Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Hey what's up y'all? March is Women's History Month. As we celebrate at LS, we're going to look back at this classic episode from twenty twenty two with Bonnie Raid discussing her journey and passion for helping blues legends benefit from their trail blazing.
You look gorgeous.
Oh thank you. You guys are be colorful and I was going to do the green and purple and red hair saying hello working for you.
Yes, absolutely, ladies and gentlemen, this is Quest Love Supreme. My name, of course, it is Quest Love Jenkins. We are joined by the almighty Team Supreme members starting a power forward. My main man, unpaid Bill, How are you, sir?
Fantastic power forward. I like it Number four, I'll take you.
I'm proud to say that I've gotten unpaid Bill off the ledge and I think I made him watch his first episode of Euphouri last night to hold me. I'm on it, oh man.
I had a full on panic attack and that turned it off.
You four year is the new uh uh, it's to me. It's the new contraception, It's.
The new don't do drugs.
You have the new don't have daughter? Yeah, it's it's you. Four is the new do not have kids? Yes? Exactly. Laiah up next, she's our center.
How are you on the boys and girls? I did?
How did you know that? Yes? I just took a while. Guest, how are you this? Uh? This lovely evening.
I'm trying not to embarrass y'all and break into tears as I am in the presence of a queen. So just just just bear with me because this is it's a lot.
Okay. So our our power forward is sugar Steve.
You got to stop with the sports now, that's just your go to Steve. Like I'm a small for Yeah, I could shoot the three so it just passes me outside and uh oh okay. They used to call me downtown Stevie Brown.
So all right, well I made you my power forward still Steve, of course, my my my shooting guard right here it Spawnico, Yes, indeed his own. How are you the shooters and the shooters only, I'm good man, I'm good man. I'm happy to be here.
This, this, this interview, this is this is gonna be a lot of fun because I remember looking in the paper as a kid and the Lucky to Draw album was always on the charts.
Oh my god, exactly.
Well, that's a ladies and gentlemen, I will say, I'll try not to show over the intro too long, but I gotta, I gotta pull out the commermative one for this. I'll say that our guest tonight probably the most truest sense of the word is an artist, and the truest sense of the word of artist that the industry has ever known. I think for the last five decades she's held the torch super high for I mean, just the lost art of sheer authentic blues madness. In addition to
other genres of music. She's a supreme songwriter, bullseye vocalist, hands down all star level delta blues guitar mastery. And I'm not even gonna I'm not gonna frame it like she can hang with the greats. As far as I'm concerned, the greats are trying to hang with her. Oh and after oh no, it gets even better. So after yeah, two decades, after a twenty year run of Critical Claim. At the Critical Claim release, I will that nineteen eighty nine the stars aligned when after nine or ten attempts
I believe. I think it's your tenth album. The world finally caught up to her level of soulful rock and blues magic with a little bitty album called Nick of Time, which in my opinion is one of the most well deserved comeback stories. But you know, I know most artists like I never left. You know. It's not like an
overnight success thing. It garnered her album of the Year accolades, platinum glory, a whole new fan base that resonated and related to her outlook of a generation getting mature in a new decade, which you know, the nineties were upon us by that point. Remember the nineties people years ago? Yes, exactly. Not to be outdone, I'll say that her follow up album luck of the draw with the immortal classic I
Can't Make You Love Me? Is it even bigger? Monster? Wait, it's just hit me right now that my third book might be named after a Bonnie rait Saw. I definitely remember one of the last conversations Rich and I having about naming something the food about, and I remember him, Bonnie raid So one of my last conversations with my manager before he passed. It's just hitting me right now. Her legend status of course, came full circle in two thousand, I believe, when she was inducted into the Rock and
Ball Hall of Fame. I can say for myself personally that her actual story, her entire story, has been an inspiration for me as a kind of blueprint in terms of artists that are trying to stay true to their integrity without and trying to find a space to also make a living and connect with their fan base. Of course, this upcoming summer, she'll be conducting a tour with another great Nava Staples. I can go on and on and on, but please let's just get to it, ladies and gentlemen.
Please welcome to QLs ten time Grammy winner, Master Musician, singer, songwriter, overall legend, Bonnie Raey.
Thank you indeed, yes in the paint with my butts here, thank you?
Yes, absolutely yeah. Indeed where are you talking to us right now? From where are you at?
I'm out in Marin County about fifteen minutes north at Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where it is truly beautiful and we got some much needed rain for a minute last night.
Wholl I never heard of California and actually welcome rain. Normally it's the opposite where I hear them always complaining about rain.
We need it. We're in a serious drought. Man, we've got You saw those terrible wildfires.
On the fire in the west.
Yeah, okay, we need some water.
Season wins coming, all right?
SONI have you how long have you lived lived out in that area?
Well? I go back and forth to La, where I was raised. But I got too much traffic, too much show business. And once I got sober, about thirty five years ago, I went I was up in the daytime and I went, Man, this place, this is not beautiful. And I had been there so many years. I always wanted to move to where the redwoods were and where I could hike and breathe the clean air and be near the ocean. So I've been here like maybe a little over thirty years, and I go back and forth.
When I rehearse and go into the show business world, I go down to LA and then up here I'm in the chill in the redwoods kind of.
I love it to go to La, get your money, and then go back home. I love it. You got that right, So you're recommending that if I were to choose a place to live in California because I mean, I'll admit to you, I'm probably one of the few people that I might pretend to be. You know, everyone pretends that they're so jaded with LA, Like I can't
stand it's so fake, so phony. Whatever I'm not because I don't live there, I still like look forward to always coming to La Like it's still there's still a little bit of magic luster to me.
But you're feel the same way because I don't live there anymore. So when I go there, I get a kick out of it, and it's it's it's really there's a very There's some really cool stuff in La. There's a lot of stuff, but it's really crowded and at some point when you're on the roads as much as I am, and in a hotel downtown, you know, sometimes you just want nature and you want some quiet, peace and quiet.
But so are you going to ask where I would recommend? Yes, Well, I'll tell you what, if I didn't have some success with nick of time, I probably couldn't afford to have moved here. So that was one thing. And you know, there's some communities that are affordable in California that are also beautiful, but man, that you have to go a long way to get there. So if you want to be near an airport and hospital, and I don't know, I think Marin County, Sonoma County, Napa County, those are
all great. But you got to be worried about the fires. And you know, on the East Coast you get worried about flooding and some extreme weather that you guys have been having. But uh, I don't know. I just love I love all the parts of California for lots of different reasons, the same way I love all parts of this country. I just when people ask me, what's your favorite, I go, Man, the Northwest. No, it's New Orleans. No, No, it's Texas, No it's but northern California is where I
choose to live because the weather's really nice. You can go outside every day, and you know, it's kind of in in the vicinity of some cool cultural scenes in Oakland and Berkeley and San Francisco. And yet I got the mountains and can have the solace of being in nature.
Roger, Okay, so we're all moving next th to you right now, we can.
Right That means Razis is coming, because man, that's the second highest place, you know, most expensively in the country.
When I moved here, you know, I just on the tail end of where I thought was going to be a bunch of you know, hippies and drug dealers and shrinks and stuff and just but man, it got soccer mom pretty fast.
I see, I see. So I start off every episode with the same question. So you're no exception to the rule. Could you please give me your very first musical memory.
Oh?
I think my dad, who was a Broadway leading man, singing the songs from his show, with my mom warming him up on the panel. She was his musical director and rehearsal pianist. And I remember being really little and hearing this big, old booming voice singing these great Rogers and Hammerstein songs. So I'd have to say, my folks playing in the house.
Were you? What was your siblings situation? How many were you?
Two brothers, two brothers on either side, two years old or two years younger. I'm the only girl.
Oh wow, So okay, you were you were? What was that like for you, like in terms of trying to find in space? Oh?
You know, I just ighlized my older brother and I went I was a serious tomboy. I got the I got the right after I stopped playing with dolls and stuff. I I scuffed up and just was got real good at sports and cut my hair just like my older brother. And uh, I just got the picture early on that women had to do all this stupid stuff to make themselves pretty and liked. And I just didn't dig it, you know. So I just sort of stayed with that one of the guys thing for a long time. And
look how I ended up. I'm one of the guys in my band.
Does that mean you can really fight Bonnie?
We well, we were Quakers, so we did. That's right, That's right. I punched my little I got my little brother pretty bad some one time. But no, I just I think I love being the only girl in between my brothers. But you know when when you hit twelve and your brother ditches you because he's you know when when I'm ten and he's twelve and eleven thirteen, you know, they just sort of reject you, and then you're just left to going, oh my god, what's this puberty thing?
You know?
Oh yeah, so all bets were off. I had to become a girl after all.
Okay, so I'm actually glad you said that, because I'm currently dating a Quaker right now, get out of here. And this and this is one of those things that you know, like when someone's so obvious and you're afraid to ask questions because you feel like you should know it already. What exactly differentiates a Quaker from a civilian if you will, oh.
Well, the short version of it for lay people is, my folks were both raised Scotch Presbyterian for my dad and my mom was the daughter of a Methodist minister, and they both after the Second World War they decided to become Quakers because they were really the it's not an anti religion, but there's no altar, there's no minister, there's no people sit in a circle and you just get Wyatt and anybody that's moved to stand up and
speak can speak. There's a pacifist a belief in pacifism because there's that of God and every person, and if you love the divine then you don't want to kill somebody. The idea is to appeal to that of God and another person and reach a conflict resolution and treat like Jesus would you know, just see that of God and the other person and turn the other cheek and try to find a way to get along. So that's the short skim the stone across the lake version.
But the.
Social version of Quakers is they're the ones on the ponchos on the peace March that helped ban the bomb. They stood up for social justice, they stood up for humanitarian They go all around the world and are accepted in perias of conflict because they don't take sides.
Always slavery.
Quakers had a belief that everybody was equal and that nobody was above anyone else, and they got persecuted from it and shoved out of England because they wouldn't take their hat off to the king, and they were thrashed and flogged in public. So I like their kind of rebel spirit, and I like their the teachings of real nonviolence and love thy neighbor come to come to roost and the Quakers really well, so you're.
Proud, Okay, you're okay, now, I get get it.
Sounds so badass like Quakers.
Oh, Gracie's trying to turn me into a Quaker. I get it now.
Well, you don't have to listen to a boring sermon. That's for sure, but I'll tell you what I missed the music because there, you know, I listened to gospel music in la I turned on a black gospel station on Sunday mornings and go, man, that's I dig the Quakers and all that. But when you're when you're eight, you don't want to hold still for an hour, you know.
So there was absolutely no musical worship, not none whatsoever.
No none, none of that. But we, you know, we sure made up for it. I just remember playing a lot of ping pong in Sunday school.
Really, she's about to turn a lit people.
Well, well you know that your parents, you know, a Quaker meeting, you're really quiet. It's like meditation, a group meditation, and kids are squirmy, you know, so you're you're probably too squamy to be a Quaker.
You This explains everything I didn't realize. This is where if my wife is headed.
Yes, you could do worse. You could do worse. You know, Quakers are really cool there. They stand up for their beliefs. There, they go to jail and conscientious objectors and you know, they got a great history fighting slavery and being on the right side. And now Richard Nixon was a Quaker. But that's a different way, different different branch or Quakers that had a minister. And you know, they also are really simple. They don't believe in, you know, buying stuff
and adorning themselves with things that you don't need. It's not as severe as the Shakers who don't even use buttons. Remember that Witness movie with Yes, I love that, I love that. But Ivan Neville was in my band for a long time and he said our expression was Alexander good Enough played the boyfriend that was pissed off that
Kelly McGillis was harboring Harrison forties. He comes out wearing her ex husband, her dead husband's clothes and are way too small from and good Enough looks looks at him, goes very plain, very plain. So that's what I haven't said. I haven't said the rest of his time with us, I said, how you doing? He's going small?
A small, little little quest of supreme tidbit trivia in nineteen eighty four. So for those I mean, for the three of you who listen to the show that don't realize my beginnings, I'm My father was a notable oldies duop singer back in the fifties. You know, kind of made a living in the in the seventies and eighties on the on the you know, on the on the duop circuit. As you know, you get up in age, like around your forties and your fifties, so does your
fan base. And of course, like the way that my life is now, where you know, all the CEOs of all these companies or whatever like went to college back when the roots were first starting. Uh. My dad was actually offered the role of Danny Glover in Witness.
Whoa Man.
It's one of my big regrets when like some guy walked up to him like Lee, and he came to a show and was like, Lee, I'm such a fan of yours. And there's a script. They'd sent a script to Witness to the House, and I was like, so small you could do it. But you know, my my father was very insecure about his reading and talked himself out of Oh, like he what I call he manifuct it. He's said he was chicken. Yeah.
I got offered a role by in a Day becomes Her There's a bartender. They ended up writing it out, but Tracy Ullman did it, but I was too chicken man. I mean, I'm pretty ballsy on stage. You know, I got one personality. But in my real life, you know, acting is like, oh, turn the cameras on. I get nervous. So but I you know, there's I understand that getting too chicken when it comes down to being on a film.
That reminds me that I'm currently reading a book right now that is sort of my bible. I gifted it to about two hundred of my friends for Christmas. It's written by an author called Gay Hendricks, and it's called The Good Friend of Mine. Yes four. Chapter four is about your story and it's just in me. I didn't even make the connection that I'm actually talking to you right now.
But wow, I didn't even know he put me in a book. I hope it was all good, stuffy.
It's about me.
It was the chapter the Big The Big Leap is basically, you know, as I as I've a explain if there was ever a story that I wish that I could give to people, that I give the story to people that I feel that are on the rise to another plateau, because basically, Gay Hendrick says that we are psychologically programmed to not enjoy happiness for more than thirty seconds before. We instantly like I gotta have a moment right now where it's like, yo, I'm so excited to talk to
Bonnie right right now. But then in the back of my mind, I'll say, oh shit, I forgot to turn the oven off, or is my mom okay? You stay in the moment, right And so it's it's because I
know so many artists that are sort of subconscious self saboteurs. Yeah, but he talks y. So he talks about how you made a decision to leave your comfort zone, and he says that, uh, we all have something called the upper limit problem, which is exactly you get to a you get to a sky's a limit place where you're just like I'm comfortable here, I'm comfortable doing my podcast, I'm comfortable doing this, and I don't want to do anything else.
And how you made an active decision to uh move into uncomfortable spaces and he basically said that you manifested your nick of time moment like literally you you you you saw yourself getting on stage accepting the award.
I did well, I did. There was a cassette when I first got sober, I got a Lazarus you know some channel guy. Somebody gave me these cassettes and this guy was channeling this person who doesn't talk anything like this other guy. I don't know if you guys have ever heard anybody the channels someone from another realm and you don't even know what they care about.
I do this all the time, Yes, I mean that was what's so cool?
And I and I remember doing this thing like it said, concentrate. You know, picture yourself doing something that you really really would like, like either be married with kids and playing with them on the carpet, or something that is just out of the realm of possibility, but you wish what happened. And I said, oh, this is crazy. And you know, I had been dropped by my label. I hadn't made the album with nikked Times signed a new contract yet, and I just had this beautiful rebirth of being sober.
I just took to it really well. And Mi I was healthy, I'd lost a bunch of weight, and I was just so grateful and I picture I said, Okay, I'll pick the wackiest thing I can think of. I'm standing on the stage at the Grammys in this gold jacket and I'm thanking people at the podium at the Shrine auditorium, and they said, now picture yourself and go up about thirty degrees and hold that image from the
back as if you're looking down from another plane. And hold that for about thirty seconds, you know, a few times a day, and see what happens. So I did it, you know, just for a goof and then forgot all about it. And then it wasn't until luck of the draw that I turned to Don was and I said, oh my god. He said something about, you know, manifesting, and I went get out of here because I had totally forgotten that I had really just made that leap. And I remember Gay saying how. I asked him how
he was doing, and Gay said, I'm really happy. I made a decision to be happy. He said, all you have to do is make a decision to overcome that self doubt in the back of your mind. And your dad, your dad could have been a movie star.
Yeah, well, I'm literally that. I'll say that that book. There's about ten books I recommend, but of all, I'll say the forty books I've read in the last two years, basically since like March of twenty twenty, when the pandemic started.
This is the book that I feel has resonated with my community, Like this morning, I gave it to Janelle James, you know, like the second, like the second that I hear any artists do a self doubt thing, Like we have a friend named j Nel James who's like excellent stand up comedian and she's now pivoting into uh comedic actress on a show called Abbot Elementary killing. It is killing that ship is the lead?
Is she the lead of it? She is?
She's really funny, She's like the.
Cramer, right, And so I told her, like, you're so good that I will. I mean, I don't know why with with with the television Academy, I haven't been as vigilant as I've been with the Tony's and the Oscars and the Grammys. But I told her, I'm actually going to send it in my form so that I can vote for you to be Best Supporting Actress. But she kind of like duck and dies like oh no, you know whatever, And this that triggers me, And instantly I was like, nope, I'm giving you this book right now.
Like nothing triggers more than self doubting people.
So it's called The Big Lead to everybody listening, and it is available on iBooks and I'm buying it and not waiting to be the two hundredth and ten friend to get it.
I will buy it before you.
It's okay, well I got fifteen dollars, Come on, man, Okay, yeah.
Get no, seriously, it's it's a short book. It's I get an audio book. You'll be finished in two days. But it's probably the most crucial book. And literally the Bonnie Rate chapter is what I'm using right now. Cool for my situation in four weeks.
So I like that Bonnie Rate didn't even know that there was a chapter about them.
Me too, Yeah, I like that I didn't even make the correlation that the person that made me do my morning mirror exercise is. I'm talking to it and I totally forgot that it's good.
And so what's this?
This synchronicity of this stuff is pretty amazing, isn't it. Clearly you guys have your pastor over there in the corner.
But wait, so, Bonnie, do you do more?
Now?
Do you do more manifesting? Do you do more?
Kind of like you know, I try to try. I know that, I mean I can't really say I ever did that. I've told people about the miracle of that because I just because especially because I forgot about it
and then that exact thing happened. But I think if you imagine something that you really want, Like when I have friends that are ill, I picture them up and about and recovered, and I picture that really hard and that trick about this not from Gay Hendrix, but the channeling Blizaarrest that's standing above and looking down at the you know, burning that into your mind that here's my friend who's ill. Not only is he out of bed, but he's walking around taking a you know, we're taking
a walk in the park. I'm gonna go get some get a salad someplace, you know, and just imagine that. Just picture us and just picture it pictured. I think there's really great point.
I'm doing it like I think a lot of people who are listening me play. When I get this kind of information music, I'm not.
I'm chuckling because it's just hit me that this might be the six quest Love Supreme in a row that that has been more about self improvement, and like like we're about to be lifestyle improvement instead of music.
Yeah, you know what you gotta fix. You gotta fix the inner, the inner to get the outer. You know what I mean, music comes to all comes from the same source. If you got, as Robert Johnson said, stones in my pathway, you know you got to move them out of the way and let that, let that flow happen.
Absolutely I agree with you.
I mean, self self doubt. Self doubt is an interesting source of songs. I mean, I wrote a funk jazzy song on my new record call waiting for you to oh about the little Devil on your shoulder, just going come on, I just I know you're gonna mess up. Come on, have another piece of pie, you know, stay up late, forget lie about returning those emails. You know,
oh I meant I did send them. You know, all that ways that you you flirt with the dark side, and you know that's just part of being human and then you forgive yourself and pay attention and move on. But you know, you got to pay attention.
I was excious to know Bonnie about your sobriety. You say, you know it spent thirty five years.
Yeah.
Sobriety is something that it's tough in any aspect, but particularly in the context of the music business, I imagine it's you know, even crazier.
How have you say sober all these years?
Well, for starters, that the inspiration of seeing how many people didn't make it, you know, losing friend after friend to either deliberate or accidental or just lifestyle caught up with them. And that doesn't even have to be you know, drugs and alcohol. It can be workaholism or you know, gambling or food or whatever. You know, the ways that
you're just kind of filling that hole. And once you understand about the addictive personality that and you know a lot of us just developed an allergy to drugs and alcohol as we got in our For me, a lot of us in our late thirties couldn't get away with what we got away with for those first twenty years. And it just didn't look good. You know, I got fat, I got I mean, I wasn't messing up my shows. I mean, audiences love blues singers that are heavy, you know, and have man problems. Oh look at.
Her, you know that's part of it. I mean, ye, that's the Mary J. Blige syndrome. We seemed only like her when she's depressed. What She's said, you know.
What, you know, Eda lost a lot of weight. She said, I wonder if people are still gonna want to come see me, you know, I said to the girl. So anyway, how I stay sober? I's it wasn't. I was really lucky and really blessed because there's a whole lot of people in our industry who had to stop. And I'm one of the people that needed to stop. It worked
better for me right away. And because of those people in those rooms, in those meetings, there are professional partiers, so their stories are better, they're funnier, they're you know, we all help each other, so it's not something you do alone. But it's really the community. I know anywhere in the world when I have issues, I can go
to any meeting, either virtually or in any town. I've been in meetings in Russia and Australia with like pirates down by the docks, you know, guys that look like Popeye with no teeth, with one hundred and fifty tattoos, you know, like, and you hear those stories about how they stay sober. You know, it's kind of a cool fellowship. So it was. It was an unexpected, non cult kind of a thing I thought. I thought it was going to be a bunch of moonies talking about Jesus all the time.
So it's not. I always wondered about that because there been a few times where I thought that I too would have to sort of flirt with circles of meetings and whatnot. And then I always taught myself out of it, because you know, I felt like post social media age, like there's no such thing as being anonymous. But there was never there was never any trepidation of like, you know, oh my god, it's fucking violent rate sitting here in our circle with you know, that sort of thing.
Or I was really nervous about it, which is why in my case and a lot of my other friends, there was a musicians meeting. You know, I know there's lawyers ones, there's doctors ones, because doctors are afraid they're going to run into their patients, right, you know what I'm saying. That's my mom And it didn't go well. You know now, I know why. You know, in the laws, I never thought about it. I mean, imagine going to an AA meeting and senior the judge that sent you
your other away, you know what I mean. So I could dig why people go to a community industry in our industry. So I've been doing a zoom meeting with people that are in the industry, and people are really respectful and we all need the same thing. So the musicians meeting really gave me the confidence in the anonymity and took the pressure off. But then I just wear a hat and I don't even People don't know it's me when I go on the road. If I go to a meeting, you know, they just don't. They're only
interested in your first name and your story. So but you know, if I've walked down Fifth Avenue with Whoopy Goldberg, I don't think she could ever disguise herself. So, you know, Ques Love, you might have a hard time being anonymous, but I think if you just pick and you get used to it, it's after about the second meeting, you don't even think about it.
Okay, No, No, I've gotten away with many a non crime crime in terms of his hat game. Sarcastic, I'm surious.
Yeah, it's all bad hats, and for me, it's covering up this little skunk streak. I want the only real color I have on my head. But the and if I don't wear I make up.
Man.
People do not get it. But when I check in my luggage outdoors on the cat and the curb at the airport, guy's going give them something to talk about. The porters always skycaps, always know it's me. Now we just check in, check in with a you know, kiosk.
But can you tell me do you remember the first record that you ever purchased?
Yeah, it was Odetta Wow Getta. It was like I didn't have a lot of money, but I spent my allowance on a record store where we could go into Wallack's Music City and put the headphones on, and I went to summer camp while my dad was on tour doing Broadway shows in regional theaters and summer stock.
John Reid, we should also mention that your father's the legend Daria John Raye, theater actor.
And Broadway music leading man. Yeah, from Carousel and Pajama Game and Oklahoma. So he made his living touring three months every summer. And their friends had a Quaker friends had a camp with all counselors from all around the
world and un kids. You know, just every every stripe, every possible permutation of religion and color and background, and we all went to this camp, and our counselors were mad for folk music, so that's how I got way into it, and I idolized my counselor, and she turned me onto Odetta and Joan Baez, and I went home and begged for a guitar for Christmas and just sat there and taught myself to play till my little fingers
were bleeding. And that was that Odetta record. She continued to be an inspiration to me, but that was I never heard a voice like that in my life.
So you were self taught or did you have any lessons at all?
I had piano lessons for five years, but the teacher didn't want to let me learn. Back then, they didn't let you learn pop music, so I switched. I had gotten pretty good on the guitar, taught myself to fingerpick, but I never had any lessons, so I do positions of the chords and the slide guitar. I play on the wrong finger because I taught myself entirely in my room without anybody showing me, and I played by ears.
So by the time I was around other guitar players and saw that you'd play e in this position, and you're supposed to use your fingers for this for that chord too late. I already was doing it.
So you know, every time I've heard you speak about music either, you know, like you'll do these shows where you'll tell stories and whatnot, Like I always felt like you were a serious musician and a serious advocate for like all these blues grates that you know that aren't
really championed by like the mainstream press and whatnot. But I always wanted to know, because I mean, you're coming, you're coming of age when the bridg this invasion starting and all these things, like in your teen years, like you just didn't listen to like the Archies, Yummy Yummy yummy, or just like just like pop music.
You know, LA was all that. When I was in junior high school, it was a super fad for the beach boys, and surfing came in, so all the guys had their hair like Dennis Wilson and bleached to blonde, and you know, it just was too plastic instead of At the time, I wanted to be a beatnik and
a jazzer, and I was. I was a member of Core and Snick and you know, because we were Quaker I just couldn't wait to get old enough to go to Dantas Village and yeah, come back, and I was like reading sing Out magazine and I just wanted I went to camping that yeah, in the East Coast with all these liberal, lefty international counselors and campers, and I and La just seemed really plastic. So I loved when people have asked me, how did you get into R
and B and blues? And I said, you know, early on, I knew the difference between Bill Haley and Little Richard and Pat Boone. And you know, Fats Domino was like a god to me. You know, Chuck Barry, come on, Chuck Berry was like the most gorgeous guy I'd ever seen, and he played the hell out of the guitar. His grooves were hilacious. So Fats. You know, Lloyd Price, oh
my god, I mean. And then somebody gave me when I was twelve, a guy who sold Channel Master TV Antennas gave rca own the channel Master and he said, hey, Bonnie likes music, and he gave me a box of twelve Ray Charles albums that I you know, at that age, at twelve, I would have never been able to afford or even knowing about. So I got Genius plus soul equals jazz. I got Ray Charles and Betty Carter, the album dedicated dedicated to you, you know, all the yeah
named after the cities. I mean, you talk about learning how to sing? That was between listening to gospel on Sunday on the radio and all of the R and B records that I just mentioned, you know, Major Lance, and then Motown came in. That was it. I was just the Motown until Loretha Franklin and Stacks and Sam
and Dave. Total soul music hound. But I didn't hear about electric blues until the Rolling Stones played Little Red Rooster and Holland Wolf and Muddy Waters, and then I got I think, like a lot of kids in the mid sixties, we got turned onto our own musical heritage by the Brits. So I was just a total blues hound.
Okay, I was going to stay that. I worked with Marshall Chess a few times, you know, in the early Arts, and he was telling me stories about trying to convince his dad and a lot of the older blues artists on that label to sort of loosen up and get with the times of like Black Psychedelic Rocket and all these things, Like especially with the Muddy Waters record. What was the wait, Steve, didn't you engineer that project? But uh we did, like it was Electric Mud, Yeah, the
Electric Mond stuff. So when I mean I didn't, I didn't engineer the original Electric.
Mud I'm not, no, no, but yeah, that was one of the greatest fold out album cover pictures of all time. That in Isaac Cayes, the fold out picture that turned into a poster. I had him in my house, Isaac and Muddy like hello, really only no, no, I was out. I was out the house by then, Okay, okay, yeah.
So what I wanted to know was okay, so as a true fan of the blues, like I know that older blues fans, some of them scoffed that, like yo yourself, like similar to to Dylan getting some pushback from going Electric, that there were some authentic blues fans that felt like, you know, like, now these guys are trying to sell out to get a younger, to get the hippies, and you know, to get a wider audience and all those things.
But did those particular Now from my standpoint, I loved Electric Mud, Like half the first Cipercillo album is from you know, the Electric Mud record and what's the other title, what's his name? Hates? Well, no, no, there the titles. Really he hates this album. It was like a sarcastic album title, like Muddy Waters hates his second album more.
Oh god, I don't know. I just didn't. I didn't relate to those records, so.
Right, no, no, no, But I meant like for you to hear at least. I mean, never think that you released in your early teens when that came out, did you. Well?
I was in the middle teens, and I didn't dig it.
You know.
I love those early Muddy Waters records, I mean as some of the greatest playing of any band ever, Hallan Wolf, Muddy Waters, Johnny Hooker's original records, Oh geez, Electric Mind. Yeah, I'm not a big psychedelic I didn't like I got the playing on some I didn't. I haven't heard Electric Mond in a long time. I did buy it, but
I haven't heard it in a long time. But I did have that the album in the robes, I mean, and his hair come on it was and then I had no idea I'd be like, really good friends with Muddy all those years later, so you know, we we I wanted to have an open mind about the sessions that they did with you know, English guys, and I just didn't think it sounded as good as the originals.
I was.
I was prejudiced the other way, you know, as.
Or because even now with hip hop, like there's a lot of our greats that you don't have decisions to make, like should they readjust their like For example, Nas is a great example of that. Like right now, Nas is about to see probably some of his best success sort of getting a little younger with who's producing this record hit boy with hip Boy, which of course, you know, his older fans are like, you know the album that Na's made twenty five years ago is like, you know,
that's their north star. And you know, I'm happy for success. I'm happy for success now, but you know, but I also feel like maybe that's us also secretly just saying that we wish that time would stand still. That's exactly what it is. You can never compete with nobody's nostalge.
Bro like you know ears, don't you know if your ears don't dig something. I mean, everybody's got the right to do whatever they do in their musical path, and nobody wants to get stuck or boor And people have the right to go more commercial if that if they're sick of being a obscure, it's you know, but you got to really dig it. You got to love what you're the combination of your new collaboration and being put
through the new producers. You gotta love it and not do it for commercial reasons, in my opinion, is because you're.
Not guarantegued to have that commercial success.
Yeah, and if your fans don't dig it, you know, that's you know, it's their choice to stick with the older stuff, you know, but.
Be rate of it, right, Like that's what you were talking about earlier about what's special about your music in a way is because when and that's what Amir was saying, when you can stay true to yourself and still reach these levels of success and you know, crossover, but you're not changing who you are.
Well, that was a lot of things happened at that particular time where my my guild, you know, the Recording Academy gave me some props at a time when the public at largic I've never been nominated for a People's Choice or American Musical ord or any of that kind of stuff. So it was really five thousand people were voting for Grammys, and I think Don and Tom Petty probably canceled each other out and I just kind of eked by by a few, you know, got me out a year. I mean it sold a million before.
You're the people's champ.
No, I like being a cult artist. And after that initial first two albums with Nick of Time and look at the draw, and then all of the regime that promoted me got fired at Capital and I had eight presidents in the fifteen years that I was on that label. I don't even think I was on there that long.
And every time you make a relationship with radio and they come to your shows after the show on tour, and you have these relationships with the promotion people, and then they fire everybody and bring in new people that have no relationships. My third album that should have done just as well, would Love Sneaking Up on You on it, you know, went from seven million records to two million because there was nobody coming to the shows. It was
no relationship. I didn't go to the radio stations. They didn't have any free tickets for me to say low to them afterwards, and you know, it just petered out. And then frankly, the agism and the music business. You know, at forty five, almost every woman especially gets booted off, even VH one, so you become the legacy artist. But you know, I'm happy selling three thousand seats at the Beacon Theater two nights at the Beacon. That's a hell of a crowd, you know.
For me.
So I'm grateful to have no pressure. I never wanted the pressure of having to follow up another record with it be compared to how successful this one was. I just want to artistically keep getting good reviews and having people go, she did it again. There she goes, she did it again. But you know, like everybody else, I have my favorite albums of my favorite artists. And while I'm on that, I just have to say this show has had some of the most incredible conversations with people
that I love and goes so deep. The one with Bruce Hornsby just slayed me. Oh man, Oh wow, that's my jam. If I can have one, If I can only have one artist on a desert island for the rest of all life, it would be Bruce Hornsby, Why Bruce does just listen to the introduction of I Can't Make You Love Me? Or the end of Innocence Mandolin Rain. Oh my god, Oh my god, that's the one for me. Shaka and you guys talked about that on the show. I learned a whole lot on the show was great.
Wow, thank you. I'm glad.
You talk about basketball. There was a lot of basketball in that show too.
Yeah, right, thank you a basketball player.
I feel like we should end this interview right now. That's a pretty good exactly.
So can you tell me what led to your signing to Warner Brothers in seventy one? In the beginning, yeah, what the process was?
Well, because I wasn't expecting to do this for a living, and I just happened to be dating the Dick Waterman who managed Son House and Mississippi, Fred McDowell, and had helped rediscover Son the father of Delta Blues, and brought him out and put a lot of the blues artists under one agency so that these club owners couldn't say, Hey, we've already had our older black guy this month, why should we pay you guy eight hundred bucks? And we
got him for five hundred you know, excuse me. So he consolidated him in kind of a guild of badass and Ray kept their prices up and didn't didn't get them these young blues fans that were managing these guys, was running them ragged. They were like in their sixties and making him play three shows a night and taking half their money. And anyway, it's a sordid story, but Dick Waterman was really instrumental in bringing Buddy Guy and Junior Wells out of Chicago. Big Barthur crued up. He
got the royalty, finally got royalty reform in Elvis Presley. Finally, after after Arthur died, they settled the estate with Elvis Presley and they finally got some money for That's all right, mama, I mean just the man was so I had I had access to opening the shows for my heroes. I didn't. I wasn't threatening. I was cheap. I played my own guitar, you know, I carried my own guitar. I didn't need a band, and I got my foot in the door
just opening for my heroes. And somebody, Dick's lawyer, Nat Weiss, well, it was the lawyer that was handling. He was Brian Epstein's partner in the States, and he George Harrison wanted Buddy Guy on Apple and Eric Clapton wanted him on rso so they were they they brought Dick and I went to the meeting when when and Nat wise said no,
I think you should sign with Atlantic. And meanwhile we became friends, and I was playing the gas Light opening for Fred McDowell and Nat came down and he went, oh, man, you got you got something there. And so he called all these record labels and had them send scouts down. And the other scouts saw the other scout and they went, what did this guy know? You know? So he drummed up this interest in me. But I always knew I wanted to go with Warners because they had Ry Cooter
and Randy Newman and James Taylor. And I went out to La on Capitol's Dime and played at the Troubadour and did a showcase. But in the afternoon I snuck over to Warner Brothers and said, I want to come on your label. So I asked, I asked for a hundred I asked for one hundred percent total artistic control. I said, don't give me. I'll just give me the budget. I'll make the record, no advance. If I save anything after making the record, I'll buy myself a new Volvo
or something. And I said, just get don't tell me when to play record with, who to work, what to sing, and how to look. And I work my ass off for you. And they went for it at twenty one.
So wait a minute, you're saying that you were out there to to talk to Capital.
They paid for the trip.
Yeah, right, and instead you Wow.
Well, I mean I was open. I was open to it, but in my heart if I could get Warner Brothers interested, Randy Newman and Right Cooter were like, you know, Apollo and Zeus to me, you know, that was just it and the and Warner Brothers that said, we make our money from Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. We don't care if you're not a hit record. You can do whatever you want. Wow, you know, little they had Little movie, you know they gave we believe in you. You're not
a singles artist. We have the grateful debt. We'll make our money from these other guys. So I thought that was so righteous.
Who was the CEO of a Warner at that.
Time, well, Mo Austin and Joe Smith were the Raprise and Warner Brothers to pairs in the same funky old building that no longer exis, So they were a family kind of a joint, you know.
It was like, so, yeah, can you also this is what I always wanted to know. I don't know. I think one trip to Japan, I think I've ran across like a Warner Brothers e b K. Where not since the days of Motown did I see this thing where like all the Warner Brothers artists would travel together, Like I think I was looking looking up like old Graham Central Station footage, but it was like the Doobie Brothers,
Bonnie Ray Graham Central Station. It was like, was it always like that where there was a Warner Brothers touring season where they Well, I.
Didn't get to go. I had so many I worked. I was booked like six months in advance for the ten months of the next year. And I made six albums in seven years and stayed on the road to hold my old twenties. I don't know how I did it. But the Warner Brothers Music Show I didn't get to go on. They went to Europe. I don't know. They must well, you must have known if they went to Japan together. But it was little feet mantros to doobies.
It was just like, yeah, and they had that thing where Team A would play this city with this set of equipment and then Team B would they'd leave the sound system and then swap it and take the train and go over. But I didn't I never heard of another label doing that. There was such a hip idea.
Okay, so they were really they were really like a family based.
Absolutely, And then it was way before Warners was at the end of the seventies, Warners, Electra and Atlantic formed. We had a big, shiant corporate building and you know, Thriller and Rumors sold twelve million copies and Thriller was huge, and Miami sound Miami Vice soundtrack records just went were billions sellings. So then when I renegotiated my deal when I was up for resign, Walter Yettnikov tried to get me to come over to CBS. When he turned James Taylor,
who had been languishing it Warner's, they made me. He was a big hit because and he said, I'll do for you what I did for James Taylor and Warners was so pissed they matched his offer and then they penalized me for it because it wasn't bringing in the big bucks. You know, I was going to say, it was all about it was all about money after that, you know, I.
Was going to say, during that initial period, when you know, you had the you had the buzz, you had the critical claim. Shit, you even got the cover of Rolling Stone for you, did you were you personally like? Because oftentimes would like I have the same situation. Well not even I like both Fonte and I kind of came from situations where like, we have massive critical claims with our product, and oftentimes I think people would just come up to me like, yeah, but you guys don't care
about that, because you guys are real artists. You don't need to grow a real artist.
No, I would have liked to. I would have liked to given my band a raise, you know what I mean?
Right? Yeah?
And run Away my version of Del Shannon's Runaway, kind of like Love and Happiness. I did this kind of al green thing and had Michael, and you know, I thought it was a hip idea. It started one of many covers that I like to rearrange, and they in it, and it got up to number twenty, and then they just didn't put the damn records in the stores. You know, I wasn't a priority, and so that pissed me off.
You know, it pissed me off that I was doing harder work than my record company wasn't following through all they needed to do. If I sold three thousand seats, there should be at least three thousand records in that town that people could go by after they see the show. So, you know, everybody bitches about being miss not promoted, but you know, I thought they didn't do as great a job as what I was hoping. But I agree that my music isn't that commercial and I don't look like
Stevie Necks, you know what I mean. I mean, I didn't have that. I didn't have that thang that makes you go from a respected artist to you know, you know, like my other female compatriots.
I was sitting here trying to think who who were buying these peers at the time, because you were talking about being on tours as you were twenty something. I heard all these male names and I'm like, well.
Linda Ronstadt, Emmy Lou Harris, Phoebe Snow. You know, yeah, we were all we were all on tour all together.
I was.
Okay, good, That's what I want to ask you. Did you get to tour with these ladies.
No, we just went to each other's show because we had our own band and crew to pay for so we There wasn't until the Lilith Fair that we that they finally had women on the same bill.
That didn't happen to Lilith Fair.
But I mean I could have I could have done another woman, but it was made made for a better show if you had a little bit of a dis you know. Well, at first I was playing with Muddy, you know, I had Mos Allison, and I had Sippy Open and Ruth Brown and Charles Brown. So I had I had some debts to pay and showcase people that,
you know, I wanted to showcase. But I had a lot of singer songwriters that that wrote the songs that I put on my records, and I owed it to them to give them as I build up my following. I love to be able to showcase Chris Smith.
But the piece that you that was interesting that you said was since you toured, when you were twenty one. I was just curious because you were one of the only females on tour at that time, and you touring with you.
Oh no, Emmy, Lou and Linda and Maria. We know there was lots of women touring and I'm sure country I don't follow country music much, but I think they were all touring, but not with you. No, no, wed Wow.
So that's what I was saying, Like back in the day, it seemed like you were on tour. You know, it was a lot of fellas, a lot of folks that you looked up to. But that must have been an experience in itself and lessons that you learned in that way.
Oh yeah, because you know, if you're if you're the only girl in the entourage, you look pretty good at two in the morning. I'm getting no, but I mean, I'm not, I'm not. I'm just saying that sometimes you date within the which which you have to be careful because you're still on that bus together for another ten months if it doesn't work out, awkward.
You know, I'm one of those people that can sort of attest to you know, I've been really careful on meeting my heroes. Some of them have been magical. Some of them have been not magical. Okay, yeah somewhere assholes.
I know that because you're such a champion for like all these authentic blues artists, of them all, like who of that legendary circle that you grew up listening to from your childhood did you really bond with personally in your first time not post Nick of Time John Lee Hooker era, but like in your initial.
Era and initially Mississippi. Fred mcdoll and I got to be very very close. He's one of my favorite of the Delta blues men and one of the only ones that was alive that I had access to, and we just clicked as I later in the nineties when I got to know him better and played a lot of shows together and did a duet, Johnley Hooker and I became really close, as did Ruth Brown and Charles Brown and I in the middle of the nineties, we all toured a lot together, but early on Fred mcdollan and
Sippy Wallace and I toured together. Sippy came out of retirement in nineteen seventy two at the Annarbor Blues and
Jazz Festival. I didn't even know she was alive. I cut three of her songs before I found out, looking to where to send the checks, and she came out on stage and was only going to do a gospel song, but she's she heard us rehearsing Women Be Wise her song in the trailer, and she said, oh, maybe I'll just had a soprano player come right up to her ear and she probably had sung it in thirty years and she said, well, I'll just do that one song, and then people went ape shit. And then she toured
for the next fifteen years, including us together. And there's a classic David Letterman clip with Sippy Wallace and I singing Women Be Wise with Doctor John on the keyboards that you got to check out. It's like nineteen eighty one maybe or seventy nine, okay, but anyway, Mississippi from McDowall. He passed away when I was twenty one, like only a couple of a couple of years after I started being close friends with him and we toured together. It
was a heartbreaking. I ended up losing a lot of the older semi grandparent figures in my life that I got close to. And you know, I was very close to Muddy Waters and he passed away. And thank goodness for John Lee and Ruth Brown and Charles Brown who I got to celebrate and have deep relationships with so my heroes.
You know, I got to be friends with There's a lot of history that you know.
Got Lee.
Yeah, I was gonna ask your history and your relationship with another get tar god, Stevie Rayvaughn.
Oh my god, I'm gonna have to put lipsic on for that.
Get your Would you like to know what was your relationship like working with him? What was your guys friendship like?
We were mutual fans of each other. We got to be friends in Austin, Texas when I would come through and play, you know, one of my favorite hangouts and places to play where the music in New Orleans and Minneapolis and Austin, the black and white music scene was not so segregated. It was really a lot of interplay, not just in blues, but in all kinds of music.
You know.
That's one of the reasons when I met Prince and he said, oh, I've always dug your music, you know, And I said, well, how did you hear about that? And you know, he said, what, you know, how did you anyway, It's one of those things where the fabulous
Thunderbirds and I did a lot of touring together. But I first met them in Texas with the at Anton's Legendary Blues Club, and the word went out about Stevie Ray Vaughan, about the Vaughn Brothers, and his first album came out, and you know, if you're a blues guitarist and a fan, the word of Stevie Ray got blasted out into the stratosphere when he played guitar and Let's Dance by David Bowie. I mean, that's one of the baddest ass solos are performances. And then I met him,
I saw him play. We toured together, we were party mates, and we were sober mates. You know, he got sober a few months before I did. Not long after our tour together, by the way, and I saw him come. He came out on stage and played the night he came out of rehab, and he just he was worried that he wasn't going to have the same edge, and he played. He burned a hole in the sun that night. It was incredible, as Mom was sitting right there on the side, just going and I said, Okay, that's it.
That's all bets are off. This guy's on a comet. You know, the greatest guitar player in my lifetime that I've ever heard.
When you're interacting with these with these blues grates, is it dismaying to them? Number one? Is it dismaying to them that they're not receiving more support from a black or fan base? I can. I can. That's sort of parallel to my situation, where like there was definitely a period where it's just like, you know, the first seven years of my career, I was just like, wait, I guess the music that we're doing really isn't attracting the
fan base that looks like I do. And so is it mind blowing to them that this, like this white woman from from California is doing more of the knowledge than you know then other black people.
But we talk about it.
But my other thing is, and I really wish and I guess I have to also do the work because I'll say that the blues is probably the one area of music that I've really really haven't you know, sunk my teeth into what is what is the criteria in your mind for what makes a great blues man? Blues woman, a blues player, like are you listening for tone? Are you listening for dexterity?
Like it just yeah, you know, it's it's that it's so ineffable. It's really hard to explain because when people say to you, you know, I want to send you on some songs, what are you looking for? I'm going well, And then people send me identical copies of something to talk about or I can't make you love me, and I go, you know, I already did that. I don't know.
I gotta find something new. And what makes me go crazy for the people like liking Lightning Hopkins or Johnley Hooker's Crawling King Snake Blues or Mississippi Fred McDowell, it's the soul and the intensity of what is revealed in their vocal and their body language and their marriage. If
they're a guitar player or a piano player. The it's one thing, you know, Memphis Slim was just you can't separate his body movements from his voice from his piano plan Fred McDowell, the same thing Johnley Hooker, Oh my god, you know it's the darkest haunting. I don't want to say it's the blues is only about the hurtful things or the pain that's so deep, because it's.
So that like one of the reasons black people might not be just running to it is because we've been going through it and we made it.
I was going to say that it's too much of a minder for me personally, but.
Yeah, but I mean it's it's the way that it came up when and when I started out was what right do you have to sing the blues? You're a white girl from California, daughter of a Broadway singer. For God's sake, how come you?
You know?
I said, you know, I didn't even think about it. I just liked the music and I needed to teach myself how to play it to entertain myself in my room. I didn't ask to this. I didn't say I was great. I didn't say I had the right to do this. If you don't like the way I sing it, don't come to my gig, you know. But I'm not trying
to be black. I'm not trying to usurp income. If anything, I was, I was made to be on the earth to showcase why artists of that generation never got royalties and why they rhythm and blues pioneers that line our record shelves never saw a penny because they're still in these oppressive, exploitive record contracts that they I didn't know any better, didn't have access to legal fee, lawyers advices.
They just were not cutting people in more than two percent of royalties, and out of that they had to pay for everything. So, you know, in the early days when people would say, I would go up and ask Sippy and Fred and Muddy like, how do you feel when they look out there and see all those white people? And he goes, you know, I wasn't expecting to be invited to go to England or to go to invite it to the Newport Folk Festival. I didn't expect for CBS to offer me a record deal, you know, for
Sunhouse and all this. A lot of these people were retired for twenty five years and they were rediscovered by young white blues fans and they they were delighted. He said, I love playing these colleges. All these girls like laying on my feet in the hotel room afterwards when I'm playing the blues all night long, and these guys are they're you know, treated me like I'm the second coming, you know, he said, you know what it's like to be ignored for all those years and not get to play,
and then be celebrated and appreciated. He said, I don't care what color they are. I'm just glad they dig it, you know. But Muddy didn't have a problem with Stevie Ray or Liel George or Mike Bloomfield or me or anybody. If if somebody could play, they that's the thing. If you could sing and play and impress them, they were in.
You were in that club, you better play.
So without without me being really controversial with this next question, good, good problem here you go, No, no, no, no, because this is I think this is my one chance to ask this question. Okay, so back in nineteen ninety ninety one, when you know, my mind is getting more open to all types of music or whatever. So a guy like me will buy a copy of Physical Graffiti buys Zeppelin, and you know, and I think when you're a teenager, like between twelve and twenty two, your mind is just
open to everything, especially if your music fan. Like if you look at my record collection from twelve to twenty two, it'd be somewhere between the Ohio players and Debbie Gibson and no, but just like Lightning Hopkins, like I was just open to everything. So my oh yes, exactly. So my whole thing is, you know, I I can't divorce myself from really being in love with like Jimmy Page's
guitar work on the Zeppelin records. And it's only when I got older when I started like going back and reading old reviews, like of course we're revisioning his history, like Rolling Stone will say, you know, Rolling Stones will do complete issues dedicated to Zeppelin, but back then, just how much of a like this is fraud? Like in the same way where hip hop heads might call out an MC who isn't really of the ilk of the culture that you know got more success and whatnot, you know,
got so. But the thing is is that even now when I still listen to Zeppelin, like I can't and there's still older cats are just like, man, fuck that shit, that's fake blues like listening to the real shit. But it's like, am I wrong in thinking that? And I'm using like in My Time of Dying as an example where they're doing like Bottleneck Blue Slides and all those things. Yeah, like is where critics just hard and guarding the gate or was that a problem with a lot of the
English blues guys. And I'm talking about Clapton, I'm talking about age, Like, what are your feelings on those like on?
You know, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton and Keith Richards are just I mean, when people fall in love with music and they adopt a style that's not comes from where they grew up. Somehow, the whole culture got the blues somewhere in the mid sixties, we all got discovered and everybody was just nuts for it. And so it's a question of what you do with that appropriate you know, it could be appropriation or it could be just absolute passion.
But I think it's a good idea to try to give it back and share the stage and pay props to the people that originated the music. In your interviews and in your songwriting credits, you don't take credit for a song that Willie Dixon wrote only settled thirty years later. So you know, there's just basic shit like don't steal people's stuff. You know, I'm not saying I'm not saying they did. I'm just saying I'm okay. So, but I'm just saying how did I feel about the do I did? I like the way they.
Played, like his musicianship, like and when you're.
Jimmy Page is unbelievable, unbelievable. Yeah, yeah, no, and Eric clapped in unbelievable Stevie way, Jimmy Hendrix. You know I didn't. I didn't look at it as colors. I didn't look at his gender. I just went this guy's a badass, you know that kind of thing. So, but in terms of the debt that white artists, oh black artists, these music they are making money from, you better start sharing. You take a knee financially as well.
Right, But you created that always, Yeah, I just always wanted to know, like, were they authentic in their presentation? In addition to I think.
They I think they built on they built something completely different, you know, like when the Stones do you Gotta Move? I mean they're not doing it exactly. They can't sound exactly like some older guy. But you just do the interpretation. And if you don't like hearing, you know, it's just up to the listener whether they think it's authentic, if it moves you or not, if they mean it. I think that's got it's got a valid, a valid reason
to to exist. And you know, brilliance is brilliance no matter what genre comes stems out of you know, So I may not be I may not be answering that breat no.
No, no, I get it. I got to get it. So okay, as many people know what the show, I bleed Purple. And you know, one of the very first times that I've heard about you in my teen years was when Prince was going to sign you to Paisley Park. And I've heard those demos, I've heard I need a man. I've heard at least four or five of the songs he was going to submit to you. Can you talk about that? What was what was that whole period like when you were about to sign the Paisley Park.
Well, it.
It never got that far. I mean I had been dropped by Warners right when I was getting ready to go on tour with Stevie Ray Vaughan, and you know, we had six months of band and crew work and I had to pull out because without any promotion or any album to sell, we just weren't going to be able to promoter didn't want to take an act that
didn't have support from a record company. So he pulled the rug out of me and twenty five people, and I had to go on tour just as a duo with a bass player and try to make a living and pay my bills. But everybody else was out of work, and we were normally touring all the time. We didn't sell records. We just made our living touring. So somewhere in a couple of years in Prince called and said, man, you got a raw deal. Why don't you come on over to Paisley Park and warners will have to take
a little lesson on how to treat somebody. So we talked about it. I said, I don't want to go do a whole prints record, and I know you don't want to come over in my wheelhouse. So if we can really meet in the middle and come up with something that's equally mine in yours, that would be great.
And you know, we had some couple of wonderful evenings together playing music and watching slicestone and staple singers and screens that were the size of the wall, you know, And I got to go in his closet and see his clothes and see just you know, it was really fun to get to know each other and we had a lot of music that we loved in common, and so I had a solo acoustic, a duo gig and Colorado playing ballrooms and ski resorts, which I could make
good money because I didn't have to pay for the band, so my fans got to see me up close and do acoustic versions of my songs. So I was doing really well. But I went on a ski. It took a ski lesson and fell on the skis and broke my landed on my thumb with my weight of my body, and I pulled my thumb off ligament and I could play. So I called Prince and said we got a postpone it. But you know what I did. It turned out to
be a blessing in disguise. And because I was heavy and I wanted to I said, Man, if this works out, I got to make a video with this guy. And I'm like thirty forty pounds overweight, and I'm going to take this opportunity while I got this cast on to go to get to the musicians meeting and hang out with my old buddies that I used to party with, but just be sober with them and I'll, you know, ride my bike and lose some weight and by the time I see Prince, I'll be ready to be filmed,
or at least more ready. So that was a blessing. And then I went to Minneapolis and he had already cut the songs and you know, did all the tracks but in the wrong key, so they weren't in my key, and there wasn't any place for me to add any musical ideas except just to play some slide on a
couple of things right. But there was one of the sets of lyrics with something I would never You know, honey, you can mess around all over town, but we're still cool because there's something I like about be in your fool, But you know, I need a a n real man. I mean, it was funky ass Minia. I mean, you know, he's just We could have done some really cool stuff together. And he went off on tour in the summer. We made plans. I canceled my tour with my band and
went to called my brother in Minneapolis. I said I'm on my way, and he said for what. Prince extended his tour and never called me. So I put my guys out of work to make the record with him, and he never called me. And just stayed over in Europe. So it was not it was not a happy ending, but still great artists, great artist did a lot of wonderful things for women guitar players.
Honnie, when did you pick up the slide? When did that become a thing in your arsenal? I have a theory. You were talking about matching guitars with voices. I feel like for some in some way the side stunk your voice.
Yeah, that's thank you. That's how I feel about it. And I like the tone that I pick is because it's how I hear. It picks up where I leave off. You know, so I and Lowell George from Little Feet is the one who gave me a compressor so I could hang the note longer because I asked him, I said, how are you holding that note? Because Fred mcdalla shouldn't do that? And you know Ry Coooter and Lowell George are the masters. And then now we got Derek Truck.
So just but anyway, I heard I heard slide guitar when I was about fourteen, when I got some country blues records and I taught myself to play. I tuned to an open tuning and I soaked the label off a chorus seat and cold bottle, and I put on my middle finger and I just I played. I didn't have any lessons, but I hadn't seen anybody do it, but I imagined it was like my grandpa had a lap steel that he'd played hymns on where he drew
the bar across the neck of the guitar. So I just pretended that that was it and just listened to that record and went quite and I taught myself to play from those records and then just honed it down.
You know.
Eventually I had to go to electric because a lot of the keys of the blues that I like are my voice is five keys up and if I put the KPO halfway up the neck, I can't get the octave without on a longer neck. So that's why I went electric.
You of course, Uh, well, I'm safer end of the show because he hasn't done a show yet. But Steve and I worked with our with our good friend Don was could you talk about the relationship with Don and.
Hal Willner blessed rest in Peace the Great?
Yeah? Yeah.
He called Don up and said I would love to have you and Bonnie rates saying baby mine from Dumbo for this Disney tribute I'm doing, and he called me and said the same thing. He said, I don't know. Meanwhile, I'm like a complete was not was Hound, you know that's right. That is my jam. Those guys, those lyrics with that singer, those singers and the music. I went nuts for them, and so on the session it went so beautifully. It's one of my favorite tracks I've ever cut,
This beautiful Disney tribute Little One Close. Ah. We did like a baby oh mine, you know right now?
That did it too?
Oh, thank you. I never thought Don would turn out. He was a big fan of my early records, and he couldn't believe that I was a fan. I could like quote every Dad I'm in jail, you know, I could quote all these was not was songs.
So we were.
It was a love affair, you know, and we just he came to my acoustic show outside of l We were playing this club called the Coach House, and I think he came to that and he saw me just playing my stuff with just in the guitar like I did the first four years of my career before I could afford a band, and he said, you know, let's make and I said, would you want to do a record together, and he said, yeah, but I want to do a record where let's base it on if you
could sing the song on the guitar or the piano and make me know that it's a Bonnie Ray song, then forget that, forget the who's in the band, just start with what you Let's pick the songs that work, just by yourself. Even though we used a band, that's how we made Nick of time. We didn't have a big budget. And I suggested my drummer, Rookie Fetar and you know Hutch Hutchinson, and we had benmont Tench, and we had Mark Goldenberg and you know, we just had
a stellar group of players, including Randy Jacobs. But he might have been unlucky the draw from what was not was So I told him he didn't know about Ed Journey, and I said, man, there's this engineer that does ry Cooter and David Linley lreo X Records. We got to see if he would do this, because you know he did get Rhythm by Rykooter. That album is one of my favorites. And so we met ed and the three of us just hit it off and we went in the studio together and we just we love each other.
It showed up in the music.
It show did I was just thinking that.
In making that record for you, the temptation to go to your sweet spot, which is the authentic blues, that the that authentic raw sound. At any point did you were you nervous about kind of And I'm not saying cleaning it up as in, you know, compromise, but there's definitely a noticeable sonic difference in that record and your previous albums, So the like, what can you from hitting your upper limit in.
Terms of oh, I see what you're saying.
What what like you know, like this is too clean? Like this not bluesy enough.
Well, I mean I don't do only blue songs, so you know, I always have a there's a Jackson Brown and Eric cat Love has No Pride and Angel from Montgomery.
I mean, there's there's a breadth of R and B and rock and roll like n RBQ songs and you know, fabulous Thunderbirds and Chuck Berry kind of thing, and then there's funk tunes and there's a lot of the ballads are very stripped down, you know, the ones that I did on the Glow, and almost every record has some kind of heartbreak song that's stripped down to just guitar, piano and bass. And so for me that the way we approached Nick of Time wasn't that different than some
of the other records that I've done. And it's just song driven, you know, whatever the song needs. And in terms of the sound of it, that's ed Cherney is really know, he knows we want to really organic sound and you get the right players and I don't know if it works for you guys, but if you get the right song and the right players in the room, and you get an engineer that knows where to put the mics and which mics to use on which instruments, and you just let it happen.
You know.
You don't rehearse, you don't open the oven door and try to mine, you know, you just set the stage and let it go.
You know.
That's how That's how I'd been making records for since the green Light album and later the you know, earlier the Glow, I did a record with Peter Asher, who's known to be, you know, a pretty slick producer. But I just said I want to do everything live, so anyway that I didn't. I mean the bluesy thing. The only blues song on that record is the Road's My middle Name. And I wanted to do that with the fabulous Underbirds in Texas, so we went down there and
did that. But that Jerry Williams song, real man, man, that's just that's right, and that's that's my I could have done that song at any point in my career. And similarly with thought Ain't Gonna Let You Break My Heart Again? With Herbie. Oh, you know, we just got really lucky with both those lucky the drawing nick of time and you know, the subsequent records. We great songs, great players, and I find the songs and bring them and I and we had the terrific core band, So
I don't want to I gotta pay props. People don't pay enough props to the band because that's what those That's why that music is so special too.
So how does your how did your life change like to take us through, you know, from going just from you know, all those years going from Warner and just going through that journey to finally getting paid dirt?
What does that mean?
Right? Well, I got a lot less free time, because when when you're a political activist that use your your voice and your money and ability to fundraise. When I didn't mean so much, I didn't get so many tribes
calling me for Native American justice benefits and planned. You know, when I when I was a bigger deal, I could when I go on I'd got invited on the Tonight Show, and I got invited on Good Morning America, and I could we had just formed the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in nineteen eighty eight, and I could go on every TV show and talk about how those artists that we owe everything too never got paid, and let's make a donation and do the benefit for you know, health, get
some health insurance for some of these icons that we all love so much. And I make my living doing the songs of so Anyway, the biggest difference was lifestyle. You know, I could have some financial security, I could move up to Northern California, I could pay my band better. I could really raise money and attention for the causes that I love. But I got really busy and in demand.
And that's sometimes I look back at being more care free when I was less of a big deal, and I wish sometimes I could go back to that that easier time, but it's not. I don't spend a lot of time looking back.
At the highlight what was like the highest of highs in terms of well, I mean, I would imagine that being a critical favorite and a favorite of the industry, that you pretty much met your peers, But just like, was there someone that you finally got to work with or at least become friends with that you're otherwise pre nineteen eighty nine life couldn't imagine, you know, were you Oh that's a good thing, buddies, or you know, I'm playing like yeah.
Yeah, no, I hear what you're saying. Well, I was blessed with being respected by so many musicians that I wanted to work with it. I really did. If you look at my guest discography, you know, there's like a lot of people who I wished I could have signed with that I you know, Willie Nelson and all kinds
of blues artists and R and B artists. So I did get to record with a lot of people already be even before that, but afterwards making a record with my dad and getting them a record deal on Angel Records in the middle of the nineties and singing Hey
there with a forty two piece orchestra. That was some heavy, beautiful stuff because I you know, here I am helping Ruth Brown and Charles Brown, and I would say that singing Merry Christmas Baby with Charles Brown and we got to move to the outskirts of town with Ruth Brown two of the great highlights of my life. To be able to showcase and take on the road Ruth Brown and Charles Brown. Put them in hotels they deserve to stay in the whole time, give them a tour bus
that they couldn't even believe they were in. And at that point in their life. For me to be able to turn around and do something for some people that mean so much to me, that was the high point of that success. And singing with my dad and Ruth and Charles and okay, John Lee, you can It's just it was deep. It was deep and still deep. And Tuts, Oh my god, the house.
That's right, You're part of the other. How won the project? Right? How's always putting weird albums together? Yeah?
Well I had. I had cut True Love Is Hard to Find on nine Lives in eighty five, Yeah, eighty six, and then Tuts and I did it and then and you want to gram me on that album Reggae, you know, True Love, which is all duets, you know, to have John Prine and Toots Gone, I mean, and how yeah. I wrote a song on my new album called Living for the Ones who didn't make it. It's all about that, honey.
What is your dad? I want to ask you this earlier on is your dad and your mom?
Like?
What did they think about where your music went? Since he came from them? You know what I mean?
You know when I started doing I'm Built for Comfort and Not for Speed, you know Willie Dipson song that Wolf did, and they were they were in the audience at the Second Fret, you know, in Philadelphia off a Rittenhouse Square, and they came to my first gig and I wasn't going to do Spider in the Fly by the Rolling Stones, but I ended up singing built built for Comfort, not for speed, just me and acoustic guitar and a bass. I think that embarrassed my dad a
little bit. So I think here's how they felt. They were delighted that the world thought I was talented. They were dismayed I didn't finish college, but then they could tell that it was I got lucky and that the lifestyle I was living, partying a lot. And I don't think they I don't think they dug that too much. So my dad always said, if you want to sing better and not worry about losing your voice or catching colds on the road, just take a little bit better
care of yourself. And they were really happy when I quit trashing myself, which wasn't all the time, but after the shows, you know, right, yeah, after the shows. I never let anything get in the way of my show because I didn't sell records, so I you.
Know, that show was everything.
I had to be really good every damn show. And that's what my dad taught me. Every night is opening night.
And why it should be mentioned didn't graduate. You did go to some really amazing colleges, right.
So I did go to Harvard for a couple of years. But man, this college of Johnny Hooker and being on the road with Mississippi Fred McDowall was a better college than any you know, And and I yeah, and I wish and they all wish that Blues was not a bad experience for most black people. They would have been great if their grand niece and grandchildren wanted to go
into it. You know what I mean, it's an institutional racism that in the community where blues people should be on stamps and taught in the schools, and blues artists should be revered and paid and treated like that jazz is treated in Europe, you know what I mean. It should we should just be lifting up roots music of all kinds, not just blues, and the people who it should be taught so that little kids can really appreciate their own heritage and you know, and dig BB King
and actually go see him, you know. So you have to be just being me and Eric Clapton talking about BB King.
Now you want to add more to the curriculum the critical race theory, no, no boon?
Yeah yeah, okay. A question always wanted to know in your post nineteen ninety one life. Is there any concert that you've ever given in which your fan base is fine if you don't do I can't make you love me? Oh, He's always wanted to know. With signature songs, you know, there's a point where Nirvana just stopped doing smells like teen Spirit, and sometimes artists will shy away from doing their signature song all the time. But for you, how do you feel about that song of all of.
Your Oh, I would not do a show without Angel from Montgomery or I Can't Make You Love Me because those people, a lot of them haven't seen me in a long time.
You know.
Some people didn't see me last time through, and maybe they haven't seen me in six or seven years, and they love that song. And so I got to do it for the people that you know, and I try to. I try to be as real and new every single night, every song. I don't ever post.
You have to, Yeah, you have to. It's the opening night every night. Yeah, someone is I mean.
And I remember I remember being on both sides of that I can't make you Love me, I haven't it, you know where somebody said I had to tell them I didn't love him that way anymore, and and they and they said, could you just could you still stay through Christmas? Oh man, that was some you know what past the piece and you're looking at the person's mom and you just you just you just broke their heart. And then I've been on the side where my heart was broken, where someone said, you know, I love you,
but not that way anymore. It's just not working out, you know, somebody that can stay home and cook for me, right, you know, we can't even talk about that song.
Like literally, I was sitting in my living room with my seventy one year old mother her seven year old friend, and we were talking about your music, and she was like that one song. She's like, don't I'm about to go it is and bring a tear song? Do you know this is the blue I do?
And I know how many men cry when they hear that song because I get the letters saying I've never seen my husband cry. And when I turned and looked at him and there were tears, you know that, she said it repaired a whole lot of hurt that we had.
Ya, I mean, I mean it makes sense. It makes sense.
And you know who wrote that song is a guy who used to be in the Cincinnati Bengals. What was a professional so what that was written by? Mike Read was a Cincinnati Bengal and Alan Shamblin wrote the words. And those two guys and and Mike Read wrote a song on nick of Time called too Soon Toll but no of course, because he wrote I can't make you love me too? And he's like this big bear of a guy. Oh, I love it, and he writes this and he has a voice break your heart like Michael McDonald.
I know, Michael McDonald, excuse me. I'm right with you, Leah.
I'll tell you that I love even though I love, I can't make you love me for me too soon to tell is my favorite song of yours.
Thank you.
I love that song. And wait till you way do you got to call Mike Read and tell him how much you love those songs?
He now knows it because we just said it. That that that is mind That is mind blowing to me.
I mean it's yeah, because you know, six foot four football player does not normally sit down and write. But then look at Hornsby.
You know what I'm saying, Yeah, big people have heart.
I'm saying.
A big club, Bill, get out of here. I thought Bill was trying to say.
I'm saying like he's like, my guys, you guys, I should just I'm just gonna sit back and let you guys clown because this is too good terrible.
Are you all?
Are you all in the same city?
No, some people are like three people are I'm in New York right now, I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Oh, I love Carolina Park. Yes, I'm in the Park.
I'm gonna wrap this up surdly, but I definitely have to ask, how did you feel when you got inducted? It's like, how do you think she felt? A mirror? But how did for you to be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
It was outrageous, And you know, I don't know if I really deserve to be in, but I knew that I had lasted a long enough time to qualify and they didn't have enough women yet. And as a woman lead guitar player, as a champion of unpaid royalties and debts to artists that didn't get their props, it just thought, why that damn museum is there? And the organization so a role model for activism and guitar play and leading
a band. I'll take it because I want to inspire the next generations of women musicians and activists and righteous people trying to get that royalty reform and get the songwriters paid by the streaming service directly and not go through the record labels. Come on, I mean, there's all these people that wrote the songs that I made my career on that haven't seen a penny from all those streams, so you know, I'm not going to shut up about it.
So anyway, I was happy to be in there because I didn't read a lot of negative press about she doesn't deserve it, So that was I was worried about that. And you know, we all get worried about social media because my feelings get hurt. So I don't look at I don't look at a lot of the responses in case people saying I wish you'd just shut up about Native Americans, you know, pipelines, you.
Know, listen. Meanwhile, I was about to ask you what causes are closest to your heart? Right now?
We need to know election protection, okay, okay, okay, Democracy is a good one. Democracy is nice when that works. So election protection, the climate climate you know, fiasco, and and the fact that food and access to health care and education, the inequities and income and opportunity are just
number one. You know, we just got to get there's just too many justice, equal pay for everybody, but you know, the health care system what you name it, but food equity and health care equity and education equal a equal opportunity. Climate change, but man, the democratic hijacking of democracy in this country by the right wing is just you know, we got fascism on our door right here, you know, knowing kids yourself did that. We got to get everybody out to the polls Purple.
That's where we live.
It is it is weird that just the basic, just basic human needs are now seen as justice causes. It's crazy.
It is crazy for you.
For you now, is there anything in your career that you have yet to bucket list that you you wish to to achieve?
Oh, I've never been asked that.
I love your passive aggressive way. I'm here of asking you. At with Bonnie Rae, we did.
Get to play They backed me up on Used to Rule the World. It was a badass version too. It was really great. I would love to work with Keith. I would love to. I would really love to re up the Womad Festival where there is an unbelievable collaborations of like Paul Brady, Habib Corte from Molly, Paul Brady from Ireland, Liz Wright, you know, Esperanza, me a Mere
you know reggae guys. I would have put bolts in there, but you know what I'm saying, Like a touring womad across pollination of fertilization of music, that it doesn't matter what genre it is. It's just great where we can hear each other every night. I mean Jackson Brown, Sean Colvin, Bruce Hornsby and myself with David Linley went on tour as a supergroup in nineteen ninety. It was just fantastic. In the summer, we just had a little window of time and we all got to sing and play on
each other's songs. And I'd like to do that again. I don't know. That was probably too amorphous an answer, but do you guys know what what womad was. It was fantastic.
When you say Keith who what Keith?
Keith Richard's you know, I forgot, I forgot where I was. No, No, I you know, I was just thinking on the top of my head. I said, Keith. But you know, in my world there's one Keith, but there's more Keith Sweat. You're right, Keith Urban.
I was thinking Keith Thomas as well, the producer.
Oh my gosh, thank you for remind give me a reality check. No, I mean that guy who together we will stand there and be weathered together. You know, I don't know if you. He loves playing the piano and singing almost Hogy Carmichael kind of stand and he's really good and I love the versions of that he does of those songs. It would be really fun to do to do something with him.
Well, we we now know that you have manifest magic, so.
You can make that wal Mad festival. But we have to keep COVID under control so we can go across borders and be safe.
Yeah, I say by May that it'll I'm saying right now, I am you're manifesting. I'm manifested by May, mainly so we can get Fante at the house in time for the roots picnicking.
Talk about it, and we was all thinking, it's out there, it's outside, man, it's outside, it's cool.
But yeah, yeah, I don't do end of If it's outside, it's it's cool. Now, I will say this COVID and no COVID two days don't Yeah, I don't know. I'm cool, but not two days two day. Oh No, I've been having the time my life. By ray, there you go.
There.
I could go to so many places right now, but I just met so I'm not going to go there. But in my mind I have got I'm going in my mind about what you've been up to.
Ben's been self work, just working on myself. You know. It gave me time just to slow down. I dropped like forty pounds and spend more time with my family. Like, yeah, I'm cooling.
There's been some good stuff about it. For sure. I made a record surprise, and I'm probably I probably would have made a different kind of a record, but you know, it's been nice to have. But I missed touring, Oh my god, I miss playing live. Yeah, And I just got to say, I tape your show every night and watch it the next day, and I love you guys. I wish I could have a whole separate series of when you guys play on the you know with Jimmy the show. I wish we could hear you're playing all
the way through. John Baptiste too, those guys, you do all that work and those tunes.
Yeah, absolutely, we had him on the show too. It was a really good show.
Yes We're good boy.
That that that video for Freedom and the videos on his record he was. I mean, I wish to just let him dance around for a while and make me happy.
I hope this is his. I hope this is his nick of time year for the Grammys.
Wow, I hope so too.
I'm going there nomination, so.
You know, I know, Okay, No, he's gonna. Oh and can I just thank you for Summer Soul.
Oh, thank you, thank you.
And I know you're gonna this is gonna be your nick of time at the Oscar.
Yes, talk about it, come.
Up top now.
Anyway, thank you very much.
I just have to ask you, did you have to tune in with Sly and all those guys that much in tune on every damn note. You don't have to answer.
Here's the fun I'm so glad you only because you asked that question. All right, I'm gonnadmit one cheat that I did once. I did only two cheats on the on the movie because uh, sing a simple song was an e. I cheated the intro drone that they did to that key and the cat because they did it that the drone was in another key and they went too then they went to sing a simple song.
But no, no, no, I mean very cool, very cool.
But for the most part, I will say that everything that you heard was this one from the soundboard in nineteen sixty nine. Like literally, damn, he did maybe zero point one percent of mixing, like we we barely touched touched the board man.
Now does that guy does the guy who mixed that and recorded that, did he get a little taste?
Yeah, give the engineer.
So here you go, my big baby, Yeah.
Gi me, the legendary jim Jimmy Douglas. He did. He did amazing grace for me, the Franklin like Jimmy Douglass has been all the timberlands like early stuff. Yeah, like he's been for fifty years, like the man. So yes, he he was my.
Engineer, the original guy, the original origin.
Believe it or not. That was a rough mix, Like, gives me a rough paycheck. Then dude, he's dead. He got well.
I gotta say that was a really great Yes, he does have family. That was a great mix.
And thank you.
Some of the baddest singing live I've ever heard in my life.
Thank you, Oh my god.
We really are so grateful. And when you say there's more footage.
I get, yes, there's more, and we'll I can make an announcement and like may for after after the oscars, I'll make.
I'm manifesting that right, now now I will take you.
Yes, I will take all your infestations.
Come and see us with We're going to be with Lucinda in New York, but then we're going to be with Mavis on the road, and you'll probably still be to be You'll be you'll be having to be in New York doing your nightly gig.
No, I will come to see and to my area. I will see this because I'm all about flowers. To to our to our great.
Said you want to, oh sake you. I was thinking Mayvis, would you know, but I thank you for considering that. I'm that, I'm all the things that you said the intro. I'm really very very very tight.
I do not not anybody gets on the show, you know, like we we have to love you. And well Bill Sherman was our first guest. So there you.
And there you go. And get the new album too. I was just gonna mention the new album. I was playing ahead just like that. Just make sure you go get the new.
Bonnie Ray album.
Oh I hope you dig it.
I do it delivers. I will say this, it delivers. It definitely does. I was like, Bonnie has given us what we need.
There's a great soul ballad on there called Blame It on Me. That's there's a funk tune that I wrote that mixes Eddie Harris Lesmacann with the Commodores, So you gotta check it out called Waiting for You to Blow. And I'm really proud of it because I wrote every little drum part and every keyboard part, every little horn part. So anyway, blame on me?
Who? What were you? Did you write? Blame it on me? Is that?
No?
I didn't. A guy who wrote it sang it on the two guys wrote it and sang it on a Facebook performance and they sent me the link and I went, what wow? Yeah, And you know what's really fun about this week? And I know we got to go, but this is the week as the record comes out and the middle of April and the single hits this week, I could call because the streaming services are going to start listening listing the tracks. So I got to call the songwriters that didn't know I cut their song. And
I've chad since last June. I knew I was gonna Did I cut it right? So I had to sit on it and I got to make that call on Hi, It's Bonnie I know, you know, we don't know each other, but I really loved that song that I heard back in nineteen, you know, two thousand and nine, and I ended up cutting it, and this guy's just flipping out.
Man, that's life changing, that billy.
Now, Bonnie, I just want to say, I just you know, I just remember I just got up on your early ketog maybe probably like ten years ago. And you know it was a good buddy, a guitar player friend of mine, Chris Berner. He put me up on like your early records and just for me, just a part of my childhood. Just again, luck of draw, luckily Draw Nickel time. Those
records were everywhere. You couldn't escape them. And so you're just definitely someone when I talked to younger artists, I definitely mentioned you was just you know, an example of perseverance and how just staying in the game. You just never know, like I had no idea. I mean, I was, you know, ten when Nikko Time came out. I thought you were a new artist. I had no idea, you know what I'm saying.
And so just to see yeah, and you know it wasn't I lucky to be forty when I got it, because I would have fucked myself up if I don't know if you can say that, Oh no, say that, but I'm saying that. You know, the people that can, like Taylor Swift and Nora. I mean, a bunch of people have gotten really famous early. They're handling themselves much better than my generation would have done. And if I had hit it big.
Y'all didn't have social media.
I'd be dead.
Yeah, yeah for real.
Yeah.
Well but you know, we thank you very much for your artistry and this is definitely an island having you on, Michelle. Thank you for ladies and gentlemen on behalf of of course Love Supreme, fant Ticcolo, you Unpaid Bill and Sugar, Steve, the Great Bonnie Radio. My name is Questlove. We will see you on the next Goverent welcome.
All right, you guys, God, bless day, safe.
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