Ep. 5 | Wade Baynham of The Basics

Wade Baynham was a founding member of the 90's coffee house band the Basics. Together with his wife Kelly and a revolving door of drummers and sound men, the Basics toured constantly between 1991 and 2005, from San Diego to Seattle and back, mostly playing at small venues in Palo Alto and Santa Cruz, summer camps like Mt. Hermon, and Coffee Houses like Mountain Roaster's in Felton, where I first saw them.

Wade and the Basics never acheived the success they sought, and attempts to measure that success would bring much pain - even causing Wade and Kelly to split. However the hundreds and thousands of fans who came to see them over the years will always cherish their music and the memories of the magic of discovering a new band at a little,often funky coffeehouse.

For fans of the Basics, the wandering souls that followed their journey, they will always be part of the singer - songwriter 90's, and those great songs still resonate today.

Follow Wade a https://wadebaynham.bandcamp.com/
Basics albums are on Spotify and iTunes.

Apologies for the audio delay at the beginning.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
She actually talked, get out of here.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Oh yeah, yeah, I've really gotten into the bad habit
of asking a huge amount of questions. Just a question
between friends, you know, she actually talked.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
All right, Well, welcome to It's been a few months,
so excuse my hesitancy, but welcome to another episode of
Five Great Questions, the podcast, which I still don't know
how many episodes we're going to have, but every episode
to me so far has been pretty special for different reasons.

(00:46):
Sometimes the recipient seems to enjoy it more than I
thought they would, and sometimes I enjoy it more than
the recipient. So I have no guarantees about which way
this is going to go. But with me this evening
is uh my new friend Wade Benim from North Carolina,

(01:08):
which I do have to say before we go any further.
You I can't lie to you. You do have a
great Nascar name, you do know that.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, and it's a Texas name too, because I'm in
high school in EXAs, and people in Texas oftentimes have
a last name for a first name, and so you
know that's kind of typical.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Right, Yeah, I just I just maybe I've seen cars
with my friend's kids too many times where I can.
I can just hear the voice saying, there comes Wade
Manum on the outside, putting his pattle down. You know, yeah, right,
that's what that's what I think. I want to hear
your name.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
So yeah, oh, I was just gonna say. My family
on my dad's side, they ran Moonshine, so they kind
of were involved in the early NASCAR.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
No way wow before before Mountain Dew was bought by
Pepsi when it was a shine chaser.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
From what I understand, yeah, yeah, and and uh, it's
it's not a history I know a ton about. But
I did look up some relatives and they did spend
some time in jail, so I think it's the real deal.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, yeah, it's all that history out there is really
interesting to me. I guess real briefly and we can
I will. I will tell those of you watching or listening,
I'm gonna guess it's about fifty to fifty split. Is

(02:26):
that the small audience that I do get. Probably half
of you are listening because you heard one or two
of my episodes you thought they were interesting, and the
other half might have heard of Wade or his band
which was called The Basics and so we're we're a
little bit of it's a dual education, I think tonight.
But the what I want to set us off for

(02:49):
right at the beginning is one of the things that
I think is so great about an interview like this
is that I truly think it's the one of the
closest things we have to time traveling, because we get
to go back to a time like the nineties and
the coffeehouse scene, and you know, it's right before the

(03:09):
digital age, and there's a little bit that gets lost
there before in the analog to digital transition, there's a
little bit that gets lost. And I will tell you truthfully,
that's what caused me to contact you, is that an
old friend from summer Camp in Santa Cruz, the actually

(03:30):
the friend that introduced me to the Basics, because he
was there at summer camp a year before I was.
He mentioned something about the original album, the cassette tape
that he had and how he was kind of disappointed
that some albums weren't, you know, on digital, and I thought, oh, yeah,
that's true, I guess, and so I looked it up
and I did a little research and I found out,

(03:51):
wait a second, the Basics might be one of those
little analog to digital you know, matrix things where you know,
things get lost. Like you mentioned, you weren't taking a
lot of pictures, and I remember my friends at the
time had the digital cameras and they would get thrown
away or lost or dropped off in the river, and

(04:12):
so a lot of that was very common. So it's
just kind of funny how we can look up, you know,
the Declaration of Independence on our phones right now, but
if we try to find a band or a song
from the early nineties, mid nineties, a lot of times
there's that's harder to find.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
It had to be pretty famous, right, I mean some
of the indie scene never got digitized on the internet, right.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah. So anyway, welcome to five great questions, and thank
you for being here. Thank you for Wade three hours
difference agreeing to doing this tonight. And I have many
more questions than just five, as you probably know, but
we're going to start with just the basic five. So
I asked this to everyone, Wade, did you receive the

(04:59):
five question that I sent you?

Speaker 2 (05:01):
I did. I want to say thank you very much
Alden for having me and I appreciate you looking me
up and it's been interesting to kind of pick my
brain into kind of consider your questions, which I think
are good ones, and to also remember back, you know,
thirty years. That's a bit of an interesting journey.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes a smell or a song can trigger
a memory. But when you're asked a direct question that
you are not normally asked, you really have to kind
of go through the files.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
You know.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
That's right, Okay, Well let's get yeah, yea, yeah, go ahead, No, no, yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
No, I was just gonna say, right, I agree with you,
and I'm glad to get started.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
I thought I would. I was. I don't have a
lot of band shirts anymore, but I made this. Uh.
I made this shirt about two weeks ago, and I
thought you'd appreciate it. It's you know who that is?

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Is that an old Roger Miller shirt?

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Well, I made it, but it's a Roger Miller shirt.
I just designed it and made it a few weeks ago. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Oh yeah, yeah, No, I meant a picture of him,
yeah sure, but yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. That's cool.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
I just love I love Roger Miller, and I think
he's one of the most underrated songwriters.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
I just so.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, Okay, So, Wade Bainim, you're in North Carolina? Were
you real quick? Were you born and raised where you
live now?

Speaker 2 (06:33):
No, I've been here twenty six years, but I never
lived here. My dad's family is from South Carolina, right
at the Georgia border, but I never lived there. I
was born in Atlanta. When my dad was in college there,
he and my mom were married. He was a five
year student because of football, so he had an injury

(06:56):
and so had an extra year and they got married
that year. And then my dad went and played in
the NFL for a few years, and so we moved
around to some different cities because of that. Wow.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Great, well it's that sounds like a country song right.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
There, exactly.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Okay, So when you when you started, I guess, Can
I assume you had one or two bands before the
basics or groups that you played with or yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
I had started writing songs in high school and one
thing my dad gave me was outside of he my
mom took some piano lessons with me before high school.
And then when I lived in high high school, I
was in Canada and I had a music teacher that

(07:49):
was incredible. He was a composer. He was a trumpet
player and a pianist, and a choir director and a
music minister to church, and he was just one of
these really very gifted, talented men. He told me that
when the band in Chicago came to town into Toronto,
we lived outside of Toronto, he would go sit in

(08:11):
with Chicago just to hang out and play with him
on stage. So he kind of had a He kind
of had that kind of ability. So what he gave
me in terms of learning and experience were things that
I then took through high school. Or I was writing songs,
my dad gave me an opportunity to record some of
those songs back in the tape days where I went

(08:33):
into a real studio, you know, with the glass and
all that kind of stuff, and you know, uh, they
they actually pulled out a razor blade to cut edits
and things like that in the tape and so kind
of you know that era. And then I got to
college and started working with some some guys I'd known

(08:54):
one guy from high school, and then some guys I
knew in college, and then uh was getting you know, Kelly,
she eventually joined us and we had a band for
a few years there and then kind of as we
lost different members.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Sorry, go ahead, Yeah, was it was the band? Did
it have any different names at the beginning?

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Or I think that band we called The Calling, which
we we liked that band the Call from you know, California.
And Michael, do you remember the Call? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (09:28):
And I was going to say, your voice, your your
voice kind of reminds me a little bit of the
guy from the Call.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah. Michael Benn had a voice that I think people
would say was different than a lot of rock voices
because it had like a thickness to it kind of.
And uh, I met him once. We got to open
for them one time many years later in San Francisco,

(09:55):
but he he wasn't doing that well that night, so
I didn't get he was ill and so so I
had a chance to talk to him a long time.
But he he was a staggering musician. I mean he
was originally the lead guitar player lost this player, so
he switched over to bass and then played a fretless

(10:16):
bass and played it like a lead guitar a lot
of times, like it was really amazing. And then just
his voice was Yeah, I think it was different than
a lot of rock voices. And I appreciated that, but
then I also appreciated the complexity of his lyrics, and

(10:37):
I would say it was people like him that inspired us,
among many others.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Okay, so did you Yeah, because your family background by
itself didn't didn't put you on the music track.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Right, not at all. Yeah. Yeah, My family was a
sport thing, right, my my. You know, my dad played
in the NFL and then ended up going to seminary
and so I was around church a lot, and I
think probably was about seventh grade when we were he

(11:15):
was working in a church. We were in Canada at
that time, and uh uh, some just asked me. I mean,
well basically they told me you're the guitar player. And
I'm like, well, I don't really play guitar, and they're like,
you are the guitar player. So I had to learn
kind of on the fly. It was playing camp songs
and you know, things like that for a youth.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
And uh yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Right exactly. And so but then I was also since
I was taking music lessons, I started writing songs and
so they weren't any good, but I was learning to
to try anyway. So when I got to college, I
just met sorry ahead.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Oh, when you first started writing songs. Were there an
influence of a type or that you would gravitate towards
as far as as far as folk rock.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Or I mean family wise, we didn't have many records
in the house. I think we had like couple Christian
artists that most people haven't heard of, like an old
guy like named Doug Oldham, which most people never even
heard of. Then there was the Kingston Trido which trio
which I think I mentioned to you, and then there

(12:29):
was Johnny Cash live at Folsom Prison, and I think
those are kind of the main records. And then we
had like some Disney stuff, and you know, we had
sound of music, so like you know, I fell love
with Julie Andrews's voice, you know, as a kid and
stuff like that, and then we're listening to the radio.
I think my dad introduced me to Neil Diamond when

(12:52):
I was probably oh Man Ont eleven or twelve. I
think that was the first content sort I ever went
to was a Neil Diamond concert with my dad. But
it was kind of in his like he was wearing
kind of the fat Elvis clothes. I mean he wasn't fat,
but he was wearing that outfit, you know, like the
the big collars and the white jumpsuit and all that stuff.

(13:15):
So it was really different than the you know, the
Neil Diamond who had ridden the more folky, edgier kind
of stuff earlier in his career. And I think he
tried to get back to that with Ruben when they
did a project together much later. But I kind of
knew him at a time when you know, chess hair

(13:36):
and gold chains and all that kind of stuff, so
that was not you know, I didn't see myself that,
so it was kind of a weird mixtrings. And then
I probably was around so many Christian groups in church
that I started to listen to some of the stuff

(13:58):
that was becoming a ular from some of the Jesus movement,
but like Keith Green and you know, then started to
learn a little bit of Randy stone Hill and uh,
you know, Larry Norman and some some of those old
Jesus people kind of guys from the West Coast.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. Did you see the Jesus
Revolution movie?

Speaker 2 (14:23):
I did not know. I heard I saw on the preview,
but I haven't seen it.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
I would recommend it. Actually, I was expecting a little
more uh, you know, a little more corny, but it
actually is. It's pretty well done, I would recommend. Okay. So,
so when you started getting together as as what would
become the basics, which is you and Kelly and Drew,
I mean at the very beginning or yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
And and then a guy who had been in the
calling was the bass player and and rhythm guitar player
with us named Dave Stubbs. And Dave was who's on
the cover of William You. So it's Kelly and me
and I have Stubbs on that cover. But Drew had
been along that whole time and was beginning to write

(15:10):
songs with us and stuff like that. And so Dave
ended up going to grad school, and so when we
went to when I closed my eye, it was already goney,
it was really Drew and Kelly and I that were
working on stuff. And then there was a drummer named
Todd Dorman who worked with us on just the drums

(15:33):
for that record and then worked with us more on
Waight and Glory.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Okay, Well, so I know people the audience will give
me a hard time because it took me a long
time to get to the question one. But question one
is how did you know when you had a sound
as the bass, as as those three people. How did
you know when you had a sound other than just
the other songs that you were hearing at the time

(15:57):
in coffeehouses or youth group events. Was it, you know?
Was it the way your voices worked together, or or
was it a songwriting. Was there one song that maybe
it just flowed out that that was the cause.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean the fact that
Kelly and I had been singing together from my freshman
year her sophomore year in college, and we both were
in a cappella groups that did some joint concerts together
at Stanford, so we knew each other from that and
we'd seen each other sing, and then I just asked

(16:35):
if she wanted to do an open mic coffee house
thing with me, and I mean she joked a lot
about kind of the cheesy line of let's see if
we says blend, but we really did do that, and
then we played that coffeehouse gig, and then she went
overseas for a couple quarters, but we were writing back
and forth, and then when she came back, we were

(16:57):
in a musical Godspel together and this, and Dave Stubbs,
the bass player, was in a musical too with us,
so the three of us were in that and then
we just started sort of practicing together and that band
and the calling was do was And then people kept
going away to grad school or doing other things, and
so it became a joke like it's always back to

(17:19):
the basics of just you know, the three of us
or the four of us or whatever. And so then
that name. We kept looking for names and kind of
stuck as a joke, and then it was we were
stuck with it. So we had started to just play
bikes and coffeehouses in the area, and we're continuing to

(17:41):
try to write songs. And I think it was really,
honestly just we had acoustic guitars. I hadn't played any electric.
Dave the had played bass and acoustic guitar and he
played piano, two I played piano. But in that sort
of form, it was much easier to bring an acoustic
guitar into a coffee house, and so that's kind of

(18:06):
just what we did. And then I remember seeing the
Indigo Girls at the Stanford Coffee House and it was
their it was their second record, but it was their
first big major label release that had Closer to Fine
on It is on Epic Records, and it was just
called Indigo Girls, and we saw them from like ten
feet away, and I just Kelly and I watched them,

(18:30):
and I remembering out of that room and going, I
could do that. I want to do that. And I
mean obviously and never had to hit like closer to
Fine And they're great musicians, but I just meant there
was something about acoustic guitars and two people and blending
and writing lyrics that had more going on than pop

(18:52):
songs at the time, a lot of pop songs period,
and so I was like, wow, I don't know if
this is a movement or anything. I just knew like it.
And so we tried to have our next thing that
became will You became a demo and then will You.
We tried to just do that thing of kind of
a couple of voices and guitars.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Huh, Well, that's that's That's a good hutser actually, because
it's true, but it's also uh, it's also very organic
and just just very natural. It's almost it's almost too simple,
because you would if someone had to guess, you would say, oh,
maybe they went to college together and then they started
playing around and then they went and saw the Indigo
Girls at a coffee house and they you would think,

(19:34):
could it really be that easy? You know?

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Well right? And we also saw an artist named Peter
Himmelman at that same coffee house who was on Epic
as well. And he's he's done a number of different things.
He did some UH scoring for some shows like UH
a show called Judging Amy. He did all the scoring
for that. But he also did some scoring for the

(19:58):
show Bones there for few seasons. But before that he
had had a record deal with Epic, and I just loved,
loved the songwriting. And he's I don't know if he steals,
but at that time he was an orthodox Jew. He's
Bob Dylan's son in law, and so he had some
pretty big shoe still to try to write songs as

(20:21):
a singer songwriter. But he played really good acoustic guitar.
He was hilarious concert. But I actually heard a song
that was one of the most influential songs I'd ever
heard of that time in my life that he wrote,
called Impermanent Things. And I was driving along and listened
to the radio and I heard it, and I actually

(20:43):
pulled over and went right into Tower Records and bought
his record called Peter Himmelman. And yeah, his his last
name is h I M M E L M A N.
And that that record I think was just called Peter Himmelman.
And he had been for people anyone who knows the Midwest.

(21:07):
He had been in a famous bin out of the
Saint Paul Minneapolis area called Sussman Lawrence. And I know
some people who live there and have lived there years,
and they're like, oh, Man, Susmen Lawrence was huge, but
they never got a record deal, and that was a
huge heartbreak for him. And then he got a record
deal finally for himself, but he just never had huge hits.

(21:31):
But he was very influential to us as the basics.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, yeah, okay, so you so, well, it's funny all
the southern connections, and yet it seems that you all
three met and started a band at a at a
west coast university called Stanford.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
That's right, yeah, a junior university.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yeah, that's right where my niece is going right now. Yeah. Okay, okay,
So let mean, so who named the band? Oh yeah,
the band name sort of just came organically. Okay, well,
let's do what I was what I was hoping to
do at the very beginning. One of the one of
the good ideas is is the the whole idea of

(22:17):
the folk revival in the nineties. I think it's so
fascinating for a lot of reasons. You know, there were
similarities to the sixties in the nineties. A lot of music,
especially in the first part of a decade, is a
reaction to the way the last decade ended. That's not
hard to see, so we can kind of see musically,

(22:38):
I think how people wanted to be stripped down. And
I actually a little side trivia note, I was at
one of the first acoustic concerts from a rock band
in San Francisco and no one, no one would link
that band to the MTV Acoustic but that is really
how it started. It was that. I don't know if

(22:58):
you remember the the club called Slims in San Francisco,
of course, Yeah, So Slims had a little acoustic show
in nineteen ninety with a rock band Tesla from Sacramento,
and we thought it was great. They played some of
their hits, they played they played some good cover songs,
they played some grateful dead and some credence. But you know,

(23:22):
six months later, MTV started doing acoustic, and MTV started
doing the the every and then everybody had to do
the acoustic thing. It didn't matter how big your band was,
it didn't matter how loud your guitars were. You had
to strip it down and everyone wanted to see you
go acoustic.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
That's right. That was huge.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
So yeah, and it was just huge. So I guess,
I mean, we sort of covered it a little bit,
but I guess just from you outside of the basics,
just you personally, what what were your what are your
favorite memories of the what were not your memory?

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Sorry?

Speaker 1 (24:02):
What was your what were your favorite parts of being
in a in folk music in the nineties.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Right, I mean we, I mean we knew kind of
from our childhoods, you know, some things that were acoustic, like, oh,
you know, popular stuff like John Denver or you know,
we knew some of the you know, like some of

(24:32):
the acoustic Jackson Brown or Crosby Stills and ash things
like that, and so that was in our vocabulary. But
we weren't trying to necessarily imitate just folk. It's just
that we didn't have a larger band because we were

(24:53):
playing venues that like I said, we'd started going to
open mics and we'd started playing coffee houses, and there
wasn't as much room to have more going on. It
was really more simple, and that worked for us because
we wanted to focus on our songwriting and we wanted
to focus on songs that had meaning and purpose. And

(25:16):
for us, we related to singer songwriters who, even if
their records had more production on them, their shows were oftentimes,
you know, simpler, stripped down. And when I first saw
you know, Indigo Girls, again the record has a lot
more on it, it's more produced, but in the coffee houses,
just the two of them. When I saw Peter Himmelman

(25:38):
at that Stanford coffee house a few months later, it
was just him just by himself with you know, playing
some piano and some guitar. He ended up having a
pretty big band and I saw them play at Slims
and it was great. But what I fell in love
with was just that simpler thing of sort of seeing
a person tell some more personal stories how they wrote something,

(26:01):
what was behind the music. And so even though that
became a thing on MTV, behind the music, we really
were trying to do that all the time anyway, right,
And so it really was like music had come alongside
us in sort of our listening in ways that cared
for us. And so we thought, if we can bring

(26:23):
that type of care to people with some vulnerability, that's
what we want to do.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, well that yeah, and and I think that's what
a lot of people appreciated and enjoy it. And I think,
you know, it's well known that you know, if things
happened during if things hit you at a different age,
they're not going to hit you the same. You know,
for me being twenty years old, twenty one in the

(26:51):
early nineties, I was just at that time where you know,
maybe I wasn't going to a lot of bars, but
it was fun to go to a coffee shop and
order maybe different kind of drink than I would order,
even if it wasn't didn't matter if it was an
alcoholic it was it was. Oh, there's some cushy chairs,
and there's a couple of girls that I've never seen
from this part of town. And you know, and you
might hear somebody that that you know, drove all night

(27:14):
from Portland to to share you his songs, and you know,
his uh, his guitar might say, you know, Woody gout
three on it or whatever, and you you all of
a sudden you thought, well, maybe I'm getting like a
stream of consciousness from a different stream, you know, because
I'm not just listening to album rock radio, or or
or folk radio or any radio. So I think a

(27:36):
lot of us appreciated that communication, almost almost like when
you see like a good Morning Vietnam and you think
of the soldiers listening to a radio station that is
that is just a pirate radio, you know, to them.
And I I think maybe that for those of us
that you know, I loved, I loved a lot of

(27:57):
the grunge bands, but I just something about it. I
just knew that it wasn't one hundred percent me. I
appreciated a lot of the songs, but I wasn't that
I wasn't that angry. I had been through it, you know,
I had a divorce and there were things that I
wasn't happy about. But I didn't want to spend my
whole life just being that angry. And and so I
think folk was a for me, at least was in

(28:19):
the nineties, was a way to explore some deeper issues
without you know, just nine inch nails all the time,
you know.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Right right, And and I mean I think you've used
that word folk, which I really appreciated and understand. I
think we thought of ourselves as singer songwriters, meaning that,
you know, there'd been that period in music before the
sixties and even through some of the sixties where the

(28:49):
singers did not write their songs. That was not okay,
that was not going to happen, right, And so probably
if there's a tradition we were feeling like maybe we're
part of in a tiny little way, it was singer songwriters,
people who were performing what they wrote.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's true too and nuts And
as I've looked through my CD case, it doesn't matter
what I say. I like, you know you're it does
tell a lot about you. And most of them in
there are singer songwriters. Most of the bands that I have,
even even like a Tom Petty, which is one of
my favorite ever, well he's a singer songwriter. And he

(29:30):
fought and almost broke up the band because they told him, hey,
you've got to let other guys write, and he's like,
I'm sorry, this is this is what I'm doing. I'm
the singer and the songwriter. So well, that's a good
transition to the next question, which is the coffee house
scene in the nineties. Take us back to. Actually, here's
a good question. Your first after you do that open

(29:51):
mic with Kelly where you thought maybe we've got something here.
What was your first coffee shop coffee house concert as
the bass.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
That's a good question. I I don't remember the name
of it. It was a little place in Palo Alto.
It was downtown. It's not there anymore. I mean, music
kind of got run out of Pale Alto for a
number of different reasons. But it was small enough to
be like a little counter, little deli counter, coffee counter,

(30:27):
and then maybe four or five tables, and I just
remember going in and uh, you know, doing a couple
covers and some originals, and I think we played five
or songs, and I just remember people were really kind
and applauded, and they asked, you know, they were like,

(30:50):
you know, you guys can come back, and so I
think we just felt like, yeah, that felt right, that
felt like it went pretty well, and we got to
keep working on us and it wasn't too long before
we had a friend another friend from Stanford who was
performing in the area, who was performing at a place

(31:11):
in pale Alto that was called at the time Cafe Momartra,
like in you know, in France, and the owner wanted
live music on the weekend, but he wanted us to
play three hour shows. And so it wasn't right after
that because David left by this time, and we were

(31:33):
doing things like playing intervarsity groups, and we were playing
shows at noon on college campuses, and we were doing
wherever we could play. But then after a year or
two we started playing downtown pal Alto, and so that
for us was pretty formative because we had to play

(31:56):
for three hours and that meant like right and learning
covers and it's challenging to play for three hours, and
uh so I think that was very formative. There was
a place in downtown San Francisco. I think it was

(32:17):
called started with an L. What was it called. In
my mind, it's like Leo's or something, but it wasn't it.
But it was the place where the Kingston Trio got
their start, and the owner actually booked us and we
played there for probably a year year and a half,

(32:38):
like once a month, maybe two years, and he kept saying, Hey,
I want to have you guys be my next band
that I break, because I helped break the Kingston Trio
and you guys remind me of them, and I love
what you're doing. And it was funny because we had
one guy that was drunk every time we were there,
and he was so nice and he he would he

(33:00):
listen to us for a while at the bar, but
then after we kept playing there, he started coming up
and singing along, like right in front of us. And
you know, this is a tight place, like we could
barely get the mixer in there, barely get our speakers
in there, and you know, it'd always be foggy and cold,
you know, and this guy would just he started yelling

(33:21):
at the christ they were talking, you know, and he'd
be like, you know, shut the f up, like listen
to these people. And it got to be where we
thought he's gonna fall on us sometimes because you know,
he was just so drunk, but he was so sincere
and so like, you gotta listen to this. And I
mean it was experiences like that that I think kept

(33:42):
us going, kept us coming back.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Wow, Yeah, that's a that's a good one. Uh. And
so let's connect the dots for the audience who doesn't know.
I decided. I went to a BMX race down in
Santa Clara in October of in September of ninety three,
and I met a guy who just turned to me

(34:10):
on the starting gate of the BMX track, just turned
right to me and said, you know, do you know Jesus?
And I said, well, yeah, but you know, we've got
a race to run. And he said, have you ever
heard of Camp Maymack? And the Camp Maymac was, you know,
a mile away from Mount Hermon up in Fountain. Yeah,

(34:32):
And that next summer I took over as the BMX
as the BMX director for the summer and for three
summers in a row. And so when I came to Felton,
it would have been, you know, May of ninety four.
That's when I found the little Mountain Roasters coffee shop,
and that's when I heard about the basics. So tell

(34:53):
me about your experience with Mountain Roasters and Felton.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, So I'm glad you found us there. We had
in college been at Mount Hermon for a number of retreats,
and Kelly and I had sung a number of times
at Mount Hermon. Four different retreats and then I think
did little mini concerts to two of us. Things like
that with with college, the college group that was there.

(35:22):
Nothing that was advertised that people knew about. So as
we started performing more around the Bay area, there were
just some people that were like, hey, one of the
things you ought to do is send your press kit
or whatever over to the Mountain Roasting Company because they have,
you know, concerts and it's a cool place because people

(35:44):
come from that area and they liked to listen. It's
not going to be just people talking like people actually
want to listen. And the owner was like a lot
of owners where they expected us to play and no
one to really listen. But when they saw people coming

(36:05):
because we would put stuff on our mailing list, and
I have to say, Kelly and this woman named Carl
Huffman who did booking with us and sales with us,
they really worked hard, I mean really hard to get
us into a lot of places. And they would basically
start with like, Okay, if you'll just have us and

(36:26):
you can see how many people we bring in, then
if you just have us once, just let us just
give us a try. And a lot of owners were
very nervous and like, I don't know, you know, you
guys might actually run more people off than help and
things like that. But he really fell in love with us,
and just I mean it was it was so great

(36:52):
to be able to play there. And I've met quite
a few people over the years that said, hey, I
saw you there because I was at a camp I was,
you know, whatever camp around the area, and I came
in and started coming regularly to your shows, and that
was just it was a great gift to have people
like yourself coming and appreciating what we were doing.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
And what and the the the little cassette tape that
you would send out at the time, was it just
like five songs or what was it?

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Well? No, I think by that time you said ninety four, right, yeah, yeah.
So by that time we had had will You, which
is our first one, which is on cassette by but
I think that time it was a CD. Then we
had When I Closed My Eyes, which was cassette n CD.
Then we had will You, Sorry, Wait and Glory by

(37:45):
that time, which was a cassette and a CD. And
I say, I mean, what.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
But in your in your press kit that you would
send out just to coffee shops. What what what album
or what group or did you like? I guess what
I mean is did you create a little mix for
coffee shops or or coffee houses.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
No. I mean by that point, we were just sending
out an actual case of one of the records and
we would just help people. Sometimes we'd say two of them,
and we would just tell people listen to these tracks.
And uh. Then you know, we would just talk about
you know, in the press, kid, it would say where
we'd play Baden. You know, we had quotes from people,

(38:27):
We had some quotes from local media, and I think
by ninety four. No, it was later in ninety four
that we bought Haven Road and then even k Fog
started to play one of our songs off Haven Road.
So that really help with you doors.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
Yeah, well, and that's another of my side questions was, yeah,
because Haven Road was I think the first one I
bought on CD. You know, and album covers do make
a difference. I remember because I was working when I
was not at Summer camp. My other job is working
at a records at a tower records knockoff up in

(39:07):
Sonoma called Rainbow Records, and I remember seeing the Haven
Road cover, and you know, from from five feet away,
it looked like it might be like the latest Gin
Blossoms or something. It wasn't. It didn't look like, oh,
they're they're just a coffee house band, or they're just
a Christian band or whatever it was. It was looked like, Okay,

(39:28):
here's a new kind of an alt rock or a
folk rock or indie rock whatever. And it does make
a difference, just the visual, you know.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
And uh, yeah, I appreciate you saying that.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Yeah, oh that's right. Did you did you have any
so we know that a few coffee houses were really
kind to you. What about radio stations.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah, we didn't get much radio airplay, but it was
so amazing when k FOG, which at the time was
like the biggest adult contemporary station in the country, was
willing to play I think they played uh walking in
Heartland for a while, especially on the weekends, and that

(40:15):
was like crazy to us because I think I can't
remember what I was doing. But Kelly had gone in
to meet one of the DJs who was willing to
take our press kit, and she basically walked Kelly into
a room that was like, I don't know, twelve by fifteen.
It was like an office and Kelly said there were

(40:35):
CDs from the floor to her waist, just in piles
around that office. And she looked at Kelly and and
she said, I got these this week, and these are
people that want me to play their stuff. And so
Kelly was like, got it. You know, at least that's
how I remember the story. And so we just thought, well,

(40:59):
that's that. Like know, she was really nice. She's like,
I like your record, but this is what you're up against,
and so it was just like, well, we'll never you know,
we'll ever hear it. So then we just had people
calling us one I think Sunny Morning, going you guys
are on k FOG and it was like what and uh,
I think we had missed it, But people just started

(41:19):
telling us, yeah, I'm hearing you. And so it was
really random. College radio stations would play us, and you know,
it's just we never knew, like, no one was giving
us the heads up. We would just hear later usually
that people heard us.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
And it leads to one of my other side questions
was do you feel looking back now because it's easier
when you look back. Was that moment with k FOG
and with the coffeehouses and with you know, the albums
were coming more regularly. Was that what you would kind
of consider a peek or.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
Yeah, I mean in terms of so we I think
this relates to one of your other questions about success.
I think that's probably I think your last question. But
I one thing I've I've noticed thinking back about that
time over the years is that there was a success

(42:19):
agenda that I think we all felt. And I can't
speak for Drew or Kelly or you know, any of
the other guys, but we did talk about it. I
remember quite a few conversations about the fact that this
needed to become a major record label deal kind of

(42:39):
band like that had to happen for us to feel
like the money, the time, the effort was worth it.
And so we got different deals. We had management deals,
we had other things where people were courting us, and

(42:59):
they just weren't very good deals. They just didn't work
out very well in terms of it wasn't going to
be beneficial to us financially. And when we tried to
get a booking agent, the booking agent would look at
our schedule and then say, can I call you about
how you get all these bookings because I'm a professional
booking agent and I can't get my people signed people

(43:22):
I can't get them in the places you're playing. And
so while that was a great compliment to Carlin and
to Kelly and their hard work, it was not affirming
of this success vision that we had. It felt like,
when is someone going to do this stuff for us?
And so by the time we got through ninety four,
then ninety five and into ninety six, we were so

(43:46):
tired because we had been hauling gear all from from
Seattle to San Diego, you know, regularly, and you know,
it was exhausting, and I think we just kept thinking, Gosh,
one of these things has to be the break that
gives us a chance to have some other people help us,

(44:08):
so we're not calling our own speakers and wrapping our
own cables every night.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
And where where were you living at the time, In
Palo Alto or in Bay Area somewhere?

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (44:19):
So, and then a kind of follow up to that
question is was there any you know, almost almost meetings
with you know, with the the agent that you wanted
or the or the producer that you were you were
you knew, was was that another concert? And you almost

(44:39):
missed him or her. Was there any of those moments
that that kind of slipped through or Well?

Speaker 2 (44:46):
It was weird because I think I mentioned to you
when we were chatting before this, that we we were
in this weird in between where we were we considered
too Christian by some secular or mainstream labels, and then
we were considered not Christian enough for kind of national

(45:08):
Christian labels. So there was a time even with will You,
where someone gave are some songs from will You. It
actually was demo is like a demo before will You
was finalized to A and M Records in LA. And
so a guy who was a talent scout for A
and M said, come on down and we'll talk. So

(45:29):
we got in the car, we drove to LA and
we got there and I just remember this big cutout
in the hallway of A and M Records. It was
right in Hollywood, in the they were housed at the time,
and the old Charlie Chaplin CEOs right there in Hollywood,
And I remember Janet Jackson standing there as a life

(45:50):
sized cutout trying to hand me her latest video. And
I just remember, like, wow, this is A and M Records.
It's like, so we walked in and met with them,
and he's like, you know, you guys are really talented.
I just you know, you're not what A ANDM needs,
But let me pass you along to what at that
time was a division of Muhr Records, and it was

(46:12):
being distributed by an M. So it was like who
handled Amy Grant stuff at the time. But you know,
she was having some bigger hits like Baby Baby and
some of that stuff, and so A and M had
taken over her distribution even though she had been a
part of Muhr Records, which was a part of Word Records,
but it was their LA division. And so there was

(46:33):
a producer and an A and R guy, which talent
scout guy named Dan Postema, who was working for Murr
at the time, but he was trying to he had
the money together to start a label of people that
were Christians but were not overtly kind of Christian music.
And so we had several conversations for a few months

(46:53):
where after that meeting at A and M where he said,
I'm going to do the label. I'm signing band, I'm
signing Buddy and Julie Miller, who went on to win
Grammys and do all kinds of stuff. Buddy Miller is
hugely famous, and his wife Julie wrote a ton of
songs and anyway, he's like, I'm signing them, and then

(47:14):
I'm signing the basics. The two of you are gonna
be my my first push. And so we were like,
oh my gosh, this is our first demo, our first record,
Like this is going somewhere and uh he called No.
We had to call him because we hadn't heard from
him in a couple of weeks. And he said, you know,
we'd just got bought by Thomas Nelson, the Bible publisher,

(47:36):
and they're killing Murr. They're cutting the whole project. They
don't they think LA is too secular. It's all you know,
crazy people out there. We want everyone to come back
to LA. So he's like, I barely have a job.
I don't have any budget. I had to let Buddy
and Julie go. And it was great for them. Buddy
and Julie went on and signed with the San Francisco
label and won Grammys and you know, did all that stuff,

(47:58):
and for us it just didn't work out that way.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Yeah. So that so that your your your your what
if moment? Came really early actually.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
And then we had more. Yeah, we had more after that.
I remember being in la I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Ahad no, no, no, no, yeah, more stories.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
Oh, just just one more. I remember we were sitting
that we played to show a guy who was a
manager for uh, the famous singer Pat Boon. You know,
Debbie Boone's father who had had all those hits in
the Elvis era, and at that time in the nineties,
they I don't know if you remember this, but they
put out a record of him singing heavy metal lyrics

(48:42):
as Pat Boon, right, so he this this manager had
done that project, and I remember sitting outside with him.
I don't remember his name, but he had like, you know,
the black turtleneck and he was kind of real intimidating,
you know, and and he was trying to tell me like,
you know, this is what we're gonna do with your band,
and we're gonna change all these things. We're gonna mess

(49:03):
all this, you know, we're gonna mess out with it
like all those guys wanted to do, which was always
like you know, either you're gonna be the singer, or
she's gonna be the singer, or we're gonna bring in
different players. You know, it's like they always do with bands,
and you know, I was like, so, well, this is
what we do. And I was like, this is what
we want to do, and this is what we've worked

(49:24):
on for years, so you know, this is what we do.
You know, you can either appreciate what we're doing or not.
But like, I'm not wearing a short skirt and Kelly's
not wearing a short skirt, and so you know, it's
like if whatever you want, like that's not what if
you didn't like what we're doing tonight? And then he
basically almost he kind of called me a liar in
terms of like saying, you can't be playing as many

(49:46):
shows as you're playing and stuff like that, like it's
just impossible. And it was just like okay, bye, And
so you know, it's one of those things where he's
there in the crowd, we knew he's there, We're all excited.
We didn't like Pat, but yeah, it's like whatever, this
is gonna bossibly be another chance. And then it just
was like nah. And so yeah, it was just that

(50:08):
sort of thing would feel so close and then and
then it wouldn't happen.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Yeah, and yet and yet the meaningful times, you know,
I'm sure there were many at you know, eleven o'clock
at night at the Felton Coffeehouse where you know, where
the lights are down and you guys, you know, you
get into your final song and it's and it's one
of the one of the heavier ones or something, and

(50:36):
you can hear everyone's just a pin drop. I don't know,
I can't help but thinking that those are priceless memories.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
Oh, no, that they are. And that's why I you know,
if if I speak to your last question about success,
uh here, I don't want to get out of order,
but since you brought it up, I would say, yeah,
I would say that that's the biggest thing I learned
was that once we weren't the basics anymore. Well, Kelly

(51:04):
and I did a couple of records just the two
of us when we moved to North Carolina, but we
didn't tour on those records, and people didn't really get
a chance to come out to shows. And what I
realized as I was i'd been producing other bands since
about ninety six or seven. I'd been starting to work
with some people, and I just realized that we had

(51:29):
had great bands we had had people who loved our music.
I mean, I remember meeting a guy who said, I
just got back from backpacking around the world and I
was in Africa for a lot of the time, and
I only had two CDs, and when I closed my eyes,
was one of them. And I just want you to

(51:50):
know that, like I was actually the guy stuck on
the desert island and I took you one of your
CDs as one of two that we could listen to.
And so I know that that it's it's colloquial, it's
just one guy, but I remember thinking, hey, that's not
actually small. That's a big deal that it mattered enough
to you to want to have that as one of

(52:12):
your only things to remember home and to remember what
mattered to you. And as I started talking to other musicians,
and as I worked with other musicians, I began to
realize how fortunate we were that people like yourself came
and supported what we did did and liked it, and
some the land actually knew the lyrics, and I mean

(52:37):
it was a great gift.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Yeah, yeah, and I and probably well, if if you
do get a chance to watch the BMX movie that
I made, it's on Amazon. It's called thirty Bikes. There's
some similarities there, and you'll you'll see when you watch
I look forward to that A tiny company that. Yeah,

(53:01):
I just went back on Amazon last week. It was
off for a few months. I had my distributor went bankrupt.
There's all the normal Hollywood stuff, you know, right, So
now I'm my own distributor. But it's back on Amazon.
But you'll you'll laugh at the similarities as far as
the impact that it had on people, but it was
a small amount of people, so and yeah, And then

(53:26):
I guess the second part of that question is, you know,
everyone always loves to ask like, well, what would you
tell the younger you? But a related question is what
did success mean to you in nineteen ninety or ninety two,
ninety four, whatever. What did success mean to you then?
And what does it mean to you now? Not how

(53:48):
do you look back at your time, but what does
it mean to you right this moment.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
Yeah. One of the things that over the years has
been helpful was there as an engineer that mixed Wait
and Glory and our part most of it and Glory,
and then he mixed Haven Road. And he was a
Nashville engineer named Russ Long and he worked along a
number of years with Steve Taylor and Uh, they worked

(54:17):
together on things like The Newsboys and things like that,
and we didn't really fit with the music that they
worked on. But we had played a show with an
artist named Kim Hill and he was the sound guy
for her that night, and so we got to know
him because they were playing through our sound system. And
so then he came out and mixed some stuff for us,

(54:37):
and then for Haven Road we went to Nashville. They mixed,
we mixed at his studio and one of the things
he said to us along the way was, I don't
care who I've worked with. None of you guys ever
saw enough records. And he said, I don't care if
you have platinum records and millions of sold or whether

(54:58):
it's you guys playing in coffee. Hou says, none of
you have sold enough records. And I think what couldn't
quite stand at the time was he was saying, you
need to appreciate where you are. And I think that's
probably what I would say about what I think about

(55:21):
success now is have I been able to work on
my craft? Yeah? I mean now I'm fifty eight and
I've been able to work on my craft for you know,
nearly forty years. Well, I mean I was actually writing
songs before that. So I've been writing songs and working

(55:41):
in the studio for more than forty years, and I've
had a chance to connect with and help and come
alongside so many people. And it was that experience of
a lot of those heartaches and a lot of those
difficult studio experiences and difficult band experiences with personnel changes

(56:04):
and things like that that have given me, I would say,
a chance to actually partner and even I would say
mentor some people. Uh, And at that time we talked
constantly about wishing we had a mentor and just not
feeling like we could find one.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Yeah. Sometimes when you're kind of blazing your own trail, mentors,
mentors are the last things that show up, you know,
it seems like yeah. Yeah, So so basically what you're
doing now is is producing music full time?

Speaker 2 (56:44):
Or Yeah. I do a mixture of things, like a
lot of us. I teach lessons, I produce. I still
write and make my own records which are out you know,
on Amazon and Spotify and you know, stuff like that,
just under my name, under Wade Baynam uh band camp

(57:06):
is uh, there's Wadebnam dot bandcamp dot com is a
site I like because I get to write more about
what I'm doing and why I've put out the music
I've put out. And my wife Denise, I've been remarried
for seventeen years. Denise is a school teacher but also
a photographer, and she's done a lot of work with

(57:26):
graphic work on that. She's also a partner in terms
of UH encouragement in terms of writing and talking about
ideas and album cuts and things like that. So that's
been a huge gift. But I I I think because

(57:47):
Denise is a teacher and it's been a lifelong teacher,
that's encouraged me to do some of the music teaching
I do. It's encouraged me to do some of the
producing I've done. Where you know, when you do studio work,
one of the times I realized I didn't want to
do full time studio work because it meant that you

(58:08):
had to do anything that walked in the door. So
that meant someone wants to read a poem, or someone
wants to do a flute recital, and that's also great,
and I've done all that and I don't knock that.
I mean, I'm glad I could do that, but it
was it was getting tiresome to do just that. So
it was I wanted more interaction with people. So that's
why I've loved teaching lessons. I've loved I've DoD sound consulting.

(58:29):
There was a seven year period about where I was
a pastor in the area where I was basically a
pastor for arts and worship, and I brought in professional
musicians to play with me all the time, and we
would tell their story, talk about their music. We then
would bring in some you know, painters, we'd bring in
some poets, we'd bring some things like that, and so

(58:52):
like that felt like I got a chance to sort
of teach a congregation about the life of an artist,
and they wanted me to do that, and I felt
like that was a gift to do that. So it's
always been around this thing of the song and the
message and how can I bring music to people in

(59:15):
a way where they feel like it's enriched their lives somehow,
Because that's still fundamental to me, is that music I had.
There's a lot of difficulty in my family growing up,
a lot of internal conflict stuff and music was one
of the things that helped me feel less. Hm hm.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
Yeah, well there's a lot there. Did you do you
have siblings?

Speaker 2 (59:46):
I have three younger siblings.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
Three younger siblings. Wow, okay, okay, well I'm almost done
with my questions, but I was gonna ask you. You've
You've answered a few of them just naturally, which is
I actually better as I can check them up. So
the best place people can go is Wadebanam dot bandcamp
dot com, and they can find your basics to now.

(01:00:10):
And then a few of the basics albums are on
Spotify and Apple and all the usual.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Yeah, right, band Camp is just my personal stuff. There's
no basic stuff on there, so basic stuff is going
to be more on Amazon and a couple of things
like that like that. I can't remember. I know the
Grow record from two thousand and four or five two
thousand and four is on in streaming, It's on some

(01:00:38):
of the streaming sites. And then I can't remember about
Cosmic neighborhood. But then in terms of my stuff, yes,
it's all there, and it's been the last fourteen or
fifteen years of my stuff is up there. Yeah okay,
and then like I said, it's also on Spotify and

(01:00:59):
Amazon and now Music. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
Yeah, and you did mention. One of my questions from
the very beginning actually was you did mention early on
in your coffeehouse session session sessions you did covers, but
yet none of the basics albums have a cover on them,
if I'm correct. No, So what's if you could go
back in time and add a cover. What's what's one

(01:01:23):
cover that you think you guys just nailed and you
wish you could you wish would have been on an album,
or we could just think you guys played it to
practice or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Oh No, we we played covers in shows quite a bit.
We just didn't put them on records, Okay, and we didn't.
We we did on the Christmas record, which is called
Canticle of the Turning, we put some covers on that,
but we we Let's see, I would say a signature

(01:01:55):
one for us. We did Closer to Find that Indigo
Girls song, and we all also did a song by
Sean Sean Colvin who is an artist, a Grammy winner
that we loved and we I I loved her producer,
John Leventhal. I thought his production was incredible and he's

(01:02:15):
married to Roseanne Cash now Johnny Cash's daughter, but he's
always been amazing. And she had a song record from
eighty nine and the song was called Diamond in the
Rough and we did a cover of that that I
really like. Yeah, we also did uh Tom Petty song,

(01:02:36):
but we did the Linda Ronstett version. We did that
cover a lot. Was it called oh the waiting, Waiting
is the hardest part.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Oh the waiting is the hardest part.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Yeah, you know, And so we did that song.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Yeah, one of my favorite Petty songs.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we did quite a few covers,
but just didn't put them on records. Then, when I
worked for this church, part of my job was to
try to introduce them to music. So one of the
things that I did was bring music that was considered
secular but that thematically fit with what our conversation topic

(01:03:16):
was that week in church. And so that's part of
why I worked with studio players is they had to
learn material like on the spot in fifteen twenty minutes
and then present it. So we played a ton of
covers and so then when I started putting out records
of my own, a lot of people had asked me
for those covers, so I put more covers on my
stuff because of how many I'd done in those years

(01:03:39):
working for the church.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
Oh right, right, right, yeah, let me. I want to
read these. I should have had these already written out
I but I did want to read you the lyrics
real quick to the since I have the Roger Miller
shirt and this is actually a good way to wrap up.

(01:04:02):
Oh if so, uh, if I if I do once
I edit this, if I do an outro, what what
song do you want me to go out to? I'm
I'm thinking of of a classic like It's all right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Or sure, I mean, yeah, it's all right was written
by we oftentimes ended shows. But it's all right And
it was written by a guy who had been a
producer and a guy who recorded us on will You
When I Close My Eyes and Wait and Glory and
his name was Tom Lulo l I l l O.
And Tom wrote okay, Tom wrote it's all right, and

(01:04:40):
so yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Well the other oh that's right, okay, Sorry, this is
the last question. I promise I you know, because I
have made a few documentary films and one of the
things I love to do is if I'm driving and
I get some new music or you know, an indie
band or something. Uh, sometimes it's at a coffee house
even still, and I grabbed the CD and I and

(01:05:03):
I'm thinking of where it could fit into a movie.
And and there are a couple of your songs. Were
there any of your songs that you thought would have
been good for a movie? I'm thinking of a couple.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Well, interestingly, we did. We wrote several songs for a
short film that premiered at the First Look Festival in
la because a USC film student had gone to Stanford
and really liked our stuff. And so those songs ended
up on the Cosmic Neighborhood record. But one of them
was called rain one was called Nevada Sky, one is

(01:05:38):
called what was the other? See? I think there were four,
I'd have to look back.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
That was the one that Leaving Seattle was the one
that when I first heard that, I was like, Oh,
come on, that's that's that belongs in a movie. Like
there's a there's a character, you know, Yeah, there's an
old Chevy Nova and there's a there's a rainy window
and there's a reflection on her face, like the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
Yeah, so interesting that you say that because at that
time we had just moved to North Carolina and we
had our old grumer, Bobby Medcalf, playing some of the songs.
But then we had new songs that didn't have drums,
and so we had a guy who was from this
area who had gone to North Carolina Central University. Their
music program is amazing, and his name was Eag Hamden,

(01:06:26):
and he came and I'd never worked with him, but
a friend had worked with him, and he played the songs,
a number of the songs on a cosmic neighborhood. And
that was his comment about some of our songs was like,
these sound like movie soundtracks.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's yeah, that's interesting. What's the short
film call? Do you remember?

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
I think it was called fire.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Fire Okay, okay, So this is I just love these lyrics.
This is called where Have all the Average People Gone?
By Roger Miller, and I just think you'll relate. So
it says, the people in the city call me country
because of how I walk and talk and smile. But
I don't mind them laughing in the city, but the

(01:07:16):
country folks they all think I'm cidified. The fighting men
they say that I'm a coward because I never push
no one around, But general people call me troublemaker because
I'll always fight and stand my ground. Funny, I don't fit.
Where have all the average people gone? Some pious people

(01:07:36):
point and call me sinner because to them, I've never
seen the light. Other folks think of me as a preacher.
But really I'm just doing what I think is right.
The wealthy people think that I am a hobo, lean
and hungry writing mournful songs, and the poor poor people

(01:07:56):
think I am a rich man. But really I'm just
trying to get along. It's funny, I don't fit. Tell
me where have all the average people gone?

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
I just think it's really yeah, yeah, yeah. And I
think as we get through life, we find that there
are a lot more of us in the in between
place than we gave each other credit and grace for

(01:08:27):
when we were growing up. You know, we all wanted
to be well, like like the producer said, there's never
enough records sold, you know, and if you if you
have a if you have a big house, well then
you also have big security. And then you also have
big anxiety at night, and you have a big landscaping
bill and whatever so everything comes with a cost. And

(01:08:50):
I think if I was going to tell the younger me,
I would probably say the same thing, that this life
is a gift, whether it lasts ten years or one hundred,
and you better love what you're doing today because there's
no guarantee what's going to happen. And the thing that
you thought you were seeking after, once you get it

(01:09:11):
number one, it might disappear out of your hands. It
might just disappear. But also you might get it and go, wow,
why was I chasing this so hard?

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
You know, I completely agree, And I think that ability
to say in my prayers, you know, kind of Jesus's
prayer in the gardener, gusemine, not my will. I actually
I don't know how this is gonna work. I don't

(01:09:42):
even want to do it, but your will. And I
think it's way easier to say that word, hey, your will.
But I do think will has had a lot to
do with my journey, because there was a part of
my journey where I would have said I thought I
wanted to follow God. I didn't. I didn't realize how
loud my will was in that. And I don't beat

(01:10:06):
up on myself for that. In a sense that I
didn't understand that. But I think in terms of saying,
my life is a gift from you guy, and so
what what would you have for me that has been
a way to more freedom than I used to experience.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
Well, that's a great way to end, Wade, work it
out with fear and trembling.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
Right, and amen to that way. Fear and trembling.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
That's right, that's right. But that's all we're called to
is to work, work on it, not to get to
the end of.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
It, just to work just a yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
That's right. Speak well, Wade, Thank you very much for
the audience. I will put all the links in the
in the notes, and I may even put an image
or two on the screen that I wasn't able to
put during this an image of me with the with
the long tom petty hair that I had when I
first saw because I had long hair. And then I'll

(01:11:10):
put a picture of Haven Road or the picture of
that you guys back in the day. I think I
saw you at Ponderosa Lodge at Mount Herman, and I
may have been a vocal I may have been a
vocal vocal fan at that age of my life.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
So thank you, thank you very much, and thank you
so much for taking the time and the effort to
talk about this stuff and to remember and to be
willing to remember with me.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
You're welcome. I hope more people find your music, and
I'm glad we got a chance to meet. And it's
very possible. I'll be traveling through North Carolina and I
will look you up.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, shoot me an email, look
me up, let me know we can. I'd love to
meet for coffee or whatever if you come through.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
Yeah yeah, all right, Wade.

Speaker 2 (01:11:56):
Thanks thanks a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
This at the end of five great questions with away bait.
This is much more than just the basics. And yes,
I just made that one up.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
All right.

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):
I feel not too walking in hard.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
Well.

Speaker 4 (01:12:25):
I was holding out on Tuesday, you know, Wednesday.

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):
Was feeling all right. On Thursday. I felt all the.

Speaker 3 (01:12:35):
Cracks giving away and my.

Speaker 5 (01:12:37):
Anger blue Friday night, but the anger gave way to
an ominous in me. It's generally safer than Fridays because
the look in the.

Speaker 4 (01:12:50):
Mirror and know that I'm scared or hurts.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
You know that in light.

Speaker 3 (01:12:58):
Walking in heart down the same street walking can fully.

Speaker 5 (01:13:18):
Label my friends and me with an accent our society's
problems today.

Speaker 3 (01:13:25):
See, we don't do enough or believe in.

Speaker 5 (01:13:28):
Our work, and have nothing of value to say.

Speaker 3 (01:13:33):
Well, I'm no friends of man who.

Speaker 6 (01:13:36):
Speaking of all right, and we all have songs to say.

Speaker 4 (01:13:41):
But to get back to where the story begins, I
can think more than we.

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
Can give away. Walking in our land.

Speaker 5 (01:13:55):
Down the same street, walking.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):
Her little fly, So a battle ground lies in our hearts,

(01:14:33):
in our minds.

Speaker 4 (01:14:34):
The truth can be so hard too, But we cannot
let all of.

Speaker 6 (01:14:40):
Our wound in the truth lives in our blood and unble,
walking in heart, down the same streets, Londing

Speaker 3 (01:15:02):
Kolone