This is Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast more what You Hear
weekday afternoons on the Drive. He's best known as the member of the duo
Hall and Oates. But I bet you didn't know just how musically diverse John
Oates is who's proving it once again with his newest release, Reunion and John,
this is you getting back in touch with your roots of when you were
starting to perform and started to get into music and the coffeehouse scene. Am
I correct? It's really yes, it is. I mean, you know,
I had a whole musical life before I met Daryl Hall. You know,
I was playing guitar and from the time I was five and six met
him, you know, when I was nineteen or twenty, and so you
know, the music that I was making was very much part of the American
folk tradition, the early R and B blues, Delta blues, things like
that, and all that stuff was you know, kind of combined with Daryl
and I got together, combined our individual influences and made something totally unique and
different and new and original. But over the years, you know, and
it never left me. The you know, the memories and the and the
musical DNA of what made me who I am, and really this album is
getting back to that. Reunion is the album and one of the things that
struck me is that you recorded it live. So I gather there were no
oh wait, let's do that again. You were at the Franklin Theater,
the classic Franklin Theater in Franklin, Tennessee. Well, there was some there
was some videos recorded live at the Franklin Theater, but the album was actually
done in a recording studio. But it was recorded live. I mean,
the players were there, we played together. It just wasn't an audience.
Well, and that's the best way to do it too, I mean,
that's way this Americana music, that's it's meant to be performed live. Absolutely,
It's all about the interaction and the and the skill of amazing players.
And fortunately being in Nashville, you know, you have this incredible selection of
some of the greatest player on the planet. So it's really it's it's a
it's an amazing It's really changed my whole approach to music. John Oates Reunion
Live at the Franklin Theater is the new album that is out. He's also
on tour with it. We'll get into some of those dates coming up in
just a minute. But you mentioned some of the incredible artists that you have
with you. Sam Bush, fantastic guitar, Jerry Douglas. Is there a
better dough Borough player. I don't think so there isn't. Wellam, and
uh, I'm sorry. Well, I said simple as that, there's nobody
better than Jerry Douglas. H Bella Bella, Belle La Fleck on banjo,
and then Sierra Hall. I don't know a lot of people know what a
mandolin savant she is. Sierra Hall is fantastically She's an amazing person, great
artist, singer, songwriter in her own and her mandolin playing is just absolutely
unbelievable. In fact, I asked Sam Bush if he could play on a
track near the finishing up the album and he wasn't available, and he said,
you should call Sierra Hall, and I said, yeah, I'd love
to call Sierra Hall. I don't have her number. He goes, well,
I don't want to give you a number because if you ever call her,
you're never gonna call me again. Well, Sierra, I saw her
by accident. I don't remember where it was, maybe Austin City Limits and
I think she was playing with Nickel Creek. She was about twelve, and
I thought, this girl is gonna go places. Oh, yes, she's
a force. She's incredible. Yeah, and she gets together with John Oates
in reunion. Tell me about some of the titles on the album or the
all original. Yes, everything's original on the album except for one track,
which is a cover of a John Prime song called Long Monday. In fact,
that was the second single we released just recently. Long Monday came about
because I was invited to a celebration of John's what would have been his seventy
seventh birthday, and that's where I met Aj Crochi, who I collaborated with
as well. And the song, Yeah, the song I chose to record
was Long Monday, and after I did it, I came up with my
own arrangement for it, and John's widow came up to me and said she'd
really loved my approach and take on that song, and I thought, well,
you know what, that's that's a good endorsement right there, so I'm
going to record it. So I recorded that, But everything else is original.
There's a song called This Field Is Mine, which was inspired by my
wife's father who has a family farm in Illinois, and that I wrote with
Sam Bush and Jeff Black. And there's a there's a song called All I
Am, which I wrote with a young guy named Adam Ezra, and you
know All I Ask of You, which is a song I wrote when my
son was born. It was just a reflection on how I'd like people to
maybe think about me one day. So really personal. This is very very
This is the most personal album I've ever done. John Oates is with us.
You know him from Hall and Oates, but again underscoring your versatility.
John. A lot of this album, Reunion is I guess the genre could
be classified as Americana, And if you don't know Americana, it really is
a mixture of if you will, folk, some bluegrass, some country,
maybe some gospel, all kind of mixed in one big blender. Yeah.
That's what I love about the Americana family of musicians in the genre. It's
so open ended. You know, you can do anything. You can do
blues, you can do bluegrass, you can do you know anything, really,
and that's what I love about it because I'm really eclectic. There's all
sorts of music in me, and yeah, all sorts of music that I
love and I like to be able to explore it. So if you can
think of Alison Krause, nickel Creek already mentioned Nancy Griffith was kind of an
Americana artist, and it's a lot of a lot of American culture in it
too. Yeah, it's an amalgamation of all this great American popular music that
started, you know, way back. Most of it started in the deep
set ealth, but in you know, in the East coast, in the
mountains of Appalachia, and then in the big cities as well, you know.
So it's really just this this mixing together of this great American music tradition.
And you will hear it on his new album Reunion, John Oates.
And one of the things about the genre I'm enjoying too, John, is
that I'm starting to hear a lot of artists take classic rock songs and do
Americana versions of them, and it's really good. It's good stuff. Well,
a good song is a good song. Yeah, it doesn't you can
do it in a lot of time. Yeah. You mentioned some of the
songs that you have written for this album Reunion by John Oates, and where
do you mostly draw your inspiration when it comes to composition. You know,
a songwriter, I think the difference between a songwriter and maybe someone else's a
songwriter seems to always always have their ears to the ground, or ears to
the sky, or ears to the cosmos in terms of just picking up on
things that maybe a lot of people might let just pass by. A turner
phrase, a certain emotional thing. But it's really how what a songwriter is
able to do is somehow take these things that might just pass the average person
by and turn them into something that all of a sudden speaks to people.
And it's really like magic. It's like drawing something out of the air.
I think it was Mozart's definition of music is sound that stirs the soul.
Got to wrap. But I've always enjoyed that. But John Oates the album
is Reunion, and you will reunite with John Oates and this fantastic music.
Thanks for joining us, Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Thanks Lead, Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews
Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to
seven and Iheartsmedia presentation