Hey, this is Paul Martin and Ray the roadie for the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast, Rock and Roll Chicago podcast coming to you live. Well, no recorded, actually, it's actually recorded. It is recorded this way.

We could get a couple of them done in one day. See? Oh, that's why we do that. Is it really? Yes.

Oh, OK. Today we've done two of them. Two of them.

Today isn't really today. No, it's before. It's before today.

It's before today. Yes. So if you're listening today, this was actually done some other day.

Right. That other day, that other day time, a long time ago. Yes.

Not that long ago, but I feel like we should be watching that Star Wars intro thing with the, you know, galaxy far, far away. Maybe. How about this? There you go.

So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And the crickets. And my kids. I know.

Now they won't stop. No, no, that's it. I like that.

You like that thing. Oh, yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. I'd say if I find what I was looking for, I'll let you know. OK, I'm sure you will.

Until then, we have to listen to all your we have to listen to all your special effects here. I don't know what that was. That was music.

I can't find it. Can't find it. I don't know.

Oh, well. Oh, well. So what are we just kind of a harp doing it? Oh, yes.

A harp. A harp. Angelic.

Yes. Angelic. Yes.

Yes. So today, today, who are we speaking with? Today, we are speaking to great moments in vinyl. Lindsey Cochran.

Lindsey Cochran. Yes. He's put together this.

He's put together several bands, a different band every time he plays, right? Yeah. Not not today. Previously, he put in like like like we're not live today.

He did not put the band together today. No, no, no. But but he puts a different band together for each show of great moments in vinyl.

They they play an entire album. They pick a artist and they do the entire album front to back. That's the name.

Great moments in vinyl. Ergo, ergo. Yes.

Ergo, ergo. Yes. So and then and then in between the songs, he tells a story about the band, about the song, about, you know, whatever information he has.

And it's quite interesting. Yes, it is quite interesting. So, yes, we were able to have him come to the studio today.

Downtown Joliet, beautiful Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66. And let's see what kind of stories he's got. Let's listen.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. Today, we're speaking with Lindsey Cochran of Great Moments in Vinyl.

How are you today, Lindsey? Good afternoon or good evening or whenever this runs. I think it's afternoon. I don't know.

It's on the Internet. It's universal. It's yes, yes, yes.

It'll be whenever, whenever, whenever someone wants to listen to it. I love it. So tell us a little bit about the Great Moments in Vinyl or about yourself.

How did you get started? Well, sure. Oh, where do we start? I mean, I could go way back, you know, when I was a kid. Somehow I got a music bug and the band that first did it for me, because you're you're in grade school and they say, what instrument you want to learn to play? They pull out the trumpet, the trombone and the flute, the clarinet.

And for some reason, I would black. Yeah, right. Exactly.

Some people are less gifted, the woodblock. But I chose the trombone. And so I got pretty good at that.

And suddenly this band comes along, Chicago, and they have a horn section and not just a horn section. They're doing cool stuff. You know, I mean, obviously there were groups of horns back in the day, grassroots, you think a lot of Motown singles.

But a lot of times that was that tended to be more faceless in the background kind of horn section. But with Chicago, there was something just upfront and interesting and making something happen that was new. So that caught my ear.

And I started studying their music and they had something they put out called the sketch score for all those books. You know, back back in the day is still today. You buy piano books for your favorite artists.

But that's a piano reduction. There's usually a melody and then a piano part. But, you know, you got Chicago, you got a horn line, you got something going on in the bass.

Sometimes Terry Cather doing something on the guitar. So this would break it out into different staffs or staves or whatever you say in the book. So you figure out all the different parts.

I get those and I play along with the Chicago records. Kirsten, actually, our turntable is a little fast back then. They don't go faster to make the record sound brighter.

So I slow it down with the handkerchiefs. But anyway, suffice to say, that's where I started. I got excited about music.

I got excited about seeing people can do this with music. It wasn't just, you know, strum on a song and singing along. There was an arrangement, something interesting happening.

And then soon after that, I discovered Jethro Tull. OK, and the album Thick as a Brick was the one that did it for me. I remember a guy back in my church going days is one of the guys who was in high school when I was still a younger kid.

Took me his car. Oh, and we listened to his benefit, a track, a Jennifer Jethro Tull, a track. I didn't like that that much.

But Thick as a Brick came out and oh, my gosh, you can do this. 40 minutes of music nonstop with things that develop and unfold and melodies and motifs that come back later in the recording. I loved it.

So I talk to my grandfather and buying a flute for me. So now I had a trombone and a flute and and a grounding in music. And that became very important, because remember, I mentioned all those sketch scores that I would read through.

So I learned how to read chords and and learned what notes go in them. And I learned how to play piano because my mother, bless her heart, wanted me to learn how to play piano. But but, you know, when you start off, you're in high school and you're playing those real simple things, you know, and the Hanon exercises.

Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. You know, it just camp town races. And yeah, it's stuff you're thinking, you know, I want to play this.

So I didn't really apply myself to the piano, but enough so that I can comp along with chords. So I had the basis of all this knowledge of music. And that led me to want to be a music major, applied to college, didn't get into the School of Music at that time, but they put me in the School of Arts and Sciences.

And I, you know, I get to look at some of the music majors in Chicago. Yeah. Northwestern.

I was in Northwestern. And the people there who were in the School of Music seemed like all they knew was music. You know, they didn't really have a broader knowledge of other things that that excited me.

You know, I was reading the Lord of the Rings back then and getting into sci fi. And there's all sorts of other stuff going on. And I thought, you know, well, I'll just stay in the College of Arts and Sciences, get another degree, ended up majoring in English.

And worked at the campus radio station, WNUR in Evanston. Did the morning show there. One of my program directors at the time was a guy named Neil Saban, whom you might recognize his name.

He works at Weigel Broadcasting. He's like the guy who dreamt up Me TV as a network and turning TV and Me TV FM into a station and now a syndicated format around the country. Anyway, I worked in radio and started thinking, well, this would be a fun summer job and applied for jobs when, you know, summer break came along and worked in Lexington, Lexington, Kentucky, and got a job in Rockford, Illinois for a while.

And then I was coming back to finish off my senior year and I wrote to XRT, WXRT. Apparently, John Bell had just left. That name rings a bell, but he just left.

And there was an opening. Everyone got to move up a slot and they needed someone to fill in the overnight. And so I got hired at that point, not doing overnight.

So I was sharing the overnights with two other people. I got to work with that music. I mean, this was not at some of the other stations, you know, like when I was in Lexington, it was like a bin full of forty fives and you pulled them out according to a little card catalog.

According to what they wanted you to play. Exactly. And then I worked at Rockford, and that was like a classic rock station, you know, and so we didn't go very deep on much of anything.

But XRT, oh, my gosh. You know, three walls of record shelves. What year was this? Seventy nine, I want to say.

So January 1st, 1979, did my first shift and stayed there for eight years. But in that time, oh, my gosh, the artists I got to meet, you know, it was so cool. Here's my heroes.

And they they come into my studio, eventually got to be the production director and come to my studios and I would give them something to read on the air. You know, I had a line about the first thing to read about coming to you in the city of the finest police that money can buy. You know, I think it's taking the place of me.

And I remember this. So that's the sort of stuff I would do. They're working with the artist.

And that was my passion. It all got put together in radio. And I've stayed in radio as a career ever since.

It's been I've been very fortunate with that. But along the way, finally answering your question about the band. Hope you still got time left.

Yeah, somewhere along the way. Oh, so I worked at the Smooth Jazz Station for a long time. And that format went away.

And I was looking for what do I do with my creative energy? And I started a blog. And and then I think my girlfriend at the time said, why don't you take a class in music, you know, the old town school folk music? And I thought, well, that could be interesting. I don't know.

Oh, I know what it was. Actually, first I was talking about doing Irish music. And I bought a what do you call it? A frame drum bagpipe.

No, not a not a boring drum, but a frame drum. It's like a round drum that you hit. It's not quite the same as a boring.

But anyway, suffice to say, I looked into Irish music and that got me looking at the schedule at the old town school. And wonder of wonders. It's not all banjo and dulcimer classes.

You know, they they have classes there. I mean, this was a revelation to me. And I'd lived in Chicago since college.

They have classes in learning how to play Rolling Stones songs or Bruce Springsteen songs or Cheap Trick or Nirvana or all these other things. And I thought, oh, my God, sign me up. So I went to a Van Morrison class as my first class.

And, you know, there we are. You know, we're jamming along with all these van tunes. And every eight weeks they have what they call a graduation performance, I guess.

And everyone who was in that class got to sit down and in a bar, you know, just some some some cheap place, you know, where everyone's playing for free. Well, we played the music that we learned in the last eight weeks. And I was watching these instructors in this class.

Elton Smith was one of them, a musician I still work with these days. And I see these guys are good. These guys are good.

I, I, I could put together a band with them. And, you know, I'm not great on the bass. I could play well enough to keep up, but I could tell stories about the music.

I get that we could do a Van Morrison show and I could talk about his background and what it was like growing up and then working and getting screwed over by the record company and then finally getting his making his way in the world. I mean, there's tons of stories that come along, as I tell we've done 90 albums, no, 80 albums over 90 different shows in the last eight and a half years. So it's a broad range of music.

And part of the secret sauce is I don't have a band. It's just me and whatever musicians I can recruit. But it's not it's not like I'm betting on the music you're doing.

Exactly. And what I do is I find the good players I know who are particularly passionate about that. A guy I work with a lot is by his name, Phil Angotti.

He's known around town for his love of the Beatles. And I know. He and I are doing a show at City Winery just to do my own plug.

Sunday, April 3rd at City Winery. This is in the year 2022. But we're doing a Sunday brunch at City Winery with 60s faves from the Rolling Stones.

And I've done several shows with Phil over the years with doing his stones. He's been my Tom Petty. He's been my blanket on the Kurt Cobain's name, Nirvana.

He's been in Beatles, done a couple of Beatles shows with us. So, I mean, I find the right musician who brings his or her own passion about the music themselves. You know, we're not just a tribute band, you know, slamming through stuff.

It's like I give these guys guys who have to play in wedding bands on a Saturday night and they make good money doing that. But I give them a chance to play stuff they don't normally get to play. They love that.

I got a great musician by the name of Paki Lundholm plays drums, guitar, keyboards, pedal steel. I'm sure I'm missing about eight other instruments that he does. He runs his own studio in Chicago.

But but he played drums for us on our Joni Mitchell show. And, you know, I mean, this is a guy who doesn't need to be sitting in a bar playing Joni Mitchell, right? But he loves it. You know, I just got a passion for it.

That's the idea. And what we want to do is we get up on stage and bring our passion there. So Great Moments and Vinyls is intended to be a tribute band that you come to learn more about your favorite artists.

You get more of the backstories. I like to think we draw you into your favorite albums more. We give you things about the music and the musicians you might not have known.

And the idea is you don't come to hear us replicated. I've been to other shows. I'm not going to name names, but there was one I saw up at Ravinia that was like Note Perfect doing a David Bowie album, the Ziggy Stardust album.

And I thought, you know, they didn't say anything after the songs. Thank you. That was it.

No, come on. Talk to us. Not even that was Amy on the guitar.

You know, it's like, no, I want to be involved in this. I could be home listening to the record if I wanted to hear that sort of thing. They look great.

They played great, but I want no. Give me something more. Part of what goes on is I realized from a lot of shows I've been to.

What happens after the song ends? The band retunes, puts around a while. People start talking. Maybe people go to the restroom and get drinks milling around.

I thought, well, I could keep their attention during that time by telling a story that draws them in. And I don't lose them. So you can't have a historian.

Uh, you know, I haven't found the right term for it. That doesn't sound dry and frightening. You know, lecturer, narrator, storyteller.

I mean, Town Crier, Town Crier. Well, you know, a guy who worked with the XRT, Frankie Lee, used to say when he did some of the announcements for promos, he felt like the town crier because you're not talking one on one like you are. You're hired or I will now tell you some information.

That's not the voice I try to bring to the show. I try to bring that sort of conversational. Wow, did you know this kind of feeling? So I've rambled a long time.

So when you play bass, you play bass. I play bass. Well, that's what I went to old town school for was to get me started on the bass.

My background in school, high school and college really helped with that in the sense that I understand music. I mean, you know, don't can't write 12 tone music, you know, polyrhythm stuff. But I understand the concepts and and and how it all fits together and how to notate it and how to read music.

So with bass, it was just translating what I learned on the trombone and the flute to another instrument. And so I mean, when we do the who, I'm not going to play John Entwistle. I'll hire someone for that.

Or when we did Paul Simon's Graceland album, all that fretless stuff that that amazing South African bass player created. I wasn't going to tackle that. I hired someone to do that.

Kevin Campbell is his name. Amazing bass player. But the the point being that I play well enough to not do harm to the music.

You know, I try to stay out of the way of wrecking it in any way. But, you know, I've gotten better over the past eight years, too. But I play bass, a little flute, some trombone.

I did that recently when we did Stevie Wonder and the Paul Simon show. I played some trombone on. But yeah, it's I felt it was important for me as the storyteller to participate in the making of the music, too.

So I'm not just that guy that talks between the songs, but I'm part of the band and I bring something more to it besides, you know, signing the checks. So which is important in itself. This is this is who.

So who are some of the the albums or usually take an album, right? We started off doing albums. That's how we launched, you know, and that was in 2013. And as time goes on, you know, albums are not quite what they what they used to be.

I mean, maybe vinyls made a comeback, but it's not like the old days where you sit down with a record and, you know, listen to it. It's more like what you have on while you're doing other things. And and I know I know the way music is in way music is sold nowadays.

It's all singles, singles on Spotify. You know, exactly. Exactly.

And iTunes or wherever. And you miss the feel of listening to the whole thing as a as a as a contained so in a sense, you know, it's interesting. My band, I like the diversity of my band, young and old and mixed races and male and female.

And and there's young guys who are into the albums, you know, people my kids age, and I'm just kind of blown away. And you still care about that. We just did Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run at City Winery.

And and I was researching and I realized, oh, my God, an album from 1975. If we were in 1975 looking that far back, we'd be reminiscing about an album from 1929. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Yeah. You know, I mean, there was a real culture shift when let's just say our generation came along, the baby boomers.

You know, there was like a severing from that past era and we created our own thing. You know, I got the sense that where we are now, we're watching that a new severing come along, you know, because a lot of the stuff that we loved and created and did, you know, it's it's within that same sort of 50, 60 year bubble. And we're going to be gone before long.

And sure, some of these younger generation people are going to love that stuff. One of my guitarists who's in his late 20s now, but we did a Jimi Hendrix show three or four years ago, and he just blew everyone away, standing up there playing Hendrix, you know, and even the behind his head or with his teeth, his teeth. So it was it's amazing that that there is a what's the word, you know, a body of knowledge.

And it's an art. Rock is an art. I mean, you guys celebrate it here at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum.

But there is a set of knowledge about that art, which is taught and learned and studied. And that will be handed on. But I think what we created as baby boomers, that culture is something that's going to be phased out.

Something new will come along. You know, just like I tell you about 1929. I mean, when I would be living, working at the Rockford radio station, lived with my aunt and uncle, he would turn on a station from Janesville that played big band music on Sunday mornings.

He cranked that up. He said, Now this is music. You know, and I feel like that's what goes on with us sometimes.

People our age, I'm assuming you're close to my age, which I'm not going to announce here. But we kind of listen to what comes along and think, hmm. Well, I've noticed lately go going grocery shopping.

I'm hearing classic rock played at a grocery store. I'm I'm listening. Is that Pink Floyd? I'm like, I'm shopping.

Some of that stuff is punched through. Right. And become part of the culture, an important part of the culture.

But but whether or not it can still carry on another 50 years in the same way. You know, I mean, there's only 12 notes on the scale. There's only so many chords and so many ways you can put them together.

And it's been reinvented as we've gone along with the I don't know if you can say the word disco, but the dance beat being incorporated into the music and with rap elements and hip hop and house music, jazz rock. Well, way back with jazz rock or even when blues rock came along or folk rock. I mean, there's always ways of varying it.

But but can we make it as cutting edge and innovative and culturally affecting as the Beatles and the Stones and all those bands in the 60s did? Because what they were doing was reinventing or inventing something. All right. They were taking some there were no rules.

They were figuring it out. And we were all getting pulled along with them, which was great. But I don't see how anyone can figure it out again.

Yeah. You know, you just don't see any musicians, any bands like that out there. Yeah, well, I'm not sure it's possible in some ways, you know, because some of the musicians I work with are very good.

And I almost think if they had been around 30, 40, 50 years ago, they'd have made that kind of inroad. But now how can they innovate in that way? That's going to grab people. And, you know, ask me in 10 years, I could be totally wrong.

But it just feels like, you know, we've got the Internet, we've got new things that are developing that might become the new cultural movement, the new thing that sweeps everybody up. And music will just be a thing that's out there. And I try to think of an example for our generation of something.

It was just there. We just took for granted. That's what music will probably be in the future.

All right. Right. So you said you had you've done like 80 different albums.

Yes. Do you have any favorites that you. Well, here's the thing, you know, or any stories that you know, you like to share from one of those.

Oh, sure, sure. I do have stories. But, you know, you ask about favorite albums.

That's that's the thing. One of my one of the things I learned in being a radio DJ was that you don't have favorites. I mean, yeah, I've got things I like to listen to at home.

XTC is a favorite band of mine that Jethro Tull stuff. I couldn't get enough of that back in the day. But when you're on the radio, you can't really pick favorites in the same way, unless you're Terry Hemmert and the Beatles.

And people aren't going to complain about that. But my point really being is is that what I want to share is enthusiasm about the music in general, because I think a lot of artists do a lot of interesting stuff. You know, they got my iTunes playlist.

There's I've curated one that's got thousands of songs on it, and they're not any particular artist. Some I go heavier into Van Morrison. I loved a lot for a period of Pink Floyd, Elton John.

But, you know, oh, I'm saying too much. I'm losing my train of thought here. So I don't have any particular favorite albums.

There have been highlights from the shows we've done from a pure performance standpoint. I mean, oh, my God, a Stevie Wonder songs. The Key of Life show is just jaw dropping.

Oh, yeah, jamming out there. We did Paul Simon's Graceland. And I excuse me to name dropping if you want, but we got some really good musicians from the show.

My standard horn section leader, John Bowes, plays all the saxes and flute and piccolo and sings, too. And he lined us up with a musician who had done touring with Tower of Power. Wow.

On horns. So we're doing, you know, my little town or the high screaming trumpet at the end. And now we got the high screaming trumpet.

There are martyrs on Lincoln Avenue. So I've had shows like that. It just felt really successful.

My fiance is a big Kate Bush fan. So we did a Kate Bush show. You know, we got a patron to help kind of finance the thing and did our best to put all that together.

And, you know, we're not afraid of trying anything. You know, we've done George Michael and Michael Jackson, as well as Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers. But you asked about stories.

Here's a great one about Jimi Hendrix. I love this story because to me, it was a revelation when I was doing research on the guy. Both of Jimi Hendrix's parents were drinkers and when they got drunk, they would fight.

Jimi was their firstborn. Six years later, a brother arrived and then the next three children were given up to foster care and adoption. And when Jimi was nine, his parents divorced and his father was granted custody of his sons.

During his time in grade school, the young Jimi started carrying around a broom to simulate a guitar. He'd hoisted in his arms and pretend to play. And not just at home.

He'd carry the broom to school too. A social worker at the school noticed this behavior and petitioned for funding for underprivileged children to purchase a guitar. She argued that the boy was clearly demonstrating an emotional need that a guitar would address.

The school district disagreed. At age 15, Jimi's mother, who had developed cirrhosis of the liver, died from a ruptured spleen. His father refused to take his sons to her funeral and said, insisted that they deal with the loss like, quote, real men, by drinking a shot of whiskey, which he then poured out for all three of them.

A broom is drearily sweeping up the broken pieces of yesterday's life. Somewhere a queen is weeping. Somewhere a king has no wife.

Wow. That's what I do at the shows. I try to find those kind of stories that take you into the song.

I've never heard anyone make those connections with Jimi's life before. And did you write the story? Yeah, well, I researched a lot of this stuff. This one I did write.

But some of them I quote a lot from other artists, like we did Joni Mitchell. And I'm thinking, oh my God, how am I, as a white male, gonna stand on stage and talk about Joni Mitchell using what other white men have said about her? I thought, let's have Joni talk about herself. So I just dug deep and found interviews with her where she has interesting things to say, and I filled the show with that.

I've got a Joni story, but I could do that now, or we could come back to it later. Here's what I did. We did the Court and Spark album.

Growing up in the Canadian prairie town of Maidstone, Saskatchewan, Joni Mitchell recalls a life of unadorned pleasures. On the radio, she could listen for the hit parade on the air for an hour each day. She could watch the trains approach and depart, or gaze longingly at the delights presented in what she referred to as the book of dreams, the Sears catalog.

In her 1999 interview, take two, in her 1995 interview with Timothy White for Billboard, she said, the only recreation I had was waving from our living room picture window in Maidstone to the steam locomotive that blew its whistle at the bend in the track as it entered town. But at least that train gave me a curiosity about going places. Looking back, we know how that story turned out.

She left the frozen north to find her future in Toronto, in New York, in Los Angeles, and eventually on concert stages around the world. But when Timothy White suggested to Joni that as a child waving to that rumbling steam locomotive from her picture window, it must have been difficult to believe the outside world would ever hear her cries. Oh, didn't I tell you, said Joni, several years ago, my mom and dad were at a party and they met a conductor on that railroad.

He said, the only thing I remember about Maidstone was that there was a house with a big window where they left the Christmas tree lights up. And a little girl used to wave to me. It was the same guy.

It really makes you wanna think that every prayer, every message we send eventually gets answered. There you go. So that's what I do.

That's what the whole band is about, is to find those moments in each artist's lives that reveal something about the music, tell you something about their past, what they were going through, what they were thinking. A story in a nutshell about Led Zeppelin was that they were working on their second album. Meantime, Robert Plant had a crush on this woman, just ferociously wanted to marry her.

And she just kept saying no. She didn't like his rock and roll lifestyle or who knows what. She just didn't do that.

She didn't wanna go there. So they broke up and he drifted on, found another woman. They hit it off well enough.

They got married. Robert starts thinking about that other woman. Can I have an affair? I'm a rock star.

Can I get away with this? Thing is, that other woman was his wife's younger sister. Oh. At least they gave him the lyrics to a song, What Is and What Should Never Be.

Wow. And that's what the song's about. Okay, so when you're planning on putting a show together, it's gotta take some time for you to research the, I mean, you can't just say, we're gonna do this album and next week.

Who doesn't love going on the internet and digging around, you know? But yeah, you know, I mean, once again, it's an odd combination of factors of the musicians I work with, who I think are just wonderfully talented. We were doing a rehearsal for one show, talking about, hey, let's do this in the future, or what about that? Or we were at one rehearsal, like, which one was it? I don't know, Indigo Girls or Sinead O'Connor, whatever it was. But the drummers started playing the riff from Walking on the Moon.

I played the bass. And lo and behold, about three months later, we did a police feature, you know? It just kind of grows naturally. There is a certain agenda where I do feel forced to try to keep the albums really familiar.

I mean, the Kate Bush album, notwithstanding, and some of the other things we've done. But the idea that now I've grown to a point where I gotta pay my band, you know? These are good people putting in time. I gotta make sure it's worth their while.

So, you know, thank God for the Joliet Area Historical Museum for bringing us out here. And we play there and sell out 250 seats or more. It's been wonderful.

We've done nine shows there and they've all pretty much sold out. I'm not sure if there's a difference between the rooftop seating and the indoor seating. But it's a very happy crowd when the night is over.

And the idea being, I wanna make sure I take care of my musicians. And if I can grow something, once again, doing my little plug in the moment again, we've got a new series coming to City Winery. They offered us to do Sunday brunches every other month.

And we're starting with a set of Rolling Stones music on April 3rd. But, and then we're gonna come back with Crosby, Stills, and Nash's first album in June. And then a tribute to the Woodstock Festival in August.

But the idea being, I wanna get some momentum going so that not every album has to be a blockbuster. It doesn't have to be the Eagles' greatest hits. It can be something a little more off the beaten track.

But people will come because they know they'll have a good time. They'll hear something, they'll hear songs they know, they'll hear stories that they can relate to and see musicians play well. So that's the grand plan.

Right, so do you do the booking as well or do you work through a booking? I guess, yeah. Yeah, I never thought I was doing booking. I just contact venues and say, please write to people.

Well, here at the Joliet Area Historical Museum, one of my brainstorms was, I need a website. And Mike Brick from the museum found our website and just contacted me out of the blue. And I thought, playing at a museum? This is like 2017.

They go, what? Okay, let me drive out to Joliet, see what that's like. And I got here and I was very impressed. And I went back to my band and said, look, we can do a great rooftop concert here.

Wonderful venue and let's do it. So we started with, not afraid of a challenge, we started with the Beatles' White Album and just kept going from there, so. So you've done the rooftop before? Oh, I wanna say five or six different shows.

Physical Graffiti, just did Fleetwood Mac's Rumors and the album before that. Billy Joel. No, I'm sorry, Fleetwood Mac was indoors, but Billy Joel was on the rooftop.

Rolling Stones' Hot Rocks and another stone set. Jimi Hendrix, we did indoors at the museum, so yeah. So you've got another show coming up there, right? Yes, as a matter of fact.

How could I forget? U2, we were gonna do a U2 tribute to the album, The Joshua Tree, back in January. And then this Omicron variant came along and everyone was feeling cautious and myself included, but I had younger guys in my band who were not in that at-risk group, but they were saying, maybe we should, so we did, postponed it. And my next brainstorm, which didn't pan out, was let's do U2 on St. Patrick's Day.

And my lead singer for the show said, oh, I'm on vacation that week. So we went with a different holiday, April 1st, which is a Friday night at the Joliet Area Historical Museum. And we're thrilled.

When we do an album, when we do a show, typically when we were doing shows before, we'd pick two separate albums. And then over the years, it got to be the point, like we did a Moody Blues show. And I was like, I don't know if I can find two great Moody Blues albums.

I can find a lot of great songs, but a lot of songs that maybe people aren't gonna wanna pay to sit through. So we did, This Is The Moody Blues, their greatest hit set. I was sort of fudging it there.

But now we're to the point, we're kind of just picking a specific album, like The Joshua Tree for our U2 show. But usually, typically we do a chronological set to set the stage. So we're starting with their first album and running through all that, not all that material, but the material through that.

And the second album, October, the third album, War, and the fourth album, Unforgettable Fire. Maybe a dabble with the Red Rocks Live EP. And there was the other one, Wide Awake in America.

They had that long version of Bad on it. So we cover all that kind of stuff. And then we'll do the featured album and a couple of songs at the end for an encore to break between.

But yeah, we dig into their past history and do you want a U2 story? Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that. I was gonna say, here, we must have a U2 story. Yes, indeed.

Oh my gosh. These guys are so interesting. You know, I mean, one story in a nutshell is I knew they were committed Christians, but the band almost broke up before the second album because they were within a, working with a religious group in Dublin that was very straight laced or strict or maybe just unimaginative.

They couldn't see what possible way you could keep your faith and be in a rock band. Well, U2 proved them wrong. But suffice to say, they almost broke up then.

I mean, a lot of things we take for granted about U2 being here might not have happened. But this is a different story. The Edge wanted to create the ultimate U2 live song.

So he imagined that he was a fan at one of their concerts. What would he like to hear? He then sat down to the four-track tape machine to craft the rough demo of the tune that would open the Joshua Tree. And when he was finished, he believed he had come up with what he called the most amazing song of my life.

Bono once summed up the quintessential U2 performance by saying, I sing from standing in front of Larry Mullen's kick drum. I sing from Edge ringing those bells. I sing from Adam who keeps us all on the ground.

The Edge's song has all those elements. And what's more, it was exactly what U2 fans wanted to hear. Says Bono, we can be in the middle of the worst gig in our lives, but when we go into that song, everything changes.

The audience is on its feet, singing along with every word. It's like God suddenly walks through the room and we go into where the streets have no name. That's awesome.

Thank you. Like, you know, I love doing this. It's, it's, I just love music.

I love rock music. As I told you, there's just like growing up, there was those moments of saying, you can do this. You know, it's not all yummy, yummy, yummy.

I've got love in my tummy. There could be interesting music out there. I mean, much the same way the Beatles opened a lot of people's eyes.

And then for me, I came of age around 72, 73. So prog rock, you know, it was out there. I lived in Oklahoma at the time.

I was listening to a station in Oklahoma city, which was 90 miles away. And the station, I don't know if you ever worked in radio, but they had the weirdest format. It was, they seemed to play long songs.

Everything was like seven minutes long or longer. So I knew a lot of, you know, Renaissance and Jethro Tull and turn to the Genesis, those kinds of songs. I didn't know any Rolling Stones or Beatles though, cause I never played them.

You know, it was all this long stuff. There was a poco song called crazy eyes. I think crazy eyes is like nine minutes long.

You know, they would dig out this stuff and it was great to listen to it. Because once again, I was feeling this feeling of, wow, you could do cool stuff with music. How can I get involved with that? I'm not a singer.

You know, that's another thing about leading a band is that, you know, I'm only on stage to tell the stories and I let the rest of the band be in the spotlight when it comes to the music. And, you know, if we want to open something up for, song up for a solo for somebody or reinterpret something a certain way, we're not afraid to do that. You know, we respect the original versions, but sometimes, you know, we have to make accommodations for how much money is available.

We did the Beatles at City Winery a couple of years ago for a Sunday brunch. And I had this idea, let's hire a string quartet. Let's do all the Beatles songs with little strings in them, you know, like Yesterday or Eleanor Rigby.

It would also open the door for us to do A Day in the Life and Strawberry Fields and I am the Walrus. And it was great. ♪ I am the Eggman, they are the Eggman.

♪ ♪ Cuckoo, ca-choo. ♪ It was a chance to do something with the music that you don't normally get to do in a club. Like I said, we did Stevie Wonder.

I had a horn section for that. And I hired a guy to play keyboards, you know. Once again, I thought, I'm not gonna get one of my white musicians to play Stevie Wonder.

You know, I want a guy that's gonna own that stuff. So I used to work at WNUA. If you remember back in the day, Ramsey Lewis used to be the morning show host there.

And I knew him and occasionally co-hosted with him. So I knew him well enough to write to him in email and say, Ramsey, we're doing a Stevie Wonder show. I don't want you to suggest a musician.

I want you to suggest a musician who can suggest a musician. You know, one of your sidemen, who would he suggest? And they put me in touch with a guy named Clarence Williams and awesome, you know, if I have my way, we're gonna go bring back Stevie Wonder to do Inner Visions this fall, you know, fingers crossed. Funny thing is that you said that you did a Beatles set and you're actually performing music live that the Beatles never performed live.

Exactly, well for the Beatles one, I'm trying to remember now, five years ago, I think we had some strings for that. I know when we did Prince, we had a string quartet just so we could do that ending of Purple Rain live. I know we had, yeah, we had a horn section, three horns, two saxes, trumpet, and then I stepped in on trombone when needed.

And then a couple of strings, two or three, I think. So yeah, but it was a dedication to trying to flesh out the music as best we could. And when we did number, what is it, Revolution No.

9, I had a whole thing prepared based on John Lennon's collage of sound. And I narrated something over it that tried to hit certain posts in it. You know, you live and learn.

That's the problem with doing things live. But I practiced a lot of times. I had certain posts, there's a place for the Revolution guitar, ba-na-na-na-na-na-na, comes up in there.

When we did the White Album at the Joliet Museum, I hadn't realized that my iPad wasn't plugged in in stereo. So when I hit that post, that was all in the channel that wasn't in the PA system. I was like, ah! So I'm in the middle of my narration thinking, well, thinking things I can't say on the podcast.

Anyway, so we just want to bring people those oh, wow moments. And that's what it's about. Sometimes it's through the performers, like the guy Bill Grady, who plays an amazing Jimi Hendrix.

He's not only a great Jimi Hendrix, he was my Dwayne Allman, David Gilmour. And it's gonna be in the U2 band. He and a friend of his from Milwaukee by the name of Jeremy Peters, both amazing guitarists.

Jeremy just was our Lindsey Buckingham when he did Fleetwood Mac at the museum. And Bill brought in a singer named Steve Taylor, who's one of those gigging musicians I mentioned before. You know, guys who get paid a tidy sum to do weddings and industrial shows and things like that.

So that's why we rarely play on Saturdays because the people I want to hire are already in. They're already busy. Making like three times what I can pay them.

But Steve Taylor, he did a guest appearance. He did a walk-on when Bill Grady was our Eddie Vedder in a Pearl Jam show. And there's a song, I'm blanking out, it's one that Chris Cornell sings with him.

It was like in the early days. I Go Hungry is like the chorus. Hunger Strike, maybe? I'm not sure what the name of the artist was in the Pearl Jam, too.

But anyway, Steve walked in and sang this high Chris Cornell thing. You know, it was just like, oh my God. You know, it was worth paying the extra money to have him come out and do that for one song in the encore because it was just an unexpected, oh my gosh.

A nice surprise. Yeah, right. We did the Rolling Stones and I hired a bluegrass fiddle player for Country Hawk.

You know, he just came on and did the one song. Billy O is his name. And I always feel bad I've never had him back again.

You know, I've hired him twice to be a country fiddle player but he said, I can sing and do other things too. It's like, God bless you. I got my standard people.

I just need you for the one thing, right? So what about Temptations? Have you done the Temptations? No, we would in a heartbeat. Once again, it's like, can I get a crowd? Can I get an audience for that? Probably, the Stevie Wonder thing was well attended. We had like 300 people at Martyrs in Chicago.

Temptations, when we did Paul Simon, the Graceland, you know, album. I had a friend who works with some musicians, African-American musicians in a soul group, Mosaic Soul, I think was the name of it. And he brought me three singers to be my Lady Smith Blackman Baso for that album.

And you know, that allowed us to do some other things like the Loves Me Like a Rock song that had the Dixie Hummingbirds singing background on it from Paul Simon's, there goes Ryman Simon. So Temptations is not a bad idea. Let me give you that some thought.

One thing we have in our back pocket, we've been lobbied by the women at the Joliet Museum to do a Dolly Parton tribute. So we're gonna try that. And here's the thing, you know, Dolly, she's having her moment right now and deservedly so, but she's not got a great album that you're gonna point to.

She's got an entire career. So I think what we're gonna do for her is 20 memorable moments and pick things. We try to keep things chronological when we do it because that helps me as the storyteller, you know, move things forward.

But we've got 20 songs picked out and I've got some research done on them and there's some good stories to come. So look for that. I'm hoping this summer on the rooftop at the museums, Mike and I still have to figure out a date.

And I wanna take it to some other places too. But once again, you know, my friend Paki has volunteered to play, Paki Lundholm to play Pedal Steel on that. He did Pedal Steel for us in one of our Grateful Dead shows.

We did Working Man's Dead and American Beauty, so. So how does one get tickets for this U2 show? The Joliet Museum website. Give me a wifi connection, I'll give you the URL.

No, you have to go to the website for Joliet Area Historical Museum. Or you can visit Great Moments in Vinyl on Facebook. We have an events page that links you to their site or their ticket window.

I can't, it's not actually a, it's not really their site, it goes to another place, another portal that actually does their ticket sales for them, so. But if you start with the Great Moments in Vinyl Facebook page, that's a good start. You're on Instagram too, I should mention.

And there's a website, greatmomentsinvinyl.com. And on our website, we got past videos from previous shows, we got a list of all the past shows. We got even an audio page, some of the songs we've done. And some things we did from home, remotely distanced during the lockdown, so.

During COVID? Yep, we didn't get together, but we still made music, which is great. A great guitarist I work with by the name of Scott Tipping. He and his partner, Ellie Kahn, did the entire Raising Sand album by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

Just the two of them. They recorded it all on video, and I recorded stories at home, we spliced it all together and put that on. So that's April 1st at the Juliet Historical Museum, and then two days later.

Friday night, I gotta mention the Friday night, because that's a selling point right there. Right, and then two days later, you're at City Winery for the first brunch. The first Sunday brunch, City Winery, April 3rd.

We're calling it The Rolling Stones, a set of 60s faves. Because we thought, you know, we're not gonna play Midnight Rambler for people on a Sunday morning over their tea and scones. Keep it kind of light, you know? We were trying to figure out, what Stones album do we do? And it just felt like, well, let's do a bunch of 60s stuff.

Because they went through some interesting changes. You know, I mean, Keith Richards said in the beginning, I wanted to be Muddy Waters. They were all blues fans, but they mutated over time.

They started to realize there's money to be made doing other stuff. So you saw them doing a lot of Motown and R&B covers. The blues is very predominant in their music.

It was, yeah, and it still is today. But I mean, they went through a shift there. You know, Beatles come along.

They got Revolver and Rubber Soul, and oh my gosh, Sgt. Pepper's. And everyone's going off and trying stuff. You saw Brian Wilson did all his pet sounds and other innovative things in the studio.

But The Rolling Stones, the Aftermath album starts to dabble in that between the buttons. And then you come along with their Satanic Majesty's Request, where they really just threw caution to the wind and experimented in the studio. I think one of the singles from that was one of the few songs that Bill Wyman sang lead on.

Sadly, it pretty much tanked. But they were trying things. And around that time, they were realizing, this is not us.

They put together Jumpin' Jack Flash. I think it was the next song that kind of was a restart of the Stones' engine, pointing them in a new direction. And then they sailed off at Beggar's Banquet and Let It Bleed, and the defining period of Rolling Stones' music.

And they kind of always went along with the latest craze. I mean, they kind of get into the dance music. Yeah, hello, Mick, emotional rescue.

Right, right, yeah. So I mean, they were following what people were listening. And even Miss You, you know? I mean, that was an offshoot of all the time that Mick had been spending in Studio 54 or whatever club he used to go to.

And I read one interview where Keith was saying he hated that song. You know, why is this on our album? But on the other hand, you know, we did Sticky Fingers here at the Joliet Museum with Some Girls. And I'm sorry, not Sticky Fingers.

I wanted to tell you a story about Some Girls. We did Sticky Fingers with Some Girls. But the Some Girls album, oh my God, all the songs are in A. Come on, guys, a little innovation, please.

Probably needed to get an album out really quick. Oh, I think they just wanted to put something together and Tattoo You, which I didn't realize was all outtakes. That was, I don't think they did anything really new.

I think it was all stuff that might've been laid down before. Maybe Jagger went in and laid a new vocal on it. But all that stuff, I take, what's the hit song from that, Start Me Up? Little blanking out here.

I wanna say it was something that dated back from Goat's Head Soup or something. You know, it just was stuff that was, just hadn't made the albums in the past. Hey, here's a great place to put them.

And oh my God, one of their better records. Yeah, exactly. All righty then.

So we can find you online, your website. Greatmomentsinvinyl.com. And same for Instagram, same for Facebook. Andrew, you got a YouTube channel, but you know, I'm not one of these kids these days.

I'm not quite sure how that works. How do you find us on YouTube? But usually if you find our videos on Facebook or on the website, they've been posted on YouTube first so that I can just link them there rather than sequestering them on Facebook. Right, right, right.

We have a blast and really, I love people come out and see the shows because you'll get caught up in it too. People come up to me after every show and thank me for the music and the stories. Sounds like a lot of fun.

It is, it is. The stories are very cool. Yeah, oh my God, they bring you just a new dimension on your favorite artist.

And you have a lot of, I didn't know that moments. Right, exactly. And the enjoyment of the music too.

Yeah, yeah. And a little bit of both. Well, thanks a lot for coming out on this afternoon and- Or is it evening? No, it could be morning, I don't know.

But we appreciate you coming out. I appreciate your time. And some great, great stories.

Thank you so much. Thanks, Lindsay. Thank you.

So that was Lindsay Cochran of Great Moments in Vinyl. Some interesting stuff there, isn't it, Ray? I'm telling you, it's very, very interesting. I mean, he gets your attention.

He gets your attention. Yes, he does. Yes, he does.

And you learn something. Yes, you do. You get kind of a backstory, kind of like what we do.

Kind of like we do, bringing you the backstory of the bands. He's giving you the backstory of a band or the album or whatever. Right.

Very interesting stuff. I definitely gotta go out and see them. And puts together a different band for every show.

Every show, somebody got different people. But he's been doing it long enough and he's got a list of people he can find. So he's probably got a whole fraternity of people.

Exactly, he knows exactly who can play what kind of, what type of music and he calls upon those people. And he's got a show coming up this Friday at the Ellic Joliet. Historical Museum.

Historical Museum. Not on the roof, he's inside. It's not.

Inside, it's inside. It's too cold. And they're doing Joshua Tree by U2.

That's right. And then two days later, he's at the City Winery starting a Sunday brunch series. That's right.

So I believe it's gonna be a Rolling Stone performance there. So get out to see him either at the museum or down at the City Winery and check him out. I think you'll enjoy him.

Okay, thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks a lot. We'll see you next week.

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. ♪ Rock and Roll Chicago ♪