Bill Payne

and began that process with them. I played on a lot of their stuff, including when Mike McDonald joined the group and he had two songs what a Fool Believes, and minute by minute I said, you play play those songs. I'll play some high strings or whatever. But I'm not Tommy Johnson and Patrick probably since seventy one seventy two, I think, so we all go back a long way. I spent up until a year and a half half ago.

I was touring with the DeBie Brothers for two years excuse me, seven years, and then Michael joined and we were all out one big, happy family. And I still stay in touch with the guys. So it's I have two sets of family.

So how'd you end up with Ken? Oh? I got a call from a person that said, if you're making a switch, because I told him what we were, you might want to check these guys out. So that morphing into the Vector's system. And with Ken Levittan, who's a great guy. I know kid for a number of years because of Emmy Lou Harris and other people, but I thought they took about two weeks or work to decide whether they would handle a Little Feet, And I said the entire time, I said, look, don't worry about it.

If I want to, you have no obligation to us. So if you're going to work with us, let's make sure that you feel comfortable with it. We would love to have it happen, but I'm a realist at the end of the day, So let's let's see where this flows with with how you're dividing to make this choice. All I can tell you is that I feel with with doing an interview with with you, for example. That's part of Levitan and Vector and the visibility we have these days is why you and I are having a conversation.

I don't discount Little Feet in my career with Little Feet or what we represent the musical world out there. But you need people to help in this business, and these guys have done nothing but great things for us.

on your behalf. It's about connections. Unlike music, which is I think about Igor Stravinsky earlier today, you know, with AI and all the the stuff that's going on there with regard to writing letters, to composing songs on up and down. I told this frind of mind, I said, look, you know we're not going to stop AI. But you know you're also not going to stop musicians and composers and creative people. They don't compose and write and are creative because they want to. They actually have to. That's

the way Stravinsky put it. He whatever is in your head and it needs to come out, that's what you're doing. And I feel that. Look, I've seventy four years old, so I mean, I hope I can do this for a while longer. Knock on what's so far, so good? But I don't pretend to know much about anything. About AI, but I know a lot about human beings, and those that are creative are going to create, not because the body is there necessarily or that the path to scoring

the next Brad Pitt movies there. They're going to do it because they have the ability to and it needs to come out.

see whatever the big university is in New Jersey. At any rate, the dream for me is nothing substantial along the lines of of getting out in front of people and taking vows. It's it's having the ability to create music. New Old continued the conversation of playing with people that are extraordinary musicians little feet, Bob has always had the attitude. Let's say that John Coltrane and his band had I assume that it's more of a jazz uh thought process than rock and roll. It it figures more on on

musicianship than than uh was you know, the visual. I think the music actually is more important to us. And I'm not knocking. I'm not knocking rock and roll. I love rock and roll. Uh, but I I uh, I think they get out and play the type of music that Little Feet plays. A song that Don was at one point and he had he had, uh they were playing with this uh one of the theaters down New Orleans. I think, uh, Stanford Theater. I can't, I can't think of the theater. But he said they were doing Waiting

for Columbus. And he said, and it was. And I said harder than you thought. He said, yeah. I said, we didn't do it to trip you up. It was just that it was the type of music that we would write, would be inclusive of hopefully for our standpoint of good songs, the great resitionship as well, and twisted turns within the arrangements, not unlike what the Grateful Dad or took another group to Steely dand for example, those are tough arrangements to learn. So it's not like Oh Atlanta,

which which I wrote, Lolah. I said, you can't write a here record. I go, can can't? Can't? You know? We're back and forth on that. As my idea of a hair record was having a chorus come up at you know, a minute in twenty four seconds, I guess. So it was not a hare record, but it's been something that people really like and and still respond to, and it's it fits in the age group. Another song

like Voices on the Wind. Our engineer and producer co producer with me, George Messenberg, once said, what does that song mean? I said, well, in a feisty mood, I said, I don't know that it matters what it means. I want people to read into it. The Laker organization read it with caream up Jewel Dabbar went into retirement and he said it is his theme song. So that was kind of proof of the pudding there playing in little feats,

like playing in ten different bands. You'd have to be in ten different bands to do the breath of material that we write and conceive and and push through, and it's not always easy to do that.

the hell are we doing? So Bob circumvented everything and just sent me some lyrics and I wrote to them. I sent him back and goes, this sounds great, and we just kept going and then about i'd say five or six songs into it, I'll get to the process in a second. But about five or six songs into it, he says, why don't you send me the music first and then I'll write lyrics to that. I go, okay. So we did a bunch like that. The point was, we never met, we never spoke on the phone, we

didn't do zoom meetings, we didn't do anything. We just we just you would send me music and I would right to it. I mean, he sent me lyrics, excuse me, and I set melody and chords and whatnot to it, or we do it the other way around. And we did twenty songs like that, probably over about i'd say two hundred plus emails. So I said, at what point, I go, Bob, I'm sure you're a very nice man, but this is kind of like a Guatemala and Internet

bride feeling to it. But we never met. We were going to get together for a picnic up in his place in northern California, and he fell ill, so we canceled that. And I think he also thought, we're maybe such good progress the way we're doing it, why don't we just leave it the way it is rather than not the way he would write with other people where he'd actually get together with him. And I live in Montana, by the way, so I'm sort of in a remote area.

take me off and do another direction. The zoom recorder was my lifelong, my lifeline to the path I was going to take to write these songs. It made it a lot easier. When I'm out of that twenty songs. One song, he says, you know, I don't like it. Just sounds I hate to use the word, but sounds pedestrian. What you wrote, I said, Okay, I was trying to take it to an Irish Pub. I'll get back to you two days. Two days later I sent it to him. He goes, oh my god, what what is this?

lyrics are superb. It was about a dragon, and I just opened it up to more changes, more of a h I say, magic realism within the lyrics that I want to to apply rather than to put the pendles at the uh uh the Irish pub on top of it. So it was it was the freedom we gave each other was, look, I won't mess with your lyrics. I will tell you, Bob, if there's something that I I wouldn't have said, or have a tough time singing. And every time I made those suggestions, He's like, try this,

and we were right in there. So it was a fascinating way too. It taught me how to write music, even though I'd been writing songs for many, many years, but it opened me up. When I was writing with Paul Muldoon with other people, I had something where I had confidence that I could do it.

a composer to draw it out. And we kind of left it at that.

I'm writing a memoir called Carnival Ghosts. I've taken an inordinarily long time to get to meeting law, probably thirty thirty five thousand words to describe what it is like to come out of a solitary sitting at the piano playing, you know, six years later after starting at age five, maybe playing a little bit of Mozart, certainly eight years later playing some rock mononoff et cetera, and all the while being encouraged by a teacher that allowed me to improvise.

So when you get into a band, you come from that solitary existence to now there's a platter on the table full of food and you got anywhere from five to six guys that want It's like a boarding house reach kind of thing. How do you maneuver within that category, which is really what you're asking. It's it can be a fight and often turns into a fight. George Harrison

certainly knew about that fight, so did Brian Jones. With Keith and Mick, uh, you know, this strong prevail is what happens, and so you have to really have a commitment to what you're asking. The first time I played Atlanta for the band, which is when we were doing a session for Little Feet where we were doing rock and roll Doctor and Alan Jusaint and was putting horns to it. The band looked like looked at me like yes, so what? I went, h you know what, we're playing

a song, where do you like it or not? I kind of pushed it through And it's not the only song that that happened that way. And I'm sure Lowell came into us with a few things. We go, eh, yeah, cool, what do you want to do? And would people listen to the record? Hoy HOI? For example, it starts off with rocket in my pocket. It's it's with low playing

acoustic guitar. I want the purity of Lowell's voice, his guitar playing acoustic guitar to ring through, and then I followed it up with the band to show what happens when the band gets ahold of it. It turns into not necessarily something different, but it can oftentimes be vastly different because of the rhythm, because of certain chre changes, maybe dropped or included, Uh, fat man in the bathtub, dude, bump bump, that's just an arrangemental thing, as is about it.

And Dixie Chicken from the piano in both cases, or keyboards in both cases. But they add to what the song is and how it registers in your mind when you hear it. It's not it doesn't make me a writer on the song, but it adds life and provides a background to hear the song. So Lowell George was all so one of the very first to include band members that didn't write, like Richie Hayward, Sam Clayton, you know,

Uh Kindergarten, Ny. We split the publishing. We did split writers, but we split the publishing just for that type of thing. So if somebody came in and threw in some LECs or or whatnot, they would be covered. I mean, trying to sustain a band is a very difficult thing because of egos, and you know, we did our best to try and circumvent that. But human beings or such as they are, it's a it's a delicate process.

who I am. And I think he did in a very brilliant fashion, and that he he had a song like easy to Slip, Let's say and uh that was quitetessential lows It was great lyrics, great melody of the phrasing was impeccable. And I was still kind of sitting on the sidelines of plotting the guy and then but thinking maybe as we grew as a group that we would we would write more. That a group is not like backing up James Taylor or Bob Seeger or Jackson Brown.

You you walk in there with a eyed eye, not like hey can I may I. It's eyed I. And that's what the advantage of being at a band is. It's also an extreme disadvantage if you don't agree with each other.

She said, when you come back for your lesson next week, all write down what you played for me, so you see what it is, and we're going to start your first lesson. Well she did, and I still have it, and there's a multitude of notes. But my first lesson was C D followed throw thereafter by C B A with my left hand, and I got to say Bobby when I hit the left hand. You liked the miner as opposed to major tonality was like entering into exotic,

an exotic world for a five year old. It it connoteded different images to me than or of a major field or as a major. Oh, the miner was or as I said, more exotic. It was it opened up a world that I wasn't really familiar with, but I want to know a lot better. And so that was what music does, at least it does for me and probably for a lot of people, especially musicians, but not always.

It opens up those avenues that you had that connect the dots between things, between other art, between food, but between everything. It's a circuitry that's plugged into to who you are as a human being and what you want to say ultimately. And the trick as you're growing through the process of learning music and applying it to who and whom you are is how do you want to represent it? And what you write be it lyrics, what you compose is musical interluds within those lyrics or maybe

just as instrumental music. How do you fit in with James Taylor, Bob Seeger, Barbie Benton, Body Rate, whoever I'm playing in the studio with. How do I take that musical background that I have and apply it to two different forms of music? And fortunately, because of my upbringing of playing, let's say back, I play a bock fugue for a little bit, and then I would zoom off into something else and play just strictly what was in my heart and head. Then I would come back to

the music and play that. So I kind of had an open dialogue with with the more formal aspects of music and attach it to the world of the mind, which can take anywhere. It's like a dream.

My brother at that time was the only person in the family not born in Texas. He was born in California.

basement that's cold, a little scary. You're you're in a piano with the keyser chipped a little bit, and she's shown you where to place your fingers to play the melody. Uh to me that that that submitted a great bond at that age to my mom. Uh and it introduced me to an instrument that to this day I still provides and provokes, uh by by by muse what what I what? I sit down, I don't often sit down with an agenda. Aist sit down and play a little bit.

And uh so I'm reacting, reacting on I want a tactle information from what the way my fingers hit the keys, and importantly what I'm hearing. And I'm in full recognition that Beethoven, who is deaf, uh was not provided that. But I also know that a trick that my teacher taught me, which was when you're you're not always going to have a piano in front of you, but you will have a desk, your knees the air, and you can sit there and play. And when I do that

right now, I'm playing in mid air. Here, I'm in a key of F F A C. I can hear it in my head. I go up to the B flat who play that. I can hit an F with an E in the base, which is not what you normally play. That would maybe a passing time to the F. So these are things that that whether you can hear the music or not, you can at least hear it in your head. And then go to arrangements. I've made ample use of that over the years, with little feet

for arrangements. When I wasn't sitting next to a piano, I could still figure out what I wanted to do.

some point. And she also gave me one important lesson too, Bob, which was at some point when I was given her recital, I was going to blank out, and she said, don't let that freak you outtion just that terminology. Don't let that panic you. It happens to most people. And she mentioned a couple of her older students where it had happened to them, and it didn't happen under her watch, but it did take place, and it was on a Mozart D major sonata and I completely forgot where I

wasn't a piece, and it about destroyed me. I mean, I was like, and I looked at it later, I go, she told you not to let it get you under your skin, and I did, but not for long.

Where was it, Maryland? I guess Annapolis, And the audience is there and they go, hey, sing Dixie Chicken, and I go, I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm like driving Miss Daisy in the back of the car. I've never sun Dixie Chicken. I know I could do it. But I don't know the lyrics. So I said, why don't we sing the song together, just a chorus, and so I started playing with it. Let's do a couple

of rounds. So we did that. Yeah, I've had to stop and start with I was on stage with James Taylor in front of twenty thousand people, and I had a I was hooked up to a a synth helper, you know, like a I'd recorded some stuff in there, and I hit the button laid or I didn't hit it or whatever happened, and it screwed it up, and I had to stop the song, and I said to the audience, I said, we're going to try this again, but without the alert James, without the recorded music. Take one.

music itself. I call that serious fun. So there's a reason we have arrangements within little feed or that I've been able to play on other people's songs and I'm very quick at what I do generally speaking. Or if I have a more complex idea and people go, hey, can we stop it there, and I go, allow me to do two more things before we stop it. I want to add another instrument and then this tell me fore like it or not? They go okay, and then oh, yeah,

that sounds great or whatever. I mean. I've rarely hit a brick wall to use that terminology again with people in the studio, but occasionally it's happened. And what it does, I just say, you know, I think we are just calling is We're not going to get much further. It's not an immediate hey, I give up. I don't give up, but there are just times when you have to know when enough is enough and say, I'm not communicating with this person, with this artist, I don't really have much

to add to this song, and that's okay. Other songs will take it place, okay.

I was Liberaci or something. So I would prove I wasn't a Liberachi by stealing their girlfriends, by hitting a home run, by making a basket at the center court, or whatever the hell I do skateboarding later feet. By that time people knew I was a regular guy, and what is regular these days anyway, But in the fifties, yeah, there was like you were either el not Elton John. El Elton John took his cue from Liberaci. You were either Liberaci or you were you know, Jerry Lee on

the piano, putting your foot on the keyboard. So I was more of Jerry Lee. But I was also I had the active to play more of the style that Liberaci would play, which was classical music. So it was the practices what allows you to do that, but it is also something that disengages you or can between you

and the audience. And I've had kind of fun with in writing this book to describe a little more in detail what is involved in that, which is not a heck of a lot more than what I've just told you, but it's a I could share one more story with you if you if you'd like sure with with I was playing with the Doomie Brothers and was on a particular song and what what I would normally do is I'd go, this is my second album with them, and they had a certain kind of kind of eighth notes

feel on the top part of the keyboard. Is the last song I was playing that day, and I was a little tired, but I thought, you know, and I threw in this stupid lick in the bridge and I stopped the tape. And John Landy was the engineer, Ted Tipple was producing. Tom Johnson was behind the could draw aboard as well. I said, fellas, let me do, let me do that lick again. I was just goofing around there go no, no, no, Bill, we like it. I said, no, I don't like it. It's I was, I don't want

it in there. I was screwing off. Okay, I had to go inside the con I said when I said fifth grade, maybe sixth I get called Bill Payne, will now play the Pianoties assemblies Washington Elementary School Adventure. I'd get a standing ovation. I would walk up to the keyboard. I'd play a little Chinese Diddy D d D kind of song, rock and roll type of thing, and I'd walk back standing ovation to my chair. I'd go on

the playground and get beat up like everybody else. Twenty two years later, I get a call from Tom Johnson. He says, not like, hello, Bill, how are you doing? It was like, you know that lick that you didn't like? I go, yeah, Tom, what about it? He says, was a result of the lick that you didn't want on the record that we kept in the story you told. I went home that that evening and called that song China Grove. I go, you're welcome. Where's my publishing? Hey?

We fact that over that there we are, so.

to twenty two, but it was. It was a long time later. Tell me and I knew each other for a long time, so that's kind of fun.

you can literally do anything you want to do. And I looked at them. I did the one or two teachers what they had there. I said, can I break these windows? And they said, well, we wouldn't recommend it, but if that's what you want to do, go ahead. So we arely these little test subjects as to what would children do given the opportunity to paint, to work with clay, you know you wanted to draw, if you asked for something they didn't have, they provided for you.

What I found out from that was that I was much better at something if I was given direction to do it, and then I could augment from there. So it wasn't a strict hey do it our way to the highway. Here's what we suggest you do. We'd like you to paint us a picture of you and the little girl that lives across the street from you. And I would have tried to have done that, but just open that blank canvas, Bob. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I didn't know what to do. I had too many options.

If you want to play the Alamo with them, fine, if you hit him with a Katie stab, or the girls running across the field, you leader with the dirt clod and hit her in the head, other repercussions to that. What's their work? But in school, in general, I was not super shy. I went to the in sixth grade there was a track meet and I asked the school if we could take I was a program chairman was voted in for that. Could we take half a day

off to hold the track meet? And we couldn't hold the track meet with Doctor Coffee, which are the people they held it before because they had issues with insurance and with I guess kids got injured or something somehow or another. I, because I really wanted it, I convinced him to do exactly that, give us a half day off. We had pole vault, we had high jump, we were

doing races, We're doing all kinds of things. So when pressed to the wall again with something I really want to do, I was capable of craying out of my shell and making sure it happened. So I felt I was sort of an anomaly in a certain sense and that I possessed enough moxie to step up when I needed to. But in general, if I walked into a restaurant and somebody singing Happy Birthday to me when they knew it wasn't my birthday, I was embarrassed. Now, I

haven't been embarrassed in a long long time. But I didn't. I didn't come out of the box that way. I came out like, hey, is is it safe? That kind of thing. And I didn't even know as a musician that I wanted to be in a band. The first band I auditioned for was after I lost my teacher at age fifteen, and I auditioned not to play piano on this band, but I play. I auditioned to play drums. So what does that tell you?

note to play, so I went, okay. Jeff Ricarr was there, Uh, the guitar player David was there, and I just if those guys don't care, now, I'll just play in an A C JRB. You know. Uh, when Jackson Brown did that to me, I said, why don't you come out

here and play the song? Jackson because on his I think it was his second album, and I played on one song already, but every time i'd play a chord, you go play like this, and I'd play in a couple of bars, no play instead of D F sharp A play F sharp a D. I finally said, would you come in the room play this for me? So he did, and I said, is there any earthly reason you're getting me to play like you when you can play it just fine and you're wasting your time and

money getting me to do that. And so he was. That year that we had that conversation, the Playboy magazine had him and so I think Rock Piano Player of the Year. And I said, well, you call me back. If you called me back, I will take direction, but I want to be able to put some of myself into it as well. So the song was here come those Tears again on the Pretender album, and I played on more than a couple songs on that record. I

was able to kind of do what I wanted. The Pretender, by the way, is Fred Tackett, who plays a little feet which I never knew or didn't know it a few years ago.

Studio fifty four in Hollywood. I pulled both faders down and the track even with Jeff and Abe and myself almost visibly sagged. I said, he's your glue. And I pushed the tracks back up and walked out of the room. So what he could have been the pretender about is beyond me. He was more like a glass of water, which may maybe kind of the same thing, which is who is he? Is? He really who we think he is? There? He's the pretender. I don't know the lyrics to Jackson's song.

took it as such. And I do have that passive aggressive nature of I could be very competitive with people when put to the test, but I don't like doing it.

But but if it's there, I'll go for it. And so if it was because I grew up with a block full of girls, I wasn't intimidated by them or off foot by the fact that they were different than us, I used it as a way just to to act as a cool guy until I got older and then got flustered by it in a couple of times in my life, but in general, I just thought, yeah, I feel confident in being a guy. And did I think Marilyn Monroe in the seven year itch was beautiful and

would have loved to kissed her and whatever? And I thought, yeah, she's gorgeous. I liked women. I like girls, so there's one way, one way to do it, or to be involved. And later, much later, the cliche is, yeah, I started playing rock and roll so I could meet girls. Well, yeah, that's part of it, but it certainly wasn't the whole thing.

in will win a record. So I'd have my second finger on a first finger on the last the dial, I'd be the first caller. Well, the record I won was The Ghost of Billy Mloo by Dorsey Burnett, and Dorsey's son was Billy. He had a brother too, I guess. So music was magic to me. Okay, great, but what is the application the application of of of music and rock and roll and where I would fit into it was a more arduous and long process. So by the time I got to the point of auditioning to play drums,

I was aware of a lot of different music. I liked a lot of different styles. I liked everything from Alley Oop by the Hollywood Argyles to uh, you know the Brtie Robins song, you know al Paso with a cool guitar and all that. I fell in love with the Beatles, but I also fell in love with the Rolling Stones. Oh you can't love them both? I go, well, I bloody well, kine mate, it's alright. So that kind of thing I just taking and choosing battles is a part of I've spent a whole lifetime going well, why

did you do that? Why are you doing it this way? Why would you do this? You know? I hadn't written. I wrote one song called Tripping Out in nineteen sixty six. The label was Psychedelic Records, Acid Ad Productions that it was a group called Something Wild. Okay, well something Wild. In nineteen sixty six we had our photograph taken with Peter Asher. Peter Gordon sixty six, I would have been seventeen years old age. If it were February, I would

have been sixteen. So I've got a pretty good photo of and I standing next to each other at least ted twelve years before we actually met each other. Later. It's a Dickinson tale in other words, which is the reason I'm writing this book. But the obvious for me has not always been obvious. And I'm not slow, Bob, but I just sometimes the application is something that takes me a little while longer to figure out.

was a surfer. Other than getting invited by Jackie Stewart to play with the Rolling Stones in nineteen I think it was nineteen eighty eighty one, must been eighty one. One of the biggest thrills of my life was to be asked to join a surf club because the guy saw me surfing at C Street in Ventura, and I go, you want to join this club, which I did, And about a week later, down in wind and Sea, I got run over by somebody else surfing out there, and I had nine stitches put into my hand. And the

doctor saw me. I go, where can I go surfing again? I would say two weeks? Yes. So I went over to my parents and they said, what did doctor say? They didn't even go with me to the and they said, he said, I go surfing immediately. So I went went out surf for a couple of weeks, came back and go, oh, this looks remarkably well. It's it's dry, it's it's looking fine. You came within a millimeter of losing the use of your left hand, by the way, I go, okay, doc, hey,

when can I go surfing again? Oh? I'd waited another two weeks and I why at the door and went down the beach went surfing. So I have a problem with authority right, which is another place where musicians and people with creative inpulses kind of coalesced. Sometimes not always, but a good percentage of the time we do it.

Counts for all kinds of mischief and for being particularly thrown into that that that uh not that many years after we got out of school, like in the late sixties with LSD and everything else that was coming into vogue. It it was like a fire burning through a forest. It took out a lot of people, you know, it was just it was just something we had to do. It's it's a historic point in time, as something like

yourself knows rather well. I look at myself as a survivor, but I also found out pretty early that I couldn't keep up with people that had a different bent towards towards that type of thing. So uh, you know, I I think of myself as fortunate. I also think of myself as fortunate of being a little feet where the emphasis to put little feet together between Law and I was, let's have a vehicle that is expandable, that fits whatever music we're trying to play. Do we need horns, do

we need another guitar player? Should we contemplate another keyboard player? What do we need? Let's come to it based on the music that we're playing and what we think we need at the time. And so rather than the first set of music that we played for Ahmed Erdigon, which were essentially all instrumentals and more like Frank Zappa esque type of music. We rather shortly after Ahmed said, boys,

it's too diverse. So we went back to the drawing board and went, oh, okay, so we put the songs that Brides of Jesus, Hamburger, Midnight, Strawberry Flats, I've been to One, taking my Time. All these songs that were the titles themselves display Captain Gunbow willing display a diversity and eclecticism. You can imagine this type of music we played for amedt Erdgon. It must have been off the charts.

And much later when I found out who Erdigand was and his association with Ray Charles, I go, oh my god. If I'd known who he was, I would have been too embarrassed to play it for him.

piano setup in that we're playing in. I ambled over to it and with the lifted the top up, didn't sit down to stood there and play. They go, hey, wait, wait a minute, here, you play the piano. I go, I guess I've been playing the piano for ten years. At that point, they said, forget this band. Here. We've got a band down the street. It's called the Debonairs. You're gonna play keyboards. Forget the drums. So yeah, I

played drums. I played keyboards far Fisa, Oregon, which is like an earwing buzzing into your head and drawing your brain full of holes. I know there was a horrible sound, but everybody and the brother was using it. So I played that instrument through high school. I went to a year and a half of junior college, which included let's see Alan Handcock Junior College, which is in Santa Maria,

which is where I was going to high school. So I moved from venture to Santa Maria and I school and I went back to a half semester Adventure Junior College. And I might add that my volleyball coach at Alan Hancock was John Matton, who was running a football team there, and a year later was down in San Diego and they went up to Tolkland. I go, I like that guy. Oh, that was my volleyball teacher. But he never taught us anything.

He says, show up, you make this grade, show up to this thing, you make this grade, etc. I got a football team and walked away from us.

black communities of Detroit, La. Etc. It was just a rough time, and the Vietnam War was in full swing, and I was bound and determined to join a band that would bring me up to some sort of value musically that I felt I deserved. I wasn't much for jamming in the ky of a for twenty thirty minutes at a time and then jamming in the KIVD for another thirty minutes. It didn't speak to me. I could do it, but I didn't like it. So he said, look, if you want to get out of here, I don't blame you.

We can't teach you anything. Here gonna be drafted if if you get out of the out of school. I said, well, I'll take that chance. So there's the impetus and the pretty real roadblock that was in front of me just to search out who. Not that long after would be Lowell George. And this was in sixty nine. The my semester Inventure Junior College was in sixty eight. So by sixty nine, I'm out there, done with the dog paddling. I'm going to start swimming and see where it takes me.

I went first in northern California to a band up there, and I met a couple of people there, but I didn't I wasn't confident enough in who I was and my abilities to know the avenue or to choose a path on how to present myself to people. I heard the album Uncle Meat after turning down a couple of bands up there, and this is Frank Zappa's record. I went, man,

that's a kind of music I want to play. So I went back to a La Vista, which is kind of a home base about an hour south of Santa Maria, next to UCSB, the University at Santa Barbara, and with a phony calling card. There are two people I could call two labels. One of the Straight Records, the other was Bizarre. They were both Frank Zappa's label. I chose Bizarre and I called to the lady there, and not with one conversation, with maybe four or five, perhaps I

convinced her that I was an okay kid. I was new to all this. I wasn't sure how to do anything, but I needed her help, and not initially, but shortly thereafter, she put me in touch with Loel George, who had been asked to start his own band by Frank Zappa. Ti I met Lowell.

Huffman Uh he and his brother Duh. Gar was older than d and I and he was a medic in Vietnam. He said, whatever you guys do, do not come down here. It's it is a free for all and in a good way. And if you've got to go to Canada, do it whatever you have to do. Don't don't come

to don't get drafted. So I took that as a means of I'm going to do whatever it takes not to get drafted, which is why I made the shrink after several maneuvers, cut down three flights of stairs at LA at the LA draft board to order me out of there and send me to a hospital. We'll draft him later. And a nurse saw me at the hospital

as this young doctor was walking in. She goes, doctor, he's nothing but an animal, and I go, yeah, lady, and you're the one who wants me to go off and kill people I don't know, and I have no business having a rifle or I don't believe in this war period. And not long after that needed Walter Cronkite. So it was. It was that kind of world. Bob as she as. You know, we're about the same age.

I'm a little older than you, but we were. Faith was something that was just kind of like where we are now, insurmountable in terms of where does the truth lie, what does truth mean? Does it mean anything?

draft board. What's the first time I went through? I signed everything they put in front of me, saying that I wouldn't and I realized rather early on there was call of the book First Circle by soultsanitsa where you're in a holding tank someplace and you don't know if it's day or night, so hours don't mean anything. Time doesn't mean anything. And later on I went, oh, that's like being in a recording studio you kind of divorced from. If they don't have windows in there, you can be

in there for ten hours. And it's like the theory of relativity. According to Einstein, if you have a beautiful woman on your lap for a minute, it seems like an hour. If you have a person maybe not so beautiful on your lab for or excuse me for anyway, I got it reverse time. It's a sexist tale. I shouldn't tell it anyway, But I just thought, I've got to take the chance on not being drafted so I can play with little feet and that's exactly what I did.

me play at the Tropicana Hotel? Which is in his room? He had a keyboard setup. He then goes, well, I played keyboards too, and I'm going, well, that's great. Why'd you have me come down here? But I didn't say that. I go, Okay, call this person back and there's a

guy named Lowell George you might want to meet. So it's like a lot of things is very secuitous route to meeting Lowell and Indeed when I when I went to his house, I had it set up and there was this beautiful blonde girl sitting cross legged on the floor, doors open his summertime. She's listening to Eric's satti. She goes, oh, you must be built. Lowell's expected you. He will be back in four or five hours. I said, well, what does he do when he's not expected you? So so continue the story.

His record collection included uh oh by John Coltrane. He had an album that that Frank Szapp had released on Lenny Bruce uh, and he so he had Lenny Bruce an album of Lenny's Uh. He had a couple of albums with Oh the Blues collection that the Smithsonian Blues Collection, of which one of the songs on there was joined the band Hey, Lordy John, the band which we put on the top of Waiting for Columbus. Uh. He had music with with Chester Burnett, uh hold Wolf and with

Muddy Waters. So he had He was a very collectic guy, and I kind of his book collection was everything from uh, I'm looking on my book collections that still the same thing, to a collection of poems by Carl Sandberg. Probably I think he might have had the Carl Sandberg of Lincoln books that he wrote as well. He had Last Exit to Brooklyn, which is a brutal book uh poetry by Alan Alan Ginsburg Howl. So rather a collect e sensive.

The time Lowell showed up and we began conversing one on one, it was like Jaygovara and Fidel Castro meeting the first time from what I've read, where they conversed about everything under the sun. And that's kind of the way we hit it off. So by the time I left there, we decided, well, hey, come back in a week, let's let's continue this. And we did. And this is the detail I'm trying to tell, which is it's deep. I only knew Low for ten years, but it might

as well have been one hundred years. It was. That's that kind of relationship.

As I said, I hadn't written anything out of some psychedelic tripping out that elliot Ingbert from The Mother's Invention, about a month later, came through the door with that particular single. Said did you play on this? I go, yeah, I go where'd you find? He says, in a band at a record store? And I got it because I said psychedelic music. Acid had productions from nineteen sixty six. This is one of the first of those kind of records.

I go, oh. I didn't know that. In fact, I didn't know what any of it meant at that time. But shortly thereafter I did. So there we were okay.

Lenny had a piano in his office. We sat there and we played anywhere from seven to nine songs, as kind of like going to Schwab's drug store and being recognized that the counter, and he asked to be in a movie. I mean, we didn't really have a band yet. Richie Hayward was with us, but we weren't in sync. We didn't have Roy Strada was on our band. We auditioned probably seventeen bass players the first six months or whatever. There's a lot of whom. One of them was Paul Breyer.

We didn't play bass. He played guitar, and LOL goes, well, it's two less strings, go for it, you know. So I mean that that kind. I mean, I wish it was loose. The only manager we had for about a nana second was a business manager, uh, mister Kibbi. Martin Kibby wrote co wrote Dixie Chicken with Low et cetera. And so his dad, Martin was a good uh what wasn't he of that group? Richie was as a fraternity of man. Martin was a different group, and they are.

His father said boys don't spend it all in one place. That was his advice, and I thought, you know what, that's very good advice. So I kind of adhere to that for for quite a while.

to Europe. He said, when I get back, we'll talk about a record deal. Well, purportedly Manson, although this is up in the air too historically whether Melcher was being sought out or not by Manson for not giving him a record deal. But for a long time that was the story. But I wound up sleeping in Lowell's van because he brought in these cats with Patricia, one of the Price sisters, of which there were three sisters. One

was married to Richie. Yeah, it was married to Rick Harper, our road manager, and Lowell was married to Patty and she I might add that their mother was Lula Belle, who sang the high part on the Lion Sleeps Tonight for Telstar, and she said the high part on a that Star trek. So that was a family the girls came from. And so we had our own Hollywood history

going on there. But I eventually got out of Loll's place and found a place and the lady got me a She said, I have an acoustic piano in my house. It was a baby grant, and U you know, I was lucky in a lot of respects about of being able to search for something and tell people like the gallon the phone and warners or straight records, excuse me a bizarre what I did, and they go, oh, okay, yeah, let's try this.

I hadn't been doing sessions at that time. I might have just started doing it, but I was. I was completely a newbie at what was involved in any of it. So it was a difficult record to put together. It didn't sell any I sawd eleven thousand copies. The first tour was I felt when we played New Year's even I don't know, wasn't New Ye's Eve New Year's Day in New York City at Club of Gano. We had two painting customers and the rest were from Warner Bros.

That probably eight or nine people were there, and I was so out of it in terms of the angst of being where I thought, we're gonna be doing great because we're on started giving the you know, the record a good review, great review effect on Strawberry Flats, maybe Hamburg at midnight, and I but we're out there and We're like, we're no nothing, no one knows this. Uh. We're up in Cleveland and we're playing with the Vanilla Figs. The audience bring on the fudge and we're just like,

what the hell are we doing? And we got to Texas and there's a couple of girls there and I went, oh, I get it. I think I like touring. So touring's okay, wait a minute, forget what I said. I'm back. I'll be back on the road any time you want. Uh So yeah, thinking like a musician, like a dope. And there it was, and we went in to make sale Juice, which was a different proposition but sold three thousand more So. Another way to put it is is the humility of

it and having to be humble. At some point you got to face facts. But also taught me a great deal about Moe, Austin and Warner Brothers, which is they were willing to stick it out with something that was not viable, but we were a cachet for them as well to people they're trying to bring in, saying, look, we've got a little feet. We know they don't sell, but they they've got a great uh you know, their thought of glowing terms in terms of who they are,

which is musicians, uh, composers, et cetera. It felt like a home to me with with with them and uh, it was so so in that regard. There were there were a lot of lessons available. But but but they're all bunched in as lessons often are with you know, in layers.

not only a truck driver, but of country music. So the reason we re recorded it for Sailing Shoes was we when we got together and we had the piano on it, well, it took us for serious approach, the way he was singing the vocal. That's why that song is iconic, not because of that first iteration. That's my opinion anyway.

chord changes. But we would play him with a complete and underdoor abandonment, and we laughed about because, yeah, we're being paid to do this. It was our little our little clubhouse. You know. I might have driven Battle a little crazy, but but not all that much because we

would have got time to play the actual tunes. We would we would settle down and try and adopt a more studio approach, which is the same, more conservative approach, but we we took every opportunity we could to put the pedal to the metal, as they say, and open up the car and drive it as fast as we could when we could. So it was a it was it was an experience where by the time the thing was over, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I don't remember Teddy in the studio at all. He must have

been there. But if he was, and I apologized ted but I don't remember seeing him there.

jumping a cab. Well, I don't know who the gig is, and there it is, throw the money at him, running into the hall and they are lined up. I don't know the Don van Vliet, Captain Beefhart was lined up, but virtually everybody else was. Artie Tripp was the drummer. He had family in town. They'd fixed it fifteen minutes after we left, and we're going for over an hour. Y Rostrada was also in that line, and he basically

told us to jump in jumping a lake. And by that time we went really okay, we will best of luck to you too, and we we were actually very pleased to get rid of him. Is He threatened to leave us at every juncture he could, and we'd have to talk him back into it and this and that. So I don't think Lowell did that to make anybody angry. It was just the way Lowell was. If Loul wanted

to do something here to do it. But that opened the doors to Kenny Gradny was the first one to walk through the open door of the two guys that would come in from De Lady and Bonnie that's coming to the base in Congress. Paul Barrera was brought in earlier because Richie and I felt like Lowell needed some help on the guitar because he's trying to do too much. He needed something to help rhythmically, not literally help, but

so he could play. He was just starting an experiment with slide guitar and we thought, well, he can play rhythm and slide, but boy, wouldn't be nice to have some cushion for him to react to Paul and his brothers they all went to Hollywood High with each other, so they knew each other. Ah. So that was a transition and a major one for us. It also gave another partner to write with as well. But having Kenny

Grandy step in from Delany and Bonnie. Rick Harper knew the guys, what was it a studio instrument metals, Canon Barry there down there and they brought Kenny and he said he just just got out of Delaney and Bonnie. We had a game coming up in uh Hawaii at the Creator Festival. He says, I want to bring my partner in and his partner with Sam play. This was the sure. So we all go to Hawaii playing Creative Festival, Greater Festival for forty thousand people. Uh it was. It

was a dream come true. And so Sam Clayton right then and there was like, yeah, I love the band and he was in. So that's that's how that transition took place. But also introduced which we had We had been familiar with New Orleans music before either of those guys got in the band. I mean I I came down to uh uh just see Lord sixty nine, knowing fully well who Professor long Hair was, what his influence would might be at some point. Uh and also uh Clifton Shinier and the stuff that he was doing so

wide open was was the word. So when we got those two guys they knew about New Orleans music, that was just a handshake and a slap on the ass and we're we're off and running.

East La. It was there was just a lot of inventiveness going on with those songs and how we were going to play them and attack them, and that openness I think on that record in particular, transformed in a nice handshake to that album. The interesting thing though, was it sold a few more copies because of the notoriety of the record, But some of the reviews, while glowing before on the first two albums, every song sounds the

same that kind of thing. So in other words, when you put your head up where you're visible above ground, that's when people start taking shots at you, which is another thing I learned, and I went, Oh, I thought we were the darlings of the press. Hardly, but in general we were, and we were certainly well thought of

in Europe and in England in particular. So a lot of doors were even at that time unbeknownst to us, but they were starting to slowly open, which would vote well for the future, except that we were a band, and like a lot of bands, and the just preperency between our personalities didn't let itself to always shaking hands with one another.

a few years ago. He goes, I don't remember that. I said, well, yep, she was there, not at our meeting, but at the at the main bar. As you walk in through the through the doors, particularly come through the back door. There's two entrances into the dining room. One is you take take a right, the other one you take a left, and that's where they film most things for movies, is when you turn left and were the

formal part of the dining room. Uh. Phil's wife said, you're not going to do it, it's ridiculous, and we did so. Then Bob Gavala stepped in. He says, there's a guy, Steve Boone from the Love and Spoonful, which is the band that John Sebastian he's got a studio in Baltimore, Maryland. Mike, we take a shot at recording there. You'll you'll live back there. You'll have free access to

this studio, do anything you want. I bought a lot of great things happened that I met Robert Palmer, I met uh through Emmy Lou Harris, my first wife, fran fran Tate. George Masterberg came in from Barclay Studios in Paris to work with us, So we knew each other or met each other at that time. And then uh

our George Lowell's daughter was born at that time. So a lot of great things were taking place for us, and it really felt like a reunion of of of of good magnitude and and UH we were able to pour a lot of good energy into it, and we've recorded several different records. We also became quite famous in Washington as a result of living back there. So there was a perfect storm of good things happening for us.

We don't have enough money to get out there and do this, and we're like kind of stune. And I walked up to him, I said, well, why we why we like? Why we laughing when you came in? He says. I was so upset about it. I didn't know what else to do. I said, God, look, you know a real human response, and I went, you know what, I completely get it. I always thought Bob was a wonderful, wonderful guy on that level. I trusted him. I said, okay, fine, Well,

but the decision was made to try the superman. It was also what was else which they wouldn't have helped Richie or Kenny or Sam or anybody, at least not initially. But then Lowell also there was another thing that he did that I Beleeve proceeded going back to work in Maryland and record there, and that was a Robert Palmer record, sneaking Sally through the alley, and a lot of people thought it was us. It was the Meters, we're playing it.

Or if you're going to get confused with a band, you can choose a lot worse bands than the Meters to get confused with. So uh and by the way, we got to sit in with those guys, you know, the Neville Brothers, et cetera. Uh, there's there's a there's. I had one guy at one point was going, well, what are you playing? He didn't say it to me directly, came in through another person. What are you doing playing New Orleans music? You're not from there? I said, Well,

tell your friend that I played Mozart. I'm not from vienn Austria. I'm not from Germany. I play Bach and Beethoven. Is that okay with him? Oh? And my parents were married and you were also maybe through osmosis, I got some of the the juju. I don't know. You tell me there against that competitive thing. You know. I'm not a purist when it comes to music. I I uh, and I adore some people that are. Don Grolnik was a purist, played piano with with James Tader with Lynn

Ron's stat beautiful jazz guy. You and I discussed this a few times. His approach was, if this is the way Bill Evans did it, then I'm gonna play it like that. You know that that kind of thing. Don had the chops. Excuse me to play it any way he wanted. I said, I don't bastardize it on purpose, Don, I just what I'm doing is I'm taken segments of things and appropriating it to music and to my writing and to my sense of what ought to be there, not as a an affront to anything.

that rolls into us. We've we've been accused through the years, and I think rightfully so that our records aren't as good as the way we play live. And I think just you know, it's subjective, but for me, I think there's some truth in that. This is one of those albums that I thought was h let me just put it this way. We want the German Album of the Year of the Year award. And when I heard that

we'd want I won that award. A couple of people in the band, I said, I told you it was Germanic and stiff, and that's that's the result of all that, and they went, there you go. So it was one of those I mean, it's it's it's silly to say it, but it was. It's kind of the way I felt about that album. And I don't I rarely listened to our records. I do on occasion, uh, and I actually sound pretty good. I gotta I gotta admit.

him or without him. And Paul and I got together and I thought, look, I don't know what to do here, but we had to go. Let's let's talk to Ted teentleman about doing a recordless playing the songs we have. See if he'll do a record with Lowell in there. But maybe Lowell is not as present as he should be. Let's let Lowell figure out who he is. I know he wants to do a solo record. Let's let him sort some of that out. See if he's amenable to

letting us take more of a stand in this. And that's what we did.

songs on his solo record? And why did it take in five years to make it? So, I said, that's a good question to ask yourself. He was in a tailspin of his own making not ours. This is what I was getting at, and it didn't to me, It didn't ever detegrate his talent. Uh Uh. I thought Richie Hayward and Prop and Paul BarreR were probably going to be the first guys to uh, you know, leave this world. That's the right they were. They were gone. Uh So

discuss the show. Were you know, we don't know what's going to happen.

But I think things were, you know, because I wasn't inside his head. I just thought that that he was he was disturbed by a lot of what he was going through internally, and that these things because the pressure of being thought of as a leader of the group, and even with a guy like myself that took over the reins from time to time, like when we did the record of the TV show uh bit I Special. Bob was the guy that produced that show. Anyway, the

producer of that show got touched with me. He said, did you would you put a list of people together for us to do the show with? I said, but why don't you have loll to it? He says, because you want to make sure it gets done. Uh airlic I think air one anyway, Bob Airlock? Uh so, ken Airlinck you mean can't yeah, ken Ic excuse me, there's a kN airlic So I brought into the weather report.

I brought in you know, the Bonnie whomever was on stage with us take let Larson and uh emmy little Harris might have been there too, I can't remember, but yeah, there there there was an increasingly more of of that where Lode was burying, kind of what Jerry Garcia was going through, where a lot of the emphasis was from the press was on both Law with Little Feet Jerry with with the Grateful Dead. But neither one of them really wanted the mantle of being a leader. They didn't

want the pressure of it. They they wanted to be the artists play compose. Give him room for that, not like the king that sits there every day and has to go through. Should I do my launch to be with this kind of detergent You're you're your worship or this. I mean, it was just no, I want to be left alone. I want to do what I do. Play

some of your songs, just do some of mine. It just was just convoluted, and the side of the times was the drug thing hovering out there, which was never that far away from from what we were all going through or what's up we're going through. I should say I'd give it up on it a few years before. Uh. It made it harder, harder to uh, to deal with one another, to deal with life. Plus we're young guys.

ton of breakfast to what actually happened. So what hit me initially was a shock of his death, but I'd rather quickly elevated to does he have insurance for his family? I don't think he did, So I said, we're going to put a concert on at the Forum, which we did, and we raised money for his family, and we tried to put and we did put Lawell in good light,

because that's what we should have done. I think the story of loll George is one that not unlike Beatnick poetry if you just talk about his death and whatever cost is, because there's a lot of stories surrounding that too. But I kind of look at it like Beatnick poetry. You throw Jimmy Hendrick's name into the hat, along with Jim Morrison, Garcia, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, do you name him?

And John Beluci. They all have very similar avenues in which they went out, and there's discrepancies too on how they died. The fact is it was a culture and an overload system that brought him to that early demise in their hearts were the things that gave out. So I don't and what I'm writing, what I'm talking about now, my focus is more on Yeah, we'll passed away. He left this legacy with us. We're intertwined with one another.

I was quoted and People Magazine is saying greater People Magazine, not the you know, foreign press as saying that without Lowl,

Georgia would not be Little Feet. And it was reminded of that when we put out Let It Roll, And I said, you know, I did say that, and that's the way I felt at that time, and I morphed and gravitated to a different way of thinking about it, which, ironically enough, was more to the way low and I thought about the band when we put it together in nineteen sixty nine, which it should be an open vessel as to who's in it and when, what material should

be included and how? And does it sound like Little Feet at the end of the day, if we play Happy Birthday, does it still sound like Little Feet? You know? But if we write a great song, does it sound like Little Feet? I think the answer was debatable for a lot of people. Some ardis and said without Lowell. It's not Little Feet without Richie, it's not Little Feet without Paul Breer, it's not Little Feet and a lot of other people, and I mean a lot more go.

You know what just ties me to something that reminds me of what was great about you guys, and guess what it still is. Because you can't walk up on that stage, Bob and play in full people. You either have them by the throat and they come along with you or you're sitting there going we aren't what we thought we were, which brings you back to the very first album with Little Feet, thinking we were going to be the Beatles.

But but having the ability, I mean at the age I am now of. I mean, honestly, if I didn't or couldn't play with Little Feet anymore, I think I would probably enjoy it that much. But could I do it? Yeah, I mean, I'm not financially hanging onto a thread necessarily, but it's I love playing music as much more than I ever have in life, and I don't want to

mislabel something that that isn't something. But as I said, when you walk out on stage, uh and you look into people's eyes out there and judge from the looks on their faces as to whether you're connecting with them. Little Feet is one of those bands that people either go who or they go oh my god, the the little feet that kind of that's special to them they have. They don't care. They're like the grateful dead on you is if if Jerry Garcia looks sideways at Bobby Ware

or Vice versa. They were the first to bring it up right, Uh, within little feet. It's the same way, if not, everybody that we've we've played our music for has liked the iteration of the band that we have. But the group is it stands with Tony Leoni, with Scott Gerard, Fred Tackett, Sam Clayton, Kenny Grady, myself. They are like doing handstands over this group, and so are we.

I think let's let's you know that. I mentioned John Coltrane earlier, the last iteration of the band he had, and he played with some great people over the years. He felt like, you know, this group, it's not a matter whether it's the best one I've ever worked with, but it certainly holds with the best that I've worked with. That's the way I feel about this band. Is it better than with Lowell and at his height of powers and whatnot, Well, certain respects, it's not better, but it's

just as good. It doesn't have low You can't replace Lowell. Maybe with AI we can, and they will. I don't know, they'll They'll have to cross that bridge when they come to it. But for right now, if live music is such and recording as such, and you're gonna write a song. Those songs come from the heart. They come from a place that AI doesn't possess. It has an intellect, which is it's not a bad thing to have sometimes, but

it's not everything. You have to have heart and an acumen to know when to play, when to lay out, when to say, you know what. Maybe that acoustic piano is not to write instruments for this, I'm gonna play a wordlesser. I'm gonna just lay out of this section I'm gonna have. I'm gonna ask Linda Ronstadt to sing softer on this duet she's doing with the Craig Fuller on the song that the Laker Organization tapped as a song as a goodbye song to Kareem Abdul Jabbar voices

on the wind. I defy a I to come up with any of that.

I'm there to prove that what we're doing. What I do when every time I walk into to play music with somebody or to hold a conversation with somebody, I've lived it. I've lived a life. I'm still living it and hopefully I'll know when to relinquish center fields. If I've dropped fly balls like Willie Mays was in center field, maybe I'll call it. Then. Right now I'm catching everything has hit to me, so I'm gonna keep playing, but just.

play music with you any longer. And I'd always upsetting it to them at first, and I said, remember I was the old man in the sea for a long time with you guys, I'm not with them, and I don't feel like I played any worse or less than I played with anybody. I come in as a team player. I come in as a I don't have to be in the band in order to play as if I'm in the band. So that's that's my attitude. I've turned down.

I've turned down Madi. I was offered a chance to the the to write the theme song for a Cops and for Baywatch. I turned them both down. My agent about hit the wall. He said, are you out of your mind? I said, yeah, I guess I am. Well, you call yourself something different, I said, I would still know it was me. I've worked around enough. I mean, you know, that's what musicians are from time to time for prostitutes. But you choose who you want to lay with, and I don't want to lay with this, okay.

If it's something you think you can can now to a campaign and make it work us, then more power to you. Generally speaking, these things that do not people with power and wealth do not relinquish it easily and are not about to do so with the streaming services. But we'll see where it goes.

I thought, yeah, I like the idea of it. And then what we will do that's maybe a little different than at least what the Doomie Brothers did to a degree. If we're playing Juliet, maybe we'll lengthen it a little bit. You know, we nothing's written in stone with us. We can We're not going to disguise a song like maybe Bob Dylan would. We'll make it where they know that it's Juliet if they're familiar with the team like you were, Uh,

and play it. But but I want to have the ability to mess around with tempo's a little bit from time to time. Let's let's see what the arrangement is.

Loel George. I'm not you know, I'm not a celebrity. But I kind of am in a certain sense, and become more so as people know more about me. But what they quickly learn about me is, look, I'm still the same guy gets beat up on the playground like everybody else. I just happen to have a talent to play piano, and I've utilized it in a pretty grand fashion throughout my career to do just that so I can be the I told somebody on TV Ruters tour, they're driving a bus. Andy, Yeah, but you're a rock star.

I said, well, if you want to think of me as a rock star, go ahead. What I am in fact as a musician, and I hold that to be I played with a lot of rock stars. I met a bunch and I admire you know, I admire those people. Have I one of them. If you want to think of me as one, go ahead, I don't really think I am.