Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the bob Lefset's podcast. My guest today is Henry Hall, who has a new book to last out. Henry, isn't today your birthday?
Today is my birthday?
So what are your special plans?
Well, my son's coming over for dinner. He's a very entertaining character. So we're going to make some pae, drink some Spanish wine. My wife is cooking dinner for me, which is not unusual, but we both share the cooking duties, but she's commandeering the kitchen for my birthday tonight.
So pae good pie is great. How did you learn how to make paea?
Well, you know, growing up in Tampa with a Cuban community. It was the kind of part of the landscape.
Any other dishes you specialize it?
Well, yeah, you know, I mean going back to the Cuban thing, the Spanish thing, the chicken and yellow rice. I love to make hyea. I love French bistro cooking, coke, Wova, boothberg Ignon. Gosh, you know, I'm just going to tell you this my spaghetti sauce. Seriously, if you're a soulful character that knows the difference between good and great. My sauce would qualify.
But make sure so magic. What's the essence of the recipe?
Time homegrown tomatoes. I don't use ground beef. I use ground hot Italian sausage as my base for the sauce. I don't know. You know, it's so heavy that you can't eat it very often. We probably make that once every two or three months. But when we do, we gain five pounds. It's part of it.
What do you do about food on the road?
Ah, that's a good one. Kind of you just try and be discerning, try and pick and choose. But it can get pretty ugly. It can get pretty damn ugly. Now, if you're on the Lenards Skinnered tour and the catering is a notch or two above what you are used to, that's half the attraction anymore. Forget exposure to a large audience. It's all about the catering.
So, okay, you've been doing this a long time. You're going to die on stage? No, So what would it take for you to all the day?
I'm close. When I was younger, I thought I wanted to be you know, Willie Nelson when I grew up. But I've had enough. I mean, honestly, I have a four year old and a ten year old at home and a young wife, and a greenhouse and some acreage and a tractor, and you know, I would like to go out maybe with a couple of people to sing with and do acoustic and acoustic evening and tell some stories.
But my son, who is a very talented young man, is more than capable of running the show out here, and he wants to, and I want him to, and so I thought maybe next year could be my last year.
Can you say your son is people being running the show? What exactly do you mean?
Well, he's a much better guitar player than I am. He's a really good singer, and he is a good leader. He's a natural born chip off the old block. That way, our family is brought with chiefs. There aren't a lot of Indians.
Okay, but if you stop, that would mean the Outlaws would be on the road without any original members.
Well, how many original tires do you have in your car? Bob? You know, he's been out there since he was ten. He's come in contact with the fan base extensively over the years. He's a really kind person and he's a very charismatic type of guy, and the fans know him, they love him. He's been very kind to the fans, and he's got the right name, and he's got a very very long and storied not unlike Johnny van Zant
or Ricky Midlock, now, you know. I mean, I don't mind saying that Lennard Skinner band is very good and those people want to hear those songs, they want to buy that T shirt, and that band puts on a great show and is very faithful to the band's musical personality. And I feel like the Outlaws and Blackhawk can go on indefinitely because of the nature of the material. And you know, little Henry has a unique talent for sounding
like his dad. There's a part of him that sounds a little like me anyhow, and as you may know, you know, it's kind of an unusual sounding voice. But he he can do that, and I want him to do that. I would That's something I can give him. And the guys on the bus love and respect him, and he can keep the band together and keep going.
But even you know, our Laws had many men, Blackcaw only had a few. You still think it could be okay with him leading.
The band absolutely well, you know, of course I would say yes. But I think Blackhawk was a trio. The Outlaws was a five piece rock band. The Blackhawk thing is far more kind and gentle, you know, and thoughtful and the Outlaws. You know, back when we were young people, man, we were like all just clawn at the walls to try and get ahead and be somebody. I think Dave Robbins and I, which are the two surviving original members of Blackhawk, I think Dave would be very helpful to Henry.
I know he would be, and I think he would lend a significant amount of credibility to the brand. I you know, how many original members and cover bands, and you know, you hear that lot. But Lennard Skinner's out there doing great and I'm using them as an example. But you know, there's a lot of bands that represent something musically to a generation of people and they want that.
And I think that it's fair to expect, you know, a great show in the spirit of what it was, what you know, what it was from a creative standpoint. But you know, other than that, I don't know when a band goes away, do they just go away? I mean, do they just like just go away or do they I don't know, keep going.
Oh, it's an interesting thing, you know. I've been to see Journey with the replacement singer and you're in the audience and you realize the audience owns the songs more than the band, and that they're experienced, they want to hear the songs, and who's on stage isn't as important to them as it might have been in the heyday.
Well, and I think that we're conditioned to love the original band. I think it's natural to feel that way. I mean, maybe the Beatles are an exception. Whether can you see the Beatles without John or Paul or George. But I do believe that that people want to hear those songs. They want them played and sang and treated with respect and with you know, in a competent musical form and fashion. One thing that has really helped the Outlaws for the last fifteen or twenty years is that
I was unyield towards the band's original sound. And when I wrote and recorded new studio records, I wrote and recorded music that was faithful to the band's musical personality. It was never spanned out ballet or any of that you know, it was always the Outlaws, and I loved, you know, just you know, continuing that musical personality and being true to it felt really natural and right to me. And so when the fan base got a new record, they drop the needle and they'd go, Wow, this sounds
like the Outlaws. This is really good. The songs are really good, the harmony, vocals are great, the guitars are sizzling. It's a great sounding record in and I not because it's my songwriting that is in the you know, at the center of it. But there's some pretty damn good songs on those records, and the performance is really good.
Okay. You hear a lot about older artists that if they play new material, people go to the bar. What's your experience?
Well, again, you know, I want to hear Bob Dylan sing subterranean homesick clues. I'm not very interested in what he has to say here in the last ten or fifteen years. So if I put a new song in the set and I'm writing about let me just give you an example. If I'm if I'm coming from a song off the first or second album and I put a new song in a set, uh, and it speaks to them lyrically, and it's and it speaks to them stylistically.
I can tell you from experience, you're going to get what you want in the way of a reaction, and uh uh, I think that. You know fans if they're having a good time and they're on their feet and the new material pushes their button, which it does, and it speaks to them lyrically in a way that they can relate. The walls of the Fillmore East still echo with the sound and Midnight Writer memories forever haunt this town. You know. It's like fire on the mountain, the voice
that can't you see. The reason Sweet Home Alibi means so much to me is it's about pride. So you put that in the show, and I defy you to not want to love that and not want to react to that. And so it's how you frame the music lyrically and lyrically, that's how it kind of established itself to begin with. And if you're wise to that and you're consistent, then you can bring new life to the band. We've done it, I mean Dixie Highway and It's about pride.
Those two albums have done incredibly well for us and really helped give the band legitimacy, which I think was important.
You talk about potentially stopping in a year. What's been keeping you doing it for these last years?
Well, most of all, I think I wanted to prove to myself because Blackhawk is a uniquely personal musical personality of my own sort of making. Along with Dave and band, the Outlaws had three singer songwriters from the very early stages of the group, and Huey emerged as the dominant musical personality in the band. And when I left the group upon my bandmates suggestion, it was hurtful and it started a fire in me that was hard to put out.
Whether it was the Henry Paul Band, or coming back to the Outlaws and establishing it as a really good, solid, vocal and instrumental group, or whether it was when hue passed away and I took the reins and brought the
band back. It was a personal thing for me to succeed, and it was important for me to feel that success because I had a large part in creating the Outlaws and I had a very significant investment in their well being, and it just gave me that late in life opportunity to show myself as committed and to put a very professional face on a band that had been through a lot of changes and a lot of inglorious moments.
So have you achieved your dream?
I have, and I you know, I had. My goal was to pull the fan base together and have everybody, you know, in one place. I found out I could not do that. I couldn't do that. I mean, it didn't matter what I did. That wasn't going to happen.
But what I did do is I brought these people that grew up listening to that band, and I brought them back to the group, and the audience went through over time, went through a significant ship and the people that I was playing for became more familiar to me sociologically.
And.
They showed their enthusiasm for what we were doing in a way that I internalized on a personal level. And so, you know, it was important for me to feel like I had put the Outlaws out there in a way that was respectful and successful, especially from the standpoint of the audience's reaction to the evening.
So who's coming Ole Laws shows now?
Well, I would say eighty percent of the audience is the original people that discovered the band and supported it. The twenty percent of the audience is young people that love seventies southern raw musical personality or guitar driven musical personalities, and the female quotient in the audience is at a higher level.
What do you think it counts for that?
I think it's the respect that they are given from the stage and the inviting nature of the rapport. And I'm not talking about pandering. I'm just talking about appealing to these people on a on a human level. And instead of making it dark and sleeveless and male and aggressive and motorcycle persona driven, we made it a little bit lighter, a little bit more vocal, and a lot
more accessible. From the standpoint of our rapport, there's some you know this, there's some nice looking guys in the band, you know, I mean, it doesn't look ugly. It looks really like American, like, for lack of a better word, a little bit more you know, just accessible as people
the people on stage, and they're really kind people. And I think through consistency of our rapport with the audience over a decade or more, twenty almost years, and people said, the Outlaws are playing in a really nice venue, they sound really good. Let's go see the Outlaws and we'll have some cocktails and we'll enjoy ourselves and it'll take us back to when we were kids. And Henry will come out and say hello, and they're very accessible and
he's a really nice guy. And the band sounds really good, and you know, they look good. By looks good and they sound good. And I just think over time, the audience, I know, it went through a shift and it was kind of like started to mirror the personalities on stage rather than us trying to mimic our our audience.
Okay, you've laid the base there. The band is now on stage, you're the front person for the band. What is the key to interacting personally with the audience.
Well, I think if you're a gracious to begin with, and you have an empathetic and gracious sort of spirit, and you legitimately like people instead of being put off by him or instead of being you know, uh, you know, instead of being you know, intruded upon or feeling like, you know, you need to just be alone or private. I mean, we were very comfortable and cordial in interacting with the fans, and it wasn't a conscientious decision made on a marketing level. It was just who we were.
It's who I am, and the band mirrors my persona when it comes to my appreciation for who these people are, and when I speak to them, I speak to them in a language that they recognize as being real. It's not some flag waving veterans supporting, you know, just pandering to some Southern rock persona or or perceived personality that
we have to assume. It's a very natural and very accessible message, and I think it comes from being smart enough to know that who you're dealing with are pretty you know, receptive and intelligent and similar types of people than as you know, they get the difference between kindness or genuine you know, behavior and appreciation rather than the cliche thing. I've heard it my whole life, you know, I've heard it over and over and it just doesn't
sound good to me. What sounds good to me is not talking down to them, but talking to them and with them. So I think that you know, people will go, you know, well, I love the stories Henry was telling tonight. You know, I'm very appreciative and genuinely affectionate towards my bandmates. Yes, we had some heart wrenching parts to the story, but I never lost sight of who they were or what they meant to me. We realized a dream together, we
thought for it, we realized it together. It was a very life changing moment and a very important part of making our life matter. And so you can't just write those people off. And I treat those former bandmates with respect on the mic, and I acknowledged the obvious contribution they made, and I think that the sincerity and the genuine appeal of the band rests in that rapport.
So when you tell a story, I mean, there's two ways to tell the story. Well, this is a song written by my bandmate, it's on this album. We're going to play it. There's another thing to say, Well, I was sitting on the couch smoking a doobie. What kind of stories do you tell live?
Well, I go to the Two Nights in Nashville when we opened for Leonard skinnern in the spring of nineteen seventy four, and Ronnie going back to the hotel and calling his manager and telling his manager that there was a band on the show from Tampa trying to kick
their ass and they had themselves Freebird. That evening, unbeknownst to us, was a life changing evening because the Leonard Skinnyerd manager at that time had a lot of influence and a lot of credibility, and his his effort on our behalf was met with attention and ultimately a major label record deal between Charlie Bruscoe and Alan Walden. We were able to connect with people that had the power to sign a band to a major label, and we
were really good. And those are the kind of stories that, you know, kind of give the fans a bit more of an understanding of how in the hell you got there, because otherwise, you know, it's just like, I don't know, we Clive came and saw us, you know, but Clive did come and see us, But he came and saw us because people told Clive we were good. You know, the music business, you're only as good as someone that has influence says you are. And if they say you're good,
then everyone believes it. But they don't say you're good, then nobody cares. So here was this person saying they're really good. And then you know, Bob, you know, Fiden comes down and sees the band and goes back and says, yeah, they're really good, Clive, they really are good. And so Clive comes down and said, you know, Clive, you know,
the superlatives were, you know, flowing. And I was in a room with a guy and all of a sudden, from just being a dreamer and a hard worker, I went to being a recording artist and a part of the popular music landscape, and it was a big deal.
Let's stay with Clive for a second. You know, you're in with Clive in his second iteration, he's starting up Arista. As you talk in the book, it's really the first rock band on the label. Clive is notorious for messing with the music. You mentioned a couple of things, him wanting hits after the first album. What was your experience with working with Clive.
It was good, not to sound, you know, politically correct, but it was good. He did not really lean on us very much. He brought to my knowledge one song and suggested we record it, and we did, and it was a little left or right of center for us. I'm trying to remember the name of the song. We never performed it, you know, because it didn't become a song that was noteworthy. The Santana story is a great story but that wasn't our story. We were more of.
I mean, when you go back and listen to the Outlaws albums and you go back and listen to the Eels records, it becomes clear pretty quickly if you know anything about songwriting, why they're a household name and we're a cult bad. I'm not saying our songs weren't good, but I'm saying they were different. Tequila Sunrise, you know, is like if you like Pinacle, you know, I mean, it's just it's served up, you know, with an umbrella
and a long straw. But Green Grass and High Tides is a majestic instrumental phenomena that would burn the Eagles completely to the ground in musical comparison, and so you know, they were beautiful singers. Henley emerged as a major league songwriter and a hugely, incredibly influential musical personality. I mean, don his solo records to me were like Goga and the Eagles to this day are a great band. I mean they should be. They've got Vince Gill and Joe Walsh.
You know, shit, how do you go wrong there? I mean, Vince Gill is a work of art, and you know, and Joe Walsh's and Don Felder was a great part of that band. I have a great part of that band. Really help them. But you know, we were different that way, and and people love us for not being the Eagles, you know, they love us for being you know. Bob Dylan has a quote that says, never never confused popular
with good. Just be yourself and write your quirky little songs that don't have you know, universal thoughts and hooks. But to you, you go out and you play that hard and you play it with conviction, and people will love it just on face value. It doesn't have to be you know, steely Dan. It can be a simple and maybe a little bit I mean, Leonard Skynard's a great example of a band that had a very simple
musical personality. And yes they had Sweet Home Alabama, which is in a you know, a beautiful musical moment for them. But Marshall Tucker and even the Almand Brothers, even though they had a hit on Ramblin Man, those bands, we were sort of cast in the Almond Brothers, we were all cast i think in a certain extent in their image. We loved them and we were in awe of them.
And we respected them and we wanted to be them, and we were, you know, in our own sol Way, just incredibly enamored by who they were and what they meant to us, especially you know from Live at the film Wore and Eat a Peach and holy crap, I mean, Brothers and Sisters was like even without Dwayne, I mean, the band hit this thing and we were just absolutely completely invested in what that was. We didn't mimic them, but we really loved what they did. And the Marshall
Tucker band was a great band. Skinner was a great band of Charlie Daniels was a great band. And that was our peer group Leonard Skinner, Marshall Tucker, Charlie Daniels, and god dare I say the Almend Brothers. That was Southern rock. And the Outlaws were the last band to enter that configuration. But the Outlaws earned their way in, and I can tell you from experience. Every night used to bring the whip down pretty good, and we would get over on Skinnered, or we would get over on Tucker,
or we get over on Charlie. We held our own every night, and our relationship with those people was genuine and warm and very very memorable in a very nurturing and positive way.
Okay, you talk about interacting with the audience today, and you talk about not being a cliche. You tour all over this country, You've seen the people, You're where the rubber meets the road. What can you tell us about people in America today?
Well, it's for me, it was, and I'm just going to talk about my audience because I don't know everyone. But not just for the Outlaws, but for Black Pop or for the Henry Paul band, those people were very grounded, earthy and traditional in their taste and in their behavior
and in their musical choices. Our audience for those and even today for those bands, are people that are middle class white American people of a normal, hard working background of success and you know the whole from family to growing up and getting a job and doing what you knew you needed to do for your family. Our audience is very Americana in a true sense of the word. Blackhawk's audience is very young. The Outlaws audience is older. But they both when you look at them, you know
they got jobs and lives. These are not people that wander in, you know, like with nothing. They worked hard and they have a life. I mean the clothes that they wear, or the way that they interact with you, or the affection that they are capable of giving you. You get the impression that these are people that are like you. They're like me.
Okay, you say after the show, you interact with the audience. I had, okay. So that's not a normal feature. You don't come out to the merge table every night.
We did for a long time. We did for a long time.
What changed.
I'm seventy six. I just you know, I have done this for a long time. I just said to myself, when I'm done with the show, I'm good to come out and say hello. I always give everybody with it, but I'm not going to haul the band out and sit at a table. We did that for our decade, and it was really a good thing to do. It was good for us to do that. It was a very accessible part of who we were. But we're not that in every true sense of the word. We're not
that altogether. These days, I get done with the show, I go to the bus, I take off those damn type pants and those cowboy groups. I put on my shorts and I sit there and I tally up the score. I think about how many people came. I think about how the band felt and performed. I consider the reaction. We got to the evening and we don't have to ring it up in all categories. But a good night. It's a good night. And I knew I did my job, and to coin a phrase from a few good men,
I'd do it again. And we just got to the point where we were okay to go to the bus and just stop. And I always come off the bus and go out and say hello and sign stuff. But I don't haul the band out to the merch table. I don't do meet and reads. I'm good.
The nature of rock and roll is it's an evening event. Let's just assume, for the sake of discussion, you get off the stage at eleven, you do your tally. How do you calm down and ultimately go to sleep.
I just sit there. I sit there, and I call home. I'm not one of those guys that can jump right into bed after the show. I'm pretty ant, so I sit there. I'm usually the last one of the last band members to go to bed and one of the first band members to get up, and in my own home I'm usually the last person to go to sleep in the first person, though I've always been like that. I don't want to miss anything.
Okay, since you're tallying up every night and you've been doing this for a while. The Reformed Outlaws is the audience going up, going down in number? Do you care to whatever degree?
Absolutely? Hey, you know, we don't have control over all of that, but the Outlaws have built an incredible following in the last fifteen years, bringing the band back from where it was when I took over after Hughey's passing. To bring the band back has been a very successful endeavor. And we're not headlining arenas, we're in theaters, so it's all relative relative to the band's place. The band's place
is a smaller sort of place than other bands. We just were never that well known, and rightfully so, we didn't have, you know, whatever it was that made Bruce Springsteen what he is. What we had, and we loved who we were and what we have, but it was different hours and I mean, I'm thankful that we have
what we have. I don't look at it and go, gosh, I sure wish we were, you know, at Madison Square Garden tonight instead of you know, BB Kinks, I'm I'm I think smart enough to realize that whatever it is you have you're thankful for. You don't sit and dream of more. I'm very happy with what we have and we've built the band back up and they're doing good numbers. That's why the Outlaws are out there with thirty eight special in Kansas on a really cool tour in America
this year. That's why the Outlaws get the phone call to come out and do the Leonard Skinner tour in Canada. The Outlaws are one of the great values in the music business. People at aeg Or Live Nation they come out and see the Outlaws and go, wow, that's absolutely incredible, and you can get them for a song. It's not like these gaudy numbers that these people are hanging out there.
You can buy the band relative comparatively inexpensively, and they put a really respectable face on the start of a show. There's no original members in the band coming out with knee braces, no shorts. You know, it's a very respectable part of a two or three acts show. We get after it. We still show some nights. We just say that Kansas sounds incredible. How many original members that I don't give it. They say in Great thirty eight Special, different kind of band. It's more of a pop band.
They sound great. Don Barnes has that band in really good shape. I've got the Outlaws in really good shape. Kansas. I'm not sure who's running the show there, but they're in really good shape. That three act show is one of the greatest things out there because Kansas is not a Southern rock band. Really, thirty eight Special is somewhat of a hybrid, So you get a really great musical evening and all three of those bands are playing at the top of their game.
Okay, in the book, they're ups and downs before the Outlaws make it, members are coming, members are leaving. The Outlaws have their Heyday than their Denu mall, and it seems like no one has any money. So how did that work out? Did you ever make any money of the Outlaws?
No, not the kind of money that I've heard about people making. Let me say that there are five members of the Outlaws. Wikipedia is a manipulated storyline. It's not. It has nothing to do with who the Outlaws are. The Outlaws were Huey Thomason, Henry Paul, Billy Jones, Monte Yojo, and Frank o'keeth. Those five people were the Outlaws. There was a band called the Outlaws that those people were
in and out of before it wasn't the Outlaws. The Outlaws really weren't the Outlaws until nineteen seventy two when we put the band together by seven. It was a five piece group. Had nothing to do with the bar band or the fraternity you know, high school band that had that name. It was those five people who wrote and recorded songs, original music that went out as the Outlaws and got the record deals. So anything other than that, people that came later the band was, in my opinion, abused,
just treated very cavalier and very reckless. And that you have this long list of names that people that have been in the Outlaws. It's embarrassing to me to a certain extent because the five people that got the band their deal and went out and recorded those first three records, that was the musical personality of the band. All the other things were sort of made to pet your weight the band's career, and fair enough, it did what it
was supposed to do. But I was a party to making some decisions that were looking back, not good decisions. We had some problems with Frank O'Keefe, the substance issues, and there were things that he did that were not in his best interest you put it that way. But we could have helped him. We could have said, Frank, you need help, you need to stop, you need to do this. We can't be a band without you. We
need you. We didn't know that. We thought, well, if Frank was going to go off the rail, then we go get somebody else to take his place and we'd be fine. But it wasn't fine. It wasn't fine. The person that we got to take his place was good. It wasn't what we were and we didn't know that. We didn't know that. If I had known what I know now, I would have worked a lot harder with my friend Frank to make sure he stayed in the
band of the band stayed hole. And I think if people saw the importance of the original members of the band for being inherent to the band's personality and success, that we would have all tried harder. We wouldn't have been so quick to cut and run. And I love the way it feels to be in a band with people for a long period of time. It's kind of like a marriage or a relationship of any substance, you know, like your your friends. I don't know who your friends are.
I'm sure there's people in your life that you know that you love for being your friend, and that feeling is very, very very important. And you know, the band, it would kind of approach a certain level and then it would kind of come apart self somewhat self destruct and once that happened, it was hard to get it back. I think the people that really did well in the music business, and I'm going to use like led Zeppelin for an example, they monetize their popularity and their personality.
Little Feet probably not so much. Does that mean little Feet isn't important? No, they're very important. Does that mean they made a lot of money. I don't know, but probably not not. In the scheme. You know, Toto, Everyone loved Toto and respected them. They're incredible musicians. Did Toto go out and make enough money to retire on and walk away from you know? Probably not. So it's just kind of the luck of the draw and the wisdom to see the value and the loyalty.
Okay, you've been in a number of good iterations. You've been in the Outlaws, You've been in Black Hawk. Are there any royalties coming and then Henry Paul ban any royalties coming in from any of that, Or you've got to work for a living.
Got to work for a living. There are royalties just going to the grocery store. You better have either a good job or some money coming in from somewhere. The Blackmawk thing was my first experience with commercial success. It was like commercial success on a grand scale. The Outlaws had gold records. We didn't have platinum Alvens. We had gold records. Blackhawk had multi platinum albums. Was success on a level like I had never seen or heard, and
there was money in that. There was money. There still is. The advent of nineties country and the popularity of what that represents is very, very rewarding financially compared to what though Blake Shelton, what do you think he gets to night? Yeah, you know, maybe in three or four shows he makes what I make gross in a year. But I don't wake up in the morning on God, I wish I was Blake. I kind of try and make the most of what I have and find success in a form
that is personal to me. I can't you know, Ronnie Dunn Brooks and Dunn, Alan Jackson, Alan Jackson, I remember when he made a pub deal, sold his publishing for like fourteen million dollars. Well, that ought to be enough in and of itself to get you to the other side. I have a beautiful family and my health. I have a really nice group of people to play with on the road. Lucky as a pig and poop to have one hundred and twenty shows a year, and to go out and make a pretty good living. I feel lucky
to have that. I don't. I don't look around and go crap. I wish I was making, you know, three or four hundred thousand dollars a night, you know, And I don't know what that means. I don't. Bob Billen's got a lot of money. He doesn't look like it's done him a whole lot of good, you know. And I love Bob Byllan, but you know, I mean he doesn't walk around in Pierre card En suits. I mean he's a scruffy guy. That so what does it take? It doesn't take much fun.
Okay. Something that is said more directly in your book, which you reference earlier. You're basically fired squeezed out of the outlaws. In addition, once you we join him, uie does it again?
Right?
How did you deal with all that?
Well, there's a The second time didn't mean anything to me. I was good to go. I didn't you know there the band business let me trying to just put it into what I considered to be proper perspective. The band business is always leveraged by your perceived value to the group. And Jewey saw himself for who he was in that band. He's saying, there goes another love song. He's sang green Grass and high Tide, and he's sang Ghost Riders in
the Sky. And I don't know what Hugh he was thinking, but I have every reason I believe he probably thought I'm pretty much the band and I don't need anyone else. But that wasn't true. But but when that mindset sort of takes over and you stop being a band with Henry, or a band with Billy, or a band like I said with Frank, you know, you start to show yourself to your audience to be less, not more. And if those decisions are financial, and they very well may have been,
so you get more. What's one hundred percent of nothing? You know what's twenty percent of a lot? So I you know I in both cases, when I was showing the door the first time, it was a signific I can blow to the band because I had helped get us to where we were. Was not just a musical journey, but it was a journey based on knowing where you were going. I mean for me to have helped and had a hand in the Outlaws, Henry Paul band, the Outlaws again and Black I'll go out and get major
label deals. Hmm, gee, Henry, what did you do in the band? I was a good salesman. I could sell it, and I looked like a duck, and I had web feet, and I quacked when I spoke, and people believed in me.
They kept giving me opportunities because I was believable. And at one point, you know, the Outlaws manager said, Chewi, you need to call up Henry because this band's going to crack and it's just coming apart and things aren't working in You and Hank were great back in the day, and you just need to pick up the phone and get Henry back in the band and Okay, let's do that. And then by nineteen eighty eight we were having a
lot of fun. We were playing to small audiences. We knew we weren't going to come back to some grand career, but I was having fun. I had the checkbook. Huey and I were making really good money. The band was being paid a very very respectable wage, and we were riding around the country, playing for fifteen hundred people and having a ball. But you know when Hue when Hughey said, well, I see what Henry's doing, I see how we're I
want more, or maybe I think it's good. Take it, because I'm going to Nashville and I'm going to do something different and I'll see your ass later. And I'm good And with my sixty five sting ray cruising down the back alley in Nashville, Tennessee, coming up on Hughey standing out there one day, you know, in a letter skinnered recording session. It didn't hurt my feelings, you know, to feel good about myself and the effort that I was able to create and show for my hard work.
And so I don't know, I don't know.
Okay, when you are fired a did you see it? Coming, which it sounds like you didn't be in retrospect, because I'm sure you've gone over this a million times in your life. Certainly at the time, was there anything that you could have played different or was it inevitable?
I think, first of all, I didn't it coming, uh, But I wasn't surprised. I mean, I kind of knew who I was dealing with all along. It was never, you know, a family environment, and the band was always
somewhat of a business. But I think that it was so painful to me and such a such an ego destroying moment, and in such a a bitter, hurtful place that I was not used to being in that my immediate reaction was put a new group together, go get another major label deal, find a really a good friend to help you with your career, and get back in the game. That's what I did, and I found help out there from people that were capable of helping me.
Okay, you are in the Outlaws. I had seen the Outlaws in their heyday opening for the Stones. They had big success, certainly with high Tides and green Grass, but it was a relatively faceless band. There was not somebody who stuck out in front. You're now out of the band. You were in a successful band. How do you convince Atlantic to give you a deal?
Well, I think my role as the frontman for the band first and foremost, and I think that my artistic recovery, writing songs like gray Ghost, writing songs like so Long, writing you know, Hallmark songs that when A and R directors listened to them, or executive vice presidents from the label listened to him, they said, we loved your in the band, We loved the outlaws, we loved you. I was somewhat of a more visible member of the group because I fronted the band and they wanted they were
willing to support me. Michael Kleffner was the was the vice president of national promotion at Arista, and went out and promoted the band at rock oriented radio, album oriented rock radio and got green Grass on the air, and he and I became really close friends. It was clear to me that it wasn't just about the band. It was clear to me that it was about the promotion department at Arista and the band and the record we made, and those people that went out and killed for us.
So Michael left Arista and got the executive vice presidential chair at Atlantic Records under Jerry Greenberg. And when I left the Outlaws, Michael said, if you need a budget to record demos, let me know. I would like to help you. It wasn't a lot of money. Five six seventy eight thousand dollars. We went in and cut ten sides, brought him to Michael, brought him to Ton Journam, brought him to John Kalodner sat down, Yes, we want to sign this band. We loved the Outlaws and we love you.
Henry and Joe Sullivan, you know who managed Charlie Daniels said I would love to hand your career. I think the world of view. I mean, these people were close to me because I invested a lot of myself in these relationships. And they said, absolutely, you're on Atlantic Sound seventy manages your career, and Paragon is still going to represent you in the live music area and you're good to goud Us. Oh okay, Now we're out in the
road with Charlie and skinnered and we're back. Not skinned they were gone, but we're out in a road and Tucker, we're back with familiar faces doing what we've always done and it kind of came. It was kind of coinciding with the decline of southern rock. There was a fad, a musical moment for that genre, and it hit a high water market started to evaporate. Molly Hatchett had come onto the scene late in the in the game and with a significant amount of commitment from Epic, did very well.
But the Henry palmband for me was that was was a I'm looking for the word, but it was. It gave me my self respect back. It gave me, you know, my my my opinion of positive opinion of myself, because honestly it was it was a hard thing to come back from. And uh, you know, without the help and support of people that were my friends, and without my hard work and focus, I'd have done what Frank did, and that would start a painting company in clear Water
and paint houses. I didn't do that. I fought back and got back in the game.
Okay, what was the decision to call it the Henry Paul Band.
Oh Jesus, we just couldn't. First of all, the Charlie Daniels band, the Henry Paul band. You know, Joe Sullivan was very much inclined to want to hang my name on the band. I looked for a name. We all looked for a name. We couldn't find a name. I was signed to the record deal. The members of the group were signed as well, but it was my band, and we just couldn't come up with anything better. So we just said, well, let's just call it the Henry Paul band.
I doesn't sound like you were happy.
Well I wasn't happy, but I accepted it. And along with that came a little bit more you know, weight pressure. Uh. I just kind of went along with it and decided, what the hell difference does it make if we're you know, the Great Ghost Album has stood a very very significant positive test of time. And while it wasn't a record that you know, set records at the retail level, it was a very respectable record and over the years has risen in the ranks of people's opinion. And I was
ready to lock asses with everybody. I mean, I wanted to go on tour with the Outlaws and you know, and steal the show. I mean, I you know, I was. I was hurt and angry and very ambitious and I wanted to get that and you know, it was it was a very significant success for me to go to Atlantic and to go on the road again and to put myself back in a place where I wanted to be. It was a big deal.
Okay, those are great achievements. Atlantic sticks with you for four albums. There's not a breakout hit. What was the experience of being in Atlantic. Were they always on your side? Were they saying, hey, you know, we'll make another record but this time.
No, they were on my side. I mean I knew every regional promotional director. I knew everybody the label. I'd go up to the label when I was in New York. You know, Claudner and I were friends. I mean, John and I were friends when he was a journalist at the Inquirer. That's how we met. And those people were definitely pulling for me, and they knew that I hadn't found commercial success, but obviously they were unwilling to just toss me aside. And this was after Michael was gone.
The first three records, they were all uniquely different records, but they all were very good in what they were. The third record, especially by the time I made the last record for Atlantic, it was pretty much over and I was playing, you know, some different game. MTV had come into its own and we were just trying to find a way to be in the on the landscape. But it wasn't meant to be and it and it
didn't do anything to help me. And it was a very hard lesson to learn about try and be yourself and live and die by that and don't try and you know, be something that you're not. And that was a big Artistically, that was a big lesson for me to learn. But I don't know that record has things about it that are are good. But the first album, the third album, and to a certain extent, the second album, all those records were really well written and played. And
I got to be who I wanted to be. I got to stay in a business I want to be. Our tour. It wasn't a whole lot of money, but there was money enough for us to make a living, and we toured heavily and I got to stay in the game.
Claudner ultimately goes to Geffen. Claudner is a guy with opinions. Did you converse with him? Did he give you input?
Yes? A lot, But you know, John was good. John was helped make some very good decisions for me and John tried really hard to help me. Uh but you know, when John went to Geffen and cozy it up with the people at Aerosmith, you know, and started wearing the white suit, it just was a different version of him. He and I were really good friends for a lo time. When I would go to La myself, John Klaudner, Mary Turner, Sam Bellamy and Paraquak Kelly, those people we were in separate.
Pat Kelly, we were inseparable, though we would do everything together. We'd go out together, we'd go to bars and drink, we'd have That was my socials core in Los Angeles. And Jim Ladd lured me up to his house on the hill with a stupid railroad car and I did an interview that I deeply regret. We got to drinking in the afternoon. But in La John was a friend and we just were really close. And Pat Kelly and I we still remain friends. He's had serious health issues.
I feel bad for Pat because you know, has been not well. I still talk to Sam every now and then. Mary's gone. She she married.
Up, although now they're both gone. In any event, you've got a family, you've got kids, you're done with Atlantic. What goes through your head.
Well, going back to the Outlaws, there was a feeling of success in going back, like being in Like do you want to come back in the band? Because I think it'd be better if you were in the group. That was helpful to me from the standpoint of my self esteem. For the first two or three years, from like eighty three eighty four, it was a little bit. It wasn't what dreams were made of. We were flying,
we were renting cars. It wasn't fun for me. There was substance issues, which there normally are, and we hadn't gotten past that. On my part, you know, I was not wholesale invested in what that was. I always kept my distance to a certain extent from that. But at one point I fired our manager slash road manager. He was a great guy, and he was an agent at Paragon who got in our corner and really tried to help us. But he was but he was expensive and when I asked him, you know, the try looking for
something else to do. I got control of the band financially and I turned it around. I turned it around for Hueye and myself and I had a lot of fun In nineteen eighty five, six eighty seven. We cut that record for Spencer Crawfer, and you know, it was an odd record. We kept trying to get into the record business, but the more we tried, the more it became clear that we weren't going to come back and
have a new life. But I had a really lot of fun touring around the United States playing smaller venues, and we had a good band. I bought a conversion band, and Hughie and I the band, the five people in the band, and the road manager, this nice Jewish boy from Long Island who I had shown the Ropes to and he was a really sweet and very hard working guy, and I loved him. He was our road manager. And the six of us were traveling this in this conversion ban.
It was great. We booked shows they were all within one hundred and fifty two three hundred miles, and we'd stay overnight at the hotel. We'd get up in the morning. We put our suitcase in the conversion band. We're all
six of us by land. We drive to the next town and there was a rider of fifteen foot rider cube truck with our gear in it, and there were two or three crew members and they would leave and they would go do their thing, and we would show up in time to check into the hotel for me to go put on my running shorts and go run thirty or forty minutes and come back and shower to a sound check, eat my stupid food that I was eating back then, and go put on a great show,
go back to the hotel, go to bed, get up the next morning. It was just great. We had it, I had it figured out, and we were doing good. Hue and I were making a pretty good living. And that lasted from eighty six, eighty five, eighty six, eighty six, eighty seven, eighty eight. At the end of the New Year's Eve of nineteen eighty eight was my last show in the band, and I had talked to Hughie and he said, I, I would really like to go it alone. And I said, well, Buster, if that's what you want,
I'm good with that. I get it, and I'm good to go. Because I knew I was going to go to Nashville. I had a friend of mine in my ear, and I thought, well, if you want the band by yourself, you can have it, and I'm happy to leave. And so I left. One of the other guys in the band left as well, and Hughey struck out on his own, and like from nineteen eighty nine through nineteen ninety four or five was a pretty difficult stretch for the Outlaws. From what I hear numbers, the whole thing got really
a bit ugly. But I went back back to Tampa. I took the conversion vand I sold it. It was an immaculate condition. I bought a SUV. I bought a couple of properties in Tampa, and I renovated them and turned them over for a pretty good profit. Started to commute to Nashville and write songs. I drive to Nashville, seven hundred miles ten hours. I'd pull up to my manager's house in Nashville, a guy by the name of
Rick Alter. And I get up Monday or Tuesday morning, and I'd booked four or five writing appointments for the week. And I come back Friday, and I get in my truck and I drive home, and I had a little home studio, and i'd go up and I had demo the three or four or five songs. Two weeks later, I'd ride back and I just kept doing that. I would make twenty trips a year and I compile this body of work and Rick played it for Dubois, who had just opened RAST in Nashville. He loved it. He said,
I love Hank's voice. And so he took me around to the publishers and said, I'm going to sign Henry. He wants it needs a pub deal. So I signed with EMI and they gave me, you know, six figures over three years, enough for me to live on day. My bills continue to develop my career, and Blackhawk was formed. And I'll be damned if I wasn't back on aris To Records with a really really strong new album that sold a couple of millions copies.
Okay for the last handful of years, everybody's going to Nashville. How did you know to go to Nashville? Thirty five years.
Ago, I was at the Florida State Fair. It's in Tampa, and my then wife and I and the kids were there, were you know, kids were there. I saw these people standing in this really long line. They were waiting to get into the grandstand. The jugs were playing, and as I walked by this line of people, I kept looking at them and I thought to myself, they looked like fans. To me, those people look like people that would that came to the Outlaws show or came to Henry Paul
Bancho Goos. And I always had loved country music and was more or less seen as the country music influence in the band. And I had a songwriting partner that told me, he said, HENK, if you just declare that you're a country music singer and go to Nashville, you can do this. So I kind of took his word for it. I took my own sort of instincts, my own work ethic, and my own salesmanship. I went to Nashville and started this would be nineteen ninety ninety one,
started to work towards becoming a recording artist again. And in my drive back and forth from Tampa to Nashville, I'd passed these silver eagles going up and down the road and I just looked at those buses and I just dreamed getting back on and being bad. So Dan Stevenson and Dave Robbins and I formed the group. Tim was a songwriting partner of theirs, and they came to him one day and said, we want to start a band or something. What do you think And he said well,
I'm working with Henry. I think if you guys want to work with Hank, he's got a great voice, and I think that there might be something good come from it. And we all saw that as a very real opportunity. We knew that if we could focus on doing what we were asked to do and do it right, we
could have what we wanted. And we did. We got what we wanted and he I talked to Tim the other day and I said, you know, Tim, I always think about you, and I always thank you for the opportunity you gave me late in my life, as I was forty three years old and people that age didn't get record deals. And he said, well, Henry, I know what you're saying, but he said, I got to tell you you made good on it. You made good on the opportunity you would give it. And I thought about that,
and I thought, well, you're right, we did. I mean, think about if you're a record executive and you've got Alan Jackson Brooks and Dunn Blackhawk, a Diamond Rio and Pam Tillis all selling platinum and multi platinum records, what do you think the bonus structure was probably through the roof so they were rolling. We had careers. You know, we were on the road making a living playing live shows. I mean, I think it's important to recognize a performer's place in the mix. You might make a lot of
money if you've become a household name. I mean, you have to go out and really work hard for it and leave your home. But these guys in the record business were businessmen making money, a lot of money, a lot more money than we ever made. But we were like these, you know, artistically inclined dreamers that could not give up the idea of being a musical personality that people loved. And that was the that was the attraction,
and that's what we did. But the Heiress, the thing in Nashville was huge to me, it was huge.
So what was different about the Nashville country business as opposed to the New York LA rock business.
Well, the New York l A rock business, you were so far away from it. I mean, I'm a earl again. Ovid Henri go in his office, put my record on the turntable and put the needle down. You know, that's a good soul Madri. I liked that song. Yeah, that was it. That was it. That was it. That was my rapport with Arma. You know that once a year, I go in the office and I play my record. You know, Jerry Greenberg and I were pretty friendly, you know,
on a business level. He would invite me to go fishing in his birtroom and we would you know, we would do things like that. But with Ariston Nashville, it was like now Tim and I. He runs the label. He and I are the same age, were the same age. We have so many like minded life experiences. And he's running the label and I'm out promoting my career at radio.
He's paying for it. And radio decides they want to play our record, and Arista they don't make them play in my record, but they're very they're very convincing, and they get our record played. And now Huey Thomason, who was the voice of the Outlaws, I'm the voice of Blackhawk. Now I'm in the you know, the catbird seat a
little bit, and it doesn't feel bad. And I have to say that during those year or two of going back and forth and being in my home studio, to my credit, I learned a lot about how to sing as a singer. I learned a lot about myself it was so important. It was the difference between success and beg and so I learned a lot late in the game about things that mattered, and it came at the right time, and it was very important from the standpoint of my success. I also knew a lot about the
politics of writing songs with other people. Jim Peterick and I wrote a lot together. John Townsend and I wrote a lot together. I went to National Van Stevenson and I wrote a lot together. You get in a room with somebody and you don't want to be an ogre. You're trying to collaborate, and I learned a lot about how to do that. It was an enormous learning experience.
Okay, over these decades, do you ever think of going straight giving up?
I thought you meant in a sexual sort of way. There was a moment when if my dad had asked me, Henry, I need your help on the farm. I want to retire and want I need help. If I think there was a moment where if you had asked me to do that, I might have done it because I was so emotionally invested in our family farm. But he never asked, and so I never had the opportunity to do that. That was the only thing that could have possibly taken me out of the chair and put me in a
different walk of life. Other than that, I was. I don't know why, but I think it was just my artistic inclination to want to succeed at something like being a recording artist, because very early on, my dream was to be a recording artist. That's all I wanted to be. And when I got to be that, then came the commercial gauntlet that allows you to continue to do and be that. And I navigated that with a great deal of finesse and forethought.
Let's stop there for a second. The finesse, the forethought. You talk about being a good salesman. Can you expand upon those things? How exactly do you do it?
Well? I just thought my vision of a creative entity, my vision of what I saw well I went towards as an idea was valid, it was appealing, It looked and sounded good. The people I surrounded myself were there to help me get to where I wanted to go. We were musical partners, but they were asked to be my partner in these bands because I needed them, they needed me, And whether it was successful on one level, not so successful on another, or ultimately very successful. They
all had very visible and tangible sort of destinations. They were a place that I knew I was going and what it was going to look and sound like.
And okay, but on a one on one basis, I mean, some people get them in a room, they close you. Okay, was it? You obviously had to convey this vision and convince people to work with you. So how did you find that you did it? Was it about Okay, let's go off for a couple of beers, I got a story to tell you, or get me in the room with a guy can say yes, I'll put on my show and it'll go.
I think it was all. It was connected like a railroad, like a train. My role in the Outlaws provided for me the opportunity for my role in the Henry Paul Band. My role in the Outlaws and my role in the Henry Paul Band provided for me an opportunity to go to Nashville and to be accepted. I'm writing with Henry Paul from the Outlaws. You remember the Outlaws?
Yeah?
I love the alas I'm writing with Henry today. Well, you can't just go in and write with this person. They got to see something in the way of promise. So I showed at every turn promise. Henry's really good, he's smart. Henry's smart. He's really smart. He's good. You're gonna like him. He's a really great guy. And man, what he's thinking is pretty cool. And you know, either you're onto some thing or your jacket, you know. And
I felt like I always could see it. I always saw what it was going to become, and it became that. And that goes for the Outlaws, because before I was involved with that band, there was no anything to see. It became what I saw. People might not like the sound of what that says, but it's absolutely true because I knew where we were going, and Huey was a big part of it. Billy was a big part of it. I was a big part of it, and Frank and
Monty were a big part of it. But I could take the band with my country rock personality at a time when that was really important and really happening. The Outlaws adapted, adopted that sound, and me with my stupid cowboy hat became a part of the band's image and everybody in the band started wearing a hat and God dang it, Bobby darned if we're not on tour with
Marshall Tucker. It was just, you know, a social and artistic sort of vision that took you down that road with cowboy boots and songs, country rock songs, Stay with Me, song in the Breeze, Knoxville Girl, you know, green Grass and high Tides, there Goes Another love song. Those were songs that cast a musical personality and a large part of that came from me, and a large part of my relationship with Hue was at the heart of it,
and his relationship as a guitar player with Billy. But when I sat down and played my country stuff, Hwey sat down went and it was like he knew what I was saying, and he and I could be in a room with two guitars and people will go, yeah, that's great. And that's where it was, and that's how we got where we were going because we were one plus one equals three. The band was just really good. We got lucky putting the people together. Hue and I
sang good together. Billy came into the band, and suddenly we had this guy that could sing like Randy Meisner and there was the three part harmony. It was intact, and Frank was a good singer, but he didn't participate in the vocal part of the band that much. But it was all just luck, and it was all just being able to see it and make that.
Okay. When the Outlaws start to become successful, you get married and start having children. Was there anything in your mind saying, man, this is a whole different road. Is this going to impact my career, I'm going to have responsibilities? What was going through your head?
I never I never planned any of that. You know. I married a girl who was really supportive of me and good to me and who I was really good friends with. And our decision to have a family wasn't We didn't sit down and say you want to start a family. No, it kind of came like, hey, i'm pregnant. Oh that's great, great, let's have a kid. What you know, Uh, yeah, I'm good. Hey i'm pregnant again. Well let's have another one. You know. But I don't think it had anything that
I love kids. I'm seventy six, I have a four year old is right downstairs. When I get done with this interview, I'm gonna go down here. He's gonna wear me out. But that's just how I am. I I love that about my life. Some people don't have children. You know, my career has been very difficult to my family. And I was I quoted you a lyric from a song. I was going to quote you a lyric from another song. The fast life and the music it's just a grim disguise for the heartache and the fear of growing old
without the ones that mean the most. It makes you realize that you are the one that's left out in the cold. You chase the dream are and you try and become somebody so hard that you wake up one day and your marriage is not happening, and your kids don't know. You know, I never let that happen. But I know that I missed a lot, and I know it was damaging to my children. It was damaging to my marriage. And being privileged in a certain sort of way makes it easy to make bad decisions.
You had a challenged child you write about in the book How'd you cope with it?
Well, she was not death but hearing impaired, and it's an invisible handicap and it doesn't show itself like a kid in a wheelchair or a kid with a cane that can't see. It's a very invisible hand cat, but it's a very painful one because when you're deaf, you don't get the subtleties of the English language, like oh you look great today, I do you know? You don't hear the inflection, you don't hear the insinuation. You take
things more on face favor. This girl got hurt. It hurt me to see it happen, and I, along with her mom and her sister, you know, tried real hard to be there for her. And I wrote a song for her on my I'm trying to think of it. I don't know which record is on, but I wrote a song called Circle of Silence, and I remember going out into the studio to sing the lead vocal and breaking down in the vocal booth because it was such an emotional thing and I was able to spit it out.
But I got to the end and I said, well, I'll pull it together, Let's try it again. And the guy that was produced in the records said, no, I think we want to keep that. I think we want to keep that. He heard what I was doing, he felt what I was feeling, and he decided to go with what I and I think it was a great decision at the moment. In the moment, I thought, well, let me have another No, I don't think we need
to do that again. So there was that part of my role as a parent that was very demanding and took a lot of empathy and a lot of commitment to this person who she and I are tight. You know, we're we're close. I'm close with all my children. But I did miss a lot by trying to, you know, go on a road being an entertainer. Right. One of the reasons I think I want out now is that because I have a four year old and a ten year old, you don't want to just keep doing the
same thing over and over and expect different results. I mean, this is an opportunity for me in the late stage of my life. How many years do I have left? Ten? I don't know how old you are, but we're not going to live forever.
Oh most people our age. I'm a little younger than you, but I'm in my seventies too, And it's like people you know are not aware. Oh yeah, they think you'll live forever. Nobody's going to live forever, and I want to see it coming. It's like I want to prepare and do the right things a bit of being supported.
And it's not just monetary, it's emotional. Like my four year old started school this year. He's in pre kindergarten. This morning, my wife and I drove the kids to school and we pull up and my ten year old
jumps out and he's gone like the wind. Four year old it's out, starts walking down the sidewalk in his There's this lady that helps the kids that you get to the class and she comes out and she holds his hand and he's walking away with a backpack on, and he looks over his right looks over his right shoulder. It was hard and it was really good, and I want that had enough of this? I think I want that.
Okay, you get divorced, you get remarried. After a long period of time, you talk about the first time we went over having kids. Now you're older, was this a conscious decision? How did you decide to have kids? Lead in life?
Well, if you get involved with a younger person. It was always my opinion that if she wanted to have children, was not my right or role to say no, if you want to have kids, let's have kids. It's the same way the first time around. You I'm pregnant, right, So it was a decision to have a family. These boys that I have when I'm gone, they're going to be really good for their mom. They're going to be good to and they're going to take care of her.
How about the fact that you're not going to be here? Is that weigh on your mind at all?
It does? It? Does? You know? I mean, because I'm on the clock more so than I would have been if I was in my thirties. And you know, I had these three kids with my first wife, and I was deeply involved with them in their childhood, in their teenage years. You know, I my wife and I at that time went are separate ways. I said, I'm going to Nashville. I've got to go. Well, she wasn't quite so sure, you know, because there was no guarantee, and we just kind of went in two separate directions, and
the kids got roughed up from it. It was not easy or good thing to be a party to there again. You know, God, dang it, I'm gonna go be this person. I gotta go be I gotta go road in Nashville, Go Go go. Meanwhile, everything at the house is changing without you.
Okay, there's a period of years between ending it with your first wife and meeting your second wife. Let's be clear, you're a rock and roll star today. Everybody has a camera. But when things were good for you, you go out on the road, You're drinking, you're drugging, having sex. To what degree did you participate in that lifestyle?
Uh? Not to the degree that my co work did, especially on the drug end of the equation. I could see where the edge was, and I might rub up to it every now and then, But I was not interested in cocaine at all at.
All, because you did and didn't like it, or you thought it was dangerous.
I did it, and I didn't like it, and I knew it was dangerous and I saw what it did to other people. Now, marijuana, I was all up in the marijuana thing, especially right out of high school in the late sixties, back when it was really illegal and you want to smoke pot, you had to be a countercultural character and live outside the law, and you would get hurt legally by it if you got caught. And I had my run ends that LSD crazy. Yeah, let's that was great. Let's do that again. A little bit
of that went a long way. But I'm not saying I didn't use LSD on a fairly regular basis for a while, but I mean, at one point it was like, Okay, I'm good, but with a cocaine made me nervous, made me jump in. Just the whole thing didn't work for me, And so it was significantly harmful to my coworkers in ways that I'm not at liberty to discuss. But I saw what it was, and I knew I didn't want to mess with it, not go down that road, no way.
But you know the advantages of being a celebrity and people wanting to, you know, be close to that because it makes them feel good, right, I mean, hey, I'm hanging around with the band. I mean, I'm friends with the band. You can go watch them on stage, but I'm back here hanging out. You know, we're like friends. M hm m hmmm. So there's that, and that was harmful. Where does the problem start in the fun stop? It's hard to really find the line, but it's in there. Oh, well,
you're a single, now you're single. Now you can do whatever. You're well, you're married, what are you doing? You're married? Man, what do you do? Really? Yeah, wait a minute, are you serious? And then there's that compromise, and I internalize it as integrity, but there's a compromise and what seemed to pass is recreational fun and games at one point became or could become, or often did become problematic and
structural in its nature, and it just didn't work. At one point didn't work, I mean, could be getting older, could be growing up and seeing things for what it was.
It just kind of goes back to those days when you're trying so hard to be somebody and you're working so hard, you're spending so much time away from home, and you know, you're just playing your guitar and shaking your ass and trying to, you know, make people like you if you're a nice looking guy, you know, and you had, you know, things that were part of it. I mean, I don't think it's a secret that the music business is centered in a very sexual sort of
property and it's it's all about that. And same with film. So you know how many Tom Waits's are there, you know, to where you're just completely disconnected from anything that looks I mean Lindsey Buckingham, for God's sakes, or Nick don Felder, I mean name it Elvis compressedly, you know, I mean it starts there, goes on and on and on indefinitely, and that's part of what it was or is, and
you have to navigate that. You have to, you know, try and manage yourself in a thoughtful and in a wise way, because there's so many opportunities to wander off the path and become lost.
Why do you believe you were so driven to be successful as a recording artist.
Just ambitious by nature, my sister's me, our family, our family's business, just ambitious, German, hardworking. And then my mom and her English upbringing and parents and background, and the heart, the heart and the mind, the heart and the feeling and the mind just will not accept the feet of failure. It just won't take it. It can't. There's no way that can happen.
You mentioned in the book. You know, you're growing up in northern New York, relatively speaking, New York's a big state and the mountains of New York. Father has a farm, parents split up to move to the Florida. What did your parents say about your career You weren't instantly successful. Were they supportive, were they dismissive? How did they feel as the years played out?
Well, I think it's typical the difference between your mother and father. My mother was supportive. She was supportive, like nurturing. I got arrested one time for the possession of marijuana. Wasn't mine. I just was with a guy who and everybody went to jail and I called my mom and I said, Mom, I'm in jail and I need you
to help me get out of jail. It's the bond is going to be said at this And before she came down to the bail bondsman, she took whatever I had in the way in marijuana at the house of flux. So my mother, in her own way, you know, was looking out for me and being supportive and being, you know, part of my solution. Not now my dad, my dad said. My relationship was significantly different. You know. I love my dad,
but my dad was like skeptical. And one of the famous quotes my father used to say to me was, what are you doing up there in a room with that guitar plunk a plunkin around up there, come down here and play me a song? Can you play me a song? And it wasn't that many years later. I was standing in front of one hundred thousand people on stage with the Outlaws at the unveiling of our first
album in New York. And he drove down with his wife and my half sisters and brothers, and he watched his son get a standing ovation from one hundred thousand people, and he was like, that's my son, that one over there, that's my So dad went from being, you know, a doubter to being my biggest supporter. It's too I mean, it's the way it goes. And I mean, who can blame him? You know, because they never asked me to help him with a farm, So what the hell? I thought I'd start my own business.
Now. You also make a big point in the book about growing sweet corn. I grew up in the Northeast, I know what sweet corn is. And then having a farm on your property now, so what can you tell us about sweet corn? And how extensive farm do you actually have?
Nothing like the failt farm. Nothing. This is all fun, big, but it's fun. Our farm in New York, we would do five tractor trailers a day, a day and a day. I mean, we were sending a lot of corn up and down the Eastern Seaboard, a MP Grand Union, all the big chains were buying our corn. We had a salesman. It was a big business. My grandfather made a lot of his land was worth a lot of money. I was so proud to be My granddad was Henry Paul. My dad was Henry Paul. I was Henry Paul. This
was our farm, this is our land. That business kind of was the was the image of that area. And you know, they'd have Hurley, New York and they'd have an Ork corn and we were the first family growing it. And there were two other families growing at it on the level that we did. One was the Davenports, one was the Gills. And the Gills and the Davenports and the Paul family own the Hurly Flats and grew corn
on it. And that made me feel really good. Like ego wise, I was someone I didn't go running around, you know, making a deal of it. But I mean, in my heart, I felt like I was a part of something good. You can say the exact same thing for the Outlaws and for black Hawks and every repulpment exact same thing, only this was my business. You had your farm. I had my band. It has my name on it, just like your bag has our name on
the bag of corn. But this was my way of creating my own because I didn't get invited to run the farm or take it over. I started my own business and it satisfied an artistic inclination of mine, and I got to do that, and then I found success at it, and I got to be my own person. Who wasn't, you know, coming in on the hills of someone else's work. I did it on my own.
Whatever happened to.
The farm, my dad, my granddad who started it, passed away. My dad was a faithful son, worked hard for his father. But by the time my granddad passed away, my dad was over it. He built a house in Florida. He and his wife would go in and stay. Eventually he sold it, you know, eventually it was sold. The Warren Buffett family came in and bought a lot of what we had, along with the farm next door, and they, to their credit, turned it into a new Ordanic model
and the sweetcorn business from where we came from. It's gone. It's all gone. Nobody grows. One of the large segments of our farm. Someone bought their growing marijuana on it, like THC marijuana, medical marijuana. They're doing very well. The Buffett family bought the larger part of the farm and with a huge one next door, they're they're growing organic produce and doing probably well at it. But it just changed that way.
But the land was very valuable. Did any of the revenue from that trickle down to the next generation in you.
Did I have a huge inheritance? Well?
Yeah, you know, some people have no inheritance, but you're talking about your parents had a very successful business.
Yeah, well yeah, I think it's safe to say that there was, you know, there's something in it for all of us there. You know, there were three kids from my dad's first marriage and three kids from the dad second marriage. So it wasn't like somebody got everything, but you know, there was enough to go around, and there was there was, you know, a reward, so to speak. I took my wife and my kids this past March. We flew into New York. I was actually working. I
took the train in New York. They flew to New York. We spent like three or four days in the city. This is going to get back to what you're talking about. But then I said, well, we were planned a ski trip in the Catskills where I learned to ski. We were going to go to bel Air Mountain and we're going to skip and so we drove. I rented a car, We drove up, and we had dinner with my sister, and the next morning we drove into Hurley and I
showed him where the farm was. There's this old dutch stone home we lived in, built in seventeen twenty, and the barns across the street was open, huge open fields. There is absolutely no sign that we were ever there. And it was very, very difficult for me. My grandfather, who was the greatest rock star in my mind I've ever known, and my dad, who was a hard working, faithful, smart guy over there. At least I have a book, at least I have a record, at least I have
this body of work. For whatever it means, that tells reminds people that I was here. He didn't become filthy rich or have medical insurance all the time. But I do have something to show for my life, and I'm proud of that. I guess I'm proud of that. I'm proud of the fact that I was able to do what I dreamt and set out to do. I actually got to do it.
So why the book, why now?
Well? I thought it was late enough in the story of the game, of the of the story to tell it to give people who just loved the band and came and bought a ticket and went to the Spectrum and drank whiskey and hoot and dollar, just so they know what happened. What it was like to share a bottle of Jack Daniels in the front lounge of my bus would run him in. What it was like to be invited on stage by Dicky Betts and to play Southbound. What it was like night after night with the Marshall
Tucker Band of the Charlie Daniels Band. What it was like to cohabitate with these cohabitat habitat with these people and be a part of their lives to where we were knew one another on a first name basis. What it was like to be in that. Because most of the people that I grew up with in that are gone, and there are maybe a few people around that can still tell the story, I have a great memory, and I, you know, wrote this book with Gary Hirtz, who was
a really smart guy, and I gave. We had a great collaboration of how it was, how it worked, what happened, how it felt. The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards coming into our dressing room. I love your ben you know, it's like, Hey, they liked our band. That's great. Thanks Matt. We like yours too. You know it's not Paul McCartney and John Lennon or George Harrison or Ringo Starbus not bad.
Okay, Henry. A couple of things. One I can just tell by talking to you that you are a smart guy. Two, you're obviously a student of the game and no music history just by your references. In any event, it's been a great pleasure talking to you. I want you to have that. Paie, have a good birthday. Thanks for talking to my audience. Thanks till next time. This is Bob leftsas
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