just this character, and everybody talked about
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: everybody seemed all of my a lot of musician friends
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: and people in the literary community, they all knew Neil.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: I never knew him, although I saw him the one time,
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: but everybody had a story about Neil Cassidy. You know,
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: he talks a mile a minute. He juggles uh uh hammers.
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: You know what do you call it? Huge? Uh? My
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: mind's are blank, but you know, sledge hammers. He juggled sledgehammers.
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to visualize this guy. He takes more speed
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: than anybody and stays up for a week and then
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: he sleeps for a week. And he could take more
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: or less d than anyone and drive a bus. And
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: I was just like, what is superhuman? Crazy artist? You
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: know what is this? And so um, I'm living in
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: Las Gatis and I'm I'm at a club and I
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: have a friend that plays in a band, and I
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: go to see this band and and I hear and
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: I hear the band, I go, well, these guys are
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: pretty good and and I'm sitting there and uh, after
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: they took a break, this guy walks out of the
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: band who was playing the guitar in the band. He goes, uh, hi,
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: you don't know me. My name is John Cassidy, you know,
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: and uh you might know my dad, Neil. And I
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: and uh so, I'm so I'm meeting Neil's son John.
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: You can be becoming good friends. And and he goes,
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: you need to meet my mom, you know, Caroline, you
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: need to meet my mom. So at some point. And
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: my my girlfriend's brother Bill, he's an author, he wrote
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: an author. He wrote a book called be Nut Content.
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: And he's a friend of Ken Ken Kesey. And so
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: there's this just you know, serendipity about you know, Neil Cassidy. So, um,
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: I have this riff and this is one of those
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: instances where I'm having this song, this you know, musical
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: thing that I'm thinking, you know, I want to write
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: something like the Almond brothers. You know, I want to
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: write something with rhythm and fast and you know, bluesy
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: and and stuff and so uh then I started thinking
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: about Neil. And the song is fast, but it gets
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: faster one of the great things about it. And I'm thinking,
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: this reminds me of Neil Cassikia and so I think,
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: I gotta, I gotta write a song with Neil and
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: it it's really not about Neil. It's really about about me,
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: about my experience, but he is part of He is
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: part of my experience. So um, and I find out
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: he lived up in the Santa Cruz Mountains where I lived,
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: and not far from where I lived, and and John
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: and I were talking, you know, and he's telling me
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: things about him, and then I'm reading about, you know,
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: where he lived in Las Gados and how he lived
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: in the Santa Cruz Mountains and what he did and
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: and and it all kind of came together as a
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: as a little tribute, if you're will, to Neil Cassidy.
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: So it's it's about both of us. It's about my
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: love for that area and and I know he loved
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: that area. He he ended up coming back again and
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: again to last get us Okay, the line going back
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: to my mountain, the home Loma Creata. Was that your
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: life or his both? I think, you know, Loma Priata
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: is the like, like the highest peak there in the
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: Santa Cruz Mountains. I think there's a you know, some
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: kind of defense Department of Defense thing up on top
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: of the mountain, you know. But Loma Priata is kind
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: of a part of the Santa Cruz Mountains that you know,
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of people refer to as thea. It's up
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: near Loma Prieta. There's a road Lama Priata. There was
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: a train station in Loma Priata and the eighteen hundreds.
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: You know, it's just kind of an iconic part of
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: that area. So you know, I lived near there and
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: and Neo Cassidy lived there at one time as well,
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: near there, so uh so we both ended up going back.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: So okay, needless to say, Tom get it's sick. Michael
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: McDonald comes in, You make a couple of oubs. I
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: remember buying that album to Drive Cross Country Taken to
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: the to the Streets and just being shocked like it
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: was a different band that had some success than the
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: Living on a Fall line. Did Minute Pie Minute comes out?
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: And it's it's almost more successful than The Captain and me.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: Did you have any idea that that album was going
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: to break through that way? Not at all. No, U. Yeah,
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: you always hope that the records are going to do well. Um.
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: I I love the songs on the record, although you know,
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of tension probably making the record,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: and I know for a fact that Mike felt very
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: um ambivalent about about the record itself. You know, he
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: didn't feel that he'd achieved at the time. Mean, we
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: talked about it openly, that he he was achieving the
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: music that he had set out to, you know, or
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: not that he had set out, but he didn't feel
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: that he had risen to the occasion as much as
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: as he hoped. And I can't. I kept tell him that, Mike,
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: you know, it's brilliant. You know, the songs are great.
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: You did a great job. You're saying you're butt off.
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: Really you have nothing to be worried about with this.
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: I I go, you know, and I think there was
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: a little um insecurity in terms of you know, we
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: had had this success with taking to the streets. Living
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: on the fault Line is arguably probably our least successful
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: record beyond our very first album. Although it's one of
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: my favorite records, it's such an obtuse uh musical venture,
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: you know. Really it's nothing like being we ever did
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: before or after it, although there are you know, songs
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: that certainly fit within our you know, scope of creativity.
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: But it was crazy, you know, experimental record. We did
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of experimenting. But minute by minute I I
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: thought it was a great record, and particularly I felt
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: Mike's songs were of it had risen to another level.
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: You know, I just you know, it was very mature
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: on his part, you know, with a song like minute
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: by Minute, I just felt like, um, with that interesting opening,
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: and that it was really bluesy, the kind of music
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: that you know, we sort of are known for. He's
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: singing the blues on that record, and but it was
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: a little more jazzy, which I at that point in
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: my presence in the band, I was kind of shooting
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: for a little bit more. You know. We certainly did
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: some rock and country and all kinds of things, but
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: I love the kind of jazz tinge things that we
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: were doing at the time. I'm kind of a you know,
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: if not a great jazz player at least a real
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: jazz fan. So I liked that we were experimenting in
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: that direction, and I felt on that record we were
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: doing that. At the same time, I felt a song
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: like What a Fool Believes was just a great uh
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: contemporary pop kind of a of a song that that
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: still had a legitimacy as a musical uh presentation. I thought,
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: you know, it was really some serious chord structure and
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: rhythmic properties there and just great. We all participated, we
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: all saying we all you know, did our usual contributions,
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, it was meaningful for me as
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: a as a part of that, you know. And what
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: where There are songs on records that I never even
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: played on, and some that I never sang on, not many,
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: but some, and you always feel a little left out,
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: you know. But on on that record, you know, we've
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: all participated, and you know we were we were here
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: and there and everywhere, and I like that. I love
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: that opportunity, and it's it just makes you feel part
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: of the part of the whole. And but but I
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: love the album, you know, as as much as as
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: as is insecure as we were about it, I really
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: liked the record. Okay, let's talk about something really important. Okay,
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: you make that album, you make the sub to Queen album,
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: You cut your hair. You were legendary for your long year.
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: You cut your hair and then eventually you grew it back.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: What's going on there? Well, you know I hadn't cut
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: my hair in like forever, and so, um, I thought, well,
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: now that we're firmly established, maybe I can change something
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: and it'll be uh something to talk about. You know,
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: we're always We had a great publicist at that time,
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: David Guest. I don't know if you're familiar with David.
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: David Guests who married Lizamanel. Yeah, I wish he was
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: still around for you to do an interview with him,
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: because it would be a real something special. But he
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: was just a madman. But you know, just cutting my
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: hair was something he could use to to make publicity
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: out of. So you know, that was a good something
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: to do, and then you know, it's just something to try.
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: At that time, I think it was the beginning of um,
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of alternative music too. You know, there
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: was especially where I lived. I was living in the
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: Santa Cruz area at that time, and there were a
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: lot of uh, you know, sort of punk bands going
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: on and stuff, and I sort of went, well, these
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: these guys are my friends. You know, I want to
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: be I want to be a punk too. So I
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: always was a punk anyway, but um so that was
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: part of it, you know, just kind of wanting to
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: do something different. And then once I had done it,
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: I realized, oh, jeez, you know, I got a comb
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: combe this stuff, this hair, and so then I thought,
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: you know it, some was so much easier having a
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: longer hair. All I had to do is brush it,
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: and uh, I have to you know, jel it or
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: you know, do anything to it. So I kind of,
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: you know, and I'm you know, I'm really I'm really
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: not a punk. I'm a hippie. So okay, So you
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: have this tour with Michael McDonald and Tom and then
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: COVID happened. Presently you're doing a residency in Vegas. Is
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: it a matter of satiating the fans or as long
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: as you can sell tickets, Mike will go out with you.
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: Or is there no plan or is this a one
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: time deal? What's going on? I don't think there's any plan.
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: I had mentioned Mike years and years ago, I said,
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: you know, would you ever want to come and do
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: a tour with us? Because I think it would be
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: just a great thing for for our audiences. You know,
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: when we're doing gigs, you know, fans come up to
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: gonna Have you talked to Mike lately as Mike can
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: ever come back and play with you guys? And I go,
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: he does, you know, gigs with us once in a while,
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: or or we're playing somewhere and he's around, he comes
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: and sits in. But I don't know, I don't know
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: if that will ever happen, you know, because Mike likes
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: the way it the way he does it. And so
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: I mentioned to him one time he had he was
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: living in uh he had bought a place over in
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: Maui and we hung out there, used to go surfing
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: once in a while, and I said, you know, would
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: you ever feel like coming and doing some kicks with
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: us and do a tour? I have to do a
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: big tour, you know, just something to go out and
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: do a few dates and the fans would flip and
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: he goes, no, I'd love to do that. You should,
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: We should do something like that. And so we kind
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: of never did it, you know, we just kind of decided,
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: and every once in a while I'd see, might go
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: still up for coming and doing some gigs with us? Yeah,
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: just let me know whenever, you know. And so finally
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: I went to the guys. I said, you know, Mike
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: keeps telling me come out and do some gigs with us.
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: Would that be something that would be cool with you guys?
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: And John and Tom said yeah, sure, you know, ask him,
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: you know when when you'd like to do that. And
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: so that's kind of how it came about. It was
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: really informal, and and then we just we knew it
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: would be, you know, something cool that people would really like.
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: And so at that point, we know the pandemic hit,
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: and I think we kind of that we're on the
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: cusp of doing it in the pandemic hit, and we said, well,
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: you know, we have to postpone it, and so we did.
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: We postponed it, and then as we postponed it, you
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: know more, we kept getting more and more offers people,
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you gotta come here, you gotta come and
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: play it. You guys should come and play there. So
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: we ended up playing, you know, booking a lot of
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: shows and uh, you know, Mikey, sure you want to
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: do this. He says, yeah, this is this is cool.
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: You know, well we'll have a lot of fun, and
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: I don't have to work so hard. You know, it
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: has a lot of work getting out there, you know,
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: shouldering all that, and and Tommy's had to work hard,
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: you know, his shoulders most of the most of the
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: songs for the night. So this has been in some
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: sense a bit you know, we're gonna be older guys.
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: It's nice to have a little bit of cushion, you know,
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 1: help each other out a little bit so that that
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: you know, it's in some ways a lot of fun
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: in that regard, just because we we can in what
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: we've extended the show. You know, we we actually were
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: playing about a two and a half hour show, almost
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: three hours. We're down here working in Las Vegas. They
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: don't want us to play that long. They want people
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: to get back out on the slot machines. But we're
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: still playing an hour, a little more than an hour,
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 1: or I'm sorry, a little more than two hours here.
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: But it's a good show. We get to do all
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: the songs that all the hits that people you know
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: that they got to hear the hits, and and then
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: we sprinkle in a few of the songs that you know,
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: we enjoyed playing and some deep cuts and stuff, some
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: stuff we've never played ever. And then, uh, we have
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: this new album out that we put out and it
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: was October of last I think was October October. Yeah,
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: and so we're doing a few songs. We do three
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: from from the new album. So that's that's really a
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: treat for us to do some new music as well.
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: So we're really, uh, I mean, we're having the time
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: of our lives. You know. It's never would have thought
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: in a million years, fifty years from more than fifty
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: years from the time we put it together, that we'd
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: still be out here doing it and having the fun
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: we're having being able to And I gotta say again
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: for me that it's it's all selfish. You know. I
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: get to play with great musicians, singing and playing songs
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: that are you know, iconic in in uh the American
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: soundscape these days. You know, I mean we never never, again,
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: I never really would have thought that we would have
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: ever made this kind of musical impact as as a band.
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: And uh, to be able to be a part of that,
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: and to me, it's like a you know, it's a
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: gift for me personally. I get to do work in
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 1: this dream band with these fabulous musicians, and our music
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: is certainly popular music, but it's it's much more complicated,
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: I think than the average songs that are that are
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: out there on the radio or that have been um
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: and and you know there are certainly there are other bands,
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 1: yes Kansas, you know STEVEE. Dan that write music that
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: is equally interesting and complicated. But I love the fact
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: that the music is challenging and even after playing songs
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: for years and years, I still have to think about
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: what I'm doing and that really makes for a great
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 1: enjoyment for me every night. I don't you don't go
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: out there just taking over. Oh I know this stuff
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: so well. I have to worry about it. You know.
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: The intricacies of the music are such that you can
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: play a thousand times and still it's it's challenging. If
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: you're not paying attention, you're going to screw up. And
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: so uh, you know, I'm always deep into it, every song,
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: every everything, all night long. It's just it's it's a
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: good thing for you know, keeping your brain active. You know,
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: as as you get older, I'm still always thinking. Another
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 1: question though, this is very significant in the Doobies career,
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: is you had this manager, Bruce Cone. He had a
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: very high profile and a lot of managers do not
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: so that people in the who are just fans are
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: aware of him. He's part of the legacy in terms
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: of bringing the band back together for charity things. You
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: ultimately switch to irving A's Loss operation, and in addition,
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: in the book, Bruce is really not mentioned. How did
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: you decide to switch managers and what is the difference
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: with the new managers opposed to the old. Well, you know,
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: I'm not really supposed to disclose, you know, Well, we'll
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: talk about what you can. I'm not trying to you know, yeah,
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: I will because you know, Bruce was a great manager.
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: I think he did a great job for the band.
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: We we had, you know, a lot of success with
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: with Bruce, and you know, he was a great person.
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: Um at a point there was there were some um
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: disagreements and we've found ourselves in a predicament where we
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: we had to make a change and it didn't It
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: wasn't something that I guess I should speak for myself,
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't something that I that I looked forward
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: to at the time. Um, but it was necessary. It
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: was an impast that came about and we we had
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: to make the change. And we I've known Irving really.
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: I met Irving through Mike McDonald. Mike introduced me to
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: Irving gosh over thirty years ago, forty years ago, something
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: like that. And naturally everyone is aware of Irving's abilities
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: and presence in the in the music industry. And when
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: we when we signed with Irving, it was, you know,
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: something that for myself it was like wow, you know,
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 1: he's like this incredible person, both as as a business
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: entity and as a person in general. He's kind of
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: a guru to me musicians. And we had reached a
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: point in our um in our career with Bruce where
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: we've kind of hitting a stagnant point and I think
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: probably the band was on the verge of just retiring,
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 1: you know, and um, we we made the break with
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: Bruce before. We didn't go to Irving and say we
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: want to make this break. We made the break earlier
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: on and we kind of managed ourselves for a while
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: because we could. We were you know, had enough knowledge
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: at that point to continue with with what we were doing.
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: And we did that for a while. Uh, and then
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: of course we knew we were we would be out
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: searching for someone to represent, and we spoke to several
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 1: different a lot of different people before we made the decision.
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: But when we found Irving would be interested, that was
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: we knew that that would be a great place for us.
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: Just for me again, once again, I kind of speak
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: for myself on this. I'm a California guy. That the
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 1: Irving's business is based in California. UM, I want to
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 1: stay within that context. You know, I feel like we're
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: a California band and who thinks they're from New Orleans.
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: But you know, so it has been really invigorating for
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: the band to be working with Irving and Kareem Karmi,
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: who is really our day to day uh management. Kareem
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: works for Stop Management, And it's been, you know, I
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: don't know, really a shot in the arm. You know,
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: we're really being more creative, more enthusiastic about what we're doing. UM,
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: having a vision for the future that we kind of
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: had begun to dissipate a little bit. I think we
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: kind of you know, it wasn't that we were it
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: was we were done or anything, but I think we
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: had felt like, well we're going to probably at least yeah,
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: I think we probably might have been done as a band,
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: and we would certainly go on to continuing to be
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: musicians and to write and try to be creative. But um,
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: there it is. That's really where we ended up. Okay,
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: you've been making music professionally for over five two years.
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: You know we had VH one behind the music. The
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: stories are legend of the people being ripped off or
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: blowing all their money signing bad deals. The Doobie Brothers
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: has never been a small group. How have you done
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: financially over the years and where are you at now?
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: I've certainly made some bad decisions financially. Yeah, it kind
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: of comes goes with the territory. I think musicians or
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 1: musicians first, and and that's our weak point. You know,
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: people can talk you into doing things because they know
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: you're you know, you're you're busy tuning your guitar. But
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: I mean I've signed bad publishing deals, and you know,
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 1: I've had people who have done nothing and then sued
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: you because they can. And then you have to waste
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 1: all your time and on something that really if if
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: if you went before a jury or something they would
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: never prevail, but you realized by that time you went
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: to a jury, you'd lose way more money than it
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 1: took you to get there. So those things happen. I've
• 2:18:17
  Speaker 1: tried to be conservative in terms of of who I
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: am financially, I don't you know, I don't have private
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: jets and limousines and a lot of expensive jewelry or
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: you know, just you know, bad bad drug habits and stuff.
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 1: You know, I've tried to be aware of uh, you know,
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 1: myself and the people around me. Um and I and
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: I haven't been afraid to work, you know, I Uh,
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: we're working. Is is good. It's good for all of us,
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: you know, to continue to to do what we love
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: to do, not take it for granted and just go well,
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: you know that it used to be fun, more fun.
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not going to subject myself to that.
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: To me, you just hang in there and do it.
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: And uh, you know is that old adage if if
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: you do something you love, it's going to come back
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: to you. And that's that's really the way it's been
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: for me. Uh, financially, you know, I'm not the richest
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: guy out there. I'm not the poorest guy out there.
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of in the middle, and and that's really
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: where I want to be. I don't I don't. I
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: don't have this, you know, I don't have I don't
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: need to make a lot more money. And it's not
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 1: about making money, you know, if you can survive, and
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't have a lot of debts, thank god,
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: you know, I do own my home. Um, that's really
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: all I want out of life. I have a wonderful family.
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: I have children, I have grandchildren. That's that's those are
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: the real Uh, that's the real wealth, you know, and
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 1: your health. Having your health is health is wealth. So
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 1: you know I'm I'm a rich man. Okay, So you
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: mentioned your wife and the motorcycles earlier. Is this have
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: were you married before? Is this your one and only wife?
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 1: I have had two marriages. My first marriage was to
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: a gal that I spoke about, her brother, Bill Cradock.
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: Diane was my first wife, great wonderful person. Um, and
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 1: we still, you know, are good friends and stay in touch.
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 1: I am married to Chris Summer Simmons. We've been married
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 1: for thirty two years and got three children and three grandchildren,
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: and UM, It's been a a wonderful relationship we've we
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 1: met through motorcycling. We met that Sturgis, South Dakota, the
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 1: motorcycle rally there. She came to a fundraiser that we
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: were the Doobies were doing for the Fight against US
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: Muscular Dystrophy that Harley supports and supported then still support.
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: And I was the the chairman of the Biker's Fight
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: Against Muscular Dystrophy and I was given a press conference.
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: The band was there um to play and I was
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 1: doing a press conference with the head of marketing for
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: Harley Davidson talking about, you know, the concert and our
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 1: efforts on behalf of the Muscular District Association. And she came.
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: She had a motorcycle magazine called Harley Women, and she
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 1: and her partner came to cover the press conference for
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 1: the magazine, and I was introduced to the head of marketing,
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 1: Clyde Vesseler, and we became friends and have been together
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: ever since. Chris and I we she she We went
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 1: out to Sturgis that night or the next I was
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 1: that night. We went out Sturgis to the to the
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 1: rally and hung out and walked around and bought some
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 1: t shirts and just got to know each other. And
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 1: we've been together ever since. It's amazing. So, what's the
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: key to being together when you're on the road, etcetera.
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: You know, the rock and roll road is it has
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 1: littered with divorces. How do you keep together? She has
• 2:22:45
  Speaker 1: traveled with me a lot from time to time. When
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: my children were small, they accompanied us on the road.
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: We took them on the road with us on the bus.
• 2:22:56
  Speaker 1: They all of their bunks. They loved that, you know,
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: camping out with the Doobie brothers on the bus. Um.
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 1: So that's helped. Um. We share so many common interests
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: and spend a lot of time together all all the time.
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: You know, when we're when I'm not working, we're together
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 1: when I'm working. She comes, um, and you know, I'm
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 1: I love that. I mean, we just have a wonderful relationship.
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: It's probably the most important thing in my life really
• 2:23:33
  Speaker 1: is my marriage and my children. So you say, okay,
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: you're rich because of that. We're rich in information you
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 1: having taken the time to tell us all these stories
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: in depth. Thanks so much for doing this. Thank you, Bob,
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. I've enjoyed it, spilling my guts.
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 1: You know the other thing. I'm a huge Doobies fan.
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: You know that I have too good two things Don Handley,
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 1: the End of the Innocence and the do Be Brothers.
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 1: When it's like they're just in my head, they just
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 1: click through. And that's not blowing smoke up your grass either.
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 1: And on that note, I'll leave it again. Thanks again,
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 1: pat Hey, thank you, Bat great talking to you. Until
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: next time. This is Bob left Sex