Hey, this is Paul Martin and Ray the Roadie for the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. How are you doing today, Ray? I'm doing awesome. How are you? I'm doing fine.

The weather's breaking, it's getting warm, it's gorgeous out. We need to go golfing. Okay.

How about Saturday? Okay. I'm down. All right.

Let's go. Good. Good deal.

Well, before that, we may need to speak to somebody about a podcast. Okay. Who do you want to speak to? Who would you, whoever you would like, and may you take the ball and run with it.

All right. How about Scott May? Oh, my goodness. I can't believe you came up.

I was thinking of him, too. Were you? Yeah. I mean, God, tickling the old ivories, you know? Yeah, that's right.

Scott's had quite a career, and he's been, well, we can let him tell us, but he's played the organist, keyboard player with the Eyes of March currently, and he's got a new CD of his own coming out in the next month or so, and so he's a busy guy, even with the COVID-19 going, he's still been pretty busy. Yes, he has. He's got quite an extensive history that really covers a lot of different areas, not just music alone.

That's right. Let's find out all about that, and give Scott a listen right now. Let's do it.

You know, I wish I had one of those little bells that you ring, you know, like at a hotel when you check in, you know, I wish I had one, because that would be a nice lead-in to this. Yeah, do it. Let's see what Scott has to say.

We're meeting today with Scott May, keyboard, best known for keyboardist with the Eyes of March. How are you doing today, Scott? Rocking and rolling. How about you guys? We're doing well, thank you.

Doing good. Doing good. Here we are, man.

Now, I said you're a keyboardist with the Eyes of March, but you play some other instruments too, don't you? Yeah, I've been playing guitar for a long time, which I enjoy really a lot. I'm a duff guitarist. I know enough guitar to play in my tunes, not enough to be the guitarist in anybody else's band.

But yeah, I also, I played bassoon a million years ago, and I was actually in the drum corps in high school. You've just about got everything covered there. One does one's best.

So tell us, well, going back to the early days, so you played in Dreamer, you played in All Night Newsboys, if I'm correct, right? Didn't you play guitar? Actually, I did play guitar in Dreamer. I started off, we had two keyboard players, a great Paul Darrow. But as things progressed with the band, I played more and more guitar.

And at the end, I was the stunt guitarist. It's a great term that Zap invented for Steve Vai. I was the stunt guitarist, and Anthony George was the real guitarist.

And see, at Dreamer, I had a lot of fun. For a while, I didn't even own a keyboard, believe it or not. Really? Yes, sir.

I probably went about five years, and I didn't own any keyboards at all. I was just playing guitar. And you were writing some songs in Dreamer, right, with Mark Dawson, correct? With Mark and Ritchie Mahota, two great writers.

And yeah, I wrote a bunch of songs for that band, and boy, that was a great band. I've got a great story about that. Do you want to hear it? Sure.

Sure. I've been with Hammond Organ for a long time, and I go everywhere and do clinics for Hammond Organ. And I was in Toronto at an event, and a guy came up to me, and he was a real nice guy, nice player.

And I asked him if he was in a band. He says, yeah. He was in a band called The Kings.

Remember The Kings? Switching to Glide? Right. Sure. Well, back then, Dreamer was up for a record deal with Elektra.

It was us or The Kings. And they went with The Kings. Gosh.

So I met the guy from The Kings. He told me it was The Kings. I just looked at him, and I started swearing at him.

You, I'm not going to say what I said, but a guy looks at me like, what the hell is wrong with you? I says, my band was up for a record deal with Elektra, and you guys got the deal, and we didn't. Then I told him that I was a big fan of the band, and Switching to Glide was a huge hit in Chicago, thanks to Steve Dahl. So there's my Dreamer story.

Switching to Glide is kind of a guilty pleasure of mine, too. I do. I hit it on my iPad, and I play it quite a bit.

It's one of those songs that, you know, it never gets old. It never gets old. It's a great song.

And you know, ultimately, songs is what counts with bands. And we had, boy, Dreamer had some great songs, but Switching to Glide was kind of irresistible at the time, wasn't it? Yes. Yes, it was.

Yes. Definitely an interesting song. Yeah.

And every once in a while, I'll see the fellow on Facebook, and we'll chat. Nice guy, though. I love Toronto.

It's a great town. So now, you just went around to clinics for Hammond, or were you a rep for them? My official title was Senior Product Specialist and Artist Liaison, and I had two jobs. I still have it.

One was, like I said, I go everywhere, and I train people, train dealers, and then I do programs for music companies where the customers come in, and I show them the latest and greatest, and I answer questions about Hammond organs. And you know, Hammond has developed to a point to where it's much more than an organ. We have models that have pianos and electric pianos and clavinets and strings and horns and synths and blah, blah, blah, blah, and Lesleys, which is really fun because they get to meet keyboard players everywhere.

The other side of my job is Artist Liaison, and I've got almost 400 artists, and this has been a complete dream because it's brought me into contact with all my heroes. Literally, I can sit here and my phone can ring, and it'll be Mark Stein from the Vanilla Fudge, used to be Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman's a friend of mine, Rod Argent from the Zombies, boy, the list goes on, Chuck Lavelle from the Rolling Stones, Felix Cavalieri of the Rascals, everybody who was a hero of mine when I was a kid are now my pals. And so it's an overwhelming, overwhelming blessing that I have, and Dr. Lonnie Smith, the great jazz organist is a pal, all the great gospel organists are friends, and I've learned so much from all these people.

And not licks, it's not, you know, when you talk with masters, it's not licks that you learn, it's how to make music and why to make music. You know, you see plenty of guys who have great chops and can play 10,000 notes a minute, but in the end, who cares? Then there's guys that can play one note and just break your heart, you know? Right, a lot of it is in the feel, absolutely. You bet, you bet, most of it.

My pal Colonel Bruce Hampton said, intent is everything. So, after Dreamer, all that Newsboys was before Dreamer, wasn't it? No, actually... Or was it the other way around, I forget. Yeah, the Newsboys came afterwards, we were doing almost all originals with Dreamer, and the guys in Dreamer wanted to, they wanted to go out and make money.

We didn't make much money with Dreamer, and we weren't going, really going anywhere to get a record deal. At that time, that was before what, you know, what the music business is now, where we can all make records in our basement. I had, I said, when I was 30, around 30 years old, if I hadn't made it, I was gonna go legit.

And that was right around that time. And so they, those guys went and they started the Newsboys, and I thought I was quitting the business. And then I got into comedy.

And then all bets were off. So tell us about the comedy, the comedy thing. I know you worked with Kevin Matthews and Judy Tenuta.

I worked with, boy, the list of comedians I worked with goes on. Jim Vose, the tour manager of Styx and I at that time were friends. And we went out for dinner one night.

We were supposed to go to Greektown. We land, there was an ice storm that night. We landed up at a place in Downers Grove.

So we went to dinner there, and that night, it was comedy night. And a guy went up on stage and completely blew us away. Just an incredible comedian.

And at that time, he was unknown, and the comedian's name was Phil Sultanic. And he did a set, and we just were completely nuts by this guy, because he was so great. Ran out the front door, we couldn't talk to him.

Two weeks later, I picked up the Reader, Chicago Reader, and opened it up, and there was an article with a picture of him. I said, there's the guy. And he had just changed his name to Emo Phillips.

Wow. Okay. And so immediately, we became Emo Phillips fans, and as I am wont to do, I found myself in the dressing room and talking to Emo, and we became friends.

And he introduced me to Judy, who was in need of a musician guy, because Judy does a lot of music in her act. She plays the accordion, correct? He plays the accordion, yes, she does. And I became Judy's music director, became Judy's music guy, and for well over 10 years, I toured everywhere in the U.S. with her.

I did TV specials. I played the Phil More West with Judy, and produced a couple of her albums, one of which was Grammy-nominated. We lost that year to Jonathan Winters, and boy, if you're going to lose to somebody, losing to Jonathan Winters, that's, ah, well, what's the good news? We got nominated for a Grammy.

What's the bad news? Well, it's still good news. We lost to Jonathan Winters. Right.

No. Not too shabby. That's an easy one.

That's an easy one to take. But from there, through Judy, I got to meet a lot of comics, and I got to be the house band at the Funny Firm Comedy Club, the late, lamented Funny Firm downtown, and that's where I worked with everybody and played with everybody, and got to know Kevin Matthews, who started bringing me in at the Loop, when Kevin was at the top of the heap, and that put me, I mean, I met everybody, you know, especially at the Comedy Club, and I worked in comedy for a long time as an accompanist, a punch-up guy, then I went up to Caroline's Comedy Hour for two seasons. We won an Ace Cable Award, worked with the great Richard Jenny, the comedy star.

That was on A&E? That was on the A&E network, yeah. Caroline's on Broadway right in the middle of Times Square, directly across the street from the Brill Building, which was great to go there to work every day, and boy, I worked with every great comedian that you can think of, with maybe the exception of Robin Williams and Rodney, but I worked with just about everybody else. I didn't realize there's so many music interacts, you know? Oh, yeah.

And a lot of them, I would do live scores to some of their stuff, and play music, just they'd do a joke and I'd rip out music behind it, actually pretty much the same way Paul Schaefer kind of did for Letterman, I'm nowhere near the player Schaefer is, but the same kind of idea. And I was like a built-in sidekick, and for the comics that I worked with Heavy, it really worked out great, and it was a lot of fun. So during this time, you were just doing the comedy route, you weren't involved with any other bands or anything at that time? No, no, no, I did the comedy, I mean, it was a lot of work, I mean, we did a lot of shows, and I did recording with Judy, and then I was also, I was doing a lot of radio at that time, I was doing Kevin.

I was a co-host of a radio show with the great Brian McCann, who had so many great years on the Conan O'Brien show. And then I was also a sidekick for Morton Downey Jr. on radio, and Mort was a singer, and we did a lot of recording of songs, I wrote songs with Mort, and what a character he was, I mean, that was an education to sit in a studio, a radio studio with him. And we were on everywhere in America except Chicago, and the show came from Chicago.

But that's a whole other thing, a bunch of crazy people that I met on that show, and Mort himself was just such a character, I learned so much about radio and improv and stuff from Mort. He wasn't the monster that you see, that his persona is. He was the sweetest, nicest man, family man, and generous to a degree I can't even believe, and kept me going for a long time.

So now, back to Kevin Banshees, why were you called the one-armed orchestra? Well, you know, I'd sit up in the studio and I'd have my keyboard, and I'd just play cues. I'd play sound effects and play cues, and the way the character developed, you know, Kevin would say, you know, how can you play that piano when you only have one arm? People can't see you have one arm. And that was a running joke, the one-armed orchestra.

It's theater of the mind, right? Theater of the mind, sitting there with Jim Shorts every day. And people still know me, and when they see me, it's like, oh man, play Earl's theme, you know, which for two years was the most played piece of music on WLUP. No other piece of music was played more than Earl's theme.

Wow. I didn't make any money off of it, thank WLUP, but it's still fun, and people still ask about it. So now, did you play in Kevin's band? Because Kevin also played in some live shows.

Yeah, Kevin, no, I wasn't part of, what the heck did he call his band? No, I didn't play in Kevin's band. I can't think of it either now. Yeah, it was Ed Zeppelin.

That's right, yeah. Ed Zeppelin. That's right.

No, I didn't play, I would do shows with them where I would come out and play keyboards with Kevin while he would do his stand-up, but then I would not play with Ed Zeppelin. However, I did, I was a Bubba. I was a part of the All Bubba Blues Band with Buzz Kilman.

And that was a lot of fun. Buzz is a great guy and a really heavy duty blues man, and boy, we played some great shows, and it was a lot of fun playing with Buzz. Because I played in the Dancing Noodles, and we played with Kevin, did quite a few shows with Kevin, and also did some shows with Steve Dahl as well.

Yeah, the Noodles, of course, I knew Roman well, because of Dahl, because I was in, I played in St. Koholips, the, what the heck was the name of, of, of, of, The Dolphins. The Dolphins. No, no.

Teenage Radiation. Teenage Radiation. Oh, Teenage Radiation.

Yeah, I did a, I did a, I did a stint in Teenage Radiation with Potter and Skender and Roman. So you were the house band for the Funny Firm, right? House band for the Funny Firm, and, you know, kind of a second house emcee. And I was like, the best way to put it, I was the Paul Schaefer.

So you were, you were there quite a bit then, right? Every night, six nights a week. Wow. And worked with absolutely every great name that you can possibly think of, you know, Ray Romano, Bill Hicks, Bill Hicks was a dear friend, Chris Rock came in from time to time, Richard Jenney, the great, he, he was on, he was on, he was on Tonight Show all the time.

Oh, Tom Dreesen. Tom Dreesen. There you go.

Tom Dreesen. Dreesen, Dreesen was, was a super nice guy, and he'd come in, and we just cleared the decks and put him on stage. Great Chicago comics and great national comics.

It was, it was, it was really a great time. So you were also playing with the Act of March then, at that time, right? Well, Act of March, that was in 90. And I got a call from Peterick saying, hey, we're going to, we've been asked to play the Berwyn Summer Fair behind Cermak Plaza in Berwyn, you know, we, we never had a full-time keyboard player.

Would you like to, would you like to come and play with us? I said, you know, the old thing, let me think about it, okay. You know, Larry Millis was, he played keyboards with the band during, all during their glory period, the big, the golden days, but Larry's not a keyboard player. Larry's a guitarist and a singer primarily, but he could play some keyboards, so he was drafted to play keyboards.

And so when the guys got back together, Larry wanted to play guitar and they, they wanted, in order to do some of the Survivor stuff, they needed a full-time keyboardist. And I'm from Berwyn, I went to the same schools as the guys. I went to Morton High School, I was in the same high school bands and grade school bands and the guys all knew me and I knew them.

And so it was, hey, let's, let's ask Scott and I can play a little bit. And so, and that, and we had 25,000 people in the back of Cermak Plaza at that show. And it was so much fun.

We decided it was only going to be a one-shot deal. And that was in 1990. And here we are in 2020, we never, never looked back and never stopped.

And we ain't stopping anytime soon. And they made me, very shortly thereafter, they made me, they made me a member of the band, which was like, for a Berwyn guy, that was like joining the Beatles. It was amazing.

That's right. Sure. It was amazing.

And it still is amazing. I, every once in a while I'm on stage and I'm, how did I get here? You know, I pinched myself and now I get to write, I get to write some tunes for Peter Rick. That was my next question.

And if you do any writing and, and contributing to the writing with the, yeah. I've been, I've been a right hand to JP for a long time. I am the proud co-writer of most of our Christmas stuff.

All our sports tunes that we had, I mean, we had, finally next year for the Cubs, Hey, Holy Cow, that, that went on a record that was sold in every major league ballpark. And it was played all the time in the, in Cubs Park, we've got a, we've got a pretty good sports thing. We've been, we have sung the national anthem for the White Sox.

I think it's 35 times. We sang the last night game at the old Comiskey Park and the first night game at the new Comiskey Park. Oh, really? Wow.

Yeah. It's very cool. We go back with the, we go back with the Sox a long time and, but then we sang for everybody else except the Blackhawks, Bulls and boy, that was some great memories being standing on the court at the stadium during the Bulls shoot around and there's Scottie Pippen and there's Jordan and there's Dennis Rodman and all the greats of the Bulls.

And they're all like shooting around and the ball would come like, would go somewhere in the comments. We'd have to like catch it and throw it back to him and you know, passing the ball to Jordan. It's like, Oh, yeah, because I'm a sports, I'm a sports, I'm a sports idiot.

Yeah. You can trust me to, you can trust me to do minor surgery better than you can trust me to play first base in a ball game. So, but it's, you know, I mean, you're Chicago and you know, you got to, you got to love our teams.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So, so tell us, tell us about some of the television and the movie stuff that you've done and some jingle, some jingle as well.

Sure. Well, I think my, my, of course, Caroline's Comedy Hour, the two seasons, the last two seasons, and we won an Ace Gable award for the last season, which was, which was really great. And that was a lot of fun.

I've done, I've done six TV specials with Judy Chinuta from all over. I've done, I've done TV with Paul Provenza, Richard Jenny, you know, different comedy shows where they've used my music. And then through Len Ostrovich, who was the, the, the major dome over at the funny firm, I got, I got tied up with a guy named Greg Liena, who's a great, great comic.

And he was a director. He asked me to score a movie with him and I did. And then the next movie that he wrote, and then I scored was called Meet the Parents.

It was a great movie. It was really fun. And it's set and, and what happened is that Emil Phillips was the producer of that movie and, and it was optioned by National Lampoon, remember National Lampoon? And they were going to release it as one of their first movies.

And then National Lampoon went, went, kind of went, went, went sideways and it's set for 10 years. You know, and Greg just, there wasn't any interest and everyone says it's a great movie, but I don't know. And then finally, I got a call one day, it was like, hey, you know, the rights to the movie were sold.

The movie was sold. I said, to who? Spielberg? Yeah. I went and Universal picked it up and then they decided to, you know, rewrite it and remake it.

And none of my music was used, unfortunately. But I know that all those people watched that movie a bunch and whoever scored the movie probably watched it. And it became one of the highest grossing movies, movie franchises of all time.

But I can say that I was, I was there at the, when the, when the seeds were being planted. I did another movie with Judy and Greg called Desperation Boulevard, which was great. She played a, she played a faded child star and the movie, it was a great movie.

Judy was great in it, but the movie never went anywhere. Boy, it's better than a lot of movies you see on cable. Maybe someday it'll come out.

But Jingles, I did, I did stuff for McDonald's, I did stuff for, for a long time. We were the, we were the Froot Loops people. That was in the, in the, in the 2000s, actually in the late, in the late 90s before, before 9-11, because 9-11 torpedoed the jingle market as we knew it, it never, it never recovered.

But I did a lot of Froot Loops commercials, Wolverine boots. I did do, I did get to do one commercial, one Empire Carpet commercial, and I went to the Jingle House, which was downtown and said, okay, today you're going to sing on an Empire Carpet commercial. I went, oh my God, that's great.

And then in through the door walked Lynn Haldren, the guy, you know, and, and when he walked in, we were, I mean, our eyes just went, it was like, you know, it was like God walking in, you know, I mean, for Chicago, and he was a nice guy. And you know, that, I had a two, three hundred Empire, that's Lynn Haldren singing that. That's that guy and a gal, I don't know who the gal was, but they're doing all the voices and you still hear that, that, that tag on all the Empire Carpet commercials.

That's Lynn Haldren singing that. Wow. All those many years, too.

All those many years. And he passed, but boy, just to stand around the microphone and, and, and sing with that guy for a Chicagoan, come on, that's, that's. Yeah.

Well, he, well, he actually owned the ad company that picked up the Empire business. That's what I heard. I didn't know that.

Supposedly he owned, he owned the ad company and he was going to hire actors or whatever to do it. But the Empire liked him and wanted him to, to do the commercial for him. And that's why he was in every one.

And now, now he's a cartoon. They made him into a cartoon. He's an avatar.

An avatar. I wonder, I wonder if the family's still making, you know, making Gidus off of that. Oh, I'm sure.

But boy, to, to, to, to stand around the microphone, we were all, we were all like, oh my God, you know, this is for a Chicago guy, you know. Yeah, that's very cool. So outside of music and movies and comedy, you're an accomplished writer too.

Yeah. I've always liked to write and, and you know, I, I probably should have went into that line of work a lot earlier. I probably would have made more money.

But then again, I, money was never been my, has never been my stick. I've, you know, but I, yeah, I've written a number of books. You do it because you love it, right? Well, you know, like, like Sherlock Holmes used to say, the work is its own reward.

But dad don't butter the toast. But as far as writing goes, I've got a number of books. I did a whole bunch of children's books for the Long Hill Company that won awards.

And then I've, I've written books on, I've co-written books on topics from financial planning to focus in education. And the latest book I've written with a gal named Marge Lise, and everybody's gonna find this funny. It was a, she lost over 200 pounds, this Marge Lise.

She was on the Today Show and she's, you know, and she had a great story and her and her husband are Ides and March fans. And they asked me to, to help them write Marge's story. And Marge has, so the book is called Too Much Me, available on Amazon.

And, and it's really, it's really a fun book. It's an easy read. And if anybody out there is carrying a little bit too much, too much weight, and you want to get a little inspiration, pick up the book Too Much Me.

And I wrote the book when I was over 450 pounds, which is very ironic. I lost a lot of weight. I was sick two years ago and lost a lot of weight.

So I'm still a fat bastard, but I know I certainly could lose a few pounds. I went from, now I'm just saying, now I'm just a garden variety fat guy. I'm not like a, oh man, look at him.

So how are you surviving the COVID-19 thing, the coronavirus? I mean, obviously the band isn't playing. Obviously the band isn't playing anymore. Not right now.

Well, we're, we did do a couple of videos. We did do a couple of quarantine videos. And the last one we did, which we did with the Cornerstones of Rock, which you guys have I don't know if you're going to ask about that, but I've been very lucky for the past bunch of years to play in the Cornerstones of Rock for Chicago Rock and Roll.

And the Cornerstones of Rock, it was a TV special on Channel 11 on public television. And it was all the great Chicago bands from the 60s. It was the Ides, the Crying Shames, the New Colony Six, the Buckinghams, Shadows of Night, Teddy Eliota from Eliota, Haynes and Jeremiah.

And we did a wonderful, they still play it on PBS a lot, Channel 11, you'll see it a bunch. And the Ides of March were the house band. So I got to play and sing with Tom Doody and J.C. Hook, Todin Hook from the Crying Shames, Ronnie Rice, Ray Graffia, and Bruce from the New Colony Six, Nicky and Carl from the Buckinghams on the TV show.

We had Dennis Stefano from the Bucks as well, Jimmy Sanz. And I get to play all these great Chicago rock and roll songs, you know, kind of a drag. I'll play kind of drag because the Bucks have their own band, but it could be War and Love by the Crying Shames and all the great New Colony Six hits.

And oh my God, it's just so great. So we did, Sanz wrote a parody of summertime blues called Pandemic Blues. And we did it, we did a video on it and it's got tens of thousands of hits already.

I'll give you a link of that if you want to pick it up. But other than that, we've interviewed quite a few of those, Tom Doody and J.C. Hook, and of course Jim Peterick, Carl G. Morrisey. And then of course, we interviewed Dave Zane.

Dave's great. Boy, what a talent. What a great player he is.

And Mike Aquino as well, who I know you work with. Oh my God, the captain. One of the greatest pure musicians I know.

I do a lot of production for other people. And when I need guitar stuff, I call Mike. And I mostly work over at Peterick's studio, private studio.

And I bring Mike in, and I pick up a book and a cup of coffee, and I go sit down and I go, Mike, put some guitar on this song. And he always plays the right thing. He always comes through for you, right? I mean, his sense of the appropriate is just amazing.

There's nothing he can't play. You know, when you see a true master like that. And on top of it, you could not ask for a nicer, less egotistic, more eager to help.

And, you know, I mean, I've done two albums of my own music. And with the third one about to be released, I've had Mike in, you know, I do all the guitar solos on my records. And I feel like a jerk because I've got Aquino in to play guitar.

And then I said, I'm going to put my soul over this. I feel sheepish. I'm like, but it's my record.

You know, I can do what I want. That's right. So tell us about some of your music.

Well, I've got two albums out. The first one was called Outside the Inside. The second one is called Own Life.

It's also available at scottmaymusic.com and on Amazon, you know. And, you know, after I turned 60 years old and I said, you know, I've never released an album under my own name. And I always wrote songs.

And so I said, well, what the heck? Let's try it. It turned out great. I took all these songs.

I sat down with Jim Peterick and Larry Millis. And I said, should I sing these or should I get somebody to come in and sing it? And they encouraged me to sing it myself. And I played pretty much all of it myself.

You know, drum computers. I've got a MIDI studio here in my house that I can work on. And I farmed out a couple of things on both records.

I had some great... I did some crowdfunding. I had some very generous people. I had some great people play on my first two records.

Do we have time for one short story? Sure. One of my dear friends for a long time is Mike Pinder from the Moody Blues. The guy who said, breathe deep the gathering gloom and played Mellotron.

And the Moody Blues never did sessions for anybody. If you notice, you'll never see any of the Moody Blues names as a guest musician on anybody else's albums. And that was a decision that the Moody Blues made, that they were just going to be inside the Moody Blues.

However, there were one or two exceptions. Mike Pinder, the Mellotron player, is an expert tambourine player. And he played tambourine on John Lennon's, one of John Lennon's records, old ones.

But he also played tambourine on Double Fantasy, uncredited. You know, the Moody's and the Beatles were great friends. And John Lennon loved the way Mike played tambourine.

And so Mike went and played tambourine on John Lennon's record. What song was that? We can't say because he was uncredited. But he's on the album.

And Mike's told the story so I don't have any problem telling it. But so when I was recording my first album, there was one song. And Larry says, boy, this could use tambourine.

I says, aha, wait a second. So I called Mike. I said, would you care to play tambourine on my record? He goes, sure, matey.

Just send the track. I sent the track out to him. And he came back.

And he sent me back a bunch of three, four different tambourine tracks for the song. And it was great. And he said I could use his name.

So I became one of the few, very, very few people that had a Moody Blue as a session player on the record. And it's one step removed from John Lennon, which was really cool. Very cool.

So now I just finished my new album, which I've kept the title secret. But I'll say it here because I'm going to announce it shortly. The name of the record is Isle of View.

I-S-L-E-O-F-V-I-E-W. Isle of View. And that doesn't take an Einstein to figure that one out.

And I've got some great, great artists on this record. I really reached out. I did a co-write with Peteric of a song.

And I wanted something different. And over the years, I made friends with a band called the Time Jumpers in Nashville. And if you don't know who the Time Jumpers are, there's the top session guys of Nashville, the veterans.

And one of the guitar players is Vince Gill. Yeah. And I made friends with Andy Reese and Brad Albin and Billy Thomas, who are Andy's lead guitarist and Brad's the bass player and Billy's the drummer.

And I called Andy. I says, would you guys want to play on my record? And Andy said, sure. And it took a number of months to get it to work.

But he finally set it up. And my wife and I went to Nashville to record these. I had a couple of songs.

And we went to Crystal Gale's studio on Music Row. And I also asked my friend Mark Jordan to come and play B3. I didn't even play keyboards while I was there.

I just sang. And Mark played on all the great 70s Van Morrison hits. He also played on Midnight at the Oasis for Maria Moldova.

He played with Jackson Browne, amongst others. So I walked into a Nashville studio with a bunch of Nashville hot shots. And we did two songs for my record.

So got the great jazz harmonica player Bill Gallison out of New York City. And from Tokyo, I've got Koi Tanaka on harmonica playing some beautiful jazz harmonica. The great Jenny Jarnigan out of Phoenix.

Up and coming singer-songwriters playing piano with me. And let's see, who else? Oh, Kari Parker, who's George Benson's drummer. Got a bunch of great people on the record.

And it should be out in about a month. Available on Amazon and iTunes. Amazon, iTunes, and at scottmaymusic.com. And available at, when the odds get back out to playing shows, which should be pretty soon, available there.

And my Facebook page, facebook.com forward slash Scott May Music. Come and visit me. When you can't answer my next question, how can we find you on social media and on the World Wide Web? Let's see, scottmaymusic.com, S-C-O-T-T-M-A-Y music.com is my website.

And then Facebook, facebook.com forward slash Scott May Music. I've got close to 5,000 friends, but I always keep a little room open for people. And then we'll probably have an Isle of You page pretty soon, a follow page.

You know, I should be doing what you guys are doing. I should be doing podcasts. I should be doing all this stuff.

But I, you know, it's, I'm... You're a busy man. You're a busy man with that. It's like, you know what, I get enough of attention.

I get enough of stage time. People are so gracious to me. And, you know, when people, people, people follow me on Facebook and people see me with the band, I get stopped.

People say things to me. Ah, incoming call. Well, hey, this is live, isn't it? It's Freddie Glickstein from the flock.

Hold on for a second. Hey, Fredo, I'm doing an interview right now. I'm going to call you back.

Maybe these guys can interview you sometime. Okay, I'll call you back. Bye.

Freddie Glickstein from the flock. Great Chicago band. You guys should interview him sometime.

He's got some stories. When all this shakes out, I'm going to be also playing with a Chicago band called the Dinosaur Exhibit. And Jerry comes, and this guy's from the flock, the Mods and Aura for Days in the Night.

My old pal, Jerry Smith from the flock asked me to play keyboards in that band. Actually, he asked me to play keyboards in that band when they first got together. But that was a couple of years ago when I was sick, and I didn't do it.

And then the last year, he asked me if I would play with them. And I said, sure. And we're getting ready to play our first gigs.

And then the COVID-19 hit. And I put a monkey wrench in everything. But when everything shakes out, the Dinosaur Exhibit will be back, and I should be on keyboards with them.

Well, very good. Well, you've had quite a career. And we wish you continued success with that.

Most definitely. I'm a lucky man. Sorry for being so long-winded.

That's my want. You know, that's every time I should have. That's the perfect guest for us.

You do the talking. We just listen. No, well, I am a very, very lucky man.

I was sick a couple years ago, and they gave me a week to live. And my great doctor, Dr. G, shot out here out west, pulled me out of the abyss. And I came out of it better and stronger.

And Mack Wood, wait a minute. I don't have a sound effect for Mack Wood. Go figure.

But here I am. And I want to thank you guys for featuring me on your excellent podcast. Well, thank you very much for joining us.

We appreciate it. And like I say, continued success with everything. And good luck.

Hope you're feeling better and glad to see that you're looking good. Ah, well, you know, I try. I thought this was going to be a video interview.

You know, but I'm not going to dance. Is that why you have the purple hair? No, I don't know. Purple hair.

Purple hair is Peter's thing. Because people see me for sitting at a keyboard, all my stuff has got to be from, like, shoulders up. So that's why I've got my hats and my red glasses.

There you go. Well, good luck with I Love You this summer. I hope it does very well.

And hopefully we'll see you about playing with somebody somewhere. Well, yeah, the Cornerstones have two shows that are apparently going to fly in August. And if you go to the Ides of March, theidesofmarch.com, that'll all be listed there.

And of course, my website is going to be picking all those up, scottmaymusic.com. And then as business gets back, I'll be around with Hammond Organ. Very good. All righty, Scott.

Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Thanks.

So that was Scott May, keyboardist with the Ides of March. And well, just about anybody else, I guess. He's got some great stories too, doesn't he, Ray? Some outstanding stuff, man.

The comedy lifestyle there, he's working with all them comedians, doing jingles and writing books and scoring movies. And God knows what else he scored. Well, he scored a wife and a couple of kids.

I know that, I think. That's right. That's right.

But that was great seeing Scott. Some great stories there. I hope everybody enjoyed that.

What a great guy too. Very nice guy too. He is a nice guy.

He is. You're a nice guy too, Paul. Thanks.

I know some people may not say so, but you're a nice guy. You on the other hand. No, here it comes.

I knew that was coming. I'm just joking. I knew that was coming.

Make sure you get out there and pick up his new album, Isle of You, this summer when it comes out. Yeah, it should be out in about a month or so. Yeah, there should be some great stuff on there.

So join us next week when we're going to bring you episode 54. Might be somebody you'd be really interested in hearing. Don't you think? I think it will be.

I think so too. So don't be shy. Keep an eye out on us on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and anywhere you get your podcasts.

That's right. That's right. Be sure to listen.

Be sure and share those podcasts. Yes, please share it with all of your friends. Let them know how much fun Paul and I are.

That's right. We are fun guys. We are a ball of fun guys.

The mushrooms of the comedy world. I'm telling you. That's right.

Of the podcast world. Of the podcast world. That's right.

There ain't no two better mushrooms anywhere. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody.

We'll see you next week. See you then. 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. The Chicago Public Library is a non-profit organization that supports the education of The Chicago Public Library is a non-profit organization that supports the education of The Chicago Public Library is a non-profit organization that supports the education of children and young people in Chicago.