When CL caught up with Michael McDonald, the world was still reeling from the October 1 terrorist attack in Las Vegas that left 59 people dead. Our conversation naturally veered towards gun control and the NRA, but we never expected to spend a lot of time in waters relating to Trump and Kim Jong-un.
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Sound and safety: Musicians and local fans react to the Vegas music-festival shooting
Guess we should’ve expected more opinion from the guy who sings “Sweet Freedom” nearly every night he’s on tour. You can read our feature story on McDonald and his new album, Wide Open, here, but below is the full Q&A from our exchange.
Read it — and get more information on Clearwater Jazz Holiday (which McDonald headlines on October 21) — below. Watch McDonald in the new Thundercat video here.
Hey Ray.
Good morning, Michael. How are you?
I'm good man. How are you?
I'm great, thanks. Where you checking in from, if you don't mind me asking.
I'm in Santa Barbara, California today.
Okay, so they got you up early today.
Oh yeah, but that's okay. When I'm home I usually do get up early. It's nice to be home. I got back yesterday, and I am enjoying the weather down here. How's the weather down there in Tampa.
It's nice. It's a little windy. These days it seems like there's always some kind of storm ready to blow in here, so I think we're used to that at this point.
Yeah, it's pretty down there though.
I wanted to ask you something. It's been a pretty rough week, and you're gonna play this outdoor festival in Clearwater. What are you telling your family and fans as you continue to play festivals in the months after the shocking events in Vegas?
Yeah, I don't know what to make of it really. Like most people, I'm just kind of in shock, I think. A certain bit of denial, too, know you. And kind of surprised that given the events of the past 10 years concerning, like you know when I was a kid I was an avid gun owner. I was totally fascinated with firearms. I had a whole collection of rifles. I hunted, I did a lot of things. But this, irresponsibility that we since to be convinced is okay, you know, this NRA lobby that prohibits us from even bringing up the subject of 'Why are we trying to loosen the restrictions that are in place,' you know, when, obviously they were put in place for a good reason, you know. We shouldn't be making it easier for mentally impaired people to buy firearms, especially assault weapons and stick mechanisms that allow them to turn their hunting rifle into a machine gun. You know, it just seems to make common sense. We have more restrictions on driving than we have on owning a gun.
Most gun owners I know, I know don't know why they don't make certain rifle enhancements or automatic weapons, you know, put them in certain categories. More background checks or you have to take lessons, or you have to somehow get a higher-grade licence to get a silencer or something. It's hard to keep up with it all because it all seems to be coming down to just this one lobby that seems to be holding all of the country hostage while our children are being shot down in the streets by some lunatic. Almost as if this is the new norm, you know?
Mmmhmm.
You know, people who are even of the second amendment fervor. You know, the right to bear arms, to the extreme, don't seem to, it's weird. It was weird, this woman, her daughter survived the shooting, and she was saying please no political comments, and then president Trump came by and visited, which was so nice and so awesome. I was thinking, just being a parent, not to criticize her, but the first question I would've asked the guy was, 'What are you gonna do about this situation before it becomes the norm in this country?'
Right.
'What steps are you gonna take? What kind of courage are you going to show against the NRA lobby?' You know, somehow bring about some common sense laws that make this a safer environment for our kids to go to a goddamn concert. To walk the streets in this country. At what point do you guys take your responsibility in this seriously, and stop taking the NRA's money as precedence over any common sense gun regulation. It's kind of mind boggling.
I'm sitting here thinking, just as a parent, of course I'd be thankful that my kid was alive, but I would stop and go, 'There's a lot of kids who aren't alive. There are a lot of parents out there who are burying their kids today,' and for their sake maybe something should be done, but it's this polarized political, like, it's like let me put my head in the ground over gun control. We can't afford to put our head in the ground anymore we can afford to put our head in the ground over what's going on in the streets of our cities. You know, where, like Black Lives Matter. They're just trying to have a conversation. It reminds me of the conversations my wife and I have sometimes.
She'll say, 'I'm seriously worried about us. We're not talking much. You're on the road so much. We talk on the phone, we kind of chitchat, but there's a lot of stuff where we really need to get down to the heart of the matter on, and I don't want to see us drift too far apart,' and I'll say something like, because of the kind of husband that I am, 'Well hell, like I wanna be out here working,' I'll get all defensive over it because I don't really wanna talk about it. I don't really want to get down to the truth of the matter, you know? And then I have to realize that's what truly has to happen, and as painful as it may be to me, she's right. That's what we need to do — is talk about it. So all of these things that we are seeing are really just examples of that same kind of conversation we're having as individuals — it's the same thing that's happening as a nation. Certain subject get brought up and everybody recoils with uncomfortable awkwardness because, we start blaming this and blaming that, getting off subject.
Then we got Trump talking about, 'Oh, we're disrespecting the military.' Here's a guy that ridiculed John McCain for being a POW, you know, a gold star family because of the service he's done for this country. Here's a guy who's gonna stand here and tell me that someone else is disrespecting the military — give me a fucking break, you know.
100-percent. Yeah, you mentioned conversations, and you have so many songs that you could use instead of a conversation. Richard Stekol gave you a pretty bold line to open “Free A Man,” but I want to ask you about another song 'Sweet Freedom,' which you play a lot. I wanted to know if it feels a little ironic to sing in Trump's America.
Well yeah, I've always kind of felt like that song, it's a Rod Temperton, and Dick Rudolph wrote that song. Dick Rudolph, by the way, was Maya Rudolph's dad.
Oh wow.
A point of interest, and he was very funny guy, too. His dad was a big executive at MGM or something, but yeah he and Minnie Riperton were married and Maya Rudolph is their daughter. But, yeah, when I play that song I think of what it means, all the songs that I play, typically, they're about a certain scenario, but a lot of times, for me, and even for the audience, there is a larger message to songs like 'Sweet Freedom.'
A friend suggested that “What a Fool Believes” would be a more appropriate song.
You know, the way I look at the Trump thing is if it wasn't so scary, then it'd be…
Funny.
It'd be funny, you know? But, watching him and Kim Jong-un. Tweedledee and Tweedledum poking each other in the chest. Two little goofy deranged idiots, you know, who expect total loyalty from everybody around them, and who are loyal to no one. They're poking each other in the chest, and the scary part is they both have nuclear code. What are the chances that one of these idiots isn't going to press the button? That's what I wonder.
It's pretty crazy, very crazy. Speaking of, Kenny Loggins will be at this same festival — Clearwater Jazz Holiday. What are the chances of you doing that song together?
Oh, well are we playing the same night?
Because I was gonna ask you about Thundercat, but he'll be long out of Florida by the time you get here.
Whenever we play the same venue we'll do our shows, but we'll do those shows together. I'll be with his band or vice versa. We'll split 'em up and then he'll come out. And that's always fun for us. He always has a great band. I always enjoy it.
Speaking of great bands. Can we talk about Steve, Thundercat. Steve Bruner (aka Thundercat) — you’ve said he reminded you of a bass stuntman and that you feel like the fat kid splashing people at the pool when you are in that lineup — is Thundercat the best bassist you ever played with?
He certainly has, kind of, pushed the envelope in the tradition of so many great bass players. To me, he kind of reminds me so much of, coming from that school of Stanley Clarke, you know Jaco Pastorius. And yet he kind of approaches it from a multi-harmonic, multi-range harmonic thing where those guys were all, they did a lot of remarkable things with bass and colored a lot of area, even some of the range of guitar when they played. But Thundercat he kind of does it as a matter of rule, you know, largely, when you listen to records a lot of those tracks are basically just him and that guitar, and he's covering the bass and guitar part and a lot of the melodic upper structure all by himself with drums, and keyboards are kind of overdubbed, and the atmospheric kind of overdub like with background vocals and stuff. It's amazing how much his tracks are basically him with that 6-string, 8-string bass and drums, and, so in a way he almost took that a step further to be like, you know back in the day when Jaco Pastorius and those guys would play melody on the bass, they would get up in the upper register, kind of carry that part of the song and then still somehow keep the bass range handled pretty well. That was really kind of cool and different, and he's kind of taken that concept and advanced it into, almost, where bass is almost the only instrument on the arrangement, you know.
And, sorry I'm not getting to ask a lot of questions about Wide Open, but you've had such a great career. I wanted to ask you about Walter Becker (Steely Dan, passed at aged 67), who was quite the jokester, I know Donald and Walter were really patient with you back when you were recording “Peg” and “This Is It,” but I wanna ask what your favorite joke or memory of Walt because he was a pretty crazy, funny guy?
I think at one time he, uh, when I was doing that session, I think it was "Peg" or one of those things. Those guys were relentlessly, you know, hard on me, well you know, one of those sessions, I think it was The Royal Scam, I had just done the last record with them. He was on me about being able to reach this one part and was like, 'Gosh, geez, last record you were really a good singer, what's going on? What happened?,' and I was like, 'Gosh, these guys are brutal.'
You know, he was very funny, and he always had a great joke. But more than anything he was a truly nice guy, a very kind guy, and as much as he could be sardonic, him and Don both. Walter, I never saw ever him be unkind to anyone, you know. He was always, you know, he would talk the same to all people no matter who it was, if it was a total stranger or someone he know, or someone he had no idea who they were. He was that true to form nice person. I'm always impressed by that, I think most of us are.
You’ve called your Wide Open album your next turn at running the bases, and you seem to be enjoying all of the process around it. Do you have enough songs for another one? The songs on Wide Open are from a wide time period and a lot of them are about love, relationships and a lot about self-doubt. Even with all the success, is there still some of that self-doubt that haunts you day-to-day?
Um, yeah, I think it's human nature. We all have that. It depends on whether, what we do with it. I think it's necessary, for kind of, one aspect of human nature, what's important is not to hide it from yourself so that it develops other character traits that are really just you trying to hide your own self-doubt from yourself, you know because that typically kind of skews your behavior in other areas. I've found it's important to kind of just start from there and then trust that whatever the challenges, the learning curve whatever it's gonna be. I've lived long enough to know that growth is painful, so when I am feeling fearful or painful, typically with that is that some kind of growth is happening. Like I should look at it that way rather than resort to reactionary traits to me own fear, you know what I mean. I'm not always very good at that. I wish I could practice that like I'm preaching it most of the time. I think as we get older we get a little better at that, but we have to kind of remind ourselves that a lot of shit happens, and you're not gonna be successful at everything you try, but it's what you do with that incident where the trouble either begins or ends, you know. It's not really what happens that is a bad deal, it's what I do next, you know.
So to answer your question, I always find that there's always some material out there. There are things that are laying around my house, and I look under a couch, and there's totally a thing that I hadn't thought about in a couple years, and I'm always like, 'Wow, I think I was wondering where this was.' And more times than not it has some kind of surprising effect on the next project or something. This record was definitely like that. So I always have to be careful to really review everything I have and look for things I've put away — songs, tapes I've made. I have to have an active effort to research my own material because there is a lot of it out there that I totally forgot or am not thinking about right now that might be a valuable asset on the next project.
Somebody asked you about the theme of humility that shows up a lot of Wide Open. You’ve joked about writing it because wanting to possess humility one day — do you think that all those years of having an awesome beard awesome beard kept you from being a humble man?
Um, well, I don't know that I'm all that humble. I always kind of felt like my biggest problem in life is being kind of self-centered to the extreme. You know? From the time I was a kid. I don't look at it like I'm bragging all the time or anything, but all I think about is me. From the time I was a kid, every time I was supposed to be doing something I thought I knew better, and I've learned that, slowly over the years, that a lot of the times when people give me advice it's good advice. I've just got to be more willing to accept it, and listen to it, and implement it because, you know, my lack of humility has really kind of manifested itself in 'I wanna just do what I wanna do,' you know, and that's smited me as much as it's ever benefited me — maybe more, you know.
100-percent. Well I'm glad you went about it all that way because you have a very enjoyable body of work to enjoy, so we're grateful for that, and we hope you have safe travels here to Florida, and we look forward to seeing you at the Festival.
Hope so, hope to see you down there. Have a great day.
Take care.
Alright, you too.
This article appears in Oct 12-19, 2017.