0:02
And then an icon walks into the bar. Wow. Look at my face. Fanboy, for real. For good reason. The icon in real life.
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0:14
Yes, we're in a bar, but no alcohol was consumed during this conversation because, well, Bonnie doesn't drink anymore.
0:18
So, I'm definitely not going to.
0:21
But the location, beautiful and on purpose.
0:25
I love that we're doing this here because um we're in Los Angeles, by the way, and we're at a place called Idle Hour on Vineland, in case you want to come down here.
0:31
I've closed you have an idle hour, yeah.
0:33
Exactly, you know, and they closed it for us, so we want to make sure you know where it is.
0:35
But I I walk in here and all the pictures on the wall um show the history of the joint and it feels very LA history.
0:41
And when we first me and my family moved here 7 years ago, they were like, "Ah, from London?"
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There's no you know you you'll miss the history.
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And then I got here and I was like, "I love the history of this city."
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Cuz you can still smell it and feel it.
0:53
It hasn't been wiped over or or like put in a museum somewhere.
0:55
It feels like it's still breathing.
0:57
There's still a lot of I grew up here and there's a lot of history that's been gentrified, you know, neighborhoods for people of color and Latino and black families in in San Francisco.
1:08
I live now in northern California.
1:11
And in LA, you know, there's just really cool neighborhoods that musicians found and they could afford a while back and now lawyers have discovered it, too.
1:17
And you know, next thing you know, they So, that kind of real history and mom-and-pop restaurants and stuff.
1:24
We got to be careful to be careful or you'll lose it.
1:28
not overdevelop, you know. No, for sure. But this is a city.
1:30
I mean, I thought 1848 was old until I went to Europe and I went, "Holy And then you go to Greece and they're like, "What history?" Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
1:37
But you know, you you Like you said, you know, Los Angeles is home.
1:42
And when you were growing up here and in your particular situation, running around and seeing what it what it meant to you, like what what are the sort of prevailing beautiful memories you have of of being a kid in LA?
1:51
Very different LA, I'm sure. Yeah.
1:53
Well, I was My dad is a Broadway musical guy, so he would be home and off in the day and oftentimes was, you know, touring with regional shows, taking his shows that he starred in on the road.
2:06
So, my memories of LA were riding bikes in Griffith Park and, you know, going on camping trips like within an hour you can be in the snow, within an hour you're at the beach or in the high desert.
2:17
So, the weather was fantastic, you know, there was all kinds of ethnic restaurants and sections of town that were really cool.
2:25
So, I was aware of the melting pot part of it.
2:27
And both my folks are from southern California, so they were telling me about that their history growing up picking peaches in the valley when the whole valley smelled like orange groves. You know, what?
2:37
So, you know, it was nice, but I was definitely growing up in the show business and not the I was just aware that Tennessee Ernie Ford lived down the street and we were renting Jack Webb's house and from Dragnet, you know, so it was kind of like a lot of lore.
2:53
And I went to school with a lot of kids whose parents worked in the in the industry.
2:56
You know, I think about you you were talking a little bit about growing up in a in a an environment that was built on entertainment and also having a childhood.
3:02
Um but to be a writer and to be somebody who even can can appreciate other people's writing enough to to want to share with the world requires um a real strength of perception, a sense of self-awareness, but really awareness of others. Thank you. To absorb and move.
3:18
When did you realize that beyond riding your bike and and appreciating your folks in their life that you were fascinated with life and what was going on around you, the things that we ignore sometimes.
3:33
Well, for me, music was such a strong part of our growing up.
3:36
My mom was a pianist and my dad's rehearsal pianist and music director and she was a great singer, too.
3:43
And he rehearsed a lot and, you know, I did a lot of concerts, not just the shows.
3:46
So, I was singing and my brothers were singing, we were all playing instruments and singing from the time we were little.
3:51
So, one of the great joys of for me is to listen to sit in the backstage when I was really little and listen watch of people perform other stories, you know, like inhabit the Carousel and Oklahoma and Pajama Game and see how they sold the different songs and inhabited the characters.
4:07
So, and between that and the heritage of Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, I was exposed to a tremendous amount of storytelling music when I was growing up and that let me really believe like what people that are into film, you know, you just believe you that those people are become those characters.
4:28
Yeah, it becomes another sense of another part of your imagination, you know, and I what The amount of songwriters I talk to have to go very, very deep in order to pull something out and then it belongs to other people and we allow it to absorb our imagination and it becomes ours.
4:40
In a way, with some exceptions we'll get to, remarkable exceptions, songs you've written, I feel like you've been able to do that as well.
4:49
Like you Like you say, inhabit these songs, take them, form different relationships with them. Yeah.
4:56
And you know, I love taking songs that other people have done first and then doing my own spin on them.
5:00
And it comes from just being a teenager and sitting in my room with no one expectation of becoming a musician for a living and just entertaining myself.
5:07
I wasn't enough for me to hear John Lee Hooker or the Rolling Stones doing Little Red Rooster.
5:13
I had to learn how to play that sound that that's like guitar that Brian Jones was playing, you know, I didn't see it.
5:18
I just went, you know, this has got to be like that Hawaiian lap steel my grandpa played, you know, and so the idea of just finding ways to be connected to nature and to listen to and and between films and books and imagination and music, it was finding a different way to be in the world through the arts, I think.
5:38
It just seemed as natural as breathing to me.
5:40
The different way to be in the world and the and the responsibility or the role, I should say, the arts play in that.
5:45
Like, you know, I I've got kids who are in school right now and and luckily they're in great schools and they get they get being nurtured the right way in the day in the hours we're not with them.
5:51
But there's a sense when I was growing up of like, "Find your likely path, the path that you think would suit you."
5:58
And yet, the way you just described it was unlikely wins.
6:03
Like, what doesn't suit you?
6:06
What's going to rattle your cage and and spark something deeper in you? And it is unlikely.
6:10
I mean, the way that you picked up the guitar and were drawn to things that on paper even back then would have been like, "Really?
6:17
You want to come in this room?"
6:20
Well, you know what it is is um I don't know if in New Zealand they have you know, kids go away to camp in the summer, probably.
6:25
You know, there's day camp and then there's sleepaway.
6:29
Those were the worst days of my life. Carry on. Oh, really?
6:31
I had It changed my life.
6:33
I had summers while my dad was doing summer stock traveling.
6:35
My folks were on the road all the time, so my brothers and I went to a Quaker camp with all kinds of international counselors and college students.
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And the folk craze of the late '50s, early '60s was the counselors playing folk music everywhere.
6:49
And you know, when you're kid, you look up to the 18-year-olds that are your camp counselors.
6:54
And I just picked up the guitar cuz I emulated Joan Baez.
6:56
And they they were singing songs of protest and it was kind of a not a lefty camp, but a focus on humanitary, you know, humanism and international relations and peace and the civil rights movement as well as, you know, swimming and sailing and all the stuff you do at camp.
7:11
So, it seemed just like the natural time I was growing up to pick up the guitar cuz everybody was doing it in America, you know, it was like a folk music craze going on.
7:23
So, it just seemed seamless to me and and I taught myself to play um again, just for myself, but I I have not had a life without that lens of playing music and singing.
7:33
So, I don't know what it would be like to I mean, I wasn't into performing for people, but I just used it as a self-expression and appreciated really good writing and really good lyrics.
7:44
You know, I think because the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows that I watched growing up and the Frank Sinatra records that I listened to were, you know, what a what a songbook, what a what a history lesson in how to write a song.
7:55
And you know, I never stopped having that discernment.
7:59
Even when Ray Charles would do I got a fam- family gave me a box of Ray Charles records when I was 12.
8:04
I mean, when's the you're going to get a box of albums when you're 12 years old?
8:07
And it was just treasure trove.
8:10
incredible interpreter of other people's material and it impacted my love of soul music.
8:14
You know, I always loved Little Richard and Fats Domino and Chuck Berry.
8:22
And I could tell when Motown came along was just something about it, you know. And it is soul music.
8:26
It's the first thing I wrote down cuz I don't really pre- pick questions so much, especially in situations like this, cuz how do you create a narrative to try to dive into an album as like this that reflects a life you've lived.
8:40
So, we're just going to ride it out.
8:40
But I did write a couple of notes down and one of them was I I just didn't even know what genre to describe your music as because you move in funk, folk and blues.
8:50
And some of it's really danceable, and some of it's heartbreaking.
8:54
And you just cherry-pick at will.
8:56
All your albums are like that.
8:59
But I I came up with soul music. Oh, thank you.
9:02
that was kind of the closest thing to to a circle around around everything.
9:07
That would be the greatest compliment you could give me cuz that's how I feel about it.
9:10
You know, how can you categorize what why gospel moves you so much or why you know, Toots and the Maytals kill you, you know, or the Indestructible Beat of Soweto and then some Irish Richard Thompson or Sandy Denny record, you know, it's just all there.
9:23
And I I I can't limit myself to one style of music or it would drive me crazy.
9:28
People say, "Why don't you do a whole blues record or a jazz record?
9:30
Oh, you're so good at you know, why don't you do a funk record or work with this producer?"
9:36
Cuz then I would miss out on the mixture of songs that makes my life really interesting, you know.
9:41
It also puts you on a journey that's kind of out of your control, which is beautiful.
9:44
Because if you try to control it, right?
9:47
If someone's or someone tries to control it through you, hey, this album worked. Do it again. Oh, yeah. Control. Do it again. Control.
9:53
And by saying I'm going to do whatever means something to me in the moment, you sort of almost hands off the wheel, right?
10:03
Yeah, cuz I wasn't selling records from the first time I put my record out.
10:04
I knew I wasn't a commercial artist.
10:06
That wasn't my intention.
10:07
But I would have liked to have had it.
10:09
You know, if my friend if Linda Ronstadt could have had a hit. I would have had a hit.
10:13
I had a couple of songs in the mid-70s that, you know, "Runaway" got some radio play.
10:16
And you know, a single is just getting the door open to be able to pay your band better and then draw, you know, tour more and go out internationally.
10:24
You know, they'd build an audience.
10:26
But the good thing about not having a hit is that you don't have to follow it up with anything.
10:31
You're not You know, people aren't comparing you to the previous record.
10:34
So I had about six or seven albums where nobody was doing that cuz it was just my core fans.
10:39
Yeah, but you called your first album Bonnie Raitt, which blows my mind that you started with a self-titled album.
10:43
Yet it's the album where you probably knew the least about yourself as an artist. Yeah. It's crazy.
10:46
But I wanted to introduce myself to the world.
10:49
It seemed like, you know, here I am, you know. Yeah.
10:52
When did you really feel that your voice had started to mature and and your inner voice had started to show up in a way that you felt like, okay, I I I kind of I'm in some harmony with myself here. Oh.
11:05
Well, so much of it is interrelated to who you are as a person and your self-awareness as a emotional and you know, relationships are hard to maintain on the road. They're hard to get.
11:14
That's a big sacrifice, isn't it?
11:18
It's not really a real world that you're living in traveling with the circus like that.
11:21
So it's a lot of fun, but I'd made a choice early on to be a a road person and run my own band and produce, you know, pick my songs and put records out and I rather than be a mother and a and a wife.
11:35
So I can't really say that I came into my adulthood until I could stand the way I sang maybe in my 30s.
11:45
But I wanted to sound like Etta James and it just wasn't happening fast enough.
11:49
So I was just smoking and drinking and living that blues mama life and I would have tried to get my voice to sound more like what I felt like.
11:59
But you know, by the time I was in my late 20s, I could I went, "Okay, she's got a little bit of character now."
12:02
But by the time I hit 40 and I'd been sober for a couple of years, I I had aged in a way that was coincided with a rebirth of me personally and and I'd learned a lot about relationships and been through some hard times and came out the other side.
12:18
And so it was really that record Nick of Time, I think, was the the one I could listen to my vocals and not gag, you know. And it's interesting.
12:27
I've I've spent more than 10,000 hours trying to trying to speak the language and helped translate music for helping artists translate what they want to say that to to an audience. And and you're right.
12:37
It's such a strange trade.
12:39
Like what we appreciate and love at times is the last thing that artists can truly identify with them within themselves.
12:47
Yeah, I don't think you were I mean, I can read the reviews and I've been really lucky to be in held in good stead, you know, from have a residual respect and affection mostly for my peers and my core fans and not the pressure of commercial success.
13:01
But who I am underneath and who's the smaller case Bonnie is always it's a hard to develop and grow when you're being Bonnie, you know, that Bonnie.
13:11
Yeah, well, that's why you make records, I guess.
13:13
You're able to to look back and listen to them if you ever did or at least have the experience of growth through that process.
13:20
Sometimes the songs help me understand what I'm going through because I go, "Why am I Why am I picking this song of Jackson's and not Yeah.
13:27
And then I would go, "Wow, when the record's finished, I go, "Wow, it really did hold together and this is a postcard of where I'm at in 1976."
13:32
You know, this record's really I go back and listen to them now and go and have great fondness for the where I was at that time.
13:41
And I most of the songs that I've recorded I would still do now.
13:45
You know, they I'm amazed at at the maturity of Jackson and John Prine and Richard Thompson.
13:52
They're friends of mine that we were coming up with songs that were so heavy duty when and I mean, I didn't write all my own songs, but but I sang some pretty personally serious topics, you know, cuz I mean, by the time you're 21, you feel like you've been around the world. what it's like for J. D.
14:09
Souther or for Jackson or somebody to be able to write a song that they think the pool of people who I can give this to to sing is really small.
14:16
Because people want another "Running on Empty" or they want another big song from me, right?
14:19
But I've written this thing. Yeah.
14:21
And I need somebody to bring it to life. And then you show up.
14:25
And I'm like, "I got the shoulders for it. Let me tackle it."
14:29
You're a songwriter's dream because I don't feel like there's any subject on the table that if you feel it, you won't be brave enough to do. Well, thank you.
14:38
I mean, that's I I really prize the points of view of the people whose songs I pick.
14:43
And often they're really great singers and have their own deals and their own audiences, but a lot of times they're obscure people that don't put out records that people are aware of like Eric Kaz or you know, Joel Zoss "Stayed Too Long at the Fair" and I just Jude Johnstone is an incredible writer.
15:00
"Wounded Heart" is one of the most powerful songs I've ever sung.
15:01
So it's great to be able to use my platform to showcase underappreciated songs and songwriters.
15:11
Some of the songs on this new album "Just Like That" have been waiting for you.
15:14
They've been They've been waiting for you to come and sing them.
15:16
A couple of them, I think, and I could be wrong, have been you've been aware of for a minute.
15:21
And they they decided to you know, to show up on this particular album.
15:26
How was it selecting the songs you didn't write for this record?
15:27
And what different environment, different circumstances, different world?
15:30
You know, I had these songs waiting for the next time I went in the studio and I just I'm always got my ear cocked for either old soul chestnuts or some obscure album cut off of an artist that I haven't listened to for a while and I'll just I'm just always hunting.
15:48
And the songs on this record, four of them have been waiting to be till the next time I was in the studio.
15:53
So I never know how the all 10 are going to line up.
15:56
And I usually know that when it's getting closer that I'm going to contribute this groove because it's what I want to play live. And we need a shuffle. We need a new funk tune.
16:04
So that's my job, you know.
16:07
"Made Up Mind" I fell in love with in 2014 from the Brothers Landreth opened the show for us in Canada.
16:15
And then Al Anderson I've been friends with with one of my favorite bands NRBQ.
16:19
He was lead singer and guitar player for them. One of the lead singers.
16:22
And I've had that song for 30 years.
16:24
"Something's Got a Hold of My Heart."
16:26
Which is incredible that's been sitting there waiting for you to to bring to life and it just sounds so contemporary and so of the moment. Do you know what I mean? Good.
16:35
I'm glad cuz I love these songs and I have to love them so much cuz I'm going to be playing them live.
16:39
And I don't know whether I pick the songs to play live or it's so driven by what I haven't already said or it's some fresh musical way that I can put something on a record that my fans and I and my band and my peers haven't heard from me before.
16:56
Cuz for me I can I can I know I've done those kind of Stonesy rockers before, but but I can add some lyrics that you wouldn't have normally heard. Yeah.
17:04
You know, so anyway, I never know what I'm going to do till it's time to get in the studio.
17:08
About 6 months before I start putting them, okay, this is the time for the Al Anderson song.
17:11
And you know, Toots and I were going to record true "Love So Strong" and be our third duet together and he passed away last year. So Yeah.
17:20
it'll be a tribute to him, but I can't wait to play it live and remember him.
17:25
It's really touching what you wrote on the liner notes of the record.
17:31
And that the last couple of years has it's been a you know, in memoriam really of some of the great artists of our time.
17:37
Not just COVID as we said before when we were just chatting. There's life, too.
17:44
There's all kinds of variables that go on in life with or without a global pandemic.
17:46
When it came time to sort of finish the record and take a a look at what you created and then, you know, like you said, you you wrote this beautiful note in the liner notes.
17:54
What was going through your heart when you when you were putting this record together in relation to some of your friends that have that have moved on?
18:01
Um It's hard to separate the last couple of years COVID experience from the nightmare of the election cycle and the polarity and the hostility and viciousness that's become what our country's climate is.
18:13
And the anxiety and stress of of um watching this play out this this polarization and this thinking and not believing in science and the center not holding anymore.
18:28
What we agree is that what just happened, people's idea of the truth.
18:32
I just wasn't expecting that in this lifetime.
18:34
So I'd have to say I was in such shock and trauma from Black Lives Matter, from the climate refugee immigration nightmare that's just was non-ending.
18:45
So that when the shutdown happened, it was just one more paralyzing part of this I I'm I'm painting a pretty negative picture, but the election was meant everything and it was revealed an underbelly that I didn't even know was this.
19:04
To just focus on raising money for musicians relief in the musicians community and you know, food banks and all that. It gave me a purpose.
19:11
So I knew that we eventually were going to either get back on the road or I was going to get in the studio.
19:17
So it was it would felt healing to have something to focus on and pull those songs together and know that people are hurting out there and I can't wait to get on the road not just to support my band and crew and the groups that I support, but to have some fun again and bring some light positive light into the room.
19:34
And people need to hear this music, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
19:39
And then and I get letters from people and read my social comments, you know, when they go, "Come on.
19:43
Come Come to Winnipeg again, you know."
19:45
One of the songs that is um I hope you take this the right way.
19:48
It's overwhelming in the most amazing way is the title song of the album just like that.
19:55
Um just first time I heard it I was I was I was unprepared which is the most beautiful thing when you hear music and you're unprepared for how you're going to react to it and you can imagine it was very emotional.
20:04
Um it's a really beautiful and touching story Thank you.
20:08
about redemption but from the perspective of a of a mother where it's really deep.
20:12
I wanted I just wanted to to to hear from your perspective where where you heard about where where the song came from.
20:17
I knew that this time when I wrote I wanted to write from a third person point of view like either a short story or something that moved me out in the world from somebody else's life story because I really mined a lot of my own personal life and I pretty much covered all the members of my family, my relationships and I I just love story songs and I hadn't done one except for a song called All at Once that I did years ago. Yeah.
20:46
And I love Angel from Montgomery and I love John Prine and those two John Prine songs and I love the music of early Dylan the first few albums where it's just him telling that the power of finger picking in a voice unadorned.
20:57
I just wanted that climate to I wanted the song to tell a very simple story.
21:05
But basically there's two songs on the record that were inspired by real life events but Just Like That was a news story on the end of the evening news they do a kind of a human interest angle and they followed this woman who was going to the house of the the man who received her son's heart that she
21:24
donated when he passed away for the first time and he opened the door and the film crew was very discreet and they went in and he invited her to sit on the couch and and they just the look in their faces with each other and then he said would you like to put your head on my chest and listen to your son's heart it laid me out. I mean it just laid me
21:44
I mean it just laid me out.
21:47
I turned it off and I just said to her and was what that must have been for her to lose her child and have the grace and the generosity and the love to agree to make someone else's life happen in the face of all that grief and then for him to accept what that means.
22:10
It was just one of those moments that because of the COVID situation in the last two or three years for me it was a story that I was just honored to be able to tell. it so beautifully?
22:21
it so beautifully? I wanted to write also not just about the organ donation but about the guilt and the terrible beating up that people do when they've caused a death of someone else inadvertently and you know sometimes it's from when
22:37
being messed up and and high and you accidentally hurt somebody or shoot them or whatever you know there's all these people in prison are something that human beings as a species we struggle to truly understand because we're encouraged to live in the
22:52
moment as much as possible but sometimes how can you see what's coming around the corner and it happens it happens and you know people accidentally are distracted and get in an accident and a loved one will will pass away so this I wrote it from
23:06
the point of view of the woman that spent decades hiding in her house just trying to kill the pain and guilt and grief and and in the face of that this guy is spending decades looking for her just just to tell her It's mind-blowing writing. No it's mind-blowing writing.
23:23
No it's mind-blowing writing.
23:24
I don't know if I'm going to be able to sing it on live but but it's it's continues to move me the story of what that would take to be able to feel grace and redemption after after all those years and I hear the stories in sobriety all the time of people that just never believed they could turn their life around and they were given a second chance.
23:45
These songs that move you don't come from nowhere.
23:47
Sometimes they're from the inside voice and sometimes you have to listen to the stories of others.
23:50
Either way when the artist is really listening it can be a very emotional experience.
23:57
To go down a different road and I have to pull out the lyrics here for this one because I want to get them absolutely right.
24:01
I got to where she is today but do I get respect? That cracked me up.
24:08
I don't know if you heard me I did I did when you said these lines are I'm so glad.
24:11
I'm really proud of that song.
24:14
This song that you wrote here um which is just so so stunning Waiting for you to blow.
24:20
The lyric goes on she claims she saw above it now she saw that mess and recovery is a fickle beast but I stick to what you know cuz I'm always riding shotgun baby just waiting for you to blow.
24:30
I mean if that doesn't playfully and deeply and honestly reflect what it is to be at the mercy of a demon or another I don't know what does.
24:40
Thank you so much cuz I mean I'm all those lyrics in that song about the ways that you your friends about oh I I never got that email or you know when you meant to write someone back and you didn't and you just tell a little white lie.
24:54
I mean I don't know what other people do but you know or or you or you stress or you procrastinate or you just you know you do all these little character defaults that if you don't watch it you'll get in a spiral of oh I'm I'm messing up I'm that other person again.
25:08
We're always that other person.
25:10
We're always going to be tempted.
25:12
We're always going to you know it's not just about I mean I've been blessed in 35 years to not be tempted to drink or use drugs again but I but there's all these other little ways that you're not sober you know there's all the way the little slips and that little devil's on your shoulder when come on I know you are.
25:30
I know who you truly are deep down inside.
25:32
another three hours nobody's going to know you know and you know cuz the next day you feel like you know I did it again you know.
25:38
Yeah yeah yeah it doesn't make you feel good.
25:40
The last line of that song I let her draw love close enough to see she really cares but no way did I get inside in case there's no one there. That was my line. line is so deep. Thank you thank you.
25:54
Because it takes you to a place of of we talk about self-awareness so how deep do we want to go?
26:00
What happens if we go so deep that we find that to your point there's really nothing going on and that it's all manufactured cuz isn't that kind of what art is?
26:08
We talked to some degree about the importance of diving in and pulling the truth out but there's also this role that art plays of manufacturing identity as a protection right?
26:18
I didn't think about that.
26:18
But yeah I mean in love if you let some of you keep pushing people away or you pick the wrong person and you go oh it's their fault well maybe you're just being saved because you're afraid if they ever really get in Yeah.
26:31
they'll they'll see something that's unlovable.
26:33
That's your worst fear what and then all especially addicts you know for whatever behaviors addicts too and I mean gosh you know any any addictive behavior has that hole inside where you're afraid.
26:42
You want people in you need them you want to be loved of being loved and loving oh this is awful sorry but you know sometimes you got to go there.
26:50
I've been married 22 years and I'm the happiest person on the planet but man to merge your identity in with somebody else and vice versa as Jack and Meg said I'm slowly turning into you in many respects you're sort of running from your true self in a weird way as well you're just replacing something with something else. It's all there.
27:06
It is exactly and you have you have to well you don't have to monitor it but you have to be aware of it.
27:11
And like the people that study Zen know they invite the hungry ghosts in you know they're not going to go away.
27:18
The ways that you're going to feel not worthy or letting yourself down here I'm my own worst critic so I wrote this song so I can just put a little bit of a humor and sardonic spin on it in the spirit of Mose Allison and Randy Newman who were you know guides for me on how to be satirical and humorous about topics that are dead serious so and then to have it written over a funk beat and I'm really proud of that music too.
27:44
and it you know it draws me into an obvious place to ask a question question you've been asked before but hopefully with slightly different approach which is that you know you don't get to that room without drawing upon those moments with Prince and the great funk musicians that you've hung out with.
27:58
You know you've always dabbled in the funk.
27:59
I think back to what you did with Love Sneakin' Up on You it's got that like Stevie Wonder Superstition groove to it.
28:08
Used to Rule the World has that James Brown thing to me I hear in it.
28:09
You know and now I hear on this song it's just Prince and you dabbled in Need You Tonight on the last album too but it's just got that Prince that I'm that hard funk.
28:19
And that's from the Commodores really you know the 70s funk that Prince loves that I love.
28:23
loves that I love. I mean we grew up on that stuff and it just gets its hooks in like James Brown there's nobody better and then I wanted to mix the great jazz chord voicings of bands like the Crusaders or Les McCann you know and I
28:38
wanted to put that over the funk thing and and put these little horn parts that the organ could play and I got the whole arrangement and I said I showed it to my band and there's a shuffle bridge in there when they went really and I said yeah yeah yeah. So I stretched a little
28:49
So I stretched a little bit in in the in this because after this many records I wanted to do something that made me not sure it was going to work.
28:57
So when it when we finished it and it did work I was so proud.
29:01
think back to those times that you spent with Prince who's one of the to me in my lifetime at least um I hate to even just put him in a box but the greatest sort of male musical artist of my life Yep. for me I understand.
29:16
You know seeing him play live like him. Oh live forget it.
29:17
How about his guitar playing?
29:20
Oh well I saw him live he came out they started with Purple Rain.
29:23
Oh there you go that's Prince.
29:29
The end of the first song everyone's like where does it go from here and then he's like boom he's like okay I'm going to play 13 hits Oh my god.
29:37
and then I'm going to go away come back and play three more hits then I'm going to play like three more hits then maybe two more hits and then when I'm done with the hits I'm just going to play and you can stay as long or as late as you want. I don't care. Like this.
29:47
And he just went straight into I would die for you. Smashed it. Oh my god. And it was like emotion.
29:51
We were crying and crying and I never That's as close as I got. You got close.
29:58
You got You got in the room. I did get in the room.
30:00
I even got in his closet.
30:02
I got to see his clothes and his shoes and everything. How big was the closet?
30:06
Well, he was just in LA at that point.
30:07
It was It was the rental rental house. you his closet. You got really close.
30:13
Well, you know, we watched Sly and the Family Stone and the Staple Singers on a giant screen and I was at his house in Minneapolis and then when I first met him he sent a car for me with purple lights in the back and little porcelain figures with the face, you know. It was pretty great.
30:30
So, anyway, what an incredibly creative and interesting person cuz he was so shy in some senses, but his funk cred is unbelievable.
30:42
you spoke music with him, Mhm.
30:45
when you talked about the Commodores, when you watched Sly and the Family Stone on a big projector, when you were able to get him in a place which was his natural language, Mhm. was he open, fully open?
30:57
Yeah, musician to musician it was really a joy.
30:59
Because he was a big fan of mine.
31:01
I didn't even know he knew I was, although I made my first album in Minneapolis and he said he thought that was so cool. Cuz Minneapolis and St.
31:07
Paul have a like New Orleans have a mixed race scene.
31:09
The rock and R&B and blues musicians all hang out together and they're all influences.
31:15
You know, you're going to go play this and so in that era he was growing up, he was very much aware of me and I was doing R&B covers and rock and roll.
31:24
The same kind of mix that I do now doing in those first early records and he said he thought it was really great that I was covering a Don Covay song or you know, Martha and the Vandellas and all this, you know.
31:34
So, he was growing He was little, but he was growing up and admired my playing.
31:40
And I went nuts for him when I first heard about him.
31:42
The word was out on him in the in the Minneapolis scene before Yeah.
31:47
even had his first record and there was this wonder kid and played every instrument.
31:51
And produced everything himself as you do as well.
31:54
Yeah, now you do, but I mean I wanted to sort of at that point when you were hanging out with him and for you looking back on it now, cuz I don't need the personal, that's between you guys, but in terms of the music language, what was the greatest card that you traded with him?
32:06
Like what did he give you that you really thought that stays with me? Like that's joy.
32:10
You know, we our time together was about aborted somewhat because of scheduling and so I couldn't make when he was available.
32:18
So, he went ahead and did the tracks in his key or they were songs he'd already written.
32:22
So, when I got out there and we had a couple of days to try some things, they were way too low for me.
32:27
But he wanted me to play slide on some stuff and he wanted me to teach him how to do it and then he sampled some of my slide on frame.
32:35
him with the middle finger as well?
32:36
Well, I just showed him how I do it. Yeah.
32:38
So, he just said I I don't I got the feeling he said I don't necessarily have to learn how to do this cuz I can just sample you.
32:43
Oh god, it was So, uh you know, we didn't get to experience the melding that we would have done and I was supposed to go and work with him again when our schedules melded and then he stayed in Europe and we didn't get to work together again.
32:58
So, what a It was an aborted effort, but you know, mutual admiration for each other and I really appreciated that at a time when I had been dropped by Warner Brothers, he called up and said, "You got shafted."
33:07
I mean, he didn't know the details, but he said, "Come on over to Paisley Park cuz clearly I respect women musicians." Ah. So, you know.
33:16
And then we find ourselves today on Just Like That with an album which sounds so deep and modern and just authentic and I I mean, right from the minute you hear Made Up Mind, it's like, all right, like this is going to be just sound-wise a great experience. It really is. glad.
33:38
And you know, you you produce your own records.
33:39
It's something that I wish I could have more conversations with amazing female artists about, you know, um and that that whole producing engineering side of it, I just feel when we've got a ways to go before we can really, you know, feel like we can have a good strong productive conversations a lot about that in regards to females in that room.
34:01
And I would just love to get your your perspective on what you get out of it from an inspiring point of view.
34:04
So, more female artists who are watching this feel like, you know what, rather than hand that role over to somebody and focus on the creative, let me see what it feels like to get behind the board.
34:16
Well, it's a it's a I I I'm trying to be succinct in my answer because be.
34:22
there's a lot more Most of the women I know that are name artists, you know, that have a have had a career for a while, have everything to say about who's in the band and which songs go where, the sequencing, the arranging.
34:35
And um so they're really much more involved and they're not like it's not being produced by a team like Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam.
34:42
I mean, I don't know what Janet's process is, but sometimes you just want to put yourself in the hands of somebody that's going to make you sound in their sandbox, what they're doing.
34:53
the masters of that sandbox.
34:55
And for for four records with Don and Ed where it was a collaboration and again, I picked the material.
34:58
We combine suggestions for band members, but a lot of times it's my root band and that's why I can produce myself is because I got a great engineer that I vibe with who's also a musician, Ryan Freeland, and my band has been with me for so many years, it's like a you know, we know what we're going to get.
35:17
So, we would just rehearse minimally and then get in the studio and it's really all about the engineer and the sound that he can get.
35:25
And if you have a discerning ear and you listen for which records you love and you go, I want to work with that guy.
35:31
Joe Henry was the guy that turned me on to Ryan and I just went this guy's a master.
35:35
So, that was a combination of him and Joe, but then I said, "Can you make my tracks, my eight tracks melded with the four tracks I wanted to use from Joe's session which are different band, totally different sonics." And he said, "Yeah.
35:47
Just any It's He said if you get the right musicians in the room on the right instruments with the right amps, I know how to mic them and I'm not going to do anything I don't run them through gadgets and EQ them later.
35:59
I just want to get what you guys are playing and I That's my man right there. Yeah.
36:05
So, I do think that other women are much more involved with the production than what the public sees on their liner credits.
36:12
So, I'd have to say I I find it I find it hard to believe that Annie Lennox isn't very much involved. Oh, 100% is.
36:19
Or Linda or Emmylou Or Brandi Carlile or Yeah, exactly.
36:22
So, I think that that and they are picking their engineers.
36:23
There are some women great women engineers.
36:25
We just need to host like all the all in the arts there needs to be more mentoring and letting people get the experience so they can get the credit and cuz you know, you only got a certain amount of money to pay for a record, especially since you don't sell CDs anymore.
36:39
And you don't want to just work while you you know, hire somebody that's hasn't done it yet.
36:45
So, we just have to be gracious with people, being inclusive of women and people of color and not be ageist and shove people off the job cuz they're 60 years old. Do you mentor?
36:56
Do you Do you I mean, I know you have friends.
36:57
I know you know, I know you're very fond of Brandi. I love Brandi. Brandi's I do too. She's one of a kind.
37:02
And you know, it makes total sense that you and her would chop it up and trade stories and whatnot, but do you sort of see yourself in the way that you were mentored um at a young age and and and shown kindness, do you consciously consider yourself a mentor of other people or do you just like to to be friendship?
37:21
I you know, I wish that my life let itself, especially with COVID, there's no way to be an influence for anyone in direct in person, but you know, I'm in touch with some women friends of mine, Myra Sharp, Susan Tedeschi, people that are peers, but a little bit younger and it's really wonderful to watch the poise with which a lot of younger artists, women especially, are handling their success.
37:45
You know, people like Adele and you know, I watched Taylor Swift.
37:47
I mean, Billie Eilish, Norah Jones who's a little older, but even as they got their huge successes, what incredible poise and self-awareness and good lawyers and I mean, they were smart.
38:00
They really paid attention to what was working for other people. Yeah.
38:04
So, I grew up um watching people not have a say in their own royalty rates or in their own careers.
38:11
I grew up with a dad had to wait for another Broadway show, but he chose to go on the road and take the shows he was famous in and take them out to the people and that's how he made his living.
38:22
I said, "You know, if I do this for music, I'm going to model myself on the folk musicians that are just getting decade after decade of loyal fans, playing those festivals in their 60s and their 70s, their 80s.
38:35
Those are That's the path that I chose.
38:37
So, I looked at Joan Baez and and Judy Collins and Odetta and Mavis Staples and watched what they do. Yeah.
38:44
But in terms of sitting down and actually learning from them, I probably had to do it cuz I was always on the road myself.
38:50
I didn't I didn't get it.
38:52
The only people I got to be on the road with were all the great blues artists.
38:57
So, I learned I checked them out.
38:57
I checked out how they handled the promoter.
39:00
I checked out how they handled their band.
39:02
Sippie Wallace was telling me stories about what it was like to be in a tent shows in her early 20s and 30s, but we're feminists, you know, we I was a band leader when I was 23 when I first third album I was able to make enough money to get a band.
39:16
Nobody told me how tricky it is to not push the mom button.
39:21
You know, if you if you're not the best musician in the room, but you know that what you're hearing isn't quite right, but you need to strip it away and start fresh.
39:29
That can cause a lot of resentment when you're a little cocky 24-year-old, you know. Yeah. Or 22.
39:35
Well, especially when you're taking lessons that you've learned from people at at a different end of their life Yeah.
39:41
who have the experience to know when to be cocky, like when to be sun house and when to just go and disappear.
39:46
And you don't you probably didn't have that muscle memory then.
39:51
No, and I didn't have a lot of confidence.
39:52
I was cocky, but I would I mean I knew what I liked, but I didn't know how to explain it.
39:56
That's where alcohol comes into play, right?
39:57
That's a great for confidence. There you go.
39:59
But I knew I had confidence that my idea for which songs to put in the order and which how to arrange them.
40:06
That was my great joy and luckily I only picked people that really not agreed with me, but got it, you know?
40:12
Like the producers and the engineers and the band that I put for each record and touring with were all people that I got along with as people and they got me and they didn't they weren't resentful or you know, and try to tell me what to play.
40:26
They were just copacetic, you know?
40:29
If you put it together like that, you just keep the show on the road forever.
40:32
I mean, there's no real end in sight and in many respects you let the business either play, you know, catch up to you or not.
40:40
It's like I'm not waiting around for the business.
40:42
And that's the problem I think that some artists they get so attached with the timing of the business.
40:47
You'll never fit into the timing of the business.
40:50
Too many people vying for that attention.
40:51
There's too There's not enough space in the And I got I got lucky.
40:55
I built my following from live touring and and that's what I could go back to.
40:58
I could go back to playing just my guitar and still make a living.
41:02
So I don't have that monkey on my back of like I just want a shot.
41:04
I just want a shot, you know, how can you get a shot in this world? It's so crowded.
41:08
But you know, you you got your shot and then comes Nick of Time.
41:15
Now, most artists that have been on the journey, which is we all know now the best part. Yeah. Right?
41:19
The arrival is is the is that's the big kind of distraction.
41:22
They've given up on the idea of arriving anywhere.
41:26
And then you get to a point with Nick of Time where you arrive big.
41:28
Like everyone's like, oh my god, this is Bonnie Raitt's time.
41:34
And I just wonder, not to reflect too deeply, but you have a unique perspective where you were able to enjoy and experience that. Yeah.
41:40
Then you sort of kind of just went back to doing what you were doing.
41:44
Yeah, I mean I was a surprise, but it was my guild that gave me the award, you know, I probably just eked past Tom Petty and Don Henley might have and the Traveling Wilburys might have canceled each other out and I just got eked by.
41:56
And so it was some there's some amazing confluence of you know, Nick of Time was already a hit by the time I got nominated. I mean a hit for me.
42:05
It was like it sold a million records and I got critical acclaim and on VH1 and got to make videos.
42:12
I had a new record company.
42:12
It was a fantastic opportunity even if I hadn't been nominated, but then to win. Yeah.
42:19
But I if I if that happened to me when I was 30, I wouldn't never have been able to handle it. Why?
42:26
Well, I I mean and I don't think it would ever happen then, you know, I I mean it's just one of those things where my peers felt that I had made a really good record and I had a new start and I I don't know it's cuz I was I wasn't like stumbling around drunk all the time.
42:41
I just wanted to lose weight and get healthier and I would talk, you know, I was like really happy to to see life through clearer eyes and not mind.
42:48
And I don't think I would have minded I would have minded being sober when I was 30. Yeah.
42:53
So it was a so many things happened to bring me to that place and I felt like I was a touchstone for other artists my age who did my kind of music.
43:05
what was amazing about that?
43:06
Hiatt and Delbert and Little Feat, you have a shot now.
43:08
Women in your 40s, come on down.
43:11
Look what happened to me, you know?
43:14
And then actually after a while, you know, VH1 didn't play people after 45, you know?
43:19
Like after Love Sneakin' Up Sneakin' Up On You, things changed and there was a little bit of an ageism and I just went back to But that's what I mean.
43:27
I went back to playing with my same audience that was a little bit bigger, but I had the band that I always wanted and I had an audience that I could go all around the world.
43:35
I could talk about the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and make a difference and raise money and Yeah, you got this much bigger platform to be able to do those things and we're going to talk about in a minute, but I mean God, you know, you think about it like okay, Nick of Time comes out happens and then you get luck of the draw. Huge songs.
43:52
You know, I was That was a surprise to have the next one do well.
43:54
You must have heard I Can't Make You Love Me and gone Come on. Yeah. Come on.
44:03
I know they sent it to me first cuz I had done Mike Reid's song Too Soon to Tell on Nick of Time and I love all the songwriters' own versions of their songs.
44:13
And this guy was a former professional football player with the Cincinnati Bengals. Giant guy. Wow.
44:17
Handsome, you know, but voice tender like Michael McDonald kind of just gorgeous smooth. Oh.
44:26
Love the idea of this guy sitting in the locker room at the end of an NFL game, you know what I mean?
44:29
Like surrounded with all this heavy testosterone.
44:32
Just one single tear rolling down his eyes while he's imagining this song in his head. Oh my god.
44:36
So Allen Shamblin wrote the words and Mike wrote a lot of the music and together they loved what I did and they sent me the song and I I just I love the opening line.
44:46
I mean, turn down the bed. Are you kidding me?
44:50
That line is just like says everything you need to know. me.
44:55
Oh my god, I get goosebumps every night.
44:57
I know I'm I know what that song means to people. It really does.
45:00
And every version, Princes and Adeles and Michael George Michael and jazz singers.
45:07
I mean, people on American Idol.
45:07
I'm always hearing that people are covering it, but I I knew it was very very special and that's why I asked Bruce Hornsby to come out and play, who's my favorite artist. He's your favorite?
45:18
If I get on Well, I mean I love so many people, but if I had to be on a desert island with just one person because of his range of musical Can I go a little deeper than that?
45:29
Because whenever someone says this is my favorite artist or my favorite song, we get so obsessed with lists that we move past that statement and I disclaim it as being accepted and acknowledged that in a group of many wonderful artists.
45:41
But when you just you said it instinctively and I love that. Why?
45:46
What What makes Bruce your favorite?
45:48
The introduction that he played to I mean, it was a beautiful demo that Mike Reid sent me.
45:52
So tender was Bruce's beginning of End of Innocence, his beginning the licks that what he did chordally and musician wise and soulfully to I Can't Make You Love Me.
46:05
That's why that song's a hit.
46:07
But I found myself skipping listening to that song again the other day just to remind myself and my wife was in the other room and I was making noises you'd normally associate when a sports team wins. I WAS LIKE, WOO! WOO!
46:18
CUZ IT CUZ IT JUST LANDS.
46:18
By the end of it you're like, ah, you're done.
46:22
Oh, I'm so glad you love that song.
46:22
I mean, I get I've said this before, but I I I have responses from people that take the time to write me often in a handwritten letter saying that they've never seen their husband cry. That's that's so sad.
46:37
I'm losing it because it's either Andrew Montgomery or you know, I've never I've been married 35 years and I turned and saw my husband with tears down his face and I just to be able to have them send that song to me and make people feel and I feel that way when I'm singing it, you know?
46:55
I don't phone any of these songs in just cuz they're I've been doing this for 50 years.
46:58
I mean, I would have to hang up if I just if I didn't love every single show as if I'd never played before, you know?
47:08
And I'm it sounds like I'm being glib, but I'm not.
47:09
When I hear a song like Down the Hall I just don't know how you're even able to um translate that into something that we get in our life as a it's a gift for us.
47:25
And I'm not as much of a songwriter, so that was really a a gift for me to read that.
47:30
that story into something that's This is the thing.
47:32
You land so hard on this record because you've got all these great writers that you're doing what you've been doing lovingly bring these songs to life, but you show up and you're like, all right, just like that, Down the Hall, blow. And I'm done.
47:46
And it's like these three songs are so crazy and Down the Hall to me is just again, it's another incredibly emotional story about redemption. Yes.
47:57
And that must be what I had what what moved me so much and I didn't even think about whether I was going to immediately knew I was going to write a song about it.
48:05
You know, it's almost like I didn't I wasn't thinking in 2018 like, oh, what am I going to write about?
48:09
Cuz I wasn't going to make the record till 2020. Yeah.
48:12
And I said, oh, I got lots of time, you know?
48:14
But you know, I'm not going to do I'm not going to do something from a story.
48:16
something from a story. It's like when people say I'm going to get another dog but I'm just I don't I'll just wait until one shows up and then you hear that that you know, they went to an or waiting for a friend on a corner and
48:29
there was happened to be an adoption going on a pet adoption and this one guy escaped and jumped in the guy's lap and that was So I feel like that song this this Down the Hall for me was another story that I in the real world that would just move me so much. It was just not even a question for a
48:46
It was just not even a question for a second that I wasn't going to write a song about it.
48:50
But you know, I read this article in the New York Times magazine about a prison hospice program and I had no idea that this even existed and I went just the idea that prisoners would volunteer to be with people at the end of their lives.
49:04
And then I when you get into the reading their interview and see the photographs of the beautiful photo essay that went with the article.
49:10
There's a moment in the song where you talk about the fear of another inmate, Tyrone in your song, of another inmate, which of course, you know, much has been written and documented both factually and artistically about the hierarchy of prison life. Yeah.
49:23
And you capture that moment of someone's tormentor becoming somebody's patient. Mhm.
49:29
Because it's all even at the end of your life. Right.
49:34
You know, but for these guys to be so bent up and embitered and traumatized and depressed about having to be in there then feel bad about whatever they did or maybe they're not even guilty.
49:46
And they don't gain anything by being volunteering.
49:48
They just saw the need and the transformation inside to say maybe I could be of help.
49:56
You know, not for any like lessen my sentence or give me some money to send to my family just because they don't have anybody there at the end of their life.
50:05
And then all of a sudden they're on the ward and they're you know, washing somebody's feet, shaving their head and waiting outside the bathroom stall.
50:14
What that takes for someone to get into prison and then have that transformation.
50:18
It was just such a moving story to me that I I was just it was like just like that and down the hall where like not anointed but I felt like I was called to write their story.
50:30
And once again just shows this side that you have of finding empathy in other people's stories, you know, whether it's all at once, what a story, you know, even Nick of Time, you know, the song that opens that album which talks about this need for some a fresh perspective on love but you tell it so lovingly.
50:48
It's like you're able to write through these characters in a way that is very specific.
50:51
Like you feel what they're going through.
50:55
Is it safe to say that you do?
50:58
I do and and even if I'm singing Angel from Montgomery, I am that woman.
51:03
You know, I think it's from partly from watching my dad in those beautiful iconic golden era musicals and how much I believed him turning into singing those stories.
51:14
It was just impacted me so much and that I I think it just became like osmosis.
51:19
And you know, Frank Sinatra's, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald.
51:25
but with but with Frank Sinatra like I have a lot of Frank Sinatra records and I'll put them on always around the same time, right?
51:32
Either in the morning or in the evenings.
51:33
Never Frank Sinatra in the afternoon thing for me.
51:35
It's just it's different with someone like Frank for me because sometimes I feel like he was given such a gift that um the doors the doors are open for him which he was But he was a good actor, too.
51:52
So maybe he was a great So maybe when you're in that I mean, Tony Bennett, one of those great singers, they really to me they're great and they impact you because they believe it when they're singing it.
52:03
The people that I love music musically believe every word that they write and that they sing and the great ones, Rodney Crowell and Randy Newman and Paul Simon. I mean, Jackson Browne. Oh my gosh. So handsome. Oh, yeah.
52:21
For someone who's is able to attach themselves with empathy to these situations and translate them so beautifully.
52:27
You can you've always done that through this kind of humanitarian lens.
52:36
I I feel like you almost taught that before you self-taught music.
52:39
Like if I'm going to do this, it's got to ladder up to something bigger than me.
52:44
Thank you for saying it like that. I'm going to use that.
52:47
I guess my question at this point is is having spent a life for the most part in servitude of the things that you care about, what is a conclusion, not the conclusion but a conclusion that you come to about to go out on the road.
53:01
I know the environment's going with you.
53:05
Climate's going with you.
53:07
Human rights are going with you.
53:07
These are your touring partners.
53:08
What is a a conclusion that you come to through this this work throughout your life?
53:14
To wake up and be in service of a higher purpose is really what motivates me when I want to be discouraged and stay stay numb or just get involved with one of local easy personal pursuits.
53:32
I feel I was given this gift for a reason and I was given a position of raising attention and supporting the people that sacrifice so much for no money and you know, that are all these activist grassroots groups and whether it's fighting a toxic dump or you know, Native American tribes trying to get a uranium mine off their land and not organize the rest of the community to not take buy out, you know, that kind of thing.
54:03
Those are my heroes and as you were saying earlier, it's a journey, you know, there's no end result.
54:07
There's never been a decade where everything was better.
54:11
I mean, the Central American war was in the '80s.
54:13
Nuclear power is still facing endless embitered plants that are dangerous and terrorist targets and waste disposal.
54:22
So the safe energy fight, the justice fight, the equal rights fight, the environment, that it act access to health care and food, you know, the inequities in our society are just too huge for me not to pay attention.
54:38
But it takes so much altitude to be able to apply yourself to something that you really won't see the ultimate positive change in your lifetime.
54:49
I wouldn't see it in my lifetime because to your point, you are part of a stepping Yeah. stone.
54:54
But there's so many victories along the way.
54:57
I mean, there's so many stories of women making their own records and women leaving bad marriages and other women helping women get out of you know, a situation where they were squelched and they you know, I I'm focused I have to focus on the victories, you know, this redwood grove saved, this this species saved.
55:17
During COVID, you know, I found nature films and and all of the films from BBC especially in National Geographic were so uplifting for me.
55:27
So we are in terrible stress of if we don't act more finally, we're going to have climate just we're already inexorably past a tipping point.
55:40
But there's people's struggles on the way that are just putting themselves out.
55:44
I mean, why do those nurses do another shift when they can barely open their eyes? I've got it so easy.
55:48
All I have to do is sing and cheerlead people and get them to table at my concerts and you know, we we donate a dollar of every ticket and there's special I scalp my own tickets at the concert so people can donate for the charitable purposes of music education or the environment or justice or whatever.
56:08
It's a balance between the good news stories and not letting that big horrible rock turn around and go, oh, this is useless.
56:14
Why are we even bothering to do this?
56:16
That's when you go Little Kids Rock.
56:18
That's when you go Guacamole Fund.
56:19
That's when you go to stay active.
56:20
You have to keep in the solution or you're not going to be able to make it.
56:23
I literally would be too depressed if I wasn't being of service, you know, not to mention I get to rock, you know, and the in the service of doing something good.
56:34
You're in the service of rock. Yeah.
56:34
And it's going to be amazing in this tour.
56:38
You and Mavis Staples and Lucinda Williams is on some of us for the first time and my favorite other band besides the Stones and is NRBQ and they're going to be opening the shows for some of it.
56:49
And then Marc Cohn is doing the whole South and Florida with us.
56:51
So I can't wait to get out there.
56:54
And you know, I wrote a song about the pandemic that I can't wait to rock on at the end of the set, Living for the Ones Who Didn't Make It. Which I love. Thank you. that song, too. And you know what?
57:03
That to me is like closest thing I think to you kind of tracing back to your work with the Stones because you've put out songs that have that shuffle and that groove that the Stones lean into but that's got a real like the guitar playing on that for me at least quite a distinctive sort of Keith Richards nod.
57:20
Oh, you know, George Marinelli and I make no bones about the fact that we love that dual guitar thing that Keith and Ronnie have had for years.
57:28
So this is our third collaboration in three albums.
57:32
So George has been my guitar player since '93 and we just I live for those parts of this, you know, when he plays Need You Tonight or Burning Down the House or on these rockers that I put some original lyrics and put my own point of view onto tracks that he does every he plays like Prince, he plays everything and then sends them to me and I go, no choice.
57:51
I have to play that I have to write something to this cuz it's going on the record.
57:54
My last question before we say goodbye for now.
57:58
Um and I'm glad you brought that song up cuz it was going to be the one I wanted to talk about at the end. Oh.
58:02
Um you know, for the ones who are no longer here and who and who they that that song represents for the you know, for the people in tribute that this album is about, um how has it changed your perspective on the moment and what is still to come?
58:19
And on life itself having lived such a full life but having made such an essential very visceral record, I just wonder where you go next and how the last couple of years has changed that.
58:29
last couple of years has changed that. I haven't thought about anything farther than the tour but you know, I know that I'm never going to be complaining about anything if I can help it because being unable to tour and play live and and feel the security of supporting my musicians community, I hope that doesn't
58:50
happen again and if it doesn't, we'll still figure out a way to get through it but right now I'm really really heartsick about Ukraine and about the state of democracy and our election protection and access to voting, you know, I'm really threatened here in this country and in the world and then that you layer climate on it. So if I didn't have this job to do and
59:09
So if I didn't have this job to do and be able to have the joy of music and bring joy to people and find joy in other people's music that I, you know, I listen to Mavis and I listen to Toots and I listen to Jackson and people Bruce Hornsby and so many singer-songwriters that are still putting out some of the best music of their careers five or six decades in. Yeah.
59:30
I look at Tony Bennett and Mick and Keith and go, "Hey, man, I'm going to be 85 like Mavis is 83 and I hope I'm still going strong.
59:37
There's too much work to do and too much fun to have to retire.
59:40
I would be bored to death."
59:44
And therein lies the lesson for all of us.
59:46
We spend our whole lives trying to get to some kind of destination so that we can stop. But what is stopping?
59:52
What's the purpose in living unless we continue to do so?
59:54
Bonnie Raitt, an icon and an inspiration on every level.