Transcript of Interview:
Interview 1:
John Hiatt: Did Jimi Hendrix have an influence on you?
Robert Cray: Big influence on me, yeah, you know, records like
Are You Experienced? Yeah.
John Hiatt: No, but I want to be.
Robert Cray: Yeah. Exactly. And I even, I got the chance to see
him a couple of times too which for me, at that particular time, was
like man, wow! But yeah, big influence.
John Hiatt: Yeah, heavy, heavy. I saw him in 19, I think 69. We're
about the same age. I'm 47 years old. But I was, you know, it was
like 'Oh my God.' Pretty amazing.
Robert Cray: Yeah.
John Hiatt: Is there, it seems like there's kind of a blues tradition
out in the northwest. Is there?
Robert Cray: There's a lot of blues bands. You know, when we
started our band, Richard Cousins and myself, we moved from
Tacoma. Both of us were army brats and we were, you know, we
wanted to play blues and R&B. So we just packed it up at 20 and 21
years old. We went down to a college down in Eugene, Oregon. We
didn't know what we were gonna run into. We had a friend of ours
who was living in Salem and he was a drummer friend of ours
formerly from the same area as us and we decided, you know, we'll
start a band. Had another guy play harmonica. We got down to
Eugene, Oregon and Curtis got on this band where the Nighthawks
were ruling, you know, just ruling Eugene. And there was Paul
Delay up in Portland, Oregon and you know, there was a big blues
scene going on.
John Hiatt: Yeah.
Robert Cray: And it was amazing. And then we kind of like, we
stuck there and all of a sudden, next thing you know, it was like we
got in contact with people at the university and then all of a sudden a
lot of blues people started coming through. Clifton Chenier was
coming through, Charlie Musselwhite was coming through, James
Cotton was coming through town. And every time we'd help them to
bring people in or, you know, we got a chance to play with these
people. And yeah, there was a big scene going on.
Interview 2:
John Hiatt: Let's talk about a couple of, a couple of songs on the
new album. You have a song called "Pardon?"
Robert Cray: Right.
John Hiatt: Tell us a little bit about that.
Robert Cray: Well that song kind of came from an idea that uh,
you know, writing a story about a man who's like, you know, you see
him all the time walking the streets, pushing a cart. Something like
that. And you know there's something more serious than what you
see on the outside. You know, so, I put together this song about, you
know, how nobody knows what's really going on with this man's life.
And I had, I had, you know, had this break where I couldn't come up
with the hook of the song. So I had gone back in. I left the lyrics
outside. I was sitting outside in the back, which is a nice place to
write, in the backyard. And I went inside and I turned on the TV and
they were talking about the president and Monica Lewinsky.
[LAUGHTER]
John Hiatt: Bingo!
Robert Cray: Well then they were talking about, they had these
people on CNN talking about what they're gonna do when he's, you
know, when he's convicted and all that stuff. And they said, well are
they gonna grant him a pardon. Ah! Grant this man a pardon. So
then I started hearing all these catch phrases like don't rush to
judgement and things like that so I mean, I went back out and I
finished the song.
John Hiatt: That's great. I love that. Yeah, there's some really cool
lines in that song.
Robert Cray: Yeah. Uh-hum.
John Hiatt: The kind of inferences you were making. Which is
absolutely true. But this was sort of a love context, was it not?
Robert Cray: Yeah, grant him a pardon from love, exactly. You
know. You know, he's a you know, help him break these chains of
love. Help the man go free. Somebody have mercy on him, you
know?
John Hiatt: Amen! [LAUGHTER]
