Episode 004 BERNIE BARLOW: Great Songs Last When The Feelings Are Real

A bot got played too hard on Spotify and an album disappeared. That story alone tells you a lot about what it feels like to be a working musician right now, and it’s where our conversation with singer-songwriter Bernie Barlow gets real fast. Bernie joins us to share her personal “My Greatest Hits” mixtape: ten songs that didn’t just soundtrack her life, they shaped her ear, her voice, and her sense of what great songwriting actually is.

We move through picks that span eras and moods, from Radiohead’s emotional punch to Dusty Springfield’s once-in-a-generation pop voice, the timeless ache of Fleetwood Mac, Elvis as a first musical obsession, and “Nights in White Satin” as both a coming-of-age slow dance and a doorway into Bernie’s years touring with The Moody Blues. We also talk about why some songs work forever: honest performances, strong melodies, and production choices that don’t bury the feeling.

Then we zoom out to the modern music industry: streaming royalties, the pressure to churn out short-form videos, why local radio still matters, and why AI training on artists’ work raises serious questions about rights and ownership. We end with Bernie’s own song “Don’t Wake Me Up” and a look at her co-writing process, where melody leads and real life supplies the subject.

If you care about songwriting, touring, the reality of being an independent artist, or you just want a mixtape that actually means something, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a music-loving friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show.

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Transcript

New Album And Vocal Harmony Love

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome everyone to another episode of My Greatest Hits. This is uh Giovanni Blanco. And my guest today is the amazing singer-songwriter, Bernie Barlow.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Thanks for being here, Bernie.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Bernie's an accomplished singer-songwriter with an amazing career, and she's gracing us with her greatest hits. And uh thank you for being here, Bernie.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Yeah, no worries. It's fun. Pick ten songs for a mixtape, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Probably not my ten favorite songs because there aren't ten favorite songs.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

It's hard. It's hard.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

It's also maybe five hundred, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

At least at least a thousand. Uh but uh it's also kind of a thing where you can't really pick favorite songs. It's really more about particular songs that you you can remember that mark something in your life. That movie that define something in you. Sure. And uh before we begin, before we start with song number one, tell me about a little bit about what's going on right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

What's going on right now? Well, I'm just kind of chilling, getting over the flu.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Um But your latest album.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Um I have a record that I released uh towards the end of last year called uh Walking Around This Town. And uh it's released on an independent label in Los Angeles called Blue Elan. And I have done a lot of singing for Blue Ilan, uh background vocals for different artists because that's kind of my favorite thing to do, really, to sing backgrounds.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

And um, are you a harm harmony healer?

SPEAKER_02 1:40

I think it's uh my voice loves other voices. Yeah. My voice has always loved other voices. It makes my voice sound more tingly and special, yeah. And it makes the other voice that I'm singing with the same. And um so that's kind of my favorite thing to do, really. Uh but I do enjoy writing the occasional song. Um so yeah, I wrote a record for Kirk Passage, who is the owner of the label, who basically said, you know, Bernie, when are you gonna make another record? I put a record out in 2020. It was in the top 100 Americana albums of 2020. Nice. And I think five people heard it because it was COVID.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Yes, it was a lockdown period.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

And I could not promote it at all. And it was kind of a waste, really. It's such a shame. And then a bot played one of the songs a little too much on Spotify, so they pulled the whole album. And I that was I paid for that album. So this time, Kirk was like, for a long time, he kept sort of saying, Come on, you know, I know a guy that owns a label, meaning himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh, it's so much work. But um, you know, I went for it because let's face it, we're all addicted to music. That's why we keep doing it.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Yes, we are.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

And so I made that, and it's called Walking Around This Town, and one of the songs on that album is uh a finalist in the international songwriting competition right now. I may win the blues category.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Fingers crossed. So it might not have been a waste after all.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

No, it's all good. I mean, listen, I had like ten of the most amazing musicians in a room at the same time, and somebody else paid for it, and we tracked my record in five days.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

I added vocals. Dave, my producer, Dave Darling, he might have done some overdubs up in Portland at home. And we had oh, my one of my really good musical friends and um such a talent. My friend Philip Sace played guitar on two of the songs, and he's probably one of the greatest blues rock guitar players on the planet right now. So I was very lucky to get him, and and I was just I was a little overwhelmed that it came out so well, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

I believe that it's it's gonna find its place. I think it will. There's some good songs on there. There's no such thing as old music.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

These days, also you put a record out and you just never know when something's gonna pop, you know, something ends up on a TV show five years after you've released the album and then all of a sudden it goes viral on TikTok. You just never know what can happen with music these days. Never know.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

I feel like this is this if it's good, it's gonna be good forever.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

You know what I mean? And it's like it's it's your the songs that I have heard and the songs you've played, I've heard probably half the songs or more on that. Live live.

SPEAKER_03 4:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

And uh you're so amazing live. You're such a great singer.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Such a natural singer. And then on on record, it's just even ridiculous. Like you just uh your voice evokes so many different things for me. Like, um, like I said, you sit between that sort of like uh the classic 70s raspiness of like Kim Carnes and and and uh Bonnie Tyler, but with a more uh richer, rounder sound, which is like nice and um especially on my bottom end.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Yeah, I think uh I think people hire me for my tone.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Yeah, no, I guess it's it's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

It's nice and warm.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Yeah, like honey. Um why don't we start with your greatest hits?

SPEAKER_02 5:35

My song selection, you know, the greatest hits kind of throws me because he did tell me think of 10 songs that you love today. Yeah. And I was like, okay, I can I can go with that. I can do that.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Because it changes.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

It changes.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

Yeah, it does change. And and also the songs are connected to things that happen in your life or times of your life, you know. So I I kind of went back to the to the first 30 years of my life. We could do the next 20 years on the next podcast.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

We can do like one year at a time if you want.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

It's a radio show now.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

It's daily. Tune back next to this next week where we do we cover 1987. Um No, let's go with number one. Uh Fake

Radiohead And The Power Of Live

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Plastic Trees by Radiohead. Uh uh quite a gem. Um, what does this song mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Well, you know, I just thought it was just it was rock and it was clever and it was artistic. That band are so brilliant. And so there's things that speak to me musically in that song, and and I I drove to San Jose with my now husband. It was like a musical trip that we went on with another couple, and we saw Radiohead at San Jose, and then they were mind-blowing live. So that song, it's not their favorite song. But I I understand they've started playing it again lately because they've sort of come around to the fact that it's for the fans.

SPEAKER_04 7:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

Um, you know, I I try to not be a selfish artist. I try to accommodate the people that are actually paying my mortgage, you know.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Yeah, I mean it's it's a it's a weird thing you see sometimes with artists where they feel like they they they have stigmas or or trauma over songs that are super popular.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Yeah, and I relate to that too. You never really know why somebody likes a song or doesn't like a song. And uh I I was asked to record a song by my label, and I was like, yeah, no, I don't want to do that one because I know what that's about, and I was in that band for a long time, and no, it's doing a different one.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yeah, no, I mean it you can you have these personal things attached to the songs and the experiences. I just find that in particular with Radiohead, I love the guitar player. Oh yeah, Johnny. Uh yeah, no, I I just think that they they underestimate the sort of quality of their pop material. It's so deep. Those first few records, it's like they were writing songs that were, you know, almost could have been songs in the 70s, like where structure-wise, us as songwriters were familiar with the sort of, you know, the patterns. But then to add the quality of that guitar work, the vocals.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

It's just all great. It's such a a deep level of uh musicianship and songwriting and production. I don't know who produced those records for them, but uh I don't know either. I don't know who produced that song, but it's great. It was one of my favorites from my youth.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Yeah. I remember reading that uh that he was so emotionally uh uh just spent that he was crying after he the did the After he sang it?

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Well that that's what it is, really. I I am a true believer that if somebody is feeling something when they perform it, uh people respond.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Also that he mentioned he mentioned that he just trying to sound he was trying to sound like Jeff Buckley in that song. And he's just like he was listening to a lot of Jeff Buckley, and he's like, I was just trying to do more falsetto, more whatever. And it's funny how that just kind of became a thing for him, and he took it someplace else.

SPEAKER_03 9:31

It's beautiful.

Dusty Springfield And Classic Songcraft

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Number two on this is my greatest hitch for Bernie Barlow, is The Look of Love by Dusty Springfield.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

Dusty. Dusty, I think, is the greatest singer ever, greatest pop voice. What a what a vocalist. And she had some fantastic songwriters as so you know, I love Baccharak David. I had the pleasure of singing for Hal David once.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Oh, you're kidding, wow.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

And he told me and I was like crying in the studio. I was on my period that day. And I was super young, and uh he was like, No, I think she might be one of the best pop singers in LA right now. And I was like, I'll take it. I'll take it. Anything to stop me crying. Yeah, no, no, she's great. What do you mean? I'm franny. So, yes, I sang a song that he wrote with a lady called Franny Goldie and uh Nikki Holland, uh, English song, right? Nikki Holland, yeah. You know her?

SPEAKER_04 10:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

So she and Franny got Hal. They started this song, they were like, this is like a Baccarack David song, and they were like, Oh, we should call Hal David, maybe he'll write it with us. And they were so thrilled that he agreed. And then it ended up being cut by Celine Dion.

unknown 10:48

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

It's a song called Halfway to Heaven. If the listeners want to go check it out. And uh anyway, back to Dusty. Yeah. Dusty in Memphis, greatest record ever.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Oh, jeez, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

I mean, that's really top five albums for me.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

So many good songs on it.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

It's just a great time in music.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

And that song really, I mean, it's I picked that one because it's some of my greatest writers and one of my greatest singers. And and it moved me when I was young. That whole era of music.

SPEAKER_04 11:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

My mom had an album, a double album of um a movie called Lost Horizon, which was Burt Backrack and how David wrote all the songs and all the score, and The World is a circle that never begins. Anyway, I love movies. I think movies are the greatest art form. They have every art form combined into one art form, and that was just a great movie. And I was a little kid with a double album, and it was a turntable, and I had Peter.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Who's in that movie?

SPEAKER_02 12:00

Um Peter Finch, I think.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Peter Finch, wow.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

Uh I can't remember all their names. I can see their faces. Olivia somebody? Hussey? Olivia Hussey.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Olivia Hussey.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Pulled that one out of my butt. And uh a bunch of a big cast, a big cast, and they they end up in the Himalayas in this with these monks that never age in this like magical land that that you can't get to unless you crash your plane there by accident. It was great. Anyway, it touched me and it stayed with me. And uh so yeah, I love Baccharack David writing just because that movie made such an impression on me when I was probably five.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Crazy. Yeah, crazy.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Yeah. Dusty though. Dusty. I I'm told that Dusty would punch vowel sounds.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Give me an example.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

So, like back in the day, you know, you'd have an engineer hitting the buttons in and out.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Like you syllables.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

She would just punch syllables. That guy had to be a good engineer.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Back in the day, especially. No, no cut and pace.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

Yeah, you like to like think of the timing and the music and like literally do it.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

The speed of the tape, like you just kind of ride with the tape. It's like it's like jumping on a moving train.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Yeah, but what a singer.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Oh my gosh. Yeah, ridiculous. She's great. Now we're gonna jump into number three.

Fleetwood Mac And Timeless Emotion

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Uh, number three. I also like to say, like to split these, like uh I I like to think of them as side A and side B. Okay. So third song on side A or songs. This is the first on on My Greatest Hits, where someone actually picked two songs for one choice, and and I get why I couldn't pick. So when when picking Poletewood Mac, um, especially with these two amazing singer or songwriters in the band, I mean several, but yeah, talking about Christine McBee and Stevie Nicks. You had to choose one of each.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

I I went for Songbird and Landslide. And really, there are more. I mean, I could have just done the whole of rumors. Yeah. I could only pick so many songs. It was the 50th anniversary of rumors this week.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

It's crazy. Yeah. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

And my I have older sip siblings. When I was little, you know, single mom with four kids, and they're older than me. And so they'd sometimes be looking after me, and I was exposed to their music. And they're 10, 11, 12 years older than me. So I had Mothertown, and I had uh, you know, Fleetwood Mac, which not too many, you know, six-year-olds were listening to.

SPEAKER_04 14:55

No. No.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

But I was in the corner at parties with headphones on while they were getting drunk. That was them looking after me.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Here's a lollipop with these headphones on.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Yeah, and I just being in heaven. You know, I've got music. I don't need anything else.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

And it just sounded so good. It sounded so good. I can imagine. Um let's talk a little bit about Songbird.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

Well, Christine. Greatest voice, greatest songwriter in that band, I think.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

But they're all brilliant in that band. They're all brilliant in that band. That's why they were so good. But she's the only one that had a hit before she was in Fleetwood Mac. She had a number one song in England and like a bluesy Americana kind of a song.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

No, and I mean I just also feel like I'm I'm a sucker for um the classic, sort of like if you can write a song that's kind of like sounds almost like straightforward, but the emotion kind of takes it elsewhere. I mean, as far as, you know, Lindsay had his style, Stevie had her style, but she was solid in her songwriting. Like, you know, like her songs are melodies.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Because then she'd give it Chris uh Stevie would often give the songs to Stevie. I mean, to Lindsay. God, all these bloody names. Uh Stevie would give her songs to Lindsay to arrange and produce.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Because she trusted him. And um I just think that combination of all those musicians in that band just took everything to a whole other level. But Christine's voice just slays me. It just slays me. It's like quintessential 70s pop sound.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

And she wrote the song during the rumor sessions just to just because there was so much tumultuous energy going on, so much craziness, and she was just like, I need to write a song to bring us together.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Right? I heard uh so they they recorded at the record plant in Saucelita, that album, and they were there for a year. And they didn't socialize outside of work. They would talk to each other at work in the studio. Wow. And I read the other day that Stevie found a room that nobody else knew about at the facility, and she would go and hide in there, and she went in there, and I I forget which song she wrote. She wrote it in like 10 minutes in there. I think Dreams.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Oh, wow, really? That's on rumors, right? That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Yeah, so uh she wrote it really fast. And in the little cubbyhole that she found. So, hey, you know, whatever works.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Whatever sometimes songs come out really quick. Milli Million Miles an hour, and my song that's in the songwriting competition. Dave and I wrote that in like 10-15 minutes. And it he was teasing me because I was so amped. I was I was on a diet and I was losing weight like crazy, and it I was burning like the speedy fat.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

And I'm already kind of speedy, so poor Dave. And he was like, You're going a million miles an hour.

SPEAKER_03 18:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

I was like, that's what I do. I mean, it was just called the response, so easy. And we just wrote it. Boom. And he was like, go away and write first lyrics.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Okay. It writes itself. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

I kind of did that one.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

That's it. I love it when that happens. Um and then Landslide.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

It just moves me when I sing it. I sing it with my friends in Deadwood Jones and party band that I sometimes hang out in. And uh, you know, Joan.

SPEAKER_04 18:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

And um Yeah, it's just such a great song. I just they're they're perfect songs on that album.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

They're just perfect songs. And I said to Dave when we did Redeemed in 2020 and when we did this one, I was like, I want to make records that people put on in ten years and they don't sound dated.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Yeah. Or or if they sound dated, they sound the where the the date is is a date that's that's uh uh that doesn't have a place in time. Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

It's just timeless.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

It's that's a better way to say it.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Yeah. I mean I feel like sometimes production can get in the way, you know, and and and certain stylistic choices. We're talking about modern music earlier today. And um you know, the trends of the time could could kind of uh overtake the song, you know, or and also pull away from the original intent.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Well, yeah. I mean, there's some uh uh historically, you know, music has its like decades, doesn't it? Where a style uh becomes popular and then everybody's doing it. Like like in the the 60s.

SPEAKER_04 19:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

You know, or like the Supremes era of Motown. There were loads of those bands with that sound that was coming out. Only certain songs stay with us. Exactly. And they made a lot of music.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

There was a lot of music.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

There was a lot of songs that you know nobody remembers. So the fact that I remembered some means they were probably okay.

SPEAKER_04 20:19

I have a terrible memory.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

Yeah. But Landslide, I just love the melody. Yeah. So great. And it's so s it just it like you say, about when you sing and you feel the sadness and the emotion. And I remember being a young singer in LA singing for songwriters and producers, and one particular songwriter that I knew that was very successful. He was like, you just gotta feel it when you sing it. He would he would be a movie director when he was uh directing me to sing.

SPEAKER_04 20:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

And it really helped with you know what emotion is going on that line and how to deliver it. You know, it just it can be very nuanced.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

It can, it can, unless unless you're punching in syllabus.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

And you know, I that's that was my that was my school. I I I got in my twenties, I got in with a bunch of very successful songwriters in LA.

Studio Lessons From Music Legends

SPEAKER_02 21:20

And also, Wilson Phillips had a big hit. And one of those songs I demoed uh on their first album. So that that next year after that album came out, I was working every week right on on different songs for songwriters that were all pitching to them because there was still that industry then.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

They needed they needed to it's not just the song, they need the artists to hear what it can sound like.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

Well, and the the people at the record companies they they don't have imagination.

SPEAKER_04 21:50

No.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

Some some are song people. Um the guy that helped me get my record deal in my twenties, I was in a band with another guy, Rich. And we had a band called Garden of Joy, and it was kind of like a rock set.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

Yeah, it was like a rock set. A duo. But we had a great band that played with us. And I forget why I'm mentioning this now. Gosh.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Songwriters and dealing with labels, and sometimes they can't see or they don't have the vision, or sometimes it they can.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

I lost my point. I lost the plot then. The guy that helped us get the deal, we got a deal with uh SBK on the East Coast.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

Which then became EMI. And his name was Brooks Arthur, and he was in the Brill Building recording people. Oh wow. Yeah, he's a kind of a a big deal in the music business over many, many years. And uh he ended up becoming Adam Sandler's music supervisor, like after that record that we had, he went and did a comedy album. He produced a comedy album for Adam. But Brooks was a song guy. He got it because he was uh he had an imagination. He he produced and recorded Tie Yellow Ribbon. You know, he he's kind of a legend in the industry. And at that time when he was telling me that my voice was special and that I reminded him of some of the women that he had recorded in the 60s in the Brill Building. Um I mean that I didn't really understand what that meant when he was saying it to me because I was young and stupid, I didn't know. So he passed away uh last year, the year before.

SPEAKER_04 23:33

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

Yes. But he was kind of a legend. And uh you know, there's a couple people that really helped me. Him being one, he took me to a label and we got a deal and it made a difference in my musical life.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

So it's funny how these people kind of come into your life and they just uh they're they're guiding lights and they're and you never know who those people are gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

They're like the first guy that I sang for was this guy, Nat Kippner.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

And he wrote, Too much, too little, too late to ever try again.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

Anyway, so um who's um I'll tell you in a minute, it will come to me.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Uh too many names, too little brain cells. Um too much, too little.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

Too much, too little, too late.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Now he was a duo, it was a duo, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 24:28

No, no, it's a Johnny Mathis.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Oh, that's right, that's right. But he sang it with somebody.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Well, he did do a song with Denise Williams. Did he do that?

SPEAKER_01 24:35

I think it was maybe that was it. I don't think so. I feel like that was a duo.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

I don't think so. But that's uh that's our brains are tired. No, no, it's not. Like he was the first person to put me in a recording studio.

SPEAKER_04 24:49

Crazy.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

So that was kind of fun. And he had this great ability to find amazing talent that he couldn't quite get across the finish line. Like he took Olivia and John to England from Australia. He took the Bee Gees to us to England from Australia.

SPEAKER_04 25:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

And they remember him. And um, his son ended up writing Let's Get Physical for Olivia. And when I went to his funeral, uh, there was a message from uh Barry Gibb thanking him, and he sent a letter to the family and they read it at the funeral, and it was beautiful. He was like, Nat was the spark in the dark in the corner of the room. Nice. He was just forever an optimist. He had some bad luck too. Like he bought an island in Australia and then he sold it to an oil company who drilled on it and found oil. He owned the rights to the cabbage patch doll for a long time. Yeah, he had some bad luck. But he was just always on on the edge of something huge.

SPEAKER_04 25:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

And uh and he he raised an amazingly successful songwriter, Steve.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

That's great. That's great. But also, you know, he found you.

SPEAKER_02 26:08

And he took me in the studio and he uh, along with all those songwriters, they really taught me how to use a studio, how to sing, how to remember melody quickly, how to record quickly. Like I didn't double straight away back in those days. Now I'm irritated if an engineer doesn't have five tracks ready for me to go.

SPEAKER_04 26:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Because I already know what I'm gonna do, and they're not ready for me, and I'm gonna do it in my first pass, pretty much. So but that's just a lot of training.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Yeah, experience.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Yeah, just a lot of listening to yourself. I'm certainly over myself at this point.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

We are talking about your greatest hits. Yes. Let's move, let's move to number four.

Elvis And Learning About Grief

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Jailhouse Rock, Elvis Presley.

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Well, much like Lost Horizon, I had the album. From the mum had the album, and I used to see Elvis movies, which I think were the original music videos, uh on TV. I'd like to come home from school and I'd have the double album with the scene of them doing the big dance number and the Hollywood Squares vibe, you know. And um, wow, it's just great. I Elvis was, I think Elvis taught me to sing.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

I feel the same way.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

He he was probably my favorite first artist. He really was. I loved him. My family had to hide from me a little kid that he had passed away.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Yeah, I I've I've recounted that story for myself recently that it was the first time that I ever felt sorrow, like felt the the pain of grief because I didn't and for especially for someone that I didn't even know.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

I know. I was like that with Princess Diana. I was waiting tables and I heard it at Marmalade in Sherman Oaks.

SPEAKER_04 28:05

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

And she died that night, and I could not stop crying for like half an hour. It was awful.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

And I was like, why am I crying? I didn't even know her.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:17

I didn't understand that about myself.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

These people they touch your life.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

They do, they touch us.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

You don't realize how much uh how much they've given you. You know, and and to to to it's such a funny feeling because what they've given you you still have.

SPEAKER_04 28:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

So when they leave, it's not like you've lost anything. But you feel a sort of uh sadness because you know I don't know. I think I think of Robin Williams and stuff when Robin Williams passed, like I had a semi-based. Prince. Prince. I cried. David Bowie and crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

Yeah. But uh I want to say also Jailhouse Rock I wrote down because I remembered that movie and how impressionable it was on me, but I also was right there with G.I. Blues.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Oh, nice. Yeah, both those movies.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Yeah. There are probably two of his better movies as well, too.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Yeah, such a natural singer. Have you ever been to Sun Studios?

SPEAKER_02 29:17

I've been to Graceland.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

I went to Graceland with Joan on tour. Yeah, we were on tour in a band, and we all went in. It was pretty cool. Yeah. And then I also sang on a record for Harry Shearer. Yeah. And he wrote a song called uh I'm All Backed Up, and it's about, you know, Elvis having issues and dying. I think he died on the toilet, maybe. That's what they say. So I I think that was the joke in the song. And uh yeah, you should check that one out.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Dig. Yeah. Dig for Harry Shears, I'm all backed up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:55

Um so yeah, Jailhouse Rock and G.I. Blues and just Elvis in general. Beautiful. He was so beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

So another person that's just such a natural And kind of little.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

He was a little guy.

unknown 30:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

I went when I was on tour with the Moody Blues, I went to um the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And um they weren't in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at that time, they are now. Uh, but uh they had a Prince outfit, they also had a Bruce Springsteen outfit and an Elvis outfit. And all of those guys are like five-five.

SPEAKER_01 30:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

All of them. And I was just like, what? No wonder Tom Cruise is so famous.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

They all had a lot to prove.

SPEAKER_02 30:45

They uh had a little guy complex, but uh yeah, Elvis show was sexy. He was like sex on legs, that guy.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

So you mentioned uh being on tour and going to the rock and roll um Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame with uh while you were on tour with the Moody Blues.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Yeah.

Touring With The Moody Blues

SPEAKER_01 31:04

And your number five song is Nights and White Satin.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

Never reach Al, I've played that song a lot. And I think I'm gonna actually record that song.

SPEAKER_03 31:18

You should.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

I think I'm going to uh I have a group of friends that I've played it with a bunch of times, and they're all like these world-class musicians. So I I feel I'm very lucky to know them, first of all. And uh I think I'm gonna record it with them because we do sort of a rock blues version of it.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

And it's kind of badass. It's kind of badass. And um, you know, I've sung that song a lot with the guys. I toured with them through the 2000s.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

How did that come about?

SPEAKER_02 31:51

Well, I was one of those angels that I was talking about earlier uh when I had a record deal. Um well, actually, the first guy, Nat, that recorded me, he was friends with a guy called Robbie Robert Robinson, who is Frankie Valley's musical director forever, still to this day. Wow. That was my first live gig. I did a gig with Frankie Valley in LA. Some sort of benefit thing, I don't know. But uh I met a guy that night called Robert Norman, and he was Frankie's agent. And he uh Robbie Robinson Rob Robinson was trying to hook me up on a date with Robert. But Robert and I did not connect romantically. We did become fast friends.

SPEAKER_03 32:39

Good.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

And skip years later, uh he is the agent for the Moody Blues and a lot of people, Fogerty, Dinah Ross, he's he's a big deal. And um he and his wife, his wife check this out. So Robert was my fan when I had a record deal. He would bring his girlfriend to um come to our showcases, and she was a fan of my voice. Skip years later, they're married, and they're in Monaco having lunch with Justin Hayward from the Moody Blues, and he's like, Yeah, you know, we we need to change some things up with the singers in the band. They said they didn't want to pay for the playing tickets to America anymore. So they wanted to find a couple girls in America. Or they found they one girl. They were gonna replace two with me and have me play a little bit of keyboards, a lot of tambourine, some like one note dun dun dun dun stuff, because I'm not really a keyboard player, a few chords here and there, and um and singing. So Robert's wife kicked him under the table at lunch and said, What about Bernie? And Robert went, Oh yeah, I know this girl, Bernie Burlow, and she's English, and uh she's a great singer, she might be really good for you guys. And he gave them a few choices, but I think he kept steering them towards me. So I ended up having that gig from like I think they called me in 2000, and I did my last gig with them 2009. Very pregnant. Six months pregnant, on stage Orange County Fair. I was like trying to I was trying to lower the average age of the band members. So yeah That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

That was kind of fun.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

But yeah, Knights and White Saturn. Uh before I had that gig, I mean I already knew their hits because they were on the radio when I was a kid in England.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

And I'm a big fan of their 80s stuff.

SPEAKER_02 34:54

Oh, you like the 80s stuff?

SPEAKER_01 34:56

I really love the 80s stuff. Like it's just it was just stuff that I remember.

SPEAKER_02 35:01

Which 80s stuff?

SPEAKER_01 35:02

I feel like the umce upon a Tony.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

Oh yeah, I did a dan I did that.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

I did that for uh for Kirk.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

I recorded it for him. Wildest Dreams.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

The two of them are in a mashup. Uh there's Wildest Dreams and I know you're out there somewhere.

unknown 35:22

Oh, I love this.

SPEAKER_02 35:23

Wildest Dreams is a great song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know you're out there somewhere. It's it's a nice song.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

I really like it.

SPEAKER_02 35:29

I just I'm Wildest Dreams, I think, is is mus the the vocals are really clever. I don't even think they know quite what they did in the studio on that.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

Uh but it's a great recording of that song, and they did a good job.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

It was just I got Justin's a good songwriter. Yeah, underrated guitar player. Like his voice is like it's just like in a certain velvet velvet velvety place. Yes. You know.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

But I just love playing uh playing in Santa Barbara tomorrow, maybe. What? Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Let's give him a call.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

Um I was very happy that I John Lodge was the bass player, and they both they were uh, you know, they all parted ways and did did their own thing. And John and Justin were always sort of the leaders of the band. And um I was very glad that I went and saw John. Like I saw him in Thousand Oaks, like maybe two years ago, and then he died about a year ago, maybe six months ago.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Not that long ago.

SPEAKER_02 36:33

Um so I was glad that I made the effort and went and saw him, said hello. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 36:40

He put on a good show too.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

I believe it. I believe it. What's your favorite memory? Do you have like a specific night that stands out being on tour with those guys?

SPEAKER_02 36:53

Well, we had a lot of great things. I did a lot of great gigs with them, like Radio City. We played there a bunch. The Albert Hall in England, my family came. You know, that was kind of special. Um I remember my auntie came and she was kind of a ball buster, and uh, she walked up to Justin after the show and said, That's my niece, sign my thing. And he was like, Well, I wasn't about to say no to that one. I was like, sorry. Um but no uh a particular gig. Probably my first gig with them.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

That must have been a chakra.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

Uh no rehearsal. I met them a couple of hours before the show. Nice to meet you. Your flies undone. And um, yeah. We just kind of they they're old school. They're like, ah, you'll learn the gig, you'll figure it out. You figured out. Yeah, we'll manage without you for the first few. You'll be there, but you won't know what you're doing. Yeah, so and uh and I got I got I did get to tour with r with four of the original guys because Ray was still there, and Ray was a great singer. I would often catch him like looking over a fence to look at me in my hotel room and wave. And uh yeah, he was he was a good guy. Yeah, they're all they were all very down-to-earth guys and a very professional gig, and uh they worked six nights a week. It was a machine, it was a very well-oiled machine. I really learnt to tour from them. So, you know. But Knights and White Satin, I went to boarding school in England, okay, and we would have these school dances, and anytime you could like hang on to somebody and get your hormones raging, you'd be going after it as a teenager, right? So they would play Knights and White Satin at the end of every school dance because it was like 10 minutes long. Yeah. And you could have a good grope. Right? That's basically so I really knew that song really well.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

And then and then also Justin So you're like specifically verse two.

SPEAKER_02 39:16

And then also I also knew Justin's voice really well because he uh did War of the Worlds, which was a big album.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

Oh, that's right, the the the narration.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. And um and so I knew Oh no, Nathaniel, no. I knew all of that. Like I have that album. Yeah, it's a great, great think. Probably a collectible. It was huge in England. Much bigger in England, I think, than here. And they started uh touring that show about 10 years ago, 15 years ago, maybe. Maybe 20 years ago. I don't know. I I kind of lost the n the last 19 years to uh my child. She sucked the life out of me. But um That's how it works.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:59

She's funny though, she makes me laugh, so that's good. That is good. Yeah, but yeah, Knights in White Satins. Kind of a big deal that song to anyone that grew up in England. And um and then I asked him what the deal was. I think he was like maybe on acid when he recorded it. Like he would say to me, Bernie, if you remember the 60s, you weren't really there. Okay. But um, yeah, what a great song. And that album, you know, it really blew up because right when they released it, that they got asked to record with an orchestra because they were signed to Decca. Yeah. And Decca sold record players. They they weren't really a music label. I mean, they they hired musicians to make it mostly like serious classical music. So Decca Studios had like all the best gear because they were um, they were selling appliances. They were s they were audio snobs. It was for the audio snobs. So they released this record and they were like, oh, let's put an orchestra on it, because we know all these orchestras, and we've got this rock band, and we need to sell more record players. So maybe if we got the rock band to be combined with the orchestra, we would sell more records.

SPEAKER_04 41:27

That's insane.

SPEAKER_02 41:27

And then when the album came out, AM Radio, it was the first stereo album. AM Radio, FM Radio, excuse me, came out like right when their album came out. So people would literally go in the 60s and sit in their cars and smoke a joint and listen to stereo rock orchestra. That's why that album blew up. And then when they released their next album, the DJs took Nights in White Satin back to number one again. And the label was 1972. And the label were like, no, stop playing that song. We want to play the new album. We've got the new stuff to sell. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

So, you know, I look like the song was was um like not as a big of a hit the first time around here in the US, and then the second time around two.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

The DJs just kept playing it because they were in charge of what they played.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

Back then. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:19

Blues radio is still like that today.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Yeah, a lot of a lot of indie stuff, but it's still kind of uh it's It's hard to get on the radio.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

My label my label wouldn't pay to go to radio.

Royalties Radio And The AI Threat

SPEAKER_02 42:30

I was pretty upset about that. I still think local radio is the way for artists to be heard. And for people to get their news.

SPEAKER_04 42:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

You know? Uh Independent. I really hope local radio stays alive in America. We'll see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

We'll see stop these big companies stop being uh gobbling up all these little things and and then I think there's like what six companies that own the world.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

Four, yeah. Yeah, something crazy like that. Well, with the TV and all that, all the mergers going on right now, it's all really pretty scary at my house because we live off of our uh royalties. John has six thousand cues in the Discovery Network's library. And I think that maybe if they go like a to a third-party publisher, they're not gonna pay royalties. And they might be getting the guy that ran Discovery, he's a piece of work. I think he's the only one making a shit ton of money off of this deal. He's gonna make like fifty, sixty million dollars. It's crazy. And he already made a crazy amount of money when they did the pre-fund, first of all. Yeah, and uh what they did was Discovery sent out letters and told all the composers that if they didn't give them the rights to their music, they would take it out of the shows. And we're talking already hit shows. Yeah. American Chopper. Uh um Mike Rose show, you know. John did all of those shows. And they were like, if you don't give us your writers' royalties, we're gonna take your music out of the shows for future plays. And that's that's when Michael Giacino got involved. Michael Giacchino went on uh, you know, he's a really big deal composer in the movies, and he was like, No, they can't do this. And I said to John, that would cost them a fortune. Imagine how many shows they have, and people are gonna say, no, you can't do it. They're not gonna do that.

SPEAKER_01 44:36

They're not gonna do that.

SPEAKER_02 44:37

But he really scared half of this city. It was a horrible Christmas. Because we all thought we were just not and these deals were negotiated so that they would make little on the upfront because they were gonna make back end, and here they were trying to take the back end away. It was all about the very naughty, very naughty.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Yeah. Thieves, thieves, and liars.

SPEAKER_02 45:03

Yeah, they're doing that on the um AI now. They're there's some law they're trying to have or some something they wrote last week, the current federal government, where they said AI training on our music is not stealing.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

I'm sorry, it is. It's the same for the screenwriters. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:25

Novelists, everybody. What are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 45:30

We're gonna keep on doing what we do.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

And we'll try. We're gonna get louder about it.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

We might.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

Yeah, we can do it. We might do. Uh we have to. We can't get louder.

SPEAKER_02 45:39

We've got to be more French.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

Yes, not gonna fuck.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

Pitchforks and all that.

SPEAKER_01 45:46

No, I mean that's I feel like that's it. I feel like the thing is, is that um you know, there there's something with what you said earlier about the DECA deal that kind of hit on her for me. And what we're talking about now with AI is that we haven't necessarily stumbled upon it yet. I haven't. But I know I feel like there's some sort of synergy with us continuing what we're doing. But we need to find our high-end record players. I mean, there were other companies. So there's another company that I remember that was just like they just sold appliances and they decided to like start a label.

SPEAKER_02 46:25

Well, it might become that way, actually, because what you're seeing today is you're seeing a lot of production companies that are actually okay, I'm Nike's production company, and I'm gonna make content for Nike, films, TV shows that are or I'm just saying Nike.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

No, no, but you're right, but you're right. It's like the companies are are independent. Yeah, they're gonna start creating their own comp their own company.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Yeah, they're gonna make their own c content now. And so I think the creatives will get busy, but there's a lot of uh stuff being done by machines as well. So uh but I think they're always gonna need music. I don't think I don't know what's gonna happen. Yeah. It's really uh a new era. It's kind of like somebody just invented the steam train.

SPEAKER_01 47:12

Did you say a new error? Era?

SPEAKER_02 47:16

Era? Same thing. Making fun of me.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

No, no, no. I mean just meant the word the word era sounds like error is a mistake. Oh, error. A new mistake.

SPEAKER_02 47:25

Oh, gotcha. Yeah, I was too slow on that one. I did not catch that.

SPEAKER_01 47:31

No, but that's that's good. That's good. The the I feel like I feel like the the part of it is that we can't um give up on on uh the fact that we are not yet. AI can't steal our personalities. AI can't uh be us in a way that's you know we can we can still tell. Like, you know, like it's but it doesn't have pain. AI hasn't had his heart broken. It's hard to like it doesn't know how to doesn't understand grief, it doesn't understand um, you know, uh loss or or or even love on a certain level, you know.

SPEAKER_02 48:09

Well yeah, it has no emotional intelligence.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

No. Not yet. That's but till then I just feel like we I feel like we're no Dave.

SPEAKER_02 48:20

I can't do that. Hal? Oh, open the door. Sorry, Dave. Not happening.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

What a genius, huh? Um but uh I just feel like we we we can't give up. We can't give up. And I th and it's also it's also parallel, and I don't care about being political on this. Parallel to what's going on in this country.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

It's that you know that that greed is the underlying uh well yeah, there's no response there's no corporate responsibility like there used to be. There used to be like Ford took pride in having second generation workers in their union on the lines. They liked that. That doesn't exist anymore.

SPEAKER_01 49:14

No, no loyalty.

SPEAKER_02 49:16

Um it's almost like there was a new breed of uh MBAs that came out of uh the fancy schools that just were like we're just gonna take all the middle class money. We're just gonna do it. Watch us. And they're doing it.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:35

You can choose to not do it.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

You can choose to not do it. Um let's let's let's flip this tape over uh in many ways and jump to side B.

SPEAKER_03 49:46

B side.

SPEAKER_01 49:47

B side. Um not necessarily the lesser side, just the other side, and start with song number six of the first one here. This woman's

Kate Bush And Music For Film

SPEAKER_01 49:56

work by Kate Bush. I mean, Kate Bush, you you know, you could have gone anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 50:03

Pioneer, genius, amazing dancer, amazing singer, amazing songwriter, amazing producer. Uh and I picked that particular song because when you watch uh She's Having a Baby, she's having a baby, and Elizabeth McGovern goes into labor and that blood drop just fucking drops and goosebumps. Yeah, I just got it as well. I just sang it. Uh she's just I I I'm so bummed I didn't go to England. She did a uh a residency a few years ago in London at Hammer in Hammersmith, I think. And I said to my girlfriend Lauren, we should go. And she was like, We didn't go. We should have gone. Because when is she gonna do that ever again? She's probably not gonna do that again. She's a recluse.

SPEAKER_01 50:59

She, you know, I mean most of the geniuses are, I guess. But uh she's I like you know, uh in in uh preparing for this, like I always loved the song, and I love it from that movie too. I mean, that's where it popped up, but uh I didn't know that she was actually hired to write a song for the movie. Oh, I didn't know specifically, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:21

That was for that scene?

SPEAKER_01 51:22

That was specifically, she wrote that for the movie. She's a brilliant storyteller, man. Here's the crazy part. The director and the producers had another song in place. It was this Mortal Coils Song of the Siren, which is a Tim Buckley song. And when you hear you hear that song, you almost kind of feel you can hear the ethereal vibe. The vibe of of her song. They couldn't get the rights to that other song.

SPEAKER_03 51:54

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 51:55

So they were like, hey, you know, whatever. And somehow, how did they hire Kate? I don't like how does that connect? Uh uh John Hughes was the main producer of that, and he wrote it. And uh I don't know, it just blows my mind that he let me just reach out to Kate Bush and have her write a song, you know, and then she writes that song. And the crazy song.

SPEAKER_02 52:16

It's mind-blowing that song. It's such a brilliant piece of poetry and a tribute to women and fathers and parenting in general. But oh, yeah, I mean, having a baby's fucking scary.

SPEAKER_01 52:30

Yeah, yeah. It is.

SPEAKER_02 52:34

I mean, women die having babies every fucking day, and I was scared. And then, you know, John wanted to have another one. I was like, you were there. You saw what happened. I'm not doing that again.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Some movies do not get a sequel.

SPEAKER_02 52:53

She uh, you know, she invented the microphone. Oh no, the that you danced with her. She was a dancer and she wanted to be able to sing at the same time. So Madonna owes her a thank you because Madonna, you know, all that all those early tours that those huge tours that she did, she had those on.

SPEAKER_01 53:11

It was the thing. Yeah. Phil's and Howard Jones, all those cats were.

SPEAKER_02 53:16

So that was Kate. She invented that. And I remembered hearing um a story. Justin from the Moody's told me she was in a studio next door to him, and she was being treated so poorly by a bunch of misogynistic engineers. In she's in the studio. She's producing her own album, and she's sitting in the hallway crying because they're treating her so badly. And I was like, oh, that just really upsets me. So she battled a lot.

SPEAKER_01 53:49

I mean, she was in like as a teenager.

SPEAKER_02 53:51

Oh, yeah. Well, you know who she was really good friends with, the guitarist. Yeah. He uh he took her to his record label and got her a deal, and she was a baby. She was like 17. Wathering Heights at 17. Wathering, Wathering, Wuthering, a high teeth cliff.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

And what a I mean, what's like to have this is like say to me, it's like it's her mind is the thing for me. It's like to have that sort of uh uh wide range of being able to bring sort of classical music to pop and you know an electronic.

SPEAKER_02 54:28

And uh and singing from other countries too. She bought in the choir Bolgaka to do one of her 90s albums, and it was just like really interesting. And then you and then you saw other people doing that with like I sang the theme for Survivor, and uh he told me that was uh a Russian folk song sample that he had in the like the first maybe 10 seasons they had it mixed in there. I don't know if they still do. And then I'll sing it to you.

SPEAKER_00 54:59

He went apparently it's Russian.

SPEAKER_02 55:11

I don't know what the hell it is. I'm doing noises phonetically, and I had to learn it for a live broadcast on CBS. And uh interesting how they put those other sounds, it's like you know, remember when they had the whole monk thing going on? Yeah, yeah. So it was in that time and she did a really unique take on that, I thought.

SPEAKER_04 55:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:37

And they were all these like it was like five uh women from an Eastern Bloc country, I can't remember which country it was, and they uh came and recorded with her and she sang with them and they learned how to do it together. The I think they're Bulgarian, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 55:57

Bulgarian, that sounds sounds about right.

SPEAKER_02 55:58

They're called the choir Bulgarka. So I think maybe that is Bulgarian, but I don't know. Don't trust anything I say.

SPEAKER_01 56:07

Um she was a huge influence on Prince, if you believe it or not.

SPEAKER_02 56:10

Oh, and Bob Seeger, too.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

Really?

SPEAKER_02 56:13

My best rock and roll story, Bob Seeger. He sent a plane for me.

SPEAKER_01 56:18

I do, and I think I know this story.

SPEAKER_02 56:19

Yeah, and so no, they they just he was influenced by him.

SPEAKER_01 56:24

And yeah, he got to see him early in his career, he got to uh Bob was cool enough to like just let him hang out backstage and see him play. And it was seeing him perform that he realized I need a big ballad.

SPEAKER_02 56:40

Yeah, I missed that tour. He uh I had done I had done an album for Bob. They his producer David Cole flew me to Nashville, and I was like, Don't they have singers in Nashville? I mean, I'll come. I'm more than happy to come and make money and sing for Bob Seeger. That would be a dream come true. But um, yeah. So so I did I did that, and then a few months later I was on tour, and David Cole calls me and he's like, hey, Bob's got this duet he wants to do. He's wondering if you can come and sing it for the demo. We're at his cabin in Michigan. And I'm like, well, I'm on tour. Maybe if I get a day off, I'll ask. So I asked, and they they said yes. And so I got the whole ball rolling. And then a few days later, the tour manager gets on the tour bus in front of all of the guys in the band who were kind of cranky at the time. And uh he says, Oh, Bernie, you know, we said that you could do that thing, but we don't think you'll be able to do it because there's no planes out of the local airport after 10, and the show finishes at 10.30. There's no flights booked out. And I go, Oh no, he's sending a plane for me. It's fine. It'll be fine. He spent more on jet fuel and pilots than he gave me for the session. I mean, I'm like, it's like a rock money.

SPEAKER_04 58:09

Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:10

And uh, and what a nice man. I showed up late at night, and uh, David left me some like towels at the bottom of the stairs, and I went and slept in the first room, and then I came downstairs. Bob's making me breakfast in my pajamas. Oh man, yeah, and then he drove me back to the plane like three hours later after I was done singing, and I missed a 25-hour drive on tour. I mean, come on. I don't know, a 25-hour day drive or a session for Bob Sager. These are your choices. So anyway, it worked out. Sarah was very nice and she let me go.

SPEAKER_01 58:51

That's that sounds like a nice chapter in your autobiography.

SPEAKER_02 58:54

It's a great story.

SPEAKER_01 58:55

It's a great story.

SPEAKER_02 58:57

Yes.

Stevie Wonder Then Eighties Pop DNA

SPEAKER_01 58:58

We went from uh this woman's work to uh number seven, Master Blaster.

SPEAKER_02 59:02

Master Blaster, John. So uh when I was at boarding school, one of my best pals, Anthea, she had that album.

SPEAKER_01 59:14

Was it the Greatest Hits? Was it the Music Music Quarium? Oh no, no. Hotter Than July.

SPEAKER_02 59:20

And um, we wore that record out. We wore it out.

SPEAKER_01 59:25

That album has one of my favorite Stevie Wonder songs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:28

Uh Stevie Wonder, my first concert. First concert, 16th birthday.

SPEAKER_01 59:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 59:36

Yeah. That that must have been like like a little bit too. So it was you were definitely jamming. Yeah, I was jamming. And he does, he was uh was in England, I think it was uh maybe Hammersmithodian, maybe. I don't think they call it that anymore. But um Yeah.

unknown 1:00:00

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:00

Every other band I've been in since then is kind of like a little lacking, I think. And I've been in some good bands.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:10

But wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:11

Stevie wonder, I mean, what a genius.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:14

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:14

Yeah, so that that's really why. I mean, like maybe us maybe 13.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

Sounds about right.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:21

13 years old just wore that record out.

unknown 1:00:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:24

So Stevie had to get a look in on the uh the top 10.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:28

Yeah. I had that 45, the single, um, back in the day. But I remember getting that album and just being in love with this one song. Uh it was like his country song.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:44

Uh he did a country record?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:46

Well, I was I always called it his country song because he sang like in a twang. He was like, oh there that's nearly. Uh, but is it uh You ain't gonna think a baby? You ain't gonna be. Don't you worry about it. No, that's early. That's earlier. But that's on Hotter Than July. Um baby. Nah, nah, nah, nah. I'm not recalling it.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:18

So many songs.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:20

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:20

Two little brain cells.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:22

It's his country song. I'm gonna send it to you. Um but uh but yeah. No, that's a such a good album, too. That's I guess pop probably his last um uh Stevie Wonder-ish album before he kind of went completely into digital sort of like um programming and everything. Um but now that we're in the 80s for a little bit, we can move on to number eight. Um, everybody wants to rule the world, Tears for Fears.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:55

Yeah. So I put that one on there because that was the first physical piece of music that I purchased. And it was a single. And it's just in my brain. I mean, I think we're I'm going to Sweden, we're gonna do some covers uh in May at one of the gigs, and I picked that one that one to do. That's a good song. It's a great song, and I think it's kind of timely.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:24

It doesn't, it hasn't lost its edge. I mean, it's like it's I feel like it's more poignant now than ever.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:29

And that bass is just dunk dunk. They're just a groove. And they had the groove, and they weren't and they w Roland didn't like it. And his producer kept saying, No, this is a good groove. We need to do something with this, and not until his wife like popped by the studio, the woman that ended up becoming Roland's wife, was like, Oh, I really like that. And then he was like, Oh, okay, I'll finish it. And and they did it, and then they they did that thing where they speed it up a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:56

And it just made it a hit song. It like it totally transformed it into a hit song. It's so weird how that happens. It that just shows you its frequencies that people are responding to. Yeah. But yeah, that was my first single that I bought. Because I had other people's leftovers, but that was Do you remember what the flip side was?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:17

Oh, I don't. I think it might have been Mother's Talk.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:22

I don't remember.

unknown 1:03:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:23

And it might have been different in America too, England.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:25

That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:26

Back in those days, things were really different. Like I would I would my mum was a nanny in America for famous people. And so I would fly over from boarding school and stay with them. And what was and I'd do that like two or three times a year, uh, from when I was like 11 to 16. So I would get a taste of what was going on in England, and then I would get a taste of what was going on in America.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:52

This is really the best time, I feel like radio. It's very different. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:56

Like in England they had like Spandel Ballet, and over here they had yacht rock.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:00

I mean, totally different.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:02

Or the beginnings of like in more and more like sort of soul, like uh like electronic stuff. So it would be like uh Shannon when the music uh uh when the music plays or whatever. Um I remember I I think that's that's that's sort of like that kind of uh new kind of dance uh oriented soul.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:23

The the guy I was waiting tables and the guy from Animotion.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:28

That's who took my phone number. That's really who that's who passed my phone number on to Nat.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:33

The guy okay, wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:35

And he called me at work on my very last shift that I was working there. So he would it would none of this would have happened. My whole life would have not happened if I had not, if I had finished work a day earlier. Let's put it like that. And I I met him and I waited on him, and I was like, man, that chick that's in your band, she looks like she really like isn't happy. And I might have been a bit more, let's say, cocky in how I delivered that. And he laughed at me and he liked me, and then he heard me singing Bonnie Ray in the kitchen.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:09

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:09

And he was like, Is that you singing back there? And I was like, Yeah, that's me. He's like, Can I get your number? I might know somebody who I can. So and then he lost it apparently, and then he called the restaurant on my last shift. Unbelievable. And here I am, sitting with Gio.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:29

No, I was just gonna say that before that that like that that time, like you're saying, like getting the basically the BBC stuff, and then get coming here to the States and feeling that what was going on in radio here. I had a similar experience because in the early 80s, my parents decided to move back to their country. So I lived in the Dominican Republic between like eighty-one and eighty-six.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:53

Oh wow. And how old were you then?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:55

Between 10 and 16.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:57

Yeah, I mean, those are influential, musical.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

Of years. But there they had three stations that played English music or uh music in English. One was playing stuff that was popular here in the US, and the other one was playing stuff from the BBC. It was just basically the playlist was ripped from the BBC. Right. And the other one was like a soft rock station. But excuse me. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:20

So you had Adam and the Ants. And you had Christopher Cross.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:24

I mean, how and they're both they were both great. No, but there's like so much stuff that was coming out of uh the UK at the time that was like so uh Trevor Horn. Trevor Horn, oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:37

Duran Duran. Duran Duran and um yeah, no, it's uh I I feel privileged to have to have had Yeah, I think that we lived through a very rich musical time in the eighties and nineties. The industry was thriving, there was a lot of music being produced and put out that got through the noise. Today, probably because they were gatekeeping.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:05

Because today everybody's a singer. I mean, you know, you just gotta go through TikTok and you got every other person is singing to their phone. And it's like, ugh. And on TikTok, I'm talking to the wall. Nobody cares about me on TikTok.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:20

I care about you.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:21

Well, I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:24

We're looking at TikTok. Who are we?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:27

I ain't looking at TikTok. I fucking hate it.

Streaming Money And Short Form Pressure

SPEAKER_02 1:07:30

But you're looking at Instagram and my label told me that when you release your record, we're gonna release like you've got all these great songs, so we're gonna ramp it up before we release it. They released like six songs. They wanted me to do 30 short form videos for each song. That's a hundred and eighty short form videos. And I was not really up for the challenge. I did my best. And we did make music videos. John and I filmed videos that we made them.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:00

Nobody else was making them. So yeah, I did my best. But it's just hard.

unknown 1:08:06

It's hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:07

It is it is hard. It is hard. I mean, it's hard to maintain that sort of daily thing. But I mean, I think I think uh we also come from a different, you know, thing. Like like you, like the all the stuff, all the work that you put into those music videos, even just you doing them yourself, that people don't understand. That it's not just like, hey, it's not just me putting my phone up or whatever. It's like oh no.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:35

Whatever the case. I never worked so hard in my life as I did last year. And when we got to the end of the year, I was just like, oh, I think I might be done.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:44

And then my friends in the hood are all like, What are you playing? And then I was like, okay, I better get some gigs going. Uh but I mean it's so hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:54

It is, it is, it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:55

I mean, I have uh a friend on the label, and she was second on the voice, and has a hundred and thirty thousand thousand followers, and you know, hopefully she'll break through the noise. And it's a fantastic record that she wrote. I sang on it. It's a great record. She's playing at the Troubadon on Thursday.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:15

What's her name?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:16

Her name is Morgan Miles, and uh, you know, she has a huge audience, but I don't know if it translates to music sales.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:27

Yeah, or a living event.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:29

And and you can't make any money from streaming.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:32

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:32

It's just a joke. Yeah. They've totally and then Spotify last year are like, oh, we we feel like we should have we should sell physical product now because we're not making enough money.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:46

You're making all the money.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:48

You're making all the money and you're giving the rest of it to the labels.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:52

Or or to, you know, uh to fund nuclear weapons.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:56

Oh yeah, some of them cashed out their stocks and uh funding uh war companies with the same sort of technology. It is a strange time. I mean it is weird that the AI, you know, the Chat GPT AI, it's um borrowed two thousand times what they estimate the company will be worth when it goes public. How do you do that? I can't do that with a credit card. But apparently, you know, big equity can do that. They they don't care. They're just putting money into it. It's like um it's like alien. It's like the movie Alien when the corporate guy's like, no. The comedian, he's like, no, we've gotta take the alien back to the plant, back to Earth. And I'm thinking, bad idea, man. Bad idea. Yeah. No. But the corporate power is a little too much.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:04

It's uh it feels like it's the only thing sometimes. Um I don't know. I I feel like call me naive. I'm still I still have I still have um I've learned recently to stop using the word hope. Because it's kind of uh you're you're waiting on something that possibly doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:29

Yeah, but humans don't exist without hope. Yeah, humans do not thrive without any sort of something to look forward to.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:35

Um that's what I'm saying. So for me, it's like I'm I'm starting to use the word patience. You know, I'm just gonna give myself some patience for what I know is coming, as opposed to a question mark, will it come? Can it come? Can it happen? Because for me, it's just like I have to believe that there is going to be something good. You know, otherwise, why?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:00

Oh, this is good.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:01

This is what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:02

Well, you just gotta take your shit out of the day.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:04

It's good.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:05

You know, oh, I had a good day today. I hung out with Gio, got to learn a bit more about him, he got to learn a bit more about me. We had a nice hang. You know, nobody was hurt. Nobody was hurt.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:19

Maybe, maybe the dog's finally.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:26

Just finally calm down.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:28

But I think it's it's a perfect uh intro to number nine.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:33

Oh,

Marvin Gaye And Vocal Risk Taking

SPEAKER_03 1:12:34

what's going on?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:36

Tell me what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:38

I mean Marvin Gay.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:40

Marvin Gay, man. I mean, he's in he's in the he's he was my Motown representative on here. There's so many. Yeah. And um, you know, I did sing on a Marvin Gay track once.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:55

Really?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:56

The label asked a producer in town who will remain nameless, uh, to rework some of his tracks after he had passed. So I go down and I show up and I'm singing, and I'm like, man, this guy he sounds terrible. What? Is this a final vocal? And they're like, oh, it's Marvin Gaye. We don't think it was him singing on his best day. Yeah. But the label want to try and make something that we can release. I mean, now they could totally just put it in Suno.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:28

Yeah, and they probably will.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:30

And they probably will. They probably will. So that was uh an interesting experience, and that's just a classic song.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:43

I mean, talk about the zeitgeist.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:45

Talk about a great use of reverb.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:48

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:49

And those sound chambers, you know, those rooms. Because you just hear it in the track, and I'm probably gonna listen to that song today now. We're talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:59

And I've I was listening to it earlier. Uh, it's just one of those things that to me it's like also um a great example of experimenting vocally, doing different things, you know, not just, you know, not just your typical background vocal thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:15

But well, he was so great. He had a great falsetto and a great full voice, and he could go in and out of the two of those uh to express himself. And and not a lot of singers can do that. You know, these big singers with big ranges, they don't usually have falsettos.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:32

So my kid, she uh she's a little jealous of my falsetto. That's probably my best feature in my vocal lexicon. Yeah. And um I just have a lot of air. Smoking. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:50

It's training, kid. You'll get there. Don't do it at home, kids.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:54

But yeah, one of the things. That's what they call experience. Yeah, I just love the track and how it sounds and the groove and his voice and the lyric. So, yeah, one of those great songs.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:08

I remember the first time I heard it. Um, like I was I was I must have been like five or six.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:14

You remember?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:15

I do remember.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:15

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:16

I I just remember because it's like I give visions with songs, like I remember being in the backseat of my dad's car at the time he had a Nova. And I just remember being fascinated with the the the the sort of the like it was just such a like the timbre.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:37

A really identifiable sound.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:38

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:40

I mean, did they have a big law, a big uh court case about that?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:45

Oh, that was the other song that was I got to give it up. Yeah, that got to give it up.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:49

Uh and that that dude that whose dad was the actor.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:53

Yeah, Robin uh Thick.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:55

Robin Thick.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:57

Well done. But you know, I mean, there's only so many notes, there's only so many chords, there's only so many ways we can put it all together.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:06

See these cases, it's like sometimes you sometimes you go, it's like, you know, I mean, this is like a certain melody choice, but then there's like certain times where you're they're obviously trying to mimic.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:19

Oh yeah. My kid will my kid will be like, hey, mom, dad, listen to this song, and we'll be like, Well, yeah, but that's that other song from like 30 years ago, the first verse, that's completely another song. And they'll be like, What? But I mean, humans, we're not all that original.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:36

No, no.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:37

And that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:38

That's okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:39

We're just as God made us.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:41

Yeah. Intent. Intent is everything, it's what you want to do with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:45

Yeah. But no, I've never been to Marvin Gaye's house.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:48

Yeah, that's up in Topanga. That's where he lived last.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:51

Um Is that where he'd passed away?

unknown 1:16:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:55

Didn't his dad shoot him?

unknown 1:16:57

Yeah. Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:58

Families. Well, it can be hard. Yeah, no, I'm sorry to be laughing at all. I mean, that sounds like mental illness. That sounds like maybe uh somebody with Alzheimer's that shouldn't have had a gun.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um I don't know if you've ever saw the movie uh Jungle Fever, Spike Lee.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:18

I might have.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:19

But it came out. One of the storylines, he basically took it from that whole his father-son relationship.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:27

Well, it's it's hard wasn't it because uh he was gay? And he was that what it was.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:34

And he's it's hard to be a black man and be gay in America. He was just like, you know, basically he was just like uh his father became obsessed with religion and you know, that sort of living in sin kind of thing. And it was just all the sort of the excesses of his life.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:50

So as I I am not a black man living in America, but one of my dear friends is and told me, you know, yeah, it's it's hard to be a black man living in America that's gay, especially at church.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:04

And um you know the world is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:10

The world is crazy. Zuzu agrees.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:15

Yes, the world is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:16

Uh no, we've definitely lost some lost them too soon. I mean, it feels like it, you know, especially when he was just having that resurgence in the early 80s. And um I remember how exciting it was to hear the like sexual healing on the radio.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:32

Oh, yeah, that was a great song. Yeah. I bought that. Yeah, I bought it. I bought that was a single I bought in England.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:37

You know, for uh for an 11-year-old that was very uh naughty.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:42

I might have been a little bit older. But yeah, what a great song.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:47

Yeah, and it's just you know, it's just a shame because you know that with the 80s technology and all this stuff, and and he was such a ch st studio freak that it was just gonna like he was just gonna he was bound to give us another masterpiece.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:03

Um it's a big loss.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:04

Yeah. But you know, what is not a loss is me sitting here with you right now to be able to talk to Teobot's song number 10.

Don’t Wake Me Up And Bernie’s Writing Process

SPEAKER_02 1:19:14

Number 10! Oh, we made it all the way through, Jimmy.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:16

You made it. We made it. Uh don't wake me up.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:19

Well, you told me to pick one of my songs as well. So I picked one of my songs. And uh This is the song on my latest record that I like to put on at nighttime when I'm trying to relax and go to sleep. It it calms me. Really calms me down. So what is it?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:36

What is it about the song that calms you down?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:39

I I'm I'm not sure. I'm really don't know. It soothes me. It might be the chords.

unknown 1:19:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:46

I don't know. Like I said, people respond to frequencies.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:49

They do, we do.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:50

So, you know, you hear people putting on these frequencies to go to sleep, and for some reason that one just really relaxes me. And uh so, you know, one of my favorites. I I put it on repeat on the record.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:03

What's the story uh behind the song?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:05

I wrote it with my friends Paul and Lily. Right now I'm kind of blanking on the lyrics because I'm a little delirious. Let me think about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:13

Um, I know that the chorus says something about uh either reaching for heaven or wanting heaven.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:21

You're better than me right now. But I had the flu all last week, so it's my first venture out this week. Um, I don't know. We do you want to listen?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:31

Sure, we can pop it on.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:33

So I'm gonna listen. And then I'll tell you. I wrote it with Paul Trudeau and Lily Wilson. Uh Paul, I met at a Melissa re Melissa Etheridge rehearsal. He came running up to me and he was like, Hey, hey, like a Labrador. Hey, do you know John Nooney? And I go, I married John Nooney. I take it you know John Nooney? He used to be my band, I love him. And I was like, okay, great, that's awesome. Nice to meet you. And then Lily, my good friend, was singing backgrounds with me. And she was, and is, married to Mark Brown, who was Melissa's longtime bass player. And uh the three of us are like siblings and we write songs together.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:22

That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:23

Yeah. Um we don't see enough of each other socially, so we kind of we almost have to get together to write just so we can have a catch-up. And then usually what we do is we start the music first. Paul will start playing some chords. Me and Lily will We start out with having a a little therapy and seeing how everybody's doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:46

Topic of the day, what people are going through. And uh then we start the music and then we kind of figure out what we're m melodically feeling, and then we decide what it's about, and then we write it words. Yeah. And we try to match the words to much like how the Bee Gees wrote, actually. They wrote in a trio the same way. They would write the music and the melody first, and they would never deviate from the melody with the words. The words had to match the melody. So, you know, we we find a subject matter and then off we go.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:20

And that's that's it's it's funny because I I often talk to songwriters, and that's my preferred method.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:28

Yeah, because uh I don't really play that well. I sing. This is my instrument, so I need to sing over something often. Sometimes I show up with a chorus, or sometimes I've shown up with more than the chorus, or you know, we'll be ch chatting. Uh we wrote wrote a song called Enough Time on the record, and Lily was on the phone the night before with her friend whose mother had passed away, and that was the theme that kept reoccurring in their conversation that they that we don't have enough time with our loved ones. You know, my mom's 93 on Sunday. I could still take some more time.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:05

She's probably done. You know, she's probably like, yeah, I've punched the clock enough. I could go whenever I'm good. Yeah. But um, so that's how we come up with songs when we're writing.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:19

It's amazing. I love I love that. I mean, because I feel like your your brain and your soul loves the challenge. You know, you want to kind of Oh, yeah, we like the puzzle. Yeah, you want to be put in a position where you you're you're looking for your way out, you know. Um it's nice to get the muse, it's nice nice to get inspired, it's nice to get the hit, but like that seems like it's like right in front of you. But at the same time, I feel like we're creatures of habit and we work towards things and we make things happen. And um, you know, it's some people would say, like, oh, you're forcing the song. Like, you're not forcing anything. You're not gonna be amazing. No, no, we're just telling everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:57

And we're telling a story usually.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:59

And uh, you know, like there's a song on the record called Love is on the way, and that really was inspired because you know, Lily and I are both in long-term relationships, Paul had a divorce, and he's not a spring chicken. So we were like, let's write a song about how you can go through this terrible loss, and you still have to maybe find somebody else, and how hard that is and how painful that is, and you're kind of scared and broken at this point, and you don't really necessarily want to let people in. So then we wrote that one. We find our we're we're looking for subject matter to write about that relates to people our age.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:45

And you know, it covers a lot of stuff. You know, my mom was my mom got had a couple of heart attacks, and I had to drive to Arizona. So stay right there. That's what that's about. I didn't want her to go anywhere. I wanted her to be there when I got there. And I had a very long drive. But we we were talking about don't wake me up. Yes. I think I think it's um it's already got me. And I'm like so fall asleep. You know, what's it about to you? I mean, some songwriters do not like to tell people what they're writing about because they want you to have a bit of mystery and interpret it yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:43

Well, I've I personally feel, and this is this might reveal too much about me. I've sometimes feel I'm not really sure what the song's about. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:26:50

It's a Well, Paul and Lily and I joke about that all the time. Because there's three of us there. Yes. So there's three people writing a song at the same time, and we all might have a different story in our head because of our own experiences in life. We are gonna be thinking about something that happened to me. Then they're not gonna know what I'm thinking about when I'm giving them the lyric idea, and vice versa for all of us.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:13

Like, for example, when I hurt was listening to the song earlier, um there's something that you do in the chorus that makes me feel like you're actually really saying, please wake me up.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:27

And we're just gonna leave it there.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:31

It's true. You know what I mean? It's like it's like to me, it's like just you're saying, Don't wake me up, but where you resolve the line, it's like a plead. Because you're saying, Don't wake me up.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:46

I think it's such a like the particular note, it just feels like I think you're pleading to be left asleep because you're you're you're enjoying the magic in your dream. Yeah. The love that you're feeling in your dream. Whatever that is.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:01

Yeah. I mean I just it felt like you were saying almost something else. Like either or or join me almost. Like like just don't like it was just like Oh no, it's not.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:10

No. It's definitely being left alone in what what your thoughts are and your feelings are. And and and it's only in your dreams that you find it. It's that. Well, it will at least it was for me. It might be something different for Paul, it might be something different for Lily. Uh but yeah, I like that one.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:31

And as oh I mean to to kind of come back with the songwriting style.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:37

Um you guys lock down that melody first before you hit the Yeah, we tend to we tend to get a a verse, a chorus, a verse, a B section, a chorus. We kind of know where we're going, and then things change. Like uh there's a song on the record, Sorry, that I wrote with John, my husband, and Paul. You know, John and Paul, they're the ones with the love affair from way back. And um my producer, Dave, when I I called him up and I go, Hey, Kirk wants me to make a record, you know, will you produce it? And he's like, Yes, okay, go write 25 songs and get back to me. So I was like, okay. So I sent him sorry, and he was like, Nah, Byrne, you need like a Chris Stapleton chorus.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:28

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:29

You need like a big So we we wrote three choruses for that. Uh we thought the second one was good. John and I definitely took it to the more Chris Stapleton-y place.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:42

But then it kind of ended on this sort of mini Ripperton idea. Love her.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:49

And uh so we sent it to Paul on a voice message because we had written the song already, and then Dave's having us change the chorus. So we sent him another idea for the second idea for the chorus. And and then Paul took what I did on the end of it and made it the chorus.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:10

Oh, he changed it. So he made that the chorus.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:12

He goes, he goes, no, no, no, this is way stronger. Here's what I hear, and he sends it back, and I go, Oh, well, that's all right too. Let's do that one. Because we don't we're on the third one at this point. We're not being precious at this point. No, no. We're just looking for the thumbs up from the guy who's gonna be pressing the tape, but that's right. That's right. So he uh he liked that one, and I and I think that's my favorite one to sing live. I didn't I didn't sing it that way in the studio. I sang it really sort of meek in the studio, and and live I go up full voice on the last chorus. Which is great when I have Meanie there singing with me because we sound so great together, and she's an awesome singer, and uh you know, it's all good.

Making Gigs Work And Final Gratitude

SPEAKER_02 1:30:57

So yeah, that would that would be my favorite one to sing on the album. Sorry. Go check it out. We did it live on the radio in uh Kingston.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:12

Kingston.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:13

New York and it was great, it sounded fantastic. Couldn't believe. We the three of us couldn't believe how great it sounded. With and and you know, Paul sounded so good. I was so Paul and uh I mean John and and Manie and myself, we do sound good together when nice voices.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:33

When you guys played that night, I just uh I made a note to myself and I've been so busy that I haven't been able to address it. I was just like, I need to f figure out how to record from the board and at least put a in like a couple of area mics or something because um I'm not recording like nothing's going through the board or the system except for vocals and and anything using a DI, like a guitar acoustic guitar or whatever. But if anyone's amped, they're not going through the system. So I have to figure out like you know, I wish that there was there were more, there's more money or whatever, but uh to do something just that night you guys sound it was just such a good like from the from the audience, it was just like the everything sounded perfect, you sounded great, and it was just like third song, and I'm just like I shouldn't be recording this. This is like so fucking good. Um it's just the kind of thing where it just felt like I wasn't there.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:38

Well, it's a good performance. Do you ever record from your phone the live performances?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:43

I do. I do. I do get video and stuff like that. And and um, but uh again, the thing about running and being the only person running the background.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:53

No, there's a lot going on. You should get a kid to come and help you. Yeah, you look at it. But maybe I would uh I would hit up, you know, Northridge has an amazing music program.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:04

Bad idea. Northridge university.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:06

They have an amazing program there, and uh you they could probably if you got maybe you can so they could get credit university and get a kid in a year. They could get like work credit and they could come and be your assistant. That's what I'd do.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:21

And this is this is recorded, so now I know I can do this.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:25

I'm just saying.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:26

See, this is it. It's like every day looking for the thing that's gonna be me.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:31

There's so much to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:32

It's just there's the it just feels like uh, you know, I was telling um somebody earlier today, it just feels like I mean I woke up today feeling like there is it seems like there's not enough money, and it seems like there's not enough time for all the things that need to happen. But somehow I feel like I don't give a fuck.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:54

I'd say just keep doing what you're doing. Just keep doing what you're doing. Keep playing, keep singing, makes you feel good.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:01

Yeah. Just gotta make yourself happy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:04

Uh, because wherever you can find your joy these days, the world is a crazy place.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:08

It is a crazy place. We keep coming to this, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:11

This is like it's and and because everybody wants to rule the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:21

Yeah. Yeah. But uh don't wait.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:27

One day we'll have to play.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:29

Yeah. I'd love to sing with you someday. Yeah. For real. For real.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:32

Let's do a gig.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:35

Just us.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:36

Just us. Ooh.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:38

Then we could make some money. Less people, more money. Yeah. It is a luxury item to have a full band.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:49

It is. It is. It is. And it's like it's such a And I'm a snob. I'm a total snob.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:55

So I want great players, and I can't afford great players.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:57

Yeah. I mean, it's just like uh I always say that there's uh the Venn diagram of great players, nice people, little money. It's like a weird, like you try to find that perfect spot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:16

Well, you know, you have some good gigs going on.

unknown 1:35:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:20

Regulars. We gotta we gotta keep busy. Yeah. I mean, I feel also it's just it's just uh having having the opportunity to uh be a part of a community at in these times, even however uh fleeting it may be, or ever, like you know Well, you promote your gigs.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:39

A lot of promoters don't.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:42

They're like, come and play my gig, sign this contract, don't play within a 35-mile radius for two weeks before you do this gig.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:52

And good night.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:53

And pay for the gig ahead of time, and then you sell all the tickets. Why do they call themselves promoters? They're not promoters, they're bookers.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:03

They're bookers. It's very different. Or restaurant managers or club, you know, Well, they're bookers too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:10

Yeah, I mean, you know, that's what you're dealing with.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:12

And that's and that's what I feel. It's just like, you know, we we we take the hit.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:17

And I feel like that uh You gotta be constantly changing, constantly reinventing. It's true. Like that one of the guys that I toured with with the Moody's for years, he played drums for them for 25 years. When he left, he started a tribute band to the Moody Blues. He makes more money now than he ever did playing for them for 25 years.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:42

What? Oh, because he was just uh He will book.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:46

I mean, he's got they're in England, these guys, and they they come over here and play with like orchestras at at the you know the city centres, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Summer summer fests and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:57

No, no. Just they'll go to like the Denver they'll go play with the Denver Symphony Orchestra.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:04

And they will make a decent amount of money, or they'll do just regular gigs without orchestras in like performing art centers. But um, you know, he's got these first call musicians from England. One of them used to be the front guy for the hollies, and they do these tours, and he he's like, Bernie, I can't believe it. I'm making more money than I ever did on the gig. So, but he works his tail off.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:30

Yeah, I mean, then you'd be you're doing everything. You're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:32

And you know, in COVID, he was driving a cab. And then he'd be like going to the airport the next day to go fly and play in Florida, and people, he's driving around with people, and they're like, What? This doesn't compute. You're going to this big gig tomorrow, but today you're driving me to the airport.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:51

But hey, it's a musician's life. What were we thinking, Gio? Should have been a rocket scientist.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:59

Well, that was the thing. We were just we were feeling.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:02

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:03

We were in the world.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:03

No, I never I never wanted to do anything else. I got completely lucky. And if I had stayed in England, I would have been an accountant. But because I came to America, for some reason it sort of freed me and made me believe that I could do anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:16

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:17

Not so sure that's the same anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:20

Because of the internet.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:22

Because of the internet. Yeah. Um We gotta make it happen. We gotta make it happen. I feel like it's just uh I I wanna I wanna end on this note that I believe in quality. I believe that the intention of how good this material is, your songs, your albums, your voice, that still means something.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:52

I don't know. It's always been a popularity contest, if you really think about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:56

Always has been. But I feel like it's still kind of like it's um we just need our decay. You know what I mean? That's all it is, because at the end of the day, you know, we're we're just selling stuff. People are just trying to make money.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:10

Yeah, I mean, I think Taylor Sheridan is really missing out by not using any of my songs on history.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:15

Seriously, especially don't wake me up. I'm just saying.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:17

Taylor, if you're listening. There's country undertones in most of the album. You could probably use some of these songs.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:25

We slap slide on every song just for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:31

Yeah. Hey, Doug Livingston is on my record. He's a monster. What a player.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:37

Sounds it. Sounds good.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:38

What a player. Yeah, yeah. I had really ridiculous. Uh I'll tell you who played on my record. Paul Bushnell, who is Tim McGraw's bass player, but he's been in LA forever. He produced the you know the movie The Commitments?

SPEAKER_04 1:39:51

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:52

Yeah, he he came over from Ireland fresh off the boat and produced that the music off of for that album. And then who else? And then uh David Raven, who is uh I've known about for years. I played in a band with him for about 10 minutes in my late 20s. And he was a drummer from my friend Joan and Sun 60 on a few of her records, I think. Then we have John Schroeder, who's Mr. Utility guitar player. He played 15 different instruments on my record. Wow. Yeah. And he's on Dancing with the Stars and plays guitar around town, and he's in a bunch of bands, and he's really, really great. So those were like the three main guys. And Dave, my producer, is a great guitar player. And then we also had Philip in to play some featured guitar solos, and Doug Livingston on Lap Steel and Slide, and uh Phil Parlopiano on Keys, who's he's on John Prime records. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's been around forever. So very, very fortunate that I had that crew of guys. And you know, I'm very lucky that uh Kirk, who wants the label, he has these wild ideas, and he'll be like, let's do a tribute album to the Straubs. And I'm like, Who are the Straubs? And then he tells us all, because he's a 70s music nerd, who they were. I mean, they had members of Leo Sayer, Wings, uh Yes, all those bands in the 70s and uh late 60s, early 70s in England. Those guys were all playing in each other's bands. And Sandy Denny was in that band for a minute, and then she went off to do that uh what's it called? Folk. I forget the name of her band, anyway. She she was a great songwriter. So he did this project like two months ago, and it's sort of like folk progressive rock. Because that band went from being a folk band to being a progressive rock band. They had Rick Waitemans in the band. He left to Gombian, yes. And so we had all these crazy musicians in the studio making this music, and he had like Grace Potter's rhythm section, and four great females singing different types of songs because they had all these different singers in the band, and uh who was playing? He had Adam Jimenez, who's badass, like a metal badass guy. He moved here from Nashville like 10 years ago when everyone was going there. He came here, and then Val McCallum from um Jackson Brown's band.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:44

Do you know Jack Shit? That's his fun band.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:48

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:48

Oh, you should go check them out sometime. And he's just like probably one of the most sensitive acoustic guitar players I've ever heard. He's kind of special. So he he and Sasha Smith uh was uh the band leader, and Paul Trudeau came down and played too. So he has like all these like killer musicians in the studio, and we're and Jordan Smith, uh Jordan West, excuse me, on on drums. My first recording sessions with a female drummer, and she plays like Charlie Watts. Nice fucking brilliant fucking drummer. I was just who Karen Carpenter, who?

SPEAKER_04 1:43:27

You know, Jordan.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:29

Wow, so good, so good. So what a f uh he brought us so much joy just bringing us all together into the studio to do this hare-brained idea. So uh we'll be finishing that soon. A bunch of people had to take off. Like we did five days in the studio, all together, every day.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:48

I remember seeing the post.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:49

And it was just awesome. I was I'm I'm very lucky to know Kirk that he hires me still.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:56

Well, there's a reason. Thank you, Kirk. There's a reason.

Where To Find Bernie

SPEAKER_01 1:44:00

This amazing woman, this amazing voice, songwriter. If you haven't had the chance to, please check her out locally and at any shows um because live is the ultimate experience. But if not, find her online. She's got several albums available. Um, and her latest album is called Walking Around This Town. Walking Around This Town, uh, including number 10 song here, Don't Wake Me Up. Thank you so much, Bernie.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:30

Yeah, man. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:32

Love you, thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:35

And now I'm gonna go home. Take a nap. I'm probably gonna go lie down. Yeah. Set my first day off for like I had friends over.