I am all in again.
Let's just do Luke Steiner with Scott Patterson an iHeartRadio podcast.
Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I amal and podcast one of them productions iHeartRadio Media, iHeart Podcast. Another edition of Luke's Dining. We have a very special, very special guest. I'm particularly excited because this superstar, this icon is from the music side of the entertainment business. Carney Wilson is joining us. Carney, welcome. We are thrilled to have you.
I'm glad to be here. Scott. How are you.
I am doing exceedingly well. Let me you know, for those of you who have been living under a rock for the past thirty years.
Uh.
Carney is a legendary singer songwriter, part of the trio Wilson Phillips. Five Grammys, you know, just little stuff like.
That Grammy nominations.
I was going to say nominated. I was going to say nominations.
I was waiting for you'd see it right behind me, like lined up.
Yeah, just a Grammy nomination, not accomplished at all, no big deal. And by the way, just on a personal note, love the cover of California Dream and just love it. Thank you you did it such justice. Uh and in some ways it was even better, if that's even possible. But it was just the most charming it. I got joked up listening to it last night. It's one of it's one of my favorite songs.
It's one of my favorite songs too. And you know, my husband Rob produced that produced that particular one, our cover of it. He produced that whole album that we did. It was an album dedicated to our parents, and he did a really good job. Yeah, it's beautiful, tell him that it was.
It was just gorgeous. Every detail that song was. I mean, he enhanced what was already there, and there was at some new things, but not too much, you know, And it was just great. God. And I listened to hold On, I listened to I watched the original video and it's
just such great, great harmonizing. And I just missed that so much because I you know, I I grew up in that in the sixties and the seventies and and and those harmonies were a huge part of CSN why and you know, all these great groups and the Beatles, and so I'm used to that and I love that, and nobody really does it anymore, you guys, do it so well. Oh that hold On song was such detail and the melody is so complex, yet it doesn't come off that. I was just great stuff, so really really
happy to talk. You come from a family of music, yes, but I hear cooking is another love language of yours. Where did that come from?
Well, I mean I've always been a foodie, you know, But I think actually my grandmother, my mom's mom, May, Grandma May was a great cook, just a just a little Jewish grandma who you know, would just I remember rolling Manza balls with her. Just have these memories of having my little step stool near her sink and we would just roll the lots of balls, roll the lots of balls. And her Manza balls were amazing because she made them with a chicken fat, and so they were
like they were more dense. They weren't light and fluffy. I like a more dense Manza ball. And hers she used to she did this thing where she would take a strainer and she when she made the broth for the chicken soup, she would put the carrots, the celery, the onion, she'd put a turkey leg, she would do a tomato, and then she would when the carrots were
and I think it was all cooked. She would take out all the vegetables strain it, but then she would some of the cooked carrots and she would strain them through the colander. The mesh, little tiny fin, little flex of carrot would be in the soup and it was really good. So I think my initial like introduction to food came from her.
Right, So tell me about everybody's got their secret ingredients.
What do you use?
What are some of your secret ingredients that you use if you can reveal that.
I do have a few. One is cardamom. I am a big cardamom lover. And it can be as like intense or not as you want it to be. So when I bake, I love to make cakes, and I usually add cardamom unless it's a flavor that's weird like funky with it, like I don't know. I mean, I might add it with strawberry, but I mean all my vanillas, my lemons, even chocolate I have. But cardamom is very special.
It's really great with like lemon and white chocolate. There's something very magical about cardamom with lemon and white chocolate together. So that's a secret ingredient. And you know, honestly, I'm an herb and I'm an herb girl and a citrus lover. So for me, I don't do terragon. I love terragon. I sage is okay, I mean Thanksgiving is really all my sage. Once in a while, maybe a brown butter thing with a sage and maybe apasta if I get adventuress like that, but really it's more my cilantros, my
you know, my basil mint. I just made an incredible corn salad and I put mint and basil in there. I think that herbs are underrated, and people someone like me who's trying to watch the sugar and the gluten and the carbon tank. I like to fancy up my food with like a shit ton of herb and citrus. So you've got some salt, pink salt, citrus and herbs, you are like good to.
Go, right right right? Yeah? I sort of of. I do the citrus thing, olive oil and herbs on salmon because I have a couple of different salmon recipes and I've got one that has like Italian seasoning bread crumbs on it too, which is really nice.
That sounds nice. I have a couple of great salmon recipes. I actually just made one on Good Morning America about six months ago, and with the mango salsa, and it was a big, big hit. But I want to try that with the bread crumbs. That sounds delicious.
Yeah, so, yeah I do. I do olive oil and then I squirt some real lemon on it, and then do the bread crumbs and put a nice, nice butter on top, and it all just sort of melds in.
I love salmon so much. I do too. I do too, I just really honestly I love it. I do too. It's my favorite. I think it's my favorite.
It's big in our household.
Yes, yeah too.
So since I am Luke from Luke's Diner, I feel only it's only right to ask you. Do you love diner food as much as I do?
Of course I do.
Yes. What's what's the ultimate diner meal for you?
For me, it's a pattimelt and fries well done. I mean, it's just it's all about a pattimelk. For the love of God, I can't think of anything better than. I really with good meat, though it has to be good good meat. But like I love the grilled onions, I love to just drench it and ketch up. I don't love like rye bread. I'm not a rye rye girl. I don't like the flavor. But I love sour dough. So a pattimeoult on sour dough. You know that's really greasy with the with the and I add tomato, so tomato,
the onions, and you know, and really good cheese. I don't care what cheese it is. Any cheese fine with me, you know, really honestly, any cheese is fine.
You're answering all my questions. All my questions. I have to cross them out. You just answered all of them.
And then I love ranch. I'll dip it ranch too, and the ketchup.
But where so you one first place in a tuna melt contest? What is this?
What is this? So? So? I did a show for the Food Network called Rachel Versus Guy and it was I don't even know how long ago it was. It was it was maybe fourteen years ago, and I made it to the very end. I almost won, but Dean McDermott won. Uh and he he I was literally he like hogged the whole countertop and I was like plating my stuff on the floor. I was really mad, but I came this closed. I came in second place. But when but when we went to we had an episode.
We were doing diner food and it was Mel's Diner and it was the classic one on Sunset Boulevard, the original Mele's Diner. And you know, it was so fun and just I love I love the vibe and energy of a diner. It just is the best, right, So I was really excited. I thought, I'm just gonna knock him dead with this tuna melt. This tuneamil is any melt, I don't care what you're melting, just melted with bread and cheese, and I'm happy. But I thought, you know,
let's let's just go crazy. So I won the first place for that week. And it was it was a tuna melt with my probably five different herbs, jalapeno in the tuna, jalapeno, you know, red onion, all kinds of seasonings and stuff, lots of lemon, and then and that's
the tuna right with the mayonnaise. And then I did I added a bunch of herbs and then I grilled onions in balsamic vinegar and butter and salt and pepper, and then so there's this tangy, kind of really yummy not pickled, but you know, it's got the balsamic with the onions and then cheddar cheese, sour dough bread, and my god, this tuna melt rocked and they loved it. And so funny enough, they had this deal with Mel's Diner. They put they had like a card on the table.
Each table had a card saying like Carnie Wilson's Rachel versus guys. You know TV show Carnie Wilson's Tuna melt featured here, And they did it for six months. But then I went after six months and they kept it on the menu and they weren't supposed to do that, so I guess, I guess, and they almost got in big trouble because I was like, well, that's not fair. That's a melt, you know. So I'm back to my agent. I'm like, hey, Mel's Diner to get their thing together,
you know. So then now they changed there so they didn't label it, and now when you go back to Mel's Diner, it's like similar to mine. Now, so they stole the idea, oh man, but people like it, So I'm people like it isn't that a cool story? That is?
I mean, but it's so typical, right, it's so typical.
Well, you know, recipes are kind of like songs, you know, I always say, you know what I mean, Like there's like variations and then you could just call your own you know, I mean, minus have a tea, spit of salt. It's your own recipe.
Right, nobody can own those chords. Sorry, right, speaking of music, you mind if we talk about your family a little bit? A little bit, sure, if you don't mind. I mean the Beach Boys, what can you say? I saw the Beach Boys three times in the eighties. I saw them on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. In nineteen eighty three, I saw them again in I think it was Fort Lauderdale again in a high school gymnasium. And I saw them one more time and I forget where it was.
But these were the shocking thing about a Beach Boys concert, and I didn't know this was that every single song was a massive hit, right, And You're just like it's just like another title wave of a huge song, and I'm like, wow, wow, wow. It was literally the best concerts I've ever seen. What is it like growing up in a family like that.
Well, I mean there's family and then there's music. They're very different and the lifestyle is very different. And there were there were a lot of really cool things about it, like music playing every minute, and then my introduction for my love of harmony and music myself. I'm very grateful for that. And then there was just like you're just not not a normal pace or lifestyle at all. So I feel like I was blessed in many ways, and then I missed out on a lot of stuff too.
But you know, everybody, it was kind of the time coming out of the sixties and early seventies where things were just kind of, i don't know, a little little crazy, and I didn't have much of a you know, like foundation like that. But my mom was really great and she tried to you know, I went to a very good school and really thrived in music and theater and it just kind of, you know, massaged my love for the art the arts, and then I just got into
entertainment industry so young. I was eighteen, so I just jumped right in and with the support of the family, of course, but it was amazing. I mean, it just you know, not a day goes by without some sort of like reminder of where I've come from and the music, and mainly more than the fame and all that all that stuff, it's more about like what the music has given to the world with, graced the world with, you know, dealing.
Right, those beautiful songs. I mean, yeah, when you listen to hold On and you listen to all of that, all of the Wilson Phillips songs, the hits, it's it's a legacy from what you derived from your family partly, and it's just it's a moving experience to hear it because it's like you're carrying you know, the torch was passed on, you're carrying it with such care. And the thing that shocked me re listening to this stuff was the quality of these harmonies and the care that went
into all of it. And it was just magic. You guys walk onto a stage and this magic happens, and that's impossible to do. It's just so difficult to do it, and you guys do it with such ease, and I'm sure there was a ton of hard work that went into it, but so so charming, so great.
Well, a lot of it is just like very meant to be. And then we spent a long time writing songs and developing our sound too, you know what I mean. Like I finished a concert this weekend and it was around five thousand people. It was a really great bill was Taylor Dane, Tiffany, Sheena Easton, and Wilson Philips. It
was really fun. And when we were done, it was a really big stage thunder Valley Casino in Sacramento or Lincoln, California, and the stage is massive, and so we had to like work the whole stage and it we really took. It really knocked the wind out of all of us.
But when we were done, we went back to the dressing room, we kind of plopped on the couch and just we were just like because we're we're like fifty seven now, so it's you know, so we get out and we're just like we get on the back, you know, and we were like, we're tired. And then and I just said, you know, we're just so meant to sing together. And at the end of the day when there's you know, this one doesn't agree with this one, or this is travels hard or whatever, it just is such a blessing.
And I know, believe me. I don't take it for granted for a second.
Yeah. Now, the singing is a hugely physical undertaking it. It is so draining and was it really truly is because it's you know, in a sense, it's like sort of acting, you know, ten x, because you know your your body is your instrument and that's it. You've got to produce that sound and maintain and it's not easy, no, not easy.
When we're it's so funny because when we sing, release me and we're all done, we literally you know, babe, you just got to release me and then we go and they're clapping because they love it, but they're also like, good job, you got through it. You know.
Where where? So are you on tour now or were you going to be appearing somewhere soon?
So our our tours, it's kind of funny. Our tours like one show a month and then this year we've got some double double decker things. But that's enough for us because we've got lots of kids between us and I'm still that are, you know, still younger, not that young but fifteen kind of hold the fort down a little bit too. But yeah, and it's not really a tour, but but we we have probably ten shows this year, which is great.
Really all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna check them out. I'd love to come see you guys.
Yeah, it's a fun show. Actually there's a lot of humor in it too.
Oh good, good, really funny. Thank you so much for your time. I know you're incredibly busy and you need to get back to it, but you gave us this time. We're very very grateful. It was thrilling. I'm a songwriter myself, so it's thrilling meeting you.
I didn't know that.
That's oh yeah, yeah, I may send you a song or seventeen do I love it? But anyway, Wilson Phillips, Carney Wilson, musical icon, legend, thank you so much for your time. And remember, everybody out there, thank you for your downloads. You are the best fans on the planet. Check out Carney and Wilson Phillips. Go see them. They're very very special. And uh, where you lead, we will follow.
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