After the Toto concert talking with Steve Lukather about how both of our mothers were contestants on the game show "Hollywood Squares." I am not kidding. 

​In this interview with Johnny Manchild we discuss his new album, Side Effects, as well as how singing live is not about looking pretty, adjusting his creative process to the manic and depressive episodes of his bipolar disorder, and how he benefited from the Oklahoma City music scene.
Johnny Manchild website: ​https://www.manchild.band/

Last night with bassist extraordinaire John Pierce of Toto after their concert in Raleigh. In addition to Toto and playing with Huey Lewis & The News for 30 years, John also played on albums for Mick Jagger, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, Rod Stewart, Roger Waters... The list goes on and on. Click here to read one of my interviews with John.

Drew Copeland of clients Sister Hazel: With songwriting, sometimes what I thought was a mistake turns out to be a key part. The stumbling block was actually a steppingstone. That's part of allowing the creative process to unfold on its own and not forcing it. There's a fine line between being authentic and being contrived. I think part of what has kept people connected to our music is that it is authentic. We talk from our souls. Even songs about fictional people and stories need elements of authenticity. And we do not add elements just because they are trending on rock radio or country radio. The overarching question is: does this serve the song? And sometimes what serves the song best initially looks like a mistake.
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If you are a band who wants content like this on your social media, website, liner notes, newsletter, etc., message me.

​If you are a band or a solo artist who is sick of personally dealing with social media, let’s talk. I can help. 

Do the sites get worse every day? Absolutely. You should not have to deal with that. You should be able to focus on your music. 

Imagine how much better your life could be if you did not have to deal with the pain, stress, and time-suck that is social media. 

You can download this e-book for free.

​Cris Cohen: You have some interesting turns of phrase on this album, Sumatra. One that stood out to me is in the song “Route 66”… the line “forward only works as an action verb.” I'm wondering if you remember how that came about?

Paula Boggs: I Googled “forward.” I was like, “What does the dictionary say about the word ‘forward’?” Because I wanted that to be a propelling word in that song. I went to Webster. It (said), “It's an action verb.” I was like, “That is brilliant. I can use that. I can run with that.”

Cris Cohen: It's a great example of just a few words that say a lot.

Another lyric that grabbed me was from the song “Wasting Young Man.” “Every heartbreak is a swinging door you can choose to walk through.” 

I've never heard the metaphor of a swinging door used with heartbreak before. Normally it's (written as a) crushing blow. In what way is a swinging door apropos to a heartbreak?

Paula Boggs: I actually had a specific person in mind when I wrote this song. I remember the darkness that enveloped my friend upon the realization that this person he loved did not love him back. I've known this person long enough to know it all worked out okay. Eventually he did find love. To do that, he had to put himself out there.

It just seemed to me that the swinging door was a great metaphor for choice. You can stay in the darkness. You can stay where you are or you can take a risk, a chance. You don't know what's on the other side of the door.

It seemed to me that the swinging door gives the person ultimate agency of what happens next. It's not a closed door. It's not open in an inviting way per se. You must choose. And that's what the song says. You can choose.

It was the choice that I wanted to really amplify with that metaphor.

Lawrence Gowan of Styx: You get asked quite often, “Do you ever get bored with playing some of these songs, because you play them every night?” And we don't. 
    
Part of the reason we don't is that every day, it's a brand-new thing. It's a brand-new way that things have happened in this 24 hours that we're living in right now. Some nuance of experience will come into the delivery of “Come Sail Away” or “Renegade.”
 
That is part of the great experience of it. I liken it to looking at your favorite painting. There's no finite number of times you can look at it and say, “Well, that's it. I've seen it 10,000 times.”
 
You get something new from it every time because it resonates with you.

Cris Cohen: How would you describe the difference between your various styles with a guitar?

Johnny Moeller of the Texas Headhunters: We all really love blues, soul music, rock and roll, all the things we talk about. We're all like, "Oh, yeah, I love The Clash. I love Otis Redding. I love Al Green. I love Freddie King, Albert Collins." But we've all come from a different place.

Ian Moore's got more of a blues, rock, psychedelic (style), but he's gone all over the place. He's done all kinds of folky records. And Jesse Dayton's definitely coming from a rockabilly, country (style). But we are all really tied around the blues. It’s that common thread.

Cris Cohen: When you wrote this book, you had to relive a lot of these moments… some fantastic, some really awful. But ostensibly your family, friends and bandmates, were going to kind of relive this as well. How did you handle that?
 
Jim "Soni" Sonefeld of Hootie &The Blowfish: Writing something down about your life is way different than talking about it with friends, family, or a loved one. You realize the permanence when you see it written there. It makes you question how you speak, how you want to communicate. 
 
My life was a roller coaster, no doubt. And I wanted to let people know that it was. But also, I didn't want to harm people. 
 
There was part of me that said, “Tell them everything. It'll be amazing.” Because I had read a lot of music bios that were anywhere from illuminating to grotesque. And I didn't want to be that guy. 
 
I still had kids that were teenagers. I had an ex-wife. I had bandmates that were still my bandmates. There's no need to harm people with your words, for some form of self-satisfaction, or to sell books. So I was very careful about what to write.
 
And yeah, living through things like the beginnings of the band… glorious. Wonderful. I couldn't wait.     
 
But going through my mom being alive and then passing. That was a difficult part of the book. That was hard. That was probably the hardest part, really facing some things in grieving. Because grieving is kind of forever.
 
If you pass through maybe the worst of it, and you've moved from losing someone to remembering someone… it was still hard. It still is. 
 
Even if I go back and read portions of my book for groups, that's one that I never get through.