A Conversation with Jack Tempchin – HuffPost 7.23.14

Mike Ragogna: Jack, what got you into music?

Jack Tempchin: Probably listening to Harry Belafonte. I think he had the number one album in this country for seven years or something.

MR: I imagine you were exposed to that through your parents?

JT: Yeah, and listening to music on the transistor radio under the covers and hearing all different kinds of music and just walking around trying to whistle out songs. Then I bought a harmonica and started playing it on the street, walking around. Then the whole music thing happened with Bob Dylan and the folk era and eventually I started being a blues harmonica player, then I moved in to being a guitar playing songwriter and then full-on head or what they call now a “hippie.” That era came along and I was ahead of the curve, being a little older than the other people. I was a year ahead of everybody else at taking drugs, having long hair, being free.

MR: So you were there to watch the folk scare turn into the country rock scare.

JT: Oh yeah, I was there through that whole thing. I was an avid folk guy, mostly I was into the blues at first, discovering Mississippi John Hurt and Robert Johnson and all those guys, and then all the other music came along. My roommate got a KLH stereo, which was a turntable with a couple of speakers all packed together in a little suitcase. He took the speakers off and spread them on either side of the room and suddenly we had stereo. It was the best thing I’d ever heard. He brought home Jimi Hendrix’s first record and we’d listen to it and go, “Wow.” The music that kept coming in was so mindboggling. But meanwhile I was playing folk in coffeehouses, meeting people like Hoyt Axton. Then I met a duo that came down from LA called Longbranch Pennywhistle, which was J.D. Souther and Glenn Frey. I invited them to stay with me in my big hippie pad where we had a candle shop in the garage, we made candles and sold them at the Del Mar Fair here in San Diego. Those two guys became my good friends and still are to this day. That was about five or six years before the Eagles got put together.

MR: Did you write together often?

JT: I wrote one song in the interim with J.D. I’d only written one or two songs with him, one was recorded by Trisha Yearwood. I didn’t start writing with Glenn until I’d known him for ten years and the Eagles had broken up. They had recorded a couple of my songs, and then he had a song I’d given him that he was going to put on his new solo album, so he called me to come over and write. We wrote two hits the first day, it was just fabulous. We were already great friends, so that was just a beautiful thing. We wrote for about fourteen years, which I guess is the time the Eagles were broken up. I think it was that long. I co-wrote most of the stuff on his solo records and we had a couple hits too.

MR: That was an interesting period. It almost seemed like the Eagles served as a hub for a lot of acts, J.D. Souther being one. Even Randy Newman with “Short People” and “Rider In The Rain.” That must have been one hell of a time.

JT: It was one hell of a time. Some things are planned, some things are business, but none of this was. This was organic and it was about the music. All these people really, really knew each other very well and were very good friends. Also being inspired by all the work that everyone was doing. It was real in that sense. The record business wasn’t pulling the music, the music was pushing the record business. The music was coming out of the musicians and going to the people who were then buying it and telling the record companies where to go. It wasn’t the other way around.

MR: And that’s obvious to see, we’re in an era now where everything has fallen apart. People like to blame it on piracy but I would add major labels abandoned the fans–in their case, customers who were loyal and already liked to buy records and CDs–by cutting maturing acts loose.

JT: And at some point, I woke up and said, “What happened to Kris Kristofferson?” You love these people, you know they’re still writing, they think of themselves as writers. But like you say, the music business just abandoned that. Frank Sinatra, he just kept making albums, but no one’s interested in the Eagles’ new material.

MR: Out of sight, out of mind.

JT: You kind of go, “Wait, how did the music ever get into the driver’s seat in the first place?” When I talk to my son and I say, “it’s kind of hard to get paid anymore,” he says, “Well, you know, Dad, the period where writers got paid was kind of just in your lifetime. It didn’t happen that much before and it’s not going to happen after. You just have to look at that as an anomaly.”

MR: Your son’s a musician?

JT: No, he’s not a musician, he’s a computer guy.

MR: Cool. That was a really interesting observation.

JT: I guess so. You’d like to jam with your kid, but he sees music as a limited art. You just write the song and it stays right there and doesn’t react. A program is the real art form.

MR: Right on. Hey, “Peaceful Easy Feeling” was your first real big hit, right?

JT: Oh, yeah!

MR: And then you went on to have a career at Arista when Clive Davis had taken interest in singer-songwriters. Where did you take Jack Tempchin as a recording artist after that?

JT: Well, I made a few albums but none of them had any hit singles on them. I made a couple albums for Arista, one with The Funky Kings, we had that single “Slow Dancing” that Johnny Rivers made into a hit later. Our version only got up to number sixty. I did go out on the road as an opening act for about ten years. My manager managed Kenny Loggins, so I started going on tour with him. I did the first Christopher Cross tour when his album first came out. I opened for everybody from Tower Of Power to Chicago, I was a solo opening act until ’95 when I was the opening act for the Ringo All-Starr Tour.

MR: Oh, nice! What was it like traveling around with that entourage?

JT: It was fantastic, I’ve got to tell you, it was fantastic. Felix Cavaliere, Mark Farner, Randy Bachman and John Entwistle were all in Ringo’s band. Hanging with those guys, hearing them tell stories of the band… It was great.

MR: Joe Walsh?

JT: Not in that band. Ringo has a different band every time. Of course, I know Joe, he’s now Ringo’s brother-in-law, that’s a great development there. I did a lot of touring then. Around 1980, I got back with Glenn and we wrote songs for those years, so I would also go in and be there during the recording of the whole album, mostly because I was learning how to make records. I took time doing that and then things shifted. I started going to Nashville every year for a while. I tried writing songs with some of those professional Nashville writers. I met some great friends there and some guys who were really good, so that was a lot of fun. I just try to keep reinventing myself as a guy who has something to do. In my latest project I’ve just kind of reduced it to taking any songs I write and doing a solo video of the songs and putting it up on YouTube so people can get the song. Making an album doesn’t seem to make any financial sense anymore. It’s hard to know what to do now because everything’s so different. I can’t quit though! I feel like my brain is exploding with new material, and I’m just as good if not better than I ever was. Maybe the world doesn’t care, I don’t know, but you just have to keep finding a way to have something to do and maybe find someone who’s interested.

MR: Lately, you’ve brought video-recording into your life. What’s the story on this new venture?

JT: I’m also a consumer of music, too, and it’s real enjoyable to cruise YouTube and see stuff. I’d just been thinking about the video aspect for a long time. I just feel good about it. If I make a video it only takes a day or two. And it’s satisfying, because then you get it done and that song’s done, whereas an album takes a really long time and it’s really a lot of work. It’s great, but f you put one out and nobody listens to it you start thinking, “Wow, do I want to do that again for three months, or maybe I’ll just proceed one song at a time.” I also feel like I try to raise the quality of the video so it catches the nuances of the audio things that I’m doing. It makes the song and the delivery more powerful–until I get a video where I watch it and say, “Okay, here’s the star. I did it real good, I was thinking about the song the whole time, and boom, there it is. It’s done and it’s ready for people to like it if they’re going to.” Then I can just keep doing it here and see what reaction it gets. I have a Facebook page that my manager Bradshaw [Lambert] mostly runs for me. We’ve got a hundred thousand likes, I don’t know what that means but I think it’s pretty good. They like it so they’re in the stream or whatever. But where does it all go these days? I don’t know. One guy in a movie goes, “I don’t care about the money, money’s just how you keep score.” But the money is kind of a way that says, “Hey, a whole bunch of people liked that song.” In a way, that’s what you’re really looking for.

MR: Has it been satisfying?

JT: Oh yeah, it’s wonderful. The only thing I’m trying to avoid is sitting down and writing a song and saying, “Hey, I’ve got this, this is good, I like it,” and then having no one to hear it. If you start doing that a whole bunch, that’s what takes away from you being able to keep making songs and being happy. If I put it up there, it’ll go, “Oh, sixty people looked at it.” I’ve played a lot of gigs in my life that had less than sixty people there. It just gives me a little bit of proportion. That’s a lot of people to enjoy something. It’s much more satisfying. I just put up a song called “Ain’t Nobody Like You,” and I’m going, “Boom, end of the line.” People can go up there and dig it and tell me they dig it and complete the circle.

MR: You’ve had so many hits with Glenn Frey, like “You Belong To The City,” “Smuggler’s Blues,” “The One You Love,” “I Found Somebody” and more. You must be kind of happy about that, no?

JT: Oh yeah, it was a dream! I’m writing with my friend but my friend happens to be one of the best writers there is. And he’s also an artist and producer who can make hits out of the stuff we write. For a writer, it doesn’t get any better than that. That’s just amazing, really.

MR: After having co-written “Already Gone” and other hits, did you feel it was cool to have a lower profile life? You know, like being able to have any kind of life you wanted since you weren’t in the spotlight like an Eagle?

JT: That’s right. There’s an interesting movie called Twenty Feet From Stardom you probably saw, it’s about background singers and how great they are, but it also talks about why they’re not the front man if they’re only twenty feet away. It asks the front men, it asks Bruce Springsteen and it asks Sting and those guys and they’re saying, “Well, yeah, but that twenty feet is a long way.” What I’m trying to say, really, is that I wasn’t cut out to be one of those guys. Having been close to the Eagles and seeing that happen and being close to their famous bands and all, I just have to say that those guys work ten times as hard as I’m even able to work. They have a different temperament. Those guys can take it. They can take it again and again and again and never stop. I just feel like I’m right where I should be, because man, I couldn’t do that. I’m staring to write a song now called “Ordinary, Everyday, Run-Of-The-Mill, Man Of Steel.”

MR: [laughs] Nice.

JT: It’s my admiration for these guys. Everybody thinks you stumble into success, but I don’t think so. The first thing is they always outwork the other guy by ten to one. I just thought, “This is where I belong.” I’m Midnight Jack, I stay up late, I have to do what I can with the limited energy I’ve got, I don’t thrive on conflict, you know what I’m saying? These are all things you can’t be a rockstar with. Rockstars get up early, they fight all day. I don’t know how to put it, but I think it answers your question. I just feel like yes, it’s great not having all the acclaim I wouldn’t have wanted and couldn’t have handled anyway.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

JT: Wow. I noticed you asked Irving Azoff that and he said, “Be born thirty years earlier.”

MR: [laughs] Yes he did!

JT: But actually, for the first time, they’re going to have something called Songwriter Camp in Las Vegas next month–this guy puts on rock ‘n’ roll fantasy camps, so I’m going to go mentor some songwriters and see how that goes. But I’ll tell you this. What I think is everything in the music field is actually better than it ever was. I can go on Spotify and I can follow the trail of any kind of music I want, and I can listen to it right now. We used to have to go down to the store and try to find a record. The Stones spent half their time trying to get a blues record over to England. In a lot of ways the music thing is great. The only way it’s not great is getting paid. I’ll be damned if I can think of any way to get paid. But what I think is the wheel is turning about that. First it was just songwriters and musicians, now movie people, too. The digital wave moves through everything. it’s changing everything. I hope that getting paid wheel moves along and people can get paid. Otherwise, they’ve stolen their own dreams. It used to be one in ten thousand people wanted to be a musician and be a rock star. Now it seems like it’s a career choice. There’s a school. “Oh, you want to be a rock star? Well go to this school and learn how to play.” There are so many people doing it and yet none of them know that there’s no money anymore.

MR: I always felt there’s a bit of a vulture culture going on there. Is it fantasy camp or a predatory school?

JT: Uh-huh. They could’ve achieved some of that dream, but–I’m not against people downloading for free, I don’t blame the people. You opened up the company store at night with nobody there, so people went in and got stuff.

MR: Well, in my opinion, Napster sort of threw a brick through the window. Labels just didn’t have the foresight to lock the front doors in a credible way.

JT: Right. They created this environment, it’s all good but the people who collect the music and present it to you get all the money and none of the creators right now. But then the question is, “What does a guy do?” and I don’t know. A guy can proceed full-on in music but just be aware that it’s going to be really difficult to get any money. I don’t know if Kickstarter is the answer or what.

MR: If your son had decided to go into music instead of computers, would this have been the frank conversation you would’ve had with him?

JT: Yeah, I would have to sit down and say, “How do you think you’re going to go about earning a living from this?” [laughs] Of course, my parents did that, too. There was no answer, but now it’s even like if you have a success and you don’t get paid, then in that sense, how are you going to earn a living? Then you try to get a viral video. I talked to my friend Tom Rush, he had a viral video but it didn’t do him any good.

MR: What are you going to do to capitalize on the promotion you’ll get from going viral?

JT: Sometimes there’s something you can do and sometimes there isn’t. He already had a whole career, he’s been a folk guy for many years.

MR: His version of your song “East Of Eden” was great.

JT: Yeah, it’s very nice. But then you just go, “Never mind on me getting a viral video, then,” and what do you try to do? I guess the answer is, “Everything you can think of.”

MR: I think after all the self-promotion, there has to come a point where it’s, “Okay, now that I’ve done that, what is it that I really want accomplished?”

JT: I used to run this club called The Backdoor at San Diego State University but nobody would show up. I had Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry and all these great concerts I promoted. I thought it was the way I was advertising the shows, so I figured out a way to put posters on the stairways into the college so that I only needed ten posters and everyone saw–It still didn’t work. Finally, I put on a show one time that was old movies and free popcorn for twenty-five cents. The place sold out and we had a huge line of people who couldn’t get in. I realized that I wasn’t giving the people what they wanted. It wasn’t the advertising, it wasn’t the promotion, it was what I was selling and they didn’t want it. As soon as I gave them something they wanted, bam, they were there by the hundreds. That’s the whole thing about self promotion on the internet, everybody I know is sitting there trying to figure out how to make a webpage because they think they should have one and I just don’t know if it’s going to do them any good.

MR: It can be so quick, temporary, then devastating.

JT: Yeah, it’s like, “Boom, you’re ready for the big time!” Wait a minute, there are no places to play for people to work out how to be a player. I used to get fifty bucks to play the blues in a bar 35 years ago. If I go out now I’ll get paid maybe fifty bucks. I’m just noticing that all the other numbers have gone up by a factor of twenty to thirty to forty since that time, but the amount that I get paid stays the same.

MR: Do you think that’s because there’s too much musical proliferation? Maybe music is now supplying another kind of need, like a rite of passage for kids going through an artistic phase and using that medium?

JT: Boy, I don’t know about that. That would be kind of sad. At a certain point, some people are writing songs and then I see these apps come out that will write a song for you, all you have to do is dictate the words. I dictate in the words and it comes out with a pretty cool song with a backing track and everything and I’m going, “Okay Jack, everyone always said they’re not going to be able to make a computer to write songs,” and I’ve always said, “Yes, they will, it’ll just take a while and I’d like to write as many cool songs as I can before that happens.”

MR: So what’s the future beyond videos for you?

JT: Well I’m pondering that right now. I’m going to do a show in Nashville on October 4th, which is put on by the Bluebird, it’s called Bluebird On The Mountain. But in terms of my general future, these videos may be it for a while. I’ll just keep doing those, and then I’d like to build up so when I go out and play I have a playing audience that comes and sees me, I’d like to make that a little bigger and do some more playing. Maybe if I write something that I think could be a little movie or cool little short video with a story or something, I might try to get into something like that. I’ll just try to get the songs to keep coming through and put them in any project I can.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne