……..part two………
 

G:      There's one song on the new album that was the longest [one] for me to
get into, I don't know if you can guess which one that was?

R:      The hardest for you to finally…  Wow…

G:      And it hit me on my way up here last night as I was listening to it, so
I said "Good!".  It's the one that I think is the most different from
everything else on there.

R:      Wow….well, two things could come to mind.  Some people have said it
about "Save A Prayer", though I love it.

G:      Ah, that just grabs me!

R:      …but it's one of the oldest songs.  We've been doing it since before we
ever made a record, before the independent.

G:      I had heard that.

R:      But I think that's more of a personal taste.  I think that anyone that
immediately doesn't take to that is just not really ready to get hip to the
Mavericks doing a gospel kind of role, you know.

G:      No, that was good, it just kinda pulls you in, I think, that rhythm.

Grandma:        I think that too.

R:      The other one…  Well, a couple come to mind.  "Dolores" is really
unusual-sounding on the record.  But… I think it's great fun.

G:      It wasn't that one, and that's because it was, it's a fun thing, it's
like what you guys do.

R:      Right, right.  It's campy and it's intentionally so.  That has been the
reaction to that.  The only other thing that I can think of that would be
unusual for – sort of unusual for - some Maverick fans, although I don't
hear it often, is "I Don't Even Know Your Name".

G:      No, that wasn't it, in fact, I wanted to ask you why you guys didn't
play that last night.

R:      What is it?

G:      "Tell Me Why" was the one that took me the longest.

R:      Really?!

G:      Yeah, and then suddenly last night it hit me, and I went, "Oh wow!"
 

Grandma:        That hits you, and then it'll drive you crazy, in your mind,
that's what that one does!

R:      Interesting, because "Tell Me Why" was one of my first favorites…

Grandma:        I thought so too!

R:      …and it's got potential maybe for some unusual presentations somewhere -
 whether that be a movie, or an Adult Contemporary release…you know, it'd
be nice if we could get this record to transcend some of the genre barriers
or whatever.

G:      I think this record has many chances at that.  In fact, how do you feel
about its chances with the places you've traditionally been played?

R:      You mean in country?  Well, that's gonna be the hardest thing.  Except
that we're leading off – to bring people back to the Maverick ballgame, you
know – we're leading off with "To Be With You", and that's probably one of
the most traditional "Maverick" feels on the record; in other words, it's
that slow cha-cha groove that country line dancers have always claimed that
the Mavericks do well.  And they like dancing to it, and it has worked on
the radio:  "O What A Thrill", "I Should Have Been True", those kind of
feels have sold records for us, and made fans of people.  So we're leading
off with that, so people can feel like they understand us, and still see
eye-to-eye (laughing).  The maybe the rest of the record'll throw 'em, I
don't know!

G:      As soon as you told me that that would be the first US single, I knew
that was what you were up to, as it was an easy lead-in for everyone, an
easy step…

R:      I'll tell you, I'll be dead honest, the band at first wanted to go the
other way, we wanted to just tell everybody right up front:   "Let's get
ready, we've got a new thing goin' on" and we were going to try to do
something like "Dance the Night Away" but we also want - we don't want
people to immediately back up from this new record, we want them to perk
up, listen.  We want to please, you know, musically we still desire making
music that pleases people… and why would we want to change that?  But, we
believe that you can do anything musically and succeed.  I think the
Mavericks have always set up this reputation for challenging the genres.
If you call us country, well then look out 'cause what's it sound like to
you?  And then, if you say well, it's Latin, it's not that, and if you say
"Well, that sounds more like a rock thing" it's not quite rock in today's
terms.    So we're always trying not to - it's like dodging bullets, I
think.  (Laughs).

["Someone Should Tell Her" playing in the background]

Grandma to R:           You recall that I spoke to you about "I Don't Even Know Your
Name" and I said "Bob, I've heard that song…" and you said, "Well, I don't
know…".  Well, it just ticked in my mind until I couldn't get it out of my
mind, and do you recall some time ago that you had given me Conway
Twitty's, you know with all his albums?

R:      Compilation?

Grandma:        Compilation.  I was playing that, and there was a song, and "I
Don't Even Know Your Name" is in the song, and…

R:      Oh, you mean the lyric is in there, the name.

G:      I love that song!

Grandma:        I do too!

G:      That was a very Beatles feel, I thought, when I first heard it.

R:      And that was the intention, I think.  Byrds…

G:      Yeah, Byrds guitar…

R:      Well, because we worked up, what?  80% of the record, we've done a lot of stuff off the record.

G:      You only left out that and "Melbourne Mambo"

R:      And we intend to get to both of them.  "Fool #1" was done by Raul last night, but we intend to do it as you hear it on the record, but…

Grandma to R, getting down to brass tacks:      When can we expect it?  Isn't
that what you mean?

G:      Yeah, I mean are they gonna play it tonight!

R:      (Laughs)  No, we didn't work it up for tonight, I'll be honest.   I'd
like to say we did, but…I'd be lying.

G:      I like it a lot, and I think it's great that you all collaborated on it.

R:      Yeah, it was fun, and finally time to do something like that, even if we
just do it occasionally.

G:      So that's what you've been doing with during your time off

R:      Writing…yeah, writing, a lot more.  I'm very pleased, I have a song with Jerry Dale, he and I wrote a song, and the Nashville term is it's "on hold" for somebody, meaning that a producer, or an artist, or a record label
heard a song that somebody has written and they say "I want this for
Trisha," or "I want this for the Mavericks" or "I want this for George
Strait."  And so we have one with Kenny Chesney right now.  It's my first
"country/Nashville" kind of "hold".  It's just a fun song that he and I
wrote.  And

Grandma:        How about the one for the Hansons?

G:      You're kidding!

R:      No, we wrote a couple for the Hansons Christmas record, and due to what
I would term more like "politics" with the making of that record, we didn't
end up with the cuts on the record.  Unfortunately…  I'd have loved to…

G:      That would've made a pile of cash, too!

R:      (Laughs) Yeah, that would've been good, good for business!  But it
didn't work out, and so we wrote some fun little, what I would call pop,
Christmas songs.  They sound like kinda Beatle-esque.

G:      So is that going to end up being next year's MCA Christmas album?

R:      I don't know if it'd end up there, but we hope that next year it'll be
out, even if we have to release it ourselves, just for fun, maybe a
collector's 45, or collector's CD single.

G:      Well, I can guarantee you about 89 sales, anyway!  [the RTML membership]

R:      Yeah, there ya go…

G:      Plus the pass-along word-of-mouth sales that that generates…   I wanted
to ask you about growing up in Kansas.

R:      (Laughs and looks at Grandma)

G:      So if you lie, we've got another… [witness who was there…]

Grandma:        Me!?

R, to Grandma:  He was asking me, and then I looked at you,  so that you
could correct me if I'm wrong.  Well, I was born there, and I did leave
relatively young, I was 5.

Grandma, doing her job correcting both of us:   You weren't born in Kansas…

R:      Well, Missouri, but Kansas City, in other words…you know, the city falls
on the state line between Kansas and Missouri.

Grandma:        Kansas City [Missouri] is a large city and Kansas City, Kansas, is
a small city.

R:      For people who aren't that familiar with the geography there, they just
say Kansas City, and it's flat, and "Oh, it's Kansas…"

Grandma:        They think it's Kansas City, Kansas…everyone does.

G:      Flat with a river in the middle.

R:      Right, but yeah, I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and my memories of
Kansas City are more about going home to Kansas City when we did some
Christmases there growing up…

Grandma:        Every Christmas!

R:      (smiles) Right!  And then going back for summer visits after we had
moved as far away as Miami.  Obviously going home to Kansas City wasn't as
frequent, but we got to see Grandma and Grandpa most every summer and spend
a few weeks together there.  I always called it my home town, still do,
because I was born there, for one, and for two, it feels like my home town
even though I spent more time in Miami.

Grandma:        I think your roots are kinda down in Kansas City.

R:      Yeah, I just know Kansas City is where I'm from, it's just a feeling,
it's in the gut, you know.   And it feels good.  Kansas City feels like a
good, solid middle-of-America… a good place to…

Grandma:        His grandfather was in the hotel business, and that was always of
interest to him, because we traveled a lot.  We took him with us some.

R:      Yeah, I always enjoyed that, Granddad ran these beautiful hotels, and
now I stay in hotels for a living, so there was a reason for all this,
right?  (Laughs)

G:      (Laughing) Yes, prepping… You moved straight from Kansas City to Miami,
then?

R:      No, Dallas for another five years, and then Miami, so it was like five
years in Kansas City, five years in Dallas, and then twenty years in Miami
before going to Nashville.  So I spent the first 30 years figuring out what
I would do with the next 30, like we all do, right?  But I never felt real
settled in Miami.  Miami was really a cool place to be a young man, a young
teenager, and growing up in Miami in the seventies was pretty cool, but by
the 80s and 90s I felt restless, I felt like I would leave and go somwhere,
I didn't know where…

G:      Well, it turns out it was a good thing!

R:      Yeah, my life has…

["To Be With You" plays in the background]

Grandma:        He started out, as a little boy, three years old, liking to play
the guitar and so we bought him one that was just large enough for him to
hold.  And there was two little blonde-headed girls in the neighborhood
where we lived and they came in and kinda pushed up against him a little
bit, wanting to play, they were about three, and he backs up, wanting to
get away from them, and sits right in the middle of his guitar, breaks it…
so I said to his grandfather, "Could you stop somewhere and pick up
something else for Bobby?" and told him what had happened.   When he came
home, he said "I couldn't find anything but a ukulele", and he still has
the ukulele.

R:      I think I had been entertaining, you know, in some fashion my whole
life.  Meaning, trying to entertain (smiling)…

Grandma:        And at the age of ten – you remember "Lights Out"?

G:      No…

Grandma:        Years ago, it was on the radio, and they'd say "Lights Out", and
then they'd have this squeaky sound in the background, like doors, and like
they were going down basement stairs, eerie sounds... and your folks gave
you a recorder for Christmas.  You remember you recorded that, having
someone making these different sounds?

R:      We used to make these little movies…  It's like, I don't think that I'm
doing anything today that is any different from my direction as a kid.

Grandma:        And you dressed up your little brother John…

G:      That sounds like me and my little brother…

Grandma:        …slicked his hair back…

Grandma:        (showing us a beautifully engraved gold metal card)  After my husband's death I got a gold card to stay in any Preferred Hotel at any
time.

R:      He ran Preferred Hotels, you know, which is basically an organization of – the criterion is basically that you have to be a four- or five-star
hotel, and you have to be independent, you can't be a part of a chain.  So,
he ran those types of hotels.

G:      But it's international, isn't it?

R:      Yes, all around the world.  It's just a membership, it could be the most
beautiful hotel in Stockholm, or the most beautiful hotel in Maui.  But if
they're independent, and they make a four- or five-star rating, they can be
a part of this elite membership.

G:      I suppose there are several in New York City?

R:      Yes.

….end of part 2……
 
 
 
 PART THREE