NHTE 601 Best Of, Volume 6

(Kenny Wayne Shepherd) “Every time I saw (Stevie Ray Vaughan) play, which was more than once, I was in just complete awe of him, just completely enthralled, and captivated, so, he really had a profound effect on me… It became I want to be able to affect people the way he affected people, or at least come close to it.  I met him several times and he was just one of the nicest people… If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know that there would be a Kenny Wayne Shepherd.”

(Carla Patullo) “You can sit in this place where you're like oh gosh this is horrible, or you can start to notice some of the other great things that surround you.”

(Natalie Gauci) “I met a manager who wanted to sign me up, in Sweden.  I ended up getting signed to Warner Scandinavia to be this big, big dance pop star.  And then that’s when my spiritual journey really started because I realized that I didn’t want to be a pop star anymore.  I was done, because it was too many people trying to take control of me and I didn't want to be a puppet anymore.  And so, I realized at that point that I was a singer-songwriter and I needed to just be true to myself and write the music that comes from my soul because that’s what’s real to me.”

(Eric Larsen) “We all grew up with Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Who records, and one of the beautiful things is I'm doing artist relations now for these companies and for the record label – I’m being exposed to a huge variety of music that I wouldn't normally have listened to and I'm falling in love with some of the new pop stuff.  I'm getting an affinity for hip hop that I’d never had before because it just I was closed off to those things”

(John Ellison) “I said to her, ‘You know what, you’re some kind of wonderful.’  I said, ‘I'm gonna write a song about you.’ So, when we left Rochester and I ate the lunch that she had packed for me, I started writing on the bag… I wrote the song we recorded it in Philadelphia.  We got a deal with Atlantic Records, and it was released.”

(Sarah Hester Ross) “I'm creating my own path when it comes to comedy entertainment and music in general.  And I also feel very, very fervently about the fact that I don't want my music just to be funny.  I want it to be good music.  I’m a musician first and foremost, so when you listen to my songs, I am hoping that you're going to like the musicality of it just as much as the message.”

(Thompson Square) “We've always had the thing where we've always said we both have to absolutely be ‘in’ one hundred percent no matter what and that's always kind of been our rule… when we write we usually have to have a third in the room because we have to have a referee to kind of keep us straight.”

(Vail Johnson) “Kenny (G) came and saw me play the next week ... I didn't know him. I didn't know he came and saw me play and he really liked what I was doing, I guess, because I get a call from him… he… wanted to hire me for a recording session which I later found out was kind of my audition for the band.”

(Mark Farner) “It's Florida, it's hot, the Hershey bars are liquid, she's smearing them into the cushions of this beautiful… I said, ‘Why are you doing that, Janice?’ and she looked up at me, she said, ‘I want to mess up Mick’s britches’!”

(Karen Kosowski) “Mickey got the call a couple months before the Super Bowl was about to happen and so when they asked me to come up with the arrangement and stuff I was like, oh my gosh, this is such a meaningful thing and this song means so much, but I grew up in Canada and I didn't grow up singing the American anthem. I grew up singing the Canadian anthem, so I had to learn it!”

(John PayCheck) “I get out there, there's this white light surrounding it and just makes it even more intimidating, more of a heavenly experience. So, it was kind of out of this world, really, it was a great night.”

(Whey Jennings) “My manager had asked me to learn how to sing Hallelujah.  And I wasn't really sure why she had done it at the time, but I'm glad she did, because I learned it while I was in rehab.  And when I got out of rehab, I incorporated it into my show.  And I call my kids up on stage to sing that song with me.  So, it's really become an amazing experience for me.  Every night I have at least one of my kids up there with me singing it.”

(Bruce Sudano) “Tommy James lived around the corner (and) came into the club one night.  Me being an aspiring songwriter – Tommy had already had songs like Hanky Panky and Mony Mony and I Think We're Alone Now, he was a very big star in America in those years – and he was very kind to me.  I got to meet him.  He lived around the corner.  I would go around the corner on breaks to his apartment and try to write songs with him.  I was fortunate enough to get on a song of his called Ball of Fire, which was released in 1969 and was a top 20 record back in those days.  He brought me into the recording studio, I got to see him make Crimson and Clover, Crystal Blue Persuasion.  I saw how a pop record was made.”

(Harmoni Kelley) “They were shuttling maybe five different bass players in. We never saw each other. But it was different time blocks. They were bringing different bass players in, and the band was there, and you had to learn the same, you know, six songs and sing, and they were recording it, like, on an iPhone and they sent all the auditions to Kenny. And then from those four or five auditions he picked one person that he wanted to come back in and audition with. And so, he picked me.”