DOC Talks to MITCH RYDER about The New Album,Tour in Europe and Playing this Saturday at The TOKEN

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, hither Detroit Wheels. Yeah, Doug, Mitch, it's Doug. It
is so great. It is great to hear your voice,
my friend.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Well, yeah, we're both still alive.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
And we're both still working. What are we thinking here?
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I don't know either. I just got done. Well we're
not done with it yet, but I'm finishing up the
new CD. I've got a tour in November for three weeks,
and then I got a two month tour in Europe scheduled.
So I don't know what I'm thinking.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well, hey, listen, the Mitch Rider train just keeps on rolling.
And congratulations, I see you got a club night coming
up here.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
I was shocked.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
I got to tell you, I was a little shocked
to see you play in the Token Lounge.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
But I think it's going to be fantastic.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
I'm sorry, but we just moved back from Georgia. We've
been living in Georgia for seven and a half years.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Okay, so we just moved.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Back to Detroit, and you know, it was a gig
that's necessary to get back into the field of what's
going on around here.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Well, there's no doubt about it.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
That is the street Feeld I mean the tickets sold
out like within forty eight hours, so you know, it
just it was mind blowing though to see you playing
a club night, because you know, I really you know,
when I think of you, in the last few years
when i've seen you, you've been playing these you know,
nice little outdoor festivals and.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Several bands on the bill.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
But yeah, as I was going through YouTube there a
little bit I saw that, you know, most of.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
This year you have been playing some club dates. So
what kind of brought that back on?

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, the package thing was out of necessity when it's
just it's difficult to explain because it's the European career
is one where I do headline, I do two hour
shows and I'm the only act on the bill. There's
no intermission, and I've put out twenty one CDs over

(02:08):
there that I've never seen the light of day here,
and I don't even have to touch Devil with the
Blue Dress, Honor Jenny. I don't have to do them.
I don't put him in the show. But over here,
I'm pretty much dead or an oldies or a legend,
whatever they want to call it, right right, And you know,
as you know, in America, it's all about youth and beauty,

(02:29):
and so I'm neither of those. So you know, when
it comes to that, it's just just the way it is.
It's our culture, and I have to accept that and
do the best I can. So my fortune obviously lives overseas.

(02:49):
But the club act and the club acts that you're
referring to, those were things that were offered and I accepted.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Well, I see that, and certainly at the Token the
stuff that you're doing on your new album, and I
want to talk about that here in a minute. The
Roof is on Fire is exactly the kind of stuff
that you could do at the Token Lounge. I don't
know that you always have to do Jenny take a Ride,
although it would be nice for an encore. But I'm
looking at this album here, Mitch Ryder, the Roof is

(03:22):
on Fire. I assume this is the one that's out
in Europe right now.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
And this right you know, the one I'm talking to
you about with that I mentioned earlier is the studio.
That's what you're talking about is a double vinyl LP
live recording.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah, wow, it looks pretty damn good. I mean I
was thinking the other day, when you know, they were
talking about you being at the Token and we were
going to talk and I said, you know, I wonder
if Mitch still does one of my favorite songs, which
is Tough Kid, and it's the second song on this album.
And you know, there's some great cover songs in there

(03:58):
from Dylan and the and I just thought.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Is in the sutlist if you want to know.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Oh, okay, good, well, thank you for that.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
But yeah, it's it's kind of to me, it's like
there's the Detroit Wheels Mitch Rider and then there's the
Detroit Mitch Rider. Is that kind of how it's divvied
up in your world these days?

Speaker 2 (04:22):
But you know, yeah, I just have to look at
the history. First of all, there's nothing to be ashamed
of with the being Mitch Rider in the Detroit Wheels.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
No, no, no, it took.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Us around the world. But once that was a three
and a half year project out of a career that's
closing in on fifty five years, and so a lot
of other work has been done by me in my career.
In fact, somebody told me, because I haven't checked it out,
but they said that in the Michigan Rock and Roll

(04:58):
Hall of Fame, both entities are listed Mitch Writer solo
and Mitch Writer Detroit Wils YEP and Detroit Wils was
certainly a very great band, but I've had to you know,
I've had to work for other bands besides it. Oh yeah,
you know, and they are. There's some pretty good musicians
around the world. Music, especially rock and roll, is pretty

(05:24):
much an international thing.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Well, you know, I've seen I've seen some of these
shows on YouTube that you've done. And I just listened
to this entire album the other night. And whoever this
band is that's backing you up right now. I mean,
you've always had great musicians, but these guys are damn good.
I mean it's like they've been with you for the

(05:46):
fifty five years. So tell us a little they No, No,
I know that. I know you've been with so many
great people, but tell me a little bit about. Well,
who's going to be with you at the Tolkeien my band?
So who are the guys as I'm seeing you play
with on YouTube?

Speaker 1 (06:02):
You know some of them have blond hair.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Okay, when you come down off of the LSD, let
me you know what's happening, because no, I don't have
a blind nobody. I don't know, you're talking about my
American band.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Right, Well, so you have a band that you tour
with in Europe, I guess then, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, yeah, okay, I understand what's going on. Yeah, No,
that band that you're listening to, that's the European band.
That's not UW, that's not my American boys.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Okay, well they're good. So you're going to be using
like Ray Goodman and and those.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Guys, right yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
All right, perfect, well okay, so but yeah, that band
in Europe, and especially on the Roof is on fire.
I mean, those guys are on fire. So you know,
you always you always pick great musicians, so no question.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
I kind of got lucky that way with Steve Hunter
and people like that. They just went on to bigger
and better things. Oh it's incredible. It's almost like the
John Mayle of America. You know, pretty much every brit
musician that was going on to greater things went through

(07:19):
the school of John Mayle first, and a lot of
people have gone through the Mittrider school of rock and
gone on to bigger and better things. I'm proud of that.
I'm happy that I gave them an opportunity to start
their careers.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
You know, yeah, no question about it.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
You've given a lot of a lot of musicians an opportunity.
And uh, you know I was reading that, you know,
in your spare time whenever that is, that you've been working.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
On a musical as well, So can you tell us
a little bit about that?

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Pretty much? It's the play Elf has finished the music
at one point was finished. I reviewed it and decided
it needed more music and a couple of different music,
and that meant a couple of scene changes in the
book itself. So since it's my first attempt, I've been

(08:18):
working on it for years to be true, truthful, and
it's going to be good when when it you know,
I don't know if it will come out while I'm alive,
but basically a gift for my wife, so you know,
once I've departed, because I'm thirteen years older than my wife, well,
once I've seen my time on the planet, she'll have

(08:41):
something to you know, help her remember me.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, keeps the legacy alive.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
And and and I'm sure that it's something that somewhere
along the line everybody wants.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
To you know.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
They always tell me, Doug, you should write a book,
you know, and right now, and who has time to
write a book? But you know, once you get a
little older, you find the time and you find the passion.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
And uh, you know I got that.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
I already did that, and I got two awards, two
nice awards for it.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, no question about.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
That book was called Devils and Blue Dressings. I believe
you can find it on Amazon.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
So Mitch, I'm.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, yeah, the book's done already. You got that one
in a can. You've got, you know, a hundred albums
and uh and I can't believe you're play the Token,
but uh, it's going to be. It's going to be
jam packed and star studded, so it should be a
great night. But if I could for a second, I
want to, you know, just go back a little bit
to uh, the the crossroads in your life. And we

(09:51):
were just kind of hitting on that a little bit.
That made me think of this question. Uh, from the
Detroit Wheels to Detroit and Steve Hunter. You leave McCarty
and the Wheels and you come back some out of
somewhere and here comes this Detroit album which nowadays people

(10:12):
are heralding this album as a breakthrough rock album that
a lot of bands and musicians go back and say
was their influence. So can you tell me a little
bit about your transition to Detroit at that time? What
was going on in your life, what was going on

(10:33):
in your head musically?

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Well, I went through that whole thing with Bob Crue
in New York, and then out came the album called
What Now My Love, which was his attempt to turn
me into a Las Vegas act and shee'sz. I sabotized
that as much as I could. I remember spending hours

(10:59):
on end on phone calling radio stations asking him not
to play it. And when Crew found out, he went
crazy because that's where he wanted me to go. And
you know, I didn't want to go there originally. And
this was a point of contention between that Jimmy and myself.

(11:21):
Jimmy wants to keep the band pure, which was the
way we went to New York. Two guitars, bass and drums,
and I wanted I was more urban influenced than I
wanted horns, and I wanted to do an R and
B thing. Well, Crew saw that whole thing. He didn't
like either one of those ideas. He wanted to put

(11:44):
together a Las Vegas Act, and then I sued to
get out of my contract with the AM and unfortunately
I didn't sue him for the money he stole from
me or the Wheels, but I sued to get out
of the contract, the management contract. So I had time
between the Detroit Wheels and the album Detroit you're talking
about to reflect on where I wanted to go and

(12:06):
what kind of music I wanted to do. And I
got very lucky because I ended up meeting Barry Kramer,
god rest his soul, who had started Cream Magazine if
you remember, yes, and very I had some ideas about
direction and and was very helpful in actually putting that

(12:27):
band together. And uh, you know, one of the Wheels,
Johnny b came into that Detroit band, and so it was.
It was. It was a It took some thought, but
not about the It was more about getting rid of

(12:49):
the past than it was about creating the future. We
kind of were in the future already attitude wise and
musically speaking, we were there, but we had to dust off,
especially in the minds of the public, all that had
gone before, with the exception of the Hits and that terrible,
terrible move with what noawm I love now. I'm putting

(13:17):
it down because it didn't fit the order of the day.
And I had been asked by Michael Bloomfield to be
the singer for Electric Flag and I had to turn
that down. I had been asked by Hendrix to when
he broke up his group, to be their singer. I
turned that down. And I had to turn those down
because Crew wouldn't let go of me. And you know,

(13:37):
those were the days when everybody was doing everybody else's
thing and you didn't need to worry about stepping on
somebody's toes if you wanted to be with another musician.
It was really free and loose that time, but not
for Bob Crue and I just got out of that,
you know, I just got away from it. Sadly had

(14:00):
to happen that way. And I don't know what would
have happened. I don't really I think about it a lot,
had we somehow managed to stay together the original Detroit Wils.
I do know that the only thing that I know
for sure would come out would be good music, because
the band was very talented. But that didn't happen, and

(14:24):
so I had to create another career, and you know,
and I ended up doing so well.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
You certainly did.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
And I couldn't have gotten a better explanation for that
question than that, right there, Wow that you know. But yeah,
that album still to me when I put it on,
you know, the hair on my arm stands up, you know,
rock and roll and and and with the digital release
that came out, you know what twenty years later, whatever,

(14:55):
you know, gimme Shelter was a song that I knew
you used to do live in concert when I'd see
you at Harpo's or.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Or some of those, some of those places.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
But you know, I never realized that it was on
or could have been on the Detriede album. But he
didn't make the final cut for whatever reason.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Right right, But but you know there actually there are
albums that do exist. They're hard to find. It must
have been like the original pressing where Shelter was on there.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Oh okay, yeah, and there was.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Another one U La Di La something like that, which
is the B side. Possibly I'm mistaken. Maybe they put
it out as a single, but I see no reason
for them to put out a single that wasn't on
the album, and it couldn't have helped that at all.
But I know the version you're talking me about. And

(15:52):
it wasn't meant to show disrespect for their stones because
their legacy will go on for many many encyclopedias. So well,
you know, it was just that's smart ass Detroit attitude
that we're born with here that you know, it says
we can do it if we want to, don't.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
I don't know if it was any disrespect. I mean
when I put it on, I think it's a better
version than the Stones. The power of Steve Hunter, your voice,
just the way you guys approached that song.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
My god, it's it's fantastic.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
So well, I'm happy to hear that.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
Yeah, well, I'm just happy to hear you and hear
that you're going to be playing this weekend in Detroit.
So you took that move you mentioned you you lived
in Georgia. What what made you move down there?

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Just the you know, my wife's relative of whole families.
Oh okay, the mother was down there and after the
boys have been grew up and we went down there
for some warmer weather and we were settled in. Everything
was almost like retirement. Basically. I was still, you know,

(17:07):
doing the European thing, but and doing pickup gigs in
America when they appeared. But we were quite happy and satisfied.
Dollas was paid for. We had enough retirement income. I
didn't have to work. But three of our children and
well four of our children, and you're not gonna believe this,

(17:28):
but it's true, and Sad developed four different kinds of cancer.
Oh yeah. Well one of them was our grandchild at
the time. He was like four years old when he
first got it, And so we moved back up here
to help the family, help out the family, her, not

(17:48):
her birth family, which is the ones down south, but
her children who were up here. Yes, and my children
of course, especially Dink. I call her Dink, But that's
my daughter. Don I love her so much. She's a
precious girl. Since she's not a girl, she's a woman.

(18:10):
My god. Yeah, oh, I guess you always think of
this baby.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Oh yeah, I've got a daughter to mitch, and I
still think of her as that little ten year old.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
You know, you have kind of wishful thinking right right
before they got to middle school. That's when things got ug.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
Oh yeah, boy, it's the same in everybody's life.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
I guess.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Well, that's what I hate about, just discrimination that we're
all humans. We're all the same. Yeah, maybe we can't
speak the same language, you know, maybe our skin's a
different color. But the needs are very simple and very basic. Food, shelter, education,
and work, you know, and healthcare. And I've been through

(18:56):
different healthcare system because I traveled around in different continents
and countries. And we should be ashamed of what we
have to pay for health care in this country compared
to other countries who are democracies in fact, but it
behooves certain people who are ignorant to call them socialists

(19:16):
and communists. I don't like communist governments either. In fact,
that that record you're talking about that you loved listening
to the other night, all of those boys were East
German musicians and they grew up under the communist regime
in East Germany before the wall came down, and so

(19:39):
they know how brutal it could be under the under
the communists. Nobody wanted that, Yeah, and we still don't really.
But this idea of when you're when you're offering reasonable
health insurance to your population, uh, there's nothing socialistic about that.

(20:00):
That's that's crazy. It's just crazy talk. And I'm I'm
a you know, free enterprise guy obviously. So you know,
you wouldn't be in music, making music and selling records
if you didn't believe in the free enterprise system. So
what the hell?

Speaker 3 (20:19):
Well, it would be nice to see this country taking
care of more veterans, uh, and more and more seniors
answer answer, and more seniors as well, because to protect well,
of course, I mean and and listen, over the past
uh several years, maybe the last ten years, I've had

(20:42):
to step up to help many musicians from that grandy
ballroom era who you know played music all their lives
but but never had the healthcare. And uh, and you
know today now and then the stark reality is is that, uh,
you can't get hospitalization, you can't get medication, you can't

(21:05):
get well, and nobody seems to care. So uh, you know,
we've we've made it a mission and I've made it
a mission of mine to uh to do what I can,
when I can and where I can to to help musicians.
And uh, you know it they there's been some good
and and some ugly out of that, but uh, you know,

(21:26):
we got to help, you know, and and certainly maybe
going forward, Mitch, maybe you know, people will hear a
voice like yourself. Uh, you know, talking about something like this,
it's it's important.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, well I'm not. I'm not a street arching guy. No,
I just mentioned what I thought was there. And health
care is something that everybody should be entitled.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
Well, yeah, you see that in Europe all the time,
especially when you're there.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
So yeah, and there are there are some criticisms to
be made about those particular systems, for example of the
amount of time you have to wait to get to
get help. But the good news is that you do
get help. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, it's not just.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Hope right right here, We'll hand you a cup of hope.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
And yeah, well I'm glad to see that your health
is doing great.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
And actually, now that we're talking about my health, no,
I've had three spine operations the last two years, and
so I've got some metal in my back and it's
start to me to be bent over, slouching. It's an
ugly look, but it has nothing to do with my voice,
so I don't count it.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Well, I've known so many people at you know, in
the latter half of their life getting back surgeries. It's
almost like it's almost natural now, So.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
Yeah, I don't think anybody's come.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yeah, I don't think anybody's going to hold it against you, Mitch,
especially when you crack that microphone.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
But we're all we're.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
All excited about the show coming up this Saturday, September
twenty first at the Token Lounge. I doubt if anybody
can get tickets, but I hope they listen to the podcast,
and I am going to once we get done here
on the air, I'm going to go search out this
Roof Is on Fire album. I'm going to order it
from somebody somewhere and crank that thing up on my

(23:27):
turntable because that's an outstanding piece of work. And if
you're working on new stuff and you're going over to Europe,
you know, congratulations to you, Mitch.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
Just don't forget I'm doing that American mostly in the
east of Mississippi, the tour I'm doing in November.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah, I wish I could travel out there to see you.
But thank you so much for your time, Mitch, and
we're all excited to see you Saturday up there at
the Token Lounge.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
My friend you soon all right, Well, thanks Mitch.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Bye bye, okay, bye bye.