Click on the
icons to load the audio***) 
| (***this interview features audio clips. Click on the icons to load the audio***) |
|
{ Click on the box to download all audio clips, .zip file, 7.8 MB } |
It’s not very often you get to sit and have an extended chat with someone who had a huge influence on you. Mike Roe and his band the 77’s were huge to me personally. Always flirting with being the “next big thing” throughout the 80’s and 90’s, Roe and company pumped out some of my favorite albums of all time — Sticks and Stones, the Seventy Sevens (and it’s doppelganger Pray Naked album) as well as Mike’s solo albums More Miserable Than You’ll Ever Be and Safe as Milk. Roe next teamed with friends Terry Taylor, Derri Daugherty and the late, great Gene Eugene to form the Lost Dogs and launched me headlong into the likes of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and old school country acts like Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline. In short, I owe guys like Mike Roe my musical life. Imagine my excitement when Mr. Roe his own self agreed to sit and chat with yours truly. What unfolded was a memorable, frank and colorful discussion about art, music and faith with one of my heroes.
So in the midst of a freak October snowstorm I nestled in and called Mike. He started the conversation by saying he was doing two strange things: the first was he was super gluing his feet — apparently it attaches skin and numbs pain (although, to my knowledge neither claim has been evaluated by the American Medical Association, so try them at your own peril) and this is where our little adventure beings:
Mike Roe: My feet have been killing me the last few days so I thought ‘that’s it, I’m getting out the superglue’ and the other weird thing I’m doing is waiting for a phone call from Brian Wilson. (laughs) Because he, uh, I don’t know if you heard about it but someone on his message board challenged him to make a personal phone call if they’d donate money to the hurricane victims. So he came up with this scheme that if anyone donates a hundred dollars or more through his website then he’ll call the person at home, personally, and match the donation. So it’s been great, the fans are going wild, they’ve raised over two hundred thousand and Brian’s on the phone non-stop trying to keep up. It’s just caused such a stir among Beach Boys fans.
Joe Mammy: Even if you’re not, Brian Wilson — that’s good stuff.
Mike: Yeah it’s stirred up a lot of great publicity and everyone’s thrilled about it because everyone’s dream’s coming true. You get to talk to your favorite — I mean for me, Brian Wilson is just huge, you know? And so the idea that he would call and that I’d get a couple minutes just to ask questions and stuff like that. I mean I’m nervous about it, but at the same time you know, how can you say no to that? I was going to donate anyway, I was dragging my feet, not sure where to do it. I found out about this and it was like “oh man, that’s it, I’m doing that.” I’m still waiting on the call.
Joe: I don’t want to interrupt —
Mike: No, no, the phone number I submitted was my cell phone. This is my land line which is better for interviews because I can put on my headset, it’s got better reception. And the superglue is almost dry. I’m just sitting down to coffee at this point so if you want to, fire away.
Joe: (Preemptively explaining bad weather in North Dakota and apologizing for any possible interruption of the interview.)
Mike: Man. Blizzard huh? Where are you?
Joe: Minot, North Dakota.
Mike: HOLY CRAP! Whereabouts?
Joe: (giving directions)
Mike: How close is it to Fargo?
Joe: (more directions)
Mike: Because I’ve been there. I’ve seen the movie, but I was there long before I saw the movie.
Joe: I wasn’t sure if you’d actually ever made it to North Dakota.
Mike: Actually I made it there with Charlie Peacock in 1984. We were on a tour with that group “The Fixx” — you remember those guys?
Joe: It’s not ringing a bell.
Mike: You must be a very young man.
Joe: Well, no.
Mike: They were huge in the 80’s. You know, “Stand or Fall.”
Joe: I was a late bloomer musically.
Mike: Oh, O.K.. Yeah, they did kinda disappear. They’re definitely an 80’s type group. If you weren’t around or paying attention to them in the 80’s then you wouldn’t hear them now. It’s not like they get played a lot on oldies stations. Anyway, we did show up and played in some huge blimp hangar somewhere. It was freezing — it was in December or November. I just remember it being just tit cold, man. Just ridiculous.
Joe: Yeah, that’s North Dakota.
Mike: So who the hell are you anyway?
Joe: (giving secret origin story from my birth on Krypton, to my miraculous escape to being raised on the barren plains of North Dakota and starting this charming website)
Mike: I’m picturing you as that guy with his head off [our beloved mascot Cecil]
Joe: It might be prettier than the actual picture, so that’s cool.
Mike: So you got some cool interviews on there. That’s really great, you know, it’s very good.
Joe: I don’t know how I landed some of them — it’s just kinda the way it’s happened. I don’t look gift horses in the mouth.
Mike: Well it’s amazing what kind of people will sit for interviews for some of the more off-the-wall things. I used to produce a radio program in the early 80’s called “Rock and Religion” and then eventually it was changed to “Rock Scope”. It was syndicated and it went off as religious programming but we were doing a totally different thing because we were researching spiritual influences on popular music. So because that’s such a wide range we ended up scoring interviews with people like the Doors, and Grateful Dead and the Who. And it started out as a forum for contemporary Christian artists where you’d interview people like Debbie Boone or Daniel Amos, you name it — anyone who was doing Jesus music of any kind. And that was happening before I got involved with the program. They’d been doing it several years and I came on board and the whole emphasis changed.
It was a really good show until the FCC deregulated us. Our roster was growing. We got on Voice of America and Armed Forces Radio and a lot of really hip rock stations including WNEW in New York and a lot of those type “A” stations. But when the FCC said “no longer is religious programming required” we lost half of our subscribers because they could sell time around that time and it made really tough. Plus at that point we were getting the record company going with Exit Records and everything was changing, but it was an interesting few years. And it was amazing the kind of people we actually conned into doing interviews — people that in no way should have been talking to us if they only knew what we were trying to do, which was basically to expose them as the devil-worshipping heathen that they were. (Chuckles)
But actually the show was very intelligent and fairly intellectual and I think that aspect of it was respected. We weren’t on a witch hunt, our agenda was to sort of explore this and let these people speak for themselves and if their ideas were foolish or otherwise against what we believed, that really didn’t matter because they were saying it, we weren’t. It was a real interesting show for its time.
Joe: Sounds like an interesting show for any time.
Mike: I’ve often wondered what it would be like to get back into it, but I wasn’t bankrolling it, I just got hired to work with it.
Joe: The problem with bankrolling is as soon as you do it you have someone saying what you can and can’t do with it.
Mike: No, we were all in agreement. I think it just became really difficult to get subscribers. A lot of stations kept it because they liked it and that was cool. It was so much work to keep the thing going and we were so much more interested in starting a record company and making records. That was the right thing to switch to doing anyway, that’s what we did.
So how did you hear about me? How am I so privileged to grace the Joe-Mammy?
Joe: (Tells a long story about how much Sticks and Stones rules and changed my life forever.)
Mike: Wow, that’s amazing.
(A few odd grumblings by Joe edited out, basically Joe remembers a coffee house show where Mike and longtime side man Dave Leonhardt did a request show and did a cover of “Can’t Help Falling in Love”. Joe and Mike share a chuckle over it…)
I find that fascinating because when I was a teenager, well, my parents got into rock music when it was new and I was a little boy and then when they saw the effect it had on me they really backed off it and went the Gaither/Blackwood Brothers route. I was completely immersed in pop music — listening to the radio and everything. For me, it was more the idea that when I was 16 there were no Christians per se doing anything that was remotely hip except for Larry Norman or Randy Stonehill or a scant few others. And you’re not the first person that’s told me that it was our music alone that was the break through for them into pop music in general, not just “Christians can be cool” or whatever that is.
It’s a bit shocking because I would’ve never imagined having a part of a role in someone’s life where not only do we open the door for them as Christians to be more expressive — to feel like they can be themselves which is one of my primary goals, I think, but also that it would get them into music in general. It’s a huge privilege to feel like you did that for someone. It certainly wasn’t the intent.
Joe: Well, if you try to do it, it kinda loses the effect — like explaining a joke, it’s not funny anymore…
(Joe starts wandering into all sorts of bands from that period that were really good including Tess Wiley — whose interview you could check out if you wanted. Joe waxes some more — will he ever stop? Doesn’t sound like it. He prattles on and on and on. *sighs* Wait, here’s a good bit…)
I’ve never made it a secret that interviews are with people I respect and find interesting. You know, people who have influenced me personally. I’ve often said that if Britney Spears asked for an interview I’d say “no thanks — “
Mike: Oh, I’d do the interview. I would definitely do it. (laughs) I’d do it for any reason I could think of. I’d probably just stare at her legs or whatever.
But that’s a cool thing to do.
Joe: Getting back to interview part, not just me mouthing off, you’ve been around for a while —
Mike: (laughing) Yes, in every way, Joe.
Joe: I’m not saying you’re old, I’m saying you’re established.
Mike: Well, there’s a good word. I like that better: established. You know, I’ve been around longer than you think, because in 1969 I was in my first band called “The Brotherhood” playing the same kinda gigs I’m playing now. Even though there wasn’t a scene for it, there were some forward looking youth pastors and church people that weren’t offended when a group showed up playing rock ‘n roll. We were even doing covers that had spiritually relevant lyrics.
In fact our most auspicious debut was opening for Jimmy Swaggart at a “Christ Ambassadors” convention in Fresno, California which caused a squall because we didn’t realize that Swaggart’s whole shtick was preaching against rock ‘n roll. I think the people that put this thing together didn’t realize or were fairly perverse in the pairing. All I know is that we were assigned to create a theme song for this whole event. The event was called “The Now Life,” which was incredibly hip for the Assemblies of God of 1969 — it had a kinda psychedelic lettering scheme. We were brought in — it was kinda a big group, we were patterned after groups like “Chicago” and “Blood, Sweat and Tears” that were really popular at that time, so we had horns and the whole bit.
So we came up with this little song and pressed a record up. The guy that pressed it up was Gary Archer, he was the father of the band that became “The Archers” — they were all little kids at the time. But he pressed this thing up and we played the theme song right before Swaggart came out. There was like 15,000 people in the arena. When we were done we went backstage, we heard them clapping and we went down into the dressing area and someone ran down and said ‘you guys gotta give a curtain call, they’re on their feet!’ So if you can believe this all of these conservative A of G pastors and youth pastors and other people, lay people I suppose, were applauding what we just did. I was shocked. I was 15 years old, and didn’t know what to make of it other than ‘this is pretty cool.’ Well, then we went out and listened to Swaggart who spent the next hour in brutal vehement disgust preaching against rock ‘n roll. Of course his cousin is Jerry Lee Lewis so he was running this whole shtick about ‘I went the Lord’s way and Jerry Lee went the Devil’s way.’
But I just found that whole interplay really fascinating at that time. Little did I know that this was going to be a benchmark — that was the first cruel rites of initiation for me into this whole thing.
Joe: That kind of embodies your career in a lot of ways — going from poster child for the entire thing to the point with Pray Naked where they won’t even release it because of the title.
Mike: Yeah, although those kind of challenges are in comparison relatively silly. The main battle is spiritual — always. That’s the one that we’ve been fighting because we’ve seen so many people who are so pent up in their faith or so uptight about trying to work out their salvation in their home churches and they’re a little bit weird or they like music — popular music — and they feel guilty about a lot of thing and they’re not sure of a lot of things. The only thing we’ve tried to do is make the best music possible and hope, hope that we’re inspiring people to do good art, you know, that sort of thing.
Joe: So what’s the status of the 77’s?
Mike: Well currently 77’s are kinda inactive. It’s just after 9/11 happened people stopped calling us to do shows and we weren’t too happy with the work we were doing at the time. I think we got burned out on things so we haven’t been doing much as a band. That might change. There’s been talk of maybe trying to do another record. I personally just got burned out on the whole thing. You do anything for 25 years, the unity of the concept just starts to fragment. I just got disinterested in rock n’ roll honestly, at least doing it that way —
(Random beeping screws up things. Gremlins — evil little monsters. When it stops Joe asks if working with the Lost Dogs and doing solo work had taken the place of the 77’s)
Mike: Well a little bit, mainly it was when Dave Leonhardt moved to Atlanta I lost a writing partner I really enjoyed working with and just doing it alone with Mark and Bruce was a lot harder for me because I didn’t have that other guitar player to bounce off of. So it made me feel out of balance and we did our best and we came up with some really cool stuff, but I would like to get Dave back. He’s talked about moving back to California and that would be great because he and I had just a real natural way of working together — you know that jangly guitar stuff that I really like.
I just felt a little bit musically void with just three guys. I felt like I needed someone else to balance it out. We’ve come up with some really cool stuff in the last ten years it’s just not completely what I want to do. I’m not as drawn to it as I maybe once was. Plus my interest in folk music and the confessional folk ballad, that kind of stuff — my tastes have changed a lot and I’m not as apt to want to pick up an electric guitar and rock out. That’s just me getting older probably. That could change. I do have tinnitus so I tend to withdraw a lot from loud sounds and stuff so that thing of playing loud guitar music has been not as appealing as it once was for health reasons if nothing else, you know what I’m saying? So that part of it’s been tough, but perhaps I’m just making excuses. (laughs)
The subject of the 77’s is a ticklish business for me only because I know it means a lot to an awful lot of people. We have a lot of fans and they want more and every time they ask me about it I demur and after a while it becomes embarrassing because I don’t want to let them down or make them feel that I don’t care what they care about — that’s not really the case. I guess it’s really hard to stay interested in expressing yourself in one kind of way for that many years. The band was never supposed to last that long in the first place.
Joe: Was there a shelf life given to the 77’s?
Mike: No, no it’s just that — I don’t know. I suppose that because the group became so unhealthy for such a long time period of time or so inactive it’s harder for me to think of it as a going thing the same way hard core fans do.
Joe: Did you run into that between the first line up and the second lineup?
Mike: The thing was we didn’t miss a beat. There was one year that I kinda floundered and then getting Mark Harmon and Dave Leonhardt in was so inspiring to me that I was just thrilled to just pick up and continue with that lineup — totally different, but it was very inspiring and then I guess when Dave and Aaron [Smith, former drummer for the 77’s] left that was a lot harder for me in a lot of ways because I had to meet the challenge of it being now a three-piece band. We worked with Scott Reams quite a bit, but he never became a full-fledged member. That was something that made it more difficult for me and plus my personal life was going through so much turmoil during the last ten years that it just made it harder to want to do it. Then when 9/11 happened and the work dried up, I think that really took the wind out of my sails.
We made that big, elaborate album, the Radioactive Crows thing [A Golden Field of Radioactive Crows — Joe] and it didn’t sell and it didn’t do what it was supposed to do and we didn’t much like it anyway. After that whole debacle I just kind of became somewhat negative about it in my mind. My idea was just to take a long working break from the whole concept and give it a rest, but there’s been talk recently. The natives are restless, the fans are restless, Mark and Bruce are restless and we’ve been discussing ways to continue to make music together. So who knows what looms on the horizon?
Joe: Let’s talk about your solo stuff, I like that more folky stuff you do in your solo stuff and it kinda helped me get into artists like Bob Dylan and the like. You had that intro on Safe as Milk that had “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” —
Mike: What it was the engineer always kept the tape rolling while I was warming up to do tracks and stuff and I would just sit there and get bored waiting for him to get levels and I would just starting noodling. He recorded some of that stuff and we threw some of it in to give people a feel that the sessions were casual. Oddly enough, Safe as Milk is the band’s favorite album. Any time that we list our favorites we never list band albums we always list my solo stuff. So that just adds to the irony of the whole idea that the band isn’t always completely happy with its own work. It seems like we feel more fully realized when we’re working under different construct.
[-this is where Joe is an idiot for not realizing the tape had stopped. Now we begin with tape 2…]
Mike: I don’t know if you’ve followed our website this year a lot, but you’ll notice I’ve been doing tons of production where the band is the backup band. That’s been a way for us to work together without having to work together as a group and we’re available to anyone who’s willing to pay for it, by the way. We’re a great — terrific — backup band. We’re willing to make a record with and for just about anybody as long as they can afford it.
Joe: So if I get that Britney Spears call, I’ll send her your way
Mike: (laughs) Yeah, even Britney Spears.
Joe: Do you feel the solo work allows you to address things thematically more than working with the band?
Mike: I don’t think of it in terms of I feel more free to explore certain topics; it’s just that I’m writing from a more personal point of a view. And the other guys are always writing their stuff, when we’re doing band stuff they’re writing their stuff, so I don’t feel able to say — I tend to become more passive and let them do more writing for the group for many reasons that are probably too complicated to get in to. That and the band thing isn’t as much as a personal expression as perhaps it once was, so yeah, the solo records are far more expressive of my own soul and my own personal musical tastes. Although there’s a fair amount of collaboration.
If you look at Safe as Milk that was a collaboration with me and Mark Harmon for a lot of it. And then The Boat Ashore was a total collaboration with Bruce Spencer — that one’s pretty much 50/50. Then Say Your Prayers was probably the only one I really did mostly by myself although Mark helped a lot me with it. And then last year we did that “7 and 7 is” thing which is Fun with Sound and that was a complete collaboration with Mark Harmon, again, which was similar in some ways as Safe as Milk but quite a bit more input from Mark, at least musically, not so much lyrically at all. So I like being able to do it a lot of different ways and try different things so that it stays fresh. I like working with other people, I like working alone so I try to keep it as interesting as I can. I need to do another Say Your Prayers though, people really liked that a lot. It’s been almost four years now and I really need to get another one out. That stuff is easy to go play live.
It was too short, I never finished the record, you know?
Joe: I have to ask this, I have this urge to ask this — are you a full time musician? It sounds like with the producing that you are, but I’ve always had this freakish vision that some day I’d walk into a bank and there you’d be as a loan processor or something.
Mike: (laughs) No, I’m not a loan processor — I need one. No, I only do music, oddly enough. It’s a scary way to live, but it’s too late to stop now, as Van Morrison says. Yeah, Mark Harmon is the one with the corporate gig, man; he’s Hewlett Packard going on almost 25 years. It drives him absolutely crazy and he hates it — hates it. He’s really good at it, but he hates it. I would love see him to be able to quit that someday and just go do film scores or whatever.
I survive with sessions and production work. Just anything I can get — tours, you know. I don’t make a lot of money, but I’m able to sort of live off teacher’s salary. It’s a drag, I wish I could make more money, but I like the freedom of being able to get up when I want, do whatever the hell I want. It would be hard to imagine different way of life at this point, but I’m fully prepared that at some point I might have to go down to Starbucks and get an application.
It’s always Starbucks, isn’t it? Even Terry Taylor [fellow Lost Dogs member and lead for
Daniel Amos] I think a couple years ago went and got the application. He really did, he was freakin’ out and I think it was his son that stopped him. His son spotted it and he went to his dad and goes “dad you can’t do this, you can’t do this.” And Terry kinda thought about it and looked at his son and realized what his son meant with those words — it wasn’t just "you can’t pull it off." The weight of the words fell so hard upon Terry that he tore up the application and realized in the same way that I do when I get in that spot that I don’t need to be working for somebody else, I need to be working harder at what I already do. Anytime I’ve ever panicked or felt like "I’ve got to get this up," I just call someone up and say "let’s make a record" or "let’s book a tour," let’s do this, let’s do that, or I’ll go write a bunch of songs — just anything to keep from working, that’s my motto. Because once you let go of it, I’d probably never be able to get it back. And it doesn’t make a lot of sense for me — I would be a liability at Starbucks or at any place compared to doing this kind of thing.
As long as people want and need it — I want to do it as long as necessary for people to have it. When I’m just forced to get out of it I probably should get out of it. But it seems like an awful lot of people enjoy this or depend on it for some reason or another, even if they just love the music, then that’s a good enough reason for me to keep my hand in. God gave me this to do and it’s like throwing it back in his face if I don’t do it to the best of my ability, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to make it easy for me, either. Everyone has to go hunt down their dinner so I’m not expecting it to be easy but it’s been tough doing it the way we do it — without ever having had a hit or something that creates a lot of work just automatically.
Joe: Having the hit would be nice, but on some level isn’t not having that give you that sense that you’ve been plugging away and doing this and you’ll never be known as “that one band who did that one song.”
Mike: Oh yeah, completely. We get a lot more work than most people that have ‘that one song.’ Unless you can perpetually exploit that one song in a way that makes a really great living it probably becomes more of a curse. The fact I have hundreds, perhaps thousands people throughout the country and world that this thing really means something to them — it’s changed their life, it’s important in their spiritual life, their emotional life, whatever. That’s a whole lot more gratifying because I know what that would mean to me — I know what it does mean to me as far as how I feel about the artists that I love. I feel like I have this quasi-relationship with an awful lot of the people that I admire through their music and when you look at the things that really matter to you, sometimes those kinds of bonds that are really, really important, that so enrich your life, that you feed on. I know that because people have told me that the stuff I do is like that for them so by all means I need to foster that and not take that lightly because that’s a tremendous privilege and it’s very cool to make someone that happy with what you do.
So in my down moments I try to remember that. I think about it and go "well, I can’t let these people down, they need so much from me I can't sluff it off or go do something else simply because this is all too hard." No one ever said it was going to be easy. If this is what you want to do with your life than you need to do it whether it’s easy or not. It’s the same as preaching the gospel, isn’t it? (chuckles)
Paul says do it when it’s convenient, when it’s not convenient, do it when it’s dangerous, do it when it’s not. You know, just do it — to be trite. (laughs) And that’s kinda I how have to look at it. It’s like you do it, no matter what, you just have to do it. And believe me, we’ve have had to do it under not to desirable circumstances many times whether its scaring up the money, or going broke or playing in back yards for peoples’ barbeque parties. That had to be the absolute nadir of all of this and yet we did it, we did it for rent for a month. It was hideous but we did it and a lot of people really enjoyed it. (laughs) At least, at the very least it made a lot of people happy and it was a lot of great parties. We were there as their mascot, so what? It could be worse.
Joe: On the upside, you got all the bratwurst you could eat.
Mike: I ate a lot of bad hotdogs that summer. Man. (sighs) That’s right.
Joe: If you had to point to one experience that really defined why you’ve kept going and what keeps you grinding away at this through the hard times, what would it be?
Mike: Probably having some young woman come up to me with a photograph of her and her baby and saying this baby exists because of your song “Your Pretty Baby”. And actually that’s happened more than once where she said “I was going to abort and then I heard that and I just couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t do it, here’s the baby.” What can I say to that, you know? Having a child myself and knowing what my daughter means to me I’d have to say that’s — that was the first thing that came to me, so there you go.
Joe: It’s kind of this constant process of humility where something you do that might be a big thing to you when you do it, but you think no one ever is going to appreciate that way, or just something you don’t think is all that important has this ripple effect on people in ways you could never have dreamed of.
Mike: Absolutely, yeah. The whole mass media thing, what it’s able to achieve in that way where I can be writing about a bag of potato chips or something and it becomes a life-changing experience for somebody. I find that process really fascinating. But there’s also a great deal of prayer and spiritual support around what we do and I’m grateful for that because more than anything I want people to be freed by this music. It’s something that frees them up personally or spiritually or draws them closer to God, that’s huge, that means more to me than the entertainment value. It’s al important, but that’s really important and I’m always grateful when things like that are going on. The unaborted babies fall in that category for sure along with just about any other thing that people might say ‘well this altered the course of my life because…’ and a lot of times it’s things that are very small gestures, like you said. You can never really know what’s going to do that. For me personally there are a lot of things that have done that that were certainly not intended to be big by whoever did it, by whoever inspired me. Yeah that part of it is pretty cool.
Joe: When I talked to Linford Detweiler of Over the Rhine I asked him about the role of faith in art and I wonder if you’d be wiling to address how that impacts what you do.
Mike: When I first started out doing this we were part of a church fellowship so we felt obligated and also I was completely caught up in the idea of sharing the gospel through rock music and whatnot. After a time we became more artistic in our pretension and got caught up in other things. I’ve long since let go of using the music as a propaganda tool or as a way to expose people to things that I have discovered or believe. I also found out that it was inevitable that if God was equipping or enabling you to do this for some reason that he goes along with you — that everything you do and say can become a touch point for those kinds of things to happen. It’s a mystery; I’m not sure how it works I just know that because there’s already an expectation that I am a “Christian artist” per se, even though long ago I abandon any such notion of being a Christian artist —
Joe: So do you look at it not that you are a Christian artist, but that you’re an artist who is a Christian and that faith is something that comes out because it’s part of who you are?
Mike: Absolutely, that’s true. Without me having to couch it in any kind of rhetoric it’s just something I noticed that happens. It goes before us and it follows after us, we can’t get away from it. I’m always so grateful about that because I know I’m not worthy of it and it’s very humbling a lot of times because you realize this thing is way bigger than you and that it’s not about you at all. I just happen to be the guy that’s trying to make a living and make some music. And along side of that is this whole parallel universe where God does his business and as long as I see that happening I’m greatly encouraged.
If I felt like that was no longer happening that I was merely just eking a living out I think I’d be fairly unhappy doing it. It’s one of the things that’s kept me/us — and that includes both bands and anyone else I work with — going because on the darkest days where you feel like your life is meaningless and you’re such a disappointment to yourself and God and everyone else and along comes these e-mails of people that are telling your how important this is, what it did in their life and then the inevitable ‘please don’t stop’ which is for me the kicker. When I see that humble begging to not give up — everyone feels like they need to encourage us not to give up and no one’s prompting anyone to say that, but it’s consistent. It’s the same thing over and over again, year after year. I have to believe that those are direct little messages from God to me coming through those people because it’s always the same thing. It’s not like I have a website with some cheerleader on the side saying ‘you really need to encourage Mike, he’s really doubting his ministry.’ It just happens.
Joe: And it seems to be a matter of timing, for me it’s always been right when you needed it most, right before you go and pick up the application from Starbucks and you get that little something telling you that you’re doing a good job and that you need to stick with it.
Mike: Yeah, oh gosh. I’m so grateful for that kind of encouragement. I always immediately write the person back, every time I get one of those and I’m having that kind of day and I just hit the reply button and say you cannot understand what this means to me at this moment, thank you for writing. And that sends back another good vibe, you know? That personal relationship we’ve had with our fans over the years I think has made a huge difference, because when the band first started I had an office with nothing to do except answer fan mail. And I wrote back to every stinkin’ person personally, you know send them a photograph or whatever it was they wanted. I wrote them a note and years later I heard that meant all the world. People came up to me with a copy version of me letter or the original letter ‘I still have it!’ That kinda stuff means a lot; I know it means a lot to me. I think that kind of personal touch will endear you to someone for life. It makes a big difference when you feel like they actually care a little bit.
Joe: I know first hand, I was the guy who showed with three shirts for you to sign.
Mike: Well, you know, t-shirts are hard to sign but I do it anyway. Yeah it’s when they don’t come up and ask it’s when you start to worry. Believe me, our bonanza days at places like Cornerstone are long past us. There was a time where we got out of the van and we were instantly stars, sieged with autographs. Now I have to almost try to get people to notice me. It’s just a whole new generation now, you know?
Joe: Things go in cycles and things now suck and are boring. I remember when the coffee house show I caught where you were taking requests and the guy next to me was just screaming for “Renaissance Man” [song off the very first 77’s album Ping Pong Over the Abyss…] and it was cool to see that people were really die hard about even the old stuff. When did that album come out?
Mike: Oh, ‘82
Joe: It was cool to hear that guys were looking for the stuff that wasn’t as well commercially received — stuff from before that All Fall Down and Seventy Sevens era.
Mike: We still get that stuff. People want to hear that. That record’s such an embarrassment to me but at the least, my one consolation is that an awful lot of people liked it an awful lot. Even though it’s embarrassing to me artistically and just about every way, it means something to someone else so we try to humor it. (laughs)
Joe: Everyone has to come from somewhere. My early stuff sucks but hopefully doesn’t define what I do from now on.
Mike: Yeah, thank God it wasn’t a hit. I look back at just about everything we’ve done and I think "be very, very grateful that you didn’t make a big splash in the world with any of this because think of how you’d feel about it now." So there is that one consolation that remaining anonymous really keeps from being embarrassed on a mass level. You think of people that are huge stars and have to live albums that they’re ashamed of, you know?
Joe: I saw Dylan a few years ago, and the show was basically “Greatest Hits Vols. 1 & 2”. I mean it’s good stuff, but you’d think after nearly 40 years, some nights he’d almost rather put an ice pick through his head before doing “Rainy Day Women” again.
Mike: Well he changes them a lot. I don’t like when he sings ‘em stupid. You know I walked out on him the lost time I saw him because he was just (Mike does a hilarious Dylan impression) it was like I couldn’t bear it. I said "I will not submit myself to that." When he starts singing correctly again I’ll go see him again but I don’t know what the hell he’s doing with his voice. I don’t understand that at all. It doesn’t make any sense to me. The man can actually sing. But this mumbling in your beer kinda stuff, I don’t get it. I don’t know who he’s trying to emulate or what the deal is, but I’m glad we’re seeing a renaissance here right now with the PBS special. It’s an exciting time, I think that he’ll probably have another huge resurgence, but he’s going to have to learn to sing again. (laughs)
Joe: I was going to ask you if you mind if I put some audio clips on the site?
Mike: Oh, I don’t care.
Joe: Because that Dylan impression is going on there, baby.
Mike: Oh gosh, that’s great. That’s going to get back to him. (laughs) We should be so lucky right? I need to eat my corn flakes now so hopefully you don’t mind me —
Joe: Oh no, do what you need to do
(crunching sounds ensue)
I lost my train of thought.
Mike: I messed you up with that mumbling. I mean it was irritating. What was great about the concert is he was playing piano. I’d never seen him play piano. I’d always heard rumors he played piano, that was great. He had, I think, was it Ron Sexton? (Mike’s phone rings, but it’s not Brian Wilson.)
Joe: If it’s Brian Wilson, drop the phone…
Mike: Oh I will.
Joe: Obviously the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson were big influences, who else would you point to as influences?
Mike: Gosh, it depends on which decade. We have to list decades, I’m old enough now that — certainly the Who, Pete Townsend was huge, Zeppelin, I love Jimi Hendrix with all that stuff, the Doors, the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, that stuff is huge with me, Grateful Dead of course. I love all that kind of music but I’m also a big jazz fan. I really love Dave Brubeck, and George Shearing and Chet Baker, certainly Miles, John Coltrane. I’m a huge jazz hound and I think that’s probably had some kind of impact.
I also love early Fleetwood Mac, Peter Green and all the different incarnations of Fleetwood Mac, but particularly the earlier ones — the ones with all the great guitar playing and guitar stylings. That’s just but a fraction. Lately I’ve been particularly enamored with Mark Kozelek — Red House Painters, he was in Red House Painters for a long time. He’s doing other things now, but he’s probably my favorite artist right now. I just really love his guitar playing and tunings and his voice and everything he does even though it’s really off the beaten path. He’s my favorite. Say Your Prayers was definitely influenced by him.
Joe: How about anyone new in the scene that you think is worth checking out?
Mike: I don’t know, I’m not as much in the scene as you think. I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything new. There’s probably someone but I just can’t think of them off hand. I love that guy that I produced, Jason Herring. I think he’s got a real shot at it; he’s got a great voice, great songwriter —
Oh wow, the ducks are mating outside. My apartment sits on this kind of fake pond. I didn’t know it was mating season, but all the males when they start to bob their heads up and down — oh there he goes, he’s on top of her right now. The mating ritual is a trip because basically the male mounts the female and pushes her under the water like he’s trying to strangle and drown her at the same time. Gets it done somehow. All the males pick at one another and try to kill each other. It’s very brutal for such a placid bird.
Sorry, that was kind of an aside, there. It just distracted me.
They just bob their heads up and down, up and down and that means sorta “okay, get ready.” Oh there he goes again. Geeze. (laughs) I wish you could see what I’m seeing right now, it’s hilarious. Anyway, sorry.
Joe: It’s okay, that’s one of those things going on the site. If Dylan was mad at you, he’ll forgive you for the ducks.
Mike: Oh good.
Joe: So are there any Lost Dogs albums in the works?
Mike: We just put out an instrumental record called Island Dreams, came in the summer. Kinda sounds like part of the “Kill Bill” soundtrack. It’s sort of like my Daydream album gone Tiki Room — sort of a Tiki Room version of it mixed with a little bit of Duane Eddy and Ennio Morricone, spaghetti western stuff. It’s fun. It started out as an instrumental record Terry and Derri (Daughtery, co-Dog and Choir frontman) did and then it never came out. I got involved in it and played guitar and now it’s out. It’s a great record for summer vacation. We put it out especially for families to put on when they’re on vacation to try and calm frayed nerves or just kickin’ back in the backyard with your straw hat and sandals and bucket full of beer. Makes you want to go book a holiday to the Caribbean right away.
Well, I gotta get going and get around to the junk I gotta do today.
Joe: Cool, thanks for your time. Any parting words of wisdom for the kids at home?
Mike: Oh gosh I can’t think of anything. What is it? “Be well, do good work and keep in touch.” How’s that? Borrowed from my old buddy Garrison Keillor…
*****
You can track down Mike during his upcoming tour with Mike Pritzl (of the Violet Burning) or with the Lost Dogs, all by his lonesome or, perhaps someday, with the 77’s. Either way, it’s a good show. As always look for some tasty goods in the Joe-Mammy.com Shop as well as through their respective websites.
Bonus audio clip: On Garrison Keillor and California
