Chicago

They've had five consecutive number one albums and twenty top ten singles on the Billboard Hot One early hits like twenty five or six to four? Does anybody really Know what time it is? And Beginnings Solve Them Somewhat simplistically labeled the rock and roll band with horns, this really under sells the event of arrangements and delicate melodies of songs like Color My World or If You Leave Me Now.

They've had many different eras and many different members, but these three guys have been there since the very start in nineteen. Now they're helming a brand new album called Born for This Moment, which is out now complete. His can rest easy because this their thirty eighth album, also bears the label Chicago thirty eight in their trademark Roman numerals. I'm so thrilled the welcome Robert Lamb, James Panco, and

Lee Locknane of Chicago. I mean, it's congratulations. I mean there's just so many new moments that I discover every time I listened to it. Listened to it a number of times. How did this project begin for you? Was this a quarantine lockdown project? Pretty much? I mean I think we had all gone home after after it was

our touring was interrupted. Um So speaking personally, I just went home and after a couple of days, you know, I got I was drawn to the piano in my studio and I just started, you know, working on not even working on music, just sort of rediscovering older pieces of music that hadn't been made into songs yet. So I just started a very long process process of doing that, and it was I found it refreshing to not be under a time constraint I had all day every day.

My wife was very indulgent if I if I, I spent most of the day at piano, and as a result, uh, some songs started to make themselves done, and I just you know, just began, you know, on my my little laptop studio kind of composing what essentially were demos. Now, how much of this was done through file sharing? Because those those horn parts sounds so tight. I mean, you know one set of lungs that had to be together.

Was that? Was that done through file sharing? We we made records in the studio as a band for fifty years, and yeah, it was. It was a little bit different, a little challenging, uh to a degree of to compose um a little uh little snippets of pieces of songs remotely and then um, you know, get them to Joe Thomas, our producer who kind of uh so things together. We did the Brass live at Lee Lot Main studio in Sedona, Arizona.

I was in the process of building the studio in Sedona before the pandemic started, and then this was just uh continuation of that when all of a sudden we weren't working. I was at the studio all the time, and we had by the time Jimmy had charts together to be able to record. We had myself, Jimmy and Ray Herman. We all gathered at my studio. We recorded eleven tracks. So that's how it's got on the record. I don't think that we intended to record an album

right away. I think everybody was sort of working individually and it wasn't until uh, you know, maybe maybe six months into the pandemic that the idea that hey, this could be this could be an album, and uh, Joe Thomas approached us and asked if we were interested. So I called these guys and said, you know, are we are we interested in doing an album? Or what you mentioned the charts earlier. I mean, something that I've loved about your arrangements throughout your career is just the interplay

between the voice and the brass. The brasses is a full on co lead. It's like the singers doing a duet with the brass. That has to be a challenge to make those pieces fit together. Is there a key? What's the process like of of arranging the brass parts for this? When I, uh, when I approached this unique brass situation, I just inherited the chair because I had been arranging as I was in college and even before.

And it's a lead vocal. Basically, it's a main book character in the song, and along with the lead vocal, it completes the melodic journey from beginning to where the lead vocal leaves off, the brass picks up, and where the brass leaves off, it leads into the vocal and remains thematic to the vocal melody. So it's it's one

smooth process, you know, vocals, horns, vocals, ones. And then basically when I when I arranged this Breath, I picked up my trombone and I played a solo along with the rough mixes with the vocals, and that solo became an ensemble and voiced we're appropriate, and that underneath the vocals. Two at substance, uh, I wrote pads to a largely agree two strengthened the quartal based under the vocal. Wow, that's so interesting. I mean, how elaborate and intricate it is.

I mean, there's so many great moments on this album, and one that I keep going track two is for the Love I mean, those strings that lead into the horn solo. It's just it's so amazing. And Robert, I know you've said for the Love of a standout for you. What is it about that song that really resonates with yeah? Uh uh. This song actually was born from a recording of the acoustic guitars a friend of mine who actually who guitarists who has played h H on Chicago albums,

and someone who's also from Chicago. Um uh sent me. You know, we were I wanted. I just wanted to write with people I hadn't really written with for a while. And ah, he sent me. He sent me basically, he said, you know, I haven't been i haven't been playing lately, and I'm having a bit of a problem, but I'll send you. I'll send you the last stuff that I

laid down just this as a as a start. So I I took his recording and I I manipulated sections of it and sort of you know, made meets H an interesting grid on which I grew huh singing melody and and as the as the melody and the section sections began to emerge, Ah, I was hearing I was hearing a song that was maybe maybe from the Dred

I was I was hearing I was here. I was kind of feeling like the singer was talking or singing with his friends, telling telling them about how much the world had changed, and and the one thing that was a constant was was the love. So uh, you know, it was sort of a brick by brick building of

a sum um. And as it happens, the first violent piece that was put in to the song was played by I'm blanking on the name, played by a young virtuoso violinist who happens to live in Italy, and she she played her solo and sent it to me and it was like perfect and so so the whole thing was coming together as sort of a non electronic, non rock piece, just a beautiful love song, if you will, with lyrics that talked about how the world was changing. And in the end all will have is That's an

incredible track. Really, one of my my favorites on the album. That's my wife, there you go. That's as the highest praise you need. She turned to me, she said, you are that's I get highest praise. There's nothing else I can say. That's all you need. Wow, I mean, good lord, beautiful track. There's so many amazing songs on this album, and I'm so fascinated by the many different ways that

people can have these flashes of creativity. I mean, you mentioned other ways that you manipulated this wholy other song to create this. I'm curious. I mean I think of a track like make a Man out of Me, a song that's so steeped in in paternal love for a child. Do you have a feeling and go sit down and sort of play it out of you? Or does the does the tune come first, and does that give you a certain feeling and then you kind of right to that. Well, making that out of me is a love song to

me my new one soon. And we're all fathers. You might be a father yourself, are you? Are you a dad? Okay? Well, I don't think that there's any more powerful bond than apparent to their child. When when when I looked down at my son in the crib, I was overtaken by the love I had for this new human being, a product of my wife and myself, and I looked down and it's that idea just hit me between the eyes.

You know, this is a responsibility. It's my duty, is your father, to give you the tools two have a good life, to succeed to know the meaning of life. And it inspired the words um. You know, as songwriters we have we have the joy of experiencing these intimate moments of expressing ourselves and our feelings about various things that affect us as people. And I was overtaken at that point in this instance, with this discovery of how deeply I love this little person more than just about

any other writing experience I had had. And then they have the blessing of being able to UH compose a song about that feeling, and then all of a sudden it goes on a record and eventually becomes a story shared by lots of lots of people. And I would venture to say that it's a commonality of it. Anybody who's had a child will immediately relate to that feeling.

In fact, when we were in the studio listening back to UH songs with UM the record Company, one of the UM, one of the higher ups with the record company seated next to me, leaned over and saying, Jimmy, you know that song resonates with me unbelievably because I have a son, and when I listened to this song, I was standing over his crib just like you, and I immediately understood the power of what you were feeling.

So hopefully a lot of people will experience that. I mean, there are so many of your songs that have that. I mean, I was I'm sure you heard us all the time. I was a wedding DJ for a number of years, and the recessional that we would play so often at so many of these ceremonies and receptions was Beginnings. I mean, it's just something that just is so powerful, and you'd see you look out there and you'd see people crying when that song was was on because it

was such a beautiful. You know, it's my favorite song. I tell Robert every night on stage and he looks at me like, Okay, I've heard enough of that, I know, and I don't blame me. I love that you included that as a as a little nod in um in our New York time. I thought was just such a cool little call back. What let you do include that? That was a producer call you know, Uh, producers can

be can be creative in that way. You know. They here, you know, they hear a song that is fairly complete, and the track may be done, and everything might be done, but a good producer will well, uh, well, sometimes add a color of flavor, maybe even a few words here and there two to make to make a particular song stand out. It's definitely not a record that's that's steeped in nostalgia, but there were a few of these touching little moments, like the opening of that This is Goodbye

to really hit me. Just a bunch of crazy kids, look at all the things we did wake up playing in the high school band. Make it to the Promised Land. I mean to me as a fan, it's hard not to read that as as autobiographical in some way. Well, you know this record, you know, as a listener, not as a composer or a member of the bandit as a listener. Uh. I found, uh, this collection of songs to be Um really pretty fascinating because you know, we delve into all kinds of stuff. Okay, it's not just

love songs or or pointless rock and roll. It's it's very cerebral, but yet it has the pull of great musicality, and the grooves go from A to Z. I mean, this is clad Seek Chicago with a new face. You know, I can try of m express it in terms of you know, I I played some of the rough mixes for my kids, you know, my younger listeners, and they were wow. You know you guys, you guys have have a freshness, yeah, that you haven't had in a while. And maybe it was the desperation of being completely idle

during the pandemic. That made us stretch a little further, you know, or made us aware of more things that we were always too busy to realize. And I think that might have inspired, uh, the courage two push the

envelope and go a little further, you know. Maybe. Well when you asked about the the Right of Goodbye, which by the way, is the first single coming out off the album, Uh, it was written by our producer, and I think he was probably incorporating when he started as a band, and I think he had a co writer and they were both doing a similar thing where they back to their roots, back to when they started and went into high school and started further in their career.

And it could be construed as it being only about us, but I think it's about any band that gets together. Let's be friends, let's you know, how far can we go with this and uh see what happens? You mentioned. The record was produced by Joe Thomas, who has worked with some of my all time favorite artists, mean, Brian Wilson, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty and now you what was it like working with him? When all did he did he bring to the table? It seems like he was very

actively involved. The biggest problem is we didn't see each other. Oh yeah, so we were very rarely in the in the same room together. We were trying to put it, get it to a point where everybody would be able to come to my studio and we'd be able to do background vocals, which we did a little bit of. We did most of the brass, all of the brass at my studio, but getting everybody in the room together was a difficult process during the pandemic. You know, I

had a lot of conversations with him on the phone. Um, and I agree with you. You know, I had never laid eyes on the guide. Uh. We know we had done some some video projects at one of the studios in Chicago that that is a venue for for videos. Um, but I had I didn't have any sense of him as a as a producer or as a writer or he actually plays plays a really good keyboards. So so all of that was really interesting. I have to say, I have to have to say that in the beginning.

Uh once once we had sort of commuted to let's see if we can you know, make this an album. Um uh, I I think uh, not being a tech guy, completely opposite from Lee. I'm not a tech guy whatsoever. I thought, well, everybody has a laptop and we all can do our our demos on the laptop. Will send him to Joe, and Joe will just you know, make a do his magic and magically, uh make a finished record.

Well he kind of thought. He kind of thought the same thing at first, but then as he was getting uh, as he was getting a file files said to him, Uh, he discovered everybody's working on a different platform. So it was like, un, I'll never do that again. But uh, and being the tech guy, I was trying to talk everyone out of doing it and sending you know, a certain file type so we can have consistency going on.

It was a difficult process. Yeah, it was really it was really you know, it was really a long, longer process and it really needed to be um. But having said that, he was very patient. He was he was very open. I found to be very open two ideas and you know, he he put his nose to the

grindstone and got this stuff done. Yeah. It was no easy test, I'm sure for for him because you know, he received, yeah, he received files from writers and he would plug in Chicago, Uh, performances into the personal demos. You know, if I submitted a song all of a sudden, Uh, you know, a demo's a demo vocal. Uh, you know, we get a studio sausage or saying or that we knew to say, a lead vocal, and then we do some backgrounds and I do a trombone kind of a

thing where the horns section would be. And then it was not only was Joe getting files from from band members and then plugging in um Chicago players band members to do to redo the performance. But yeah, he would then take that upgraded track with you know, Wally Rays playing the drums instead of a you know, a a drum machine or whatever. We have you know, Wally playing real drugs. We have a real bass player, we have

you know, real musicians. And then he'd take that file and send it to me, and then I would arrange the brass to that track which had the real music on it. So uh, I could create a horn arrangement, because I cannot create a horn of horn arrangement to an unfinished demo because there's uh, there's it's got to be the real thing. I can only arrange to what the final representation of the song will be. So he was receiving files, he was putting musicians on those files.

He does send the file to me, I would put real brass on paper. We take that brass to Arizona to Lee's we record that real brass. It would then go back to Joe and Joe would put background love of those on the track again where the real horns were. So it became a sceneless result. So it was back and forth and back and forth. I was doing vocals in California. I didn't the track for my song on stage with the with the live band if This Isn't Love?

And I think I did a couple of songs like that, and if This Isn't Love was the one that made it on the album. But I think that was one of the few songs on this record that was done by our band and band on stage as a band. Wow. And then we recorded the Breast at the studio in Sedona and and by the way, well during the pandemic,

I had enough time two build the studio. My UH engineer Tim Jessop and I were working on a Cardigi all projects which we we did six days in nineteen seventy one and uh we were uh mixing and mastering all six all eight shows that we did within that six states. So we were immersed in the in uh deep in a project while this record was going on. So um, there was a lot going on in the pandemic amazing productive time. Yes, I loved that Carnegie Hall

box set when it came out last year. And one one of the things that I really enjoyed about it was I feel like there were so many moments of improv in there, which is a side. I feel like, we don't see a lot from you so often. So I really enjoyed it so much. I really love there was a lot from night to night we we just said, we were uh like this, like good bye, that's crazy kids just coming up and playing uh, you know, from

the hip and just doing what what came. We had the the the songs put together, but we played them loosely, you know. Frankly. I revisited that Cardegie all uh Little Lee sent us uh the records. I listened, you know. Of course it was uh you know, it improved, I mean amazingly so at I started realizing, holy crap, how did we do that? We I mean, we were a bunch of kids, and I listened to some of those performances,

and you know, we had no fear. We had no fear. Uh. And Terry, you know, I mean his his genius and his his strength within the band. Yeah, I think it actually motivated me to say, screw it, man, I'm not gonna worry about rules, you know, with this album, you know, and I started just taking chances because I listen to Candy, I'm all right, man, if we could, if we could accomplish that when we didn't know anything, can we accomplished

when we do know all that? But we had the same experience when we a couple of years ago we did Chicago to live on on our tour, and in rehearsing to play that, played that repertoire. It was like we did a lot of that, looking at each other saying, what the hell will we think we're writing these? And you know, obviously not only the Chicago two situation, but you know, the Carnegie Hall. Uh, you know, that was

still very early in our career. I mean, I think probably the most the most recent song might have been Savory in the Park. That was this was only three albums, so you know it was. It was a different world, certainly a different climate in in rock music. It was funny before speaking to you, I was rewatching that amazing

documentary now more than ever. And there's a great moment when you were talking about the start of your career when you played an original song at a club and you were fired for not playing the top forty, which is I mean, it's just insane to me to think of a time like that. What what what was that like back then for you? What compelled you to make the jump from from playing these songs to playing originals. We actually played a Frank Zappa song of uh, how

could I be walls? Rock and roll walls? And that's where we're go from there quote a Zappa cover. The music business changed, it changed, it changed. By the end of the seventies, it was really all about, you know, if you had to hit with one song, the record company wanted another song just like it, only different if possible. And and I just think that the uh, the thinking, the thinking about trying to write a hit song really kind of really kind of defeated lots of artists as

as the music industry demanded that that procedure. Here was a strange question that I'm just thinking now and I'm trying to make phrase it right. I feel like there's a lot of people who talk about artists who inspired m to be virtuoso's, But I was wondering, are there any musical heroes of yours that taught you how to play together with a band and how to really jel I mean, I feel like that's something that's so special about you. And again, I keep going back to the

one set of lungs. Were there any groups out there, maybe the Mother's of Evntion were one of them that really showed you what was like to see a group in total cohesion, total mind melving playing as one that really showed you like this is what this is how powerful and musical unit can be. I can tell you one right, yeah, the Beatles. Oh yeah, when the Beatles

came on the scene, I was totally jaw dropped. I mean, these guys, uh, they re they reinvented pop music, or maybe not reinvented it, but took it to a unique other level. Perfect voicing in the vocals. Well, like Calfacings. We were listening to Colfaing and we learned how to phrase by listening to Yeah, I've always in my own mind, like in your your horn parts to Brian Wilson's vocal arrangements just the way it sits in the track and compliments the lead so perfectly. UM. I know he's someone

that you're very closely associated with. He's one of my heroes, and you're about to go out and do a number of shows with him this summer. I just wanted to ask you more about about your your connection with him, and what it's been like playing with them all these years, and and just your thoughts on the Beach Boys. But we did, we did to her with the Beach Boys extensively in the seventies, and it was they had they

had kind of been in a down phase of their career. Uh, and we were, you know, we were selling out baseball stadiums. So our producer at the time, Jenny Garcio actual, she was playing bass with the Beach Boys and somehow got them to agree to be our opening end. And that whole ste summer was just in aasing experience. Uh. Talk about a band that could throw down live. The Beach Boys good, and so could Chicago and so could the

two bands when they came on stage together. So I think that as a possibility, will be doing a little bit of that this summer. Brian and his band. The footage from that seventy five when you're on together doing like Darlin together or something, I mean, you're out there playing with it sounds like a Chicago song. It's so perfect. It's such a great blend. I love those those concerts. Wow,

that was that was a phenomenal experience. Were at the at the Garden in New York and they had to they had to evacuate the felt for him on the floor below because the floor of the floor of the of the Garden was going up and down. The people that's right, it's on springs, right, and then the the upper deck was coming loose from the French were shaking around at Angels Stadium in California when we played that, because the you know, they were built to withstand a

home run. The excitement of the run, well a three minute song with it, with its shaking up and down, it really got going good there where they were. They were worried that that the all per deck went collapsed. Oh man, I we all need a little bit of that energy this summer. I cannot wait to see out there. My my last question before I let you go. I'm so excited to get back out on the road. I want to ask you, what is the title Born for this Moment mean mean to you? It's such an evocative phrase.

I was thinking a lot about it. I don't want to ask you what what led you to choose that title Born for this Moment? Yeah? That was actually that's actually the title track. That's a uh, you know Robert song. And before the title was chosen, I as I'm arranging that Robert song, I'm thinking, wow, what a great title for the for the record. Weren't for this moment? You know, this mortality is the reality. You know, maybe this uh is the last real original plation of music that we

have the you know, the pleasure of doing. Hopefully not, but uh, this record is a record that I think was meant to be made for a long time. You could book had this career with Chicago Transit Authority and Born for this moment in my moment, because this, you know, this is the first album of this next thing, hold long at last. We don't know yet be in the moment, I think that's a that's a beautiful note to end

on Lee, Robert James, you were the best. Thank you so much for your time today and most importantly for your music. You give me so much joy over the years. Thank you, thank you so much, thank you, thank you. Joy Speaking. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio, a production of I Heart Radio. For more episodes of Inside the Studio or other fantastic shows, check out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.