Pat Monahan

Mr. Train.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Chats podcasts.
My Yesterday's Hot on a hand of Twain. That band
is going on the road with Bare Naked Ladies and
Matt Nathanson and have a new single, The Weekend Pat.
I read the lyrics of the Weekend. I listened to
the song, and it seems like there's a message tell

(00:31):
me what the song is about.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Well, Hi, Bob, thank you for having me on your program.
I really am a big fan of your work. You're
seeming to be the smartest guy in the music industry,
and I've read many, many, many of your articles that
I adore. So the weekend is I started singing, I
don't talk about the weekend while playing on a piano

(00:59):
because my life and I we we noticed that on
the internet everyone is living this incredibly ideal lifestyle and
it seems to be false. And my wife and I
don't really brag about our lives, so we essentially don't

(01:20):
talk about the weekend. We just make memories and don't
post about it. We don't, you know. Some of the
lyrics are like, if you have to show the world,
if you need the world to see you, you know,
think about what other people are going through. If you've
got to tell somebody you're a boss, man, chances are
you ain't a boss then, because it just seems like

(01:42):
a whole lot of what is the Lady doth protest
too much? Where you would see so much good and
then two weeks later you find out that are going
through a divorce or whatever. And my idea was the
people who come to a training concert were making memories together, Like,

(02:02):
it's not about what you post to your friends or
try to show the world what you have and how
good life is. It's just about having a good life.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
You know, I got that. But there's also the line
go on and find yourself a watergate, And there's also
the issue of I don't talk about the weekend. You'd
already know if you're a good friend. I thought that
maybe this was like a TMZ type reference where Hey,
you know I've been burned. This is my regular life.

(02:38):
You know that the tabloids and people online are looking
to get me in a situation and publicize that. Is
that a pure fantasy eater is at the song at all?

Speaker 2 (02:48):
It's definitely in the song. I think everybody's always looking
for a way to take somebody down. And I'm not
really a famous guy, so I'm not really on people's radar.
But if you are looking for somebody to lover hate,
go find something because I'm not it for you, you know,
Like that's all I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Okay, to what degree are you on social media? I mean,
not posting, but spending time going through TikTok Instagram.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Whatever I post, I post on Instagram and TikTok, and
it's all very positive. You know. I have four children
and have seen the negatives of what social media can do,
and I just try to keep things super up and

(03:38):
I definitely page through social media, Instagram and TikTok for
comedy and golf, like those are my two things that
I look for.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Okay, let's start at the beginning. Just by posting online,
you get hate. Of course, have you experienced hat and
how do you hope with that?

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Well, it's changed over the years because you know, I've
never been in the biggest nor the most popular band
in the world, and so people have found many things
to dislike about what I do and you just don't
read it. Like I have friends that are in the
industry and bands similar to mine, and they read it
and it's terrible. It's terrible for them. Nothing is real,

(04:26):
you know, Like if you're adored by five million likes
and you have five thousand hates, like none of it's real.
Like you just have to remember, I've gotten to the
age where reading any opinions of me doesn't really matter anymore.
I don't take any of it personally. It's not about me.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
So how good a golfer are you.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
I've played some good golf, I've played some bad golf.
My indexes at around a six right now. And I
just had a lesson from a good friend of mine
who's an older gentleman who has played in six Masters.
His name is Rick Fair, and he really helped me

(05:14):
with some things. I think I might be getting there.
Do you play?

Speaker 1 (05:21):
What I always tell people is I got a hold
in one and I gave up.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
Oh wow, I still don't have one of those.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Well that's a lucky shot. But I played as a kid.
I was never good. And the problem with playing as
an adult, I found is people take it so seriously. Yeah,
I mean, you know if you're dealing with that coach
that the pros play a completely different game yep than
the average person, the way they worked the ball, etc.

(05:51):
Unless you started at a really young age, you can't
accomplish what they're doing. But I have friends and they're
so compared. I guess my mother was really played a
lot of golf, so I played some too, and it
was about you know, doing the right thing ethically. And
but as I say, people people are so competitive that

(06:15):
I stopped playing.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, I heard something today. I was talking to a
friend and he said his brother started playing before him,
and his brother gave him one piece of advice when
he started, and that nobody wants to be around an
angry golfer. And I think that's great advice, Like just

(06:37):
go out there and enjoy it and be happy that
you're with your people.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Absolutely. The other thing is I don't have the patience
to work on chipping and sand shots to the degree
that you need to.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
That's the grind.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
So do you practice at that level?

Speaker 2 (06:58):
I have started to because I It was recently in
the Pebble Beach per the at and T prom at
Pebble Beach and it was my seventh one and I
played terribly. And I played with a kid named Jake Knapp,
who's a really beautiful golfer, wonderful kid, and he said

(07:18):
he gets the most joy out of practice, and I
was like, huh, that's really interesting because I can only
equate that to music, and music for me, I don't
practice anymore. I write songs. But I think that's practice, right,
So we write songs until we get to until we

(07:42):
hit oil. Like I have way more terrible songs that
no one has ever heard than I have songs that
people like that they have heard. And I think that's
what practice is. I think that's what golf is. You
leave all the bad shots out there so that when
you get to the tournament, you have done all the work.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
So have you played with you know, supposedly Vince Gill
is an amazing golfer and he was friends with Arnold Palmer.
Have you played with any really good people from the
music business on either side of the stage?

Speaker 2 (08:15):
You know. I'm actually good pals with Vince, and we
threatened to play golf every summer because this guy is
like shooting his age and he's sixty seven now and
that's insane, Like that's a different level of golf. So
I'm hoping that I do get to play with Vince.
But I played with a lot of really good athletes,

(08:38):
really good professional golfers. Some Klay Walker have played with,
who's a country artist. He plays good golf. There's a
bunch of them out there that are really good.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
So you had this lesson with fair Give me one
tip that he gave you that was an insight.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Just to to narrow my stance. I've been told that
for a long time, to narrow my stance, and I
never really put all the pieces together because it doesn't
end there. You have to move the ball a little
further away, so you're reaching and I hit a fade,
and narrowing my stance and moving the ball a little

(09:19):
further away will help me draw the ball, and so
you put the little pieces together. But it really helps
a lot because I took that lesson to Augusta National
and played really good golf.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
And how often do you play.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
It depends, you know. Sometimes it'll be three times in
a week and sometimes it'll be three times in four months.
It just depends on I try to take every year
off of music, and every year I don't get off,
so eventually I'll play some golf.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Are you a member of a club.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, I'm at a club outside of Seattle. My wife
is from Seattle. So I'm at a place called Aldera.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Okay, what was the other thing that you said you
looked for on social media besides golf?

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Comedy?

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Okay, so who's funny? In your book?

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Comedy is the most important thing to me and my bandmates.
Like you know, no one's interested in who's the new
band or anything where, Like you got any gags for me,
any jokes? Like I think our music is very much
a romantic comedy. And so we do a cruise every

(10:35):
other year and we always have a comedian on. And
my new favorite living comedian is a guy named Rory
Scovel and so he's going to perform on the cruise
with us this year. He's absolutely incredibly talented and maybe
a genius when it comes to comedy. George Lopez is

(10:57):
a good friend of mine, and Ken Jong is a
good friend. Like when I meet comedians, there's something that
I just inherently love and admire about them. I think
the bravery of getting up there and starting from nothing
and then having an hour long show is got to
be the most difficult thing that you could ever do,

(11:19):
because you're all by.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yourself and you know there are a lot of comedians
on social media. Are you on social media both to
entertain yourself and trolling for new comedians?

Speaker 2 (11:32):
Well, yeah, but I'm also I'm on social media to
send the message of you know, like we have a
new single, we'll have a new album and a new
a new tour. So like I'm in Los Angeles now
doing TikTok videos with kids that have millions of followers,
because that's part of today's promotion or promoting what it

(11:55):
is you're trying to promote. It used to be you
write a on that maybe people will care about. You,
try to get some key radio stations to play it,
you have call out which you don't have anymore, and
hope that it creates a buzz, and other channels start
to add it, and the record president is yelling at

(12:16):
all of his staff to get that thing played, and
its are and now it's.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
TikTok Okay, So your managers found these people. Have you
done any yet?

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah? Yesterday I did one where I was on the
back of a bicycle singing karaoke to my own songs
in a neighborhood in Los Angeles. Earlier today I did
one where I sat in these two kids kitchen and
sang a couple of songs with them. It's just, you know,

(12:54):
all these people have many millions of followers, and in
New York I just did week of it. It's a
whole new way of promoting. It's a wild game.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
So since all these people are successful, do you have
any insight into who these people are, what makes them successful,
whether there's something there.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, there was one particular guy who does. He was
in New York and he does he's incredibly good at
Guitar Hero. And so here's a kid who grew up
I think it was Denver. I can't remember where he
grew up, but he grew up not in New York,
and he was so good at Guitar Hero that he

(13:38):
was like, I got to figure out what to do
with this. So he goes on the streets of New
York and gets people to play Guitar Hero to their
own music. And then he actually is so good at
it that he creates the program for that song if
it's not already part of Guitar Hero. And you know

(13:59):
what we did, and we did a little over the
weekend and drops of Jupiter. Since it's the twenty fifth
anniversary and that thing's got over a million views already
and I think it just went up yesterday. So some
of these people have this really interesting take on how
to connect with people through the Internet, and like, I

(14:20):
don't have that gift, but this particular guy did.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
Okay, But a lot of people have been around a
long time poo pooh the influencers, And there's a lot
of influencers are just in it trying to make money.
But some of them are very creative with good ideas.
Have you encountered any of that.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Uh, yeah, they're not life changing ideas by any means. Actually,
you know what, I there was one kid in New
York that really was a very wonderful you could tell
what a deep soul. He was prob twenty four years
old and he just has one question, and that question

(15:06):
is what makes you confident? And and it's a it's
a pretty interesting question. He has a lot of people
following because you know, he talks to people on the
street that are not trying to pitch anything and people
like me that are, and and we all kind of,

(15:27):
you know, stumble through the answer. And I think he
hit something very human about you know, because what makes
you confident, and you're like, oh shit, it's a fleeting thing.
It doesn't happen all the time. But when I am confident,
it's maybe because of these few things. You know, that
kid I think is he's doing something extraordinary because he's

(15:49):
maybe helping people, you know.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Okay, as you've referenced, the business has completely changed. So song,
let's focus on this because you're going on tour, etc.
How long ago did you write this song?

Speaker 2 (16:08):
You know, it's maybe been five months. Sometimes I have
a song for a year before anybody hears it.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Okay, So in this particular case, you write the song
in five months, five months ago. In the back of
your mind, are you saying, I'm going to use this
to promote the tour?

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Well, you know, the truth is I I wrote you know,
seventy or eighty songs and hence the practice, right, So,
and then I finally hit the weekend and that felt
like this is the record I'm supposed to make. So
once that song happened, it was It wasn't this is

(16:51):
the song. It was I finally found where I can
drill now for oil like and that happens with a
lot of records, like when we made Save me San Francisco.
It was a song called I Got You because I
wrote Forever and Ever and I wrote a song with

(17:13):
a guy named Kevin who is in better than Ezra,
and we wrote this song I Got You, and I
knew this is now where I'm supposed to drill. And
so soon after that I was able to write Hey,
Soul's Sister, and a couple of other songs that people
ended up caring about. The Weekend was the same thing,
except it's lasted this long through other songs that I've written.

(17:36):
So it became let's start here and then see where
we go.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Okay, you're one of the few acts its started in
the last century who was still with their major label.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah, okay, so a lot.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Of people go independent.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
You know.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
The nature of deals is they need to get renewed.
Usually when the act has a mile on them, the
label doesn't want to renew it. So you talked about
the old yelling record company head in the old days.
How do you still end up on Columbia? What is
that experience today?

Speaker 2 (18:13):
Well, you know, it's a pretty positive relationship because I
don't want their money. They don't have to write me
a big check for me to give them music. The
only thing that I need them for is to get
my music out there to people. And that's a very

(18:33):
positive relationship for them as well, because they have the
resources to help me if they believe in what I'm doing.
And so they continue to believe in what I'm doing,
they can try to expose this music because it's to
their advantage as well. And then I don't really need

(18:54):
their money. Like if I'm a young artist and I
really need to get through with a month or the
year and I'm asking for money all the time or whatever,
or if I'm the kind of guy that wants to
make a million dollar album, like those days are not
here anymore. There's no reason to spend a million dollars
making an album. And so I'm just I'm a practical guy,

(19:18):
and I think that practicality is probably refreshing to a
record label. And we have a great relationship because we
know what we expect from one another because we're all
grown ups.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
However, there is a sales minimum that they like to see.
It's not a specific number, it's more of a vibe. Yeah,
do you feel any pressure there?

Speaker 2 (19:44):
No, because you know, in the last in the last year,
we've reached like two billion streams on Hayesol's Sister, over
a billion on Drops of Jupiter, and just recently over
a billion on Drive By. So they have they have
great revenue coming in, or at least better than many

(20:08):
other artists, and so they're I think, I think they
feel very confident in what they're already receiving from taking
a chance on us earlier to like, you know, my
manager always says, never count Monahan out, like you never
know when something's gonna go.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Okay. And your personal view on streaming as opposed to
the old model.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
I've never criticized any change in the music industry from
albums to cassettes to CDs to downloads to streaming. I'm
very fortunate that I started when I started. You know,
we just did a Billy Joel tribute concert and Billy

(21:05):
was there. And you know, Billy started at a time
when if you sold ten million records, that's a whole
hell of a lot of money. I've sold ten million records,
but it didn't equate into that kind of thing, and
and downloads were you know, that's a different kind of math,
and streaming is a different kind of math. But the

(21:27):
more I bitch about things, the less time I have
to actually go do the work. And so I just
feel for younger people who are debating whether being an
artist is their future or not, and making a living
is part of a choice for life. And I feel

(21:47):
like the world of streaming and not making money from
hard copies of things may keep us from getting some
of the artists that we would have gotten otherwise. That's
my only complaint.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
You signed an original deal, did you have a manager
or a lawyer who renegotiated rates? If streaming, if you
own the track, you have to pay a small fee,
and if you wrote the song, you get all the money.
Someone may not listen to you don't get any money now.
Or you know, if a new act that's got a

(22:24):
lot of social media viewership, they might sign a deal
where they get fifty percent of the net. Has your
deal been renegotiated?

Speaker 2 (22:33):
My manager, Jonathan Daniel, who I think you know, has
continued to renegotiate And the only reason we would continue
to have a relationship with a record company at this
point would be is if it's advantageous to me. And
so I feel really confident that you know I have

(22:55):
I have a deal with Columbia Records. That's fitting for
where I am in my career. If anyone ever asked
me to do like a three sixty deal and get
a piece of my merchandise and touring, and we just
never would have continued a relationship in that matter.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Are you a student of the business.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
No, not really. I'm a man of faith in the
people who represent me. And there's no one more wonderful
and brilliant really than Jonathan Daniel. He's a very smart man,
and his partner Bob mclenn is lovely and smart, and
I just always feel like I'm being protected all the time.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Okay, you get a deal with Columbia Records just before
the turn of the entry, Is anybody still working there
who was there when you signed?

Speaker 2 (23:51):
I was just there as funny, I was just there
about a week and a half ago. And there were
like two women that were there early days, but everybody else,
everybody else has changed, and there were some people there
twenty years ago, but not twenty eight years ago. So yeah,

(24:13):
there were like two women that were there in the beginning,
and then one radio guy and one radio girl who's
been there for at least twenty years. Lisa Sonken and
it's fun, fun seeing them, and you know, there were
very few survivors, me included.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Isn't it weird though, that you have a longer tenure
than the people run in the company.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
No, I think that that makes me want to be
there even better, even more. I think as time moves
on and changes, so does the people. You know, Like
the thing that I think inspires me mostly about making
music is young artists and even not young artists. But

(25:00):
you know, I always mentioned Jay Cole's he's the best
hip hop guy out there to me because I love
him so much, but he keeps making great work. That's
an inspiring to me. And you know, at some point
young people won't want to hear him, They'll want to
hear the new hip hop guy. And the same goes

(25:21):
for a record company. You know, it's not going to
be run the same way now as it was when
you were selling hard albums. This is streaming. So these
are kids that graduated with like computer science degrees, Like
it's a different game. So I think they need to keep,
you know, making sure that the people that are sitting
in those pubicles or in those chairs are going to

(25:43):
shows and communicating with artists are hip to what's happening
in their world?

Speaker 1 (25:49):
And what do you find interesting intriguing about j Cole.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
I just think he's so smart, he's so good at
what he does, and I don't know, he just seems
like my kind of guy, like I'd want to be
friends with him.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Many rockers are anti hip hop. Why is it just
Ja Pole or are you really into hip hop?

Speaker 2 (26:17):
No? I love Kendrick and Drake, and I mean there's
so many of them, but you know, those three in particular,
I think are just very gifted. Twenty one Savage is great.
I don't know what there is to dislike about hip hop.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Well did you get into hip hop your own way
or did one of your kids really turn you.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
On to it? No, it was definitely me because when
we do workouts, I make them listen to it. Like
my son, who's fourteen, he just wants to listen to
every heavy metal band around, like we listened to We
just went and saw a Black Label Society. His favorite
guitar player is Zach Wilde, like he's he's not in

(27:03):
my world of hip hop. So I definitely found my
own way.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Okay, so many acts who started in the last century
who can sell out arenas. Most of them don't even
make new music. Okay, Doobie Brothers put out a record
every couple of years, but most of them they find
it too frustrating in that there used to be a

(27:32):
level of ubiquity and you have had that level, you know,
you talk Drops of Jupiter, Marry Me, etc. We're people
probably know Meat Virginia than any Taylor Swift saw and
that's because it's a different era maybe. So to what
degree when you sit down is it to write? Is

(27:55):
it frustrating knowing that in the tower of Babel Society
the reach will probably be limited.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Well, you know, we do really good business, but it's
never big enough. You know when I hear about people
playing stadiums and I long for that, you know, someone
like Billy Joel, Like I was, just like I said,
in New York doing Billy Joel tribute. And when he
was out with Elton, Elton kept making new records and

(28:25):
he was like, Billy, you should make more records, and
he said, Elton, you should make less. But Billy Joel
and Elton John wrote two hundred number one. Like it's
kind of like Paul McCartney making a new record right now.
It's like he doesn't have to. He can go play
an arena or a stadium or whatever he likes. I
don't really have that. I don't have that level of

(28:48):
what they've got. So, first of all, there's a part
of me that's competitive enough with me and perhaps that
something I do can still break through and somehow, maybe
there's a way for me to sell out Wembley one day.
I have to keep believing that because it's helped me
continue since the whole band started. The second reason that

(29:12):
I want to keep creating is I started this band
with four guys. We weren't close friends. None of those
guys are in this band anymore, and for much of
the big moments of the band, they were here. And
now I'm with my closest friends and I think I'm
making really good work. Unfortunately for them, I'm much older

(29:36):
than when those other songs hit, but I still feel
like I want them to experience what I got to experience,
and that's an important part of this for me.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
So the dream is still there. Oh yeah, you're not saying,
you know, I got to pay for my boat, so
I got to do now dates this summer, no let's
go back to an earlier thing. You say you wanted
to be positive optimism. Are you an even killed guide?
Do you ever get depressed? Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
I'm originally from Erie, Pennsylvania, So I have as much
rage inside me as you ever want to pull out,
Like it's an endless well. But I've also got the
most amazing wife in the world, who's like, what's there
to be mad about? Like, you're not a kid anymore,

(30:29):
you don't you don't have to be mad at anybody,
And she's right. So I just try to be psyched
as much as I can, Like I hittingly complain all
the time to my band, but they know that it's
a it's a joke because like what a great life
I have. So I definitely get upset and disappointed and depressed,

(30:53):
and I just try to leave. I try to leave
very little room to get bummed out. Like my expectations
have changed so much since I started this career. I
don't really expect Columbia Records is going to make the
weekend a huge hit. It would be a beautiful surprise.

(31:17):
But I've also got to go out there on TikTok
and do all that. So the fact that I'm not expecting.
Really anything from them helps me not be disappointed in them,
because I have to go do the work anyway, and
so I might as well enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
So tell me about this rage being from Erie, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Well, you know, I was the last of seven kids,
and in a town like that at the time, if
you weren't an elite athlete or an elite student, there
was very little opportunity for you. And that doesn't feel

(31:58):
good to who is, you know, a creative sort. And
so then I moved to Los Angeles and I was
in a bad relationship and we had a child, and
you know, then the anger just continues to move forward.
How frustrating it is to try to raise a family,

(32:19):
have a full time job as a house painter in
San Francisco, and try to play every free show you
can to get noticed. And so that anger for no
one paying attention builds up for a long time, from
childhood through early adultism and until I finally meet my

(32:42):
wife and she was like, you gotta be less mad
about stuff. You're gonna be all right.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
Well, your wife helped you. Did you go to therapy too?

Speaker 2 (32:53):
I did a lot of that early days. Yep, I
went to a great therapist for many years who helped
me kind of appreciate what I've got instead of what
I don't.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
And what was the motivation to go to the therapist.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
Well, I knew that I needed to leave a marriage
and didn't have the tools to do it in a
way that would protect my children. And secondly, one of
the first things I said to her was I am
currently a successful musician, which is what I always dreamt about,
and I am never happy. And so she made me

(33:32):
stand up and she goes now bend over and then
she started clapping. She just said, you just to you
just took your first bow, and I was like, yeah,
I kind of needed to do that, I think. So
she helped me with a lot of those things, and
I still use her to get through certain things.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Okay, you talk about this time in your personal life,
which obviously had turmoil in it. Were you also not
happy with your business life?

Speaker 2 (34:04):
No, I was not happy in the band that we
were in. It was you know, we had a lot
of rules to protect each other, but I wasn't being protected.
The biggest rule was we cannot right outside of the band,
and that was not a rule to protect me. That
was a rule to protect everybody else. And so as

(34:27):
time moved on, I became more resenting these guys, and
so that being in a bad relationship, trying to raise kids,
moving from a full time painting job to a full
time touring job, which was rutal because you know, you're
not making any money, being in a van with guys

(34:51):
that excuse me, I felt it very difficult to be
with most times. There was not a lot of joy
going on. And I was sober for all those years,
so everything was crystal clear to me, and I could
see all the problems and felt like I wasn't in
control to fix them.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Was part of the therapy, learning how to adjust your
band situation, whether it be writing out or getting rid
of members or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
Well, you know it. I naturally started to write by myself,
and one member removed himself because he felt like he
wasn't being paid attention, paid enough attention to writing wise,

(35:52):
And then the next person had to be removed because
he was creating a big problem within the band. So
now there's just three of us.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
A big problem because of drugs, ratitude or ability.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Yeah, it was it was addiction stuff, and it was
just it was becoming too much for us. So now
there's three of us left. When we get new people
to come in, new managers and new everything, and it was, boy,
it was just a rocky, rocky road. So I mean,

(36:26):
there's so much story to it. But the therapy helped
me to try to work on me, because I was
really wanting everybody else to work on themselves to fix
my problem. And I think the closer I got to
like fixing my problem, which was end a relationship, be

(36:50):
okay with success, be okay with who you surround yourselves with,
knowing that you have a choice. And so I went
and made a solo record, which was my way of
putting the band in time out. And it was not
the right solo record and it was not the right move.
Had I, you know, had Jonathan Daniel in my life,

(37:12):
he would have definitely kept me from doing that. But
I did it, and that was a good opening for
me to start writing with other people. And that's when
I started to really spread out. And so all those
songs on all those records, it was me writing with
people in New York and London and you know, all
over the country, all over the world. And then I

(37:35):
was happier and the band was successful, so they were
not upset because they were having a good life. But
then other resentment comes in and on all sides, and
so eventually, you know, it was just like, you guys

(37:56):
are not going down the same road I want to
go down, so let's not be together in the best
possible way. And so I think everyone was paid handsomely
to go their own way, and I continued to have
the time of my life trying to create things that

(38:17):
people care about and maybe it matters to their lives.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
Going back to the solo album, was it the wrong
solo album or you shouldn't have made a solo album?

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Addle I was it was I needed to make a
solo album. I don't I don't think I would have
been kept from that. But it was the wrong album.
It was it was basically like a little bit more
of an R and B train record, which was like
why why? What was the purpose? And the purpose really

(38:50):
was to get away from the band, But that's a
terrible reason to spend a half a million dollars to
make a record that you know doesn't do well. Like
it was useful thinking and the right record might have
done some good but I know in Europe, you know,
people really still love that record, but there's you know,
forty of them, so I feel like it was just

(39:15):
I needed some guidance.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
So when that record failed commercially, how did you handle
it emotionally?

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Not well? Hm, he's not good. But then I picked
up the pieces and started writing the Save Me San
Francisco album. And the people that I was writing with
were in the Crush office, just like using space in
the Crush office.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
Crush Management, that's your management company. Yeah, just for those
people who don't know, Yeah, Crushes.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Our management company. And I ended up writing with a
guy named Sam Hollander. Loved Sam. He's a dear friend.
And I also wrote with Butch Walker, who's now playing
and Train. He's been a dear friend for a long
time and has been managed by Jonathan and Crush for
since the beginning. He was their first client. And I

(40:07):
think both Butcher and Sam started talking to Jonathan and saying, hey,
that that's one of us, and I think he's writing
a really great record, so you should help him out
a little bit. And Jonathan never comes in he's like
I'll manage you. He's always more like, maybe I could
listen to some of your songs. And because I would

(40:27):
pull him aside at the water cooler and be like, man,
I could use any help you can give me because
I had just left a manager and needed to figure
out where to go. And he was like, well, let's
listen to your songs. So he listened to seventy two
songs and one of them was Hey, Soul's Sister, and

(40:48):
he was like, this song's pretty interesting. He's like, let's
let's let's get somebody to, you know, help you finish this.
And and then he was like, if you get a
haircut like Pete Wentz, maybe I'll even manage you. And
so Train was the first band that they took on
that was, you know, a seasoned or not in the

(41:13):
genre of music that that Fall Up Boy and Panic
at the Disco and Boys like Girls. That was a
very specific region of music and age. So we were
the first things that they took on, and they really
revived our career and then you know, the rest has
just been kind of fun.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Okay, you justified about Jonathan Daniel a few times, and
without making it specific, what's it there between a good
manager and a bad manager? I?

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Well, I have a specific story, but I'm not sure
if it will get me in trouble. Okay, I'll just
focus on the positive. Jonathan is someone who I've shared
stories with about other people who have managed my career

(42:30):
and the way they went about it, how lost I was,
and that I just really needed, you know, kind of
an emotional hug. And he has such a good way
of when he sees that you're in trouble, whether it's

(42:51):
business or personal, he makes it his mission to solve
the puzzle. It's he would never make an artist feel like, well, look,
this is what you asked for. And he and I
have had many conversations about all of the ways that

(43:16):
you can handle people, and the way he handles people
is with, you know, a very fatherly yet close friendship
type of manner where he almost thrives on the problem

(43:39):
only because he knows he can fix it or solve
it or help you solve it. And that's a wonderful
cat to have in your life. Somebody who if you
complain about something, doesn't take the complaint and think less
of you. He just tries to change the way you're thinking.

(44:02):
Like I remember one time I was in CSI, New York,
Soul's sister who was on the show. I was an
actor in the show, and Kim Kardashian was in the
show with me, and Kim put this at the time
as Twitter put this tweet out and named almost everybody
in the show who was going to be in it

(44:24):
with her except for Train and I Paul Jonathan, and
I was just so hurt by it. I was so
bummed out. And he just said, man, you just think
about the wrong shit. I needed to hear simply that,
and I do. I think about the wrong shit sometimes.
But he never made me feel bad for it. He

(44:46):
was just like, that's dumb. Move on, let's go. We
got more stuff to do. I need that kind of guidance,
like you can't follow yourself down a rabbit hole of
like self loathing or disappointment, Like there's more fun to have.
Let's go.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
Okay, let's go back to Eerie. What did your parents
do for a living?

Speaker 2 (45:11):
My mom was she worked for a place called Erie's Magnetics,
which was a huge magnetic company, and she was she
was in like the buying and selling of products and
she but she raised six kids before she got a job,
and then I was born, and she got a job.

(45:33):
My father was a clothing salesman and a haberdasher haberdasher,
and he was a very funny man, and I learned
a lot of great things from both of them.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
So what's the age range? If you're the youngest, your
oldest sibling gets how much older than you?

Speaker 2 (45:53):
My brother who passed away, I think would be seventy two,
he was the oldest, and then I have a brother
seventy one, seventy and then my sisters I think are
like sixty eight, sixty five, and sixty two.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
Okay, you have there's a lot of kids. Whenever you
have more than one, especially three, frequently the youngest is
the baby treated differently in multiple ways. Was that a
factor you're growing up?

Speaker 2 (46:33):
Yeah, My sisters babied me and took care of me
and my second brother, second oldest brother, Jackie. He's still
a very very close friend of mine who he was
a father figure to me, so like he was the
one playing catch with me and buying me baseball gloves,

(46:55):
and when he went to college, it was that was
my first taste of heartbreak, like having that guy leave
the house.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
Okay, so you're going to school. What kind of kid
are you? You know you're one of the group. You
play in sports? Are you the loner?

Speaker 2 (47:14):
No? I was obsessed with sports. I wanted to be
a professional baseball player. I loved Steve Garvey as my
favorite baseball player, and I, you know, I was okay
at it. I was, you know, pretty good at it
until you know, you're fourteen, everybody's growing and you get
into high school and I'm like, okay, I can't compete anymore.

(47:36):
Basketball was never gray up, but I played all through
high school or grade school. And I played football through
my tenth year of high school and just got my
ass handed to me. So sports was out. I started
playing drums when I was in eighth grade, and you know,
no boys wanted to sing in front of girls, so

(48:00):
I had to start singing until we could find a singer.
And then it ended up being that I was pretty
all right at it. So and I found out that
girls liked singers anyway, So it worked out.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Well. You were in high school. Were you a popular guy?
Were you the music guy? Oh that's the singer, that's
the guy in the band. Were you class president? I mean,
how did work?

Speaker 2 (48:22):
No? I wasn't all those I was my one claim
to fame is that when I went from a Catholic
high school after tenth grade to a public high school,
I just got to meet so many different people that
I never had access to because at a Catholic all
boys high school, you know, you're dealing with kids that are,

(48:44):
you know, playing every sport at a high level. They're
academic at a high level, and they're also you know,
very sweet at a high level and very shitty at
a high level. So when I went to a public school,
I got to see so many any variations of kids
that I didn't get to see at an all boys
Catholic school. And I just kind of liked everybody, and

(49:07):
I got on with everybody. Whether you were an athlete
or a musician, or you know, you were a chess
player or a cheerleader, it didn't really matter to me.
I would sing songs in class for everybody until the
teacher came in. And so my one claim to fame
is that they voted me prom king in my senior year.
So that was it was my big high school moment.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Okay, did you have a band in high school that
played out?

Speaker 2 (49:36):
We started in high school and then you know those
guys in high school ended up, you know, having different
things to focus on, and by then older kids in
Eerie started to see me sing. So I was in
bands with twenty five year olds at seventeen, and you know,

(49:57):
the like twenty five thirty year olds. They seemed ancient
at the time, but they were five to ten ten
years older than me. And that's when I really got
my start. And the reason that I ever moved to
LA was because I knew so badly I needed to
get out of Erie. And I was in a cover
band called Rogue's Gallery. We were playing a bar called Sherlocks,

(50:21):
and that evening Cher played the small arena in town
and Cher's band came in after the show and saw
us play, and a guy named David Shelley, who has
passed away a few years ago. He was for a
guitar player and he pulled me aside and he gave
me his phone number and he said, you got the thing,
so when you get to LA, give me a call.

(50:43):
So I packed my shit went to LA and I
never connected with him, not once, but he got me
motivated enough to go because it was the first time
somebody that knew on some level what they were talking
about had faith in what I did, and that was
all I needed.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
So you graduate from high school, where does that leave
you with school?

Speaker 2 (51:07):
I went to a college class for about a month,
and one day I looked at the teacher and I said,
I think I gotta go to I think I gotta
leap down. I don't think I can be here anymore.
And she was super nice. She was like, well, you
can always come back. You're good at it, because I
think I would have taken college much more seriously than

(51:29):
high school. And I just I needed a move. And
music was too. It was just too uh, it was
too big in my art to pretend it wasn't there.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
So how long after you graduate from high school do
you move to La.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
I was nineteen, so I had been out of high
school for a year, and I literally like, I, Yeah,
I got out of high school and waited a year.
I went to La. I was there from nineteen caned
twenty two, moved back to Erie to have a baby,
and I just like.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
That this woman you had the baby with, did you
meet her in Erie or did you meet her in La?

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Here?

Speaker 1 (52:14):
And so when you went to La did she come
with you?

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (52:19):
So you moved to La the only person you know
you don't contact. Hey, you got to have a car,
and b you have to have money. So you were
making enough money as a musician to get out.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
I literally went to Los Angeles on an airplane with
four hundred dollars and a friend who moved there a
year before I did, who He said I could stay
with him until I found an apartment. I also had

(53:01):
my brother in law. His stepfather was working a construction
site in Los Angeles. So I begged the guy for
a job, not knowing how to do anything, and so
I worked at a construction site, slept on this kid's
floor for like two minutes, and found an apartment in Hollywood,
where gunfire and helicopters were a many.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
Okay, let's go back a step before this guitarist in
Shares Band says, you have the thing. Were you just
playing in a band or did you have a dream
to play at the level you're now at.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
I had a dream always to get to another level,
So moving to LA was a chance to, like, you know,
I can't remember all the magazines that I would put
my name in or look at, like Music Weekly or
I mean there were four or five of them.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
The recycler, music connection.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
Music connection, that's the big one that I used. Yeah,
And so you know, I would meet all kinds of people.
Finally got a car, so I was driving to every
audition with kids that you know. You know, it was
just really really hard thinking that somebody out there is

(54:24):
going to be who I'm supposed to do this with.
And it didn't work. So the reason I met, the
reason train started is that my ex wife was a
school teacher and my first the guy started the band
with was a sign musician in La and his wife

(54:45):
was a school teacher, and the girls met and introduced us,
and his record contract was not going very well, and
so we hung out a couple of times. Not you know,
I went and saw his band and I thought they
were good. I moved back to eerie and he calls
me and he's like, let's move to San Francisco and
see if the two of us can get this thing going.

(55:08):
And I got it going, and so you know, I'm
grateful that I got to meet him and start to think.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
Out, Okay, how long were you in La.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
And it's like two and a half years, and of.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
That time, how long was the woman you married in La?

Speaker 2 (55:28):
That amount of time.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
Okay, you spent this time in Los Angeles, although ultimately
you connected with the musician through your ex wife and
her friend. What was your state of mind for two
and a half years.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Oh, man, Like this is hard, Like I thought I
knew how to work hard, but this is hard hard.
But it was nothing compared to living it like then
moving to San Francisco, finding a paint job, having a

(56:05):
shoot one year old, and then playing music at night,
every single night for free so that people would pay attention.
That's another level of working hard. So I just you know,
if you have a plan B, you'll take it. If

(56:25):
I had a plan B, I would have taken it
a hundred times.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Okay. When you were in LA, were you in any
bands or nothing ever? Worked?

Speaker 2 (56:35):
Yeah? I had a friend named Kevin who we would
write songs and get together all the time, but he
was always looking for like a bigger you know, everybody
the thing with LA sometime well at that time, because
everybody is like, you know, you'll do the thing with you,
but they're always looking for a better thing, and and

(56:56):
so it just it was just hard to find drummer
and bass players. And then those guys are they all
have three other bands that they're in, so I would
at least go see other bands so I could meet
other musicians. And I fell in love with the several
of them and stayed friends with several of them over
the years, but none of them ever wanted me to

(57:17):
be their singer. And that's you know, it was like,
that's it was. It was tough. It felt like a
huge fail leaving Los Angeles.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
And how long were you back in Eerie before you
went to San Francisco?

Speaker 2 (57:32):
Maybe a year or if.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
That, and you were doing what during that year?

Speaker 2 (57:38):
Yeah, it might have been a year. I was hanging
wallpaper and painting and trying to raise a little boy
and and just grind men.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Were you playing music?

Speaker 2 (57:53):
I started to sing with some friends of mine in
a band called Exit, and that was that was like whatever,
So no, no, not really, I just knew that I
needed At that point, I'm like twenty two years old
and thinking that I moved back to Erie and such
a small town and they're like, well, the best singer

(58:15):
of our time couldn't make it, and now he's back
and he probably thinks he's a big shot because he
went to LA And I was like, I need to
get out of here as soon as I can. This
is very un fun and so you know, moving to
San Francisco. I don't think there was another option for.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
Me, Okay, because at the time and to this day,
little things have changed in the twenty first century. San
Francisco is the eppisiteer of music in the sixties. You're
now moving there much later. When you went to La
that's where it was happening. Didn't happen for you, that's right,
But you must have really wanted to get out of

(58:58):
Erie because going to San France Cisco was kind of
going sideways.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Yes, But here's this is the interesting part of my
observation of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Los Angeles is
now when I was there, like the peak of hair
dress up rock, right like Cinderella and Rat and like

(59:24):
all the stuff is blowing up right before a grunge
destroys it. And I moved to San Francisco, where the
scene really isn't anywhere except coffee houses are like the
big thing, and on every corner is a coffee house

(59:46):
with somebody playing guitar for free because there's so many
places to do it. And the coffee shop owner or
the little pub. They want entertainment for free and they
can have open mic nights and everything. So that was
a huge trend at the time. The open mic night.
It was like the peak when we got to San Francisco,

(01:00:08):
like we could walk two blocks and play five places,
and we did.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
So you're there. It's just you and that guy. Is
it a duo at that point?

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Yeah, it's me and a guy named Rob Hotchkiss. Yeah,
we're a duo. So I played percussion, he plays guitar.
We're writing all the songs. We're singing his songs and
the other songs that we wrote together. And then the
other guy who was in his band in La comes.
His name is Jimmy Stafford, so he joins us them
we're a trio. Then his bass player from the previous

(01:00:42):
band brings a drummer from Durango, Colorado that they were
in a band together, so they join us, and now
we're a five piece band. And that was Trent.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Okay, like time, it's a five piece band? Are you
still playing for?

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Yes, we got after a couple of months, we got
like a couple of paying gigs for like five hundred bucks.
We'd have to bring all of our own stuff. They
would have a pa for us, they would mix us,
we'd play for an hour or whatever, and then we
would you know, still play for free, like go play

(01:01:22):
wherever you can for free and try to get paid
whenever you can. At the time, we're also making demos
all the time, and some of the guys are friends
with a few of the fellas in the Count and Crows,
so we ask if we can use their storage facility
to like rehearse in in East Bay, and they say yeah,

(01:01:45):
And so like Dave Bryson is still a Palamine and
Jim Bojess who was not in the Drummer at the time,
he's he is now, but he's a good friend of mine,
And so those guys let us use their facilities. So
we would write songs, and then the more demos we had,
the more opportunity we have to make money, because we
would send the demos to places and we'd start playing

(01:02:05):
places like the Sweetwater in Mill Valley. Still no shot
at all of playing the filmore yet, but we'd play
Slims and then we start to get a big enough
following that now we have songs, enough demos and songs
and a following that, we can start looking for a manager.

(01:02:29):
And so the Count and Crows guys put us in
touch with their lawyer, and the lawyer takes us on
as a lawyer because you know, there's no there's nothing
you can't fail because you're not really spending any money
until you make money. And so he tries to connect
us with managers from every walk of life, and no

(01:02:52):
one wanted anything to do with us except for a
guy named Arnie Postelnik, and he was at Bill Grahant Management,
so he was a local man. I took a song.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Okay, when there's no money, it's usually very hard to
keep the band together. Yep, Well it was your experience.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
I had a full time job as a house painter
until I left that job to make my own house
painting company, and it was very successful. I bought a house.
I had two children at the time. Well maybe she
wasn't born yet, so I still have one. So I'm

(01:03:42):
hiring my band to paint houses with me. None of
them were good painters.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
When you're cutting these demos, who's the engineer and producer?

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
Well, you know, early days, Dave Bryson from the Count
Crows helped us out a few times he had a studio.
We'd go to places like tiny telephone and you know,
any anywhere that we could. Producers were like, we found
a great sound guy that we loved, Egyptian guy named

(01:04:19):
Hannie who I think he mixed us live and tried
to engineer some stuff a couple of times. So whoever,
Like it didn't matter, Like we just wanted to get
songs on tape.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
Okay, the band is togethered now from the time of
high school on. Are you always writing songs or you
only writing songs really when you're in San Francisco.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
No, I'm writing early, but they're bad. I mean that
whole ten thousand hours thing. It's no lie. You got
to get it in. So I've written many, many bad songs,
but didn't start to get better at it until I
was in San Francisco. I started to So when I

(01:05:07):
was in high school, the only thing I was good
at is writing poetry. Like I was not very good
at class. My grades were not excellent. But when my
English teacher would read my poetry, she'd be like, this
is there's thing, like this is a thing you should write,
like whatever you have to do to write, and so

(01:05:27):
that ended up being songs because I cared so much
about feeling something, and my father was obsessed with great
lyric writers like Johnny Mercer was his favorite writer. He
might be my favorite lyric writer because of how unusual
he wrote. And so I cared so much about the
English language that that was the one thing I would

(01:05:49):
put time into. So by the time I went to
San Francisco, I had already cared as much as you
can care about wanting to write something beautiful. So I
just had to do the work.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
Okay, irrelevant of the well the credits. Let's say, in
the first album, is that a way for people to
get paid? And you really wrote the songs or did
everybody really contribute the first album?

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Everyone definitely contributed. I have always written all the melodies
and lyrics, but all that music was definitely written by
those guys.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
Okay, So if you get this guy as a manager
with Bill Graham, he's the manager, how long till it
becomes something more?

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Till the band becomes something more?

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
Yeah, let's try to put a day down. If you
can remember, what's the year we're in When you get.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
The manager, Oh boy, I would say, man ninety ninety five.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
Let me ask a different way. How long from the
time you get the manager to the first album was released?

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
Maybe three years because Arnie could not get us a
record deal. He nobody was interested and we didn't sound
like anybody else. Yeah, grunge was really popular, but then
all of a sudden, like Hoodie and the Blowfish and
Dave Matthews start to come out, so there is a

(01:07:26):
trend towards singer songwriter more. But nobody wanted anything to
do with us. But we had a friend at Columbia
Records who was in the He was in the promotion department,
he wasn't in the A and R department, and he
pitched us to Columbia and they were like, okay, let's

(01:07:48):
get him here. From San Francisco to New York. They
flew us to New York. We did a show, thinking
the next day we'd wake up and go cide a
record deal, and they were like, Don Einer was the president,
and he said, I didn't say anything special last night,
So we go home. My parents have flown from Erie,

(01:08:10):
Pennsylvania to San Francisco to basically congratulate me on my
new record contract that I did not go home with
and then we had rehearsal the next week and I said,
I don't know why we're a band. We're not from
high school together or friends or any of that shit.

(01:08:31):
So we got to figure out what we want out
of this, and we need a common goal. So he
wrote on this chalkboard it was you know, pretty whatever,
and everybody would write their goal down, and one common
goal was we want to make a record. We might
want to make an album, so we all had different

(01:08:54):
jobs to go borrow money, go find a producer, go
find a place to record, and we raised twenty five
thousand dollars from friends and family. Our manager was not
able to help us do that, and we went and
made our own album with those songs and an A

(01:09:19):
and R guy at Columbia Records ford it so, the
same label that said they didn't see anything special. So
he had to pitch this new album to Don Einer,
who didn't really care about us, so he pitched it
as Project X so he would relabel everything Project X,
and finally Don agreed to give us a chance and

(01:09:44):
put us at Aware Records, so they started a relationship
with the Greg Latterman at a Ware Records. So Greg
was going to be the quarterback. Columbia Records would be
the umbrella label. My manager hated this idea because he
wanted us to be on a major label, and we
didn't care one bit. And so they were able to

(01:10:05):
get Meet Virginia and a song called Free on a
bunch of college compilations, and they started working Meet Virginia
at radio and it took them forever, but we sold
a million albums and it gave us a chance to
keep going.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
Okay, the album that you recorded for twenty grand twenty five, yeah,
is the identical album that Columbia puts out.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
We added one song with Matt. I don't remember Matt's
last name, Matt. He was such a big producer back then,
Matt Wallace, So Matt Wallace Records a new song that
we wrote because Columbia wanted a little more tempo on
the record. I don't even remember what the name of

(01:10:56):
the song is. So we added one song to it.
Other than that, it's the ex album.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
Okay, I love that album. That album doesn't sound like
it's cut for twenty grand, you know, it sounds like
it is a major label album. Why did it end
up being of such quality?

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
You know, there was no auto tune back then. I
had to re sing. I wanted to quit during that
record so bad. I mean, the guy producing us, you know,
he had never done it before, and he was as
lovely as he could have been. Uh, but I would
sing and before I would even sing the third word,
he'd be like, pitchy, stop tape, man, this is visery.

(01:11:43):
So we just worked so hard, man, I mean every
bit of this. I'm exhausted from telling you this story,
like this is this is so hard, and we just
cared so much. We we would like put pennies on
snare drums and you know, try to get everything out
of everything we could.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
Did you believe these songs were good?

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
Well? I think we believed from watching our audience that
we had something. I'm never sure of anything, Like I'm
not a very confident fellow when it comes to creating.
Like if I create something, I need a lot of backup.

(01:12:31):
You know, if I play something for my wife and
she's like I love this, I need fifteen other people
to say the same thing before I believe it. And
so people were loving those songs, so I felt like
there had to be something special there.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
So for me, the two best songs out of the
record are Free and I Am.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
I Am. Yeah, that was the first song we ever wrote. Really. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
Did you think Meet Virginia was a single or did
the people on the business side say it was a single?

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
I think maybe we thought it was a single because
it was so weird and weird Wins. We didn't really
put those pieces together, that weird Wins, but like, hey,
Soul Sisters, that sounds weird, man, and I think that
was the beginning of us finding a thing, a lane
of like we're not anybody else, Like Meet Virginia is

(01:13:31):
just different. It's weird.

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
Okay. Do you think going with ladder Men helped or
didn't help?

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
No, it helped im mentally, like he cared a lot Greg.
Greg had a lot of other projects going on, so
much of that time. I was not a fan of
Greg because I felt like he wasn't keeping his eye
on the real prize, which was trained. I feel like

(01:14:06):
he was wanting some of his other things to exceed
where we were going, and that bummed me out. So
I felt like he needed to be managed a little bit.
Now that I know Greg better, I know that he's
a methodical guy and he cares a lot about everything
that he puts his hands on, and I know that
he really cared a lot about my band and the

(01:14:28):
project and making sure it was successful because it was
not going to just be successful for us, It was
going to be successful for him. He needed to have
a good relationship with Columbia Records to have a future
with them.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
When we met previously, which I mentioned before we started
the podcast, we were on the street in front of
the Viper Room where Tim Divine. Tim Vine said, who
signed you? Because I knew, I mean, I know Divine forever,
but let latterman it hype me that it was his record,

(01:15:03):
and Divine this little pissed off and he brought you.
There were two other members of the band, z Dio
who signed you? That is Jim Okay, this first record happens?
Does the same manager continue? Yes, the first record, as
I say, it was worked a long time. Ultimately gets

(01:15:23):
on MDV. I got to ask two questions. One, why
is the band named train?

Speaker 2 (01:15:30):
Rob? When we started the band, you know, thinking about names,
he listened to an interview one of the members of
Echo and the Bunnyman said there was nothing romantic about America,
and Rob said, I feel like the most romantic thing
about America is the locomotive. Uh. And he was right.
It's a romantic, beautiful image. And so we just worked

(01:15:55):
with Train for a while and didn't think we'd ever
get the name. But there was no other band called Train.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
Okay, the artwork from the first album, that theme continues.
Tell me about that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:07):
Yeah, the theme. Uh. So the artist was from Orange County.
His name is Tommy Doherty. Kind of a crazy person,
but a beautiful artist like this guy's work was just tremendous.
And Charlie, our bass player at the time, found this
piece of art, which is a massive like it was
probably twelve by ten this painting, and it the boy

(01:16:32):
looked like a king and a jester at the same time.
And we felt like that's who we are as a band.
We feel like we're special and royal, but were also
really stupid and full of gags. And it was a
great combination that represented who we were.

Speaker 1 (01:16:56):
And how did you decide to continue? It is to
be in You know, a lot of people don't.

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
Well, the second record has a boy with a crown
because we Brendan O'Brien took on that record to produce it.
Because Limp Biscuit bailed on it the last minute, so
he had a spot open for us, and it was
just good timing. And we had dinner at his house
and we saw a piece of art that was hanging
in his dining room and it was the same artist

(01:17:23):
who the cover of Drops of Jupiter that he created,
Hernandez I think his last name is, and he was
Tony Hernandez from Atlanta, and so we looked at all
of his art and we were like, Oh, there's a
boy in a crown. This will be perfect for the
theme moving forward.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
And that's why, Okay, first record, Little Engine that could. Hey,
how much you're gigging? And did you make any money?

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
You know, when I got a record advance, I paid
off all my credit card. That was it. But I
was losing tons of money on that tour because I
went from owning a painting company to making four hundred
dollars a week. That was not sustainable and it caused
a lot of problems financially and personally. And that record

(01:18:19):
advance was long gone because I had so much debt
by the time the record went out. And like I said,
we sold a million copies, but that money is you know,
a long term streamline that takes a while to get
to you, and these gigs, these tours were like, you know,

(01:18:42):
we were trying to just break even and try not
to make Columbia Records pay for us to be on
the road, which a lot of record companies did at
the time, and now I don't know if they still
even do that. They probably do, but they probably want
a piece of the merch and everything else that comes
with it. But we just we didn't make much money,

(01:19:02):
and we gigged a lot a lot, and every radio
station in the country. We'd be there at six in
the morning. We'd do a show that night and drive
to the next place to do the same thing. There's
a really interesting story that I'll share with you quickly
about Meet Virginia breaking So Meet Virginia starts being played

(01:19:25):
on Alice in San Francisco, and it started to get
a buzz and it started to go, but we couldn't
get the more important stations on the East coast to
take it on, like ninety nine next in Atlanta wouldn't
take it. But there was another one called the X
and that was in Birmingham, Alabama, and the program director's

(01:19:46):
name was Dave. I can't think of Dave's last name.
Dave had a guy working for him named Scott Register.
So Scott has stercle you know Scott Register, of course.
So reg has a show on Sundays only called Regis

(01:20:08):
Coffee House. Absolutely, so he's like, hey, can you guys
come in? Because we played Birmingham on a Saturday. He
was like, can you come into my show tomorrow and
play live on Regis Coffee House. They're like, no, we
have to be in New Orleans that evening. Katrina is
heading towards New Orleans, so we can't go to New Orleans.

(01:20:30):
And we're like, Reg, we can come in to play
Regis Coffee House. He's like awesome, So we all go in.
It's early in the morning, it's all taped, so he's
he can't get the gear to work, so he has
to call his boss, Dave, who doesn't want anything to
do with train, to come in and set him up.
So he comes in. We do a bunch of songs

(01:20:51):
from the record, a bunch of Lead Zeppelin songs, and
Dave's like, I fucking love these guys. So he adds
meat Virginia and that's where it broke is Burnham, Alabama,
because that guy was breaking records every month, and without
that serendipitous thing happening, Katrina being a Sunday, him not

(01:21:12):
being able to get the gear to work. All of
that paid a huge part of me still being here.

Speaker 1 (01:21:26):
Okay, at what point do you decide it's time for
a new album? Is it the manager, is it the band,
is the label? Have you been writing songs? How does
that go down?

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
Yeah, all of the above. Like, you know, the more
music you can get out and the sooner you can
get it out, you know, you can capitalize on whatever
momentum you have. And we had an album done, you know,
after a while with Brendan, and it was called something
More that we had written on tour and then after
tour and drops the Jupiter is not on that record

(01:22:00):
because it hadn't been written. And Don Einer was like,
we don't have a first single, and you're like, we
have five erst singles. This is a great album, you know,
because we're all full of our own shit. And he's like,
you don't know a song that I can start this
out with. So my mother had passed away. I'm not
in a good place in my life at all grinding

(01:22:22):
to try to write songs. I go back to visit
in Erie, Pennsylvania. Don calls a meeting. He's about to
call me to New York because he wants to tell
me I have to start writing with other people. So
whatever your band rules are, they don't I don't care anymore.

(01:22:42):
So I go to bed one night and fifteen minutes
later I wake up, I go downstairs and I write
all of Drops of Jupiter in fifteen minutes. I go
to a friend's house and cut a demo the next day.
The following day, I have to fly to New York.
My friend brings the CD over. He's like, there's something
special about this song. I go to New York. Don

(01:23:05):
starts giving me the talk, like, listen to these guys.
This is you know, if you had this song or whatever.
And he's gearing me up to tell me he's gonna
put me in a room with some people, and I go,
I wrote this song. I woke up from a dream.
If you want to hear this, And he was like,
this is where the magic ones come from. So he
puts it in, turns it up real loud, and by

(01:23:28):
the time it gets to plain Old Jane told a
story about a man he just lifts up his arms
and he goes fucking song of the Year. And that
was his first single.

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
How close was the demo to the finished record?

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
Very very close, except Chuck Levell on piano, He's a
whole other animal, like he gave it the bound bound
down like you know he he plays piano like a
drummer like he should, and uh, he gave it life.
How did Chuck get well his his recording abilities? He's
an incredible engineer, like he makes things sound incredibly good.

(01:24:09):
But the song was already arranged and done and the
Nona nons and everything. So the only change was that
this was when Almost Famous was out and a huge hit,
and all of Elton's songs were being reloved all over again,
and Paul Buckmaster did all those string arrangements. So Don

(01:24:30):
Einer was like, Paul Buckmaster has to be on this,
and so Paul, that string line was all Paul and
really important to it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:41):
I want to go back a step. Mead Virginia ends
up on MTV. What was it like when you saw
the video for Mead Virginia? You know, it's like hearing
your song on the radio.

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):
It just always felt like a you know, a little
song in a big world. Like the video was little,
the concept of the song was little. It wasn't like
a you know, it's a beautiful day, you know, like
not one of those kind of songs it was. It
was just a quirky little song that just popped through

(01:25:15):
the surface.

Speaker 1 (01:25:17):
Okay, Donnie says old song of the year. Are you
on the Train? Are you a believer or you a cynical?

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
Guy?

Speaker 1 (01:25:26):
Said, well, at least I don't have to write with
other people.

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
Or what I am. I'm like, wow, I'm so relieved
that he thinks this is the song. And then I'm like,
this is so not the song. Like there's no song
out there like this song. This is not the song.
And so the first time I heard it, I was
actually in eerie driving home and I heard it on

(01:25:51):
a like a college radio station and it was four
minutes long, and I was like, no one's gonna like this.
And then the girl came on afterwards and she was like,
that's my new favorite song from Train. I think you're
gonna be hearing a lot of that one, and I
was like what And then and then it kind of

(01:26:11):
started to.

Speaker 1 (01:26:12):
Go Okay, drops. The Jubiter was gigantic. Did you feel
that the band had made it? Did it change the
perception on the inside it?

Speaker 2 (01:26:26):
You know, there was a moment where I felt like
maybe we had made it. We were in we were
in Oslo, and there was a festival happening, and we
were scheduled to play, you know, and at the time
of year, the sun doesn't go down, so it might
have been like midnight and I'm walking to my hotel

(01:26:46):
and I see Chris Martin and he's standing outside of
the hotel and I keep to myself because nobody knows
me and I don't want to gush all over the guy.
But I was loving the Coldplay stuff and I was
about to walk past him, and he just grabbed my
arm and he goes, hey, man, beautiful song. And I

(01:27:09):
was like, that's so cool. So instead of me going
beautiful song to him, he got me. And I was like,
should have done it first. So that's when I felt like,
maybe this is something okay.

Speaker 1 (01:27:21):
The next album, Man's Calling Old Angels, How's that written?

Speaker 2 (01:27:26):
Calling Old Angels was through my therapist because while I
was in there telling her how unhappy I was in
my success, she said we all are made up of
two things, and that's traders and angels. So it's time
to call your angels. And I was like, consider it stolen.

(01:27:47):
And then I wrote a song about trying to call
angels to help us through this stuff. Okay, we need
more than angels now, Bob.

Speaker 1 (01:27:59):
That's true. Sure, that's a separate subject. So when do
you see any money?

Speaker 2 (01:28:07):
Donnie helped us. He found a manager that he liked
to help us move forward.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
Okay, first wife, you say she gets all the money
other than child support? Was it one lump sum and
then going on? Or do you have to pay her forever?
It was for a very long time. Yeah, how do
you meet your second wife?

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
I left my marriage in October of two thousand and
three and we did a residency tour where we were
playing like three nights and like a dozen cities, and

(01:28:54):
we went to Seattle and played a place called the Crocodile.
This isn't May now. So I left my marriage in October,
went right to Australia, toured, came back and that's to May.
We're doing this residency tour. My last thing on my
mind is ever meeting anyone ever again ever? And my

(01:29:15):
tour manager comes in and before we go on and says, Hey,
there's a beautiful woman outside trying to get a ticket
for the show, but it's sold out. You want me
to let her in? And I was like, sure, I've
never done that before. That sounds fun. And so he
come back. He came back in and he's like, yeah,
she's with her mom, I think, but she's got a

(01:29:38):
ring on her finger. So I was like, okay, well,
at least I got to see the show. Like I'm
I'm I'm good, you know what I mean, Like, I've
been through it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:46):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:29:47):
So it was actually her mom that made her go
to the show. She's like, we're going in, and my
wife was like, I don't want to go to the show,
Let's just go to dinner. She's like, no, we have
to go see the show tonight. There's no tickets, Mom,
it's sold out. Doesn't matter, We'll find tickets. And the
only reason my wife was in town at the time,
she was living in San Diego, is because it was

(01:30:08):
her parents' anniversary. So they get in and I decide
after the first set of our show, I was like,
I don't care about the girl with the ring on
her finger. There's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen
out there. I want to talk to her anyway. So
I asked a friend of mine to go, I've never

(01:30:28):
done this in my career, to go ask her if
I could just say hi afterwards. So my friend sees her,
brings her to see me. I say hi to her
and her mom, same girl with the ring on her finger,
and I was like, oh, boy, you got you're engaged.
And she's like h and I was like I just

(01:30:52):
She was like, aren't you married with kids? And I
was like, I'm not married with kids, but I definitely
have kids. And I was like, I'd love to talk
yeah to getting married. Is there a week you could
give me three days? And we laughed a little bit
and we exchanged phone numbers, and I found out the
next day when or a couple of days later actually,

(01:31:16):
that she was trying on wedding dresses that day, crying
in the dressing room, telling her mom something wasn't right
and she didn't want to marry this guy. So when
I said I want to talk to you out of
getting married, it was all like this wave of whatever.
And so we had coffee and she came to the

(01:31:36):
show the next night. I got to spend a little
time with her after the show, and I try to
see her every single minute of every day after that.
So she went home and packed her stuff from San Diego,
moved back with her parents, and then we ended up
getting an apartment in Santa Monica.

Speaker 1 (01:31:58):
How long after you that gig at the Crocodile do
you get the apartment in Santa Monica?

Speaker 2 (01:32:04):
It was just a few months. I because I had
to be in Eerie to be with my children, and
I decided because of how unhappy I was with the band,
I wanted to pursue acting. So I was like, why
don't we move to La so I can pursue acting
take acting lessons. I have enough money that I can

(01:32:27):
pay all my debt and we can have an apartment
there and live an okay life while I figure shit out.
And so we lived there for a year and then
bought a house close to where her parents live.

Speaker 1 (01:32:42):
Okay, where do you live today?

Speaker 2 (01:32:45):
I live in Washington State, right across the street from
her parents, literally fifty fish and they're they're like my
closest friends. It's a really.

Speaker 1 (01:32:57):
Okay two kids from your first they're out of the house.
What are they up to?

Speaker 2 (01:33:02):
So my son lives with his mom in Erie, Pennsylvania,
and my daughter lives in Washington State, a couple miles
from me, and she's she's over a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:33:14):
You live in Santa Monica taking acting lessons? What'd you
learn about the other side of the fence? Not music
but acting TV movies.

Speaker 2 (01:33:26):
It's really hard. It's really hard because I can pretend
with the best of them, and I can remember what
I write, but trying to remember what somebody else wrote
is really hard for me. I don't have a photographic
memory or anything. But I got pretty good at it,
and I ended up in a couple of TV shows,

(01:33:47):
but that was after Hey Soul Sister, and like I was,
you know, back on the horse of you know, doing
business again. But I don't, you know, the acting thing.
Nobody ever beat my door down to try to get
my tried. I auditioned for several things and didn't get them.
And it's hard. You have to be a full time actor.

(01:34:10):
I think, like you have to really commit. Very few
people can do what Cherry Letto does, you know, and
be good at both.

Speaker 1 (01:34:16):
Okay, you make another album. There really isn't a hit
on it. How does that feel terrible?

Speaker 2 (01:34:25):
That was I didn't want to make that record. I
didn't want to make that record in Atlanta. We did
not have the goods at all, and it was very disappointing.
We don't play any songs from that record. It was
the end of the band for me. It's You happens

(01:34:46):
to be a few of my friend's favorite album, not mine.
It's a period of failure and like leftover sadness. You know,
I needed to move on.

Speaker 1 (01:35:00):
Okay, when you go back to the studio again, you
make another record, You're working with a ton of different people.
What's going on there?

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):
You mean my solo record?

Speaker 1 (01:35:11):
No, I'm talking about Save Me San Francisco.

Speaker 2 (01:35:15):
Oh, save Me San Francisco. That so, yeah, we go
from we go from for me, It's You to my
solo record that doesn't you know it wasn't the right record,
and then sam Me San Francisco. Then it's like the
rules of you can't write in the band are way over,
Like we got to get back or this is over forever.

(01:35:38):
And so I wrote with every person that would meet
with me, and two times a day if I could
get the time, and you know, through that, I wrote
with the Espionage guys and wrote Hey Soul Sister, drive
by other songs that I love, Bruises and my friend

(01:36:00):
Mark Wattenberg Like. It was all a period of this
is good for me to go meet people like they
liked what I did. I didn't know what they did,
but together we could somehow make something magical. So I
wrote with everybody, I could.

Speaker 1 (01:36:14):
You have your career. But alongside of that, the business
is changing dramatically. Okay, it's consolidation in labels. We have
Napster or ultimately Spotify comes along and rescues the business.
But as we stated earlier, nothing is ubiquitous in the

(01:36:35):
same way is at the beginning of your career? Is
that palpable? Do you feel the game has changed or
are you still saying, hey man, you know I got
to write a hit that's going to get out every
radio for about etc.

Speaker 2 (01:36:51):
So a radio hit, I don't even know if that's
the thing anymore. What you really need to do is
focus on social media and if a piece of your
song gets viral, then radio stations will start to play it.
But do people listen to radio? I mean, I listen
to like Serious XM, but it's rare that I would

(01:37:14):
listen to a channel that would play what I'm creating.
I don't know what does. I don't know what the
chances of success are. I think at this phase it's
more like the way I make a living is through
live performance. And if I have songs, new songs that

(01:37:36):
matter to the same people that Drops of Jupiter matter to,
that's a success for me. That's a win. That's a hit.
If people that love train love something new that I
did or that I'm doing, that's a success. What I
would hope for business wise from it, like hit radio

(01:37:57):
or TikTok or anything, a very low expections of that.
It's mostly I'm writing songs for train fans and future
train fans. That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
Who are train fans?

Speaker 2 (01:38:12):
You know, they're pretty great, normal, loving, wonderful humans. And
we do a cruise every other year so I can
be closer to them, like many of them have my
phone number and email, and we support each other. They
are responsible for me having a great life, and I'm
responsible for the music of some of their greatest memories.

Speaker 1 (01:38:38):
In terms of gaining new fans, can you feel it?
How do you do it? I mean, obviously we talked
earlier doing all these TikTok things. Do these work or
is it the same core who grew up with you?

Speaker 2 (01:38:53):
No, it's it is. So this is an interesting thing
that's happening. So, you know, heavy metal and hard rock
is making a huge resurgence, Like my fourteen year old
son is obsessed with all of it. And there's also
what train does. There's a nostalgia movement where kids who

(01:39:16):
grew up in car seats listening to their moms and
music are falling in love with it as teenagers and
twenty year olds. So we find that every tour we
have more and more high school and college kids. And
I saw this happen with Tom Petty a long time ago.
Like Tom, you know, has far more amazing songs than

(01:39:39):
I do, but he there was a lull in all
of a sudden, there was a massive boom in the
Tom Petty world where young people were embracing Tom Petty.
I remember my sister in law, who at the time
was sixteen, couldn't wait to go see Tom at the
Gorge in Washington State, And like, I feel like that
is happening right now and we could be a part

(01:40:02):
of that. I'd like to be a part of that.
It'd be more fun for me for a teenager to
hear a song like the Weekend and go that song's amazing,
and then they come and see us and they're like,
holy shit, they do that and that and not have
any idea.

Speaker 1 (01:40:21):
Okay, you became a favorite of Howard Stern and you
did ramble on on Howard Stern. That's a cool thing.
Do you think that enlarged your audience Howard?

Speaker 2 (01:40:34):
Definitely. I mean I still go to many places, and
we haven't been on Howard in a long time. I
was on when Ralph passed away briefly, but we haven't
been on for like a new album or anything in
a while or had a long conversation. But so many
people are like, I love you on Howard. You know,

(01:40:54):
when I met Howard, he was still on k Rock,
and then years later when he was on Serious, we
got to be pretty good pals. And he and I
are very similar in our love for LED's Uplin, but
also as people like he's smarter than I am and
funnier than I am, but I think we care about
the same stuff and so we had that in common.

(01:41:16):
And I know that you've said incredible, great things about Howard,
and he's a big fan of yours. So when you
know him a little bit, you realize that you know
you're talking to one of the smartest people you'll ever
be around, and clever and interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:41:31):
Okay, you know Fred Astaire famously really had no friends.
Then there are other people Sammy Hagar. He knows everybody
and stays in contact with everybody. Where do you fit
on that continuum?

Speaker 2 (01:41:46):
I'm I think I'm closer to Sammy, like Sammy's palmine,
but I'm way more careful about who I would want
to be friends with, especially in the music world. I
my closest friends are through Golf. I love and trust them.

(01:42:08):
We come from different things. We want nothing from one
another other than friendship. Sammy wants nothing from you other
than like, come and sing with me because it's fun.
And he's Sammy Hagar, So that kind of relationship musically,
I love, like, we don't need anything from each other,
Let's just be friends and support each other. And I

(01:42:29):
have that with with several artists like Mark Roberts from Oar.
I love that kid. You know, there are Kat Tunstall
I think is just absolutely tremendous Sammy. I love like
there's you know, there's a handful of musicians that I
want to stay close with forever, But then there's a

(01:42:51):
handful of musicians that I'm good like. I'm more like
Fred Astaire.

Speaker 1 (01:42:58):
On a tip of day. Are you in contact with
other high profile celebrities musical celebrities we leave the golf
people aside? Or is that more of a rare thing.

Speaker 2 (01:43:12):
Yeah, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not a celebrity. I'm
not really in contact with a bunch of celebrities. Like
I probably know more professional athletes than I know, like
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:43:26):
I know a.

Speaker 2 (01:43:27):
Couple of actors, But like same lost its interest to
me a long time ago, Like I used to long
for it, And when Chris Martin's career was going like
this and he was getting famous, I was jealous of
it because I thought I want that. And now that
I'm not famous and I don't have to deal with

(01:43:47):
all that, I don't really want anything to do with it.
And I don't like seek famous people out to hang
out with them. I'd love to be friends with Killian
Murphy because he seems like just such a cool guy
and so real. But yeah, there's nothing about I don't
keep in touch with a lot of eye profile. I
keep in touch with George Lopez because he's one of

(01:44:09):
my favorite people, but that's not because of anything other
than I love him.

Speaker 1 (01:44:15):
Will you email or text with Howard or just when
you know Gary reaches out in order to have you
do something, No.

Speaker 2 (01:44:23):
I definitely I will rarely because I know that he
complains about you know, like I. He talked about Drop's
Jupiter turning twenty five the other day, and so I
just sent him a note saying, don't respond, thank you
for the love. I hope you guys are great. I
love you, And then he didn't respond, so I let

(01:44:46):
him off the hook.

Speaker 1 (01:44:47):
So he's, like Chris said, doctor Respot, he's got a
lot of people looking for He's got his own life.
What's your favorite led Zeppelins?

Speaker 2 (01:44:54):
You know, I talked to my son about this because
we debate about it, and I think it has to
be the Rain song. Really Yeah, It's just got so
many different layers to it, and the vocals are great.
I love the lyrics, the everything Jimmy Page is. It's
it's just a magical song. How about you ten years gone?

(01:45:17):
Oh wow? Interesting. Is that a physical graffiti?

Speaker 1 (01:45:22):
Yeah, you know they got those all those they got
Cashmere ins one side back in the vinyl days yea,
in my time of dying, yeah, ten years. I love
how it goes from quiet to loud, which ultimately Boston
I won't say Ripped Off was influenced by, and that's
how they created Long Time. I know it soars and

(01:45:43):
then it goes acoustic, etc.

Speaker 2 (01:45:46):
A great song. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:45:49):
So basically at this point you're training, you call all
the shots.

Speaker 2 (01:45:53):
Yeah. And I have great friends that share the stage
with me that I try to be as generous as
I can too. And but you know, having a business partner,
I've learned just the hard way that there's resentment and
other things that come into play that I don't want
to deal with and I don't want them to have
to deal with it. So just allow me to be

(01:46:15):
generous and don't ask me to be a partner because
that kind of relationship I've not been very successful at.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
So how many dates do you want to do a year?

Speaker 2 (01:46:30):
I want to do none. That's not true, you know,
I think one hundred dates is quite a lot. I
think will be about one hundred this year. I'd like
to I'd like to work less and make more money.
Like to be honest, i'd like to play who would
I know? I want to play bigger venues and play

(01:46:53):
less of them, like I think having fifty, we'll see
I need more than fifty. If you're going to play
Europe in Australia, if I could play seventy shows, I
think I'd be psyched.

Speaker 1 (01:47:06):
Who's your agent?

Speaker 2 (01:47:09):
It's CIA. Now we just went back to Rob Light
and the guys at CIA.

Speaker 1 (01:47:14):
Okay, so listen, it's a business. So like you're going
out with beer naked ladies and Matt Nathanson. How does
that come together?

Speaker 2 (01:47:26):
It usually starts with Jonathan's partner Bob McLynn. Like Bob,
they'll they'll run a bunch of people by me and
ask you know what I think of this? Like we
went with Rio and that was very strange to me,
and I was like, yeah, I mean I love their music.
Let's see what it's like. And I had the time
of my life out there with those guys. And I

(01:47:46):
know the bear naked lady guys. I know they're great guys.
So the more I know people, the better. Because I'm
fifty seven years old and like I don't have time
for a bunch of bullshit, like I want people to
get on like family. Our goal is to make everybody
in those seats happy that they came. And you know,

(01:48:07):
we should perform together on stage and and get on
well with each other, because this time we have on
this planet is fleeting.

Speaker 1 (01:48:16):
Okay, you do the cruise every other year, do you
have any problems selling? Do you have to work to
sell the tickets? Or you got these fans, they're coming.
You don't have to worry about selling.

Speaker 2 (01:48:26):
No, they sell in pre sale. Like. I don't even
think we would need to put a roster of performers up.
It's just become something that people want to do every
other year. Every year would be a little harder because
you know, you do have to keep in mind that
it takes time. You got to fly to Florida, you
need to save money to do these vacations, and so

(01:48:49):
every other year has it's been easy for it to sell.
I don't have to do any work. Well.

Speaker 1 (01:48:54):
A friend of mine managed kid Rock. Let's not get
into the politics. Kid Rock. Hit Rock did a cruise
and he said, yeah, everybody would get to meet him,
and then he said never again. Because he hit you know,
the whole time. He's the star of the cruise. He
could never sleep.

Speaker 2 (01:49:14):
What's your experience, my experiences, We've we've figured out a
way and this is a real thing that if you see,
we got away with it for a couple of years.
If you sign up on the pre sale, you get
a picture with the band, and plus we're working our
asses off this whole time. Man, I'm like game shows

(01:49:37):
and judging things and everything you could think of and
the shows that we perform. So if you sign up
in pre sale, you get to take a picture with
the band on the third morning of whatever. And now
the whole boat sells out in pre sale, So we
meet every cruiser, every cruise, and you know it and
it's worth worth every second of it.

Speaker 1 (01:50:02):
Okay, you've mentioned you recently did the Carnegie Hall Billy
Joel thing. Do you feel like, oh, yeah, you know
I'm going through you know, my manager calls me, I
have an oping I'll go, or you have some imposter syndrome,
saying wow, I can't believe they called me. This is great.

Speaker 2 (01:50:21):
I have two great stories. Bill. Billy and I sat
together at Howard in Best Wedding and I didn't really
talk much to Billy because I'm such a big fan.
I didn't want to say anything stupid, but I love
being with him, and I was like, Billy, if you
went and sang always a woman at this wedding right now,
this place would go ape shit. So he's like, you know,

(01:50:42):
So he finally went up and sang, and I heard
him or watched him talk to the band leader, and
then he sang a James Taylor song because he's so
he's so not presumptuous that he would be like, yeah,
they want to hear a Billy Joel song. So I
wanted to go to Billy's so I could sing that
song that he wouldn't sing at Howard in Best Wedding.

(01:51:05):
But I have this really funny story about Paul Simon.
So I got a phone call like fifteen years ago,
when Paul Simon's going to be inducted into the Songwriting
Hall of Fame. Phone call comes from one of the
guys working at my publishing company, Guy goes Hey. Paul

(01:51:25):
Simon specifically asked for you to induct him into the
Songwriting Hall of Fame. I was like, holy shit, that's
the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life. I
can't do it. I'm going to be in Europe. But
please tell Paul. I'm such a huge fan. What an honor?
Years ago by I have a little spot in Maui

(01:51:48):
and Shep Gordon is a friend and Shep has a
charity show every year and it gives to the homeless.
It's some beautiful thing that he does. And he tells
me because I'm going to perform there. Sammy does it
every year and he's like, hey, Paul's gonna be here.
I was like, ah, Sep, when Paul's here, can you
please introduce me. I have a question for him. It's

(01:52:09):
been killing me for so long. He was like yep.
So he comes over. He's like, Pat, Paul just showed up.
So I go over and I'm like, mister Simon went
an honor? Min is Pat Monahan? Whatever? And I goes, hey,
I asked you a question. A few years ago. My
publicist called me when you were being inducted into the
Songwriting Hall of Fame and said that you specifically asked
for me to induct you by name. And I've been

(01:52:31):
dying all these years to ask you if that's true.
And he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, Pat,
I'm going to put your mind at ease. I never
asked for you. It's the greatest, Like, what a great thing.
And I get to have that all.

Speaker 1 (01:52:53):
And that's his personality. Okay, you're a songwriter, but you're
rademark is your voice. There are people like Paul Anka
he could still sing the way he did. There are
a lot of people household names really can't hit the notes. Yeah,
are you fearful? How do you tweet your voice? You

(01:53:15):
fearful of losing it?

Speaker 2 (01:53:17):
No? I mean, you know it's gonna be here as
long as it'll be here, and I just have to
keep doing. But I do to take care of it. Exercise, esteem,
the stuff that you can control. Stress, I think is
what really. You know. I had some vocal cord surgery
years ago. It was all stress related like that and
singing too many of Zeppelin songs.

Speaker 1 (01:53:39):
Okay, what song do you enjoy most playing on stage?

Speaker 2 (01:53:45):
You know, drops to Jupiter just because my mom sent
me that song and probably wrote it for me. It's
always gonna be the most important, But right now I
love performing the weekend. It's a song. People don't they're
not all that familiar with yet, but they seem to
love it. Live and new is always fun for me.

Speaker 1 (01:54:06):
Okay, Pat, I think we've come to the end of
the feeling we've known. You've been very honest and forthcoming.
You're a sharp guy. I want to thank you for
taking this time with my audience.

Speaker 2 (01:54:18):
Thank you, Bob. You're great at what you do. Man,
I appreciate all the questions. You're good at it.

Speaker 1 (01:54:24):
Until next time. This is Bob Left Sense.