Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis

Me Lately? Together Again and All for You. Then there's Boys Two Men's Four Seasons of Loneliness and on Bended Knee, Human by Human League. They've worked with everyone from Michael Jackson and Gwen Stefani to New Edition and Shaka Khan, but now they're stepping out in front for the first time. On July nine, they released Jam and Lewis Volume One, their debut album under their own name. It features help from up and comers like Oh Mariah carry Usher, Baby Face,

Tony Braxton, Mary j. Blige. Maybe heard of them. Like their home state of Minnesota. They are cooler than cool. I am so happy to welcome to music legends Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis Jimmy Terry, thank you so much for taking the time today. This is such an honor. I owe you every every high school dance I've ever had thanks to you. I should say, it's such an honor to be speaking to you. Thank You've given me so much joy over the years. Oh, thank you. Well,

we'll try to do nothing to ruin that. Nothing. I don't worry. My hopes are very high. You. You have your debut solo album due out, Jam and Lewis Volume one. In some ways, it's been in the works for thirty five years now. Can you tell me a little bit about the genesis of the album. The origin of the Jam and Lewis album actually started, Yeah, thirty five years ago, the same year that we were working on an album

that ended up becoming Control for Jam and Uh. Really we had started, you know, working on tracks for our album, and then we got the call from a John McClean at and M Records who was a and our person, and he said, hey, who do you want to work with on our roster? And we looked at the roster and we said, oh, jam it. We want to do Janet And he said, you want to do a couple of songs. We said, no, we want to do the whole album, and he said, oh, okay, cool. So anyway,

Janet came to Minneapolis. We started working. When we were done, at least what we thought. When we were done with the album, we had John come up and we played him control and Nasty and when I Think of You and Pleasure Principle and Funny out time Wise and let's wait a while. And we're thinking we're done, we're good, and like all a and our people, he goes, I just need one more, just need one more, always one more, right,

and we're like, now forget you. So anyway, we hop in the car and we're gonna go grab a bite to eat. Terry puts in a cassette. So now this dates us thirty five years ago. He puts in a cassette of tracks we were working on for the Jam and Lewis album, and about the third track in John McClain goes, wait, that's the one I need for Janet. He said, what are you talking about? He said, not need that track for Janet, play it for and if

she likes to give it to her. And we're like, oh, you're just giving our songs away now okay, fine, So the next day we go to the studio. We just turned a song on. We didn't say we were gonna play anything. We put the song on. We why Janet, and Jane's kind of looking at the TV and then she kind of puts her head down and she starts bopping a little bit. She walks to the door. She pointed me and Terry. When the song goes off, she goes,

who's that for? And we said, well, you if you want it, and she said, oh I wanted that song became what have you done for me lately? So it ended up being the single that launched her career and basically ended hours at least as artists and got us into writing and production. So that's why it's been a

thirty five year journey. And over the years going forward, we would do songs with artists and we'd say, hey, we want to do something for our Jane and Lewis album and they go, you had great, great, And then when the song would be done, they'd go, oh, no, I gotta keep this for myself. So about four years

ago we finally got selfish. We were going in the Songwriters Hall of Fame and we were on the red carpet, and a couple of reporters said, what is it that you guys haven't done that you guys still want to do? And we looked around on the red carpet, and standing a few feet down from us was baby Face. And we looked at baby Face and we said, well, we never got a round to finishing anything with baby Face, working on someone with baby Face. And then we said, and we never got around to do in our album.

And the third thing we said was we never got around to actually touring playing our own songs. So those were kind of the three things on our checklist that we had never gotten around to doing. And then through kind of you know, weird circumstances and different things, we finally just decided, let's be selfish and let's just do

our record. And so baby Face was one of the first people we reached out to we put our wish list together, and you know, that was kind of the journey of the album and why it took so long to do. And finally we were just like, we're keeping the songs for ourselves. You know, at one point in time, I think we were thinking of calling the album something like songs we were keeping for ourselves or something like that, you know, because because really that's what it is, That's

what these songs are. Are there any songs on this new album that date back to I don't think there's any that date back that not that far, but you know, certainly we have like a book titles or now iPhone the titles that might date back that far that we pull ideas from in terms of just concepts to write them. So the base of those things could possibly be. And certainly a lot of inspirations probably date back that part you met your baby Face. I love the track that

he did with him. He don't know nothing about it. Tell me about the background behind that song. It's such a great track. Well, really, the concept with really all the artists on the album is really to make if you said the artist's name, what should that song sound like? And I remember with baby Face, it was interesting because we just wanted to make the most baby Face sounding record we could possibly do. And the feeling we wanted to try to give people was we call it nostalgia.

It's that idea of hearing something new which is exciting, but it's familiar. It makes you feel good and comfortable, right, It's like it's almost like something you you're hearing something new for the first time, but it feels like something you've heard before, or like meeting an old friend for the first time or something. I don't know the different ways to kind of analogize it, but that's kind of the the idea of it. So when you hear the baby Face record, to us, it sounds like a baby

you know, it sounds like a baby Face record. And I remember somebody when we when they first heard it, said you know, wow, it doesn't sound like a Jam and Lewis record. And we said, well, what does it sound like and they said, it sounds like a baby Face record and we said, exactly, so it's not you know, I think they took it as like a like it

wasn't a compliment. We took it as a total compliment because as writers and producers, that's what we've always tried to do, is make the artists sound like the best their best self. And with baby Face, it was really cool because when we first of all, we got a chance to do to start working on it pre COVID, so we actually got to sit in the studio together and actually right and and record and do all that

kind of in person, which was which was great. But then you know, baby Face allowed us to produce the song rather than him producing it, so it made for an interesting thing. When he finally heard the finished version of the song, he just said, man, that sounds really good. And we said, oh, thanks, and he said, no, that sounds really good and we said, your baby face, what do you think it's gonna sound like. But sometimes the artists forget, they kind of forget who they are, like

why they're so great. But with him, I we also realized that because he's so meticulous about doing everything himself, he never gets to hear himself in a fresh new way. So the fact that he just handed the song off to us and said go ahead and finish it, he didn't know the choices we were going to make a which vocal to use, which guitar part to use, which he didn't know. But when he heard it he was

pleasantly surprised. So I got I think he got a chance to hear himself and in a way fall back in love with himself again, which was very important for us really with all the artists, but particularly with baby Face. But you mentioned saying you know you you want a song to sound like the best version of that artist? How do you do that? You put yourself is you sort of put your fan hat on and think, Okay, I'm really a fan of this artist. What would I

want is that? How do you approach that? That's exactly how we approach it. We are fans, you know, friends and fans of these artists first, and then you know, you just imagine, like what would I want to hear this particular artist sound like what song would I want to hear? And then we try to go for that concept and then from there, you know, just hearkening back to like a history of it, You've heard great performances

from all of these artists. So we just try to make sure that we are in the ballpark's get great performances so that it takes you to the place that you feel like you're where you were, but you're in a whole new space because, like jam said, the new stagia of it. It's comfortable but new. And so I think everybody get that that smile that you just had, just like that, we try to go for that that

makes you just feel good. It's it's that that warm feeling that the woman fuzzy that that is absolutely right. We basically this is a very selfish record. This is a record we made for ourselves, and we just hope everybody agrees. You know, we made it for ourselves. We made the records we wanted to hear these artists do, simple as that, and and hopefully people just agree with that and go, oh, yeah, that's I agree, that's what I want to hear, you know. So we're very selfish

of us. There's a great story you've told about working with with Janet Jackson on I think it was control where for the first five days you were just talking and she said, well, when are we gonna get started? And you said, well we did, and you showed her

the lyrics too. I think it was control saying based on what you've been talking about and how you kind of sort of got into her mind in a lot of ways, what is that preprocess like that that period for Janet for example, when you're sort of getting inside an artist, how do you know how do you cast a song? I guess is the question very interesting? To

put it that way, I mean, it's interesting process. It's the kind of the psychology, psychiatry of human of humanities, like to understand or at least listen to what a person is feeling in their deepest feelings and then convert that into song. We always say what comes from the heart reaches the heart. So if it comes from their deepest places in their mind and their soul, when they deliver it is certainly going to touch anyone that comes into contact with it. So we just like to just

be in their weaving I guess tailoring. I guess we call it with song smith smith ing and just the personalities of people. We just like to play with that because it just it's just an interesting place to be and as opposed to writing a song that comes out like certainly I can write a concept that comes out of my mind, but it comes out a lot better when I integrate that artists feelings about that concept, and

so we always try to include those things. We're always aware also that the artist has to you know, they have to perform these songs for the rest of their life. If they hit you no big, you know, at that point in time obviously, as right as in producers, when the song leaves the studio, it's done and we move on to the next thing. For them, it's just the beginning of the journey. They have to talk about it, they have to learn it, rehearse it, make videos for it.

I want to make sure that that song really means something to the artist that it did, it really resonates with them. And with Janet it was cool because when she her eyes just lit up when she saw kind of the lyrics to control. She just said, well, wait, this is exactly what we've been talking about. And we said yeah, and she says, whatever we talk about, that's what we're gonna write about. And it's like yeah, and she was I want I want to write about this.

I want to write about this. And it got her excited about becoming a songwriter because we included her in the process of actually creating the songs. And but that was always our philosophy, like like Terry said, tailoring almost like tailoring a suit. You get what people like, the color, the lapel, they like that, you know, and all that, and now they have something that they can wear. It only fits them. It's custom made for them and not

everybody can wear it. But I think that's kind of the philosophy production one give us a question, and I guess there's no easy answer. What is it about music that makes it's that's an effective conduit for emotion. Just reach it straight into your soul. It's the universal language. It's we we call it the divine art. It's the divine art. And if you think about it, a couple of things come to mind. One is it's time to travel.

So if I said to you, uh, you know, Jordan, in nineteen eighty five, on this day, what were you doing or whatever? You know, just pick a year and you could probably kind of piece it together in your mind. You know, well, I might have been going to this school, or I might have been you know, whatever it was that was happening in your life. If I play a song from five or a day in nineteen eighty five, you remember everything about it. Remember you know, you might

might be the girl you're dating. It might be whether it's a prom, whether it's you know, oh, I'm in my car driving with the top down, or I'm at my parents house or um, whatever, and you not only remember it, you remember the smell of the food that's cooking that day, You're there, sounds of the right you're there. Okay, that's divine. Okay, that's divine. And also think about now, in the days of zoom or we're doing everything on

zoom screens. So I know you've been on zoom screens with a ton of people write and you look on a zoom screen and you see young, old, black, white male female. You you see every different people on their right, maybe even some people where they don't even speak English necessarily, so you may not understand what they're saying. If I put a beat on, everybody's going like this. At the same time that it's that uniting thing. So I always say the zoom screen is like a quilt. Music is

the threat. So that's what it is. I mean, it's very simply the divine art, and it speaks It's God's language. To me, it's the it's the language that God speaks to all of us, which is why we all understand it. That's why we all understand Yeah, and it's in as Biblicu it as well. Like that. The mystery of music is always fascinated me. And when you think about you see in ancient culture as you see remnants of instruments. This is back when we were just struggling to be

able to eat. You know, this was clearly something that wasn't just you know, for fun. This was a primal need that we needed for some reason. And even though we don't necessarily can't totally articulate why, I think it's it's roof positive that this is something that we as humans need in our lives. Right, that's a beautiful way you expressed it. Yeah, Well, silence is scary, and there's and there's there's music and everything that happens in life.

There's a rhythm when you hear the birds sweet, there's a melody with it. Uh, there's you know, if you hear attractor trailer or a car going by, there's a rhythm that there's there's always music and everything. We just desired as humans to hear that and to feel that that that's the thing that connects us to nature. We love to hear the brook babbling in the background and the squirrels running up the tree. Is like, we love all that kind of stuff. It's just nature is part

of humanity. And and the one thing I'll add to that is we've always talk about, you know, how in schools are taking music out of schools. If you remember when you're a kid, the way you learn your alphabet, you don't learn it a B, C D. Nobody lines up the letters and goes learn these in order. But as soon as you put a melody to it, as soon as you go A E, C, D, E F G, now you remember it. So why would the very route

of tools that you used to learn the alphabet? Would you then go to school and go take music out of schools? Because that is the way that you learn. It's the reason why you know a kid can't do an essay, but he'll sing three minutes of any rap song out totally memorize. So it just, you know, it's just kind of interesting to me. But once again, I just I'll go back to what we originally said, it's the divine art, a beautiful way to put it. I

guess the flip side of that my question too. And I'm fascinated to hear your response to this to people who have I think, by my account, over a hundred top ten songs. What do you do on the days when the music is not coming? How do you push through that when you're you're you're stuck at a point when you're working on a song, how do you how do you persevere? Do you did you walk away from and get away from it? Is it's just willpower and plow through. What what do you do when, uh, when

you hit a musical problem? Well, Jordan, I don't think there's a day that the music doesn't come. It's just that all those music that comes is not great. There's always music, and there's always inspiration. Sometimes there's better inspiration and better music, you know. I tell my wife that all the times, Like sometimes you just have to wait eighteen hours to get that two hours and you know that you're inspired to do something, but you have to sit there and put the time in to get to

that two hours. You never know when it's gonna come. It might come the first hour, but it might be the last hour. You just don't know. Well. The other thing too, is that we being a team makes it easier because I go through periods where I may not be inspired or I may not feel I'm coming up with any good ideas, and then but Terry'll inspire something like Terry will have an idea or mentioned something and

I was like, oh, yeah, that's that's really cool. And then it works both ways, you know where that sometimes that happens. You know, it's interesting. I remember when we were working this is a while back, I think by Alexander O'Neil or something we were working on and Terry couldn't figure out a lyric. And we've worked and worked and work couldn't figure it out. And Terry went to like the amusement park or something he went to. He went to Disney, and he came back with a million

ideas because he wasn't thinking about it. So we're kind of aware that that is kind of the way that that it happens. But there was a Terry talked about the usher, the significance and usher in our in our lives. Yeah, well usher especially for me. And I'll tell you I went through a period of time where I thought that artists didn't really care about music anymore and it just

didn't feel inspiring to me. So I remember going to the studio one night and sitting down in Jams office and he had chairs, but I sat on the floor because I felt that low. I just my battery was just drained. I hated to do it, but I had to tell him, hey man, I'm not feeling this anymore. It's like I feel like I'm tapped out. I don't I'm not inspired. Nothing that anyone says or does makes me feel like I want to do music And Jam said, well,

I really don't feel like that. So I said, well, hey man, I'll just keep pushing as far as I can, you know, but I just wanted to let you know. And along came Usher. We were doing the project with Usher, and we started working and Usher showed me that he was so into being great. He wanted to sing better, he wanted to write better, he wanted to learn, and he was so involved in that process that it inspired me to want to be part of that process again.

And basically he restarted my my energy and my engine again and he pulled me into the next however long I'll feel like this, but that inspiration is so important. And just to be able to work with people who inspire you and pull you and push you to do

things that you wouldn't ordinarily do. That's a great story and a real story for me because I got to a place where I felt like I always feel like there's something different, And I think all these experiences that we go through right now in music is preparing us for whatever else we do in Although music will always be a part, that energy and that knowledge base is going to actually propel us into something else and be the base of that. So I don't know what that is,

but here, here we are. I'm totally excited. I love the journey, and I hope I never arrived at the destination because then I don't know what I'll do. So as long as the journey is going on. Then somebody asked us, they said, you know, what if what if you guys like write the perfect song or you guys have the perfect thing, and it's like, well, then we're done.

So I guess we're gonna keep trying to do it, but we hope we can actually never get there, because yeah, it's like that that people say that first high that you chase. You know, you get to the first high you get, it's just the perfect high. You just want that high again. Yeah, well, I hope I never get that because I don't. I just like the consistency of all of it. Is beautiful, warm for a long time

is our is our motto. When we did our very first interview, are kind of local Boys make good interview uh in Minneapolis after Control came out and the first question the interviewer asked us, he said, you guys are the hottest producers. How does it feel to be the hotest producers? And we said, we don't really want to be the hottest producers. We just want to be warm

for a long time. And then thirty years after that, so five years ago when Unbreakable came out with the Janet album Unbreakable came out, I remember we talked with the same the same gentleman. His name is John Breen, by the way, he's still at the same Star Tribune, which is the local Minneapolis paper. And he said, wow, he said, you guys realize you've had number one records in four decades now, in the eighties and nineties, two thousands, two thousand, tens. How does it feel to have another

number one record? And we just said, remember what we told you that first interview. He said, what's that? That's warm for a long time, and he laughed, but I said, that's that's really been our philosophy, you know, and the decision making process that that we've gone on. How do you stay warm for a long time? I just think you make you make decisions. You you don't chase. I think we've never chased. We've never really tried to chase trends. Were were very aware of of things that are musically

around us. We never ever shut down. I remember back in the day, because we When I say back in the day, I'm talking thirty thirty five years ago when sampling first started. And I remember people always used to ask us about sampling and they'd go, you guys would never sample, right, that's that's you know, that's cheat or that's whatever. Sample. Yeah, Beethoin never would never sample. And I'm like, no, Beethoven was an innovator, I said, people

that were innovative in making music. They were trying to figure out ways the doctor, the the the the keys or the hammers that hit the strings on the piano to give different sounds, which is why you end up with harpsichords and all kinds of different things. Synthesizers were no different, and then sampling technology was no different. But what I loved about sampling personally was one it was the foundation of hip hop music, which we love hip hop music. The other thing is, you know, as a

tool to bridge generations together. There's nothing like hearing a sample of a song that you go, I mean, we we did. I remember twenty years ago was all for You with Janet and I remember we sampled a song called the Global Love, which was changed, and it was a song that I played as a DJ back in the day, and I always thought, man, that would be

cool to sample that. We sampled that song, and I remember Janet walking into the studio and she loved it, but she had never heard the original song, so for her it was a brand new song that she was loving. But I remember Shawnette, one of her dancers, heard it and said, oh, it's a Van Dross. I remember this. I love this song and I knew that, okay. So if someone that's never heard the sample loves it and somebody that remembers the sample loves it, that's how you

bring people together. It was the same thing with Ventura Highway used in um Someone to Call My Lover, or or Rhythm Nation, which was slammed the Family Stone, Thank You. You know. So we've always embraced the technology, the idea that you know, just moving forward and staying fresh and being aware of ideas that are out there. But then we always try to remember then the kind of the musical roots of you know, melody, great melodies, great lyrics

and all those things. So we've always kind of combined the two things, and our ear that we've come up with in is great. We started with analog tape, you know, we went through um, you know, digital tape, which we never really messed with a whole lot. Terry got into like a computer stuff really early, as far as the digital workstations on computers, which I thought was crazy because I was like this, the sounds terrible, and this will

never work, This will never work. And of course now we live in a day where everything is like that. And our album is a great hybrid of the baby Face song, which was analog tape, the Mariah song, which was pretty much done in my laptop, you know what I'm saying. So it kind of runs the gamut of of of everything technologically. Also, that was always gonna ask him this new record. It's like a great Quincy Jones record. It's a collection of all your incredible songs done by

a collection of always amazing singers. But with all these different voices and textures and styles. I was blown away by how he unified it sounds. Was that a challenge to keep it all sounding cohesive? I guess it is

the worst. Well to use Terry's analogy of of of a tailor, the thing is, as I said, you know, you can make a suit for somebody, right, and they're gonna pick you know, I like black, or I like a you know this kind of stitch, or I like this kind of lapel or three button or four button or double breasted, or you can do that, right, But the thing that's going to remain the same is the

actual tailor that's making the suit. So the threads in the suit, the way things the quality in which things are sown, I guess I would say is gonna be the common threat. So you could look at a a red single breasted suit at a blue double breasted suit, and there you will realize that they're totally different, but the same Taylor did that suit. I can tell from the quality of it. And that's the way we always

think of ourselves as as producers. So the quality is the thing, and also the way we sequence the album, because it's always nice when we get the opportunity to do whole albums where we can actually start with a song and end with a song. So in this case, the album starts with Sounds of Blackness, which we always think is our foundation and was the foundation of Perspective Records thirty years ago when we did Yeah, so thirty years since Optimistic started and that was the record that

launched Perspective Records. But then we ended it actually going back even further with reuniting Morri's Day and Jerome together, Terry's brother Jerome together along with the Roots who Questlove, Luke Kleslo's mind to finally work with Moore's Day on something. You know. It's just a nice kind of circle that that happens. It's like the beginning and sort of the new beginning, I guess you could call it, you know, in a sense. So all of that is important, and

we hope people listen. I know that they're going to download individual songs or however they want to listen to it. It's up to them. But I would love for everybody to listen to the whole album from start to finish. I would love for that to happen. Books it like for you doing that track with with Morris and the Rous, I mean, that must have been emotional for you in a lot of ways. No, it was. It was great

because it was funny. Quest Love always tells a story when we first met for the first time, we had a group. Uh. I think it was Solo. Maybe we had a group called Solo. I think it was Solo, and we wanted oh no, no, no, it wasn't Solo. It was actually um Angel. It was Angel Grant and I think it was Angel Grant and we actually they were playing somewhere in Philly and doing a big outdoor thing and we, you know, we asked could we come beyond the show, and he was like, oh, yeah, that'd

be great. He didn't realize that we were actually gonna show up, and they were like, Jimmy, jim Terry Lewis are here. Oh my god, they're they're like in the band, They're like back in this artist stuff, and it just kind of blew his mind ever since that that point in time, just how hands on we were and how much we cared about the artist. But we always thought our our role was really to protect the artist and make him look great, and that was the case then.

But we met and we hit it off, and he was shocked that we actually knew their music, because I think that people thought, well, maybe we don't listen to hip hop or whatever, but we totally knew the music and we hit it off, so it was like a dream come true. He actually interviewed Mores for his show that he does, The Quel Less Show, and they were talking about that, just how his mind is blown. The quest levels said that the gateway to Prince for him

was the Time. And we're forty years since the first Time album this year, but he said, Prince, he you know, heard of him, and he kind of heard his songs but wasn't didn't really get it. But when he heard the Time, he was like, oh my god, I love this. These guys are great. And then you know, somebody said to him, well, yeah, you know, but you know Princess producing all these songs, and that made him then go to Prince. So now we obviously he's a huge Prince fan.

But his roots in uh it's so to speak, no pun attended. His roots in jam and Lewis were literally the Time. So this was a big full circle moment for him. I think, I mean, the whole album feels like a victory lap in so many ways. I mean, with all the friends, all your friends, all the people that you've worked with for for so many years. I mean, it's just such a great collection. I wanted to ask you, how do you know when a song is done? The easiest way to know when a song is done. I'll

tell you, Jordan's see this hand right here. When somebody has a crowbar and probably a gun of some kind and they come and pry it out of out of this hand, it's like you never want to let your babies go, you know. Um. Like I said, it's it's very difficult because you never feel like it's perfect. I want to get this perfect, and so I guess once again, if I make the perfect song, I'm gonna have to plick because I'll be facing that forever. The easy answer would be when they pry it out of our hands.

But by the way, by the way, I will say, you realize, when we're producing, what we're doing is we're listening for mistakes. So as we're doing the songs, all we're hearing is the mistakes. What we can make better? What can how can we change this? How can we do that? There is a certain point where with this album where we felt we thought we were done with this song when two things happened. One was we no

longer heard the mistakes. We could listen to the song from start to finish and not go, oh, we gotta fix it. We gotta change that we gotta we could just listen to it and just enjoy it. That was one thing. The other piece of it, though, was when we felt we couldn't wait for the artists to hear it. We would get to a certain point and then we'd hear it and we'd go, I can't wait for Tony Braxton to hear this. I can't wait for Mary J. Blige to hear that. You know, can't wait for boys

them in to hear this. And that was the other thing that kind of told us that it felt like it was done. So it was more the feeling. We just had a feeling that we were we were ready to share it, and then even when we were ready to share it, as Terry said, they still had to come pry it out of our hands to get it down to the last Maybe the mix could be a little bit better. I remember who I think it was. It might have been a Leonardo da Vinci quote. Arts

never finished, just abandoned. Yeah, that's right. What's the best compliment that an artist can can give to you when you're when you when you just you sit them down, you have the final mix, you're doing the play back. What's the best response that that they can give to you. Wow, there's a lot of them, actually, I can tell you overall. I'll give you one from just overall career wise. One one thing we always wanted to do was we always

did our homework on the artist. We always knew what kind of song we would want to hear them do. And so I remember working with Barry White, and I remember that we had done a demo for the song kind of we have done the track, but we I kind of tried to sing like Barry White, and I'm on there like oh, and I'm trying to sing right

and it's hilarious because I can't sing right. I remember when we got done, we played in the song and the song goes off and there's just kind of a moment of silence, and we said, um, Mr White, are you was that? That? Was that? Okay? How's it sound? And he said he just reared back and had this big laugh. He said, oh, sounds like me. And we said,

sounds like me. That compliment we've gotten from Earth Wind and Fire, from the Isley Brothers, from when we get that compliment from you know, the legacy artists that we've had a chance to work with, that to me, is the best compliment it because we've captured it. I remember even we worked with Lionel Ritchie and Lionel Richie laughed when we played that. We did a song called Don't Want to Lose You and he heard the song and he just laughed. He laughed. He said when he heard it,

he said, oh my god. He says, you basically wrote my song, like you took my song and just rewrote it. But it sounds coming from you. I can accept it, like I could never write that song again, but you guys managed to do it. So that to me is always the biggest compliment his career wise, I think, and I think for our album. I think the moment that I remember on our album is when we were working with Boys two men, and I remember two things happened.

One was um Sean came to the studio Nate in the group actually asked could we put real strings on our the song we were doing, And so we did a session at Capital Studio's historic studios, right, and we have Susie Kadayama who's our string arranger, and she did this beautiful arrangement with hearts and strings and French horn and all this beautiful stuff. The thing that happens in sessions like that is the string players will come in play their part, and as soon as you say, okay,

that's it, they're out the door. And Seawan came to the session to listen to it because he hadn't heard the song in a year where whenever they had done the vocals on it. So he's watching the string players and nobody's leaving, and he's like going, He's thinking, well, why why isn't anybody leaving? And and even Susie was like, you guys gotta be quiet because I gotta do these couple of other parts. But everybody wanted to hear the end of the song. They wanted to hear how it

turned out. So that was kind of the first sign that there might be something special happening with the boys them in song. The second piece was he came to the studio right before COVID. He came to the studio and he just said, hey, how did our song turn out? How did it? And we said, oh, we can play it for you, and we put him in the chair in our studio and in our studio we are doing mixes.

This mixes you're hearing now our stereo mixes, but we're also doing eleven point one surround mixes of all the songs. We played him the eleven ones around version of the song and he cried when he heard it, and what he articulated to us was that it was that feeling like everything you know we talked about time travel with

with music. His mind was going back to growing up listening to like the New Addition songs that we had done, and listening to those songs, even taking the name New The name Boys the Men came from a song we wrote for New Addition, and then when they did their audition, uh for Michael Bivens from New Addition, they sang can You Stand the Rain, which was a song they wrote.

And so later on in life when we got a chance to do Four Seasons and Loneliness and we got to do on Bended Knee, that was like, you know, a dream come true for them, actually working with people who they had grown up listening to. So now to now hear a song, current new song that has all those same elements that they want in a song, you know, chord changes and great lyrics and and modulations and and

dramatic effects and live strings and live instruments. Just it just made him cry, and he just said, I hope people understand this. And after being an artist and you're being told you know, demographic here and analytics here and algorithms here and streaming here, that to me wasn't the conversations we had. We just said, let's go make a great song. And I think he heard all of that in that moment and it just brought tears to his eyes.

And so that, to me is the biggest compliment, is when the artists fall back in love with themselves so to speak, because I think that's a good sign that the fans will fall back in love with them currently not what they used to do, but now what they're doing now. And I just think there's something very powerful about that. An incredible track of falling in love with yourselves.

You you are doing something that's really cool series on Twitter right now, thirty five years and thirty five days where you're going over your your amazing career and legacy. It's been so cool to to watch the video clips that you've been sharing. What is there anything a song and achievement, anything at all that really stands out above the rest as something that is just truly really that that that moment that that you were just to driving

for voice and what what have you had? One like that, one that really is just means more to you in your professional life than than any others. Yeah, well, I I mean for me, I'll just say because Terry and I were talking about it the other day. So the song. We always say, it's tough to say favorite song because there's a lot of reasons that's something could be your favorite song. It could be the actual process of recording it, that's great. There could be um, the result of the song,

how it touched people. It could be because you know all the million copies are you know, top the charts. I mean, there's a lot of things to be favorite in about things, I guess, but the song we I guess. I would put it like if there was a time capsule and you had to put one of our songs in a time capsule, and then a hundred years later somebody was going to open it up and it says jam and Lewis, and you wanted to know everything about

jam and Lewis in one song. The song would be optimistic by the sounds of black and so I think for and then there's other reasons beyond that. But we were talking about when we went over to when we talk about the international language of music, and when we were in London, uh and and did when they toured over there. We were there and it's probably for an audience to connect to the stage. I mean, what was supposed to be I think a forty five minutes show

turned into a two hour praise. Yeah, it was. I've never seen anything like it. And to know that songs we were involved with have that effect on people, um was, that was just mind blowing to me. So so I think that would probably be the most impactful moment is seeing something live. I think in the studio, our most impactful moment would probably be Michael Jackson recording with Michael. I mean that that was we were like little kids when he went in the studio all calm. This was

to do screen with with Janet and Janet. We were in New York and Janet said, okay, I'll do my vocal after Michael does his, and We've said okay, cool. So Michael goes in and does his vocal. But he goes in and he's breaking every studio rule, right, He's wearing jangly stuff and hard to NEOs and just all the things that they say don't do in the studio. Right, And the song comes on and he starts dance. It's

like the chance Maiden in Devil or something like. He starts spinning and doing his things, and Terry and I were like, we were like at the concert, we were like, we're streaming like little girls. Man, it was like it was unbelievable. And then it was funny. When he finished, he just kind of calmly goes, how was that what? But yeah, we're kind of stammering, and he goes, do you want me to do it again? And well, yeah, yeah, Mike, yeah,

go ahead and do it again. That that's a good idea, right, So Janet leans into us because she's sitting behind us, and she leans in between us, and she just goes, because we're in New York by the way, she goes, I'll do my vocal in Minneapolis heart of following Michael's performance. And then the funny thing about it was we went to we went to Minneapolis, we did Janet's vocal. When Michael heard it, he said, oh, Janet's vocals sounds really good. And we said yeah, thanks, He said, no, that sounds

really good. Where did she record that? And we said in Minneapolis. He said, oh, he said, I want to come to Minneapolis. The ultimate competitor, even with his sister, right, just the ultimate Competitor. But obviously the song turned out great and all of that, and but yeah, that that was pretty much impactful studio moment for sure. We've we've had a few. We've had a few over our years. Yes, you have it. It means so much to so many, including me. It's been such a joint and honor speaking

before I let you go, My last question. Name of your album, Jam and Lewis Volume one, Volume two. I hope there's plans for that. What do you think there any time on the horizon for for a sequel? I think we can safely say there will be a volume two. Actually already started down that role. But let's get by um one out. Got you. The thing I said is like I always said Lebron James when he went to Miami, when he left and he went to Miami, and I remember at the at the big press conference, and he said,

not one, not too not three, not four. Okay, So that's the way we feel about it. We've feel like we're on a new chapter of our life right now. We're really excited about it, a little nervous because I guess anything important to you're a little nervous about. But yes, Terry said, no, Volume two was already not only in our minds, but already in progress. But really we're charged right now to make sure that Volume one gets the

love and respect that we hopefully it's deserving of. And we want to make sure that's happy and and make sure that the artists are happy because to me, it's an elevation moment for them and it's a celebration really of this thirty five year journey to get here. Yes, Shimmy jam Terry Lewis, thank you so much for your music, your time today. It's been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thanks. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio, a production of I Heart Radio.

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