Gary James' Interview With Singer/Songwriter
Lauren Wood



She is best know for songs "Please Don't Leave", a duet with Michael McDonald of The Doobie Brothers fame, and "Fallen", included in the soundtrack of the film Pretty Woman. That song has been covered by Johnny Mathis and Nicolette Larson among others. Other songs she's written have been recorded by Gladys Knight, Philip Bailey, Cher, Dusty Springfield, Tiffany, Sammy Hagar and Billy Preston. She even started her own record label, Bad Art Records, in 1997. The lady we are talking about is Lauren Wood. Lauren Wood spoke with us about her musical journey.

Q - So, you're re-mastering and re-releasing your two Warner Brothers albums.

A - Yeah.

Q - To me that means when you signed with Warner Brothers you had a clause in the contract saying you retained ownership of your masters. Now, in the music business that's kind of rare, isn't it?

A - Well, no. That's not exactly what happened. I don't now when this happened, but there was some law, it's being referred to as the 35 year law, and I don't know when it was passed. It says if you request it from the record company there's a four year period you can request it. Once 35 years is up since the time you released the record, in it's four year period, if you request it, it seems like you can get your masters back. The guy who has been doing this for a lot of different artists, he's done it for a couple of my buddies, Stephen Bishop and Robbie Dupree. He takes advantage of the 35 year law and I'm requesting that you release my masters. So that's what we did. So, it wasn't a thing where I signed and got this incredible deal where they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on me and then a few years later I get the masters back. (laughs) This is something that is like a U.S. law. I think it's being tested in the courts right now actually, but the company I signed with are the ones that are doing this. It's this lawyer, Evan Cohen, that's been doing this for a bunch of my contemporaries.

Q - You have or had your own record company, Bad Art Records?

A - I have my own record company, yeah.

Q - When I think of a record company I think of a studio, a pressing plant, a promotion and publicity department, a distributor. Do you have all that or is the work farmed out?

A - Most of it is farmed out, but I do have my own studio. Pressing plant, you just press wherever you like the sound of. I particularly like JVC because they had a plant in Japan that has a K2 machine that sounds better. Before that I used to use Technicolor. Different plants. People say digital sounds the same, but it doesn't. This is a battle I've had with engineers since digital started. I found my favorite engineer in the world, a guy named Michael Vertek, who mixed my two records I put out on my own label. We found each other because we were fighting the tides of people saying digital is the same. "It's zeros and ones," or something. "It all sounds the same," but it doesn't. He and I were fighting the tide online until we found each other. "Yes, I hear it!" And we both went, "Yes! I hear it too!"

Q - In the mid-1960s you had a band called Rebecca And The Sunnybrook Farmers. What kind of band was that?

A - (laughs) We played Classical Cartoon music. That would be the only way I can describe it. That was my first band. Classical Cartoon music and some protest music too because the Vietnam War was going on and we were all kind of hippies and hated the Vietnam War. Some of the members left the band and went off and did other things. The three of us stayed together and it became the band Chunky, Novi And Ernie. We made one record as Rebecca And The Sunnybrook Farmers and then we were signed by Warner Brothers as Chunky, Novi And Ernie. We made two records as that and again that was more kind of fine tuned. I was Chunky, although I wasn't chunky anymore. I'd been chunky since I was ten years old.

Q - Did that band, Rebecca And The Sunnybrook Farmers catch the attention of Frank Zappa?

A - I think we actually had already dwindled down to Chunky, Novi And Ernie and that's the band that caught Framk Zappa's attention. He just loved us. He though we were so weird and so artistic and he just loved us. There was actually a bidding war between Frank Zappa's Bizarre label and Warner Brothers. It was a really hard decision because Frank was our idol, but then we had a couple of our idols who were also at Warner Brothers. We liked Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman. I think Joni Mitchell was there at the time. It was like, "Oh man, which artist's label do we go with?" Frank was cool. We went with Warner Brothers 'cause we thought we'd have more chances of longevity and commercial success. Frank was totally cool with that. What's interesting is that Frank Zappa's lawyer was named Mutt Cohen. His son is Even Cohen who was the guy going around, getting bands and artists released from their deals. He's the one doing the 35 year deal. So, that's sort of an interesting circle.

Q - And you sang on one of Frank Zappa's albums, "The Grand Wazoo".

A - Yeah.

Q - He must've been a great guy to work with in the studio then.

A - Oh, he was so funny and so artistic. He didn't do any drugs. I don't think he drank. We always thought he was a pot head, did a lot of acid, but he was just an incredible musician who worked day and night in the studio. He had a studio in his house and he had other studios he worked in all the time. He was constantly recording, doing extremely complex music and was really a great guy.

Q - Did you know that as part of John and Yoko's This Is Not Here exhibit at the Everson Museum in downtown Syracuse, Frank Zappa contributed an old V.W. (Volkswagen) to the exhibition?

A - So, they brought the whole car in?

Q - They did.

A - Wow! Cool! (laughs)

Q - I guess the message that John and Yoko were trying to convey is that anybody could be an artist.

A - We had a thing in our group Rebecca And The Sunnybrook Farmers, we would let people join the group. Our joke was anybody who wanted to could. Sometimes we had fifteen members. (laughs) But mostly it was a core group of, I'd have to think about it.

Q - Where did the group perform? Did you play nightclubs?

A - We would play all kinds of venues and basically we did that when we first started out and then we would have it down do, "No, you can't play with us." But when we first started we were like hippies and we'd say, "If you want to play with us, you can." Sometimes we'd just have a bunch of dancers join us on stage. The rest of it was just too complex. People couldn't just join in and play. It was even more complex in Chunky, Novi And Ernie. That's why Frank loved us.

Q - Because you were so different.

A - You had people like Michael McDonald of The Doobie Brothers and Patrick Simmons of The Doobie Brothers to play on your Warner Brothers album.

Q - How'd you get them to do that? Did the producer bring them in? Were they recording in a studio next to you?

A - Sometimes they were recording next to us, but we had the same producer, Ted Templeman. When he first showed us the tape, before Michael McDonald joined the group, we kept saying, "Don't sign them. They sound like a bar band." But then as soon as Michael joined the group, oh my God, now you're talking! Michael has one of my favorite voices in the whole world ever and is one of my favorite writers of all time. But yeah, we became friends with The Doobie Brothers because half of the time they were recording with Ted Templeman. Plus, sometimes they were recording in the room next door at Sunset Sound. So, it was kind of both things.

Q - After your follow-up album, "Cat Trick", you walked away from the music business. You started writing songs for TV and movies. Isn't that a rather tough field to break into?

A - I would just basically write songs for myself. I didn't exactly walk away. I just branched out a little bit and found different venues. I wasn't just satisfied doing one thing, so I would branch out. I even did greeting cards, dressing up my cat, and did a greeting card line. I did a really crazy movie called We Must Be Told, which had a bunch of stars in it in cameo appearances. It was kind of like an ad-lib thing. Pee Wee Herman was in it. It was like a take-off on an Edward D. Wood movie. We're doing a full-length, horrible movie because my friends and I were fans of bad movies because we thought they were hysterically funny. So, we did our own version of it. It was called They Must Be Told, and I was the star of it. I did a character called Little Two, which later I branched out and did voice-overs for cartoons. It kind of started from They Must Be Told, doing this character Little Two. Then I started doing voices for Rugrats and Jackie Chan and some Disney projects where I'd sing and do voices.

Q - Who else was in They Must Be Told?

A - Linda Ronstadt, Elvira, Toni Basil, Terri Garr, Buck Henry.

Q - You did get some big names there!

A - Yeah. Leslie Ann Warren, Mike Post, who wrote all the TV show themes in the '60s and '70s. It was a pretty fun and crazy thing that we did, which was also very avant-garde because later in life, in comedy, people are kind of doing the same thing we were doing then. Curb Your Enthusiasm does the same thing. You know what you have to do in a little scene, but there's no script and you just have to ad-lib and be funny. So that's what we did way before it was a thing to do something like that.

Q - Sounds like Saturday Night Live maybe adopted or adapted your style of comedy.

A - Yeah. I would think so. I'm a big fan of really crazy comedy. I love Saturday Night Live. So many brilliant, brilliant comic actors have come out of Saturday Night Live. It's unbelievable.

Q - Are you still a fan of the show?

A - Yeah. I always have been. From day one. You can never top that original cast, but I still love it now too. It can be different from week to week, but there's some brilliant people. Kate McKinnon is a comic genius. She's great. Kristen Wiig. Fred Armisen and Bill Hader. Bill Hader has done Documentary Now with Fred Armisen, which is brilliant. Bill Murray has had a incredible career. All kinds of people. One of my favorites of all time is Gilda Radner. She died way to soon. It's so sad to see her husband Gene Wilder, another brilliant comic actor.

Q - When you write a song that becomes a hit, did you write the song with that person in mind, or is it just a coincidence?

A - Usually it's just a coincidence. I usually just write for myself and then other people find it either through a publisher or a friend of a friend. Somebody knows me or somebody likes my work and asks me for songs. I think I only one time tried to write for somebody. I heard The Pointer Sisters were looking for songs. So, I specifically once wrote something for them. Turned it in to Richard Perry. He said, "It's fantastic, but I'm taking them in a new direction. This sounds like what they've done for years, so I'm going to pass on it." Once he passed on it, then Gladys Knight picked it up and it got recorded anyways. But I actually wrote it for The Pointer Sisters. That was the only time I've ever done that.

Q - And now you're off to Europe for a month?

A - Yeah. I'm going to Italy for a month and then in between while we're in Italy we're going to take off and go to Egypt and go scuba diving in the Red Sea. So, I travel a lot lately. I travel a lot to go scuba diving because with climate change we keep losing coral and we lose sea life. The general public doesn't realize what's under the water. They look out at the ocean and they see a bunch of blue. It looks like nothingness. There's certain places in the world where there are these incredible, gorgeous gardens of color and shape and beautiful sea life. My favorite is probably scuba diving with manta rays. I also love turtles and octopus and of course I haven't scuba dived with whales, but one day I would like to scuba dive with whales. (laughs).

Q - Just don't scuba dive with a shark.

A - Oh, I do all the time. Not great whites. Never a great white. I would be terrified to see a great white in the ocean. I've scuba dived with hundreds of black pit, white pit reef sharks, grey sharks. All kinds of sharks, but not great whites. I will scuba dive with hammer heads. I just haven't been in the area, but I've got a trip planned where I'll be scuba diving with hammer heads too.

Q - Aren't you afraid they're going to turn on you?

A - No.

Q - You're fearless.

A - No. (laughs) I wouldn't say I'm fearless. I just don't have a fear of sharks. Sharks usually attack when you're above water, when you're at the top. They particularly attack surfers because when sharks are underneath the water and they look up, they see the shape of the surf board. To them it looks like a seal, and seals are their favorite dinner because seals are fat. They don't have a lot of bones and there's a lot of blubber in them and it's their favorite dish. So when sharks are under the water and they see the shape of a surf board they'll come up to the top and bite them. Usually they bite and let go because they don't like it to be a bone. Sometimes they'll continue. Sometimes people get killed.

Q - So, the fact that sharks are coming further inland tells us seals aren't as plentiful.

A - That's true. We're losing all kinds of sea life from pollution and over-fishing. Other sea life dies because they don't have food. So, it's a terribly vicious cycle and it starts with what man does, global warming and what we do, over-fishing, over doing everything. I do anything I can to fight global warming. I have solar panels in my house. I recycle. I try not to use too much plastic, but there's only so much I can do right now. I try to help climate change with my vote. Other than that I just want to see what I can see before it's gone.

Official Website: LaurenWood.com

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