A Conversation With Radney Foster
Mike Ragogna: Radney Foster! How're you doing?
Radney Foster: Hey Mike, how are you? It's great to hear your voice again.
MR: Yours too, sir. Let's first talk about your first solo album, Del Rio, Texas, from 1992. It really resonated when it was released, and it featured many hits and classic tracks. It was autobiographical, wasn't it?
RF: Absolutely. I just wrote what I knew and unfortunately, I was in a tumultuous marriage and I wrote about life. I thank the guys who were my mentors in addition to Bill Lloyd. Bill was a great mentor and partner. But, you know, I loved Guy Clark and Rodney Crowell. Those guys really wrote about where they were from and from life experiences. Even when they were making things up, you knew that they were throwing things in there that had to be real. I think one of the reasons why that was such a successful record, and I think one of the reasons it stood the test of time? I still have requests for those songs night after night because I wrote them from that perspective.
MR: Right, the personal material always resonates. Now, you are still a touring musician.
RF: I am.
MR: How often do you get out there?
RF: I still probably do about 75 gigs a year.
MR: Nice. Where mostly?
RF: I would say half are in Texas. The other half are in Seattle and London. There is travel time now and again.
MR: They do love their country music in Britain.
RF: They do indeed. I play over there about every 18 months. I go play the UK and the rest of Europe as well.
MR: Okay, we're celebrating your 20th Anniversary of Del Rio, Texas, with a kind of new take on the same material. Of course, they both feature songs such as "Easier Said Than Done," "Just Call Me," and "Nobody Wins." Radney, what is the most revealing song on this album?
RF: I think there are two. One is "Easier Said Than Done." It was a big hit for me. It is about breaking trust in a relationship and I had unfortunately done that. I think with the lyrics, at the time, I would have denied them, saying that I had made them up out of thin air. There was a great deal of personal experience in there. I remember having a journalist, after an interview, ask me, "What do you do to rebuild after you've obviously crushed this person?" I was like, "Wow, how did you know?" I'm in a different relationship now and I still feel the pain of that song. I can remember what it was like to write that song. I know that was very revealing of me.
The other one is really "Old Silver," which is written in the style of an Irish murder ballad, inspired by the death of my grandfather. He was a great raconteur, cowboy, and storyteller, and he could certainly keep kids around a campfire on top of a hill on a ranch entertained for hours with stories. I really wrote that from that perspective and created sort of the drama of a sidekick and a woman who's the lover of Old Silver, and the side kick has always been in love with her, too. I made a little western movie out of it. I was taking my cues from the stories of my grandfather and my love for Irish music.
MR: Okay, now, let's go to Del Rio, Texas, from 2012. It's many years later, this album's 20th anniversary. To me, this is like Radney Foster looking at his life the way it was back then, now visiting it from the perspective of your older self. Am I getting it right, is that what's going on with this album?
RF: Absolutely. One of the things I wanted to do is honor the 20th anniversary of that record. It was the biggest country record I ever made and, arguably, the best country record I ever made. Also, I had so much trouble...it was out of print for years. I had to fight to put it on iTunes. I heard that people would try to recreate lightening in a bottle and do their records and make some profit at least the same way they did them before. But they just laid there like a dead fish.
MR: Yeah, and that's something you're not doing here.
RF: There wasn't anything fresh about them. I started thinking about ways to make it fresh. One way was to make a live record and do sort of an unplugged, different themed record. My friend, Steve Fishell has the Music Producers Institute. He has bands and fans that come in and see people who actually record real records. I did it in Austin unplugged with bluegrass players in several different musical traditions, did it all live in the room with no headphones. You can't really replace anything because the fiddle parts are in the acoustic guitar parts, which are in my vocal parts because you are right there in one circle. So we had a live audience and an unplugged sort of thing. It really came together really well.
MR: More and more, there are stories of artists getting back to recording that way. For many, it can be a more inspired approach compared to layering and pitch-correcting. And this version of Del Rio, Texas, reads that much more personally because of that.
RF: One of the things that was in the forefront of our minds was that if we were going to revisit this, we really needed to deconstruct it down to its bones. My co-producer, Justin Tocket, and I spent a lot of time with just me and him and a guitar even before we got to Austin. I'd say, "Here's the original arrangement and here is what I have been doing live with the arrangement. Where do we go from here?" He really encouraged me. In the last 20 years, I've learned a lot of alternate tunings and I got a lot more bottom end on my voice. It didn't really hit until I was 40 years old. He made these lower keys. He would ask, "Why don't you try that in a lower tuning? Maybe you should slow that down so the lyrics can speak a little more." Those kinds of things. It was nice to have those ideas going into the studio. When you get there, you have these other musicians you can collaborate with where you go, "Wow, what are you doing!" That's cooler than anything I thought about before we went in.
MR: Of course, you were part of the country duo Foster & Lloyd with Bill Lloyd. Can you tell the story of how you went from being Foster & Lloyd to starting your solo career? I would guess like many, many bands, you guys just wanted to do your own creative projects at some point.
RF: Yeah, I think so. At the time, I had all these songs that didn't fit Foster and Lloyd because they were much more stone cold country. At the time, I thought I would just do a solo record, then go back to Foster & Lloyd. I didn't realize that it would be a 20 year hiatus in between. It ended up being a whole different career. As much as Bill and I were good lyricists and we just did a record after 20 years--you know, the Foster & Lloyd record that came out last year--I think a lot of it has been about building around a band's sound and writing lyrics along with that. With my first solo effort, one of the things that happened was that I went out doing shows for Mary Chapin Carpenter, just me and my guitar. There wasn't anyone there to play guitar solos or secondary parts so it made me dig deeper lyrically because it had to work with just me and my guitar, or it was not going to happen. That was one big change at the time and made media a little deeper. What I thought I had was a group of songs for a solo record, but it got even better because I went back and dug into the songs, writing in a manner and lyrical way that was different than Foster & Lloyd.
MR: I imagine you were very pleased at the time by your first hit, "Just Call Me Lonesome," which came out, well, 20 years ago.
RF: Yeah, absolutely. I have sung that song every night for the past 20 years. It was really me and my co-writer George Dukas; I love those Buck Owens records and those Ray Price records of the fifties and sixties. I was really trying to emulate those guys. It just took on a life of its own, which was really neat.
MR: You had five singles from that album, with "Nobody Wins" becoming a huge record for you. Any memories you can share?
RF: Yeah, it was my number one record as a solo artist. It was very gratifying. Again, born out of personal pain, it was one of those times where we slammed a lot of doors and slept in separate bedrooms with my wife. I was supposed to write with Ken Richie the next day and I sort of dragged because I got very little sleep. I was kind of down in the dumps. He asked if I was okay and I told him that we had a fight--this and that--and it was not the best of nights. I remember him saying that he had one of those two or three days ago. Nobody wins that stuff. I thought that day, "Okay, nobody wins, that's what we're writing today."
MR: And that can happen outside a personal marriage or relationship, it being a universal theme of when two people are so stubborn, they don't want to resolve things or they're just being pigheaded.
RF: Yeah! (laughs)
MR: Seriously, nobody wins.
RF: When people live in the same house and are fighting, usually there isn't a winner. (laughs)
MR: Or the same country, but that's another subject. (laughs) Radney, you've had many covers by recording artists. Can we talk about a few of them?
RF: Yeah, absolutely. Anytime besides my mom is listening in her living room, I'm happy about it. I have been very fortunate. There have been other artists who have put more zeros behind their record sales than I do, and they've covered my songs. Keith Urban had a couple hits, some being "Raining On Sunday" and "I'm In." I've been recorded by T. Graham Brown, Tanya Tucker, Guy Clark; Sara Evans had a hit with "Real Fun Place to Start," Collin Ray with "Anything Else." I've been lucky, all along my career. At different stages of it, someone else has picked something off one of my records or picked something I didn't put on a record and made a big hit out of it. It has fueled a lot of trips to schools and new shoes for kids, those kind of things over the years.
MR: And let's not forget your first hit with Bill Lloyd as a songwriter, "Since I Found You," with Sweethearts of the Rodeo.
RF: That's correct. It was the first time I heard myself on the radio. My wife and I, at the time, pulled the little Volkswagen over on the road and danced around the car the first time we heard it played on the radio.
MR: Sweet. And, of course, there's "Don't Go Out With Him" with Tanya Tucker.
RF: Uh-huh. "Don't Go Out With Him." In more recent times, like I said, Keith Urban, Sara Evans, Collin Raye. There are songs recorded by Kenny Chesney and Luke Bryan, Pam Tillis. I've been really fortunate in that respect.
MR: Looking back at that run from then until now, what do you feel is the biggest growth that's happened creatively for Radney Foster?
RF: Well, I think I've grown as a writer. I like to think that I'm not getting any worse. I'm getting better and I'm still in love with the aspect of storytelling. It is a neat way to make a living. I'm fortunate that I get to wear several different hats as a musician, and as a singer and a songwriter. I don't have to depend on just one of them to help me make my living; it doesn't get boring that way. As a writer, what's different for me now, is that I'm not terrified of whether or not the song is going to get finished, how it's going to turn out, who's going to do it. I've gotten to the point where I'm comfortable with just writing songs for the sake of the song. Also, I have changed a lot as a guitar play. I'm much better at 50 than I was at 25, and that's changed things about the way I write as well.
MR: Radney, I have to ask you my traditional question: What advice do you have for new artists?
RF: Work very, very hard. Realize that you're not selling perfection. You are not even creating perfection. You're selling an emotion or feeling and that the more emotion you can reel in and gather into a song, the more people are going to believe it; the more believable it is.
MR: That's beautiful, that's actually one of the best answers I have
gotten.
RF: Thanks, Mike.
MR: Yeah, yeah. (laughs) Radney, this was great, I hope it doesn't take another twenty years before we catch up again!
RF: Mike, it's great to hear your voice.
Tracks:
1. Just Call Me Lonesome
2. Don't Say Goodbye
3. Easier Said Than Done
4. A Fine Line
5. Me And John R.
6. Nobody Wins
7. Old Silver
8. Louisiana Blue
9. Closing Time
10. Hammer And Nails
11. Went For A Ride
Transcribed by Joe Stahl
A Conversation With Bill Lloyd
Mike Ragogna: Hi Bill, how are you?
Bill Lloyd: Hey Mike, how are you? I'm fine.
MR: Pretty good, how have you been? I guess we're playing a little bit of catch up.
BL: It's only been about 20 years.
MR: It's seems like only yesterday when wed eat at Fudruckers.
BL: Or one of the places we used to go hang out at and have lunch from MTM. We were all signed to MTM Music at the time. It was when Mary Tyler Moore moved to Nashville--the company did--and they signed country writers and pop writers. It felt like you could get on board.
MR: It was a great period, we were very blessed. MTM had Mac "Everlasting Love" Gaydon, we had your eventual musical partner, Rodney Foster. We had Beth Neilson Chapman, Judy Rodman, Holly Dunn, Fred Knoblock...
BL: Paul Overstreet.
MR: Yup, Paul Overstreet. It was a great run.
BL: It was a good little cool scene.
MR: But enough of that! Let's get into your new album Boy King Of Tokyo. The cover has a Japanese theme with its photo.
BL: The photograph's on the CD, I haven't pressed it into vinyl yet, which I might do eventually, because it looks like an album cover.
MR: Yeah.
BL: It's begging for an album cover. It has kind of a retro feel to it. The photos were taken by my mother, actually. I lived in Tokyo, Japan, for at least the first three and a half to four years of my life. My mom had been an army librarian and my dad was an officer's club manager. He got transferred to Tokyo to run the officer's club in Pershing Heights, the Pershing Heights officers club in occupied Toyko. It was 1956. The first few years of my life, I was living there.
MR: A tribute to the past or looking back?
BL: I don't know, it's kind of a middle-aged rumination, like we all do. All of us who were songwriters tend to take personal things. This is my fifth or sixth solo record in fifteen years or so.
MR: Taking personal stock.
BL: Yeah, personal stock. Yeah it's one of those records. Cheaper than therapy, I always say.
MR: You have a couple of instrumentals on Tokyo such as "Chet's Right Hand, Man."
BL: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you how that came about. I worked as a string instrument curator at the Country Music Hall of Fame for about three years, and I was in the archive down there. Behind my desk was about 20, 25 of Chet's guitars. There was this one Gretch prototype that I would always pull out to show guests who would come to the archives to see what was back there. I always wanted to have a song to play that was in that finger-picking style. I wrote the one that was on the CD there. It's sort of a hillbilly-jazz kind of thing. Another instrumental on there is called "Doc's Box," and that refers to Doc Watson.
MR: I'm looking at some of these other great titles...you've got "Buy On Credit."
BL: Yeah.
MR: Why, there's something we can all relate to.
BL: I'm kind of making fun of the way people just don't seem to care. Everybody gets a bailout these days. I think that's what it kind of comes down to.
MR: We talked about taking personal stock. When you look at the crazy amount of debt people are carrying, it's almost impossible to believe. So what other themes pop up on Tokyo?
BL: There are other songs on the album that are just odes to the music business. There's one called "Com Trol," which is about how the corporations control of all media. And there's a song called "Best Record Ever Made," which is a little love song to vinyl days.
MR: Let's talk about this duo called Foster & Lloyd. What's their origin story?
BL: We were a duo. He was Rodney Foster, I was Bill Llyod, and we had some hits on the RCA label back in the eighties, back in country radio, we were all sort of a young country movement, the same era as Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett, Rodney Crowell, The O'Kanes, The Desert Rose Band...if anyone remembers that stuff.
MR: Don't forget Sweethearts of the Rodeo.
BL: Yeah!
MR: A couple of songwriters named Bill Lloyd and Radney Foster had a big hit with them.
BL: That was kind of our beginning. They cut one of our songs and that led to us getting a record deal. They maybe had two singles before ours. And then Don Schlitz came along with the song "Midnight Girl, Sunset Town" and they did real well with that. It was all good.
MR: The era of country duos. You might remember, even I was part of a male duo.
BL: You were in The Almost Brothers.
MR: Yeah. And there was The Vega Brothers, they were on MCA, Jimmy Bowen's act.
BL: I liked The O'Kanes a lot. They were great. And of course, The Bellamy Brothers had been around for a long time. We were at RCA with The Judds and they sort of swept everything, pretty much dominated the duo category. I know Brooks & Dunn were sort of put together, actually, after all these duos had sort of moved out of the way, either split or lost their record deals.
MR: It was quite a glut.
BL: It was a glut, and then all of a sudden, the air cleared and I remember Tim Dubois actually told me, he kind of put Kix and Ronnie together just to make sure they got into that duo category cause it was wide open.
MR: If only some of these duos--ahem--hung in there just a little bit longer. That would be The Almost Brothers. (laughs) But it's true, they always tell you, "Just hang in there," or "Just keep doing it and doing it, and eventually, you'll have your time." But Foster & Lloyd had a good run, and some top ten hits along the way.
BL: We had about five that did top ten. Yeah, it was pretty good. It kind of came before the big huge bump in country. It kind of led to this platinum zone.
MR: That's right, country sold as well as pop.
BL: We predated that. Radney's first album as a solo artist got in on some of that. What I did in the country market...we put together a band with myself and Rusty Young from Poco and Pat Simmons of The Doobie Brothers and John Cowan from The New Grass Revival. We had a band called The Sky Kings. We were signed to both RCA and Warner Bros, and we made two different albums. It just wasn't working. It was six years of my life I put into that and it just wasn't, but we're all friends 'til this day.
MR: How did you have a simultaneous record contract?
BL: No, we were with RCA for about two years.
MR: And then moved on to Warner.
BL: Pat didn't go with us to Warner. It was just the three of us after.
MR: Interesting, because Patrick was on Warners with The Doobie Brothers.
BL: Yeah, and he was already in. They never make a Doobie's album without Pat. I don't see how they could, really. He went back to work with them. So I tried my hand at the country market. I feel now that I still like writing songs for the market.
MR: I remember you as a solo artist getting a lot of accolades for your solo album Feeling The Elephant, and on, actually. Critics love you, and your style of music was really happening at the time.
BL: It's sort of melodic pop. People call it "power pop," which immediately puts it into a very light place in terms of it lyrically. The stereotype of power pop is very inconsequential.
MR: Yeah, but on the other hand, it gave us some awesome acts including yourself, Matthew Sweet...
BL: ...Marshall Crenshaw. I would say that my stuff tends to fall in that area. But I'm hoping, songwriting wise, I try to put a little bit more into it.
MR: We were having a conversation prior to this interview about Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell being... Well, those are the two for me and you.
BL: Yeah, that was considered great songwriting. And, of course, you can't deny The Beatles. But still, when you're looking at songwriters, you know, people that elevated the form... Jimmy Webb was another one.
MR: Jimmy Webb, these days, it's interesting, he's conquered the world. He's the head of the Songwriters Hall Of Fame. He oversees that with some association with NYU. In their collaboration, they put together a really smart, sort of underground railroad for upcoming singer-songwriters. And this isn't just, of course, for the music, but for the lyrics having some sort of a depth.
BL: Yeah, that's what I kind of look for, but I also love catchiness and big beats and jangly guitars, and all that stuff. They don't have to be exclusive from each other. They can have good lyrics with all those same elements.
MR: Bill, when you're looking at the music scene right now, what do you see?
BL: I still see... I mean, I can listen to some Goldfrapp. On the whole, I'm still drawn towards the singer-songwriters, no matter how old or young they are. I am still drawn towards that. I mean, I love that MGMT single that was huge. That was great. I try and stay in touch even for an old guy.
MR: So, you have a kid. A 21-year-old. Many kids around that age were influenced by their parent's choices in classic rock.
BL: Yeah, well he knows all that stuff. It's funny, he's 21. He knows Beatles, Stones, Who, all kinds of stuff.
MR: How could he not with his dad being Bill Lloyd?
BL: (laughs) Hey, is this broadcast in Iowa, mostly?
MR: Other than the transcript being in The Huffington Post, yeah. But it also will be on the Internet in addition to it being broadcast locally.
BL: I love playing in Iowa. I've played there a bunch in the last few years with a thing that I do. I'm a music director for an organization here in Nashville called The First Amendment Center. It's a non-partisan, non-political thing. It's just a watchdog organization on the First Amendment.
MR: Nice, let's talk about that.
BL: It's for schools and press organizations as a reminder of how important free speech is and how music plays into all that. If you look into the history of recorded music, there's been censorship since the beginning, "Wake Up Little Suzie," having been banned in Boston for suggestiveness, you know?
MR: One of my favorite banned records is David Cassidy's "Get It Up For Love." That was ridiculous.
BL: Was it?
MR: Yeah, and in the UK as well.
BL: That I didn't know.
MR: But we're talking about sexual innuendo censorship as late as the seventies. Really, that was insane.
BL: Even recently, the "Louie Louie" stigma was still there from when people thought "Louie Louie" had lyrics, but it never did. There was a government investigation into "Louie Louie." Nobody bothered to find the original songwriter or listen to the original record, they only listened to The Kingsmen's version, which was very garbled. It was a seven-city investigation. Even recently, there was a marching band with no lyrics that got told not to do "Louie Louie." It was the alleged suggestiveness.
MR: All they'd have to do is go to the Paul Revere version, which was easier to understand.
BL: Yeah, yeah.
MR: Which was also a hit.
BL: Yeah. But anyway, those programs are real fun and myself and a lot people from Nashville and Ashley Cleveland, Joseph Wooten from The Wooten Brothers...he plays in The Steve Miller Band. Don Henley, Jason Wright and other songwriters all take part in this thing.
MR: Beautiful.
BL: It's an ongoing thing. We've been doing it for about 12 years now.
MR: Do you remember in the eighties hit "Money's Too Tight To Mention" by Simply Red?"
BL: Yeah.
MR: There were major radio stations that wouldn't play that because of its line, "Did the earth move for you, Nancy," at the end because it was a "let them eat cake" slam at Ron and Nancy Reagan.
BL: I had no idea. I have one sort of political song on the record called "The Fix Is In."
MR: Oh. Nice. What's it about?
BL: It's really about despondency over everything. Not even a partisan or one side or the other, just a throw up your hands, you know?
MR: I know. I believe people were expecting all these major changes and almost nothing happened. On the other hand, the previous years were a nightmare when it came to civil rights.
BL: Yeah, those years that went on before, a lot of civil liberties were gone from that period.
MR: Oh, yeah. Bill, can you go into some of the lyrics?
BL: Well, it starts off with, "What do you have cooking in that pretty little head? Some kind of notion you can make a stand. Way too deep, you're gonna end up dead. When the water starts rising, you'll want dry land. Better off sticking to the shallow end. Forget about it, now the fix is in." That's the first verse. It's written from a character's point of view, someone who's on the inside who's dismissing anyone who feels like they can make a difference.
MR: Rhetorical question, but that isn't really how we should be feeling, right?
BL: No, and in my heart, I don't feel that way. But there are times when I do and that's why you write a song. You let it loose that way.
MR: Bill, sir, you're the musician's musician.
BL: I don't know, but thank you.
MR: But to that point, aren't you also in a band that emulates records?
BL: I have a band here in Nashville called The Long Players. You can find out about us if you go to www.thelongplayers.com. A lot of people forget the LP stands for "long player," so that's where the name comes from and over the last eight years, we have done well over 58 albums from start to finish, playing the album live and in sequence, just as you would remember, and we get guest stars to sing the song. So the constant is the band. We get guest stars to be upfront, and if you go to our website, you'll see a lot of talented people, especially in the Nashville community, who are willing to come out and celebrate these records with us. It's all sort of shared memory and shared love of the same songs, a lot of the same records. It's a great way to revisit a record. You go out to a big room full of people who all grew up with the same record. They can sing along and they can see live musicians and singers and bring that record back to life again.
MR: And the players must not be too shabby.
BL: We have really good players in our band--Steve Allen, the other guitar player besides myself, was in a band called 20/20 out of LA. They were kind of a New Wave pop band. Our first bass player was Gary Talent from the E Street Band, but he went back on the road with that guy, Bruce Spring...Spring...
MR: Springfield!
BL: Bruce Springfield, yes! (laughs) So, Brad Jones, who's a great record producer, he's playing bass with us now. Steve Ebe is in a band called Human Radio; he's on drums. The keyboard player is John Dedrick who's toured with The Dixie Chicks, Michael McDonald, Patty Griffin, Alison Krauss, just all sorts of people. He's a great keyboard player. Sometimes when he's not around, there's a woman named Jen Gunderman who teaches and used to be in The Jayhawks. It's a good group of people we have as far as our core band, and then we get singers, whoever we can get in the Nashville community, which can be anyone from country stars to aging rock stars to people who are well-known here in Nashville. They may not be known somewhere else, but...
MR: ...uh, how about an ex-Almost Brother who visits Nashville once in a while?
BL: Well, there you go! We'll have to get you involved. Just the other night, for instance, we did Springsteen's Born In The USA album, we had Dan Baird from Georgia Satellite, we had Joe Blanton, the lead singer of Royal Court Of China. They were on A&M years ago. We had Don Johnson who has had country hits...great singer. I could go down the list, but if you go to our website you can see everything.
MR : What's the website?
MR: It's great you were able to get that domain name 'cause it seems like somebody would have grabbed that.
BL: I don't know, I don't know if anyone else had the band name. We do own the name, so.
MR: Speaking of performing full albums, why whoever could it be playing with Cheap Trick on their take on Sgt. Pepper?
BL: Oh, that's right. I got to be a sideman with Cheap Trick when they were doing Sgt. Pepper with an orchestra. We did it two years in a row at The Hollywood Bowl, which was mind-blowingly fun. The first year, we got to go out and record at Capital Studio. Geoff Emerick was behind the board the whole time, The Beatles' engineer on that record, so that was great fun.
MR: I hugged those Cheap Trick multi-tracks that were in the vault when I worked at the Capital Tower.
BL: Wow, I don't blame you. So anyway, we did two years in a row with that. We did this extended thing in Las Vegas. There's a DVD and a CD and all that stuff. If you look hard enough you can see me in the shadows over there.
MR: (laughs) So what other projects are coming up for you?
BL: Mainly songwriting, and I'm kind of back into the swing of pitching songs again. The people who administer my publishing just got bought out by another big company. Bug Music got bought by BMG Chrysalis, which is not the same BMG that bought out...which is now Sony. No, I mean, Universal.
MR: Gee, confusing? That particular paper trial gets tricky. I was going to say, BMG got bought out by Universal. The songs we wrote for MTM were bought by BMG, then Sony, now Universal.
BL: Yeah, it kind of went through a couple different changes there. Now there's a new BMG, which is Chrysalis, and they bought out the Bug catalog. If you hang around the music business long enough, your songs can dance around from catalog to catalog. So there are new people I'm working with over there.
MR: To get royalty statements from them.
BL: Yeah, exactly.
MR: Mr. Bill, what advice do you have for new artists?
BL: Do what you believe in, don't give up. Love it. Don't do it for the money. Do it for the love and try to be as unique as you can be.
MR: And that the advice you would give to the kids! Nice.
BL: Yeah. In today's economy, that's the only way to...everybody tends to make their own luck. Nobody's relying on a big corporate mother or father to come carry them and support them for years. It's very much a time where you make your own luck. The internet is really wonderful in terms of promotion, in terms of selling a small amount of records, so you're able to survive on that. In terms of the other parts of the music business that we grew up with, the internet has pretty much decimated that, and file-sharing has. But, you know, you move on.
MR: Bill, it's been great hanging with you here in Nashville after all these years.
BL: It's good to see you, Mike.
MR: It's really great. By the way, Radney says, "Hi."
BL: Oh good, because I need to talk with him.
MR: Are there any more Foster & Lloyd albums coming? Touring?
BL: Yeah, we were talking about doing another one. We made one last year for the first time in 20 years, or 21 years, actually. We went out and toured a little behind that so that was fun and, you know, it was a joyous experience being able to write together again and we found a cool groove so we enjoyed it. There's talk of us doing something down the line.
MR: This was great, I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Bill.
BL: Thank you, Mike.
Tracks:
1. Boy King Of Tokyo
2. Buy On Credit
3. Let It Slide
4. We Got The Moon
5. Com Trol
6. Home Jeeves
7. Doc's Box
8. Best Record Ever Made
9. Up In The Air
10. Fix Is In
11. Indubitably
12. Chet's Right Hand, Man
13. Where Nobody Cares At All
14. Mistakes Were Made
Transcribed by Joe Stahl
"DROWNING" WITH VAN GHOST
Van Ghost is a Chicago soul-rock band led by Michael Harrison Berg, and the Chicago Tribune said the group specializes in "an ultra-melodic take on epic '70s rock." Van Ghost, also features Phish/Trey Anastasio veteran Jennifer Hartswick (who also has performed with The Rolling Stones, Santana, Dave Matthews Band, Herbie Hancock, etc.). Take a listen to their HuffPost exclusive track, "Drowning"
And now, it's time for...you guessed it...UNSTOPPABLE DEATH MACHINES!
The self proclaimed "art punk rock-explosion" from Brooklyn via Queens consisting of brothers Michael and William Tucci have acquired a knack for raw, abrasive sonic bedlam on their new album We Come in Peace. Singing through homemade face microphones, UDM shows that sometimes, more can be done with less. A bass and drums duo, these brothers have toured endlessly over the last four years packing in venues and art spaces across the U.S., Canada and Mexico with a psychedelic hybrid of coarse punk and screeching noise rock, coated in a pop primer with catchy nooks and crannies. Listen to their whole album here.