When I started out in the lucrative and steady career of folk-singer back in the day, many of the songs I played were Kenny Loggins songs. Not just because they were mindlessly simple and seemingly written to make girls believe I “got” them……probably not just that. No other reasons come to mind right at this moment but if one does I will add it to the end of this term paper…er, I mean “blog.”
Flash forward to years and years later when I was a wildly successful songwriter in a little town you may have heard of? Nashville? Ring any bells? Suddenly Kenny Loggins was coming to town and asking me to write a song with him. The actual request probably had “anyone available” in the place of my actual name … but he was coming and I was sharpening my pencils and putting on my magic songwriting dickie. (That is not a cute nickname for my penis. It is a half sweater worn under a shirt. My actual penis has no magic songwriting powers to my knowledge.)
We wrote great together, we sang great together, we got along, he left.
Now years later he asks me to join a band with him. I have had some wonderful occasions to play on stage with wonderful artists, (Ringo Starr, Carole King, Roger Daltry) but this was START a BAND with him. That means psychological warfare. Passive Aggressive manipulation to get your own way. How many solos do YOU have. How many words did I write? Who gets to drive the paneled station wagon with the gear in it? Who gets the prettiest girls?
The answer to the last question got answered when he also asked my wonderful and talented significant other, Georgia Middleman, to join the band as well. That answered that question with “I get the prettiest girl!” (that statement was for points I can collect in the bedroom later from GM)
So now you can follow the fun. I am going to try and let you know just how strange and exhausting it is to start a new band in 2011. And to start it with an idol of yours. And to start it far enough in my own career so that I truly believe that everything I say is right and genius and everything anyone else says is caca. As Betty Davis once said:
“My agent is an idiot. Don’t listen to a single word he says.”
The Blue Sky Riders are born. The name means nothing. Random words forced upon us once we learned that the Continental Sphincters was taken.
Bye for now