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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast More What You Here

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weekday afternoons on the Drive. You
know the cow Seals by their many hit

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records like Hair, The Flower Girl, Indian Lake, The Rain, The

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Park, and other things. Bob
cow Sill is a member of the famous

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family singing sensation the cow Sials,
and is featured on Thank You Mister Rogers

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Music and Memories, a deluxe album
that is being reissued to commemorate what would

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have been Fred Rogers ninety fifth birthday. Several artists got together to record many

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of the songs featured on the Mister
Rogers Neighborhood TV show, and the cow

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Seals were one of them. Bob, welcome. So let me guess it

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all started with you and your brothers
and sisters sitting around the television watching an

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episode of the Partridge Family, and
you said, I think I can do

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that too. I'm kidding, I
know. It's a great honor that parters

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face only story is fantastic to us. We love it, okay, I

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mean they liked our story if we
proved it was a successful story. You

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know the moms in the band that
on the bus, they're touring. They

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just didn't want us. They wanted
our story and that was fine. We

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had a shot at it, but
we weren't actors. But they turned us

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down to be the children and went
and had to hit TV show that to

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this day. Now. Back then
our star was kind of fading in the

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seventies, when the Bartridges came along, kept our name in the print forever.

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And now we returned the favor to
Shirley in the gang and keep their

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name alive with an association with us. So it's pretty cool. Well,

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you all, I think we're far
better at musicians than than than they would

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have than they were. I think
what Shirley and maybe her son were the

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only ones who actually did the singing. Honestly, we were prayed that they

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would put together a band. You're
right, I mean, David and Shirley

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talents to the other kids. You
know, central casting cool, that's okay,

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But we were hoping they would put
a band together and together the partner's

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family and the Cowsils would go out
on tour. You know, they never

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did, but we always thought it
was a great business model if they could

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Bob cowcils with us with the cow
Sils, he is featured on the Thank

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You Mister Rogers Music and Memories album. It's the music that you heard on

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the TV show and several artists got
together to do this. The cow Sils

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sing the title track, Won't You
Be My Neighbor? When they reached out

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to you to do this project,
what were your first thoughts? Our first

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thoughts was who knew that mister Rogers
was a songwriter? Our second thought was,

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you mean he wrote Won't You Be
My Neighbor? We were so impressed

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with that. I can't tell you. Look, we all grew up watching

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his TV show. The music on
the TV show is, of course,

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just a supportive thing for what you're
watching and going through with mister Rogers on

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his show. So the music is
subtle, it's not primary. Now they

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call us to go record this wonderful
song, and when you go into the

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studio and you break it down and
you record a song like well You'd be

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My neighbor, you really do understand
the brilliance of it and what a great

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songwriter Fred Rogers action was. I
think a lot of people thought he had

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some sort of child psychology degree or
therapy degree. They didn't realize his degree

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was in music. He played I
think piano and organ. Yeah, he

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was an accomplished musician. This is
something I believe that Fred himself used in

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his own life in a supportive way. It wasn't I don't think it was

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his primary as primary was the children
in the show and his image as Fred

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Rogers image the music. I don't
know. It's amazing. He could have

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bragged about it. He could have
said hey, that's me and done this

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a lot sooner, but it never
happened that way. So we're thrilled that

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now everyone can understand, like this
was a bigger talent than all of you

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thought. Bob Castle of the cow
Sills featured on the album Thank You Mister

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Rogers, along with Mickey Dolan's Perfect
Beautiful Day, and Essa william sings Many

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Things I Say, I Love,
Jim Brickman right sings this is My Home,

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and even John Sacava Podemo said amigos, which means won't you be my

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neighbor? Um? But managed yeah
cool version, Yeah, yeah, I

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remember an interview with Graded go ahead. We interacted with some of those people

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by getting to their sessions, like
Mickey Dolans and stuff, But a lot

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of times we're in there. We
didn't get to meet Tom, for instance,

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or some of the other people.
Boy, what a great honor to

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be with them on this record.
It was almost like, oh, I

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don't know a traveling road show from
the seventies. It would be cool,

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wouldn't it. When we got won't
you be my neighbor? We couldn't believe

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that we got that. We thought
a bigger name would be Mickey Dolans or

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Tom or or somebody else. We
could not believe of all the songs they

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chose, they gave us that one. So we thought we had a head

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start on everybody else because we got
the best song. But then you hear

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these other tunes, you go,
well, now wait a minute, and

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that's when you find out this guy
was pretty good. Bob Cowsill a member

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of the famous singing family the cow
Sials, and featured on Thank You Mister

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Rogers, a compilation of all of
the music you used to hear on the

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TV show. And if anyone has
ever asked, whatever happened to the cow

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Sials, I think the answer is
nothing. You guys are still going strong

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and you never stopped. We never
stopped. We have We're on our seventh

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Happy Together tour this summer, sixty
cities with other acts from the genre.

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You know, Little Anthony's coming this
summer with as we're excited about meeting Little

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Anthony and Gary Puckett and the Turtles
and the Bogus and the Classic Sport.

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It's a fun tour. It's of
course, we're all grateful artists because six

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of us can now continue to do
what we all did in the old day

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by ourselves. And this is a
great business model. Just wonderful night of

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hit records. Well, that's another
thing that I don't know. That the

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cow Sials fell into that dark period
that many many bands of that era fell

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into. Well, it was pretty
rough and tumble. But the rough and

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tumbleness was within our own family.
Our trouble was with our dad. Our

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trouble was growing up in a military
family. But the military is not where

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you apply to raise six boys and
a girl. It didn't work. So

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our challenges were from within. And
despite those challenges from within, we overcame

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them at least four times, you
know, to continue getting recordings and doing

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our job. We were very young, but we were in charge of the

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music bill and I you know,
seventeen and eighteen. We were running the

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show back then, and we loved
the studio. It's where our dad couldn't

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interfere. No one would interfere.
They left us alan in the studio.

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That's where our peace and calm took
place, and we loved it. Well.

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The music probably helped too, because
some of the tunes that you were

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you were performing, we were kind
of getting into that folk era anyway.

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Well, we wanted to produce and
that it was our natural sound. But

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we were basically happy people and we
want we sound happy, and we project

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how life should be. We think
to our harmonies and hopefully when people hear

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is it's an uplifting thing. That's
all we want a lot like mister Rogers

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attitude. And the album is Thank
You Mister Rogers Music in Memories, a

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compilation of the songs you heard on
Mister Rogers done by some of your favorite

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artists like The Cowsills and Bob Cowsill. Thanks for joining us today, thank

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you for having me pick up that
album lead Thanks for listening to Later with

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Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast,
and remember to listen to The Drive Live

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weekday afternoons from five to seven and
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