Hey, this is Paul Martin. And the heated Ray the Roadie. You're heated.

Why? Are you hot? It's summertime. Summertime in the city. Yes, it is.

Get all heated up. Oh, by the way, this is the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Sorry I interrupted you.

That's right. It's like hot flashes, man. For the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast.

That's right. I mean, if it made it official. For the hot Rock and Roll Chicago podcast.

It's a little warm in here. It is warm. It's a little warm in the studio today.

I don't know why. The sun was kind of beating in there and. Yes.

And it gets a little warm in here. It does a little bit. Eventually, it'll be cool down.

But especially when we have a band called The Heat. The Heat. That even brings it up even more.

That's right. It's a whole new level. It is another level.

It's thermal. Thermal's higher than normal. And it's not the Miami heat.

No, no, no. No. Which we will learn something about them.

We will learn something about the Miami heat. Yes. So the heat is.

What's left of the heat, I guess. Yes. Yes.

We had. We had. We had Mark Police and Marty Kelly join us, tell us about the heat and back in their day, what they did, what they what they what they're still doing, what they're still doing.

Yes. So still putting out some music, some original music and and doing some duos and trios and whatever. Whatever.

What have you. What have you. Well, that's awesome.

Let's go see what they have to say, because I don't think people want to listen to us rattle on. No, no. OK.

Here we go. It's getting too hot in here. Here we go.

Hello again, everyone. And welcome to the show. Today, we're speaking with Marty and Mark from the band Heat the Heat.

Right. Yes. They're bringing the heat.

They're bringing the heat. They're packing heat. They're supposed to check those at the door.

That's right. That's right. So how are you guys doing? Great.

Doing good. Good. So what brings you out here? We we're in the neighborhood, seen there was an open door and cold water just waltzing.

We're here to talk about one of our 80s through 90s. We thought would be a career, you know, career making event. But here we are.

You know, 2022, 40 years later, 40 years later, retired building trades guy here and same over there. But we had a lot of fun along the way. We met a lot of great people, a lot of great places.

And yeah, I wouldn't trade any of it for the world. It was a lot of fun, a lot of cool clubs, a lot of great fans along the way. And yeah, we got to make some original music.

Mark and I, my twin brother, Kevin, we would, you know, save up our funds and always reinvest into the band. We actually had a tax ID number and we were licensed to be the heat before the Miami heat. So we still have the records to prove it.

Kevin was our tax accountant and yeah, make as much money as those guys. No, no, no. But like I said, we had a lot of fun along the way.

We played with the hounds. We played with some pretty big acts back in the day. We actually jumped into it.

We never got to play with Airman Air Rush though. I don't know why that was. Are they still around? No, they were always like one bar ahead of us or one bar behind us.

I remember Cheap Trick played at Luigi's one weekend. I was there. I was there.

We were there the following weekend and like that was, you know, holy ground for us. We are big fans of them guys and all the Chicago bands. We had the pleasure of recording with Gary Loizo at Pumpkin Studio.

Some of that stuff on that CD, Gary engineered for us. Great guy, great engineer. God rest his soul.

Got to sit in the Pumpkin Studio where, you know, the big boys played and he charged us like the big boys to, you know, it was a great experience. He queued up a little phone conversation for Mark on one of the songs. It's no secret if you guys get to that, you'll hear a little phone conversation in there and that was all Gary, you know, hey, you know what, why don't we do this? Why don't we do that? Look for these guys.

Yeah, we're still playing. Mark's in another act you guys had talked to earlier on Wavelength. I'm doing a little duet thing with Julie Cronus, traffic girl from NewsRadio 78.

And she's doing some other things right now, still doing traffic, but we actually rehearsed today. We've got some little duet gigs coming up and yeah, we're still going at it, proud to say. So where did this all begin? I met Mark on a chance.

He told me, look, we got this one gig, one gig, we're playing a battle of the bands. You got to learn like six songs or something. Mississippi Queen, Jailbreak, I'm trying to think of some of the songs we were doing.

It was at Tinley Park High School. I don't know if we won the battle of the bands, but Mark and our late drummer at that point, Joseph Borak, God rest his soul. They came to the house and we learned these songs.

And Mark had told me that he was going to be going on the road with Joe Walsh. It's a roadie. I was like, this is just one gig.

Don't worry about it. Mark is nodding his head for those of you that can't see the podcast. And it turned out that they didn't get that gig.

So we kept playing. And yeah, we formed different versions along the way. My twin brother, Kevin, came along.

So what year was this? Oh, 76? 76, 77. Okay. So you guys were like seven.

We were in high school. We actually got to play some of the clubs when the legal drinking age was still 19 in the state of Illinois. And yeah, Studio One, Nickelback, Luigi's.

Yeah, there was always a lot of fun in those clubs back then. And then when it changed to 21, that definitely put a damper on things. But we still kept going.

Again, came up with different versions of the band. Bill and Michael Pratt came along. They were on that CD.

Great drummer, great lead guitarist. Both of them are great singers. Mark's still playing with Mike right now.

And I still do some duet stuff with Bill. We're called the Shenanigators. So we do some stuff on the side as well.

So everyone's still playing. My twin brother's still playing. He came out to Durbin's last October and helped us out.

Once a year, we play for these folks who are dear to my heart. My 29-year-old son has been living there for about three years. He loves it.

I do a lot of volunteer stuff for them. What folks are those, Marty? Misericordia. There you go.

Yeah. They take care of 650 disabled folks. Sister Rosemary Connelly, great soul.

And started at, before we started playing, 70, 71, I believe. And, yeah, does a lot of good things for folks. A lot of outreach with all the sports teams.

And they just do a tremendous, tremendous job finding, you know, a life worth living for those disabled folks up there. And my son's one of them. He's intellectually and physically disabled.

He has cerebral palsy. Born early, but, you know, he's striving. I talked to him today.

He's looking forward to seeing Josh Groban and the Smashing Pumpkins. Yeah, I imagine that span of musical taste. Yeah, yes.

And he loves the Beatles. And he's got, I guess, some of that from, I guess, us, you know, listening to us play. But, yeah, it's been a long journey.

And it's, you know, we're going to keep going, keep writing, keep recording. We're in the middle of a project right now. And the working title right now, Mark, Senior Moments.

Yes. I can relate. I can relate.

Yeah, last session was the COVID sessions. Yeah, we have, again, Nick at the Nook working as our engineer. Kevin on great bass lines.

Mark was there with some great synthesizer and keys. Bill's contributed some guitar work on this one. But the game changer was a young man by the name of Brian Calvert, who added some mandolin and pedal steel on some of our stuff.

And just a real talented soul and great, great people to work with. So that's coming out. Look for Senior Moments 2022 to be released by Marty, Kelly, and Friends.

And we'll keep you guys posted. So when did the name The Heat come to fruition? So that was probably. Before the Miami.

Before the Miami, yeah. So it was like 83, yeah, around 83, 84, when we put The Heat together. When you turned The Heat up? Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, I don't know. I guess we could have gone after them for using the name of, you know, we don't have their money.

That's true. That's true. Or their lawyers, I'm sure.

Yes. No, we didn't. But, you know, and it's funny because our logo at the time.

Was the basketball on fire going through? No. But it was the name On Fire. Okay.

You know, so it looked just. People would think that we stole it from them. Right, right, right.

We didn't. Yeah, our logo underneath. I should have brought one of our old business cards was pop with an edge.

Yes. Pop with an edge. Yeah, that was our shtick.

Yeah. We covered a lot of outfield. And we did some really heavy, heavy vocal harmony stuff back in the day.

And it was a lot of Beatles when we'd open up for any of them American English guys or something. They were like, hey, don't be playing all them Beatles songs. You guys doing pretty, pretty good.

But yeah, we had a lot of fun. A lot of fun. So did you guys do any original music back then? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We were probably, I don't know, 70, 30 on original and cover.

Yeah, we tied them in together. We would cover some grand funk. And I remember tying in one of Kevin's songs, My Baby.

We'd go right after a grand funk song. We try to let people know we're out there writing. We try to pull the wool over their eye.

OK? So here's something you know, and here's something you don't. Yeah. And nine times out of 10, they couldn't tell the difference.

Yeah. We were sharp at our stuff, though, setting out the record folks. And if you get a letter back in the day, it wasn't an email, but if you get a letter back from a record company, independent or whatever, they just throw the letter away because they're saying, no, you guys sound too much like this.

We were always like the grunge was coming out. There was something we were always one step behind. And a lot of fun, though.

A lot of great clubs, a lot of great people. I remember being told that we should sound more like a flock of seagulls. Yeah.

So we thought about changing the band to School of Guppies, but it didn't work. Yeah. Because we actually caught the interest of the manager from Split Enz.

And he had some interest in the group for a short time. And nothing ever came about it. Yeah.

So our stuff was really, I don't know. It was pop with an itch. Yeah.

It was kind of an outfield kind of foreigner on steroids kind of. Yeah. Do you still have any of that music available? It's right in front of you.

Yeah. Yeah. This first one? Yeah.

We won a battle of the bands on Brandmeier's Friday morning run. And Bill was luckily calling in to tell him who wrote the song and blah, blah, blah. And it was one of my songs, So Sad.

And there's a lot of double harmony leads and stuff on that song. And I actually met Brandmeier about a week later. He was doing a remote down by the Hancock, and he had his little backpack.

And I'm like, Johnny B, Johnny B. It's me. It's Marty Kelly. I wrote that song.

You played it. We won the battle of the bands. And he gave me some advice.

Yeah. He said, yeah, you're on your own, pal. And he added some Fs in there, too.

You're beep, beep on your own, pal. Because I'm like, don't you need an opening band at Alpine Valley? And he's like, no, I don't think so. But God still love you, Johnny.

You're a great guy. And the band that we beat was the Blind Venetians at that battle of the band. They called more girls called in for us.

And we ended up playing at American Cancer Society benefit out in Aurora, the Paramount Theater. And they ended up beating us in live performance. But we did not play that song.

We did a different one. But yeah. Well, that's because, you know, as Buzz Skillman said, the chicks dig the heat.

That was a quote. Yeah, that was in the Illinois Entertainer. Yeah.

So I see Marty let you write two songs on here. Yeah, I was lucky enough to squeeze through it. I didn't have as much money as he had.

Well, Mark's classic tune on there, Born to Rock and Roll. Great song. He let me come up with an intro on that.

And that was a good thing about writing, too, is that when we sat down, everybody kind of put their two songs in. I heard Billy Joel say that, too, that he would present a song to the band. They'd go like, no, dude, this sucks.

You know, revamp it and come back. So everybody put their own little shtick on it. But a great song.

And some Edge lead guitar on there before, maybe around the same time, Edge was doing his thing. Did Edge play with you? I tried to sound as much as I could. But, you know, I'm left-handed, so that, you know, limits me somewhat.

But no, that was one of the Gary Louizo, I believe, projects. Yeah. We did like seven songs with him.

That was at Pumpkin Studios. Pumpkin Studios. I can't even remember some of the other places that we recorded at, but five or six around town.

ARS maybe was one of them. But Nick's our guy now. Yeah, Nick's the master.

And so we'll have that third one ready with him. You guys will get a copy whether you like it or not. You could hear some fine.

I would say this is our country-est we've done, Mark. Oh, this is very country. You know, when you throw pedal steel on stuff, it really adds a lot of flavor to it.

Okay, so you've got, are you in the studio now putting this thing down? Yeah, Friday we're going in to do a final mix on the last four songs. You could see on MRT, Kelly and Friends, I always add a couple covers on there. I put a couple Beatle tunes on there, kind of my version of them.

And I'm going to surprise you on this next one. Is this more of a solo project here? No, it's got Hide Your Love Away and something, but it's my version. It's kind of like Ritchie Havens on steroids kind of thing.

The way I play, like I said, left-handed. You have to think with the right side of your brain. That means you're in your right mind.

But there are some re-dos. I recorded some of those songs with a trio I was with. That was in the early 2000s.

But I needed to kind of get Mark and his keys and his vocals on some of these songs, and it really worked out good. Yeah, yeah. And there's even a Christmas song on there for you, dedicated to my late mother.

Awesome. And one dedicated to Dolores O'Riordan from The Cranberries. We dedicated one to her, too.

So, yeah, we try to cover all bases, you know. I see. So this new thing you said is more country, huh? Yeah.

Why do you think that is? Well, I would say from the titles, truck driver song, the river. Someone like you, when you put a mandolin and a pedal steel on songs, it just kind of like, you just kind of go, hmm, what's that about? But I said Brian Calvert did a great job, and I'm real happy with it. Have you been listening to more country music lately? Well, my gifted young man got me listening to some Dierks Bentley.

I'm actually playing Gareth Brooks right now. I never thought I would play Gareth Brooks in my life, but we added some country stuff to our set, you know. People seem to like it, and my late dad would come down and say, why aren't you playing John Denver? Why aren't you playing this song? And the songs that he told me to play, Take Me Home, Country Road, and all that, we're doing them now.

I'm like, Dad, you were right. Country nowadays, modern country, today's country, it's a lot like what rock and roll was 20 years ago. It just put a little twang in the voice, I think.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we were lucky enough to go down to the Aragon. Got a lot of crunch guitar in it.

Yeah, and the Uptown and Riviera and see, you know, the Marshall Tuckers and the Outlaws, and I got to see Charlie Daniels, and I got to see the Allman Brothers. I wish I would have seen them. I'm not that old to see them with Dwayne, but I was heavily influenced by the country guys, and, yeah, they put a big impression on me.

I always enjoyed hearing Dickie Betts and that new wave of Tedeschi and that young Trucks. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, they got it.

Yeah, they got it down. I'm proud to see that, you know, that's continuing on. Yeah, they're no longer breaking down their pickup trucks and their dogs aren't dying anymore.

No. Yeah, I think you could probably think a lot of that to do to Mutt Lang. Yeah.

Because, you know, he took Shania Twain and made her mainstream country and everybody jumped on that bandwagon. You know, so it all changed right then and there to where, you know, now it's going to sound like rock and roll. Right.

Well, it's like Marty said about Garth Brooks. He's never listened to him before. If you watch Garth Brooks live on a show, it's like a rock show.

He's running around. I mean, he's rocking out. He really is rocking out.

Well, you'd be surprised. One of Garth Brooks' favorite band is Kansas. Right.

So, you know. He's got a lot of rock and roll influence, so it's not just country. No.

I think one of the great guitar players right now is Brad Paisley. He's unbelievable. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I'll agree. I'll agree. Yeah, we did a Les Dudek song, and we never did any Brad Paisley, but I'm trying to think of the other country guys we used to cover.

Vince Gill is another great guitar player. Yeah. Look it, he's playing with the Eagles.

Right, right, right. Vince Gill originally was a bluegrass guy. Yeah, yeah.

How crazy is that? No. Yeah, Brian, going back to my Pedal Steel guy, he introduced me to some stuff. You know, Billy Strings, I'd never heard of the guy.

You know, Marty, you've got to check this guy out. I'm like, what? You know, this kid's unbelievable. And he plays with his dad.

You know, bought his dad one of the first issued guitars. Just a real talented soul, and I'll never be that good. I'll just keep writing my songs, whatever hits the ground hits the ground, and, you know, we'll keep recording, we'll keep playing, keep copywriting and doing all that stuff, and getting out and sharing it with the people, you know, throwing some original music at them.

It's a good thing, you know. So when do you plan this to be released? If everything goes okay, my Friday we get everything down, and I'm sure Nick's going to say, let the dust settle, give it one more week, and just make sure everything's good. I'm hoping by the end of June it'll be out on Spotify and YouTube, and my duet partner Julie and I were talking about it today, actually getting it out there.

So, yeah, and then if I do sell a CD at my show or whatever, if you look on there, there's a website. There's recordia.com. So the proceeds for that go to them, and I'm heavy into helping those folks out. That's great.

That's great. Very nice. Yeah, they need it.

20% of that population has no family. So if you take about 650 people, 20%, you know, orphans, adopted, you know, so they need to help, and they're going to get it from me as long as I'm still breathing. Very good.

Very good. A worthy cause. Yes.

Worthy cause. I remember when they had two locations. They used to have one on the south side.

That's right. Yeah. So what started you playing guitar? When did I start playing? In what instances? Did you say, Mom, Dad, I want to get a guitar? I had a band with some fine guitar playing lads, Roger White, Jim Harden, my brother Kevin and I. We learned how to play House of the Rising Sun from a guy named Don Woodstock, and we thought Don was God.

And then we learned how to play Free Bird, and then we thought we were God. Well, his name was Woodstock, so he was pretty close. Woodstock.

He had taught us. Yeah, he pushed us over the edge, and we went out and got our little Tisco amps and our little Tisco guitars, and being left-handed was always a problem for me, but, you know, guys like me and Jimmy and Paul, we get over stuff like that, left-handed thing. But, no, we got that going in the basement and moved on from there.

Did you start out with a right-handed guitar, strung the other way? I strung it the other way. Yeah, yeah. I had a Strat, and, yeah, I walked in to see Tom over at the music store, or the music, yeah, up in Bremertown Mall back in the day, and he's like, No, dude, you want to play? Don't play.

Don't play. No, no, I'm like, I'm left-handed, man. He's like, Okay.

But, yeah, I took guitar instruction for about a summer, and then that's when I met Mark and his brother Fred, Mike Korecki, Joseph Borak, and then Kevin ended up coming on bass. And, yeah, that was the first version. So, yeah, we played heavy.

We practiced every night. We were ready to roll. We were doing those Battle of the Bands, and we were like, Yeah, we're going to be signed, yeah, any day now.

And, yeah, I think after a few versions, that's when the club started kicking in, and we started taking things a little bit more seriously as far as promotion and artwork, and we had a hairdresser, and, you know, like I said, we had the tax ID number. We were writing off picks, driving to practice. We had an accountant in the band, so we're like, You know what? Let's do this right.

And that lasted for a few years, yeah. Well, we weren't making any money, so. Yeah, just reinvesting, yeah, yeah.

And I'm glad we did because, you know, we had some really good recording and a lot of memorable moments. One of the versions, excuse me, was a gentleman by the name of Rick Hallowell and Bill Thorpe. I got hooked up with Mark, and I think the band was called Icarus.

Imagine that. We covered some Kansas and stuff like that. But there was a place that we played right next to the Juliet prison, not far from here.

It was called the Oedipus Club. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah.

And that was a scary, scary place to play for us. I remember the Oedipus. Yeah, Oedipus, yeah.

Low ceiling and a lot of smoke. The smoke was about halfway up, halfway down. Yeah, and some of that going on with the smoke.

But I remember we were walking out. The lights looked really good. Somebody was mad at the band or something, and they decided to drive up on the sidewalk.

And, like, band members had to jump out of the way. Well, Rick got all four of his tires slashed. Yeah, uh-huh.

Slashed his tires. Yeah, yeah. They shot at my wife.

There were some bad things happening at the Oedipus. That was our last time there. Yeah.

First and last. Yeah, yeah. That was, like, some Jake Daniels or something.

Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it was bang-bang shots. Yeah.

It was a scary night. Hitting the deck. It was a scary night.

And I would say probably another memorable weekend for us was the Interaction Lounge. I don't know if it's still open or not. I don't know if the owner is going to come after me.

But there were, like, 25 five-gallon buckets in the middle of the dance floor. And I'm like, what's with that? And the bartender said, well, the roof leaks. I'm like, OK.

He goes, don't worry about it. He goes, it'll stop leaking by the time you guys start playing. So Friday, I think we played with Mark Farner.

Yeah. And then Saturday was Fog Hat. Right.

And then that was the loudest thing I'd ever heard in my life. Oh, yeah. That was the Fog Hat concert.

Fog Hat, yeah. And the sound man's like, no, we like it loud. So, you know, never forget that.

Got to meet our heroes, though. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah, good guys there. Yeah. My ears, I think, are still ringing from that one.

Loudest show I've ever heard. In a club. Yeah, we're going to the sound man, you know, turn it down, turn it down.

I'm like, nope. So when you write a song, what are you at? Lyrics first? Music first guy? Or do you go by titles? Most of my songs were written on I-55 coming home from 35 years of construction, just sitting in the middle of traffic. And, you know, I don't know how people come up with melodies and stuff, but it just kind of come to me.

You know, I'll just see something and something comes in my head, and it may not be the exact words that I come up with, but most of those songs I've written on my way to work and on my way home from work. And, you know, I don't know how people, you know, sit down and write words and, you know, put melodies and stuff to them that way. I have to come up with a melody first, and then I start adding ideas and titles.

One of our songs that we're doing now on this next CD, it's called Love Makes the World Go Round. And, you know, I kind of, I was in the middle of writing that song. That doesn't sound real country.

There was some country, there was some pedal steel on there. But I, you know, it was one of those where the melody came, and then the next thing you know, we've got, you know, I tied Ukraine into that thing. I got political, you know.

My second political song, but Mark did a great job singing it. And that, like I said, that'll be turned around here pretty soon, the next month. But, yeah, we ended up, our first one I wrote about was when YouTube was kind of breaking and we were kind of breaking at the same time.

We were breaking in the wrong direction from YouTube. But I wrote a song called Burn City, and it's about the troubles in Northern Ireland. And, you know, I'm glad they figured it out, you know.

I think they figured it out, but, you know, maybe they'll, you know, shed a little light on other places in the world, you know. But, yeah, we'll have that out. I'll get you guys, I'll get you, you'll be one of the first guys to have a copy of it and let us know what you think of Marty's country rock stuff.

So how about live performances? You guys got gigs booked up or? I'll be playing at the Brass Tap here. Let me look at my calendar. Beautiful Orland Park.

I'll be playing at the Stray Bar. I'll be playing at little duet places around town. Wavelength coming up anywhere, Mark? We're in recovery mode.

COVID? No. Surgeries, neck surgeries, back surgeries, you know. You get past 60 and everything breaks.

Yeah, I know all about this. I know all about this. You want to tell us about it, Paul? No.

No? Okay. Maybe another show. You seemed a little excited about that.

I think he's going to tell us. Marty Kelly and Friends featuring Julie Cronus. And in July 2nd, we'll be at the Stray Bar, 8 to 11, with Kate and her fine crew over there in beautiful downtown Frankfurt.

It's in August. Stray Bar again. We're kind of getting our duet going, but we've played a lot of microbrewery places, the Hickory Brewing in New Lenox, some other Nick and Ivy out in Blackport.

There's a lot of rooms for duets, I've noticed, these days. Not so much for heavy-duty five-piece, six-piece rock and roll bands, but I think we can thank COVID for that. Yeah, yeah.

Because a lot of places have just narrowed their vision and gone with duets. Yeah. Embers, we've got a couple Sundays coming up with them, too, in Blackport.

So, yeah, we're getting out there. We're playing. We're having fun.

We had a big St. Patrick's Day weekend. Mark witnessed one of ours at Mackey's, and we played at Paddy B's over in Orland, part of their Orland Irish madness. It was a lot of fun.

We had a lot of fun that night. Is there a European tour in the plans? I'm the last of the nine. They make it to Ireland, so I'll get over there one of these days, and I'll bring my guitar with me, and I'll be ready with my Garth Brooks, because they don't want to hear this Irish stuff.

They want to hear Garth over there. Look at the guy with the left-handed guitar. Lenny.

Can I swear on this or no? No, I don't want to swear. No, we'll. Shit, why not? No, we'll make Ireland one of these days.

Scotland, yeah. Me and Mark could walk across Hebby Road together with Kevin, and we'll find a drummer. Look at that daggo.

So, Mark, do you sing a lot of the tunes? What's that? Do you sing all the tunes or a lot of them? 90%. Yeah. Yeah, 90%.

Mark does some great synthesizer work, and he had a lot of great keys on this last version, too. Little harmonica here and there. The mouth organ.

Yes. So what's one of your favorite numbers off of this? Off of that first one you got, there's a song called Patty. We dedicated that to my late nephew, Jason Eichmayer.

Jason's son. Yeah, yeah. It left us too soon.

And then on that other one, probably that Christmas song. Mark does a fine intro on there, little jingle bells on there for me. Yeah, yeah.

You've got to have a Christmas song on there once in a while. Are you dressed like an elf? No, but I have a picture of an elf I could send you real quick. So if somebody wants to find out more about the band or about, Marty, where you're playing or whatever, where can they go? martykellyandfriends.com. My website's up.

My daughter, Maura, is hooking it up for me, and it's been on there for about a year. We post our gigs that are coming up. And then, again, the donation, misericordia.com is on there.

Their website's on there. So, yeah, that's been helping. Seeing friends coming out of the woodwork from Carl's Hamburg and stuff where I graduated.

That's a high school in Orland Park. And, yeah, some friends from back in the day, Mickey Grand, Johnny Frank, some friends that have come out and seen us at our benefits and stuff. It's good to see folks like that, you know, from the old neighborhood.

Yeah, and on Facebook too, I'm sure. Yes, yes. There's a Southside link, John Elroy set up.

I'm on that. And, yeah, we're out to conquer the duet world on the south suburbs. Do you have a heat page or anything? You know, we don't.

We should probably get one going just to kind of get some of the buzz going because I'm sure there'll be a heat 50-year reunion coming up here pretty soon. Might as well. Everybody else seems to be coming out of the woodwork.

Reunion gigs. Yeah, yeah. We could all still hit it, you know.

Did I see Off-Broadway is playing again? And, you know, I think the Griff Band and, you know. Gambler. Gambler's back again.

We just did a show with them a few weeks back. So that means it's like so everybody's retiring from their square jobs and going back to playing, you know. Playing music.

Exactly what's happening. Exactly. So, I mean.

It's good to see. It's fun. Too late now.

We're almost done, Marty. It's my fan base. Dude, are you really doing a. Yeah.

But. Is that really you? Hasn't even been released, but I can hear you. Who's that band playing? They sound better than the heat.

Now, we'll have a reunion coming up. You guys will be the first to know. We'll get you front row tickets.

All right. Backstage passes. We came real close to a heat reunion.

Yes. Well, very good. We thank you for joining us today.

Yes, thank you for making the long drive out to beautiful downtown Joliet. Been a pleasure, guys. Yeah.

Thanks for having us. Nice to see you again, Mark. Always a pleasure to see me.

I'll be back on some other incarnations of other bands. You're always open to our policy here, Mark. That's right.

I just wanted to see how the place was coming along since the last time I was here six months ago. Yeah. If you're in your neighborhood, stop by.

We're doing a podcast. Just walk in. Hey, guys.

What are you guys talking to? I'm sure I jammed with them somewhere. Thanks again, guys. Thank you.

Thank you. So that was Marty Kelly and Mark Police from the heat. From the heat.

And talking about their latest adventure that should be coming out soon. Yeah. We've been here for too long.

Kind of a country motif, they say. A little Western. Should be interesting.

Both kinds of music, right? Country and Western. Country and Western. That's right.

But their pickup truck's still running and their dog hasn't died. So that's good news. And their girlfriend has left them.

That's right. So they're going. And so the most recent CD they've put out, Marty Kelly and Friends, is called The COVID Sessions.

And this new one is called Senior Moments. Right. Senior Moments.

So maybe we can go sell it at the homes around here. Right. That's a good idea.

Senior Moments? Oh, yes. Right over there. We'll take one.

Do you have any tapioca? Don't forget chocolate pudding. Chocolate pudding, too. Got to have the pudding.

Yeah. Yep, yep. So that'll be out, their new CD.

About a month or so. About a month or so. Be out on Spotify and stuff.

And then you can contact them and get a real CD, if you'd like. That's right. That's right.

So I'd like to thank them both for coming out here, all the way to downtown Joe, beautiful downtown Joliet, Illinois, at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66, home of the Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast Studios. See how fast I could talk? And you didn't even turn that, you didn't even turn it up to speed, man. No, no, I didn't.

I could be like one of them fast talkers. Yep. You know, reading the fine print.

You are a fast talker. Fine print on an insurance policy. I've talked to some women who said you're a fast talker.

Whoa, easy there, easy there. That's not nice. I'm a gent, nothing but a gentleman.

Yes, they're fast talking gentlemen. Sometimes I must be fast. I'm in a hurry.

I got places to go, people to meet. So I have to go. Speaking of that, I have to go.

All right. Is your car waiting? No, not today. Not today? Not today.

All right. Okay. All right.

Well, thanks for listening, everybody. And we'll see you next week with another exciting episode of the Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast. Yes, you will.

I'm glad you, it's funny how you're starting to talk fast too. Yes, I am. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast does not own the rights to any of the music that's played on this podcast. The music is used to promote the band or musicians that are interviewed.