Wayne Nelson of Little River Band joins me to talk about all things LRB!

Wayne Nelson from Little River Band and I talked about the new music, 
what they did as a band over the last few years to stay in vocal and musical shape, and...
YACHT ROCK!  Listen! 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey, it's Lucy Chapman. Thanksfor hanging out with me again on another
podcast of Here's More. And Igot a special guest for you today,
Wayne Nelson of Little Riverband. Goodto talk to you. It's so great
to have you on. And weactually spoke back in twenty eighteen. I
went back to look to see howlong ago it was that I talked to
you, and I was shocked.I think COVID time everybody forgets how much

(00:22):
time has passed. It really messedup everybody's internal clock, if you will,
Because that's six years. It feelslike it was, you know,
six weeks ago that we talked.Because everything got turned upside down by being
shut ins. We were out ofwork for eighteen months. Tell me how
that went a long damn time fromthe very beginning, which was March of

(00:43):
twenties when everything started getting really serious, Where did the band go? How
did they deal with that in thenext year and a half from there?
Well, first of all, weweren't all living in the same town,
which made things complicated. I wasin Arizona, the rest of the guys
were in Nashville. The same thinghappened to us, that happened to everybody.
Work was gone. We couldn't maskup and travel and go do things

(01:04):
because nobody would come to a show. You know, the entertainment industry relies
on people coming through the door.So we literally had to just stop.
We could take on projects at home. We could, you know, try
to do some recordings and share themback and forth by email or transfers or
dropbox or something like that, whichwhich we did some of we started.

(01:26):
As a matter of fact, acouple of the songs that are now on
our new record that came out onMay three were conceived in Demo's cut during
that time. But basically everybody hadto look for, you know, something
different to occupy their time and notjust go. First of all, at

(01:48):
age seventy plus, I had tosing the set two or three times a
week in my studio closet, youknow, to make sure that you just
didn't lose your chops. If asinger doesn't use his voice at that age
for over a year, you forgetabout it. You're done. So two
things happened. We had a liveorchestral record in the can that needed to

(02:10):
be mixed and post produced and printedand so on and so forth. So
We dug into that heavily for aboutfour months and got that out. So
that was a band project that cameout in the middle of COVID. It
was called black Tie and it's uslive with anywhere from a seven to a
fifteen piece orchestra at different shows andsome magnificent record. Very proud of it,

(02:32):
but we literally had to market itfrom home do all the talking about
it. We could on interviews andstuff. That was one thing. The
other thing that was great between Rondaand myself we kept hearing a phrase same
storm. We're all we're all inthe same boat, and we kept going,
We're not in the same boat.There are a lot of people in
way different boats. There's people withrow boats and there's people with yachts,

(02:55):
and they're living completely different experiences here. So we started our own podcast called
Same Storm, Different Vote. Iam definitely all look that up because I
want to hear some of that.We talked to everybody from semi truck drivers
who had worked for us in thepast to investment bankers, nurses, teachers,

(03:15):
educators. We had a great time. They were all friends, but
we spoke to them on their professionallevelges to get their viewpoints and their thoughts,
and it was very telling as tohow different people were coping with the
situation. Some great insights came fromthe investment banker because he had his finger

(03:37):
on where were people's thoughts about theirinvestments and their retirements, what's going to
happen when the fog lifts from thisthing. But we had teachers that ended
up retiring because they couldn't get intoa classroom, et cetera, et cetera.
Same storm, different vote. It'son podbean, video and audio.
The other thing that she and Idid with the help of a good friend.

(04:00):
They said, if you don't startwriting your story before you either forget
it or you lose the energy towant to do it, you should start
doing that now. So I didten episodes of Little Rivers Run Rough is
the way I called it, becausewe have a pass. We had a
history within the band of people leavingor firing each other, and it was

(04:25):
a tumultuous time. So from mystandpoint, some of that time was Little
River's Run Rough. And my friendand I went from high school, our
first band together, all the waythrough the current situation, and we've updated
it once. Now we've got achapter eleven, because a lot has happened
since twenty twenty one with regard tolegal issues and band membership and so on

(04:48):
and soefully plus a new record.So we kept ourselves busy doing that,
and the agency was mortified that theycouldn't get us work. They couldn't make
anything. Ha happened, but thewhole industry was down, and that's how
we kept ourselves busy. And thenall of a sudden somebody tiptoed in and
said, let's do two shows inFlorida. Let's see how they go,

(05:10):
and we finally got to start rollingat the end of twenty one. Do
you think that the real intense partof that, where we were told to
stay home and to order in andto not go and visit relatives, do
you think that that whole moment intime brought us actually closer together. You

(05:30):
talked about the podcast that you did, and you talked to people who you
have known for years or decades thatyou never had conversations like that with before,
and here you are having these deepconversations with people that you know and
learning all these new things about them. Do you think, in a weird
way, COVID kind of brought humanitya little bit more together. It depends

(05:53):
on which part of humanity I thinkto really get into the weeds on this.
If you were a nuclear fan andyou were used to walking in the
door and seeing everybody and whatever,I have a feeling that the reverse happened.
If they couldn't If you couldn't dothat, could you depend on social
media or the telephone or texting orwhatever to stay as close to family members

(06:16):
as you did. I think itcaused a lot of fracturing of those kind
of relationships in families and good friendsthat were constantly hanging out, because you
would have half of them. They'regoing, this is all of ours.
We don't need to wear masks.You know, we're not believing the science.
And then you've got another set ofpeople who are very diligently making sure

(06:36):
they don't spread it or get it. And I think that division has spilled
over into general life. Everybody startedquestioning everything if they couldn't wrap their head
around it, and they didn't wantto believe science because they were prone not
to. I think that division,I think that canyon is still here.

(07:01):
Do you think that when you goout and you're playing shows, now do
you feel a little bit of beingable to maybe fill a little bit of
that gap to just bring people together. You got them smiling, they're dancing.
All of the concert venues now mostlyhave chairs in front of the stage,
and it's killing people like me,and we want to get them and

(07:24):
we want to dance, and we'redoing it anyway. Do you think that
you're kind of contributing to bringing someof that all back full circle and closing
that gap. The answer to theother question was a speculation. The answer
to this question is there is noquestion. At the instant we were able
to play the first show. Ourfirst four or five shows were in venues

(07:44):
that were masked, and I rememberdistinctly the third one. Half the place
was masked and there was a rebellioushalf that weren't, and by the end
of the show, the masks wereoff and people were dancing and partying.
It was an amazing revelation to findout what live music really actually did mean

(08:05):
to a lot of people. Andwhen that spilled over into twenty twenty two,
because all of the cancellations from twentyone were rolling in and being slotted
in in twenty the late twenty oneand all of twenty two. The vibe
and the energy of people being ableto get back out and hear music.
Yes, there were some masks,but they were going to come out,

(08:26):
and they were going to come outand see the sun again. The energy
was amazing and so that momentum isstill still going. You know, the
live music industry is back and full. But there's no question in my mind
that we all said, lots ofpeople said, and some pundits said,
when live music happens, you'll knowthat we are that the worst is over.

(08:48):
And that's kind of the way itfelt on the street when we would
pull in, and you know,some people were cautious on cruise and we
were too. We kept our distance, but we knew that we were at
least with a bit of social distancingwhatever that was about, that we were
going to be okay. The onereally bad thing for us we stopped doing

(09:09):
meet and greets and we haven't starteddoing them again because of flu and RSV
and the vulnerability of having people lineup and you're face to face with one
hundred and fifty people wanting to buya T shirt and shake your hand whatever.
The vulnerability just multiplies exponentially, Sowe've just decided if one of us
goes down, we're all down fortwo or three weeks. So we just

(09:31):
aren't going to gamble that. Andwe miss it because we used to hear
some great stories and get some greatpersonal feedback. But in general, when
the cloud lifted, I mean,live music was their fit. They ran
through the front door to get toit. And I don't think people even
realized just how much of a healingprocess just listening to live music would be

(09:54):
for them. I'm guessing that somepeople went reluctantly maybe to a show and
came out feeling awful good. You'reright, You're absolutely right, because what
that does is, I mean,if you were listening to brand new songs,
it would hopefully be healing just becauseyou were in a musical environment.
But our songs go back dare Isay, fifty years. We're our fiftieth

(10:15):
anniversaries next year. So those peoplewere being taken back to memories way before
COVID, before cell phones, youknow what I mean. It's like that
scrap book was being the pages werebeingterned, and they could literally leave close
the front doors and forget about,you know, forget about current issues and
just escape to that thing. Andit was you could feel it. You

(10:37):
could you know, you could seepeople crying and laughing and singing along,
all together, singing along. Andas you say, the hell with the
way the seeding is. We're notgoing to be sitting down for these last
two or three songs. We're gettingup there, and it's that energy is
great for us, but it's it'sfulfilling to know that that music still has
that power to help people get toto help them forget, to help them

(11:01):
escape and be happy. Like yousay, well, Wayne, I don't
want to keep dwelling on COVID.So it's over again. It's done,
it's we're ow. We'll just forgetabout it. But you mentioned some new
music. Let's talk about the music. What are you guys doing? We
have just dropped and I say this, okay, So I'm the oldest dinosaur
in the band, and social mediato me was a frontier that I don't

(11:26):
know. I don't I know whatan algorithm is, but I don't know
what it means to our business andso on and so forth. So we
set out to make a new recordand to have that record bridge the gap.
If you will with. There's alot of new people, a lot
of young people who are being turnedonto Little River Band's music and don't know
or care about the first forty nineyears. They're hearing the music because their

(11:50):
family listened to it. They're going, oh, yeah, that band,
I remember those songs. And sowhere we took the approach that we wanted
to try to reach them are fansand the people that know the band are
going to listen because they want tohear what we did. But we want
to go to them and go thisis brand new stuff. You don't have
to love. It's a long waythere in order to love this. The

(12:11):
song is called the album is calledWindow to the World, and the first
single is called Window to the World, and it is literally the sun's up,
put the shades up, get outsideand or at least look through your
window to the world and look atthe positive things that you've got and that's
your life. That's that's what youcan take pride in, enjoy in,

(12:33):
and it's it's just a fun,bouncy tune. And then the next levels
of songs are I am so disappointedthat we don't have a record deal and
we don't have airplay and all ofthose, all that game we used to
play. But what this new marketingteam of young people has taught us is
you put out a few singles andcatch people's attention, and then you put

(12:58):
out the record and you do itmedia and you're looking for streams and downloads
and likes and clicks and numbers andso on and so forth, and so
that's where our heads have been takento. Here in twenty twenty four,
we put Windows of the World outon May three. We now have over
fifty thousand streams for that song,and I know that there are artists out

(13:22):
there that had millions of streams.We hope to keep climbing the ladder and
get there, but fifty thousand peoplepaid attention to that record in the first
four weeks. We wouldn't have hadthose numbers in four years back when we
released our last record of new music, which you and I talked about,
it was called Cutpsychdemon, Great Songs, great, great project and whatever.

(13:46):
So we're very happy. And ournext song, which is a very powerful
storyline and little Riverband Ballad, comesout this Friday on June seven. Playing
those two songs back to back inthe set and we don't make a big
deal at the front of it ofa these are new songs because people tune

(14:07):
out, you know, they goget a drink, they go over to
the bathroom, they whatever. Sowe just roll right into it. We
get them singing the front of thesong. And I'll tell you a funny
story. We had somebody right intoFacebook and said, it started out,
how dare you, how dare youput new songs into the set dot dot
dot and then make us go homeand look through all of our albums to
find out where those great songs wereand how did we miss them? I

(14:31):
love it. Excavation point, extervationpoint. We love the new songs that
are so powerful we can't wait tillwe can get a hard copy and whatever.
But we're doing it the way everybodydoes it now. You know,
we're getting the developing the interest withthe likes and the clicks and the streams
and so on. So that's thegist of it. And when we play
the second song, people are justkind of oh wow, that is a

(14:54):
story. I don't want to giveit away. But on June seven,
if your listeners and you would justhave a listen to first time I will
listen to it on Saturday. WhenI hear it live, I'm gonna come
to your shows. Just I'll tellyou what. Wait till Saturday. Okay,
Queen, you and me, Iknow what a music lever you are,

(15:15):
and I know that you know thepower of a live show and a
good song and so on. Sowhen we play it for you on Saturday,
I promise you'll be moved in somedirection or out of the story grabs
everybody because it could happen to anybodyin some direction or another. Am I
going to punch somebody? No,it's a love song. Oh, while

(15:35):
we're talking about music, you're veryfamiliar with the term yacht rock, and
it's making this huge. I'm notgoing to call it a research, but
there's so much of it out there. Do people look at Little Riverband and
say, oh, that's yacht rock? Do you see that happening? And
if so, do you like that? Hate it? How do you feel

(15:56):
about that? We love it?And yes they do. What yacht rock
really means is it's melodics, singalong rock and roll. It's not hard
rock. It's not depressing rock.It's not punk, it's not angry.
It's what you would want to doif you got on a boat and you
headed out for an afternoon of afun And we absolutely love the fact that

(16:21):
we're part of that movement. We'veactually played twice with the guys that started
yacht rock in Atlanta. They werea great, great cover band and one
day they put on captain's hats andit's stuck. And so they now have
three or four different versions of theirband playing different parts of the country,
with yacht rock reviews there everywhere.But God bless them. I mean,

(16:42):
what a great thing to just havesuddenly this sturge of stuff. And now
they've done their own music as wellin the same vein. But we do
love it because it's happy. It'snot creating controversy or dealing with it or
talking about it. It's just whatLittle River Band is. All he's done.
Our songs are about life. Ididn't want you to be mad or

(17:03):
sad about it because we love it. Anybody that's going to be mad or
sad about that. I mean,we've worked with a lot of people whose
egos want to make them bigger thanthe music, and it never works.
I mean, unless you're Prince orMichael Jackson or something with this unbelievable performance
element as well. But songwriters andmusicians that put themselves above their music,

(17:26):
it's just a it's a kiss ofdeath. Yeat rock has been a blessing
to us because although people don't comeand do that at our show, they're
exposed to it on a daily basis, and it is making old music current
again because you don't hear all ofthat melody and all of that guitar work
and intricate arrangements now in modern music. Modern music has taken a simpler and

(17:52):
a less vocal heavy direction. There'sgreat music, and there's great artists,
but to hear those big vocals isvery rare, and especially live. So
we're thrilled about yacht rock. There'snew music. There's the yacht rock movement
which has got our old music upon a pedestal with a whole lot of
other artists, and we do concertswith those artists. We've done yacht rock

(18:18):
shows, themed shows with Ambrosia andFirefall or Leans, Pure Prairie, so
on and so forth. Wayne Nelson, Little River Band, it's been such
a pleasure talking to you today.Final thoughts. At the heart of it
is what this band's about. It'sabout songs are about life and having a
good time and memories and all ofthat. So we've added orchestra to our

(18:41):
repertoire on a more regular basis.There will be a lot of those.
But I guess the biggest thing comingfor us is we're now halfway through.
Can you believe it's almost July?I mean it's I know, right around
the corner. So we're in ourforty ninth year going strong. All five
guys in the band are singing leadvocals now just not singing vocals, but
everybody's singing a lead vocal somewhere inthe night. People love that their heads

(19:02):
are snapping back and forth going whichone's going to sing now? And that
rolls us into next year, whichis Little Riverband's fiftieth birthday. There's not
a whole lot of bands that getto say that, and I'm proud as
hell of it, and I guessthat's the thing I would say the most.
Come see this band. The energyis great. We don't just go
through the motions, and we're reallyhappy to talk to people like Lucy Chapman

(19:23):
and spread the word and we gotgood friends out there. Saturday night at
La Vista at the Astro, LittleRiver Band and Three Dog Night. It's
going to be an amazing show.A few tickets are still available. We
will see you on Saturday this Saturday, June eighth. It's going to be
a great night because I promise youas many songs that people are going to

(19:45):
remember from our set Three Dog Night. You don't really remember how much of
an influence they had back in thelate sixties and early seventies. It's a
great show and it's going to bea great night all the way around.
So I can't wait to hope,but fingers crossed great weather and and we'll
see everybody Saturday night. Wayne Nelson, Little Riverband, thanks so much for
joining me today. Thanks Lucy