Join @thebuzzknight with "Bayou Soul" maestro Marc Broussard. Marc shares the rhythms of his life and career, from his roots in Carencro, Louisiana, to his rise as a celebrated singer-songwriter. Marc opens up about his unique blend of funk, R & B, rock, and pop, which has captivated audiences worldwide. Marc reflects on the immense impact his father; Louisiana Hall of Fame guitarist Ted Broussard has had on his life and how that influences him to this day.
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If you like this podcast, check out our companion podcast from Buzz Knight Media Productions called Music Saved Me. Listen here. Listen
Taking a Walk. We just not play the song. I refuse to play the song.
In fact, one of my favorite memories is we had morning television in New York City, National TV. We're gonna play two songs. We're gonna play Home and Where you Are.
We play Home first, and my entire record label is there, my managers are there.
We play Home, go to commercial break, come back from commercial break, and the anchor sis.
And once again here's Mark Brussard with Where you Are. And I turned to the band as she's saying that and said.
Play rock Steady.
And they're like what I said, Pree rock Steady.
And as soon as we hit the downbeat on rock Steady, I can see all of my label executives and my managers through the glass in the studio and they just started leaving.
Welcome to another episode of Taking a Walk, the podcast where Buzz Night talks about the lives and careers of some of the most fascinating figures in music and gets the inside scoop directly from the art themselves. Today, we're lacing up our shoes for musical journey with the soulful and talented Mark Broussard. Mark is known for his distinctive Bayous soul sound. He's been captivating audiences with his powerful voice and blend of funk, blues, R and B and rock for over two decades. Hailing from the great state of Louisiana, Brossard's music is deeply rooted in the rich cultural tapestry of the American South. Let's join buzz on taking a Walk with Mark Broussard.
Mark, thanks for being on taking a walk. And since this podcast is called taking a walk, who would you like to take a walk with, living or dead? And where would you take a walk with them? Someone from the music side of things, of course, because you are a musician.
Probably Johann Bach, and I would take a walk with him in Lucerne, Switzerland as a beautiful old bridge in Switzerland that I absolutely love.
And Bach, you know, I mean, the guy is.
None of us would be here without him, you know, in the modern era it's Stevie Wonder, But in the history of music.
I think that Johann Bach takes the cake. Well.
First of all, I know that bridge in Lucerne was just there recently and that.
Is spectacular, yes, beautiful. And the funny thing I have to share with you is.
I had a couple of brothers on this podcast from this band called Red Cross, two d's and spelled with a K, the McDonald brothers. There's a new documentary out about them called Born Innocent, and they're punk rockers for about forty years. And I asked the same question and the older brother he led exactly with your answer, Johan's.
I mean, the guy has done it all.
Every time I think I'm being creative or innovative, somebody points out that Johann Bach.
Did it already. There.
We got tripped up a little bit in talking to those guys, and then maybe we thought we were talking about Sebastian Bach from skid Row or something like.
That, so it really went down a severe rabbit hole. But anyway, great answer. And I'd like to be tagging along with you if I could.
Man, you know, taking a walk in chatting music with Johann Bach would be an absolute dream, It really would, especially in Lucerne.
I love that place. Switzerland.
You know, you don't hear too much about Switzerland, but I've spent a significant amount of time there.
I did some touring. I did two tours.
There's a car company out of Spain called sayat spelled like seat and they threw.
A bunch of money at this tour. So this guy Phil Dunkner, who's kind of an MD, you know, a piano player and music musical director.
He put together these tours for say I and I did like fifteen cities in Switzerland, which I don't know if you know this, but Switzerland's not a very big country. And so I got to spend a couple of months there in the two tours that I did with Phil, and it's really one of the most beautiful places ever, especially Lucerne Lake.
Lucerne.
I think it's something like eight hundred feet deep, and it's crystal clear. It's a gorgeous and the city is kind of built right around right around the lake, you know. So I've enjoyed my time there, and I definitely would take a walk with old Johann Bach across the.
Old Johan as we call the Old pal Yeah.
So if somebody never heard of the term by you, soul, how would you describe this to them?
Man, It's really just.
It's a term that some journalists twenty years ago coined for what it sounds like to listen to me. And I think it's a fairly apt description. If we're just, you know, going by the term by you. Soul is soul that originates into by you. It's a little bit swampier than you might hear in modern R and B. It's got a little more groove then you might hear from people with a similar pigmentation that I that I have. It's just down home southern.
Soul music and the way you play it, it just flows so naturally and so beautifully. Do you get in a zone equivalent to the zone that an athlete gets in when you're playing your music.
Man, I really do.
In fact, when I try to get cerebral on stage, it's a real problem. I worked two years ago with a group of guys. We called ourselves a Southern Soul Assembly. It was myself, JJ Gray, Luther Dickinson from the North Misissippi All Stars, and one of my dearest and most favorite artists in the world, a guy named andrews Osbourne. And I noticed that anders would sing certain songs just the tiniest bit differently every night. He would emphasize different words every night.
So I asked him and he.
Said, oh yeah, So I've got my iPad up there with the lyrics, and as I'm singing, I'm looking ahead at the lyrics and I think to myself, Ooh, I'm going to pick out that word to emphasize tonight. And I mean, he's brilliant. He's a really brilliant guy. Well, I tried doing the same thing without the teleprompter one time, actually a couple of times, and it was a massive mistake because I would get to.
That line or that word and my mind would go completely blank.
So I really kind of have to just give myself over to the process and give myself over to the moment, because if I try to get cerebral at all, it really becomes a problem. And I've had to apologize to the audience and say I'm so sorry. I just based on that lyric. It's something that I've been doing. I'm forty two now. I started playing with my father on stage when I was five and a half.
I feel like I developed love.
Of performing before I ever knew what social anxiety was. And it's definitely a place that I feel most at home, and when I'm on stage, I feel most at home.
So talk about further the influence that your father had on you and the fondest earliest memory that really shaped you with him playing music.
Yeah, so I was five and a half.
My dad would book a gig in Destined, Florida every year to help offset the cost of taking his family on vacation. And so right before we left for that vacation, Back to the Future came on TV. And if you've ever seen the movie, you see Marty McFly comes out at his parents school dance and he plays Johnny b Good on this beautiful red Es three five a Gibson S three thirty five. Well, my father actually had that same guitar. His father bought.
It for him in nineteen sixty seven.
And for whatever reason, I just kind of gravitated towards that hook and I kept repeating it over and over again.
Johnny be Good, Johnny be Good. So my dad says, Mark, do you want to learn that song?
I said yeah, And he comes home the next day with the lyrics printed out. Because he didn't know all the lyrics. I was on an old Dot Matrix printer. This is a nineteen eighty seven. He taught me the lyrics. I couldn't read at the time, but within a few rounds I had memorized the words and he starts playing, and I starts singing in key, and we play it all the way down, and he was impressed. And then he said, all right, let's try it again. And I vividly remember this. He says, let's try it again, and he starts. I start singing in key. In the second verse, he modulates up a half step and I follow him. Third verse, he modulates up another half step and I follow him. And that's really what told him that I had some gifts.
And so.
We went to Florida that weekend for our family vacation, and he brought me along for the gig. That was the first of great many times where he brought me along for the gig. Around nineteen ninety one, he joined a band called the Boogie Kings. The Boogie Kings is kind of a party band around here. Guys dress up in tuxedos and white tails, and it's a big horn band. They play what's known around here colloquially as blue eyed soul. It's white guys singing Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye and Wilson Pickett and the like. And I would go on as many of those gigs as I was allowed to, playing sort of semi roadie where I'd carry some of his gear and then I would just kind of hang side stage until it was my turn to get up and go sing. Johnny be good, but he really fancies himself as a jazz player, and he's a very very talented guitar player. And you know, growing up in the house, most of the music that he listened to was instrumental jazz music, and as a budding young singer, that.
Was kind of torture, to be quite honest with you.
So it was on the occasion that he had to learn some new Oldish Redding song that he would put on that he would put on an LP of Otis and I'd come running out of the back and say, Dad, who's this? You know, I'll never forget When he put on James Taylor, I guess he was in a pensive mood and decided to put on Never Die Young, And that really launched launched me into songwriting. I was like, Dad, I need you to show me how to play the song right here, and I kind of use those changes, reincorporated those changes from Never Die Young into a song of mine that I've been playing almost every night for the last twenty plus years.
A song called The Wanderer.
Having such a sophisticated musician in the house, I think definitely set me up for success. You know, most of the musicians that are from around here, from South Louisiana are playing zydico and Cajun music. So being exposed to Steely you know, Steely Dan and Stevie Wonder and Donnie Hathaway and Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield definitely gave me a nice launchpad.
Was he protective with you as far as you touching at an early age his guitars?
Oh yes, yes, and rightfully so.
In fact, one of the first times that I ever got to take one of his guitars was probably about fourteen years old. I said, Dad, I'm going to a bonfire. Do you mind if I bring the guitar? And he reluctantly okayed it, and I ended up I ended up letting a buddy of mine play the guitar that night as well. And when my buddy put the guitar back into the case, he didn't realize that the plastic part of the strap was kind of sticking straight up when he closed the case, and it knocked just the tiniest piece right out of the sound hole.
So yeah, I was banned.
I was banned from his guitars for a long time before and after that. Luckily, I've been able to replace that guitar. I signed a deal with Yamaha a few years ago and ended up getting him a new guitar that.
He absolutely loves. But yeah, he was very, very protective over.
His guitars, mostly because you know, my dad's he's not a wealthy man. He was a civil servant for thirty five years.
He really worked hard.
To earn the money that he spent on those guitars, and he cherished every single one of his guitars, which is why I was blown away completely when at my thirtieth birthday celebration at the House of Blues in New Orleans, he gifted me the red Es three thirty five that his father had bought for him in nineteen sixty seven. I was completely stunned, and it's actually still at my dad's house.
I'm glad that the ice got broken in the relationship eventually.
Yeah, no doubt.
Yeah. Tell me about the hometown that you grew up in.
Man, it's a pretty quaint town, you know. I grew up right here. Actually, I still live on the street that I grew up on. My parents live about one hundred and fifty yards across the street from me.
And it's the name of the town.
I'm sorry, it's called Karen Crow, Louisiana.
C Yeah, the name of your album.
That's right.
It's just a little bedroom community to the north of Laffey at Louisiana. So when I was growing up, it was pretty small. It was probably two to three thousand people.
When I was growing up. It's since grown up quite a bit.
I think they're probably closer to about ten thousand people, maybe fifteen thousand people here. I haven't looked at the numbers recently, but the traffic feels like it's way.
Heavier than when I was a kid.
We rode our bikes a lot, you know, it's a very typical gen X story. We rode our bikes everywhere. We got into a lot of trouble. We played a lot of basketball on driveways, and we played a whole lot of football in the fields. It's a pretty typical idyllic community, and I'm very very happy that I was able to raise my kids here as well.
Everybody probably knows everybody's name.
Right, Oh yeah, yeah, especially when I was growing up. Man, it was such a small town.
You know. My first job was at the store right at the.
Corner at the top of the street. And when I was a kid, my mother had an account there. I could go and get her cigarettes. If she sent me down to the store, I wouldn't. It wasn't an issue for me to go get her cigarettes. I worked in the kitchen at the local restaurant that used to be here, a place called Paul's p Row. My brothers, you know, cut their teeth at the other restaurant in town, pray Gen's. There was only two main stops in town.
You know.
Played a lot of baseball. I was a catcher for many, many years, and I loved catching. When the boys started throwing. At about seventeen, eighteen years old, when the boys started throwing up over.
Eighty miles an hour, I was like, I think I'm done with this.
Well, the album you know and Crows twenty years old, right, it sure is. How does that make you feel that it's twenty years old? And tell me how proud you are of that body of work and what it means to you today.
Man, It was an interesting time.
You know, I was twenty years old when I signed my record deal with Island dep Jam.
I felt as if.
I had this team of people around me, between management, my band, and the label, that we're all smarter than me, and I felt good about that. I also felt like all I needed to do was show up and that I would be on a gravy train that.
Would run forever.
I was disabused of that notion about twenty eleven or so, so it did take me quite a while to realize just how much I had to engage in my own career. But Man, Karen Crow was an interesting time because you know, it's kind of a schizophrenic album.
There's a lot of.
Different influences going on on that album, and I was adamant that the song home should be my first introduction to the American consumer. The record label, however, wanted a song called where You Are as the first single. I dug my heels in pretty hard, and you know, they would send out the radio rep from the region who had already wined and dined the local program director at the hot AC station or the Top forty station, and they would show up at my show and all night long, the regional radio rep for Universal is bragging about this song where you Are. We just not play the song. I refused to play the song. In fact, one of my favorite memories is we had morning television in New York City National TV. We're gonna play two songs. We're gonna play Home and where you Are. We play Home first, and my entire record label is there, my managers are there. We play Home, go to commercial break, come back from commercial break, and the anchor says, and once again.
Here's Mark Roussard with where you Are.
And I turned to the band as she's saying that and said, play rock Steady.
And they're like what I said, pree rock Steady.
And as soon as we hit the downbeat on rock Steady, I can see all of my label executives and my managers through the glass in the studio and they just started leaving. And my brother actually who's in the business now, ran into one of my former managers from that time a couple of years ago, who says that that day was the worst day in his entire music career. I you know, hindsight, being twenty twenty, I probably would have played it a little differently. These days, but there was there was something about letting them know that they no matter what they did, they couldn't control me. And you know, maybe that kept me away from some success. I don't know, nor do I really care at this point, because truth be told, I'm very happy with the way my career has gone over the last twenty years. I can still walk down Main Street Disney World with my family without being bothered by anybody. My wife hasn't had to have a job in twenty years. She's been a stay at home mother. Now she's touring with me because our kids are a little older. So I wouldn't change a thing necessarily, but just having a little more wisdom about how business operates, I might have played it a little differently.
They're like that Broussar guy man boys, he's something huh.
He doesn't look like he'd be that way and so unassuming and wow, yeah, you know, no, I'm I'm teasing you. Listen, you gotta forge your path man.
I told my my producer, Marshall Altman, I said, Man, I really disliked this song.
I hate this song.
And he says to me, I'll sabotage it in the mix, and I trusted him, and he didn't. He turned it into a really perfect pop mix that the label was just over the moon about. And I knew that Home was, you know, that was a much better introduction to what it is that I do.
Where you Are was a song that, yeah, you know, it is what it is.
But Home has grown in stature over the years consistently. It's because it just so connects with everybody in everyday life, right.
Yeah, you know, I can't necessarily put my finger on it.
It's a song that my father originated.
The guitar riff was originally his, and he and I had actually I had called him out to help me open some shows for a guy named Martin Sexton. We played Atlanta in Birmingham with Martin, and on the way home from Birmingham we were driving down I twenty fifty nine and he says, hey, Mark, you remember that remember that guitar riff oomed? I said, yeah, of course, And he says, what do you think about this?
Rolling down the road going.
Noway, guitar packed thing the trunk and he kind of looks at me all goofy like, and I had to turn my head out out the window because I didn't want him to know how cool I thought he was at that moment.
I thought that was a.
Hell of a lyric, and right right when he right when I looked out the window, I saw my marker one twelve fly by, and I just kind of turned back to him and said, somewhere around my mark of one, te Papa startle hung and the funk. And I had no idea that that one little brief, passing moment would turn into a career defining song for me.
But I am eternally grateful that my dad was so inspired to share that with me that day. And I have had no issue.
Whatsoever playing that song every night for the last twenty years.
Man, it's a joy to play.
We've evolved it over the years into different versions from the original, and I think every evolution has made the song better. None of us get tired of playing that song. It's a hell of a song to play.
Don't you think That's one of those moments that when you think about the art of collaboration and creating, and you think about how often everybody overthinks certain things in collaboration and creating, that that was a moment that it was just like, trust your judgment, then let it go and make it happen and let it flow.
I mean, don't you think Yeah?
I mean, look, collaboration is the defining term of music. What I do on stage every night with my band is collaborate and there are there's a place for intention always, you know. I find that my guys and I do better and feel a lot better about the show when we all have very defined roles and especially after some rehearsal time before going into a new set. But at the same time, the most beautiful things that we've ever come up with on stage are absolutely spur of the moment things that inspire everybody else to pick up on the next time that that round comes around, whether it's referencing some Zeppelin or or whatever in the middle of the first chorus, and by the time the second chorus comes around, everybody else's picked up on it.
Those are really really fun moments.
Those are the moments that make what I do the.
Best job in the world.
We'll be right back with more of the Taking a Walk podcast. Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
When you think of the people that you collaborate with, if you're meeting somebody that you're potentially going to collaborate for the first time. What are the signals you look for that would indicate it's going to be a great collaboration.
It's a good question, man.
Most of the time, it really comes out of left field, to be honest. One that comes to mind right now, there's a song called I'll Never Know that I wrote with a guy named Darryl Scott.
I'm sitting in Daryl's parlor at his home.
He's playing lap steel, and I'm writing this beautiful song.
It talks about all the things that you'll never know.
In the middle of it, he just stands up and puts the guitar down without missing a beat, and makes his way to the piano and then takes over on piano. And it was such a stunning display of musicianship because I'm in awe, you know.
I mean, I'm a singer.
I play enough guitar to get by and to write, but I'm not really an instrumentalist in the sense that.
My father is. Mostly because when I was about fifteen years old, I was like, Dad, how'd you get so good on guitar?
And he said, well, so when I was your age, I was practicing about six or eight hours a day, and I said, so I'm going to be a singer. I guess I was just always too lazy to put in the work on guitar.
But to witness somebody.
Again without missing a beat, put the guitar down, make your way over to the piano and start playing the most beautiful piano.
Was really stunning for me.
Chris Stapleton also absolutely blew my lid off, mostly because I was familiar with his voice before I was familiar.
With his name.
And in a writing session, of cold writing session like that, we typically spend about ten or fifteen minutes just kind of chatting. It was Chris, myself and a guy named Jed Hughes. And the whole time Chris and I are chatting, Jed is over here just playing playing some guitar.
Beautiful guitar.
So you know, Chris and I are kind of getting to know each other a little bit and talking about what I want to write about, and then all of a sudden, he starts wailing, and I immediately recognized the voice, and I said, excuse it, hold on, I said, are you the steel Driver? And he says, well, I was, and he kind of tell the story about how he ended up leaving that band, and for the rest of that writing session, man was iking it too. This clip from the movie Step Brothers with Will Ferrell and John c Riley after Will Ferrell's character sings for John c Riley's character, John c Riley's characters like.
I can't even look at you.
I've never fallen in love with another man. That's the closest I ever became, by far, the close than I became.
I want to talk about your work with charities even though I'm still laughing, and charities are not supposed to be funny, so I'm just laughing.
At the story, but it's all good.
I love it.
Your work with charities is pretty amazing through your SOS foundation. Talk about that work and the charities and what that work means to you, because it's really amazing.
So the first SOS that we made was actually out of necessity. I had made a second effort for Island def Jam. They decided that they were not going to release that album. We asked to be let out of our contract. They agreed to let us out, but I could not take the album that I had just recorded, and we didn't feel like there was enough time to go back into a writer's mode. It was going to take too long to write a new album, and so we decided the best course of action was just to record a covers album, a bunch of really classic soul songs, stuff that I had grown up on that my young fans may not know about. And we knocked that project out of the park once I left the major labels around twenty eleven.
So the calculus on.
Record deals is such that I never saw a dime from records else and thus never built it into my family's budget because I didn't see it. And so I figured once I got off the major labels that this money that used to go to keep the lights on and office buildings in New York and Los Angeles and Nashville was better served keeping the lights on for people that actually needed to keep their lights on. My managers were like, hey, man, you don't have you don't have this in your budget. You need this money, and I was like, no, I don't. I haven't needed it for the last ten years. I don't need it.
Now.
Let's set up let's build philanthropy into my business. And so SOS two was the first of those releases.
I think that was probably.
Somewhere around twenty thirteen, and it was so much more successful than I had ever even anticipated.
I knew it was going to work.
I knew that my fans, the music business was dying, right the record sales industry was dying. So I wanted to give my fans an extra incentive to leave the shows with something in their hands, and partnering with charities was exactly that incentive. My fans reacted to the project like gangbusters. It got me to Europe for the first time. We've been able to raise tens of thousands of dollars through each one of these projects for various charitable causes. All around, it's been a swimming success. And more importantly, it told my managers that even my hair braindiest schemes are maybe worth taking a second look at, because they were convinced that it was a massive, massive mistake, and once it succeeded the way that it did, they were like, Okay, whatever you want to do, now, let's go.
Have you personally seen where your music is, you know, helping people through challenging times We produce in this other podcast called music saved me about the healing power of music. So have you have you witnessed in any instances with your fans or one on one with anybody that music has really a healing power.
Yes, lots and lots of stories over the years, but one really stands out. We were playing a small club in Los Angeles and my tour manager says, Hey, there's a guy in a wheelchair.
He wants to meet you.
I said, sure, tell me come right after soundcheck, and I'm headed out the back door right after soundcheck when this guy is being wheeled into the building by his girlfriend and he tells me Mark, I wasn't always in this wheelchair. About a year ago, I was outside of club here in Los Angeles and I got sucker punched.
I was put into a coma.
At the thirty day mark, the doctors tell my family it's probably time.
To pull the plug.
They decide they're gonna pull the plug. Then she walks in with a stereo and puts on your song Home, and for the first time in thirty days, I start mouthing the words and tapping my finger. That was my first signs of cognition in thirty days.
Man, that was so much fuel.
That one story gave me so much fuel for my tank I've had plenty of families show up and to say that, you know, I'll never forget one time father and son showed up in South Carolina. Dad's wearing a suit. It's kind of tie. Tie is a little loose. Son has got tattoos and big holes in his ears, and the dad tells me he's got his arm around his sunny. He says, we haven't spoken in eleven years, ever since his mom and I split, and then your music brought us back together. Those are kind of the stories that I live for, to be honest with you, because I could go do something else at this point. Traveling is hard. Traveling and being away from my family is hard. And not seeing a ton of improvement in attendance numbers or our our ticket sales or our guarantees, it is hard. I could go sell insurance and probably make a better living at this point. But those are the stories that kind of tell me that I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.
Man, thank you for sharing. That's that's amazing.
And then you ventured off into a children's book. Yeah, I love you for you. Yeah, what prompted you to go down the road of writing a children's book.
Well, I love kids.
I love kids so much that I have to prevent myself from picking up random kids and just hugging the crap out of them. I asked permission. Now, not that I ever really picked up random.
Kids, but I really do.
Thoroughly enjoy being around children. I like working with kids. I have a godson that's just started catching. He's six years old and he's a catcher for baseball, and so I.
Bought him all the gear.
And I love working with kids. A dear friend of mine, a guy that I had worked with on a number of product projects, Kurt Zenzian. His wife happens to be an illustrator, and every time we got together on a project, we'd end up at dinner after a performance or something, and Rebecca and I would talk about about working on a children's book together. And finally I've got this SOS Foundation. There's a brand new hospital, children's hospital that opened up just down the road in Baton Rouge that expanded this region's ability to care for chronic and terminal sick children by something like one hundred and eighty thousand kids a year. And I thought that was a worthwhile project to put an sos behind, and so once I decided that it was going to be a lullaby album, we figured why not do a book in conjunction and help raise some funds for this hospital. Rebecca jumped at the chance. We were always you know, we were always both very very into the idea. We just needed the right moment, and so the opening of this children's hospital was the right moment for us. Any plans to follow it up, Yes, In fact, we've been in talks for a little while now to do so.
The book is I Love You for You.
It's basically a story about a parent or an adult figure in a child's life saying, no matter what you're going through, no matter what you got, uh what what what problems you're.
Facing, I love you for you.
If you can run like the wind, or if you need a wheelchair to get around, I love you for you. If you can see to the moon, or if you need spectacles, I love you for you. And the next project I think we're going to focus on I Love you for You too, which would be from the child's perspective to a parent to say, you know, no matter if you had a great dead work or it was the worst day in the year. I love you for you.
Too, so we'll see exactly when that comes long.
Have you gone to schools to talk to kids in conjunction with the book.
Yes, I've done a few readings over the years. I've visited the hospital as well and done some readings there. It's it's honestly been the most remarkable piece of merch items I've ever had. There's not a single person that leaves the merch table without that book when we have it available. It's really been a beautiful, beautiful venture. And so I'm definitely gonna do a follow up.
You've collaborated with some great people.
I'd like to hear who some of your favorites in terms of collaboration are, and then I'd like to hear maybe folks that you wish you could collaborate with in the future.
Oh Man, I got to open for Paul Carrick years ago in Rotterdam and Amsterdam a few other spots.
And how.
It was right after I signed a record deal, a big record deal with Atlantic Records. And for those of you who don't know, Paul Carrick was in three massive bands. He was in Ace, Squeeze and Mike and the mechanics, and after the show in Rotterdam, I asked him. I said, Paul, I just signed this million dollar record deal. You got any advice for me? And he says, Mark, I've signed some of the biggest record deals in the history of the music business. Nowadays, I have a building in England. That building houses my management company, which I own. It houses my record label, which I own. It houses my booking agency, which I own. I'm working harder than I've ever worked, I'm making more money than I've ever made, and I'm happier than I've ever been. It took a few years for that it's to really resonate, but it's one of the most important conversations I've ever had because nowadays, although I don't own my management company or our booking agency, I do own my record label. I'm definitely working harder than I've ever worked, I'm making more money than I've ever made, and I'm definitely happier than I've ever been.
Paul's advice that day was really.
A game changer for me, and I think about it often. Bonnie Rait we did nine shows on the road with her. She was an absolute doll of a human being. She called me up to sing love sneaking up every night, called the entire band up for the encore, and she bonused me about four thousand dollars in cash at the end of that nine show run, which was probably about equivalent to what we had made for the entire run, which taught me a lot about paying attention to the financial of the people that you have supporting you on tour.
I never forgot it. I'll never forget it.
All everybody in my crew got Christmas cards from her every year for like ten years after that show.
After those shows, she's quite.
Honestly one of the sweetest people I've ever met, and a hell of a singer and a hell of a songwriter to boot. Joe Bonamasa and I dropped a record last year. He produced an album for me, SOS four and Man talk about one of the most talented yet humble people I've ever been around. The guy is one of the best guitar players on planet Earth, and yet does not hesitate to give his chair up for somebody else. So when I call a buddy of mine like Eric Krasno and come and sit in on a track instead of kicking Josh Smith out of the chair, Joe's the one that volunteers to get up. Incredibly talented, incredibly humble, incredibly gracious, so much so that we are we actually have on the schedule to go back into the studio next month to record an original album.
As far as people that I.
Wished to work with, There's a singer by the name of Yeba who I've been desperate to work with for years.
She's one of the best singers I've ever heard of my life.
There's another singer named Emily King that I think is brilliant, and I'm making overtures to both of those young ladies for this blues project with Joe. I would say working with Stevie Wonder would be probably the top of the list. If I ever get the chance.
I'm gonna jump.
Yes she will, Oh yeah, Oh my god. What a unbelievable time this has been speaking with you. So grateful that you came out on the podcast to tell the story.
Is there anything that I might have left out that you want to talk.
About, Man, not at all. We've got a brand new record. We just dropped a record Eric Krasno produced for me. In fact, I'll tell you this little tidbit about this album. So I was sitting in about twenty eighteen. I was sitting on a batch of about thirty songs, and I was ready.
To make an album.
And I only wanted to work with one guy, a guy named Jeremy Most and Jeremy is notoriously difficult to get in touch with. After two years of searching, by March of twenty twenty, I had all been giving up. Told my manager, I said, let's stop searching. I'm going to call my buddy Eric Krasno to produce these songs. Eric and I have known each other for twenty plus years. I loved everything that he's ever produced, and so I reached out to Eric and I said, hey, man, look, I got a batch of material that I think is ready to go for an album, but you and I should start writing together to just kind of get the juices flowing round off the edges of the album. See if we enjoy working with each other. And about a week later we had an entirely new album. He had sent me. He would send me instrumental tracks in the morning. By the afternoon, I'd send him back a full song that I tracked right here in this little home studio, and we got this entirely new record. We're both fired up about it, but we're in the throes of a pandemic, and so we put the pause on everything until September about last year. I'm going to fly out to Los Angeles in September of last year. Now, this record making process was quite different than any prior for me in that Kraz was responsible for all the tracking without me being there, and I was just going to fly out to sing final vocals and do a few overdubs. And because I'm a little older and wiser now, I don't want to just fly by the seat of my pants. I want to make sure that I'm not flying out there to waste my time. And so I called Eric about two weeks prior to me flying out there, and I said, hey, man, look what's the plan. I don't want to come out there and waste my time. He said, oh, no, I got it, man, it's all good X y Z blah blah blah blah blah. I got the plan. I said, Okay, I'll see you in two weeks. And right as I'm about to hang out the phone, Crass says, oh, by the way, j.
Most is out here.
Should I ask him if he wants to work with us, And I said, what do you mean, j Most is out here, and he'said.
Yeah, he's been.
He's been looking for places to live for the last four months, and so he's just been staying in my guest bedroom. The guy that I looked for for two years happens to be just camped out in the guest bedroom of the second guy that I called.
Man. I said, yeah, I asked me he wants to work with us. He texted me about five minutes later he's like, he's down. Man.
I cried like a baby. I cried like a little child, mostly just because it was like the universe kind of again, you know, telling me like, stop worrying so much. Man, we got you. I got you. It's been a hell of a journey. I wouldn't change a thing, except maybe i'd have played Where You Are a few times back in the day. But it's a hell of an album. The new album is called Time as a Thief. Came out in September, and I think it's probably the best of my career.
Congratulations on it, and thanks for giving it to us, and thanks for giving us everything, and.
Brother, thanks for being on taking a Walk.
This was a blast. I appreciate you, buzz.
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