Gary Clark Jr. On Collaborating with Stevie Wonder | Huey Lewis' Music Hits Broadway

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I got part a Browny Award brand musician. A new album is called jpeg Wall. Please welcome Gary Clark Junior. Gary, So you know how much I love your music and what you do. I've heard you, have heard I bother Gary, actually quite frequently because I'm such a fan of yours and because I love music. But this album, Jay Pegrell is, I just feel like is a masterpiece. Thank you you killed it, dude.

It's so good.

O you. I kind of felt that way, but it's good to hear somebody say it out loud.

When you are because it is a not solitary process. But you don't have people really responding live or anything. You're you're writing, I guess in a environment without an audience.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is kind of terrifying because in my own world I think it's the best thing ever.

But you never know.

Until album drop days and people can be like, nah, we don't want it, but it's been good so far.

You could always if you needed reinforcement or any kind of comment. Obviously you have my number, yeah, yeah, and you're more than welcome to use it.

Well.

Also, you know you're bet you doing this drumming thing, so.

I'm killing it. If you need a backup, all maybe you cannot have a van if we need to travel to do stuff.

Absolutely, that's about you.

The band that I'm in. First of all, I'm not the youngest or oldest person in it, and second of all, I'm not even the best drummer in it.

That's okay, you think, So, that's okay, you'll be fine, all right.

I'm very appreciative of that. I'm so glad that you've offered for us to open up for you on this. We just try to write music. I'm telling you though, Man, what I love about this album too is like you know, there's the Gary Clark Junior thing like that destroyed a hard drive. This album is every generation of every decade of Americana music is in it. Man, Like was that intentional? I mean you croon on this the falsetto, like there's glam rock, Like it's you're banging it.

Yeah, well we did this.

This this record mostly was written during the pandemic. So I was by myself in a very smoky room doing whatever I wanted.

Oh so the room is on fine, sure, okay, yeah, yeah, you were just letting yourself go to every place musically artistically that you want to go.

Well, I decided during that time, Well, there was no one saying Gary Clark Junior the guitar player, any of that stuff. I've kind of been pushed into being this guy who's like the savior of the blues, and the blues is gonna be fine. It's the music that is will stand the test the time. It's everything's cood true, right, I.

Will say this, people will always be sad. But the other stuff, Man, you hit a falsetto and I was like, I didn't even know you had that.

Well, when I was a kid, I had an R and B group it's called Young Soul with the buddy of mine, Robbie Sublett, and we used to sing like R and B songs, So we would sing boys to men as yet all for one mista, and so Robbie was like this good looking kid superstar. All the girlers loved him, and I was like his backup singer, right basically, but we were a group.

And yeah, you're not any of those things.

I thought I was going to be an R and B singer, right, And then he ended up moving to France and my friend Eve had a guitar down the street and she was like, come hang out with us, and I just I grew up as a kid listening to R and B music, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, all that kind of stuff.

So what was it like when Stevie Wonder so Stevie Wonders on this record, yes, which is been honest?

What was it when?

Now? Did you did you reach out to Stevie Wonder and say, hey man, I've been a fan since I was a kid. Any chance you might want to jump in or no?

He actually called me, yeah, Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder facetimed me.

Yeah, wait, Stevie Wonder did.

What Stevie Wonder facetimeed me.

He facetimed here.

It was pretty cool.

I'm just gonna avoid that for what was the impetus? Did he just say like, hey man, I've heard yourself.

I love it?

Like what was the impetus.

Well, yeah, well he had called me to do a song on his record. It was Where's Our Love Song? On a record he released in twenty twenty, And then soon after that, everything was kind of going crazy, and I was frustrated. There was no outlet. I wasn't out seeing people. I was just in my phone. And then I got to recording the video of me kind of going, what the hell's going on?

You know, in the world, in the world, It's like, yeah, what are we gonna do?

You know?

I was frustrated.

I was a little angry, as concerned, but always with a sense of hope.

So he facetimes me and he always says, my name really weird. It's funny.

He goes, geah rah, I don't know where that comes from.

So that's my name now.

Yeah.

But so he called me and said, I heard I heard what you were saying. I see you.

Let's make a song about it, he said, as a matter of fact, I have an idea. It's a song called what about the Children. He's like, I'm going to send you a it's memo you want to collab, But I'm like, what am I gonna say?

No?

Right?

So he sends me the demo and I get to working on the record with my band in the studio. We go back and forth and I said, well, will you sing on it now? And not only does he sing on it, he plays beautiful harmonica, he plays clavinet. He hadn't played clive And I think thirty something years really classic Stevie. But like in the future, it's amazing. He's eighty something years old and.

Is he really?

And I thought that I was working hard in the studio and if you ever see, if you ever think you're doing too much, watch Stevie Wonder work really.

Yeah, it's incredible and.

It's still just joyful. I mean, the one thing about Stevie Wonder is when he plays boy, do you you feel the joy? You see the joy? It just emanates off of him.

Absolutely, He's he's tapped into something that I don't think that many people are are able to tap into.

You, right, what did joy to be able to work with that? And then you got George Clinton. We had George Clinton come on. This supposed to have been ten or eleven years ago, and I just remember that day being like, it's sure yet like George Clinton news. So he's like he's like, I think he's in a van coming up the turnpike. But it was one of those like a dude named Shaky was driving him and like nobody really knew what was happening.

Dude named Shaky though, was always the most solid you can do.

That's probably the truth. Uh. The song habits, Yeah, what's that?

It's a song about struggles.

Yeah, you know, just really uh struggles, my personal struggles. It's something that I've always kind of been shy about, uh expressing. You know, in this world it's like the flex and everything's cool and everything's rah rah and you know, post the trophies and the great times in golf tournament.

If you win a golf tournament, you put that, put that right out there.

Congratulate saw it's amazing.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Yeah yeah yeah, how do you win that?

Yeah? Yeah, So don't worry about anything else is going on. I want the same twice. Yeah. So it's it was you know, I've had my struggles over the years.

I got into the business as a young as a young person fourteen, right, and older folks with they taught me how to drink, they taught me how to smoke and you know, I've had my battles ever since, and you know, I've had some losses in my life and just being really honest about it, so I've got habits.

That I just can't break. When I think.

It's a beautiful.

Song, it's it's real and it's and it's raw, and I hate to like make everybody sad, but I think it's cool.

It's it's fantastic and it's you know, there's also a certain courage and just saying like, hey man, and this song is nine minutes and it's worth every minute, it's worth every second.

Think it's beautiful.

Thank you. Well, we actually chopped off a two minute intro.

So I felt it was lacking something. Yeah, you know, I felt that in the beginning. It's more No, it's it's fantastic. It's always such a pleasure to see you, Mata quest.

Thanks, it's such a good man.

Quite wrong, it's available now, we'll we went back over there.

I guess tonight is a grabby award. But the artist who sold over thirty million records. His songs inspired the new Broadway musical The Heart of Rock and Roll. Please welcome Huey lewis wonderful I know that helps helps with the hearing.

How do I sound, Huey, Yeah, that helps my hearing wonderful.

Thanks to Starky Hearing Institute for that.

The Starky Hearing Institute, yep, thank you very much.

You know what they did exactly.

They brought together Huey Lewis and the fake news finally.

Together together at once.

It is an honor to have you here.

In New York. Thank you. I hate tell you my news is kind of fake too, So.

Don't break my heart.

Huey. You're here.

You got a big Broadway musical opening tomorrow. The preview start tomorrow, right, and I'm sure you thirty million records sold, twelve top ten hits. How do you start to narrow down what makes it into the heart of rock and roll?

Which songs make it into them? Yeah, well, it's a It came about because a producer called Tyler Mitchell, who's my neighbor's friend, was a big fan of ours. And I was over at my neighbor's house for my birthday and he was there, and my neighbor's a big musical theater buff and said, you know, suggested to his son in law, Tyler, you should do a musical. We started talking about Mama Mia and how much we love Mama Mia, and he says, you should do a musical with Hughey's music.

Yeah, you're saying, that's all it take. If I ran into you like.

A decade ago and said your music, your music is great, it's known worldwide, people love it.

You should do more of it publicly, like.

I could be working with you right now.

Yeah, well shit, Actually you know it took nine years. So and what they did, Tyler and John did was they printed out all of our lyrics right and put them up on the wall and then just lived with them. And I guess there's some jogging involved and listening to lyrics, and this story emerged that it's rhyth rock, you know, pretty compelling.

I was going to say, now, in creating a musical, you have to create a narrative, but these songs are written singularly.

Do you.

How does that look?

To take a step back, do you feel like there was a sense of narrative to those songs? To begin with, or is it sort of a reinvention of what was there?

Yeah, it's reimagining the tunes really, and you know, they worked in a certain way anyway, but we had to tweak them a little bit in order to push the story forward, because the songs have to push the story forward, you know. But by the same token, you don't want to lose the integrity of the song. So that's the little balancing act, you know.

So now the musical is set in the eighties.

Correct, It's just set in the eighties. And we had a lot of fun with that. We had a lot of fun with that. I'm sure.

I'm sure it's so interesting because I will I will admit the first cassette I ever bought The Small World by Huey Lewis and the News.

Wow.

Yes, And I used to dance around the house to sports with my family.

You better that's a little too much information.

Sorry, my child was conceived.

Do you want more?

Do you want more?

Rock and roll is still beating.

I gotta tell you it works. You you weren't say dumb, dumb, dumb, thumb dumb dumb really.

Sense them food. What I will say is, as a fan, it was.

It's fun to go back and look at some of the videos from the eighties because you look at the music videos in the eighties and you were sort of on the forefront of a new art form. The music video is on MTV, and I when I'm reapproaching watching some of them, what's so interesting is I feel like your music video is, unlike many of the ones at the time, had a real comedic sensibility that you're not only presenting the songs, you found a way to inject humor into it. And so you're sort of at this.

New art form.

You're you're you're pushing this forward, this this art and this music beyond, but you're also finding your way sort of as a comedic character and a comedian, right. Did you feel yourself doing that at the time.

I think I should get some kind of an award for that.

You well, you know, do you like Fiji water Ship? Did Joey Lewis an award?

For God's sakes?

I mean, honestly, MTV of the videos were a necessary evil. You know. We we started off as an audio band and and you write this song which tells this story, and now, oh my gosh, you got to make a video, so and so what we decided we were going to do them ourselves. We had a very Hollywood producer of the record company, got him to do our very first video, This is do You Believe in Love? Where we're all

Actually, I want to give you credit.

I would give you a ward.

I feel like you perfected the comical take over the fancy sunglasses.

It was a big one for me though.

It was a big one, right, did you practice that in the mirror?

That Varney Varney sunglasses? By the way, at the.

Time, are you trying to get a sponsorship?

Here?

Is this heue always always moving to sharky Varney Okay, Fiji water, we get it, Hewingie, it's not Huey Lewis blues in the plugs all right. There was a wonderful documentary that came out recently that looked at the behind the scenes of We Are the World, and you talk about your experiences in that amazing, wild night of pop music. I think I was so fascinating about watching that documentary is when I was I was wondering, on a night

But it's surprising.

I don't know if you could do something like that day were people as sober as well?

I mean, you know there was check your ego at the door. Well, clearly nobody's going to pull an ego trip on this group, right, Yeah, And so I think we all were a little nervous, except Stevie Wonder, who was not nervous. No, no, not at all. And I don't think Stevie's ever nervous, to be honest.

And so was there again something like that had never happened before. I think with the presence of cameras there, did that add attention in that room.

Well, actually, there weren't that many cameras, and we were so focused on the I think it was pretty pretty transparent, actually, I mean what was interesting is that I think we all realized, I certainly did, that this was going to be the career event of my life. You know, I was I was barely thirty years old, and I'm thinking, what could be more amazing than this? And I think

Obviously, there's a moment in there where Stevie Wonder throws out the idea of singing in Swahili, which seemed to really.

Split the room.

Yeah.

Waylon Jennings, I believe walked out.

Yeah, and actually what happened, and I don't think it's in the documentary, but yeah, whalee walked out. But and it clearly wasn't going to happen. And as we were kind of getting involved there, and it was late, it was like three or four in the morning at this point, and Ray Charles is in the front row and he goes ring the bell. Quincy rang the bell. It's time to move on, Like let's go.

Yeah, somebody brought a fact up there were like you're nineteen eighty four Sports was number one album. They were only it was on the charts for quite some time. In fact, that year there are only four other albums that were the number one album that year.

That was Thanks for pointing that out.

Yeah, I want to humble you here a little bit.

Okay, see if you can turn this in a way to get some sponsorship. Okay, Thriller was a number one album, Footloose, Bored in the USA, and Purple Rain.

That's a good year for music.

It was a good year.

If you had to marry or kill.

Footloose, Bored in the USA, Purple.

Rain, or Thriller.

What do you do if you have to do? What? Now?

Now?

Okay, what do I have to do?

Think back to the harder rock and roll of what happened back in my bedroom back in the day. You have to you have to mark one of these albums, So make love to the album one of those, the hypothetical, the metaphorical idea of the album. Okay, make love to the album. You have to marry the album, like, engage in matrimony with the album, a real commitment with the album. Okay, or kill be done with one of the albums.

Okay.

Out of those four albums.

You have to make love to one.

You have to commit yourself mary to the other, and you have to execute one.

Wow. Wow, that that's tough.

Tough.

I'm gonna I'm gonna execute Footloose because Kenny Loggins won't mind. He's he's a good guy.

Okay, I'm gonnabody.

Uh uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna make love to Born in the USA, and I'm gonna fall in love with Thriller.

Yeah, you gotta fall in love with Thriller.

I actually I actually will.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I actually like. I like Off the Walls Out Michael's album a little better actually than Thriller even really, if I don't mind me saying that, you like.

A little bit of that disco dance vibe to it all?

Oh yeah, rock with you.

I gotta listen to that over and I think dangerous, dangerous an underrated album.

There you go, look at this.

We can do this forever. I could pitch you on a musical, like, hey, why don't you use your own songs as a great hits? We can make some money off this year before.

I let you go.

It's so interesting. You are a beloved musician. It's so funny. I was talking to you a little bit backstage when I told the folks, or when we were told that Huey Lewis was coming on the Daily Show. People of all ages who work on this show, they love you and they're so excited that you hear you bring such goodwill to people. And I heard the story that back to the Future. Robert Tamchis told you that Marty McFly his favorite the fictional character Marty McFly his favorite band

Lewis in the News.

And so in a fictional universe, you appeal both to a person who is a time traveler and a person who is a psycho killer.

You are that universe.

You know what that is? Fresh material for a musical Reviews for the hung.

A locket roll weget Tomorrow, Mark Tunny Night at the James All Got Data.

Very Love.

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