Bill Payne

Keyboardist extraordinaire Bill Payne is an original member of Little Feat, and has been a member of the Doobie Brothers and the String Cheese Incident too. Bill has written songs and recorded with a who's who of artists. This is his story.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is keyboardist extraordinaire.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Bill Payn Bill, good to have you on the podcast. Oh,
it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for
having me.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Okay. Sometimes you're referred to his Bill. Sometimes you're referred
to his Billy. Do you care what's going on there?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Not often? I mean my mother finally called me Billy
for a while when that was the rage. I normally
would people ask I say it's Bill. But if they
want to say Billy, just don't call me late for dinner.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Okay. So you're out with Little Feet now, you were
out with the Doobie Brothers. What's your relationship between the
two acts.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Now Little Fat I'm the leader of the band. We've
got a couple of new members, scotch Are, Tonny Leoni
on drums and guitars. Tony plays drums also sings, which
I didn't realize he did. We have Fred Tackett, Kenny Grandy,

(01:12):
Sam Clayton from the original band Fred, although came in
a little later. But we've known I've known friend since
nineteen sixty nine. So that relationship is that it's family,
the Doobie Brothers. I started work on their second album
and began that process with them. I played on a

(01:34):
lot of their stuff, including when Mike McDonald joined the
group and he had two songs what a Fool Believes,
and minute by minute I said, you play play those songs.
I'll play some high strings or whatever. But I'm not
Tommy Johnson and Patrick probably since seventy one seventy two,

(01:54):
I think, so we all go back a long way.
I spent up until a year and a half half ago.
I was touring with the DeBie Brothers for two years
excuse me, seven years, and then Michael joined and we
were all out one big, happy family. And I still
stay in touch with the guys. So it's I have
two sets of family.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
I guess, well, I guess the question would be, would
you ever go on the road with the Doobie Brothers
again or is that in your past?

Speaker 2 (02:24):
I'd go out with them again if the inclination hit
and all systems will go, and it was something I
could do to help and vice versa. Yeah, I got
to keep a Leisa fair attitude towards that. That's that thing,
Bob with whom ever I'm working with. To be honest,
it's I don't try and cut people off, but you know, uh,

(02:49):
there's only so many hours in the day too. Just
wait out like like you do. I'm sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Well, it's it appears from the outside that you decided
because the Doobies are still on tour, that you decided
to leave that to get back with Little Feet. Would
that be an accurate description?

Speaker 2 (03:06):
An absolute accurate description. And the reason I did it
was Little Feet came upon some pretty good management in
a form of Bob excuse me, Ken Levitan and Vector
out of Nashville. In fact, when I when I spoke
to the duties, they said, well, when we heard you
went to Vector Management, we kind of figured your time

(03:29):
with us would be limited. So I said, well, you
guys figured it out before I did. But yeah, you're right.
So how'd you end up with Ken? Oh? I got
a call from a person that said, if you're making
a switch, because I told him what we were, you

(03:49):
might want to check these guys out. So that morphing
into the Vector's system. And with Ken Levittan, who's a
great guy. I know kid for a number of years
because of Emmy Lou Harris and other people, but I
thought they took about two weeks or work to decide
whether they would handle a Little Feet, And I said

(04:11):
the entire time, I said, look, don't worry about it.
If I want to, you have no obligation to us.
So if you're going to work with us, let's make
sure that you feel comfortable with it. We would love
to have it happen, but I'm a realist at the
end of the day, So let's let's see where this
flows with with how you're dividing to make this choice.

(04:33):
All I can tell you is that I feel with
with doing an interview with with you, for example. That's
part of Levitan and Vector and the visibility we have
these days is why you and I are having a conversation.

(04:54):
I don't discount Little Feet in my career with Little
Feet or what we represent the musical world out there.
But you need people to help in this business, and
these guys have done nothing but great things for us.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Well, since you've been in the game for a long time,
what have you learned about management?

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, I actually managed a Little Feet myself with Paul Breyer.
It's a thankless job. First and foremost you get blamed
for things that maybe you shouldn't be blamed for. You
get credit for things that maybe you did some minimal
research into and it paid off. But I do know

(05:37):
that that management with the right people can open doors
that are normally closed. It's about perception at the end
of the day. It's also about who you have speaking
on your behalf. It's about connections. Unlike music, which is

(05:59):
I think about Igor Stravinsky earlier today, you know, with
AI and all the the stuff that's going on there
with regard to writing letters, to composing songs on up
and down. I told this frind of mind, I said, look,
you know we're not going to stop AI. But you
know you're also not going to stop musicians and composers

(06:20):
and creative people. They don't compose and write and are
creative because they want to. They actually have to. That's
the way Stravinsky put it. He whatever is in your
head and it needs to come out, that's what you're doing.

(06:42):
And I feel that. Look, I've seventy four years old,
so I mean, I hope I can do this for
a while longer. Knock on what's so far, so good?
But I don't pretend to know much about anything. About AI,
but I know a lot about human beings, and those
that are creative are going to create, not because the

(07:03):
body is there necessarily or that the path to scoring
the next Brad Pitt movies there. They're going to do
it because they have the ability to and it needs
to come out.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Okay, So how much runway is there for Little Feet?
Little Feet had Lowell George, and then Lowell George unfortunately
passed away. You continued under vary incarnations. As you said,
you're seventy four, but you do have hope to do
this for a while. You're hooked up with Ken and Vector.
What's the dream at this point in time.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
I'd like to get some new songs recorded as a
part of the dream. I've written twenty songs with Robert Hunter,
of which four have been recorded by the Little Feet,
which leaves sixteen that haven't, and not all sixteen of
them are should be recorded with Little Feet, by the way,
eight or nine songs with Paul maul Dune, who's a poser,

(08:03):
prize winning poet, poet and teaches it back East. Let's
see whatever the big university is in New Jersey. At
any rate, the dream for me is nothing substantial along
the lines of of getting out in front of people
and taking vows. It's it's having the ability to create music.

(08:29):
New Old continued the conversation of playing with people that
are extraordinary musicians little feet, Bob has always had the attitude.
Let's say that John Coltrane and his band had I
assume that it's more of a jazz uh thought process

(08:50):
than rock and roll. It it figures more on on
musicianship than than uh was you know, the visual. I
think the music actually is more important to us. And
I'm not knocking. I'm not knocking rock and roll. I

(09:11):
love rock and roll. Uh, but I I uh, I
think they get out and play the type of music
that Little Feet plays. A song that Don was at
one point and he had he had, uh they were
playing with this uh one of the theaters down New Orleans.
I think, uh, Stanford Theater. I can't, I can't think

(09:37):
of the theater. But he said they were doing Waiting
for Columbus. And he said, and it was. And I
said harder than you thought. He said, yeah. I said,
we didn't do it to trip you up. It was
just that it was the type of music that we
would write, would be inclusive of hopefully for our standpoint

(09:57):
of good songs, the great resitionship as well, and twisted
turns within the arrangements, not unlike what the Grateful Dad
or took another group to Steely dand for example, those
are tough arrangements to learn. So it's not like Oh Atlanta,
which which I wrote, Lolah. I said, you can't write

(10:19):
a here record. I go, can can't? Can't? You know?
We're back and forth on that. As my idea of
a hair record was having a chorus come up at
you know, a minute in twenty four seconds, I guess.
So it was not a hare record, but it's been
something that people really like and and still respond to,
and it's it fits in the age group. Another song

(10:40):
like Voices on the Wind. Our engineer and producer co
producer with me, George Messenberg, once said, what does that
song mean? I said, well, in a feisty mood, I said,
I don't know that it matters what it means. I
want people to read into it. The Laker organization read
it with caream up Jewel Dabbar went into retirement and

(11:04):
he said it is his theme song. So that was
kind of proof of the pudding there playing in little feats,
like playing in ten different bands. You'd have to be
in ten different bands to do the breath of material
that we write and conceive and and push through, and
it's not always easy to do that.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
By the way, let's bought a couple of interesting things.
Let's stop for a second on Robert Hunter. How did
you meet Robert Hunter? How do you end up writing
with him? And what was the process?

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Like? I met Robert Hunter through Cameron Sears. Cameron was
was co managing with John Cher from New York and
we were coming up to another record and Cameron said,
would you like to write with with with Bob? So

(11:59):
I said, you know, let's let's see what happened. So
Hunter sent me some lyrics and that took us a
second or two first, because I thought, oh, let me
talk to him. He doesn't want to talk, okay, cool,
Well if he doesn't want to talk, then what what
the hell are we doing? So Bob circumvented everything and

(12:21):
just sent me some lyrics and I wrote to them.
I sent him back and goes, this sounds great, and
we just kept going and then about i'd say five
or six songs into it, I'll get to the process
in a second. But about five or six songs into it,
he says, why don't you send me the music first
and then I'll write lyrics to that. I go, okay.

(12:44):
So we did a bunch like that. The point was,
we never met, we never spoke on the phone, we
didn't do zoom meetings, we didn't do anything. We just
we just you would send me music and I would
right to it. I mean, he sent me lyrics, excuse me,
and I set melody and chords and whatnot to it,

(13:08):
or we do it the other way around. And we
did twenty songs like that, probably over about i'd say
two hundred plus emails. So I said, at what point,
I go, Bob, I'm sure you're a very nice man,
but this is kind of like a Guatemala and Internet
bride feeling to it. But we never met. We were

(13:29):
going to get together for a picnic up in his
place in northern California, and he fell ill, so we
canceled that. And I think he also thought, we're maybe
such good progress the way we're doing it, why don't
we just leave it the way it is rather than
not the way he would write with other people where
he'd actually get together with him. And I live in Montana,

(13:50):
by the way, so I'm sort of in a remote area.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Okay, So let's just assume he sent you the lyrics.
What is your process in terms of coming up with
the music?

Speaker 2 (14:01):
I would do what I'm recording on now our conversation
is a zoom recorder. The Tom Guarnsey, who's another friend
of mine that we write music together. He gave it
to me. He says, why don't you use this to
write music? And I said, oh, okay, that way what
I could be doing is sitting there playing Mary had
a little lamb, let's say. And then five minutes later

(14:24):
ago what was I playing? Was I going down? Or
was I got dada? And then that was going to
take me off and do another direction. The zoom recorder
was my lifelong, my lifeline to the path I was
going to take to write these songs. It made it

(14:44):
a lot easier. When I'm out of that twenty songs.
One song, he says, you know, I don't like it.
Just sounds I hate to use the word, but sounds pedestrian.
What you wrote, I said, Okay, I was trying to
take it to an Irish Pub. I'll get back to
you two days. Two days later I sent it to him.

(15:05):
He goes, oh my god, what what is this?

Speaker 1 (15:09):
This is?

Speaker 2 (15:10):
This is great? Uh. I emailed it back. I said,
I took it out of Ireland and I took it
down to South America and I said, and he says,
you know what I like about you. You don't let
anything stand in the way of of anything. You just
do what the hell you want. I said, well, what
else do we have, man? I mean, I think the

(15:30):
lyrics are superb. It was about a dragon, and I
just opened it up to more changes, more of a
h I say, magic realism within the lyrics that I
want to to apply rather than to put the pendles
at the uh uh the Irish pub on top of it.
So it was it was the freedom we gave each

(15:54):
other was, look, I won't mess with your lyrics. I
will tell you, Bob, if there's something that I I
wouldn't have said, or have a tough time singing. And
every time I made those suggestions, He's like, try this,
and we were right in there. So it was a
fascinating way too. It taught me how to write music,
even though I'd been writing songs for many, many years,

(16:17):
but it opened me up. When I was writing with
Paul Muldoon with other people, I had something where I
had confidence that I could do it.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Okay, but you're also a lyricist. So when you're working
with Hunter, did you ever feel like, hey, I want
to put in some words here, I want to change something.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
I might have tried it once and I got shut
down pretty quickly, so I said, Okay, I understand the rules,
let's do let's do it that way. I mean, it's
a much better lyricist than I am, but I'm not
a bad I'm not bad at it either, but I'm
not Robert Hunter. So but he's not me. Uh. I
think the biggest compliment we gave each other was was

(16:57):
just I said something like, you know what I write
and compose what I'm doing to your lyrics. The music
is already there, and he says, yeah, but it takes
a composer to draw it out. And we kind of
left it at that.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Now you mentioned th Atlanta. You were saying, well, it
wasn't a hit. Well, in reality, it was. I mean,
in nineteen seventy four it was all about FM and
that was the first time that Little Feet got any
significant rock radio airplay, and it was funny because it
was seen as more of Lowell's being. But you're the

(17:34):
one who had the successful track. So what was going
on on the inside.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
Well, the inside is like a lot of bads. You'll
usually have two maybe three people that are vine for
the the cotton candy or whatever it is you're going after,
and loll As in the beginning was my mentor. Essentially,

(18:03):
I'm writing a memoir called Carnival Ghosts. I've taken an
inordinarily long time to get to meeting law, probably thirty
thirty five thousand words to describe what it is like
to come out of a solitary sitting at the piano playing,
you know, six years later after starting at age five,

(18:24):
maybe playing a little bit of Mozart, certainly eight years
later playing some rock mononoff et cetera, and all the
while being encouraged by a teacher that allowed me to improvise.
So when you get into a band, you come from
that solitary existence to now there's a platter on the

(18:45):
table full of food and you got anywhere from five
to six guys that want It's like a boarding house
reach kind of thing. How do you maneuver within that category,
which is really what you're asking. It's it can be
a fight and often turns into a fight. George Harrison

(19:06):
certainly knew about that fight, so did Brian Jones. With
Keith and Mick, uh, you know, this strong prevail is
what happens, and so you have to really have a
commitment to what you're asking. The first time I played
Atlanta for the band, which is when we were doing
a session for Little Feet where we were doing rock

(19:27):
and roll Doctor and Alan Jusaint and was putting horns
to it. The band looked like looked at me like yes,
so what? I went, h you know what, we're playing
a song, where do you like it or not? I
kind of pushed it through And it's not the only
song that that happened that way. And I'm sure Lowell
came into us with a few things. We go, eh, yeah, cool,

(19:49):
what do you want to do? And would people listen
to the record? Hoy HOI? For example, it starts off
with rocket in my pocket. It's it's with low playing
acoustic guitar. I want the purity of Lowell's voice, his
guitar playing acoustic guitar to ring through, and then I
followed it up with the band to show what happens

(20:11):
when the band gets ahold of it. It turns into
not necessarily something different, but it can oftentimes be vastly
different because of the rhythm, because of certain chre changes,
maybe dropped or included, Uh, fat man in the bathtub, dude,
bump bump, that's just an arrangemental thing, as is about it.

(20:36):
And Dixie Chicken from the piano in both cases, or
keyboards in both cases. But they add to what the
song is and how it registers in your mind when
you hear it. It's not it doesn't make me a
writer on the song, but it adds life and provides
a background to hear the song. So Lowell George was

(20:59):
all so one of the very first to include band
members that didn't write, like Richie Hayward, Sam Clayton, you know,
Uh Kindergarten, Ny. We split the publishing. We did split writers,
but we split the publishing just for that type of thing.

(21:20):
So if somebody came in and threw in some LECs
or or whatnot, they would be covered. I mean, trying
to sustain a band is a very difficult thing because
of egos, and you know, we did our best to
try and circumvent that. But human beings or such as
they are, it's a it's a delicate process.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
So it was Lowell jealous that you had the hit.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
I don't think so. I uh, I think what Lowell
wanted and any proved at least initially with Warner Brothers
on Sale and Shoes, which is our second album, that
was his territory. He was carving out his own wrote

(22:08):
the first album had songs that we co wrote, etc.
I don't know if we wrote anything on the second album.
We might have co written one or two songs. But
but he decided to draw a line to say here's
who I am. And I think he did in a
very brilliant fashion, and that he he had a song
like easy to Slip, Let's say and uh that was

(22:30):
quitetessential lows It was great lyrics, great melody of the
phrasing was impeccable. And I was still kind of sitting
on the sidelines of plotting the guy and then but
thinking maybe as we grew as a group that we
would we would write more. That a group is not

(22:50):
like backing up James Taylor or Bob Seeger or Jackson Brown.
You you walk in there with a eyed eye, not
like hey can I may I. It's eyed I. And
that's what the advantage of being at a band is.
It's also an extreme disadvantage if you don't agree with
each other.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Let's go back to the beginning. So you said you
were taking piano lessons since age five. What was the
incentive for that.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
A little girl across the street was playing piano and
I thought if she could do it, I should do it.
Her name was Marilyn Newell. It was a venture California,
and I lived up on a hill with a gorgeous view.
I'm sitting here in Montana with a gorgeous view. And

(23:44):
when I finally found the right teacher, I marched into
her piano room where I was gonna take the lessons.
Her living room, I guess, and it was the theme
of Davy Crockett and I I played it for it.
She said, when you come back for your lesson next week,
all write down what you played for me, so you

(24:06):
see what it is, and we're going to start your
first lesson. Well she did, and I still have it,
and there's a multitude of notes. But my first lesson
was C D followed throw thereafter by C B A
with my left hand, and I got to say Bobby
when I hit the left hand. You liked the miner

(24:29):
as opposed to major tonality was like entering into exotic,
an exotic world for a five year old. It it
connoteded different images to me than or of a major
field or as a major. Oh, the miner was or

(24:55):
as I said, more exotic. It was it opened up
a world that I wasn't really familiar with, but I
want to know a lot better. And so that was
what music does, at least it does for me and
probably for a lot of people, especially musicians, but not always.
It opens up those avenues that you had that connect

(25:18):
the dots between things, between other art, between food, but
between everything. It's a circuitry that's plugged into to who
you are as a human being and what you want
to say ultimately. And the trick as you're growing through
the process of learning music and applying it to who

(25:40):
and whom you are is how do you want to
represent it? And what you write be it lyrics, what
you compose is musical interluds within those lyrics or maybe
just as instrumental music. How do you fit in with
James Taylor, Bob Seeger, Barbie Benton, Body Rate, whoever I'm

(26:03):
playing in the studio with. How do I take that
musical background that I have and apply it to two
different forms of music? And fortunately, because of my upbringing
of playing, let's say back, I play a bock fugue
for a little bit, and then I would zoom off
into something else and play just strictly what was in

(26:25):
my heart and head. Then I would come back to
the music and play that. So I kind of had
an open dialogue with with the more formal aspects of
music and attach it to the world of the mind,
which can take anywhere. It's like a dream.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Okay, your in venturer at California. What are your parents
doing for a living? How many kids in the family.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
I have a brother three and a half years younger
than I am, who at one point tried to take
piano lessons to work. I had a sister that was
nine years older, born in nineteen forty. She had taken
piano lessons and did work for her either. For whatever reason,
it stuck with me. My dad worked as a mechanical engineer,

(27:19):
over at point Ago. He was a civilian, but within
the context of working for the Navy. I guess my
mother was a state home bomb. My family was from Texas.
My brother at that time was the only person in
the family not born in Texas. He was born in California.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Okay, so you're in California. Based on what you're seeing.
You fiddled around on the piano and you made some
progress before you even win for lessons.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yes, the first song by my mother taught me and
watched her play, but I couldn't play like her was
via condos and it was Mary Ford and uh less
uh less Paul. I still have the album cover for it.
While I did solo shows, I showed him that album cover.

(28:14):
Is this just a deep rich uh excuse me, not
album cover, but but sheet music and uh yeah, the
wharf is you know your mother's lap. You're in a
basement that's cold, a little scary. You're you're in a
piano with the keyser chipped a little bit, and she's

(28:34):
shown you where to place your fingers to play the melody.
Uh to me that that that submitted a great bond
at that age to my mom. Uh and it introduced
me to an instrument that to this day I still
provides and provokes, uh by by by muse what what

(28:57):
I what? I sit down, I don't often sit down
with an agenda. Aist sit down and play a little bit.
And uh so I'm reacting, reacting on I want a
tactle information from what the way my fingers hit the keys,
and importantly what I'm hearing. And I'm in full recognition

(29:18):
that Beethoven, who is deaf, uh was not provided that.
But I also know that a trick that my teacher
taught me, which was when you're you're not always going
to have a piano in front of you, but you
will have a desk, your knees the air, and you
can sit there and play. And when I do that
right now, I'm playing in mid air. Here, I'm in

(29:40):
a key of F F A C. I can hear
it in my head. I go up to the B
flat who play that. I can hit an F with
an E in the base, which is not what you
normally play. That would maybe a passing time to the F.
So these are things that that whether you can hear
the music or not, you can at least hear it

(30:00):
in your head. And then go to arrangements. I've made
ample use of that over the years, with little feet
for arrangements. When I wasn't sitting next to a piano,
I could still figure out what I wanted to do.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Okay, for some people it comes easy, for some people,
it comes hard.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
What was your experience, It was a combination of both
everything that you attack in earnest comes with difficulty and
having a great teacher that's your mode of either have
I got to crawl under the fence, dig under it?

(30:41):
Am I going to go through it? Or am I
going to pull vault over it? And the teacher is
there to give you options and guidance on how to
do that because you're going to hit the wall at
some point. And she also gave me one important lesson too, Bob,
which was at some point when I was given her recital,

(31:01):
I was going to blank out, and she said, don't
let that freak you outtion just that terminology. Don't let
that panic you. It happens to most people. And she
mentioned a couple of her older students where it had
happened to them, and it didn't happen under her watch,
but it did take place, and it was on a

(31:22):
Mozart D major sonata and I completely forgot where I
wasn't a piece, and it about destroyed me. I mean,
I was like, and I looked at it later, I go,
she told you not to let it get you under
your skin, and I did, but not for long.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Well, just to continue the lesson. If she told you
not to panic, what did she tell you to do
under those circumstances.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
She said, just to if you need to get the
music up there to reorient, do that, or try and
find a place where you could could stop and start
again and continue. But in any case, if you had
to just throw up your hands and say you know,
enough is enough, then that's okay too. It's it's a part.

(32:08):
It was like the Terrible Twos. Is the way I
gathered it. It was gonna happen. At some point I
was playing a gig with a solo show at the
Where was it, Maryland? I guess Annapolis, And the audience
is there and they go, hey, sing Dixie Chicken, and

(32:28):
I go, I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm like
driving Miss Daisy in the back of the car. I've
never sun Dixie Chicken. I know I could do it.
But I don't know the lyrics. So I said, why
don't we sing the song together, just a chorus, and
so I started playing with it. Let's do a couple
of rounds. So we did that. Yeah, I've had to

(32:51):
stop and start with I was on stage with James
Taylor in front of twenty thousand people, and I had
a I was hooked up to a a synth helper,
you know, like a I'd recorded some stuff in there,
and I hit the button laid or I didn't hit
it or whatever happened, and it screwed it up, and
I had to stop the song, and I said to

(33:13):
the audience, I said, we're going to try this again,
but without the alert James, without the recorded music. Take one.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
You know.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
I just think, you know, there are times when you
can let the audience in on what's behind the curtain,
and you always have full access to keeping that curtain
where it is too. It's a matter of style, and
I try not to take myself too seriously. The only

(33:45):
thing I take seriously is is having fun while doing it,
but being serious to the to the approach of the
music itself. I call that serious fun. So there's a
reason we have arrangements within little feed or that I've
been able to play on other people's songs and I'm
very quick at what I do generally speaking. Or if

(34:10):
I have a more complex idea and people go, hey,
can we stop it there, and I go, allow me
to do two more things before we stop it. I
want to add another instrument and then this tell me
fore like it or not? They go okay, and then oh, yeah,
that sounds great or whatever. I mean. I've rarely hit
a brick wall to use that terminology again with people

(34:32):
in the studio, but occasionally it's happened. And what it does,
I just say, you know, I think we are just
calling is We're not going to get much further. It's
not an immediate hey, I give up. I don't give up,
but there are just times when you have to know
when enough is enough and say, I'm not communicating with
this person, with this artist, I don't really have much

(34:54):
to add to this song, and that's okay. Other songs
will take it place, okay.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
One of the other big issues taking piano lessons is
a kid is practice. Did you practice?

Speaker 2 (35:08):
I did practice, to the point were years later. Terry Katz,
who was a kind of a Malliete, a bad guy
that lived beneath me, adventurer. He came up to me
at the venture A theater years later with little feet,
he says. Then he apologized. He says, you know, I

(35:29):
didn't know why you had to practice all those years,
but I get it. I get it down. And so
a part of what I'm writing about my book is
this notion of people thought the other kids thought maybe
I was Liberaci or something. So I would prove I
wasn't a Liberachi by stealing their girlfriends, by hitting a

(35:52):
home run, by making a basket at the center court,
or whatever the hell I do skateboarding later feet. By
that time people knew I was a regular guy, and
what is regular these days anyway, But in the fifties, yeah,
there was like you were either el not Elton John.
El Elton John took his cue from Liberaci. You were

(36:13):
either Liberaci or you were you know, Jerry Lee on
the piano, putting your foot on the keyboard. So I
was more of Jerry Lee. But I was also I
had the active to play more of the style that
Liberaci would play, which was classical music. So it was

(36:36):
the practices what allows you to do that, but it
is also something that disengages you or can between you
and the audience. And I've had kind of fun with
in writing this book to describe a little more in
detail what is involved in that, which is not a
heck of a lot more than what I've just told you,

(36:58):
but it's a I could share one more story with
you if you if you'd like sure with with I
was playing with the Doomie Brothers and was on a
particular song and what what I would normally do is
I'd go, this is my second album with them, and
they had a certain kind of kind of eighth notes

(37:20):
feel on the top part of the keyboard. Is the
last song I was playing that day, and I was
a little tired, but I thought, you know, and I
threw in this stupid lick in the bridge and I
stopped the tape. And John Landy was the engineer, Ted
Tipple was producing. Tom Johnson was behind the could draw
aboard as well. I said, fellas, let me do, let

(37:43):
me do that lick again. I was just goofing around
there go no, no, no, Bill, we like it. I said, no,
I don't like it. It's I was, I don't want
it in there. I was screwing off. Okay, I had
to go inside the con I said when I said

(38:03):
fifth grade, maybe sixth I get called Bill Payne, will
now play the Pianoties assemblies Washington Elementary School Adventure. I'd
get a standing ovation. I would walk up to the keyboard.
I'd play a little Chinese Diddy D d D kind
of song, rock and roll type of thing, and I'd
walk back standing ovation to my chair. I'd go on

(38:26):
the playground and get beat up like everybody else. Twenty
two years later, I get a call from Tom Johnson.
He says, not like, hello, Bill, how are you doing?
It was like, you know that lick that you didn't like?
I go, yeah, Tom, what about it? He says, was
a result of the lick that you didn't want on
the record that we kept in the story you told.

(38:49):
I went home that that evening and called that song
China Grove. I go, you're welcome. Where's my publishing? Hey?
We fact that over that there we are, so.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
The intro to China grow. That's you. You came up
with that.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
It was a it was a lick in the middle
of the brit that lick there. I didn't mean, I
did it because I'd meant to do it, but it
was I was kidding around. It was a joke, and
that's why I had explained the joke of the Chinese
songs I played in the other kind of thing, and
not the Chinese music as a joke. Far from it,

(39:27):
but in the context it was so yeah, things like that.
I I uh, I thought that was pretty interesting. And
it might have been twenty four years later as opposed
to twenty two, but it was. It was a long
time later. Tell me and I knew each other for
a long time, so that's kind of fun.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Okay, let's go back to the early days. You said,
on one hand, kids perceived you as Liberachi. On another kid,
you know, you were out on a playground getting beaten
up and hitting home runs. So what kind of kid
were you? Good student? Bad student? Did you fit in?
Were you a loner?

Speaker 2 (40:05):
I'd say not a great student? Uh, But people recognized
I had musical talent, and that talent was represented in
a couple of fashions. One was there was a a
room that was that was out. It was indoors, but

(40:27):
it was it had an open ceiling, so it was
in the middle of school. Uh. I think I was
probably in third grade. Missus Julie was our principal there
at Washington Elementary, and they put me in this class
with probably four or five other kids, and they said,
you can literally do anything you want to do. And

(40:50):
I looked at them. I did the one or two
teachers what they had there. I said, can I break
these windows? And they said, well, we wouldn't recommend it,
but if that's what you want to do, go ahead.
So we arely these little test subjects as to what
would children do given the opportunity to paint, to work

(41:13):
with clay, you know you wanted to draw, if you
asked for something they didn't have, they provided for you.
What I found out from that was that I was
much better at something if I was given direction to
do it, and then I could augment from there. So

(41:34):
it wasn't a strict hey do it our way to
the highway. Here's what we suggest you do. We'd like
you to paint us a picture of you and the
little girl that lives across the street from you. And
I would have tried to have done that, but just
open that blank canvas, Bob. It stopped me dead in
my tracks. I didn't know what to do. I had

(41:57):
too many options.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
Okay, so you're in school, do you have a lot
of friends. Are you into sports?

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yeah? I love sports. I I did have a lot
of friends, mainly on the street I grew up. It
was all girls. There was one guy there, excuse me,
but the rest were girls. So I learned very early
that don't mess with the girls. There are repercussions to that.

(42:32):
And it took me a couple of three times to
learn that lesson, which I forgot later in life, but
it was it centinly hammered into me, almost literally when
I was a kid that you know, girls are tough.
If you want to play the Alamo with them, fine,
if you hit him with a Katie stab, or the
girls running across the field, you leader with the dirt

(42:56):
clod and hit her in the head, other repercussions to that.
What's their work? But in school, in general, I was
not super shy. I went to the in sixth grade
there was a track meet and I asked the school
if we could take I was a program chairman was

(43:18):
voted in for that. Could we take half a day
off to hold the track meet? And we couldn't hold
the track meet with Doctor Coffee, which are the people
they held it before because they had issues with insurance
and with I guess kids got injured or something somehow
or another. I, because I really wanted it, I convinced

(43:41):
him to do exactly that, give us a half day off.
We had pole vault, we had high jump, we were
doing races, We're doing all kinds of things. So when
pressed to the wall again with something I really want
to do, I was capable of craying out of my
shell and making sure it happened. So I felt I

(44:02):
was sort of an anomaly in a certain sense and
that I possessed enough moxie to step up when I
needed to. But in general, if I walked into a
restaurant and somebody singing Happy Birthday to me when they
knew it wasn't my birthday, I was embarrassed. Now, I

(44:27):
haven't been embarrassed in a long long time. But I didn't.
I didn't come out of the box that way. I
came out like, hey, is is it safe? That kind
of thing. And I didn't even know as a musician
that I wanted to be in a band. The first
band I auditioned for was after I lost my teacher

(44:51):
at age fifteen, and I auditioned not to play piano
on this band, but I play. I auditioned to play drums.
So what does that tell you?

Speaker 1 (44:58):
You know, it leaves a lot of open questions.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
It does, which which is the reason I'm writing this book,
because I you would think with the way I played
piano and with the activeum I played Donald with a
little beat with everybody else I've had the privilege of
playing with. Uh, I'm not shy about it. I mean,
I take it unless I'm asked to hit a hold

(45:21):
out or in the case of playing with with with
Bob Asron and oh Man, I did every think of
the band name the guys that did the wall Pink
Floyd wouldn't played Pink Floyd. Bob Asward told me every
note to play, so I went, okay. Jeff Ricarr was there, Uh,

(45:44):
the guitar player David was there, and I just if
those guys don't care, now, I'll just play in an
A C JRB. You know. Uh, when Jackson Brown did
that to me, I said, why don't you come out
here and play the song? Jackson because on his I
think it was his second album, and I played on

(46:05):
one song already, but every time i'd play a chord,
you go play like this, and I'd play in a
couple of bars, no play instead of D F sharp
A play F sharp a D. I finally said, would
you come in the room play this for me? So
he did, and I said, is there any earthly reason
you're getting me to play like you when you can

(46:27):
play it just fine and you're wasting your time and
money getting me to do that. And so he was.
That year that we had that conversation, the Playboy magazine
had him and so I think Rock Piano Player of
the Year. And I said, well, you call me back.

(46:48):
If you called me back, I will take direction, but
I want to be able to put some of myself
into it as well. So the song was here come
those Tears again on the Pretender album, and I played
on more than a couple songs on that record. I
was able to kind of do what I wanted. The Pretender,
by the way, is Fred Tackett, who plays a little
feet which I never knew or didn't know it a

(47:12):
few years ago.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
I mean, the Pretender is Fred Tackett. Yes, explain a
little bit, since you know Fred I can't imagine what
it means. I mean, Fred is he's just he's from Arkansas.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
He's uh uh. He's probably done as many or more
session session work than I have. There was a session
in which we were playing for Abraham L. Boreal and
I've had his son, of course, who's playing right with
Sir Paul McCartney anyway, Ale Boil, Jeff Pacar on drums,

(47:48):
Fred Tackett on guitar acoustic guitar, and I played keyboards.
The producer calls me into the room says, what's Fred
Tackett doing? I said, what tracksy on? Yes seventeen and eighteen.
I went on to the board as Richard Perry Studio
Studio fifty four in Hollywood. I pulled both faders down

(48:08):
and the track even with Jeff and Abe and myself
almost visibly sagged. I said, he's your glue. And I
pushed the tracks back up and walked out of the room.
So what he could have been the pretender about is
beyond me. He was more like a glass of water,
which may maybe kind of the same thing, which is

(48:32):
who is he? Is? He really who we think he is? There?
He's the pretender. I don't know the lyrics to Jackson's song.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
Well, I certainly do. But well, let me go back
a chapter. I was talking about being in high school
and you talked about stealing the girl friend. And it's
funny that you mentioned that, because that would imply a
strong inner confidence. In addition, I know how hard it
is to make it. Could you amplify what you were

(48:59):
talking about about there or why you mentioned that.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
I mentioned that because it was Hey, it was true.
It was it was a step of of of showing
those that they might have thought because I played piano
and was not always at the practice field to play
softball or wherever, Uh, that maybe I wasn't as manly

(49:24):
as they thought and it wasn't a competition along those lines,
or was I supposed to be. But I kind of
took it as such. And I do have that passive
aggressive nature of I could be very competitive with people
when put to the test, but I don't like doing it.

(49:44):
But but if it's there, I'll go for it. And
so if it was because I grew up with a
block full of girls, I wasn't intimidated by them or
off foot by the fact that they were different than us,
I used it as a way just to to act
as a cool guy until I got older and then
got flustered by it in a couple of times in

(50:07):
my life, but in general, I just thought, yeah, I
feel confident in being a guy. And did I think
Marilyn Monroe in the seven year itch was beautiful and
would have loved to kissed her and whatever? And I thought, yeah,
she's gorgeous. I liked women. I like girls, so there's
one way, one way to do it, or to be involved.

(50:31):
And later, much later, the cliche is, yeah, I started
playing rock and roll so I could meet girls. Well, yeah,
that's part of it, but it certainly wasn't the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Okay, let's stay there. Your first band, you say you're
gonna play drums. At what point do you want to
play with other people? And music is changing while you're
doing this. You know, rock comes in in the early fifties,
then we have Elvis in the mid fifty then we
have the crap pop acts of Fabian Bobby ry Dell,

(51:04):
and then the Beatles come in in sixty four. So
what was going on in your life is all these
things were happening in music.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Having a sister that was nine years older than me.
She introduced me to Elvis Presley by virtue of the
fact she went down to the record store to buy
a hound dog, and I was as enamored with the
music as I was the visual of the RCA label
with the dog listening to the phonograph, so I liked

(51:34):
both a lot. I also, like most kids, grew up
listening to radio, and there was a guy named Dick
Shipley who was one of the DJs Adventura, and we
had the rotary fronts. So the first caller to call
in will win a record. So I'd have my second

(51:55):
finger on a first finger on the last the dial,
I'd be the first caller. Well, the record I won
was The Ghost of Billy Mloo by Dorsey Burnett, and
Dorsey's son was Billy. He had a brother too, I guess.
So music was magic to me. Okay, great, but what

(52:19):
is the application the application of of of music and
rock and roll and where I would fit into it
was a more arduous and long process. So by the
time I got to the point of auditioning to play drums,
I was aware of a lot of different music. I
liked a lot of different styles. I liked everything from

(52:41):
Alley Oop by the Hollywood Argyles to uh, you know
the Brtie Robins song, you know al Paso with a
cool guitar and all that. I fell in love with
the Beatles, but I also fell in love with the

(53:02):
Rolling Stones. Oh you can't love them both? I go, well,
I bloody well, kine mate, it's alright. So that kind
of thing I just taking and choosing battles is a
part of I've spent a whole lifetime going well, why
did you do that? Why are you doing it this way?

(53:24):
Why would you do this? You know? I hadn't written.
I wrote one song called Tripping Out in nineteen sixty six.
The label was Psychedelic Records, Acid Ad Productions that it
was a group called Something Wild. Okay, well something Wild.

(53:45):
In nineteen sixty six we had our photograph taken with
Peter Asher. Peter Gordon sixty six, I would have been
seventeen years old age. If it were February, I would
have been sixteen. So I've got a pretty good photo
of and I standing next to each other at least
ted twelve years before we actually met each other. Later.

(54:06):
It's a Dickinson tale in other words, which is the
reason I'm writing this book. But the obvious for me
has not always been obvious. And I'm not slow, Bob,
but I just sometimes the application is something that takes
me a little while longer to figure out.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Okay, living in Ventura, which is a beach community, although
somewhat of a city there, how big a deal were
the Beach Boys, Gen and Dean surf music for you.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
It was a real big deal. And I just had
a nice shout out from one of the guys on
the Beach Boys the other day. There were I didn't
really know the cats, but I mean my brother knew.
Carl and Van Dyke, Parks and Brian and I were
out of piano at Sunset Sound. Van Dyke ushered me

(55:03):
into the Rimses play the song with us, so myself, Brian,
you know, Brian and Van Dyke, we're playing this tune.
But at Janadine, I love the music. I love I
was a surfer. Other than getting invited by Jackie Stewart

(55:24):
to play with the Rolling Stones in nineteen I think
it was nineteen eighty eighty one, must been eighty one.
One of the biggest thrills of my life was to
be asked to join a surf club because the guy
saw me surfing at C Street in Ventura, and I go,
you want to join this club, which I did, And
about a week later, down in wind and Sea, I

(55:46):
got run over by somebody else surfing out there, and
I had nine stitches put into my hand. And the
doctor saw me. I go, where can I go surfing again?
I would say two weeks? Yes. So I went over
to my parents and they said, what did doctor say?
They didn't even go with me to the and they said,

(56:08):
he said, I go surfing immediately. So I went went
out surf for a couple of weeks, came back and go, oh,
this looks remarkably well. It's it's dry, it's it's looking fine.
You came within a millimeter of losing the use of
your left hand, by the way, I go, okay, doc, hey,
when can I go surfing again? Oh? I'd waited another

(56:29):
two weeks and I why at the door and went
down the beach went surfing. So I have a problem
with authority right, which is another place where musicians and
people with creative inpulses kind of coalesced. Sometimes not always,
but a good percentage of the time we do it.
Counts for all kinds of mischief and for being particularly

(56:55):
thrown into that that that uh not that many years
after we got out of school, like in the late
sixties with LSD and everything else that was coming into vogue.
It it was like a fire burning through a forest.
It took out a lot of people, you know, it

(57:18):
was just it was just something we had to do.
It's it's a historic point in time, as something like
yourself knows rather well. I look at myself as a survivor,
but I also found out pretty early that I couldn't
keep up with people that had a different bent towards

(57:39):
towards that type of thing. So uh, you know, I
I think of myself as fortunate. I also think of
myself as fortunate of being a little feet where the
emphasis to put little feet together between Law and I was,
let's have a vehicle that is expandable, that fits whatever
music we're trying to play. Do we need horns, do

(58:00):
we need another guitar player? Should we contemplate another keyboard player?
What do we need? Let's come to it based on
the music that we're playing and what we think we
need at the time. And so rather than the first
set of music that we played for Ahmed Erdigon, which
were essentially all instrumentals and more like Frank Zappa esque

(58:22):
type of music. We rather shortly after Ahmed said, boys,
it's too diverse. So we went back to the drawing
board and went, oh, okay, so we put the songs
that Brides of Jesus, Hamburger, Midnight, Strawberry Flats, I've been

(58:44):
to One, taking my Time. All these songs that were
the titles themselves display Captain Gunbow willing display a diversity
and eclecticism. You can imagine this type of music we
played for amedt Erdgon. It must have been off the charts.
And much later when I found out who Erdigand was
and his association with Ray Charles, I go, oh my god.

(59:05):
If I'd known who he was, I would have been
too embarrassed to play it for him.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
Okay, let's go back. So you try out for being
the drums. Do you play in Being's in high school?
Do you stop your education after high school? You go
to community college or college? And at what point do
you say, yeah, I want to play music for a living.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
The drum instance only took place during the audition for
this particular band, and I'd had a bad go of
a venture where I drank too much and I didn't
want to kill myself, but it almost happened. My parents
picked me up. They go, there's a kid. There's her mother,

(59:49):
I mean his mother called and watched an audition for
a band. That was them saying we want to try
and help you out. Here. During the audition, there's a
piano setup in that we're playing in. I ambled over
to it and with the lifted the top up, didn't
sit down to stood there and play. They go, hey, wait,
wait a minute, here, you play the piano. I go,

(01:00:12):
I guess I've been playing the piano for ten years.
At that point, they said, forget this band. Here. We've
got a band down the street. It's called the Debonairs.
You're gonna play keyboards. Forget the drums. So yeah, I
played drums. I played keyboards far Fisa, Oregon, which is
like an earwing buzzing into your head and drawing your

(01:00:36):
brain full of holes. I know there was a horrible sound,
but everybody and the brother was using it. So I
played that instrument through high school. I went to a
year and a half of junior college, which included let's
see Alan Handcock Junior College, which is in Santa Maria,
which is where I was going to high school. So

(01:00:56):
I moved from venture to Santa Maria and I school
and I went back to a half semester Adventure Junior College.
And I might add that my volleyball coach at Alan
Hancock was John Matton, who was running a football team there,
and a year later was down in San Diego and
they went up to Tolkland. I go, I like that guy. Oh,

(01:01:20):
that was my volleyball teacher. But he never taught us anything.
He says, show up, you make this grade, show up
to this thing, you make this grade, etc. I got
a football team and walked away from us.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Okay, so what's the motivation to stop your education and
what's going on with your professional musical career at that time.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Frank Salazar, who was my counselor and he was also
the conductor of the orchestra Adventurer Junior College, I had
a one on one with him toward the end of
that first semester. This is in sixty eight. The world
was on fire literally and figuratively in sixty eight with
the assassination of Martin Luther King of Robert Kennedy, the

(01:02:06):
continuation of the riots throughout the United States in the
black communities of Detroit, La. Etc. It was just a
rough time, and the Vietnam War was in full swing,
and I was bound and determined to join a band

(01:02:30):
that would bring me up to some sort of value
musically that I felt I deserved. I wasn't much for
jamming in the ky of a for twenty thirty minutes
at a time and then jamming in the KIVD for another
thirty minutes. It didn't speak to me. I could do it,
but I didn't like it. So he said, look, if

(01:02:54):
you want to get out of here, I don't blame you.
We can't teach you anything. Here gonna be drafted if
if you get out of the out of school. I said, well,
I'll take that chance. So there's the impetus and the
pretty real roadblock that was in front of me just

(01:03:15):
to search out who. Not that long after would be
Lowell George. And this was in sixty nine. The my
semester Inventure Junior College was in sixty eight. So by
sixty nine, I'm out there, done with the dog paddling.
I'm going to start swimming and see where it takes me.
I went first in northern California to a band up there,

(01:03:39):
and I met a couple of people there, but I
didn't I wasn't confident enough in who I was and
my abilities to know the avenue or to choose a
path on how to present myself to people. I heard
the album Uncle Meat after turning down a couple of
bands up there, and this is Frank Zappa's record. I went, man,

(01:04:03):
that's a kind of music I want to play. So
I went back to a La Vista, which is kind
of a home base about an hour south of Santa Maria,
next to UCSB, the University at Santa Barbara, and with
a phony calling card. There are two people I could

(01:04:24):
call two labels. One of the Straight Records, the other
was Bizarre. They were both Frank Zappa's label. I chose
Bizarre and I called to the lady there, and not
with one conversation, with maybe four or five, perhaps I
convinced her that I was an okay kid. I was
new to all this. I wasn't sure how to do anything,

(01:04:47):
but I needed her help, and not initially, but shortly thereafter,
she put me in touch with Loel George, who had
been asked to start his own band by Frank Zappa.
Ti I met Lowell.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Okay, just going sideways for a second. Whatever happened with.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
The draft, I was drafted shortly after I got in
uh in Little Vee and Uh. I will keep this
trunk caded because it's a it's a long and involved story,
but the gist of it was I got the shrink
to at l A. You know, before you can say oh,

(01:05:34):
I'm gay, I'm I'm this, I'm mad, they go, well, hey,
now come on in. We don't care what you are.
You're going to the army and you're gonna go down
to Vietnam fight. Uh. A dear friend of mine, Gar
Huffman Uh he and his brother Duh. Gar was older
than d and I and he was a medic in Vietnam.
He said, whatever you guys do, do not come down here.

(01:05:57):
It's it is a free for all and in a
good way. And if you've got to go to Canada,
do it whatever you have to do. Don't don't come
to don't get drafted. So I took that as a
means of I'm going to do whatever it takes not
to get drafted, which is why I made the shrink
after several maneuvers, cut down three flights of stairs at

(01:06:22):
LA at the LA draft board to order me out
of there and send me to a hospital. We'll draft
him later. And a nurse saw me at the hospital
as this young doctor was walking in. She goes, doctor,
he's nothing but an animal, and I go, yeah, lady,
and you're the one who wants me to go off
and kill people I don't know, and I have no
business having a rifle or I don't believe in this

(01:06:45):
war period. And not long after that needed Walter Cronkite.
So it was. It was that kind of world. Bob
as she as. You know, we're about the same age.
I'm a little older than you, but we were. Faith
was something that was just kind of like where we
are now, insurmountable in terms of where does the truth lie,

(01:07:07):
what does truth mean? Does it mean anything?

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
Okay, just to be clear, you talk to the shrink
and he put you in the hospital after you told
them what.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
I didn't say a word. I was lying there at
a fetal position, and I made them make the action
of physically picking me up and putting me on a bus.
To ford ord or ordering people to send me to
a hospital, which is what the guy did. But that
was probably my fourth time, certain my second or third note,

(01:07:42):
I want to but what my third time at that
draft board. What's the first time I went through? I
signed everything they put in front of me, saying that
I wouldn't and I realized rather early on there was
call of the book First Circle by soultsanitsa where you're

(01:08:03):
in a holding tank someplace and you don't know if
it's day or night, so hours don't mean anything. Time
doesn't mean anything. And later on I went, oh, that's
like being in a recording studio you kind of divorced from.
If they don't have windows in there, you can be
in there for ten hours. And it's like the theory

(01:08:23):
of relativity. According to Einstein, if you have a beautiful
woman on your lap for a minute, it seems like
an hour. If you have a person maybe not so
beautiful on your lab for or excuse me for anyway,
I got it reverse time. It's a sexist tale. I
shouldn't tell it anyway, But I just thought, I've got

(01:08:45):
to take the chance on not being drafted so I
can play with little feet and that's exactly what I did.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
Okay, what did you tell this woman in herb Cohne's office? Bizarre?
That would have vated her to put you together with Lowell.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
I told her that I had taken piano lessons for
a long time. I played locally with several bands as
I got older. I wanted to keep it short, and
I told her that I love Frank's music. I didn't
want to meet Lowell. I want to meet Frank. Frank
was over in Europe. He wouldn't be back for a month,

(01:09:28):
so that month interim. Would you be okay with meeting
Lowell George? This is after introduced me to Jeffrey Simmons,
who was with a group called Eureka. Would Jeff heard
me play at the Tropicana Hotel? Which is in his room?
He had a keyboard setup. He then goes, well, I
played keyboards too, and I'm going, well, that's great. Why'd

(01:09:51):
you have me come down here? But I didn't say that.
I go, Okay, call this person back and there's a
guy named Lowell George you might want to meet. So
it's like a lot of things is very secuitous route
to meeting Lowell and Indeed when I when I went
to his house, I had it set up and there

(01:10:12):
was this beautiful blonde girl sitting cross legged on the floor,
doors open his summertime. She's listening to Eric's satti. She goes, oh,
you must be built. Lowell's expected you. He will be
back in four or five hours. I said, well, what
does he do when he's not expected you? So so

(01:10:36):
continue the story.

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
So we'll tell us about ultimately meeting him.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
So when he came in, I spent a because she
left not too long after that, I had a long
time to, like, you know, steady his house. He had
a sitar on the back corner, right down corner of
the wall in this rustic house in the LUs Felis
area off a in Lamont Drive, and he uh he

(01:11:05):
had a samurai sword on the on the very back wall.
Next to that was a kitchen, very rustic in nature. Uh.
His record collection included uh oh by John Coltrane. He
had an album that that Frank Szapp had released on
Lenny Bruce uh, and he so he had Lenny Bruce

(01:11:27):
an album of Lenny's Uh. He had a couple of
albums with Oh the Blues collection that the Smithsonian Blues Collection,
of which one of the songs on there was joined
the band Hey, Lordy John, the band which we put
on the top of Waiting for Columbus. Uh. He had

(01:11:50):
music with with Chester Burnett, uh hold Wolf and with
Muddy Waters. So he had He was a very collectic guy,
and I kind of his book collection was everything from uh,
I'm looking on my book collections that still the same thing,
to a collection of poems by Carl Sandberg. Probably I

(01:12:16):
think he might have had the Carl Sandberg of Lincoln
books that he wrote as well. He had Last Exit
to Brooklyn, which is a brutal book uh poetry by
Alan Alan Ginsburg Howl. So rather a collect e sensive.
The time Lowell showed up and we began conversing one

(01:12:36):
on one, it was like Jaygovara and Fidel Castro meeting
the first time from what I've read, where they conversed
about everything under the sun. And that's kind of the
way we hit it off. So by the time I
left there, we decided, well, hey, come back in a week,
let's let's continue this. And we did. And this is

(01:12:59):
the detail I'm trying to tell, which is it's deep.
I only knew Low for ten years, but it might
as well have been one hundred years. It was. That's
that kind of relationship.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
So you're talking, at what point do you end up
playing some music.

Speaker 2 (01:13:18):
I don't think it was that long after. I utilize
a piano like most people utilize their voice. If I
need to illustrate something, I sit down and play it.
You know, It's a part of my vocabulary is playing
the piano. So he had an achistic guitar available, and
I think we just started playing a few things. There

(01:13:39):
might have been a little snippets of music that he had.
As I said, I hadn't written anything out of some
psychedelic tripping out that elliot Ingbert from The Mother's Invention,
about a month later, came through the door with that
particular single. Said did you play on this? I go, yeah,
I go where'd you find? He says, in a band

(01:13:59):
at a record store? And I got it because I
said psychedelic music. Acid had productions from nineteen sixty six.
This is one of the first of those kind of records.
I go, oh. I didn't know that. In fact, I
didn't know what any of it meant at that time.
But shortly thereafter I did. So there we were okay.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
So you say that ultimately you auditioned for Ahmit, you
go back to workshop, you're wood shedding. You ultimately a
deal with Warner Brothers. How long a period of time
is this and is there a manager involved?

Speaker 2 (01:14:33):
It was about a It was off the course of
a roughly a year, maybe a little less than that. Actually,
I just said with Russ's title in New York a
couple of weeks ago, and Russ reminded me that we
were going to go to Lizard Records Slow and I

(01:14:55):
and I think Meckler Mickler was at the head of that.
I can't remember his first name, but Russ insisted that
we go to Warner Bros. Then at least we tag
up at Lenny Warderker's office, which is what we did.
And interestingly, we went out there just Laul and I.

(01:15:18):
Lenny had a piano in his office. We sat there
and we played anywhere from seven to nine songs, as
kind of like going to Schwab's drug store and being
recognized that the counter, and he asked to be in
a movie. I mean, we didn't really have a band yet.
Richie Hayward was with us, but we weren't in sync.

(01:15:39):
We didn't have Roy Strada was on our band. We
auditioned probably seventeen bass players the first six months or whatever.
There's a lot of whom. One of them was Paul Breyer.
We didn't play bass. He played guitar, and LOL goes, well,
it's two less strings, go for it, you know. So

(01:16:00):
I mean that that kind. I mean, I wish it
was loose. The only manager we had for about a
nana second was a business manager, uh, mister Kibbi. Martin
Kibby wrote co wrote Dixie Chicken with Low et cetera.
And so his dad, Martin was a good uh what

(01:16:22):
wasn't he of that group? Richie was as a fraternity
of man. Martin was a different group, and they are.
His father said boys don't spend it all in one place.
That was his advice, and I thought, you know what,
that's very good advice. So I kind of adhere to
that for for quite a while.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
So what were you surviving on at that point?

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
Oh, you know, that's a very good question. I mean,
I would alternately live in my parents' house. I was
hanging out in a La Vista, which didn't bring in money,
but at least I knew people. I could sleep a
took place, rash on the floor or whatever. I slept
at Lowell's for the first month or two, and then
the la Bianca family was murdered less than a half

(01:17:10):
mile from Lowell's house. We had just met with Terry
Melcher a night or two before. Terry was going over
to Europe. He said, when I get back, we'll talk
about a record deal. Well, purportedly Manson, although this is
up in the air too historically whether Melcher was being

(01:17:32):
sought out or not by Manson for not giving him
a record deal. But for a long time that was
the story. But I wound up sleeping in Lowell's van
because he brought in these cats with Patricia, one of
the Price sisters, of which there were three sisters. One
was married to Richie. Yeah, it was married to Rick Harper,

(01:17:54):
our road manager, and Lowell was married to Patty and
she I might add that their mother was Lula Belle,
who sang the high part on the Lion Sleeps Tonight
for Telstar, and she said the high part on a
that Star trek. So that was a family the girls

(01:18:18):
came from. And so we had our own Hollywood history
going on there. But I eventually got out of Loll's
place and found a place and the lady got me
a She said, I have an acoustic piano in my house.
It was a baby grant, and U you know, I
was lucky in a lot of respects about of being

(01:18:40):
able to search for something and tell people like the
gallon the phone and warners or straight records, excuse me
a bizarre what I did, and they go, oh, okay, yeah,
let's try this.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):
You know, did you ever have a street job?

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
Uh? The only job I did other than play music
was I was a paper boy adventure. I had the
most customers that are route in the city, and I
had a good aim.

Speaker 1 (01:19:16):
Okay, So Russ says, you got to sign with Warner Brothers.
Tell me the experience of making that record which you
make with Russ. And I was living on the East
Coast at that time. It was like it didn't even
come out. What was the experience for you? The experience
was a.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
Nightmare, and that I thought that they were Lord, hey, Russ,
we're very good friends. And as it turns out, they
became disenchanted with each other over all. Manner of things
be it, arrangements, the music there's been chosen, I'm sure,

(01:19:59):
just everything. So that made it a nightmare because two
guys that I thought were dear friends were now dear enemies,
and it made it very, very uncomfortable. First album I
had never played on, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Anyway,
I hadn't been doing sessions at that time. I might

(01:20:20):
have just started doing it, but I was. I was
completely a newbie at what was involved in any of it.
So it was a difficult record to put together. It
didn't sell any I sawd eleven thousand copies. The first
tour was I felt when we played New Year's even

(01:20:46):
I don't know, wasn't New Ye's Eve New Year's Day
in New York City at Club of Gano. We had
two painting customers and the rest were from Warner Bros.
That probably eight or nine people were there, and I
was so out of it in terms of the angst
of being where I thought, we're gonna be doing great

(01:21:07):
because we're on started giving the you know, the record
a good review, great review effect on Strawberry Flats, maybe
Hamburg at midnight, and I but we're out there and
We're like, we're no nothing, no one knows this. Uh.
We're up in Cleveland and we're playing with the Vanilla Figs.
The audience bring on the fudge and we're just like,

(01:21:29):
what the hell are we doing? And we got to
Texas and there's a couple of girls there and I went, oh,
I get it. I think I like touring. So touring's okay,
wait a minute, forget what I said. I'm back. I'll
be back on the road any time you want. Uh
So yeah, thinking like a musician, like a dope. And

(01:21:51):
there it was, and we went in to make sale Juice,
which was a different proposition but sold three thousand more So.
Another way to put it is is the humility of
it and having to be humble. At some point you
got to face facts. But also taught me a great
deal about Moe, Austin and Warner Brothers, which is they

(01:22:13):
were willing to stick it out with something that was
not viable, but we were a cachet for them as
well to people they're trying to bring in, saying, look,
we've got a little feet. We know they don't sell,
but they they've got a great uh you know, their
thought of glowing terms in terms of who they are,
which is musicians, uh, composers, et cetera. It felt like

(01:22:37):
a home to me with with with them and uh,
it was so so in that regard. There were there
were a lot of lessons available. But but but they're
all bunched in as lessons often are with you know,
in layers.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
Okay, I have to bring up Willing, which is on
both the first and second albums. Do you remember Lowell
writing it? Did you have any idea the iconic song
would become what's your remembrance of that?

Speaker 2 (01:23:07):
The song Willan is I wasn't there when he wrote it.
They put it on the record is not an afterthought.
It was a good song. But when I heard I
had brought down with me from Santa Maria some country
music by you know, Conway Twitty for example. Those are cats.

(01:23:35):
I was listening to COMG Truitty, George Jones. What Willin
sounded like to me, Bob was was a caricature of
not only a truck driver, but of country music. So
the reason we re recorded it for Sailing Shoes was
we when we got together and we had the piano

(01:23:57):
on it, well, it took us for serious approach, the
way he was singing the vocal. That's why that song
is iconic, not because of that first iteration. That's my
opinion anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
Okay, in the experience of making the record with Ted Templeman.

Speaker 2 (01:24:20):
Well, I took a little bit of a backseat on
that record in terms of letting Lowell, you know, like
his statement hurt Richie and I. On the other hand,
when we were rehearsing for it, I said that we
were like two two tornadoes criss crossing each other in

(01:24:40):
a room, you know. On the songs that allowed, which
hardly any of them did. But for the lead up
to that record, we were able to jam certain songs,
but they weren't one note jams. They were songs with
chord changes. But we would play him with a complete

(01:25:01):
and underdoor abandonment, and we laughed about because, yeah, we're
being paid to do this. It was our little our
little clubhouse. You know. I might have driven Battle a
little crazy, but but not all that much because we
would have got time to play the actual tunes. We
would we would settle down and try and adopt a

(01:25:23):
more studio approach, which is the same, more conservative approach,
but we we took every opportunity we could to put
the pedal to the metal, as they say, and open
up the car and drive it as fast as we
could when we could. So it was a it was

(01:25:45):
it was an experience where by the time the thing
was over, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I don't
remember Teddy in the studio at all. He must have
been there. But if he was, and I apologized ted
but I don't remember seeing him there.

Speaker 1 (01:26:08):
Okay, So that album comes out that also is unknown.
When I first came to Little Feet, a track was
included in one of the two disc sampler albums that
Warner put out, and there was amazing buzz on the
third album, Dixie Chicken, which I then bought. So tell
me the transition from Sale and Choose to Dixie Chicken.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
The man transition between those two albums, Sales Choose and
Dixie Chicken was losing Roy Strada on bass. We had
played at Cincinnati at a gig with Captain Beefheart, and
the sound sister broke down and Lowell was told it

(01:26:55):
could take fifteen minutes to fix it or an hour
and a half. We don't know what he says. I'm
gonna go ice skating. I go ice skating. Well, I
better go with him, so I did. I'm watching you
do all the loops and stuff. I said, we got
to get back to the gig. Loll come on, so

(01:27:17):
jumping a cab. Well, I don't know who the gig is,
and there it is, throw the money at him, running
into the hall and they are lined up. I don't
know the Don van Vliet, Captain Beefhart was lined up,
but virtually everybody else was. Artie Tripp was the drummer.
He had family in town. They'd fixed it fifteen minutes
after we left, and we're going for over an hour.

(01:27:40):
Y Rostrada was also in that line, and he basically
told us to jump in jumping a lake. And by
that time we went really okay, we will best of
luck to you too, and we we were actually very
pleased to get rid of him. Is He threatened to

(01:28:00):
leave us at every juncture he could, and we'd have
to talk him back into it and this and that.
So I don't think Lowell did that to make anybody angry.
It was just the way Lowell was. If Loul wanted
to do something here to do it. But that opened
the doors to Kenny Gradny was the first one to

(01:28:21):
walk through the open door of the two guys that
would come in from De Lady and Bonnie that's coming
to the base in Congress. Paul Barrera was brought in
earlier because Richie and I felt like Lowell needed some
help on the guitar because he's trying to do too much.

(01:28:47):
He needed something to help rhythmically, not literally help, but
so he could play. He was just starting an experiment
with slide guitar and we thought, well, he can play
rhythm and slide, but boy, wouldn't be nice to have
some cushion for him to react to Paul and his
brothers they all went to Hollywood High with each other,

(01:29:09):
so they knew each other. Ah. So that was a
transition and a major one for us. It also gave
another partner to write with as well. But having Kenny
Grandy step in from Delany and Bonnie. Rick Harper knew
the guys, what was it a studio instrument metals, Canon

(01:29:39):
Barry there down there and they brought Kenny and he
said he just just got out of Delaney and Bonnie.
We had a game coming up in uh Hawaii at
the Creator Festival. He says, I want to bring my
partner in and his partner with Sam play. This was
the sure. So we all go to Hawaii playing Creative Festival,

(01:30:00):
Greater Festival for forty thousand people. Uh it was. It
was a dream come true. And so Sam Clayton right
then and there was like, yeah, I love the band
and he was in. So that's that's how that transition
took place. But also introduced which we had We had
been familiar with New Orleans music before either of those

(01:30:22):
guys got in the band. I mean I I came
down to uh uh just see Lord sixty nine, knowing
fully well who Professor long Hair was, what his influence
would might be at some point. Uh and also uh
Clifton Shinier and the stuff that he was doing so

(01:30:42):
wide open was was the word. So when we got
those two guys they knew about New Orleans music, that
was just a handshake and a slap on the ass
and we're we're off and running.

Speaker 1 (01:30:54):
Okay, Dixie Chicken comes out. The title track is now iconic,
and it took me a few plays to get into it. Actually,
I first started with Juliet and then Lafe Att Railroad
and then kind of worked my way backward. What was
going on inside? Did you feel like you were finally
getting some momentum or same as it ever was?

Speaker 2 (01:31:16):
I felt we were getting momentum. That's a great questions.
Oh I've been Yeah, we were getting momentum, and there
wasn't any of the acts before. We're trying new things.
I tried playing synthesizer for the first time on Fatman
at the basketeb which I believe was also on that record.

(01:31:37):
I tried a melotron or some additional answer which had
drunken Mexican trumpets, which they wouldn't call them these days,
but there they were on the That's what the sound
was called. So I came with Bup. It was about
East La. It was there was just a lot of
inventiveness going on with those songs and how we were

(01:32:00):
going to play them and attack them, and that openness
I think on that record in particular, transformed in a
nice handshake to that album. The interesting thing though, was
it sold a few more copies because of the notoriety
of the record, But some of the reviews, while glowing

(01:32:23):
before on the first two albums, every song sounds the
same that kind of thing. So in other words, when
you put your head up where you're visible above ground,
that's when people start taking shots at you, which is
another thing I learned, and I went, Oh, I thought
we were the darlings of the press. Hardly, but in

(01:32:46):
general we were, and we were certainly well thought of
in Europe and in England in particular. So a lot
of doors were even at that time unbeknownst to us,
but they were starting to slowly open, which would vote
well for the future, except that we were a band,
and like a lot of bands, and the just preperency

(01:33:11):
between our personalities didn't let itself to always shaking hands
with one another.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
Okay, So the album after that is the breakthrough because
it has your song with Lianta. However, being honest, I'm
not quite as enamored of that as I am of
Dixie Chicken. But it does have the original version of
Spanish Moon too, which is iconic in the double live
album which comes out in seventy eight. So tell me
about the experience of feats Don't Fail.

Speaker 2 (01:33:39):
Me Now, Peace Don't Failed Me Now followed a breakup
of the band. There are a couple of iterations on
how to try to get the band back together. Water
was putting Low and myself into what Warner thought of
as a supergroup with John Sebastian and I believe was

(01:34:00):
Phil Everley, so one of the Everly Brothers, which we
had a meeting about it at Mussa Frank's restaurant. I
met Fay Ray that evening, who flirted with each and
every one of us. I reminded John Sebastian of that
a few years ago. He goes, I don't remember that.
I said, well, yep, she was there, not at our meeting,

(01:34:22):
but at the at the main bar. As you walk
in through the through the doors, particularly come through the
back door. There's two entrances into the dining room. One
is you take take a right, the other one you
take a left, and that's where they film most things
for movies, is when you turn left and were the

(01:34:42):
formal part of the dining room. Uh. Phil's wife said,
you're not going to do it, it's ridiculous, and we
did so. Then Bob Gavala stepped in. He says, there's
a guy, Steve Boone from the Love and Spoonful, which
is the band that John Sebastian he's got a studio
in Baltimore, Maryland. Mike, we take a shot at recording there.

(01:35:07):
You'll you'll live back there. You'll have free access to
this studio, do anything you want. I bought a lot
of great things happened that I met Robert Palmer, I
met uh through Emmy Lou Harris, my first wife, fran
fran Tate. George Masterberg came in from Barclay Studios in
Paris to work with us, So we knew each other

(01:35:32):
or met each other at that time. And then uh
our George Lowell's daughter was born at that time. So
a lot of great things were taking place for us,
and it really felt like a reunion of of of
of good magnitude and and UH we were able to

(01:35:53):
pour a lot of good energy into it, and we've
recorded several different records. We also became quite famous in
Washington as a result of living back there. So there
was a perfect storm of good things happening for us.

Speaker 1 (01:36:07):
Tell me about the being breaking up before.

Speaker 2 (01:36:09):
That, I think what was going on it was it
was this was primarily financial in regard. We just couldn't
We're having a tough time making ends meet. It created
attention what you would do in any kind of marriage,
and I'm certainly being in a band as a form

(01:36:30):
of marriage. And Bob Cavallo came to one of our band,
like the night before we go on tour. He came in.
He was like laughing and kind of you know, jovial
about a few things, and he said, I got I
got some news for you. We just canceled the tour.
We don't have enough money to get out there and

(01:36:51):
do this, and we're like kind of stune. And I
walked up to him, I said, well, why we why
we like? Why we laughing when you came in? He says.
I was so upset about it. I didn't know what
else to do. I said, God, look, you know a
real human response, and I went, you know what, I

(01:37:13):
completely get it. I always thought Bob was a wonderful,
wonderful guy on that level. I trusted him. I said, okay, fine, Well,
but the decision was made to try the superman. It
was also what was else which they wouldn't have helped
Richie or Kenny or Sam or anybody, at least not initially.

(01:37:40):
But then Lowell also there was another thing that he
did that I Beleeve proceeded going back to work in
Maryland and record there, and that was a Robert Palmer record,
sneaking Sally through the alley, and a lot of people
thought it was us. It was the Meters, we're playing it.

(01:38:01):
Or if you're going to get confused with a band,
you can choose a lot worse bands than the Meters
to get confused with. So uh and by the way,
we got to sit in with those guys, you know,
the Neville Brothers, et cetera. Uh, there's there's a there's.
I had one guy at one point was going, well,
what are you playing? He didn't say it to me directly,

(01:38:22):
came in through another person. What are you doing playing
New Orleans music? You're not from there? I said, Well,
tell your friend that I played Mozart. I'm not from
vienn Austria. I'm not from Germany. I play Bach and Beethoven.
Is that okay with him? Oh? And my parents were
married and you were also maybe through osmosis, I got

(01:38:45):
some of the the juju. I don't know. You tell
me there against that competitive thing. You know. I'm not
a purist when it comes to music. I I uh,
and I adore some people that are. Don Grolnik was
a purist, played piano with with James Tader with Lynn

(01:39:06):
Ron's stat beautiful jazz guy. You and I discussed this
a few times. His approach was, if this is the
way Bill Evans did it, then I'm gonna play it
like that. You know that that kind of thing. Don
had the chops. Excuse me to play it any way
he wanted. I said, I don't bastardize it on purpose, Don,
I just what I'm doing is I'm taken segments of

(01:39:29):
things and appropriating it to music and to my writing
and to my sense of what ought to be there,
not as a an affront to anything.

Speaker 1 (01:39:41):
Okay. So then we have the Last Record album, which
for me is a return to form, and you're you're
writing more on that album. So what's going on there?

Speaker 2 (01:39:55):
Well, well, I had a pretty substantial battle. We're going
into make No the last record. Excuse me, I'm dyving
my head a little too too early. Uh. That that
album was made in Hollywood, which is why we have
that Hollywood drawing a Neon Park so beautifully hated. It

(01:40:17):
was not one of my favorite records, although it had
some great songs on it, but I just felt it
was very stiff, uh, disjointed even, and that could have
been just for me. You know. Perspective is a lot
that rolls into us. We've we've been accused through the years,
and I think rightfully so that our records aren't as
good as the way we play live. And I think

(01:40:39):
just you know, it's subjective, but for me, I think
there's some truth in that. This is one of those
albums that I thought was h let me just put
it this way. We want the German Album of the
Year of the Year award. And when I heard that
we'd want I won that award. A couple of people

(01:41:00):
in the band, I said, I told you it was
Germanic and stiff, and that's that's the result of all that,
and they went, there you go. So it was one
of those I mean, it's it's it's silly to say it,
but it was. It's kind of the way I felt
about that album. And I don't I rarely listened to
our records. I do on occasion, uh, and I actually

(01:41:22):
sound pretty good. I gotta I gotta admit.

Speaker 1 (01:41:24):
Okay. So the next album, Time Loves a Hero, I
bought it. It seemed like something completely different, and Lowell
was barely on it saw that tour. What was going
on there Lowell was Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:41:41):
I think that the tailspin Lowell was going through was
healthy health wise. Uh he we not he we We
made it difficult to work with one another. In general,
he would be there, he wouldn't be there. I kind
of like what Jerry Garcia doing with The Grateful Dead.

(01:42:02):
He would disappear at times, and then when he shop you,
oh yeah, hey Loel, Hey Jerry, welcome back. You know
that kind of thing. But we had a very real
proposition of not being able to make an album with
him or without him. And Paul and I got together
and I thought, look, I don't know what to do here,

(01:42:23):
but we had to go. Let's let's talk to Ted
teentleman about doing a recordless playing the songs we have.
See if he'll do a record with Lowell in there.
But maybe Lowell is not as present as he should be.
Let's let Lowell figure out who he is. I know
he wants to do a solo record. Let's let him
sort some of that out. See if he's amenable to

(01:42:46):
letting us take more of a stand in this. And
that's what we did.

Speaker 1 (01:42:52):
Okay, and then Lowell ultimately does make a solo album
which comes out two years leader and was the band
really together at that point?

Speaker 2 (01:43:07):
It was? Paul and I took a lot of flak
for having taken over the band from people on the outside,
and I later when it when I was able to
articulate it in this fashion, I said, look, let me
explain something to you. Tell me if you think I'm

(01:43:27):
a right or wrong or I'm just whatever you think,
here are the facts. We didn't. It was fine that
Lowell made a solo record, but if we were keeping
Lowell from writing music for Little Feet, why did why
are there hey, why are there so few Lowell George's
songs on his solo record? And why did it take

(01:43:49):
in five years to make it? So, I said, that's
a good question to ask yourself. He was in a
tailspin of his own making not ours. This is what
I was getting at, and it didn't to me, It
didn't ever detegrate his talent. Uh Uh. I thought Richie

(01:44:11):
Hayward and Prop and Paul BarreR were probably going to
be the first guys to uh, you know, leave this world.
That's the right they were. They were gone. Uh So
discuss the show. Were you know, we don't know what's
going to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:44:29):
Tell me a little bit more about where Lowell was
at this tailspin. Was purely drugs or what was going on.

Speaker 2 (01:44:36):
I think a lot of it was was was uh lifestyle,
but it was also just trying to figure out uh
I think he was he was battling some health issues.
He was overweighted obviously, and uh so that so that
was coming into play a little bit. It had to be.

(01:44:56):
He had trouble maintaining his his vocals out on the road.
We had to play a couple of shows with with
him there, but he couldn't sing. Uh, that's that's just
you know, that's just losing your voice, that kind of thing.
But I think things were, you know, because I wasn't
inside his head. I just thought that that he was

(01:45:17):
he was disturbed by a lot of what he was
going through internally, and that these things because the pressure
of being thought of as a leader of the group,
and even with a guy like myself that took over
the reins from time to time, like when we did

(01:45:39):
the record of the TV show uh bit I Special.
Bob was the guy that produced that show. Anyway, the
producer of that show got touched with me. He said,
did you would you put a list of people together
for us to do the show with? I said, but

(01:46:00):
why don't you have loll to it? He says, because
you want to make sure it gets done. Uh airlic
I think air one anyway, Bob Airlock? Uh so, ken
Airlinck you mean can't yeah, ken Ic excuse me, there's
a kN airlic So I brought into the weather report.
I brought in you know, the Bonnie whomever was on

(01:46:24):
stage with us take let Larson and uh emmy little
Harris might have been there too, I can't remember, but yeah,
there there there was an increasingly more of of that
where Lode was burying, kind of what Jerry Garcia was
going through, where a lot of the emphasis was from

(01:46:46):
the press was on both Law with Little Feet Jerry
with with the Grateful Dead. But neither one of them
really wanted the mantle of being a leader. They didn't
want the pressure of it. They they wanted to be
the artists play compose. Give him room for that, not

(01:47:08):
like the king that sits there every day and has
to go through. Should I do my launch to be
with this kind of detergent You're you're your worship or this.
I mean, it was just no, I want to be
left alone. I want to do what I do. Play
some of your songs, just do some of mine. It
just was just convoluted, and the side of the times

(01:47:31):
was the drug thing hovering out there, which was never
that far away from from what we were all going
through or what's up we're going through. I should say
I'd give it up on it a few years before. Uh.
It made it harder, harder to uh, to deal with
one another, to deal with life. Plus we're young guys.

Speaker 1 (01:47:53):
So so Lowell is on the road promoting his solo album,
He Dies. Was that a shock to you or did
you expect it? Or did you figure if it wasn't
going to be this, it was going to be something else.

Speaker 2 (01:48:08):
I thought it was. It was a shock to me,
and then in the U in my ability to come
to grips with it, it's like when you're in a
car accident or getting close to a car accident. And
at least for me, the few times I've been close
to something like that, my mind is like kind of clear,
it doesn't like fog up. I'm like, I've got this

(01:48:31):
way to do this. Or this way to do it.
I'm going to do one or two and make a
decision to do it later. It hit you like a
ton of breakfast to what actually happened. So what hit
me initially was a shock of his death, but I'd
rather quickly elevated to does he have insurance for his family?
I don't think he did, So I said, we're going

(01:48:53):
to put a concert on at the Forum, which we did,
and we raised money for his family, and we tried
to put and we did put Lawell in good light,
because that's what we should have done. I think the
story of loll George is one that not unlike Beatnick

(01:49:13):
poetry if you just talk about his death and whatever
cost is, because there's a lot of stories surrounding that too.
But I kind of look at it like Beatnick poetry.
You throw Jimmy Hendrick's name into the hat, along with
Jim Morrison, Garcia, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, do you name him?

(01:49:36):
And John Beluci. They all have very similar avenues in
which they went out, and there's discrepancies too on how
they died. The fact is it was a culture and
an overload system that brought him to that early demise

(01:49:56):
in their hearts were the things that gave out. So
I don't and what I'm writing, what I'm talking about now,
my focus is more on Yeah, we'll passed away. He
left this legacy with us. We're intertwined with one another.

(01:50:19):
I was quoted and People Magazine is saying greater People Magazine,
not the you know, foreign press as saying that without Lowl,
Georgia would not be Little Feet. And it was reminded
of that when we put out Let It Roll, And
I said, you know, I did say that, and that's

(01:50:40):
the way I felt at that time, and I morphed
and gravitated to a different way of thinking about it, which,
ironically enough, was more to the way low and I
thought about the band when we put it together in
nineteen sixty nine, which it should be an open vessel
as to who's in it and when, what material should

(01:51:02):
be included and how? And does it sound like Little
Feet at the end of the day, if we play
Happy Birthday, does it still sound like Little Feet? You know?
But if we write a great song, does it sound
like Little Feet? I think the answer was debatable for
a lot of people. Some ardis and said without Lowell.

(01:51:23):
It's not Little Feet without Richie, it's not Little Feet
without Paul Breer, it's not Little Feet and a lot
of other people, and I mean a lot more go.
You know what just ties me to something that reminds
me of what was great about you guys, and guess
what it still is. Because you can't walk up on
that stage, Bob and play in full people. You either

(01:51:47):
have them by the throat and they come along with
you or you're sitting there going we aren't what we
thought we were, which brings you back to the very
first album with Little Feet, thinking we were going to
be the Beatles.

Speaker 1 (01:52:01):
Okay, So in these ensuing decades where you've continued with
Little feed Little Feeds, membership has morphed, you've worked with
all these other artists. Has there been any plane or
you're just bumping into stuff? How did this all play out?

Speaker 2 (01:52:20):
Well? There is a there is a sense of jumping
from log to log just in terms of, hey, what
am I gonna do? Well? Little Feet's not there. Oh,
I'm gonna play with Linnerasset for for a year, a
year and a half, for a year or less. I'm
playing with James Taylor. That goes on for six years. Now,
I'm playing with Bob Seeger. Then I say I want

(01:52:42):
to put Little Feet back together, which puts not at wrong.
That's life in general. You know, we we we can
only plan so far the best plans of men et cetera.
But but having the ability, I mean at the age
I am now of. I mean, honestly, if I didn't
or couldn't play with Little Feet anymore, I think I

(01:53:07):
would probably enjoy it that much. But could I do it? Yeah,
I mean, I'm not financially hanging onto a thread necessarily,
but it's I love playing music as much more than
I ever have in life, and I don't want to
mislabel something that that isn't something. But as I said,

(01:53:29):
when you walk out on stage, uh and you look
into people's eyes out there and judge from the looks
on their faces as to whether you're connecting with them.
Little Feet is one of those bands that people either
go who or they go oh my god, the the
little feet that kind of that's special to them they have.

(01:53:51):
They don't care. They're like the grateful dead on you
is if if Jerry Garcia looks sideways at Bobby Ware
or Vice versa. They were the first to bring it
up right, Uh, within little feet. It's the same way,
if not, everybody that we've we've played our music for
has liked the iteration of the band that we have.
But the group is it stands with Tony Leoni, with

(01:54:12):
Scott Gerard, Fred Tackett, Sam Clayton, Kenny Grady, myself. They
are like doing handstands over this group, and so are we.
I think let's let's you know that. I mentioned John
Coltrane earlier, the last iteration of the band he had,
and he played with some great people over the years.
He felt like, you know, this group, it's not a

(01:54:35):
matter whether it's the best one I've ever worked with,
but it certainly holds with the best that I've worked with.
That's the way I feel about this band. Is it
better than with Lowell and at his height of powers
and whatnot, Well, certain respects, it's not better, but it's
just as good. It doesn't have low You can't replace Lowell.

(01:54:56):
Maybe with AI we can, and they will. I don't know,
they'll They'll have to cross that bridge when they come
to it. But for right now, if live music is
such and recording as such, and you're gonna write a song.
Those songs come from the heart. They come from a
place that AI doesn't possess. It has an intellect, which

(01:55:17):
is it's not a bad thing to have sometimes, but
it's not everything. You have to have heart and an
acumen to know when to play, when to lay out,
when to say, you know what. Maybe that acoustic piano
is not to write instruments for this, I'm gonna play
a wordlesser. I'm gonna just lay out of this section

(01:55:39):
I'm gonna have. I'm gonna ask Linda Ronstadt to sing
softer on this duet she's doing with the Craig Fuller
on the song that the Laker Organization tapped as a
song as a goodbye song to Kareem Abdul Jabbar voices
on the wind. I defy a I to come up

(01:56:00):
with any of that.

Speaker 1 (01:56:02):
Yeah, I'm certainly with young. Now let me just a
little clean up work. You talked about the finances, So
how has it been financially.

Speaker 2 (01:56:10):
We started from ground zero about a year and a half,
almost two years ago, and it took some doing to
UH to build the coffers up to where we could
actually begin to breathe a little easier.

Speaker 1 (01:56:22):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:56:23):
That's from good management. It's from good planning. Uh, it's
from from us doing what we're supposed to do when
we when we hit the stage, which is just deliver.
Uh the old adage as you well now it's you're
all as good as you were last week, right, or
how you were thought of last week. So Uh, some
people cannot handle that pressure. I welcome it, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:56:45):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:56:46):
We marched on stage with Letter Roll in South London
with Bonnie Raid and man, woman and child that we're
in that audience, Bob. We were about six feet up
looking out over them. Their arms were crossed across the
chest looking at us in a defiant mode of prove it,
and as a war on the hands dropped it their sides.

(01:57:10):
By the end of the set, their hands were in
the air and they were like that for twenty five
minutes after we left the stage. That's what I want.
I'm there to prove that what we're doing. What I
do when every time I walk into to play music
with somebody or to hold a conversation with somebody, I've
lived it. I've lived a life. I'm still living it

(01:57:32):
and hopefully I'll know when to relinquish center fields. If
I've dropped fly balls like Willie Mays was in center field,
maybe I'll call it. Then. Right now I'm catching everything
has hit to me, so I'm gonna keep playing, but just.

Speaker 1 (01:57:51):
Drooling down on the money for a little bit. Second,
you were in a bend, had multiple members forgetting today
throughout your career. I mean, I'll be very specific. You
end up playing with Leftover seam And, which hadn't deal
with Hollywood Records, but really is more of an indie
jam band, more of a localized Colorado scene. Are you

(01:58:11):
taking those gigs because you say, hey, I like them,
or you say, listen, I need to work, I need
to pay the bills.

Speaker 2 (01:58:19):
I start, what do I like who I'm working with?
And at one point I had to say to them,
to the Leftover Salmon, I got an offer from the
Davy Brothers, which came about in a securest way, but
I pressed the issue and I'm going to do it

(01:58:39):
very well financed with us, guys I've done for a
long time, and I'm not going to be able to
play music with you any longer. And I'd always upsetting
it to them at first, and I said, remember I
was the old man in the sea for a long
time with you guys, I'm not with them, and I

(01:58:59):
don't feel like I played any worse or less than
I played with anybody. I come in as a team player.
I come in as a I don't have to be
in the band in order to play as if I'm
in the band. So that's that's my attitude. I've turned down.
I've turned down Madi. I was offered a chance to
the the to write the theme song for a Cops

(01:59:25):
and for Baywatch. I turned them both down. My agent
about hit the wall. He said, are you out of
your mind? I said, yeah, I guess I am. Well,
you call yourself something different, I said, I would still
know it was me. I've worked around enough. I mean,
you know, that's what musicians are from time to time

(01:59:46):
for prostitutes. But you choose who you want to lay with,
and I don't want to lay with this, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:59:54):
Are there any royalties of significance from the Little Feet
era and from the songs you've written?

Speaker 2 (02:00:00):
Yeah, we did pretty well. The eraror that we live
in now, as you know as well as anybody the
the streaming, it's an outrage, it's it's it's that right.
I don't think much of what is going on within
the rule of so called rule of law these days,

(02:00:23):
or what what masquerades is law is right on any level,
personal or otherwise, as to what to do about it. Again,
like most things in life, you can choose your battles.
If it's something you think you can can now to
a campaign and make it work us, then more power

(02:00:49):
to you. Generally speaking, these things that do not people
with power and wealth do not relinquish it easily and
are not about to do so with the streaming services.
But we'll see where it goes.

Speaker 1 (02:01:03):
And you're going on the road now and you're playing
complete albums. Concurrent with that, you're releasing repackaged versions of
the second and third album Sailing Juice and Dixie Chicken
with additional stuff. Tell me about the decisions to do that.

Speaker 2 (02:01:21):
Our management came in. They thought with the notion of
doing Waiting for Columbus, which we did UH, that it
would be good of UH Wars had a desire to
possibly re release a couple of records maybe more, And

(02:01:43):
I had just played with the dav Brothers on a
couple of UH. I think we played in New York
at the what a big theater New York is the
Reacon big a theater? Uh? We played a couple of there.
I know that Steely Dan you know Don Don's done it.

(02:02:07):
I thought, yeah, I like the idea of it. And
then what we will do that's maybe a little different
than at least what the Doomie Brothers did to a degree.
If we're playing Juliet, maybe we'll lengthen it a little bit.
You know, we nothing's written in stone with us. We
can We're not going to disguise a song like maybe

(02:02:29):
Bob Dylan would. We'll make it where they know that
it's Juliet if they're familiar with the team like you were, Uh,
and play it. But but I want to have the
ability to mess around with tempo's a little bit from
time to time. Let's let's see what the arrangement is.

Speaker 1 (02:02:47):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:02:48):
Do I play it? Uh? Piano with strings? Do I
play it just rose? Do we have a a man
delendas opposed to a guitar playing some parts to it?
Leave in our improvisational style, intact to play the album
but not replicated. And it's a you know, as the

(02:03:12):
Eagles have done. You go to an Eagles concert. I've
been to one, I guess, and they'll play the record.
By God, it sounds like the record. That's the style.
I don't knock it at all. It's it's not our style.

Speaker 1 (02:03:27):
And why do you live in Montana?

Speaker 2 (02:03:31):
I live here because of the beauty of it, the solitude,
the fact that he gets fifty below zero during the winter.
He keeps the riff raff out, he keeps the riff
raff in. It's It's just one of those places where

(02:03:53):
because I travel all the time, I wanted to come
back to someplace that felt like, you know, where people
aren't you know, I'm just another guy up here. I mean,
people know who I am. It's not that the the
it's I'm not I'm not afraid of celebrity. I'm not

(02:04:15):
Loel George. I'm not you know, I'm not a celebrity.
But I kind of am in a certain sense, and
become more so as people know more about me. But
what they quickly learn about me is, look, I'm still
the same guy gets beat up on the playground like
everybody else. I just happen to have a talent to
play piano, and I've utilized it in a pretty grand

(02:04:36):
fashion throughout my career to do just that so I
can be the I told somebody on TV Ruters tour,
they're driving a bus. Andy, Yeah, but you're a rock star.
I said, well, if you want to think of me
as a rock star, go ahead. What I am in
fact as a musician, and I hold that to be

(02:04:58):
I played with a lot of rock stars. I met
a bunch and I admire you know, I admire those people.
Have I one of them. If you want to think
of me as one, go ahead, I don't really think
I am.

Speaker 1 (02:05:11):
And on that note, I think we're going to stop
it for now.

Speaker 2 (02:05:14):
Bill.

Speaker 1 (02:05:15):
I want to thank you so much for taking the
time with my audience, very thoughtful responses. You never really
know until you talk to somebody who they are, but
you're obviously a thinker.

Speaker 2 (02:05:26):
So thanks again a pleasure, Bove, and I've enjoyed breathing
your work over the years. I haven't always agreed with it,
but I got to say that for the same thing.
You know, you get them as you see them, and
I think there's you obviously are a thinking person as well.
I respect that in people that can actually think. It

(02:05:49):
gives them the latitude and the respect to do so.
So I have a lot of respect for you, and
I actually have to agree with you a lot a
lot of things you write about as well.

Speaker 1 (02:05:57):
Right, I wouldn't expect you to agree with everything, but
you know, in a world where everybody just makes it
about the dollar, and I'm not saying the dollar is
not important, you know, it's the the number of what's
around the dollar, I'm thinking about it. And the way
you describe music that you know it was certainly very
insightful and not what you get from the average person.

(02:06:19):
You certainly said things you don't normally hear and I
think will be helpful for musician's I hope.

Speaker 2 (02:06:27):
So again, thanks for the thanks for the conversation. Honestly,
it's a pleasure talking to you and me with you.

Speaker 1 (02:06:35):
Until next time. This is Bob left six