PAT MONAHAN: "Train - All Aboard"

So excited tonight to be talking with somebody that I have admired your music, I have followed your career, I have played your songs. Pat Monahan, lead singer from Train, Welcome to the Delilah Show.

Thank you, Gila, Thanks you for having me to your beautiful share that I listened to a lot of same song.

I was so excited.

I have a producer named Peter who's been with me Pat almost as long as Train has been around. And we call him behind his back, well we call it to him his face to snippy Peter, because Peter is almost like a TV character, and that he is this sort of sardonic always has a sarcastic comment to everything. You know, he's got this, You would love him. He's got this wicked, dry sense of humor.

Yeah, worthy tomp, you know, because they like three areas that is the wickedest. So it's New England, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

Well he would fit very, very very well in Jersey. But he's actually from Bellevue, believe it or not. He's your next door neighbor.

But wow, that's so funny.

He discovered your video play that song before I think before it was maybe released. I don't know if he's got an end with somebody at iHeart, but he sent me a copy and he's like, oh my gosh, this is the best song that I have heard in years. And for somebody as sardonic and snippy as Peter to forward that to me, and I'm like, I was expecting

But I love it. I love the song, but man, I love the video.

Oh thanks. It just is such a happy song that we had to make an equally happy video for it, which is the director just had an idea of basically doing what happened in a movie called Five Hundred Days of Summer, where this guy falls in love, he walks out of his house and then everywhere he goes he's just like a magnet to greatness. And so we just kind of played on that.

And right now we need happy, pat I love happy right now. We really really need happy.

In our world, really need happy.

Every night I come into the studio and I purposefully do not watch or read any news before I go on the air, because with you, I want to be happy and I want to share joy and I want to share you know, goodness, And it's hard when you're just being inundated with negativity.

It really is.

A tough time for that. And I'm hoping that it shifts soon. Like I have a couple of doctors in my life that practice like alternative medicine, and they believe that this is a humongous shift in the universe that at the cleansing time. It doesn't feel like it right now, but they are convinced that this is a time of cleansing and that it hurts to cleanse at first.

So we'll see if they're right.

Well, there is a theory that that's not a theory, it's it's truth that when you want pure gold, if you want to have a necklace or a wedding band or something made of pure gold, in order to get the dross or the metals out that aren't gold, it has to go through the fire right, there's only one way to burn out the dross.

To burn out the dross.

Yeah, well, we'll see.

We'll see if this fire is going to bring out pure gold. But man, it's so nice to have happy music and happy songs to kind of be the balm.

I love to be a part of it. You know. Little kids love play that song a lot, and which is great about having little kids. I have a five year old and an eight year old, so when I write music, I always bring it home for them, and their reaction means.

A lot to if I'll use it or not.

And so that was one of several songs on this album that they really responded to. And they were right, because little kids around the world really respond to it.

So you've got your own little mini testing ground right there in your house. You're like, okay, kids, dad's about to go on tour. How do you feel about this one?

That's right.

They're like my small record company. You know, I've never been a famous guy, and a lot of people don't even know the Main Train as a band, but they know the songs, and so I have seen as songs and I think that's a pretty great life. I can go where i'd like to go in my whole life and take my kids to the grocery store, and when people here marry.

Me or drop the Jupiter or hey sol sister, those songs mean something to them. And that's a great gift that I've been given.

That is a great gift.

And of all the people that I have interviewed on this show through the years, I think you might be the first one that acknowledged what a gift that is.

There.

You know, there are a lot of other artists who put the music before themselves.

You know.

I think about Sheryl Crow and so many people that I've interviewed that are very very humble, humble people, yeah, that that do put their music. They're not out there being a show off being you know, it's all about me. It's about the music. But I think you're the first one that's ever articulated what a gift that is. And I appreciate that well.

You know, I have six brothers and sisters and they for some reason, they can't perform and sing and write songs, and so I don't know why, but I've been given that ability, and so I have to respect it as as much as my parents would have wanted me to because it's a gift that my siblings wish they had, and probably many other people, so I have to respect it at all times.

Well, I truly wish I had it, but I was probably in my thirties or forties before I realized why I didn't, because I would not have been like you. I was born with this show off gene, and so God had to counter that by not giving me any talent.

Is an amazing thing that you just said.

That's hilarious because if I had pat if I had one if I had.

One smidge in one one iota, one teamy, tiny little smidgeon of musical ability, if I could play a single instrument, if I could keep a beat on a drum, if I could play the piccolog if I could have played the triangle, Well I would have been you know, one of those those stars that's up grinding on stage trying to take all the attention.

No, you don't, you really don't it. You're a great performer. You are a fabulous performer. I've seen you I don't know how many times and how many shows, but you never You're just not a jerk like I.

Would have been.

It's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me, You're not, but.

It's true your shows are always.

Some would disagree with you at this point.

Really, okay, tell me Pat Monahan from lead singer from Train, what's the jerkiest thing that you can talk about on the radio, given that your kids will probably listen to this, what's the jerkiest thing you've ever done?

Well? I have learned how to be a jerk from my older brother Jackie.

He's the king jerky.

He would but hilarious, like I'm just always trying to be funny, not really a jerk.

So he when I was.

Five, he was like sixteen, maybe he was eighteen, and he came home from.

College and he just said, hey, you know, mom doesn't want you anymore. I'm five And I said, yes, she does, and he says no, still ask her.

So she's in the kitchen making dinner and I am, Mom, do you want me? And she thought, I said meant you know, did you call for me? And she goes, no, honey, I don't want you. So I grabbed my bike and moved out of the house. So he had to come and get me because my mom was super upset about it. And so he was learning after me, but he could hardly even get to me because he was.

Laughing so hard.

So I got that gene and I try to pass it on to the younger people in my life.

Oh good for you, Good for them, your family from what I've gathered and gleaned following you through the years, being a big Irish family. My producer Jane, who's been my producer for almost thirty years, is one of seven children as well, from a big Irish family from Boston, and the same thing, same jerky Jean runs in their family and in the same way she's passed it on.

And I won't.

Say this is her story because she's the one that's going to produce the show, but I will tell you that somebody who grew up in that area, in that family may or may not have fixed her younger brother a sandwich one time and told him it was crunchy peanut butter. Oh no, when really it was dog dog kibbles.

Oh that's nice.

Isn't that nice?

Boy?

This crunched peanut butter or something I'm going to stay away from in the future.

Yeah, wow, that sounds uh what you know, we used comedy to survive, and so you know, I think that's what most most comedians would say as well.

I love, love, love being around fun people and funny people, and I am one of the biggest jerks you will ever meet when it comes to practical jokes, which are neither practical nor funny part of the time, but I love pulling them anyway.

Yeah, I love it.

So you're going to start touring when in May?

Yeah, I think our first date is mayteenth in Las Vegas.

And how many cities do you think you'll be visiting during the tour?

Well, you know, I think there's about fifty whoa And so yeah, I know it's a long one, but we make it a lot.

Of fun family going with or staying at home, well a little bit of both.

So we do start on the twelfth in Las Vegas.

Then we go to Los.

Angeles on the thirteenth, and so my family will come out for the beginning of that and then they'll go finish school. My little kids will go back to school, and then they'll come back out at the end of the run. When we're back on the West coast, like Salt Lake City.

And you know, all the Bay Area and everything.

Like that, and where can folks get information so they can start getting tickets now for train on tour all summer long, fifty cities.

Yeah, you could go to save me San Francisco dot com and find out everything that you'd want to about tickets. And we're out with Natasha Bettingfield and some friends of ours, a band called Oaar And I'm sure you've played some of Oar and Natasha's music in the past, so it'll be a really fun night for everybody who comes.

Out with me tonight.

Is Pat Monahan, the trained lead singer new song Out, play that song, new album Out, A Girl, a bottle, a boat, A fabulous, fabulous.

Listen and Pat, thank you for spending time with us.

Yeah, thank you. I hope that everyone feels like to they are holding a glass of line on a boat somewhere and a beautiful lake when you listen to the album Networks A.

Gould, Well, I'm sure that they will feel either that or when I play play that song, they're going to feel like.

Going and dancing in a fountain.

I love that cool.

Pat, thank you, God, bless you.

All right, thank you about you soon, Al.

Damn and loves a bad reading.

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