← On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
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- [00:07]
A
We took these songs and we made this. These experimental records and some night we'll have to sit and listen to some of this. I love it. It's crazy. It's the origin of the Boxmaster. The first Boxmaster song ever recorded was Yesterday's Gone by Chad and Jeremy done like hillbillies. So we thought, well, that's an interesting thing. The people who didn't get it really didn't get it. The people who did get it really got it.
- [00:34]
B
Welcome back to on the Bus with Troy Ballhoffer. And today's a fun one. I'm up here in Montana. I'm sitting with J.D. andrew and Billy Bob Thornton. Of course, you know Billy Bob from his countless films and TV shows, but one fact that you don't know possibly is that music has always been his first love. The band dropped a brand new album in July and are currently on their Pepper Tree Hill tour. I can't wait to share their story with you. Please welcome the Boxmasters. Hey, everybody. It's a big day today. I'm here with my two friends, Billy Bob Thornton and J.D. andrew of the Boxmasters.
- [01:09]
A
Yay.
- [01:11]
B
We're on tour. We're in Montana right now. And I just want to congratulate you guys. You're coming off of a real milestone opening for the who at the beginning of the tour. Let's talk about that for a second.
- [01:20]
A
That was awesome. I mean, you know, we've opened for a lot of big bands over the years. You know, ZZ Top and Steve Miller and Elvis Costello, George Thurgood, a lot of people. But this is one of the top three bands of all time. Absolutely. So it makes you a little nervous. And so what was awesome about it, we started in Miami. They're in Sunrise, Florida, you know, in there in Fort Lauderdale. And we got a standing ovation. And Bill Curbishly, their manager, said, you know, who have had four standing ovations from opening acts in their career. The first one was Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the fourth one was you guys. So it was really cool and the fans were so good to us. And on the drive up to Newark, New Jersey, which is the next stop with the who, the guys in the band were all excited and stuff saying, hey, hope we get a standing ovation in Newark. So I didn't want to let them down, so I did a preemptive strike. I just, on the last song, I just said, everybody, stand up and worship your heroes. The who coming out soon. And so, you know, we'll never know if we were really gonna get one or not?
- [02:27]
B
J.D. what was it like, like, from your perspective?
- [02:30]
C
Well, not to be completely, like, arrogant, because, I mean, this is very conceited sounding, but the whole time I was up there, I mean, we were playing great, and the whole time I was just like, this is the place where we should be. Like, this is the kind of. This is the stage we should be on every night, you know, and it sounds arrogant and completely pompous, but, you know, we're a rock band and that grew up on rock bands like the who. And so it just felt so comfortable being up there. I loved every second of it, and I loved every second of being in the arena. I love the trucks bringing gear in. I love the stage. I love the people crawling around, you know, all of the people that it takes to put a show on like that. And it's like, I love every second of it. And I hate that we have to leave. You know, it's like we had to go do our own tour and. And it's like, oh, why can't we just, like, hang out with those guys?
- [03:26]
A
Their crew? They were awesome.
- [03:30]
C
They couldn't have been. Our guys were saying, man, I wish you guys could be with us the whole time. And it's like, well, we do too. But.
- [03:35]
A
And you know what we said? We said, no, we have things to do with Fran Moran and the Nervous Wrecks, so we are not stank. But. But it really. We were humbled by it. Honestly, we really were humbled by it. I mean, when you see these guys on Ed Sullivan, when you're a kid and you follow them their whole career and the next thing you know, you're opening up for them. It was very humbling, and we were very proud that we got to be there for that moment in time on their final tour.
- [04:03]
B
Let's go back to the beginning of the Boxmasters. I'm curious, and I know our viewers would be curious to understand more of how the Box Masters were developed from your musical career, of your solo career going into the Boxmasters. So hit it if everyone's take that one.
- [04:19]
A
Well, it was. It happened very organically, which was great. You know, it wasn't put together like, oh, we're purposely going to do this thing. JD Played in bands when he was a kid. And then I started very young, and by the time I was 16, 17, I'd been in bands that opened for, you know, big bands at festivals and things like that, then became a roadie with sound company. So I ended up working for a lot of people The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Pure Prairie League Lighthouse out of Canada, which we talked about. Those guys were so nice to me. And. And. And some country acts. Johnny Paycheck, unfortunately, he liked me.
- [04:58]
B
Yeah, I'm sure.
- [04:59]
A
And then when I went to California to play music, it was the hair band scene and it wasn't really my deal, you know, and some punk and then hair band scene. And I found also that it was just very hard to, you know, get into it, you know, at that time, you know, because LA was really alive. The strip was alive. In the 90s. I started doing some demos again in Nashville, mainly some in la. And then I got this deal with Universal, Mercury Nashville. It was all kind of one thing, you know. I was on Lost highway on the first record, which Marty Stewart produced. And then I did three other solo records, and they were my first major label solo records ever. My first recording was with a band called Hotlanta in 75 and Muscle Shoals, but nobody ever heard it, you know.
- [05:49]
B
Right.
- [05:50]
A
Or the other. Jim Mitchell was my engineer there at the Cave, which is the house that I had bought from Slash. So it was the old Snake Pit.
- [05:58]
C
Wow.
- [05:58]
A
And that was the studio.
- [05:59]
B
Was that in Beverly Hills?
- [06:00]
A
It was in Beverly Hills, on Roxbury, yeah. And we lived there before Slash, originally Cecil, Be the Mill, and then in the late 50s, early 60s, Stanley Kramer, the famous director, producer. Yeah, we finally moved from there because it was. It was just me and my. And Bella and Connie, my wife and my daughter. And it was 13,500 square feet. And it was just like, you know, so you could invite guests. My brother and his family lived with us for a while. We rarely saw each other. And so I'm doing this thing. It was a record called Beautiful Door. And it was just me, Brad Davis, Teddy Andreas and Lee Sklar on bass. Four of us. And so Jim was. Was the engineer on the record. Jim got a really cushy job with Fox Sports doing the, you know, mixing and using stuff for NFL games and stuff. And, you know, he's got a family. It's going to have benefits and insurance and everything. So a mutual friend of mine at JD's, she hooked us up because I said, look, I need. I need somebody. I had a couple of weeks left on the record and it was mostly just me doing. Playing some drums and percussion and some background vocals, things like that. So she said, well, I know a guy just writes. So JD came over and. For those two.
- [07:18]
B
So that's how you met?
- [07:19]
A
That's how we met.
- [07:19]
C
Exactly.
- [07:20]
A
Wow.
- [07:20]
C
A two week session.
- [07:22]
A
Really? Yeah, yeah.
- [07:23]
B
How many years ago was that?
- [07:24]
C
Two or three weeks. It was December of 2006.
- [07:27]
B
Wow.
- [07:27]
C
Is when it started.
- [07:29]
A
Congratulations.
- [07:30]
C
Because she had told me on Thanksgiving Day, I'd seen her at a Thanksgiving party. I worked at the Record Plant in la and my boss, Rose Mann Tourney, and her husband Ed. Ed was my mentor at the studio. They had a Thanksgiving party and Lisa pulled me aside at one point and said, hey, it's a possibility that, you know, Billy would need somebody to work with him for a couple weeks to finish the record. I went over and heard what they had got going and it's like from the first note. What was. Was it. What was the first song? It's just me, you know, that was the first thing. And, you know, it hits hard, you know, it's beautiful. Right from the first note of the record.
- [08:09]
B
How did you write that, Billy?
- [08:10]
C
You and Brad wrote the whole, whole record? Yeah. There were vocals to be recorded. Lee hadn't put any parts on it. So I got to sit and watch Lee Sklar play bass on 10 or 12 songs over the course of two days. And I was this, you know, like as close as me and you are. And I just sat there just staring at his hands, you know, just watching. And we'd play the song for him once he would kind of make a chart. He would start kind of putting his hands on it. The second time he heard the song was pretty much the take. Maybe one song. We had two takes or we'd punch in a bridge or something.
- [08:42]
A
Usually while he was writing his chart, he would play while he was writing the chart. He pretty much had the take while he was writing the chart. Yeah, it's kind of insane. Yeah.
- [08:53]
C
Yeah. So it was, you know, it was the best two day bass lesson, you know, I could ever have.
- [08:59]
B
So when did the Box Masters actually become the Boxmasters? Because those were solo records.
- [09:03]
A
So JD And I would sit down there in the cave all the time, which is what we had renamed the studio from the Snake Pit.
- [09:08]
B
Yeah, that's awesome.
- [09:09]
A
And because we didn't have any boa constrictors, I had been asked to do a country song, which is really not my deal. And it was for some TV show, I think, out of Canada. And I don't even know if it ever went on there or not.
- [09:22]
C
I don't know that.
- [09:22]
A
Yeah, I don't think it did. But anyway, they wanted me to record a Hank Williams song and we did Lost highway so well, to back up.
- [09:29]
C
I mean, they asked you to do it. And then whatever afternoon it was that we were, you know, gonna work on something on the record, you know, he walked in and said, hey, I just got asked to record this song. I've seen you playing guitar around here. Learn Lost highway and let's record it tonight. And that was basically it. And it was just like, okay. So I sat there and I wrote a chart out and, like, figured out it's like, oh, okay. And it goes down something like that. So I did it. And like, we record all of our songs. Pretty much is it acoustic guitar and a vocal? As you know, that's the scratch that's the basis for the song.
- [10:10]
A
And then I put drums.
- [10:11]
C
Drums to it. And then I go, you know what? I think I can hear a bass part to this. You know, like a. Just a simple doom, you know, 15 sort of thing. And so he's just like, sure, go for it. But I did that, and then I was like, hey, can I put an electric guitar on here? He's like, yeah, man. And Billy had this old Fender Harvard from the late 50s. And I plugged a Telecaster into that and just kind of got this kind of nasty, Keith Richardsy sounding kind of guitar part, like, just started out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just kind of a trashy, unique distortion. Yeah, I just.
- [10:46]
A
Without razor blades.
- [10:47]
C
And that had a cool thing to it.
- [10:49]
A
We just, like. We just liked the sound, right? And. And so then we started talking about different kinds of music that we like that we grew up with. JD Would talk about Credence and the Beach Boys and everything. And I talked about the whole British Invasion and because, you know, I was a Beatles kid and Stones, Animals, Kinks, all that kind of thing. And JD Being younger than me by what, six months, Right?
- [11:17]
C
Anyway, at this point, probably not. It's probably exactly the same age older. Look at this gray hair.
- [11:24]
A
But one way or the other, we started talking about our influences and things we liked. And I started playing JD Some stuff from the British Invasion that maybe he didn't know. And some Jerry and the Pacemakers and Chad and Jeremy and some Peter and Gordon, different things like that. I said, you know, a lot of these British bands, they grew up on our. Where Skiffle kind of came out of was like, it was a folk music. Like, you take Woody Guthrie or any of these guys, and some country music like Hank Williams. And, you know, the Beatles were huge fans of Carl Perkins and Buddy Holly and different people like that. So we got into that and I said, what if you took British Invasion stuff and turned it into Hillbilly stuff. We didn't play the way we play. I didn't play drums on it, the way I play. I didn't sing the way I sing. I sang a little bit, kind of like David Allan Coe or Del Reaves or somebody like that.
- [12:15]
C
We listened to so much Del Reaves, the Wilburn Brothers. We listened to all that at the beginning because we were getting all these ideas for what we could do. Because those first two Boxmasters records were double records where it was songs we wrote and then Covers was another complete cd. And so one, the first song on the COVID side was called She's Looking Better by the Minute by the Wilderness Brothers, which we saw on the TV show on rfd.
- [12:44]
A
But the idea behind it was that I said to JD at the time, what if Frank Zappa decided to marry the British and invasion with hillbilly music? And so to have it make it tongue in cheek, in a way. And so those first couple of Boxmasters records, plus a Christmas record, so what we did is we. We took these songs and we made this. These experimental records and some night we'll have to sit and listen to some of this. It's crazy. It's the origin of the Boxmaster. The first Boxmaster song ever recorded was Yesterday's Gone by Chad and Jeremy done like Hillbillies. So we thought, well, that's an interesting thing. The people who didn't get it really didn't get it. The people who did get it really got it.
- [13:27]
C
Yeah, I mean, we finished Beautiful Door, but it was just like instantly 90 miles an hour. We were recording every single day, you know, 15 hours a day. And so we had a lot of material done by the time that tour came.
- [13:43]
A
So we opened for ourselves. We wore Chelsea suits from Liverpool, full on Beetle suits with beetle boots and everything, everything. And got gathered a collection of people and there's a guy named Mike Butler who JD Knew, who was also an engineer and a great guitar player. And Butler I said, well, we're going to need a lead guitar player. So Butler came up and the original Boxmasters were me, JD And Mike Butler. And we augmented it with other musicians. Yeah, Brad and Teddy. Brad and Teddy and all those guys. Mike, Bruce. And so we go out on the road and we would come out as the Boxmasters and open the show right, go off stage, have a 15, 20 minute intermission, come back out in sort of more hippie clothes and do my solo show. So we literally, for about a couple of years, open for ourselves.
- [14:31]
B
Oh, wow.
- [14:32]
A
Which was always fun for us. Then After a while, we started to just sound like we sound. Yeah, you know, it was like, well, these were fun records to do, and people love this stuff, but we were doing it as, like, this fun experiment. Like, for instance, we had a song called I'll give you a ring when you give me back my balls. And so it was all, you know, like I said, add some Zappa humor into it. And there was another song called the work of Art about a guy having this suspicion about his wife having this affair with his friend Art. So it wasn't like a work of art. And so it was a song about. He comes in, he smells the aftershave, he smells this, and he. This is best, buddy. And so there's all these signs of art around, like a territan cigarette in the ashtray or whatever it was. And I know this has to be the work of art. And also how arts work with, getting by with. This was a work of art, you know, so we did that kind of stuff. So ultimately, we started doing things. We made a transition. It wasn't like we didn't transition from what we did then to what we do now. Out with you guys on the road, it was in the middle. We became more Americana.
- [15:46]
B
Gotcha.
- [15:47]
A
So it was still not who we are as rock and roll guys, but it was almost like we couldn't just, like, flip the switch.
- [15:55]
C
But we recorded. I mean, we did those first three records for Vanguard, and then we didn't put out another record for five years. But we didn't stop recording. We didn't release those records. But we've stolen songs off of them and put them on other things since. I mean, we've talked about it for 15 years, this record Dinosaur, that we made. And Dinosaur is all over the map musically. It's got, like, hard rock songs, it's got bluegrass songs. It's got all sorts of different genres of stuff. But, you know, it has a thread starting at the beginning, how us elder people, how we deal with, you know, technology and the social media and just how everything is changing and changing fast.
- [16:40]
A
Yeah, it's like you get called a dinosaur because your favorite band is Cream or Traffic or somebody. And it's like, but wait a minute. We grew up in this stuff. You wouldn't have your music if it weren't for our generation. And so it's really just a thing about missing stuff. I mean, we talk in songs about, it would feel nice just to put a quarter in a payphone again sometimes.
- [17:03]
B
How true is that?
- [17:04]
A
I know, right? And just to write a Letter to somebody with a pen and paper. And so there's some songs about that and then just other things about. One's about sex addiction. And in the song it literally says, you mean horny? It's like, what is that? What does that mean? You know, one of these days we're going to put these concept records out. We put one out which was called Stranded in a Stain, which was very recent. But these days, you know, the label's not going to put out a two volume concept record. I mean, and thirty Tigers, our label is. They're awesome. I mean, they'll do. They actually love David Macias, loves the stuff we do like that. But economically that doesn't make sense for the label. And they put one record out a year on us, so we have to put our pop record out.
- [17:52]
B
By the way, that new record is amazing. Pepper Hill Tree.
- [17:56]
A
Anyway, I had Herb Alpert on it.
- [17:57]
B
I know I was. We were backstage the other night in Spokane and there was a tune that was on. So that sounds like Herb Alpert. And the production guy was some young guy and he goes down the Tijuana Brass. And I went, how the hell do you know that? I mean, Herb Alpert was. When I was a little kid, this is my dad's favorite artist.
- [18:14]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [18:15]
B
He's amazing.
- [18:16]
A
Well, you know what's funny about a guy like that is like, he's like 91. Yeah. And he's still touring. And he's. He's awesome. He's a wonderful human. He's played on several songs. That's the only one that's been released so far. But the great thing about Herb is when you hear him play trumpet, you know it's him. I mean, how many trumpet players? There have been thousands. But, you know, it's Herb Alpert touring.
- [18:40]
B
So you have a busy schedule as an actor, you have a busy schedule as a dad. As a dad. And being. That's pretty much it, the mayor of Boxmaster World. Because I know when you guys, when you're done doing your movie star stuff, you're immediately in the studio with J.D.
- [18:57]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [18:57]
B
The day after you did that press junket for Landman, you were immediately in the studio. I heard that what he's in the studio are you flew from New York.
- [19:05]
A
And it's probably 65, 35 music. I mean, you know, the movie thing, I do a little bit every year, and then the rest of the year is all music. And the family and I just had to brag on you for a second. We've had opening acts over the years that usually not one that was a consistent opening act. It's usually, you know, local promoters getting people in the towns and stuff. And for some reason, I guess because I have two names, you know, they always think that they need to get Ronnie Livingston, the Good Old Boys and the Good Old Boys or whatever it is, you know, which sends the wrong message to an audience. When Nick first put us together and I heard your stuff and I was like, wow, this is. Cause really genre wise, we're the same. And this is our fourth tour together. When you guys couldn't join us for the first eight or so shows, we were bummed. Even though there were great shows, these are sold out shows where we were doing great. And we're still bummed that you guys weren't with us. Because when you come out and if there's some people in the front row that maybe not exactly what you'd call rock and roll fans, you guys are awesome. Because they're gone before we ever get out there.
- [20:22]
B
We cleanse the venue of non rockers. You like it or you don't, you're either in or you're out.
- [20:27]
A
But honestly, fans come to me and say, man, you guys opening act is awesome.
- [20:32]
B
Thank you.
- [20:33]
A
And you're a great front man and it's got such a great vibe and it's so similar to what we do that when people come to our shows that they know what this is, there are no surprises. And also now our fans are getting to know you guys, which makes us happy. So when I hear a compliment about you guys, I'm always proud and stuff. It's like, those are our guys right there. Those are our guys.
- [21:03]
B
I mean the cool thing about it is, and thank you very much for the kind words guys, but out here, this is truly a family thing. What people don't understand is what happens after. We're waiting for the bus drivers to show up to the next city, we have a few cocktails, tell some stories, and your live show is amazing. Your vocals are spot on. I watched the whole show last night again for like the 10th time this tour because I'm a fan of the band. But your vocals are amazing. How do you treat your vocals? Because we play every night. It's not like the kids these days that play, oh, I can do two in a row. I need at least a day off in between. Do you treat your vocals somehow or.
- [21:40]
C
How do you feel about I had to go to the store the other day because yeah, he woke up and.
- [21:43]
A
He'S like, when we were about to do that little acoustic show up on Whidbey Island, I woke up in the morning and I got it from some of the other creeps on the bus, you know, and so, I mean, Raymond and Jacob were just like snot coming out of their nose. I got through it because my immune system's pretty darn good. I mean, I take all those potions and stuff. But then right before that show, I woke up that one morning of that acoustic show, and it literally felt like I had razor blades in my throat. And by the way, not doing the rock show. Doing an acoustic show.
- [22:17]
B
Yeah.
- [22:18]
A
With rock songs. Yeah.
- [22:19]
B
More challenging.
- [22:20]
A
But I took grapefruit seed extract. JD Went and got me a bunch of manuka, honey. That's the big one. And then also Kirk gave me his bottle of zinc throat spray. But I took so much stuff, literally the next night. By the time we went on stage at the show in Spokane. In Spokane, I was. Well, yeah, you were. And I mean, I literally had nothing. And today I've got a little bit of it. But I always tell people, I mean jokingly and not jokingly, that at least we're in the rock and roll world. So if your voice is. Has got some grit to it, that's okay. Yeah, if I was Josh Groban, there'd be a problem.
- [22:59]
B
No bands play as many dates in a row as the Boxmasters do. Explain that to me. You seem to get better, you guys, as like the fifth night of a five in a row or a six in a row or seven row on number night. We've done seven.
- [23:11]
C
You guys are like, we've done 16 nights in a row.
- [23:14]
B
Oh, I know. I think you did 37 out of 41 days last year, if my memory serves me right.
- [23:19]
A
Something like that. Yeah, We've done even more. We've done. We did 60 something dates in 75 days one year.
- [23:26]
C
I just remember the 16 nights in a row. And then, yeah, the LA. That time we ended it was it Boondocks in Springfield. It was like the 16th Springfield, Illinois. And it was like trying to lift my feet up. And it's like being in quicksand. It's like you have cinder blocks on your feet. It's like, I can't move.
- [23:44]
A
But we like it. And, you know, our crew. Our crew likes it, which is really. Yeah.
- [23:48]
B
You're in a group, right? You're in a total group.
- [23:49]
A
Exactly. And right now, our guys, we're gonna be here at this place, at this festival for three days in a row. Go Play Idaho, come back, do two more here. The crew couldn't be less happy. They're bummed that we're not on the bus together every night, traveling to the next city. And none of our players, I mean, Nick and Jade and Kirk and Raymond, they want to play every night because, like you said, you get in a groove. And on our days off, we kind of don't even know what to do. I mean, it's like, well, is there a Mexican restaurant around here? And then we go do that, come back to the bus, drink a couple more beers, the kids put on, you know, video games, or we watch south park or something. I think there's a certain adrenaline rush that you miss on those days.
- [24:39]
C
And it's also just a schedule. It's like we have, you know, pretty much every day we have the same schedule. And when you get off of that schedule, you just don't know what to do with yourself.
- [24:48]
B
Oh, yeah, Days off aren't fun.
- [24:50]
A
No, they're really not. I mean, when we see you guys coming off stage and we literally pass you every night, that's like our rhythm. It's like, I see you go out, and I love this suit look you're doing. This is awesome, dude.
- [25:06]
B
Thank you.
- [25:06]
A
And so when I see you going in, you know, and the other guys are going in, have a good show, Troy. You guys, too. You guys come off. Great show, Troy. When we go out there, and we're used to that, and we never have days off in cool places either.
- [25:23]
C
But also, you know, coming.
- [25:24]
B
I would have got it.
- [25:25]
C
It's like when you guys are coming off the stage, you have carri say that, you know, you guys have warmed him up for us.
- [25:30]
A
Two reasons I always know. One, it depends on how sweaty Troy is. If Troy has. If his forehead is wet, and if Carrie comes by and says, great crowd. We got them warmed up for you, then we know you're going to be good. You know, here's Kerry's thing. He tries to be positive. So if Carrie.
- [25:52]
B
You can read them like a black. Of course he can.
- [25:54]
A
And so if Carrie comes off, I go, how are they, Carrie? And he'll go, oh, they were good. They were good. I know already.
- [26:03]
B
I just want to touch on a movie I watched the other day with the boys from Canada, the trailer park boys. Bubbles, tell me how that came to be. And I thought the concept was amazing. And you came in and was the, you know, all right, Bubbles, you're gonna be all right, buddy. How did that come about? How did that come? Because it's a Boxmaster movie.
- [26:23]
A
Well, you know, it was funny because we were. Nick, our mutual agent, was going to book a tour of Europe for us already. And I was talking to Mike, Mike Smith, Bubbles, who's an old friend and a great friend of Tom Mayhew's.
- [26:37]
B
And a great talent.
- [26:38]
A
And a great talent, wonderful talent. I mean, all those guys, very talented guys. And they said. Mike said he had an idea that he was gonna write this movie. It was. I think he'd already started writing it. And he said, so Bubbles in the Rockers open for the Boxmasters in Europe. I said, well, cool, because Nick is gonna book a tour over there anyway. And he said, all you guys gotta do is just go play your shows and we open for you and there'll be some of the shows recorded. But a lot of it's about Bubbles and the Trailer Park Boys and every now and then there'll be something backstage with you guys. And so we went over there and started in Prague, played about seven shows, you know, and they filmed it all. And the idea that they had from the beginning, or Mike had, is that Bubbles was going to start screwing up so badly that we had to kick them off the door. So that's what happens. Right at the end of the tour, we're having an after tour party at Abbey road in Studio 2 where the Beatles and many others recorded their stuff. And Mike said, look, you know all these guys, you know, I want to get some like really famous guys that actually were there in the day to come and be on this final scene. And then in the movie, I invited him back and say, bubbles, look, dude, you know, come on out. Because he had written a song about kitties because he's obsessed with kitties. And his dream was to record this kid. He was a ballad, right? Yeah, melodic ballad, melodic thing, yeah. And he wanted to record this Kitty song. And Abbey Road, it was like his dream. So we got Eddie Kramer to play the engineer. Couldn't believe it.
- [28:19]
B
And when I said Eddie Kramer, Eddie Kramer, kiss Hendrix.
- [28:24]
A
All right. And so we had Eddie Kramer and Bubbles wanted to know if we could get some people. Well, I tried getting a hold of a couple of guys and we're going to try to get McCartney over there because I know McCartney's son, but he wasn't available to do it. He actually was recording in la, which was ironic, you know. And so I said, you know what? I'm going to call Ronnie Wood, who's an old friend called Ronnie Wood. We got Ronnie over there, he's got.
- [28:48]
B
A Speaking part in it, too.
- [28:50]
A
Fairly sizable. And I said, ronnie, will you come do this thing? And he goes, mate, I live like three quarters of a mile from the studio. Of course I'll do it. You know, I'm off, you know. And so Ronnie comes and does it. And then Tom gets Duff from gnr, who's our old buddy. And then. And your hero Rick Nielsen was there, and Dax, his son. And then we. Eric Burdon from, you know, singer of the Animals, we met him over Zoom. He lives in Greece. And so he wanted me to do the narration on the story of his life for a documentary. And while we were at it, I just said, hey, dude, how about coming over to Studio 2 at Abbey Road and be in this movie with us? All right? And so he shows up and does it. And so then we have all those people, but at one point, Duff, because it was a pre recorded track, but we all sing along with it and we were singing out. It's just that that wasn't being recorded and we had our lavaliers on, so it wouldn't have worked. But during the song, at one point, Duff's looking over at Eric Burdon sitting there on the stool for the Animals, and he's. And Duff leans over at me during the song and he says, can you believe we're witnessing this in person?
- [30:03]
B
Right?
- [30:03]
A
And I go, right. You know, it was amazing. It was really, really amazing. You know, along the way, you have these moments in your life that you just can't believe you have. I mean, we're thankful and blessed every day that we have a band we love. We have an opening act that we're pals with. It's like a family traveling circus. We're making the records we want to make, and you're making the records you want to make. And it's such a pleasure and a joy and an honor. I mean, really.
- [30:36]
B
Well, I just want to thank you very much for spending your afternoon with me. Usually it's later at night with a few beers and. But thank you very much. It's so great to see you, Jay.
- [30:46]
A
Thank you, Troy.
- [30:47]
C
Always a pleasure.
- [30:48]
B
Love you guys and love you, man. We're back for another installment of Off Roading with Troy. This is where I highlight one of my favorite spots to check out when I'm on the road. Every year we try to make it to the Minnesota State Fair to catch one of our favorite bands or a client that we have on the road that is touring. I mean, it's the only fair that starts at 7am in the morning. With livestock and it's crazy all day long and probably the best carney food you can possibly find out there. Then we top it off with a visit to Murray's Steakhouse. An amazing wine selection, great steaks, old school dining, opened in 1941. Every time we're in Minneapolis area, we stop in at Murray's. Other than that, we're rolling down the road and we're in Montana right now. We're checking out some highlighted spots and ironically, one of the restaurants we're going to hit tomorrow is called Murray. So we'll see how it sizes up big. Thanks again to Billy Bob and JD for stopping by the bus today. Their live show is absolutely amazing and they're true road warriors. They play five to seven nights in a row. I really enjoy being a friend of Billy Bob and JD's and the Boxmasters and we have a lot of fun together. So stay tuned. Please catch a show live. They're touring the US this fall and you can visit the boxmasters.com to see when they're coming to your neck of the woods. Get your tickets. That's it for this episode. I'm Troy Volhoffer and from on the Bus. Take care. Be sure to follow Country Thunder on all our social platforms. At Country Thunder, we have new episodes dropping bi monthly. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you know when the new episodes hit the feed.
- [32:28]
A
I was talking to Alice about Ted one night, you know, making jokes and stuff, and Ellis said, well, you know how I handle Teddy when he has an idea? Because Teddy will come in, he'll go, you know how they lower you out of the ceiling and then there's the guillotine and all this stuff? We should lower the whole band out of the ceiling. And Ellis would go, huh? No, that was it.