A Conversation with Oak Ridge Boy, Joe Bonsall – HuffPost 4.9.14

Mike Ragogna: Joe, with your new live album Boys’ Night Out, the Oak Ridge Boys are celebrating their 41st anniversary. And it’s with President George H. W. Bush, our 41st president. That’s way clever! How did that come about?

Joe Bonsall: Our friendship with President Bush or the event?

MR: Okay, both! How did the friendship begin and how did that lead to this performance?

JB: Our friendship with George Herbert Walker Bush dates back to 1982 when Ronald Reagan invited the Oak Ridge Boys to perform on the lawn of the white house for the annual congressional barbecue and a young, tall, skinny vice president came running at us during sound check–a lawn-of-the-white-house-sound check is kind of surreal anyway, but there we are doing it–and he come running towards us claiming to be our biggest fan. He said he couldn’t be at the show that night, he had to leave town, but was there any way we could sing a few songs for him? So we said, “Of course!” He started requesting album cuts, so we said, “Oh wow, this guy does know our stuff.” Even from our 1977 album Y’all Come Back Saloon, he wanted to hear “Freckles.” He said, “I love ‘Freckles.’ Can you guys do ‘Freckles'” We did the best “Freckles” we could for him. He gave us all the Vice-President of the United States t-shirt, which I never even knew existed back then and I have tried to find it…I’ve got it here somewhere, I know I do. But anyway, it struck up a friendship with him that lasted all of these years. We campaigned with him when he ran for president, we campaigned with him when he ran against Bill Clinton and lost, we stayed friends all of these years. He invites us and our family to see him and Barbara up in Kennebunkport. I wrote a book several years ago called G.I. Joe And Lillie about my parents in World War II and Barbara Bush wrote the forward. We’ve just been good friends all of these years. We were there for his fiftieth wedding anniversary, his eightieth birthday party; we’ve just stayed close. Every year, we play Galveston, Texas, at the Opry 1894. It’s an old theater in downtown Galveston, and a lot of those years, George and Barbara come over from Houston to the show, and they did this year. What made it kind of unique–and of course this is our forty-first year–we were told by the RIAA that we’ve sold an excess of forty one million albums worldwide, and here comes president forty-one. Everything’s looking like the number forty-one here! What we did to be a little bit different–and I’ve got to tell you this is Duane Allen’s wife Norah Lee Allen’s idea, Norah Lee who works at the Grand Ole Opry in a backup group and has for forty years on that stage–she called and said, “You know how his affinity is for socks? You guys have even made fun of him for years for his goofy socks that he wears! You guys ought to buy some goofy socks and when he gets there, y’all ought to show him your socks.” We thought, “Well that would be funny.” So we sent our tour director Darrick [Kinslow] to Wal-Mart and got all kinds of goofy socks. I guess they have a goofy socks section at Wal-Mart. [laugh] But we put on all these bright, goofy-colored socks and him and Barbara went into the dressing room, we got on the bus, put on our socks, went up to the dressing room door, took off our shoes like a bunch of kids and ran in there and showed him our socks. He laughed so hard and he pulled back his pants and showed us his socks, which were the most unique pair he’d ever had on. He had an emblazoned photo of himself on the socks. We just laughed and laughed, and I guess they took pictures and the next thing you know, it’s released as a piece, Forty One And Forty One And Forty One. It was a fun event. Nobody got a really good picture of this, but that night on stage, they were sitting out there in the audience and we all put our feet up on the speaker and pulled back our pants and showed our socks on stage. They were some ugly, goofy socks!

MR: I’m looking at a picture of the socks right now…yikes, you’re so right.

JB: [laughs] Mine, I think, were yellow with little red hearts on them. Who would even wear these things? But he’s become kind of known for the socks, man. I think it’s kind of funny…here he is about to turn ninety, right? I think he’s eighty-nine, but he’s still out there going to things. You look at TV at night and there he is at this game, there he is at Duke with Coach Krzyzewski and then there he is celebrating this and there he is doing a Points of Light event and there’s Barbara still speaking for illiteracy and women’s issues and hospitals, and they both are still so involved with the Cancer Center there in Houston. I don’t know man, it’s like I always tell him, I feel the same way when we’re around Chuck Yeager, who’s also a good friend of ours who’s the same age. He celebrates his birthday with us every year and here’s Chuck Yeager and George Bush. I always say, “Man, I’ll be sixty-six in a month, I’ve been with the Oak Ridge Boys for forty-one years. If I ever grow up, I want to be those guys!” I ask Chuck Yeager, “What have you been doing lately, sir?” and he says, “Well, I’ve been over in South Africa teaching young boys how to fly F-16s.” What? [laughs] That is just unimaginable to me. The energy level and the service that these kind of people have brought to our country over all these years… Your political swing doesn’t matter, be a conservative, be a liberal, it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to sit back and look at a guy like George Bush and think about his being ambassador to China, think about his being the head of the CIA, think about his being Vice-President, President, World War II hero, all the things that he has done over all these years, and you’ve got to just be in awe of the man and what he stands for.

MR: And you guys are still his musical ambassadors after all these years.

JB: You know, we are. He had a favorite Oak Ridge Boys song from years ago. The original title was “Portrait Of An American Family,” and he’s always loved that song. In fact, the last couple of times we’ve seen him, he’s asked for it and we didn’t really have it ready to sing for him. This time we knew he was going to be possibly coming to Galveston, so we worked it up so that on stage that night we could sing “Portrait Of An American Family” for George and Barbara because he just loves that song so much. So we even find ourselves customizing our shows for him. We make sure “Amazing Grace” is on the show. These are things that we know he really loves.

MR: Forty-one years is a long time for any group, my friend. What is it about the Oak Ridge Boys that makes it so enduring and endearing?

JB: First of all, we don’t know how to stop. I think we’ve been able to plan every aspect of our career, we’ve been able to look at everything we’ve ever done and try to do it right, but we’ve never been able to plan how to even slow down, let alone stop. I think it’s in the DNA of the Oak Ridge Boys. I think as long as we’re feeling good and singing good that we’ll just keep on singing. In fact, I threw a tweet out there yesterday–I do the @OakRidgeBoys on Twitter–I threw an April Fool’s tweet out that said, “Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton and Taylor Swift will be opening for the Oak Ridge Boys’ Farewell Tour April 2015.” They weren’t even noticing the joke of Luke Bryan, Blake and Taylor opening for us, they weren’t even noticing that. They saw that phrase, “Farewell Tour” and people were freaking out. I had to give it away that it was April Fool’s much quicker than I wanted to. I came back and said, “Okay, happy April Fool’s Day! Listen, people, if we’re still alive in 2015, I assure you we’ll be planning 2016.” [laughs] If we’re still here, we’ll be planning the next year, we just don’t know how to stop. We’re the old guys on the block, man. Everybody’s feeling good, everybody’s singing good. That’s why we’re doing this live album that’s coming out, our first ever live album. It’s a boy’s night out thing. Duane Allen said last year, “None of us know how long this is going to last. We’re all in our sixties and seventies now and we’re all singing so good we need to be recording our shows. I don’t know what’s going to happen with them, but we need to take the equipment out there. We’re performing at this level still which is amazing at our age, we should be recording our shows for posterity! But we took the equipment out, started recording live shows and probably got sixty-two songs in the can from about twenty-two shows over the years that we’ve worked. It just so happened that our manager Jim Halsey was talking to Cleopatra Records at the same time we were doing all this. Cleopatra’s probably the largest independent label in the world and they said to Jim, “We would love to do a live album on the Oak Ridge Boys. Let us be the one, we’ll release it worldwide–MP3, CD, vinyl–we’ll get behind this thing and make a big deal out of it. Their first ever live album? Let us do it!” So all of a sudden, boom, our first fourteen song live album. I don’t know if there’ll be any more or not. There may be, but for right now, the concentration is on Boys’ Night Out. You just hang around long enough and good stuff happens.

MR: And it’s like a baby greatest hits package since it touches on so many classics that you guys accumulated. Are there some songs that have deeper meanings that you’ve discovered after performing them over all these years? Any surprises in how you interpret their meaning these days versus when you first recorded them?

JB: I don’t know about surprises, but there are some songs that are really relevant to our career. “Y’all Come Back Saloon” was our first big hit in 1977, which started it all. “You’re The One” was our second biggest hit. “Thank God For Kids,” to me, was a very pivotal song in 1982 and it’s still very meaningful today. Of course, “Elvira” and “Bobbie Sue” were the gigantic crossovers, and “Elvira” especially was just like the biggest record in creation. Everybody in the whole wide world would love to have an “Elvira” every time out, and so would we, but that kind of magic just happens. The whole year of 1981, the whole country was singing, “Oom papa mow mow…” with Richard and now when we sing it, it still goes over so big. But to answer your question a little more specifically, I think over the years, songs do change and morph just a little bit, and to me, the exciting thing about the Boys’ Night Out project is we’ve got all these hit songs there, but it’s the way we’re doing them right now. If you come to hear the Oak Ridge Boys tonight with our band in a big show situation, you’re going to hear “Leaving Louisiana In The Broad Daylight” the way we do it right now. Yes, the songs do change. They get a little bit more edgy than the original records, there’s a little more excitement, obviously, to the live version. I think all of those songs change a bit over the years. That’s why I think the live album, at this point in our career, is a nice idea, because it shows us right now, how we are today. People want to hear the originals? Hey, man, they’re all over the place. How many greatest hits compilations can you put out on a group? They’ve put out tons of them on us; you can find our songs everywhere. Put “Elvira” in on iTunes and probably ten versions of it come up over the years, but not this live version. Here it is live and kicking with the audience singing with us. It’s totally updated and different. I think for our real fans, this is going to be a gigantic treat, because our fans have clamored for a live album for years, and for people who don’t know us or don’t know us as well, to listen to this makes them go, “Oh wow, these guys are still sounding great, holy cow.” I think it’s going to be a good project for us all around. Plus the new worldwide publicity that we’ve been getting from this relationship with Cleopatra has been enormous. I’ve seen reviews on the album from Spain and Portugal and the British Isles and Scotland and Ireland and Scandinavia. I’ve done several online interviews with a lot of major worldwide press people. We haven’t had that kind of worldwide coverage in like forever. I think this is going to be a great way to introduce a lot of people around the world to the Oak Ridge Boys as well or to those who may have forgotten us. See, the cool thing about Europe especially is they love the legendary, been around a long time kind of acts. It’s tradition or something; they just love this tradition. The way people are writing about us over there is pretty cool right now. I have to give Cleopatra credit for that.

MR: And you have had so many international hits and I wish you and the band many more. So what do you think of what’s going on in country music right now?

JB: First of all, I think our days of big hit records are over. I think recognition and legendary status and stuff like that is where the Oak Ridge Boys are now and that will continue on as long as we keep performing at this level. But it’s a younger business now and I may not love everything that’s out there, but I think that these kids today have taken country music to a new level. I’ll give you an example: for us to fill colosseums in the early eighties we had to have records cross all barriers into other forms of radio besides country. These kids today are filling up arenas and stadiums with country airplay. So what have they done? People like The Band Perry and Lady Antebellum and Taylor Swift and Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line and Keith Urban, there’s a ton of them, and they have taken country music and made it the new popular music. They’re filling up arenas and colosseums on just country airplay and country popularity and country TV. So what is now country music has become the new pop music as far as I can see, and I’ve got to give all the credit to these kids who are doing it today. They’re younger, they’re faster, they’re hipper, they’re cooler and they’re making it happen. I have no bones to pick with any of it. We’ve had a great career, we’ve had our share of hits–fifty-some charted hit records over all these years–so I think that’s what’s happening now is great. A lot of these kids have a lot of love and respect for the Oak Ridge Boys too. I think it’s a great time to be in country music. You know the old adage, “If you don’t like what’s on the radio, that’s why God and Steve Jobs gave us an iPod.” Today is Emmylou Harris’ birthday. [Note: This interview occurred on April 2nd.] Emmylou Harris is one of my favorites of all time. I have a ton of Emmylou Harris on my iPod. If I don’t want to be listening to The Band Perry, I can listen to Emmylou. If I want to listen to Merle Haggard today instead of Luke Bryan, I can certainly do that. Everything is out there for everybody to download and listen to, more so than it’s ever been before. For those who don’t like what they’re listening to now, they can listen to what they want to. Heck, they can go listen to Frank Sinatra.

MR: Joe, what advice do you have for new artists?

JB: Well, I don’t know what advice I can give to artists these days because there seem to be so many. I live in Nashville, Tennessee, and my gosh, you can go downtown right now this afternoon and walk down Second Avenue and listen to one new kid after another singing on the street corner or in the bars and they all sound pretty doggone good. You’ve got to do something to make yourself stick out from the other guys. A lot of these guys kind of sound the same. I don’t know, I guess if you’re really, really good and you’re moving people with your music then stay at it and don’t give up your dream because dreams do come true and a lot of hard work and a lot of great talent will pay off for you eventually. But I still think you’ve got to work on trying to be something a little bit different than what people are hearing.

MR: Do you feel like the Oak Ridge Boys did that when you guys were starting?

JB: Definitely! When we came out everybody was saying, “Well there is a group…” and they were talking about The Statler Brothers. Well now, the Oak Ridge Boys and The Statlers, aside from being a four-man singing group, had nothing whatsoever in common. We didn’t sing alike, our songs were different, we didn’t sound the same. But the thing is, yes, when “Y’all Come Back Saloon” hit the airwaves you can talk to people all over the place and they will say, “My gosh, when ‘Saloon’ hit there was nothing like that on the radio.” The Oak Ridge Boys had a whole new niche happening right there. That gospel harmony, that fullness of singing, that quality of sound and a song like that, it revolutionized a whole lot of things and it certainly revolutionized our career because we did manage to come out and sound like everybody else. We had a new thing. Nobody had quite what we had–a bunch of cool young guys, dressing cool, singing cool, being cool–and it worked for us back then and it obviously continued to work for us. I think we put something new on the table, I think we really did.

MR: And speaking of gospel, of course the Oak Ridge Boys have had a significant gospel career with a certain project produced by Leon Russell.

JB: We did! Several years ago–well it was a long time ago now, twelve or thirteen years ago now. But yeah, we worked with Leon and it was fun. Leon’s a great talent, obviously. Gospel music has always meant a lot to the Oak Ridge Boys, it’s the basis of our sound and attitude and how we do things today. We recorded some gospel over the years… About thirteen or fourteen years ago, we recorded From The Heart for Spring Hill, and we did one just two years ago called Back Home Again produced by Ben Isaacs of The Isaacs. We’re always paying a little tribute to our roots. We still do some gospel in our shows. People enjoy hearing the Oak Ridge Boys singing that four-part harmony, Southern-style gospel. It’s kind of the basis, I think, of our whole sound and always has been and it still is.

MR: What are your thoughts on gospel these days?

JB: I’m a huge fan of gospel music. I love southern style gospel and I love a lot of the kids that are singing it. My favorite acts right now are probably The Isaacs, The Easters, I love the Booth Brother guys. There’s a lot of southern-style gospel that sounds great to me. Bill Gaither has been able to keep that all alive. I think Southern-style gospel is in a good place right now. The contemporary Christian gospel is what’s gotten big with the kids. I kind of wish that some of the Southern-style groups were getting a younger audience like the Christian Contemporary kids are. Third Day came out to hear us sing. They were singing at night and we were singing in the afternoon at the Strawberry Festival in Plain City, Florida. They stood on stage and watched us sing and were very complimentary. Great guys, great talents, but a lot of these younger, contemporary Christian artists are getting the young kids these days. I don’t know if it’s their more rock ‘n’ roll approach to gospel or what, but for good old Southern-style gospel music like we came up on… I’m pretty happy with a lot of the kids that are playing today, I just wish the audiences were younger. I wish they’d latch on to it.

MR: They may latch on to it. Gospel music takes on some beautiful nuances now and then, and I think that’s where you get an interested wave of new listeners. Christian Contemporary almost feeds people into gospel because that’s the next, natural step if you’re looking for something more than pop, you know what I mean?

JB: Yes, I agree with you totally. I think that is the absolute perfect outlook for it.

MR: Speaking of gospel, the Oak Ridge Boys sang background on Paul Simon’s “Slip Sliding Away.” Do you remember that session?

JB: Oh my gosh, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was one of the most meaningful things to us because back in ’75 when we recorded that song with Paul, we had just won a Grammy for gospel and we met Paul at the Grammys in ’75. It was February and we said to him, “Man, Paul, we need some help here.” We were dying on Columbia Records and Paul was with Columbia. This was before we met Jim Halsey and made the move to ABC/Dot, which became MCA and all that. We were on Columbia, we were singing songs about the moon and the stars in the sky and we were just dying. We said, “Paul, you need to write us something.” I’ll never forget Paul saying, “I’m a selfish songwriter. If I write something and I love it, I’ve got to sing it. I never share with nobody.” We said, “Well, write a new song for you and we’ll come sing on it with you!” That’s how “Slip Sliding Away” began. Several months later, he called us up and said, “Man, come up here, I’ve got the song.” He flew us up to New York, we spent two days up there with him at the famous A&R studios with Phil Ramone producing. We sat in a circle with Paul in the studio for hours singing “Slip Sliding Away” singing the oohs and the ahs and everything. When that thing came out, we were still starving to death, but I’ve got to tell you, man, it was a big shot in the arm for us because “Slip Sliding Away” was such a gigantic song in ’76; it was huge. Maybe the world didn’t know that that was us singing with Paul Simon, but we knew it and it was a big, big deal to us, man. It was a big deal. We learned a lot from working with Paul Simon. We even learned how to not take everything so super-serious. Here he is serious as can be about the song and the music and editing his voice right down to the right words that he liked the way he sang and all of a sudden, it’s time to go see the Red Sox play the Yankees and Paul’s gone. A limo pulls up outside and Paul says, “Well, see you guys, I’m going to the game.” Whoop, he’s gone.

MR: [laughs] I was going to ask since he’s such a baseball nut if you had any baseball moments with him and you did. That’s great. Any others?

JB: We had that, and I’ll never forget this… Here I am, what, like twenty seven-years old, twenty-eight, sitting here with Paul Simon, a hero, and I’m talking about growing up in Philly and pitching ball cards and he was talking about growing up in New York how they would flip ball cards. He sent somebody out to buy a bunch of baseball cards and next thing you know, there’s a break in recording and Paul and I are flipping and pitching baseball cards like a Philly kid and New York City kid showing how we did it in our different cities and what we did with our baseball cards when we were kids. The whole session stopped while we pitched ball cards. It was incredible. And we sat there, the two of us, opening the packages to see who the cards were before we started messing with them. “Oh wait a minute, that’s a Yankee, I’ll take it.” “Wait a minute! That’s a good-looking Philly, I’ll take that.” We were putting the cards in our pocket, flipping, pitching, we turned into two little New York and Philadelphia city boys sitting on the floor of A&R studios with baseball cards and then all of a sudden, it was, “All right, back to singing.” “Let get this song down, I’ve got another song idea” and all the ball cards were left on the floor and next thing you know we’re in the studio again.”

MR: [laughs] God, I remember as a kid being as excited to play with the cards as it was just opening the pack and seeing who you got.

JB: Oh yeah! And you know what, my friend? I have never, ever, ever told that baseball card story.

MR: Wow. I appreciate it.

JB: I always think about him going off to the ball game. The funny thing was, it was the Red Sox against the Yankees, which is a big, big deal, and me and Richard got on the subway, went to the game, scalped tickets outside and sat up in the outfield thinking “That doggone Paul Simon’s sitting down there right behind home plate.”

MR: [laughs] What an awesome story, man. Dude, my only worthy baseball story is although I grew up in New York, I sang the national anthem at a Red Sox game. I felt all guilty afterwards. I felt like I needed to put on a hat, fake moustache and glasses the next time I was in NYC.

JB: [laughs] Years later in the early eighties, when we were the biggest thing in the business, we got to be friends with George Steinbrenner and we would go to Yankee games up there and meet the Yankees in the dugout with Steinbrenner and I’m thinking, “A-ha, take that, Paul Simon!”

MR: [laughs] Oh my God. [laughs more] Joe, I’ve got to let you go, but you’re awesome. It was really great to catch up with you after all these years.

JB: Well thank you, my brother. It’s great to talk to you, too, and I appreciate you writing about it.

Transcribed By Galen Hawthorne