Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, hither Detroit Wheels.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Hey, Doug, it's Pat Smiley.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Buddy, Pat Smiley.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
How you doing there, Pat, I'm doing real well, buddy.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
So Pat is of course one of the artists that
appeared a couple of years ago on the WLLZ album.
And boy, you've been working hard over the past few years.
You've had some great new recordings, Pat, and I saw
that you've got some new ones out right now. Plus
you've got an upcoming a couple of dates out at
Auto Rama, which is.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Always a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Yes, yes, I thought we'd talked about it and start
with some of these new recordings that I see you've
got out now. Is this a full album or are
you just kind of piece mailing some stuff out there?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, I am. Actually I'm decided to try something a
little different. I'm gonna I'm releasing these songs one at
a time as singles. I've back. Last March, I got
the band together and Josh and I laid down basic
tracks for ten new original songs, and so we had,
(01:03):
you know, the basic band tracks, and then as time
time came by, you know, we invited Jim mccartian to
do play some guitar on one of the songs, I
released that song called Back in sixty nine that came
out in August of last year. And one of the
other songs that we recorded was a Christmas song called
(01:26):
Socks from Santa and I read at Christmas time this year.
And now just last week on Valentine's Day, we released
the third of these ten tracks. It was sort of
an acoustic ballot called Lovers and the Levers and like that.
One's been out just like four or five days at
(01:46):
this point, so it's doing real good. But my plan
is to probably drop one single out of time every
two or three months, and then when they're all out
and they round them up together and package him as
an album and put that, you know, put that out
onto the streaming services as well.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah, And I've noticed that each song has its like
own identity.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
It's they're not all the same.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
They're very diverse, really different, and you sound fantastic. Your
voice is just like perfect right now, I think, so congratulations.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Well, you know, I'm growing up. I always loved songs
that are albums that had a lot of different variety
on them. You know. The Rolling Stones were one of
my favorite groups coming out and you know, listen to
a Stones track, you get a little you could get
a little bit of everything, you know, maybe a little
country on one song, some blues on another song, some
(02:43):
hard rock. So I mean, I've always just been that's
the way I like to listen to music, and that's
the way I make music. I've always been like that.
I just have a lot of influences, and I think
I can think I can almost I feel like I
can sing just some most about anything. As long as
I got a tight band behind me and with a
(03:05):
bunch of soulful players. Yeah, I wouldn't be my I
don't think I'm going to tackle the Great American Songbook
anytime soon, but you know, any kind of roots kind
of based music, blues or rock and roll or a
little country or whatever, what have you. I mean, I'm
down with it. I have an enormous album collection or
(03:25):
CDs rather, you know, that I collected over time when
I was younger, probably probably now it's close to four
thousand titles or whatever, you know, and all those CDs
are sitting in my basement right now.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Well, I've seen you play with some of the best
and some pretty you know, diverse stuff like with Dennis
Coffee when you were doing that Northern Lights gig, and
then of course with Jim McCarty. But early on you
were kicking out all his Rockets material and you know,
laying it down. So you know, really you've proven your
(04:02):
point there, Pat you do, you do a lot of
different stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
So who's all.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
On this album? And tell me about you and Josh?
Where'd you finally decide to record this?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Sure? So Josh and I have been known. We actually
met Josh Ford MotorCity. Josh to listeners out there, have
we met initially when he lived in Chicago for a
brief time and I was there in total about twenty
three years. I think Josh spent close to one or
one and a half there. But I had met him
(04:37):
during one of his gigs there and we just stayed
friendly and in touch. And when I started talking about
moving back to the Detroit area, he was one of
the first guys to reach out to me, like, you know, hey,
I got a recording studio and I'd like, you know,
if you want to do something, And I think, you know,
he probably just you know, he's a hustler. He was
probably out looking to drum up some business. But when
(04:58):
I got back, I kept that in mind and we
just we really hit it off, you know, in terms
of we had a lot of similar musical tastes and background,
and we worked together pretty easily. So this is now
our third project together. I had an EP in twenty nineteen,
which I believe was the last time I talked to
(05:18):
you in preparaate we had. It was called Lonesome for
a Long Time, a six song EP, and we did
our release party at the Token Lounge, and I was
on your podcast at that time talking a little bit
about that. And then over the pandemic, we recorded an
eight song album called Last Chance, and that came out
(05:39):
in twenty twenty one, and so I began, you know,
I'd been continuing to write songs and I don't know,
we probably came up close to eighteen or nineteen, you know,
seeds of songs, ideas, babe, you know, some of them
didn't pan out. But you know, usually I'll start with
a little kernel of an idea I'll get with with Josh.
(06:03):
We'll have a little writing session. We'll bounce some ideas
back and forth. He'll listen to me sing, you know,
whatever I have. You know, I might have a part
of a melody or a chorus, or I might have
an idea for a riff, and I don't play any instruments,
so I just kind of sing it to him. And
to his credit, he's an incredibly musical and creative person,
(06:24):
and so he'll he'll just play something back to me.
He's like, how does is this what you're talking about?
Or how do you like this? Or about this for
a bridge? And I'll go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know,
or no, let's try something else, and we so we've
been able to work easily together. So we got I
let him know. We whittled it down to a batch
of what I felt were our best ten songs, and
(06:45):
as you mentioned, they were all over the spectrum in
terms of music or rock music. You know, it's it's
it's kind of you know. The song we did with
Jim back in sixty nine was a real heavy guitar rocker.
That's probably the most the heaviest tune I've committed to
you know tape myself.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
I actually think that might be one of the heaviest
songs I've heard Jim McCarty do in at least ten
years too.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
That I was trying to get to that. I'm like,
I love Jim. I love Jim as the blues player,
of course, the blues man, but I knew him. I
grew up with him as a rock and roller, you
know what I mean. I wanted to hear Jim rock.
So we tried to write one many rocks, and when
he came to the studio, I said, Jim, I want
you to bring all your whatever pedals you need. I said,
I want you to go crazy on this one. He goes,
(07:34):
I don't know, man, that might be too heavy. I said,
don't tell me what's too heavy. I want it. I
want it heavy. I wanted a rock and you know,
Josh the great and we had so we had. Getting
back to the musicians on these sessions, it's the usual
suspects for the most part. Todd Glass on drums, one
of Detroit's finest drummers Motors City. Josh actually played a
(07:59):
little slide on here. For the most part, he stayed
out of the sessions. He had the core band record.
We just you know, we were live in the room
recording these two or three takes each until we got
it and then we did you know, later did overdubs
on background vocals and whatnot horns, but we had Todd
(08:21):
Glass on drums. On bass was Rocco Popolarski who plays
with Josh and his band. Johnny Rhodes on guitar. The
guitar and rhythm guitar. You know Johnny, He's done some
events with us. And on keyboards, we had a guy
named Dale Greiser, and so that was the basic rhythm section.
(08:44):
Then I brought in my two girls from Chicago, Tina
Howell and Ashley Stevenson. These girls event on every recording
I made in the last twenty five years. Tina's been
with me since nineteen ninety nine singing on my records
and doing gigs with me. And and then of course
the horn sections we have again, we tapped Keith Kaminski
(09:07):
to come in and do our horn arrangements and he
did that on four songs. We just actually got Keith
into the studio to do this about a month back,
month and a half ago, So his songs our next step.
When we're going to get together in the studio, we're
gonna mix down the horn tracks that he gave us
on those four songs. But right now six of the
(09:28):
ten songs are are completed. Are mixed down. We released
three of them and we have four more to finish
mixing down because we just got the horns. I've been
taking my time because you know, studio time, and you
know it's expensive and it's uh, and I like to
let you know I spend I don't like, I'm not
(09:48):
too fussy in the studio. I like to bang them out.
I mean, the feelings either there, it's not. We do
a lot of pre production work to make sure everybody
knows is not on the same page. But I I
find it very important to spend time on the back
end with just listening to the tracks and seeing what
you know, the guys gave us and how the how
(10:10):
it fits together and mixing. So I spend a lot
of time, I mean, uh, lovers and leavers. This song
the last batch just comes out. I feel like I
listened to each of those songs like over three hundred
times driving around in my car, just making notes like, oh,
we got to turn up the high hat here and stuff.
So a lot of work, a lot of concentration goes
(10:32):
into it on the back end. But when when we're
there in the studio, we're trying to keep the rock
and roll, vibe and bang it out and have fun.
And I think we really did a great job of
that with especially these last sessions. You know, as Josh
and I get more comfortable working with each other, I know,
you know how he works. He understands my thing. We
have access to you know, between him and I, we
(10:53):
can we have access to you known any pretty much
all the greatest, all the best musicians in town. We
can tap them and ask them if they you know,
they come and want to be a part of it.
So like jim is recorded on all all three of
our projects, you know, and uh, he'll he'll always have
a spot on my record and some of them making records,
(11:14):
and Jimmy is around and wants to do it. We're
gonna I'm gonna save them. I give him when we
get done with our base successions, I go, I usually
bring Jim like a two or three songs. I go,
I kind of had you in mind for this one
or that one. Which one do you like? And when
he heard back in sixty nine, he was like, that's
the one. I figured out it reminded me more of
(11:36):
some of the stuff he did in his days with
ket This.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, you know, definitely so.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
A real like riff rocker. So anyways, it's been going good.
And like I said, uh, we have now we'll have
a total seven more singles coming down the pipeline, one
at a time. But I like because they're so varied,
I kind of like the chance to drop them one
at a time and let them kind of sink in,
you know, because when I when I I put out
(12:04):
an album and it gets categorized as a blues album,
well you know, if somebody hears something on there that's
not exactly their idea of the blues, or it's not
a shuffle or it's not you know, they I don't know,
they just kind of seem to turn a deaf ear
to the rest of it. So I like the idea
of putting these out one by one and that way
(12:26):
I can share them and I can you know, get
them to the people or in the different genres who
might relate to them. Like you know, back in sixty
nine is a heavy rock tune, and you know, but
it's not something that a Chicago gouse fan would necessarily,
you know, be the first thing they go to, you know,
(12:46):
but a Detroit rock and roll fan, you know, they're
going to know how to handle that kind.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
You've got some of the best Detroit musicians backing you up,
There's no question about that. And yeah, we pulled one
of those McCarty songs a couple of years ago for
the WLLZ album. So yeah, you've had him on all three.
I think, Pat, you may be the only person alive
(13:10):
that can get Jim McCarty to, you know, tear it
up in the studio and do all these incredible recordings.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
So gratulations to.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
You on that.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
I mean, I can't see you know, Jim came to
the session and I said this before in another interview.
I mean, you know, we've been friends now at this
point for fourteen fifteen years or something like that. I
think I met him in two thousand and.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Five initially and you know, just a meet and greet,
and then we started playing together doing gigs together in
twenty ten, so you know, we've had close to fifteen
years doing gigs together.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah, a couple of more songs, guys, do a couple
of more songs, and you can put your own Jim
McCarty pats my Way album.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Ut right.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Part of the thing about that don't tell them, So Pat,
tell me about the the upcoming Autorama shows.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
You got a couple of good dates coming up here.
We saw each other last year out there.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
You got Friday the twenty eighth and Saturday the March first.
So who's going to be backing you up out there
at Autorama?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Okay, So this will be my second year performing at Autorama.
As you mentioned, we saw each other last year. I
remember walking in to the lower level there at at
the spot at Hunting and Center and I saw you
at the booth.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
I saw the Woz booth, but I was actually brought in.
I've been doing a lot of gigs with a group
of guys, a six piece band called the Soul Brothers,
and I met them initially through Tasha Owens. They were
backing up Tasha at a gig and they asked me
to sit in and they like kind of like my style,
(14:56):
and we've been, you know, doing gigs together ever since
and this will and so they were the ones that
brought me into the Autorama circle.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I never attended an event like that. I had a
lot of fun, you know what I mean. I felt
like so so great to see everyone showing off their
cars and just and it was fun and so I
was glad we got asked to come back again and
they thought of to ask me our bass player. And
the band is a guy named Denny Barron, Dennis Baron,
(15:27):
and then Dennis is the band leader. And from what
I understand, he and the group have been participating in Autorama,
either backing up different singers or backing up the Blues
Brothers tribute act or you know, doing that. They've been
a part of it for ten or twelve years. Ye,
so uh, you know, for the last two years. This
(15:47):
year will be my second year I'm singing with him,
and I got Tina and Ashley coming in from Chicago,
and we're going to have a blowout and it's gonna
be fun and we'll be playing we'll be playing back
in sixty nine. We'll be playing lovers and Libs. We're
gonna we have a handful of the new tunes we're
gonna do and they're just a great group of guys.
(16:07):
And then we rehearse together a couple of times a
month and we have a regular standing residency. The first
Saturday of every month, we play down at Nancy Whiskey
Pub in Corktown and that's a tiny place, but we
pack it and it's always a lot of fun. So
we're there. That's like my standing gig right now, first
(16:27):
Saturday every month at Nancy Whiskey's and then we'll be
here at Autorama, me and the guys along with the
girls playing an Autorama on the Friday twenty eighth. Our
showtime is on Friday, I believe our four pm and
seven pm, and then again on Saturday, March first. Our
times on Saturday will be three pm and six pm.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
I love the rat Rod Room, you know, that's always,
you know, so cool down there, and yeah, it's a
little different than upstairs, you know, so it's got that
vibe and you fit perfectly in there. So where can people,
pat uh grab these singles in the meantime before this
CD actually hits the ground.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
So all my music is available on all the streaming
services I've put them out. You can get them on
whatever whatever you like to do with iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, anything,
Just type in Pat Smiley. I have my own you know,
little section there and all the songs are out there,
and you know, I don't know what, I don't know
(17:33):
what to think. I mean, I love physical CDs and
albums and everything, but anymore. I mean, I even catch myself.
I listen to music on my phone all the time
in the car. They don't make CD players in cars anymore,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 6 (17:48):
It's like I'm having a hard time justifying spending a
lot of money to make up CDs. Especially I got
a couple of box you know, a couple hundred copies
of my old album's sitting here.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
In the I got to totally agree.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
You know, what you could end up doing is, after
a while, take all three of these latest recordings, with
all the McCarty songs and all these great singles, and
make our greatest hits vinyl album.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
There you go, Well, that's how we did it, right,
That's how you did it with the MOTORCV rocks.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Well listen, hey, thank you so much. Pat, We got
to go, but listen, thank you so much, my friend.
We're looking forward to seeing you out there at Auto
Rama picking up the new music. And once again, congratulations
on wrangling at Jim McCarty into the studio, because we
appreciate hearing them on recordings like that, especially you two together.
(18:44):
There's some kind of chemistry there and it's absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Well, we're looking forward to seeing you on this week.
Are you gonna be out there, Doug, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
We'll be there, brother, So we'll see you at the
Auto Rama.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Very good. Thank you, buddy.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
All right, thank you. Pat Smiley right here, Troits Wheels
Yeah, hither Detroit Wheels.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Hey, Doug, it's Pat Smiley.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Buddy, Pat Smiley.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
How you doing there, Pat, I'm doing real well, buddy.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
So Pat is of course one of the artists that
appeared a couple of years ago on the WLLZ album.
And boy, you've been working hard over the past few years.
You've had some great new recordings, Pat, and I saw
that you've got some new ones out right now. Plus
you've got an upcoming a couple of dates out at
Auto Rama, which is.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Always a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Yes, yes, I thought we'd talked about it and start
with some of these new recordings that I see you've
got out now. Is this a full album or are
you just kind of piece mailing some stuff out there?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, I am. Actually I'm decided to try something a
little different. I'm gonna I'm releasing these songs one at
a time as singles. I've back. Last March, I got
the band together and Josh and I laid down basic
tracks for ten new original songs, and so we had,
(01:03):
you know, the basic band tracks, and then as time
time came by, you know, we invited Jim mccartian to
do play some guitar on one of the songs, I
released that song called Back in sixty nine that came
out in August of last year. And one of the
other songs that we recorded was a Christmas song called
(01:26):
Socks from Santa and I read at Christmas time this year.
And now just last week on Valentine's Day, we released
the third of these ten tracks. It was sort of
an acoustic ballot called Lovers and the Levers and like that.
One's been out just like four or five days at
(01:46):
this point, so it's doing real good. But my plan
is to probably drop one single out of time every
two or three months, and then when they're all out
and they round them up together and package him as
an album and put that, you know, put that out
onto the streaming services as well.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah, And I've noticed that each song has its like
own identity.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
It's they're not all the same.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
They're very diverse, really different, and you sound fantastic. Your
voice is just like perfect right now, I think, so congratulations.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Well, you know, I'm growing up. I always loved songs
that are albums that had a lot of different variety
on them. You know. The Rolling Stones were one of
my favorite groups coming out and you know, listen to
a Stones track, you get a little you could get
a little bit of everything, you know, maybe a little
country on one song, some blues on another song, some
(02:43):
hard rock. So I mean, I've always just been that's
the way I like to listen to music, and that's
the way I make music. I've always been like that.
I just have a lot of influences, and I think
I can think I can almost I feel like I
can sing just some most about anything. As long as
I got a tight band behind me and with a
(03:05):
bunch of soulful players. Yeah, I wouldn't be my I
don't think I'm going to tackle the Great American Songbook
anytime soon, but you know, any kind of roots kind
of based music, blues or rock and roll or a
little country or whatever, what have you. I mean, I'm
down with it. I have an enormous album collection or
(03:25):
CDs rather, you know, that I collected over time when
I was younger, probably probably now it's close to four
thousand titles or whatever, you know, and all those CDs
are sitting in my basement right now.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Well, I've seen you play with some of the best
and some pretty you know, diverse stuff like with Dennis
Coffee when you were doing that Northern Lights gig, and
then of course with Jim McCarty. But early on you
were kicking out all his Rockets material and you know,
laying it down. So you know, really you've proven your
(04:02):
point there, Pat you do, you do a lot of
different stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
So who's all.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
On this album? And tell me about you and Josh?
Where'd you finally decide to record this?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Sure? So Josh and I have been known. We actually
met Josh Ford MotorCity. Josh to listeners out there, have
we met initially when he lived in Chicago for a
brief time and I was there in total about twenty
three years. I think Josh spent close to one or
one and a half there. But I had met him
(04:37):
during one of his gigs there and we just stayed
friendly and in touch. And when I started talking about
moving back to the Detroit area, he was one of
the first guys to reach out to me, like, you know, hey,
I got a recording studio and I'd like, you know,
if you want to do something, And I think, you know,
he probably just you know, he's a hustler. He was
probably out looking to drum up some business. But when
(04:58):
I got back, I kept that in mind and we
just we really hit it off, you know, in terms
of we had a lot of similar musical tastes and background,
and we worked together pretty easily. So this is now
our third project together. I had an EP in twenty nineteen,
which I believe was the last time I talked to
(05:18):
you in preparaate we had. It was called Lonesome for
a Long Time, a six song EP, and we did
our release party at the Token Lounge, and I was
on your podcast at that time talking a little bit
about that. And then over the pandemic, we recorded an
eight song album called Last Chance, and that came out
(05:39):
in twenty twenty one, and so I began, you know,
I'd been continuing to write songs and I don't know,
we probably came up close to eighteen or nineteen, you know,
seeds of songs, ideas, babe, you know, some of them
didn't pan out. But you know, usually I'll start with
a little kernel of an idea I'll get with with Josh.
(06:03):
We'll have a little writing session. We'll bounce some ideas
back and forth. He'll listen to me sing, you know,
whatever I have. You know, I might have a part
of a melody or a chorus, or I might have
an idea for a riff, and I don't play any instruments,
so I just kind of sing it to him. And
to his credit, he's an incredibly musical and creative person,
(06:24):
and so he'll he'll just play something back to me.
He's like, how does is this what you're talking about?
Or how do you like this? Or about this for
a bridge? And I'll go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know,
or no, let's try something else, and we so we've
been able to work easily together. So we got I
let him know. We whittled it down to a batch
of what I felt were our best ten songs, and
(06:45):
as you mentioned, they were all over the spectrum in
terms of music or rock music. You know, it's it's
it's kind of you know. The song we did with
Jim back in sixty nine was a real heavy guitar rocker.
That's probably the most the heaviest tune I've committed to
you know tape myself.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
I actually think that might be one of the heaviest
songs I've heard Jim McCarty do in at least ten
years too.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
That I was trying to get to that. I'm like,
I love Jim. I love Jim as the blues player,
of course, the blues man, but I knew him. I
grew up with him as a rock and roller, you
know what I mean. I wanted to hear Jim rock.
So we tried to write one many rocks, and when
he came to the studio, I said, Jim, I want
you to bring all your whatever pedals you need. I said,
I want you to go crazy on this one. He goes,
(07:34):
I don't know, man, that might be too heavy. I said,
don't tell me what's too heavy. I want it. I
want it heavy. I wanted a rock and you know,
Josh the great and we had so we had. Getting
back to the musicians on these sessions, it's the usual
suspects for the most part. Todd Glass on drums, one
of Detroit's finest drummers Motors City. Josh actually played a
(07:59):
little slide on here. For the most part, he stayed
out of the sessions. He had the core band record.
We just you know, we were live in the room
recording these two or three takes each until we got
it and then we did you know, later did overdubs
on background vocals and whatnot horns, but we had Todd
(08:21):
Glass on drums. On bass was Rocco Popolarski who plays
with Josh and his band. Johnny Rhodes on guitar. The
guitar and rhythm guitar. You know Johnny, He's done some
events with us. And on keyboards, we had a guy
named Dale Greiser, and so that was the basic rhythm section.
(08:44):
Then I brought in my two girls from Chicago, Tina
Howell and Ashley Stevenson. These girls event on every recording
I made in the last twenty five years. Tina's been
with me since nineteen ninety nine singing on my records
and doing gigs with me. And and then of course
the horn sections we have again, we tapped Keith Kaminski
(09:07):
to come in and do our horn arrangements and he
did that on four songs. We just actually got Keith
into the studio to do this about a month back,
month and a half ago, So his songs our next step.
When we're going to get together in the studio, we're
gonna mix down the horn tracks that he gave us
on those four songs. But right now six of the
(09:28):
ten songs are are completed. Are mixed down. We released
three of them and we have four more to finish
mixing down because we just got the horns. I've been
taking my time because you know, studio time, and you
know it's expensive and it's uh, and I like to
let you know I spend I don't like, I'm not
(09:48):
too fussy in the studio. I like to bang them out.
I mean, the feelings either there, it's not. We do
a lot of pre production work to make sure everybody
knows is not on the same page. But I I
find it very important to spend time on the back
end with just listening to the tracks and seeing what
you know, the guys gave us and how the how
(10:10):
it fits together and mixing. So I spend a lot
of time, I mean, uh, lovers and leavers. This song
the last batch just comes out. I feel like I
listened to each of those songs like over three hundred
times driving around in my car, just making notes like, oh,
we got to turn up the high hat here and stuff.
So a lot of work, a lot of concentration goes
(10:32):
into it on the back end. But when when we're
there in the studio, we're trying to keep the rock
and roll, vibe and bang it out and have fun.
And I think we really did a great job of
that with especially these last sessions. You know, as Josh
and I get more comfortable working with each other, I know,
you know how he works. He understands my thing. We
have access to you know, between him and I, we
(10:53):
can we have access to you known any pretty much
all the greatest, all the best musicians in town. We
can tap them and ask them if they you know,
they come and want to be a part of it.
So like jim is recorded on all all three of
our projects, you know, and uh, he'll he'll always have
a spot on my record and some of them making records,
(11:14):
and Jimmy is around and wants to do it. We're
gonna I'm gonna save them. I give him when we
get done with our base successions, I go, I usually
bring Jim like a two or three songs. I go,
I kind of had you in mind for this one
or that one. Which one do you like? And when
he heard back in sixty nine, he was like, that's
the one. I figured out it reminded me more of
(11:36):
some of the stuff he did in his days with
ket This.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, you know, definitely so.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
A real like riff rocker. So anyways, it's been going good.
And like I said, uh, we have now we'll have
a total seven more singles coming down the pipeline, one
at a time. But I like because they're so varied,
I kind of like the chance to drop them one
at a time and let them kind of sink in,
you know, because when I when I I put out
(12:04):
an album and it gets categorized as a blues album,
well you know, if somebody hears something on there that's
not exactly their idea of the blues, or it's not
a shuffle or it's not you know, they I don't know,
they just kind of seem to turn a deaf ear
to the rest of it. So I like the idea
of putting these out one by one and that way
(12:26):
I can share them and I can you know, get
them to the people or in the different genres who
might relate to them. Like you know, back in sixty
nine is a heavy rock tune, and you know, but
it's not something that a Chicago gouse fan would necessarily,
you know, be the first thing they go to, you know,
(12:46):
but a Detroit rock and roll fan, you know, they're
going to know how to handle that kind.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
You've got some of the best Detroit musicians backing you up,
There's no question about that. And yeah, we pulled one
of those McCarty songs a couple of years ago for
the WLLZ album. So yeah, you've had him on all three.
I think, Pat, you may be the only person alive
(13:10):
that can get Jim McCarty to, you know, tear it
up in the studio and do all these incredible recordings.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
So gratulations to.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
You on that.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
I mean, I can't see you know, Jim came to
the session and I said this before in another interview.
I mean, you know, we've been friends now at this
point for fourteen fifteen years or something like that. I
think I met him in two thousand and.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Five initially and you know, just a meet and greet,
and then we started playing together doing gigs together in
twenty ten, so you know, we've had close to fifteen
years doing gigs together.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah, a couple of more songs, guys, do a couple
of more songs, and you can put your own Jim
McCarty pats my Way album.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Ut right.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Part of the thing about that don't tell them, So Pat,
tell me about the the upcoming Autorama shows.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
You got a couple of good dates coming up here.
We saw each other last year out there.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
You got Friday the twenty eighth and Saturday the March first.
So who's going to be backing you up out there
at Autorama?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Okay, So this will be my second year performing at Autorama.
As you mentioned, we saw each other last year. I
remember walking in to the lower level there at at
the spot at Hunting and Center and I saw you
at the booth.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
I saw the Woz booth, but I was actually brought in.
I've been doing a lot of gigs with a group
of guys, a six piece band called the Soul Brothers,
and I met them initially through Tasha Owens. They were
backing up Tasha at a gig and they asked me
to sit in and they like kind of like my style,
(14:56):
and we've been, you know, doing gigs together ever since
and this will and so they were the ones that
brought me into the Autorama circle.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I never attended an event like that. I had a
lot of fun, you know what I mean. I felt
like so so great to see everyone showing off their
cars and just and it was fun and so I
was glad we got asked to come back again and
they thought of to ask me our bass player. And
the band is a guy named Denny Barron, Dennis Baron,
(15:27):
and then Dennis is the band leader. And from what
I understand, he and the group have been participating in Autorama,
either backing up different singers or backing up the Blues
Brothers tribute act or you know, doing that. They've been
a part of it for ten or twelve years. Ye,
so uh, you know, for the last two years. This
(15:47):
year will be my second year I'm singing with him,
and I got Tina and Ashley coming in from Chicago,
and we're going to have a blowout and it's gonna
be fun and we'll be playing we'll be playing back
in sixty nine. We'll be playing lovers and Libs. We're
gonna we have a handful of the new tunes we're
gonna do and they're just a great group of guys.
(16:07):
And then we rehearse together a couple of times a
month and we have a regular standing residency. The first
Saturday of every month, we play down at Nancy Whiskey
Pub in Corktown and that's a tiny place, but we
pack it and it's always a lot of fun. So
we're there. That's like my standing gig right now, first
(16:27):
Saturday every month at Nancy Whiskey's and then we'll be
here at Autorama, me and the guys along with the
girls playing an Autorama on the Friday twenty eighth. Our
showtime is on Friday, I believe our four pm and
seven pm, and then again on Saturday, March first. Our
times on Saturday will be three pm and six pm.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
I love the rat Rod Room, you know, that's always,
you know, so cool down there, and yeah, it's a
little different than upstairs, you know, so it's got that
vibe and you fit perfectly in there. So where can people,
pat uh grab these singles in the meantime before this
CD actually hits the ground.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
So all my music is available on all the streaming
services I've put them out. You can get them on
whatever whatever you like to do with iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, anything,
Just type in Pat Smiley. I have my own you know,
little section there and all the songs are out there,
and you know, I don't know what, I don't know
(17:33):
what to think. I mean, I love physical CDs and
albums and everything, but anymore. I mean, I even catch myself.
I listen to music on my phone all the time
in the car. They don't make CD players in cars anymore,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 6 (17:48):
It's like I'm having a hard time justifying spending a
lot of money to make up CDs. Especially I got
a couple of box you know, a couple hundred copies
of my old album's sitting here.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
In the I got to totally agree.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
You know, what you could end up doing is, after
a while, take all three of these latest recordings, with
all the McCarty songs and all these great singles, and
make our greatest hits vinyl album.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
There you go, Well, that's how we did it, right,
That's how you did it with the MOTORCV rocks.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Well listen, hey, thank you so much. Pat, We got
to go, but listen, thank you so much, my friend.
We're looking forward to seeing you out there at Auto
Rama picking up the new music. And once again, congratulations
on wrangling at Jim McCarty into the studio, because we
appreciate hearing them on recordings like that, especially you two together.
(18:44):
There's some kind of chemistry there and it's absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Well, we're looking forward to seeing you on this week.
Are you gonna be out there, Doug, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
We'll be there, brother, So we'll see you at the
Auto Rama.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Very good. Thank you, buddy.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
All right, thank you. Pat Smiley right here, Troits Wheels
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