May 19, 2025 • 56 mins
The band Firefall scored huge hits with “You Are The Woman,” “Just Remember I Love You,” “Strange Way,” + “Cinderella.” I speak with original member Jock Bartley about their major success + latest album, “Friends & Family 2,” which features their own takes on Fleetwood Mac, the Beach Boys, Eddie Money, Kenny Loggins + more! Join us we go down music's Memory Lane.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
How about now I can hear you? Can you see me?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I can't see you.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
You at hm hmm.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I wonder what I have to do.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Are you on an iPhone?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I am.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
There's probably a setting somewhere there if you look at
the bottom of your say.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Wait a minute, yeah, here we go. Oh shit, you.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Can turn on video and now it's muted. I see
that it's muted. If you had audio again, if you
click that, maybe will unmute you. And if you click video,
(01:03):
it should bring your camera up. It's always at the
bottom left of your.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
On.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Zoom over there and we'll admit you again.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Here, okay, so mute start video?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Oh god, start video?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
We yeah that, but it left in about one second.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yep, I saw you for a second. There you go.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
There you go. Hey, modern technology, God, did you just
get that? Did you upgrade to another phone? Is no,
because that always happens every time you get a new phone.
It's like they move something somewhere else. It's always it's
always tough to try to find things right.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
So I'm thinking I may not want to hold my
phone for the whole time.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yeah, if you want to set it in a comfortable place,
that's fine. Well, if you give me too much headroom,
I could always put your font right over your head.
I do that a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Can you put it on its side?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Uh? Sure?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
So we get sixteen by nine?
Speaker 3 (02:17):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
You know what, I'll probably just have to hold it.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
And people have done that too in the past. That's fine. Yeah,
that's cool. That's cool. How are you doing this morning?
You're over in Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I'm in Westminster in Denver, which is close to Boulder,
but not in Boulder.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Very good, very good.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
How is it.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Where are you at?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Oh, okay, it's.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
A nice time of year. It's not too bad. We
got through some really horrific storms. They were saying, oh,
these twisters were headed towards us, and thankfully the twisters
didn't come this far over. But it's already a rocky spring.
Where ready to go into another drought?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
I think?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
So we we can't get wildfires like you do out west.
It's maybe not as bad, but you know, they can
contain them a little bit quicker. But wow, you've had
some doozies out there in Colorado all the way to
California more recently.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, and actually, you know, Colorado has had the mildest
winter I pretty much ever. Remember we had you know,
you know, many many weeks of sixty five degrees and
you know the storms will form all over the Rockies
and give us a little rain or a little bit
(03:39):
of snow and then move to Kansas and have blizzard conditions.
So we've been pretty lucky.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah, so ski season wasn't as good up that way
they had it.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Oh no, I mean ski season's great. You know, they
have one hundred and eighty inches or something. But we
down here in Denver have then had a real mild deal. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, you get up into the mountains, I'm sure so Breckinridge,
all those ski resorts, it must be must be good,
good stuff out there and beautiful out that way.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Well, I'm glad we're on together, Bob.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, it's always it's fun to catch up
with you. I had you on a little while ago
when your Friends and Family project first took off. How
it was that a year or two ago?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Now I'm losing track.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
It was closer to two years. Yeah, And so are
we are we starting now?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Oh yeah, we're going, We're going.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah that was two years ago. And did really pretty
well for us last year, and it went so well
getting some attention that my record label and manager said,
let's do friends and family too. So I've just now
(04:58):
a few months ago finished a whole new record with
a whole new set of twelve songs under the same concept,
which was Firefall. The original Firefall guys played in other
famous bands like The Birds and the Flying Breeder Brothers
and Spirit and Jojo Gunn and Graham Parsons and Emmy
(05:20):
Lou Harrison my case, and we expanded that concept to
do Back in the nineteen seventy six when our first
album came out, we got to tour with just about
all the top bands in the you know in America,
including the Doobie Brothers and Fleetwood Mac and Lenyard, Skinnyard
(05:42):
and Loggins and Messina. So we got a whole new
album coming out.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
What was that like opening up for like Fleetwood Mac.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
I always was like you were that were the top
of their game, that rumors tours like electrac.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Well, yeah, was totally electric. And you know when we
started opening for Fleetwood Mac, our first gigs were like
in either sold out stadiums of sixty to seventy thousand
people or sold out NBA basketball arenas of twenty thousand people.
(06:23):
And you know, one of the reasons Fleetwood Mac and
other big bands like Firefall as an opener was because
we had the hits. We were a good band that
had come from being a club band, so we could
kind of get on stage and play without a sound
check and we could play a really good forty minute
(06:44):
set or whatever it was before they came on, So
we got to play with just about everybody, which was unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, that'd be so inspirational.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
And I know Mick Fleetwood was, and I think we
talked about this last time, but mc fleetwood was just
so insta mental in your growth as as Firefall was
just you know, getting bigger and bigger. It must have
been fascinating to have him involved in really kind of
mentoring you in a way.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Well, he mentored us for about two weeks.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
That's all you did, really, uh, And then hey.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
If you're you know, mixed Leewood in the biggest band
in the world, two weeks is great.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
He We toured with them a lot during the Wide
album for them, and then into rumors we were one
of their main opening acts of choice. And uh, then
he and Limited Management decided to want they wanted to
(07:47):
be our manager, and so they actually became our manager
and went and negotiated some stuff with Atlantic Records and
came home with the really big check and our lawyer
out in mixed mansion out in bel Air, we had
a really big meeting and though we were we were
(08:10):
staring at a five hundred thousand dollars check made out
to us. Our lawyer told us, you know, this contract
is kind of worse than the one that we are
getting out of. And our business manager, kind of a
crooked guy, said, out of five hundred grand, we're gonna
(08:30):
pay each guy in the band five thousand dollars. And
we went, what you're gonna pay a thirty grand out
of five hundred grand. We're a band, dammit, you know.
So we ended up not going with Mick.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
You hear these stories, it's like amazing. It's like these
people have been on the radio. You think, oh my gosh,
they're this is a cash cow. They're doing so great.
But got you hear about these horrible management deals and
just sleazy people in the business, just right profiting off
of it.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Right. Well, you know, so many artists and bands got
totally screwed by their managers or combination managers slash agents
slash record label. That that was kind of the norm
(09:25):
for a while. And I mean when you go back
and you know, look into like Billy Joel's you know
early days. You know he had something like three or
four gold records and didn't see a penny. Yeah, you know,
he made he made his money on the road, but
where he should have been making, you know, lots and
(09:48):
lots of money for having ten songs on an album
or something, totally got screwed. Same thing with lead singer
of Creeden's clear Water. You know, it's like, yeah, John Fogerty,
I mean, you know, so firefog got screwed contractually. And
(10:12):
you know it was interesting because the band, I mean,
our first album came out and as I probably told
you last time it was said, I still kind of
have trouble believing this, but we heard from very good
sources that Firefall's first album in nineteen seventy six went
(10:34):
gold faster than any album had that had on Atlantic
Records had ever done. And when you think about it,
you had led Zeppelin on Atlantic Records, you had Aretha Franklin,
you had the Rolling Stones, You're going, nah, I don't
believe that. But you know they said we went we
went gold faster than any other album. And uh, you know,
(10:59):
but the five the six guys in the band never
made any artist royalties because Atlantic Records kept us in
the red all the time, and the songwriters made royalties,
but none of the rest of us did. So you know,
it was a screwy kind of thing, but you know
that's how the business was.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, it's the songwriters. If you want to get into it,
you give advice to somebody getting into it. It's get
those publishing rights, and you know, you're a member of
the band. No, it's not going to be forever. It's
just you know, you feel like you're part of a
family and everything. But it's still a business.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
You know.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
When you're talking about Billy Joel, I mean he's had
members of the band. You know, could have been there
twenty thirty years. But at some point it does come
to an end. And if you didn't get those songwriting
publishing credits, then it gets into a financial, you know,
really tough situation. So yeah, it's really tough.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
And you know, I don't really understand how it works today,
writers and publishers aren't really making any money, you know,
And and you think about Nashville and all the people
goes to Nashville to write country songs and have a
hit hit record. It's like it's it's totally changed and
(12:17):
the artist and the writer are getting screwed again. And
you know, my only thing that I'm really thankful for
is that I ended up became becoming the controller and
owner of the name Firefall and the band, and so
you know, I get a call the shots when we
(12:38):
go out on the road or are we going to
do this or not that you know. But publishing has
taken a noseedy for songwriters, and somebody's making money. I
don't know who it is.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, it's probably big tech these days.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
The way streaming works like you don't even get like
a haypenny for every play. It's like nothing. And yeah,
now it's it's the guys at the top who are
running these places. You know, your Apple, Spotify's Amazon Music.
It's just, you know, it's such a different thing. But
it's nice to have the convenience of being able to play, Hey,
I could play the first fire or Fall album anywhere
(13:12):
I want, which is unheard of back in the day.
So yeah, totally changed. And you know, there's so much
talent up there out there, and it's it's it's fantastic.
But the thing is now everybody could do it. Everybody
gets on you know, it's just about anybody can get
on Spotify. So it's cluttered.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
It's cluttered, and you know a lot of new music
that's being put out there that's cluttering, you know, the
whole everything is uh, some of it's not very good.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
So I know that I am just so fortunate and
happy that my band Firefall played a small role in
the in the nineteen seven which was one of the
most amazing and greatest decades for new music, you know,
(14:08):
And I attribute that actually to you know, back in
the day, if you had songs of your own and
a singer that sounded a good singing them record labels
would sign you, you know, and they would put out
your album and see if it went and if they
really liked it, you know, they'd push it. And so
(14:33):
many bands, you know, the Eagles, Dan Fogelberg, Little River Band, Firefall,
you know, Logins of Messina, Kenny loggins. We all had
really good songs and radio friendly type of stuff and
consequently were able to get on the radio. You know.
But then in the eighties, record labels started, you know,
(14:59):
feeling the power, and they wanted to come in and
be there when you rehearsed for your new album, and
they'd sit there in the corner. Happened to us one
or two times, sit there in the corner with some
record guy, you know, listening to your rehearsal saying I
don't think this is a hit. You got anything else,
And they wanted to pick songs or give you songs
(15:21):
to play or not just let the band be who
the band was. And from the eighties on it got
a lot weirder.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
How creatively stifling that is. I couldn't you got your
anarch guys sitting in there and you know they know
what hits certainly, but like they're telling you what to do, right,
it's oh my gosh, yeah, never tell it artists. I
think David Bowie spoke to this too as well. It's
like you're you're you're not real, You're not authentic. You
know where it really works. It's like what you want
(15:52):
to do, how you want to explore and expand your career.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Right David Boy got told he wasn't a fantic.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
It's like, yeah, well that's why he went off into
the projects he really wanted to do. And it's like,
don't sit there and they like tell somebody what to
do and tell them how to put the album together.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
But yeah, I remember.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
I remember because we were in Boulder, Colorado, and some
big wig from Atlantic Records called our managers said, yeah,
we're going to send out our an R guy. When
are you guys rehearsing? You know, Oh, well we're rehearsing
next Monday and Tuesday. And sure enough, at Rick Roberts's
(16:36):
house there they're knock on the door and there's an
Atlantic Records guy. And I remember very distinctly because Rick
Roberts wrote pretty much all of our hits. Our other
singer songwriter, Larry Burnett had Cinderella and had a lot
of great songs, but not commercial like Rick did, and uh,
(16:56):
you know, had the A and R guy from Atlantic
Records tell oh, Rick, I don't hear a hit, you
got anything else? And Ricky's going, how about this one?
And he play another song and the guy, no, you
got anything else, and this was a record guy, and
here we are trying to make our second or third record.
It was like, oh my my god. That was It
was terrible.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, and toxic.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
I mean, how do you get inspired when you're trying
to rehearse a record and they're in the room saying, yeah,
I'm not hearing a single here, it's gotta be just crushing.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
They weren't there. They played that role for a little while.
Excuse me. Yeah, but when it came time to recording
the album, nobody was there from the label. And it
was a good thing too, because for me, the lead
guitar player, when I was out in the you know,
(17:49):
the recording room playing solos on songs, you know, some
of which I knew what basically I wanted to play,
and other songs just wing it and just play what
felt good at the moment, there wasn't a guy from
the label saying, you know, that guitar solo kind of
wasn't what we're hearing. Can you try something else? You know,
(18:10):
I didn't have to go through that.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
That's good.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
So in there saying hey, we need some saxophone. That's
pretty big these days.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah, that's right. How about a little flute here.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Okay, yeah, very big back then.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
You had Jethrotola up in your time too as well.
So like when you started, like, did Atlantic say, hey,
I want three albums in the next three years? How
did that work? What did they contract you to? When
you first were on with Atlantic.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
We had a seven album deal and we owed Atlantic
Records one album a year. And then when things kind
of got weird and we ended up in our manager lottery,
which we had pretty much once a year, when our
(19:02):
third manager lottery came around, we need a new manager,
and we picked Mick Fleetwood. He went in and stopped
the presses on a record that we weren't really that
happy about, but you know, the record label said, oh no,
it's great, you know, and everything. And Mick Fleetwood went
(19:23):
to a meeting with all the big wigs of Atlantic
in New York and said, I represent Firefall now, and
we want to stop the presses, you know. And we
stopped the presses and got to redo and add a
few songs and you know, and made the record a
lot better. So when it came out and went gold
real quick, which it probably would not have done had
(19:46):
we left it originally, how it was.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
What one song.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Became a hit and you didn't think was going to
become ahead out of your entire catalog.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Uh uh. I don't really have an answer for that,
because I thought that we'd have some big songs off
our first album. We were about seventy five percent of
the way done recording our first album and Rick Roberts
(20:24):
came in one day and said, I just wrote a
new song, which was You Are the Woman, and we
all listened to it and went, oh poppy, poppy, kind
of yoh okay, and you know, and we kind of
all knew, and the and the producer knew right away
that's the first single, you know. And it ended up
(20:46):
not being the first single because nobody had heard the
Firefall yet. So they put out Living Ain't Living as
the first single to introduce the name Firefall to Billboard
and the public, and you know, Living a Living got
into the top forty is a brand new band, and
then they put You Are the Woman out and it
(21:06):
was in the top ten or the top twenty for
like six months and got to number three on the
Billboard charts, and then suddenly the rock band from Boulder,
Firefall is really a poppy, light rock band, you know,
with You Are the Woman and after You Are the
Woman was such a big hit. Atlantic Records, had they
(21:30):
had their way, they probably wanted ten You Are the
Woman's on an album exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah, that's that worked. I mean you see this in
the movie industry too. That's why we have sequels. That's
why we have you know, the Hey, if it worked,
and now we can keep doing this, and so then
you're gonna get a pigeonholed. Oh yeah, you're the guys
we always hear in the Dentis office. That's really light rock.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
You know, that's that's right, light rock. And you know what,
without our light rock hits like you Are the Woman
and just remember I Love you. You know, we wouldn't have
been nearly as big as we ended up being. But
when people who only listened at that time to AM radio,
you know, they thought Firefall was You are the Woman,
(22:13):
that's it. And you know, here we were playing Mexico
and Cinderella and all these other great songs. So it's
it's funny and I ain't complaining because here I am
in my seventies still doing this. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Absolutely, it's you know, like they always say, the cliche,
the soundtrack of People's Lives. But did you see that
yacht rock documentary, because you were you were kind of
around that time, but they didn't really seem to like
throw you into the rock yacht rock.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
No, I didn't see the documentary. I've seen on Facebook,
you know, Michael McDonald talking about how how great it
turned out and stuff, and no. But you know, it's
funny because so many people in the public, and many
(23:07):
radio and or entertainment people have to have genres. What
genre are you? Are you you rock? Are you soft rock?
It's like, what's you know some of that intertwines. Are
you heavy metal? Or are you you know Americana? It's
like they want to they want a pigeonhole you name you,
(23:28):
And that's okay, you know, I see the logic in that.
But when you get pigeonholed for just one single off
off an album, and you know, for many years we
fought being the lightest of light rock bands.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Gosh, and then we get out and play with Fleetwood
Mac during rumors and kick ass and play rock songs
and then play You are the Woman. I know, you know,
people are going wow, I didn't know, these guys rock
so hard.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I know, it's like, get the whole album, you know,
that's the whole thing with singles versus the album. It's like,
if you get the whole thing, then that makes sense
and you could really vary yourself when you go out
on the road, and especially back in those days.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
So the new album out.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Now, Friends and Family. You've got some great covers here,
So what inspired this collection? It's really fascinating to really
see love the one You're With. You know, I love
Stephen Still's I saw him live a few times back
in the dayly eighties in Cleveland. Just an incredible artist.
(24:42):
A great collection of songs here. So what inspired kicking
the album off with the Stephen Stills record?
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Well, now you're talking about Friends and Family two, which
has not been released yet. It comes out in May.
Sometimes the single love the You're With was our first
single before the record was released. And in fact, we
have a new single that I just heard about this
being released either now or a few days ago. Uh,
(25:12):
And it's uh, the Eddie Many Eddie Money song Shaken. Yeah. Yeah,
and uh, you know, and that's that's really cool for
me because that's a rock song and I get to
play my my great rock league guitar stuff, so excuse me, no,
uh no, you are the woman there. But in answer
(25:34):
to your question, about two or three years ago, our manager,
who is also our record label from Sunset Boulevard Records,
uh called and said, you know, the original Firefall guys
played in a lot of other famous bands I named
(25:56):
them before, Oh yeah, and uh, why don't you do
an album of just their material? And I went, well,
that's the concept. I liked that, and then I suggested
to expand that and to include people that we toured
with and got to be friends with out on the road.
Mentioned them to Doobie Brothers, Fleetwood, mac Lenard Skinner, Marshall Tucker.
(26:20):
I said, let's include those a song of those guys too,
and he said fine. And then now this is for
the first Friends and Family album. Then it came time
to pick the songs, and most of the songs, including
(26:42):
Angry Eyes by Logins and Machiner, were just a really
easy choice because Firefox kind of sounded like you know
that Loggins and Messina song, and we'd really do it
justice and could do a great version of that. But
then I remember thinking, Doobie Brothers. How many you know,
there's so many Doobie Brothers songs on What are We
(27:05):
Gonna Do? Or Heart? What hard songs should we pick
and ore? At that time, our new lead vocalist bass
player John Desajou, you know, said, you know, I could sing,
I could sing the heck out of what about Love
by Heart? And I went bingo, you're not good, We're there,
(27:26):
you know, and so things kind of you know, because
I knew we had to choose very wisely. And then
also the consideration was sometimes like on the Dan Fogelberg song,
we did it pretty much like Dan did and didn't
really try to change anything. And our version, of course
(27:47):
sounds different than Dan Fogelberg's version because it's Dan singing.
It's the guys that had he had in his band,
and our version was a different person and singing it
and everything. But then there were some songs like the
Doobie Brothers song Long Train Running, where we kind of
(28:07):
stepped out of the box a little bit and played
it differently, and at me as producer of that record,
it was really cool having the flexibility to do with
utmost love and respect for the original artist, the original
song and the seventies that that song came from. You know,
(28:30):
we could do what felt right with those songs. And
there you have our first album and the second album,
which you mentioned, Love the One You're With. You know,
that one was an easy choice. We didn't have a
Steven Still's solo record on our first album, and we
(28:54):
did have a Buffalo Springfield song, but you know, I thought, yeah,
and Rick Roberts used to play with Steven, you know,
out on the road also when Firefall wasn't playing back
in seventy eight or whenever seventy seven, and that was
an easy choice. And I asked my friend Cactus Moser,
(29:15):
who is the husband of why Noah Judd, if they'd
be good guest stars on that song, and he said, yeah,
oh that's great. Inact, Cactus said to me, you know, oh,
I asked him after he said he'd love to play
drums on it, because if you notice on the original
Still's version of that of Love the One You're With,
(29:37):
there isn't any drums. It's all Joe Lala on percussion,
you know, and the big acoustic guitars and everything. And
to me, that song was crying out for drums, you know,
to really make it a rock star. So I a
rock song. So I asked Cactus if he played drums
on the song, and he said sure, that'd be great.
And then I kind of timidly asked him, do you
(29:58):
think you're wife, win Ona would be interested in singing
on our song? And he here's what he said to me.
He said, that's a great idea. I'm sure her producer
is gonna love it. Yeah, he's really interested in stuff
like this. And I went great, and then he leaned
in kind of and said, of course I'm her producer.
(30:21):
Well great, well great, So we got Winona, Judder and
Cactus Moser on I Love the One You're with. And
you know, I'm really proud of that song and really
all the album, you know, because for the first time
in Firefall's long history, we made one album and now
(30:41):
have made a second album of other people's songs, and
you know, doing the best we can to honor that
decade the late sixties into the seventies, which to me,
you know, is a decade or twelve or thirteen years
worth of of original music by a lot of bands
(31:03):
that will never be equaled. You know's there's great bands
in the eighties and nineties and stuff. But it's not
like the seventies.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
And this great collection. Both collections are amazing. Get them
wherever you get me is like love that cover of
Longer by Dan Volgelberg.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Again, that's in your genre.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
You all came up together at the same time, pretty
much all these artists you are covering and hadn't money.
My gosh, I remember when he was coming up and
just there was nothing like that. Shaken is just like
one of those things that just pumps you up and
you recapture it here on this album.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Oh well, thank you.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
You know. It was great because there's a lead guitar player.
For instance, I'm simple Man of Leonard Skinnard off our
first record. I didn't really listen to the skinnered version
of that, at least to tour with them a lot,
and they had three of the hottest guitar players going,
(32:02):
you know, and I just knew that if I played
my Heart and I played solos ballsy solos, I didn't
really need to copy anything, you know, it was gonna
sound really good. And it did same thing kind of
with the Eddie Money song Shaken when I first heard it,
(32:23):
you know, I mean I heard it back in the day.
But when we were looking for well, now, which Eddie
Money song should we do, and that one, you know,
shaken became an obvious one. I was thrilled with how Ballzy,
the lead guitar on his original song was and I went,
(32:44):
oh boy, this is right up my alley. And again
I didn't I didn't really. I mean I listened to it,
but I didn't cop the licks other than maybe his
introductory into introduction ones just to kind of set aside.
You know, so people go, oh wow, this is Eddie
Money and a money song. But for me as a
(33:05):
lead guitar player, to you know, to be able to
take off and play on a song as rocking as
as is that Eddy Money song just fantastic.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Mmmm.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
So you toured for the first friends and family, you
took that out on the road, and how was that
received when you would play a lot of those covers live.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Well, you know, we didn't play a lot of those covers.
We In the last year or two we've been playing
Long Train Running by the Doobie Brothers and maybe throw
in one other song by that. But the truth is,
for instance, when firefalls on tour and like We do
(33:51):
a lot play in packages of seventies bands, you know,
and maybe there's three other bands, Pablo Cruz and Orleans
and Atlanta Rhythm Section or Pure Prairie League or that
kind of stuff. On a bill like that, each band's
given forty five minutes to play, you know, and in
a forty five minute set, I kind of know the
(34:14):
six or seven songs that we have to play. It's
been the same thing for twenty years. You didn't play
Strange Way. No, we always play Strange Way, you know,
and you know you have to play you are the
Woman and just remember I Love You in Mexico and
Cinderella and living and living in Strange Way. And there's
(34:34):
like seven right there. So we didn't have a lot
of room to say, here's songs from our new album
and play three or four songs. We did sell the
album out on you know, out at the merch table,
but you know, but we're going to include at least
two songs upcoming this year once this new record gets out.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's you know, Yeah, you have to stick
with your staples. That's what people came out to hear.
You couldn't get away with that.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
So that's right, Hey, man, I paid all that money
and they didn't play You Are the Woman.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, that would be just horrific.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
If anything, I think the power would have to go
out in order for you.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, exactly. One interesting sidelight is now, I'm in my
seventies now, and you know, our audience is like fifties
sixty year olds, you know, and you know, but a
lot of times I'll look out in the crowd when
we're on stage playing and there will be a lot
(35:43):
of thirty and twenty year olds singing the lyrics to
our songs, and it's like wow. And of course the
reason that is is because they were the kids of
the parents who played Firefall and Dan Folgerberg and the
Eagles all the time at home, so they were exposed
to our music back when they were growing up. But
(36:07):
it is pretty amazing just to think a band as
old as us has a lot of thirty year old fans.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, I think it would take you to get to
your thirties because like all the way probably.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Through a kid's twenties.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
I have a daughter in her twenties, and it's like,
I think when they get a little bit older, then
they're okay listening to a mom and dad's music because
it doesn't build on those memories. They start getting nostalgic
once they get up into their thirties, right, so I'm
start yeah, I've started to see that.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
You know, you'll see that now.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
I see that at Paul McCartney shows or things like that,
where it's like, that's nice. It's the gift that keeps
on giving, and future generations are discovering the music and
it's like comfort food in a way too. It's it
reminds them of, you know, the things that they gave
them the comfort and yeah, definitely those Firefall songs. I
don't know if we talked about it last time, but
(36:55):
how you came up with the band's name, it's kind
of an interesting Western reference that happens out that way.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Was it in Yosemite?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Where it hit you? How you came up with that
of the band's name.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Rick Roberts, our original lead singer and writer of most
of our hit songs back in the early days, he
thought of he knew about Firefall in Yosemite and we
were trying to pick a name, and he said, how
about this, and we'd go, yeah, nah, how about this? Nah?
(37:34):
How about firefall. What firefall? Huh, well, yeah, that sounds okay.
I guess put it on the list. And by the
time we needed a name for our first gig and Boulder,
we had like two names on the list and firefall
was the best one of the two. We said, okay,
(37:55):
we'll be Firefall. But I've never heard of the Yosemite firefall.
I've never been to Yosemite to see a firefall. The
there's two firefalls, of course, there's every in two weeks
in November, the setting sun hits Horsetail Falls just right,
so it illuminates the waterfall going off a cliff, and
(38:17):
they call it the firefall. Now, that's the natural firefall
for about thirty forty years. They've stopped it now, but
they used to make a man made firefall and set
off a bonfire on top of the cliff and slowly
push it off so that they could have it be
more of a tourist attraction and not just once a year.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Oh wow, that's that's really cool. And I love the
logo how that halt. The artwork on the albums going
back into the seventies is just so amazing. I love
looking at at your firefall logo and the albums like
by Yes, it's just you know, artwork meant so much
when you would get an helpie, Ah.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
It did. And you know what it's interesting behind me
is my painting of our Firefall cover. I did my
painting that you're seeing here after the album came out,
and I sent the art director of Atlantic Records. I
(39:21):
sent him two or three sketches of what I thought
Firefall could be and they said, that's a great idea. Now,
when I was thinking of the album cover, now, I've
been an artist longer than I've been a musician, and
(39:42):
you know, one of my favorite artists is Maxfield Parrish,
who did all these amazing blue you know, twilight scenes
and just an amazing illustrator. I was thinking when I
started making the concept for this album cover. The first
(40:02):
one was, you know, our album's going to be on
the wall with two hundred other albums, and I want something.
I want our album to stand up even though nobody
know who's whose Firefall is. I want that to just
be so dynamic that people will pick up the album
(40:22):
just to see what it is. You know, off that wreck,
that record rack of two hundred albums being sold and
it really helped, you know. And they took my idea
and they said, great, we'll take it from here. You know,
I was hoping I was going to paint the first
album cover and they said, oh no, we'll take it
from here. Kid, thanks, and they did. The original first
(40:46):
album cover was a real photograph of a lake in
Wyoming in the daytime. That then they airbrushed all the
dark blue and the commet and this on, and it became,
you know, the album cover I think fit in perfectly
(41:07):
with how great the music was. And that's that's the key,
is how good the music is. And I think I've
told you this story before, but when Rick Roberts asked
me to start being his lead guitar player for what
he thought was going to be his third solo record,
(41:27):
and we'd be practicing Rick songs and everything, and then
Mark Andy's from Spirit and Jojo Gunn, who'd moved to Boulder,
joined our practices, and suddenly it didn't feel like a
solo record anymore, felt like a band, you know. And
when it felt like a band, Rick Roberts said, I
(41:47):
know this guy Larry Burnett in Washington, DC who writes
great songs, and he and I sing great Together, you
want to hear a song of his? And Mark and
I went, sure, let's hear it. And it was on
a reel to reel tape. I remember us long before
cassettes wherever invented. And Rick played his tape of Larry's
(42:08):
song Cinderella, and we went, oh, you know, get him
out here. So Rick flew Larry Burnette out and from
our first week of rehearsal, this was before Michael Clark
the drummer, got involved, and on our first week of rehearsal,
we had twenty five original songs to work out. And
(42:33):
that's just staggering because you know, when you know, when
you start a band, you really don't know what you're
gonna sound like, and you don't know what songs you're
gonna play unless you're a cover band. And we knew
we were gonna be where we were shooting for the
for original songs, and most bands have no idea what
they're going to sound like. And here we were with
(42:55):
twenty five songs to work out in our first week,
and a lot of those songs like Living and Living
in Mexico and Cinderella, we worked out, you know, in
the first week of practice before we even had a name.
And that's just that's astounding. So in my book, Firefall
(43:18):
has primarily been number one about songs, really great songs,
and then number two about the singers of those songs
and what that sounds like. And then number three great musicianship.
You know that that beefs it up, and that's where
I come in.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Yeah, that's what counts. It really does. And you know,
after the yacht rock era and then they were saying
music videos were really taken over. You got into the eighties,
did you all get into doing videos?
Speaker 1 (43:50):
We met a few videos and we had one one
of our singles in the eighties briefly be played on
MTV because Firefall certainly isn't an MTV type of band
and wasn't back then and now MTV hardly has any
music on it. But yeah, we made videos, but you know,
(44:13):
we were of the yeah, I don't know, it was
we didn't probably make enough and enough videos, and consequently
Firefall was kind of a faithless band and they go Firefall,
firefight you know, oh you are the woman or oh Mexico,
(44:35):
you know, but so, you know, I wish we would
have been able to you know, have a backer who
paid for more videos. But videos even back then were
pretty damn expensive to make.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Yeah, yeah, they really were. Now anybody could do them,
but oh yeahn oh my gosh. Yeah, you know, the
equipment everything I started out, you know, making movies, Super
eight movies and stuff like that. I didn't have money
for a video equipment and you were very limited with
with film and it was expensive, very expensive nowadays and
he kid can shoot anything they want on their phone
(45:09):
and upload it to YouTube. They become famous.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah, there's backs, like and a lot of people don't
realize that. Once you film a song, you know, then
there's hours and hours of editing to it. It's you know,
and there you go, it's okay. Editing.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Yeah, yeah, that's very important too. How to tell the
story and you need to be a good editor. And
that really does make the song in the video, and
that video is attached to your song forever. It's like,
that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
You make a crappy video and that you know, people
remember you're the crappy song in the crappy video. It's like,
you gotta be careful.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
That's so true.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
So I going out touring, are you going to be
doing a lot of it here this year in twenty
twenty five. How does that look As far as getting
out there on the road.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
We are we are too, I won't say a lot.
We are touring. Weekend Warriors go out and play one
or two shows on a weekend. We're going to New
York and New Jersey for a four day swing. But
we don't tour like we used to do. You know,
(46:18):
you go away for you know, back in the seventies,
I'd be gone for two months from my apartment, which, man,
not only could I not have a dog, I couldn't
have any plants in my house. You know, It's like,
who's going to water my plans? But we're we're weekend
Warriors now, and you know, it's still just amazing fun
(46:41):
to play the shows out on the road, whether it's
a short thirty five or forty minute set, or whether
it's our long ninety minute set or two one hour
shows or whatever. But I'll tell you what, the travel
part and the hotel part and all the other parts
of uring I don't miss at all. And in fact,
(47:03):
I'm kind of glad that we're only playing some this
coming year because I'll tell you what the grind, you know,
the grind from you know, touring, you know, weeks and
weeks at a time is just really tough.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Oh it is. And recording is just you know, I
would say, slightly easier. You're not having to like take
all your drag all your stuff all the time, so
that's really nice. How long did it take to record
this set or each set? How long did it take
for each volume when you put this together?
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Oh? Are you talking friends and family here? Right?
Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Uh. Firefall never made really quick records. Yeah, you know,
I would say it took us a month, you know,
maybe a little bit longer. Now we live in five
different states, and so I might be in the stud
studio doing guitar parts and hey, we need Kunga's and
(48:04):
shakers in here, and then I would have to send,
you know, what we did to Nashville to have John
sing on it or or whatever. So it's kind of
time consuming. I remember a bit in the old days,
one of my favorite band's Little Feet with Lowell George.
We love those guys. I had heard stories about they'd
(48:24):
go into the studio with songs that they were going
to record for their new album, and if they didn't
get a cut on that one song within two or
three takes. Forget it, We're not doing that. You know.
It'd be like so they would go in and then
make an album in like three days, which is like, wow.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
And then and then on the other side of that
would be like Steely Dan who you know, would like
you know, they they'd have ten different guitar players on
the same song, and you know, in La New York,
you know whatever. So it generally has taken Firefall about
a month to make a record when you're real focused, yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
You're in all these different locations, so you're putting files
together and you have a mixer. It's just totally different
than how you did it in the old days.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Start up in the studio, that's true. Yeah, way way way.
Speaker 3 (49:24):
Different and going to tape rather these days all digital,
so it's just completely a different story.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
So this album as well.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
You offer it up on CD and vinyl is it's
available always at your merch tables and wherever you can
get music.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
I have heard that we are printing up vinyl on
friends and family too, which you know, the full circle
about how that came around, you know, you don't have
vinyl on your record gees, you know, so and you
know what I mean, CDs are kind of obsolete. You know,
everybody just diload stuff and that goes back to you know, downloads,
(50:06):
you know. I mean, I remember hearing many money many
months ago about that song Happy. I forget the guy
who did it, huge worldwide hit Happy. You know, he
had four million radio airplays and he made something like
eight hundred dollars from royalties, and you're going, man, so
(50:28):
Rick Roberts and all the old old riders of songs.
You know, they used to make a lot of money,
and now it's like, who knows if they make money
or not. I'm just glad that I'm in a band
that has hits to play. Here, I'm seventy four years
old and I'm still making new albums. That's that's pretty rare. Oops.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
Yeah, it's very good.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
That was gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
It happens at some point, you know, that's true.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
And and you know there's so many around your age
who were just like, oh, they played just the hit.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
And it's just kind of.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Nice to see, you know, artists now still creating something new,
whether it's you're you're doing the covers, you're still recording,
but and even writing new songs.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
It's really nice to see that.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
And I'm writing, I'm writing new songs that aren't for Firefall,
because Firefall is kind of we have a not a pigeonhole.
But you know, I could write a really hard charge
in rock and roll song that doesn't like that doesn't
sound anything like Firefall. And if you know, if I
(51:33):
had Firefall do that song, people would go, well, I
kind of like the song, but that's not Firefall. Firefall
should be just remember I Love You. So it's kind
of cool because I write a lot of songs, I
do a lot of paintings, and I'm you know, I
have a lot of free time just to create, and
(51:56):
uh you know when I in fact, last night I
sat down, picked up a guitar and suddenly was writing
a new song for a new Firefall record, which after
two albums of cover songs like Friends and Family and
Friends and Family two are I know that I want
(52:16):
to put out at least a five or six song
new album of new Firefall songs. So you know, it's
always it's always a you know, an ongoing kind of thing,
which I know how lucky and fortunate I am to
be in this position.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Yeah, and so hard in the arts especially, and you're just,
you know, so right brained. I mean, you're you're doing painting.
You you put together music that that's really fascinating, and
it keeps your mind going. That's what keeps you young
and keeps your spirit going and just keep ongoing. That's
that's very inspiring to see that, because it's so hard
(52:53):
out there these days.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
When you're young and you really wanted to get into the.
Speaker 3 (52:56):
Arts, it's really really tough, right, So yeah, I definitely
give kudas to that, and so many great songs on here,
a dozen new songs. With the second volume of Friends
and Family, you even dig back a little bit into
the six Days. I love that you. I love the
birds so much, and I remember meeting Roger mcgwen under
(53:16):
a bridge in Chattanooga.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
He played under a bridge and.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
It was just like one of the best little performances
that I could ever remember it. Just to see you
being inspired by the birds is really nice to see
that on here.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
So you want to interesting about you saying that on
the first Friends and Family album, I mean we had
played so you want to be a rock and Roll
Star as our encore song live for years, you know,
and I thought that that would be the Bird song
that would be on that first record, and we recorded it,
(53:53):
and then I just kept thinking, I'm going, you know,
let's do that Gene Clark song. You know, the name
escapes me right at this moment. That's on the first record,
feel a whole lot better. Yeah, one of my favorite
bird songs. And so I didn't want to put two
(54:14):
Bird songs on the first record. So we kind of
put Rock and Roll Star in the tank, not knowing
we were going to make a second record. And so
when we started this record, we already had one song done,
rock and Roll Star. And to me, I mean the Birds,
Oh my god. I was in high school when the
(54:38):
first Birds record hit, and of course the Beatles and
the Stones, but the Birds, oh my god. And to
suddenly graduate high school, I was already a pretty good
guitar player. I moved to Boulder to go to college,
and Boulder, I mean, Steven Stills moved in. There's Dan Volgerberg,
(54:59):
Hey Walsh, you know, Richie Fury, oh, Chris Hillman. You know.
I started playing in bands with guys from the birds,
you know, Chris Hillman. You know, I was lucky to
have totally fallen into Grand Parsons and Emmy Lou Harrison
the Fallen Angels. So looking back on my history, I
(55:20):
got to play with three birds, Chris Holman and Michael
Clark and then a little bit Graham Parsons. I've sat
on stage and we've had Roger mcgwin bring his twelve
string on and sit in with us a couple of times,
and it's just like, I look up my career and
I go, wow, you know, I got to play with
some of the birds, you know.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
Yeah, live in the dream.
Speaker 1 (55:43):
Definitely living the dream.
Speaker 3 (55:45):
That's great, so inspiring, so great to see you, and
best wishes with this new project and touring and new
material for Firefall, that's going to be exciting. One day
we'll see that come to fruition and just all the best.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Definitely, Well, thank you, it's been nice.
Speaker 1 (56:04):
Sorry about my uh my phone shaking a little bit,
but uh, the next one I do, I'll make sure
I put on some stationary position.
Speaker 3 (56:14):
Yeah, I've seen much shakier in the past, So that's
that's very good. Yeah, we did really well. I'm so
glad you Hugh came by today.
Speaker 1 (56:23):
Well, thanks, very nice talking to you, Bob.
Speaker 2 (56:26):
Have a good one.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
Take care of okay, we'll do thanks. Bye.
How about now I can hear you? Can you see me?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I can't see you.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
You at hm hmm.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I wonder what I have to do.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Are you on an iPhone?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I am.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
There's probably a setting somewhere there if you look at
the bottom of your say.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Wait a minute, yeah, here we go. Oh shit, you.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Can turn on video and now it's muted. I see
that it's muted. If you had audio again, if you
click that, maybe will unmute you. And if you click video,
(01:03):
it should bring your camera up. It's always at the
bottom left of your.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
On.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Zoom over there and we'll admit you again.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Here, okay, so mute start video?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Oh god, start video?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
We yeah that, but it left in about one second.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yep, I saw you for a second. There you go.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
There you go. Hey, modern technology, God, did you just
get that? Did you upgrade to another phone? Is no,
because that always happens every time you get a new phone.
It's like they move something somewhere else. It's always it's
always tough to try to find things right.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
So I'm thinking I may not want to hold my
phone for the whole time.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yeah, if you want to set it in a comfortable place,
that's fine. Well, if you give me too much headroom,
I could always put your font right over your head.
I do that a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Can you put it on its side?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Uh? Sure?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
So we get sixteen by nine?
Speaker 3 (02:17):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
You know what, I'll probably just have to hold it.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
And people have done that too in the past. That's fine. Yeah,
that's cool. That's cool. How are you doing this morning?
You're over in Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I'm in Westminster in Denver, which is close to Boulder,
but not in Boulder.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Very good, very good.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
How is it.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Where are you at?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Oh, okay, it's.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
A nice time of year. It's not too bad. We
got through some really horrific storms. They were saying, oh,
these twisters were headed towards us, and thankfully the twisters
didn't come this far over. But it's already a rocky spring.
Where ready to go into another drought?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
I think?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
So we we can't get wildfires like you do out west.
It's maybe not as bad, but you know, they can
contain them a little bit quicker. But wow, you've had
some doozies out there in Colorado all the way to
California more recently.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, and actually, you know, Colorado has had the mildest
winter I pretty much ever. Remember we had you know,
you know, many many weeks of sixty five degrees and
you know the storms will form all over the Rockies
and give us a little rain or a little bit
(03:39):
of snow and then move to Kansas and have blizzard conditions.
So we've been pretty lucky.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah, so ski season wasn't as good up that way
they had it.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Oh no, I mean ski season's great. You know, they
have one hundred and eighty inches or something. But we
down here in Denver have then had a real mild deal. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, you get up into the mountains, I'm sure so Breckinridge,
all those ski resorts, it must be must be good,
good stuff out there and beautiful out that way.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Well, I'm glad we're on together, Bob.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, it's always it's fun to catch up
with you. I had you on a little while ago
when your Friends and Family project first took off. How
it was that a year or two ago?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Now I'm losing track.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
It was closer to two years. Yeah, And so are
we are we starting now?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Oh yeah, we're going, We're going.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah that was two years ago. And did really pretty
well for us last year, and it went so well
getting some attention that my record label and manager said,
let's do friends and family too. So I've just now
(04:58):
a few months ago finished a whole new record with
a whole new set of twelve songs under the same concept,
which was Firefall. The original Firefall guys played in other
famous bands like The Birds and the Flying Breeder Brothers
and Spirit and Jojo Gunn and Graham Parsons and Emmy
(05:20):
Lou Harrison my case, and we expanded that concept to
do Back in the nineteen seventy six when our first
album came out, we got to tour with just about
all the top bands in the you know in America,
including the Doobie Brothers and Fleetwood Mac and Lenyard, Skinnyard
(05:42):
and Loggins and Messina. So we got a whole new
album coming out.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
What was that like opening up for like Fleetwood Mac.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
I always was like you were that were the top
of their game, that rumors tours like electrac.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Well, yeah, was totally electric. And you know when we
started opening for Fleetwood Mac, our first gigs were like
in either sold out stadiums of sixty to seventy thousand
people or sold out NBA basketball arenas of twenty thousand people.
(06:23):
And you know, one of the reasons Fleetwood Mac and
other big bands like Firefall as an opener was because
we had the hits. We were a good band that
had come from being a club band, so we could
kind of get on stage and play without a sound
check and we could play a really good forty minute
(06:44):
set or whatever it was before they came on, So
we got to play with just about everybody, which was unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, that'd be so inspirational.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
And I know Mick Fleetwood was, and I think we
talked about this last time, but mc fleetwood was just
so insta mental in your growth as as Firefall was
just you know, getting bigger and bigger. It must have
been fascinating to have him involved in really kind of
mentoring you in a way.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Well, he mentored us for about two weeks.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
That's all you did, really, uh, And then hey.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
If you're you know, mixed Leewood in the biggest band
in the world, two weeks is great.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
He We toured with them a lot during the Wide
album for them, and then into rumors we were one
of their main opening acts of choice. And uh, then
he and Limited Management decided to want they wanted to
(07:47):
be our manager, and so they actually became our manager
and went and negotiated some stuff with Atlantic Records and
came home with the really big check and our lawyer
out in mixed mansion out in bel Air, we had
a really big meeting and though we were we were
(08:10):
staring at a five hundred thousand dollars check made out
to us. Our lawyer told us, you know, this contract
is kind of worse than the one that we are
getting out of. And our business manager, kind of a
crooked guy, said, out of five hundred grand, we're gonna
(08:30):
pay each guy in the band five thousand dollars. And
we went, what you're gonna pay a thirty grand out
of five hundred grand. We're a band, dammit, you know.
So we ended up not going with Mick.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
You hear these stories, it's like amazing. It's like these
people have been on the radio. You think, oh my gosh,
they're this is a cash cow. They're doing so great.
But got you hear about these horrible management deals and
just sleazy people in the business, just right profiting off
of it.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Right. Well, you know, so many artists and bands got
totally screwed by their managers or combination managers slash agents
slash record label. That that was kind of the norm
(09:25):
for a while. And I mean when you go back
and you know, look into like Billy Joel's you know
early days. You know he had something like three or
four gold records and didn't see a penny. Yeah, you know,
he made he made his money on the road, but
where he should have been making, you know, lots and
(09:48):
lots of money for having ten songs on an album
or something, totally got screwed. Same thing with lead singer
of Creeden's clear Water. You know, it's like, yeah, John Fogerty,
I mean, you know, so firefog got screwed contractually. And
(10:12):
you know it was interesting because the band, I mean,
our first album came out and as I probably told
you last time it was said, I still kind of
have trouble believing this, but we heard from very good
sources that Firefall's first album in nineteen seventy six went
(10:34):
gold faster than any album had that had on Atlantic
Records had ever done. And when you think about it,
you had led Zeppelin on Atlantic Records, you had Aretha Franklin,
you had the Rolling Stones, You're going, nah, I don't
believe that. But you know they said we went we
went gold faster than any other album. And uh, you know,
(10:59):
but the five the six guys in the band never
made any artist royalties because Atlantic Records kept us in
the red all the time, and the songwriters made royalties,
but none of the rest of us did. So you know,
it was a screwy kind of thing, but you know
that's how the business was.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, it's the songwriters. If you want to get into it,
you give advice to somebody getting into it. It's get
those publishing rights, and you know, you're a member of
the band. No, it's not going to be forever. It's
just you know, you feel like you're part of a
family and everything. But it's still a business.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
You know.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
When you're talking about Billy Joel, I mean he's had
members of the band. You know, could have been there
twenty thirty years. But at some point it does come
to an end. And if you didn't get those songwriting
publishing credits, then it gets into a financial, you know,
really tough situation. So yeah, it's really tough.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
And you know, I don't really understand how it works today,
writers and publishers aren't really making any money, you know,
And and you think about Nashville and all the people
goes to Nashville to write country songs and have a
hit hit record. It's like it's it's totally changed and
(12:17):
the artist and the writer are getting screwed again. And
you know, my only thing that I'm really thankful for
is that I ended up became becoming the controller and
owner of the name Firefall and the band, and so
you know, I get a call the shots when we
(12:38):
go out on the road or are we going to
do this or not that you know. But publishing has
taken a noseedy for songwriters, and somebody's making money. I
don't know who it is.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, it's probably big tech these days.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
The way streaming works like you don't even get like
a haypenny for every play. It's like nothing. And yeah,
now it's it's the guys at the top who are
running these places. You know, your Apple, Spotify's Amazon Music.
It's just, you know, it's such a different thing. But
it's nice to have the convenience of being able to play, Hey,
I could play the first fire or Fall album anywhere
(13:12):
I want, which is unheard of back in the day.
So yeah, totally changed. And you know, there's so much
talent up there out there, and it's it's it's fantastic.
But the thing is now everybody could do it. Everybody
gets on you know, it's just about anybody can get
on Spotify. So it's cluttered.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
It's cluttered, and you know a lot of new music
that's being put out there that's cluttering, you know, the
whole everything is uh, some of it's not very good.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
So I know that I am just so fortunate and
happy that my band Firefall played a small role in
the in the nineteen seven which was one of the
most amazing and greatest decades for new music, you know,
(14:08):
And I attribute that actually to you know, back in
the day, if you had songs of your own and
a singer that sounded a good singing them record labels
would sign you, you know, and they would put out
your album and see if it went and if they
really liked it, you know, they'd push it. And so
(14:33):
many bands, you know, the Eagles, Dan Fogelberg, Little River Band, Firefall,
you know, Logins of Messina, Kenny loggins. We all had
really good songs and radio friendly type of stuff and
consequently were able to get on the radio. You know.
But then in the eighties, record labels started, you know,
(14:59):
feeling the power, and they wanted to come in and
be there when you rehearsed for your new album, and
they'd sit there in the corner. Happened to us one
or two times, sit there in the corner with some
record guy, you know, listening to your rehearsal saying I
don't think this is a hit. You got anything else,
And they wanted to pick songs or give you songs
(15:21):
to play or not just let the band be who
the band was. And from the eighties on it got
a lot weirder.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
How creatively stifling that is. I couldn't you got your
anarch guys sitting in there and you know they know
what hits certainly, but like they're telling you what to do, right,
it's oh my gosh, yeah, never tell it artists. I
think David Bowie spoke to this too as well. It's
like you're you're you're not real, You're not authentic. You
know where it really works. It's like what you want
(15:52):
to do, how you want to explore and expand your career.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Right David Boy got told he wasn't a fantic.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
It's like, yeah, well that's why he went off into
the projects he really wanted to do. And it's like,
don't sit there and they like tell somebody what to
do and tell them how to put the album together.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
But yeah, I remember.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
I remember because we were in Boulder, Colorado, and some
big wig from Atlantic Records called our managers said, yeah,
we're going to send out our an R guy. When
are you guys rehearsing? You know, Oh, well we're rehearsing
next Monday and Tuesday. And sure enough, at Rick Roberts's
(16:36):
house there they're knock on the door and there's an
Atlantic Records guy. And I remember very distinctly because Rick
Roberts wrote pretty much all of our hits. Our other
singer songwriter, Larry Burnett had Cinderella and had a lot
of great songs, but not commercial like Rick did, and uh,
(16:56):
you know, had the A and R guy from Atlantic
Records tell oh, Rick, I don't hear a hit, you
got anything else? And Ricky's going, how about this one?
And he play another song and the guy, no, you
got anything else, and this was a record guy, and
here we are trying to make our second or third record.
It was like, oh my my god. That was It
was terrible.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, and toxic.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
I mean, how do you get inspired when you're trying
to rehearse a record and they're in the room saying, yeah,
I'm not hearing a single here, it's gotta be just crushing.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
They weren't there. They played that role for a little while.
Excuse me. Yeah, but when it came time to recording
the album, nobody was there from the label. And it
was a good thing too, because for me, the lead
guitar player, when I was out in the you know,
(17:49):
the recording room playing solos on songs, you know, some
of which I knew what basically I wanted to play,
and other songs just wing it and just play what
felt good at the moment, there wasn't a guy from
the label saying, you know, that guitar solo kind of
wasn't what we're hearing. Can you try something else? You know,
(18:10):
I didn't have to go through that.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
That's good.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
So in there saying hey, we need some saxophone. That's
pretty big these days.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah, that's right. How about a little flute here.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Okay, yeah, very big back then.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
You had Jethrotola up in your time too as well.
So like when you started, like, did Atlantic say, hey,
I want three albums in the next three years? How
did that work? What did they contract you to? When
you first were on with Atlantic.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
We had a seven album deal and we owed Atlantic
Records one album a year. And then when things kind
of got weird and we ended up in our manager lottery,
which we had pretty much once a year, when our
(19:02):
third manager lottery came around, we need a new manager,
and we picked Mick Fleetwood. He went in and stopped
the presses on a record that we weren't really that
happy about, but you know, the record label said, oh no,
it's great, you know, and everything. And Mick Fleetwood went
(19:23):
to a meeting with all the big wigs of Atlantic
in New York and said, I represent Firefall now, and
we want to stop the presses, you know. And we
stopped the presses and got to redo and add a
few songs and you know, and made the record a
lot better. So when it came out and went gold
real quick, which it probably would not have done had
(19:46):
we left it originally, how it was.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
What one song.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Became a hit and you didn't think was going to
become ahead out of your entire catalog.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Uh uh. I don't really have an answer for that,
because I thought that we'd have some big songs off
our first album. We were about seventy five percent of
the way done recording our first album and Rick Roberts
(20:24):
came in one day and said, I just wrote a
new song, which was You Are the Woman, and we
all listened to it and went, oh poppy, poppy, kind
of yoh okay, and you know, and we kind of
all knew, and the and the producer knew right away
that's the first single, you know. And it ended up
(20:46):
not being the first single because nobody had heard the
Firefall yet. So they put out Living Ain't Living as
the first single to introduce the name Firefall to Billboard
and the public, and you know, Living a Living got
into the top forty is a brand new band, and
then they put You Are the Woman out and it
(21:06):
was in the top ten or the top twenty for
like six months and got to number three on the
Billboard charts, and then suddenly the rock band from Boulder,
Firefall is really a poppy, light rock band, you know,
with You Are the Woman and after You Are the
Woman was such a big hit. Atlantic Records, had they
(21:30):
had their way, they probably wanted ten You Are the
Woman's on an album exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah, that's that worked. I mean you see this in
the movie industry too. That's why we have sequels. That's
why we have you know, the Hey, if it worked,
and now we can keep doing this, and so then
you're gonna get a pigeonholed. Oh yeah, you're the guys
we always hear in the Dentis office. That's really light rock.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
You know, that's that's right, light rock. And you know what,
without our light rock hits like you Are the Woman
and just remember I Love you. You know, we wouldn't have
been nearly as big as we ended up being. But
when people who only listened at that time to AM radio,
you know, they thought Firefall was You are the Woman,
(22:13):
that's it. And you know, here we were playing Mexico
and Cinderella and all these other great songs. So it's
it's funny and I ain't complaining because here I am
in my seventies still doing this. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Absolutely, it's you know, like they always say, the cliche,
the soundtrack of People's Lives. But did you see that
yacht rock documentary, because you were you were kind of
around that time, but they didn't really seem to like
throw you into the rock yacht rock.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
No, I didn't see the documentary. I've seen on Facebook,
you know, Michael McDonald talking about how how great it
turned out and stuff, and no. But you know, it's
funny because so many people in the public, and many
(23:07):
radio and or entertainment people have to have genres. What
genre are you? Are you you rock? Are you soft rock?
It's like, what's you know some of that intertwines. Are
you heavy metal? Or are you you know Americana? It's
like they want to they want a pigeonhole you name you,
(23:28):
And that's okay, you know, I see the logic in that.
But when you get pigeonholed for just one single off
off an album, and you know, for many years we
fought being the lightest of light rock bands.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Gosh, and then we get out and play with Fleetwood
Mac during rumors and kick ass and play rock songs
and then play You are the Woman. I know, you know,
people are going wow, I didn't know, these guys rock
so hard.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I know, it's like, get the whole album, you know,
that's the whole thing with singles versus the album. It's like,
if you get the whole thing, then that makes sense
and you could really vary yourself when you go out
on the road, and especially back in those days.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
So the new album out.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Now, Friends and Family. You've got some great covers here,
So what inspired this collection? It's really fascinating to really
see love the one You're With. You know, I love
Stephen Still's I saw him live a few times back
in the dayly eighties in Cleveland. Just an incredible artist.
(24:42):
A great collection of songs here. So what inspired kicking
the album off with the Stephen Stills record?
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Well, now you're talking about Friends and Family two, which
has not been released yet. It comes out in May.
Sometimes the single love the You're With was our first
single before the record was released. And in fact, we
have a new single that I just heard about this
being released either now or a few days ago. Uh,
(25:12):
And it's uh, the Eddie Many Eddie Money song Shaken. Yeah. Yeah,
and uh, you know, and that's that's really cool for
me because that's a rock song and I get to
play my my great rock league guitar stuff, so excuse me, no,
uh no, you are the woman there. But in answer
(25:34):
to your question, about two or three years ago, our manager,
who is also our record label from Sunset Boulevard Records,
uh called and said, you know, the original Firefall guys
played in a lot of other famous bands I named
(25:56):
them before, Oh yeah, and uh, why don't you do
an album of just their material? And I went, well,
that's the concept. I liked that, and then I suggested
to expand that and to include people that we toured
with and got to be friends with out on the road.
Mentioned them to Doobie Brothers, Fleetwood, mac Lenard Skinner, Marshall Tucker.
(26:20):
I said, let's include those a song of those guys too,
and he said fine. And then now this is for
the first Friends and Family album. Then it came time
to pick the songs, and most of the songs, including
(26:42):
Angry Eyes by Logins and Machiner, were just a really
easy choice because Firefox kind of sounded like you know
that Loggins and Messina song, and we'd really do it
justice and could do a great version of that. But
then I remember thinking, Doobie Brothers. How many you know,
there's so many Doobie Brothers songs on What are We
(27:05):
Gonna Do? Or Heart? What hard songs should we pick
and ore? At that time, our new lead vocalist bass
player John Desajou, you know, said, you know, I could sing,
I could sing the heck out of what about Love
by Heart? And I went bingo, you're not good, We're there,
(27:26):
you know, and so things kind of you know, because
I knew we had to choose very wisely. And then
also the consideration was sometimes like on the Dan Fogelberg song,
we did it pretty much like Dan did and didn't
really try to change anything. And our version, of course
(27:47):
sounds different than Dan Fogelberg's version because it's Dan singing.
It's the guys that had he had in his band,
and our version was a different person and singing it
and everything. But then there were some songs like the
Doobie Brothers song Long Train Running, where we kind of
(28:07):
stepped out of the box a little bit and played
it differently, and at me as producer of that record,
it was really cool having the flexibility to do with
utmost love and respect for the original artist, the original
song and the seventies that that song came from. You know,
(28:30):
we could do what felt right with those songs. And
there you have our first album and the second album,
which you mentioned, Love the One You're With. You know,
that one was an easy choice. We didn't have a
Steven Still's solo record on our first album, and we
(28:54):
did have a Buffalo Springfield song, but you know, I thought, yeah,
and Rick Roberts used to play with Steven, you know,
out on the road also when Firefall wasn't playing back
in seventy eight or whenever seventy seven, and that was
an easy choice. And I asked my friend Cactus Moser,
(29:15):
who is the husband of why Noah Judd, if they'd
be good guest stars on that song, and he said, yeah,
oh that's great. Inact, Cactus said to me, you know, oh,
I asked him after he said he'd love to play
drums on it, because if you notice on the original
Still's version of that of Love the One You're With,
(29:37):
there isn't any drums. It's all Joe Lala on percussion,
you know, and the big acoustic guitars and everything. And
to me, that song was crying out for drums, you know,
to really make it a rock star. So I a
rock song. So I asked Cactus if he played drums
on the song, and he said sure, that'd be great.
And then I kind of timidly asked him, do you
(29:58):
think you're wife, win Ona would be interested in singing
on our song? And he here's what he said to me.
He said, that's a great idea. I'm sure her producer
is gonna love it. Yeah, he's really interested in stuff
like this. And I went great, and then he leaned
in kind of and said, of course I'm her producer.
(30:21):
Well great, well great, So we got Winona, Judder and
Cactus Moser on I Love the One You're with. And
you know, I'm really proud of that song and really
all the album, you know, because for the first time
in Firefall's long history, we made one album and now
(30:41):
have made a second album of other people's songs, and
you know, doing the best we can to honor that
decade the late sixties into the seventies, which to me,
you know, is a decade or twelve or thirteen years
worth of of original music by a lot of bands
(31:03):
that will never be equaled. You know's there's great bands
in the eighties and nineties and stuff. But it's not
like the seventies.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
And this great collection. Both collections are amazing. Get them
wherever you get me is like love that cover of
Longer by Dan Volgelberg.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Again, that's in your genre.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
You all came up together at the same time, pretty
much all these artists you are covering and hadn't money.
My gosh, I remember when he was coming up and
just there was nothing like that. Shaken is just like
one of those things that just pumps you up and
you recapture it here on this album.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Oh well, thank you.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
You know. It was great because there's a lead guitar player.
For instance, I'm simple Man of Leonard Skinnard off our
first record. I didn't really listen to the skinnered version
of that, at least to tour with them a lot,
and they had three of the hottest guitar players going,
(32:02):
you know, and I just knew that if I played
my Heart and I played solos ballsy solos, I didn't
really need to copy anything, you know, it was gonna
sound really good. And it did same thing kind of
with the Eddie Money song Shaken when I first heard it,
(32:23):
you know, I mean I heard it back in the day.
But when we were looking for well, now, which Eddie
Money song should we do, and that one, you know,
shaken became an obvious one. I was thrilled with how Ballzy,
the lead guitar on his original song was and I went,
(32:44):
oh boy, this is right up my alley. And again
I didn't I didn't really. I mean I listened to it,
but I didn't cop the licks other than maybe his
introductory into introduction ones just to kind of set aside.
You know, so people go, oh wow, this is Eddie
Money and a money song. But for me as a
(33:05):
lead guitar player, to you know, to be able to
take off and play on a song as rocking as
as is that Eddy Money song just fantastic.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Mmmm.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
So you toured for the first friends and family, you
took that out on the road, and how was that
received when you would play a lot of those covers live.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Well, you know, we didn't play a lot of those covers.
We In the last year or two we've been playing
Long Train Running by the Doobie Brothers and maybe throw
in one other song by that. But the truth is,
for instance, when firefalls on tour and like We do
(33:51):
a lot play in packages of seventies bands, you know,
and maybe there's three other bands, Pablo Cruz and Orleans
and Atlanta Rhythm Section or Pure Prairie League or that
kind of stuff. On a bill like that, each band's
given forty five minutes to play, you know, and in
a forty five minute set, I kind of know the
(34:14):
six or seven songs that we have to play. It's
been the same thing for twenty years. You didn't play
Strange Way. No, we always play Strange Way, you know,
and you know you have to play you are the
Woman and just remember I Love You in Mexico and
Cinderella and living and living in Strange Way. And there's
(34:34):
like seven right there. So we didn't have a lot
of room to say, here's songs from our new album
and play three or four songs. We did sell the
album out on you know, out at the merch table,
but you know, but we're going to include at least
two songs upcoming this year once this new record gets out.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's you know, Yeah, you have to stick
with your staples. That's what people came out to hear.
You couldn't get away with that.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
So that's right, Hey, man, I paid all that money
and they didn't play You Are the Woman.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, that would be just horrific.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
If anything, I think the power would have to go
out in order for you.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, exactly. One interesting sidelight is now, I'm in my
seventies now, and you know, our audience is like fifties
sixty year olds, you know, and you know, but a
lot of times I'll look out in the crowd when
we're on stage playing and there will be a lot
(35:43):
of thirty and twenty year olds singing the lyrics to
our songs, and it's like wow. And of course the
reason that is is because they were the kids of
the parents who played Firefall and Dan Folgerberg and the
Eagles all the time at home, so they were exposed
to our music back when they were growing up. But
(36:07):
it is pretty amazing just to think a band as
old as us has a lot of thirty year old fans.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, I think it would take you to get to
your thirties because like all the way probably.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Through a kid's twenties.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
I have a daughter in her twenties, and it's like,
I think when they get a little bit older, then
they're okay listening to a mom and dad's music because
it doesn't build on those memories. They start getting nostalgic
once they get up into their thirties, right, so I'm
start yeah, I've started to see that.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
You know, you'll see that now.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
I see that at Paul McCartney shows or things like that,
where it's like, that's nice. It's the gift that keeps
on giving, and future generations are discovering the music and
it's like comfort food in a way too. It's it
reminds them of, you know, the things that they gave
them the comfort and yeah, definitely those Firefall songs. I
don't know if we talked about it last time, but
(36:55):
how you came up with the band's name, it's kind
of an interesting Western reference that happens out that way.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Was it in Yosemite?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Where it hit you? How you came up with that
of the band's name.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Rick Roberts, our original lead singer and writer of most
of our hit songs back in the early days, he
thought of he knew about Firefall in Yosemite and we
were trying to pick a name, and he said, how
about this, and we'd go, yeah, nah, how about this? Nah?
(37:34):
How about firefall. What firefall? Huh, well, yeah, that sounds okay.
I guess put it on the list. And by the
time we needed a name for our first gig and Boulder,
we had like two names on the list and firefall
was the best one of the two. We said, okay,
(37:55):
we'll be Firefall. But I've never heard of the Yosemite firefall.
I've never been to Yosemite to see a firefall. The
there's two firefalls, of course, there's every in two weeks
in November, the setting sun hits Horsetail Falls just right,
so it illuminates the waterfall going off a cliff, and
(38:17):
they call it the firefall. Now, that's the natural firefall
for about thirty forty years. They've stopped it now, but
they used to make a man made firefall and set
off a bonfire on top of the cliff and slowly
push it off so that they could have it be
more of a tourist attraction and not just once a year.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Oh wow, that's that's really cool. And I love the
logo how that halt. The artwork on the albums going
back into the seventies is just so amazing. I love
looking at at your firefall logo and the albums like
by Yes, it's just you know, artwork meant so much
when you would get an helpie, Ah.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
It did. And you know what it's interesting behind me
is my painting of our Firefall cover. I did my
painting that you're seeing here after the album came out,
and I sent the art director of Atlantic Records. I
(39:21):
sent him two or three sketches of what I thought
Firefall could be and they said, that's a great idea. Now,
when I was thinking of the album cover, now, I've
been an artist longer than I've been a musician, and
(39:42):
you know, one of my favorite artists is Maxfield Parrish,
who did all these amazing blue you know, twilight scenes
and just an amazing illustrator. I was thinking when I
started making the concept for this album cover. The first
(40:02):
one was, you know, our album's going to be on
the wall with two hundred other albums, and I want something.
I want our album to stand up even though nobody
know who's whose Firefall is. I want that to just
be so dynamic that people will pick up the album
(40:22):
just to see what it is. You know, off that wreck,
that record rack of two hundred albums being sold and
it really helped, you know. And they took my idea
and they said, great, we'll take it from here. You know,
I was hoping I was going to paint the first
album cover and they said, oh no, we'll take it
from here. Kid, thanks, and they did. The original first
(40:46):
album cover was a real photograph of a lake in
Wyoming in the daytime. That then they airbrushed all the
dark blue and the commet and this on, and it became,
you know, the album cover I think fit in perfectly
(41:07):
with how great the music was. And that's that's the key,
is how good the music is. And I think I've
told you this story before, but when Rick Roberts asked
me to start being his lead guitar player for what
he thought was going to be his third solo record,
(41:27):
and we'd be practicing Rick songs and everything, and then
Mark Andy's from Spirit and Jojo Gunn, who'd moved to Boulder,
joined our practices, and suddenly it didn't feel like a
solo record anymore, felt like a band, you know. And
when it felt like a band, Rick Roberts said, I
(41:47):
know this guy Larry Burnett in Washington, DC who writes
great songs, and he and I sing great Together, you
want to hear a song of his? And Mark and
I went, sure, let's hear it. And it was on
a reel to reel tape. I remember us long before
cassettes wherever invented. And Rick played his tape of Larry's
(42:08):
song Cinderella, and we went, oh, you know, get him
out here. So Rick flew Larry Burnette out and from
our first week of rehearsal, this was before Michael Clark
the drummer, got involved, and on our first week of rehearsal,
we had twenty five original songs to work out. And
(42:33):
that's just staggering because you know, when you know, when
you start a band, you really don't know what you're
gonna sound like, and you don't know what songs you're
gonna play unless you're a cover band. And we knew
we were gonna be where we were shooting for the
for original songs, and most bands have no idea what
they're going to sound like. And here we were with
(42:55):
twenty five songs to work out in our first week,
and a lot of those songs like Living and Living
in Mexico and Cinderella, we worked out, you know, in
the first week of practice before we even had a name.
And that's just that's astounding. So in my book, Firefall
(43:18):
has primarily been number one about songs, really great songs,
and then number two about the singers of those songs
and what that sounds like. And then number three great musicianship.
You know that that beefs it up, and that's where
I come in.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Yeah, that's what counts. It really does. And you know,
after the yacht rock era and then they were saying
music videos were really taken over. You got into the eighties,
did you all get into doing videos?
Speaker 1 (43:50):
We met a few videos and we had one one
of our singles in the eighties briefly be played on
MTV because Firefall certainly isn't an MTV type of band
and wasn't back then and now MTV hardly has any
music on it. But yeah, we made videos, but you know,
(44:13):
we were of the yeah, I don't know, it was
we didn't probably make enough and enough videos, and consequently
Firefall was kind of a faithless band and they go Firefall,
firefight you know, oh you are the woman or oh Mexico,
(44:35):
you know, but so, you know, I wish we would
have been able to you know, have a backer who
paid for more videos. But videos even back then were
pretty damn expensive to make.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Yeah, yeah, they really were. Now anybody could do them,
but oh yeahn oh my gosh. Yeah, you know, the
equipment everything I started out, you know, making movies, Super
eight movies and stuff like that. I didn't have money
for a video equipment and you were very limited with
with film and it was expensive, very expensive nowadays and
he kid can shoot anything they want on their phone
(45:09):
and upload it to YouTube. They become famous.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah, there's backs, like and a lot of people don't
realize that. Once you film a song, you know, then
there's hours and hours of editing to it. It's you know,
and there you go, it's okay. Editing.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Yeah, yeah, that's very important too. How to tell the
story and you need to be a good editor. And
that really does make the song in the video, and
that video is attached to your song forever. It's like,
that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
You make a crappy video and that you know, people
remember you're the crappy song in the crappy video. It's like,
you gotta be careful.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
That's so true.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
So I going out touring, are you going to be
doing a lot of it here this year in twenty
twenty five. How does that look As far as getting
out there on the road.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
We are we are too, I won't say a lot.
We are touring. Weekend Warriors go out and play one
or two shows on a weekend. We're going to New
York and New Jersey for a four day swing. But
we don't tour like we used to do. You know,
(46:18):
you go away for you know, back in the seventies,
I'd be gone for two months from my apartment, which, man,
not only could I not have a dog, I couldn't
have any plants in my house. You know, It's like,
who's going to water my plans? But we're we're weekend
Warriors now, and you know, it's still just amazing fun
(46:41):
to play the shows out on the road, whether it's
a short thirty five or forty minute set, or whether
it's our long ninety minute set or two one hour
shows or whatever. But I'll tell you what, the travel
part and the hotel part and all the other parts
of uring I don't miss at all. And in fact,
(47:03):
I'm kind of glad that we're only playing some this
coming year because I'll tell you what the grind, you know,
the grind from you know, touring, you know, weeks and
weeks at a time is just really tough.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Oh it is. And recording is just you know, I
would say, slightly easier. You're not having to like take
all your drag all your stuff all the time, so
that's really nice. How long did it take to record
this set or each set? How long did it take
for each volume when you put this together?
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Oh? Are you talking friends and family here? Right?
Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Uh. Firefall never made really quick records. Yeah, you know,
I would say it took us a month, you know,
maybe a little bit longer. Now we live in five
different states, and so I might be in the stud
studio doing guitar parts and hey, we need Kunga's and
(48:04):
shakers in here, and then I would have to send,
you know, what we did to Nashville to have John
sing on it or or whatever. So it's kind of
time consuming. I remember a bit in the old days,
one of my favorite band's Little Feet with Lowell George.
We love those guys. I had heard stories about they'd
(48:24):
go into the studio with songs that they were going
to record for their new album, and if they didn't
get a cut on that one song within two or
three takes. Forget it, We're not doing that. You know.
It'd be like so they would go in and then
make an album in like three days, which is like, wow.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
And then and then on the other side of that
would be like Steely Dan who you know, would like
you know, they they'd have ten different guitar players on
the same song, and you know, in La New York,
you know whatever. So it generally has taken Firefall about
a month to make a record when you're real focused, yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
You're in all these different locations, so you're putting files
together and you have a mixer. It's just totally different
than how you did it in the old days.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Start up in the studio, that's true. Yeah, way way way.
Speaker 3 (49:24):
Different and going to tape rather these days all digital,
so it's just completely a different story.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
So this album as well.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
You offer it up on CD and vinyl is it's
available always at your merch tables and wherever you can
get music.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
I have heard that we are printing up vinyl on
friends and family too, which you know, the full circle
about how that came around, you know, you don't have
vinyl on your record gees, you know, so and you
know what I mean, CDs are kind of obsolete. You know,
everybody just diload stuff and that goes back to you know, downloads,
(50:06):
you know. I mean, I remember hearing many money many
months ago about that song Happy. I forget the guy
who did it, huge worldwide hit Happy. You know, he
had four million radio airplays and he made something like
eight hundred dollars from royalties, and you're going, man, so
(50:28):
Rick Roberts and all the old old riders of songs.
You know, they used to make a lot of money,
and now it's like, who knows if they make money
or not. I'm just glad that I'm in a band
that has hits to play. Here, I'm seventy four years
old and I'm still making new albums. That's that's pretty rare. Oops.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
Yeah, it's very good.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
That was gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
It happens at some point, you know, that's true.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
And and you know there's so many around your age
who were just like, oh, they played just the hit.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
And it's just kind of.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Nice to see, you know, artists now still creating something new,
whether it's you're you're doing the covers, you're still recording,
but and even writing new songs.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
It's really nice to see that.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
And I'm writing, I'm writing new songs that aren't for Firefall,
because Firefall is kind of we have a not a pigeonhole.
But you know, I could write a really hard charge
in rock and roll song that doesn't like that doesn't
sound anything like Firefall. And if you know, if I
(51:33):
had Firefall do that song, people would go, well, I
kind of like the song, but that's not Firefall. Firefall
should be just remember I Love You. So it's kind
of cool because I write a lot of songs, I
do a lot of paintings, and I'm you know, I
have a lot of free time just to create, and
(51:56):
uh you know when I in fact, last night I
sat down, picked up a guitar and suddenly was writing
a new song for a new Firefall record, which after
two albums of cover songs like Friends and Family and
Friends and Family two are I know that I want
(52:16):
to put out at least a five or six song
new album of new Firefall songs. So you know, it's
always it's always a you know, an ongoing kind of thing,
which I know how lucky and fortunate I am to
be in this position.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Yeah, and so hard in the arts especially, and you're just,
you know, so right brained. I mean, you're you're doing painting.
You you put together music that that's really fascinating, and
it keeps your mind going. That's what keeps you young
and keeps your spirit going and just keep ongoing. That's
that's very inspiring to see that, because it's so hard
(52:53):
out there these days.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
When you're young and you really wanted to get into the.
Speaker 3 (52:56):
Arts, it's really really tough, right, So yeah, I definitely
give kudas to that, and so many great songs on here,
a dozen new songs. With the second volume of Friends
and Family, you even dig back a little bit into
the six Days. I love that you. I love the
birds so much, and I remember meeting Roger mcgwen under
(53:16):
a bridge in Chattanooga.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
He played under a bridge and.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
It was just like one of the best little performances
that I could ever remember it. Just to see you
being inspired by the birds is really nice to see
that on here.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
So you want to interesting about you saying that on
the first Friends and Family album, I mean we had
played so you want to be a rock and Roll
Star as our encore song live for years, you know,
and I thought that that would be the Bird song
that would be on that first record, and we recorded it,
(53:53):
and then I just kept thinking, I'm going, you know,
let's do that Gene Clark song. You know, the name
escapes me right at this moment. That's on the first record,
feel a whole lot better. Yeah, one of my favorite
bird songs. And so I didn't want to put two
(54:14):
Bird songs on the first record. So we kind of
put Rock and Roll Star in the tank, not knowing
we were going to make a second record. And so
when we started this record, we already had one song done,
rock and Roll Star. And to me, I mean the Birds,
Oh my god. I was in high school when the
(54:38):
first Birds record hit, and of course the Beatles and
the Stones, but the Birds, oh my god. And to
suddenly graduate high school, I was already a pretty good
guitar player. I moved to Boulder to go to college,
and Boulder, I mean, Steven Stills moved in. There's Dan Volgerberg,
(54:59):
Hey Walsh, you know, Richie Fury, oh, Chris Hillman. You know.
I started playing in bands with guys from the birds,
you know, Chris Hillman. You know, I was lucky to
have totally fallen into Grand Parsons and Emmy Lou Harrison
the Fallen Angels. So looking back on my history, I
(55:20):
got to play with three birds, Chris Holman and Michael
Clark and then a little bit Graham Parsons. I've sat
on stage and we've had Roger mcgwin bring his twelve
string on and sit in with us a couple of times,
and it's just like, I look up my career and
I go, wow, you know, I got to play with
some of the birds, you know.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
Yeah, live in the dream.
Speaker 1 (55:43):
Definitely living the dream.
Speaker 3 (55:45):
That's great, so inspiring, so great to see you, and
best wishes with this new project and touring and new
material for Firefall, that's going to be exciting. One day
we'll see that come to fruition and just all the best.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Definitely, Well, thank you, it's been nice.
Speaker 1 (56:04):
Sorry about my uh my phone shaking a little bit,
but uh, the next one I do, I'll make sure
I put on some stationary position.
Speaker 3 (56:14):
Yeah, I've seen much shakier in the past, So that's
that's very good. Yeah, we did really well. I'm so
glad you Hugh came by today.
Speaker 1 (56:23):
Well, thanks, very nice talking to you, Bob.
Speaker 2 (56:26):
Have a good one.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
Take care of okay, we'll do thanks. Bye.
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