#363 Bass, The Monkees & The Troubadour: John Billings Tells All – PODCASTHON.ORG EDITION

Jeff Dwoskin 0:00

Alright, everyone you may know my next guest as featured guests on Episode 230 of this podcast. You may also know him as bass player for the monkeys. You may also know it's not making noise.

John Billings 0:18

230 Episode 230 for those who are hearing impaired,

Jeff Dwoskin 0:24

famous from Episode 230 uh, also the bass player for the monkeys. You might know him as that as well. He's known equally as both, depending on on what circles you're in. Welcome back to the show. John billings, hey

John Billings 0:36

buddy. Hey buddy. Thanks for having me. This is so so cool. I'm

Jeff Dwoskin 0:40

excited to have you back. You know, the Jose it was. We were talking about going to Nashville, that's right. And I'm like, oh, you know, I've friends over at dinner. I'm like, you know my I'll call my friend. You know, he's the bass player for the monkeys, you know? And they're like, you know, the bass player for the monkeys. And they're like, yeah. I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever, you know,

John Billings 1:06

that's like a weird trivia question,

Jeff Dwoskin 1:08

I know. And it was funny. So I was, I like, to type in my guest name, this chat GPT, not just because

John Billings 1:17

it's, oh, really, what came up was it the guy that created the there's two, there's the the Grammy guy.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:24

Well, it makes you, and it used and, and the best part was, it referenced the podcast as Really dude blew it out. Where am I? Dirty? Man, we're like, famous. We're like, so pretty. So the new album. You have a new album out with Micky, yeah, alive, live at The Troubadour, listening to it. I've actually listened to it a few times now. Digging it. How did Micky main I mean, he's 50 years on. I mean, from the monkeys, right? I mean, many decades I his voice is just sounds amazing, still like, amazing.

John Billings 2:02

He's still singing, man, he's gonna be, holy cow. You know, he's 80. In like, a week, he's gonna be 80. Um, he's still singing. He's and we haven't changed keys. He still hits that. I always look at him when we do Pleasant Valley Sunday at the very end of the song, uh, Pleasant Valley Sunday. He's nailing that. And I'm always like, are you still hitting that, that line at the end of the song? I can't do it, and that. And I'm, you know, I'm only 30 Well,

Jeff Dwoskin 2:30

I mean, you know, like I saw Paul Simon in concert a few years ago, and he's so good, but he's not, yeah, early Paul Simon. And, you know, it's normal. I mean, you we all change. I mean, it's like Paul McCartney is in his 80s, right? I mean, he just rocked the end of Saturday, live, 50, yeah. And, you know, I mean, he wasn't 100% Paul, but he was amazing. Paul McCartney, I mean, he looks still, Paul, yeah, like, amazing. But Micky, I think, sounds like he

John Billings 3:00

he sounds like he always did. Yeah. I mean, it's like, like,

Jeff Dwoskin 3:03

no change. Like, like, age didn't impact him at all. It's

John Billings 3:07

not at all. He drinks like, better liquors now, but that's the only thing that the age, the age affects a higher top shelf now, as opposed to probably just beer. Then,

Jeff Dwoskin 3:19

I've been trying to get Micky on the podcast. I'm still chasing him. It hasn't been, hasn't been a no yet. Been working with his people, but I did, so I ended up getting Amy Dolans on. Yeah,

John Billings 3:32

did Jerry? Did her husband, Jerry, jump in there at all? No, no, no, like, lean over, should or anything.

Jeff Dwoskin 3:38

No, but she was fun to talk to. Really cool. So, alright, so the album is live at The Troubadour. Can you talk to me? So the troubadour, obviously, is a big deal. Yeah,

John Billings 3:51

was a huge deal to him. I mean, that was a place where he, he hung out when he, you know, when the show was in his heyday and and after the show was even over, that was the place where everybody would go and hang. And he spent a lot of time there. He met a lot of cool people there. He always goes, I had, you know, I spent two years there one night. That's his big joke. It's probably quite true, actually, but so it was a huge thing for him to come back after all this time, which was amazing to me. I was like, that seems odd that he wouldn't have performed there, but then again, it would have been weird if he had performed there, because he's, you know, he's not, he doesn't do clubs really anymore. And this really is a, it's a big club, it's a cool club, but it's a club. So for him, this was a, this is a big stinking deal, well, but

Jeff Dwoskin 4:38

there's a lot of history here too, right? As they started to kind of dig into it. I remember hearing the name off and on, but I mean, like, this is where the Eagles met Don Henley and Glen fry met there, uh, Elton, John, yeah, famously, this is the first place he played in America that John billings, John billings,

John Billings 4:58

John billings, didn't speak with things there in. 80s that we will not talk about. Talk to me about, I'm a different guy now, but that was I had a lot of foot at The Troubadour myself.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:08

Who did you play with at The Troubadour? I used

John Billings 5:11

to have a band, a metal band, long haired metal band called Lancia. And we would play the whiskey, we play the Roxy and the troop that was like on our little circuit that we would play. So actually, one of the few times my parents got to see me in my long haired Metal Days on stage was at the troop they brought, they brought their friends from Virginia, from Chester Virginia out. They were all out in the audience while I was up there flipping my hair and doing, you know, crotch lunges and you know, all the stuff you had to do in the 80s. But, yeah, that place is huge. Dude. I saw people perform there when I lived there at that time. It's always been kind of an iconic room. And, I mean, everybody always uses that word iconic, but it really fits in this situation.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:55

Yeah, it seemed, uh, it seemed like it was important to him and such. And it is as he dug in. You're like, everyone's played there. I mean, there's a Carly Simon James Taylor album recorded there as well. Like, there's just tons teaching Chong performance.

John Billings 6:12

That place is awesome, dude. I'm surprised. You should have come out to that one. That would have been a good one to blow some dough, get the plane ticket Hotel.

Jeff Dwoskin 6:19

Had I known so you recorded this last April, April, 2024 The album was released December. Yes, sir, 24

John Billings 6:27

and we actually have, I shouldn't be talking too much that term, but we shot video that night. So yours truly is, you know, behind the the eight ball on it, but I've gotta get that wrapped up. So we'll have a video performance out on DVD. Oh, that's amazing.

Jeff Dwoskin 6:43

Yeah, I have the live vinyl of the Oh, yeah, thank you. Show that you're on too. So okay, I remember, like, if for those of you tune in to episode 230 I realize I've probably seen you in concert just as much as I've seen everyone. I just had no

John Billings 6:58

idea that was the one 230 Yeah, 230

Jeff Dwoskin 7:01

Thank you.

John Billings 7:04

Sorry. I won't do that anymore. I don't know why that. I think that's so funny.

Jeff Dwoskin 7:07

No, no, I'm sure it'll be funny the fifth time too.

John Billings 7:12

No, I'm done my my comedic timing's over. I've lost it, dude. I'm not doing it anymore. No, that vinyl was amazing. It was, you know, that was Andrew Sandoval production and Christian Nesmith mix that that was captured over a number of nights and great performances chosen that tour was great. Tour was really cool. It was

Jeff Dwoskin 7:33

really, really good. It was nice. I saw, I saw it pre pandemic, so I know when they came back, Mike was, was starting to get Yeah, thicker and sick. It was getting closer to the end there, but the Yeah, but when I saw them, I went to, like, this little place in Chicago, I think we talked about it last time and like, but it was such a great concert. Such a great concert. You were awesome. I mean, I didn't know I could feel the bass, but I didn't, I didn't know I was feeling it, but

John Billings 8:04

this camera, if I was in this podcast, you'd never even say that, Jeff, come on. No, I would. I

Jeff Dwoskin 8:08

was just talking to someone the other day. I'm like, remember the bass? Do you remember the bass? Yeah, I

John Billings 8:13

remember the bass. It was rumbling my booty. I remember that bass. So

Jeff Dwoskin 8:17

as a bass player, let's just go down rabbit hole for sure. So like, Are you the unsung hero of the band? Like, what's, oh, my, what's your role? There's no, like, you know, think of like, I couldn't name any band and name their bass player, except maybe the You of course. And I tell everyone, everyone knows that. But like, you know Paul McCartney played bass, I know. Yeah, absolutely left handed bass and, you know, so but other than that,

John Billings 8:46

I know it's our gene, Simmons. There's always gene,

Jeff Dwoskin 8:49

remember the tongue. There's though, you know, those, those examples are like fronts, the bands front, right? So, you know, you don't like, you know, I don't know a lot of the drummers either. It's not our keyboardist, and that's just me. One of the, I tell you, like, you're one of the few music folks I've talked to, because I don't, inherently, I enjoy music, but I don't like, I can't talk to it like a TV or something like that, like all it just, you know, comes in my ears, and I'm like, I enjoy it. So it's like, I've, I've grown since talking. I mean, I haven't interviewed another musician, but, and then the next one I interviewed was you again, but, like, but I feel comfortable with you. So, you know, we share this mode. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. I mean, I see the pictures I looked on the some of the reviews, and, you know, you're like, you're always like, rocking it. You're making, you're doing the rock and pose when you're basing, Whoa, is that? I gotta say out, yeah,

John Billings 9:45

when I'm out base, it actually pronounced out basing, no, that music. It's, I'm really lucky to get to play on that stuff, because that was an era where bass players were playing parts were playing. Playing really interesting parts. It wasn't just a support role. Right after that era in the 70s, bass started to get a little simpler and became more of a support mechanism with the drums. And so there wasn't a lot of melodic bass playing. You know, he had Paul McCartney would play really melodically and and then he had jazz guys that would go off and play really melodically on bass. But that was the monkey's music. Was kind of like the wrapping up of that era of of cool bass. So it is fun to play that show you get really cool bass lines. And I always tell people, they probably roll their eyes when I say it, but I go, that's that's bass that matters. That's bass that when it's not there, you're like, something's missing from this song. There's a there's a line. You know, it's like, when people hear, uh, I'm a believer, and that, course, has that funny been to do, to do it's funny. It's a good, quirky little bass line. But when, if it's not, there, people way notice it. Or if it's not, if I'm not playing it right, they notice it. And that's what's cool about that gig. It's basic matters. I mean, a lot of the other stuff I've done. It's not that it doesn't matter, but it doesn't hold as high a level. You know, it's more like I use it. I use that term earlier. Just support Megan mechanism. It fills in the low end. It's it's grooving along with the drums. But the monkey stuff was in that era of a little bit of experimentation, and people would play bass like a guitar sometimes, and sometimes the guitar players were playing bass, and they would play more melodically. So it's a fun gig. I get to play cool parts that matter. And so, yeah, it's exciting. I get happy about it. You know, my wife always, she likes it. She always notices it when I'm learning new tunes for them or some she's always like, the bass lines are so different, they totally are. So your wife's into all that music. Oh yeah, she's a piano player. She listens and she and she hears me in here woodshed, sitting in this chair, wood shedding, something that for Micky or Andrew used to have us learning some B sides that I I didn't know because I didn't follow us closely back in the day. So I a lot of the times it'd be Andrew would send an email and say, You got to learn this song. It's a Nez song, or this song, Davey song, and I'd be playing it, you know, and practicing it. And Amy would hear me in here playing, she would always go, well, it's like not your usual, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Bass part, you know, you're playing a line. And if it's not there, you really notice it. So

Jeff Dwoskin 12:18

since she knows music, she can hear if you screw up.

John Billings 12:21

Yeah, she hears, she hears me screw up all a lot. I gotta screw up a lot until I get it right. Great,

Jeff Dwoskin 12:29

great show, John, until you screwed up stepping stone Exactly.

John Billings 12:33

Oh, my God, that's every other night. Man.

Jeff Dwoskin 12:37

Oh, that's so funny. Yeah, so it sounds like you're describing bass, like people describe Ringo star playing drums,

John Billings 12:45

yeah, it it matters. It meant Ringo played mattered. Yeah, arrow is very cool. I've been really lucky that that that gig, this gig, came along, because I get to have fun playing bass. And it's not just, uh, you know, my friends always taught, you know, they taunt me. And some of my other bands always go, Brad Henderson always goes, thumb the root or get the boot. And other, my other bud call it dumb guy, bass dumb guy, dumb guy, dumb guy, dumb guy, dumb guy, dumb and, you know, that's a lot of what we do as bass players, and it's, it's important, when it's gone, you notice it's gone or it's not meshing with the drums. You'll you'll feel it. The Groove gets weird. But the monkey stuff I played in a carpenter's tribute that I love, because it was this guy named Joe Osborne playing bass, and he would play all this really cool, melodic stuff, like I said, that was an era where the bass got to stretch a little bit. So it's been, I've been lucky, been really lucky, get to do it.

Jeff Dwoskin 13:38

Okay, so the top three monkey songs that rely most on bass,

John Billings 13:45

yeah, like in a fight with half the guys in the band. This is

Jeff Dwoskin 13:49

from the bass player's point of view. It doesn't matter what the other guy's saying

John Billings 13:52

that you know what? You're right. You were right. They better remember,

Jeff Dwoskin 13:56

the drummer would be like, This is my kick ass drum song. And you'd be like, okay, buddy. Why? This is my hi

John Billings 14:02

hat performance. Rich Dart on hi hat, someone, uh, you just may be I'm terrible, all right, let's just be honest. I'm terrible. Song title, so I have to sing the whole course

Jeff Dwoskin 14:12

I get it. I get that. You just make my kids names. I get, Oh, yeah. Well, I did, yeah. We

John Billings 14:16

all do that, all four of them. I have to go through all three to get to the fourth right one, yeah, you just may be the one which Nez always calls o members, O members, that has a real pivotal bass part that's really cool. There was always I love to play. Now, some people would say that that's not super important line, but I always love to play circle sky was like a really cool bass line. And actually a line that Peter plays Live is the one that I always played live, and it's a little different from the original, but it's really, really cool. You know, he really did it. He came up with something really neat. I always feel like, uh, man, now you put me on the spot for number three. I can't think of what it is,

Jeff Dwoskin 14:55

which is could be just like your favorite ones, where you're like,

John Billings 14:58

I love to play Pleasant Valley. Sunday. From a bass player's perspective, it's the same note. It's just a, D, A, A, you know, if I played it sitting right here, you'd be like, are you having a stroke? John, is everything okay? But it's really cool how it sits in the song. It anchors the song. And it's one of those things where I'm playing a really simple part that doesn't take a lot of lot of effort, or a lot of, you know, I'm not shredding, but it sits with the drums, and it sits with the guitars in such a cool way that always makes me kind of go, you know, it feels really good to play that song. And it's usually like the last song. I have a bunch of friends that go, you ask them what their favorite song is, they go, the last one. I would think that we get to Pleasant by Sunny Lake. My favorite song the last ones up.

Jeff Dwoskin 15:46

I saw you at the 50th too. We talked about all this last time. Yeah. Recap to tease Episode 230 hold up the sign and episode Yeah, but yeah,

John Billings 15:56

my wife, cool night. That was a really, that was my 50th birthday. Oh, really, it was their 50th birthday or 50th reunion show, and it's my 50th birthday party. We turned 50 on the same night. Oh, that's

Jeff Dwoskin 16:10

so cool. It was really cool. That is really, really cool. All right, so, all right, so the tribute, tribute door. What'd you call it? The Troubadour? Troubadour called it the troop. What'd you call it, true troubadour, but you can call it the troop, the true that's what you called it. That's what I was saying. All right, so you so that's the deal. So it's a big deal record there too, right? So,

John Billings 16:30

yeah, it was very cool. I mean, I never recorded there ever. It was always, you know, live shows, and you're done, you're you walk off stage, and that moment's lost forever. So this was great because we were able to catch it for multi track and also for video. And actually the priority was to do video. And after the fact, when I got my files back, Micky was like, Well, how did it sound tonight? And I go, well, once we mix it all together, he was like, You mean you have multi tracks of the show? And we're like, yeah, we can mix this properly. Goes, we're gonna do a record, and that's literally how it came out. I was like, Okay, we're doing a record. So I produced the record. We had a mean ceruki and mix it, edit and mix it. Came out really beyond our expectations. So it's really happy with it.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:09

Yeah, it sounds amazing. Well, let me ask you another question. When you're there recording the troubadour, the troop, bro. I mean, does does it feel? Do you feel the iconicness when you're there? It's funny, it's

John Billings 17:23

a lot of times when you when you're performing, you know, this, when you perform, you might be in a big room, but you're so keyed in on your performance and your gig and what you're doing that it might slip by that you're in this particular place until afterwards, and you get done, you're like, holy cow, I just played the, you know, insert amazing venue here that night. I had so much on my plate as I was producing the live video part of this, I had two shooters in the audience. I had some cameras play strategically, because there's a whole bunch of restrictions when you play a small club. So that whole afternoon, I've been negotiating with the, you know, the production manager, on what we could couldn't do, what my shooters could go out and do, what they couldn't do. Was more about what they couldn't do than anything. I had so much that on my mind, making sure that the multi tracks were gonna sound good. Then put my head in the end of the show. And then those I had my couple my shooter guys were like, just wandering around backstage, getting backstage footage beforehand. So then you're like, on, you know, instead of like, Oh, God, hope everything goes well, you see them walking like, Hey, can't wait to play the trip tonight. Whoo, they walk away like, Oh, I hope that they unmuted the mic. You know, you go back to your worry, and then you hit the stage. I think at the halfway point of the show, we became, we do an intermission, we come back. I think at that point there's a there's this long intro to the Buffalo Springfield song that we do. Micky does a story over right?

Jeff Dwoskin 18:41

Steven Stickles was originally exactly the monkeys. And then he's like, No, I'm not gonna do that. I know all the history of the monkeys. Oh, yeah. And he wouldn't sign the deal, right? I mean, which is funny, because a lot of people these days, you know, when they do American Idol and stuff, they won't sign the deal. The story I'd always heard was he's like, Yeah, I have this friend, and he happens to look just like me. Well, he's this story is actually about, and it's Peter torque. I mean, it's Peter Torre, yeah, yeah. But Peter looks like, if you look at the old Stephen Stills, young Steven stills and young Peter torque, they resembled each other. They do resemble each other. And so they're like, Steven stills, like, no, but hey, here's this guy. And he kind of looked like,

John Billings 19:22

I mean, that Peter was the guy. I mean, the the, obviously, the the magic is with these four dudes, they picked the right cats, and the fact that they met the first day of the shooting of their of their shoot Episode One, they're all four in the same room for the first time. That's insane. That's just a crazy

Jeff Dwoskin 19:39

story. Yeah, it's amazing how they got so lucky with just the that chemistry and how they all that was one of my favorite shows growing up like I was really into the whole MTV revival and that 20th anniversary, that was my first I'm sure I told you this last time, episode 230

John Billings 19:59

somewhere, I.

Jeff Dwoskin 20:01

Funny. You think that the little he's a big marker, big pen. He thinks like, Oh yeah, that was my first concert without my parents and like, so it was so much fun. And then, yeah, I loved it. I loved it. That moment

John Billings 20:18

you were talking earlier about, did it occur to me that I was at the troop, back at the troop, that during that Buffalo Springfield story, we were just playing two chords over and over again while he talks for about five minutes? That's when I finally kind of went, I'm back. I haven't been here in 30 years, you know. And my parents were right over there, and my wife is now hear how weird the universe, you know, I had that during that song. You probably in the video, you'll see me glossing over for a moment, and that's probably what that is. That's

Jeff Dwoskin 20:49

cool though, that you, that you were able to take in that moment. Yeah, and kind of really headed

John Billings 20:54

to halfway point before I let my brain, like, relax, just for a minute. And then after the show, Micky had, a, like, a little party that's got a little VIP area off to the side. Coco's birthday was at night. They were gonna have cake. I sent Amy over there, and Courtney. Amy and Courtney were together. Courtney, Courtney, dole was there, and they were hanging out. But I'm like, catching up to the engineer to get the video files. I'm going and talking to my video guys about getting, I'm sorry, audio files going to my guys to get hard drives copied over, packing camera gear, and by the time I closed the last case, shook the last hand, paid off the last guy, the place is cleared out. I go to the party. There's nobody at the party but Amy and Courtney waiting for me. So I miss all of it. But you know, when you're when you're the producer, you miss, you usually miss all of it.

Jeff Dwoskin 21:40

Well, this is where you get your revenge. Is when the album comes out. The video, it's live at The Troubadour, Micky Dolans and then Prince these featuring John Billings. That's exactly right. You just slip it in and everyone's like, when did they? Well, we already printed 100 million of

John Billings 21:56

them. We were planning on putting us a little bug in the corner of the screen. Are

Jeff Dwoskin 22:00

there any like backstage stories? So I do know it was Coco's birthday, and I want to say that, did she warm up the audience first? Is that how? Yeah, she came out. I

John Billings 22:10

believe that night she did, I think she did four songs. We've streamlined it to three now, but she was doing four then, and she has Amin zaruki and Alex Jules and rich start will play with her. So she has kind of a trio behind her, so she warmed up the night, and we also multi track her show. So she has her own live at the true CD. And we took different, almost a different strokes, different drum from Nikki's performance, and rolled it into her CD, so she actually has her own CD live at the true true

Jeff Dwoskin 22:39

Oh, that does well, she we won't get we'll get back to this one second. But she's saying, does she sing different drum? Is that okay? So, yeah. So she sings different drum on the live album. That's the mike Nesmith song. That's right, what he wrote, and they rejected it, and Linda Ronstadt made it a huge hit, right? Linda rods, yeah, yeah. And the stone, folks, that's one of the treats, I gotta say, of the live at The Troubadour with Micky Dolan's CD, you know, album, I guess, is Coco singing. I She's got, I'd never heard her sing before. Amazing. Yeah, amazing. Really,

John Billings 23:15

rocks that a song is perfect for her. It sits perfectly in her vocal range. And she's done it for so long, she's kind of made it her own. And then, yeah, it kind of full circle. Wraps back to Michael Nesmith being the hoot nanny. I forget what they called him when he ran like a songwriter night at The Troubadour, and his relationship with Micky. And, you know, of course, Coco sang on some of the early monkey stuff, so to have her sing his song at the true that was cool. It was really cool. Was

Jeff Dwoskin 23:41

there anything, any crazy stories behind the scenes? Wait, did you leave home? This? Was this a one and done, one and done.

John Billings 23:48

That was it. And and we had, like I said, we had a lot of restrictions on what we could do with cameras. So we're actually looking, kind of looking at doing some fan submissions. Because, you know, everybody in the front rows, you know, they're standing there like this. And so I've talked to one person already, and I'm like, You know what? That footage is pretty damn good. I'm gonna take that and, you know, have some cutaways with that. But no, it wasn't a crazy night. We Micky had a lot of cool friends there, which, of course, I would have met at the VIP party had I gone. So I heard about some great people there, but I didn't really get to experience it. But who is it the party? I gotta ask Amy when she gets here. Well, speaking Amy, Amy Dolans was there. Amy and Jerry were there. All his kids were there. Except I don't, I don't think, I think one who's on the East Coast, Charlotte wasn't. I don't believe Charlotte was there, but Emily and Georgia were there. George's fiance was there. So the whole fan was a big family affair. You know, that was really cool. You get back to me. I'll go. I'll search my you remember at the whole time that we're playing, everyone's having fun out there, going, Are we getting that angle right? Oh, God, dad with the color color grading, gonna work on this? So I was thinking of the whole time, so

Jeff Dwoskin 24:56

you didn't see. So I think when you say, like, were these famous. Famous, same as people, meaning, like, if you were to look on the audience and see famous, famous person, would that throw you? Like, if you a

John Billings 25:06

little bit, yeah, I'm still get, I get star struck a little bit. But it's funny, because, you know, when those people show up, they don't usually come in the front row, or you can never see them. They're usually, like, in the back house, or they're off the side of the stage and the dark and the wings, which is a little unnerving when you you know they're there, but you can't see them, but you know they're just staring right the side of your skull, judging

Jeff Dwoskin 25:26

you non stop. Yeah, judging you. No, I get that because, you know, I did stand up comedy forever, and so it's like, if people I'm like, you can come to the show, just don't sit in the front that I don't want to see you, and I also don't want to interact with you because you don't know how to interact with me, because you think I'm me and I'm not me. I'm on stage, Jeff, you don't know we don't know each other.

John Billings 25:50

That's exactly right. So it would, it would be unnerving if I looked out there and I saw like people I, you know, old actresses that I had crushes on, a crush on, when I was a kid, or something in the audience, or or Billy mummy, or somebody like

Jeff Dwoskin 26:02

that, like, oh my god, this movie.

Unknown Speaker 26:09

I didn't want to embarrass

Jeff Dwoskin 26:10

you. Yeah, that's

John Billings 26:13

a daily occurs, dude. Come on. But you know, I think a couple of moments that were really funny to me, or funny, like, cool moments. Was years ago when Nesmith was around with with Micky. He would have, he'd like to have people around, you know, like he liked to do this the start thing, you know. So he'd reach out and invite people out. Fred Armisen, I remember we get an elevator with Fred at the beacon in New York, you know, and you step in the elevator like, holy shit. It's me and Fred, and, you know, they and this elevator is going slow, and you're like, What do I say to Fred? Armisen, holy cow. And did you

Jeff Dwoskin 26:50

see him with Saturday night 50? He was playing drums with the bands. That

John Billings 26:54

was great. That was really, yeah, he's, he's very cool. He's, he was, it was awkward because I asked him about somebody on the show who's a, like, one of my best friends plays in the band. And he was like, Who? And I went, you know, James? He's like, Oh, the bass player. Oh yeah, the bass player, yeah. I was like, ah, awkward moment. Elevator door is open. Goodbye, friend. It's only

Jeff Dwoskin 27:13

awkward because now you put it on a podcast that now he can hear. Otherwise he never would have known. So you just,

John Billings 27:20

you'll be getting an email from him. Yeah, day. Now he is,

Jeff Dwoskin 27:24

he is one of my top fans. So Billy

John Billings 27:26

Bob used to come out. Billy Bob Thornton loved Ness, and I had met Billy years ago through one of his other players, and got to hang out in the studio one day. And so to see him come out and fanboy over ness and be really nice and be just genuinely Billy, you know not Billy Bob. And was really cool. Another cat was Dwight Yoakam nez. Biggest Fan on the planet Earth is dw, Dwight Yoakam or dy, dy, and Dwight would come out. And again, I'm in Nashville. Everybody in Nashville knows everybody, and everybody here plays for everybody. So you know everything about everyone, there are no secrets in the music business in Nashville, Tennessee. So I have many friends who played for Dwight after I got tons of Dwight stories. But Dwight, in that environment, was like a kid, and he was like, smiling and nice and happy to be there. And Nez, you know, hey, Nez, you know, that was really cool. It's cool to see those guys and that act like act like fans. That was neat.

Jeff Dwoskin 28:24

That's awesome. I love that. That's so cool. That is really cool. All right, so you're the producer of this album. Live at the troop. I call it the Stroop now, because I feel like so part of it. How did this fall on your shoulders? They have to do everything. Like the drummer couldn't help, like, what's up? You know? It

John Billings 28:47

was, it was a no, wait, you know, Micky called. We had booked the gig at The Troubadour, which was exciting. I was like, oh, play the tree of this. So cool. He called one day and said, Hey, what's the likelihood of us capture some video? Because I, I'm also in the video world, and I'll shoot stuff for him now and then. Most of the time it's for our agent wants to have some footage of a show to sell a show or something. Usually it's pretty chill stuff. And I did his DVD years ago at the Arcata in Chicago. That was somebody else shot that and then gave us the footage and I produced that one. So when it's video stuff or audio stuff, he'll, he'll, you know, he'll call. So he called and said, What's up the what's the likelihood that we could video that show? Very likely it's we should, let's do it. So that was it. We put it all into place. And that was the funny part. Is that, you know, I called it, I call the the engineer over there. I'm like, can you do multi track and you record the whole band? Yes, I can. Great. Fantastic. We'll be doing that. But, you know, put that on the bill. And Micky had, Micky just thought we were gonna do like, two mics out and back a house. He just didn't know. So that night. I mean, during the show, at the or at the end of the show, where he's like, how did it go? How'd it go? Man, it went, great. The multi track. I'm gonna go pick up the multi tracks now, and he's like, multi track. I go, Yeah, we, we multi track. The. Show so we could go back and mix it, mix the audio properly for the video. He's like, you're saying we could do a record. So then that fell on my shoulders, but that was cool, it actually. And then when we ended up doing the we reversed the whole thing. We flipped it all. We did the record first, and the DVDs, like, it's gonna be something that's gonna be later, which hopefully sooner than later, I can get my ass in gear. Jeff, hello. First of

Jeff Dwoskin 30:20

all, you need vinyl. Nobody has a DVD player. I know I was like,

John Billings 30:24

what do you do? We do blu ray? Do we? You can't stream it. I don't know.

Jeff Dwoskin 30:29

You could stream you could stream it. You have a YouTube channel members only, and you just people pay to stream it. You could do that for, like, the first whatever, because this

John Billings 30:38

page, like an only fans Micky page, is that what you're telling me, something like

Jeff Dwoskin 30:41

that. You could do that too. I mean, yeah, people might pay extra if he takes his shoes off or something. Here's some monkey feet. I

John Billings 30:51

horribly All right, so you're

Jeff Dwoskin 30:53

sitting on multi job. What's, what are the many things that can go wrong if you're only doing one show?

John Billings 30:57

Everybody that knows me gets tired of me saying, you know, I burned this word up constantly. I know my wife's sick of hearing me say it redundancy. Everything's got to be redundant. I've recorded a lot of bands alive before. And if you use computers, or, you know, back in the day, we'd have machines, digital machines, or even analyze, something can go wrong. And then if you don't have a redundant backup, then you're screwed. The whole evening is for nothing. If you shoot a bunch of video with no good audio, you can't even use the video anymore. You always have to have good audio. You always have to have redundancy. So for me, that was my biggest worry, is we didn't really have great redundancy. We had like, oh shit, redundancy. Like, I have, like, a little recorder that I had sitting over by the console aimed at the stage the Oh, shit, redundancy. I think I recorded a left and a right off the console onto another recorder, and that was it. And that I do not like to run at that level with that little bit of redundancy. So that was a little nerve wracking that could have ended horribly if, if that file, it fade, failed, or the drive took a dump, or any number of things. Thinking about it now I'm like, getting sweaty makes me crazy. So that was on my mind all night. Was like, get it to the end and make sure it works. And and I got back to my hotel room, pulled up the guy, the engineer, said, No, everything's great. I'm watching it go down. It went down, great, but still, until went back to my hotel and pulled it up, put my headphones on and listen. Okay, we we got it, we got it. You know, with good audio, we can, you know, video is going to be great anyway, because we had good people working it. But, yeah, that was that could have gone horribly wrong. And

Jeff Dwoskin 32:32

then some multi tracks like, oh, maybe we turn the base up just a little bit more. Why is it all based?

John Billings 32:39

I should make Amin sign an NDA, because I may have asked him to turn a base up once or twice, just once or twice.

Jeff Dwoskin 32:47

That's it. Hey. Hey, you're the one in charge. You have the right to do that. I exercise that right. I think it's totally, totally good.

Unknown Speaker 32:56

So when you did it, he did a phenomenal

John Billings 32:57

job. I'll say Amin did a really good job. He brought it up to a high level. I'm really happy, really proud. It

Jeff Dwoskin 33:04

sounds it's amazing. I listen to in Spotify or Amazon, one of those. So you know, it's, it's amazing. So for the three cents you got from me streaming it, you're welcome.

John Billings 33:15

Yeah, have it up on my MySpace page now,

Jeff Dwoskin 33:18

when you're preparing, I know there's like, a musical director and stuff like that. So explain to me when you're playing live. I guess this is anytime you're playing live, but like, we know what the song supposed to sound like, so what's the role of the person doing that? And how do you guys then re make sure you're properly recreating the monkey's song, the monkey's sound? Wayne

John Billings 33:39

AVers has been our musical director for at least the last 20 years, and he's great. He knows the stuff inside out he's been playing. He's the longest member of the band. He's actually did more shows than Davy Jones and Peter tort or Michael Nesmith, believe it or not. So Wayne has a really good feel for how everything is supposed to go. And everybody on that stage is a high level musician, and they come into that gig wanting to make sure that they are delivering it's, there's a lot of pride. There's a lot of self pride coming in there. You know, Amin is always tweaking his his pedal board make sure his guitar tones are sounding like the guitar tones on the record. Rich Dart is a, it's a is a huge monkeys fan, intimate with their music. So, you know, he's always dialing drum parts in, like the originals. I'm the, I'm probably the one that's like, needs to do a little more homework. Would not be a bad thing, John, I'm that guy. Just to get a little way, maybe it's a little bit too much 80s metal. John, in there, I don't know. It's kind of like, always on the line a little, you know, Wayne is the one. The musical director is the one. It's ultimately, ultimately, it's Micky, but really Wayne is and when it's the man on the ground, he's the he's the general, Micky's in command of the whole he's the president. He's POTUS, but, but, uh, Wayne's the general. Is making sure we're all together. We're starting stopping anything that is an audible that gets thrown on stage. Wayne's actually the boss. He'll actually, he's always. Watching the time, because we actually can't go over a certain amount of time. So who he's always got his eye on, on the clock, if things need to go longer, if we need to add a song or take a song away, you'll see him go up. You'll see him speak into Micky's ear. And Micky puts all his trust into Wayne to do that for him so that he can just go out there and be Micky. He's not worried about all these things. That's the musical director, and that's what Wayne and that night, my job was just capturing the evening. Wayne's job was still driving the ship that night, at the at the troop, at

Jeff Dwoskin 35:26

the troop. I won't ask you which songs you wish you could have done over but for the live album, because you only had one shot. Oh, I will ask you which of the ones we were like, damn. We just we dialed into those, these versions of these songs that I

John Billings 35:40

thought we did your song, Belton, John, and I was, I was worried about that, because I think that was the first time I played that song since I was 25 or something, a long time ago. And I didn't put as much homework into that one as I probably should have, but I'd heard it my whole life. I played it when I was younger. I think I put my ears on my hands on it right before the like sound check when we ran it for the first time, that one, I was worried about, but I was pleased how it came out. I think it came out really good. Everything else, you know, you got to remember, we've been this configuration of players. And mean, came on, man being came on, on the mike and Micky, the last time Mike was with us. So what is that? Two years now? So we've had this group locked in for two years doing these tunes. So for the most part, everyone's going to come in and it's going to be pretty good. And it was, I think it was a really good night. I can't imagine anything else, doing anything over No, no,

Jeff Dwoskin 36:28

It all sounded amazing. That's not what I mean. If I'm doing comedy, some nights, sometimes you're just in a rhythm, and like one of the jokes, you just crush harder than other nights. Oh yes, for no reason. You

John Billings 36:39

know, it's funny, thinking back like I was so worried about everything else, I don't think I paid attention to it. I might have fixed one bass note. I think I came in wrong somewhere, and I may have gone in there and corrected my error. All right,

Jeff Dwoskin 36:53

so that's my next question. How much post work do you do on a live album to make? There's always a

John Billings 36:58

little bit, there's always a little bit, you know, that you got, like a the, I think the biggest offense on this record was in between song noise on stage, you know, somebody tune and hit a pedal and it goes for a second, or, you know, I think I hit a base note, you know, by accident, and then it's going back and removing a bunch of that extraneous noise It doesn't need to be there. That's, that was the biggest editing that we did, is I just wanted it to be clean. Between songs, you just hear Micky talking. I didn't want to hear people tuning or me and rich talking about making fun of somebody out in the house. You know, we're always having a sidebar. And made sure that all that was ixnay on the sidebar. Nice stuff.

Jeff Dwoskin 37:40

The downloads been good, is it? Because it's harder these days, right, to just, even just get the word out.

John Billings 37:46

Micky did a great job of marketing and hype and hyping the record. And I know he's doing a deal where you buy the record, you're making a donation straight to make a wish. Make a wish. Thank you, sir. And that's what the whole night was really about. Was about a Make A Wish evening. That's what, you know. That's really what his goal was. He wanted to play there, but it became, it was really about Make a wish. And so now if you buy the record, there's an additional donation to make a wish. So that's kind of really cool. That is

Jeff Dwoskin 38:11

really cool is that some kid with Make a wish, and I want to meet the monkeys, and John billing shows up. He's like, what's going on?

John Billings 38:17

It'd be more like, what's going on. That's the face it actually make. I

Jeff Dwoskin 38:24

think that's amazing that they, they promote that I had that written down, that, yes, the whole night was for Make A Wish Foundation, yeah. And I think a lot

John Billings 38:33

of their leadership that was in Los Angeles. I think a lot of their leadership was there that night, which was really cool. Of course, my head was buried in the sand of worry and production. So I missed all of that, but I heard they were there.

Jeff Dwoskin 38:47

I heard I had a good time. I heard it, yeah, I do you know who has the most make a wishes? I mean, not the most make wishes. That you know, who's fulfilled the most Make a wish? No. John Cena really, yeah, just, he holds a record. Yeah, just a little random trivia. Okay, so it was Coco's birthday, which I think you mentioned in the in the thing, and then I'd never heard that was then this is now live, which, oh, okay, I love that song. And it's the album kicks off. So this is the name of the album, really, if you're touring, is Micky Dolan's songs and stories Exactly. It's not the name of the album, but, like, that's kind of the subtitle of what the tour normally is,

John Billings 39:28

okay. And the show was a kickoff for that, that new show. This is a new show he designed where he wanted to. He wanted to tell more of these stories about the songs and about things that happened to him in the day or during, you know, the song always relates to a story. And this show was a the kickoff for that, which is what we're out doing right now. We'll be doing that through the year.

Jeff Dwoskin 39:45

I think Neds did that at one point. I because I saw that live at some really small theater. I saw Ned Smith, and he would tell he was, like, he has an album. I think it's like something in store, you know, TV and movie, I don't know, yes, but like, he would kind of tell. Stories. He didn't play any monkey song, so he might have played this into the band.

John Billings 40:05

That was, yeah, he might have, he might have begrudging. If

Jeff Dwoskin 40:09

he did, that would have been so this, this one has last train to Clarksville. He's like he does. He has a lot of great little stories. A little bit, for Pete's sake, I love that song, the closing song, that it's such a cool tune, right? There's a another

John Billings 40:21

song with a cool bass like, that's got a cool, quirky little bass part that's really neat and, mean, will play along with me on guitar and cool bass, cool monkeys bass part,

Jeff Dwoskin 40:32

all right? So is it super fun playing the Beatles then live, like, because Sergeant Pepper is on there. Good morning. Good morning. It's not monkeys. You're like, it's must be I mean, I know you love the monkeys, I don't mean anybody, but it's like, must be nice. It's like, must be nice to, like, switch it up a little bit any tour you were, too, even if you're doing just something, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 40:49

we didn't do a lot of Monkeys. The

Jeff Dwoskin 40:51

monkeys non stop, but the, I'm just saying, but, like, it probably just gives as a musician, it probably puts a little Jess back into you for the next monkey song, because he

John Billings 41:01

does that for for Micky, because Micky is a fan. He's a fan, he's a Beatles fan. So he gets jazzed when he gets to do one of these songs, much less two. We did a good morning, good morning, and then we'll do, uh, Sergeant peppers. He's excited. It really puts like fuel in his tank when he gets to do those that's when I could have done a much better job. Well, it's good morning. Good morning. It's not my, my proudest morning moment that night.

Jeff Dwoskin 41:24

Yeah, the bass was a little off on that one. It was a little. It was a little. Your wife called me and said, Don't let skip that one. It's, he's a little off. I'm like, How do you know she's like, Why play piano?

John Billings 41:33

I've been sitting there listening to him clown it up all. It's not gonna get it.

Jeff Dwoskin 41:38

Is it emotional for maybe, well, maybe even you, because you knew him too. Like, when you play Valerie or for pizza, like where they were the core, or, like, different drama, even where these are the other non surviving members songs that were so iconic, because it's emotional. And, like, I remember, like, watching, like, even the 50th when you did the the Davy tribute, it's emotional, you know, it's like, you're like, it kind of hits you.

John Billings 42:02

And it was really more emotional then, because that was, you know, Andrew Sandoval point was, and it worked. It worked in such a way that we've on stage, we felt it playing along with with Davey. I forget the name of the song, someone where he's dancing, he's tap dancing in the tuxedo, right? I know you're talking about, but we would play along with him on that. Some of the NES stuff that we did after Nez passed, Micky would do, would make me feel like, oh, wow, yeah, it's, you know, we lost this guy. I got a little emotional with him. You know, Peter didn't sing a lot during the show, but it's you know, you miss looking over there and seeing him. You know, on that side of the stage, he's not there anymore. One day, you show up to a gig and he's not there. So there's, you know, I guess, for different reasons, you get emotional about that stuff in their family members that definitely, and I didn't know Davey at all. I had never met Davey at that point. I just worked. I just worked for Micky in the beginning, and then when the monkeys got together, Davey and Peter and Micky, then Davey took his band out, so I wasn't even involved. I've never, I never got to meet Dave and I remember I got to see them in Coney Island. Actually had my daughter at that show. I went backstage before the show, and Wayne brought me back, because Wayne was on the gig. Got to go see the band and say hi to everybody and and Wayne goes, Hey, do you want to? You want to go meet Davey? You've never met Dave and I go, you know, I know before the show, that's kind of like a sacred time. No, I'll meet him later. You know, I'll meet him another time. We'll see we'll encounter him some other No, leave him alone. That opportunity went right away. I learned a good lesson from that one

Jeff Dwoskin 43:36

I almost met. I don't remember if I told you the story about how I almost met Davey, where my when my wife and I started dating, we would go see the real life Brady Bunch going back decades, and one of the and so every week we would usher so we didn't have to pay because we didn't have any money. And one of the episodes they did was the Davy Jones episode, and Davy Jones was there and played Davy Jones. And so afterwards, there was no line. I can picture it. I'm like, I don't know why I didn't. You know it wasn't I was like, I regret that to this day as I stare at my headquarters

John Billings 44:05

album. It could have been exactly you could have had another little signature

Jeff Dwoskin 44:09

on there, as I stare at my with only two signatures on it, because I almost met Peter. We were going to Comic Con in the same Comic Con had norm Norman from, I can't remember blanking on his last name at the height of Walking Dead. Norm, okay, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And Stan Lee, it took us three hours to get near the parking lot, and we finally bailed. I mean, I had that album with me. I had it with me. We're like, hey, I'll get it next time. I was like, you gotta be sometimes there's not a next time, and it's like

John Billings 44:41

my wife has a great moment with my wife, who is who's missed a little pop culture. She's gonna kill me when she hears this, but she knows the story, so she'll she'll forgive me. She missed a little bit of pop culture there for a while, she was working for an artist that we work with at our store called named Guy Gilchrist. And she'd go out with Guy. She'd be his handler, which is, you know, somebody that gets him to the venue. It brings the fans over to meet him, ushers him along. Okay, that's great. Okay, Nick next, come up, you know, get up, something to eat, get him back to the room, wake up, up in the morning, start all over again. She'd known guy for years. She did a few weekends with him like this. And finally, a gig came along to go to, I think it was San Diego. It wasn't a Comic Con, but it was a con. She didn't want to go. She didn't want to make the trip. It was, we had something else going on. She's like, I can't do, I can't do this one. And guys manager called up and, you know, come on, we want you on this one. And she's like, No, I just can't, I can't do it. She gets off the phone with them, and she looked, she's talking to me, and she's like, you know, I don't know if I should go to this thing. You know, this guy invited. Got he whoever put the show on, invited guy personally, and it's wanted a big deal to have him a real handler. And I was like, well, who's the guy who put the show on? She goes to some guy named Stanley, Stanley something. And I went, Stan Lee. And she's like, Yeah, maybe it was Stan Lee. And I was like, Oh my God, you turned down to go meet Stan Lee. And she's like, I don't know who that is. I'm like, I had to go into Marvel Comics. And she's just going, oh my

Jeff Dwoskin 46:08

god, after we did our last interview Episode 230 Yeah, you were in town. You came to Michigan, and like, you were like, the Royal Oak music theater, and I would have gone, that was like a Saturday. I never travel. I never do anything that Friday, going to visit my daughter, who happened to be in London at the time, studying abroad. And so I was like, Are you kidding me? Worthy

John Billings 46:36

cause, though, I mean, I know,

Jeff Dwoskin 46:38

I know, but it's like, you know, like you do nothing, and then the two events, they just line up at the same time. I just happens, yeah, so we could have had, I could be putting up a photo right now of me and Micky. I mean, you and I, that's

John Billings 46:53

exactly right. It's going to happen. I'm going to be back. I mean, we'll be in Michigan. It's going to happen. We'll do it well, is back from the nail

Jeff Dwoskin 47:01

salon. Oh, we're almost done. We're almost done. He's

John Billings 47:05

creeping back there she is. Sorry. I this is a working house, Jeff, an actual home. This is not a studio. This is what makes it real.

Unknown Speaker 47:17

If I had my grandkid over here, going, papa, papa, papa, then it would

Jeff Dwoskin 47:21

you really get to, I like the little monkeys thing you got in the back, yeah? Drum head there. My Micky, my Micky drum head. Yeah. I think my brother in law has one of those, and it's signed, yeah.

John Billings 47:30

So if you're a drummer, you must have one of these guys. My

Jeff Dwoskin 47:34

brother in law is a drummer, and he has that exact thing, actually. So with Micky Dolan signature, I mean, so this

John Billings 47:41

is another crazy thing I've got here, which I need to put it away from my grandkids, so they don't, they don't destroy it. I played this bass. I can tell you what air it was, but I was playing this for a concert run. So Gibson, a Gibson bass. I was going to retire from the tour. I just wasn't going to play it anymore. I was going to play something else. I was going to play a different model bass. And then I thought, you know, I'm just gonna get Nez and Micky to sign this thing, and they'll just put their name on it and and one day, maybe I'll just sell it. I don't know. Who knows. We'll see. And then so I gave it to their assistants, and they wrote messages on there. And I was like, I can't, I'm just

Jeff Dwoskin 48:17

gonna say that's worthless. Now, well, it's worth, it's worth, yeah,

John Billings 48:23

you know what I'm saying? Like, I was just hoping to say Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolan, and then I got this back, and it's like, you know, to John, great work. Michael Nesmith. And then Micky wrote Big Bad John from little good Micky, you know, like, oh, forever be on a wall somewhere at my house, well,

Jeff Dwoskin 48:41

or you sell to it? John, yeah, exactly. I Yeah. I was gonna say that as you were saying that, I was like, No, that's not gonna have any retail value. That's why. I mean, just so everyone listening. That's why, when you go to these comic that's why people, they'll put your name on it, so that it minimizes your ability to do a resale Exactly.

John Billings 49:02

And then most of these guys don't like Micky's really, he'll do the one for you. But these people walk up with a stack of records, and this is, you know, they're gonna go off and, like you said, they're gonna go for resale. So he'll do like, I'll do the first one maybe. And then everyone I'm gonna you need to pay, make a wish. And you pay, make a wish, and I'll sign it for you. And I was like, that's that's cool, because then that means that that record is, you know, they're making a donation every time they sign a record. It's amazing.

Jeff Dwoskin 49:26

When I met Mike Nesmith, I met them both at Comic Cons, Micky at different times, it was like, Mike's only time doing one, because I think he never understood, really, why Google wanted his autograph, right? And, yeah, who he always was. And I'm like, I love the monkeys. And you're standing in line with people, and you realize I don't love the monkeys as much as these go. You know, there's people like, I'm paying like, 100 bucks for one autograph, right? I came and afford a photo, right? I took one from like, 10 feet away or something. I mean, there's people with 20 things, and they're going to pay all your dollars, 20 times, 100 and like crazy, things like, not just normal things like, you. Are things you've never see before or after that somehow they had access to it's

John Billings 50:04

just right. And they saved their money all year long. They save up all year in cash. Usually it's cash. And they come to these things, and they they're like, they're there on a mission. Don't forget,

Jeff Dwoskin 50:15

you can see the eight by 10s. Each one of these represents something. And if I do that. You can see it goes all the way around. That's that's how I spend my money at the Comic Con. Alright, but real quick though, back to live at The Troubadour. Micky Dolans, I know you love troubadour. Am I saying it wrong? No,

John Billings 50:34

you're saying it just right, the truth. I'm just making fun of you. Calling it for me. Make it funny. You make it fun of me. Call it the true So, troops,

Jeff Dwoskin 50:40

the troops, troops. Uh, we're hanging at the troops. And so, okay, I know you probably love all the songs, so it's not like a setup question, but I'm just saying, like, if you were to jam out, you can pick two if you want. But if, like, like, of this album, of that you were to jam out, if you're I could say you only listen to one song for the rest of your life from this album,

John Billings 51:00

I happen to have said, album, I'm gonna look, I'm gonna read the back. Because, of course, I don't remember anything from that night.

Jeff Dwoskin 51:07

You only produced it and probably spent 1000 hours with it, but I get it. If I could

John Billings 51:11

do over Good morning, good morning, that'd be great. Let's see Johnny be good. Is always fun to play. You know, that's like a not a monkey's tune. It's always fun play that. And it's always fun. When we do the setup for purple haze that we do, we used to play the whole song. Micky used to go, Hey, that sounded pretty good. Why don't we do the whole thing? And then Wayne would kick back into the lick, and we'd play the whole Purple Haze thing. But that one went away. So I had to say, I always love playing stepping stone,

Jeff Dwoskin 51:38

stepping stone fun song I loved, I loved hearing that was in this. Now this kicks off, really, yeah, because I've never heard, I don't think I ever heard that one live as many times as I've heard them play.

John Billings 51:48

That's usually a Micky show. That was never a monkey's show. Kind of like when we do a monkey show, that song Never, usually ended up in the that was a

Jeff Dwoskin 51:56

monkey's song, though it's like, I think it was just, it might have just been Davey and him, though, because it was, like a greatest hits album. It was the greatest hits release called, I think that was, this is now. So, yeah, it's that one is

John Billings 52:08

always in a Micky show. So if you come to a Micky show, that one's always at the top of the show, that's usually like, like these days, is typically stepping stone right into this is in, that was in, this is now. And then right out of there will usually run right into is it right here? Let me see, actually, no, it isn't. We changed the set that night. I see,

Jeff Dwoskin 52:26

well, there's my final question, are these in the order you played them, or in the order you

John Billings 52:30

they are? Yeah, we kept everything in the order, just because the DVD, I'm gonna have it linear, all linear anyway, so I we kept everything in order. We could, I guess, pop around a little bit. But what you know, what's used to that? This is a good set, though.

Jeff Dwoskin 52:42

I loved it. I loved it because, well, I only mentioned it because you said, normally you play that was then. This is now after stepping stone, because of my active listening skills, I then thought to ask that question,

John Billings 52:56

no, this is a good set, and then give me some love. And it's fun to play. I always have fun doing that no time. Is a funny song. I always get a kick out of that. That's kind of a silly song. That's a total silly song. And we every now and then, we'll do it the whole thing, or we'll just do a piece of it. Lately we've been doing the whole thing. But here's the funny thing is, we never know we're gonna do the whole thing. Micky would come out. He'll do this thing with Wayne. He'll go, we're gonna do the funky monkey, and they'll do this little blues rendition of, hey, hey, we're the monkeys, and then Micky might go hit it Alex, and we'll play, I'm a believer, and that's the end of the night. Or he'll go, who the movie? He'll just launch into no time. And we net, we literally Rich will sit there, and we just kind of eyeball each other, like, what's it gonna be no, you know, and that's literally how that usually goes that night. We knew what we were gonna do, but, like, literally, now we never know if we could do the whole song or or go right into hit it. Alex. So Alex is kind of ready, you know, riches. We're all ready. Kind of watch and see what happens.

Jeff Dwoskin 53:56

I love it. I love it. It's Coco. Live at the true Oh, Coco lives. Yeah, Coco is amazing, too. Amazing voice. It's amazing that they both have, like, she's not as famous as him, and

John Billings 54:09

she played on some of that early stuff. She's She sang on it, so she's actually on some of the early records. Micky pulled her in.

Jeff Dwoskin 54:15

Yeah, that's so sweet of him. That's awesome. Wow. I mean, she's good. I mean, yeah. But you

John Billings 54:19

know, big brother, you think, more like, more more often he like, shove on the forehead, get, you know, or something like that.

Jeff Dwoskin 54:24

Or, you know, I think you know, Willie, he probably recognizes he's like, really, really good. Just probably makes him sound better. So he says

John Billings 54:31

that on the show, she goes, This is who I learned to sing from. And then he'll introduce different, different drum, different strokes.

Jeff Dwoskin 54:37

John, it was a pleasure hanging out with you again. Man. Thank you so much. It

John Billings 54:41

was a great pleasure. Jeff. I loved it. What? Hey, what number is this episode? Do we? Do we know yet have you never don't know what episode this is, so let me know. And I'll put it underneath the 230 just

Jeff Dwoskin 54:50

hold it up. And I'll, I'll superimpose it. Just hold it up. Just curious to it. New Page. A little new page. There we go. I really. On here, ready? It's that episode so you don't understand overlay video, yeah, you could be going to you're building a dog. I could replace

John Billings 55:07

practice in, in Premiere, in After Effects. Get it, get it going. Thank you. Hey, Jeff, this is a blast. Thank you, sir. I love coming on your show.

Jeff Dwoskin 55:17

I love having you on my show. We'll have you back every like 230 episodes, we'll have you back. I'll

John Billings 55:23

always be there for you. Next, I'm gonna make Amy play piano over here next to me. She's good. That would

Jeff Dwoskin 55:27

be amazing. And you'd be our background music. You could play the bass. That'd be great. Yeah, totally. Alright, let's, let's take it out with a monkey song. That was that. This is I now. Alright. You're awesome. All right, thank you, sir,

Unknown Speaker 55:41

thank you, sir. You.