No touring, but News hits rhythm
They’re the News. Their breakthrough album was “Sports.” And now, ladies and gentlemen, “Weather.”
It’s an appropriate title at a time the world tries to weather the coronavirus crisis and Bay Area rocker Huey Lewis tries to weather a challenging time in his career.
But by no means is the band’s 10th album pandemicgenerated. “Weather” was in the works years before anyone knew of COVID19. While Lewis continues to experience hearing issues that prevent him from touring, he’s proud and uplifted about Huey Lewis and the News’ first new album of original music since 2001.
“It’d been a while since our last original record for several reasons,” Lewis said on The Chronicle’s “Giants Splash” podcast. “No. 1, we’re not all too prolific at this ripe old age. No. 2, we were doing 75 shows a year.
“That’s a lot of days on the road, and we have lives. So there wasn’t a lot of time. Also, it’s tough to come up with original ideas when you’ve already had a few.” The band was shooting for a 10song album but settled with seven tracks because Lewis’ Meniere’s disease — he was diagnosed with the innerear disorder in 2018 — prevents him from singing, recording and performing. It ended the band’s touring. And it’s a bummer for someone who loves to play music and for fans who love to listen to his work.
“Weather” is a diverse mix of rock, funk, blues and country, with the latter genre bringing Lewis back to his days with Clover, a country rock band from Marin.
Lewis (then known as Hugh Cregg) attended Mill Valley’s Strawberry Point School and Edna Maguire for junior high. He then went to prep school in New Jersey and spent time at Cornell University and in Europe before returning to Marin, joining Clover and eventually forming Huey Lewis and the News.
Influenced creatively by his parents — his father was a jazz drummer and piano player, his mother an artist — Lewis flourished growing up in Marin, which he called a “community of artists . ... we sort of all knew each other.”
Here’s what he’s had to say about
growing up in the Bay Area, “Weather,” the pandemic and more:
On being raised in Marin: “In those days, in the ’60s and ’70s, everybody was in a band. That’s what you did. There was live music everywhere. It’s hard to fathom now. But in those days, nobody spun records or had DJs — it was all live music in clubs.”
On the album, which he called “among our best work,” taking as long as it did to produce and release: “We were figuring it didn’t matter how long that was as long as the band was good, and we were. Actually, we were better than ever. We had these seven things recorded and mixed, and my hearing collapsed. So we waited a year to see if that was going to remedy itself, and it didn’t. So we thought we’d just share them with the fans.”
On the song “One of the Boys,” which Lewis wrote for Willie Nelson at the request of producer Dave Cobb. Nelson wound up not recording it, so Lewis decided to use it himself and summoned old Clover mate John McFee, who rose to fame with the Doobie Brothers, to play pedal steel: “We were left with this song, and I had written it as if it might’ve been Willie’s story. At that point, Bill Gibson, our drummer, said, ‘I think we should do it.’ ‘Really? Billy, it’s country.’ He says, ‘It sounds like us. You sound good on it.’
I relistened to it with that in mind, and I realized the lyrics that I had written were in fact my life story. So we included it on the record. I sent it down to McFee, he played steel on it, killed it, and there you have it.”
On the song “Her Love Is Killing Me,” an upbeat throwback that could’ve fit nicely on previous albums. (Lewis and former News guitarist Chris Hayes actually wrote it a couple of decades ago, and the band didn’t feel comfortable with it until about five years ago when Johnny Colla added a horn chart): “It’s interesting because it’s a simple song, and sometimes the simplest stuff is the hardest stuff to get right ... but it all fell together for us.”
On his musical, “Heart of Rock and Roll,” which premiered successfully in San Diego: “It was a big smash hit, got great reviews and sold out everything, and we were about to bring it to New York when this COVID thing hit. We’re biding our time and hoping we can get it to Broadway when we get on the other side of this thing.”