Chris Isaak

December, 1998

Jeff Clarke: Kink fm 102 presents Chris Isaak and Silvertone in concert tonight at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall and delighted to do so. I think we've been playing Chris Isaak music since he put out his first album way back in 1985. He's been a mainstay on this radio station. He's here with us right now. Great to see you.

Chris Isaak: Thanks Jeff. I brought Kenney Dale Johnson, my drummer and attorney and Hershel Yatovitz with me.

JC: Always take your attorney with you and your guitar players, too.

CI: Kenney, can I answer that question?

KJ: No, I'd advise you not to.

CI: (imitating Clinton) I don't know the meaning of "Is." (laughs) I love that one.

JC: It is what it is, what it is.

CI: I don't know the meaning of the word "Is."

JC: Want to congratulate you on your latest album, "Speak of the Devil" It's been out for a while and I think it's one of your best ever. We'll talk about that in...

CI: Jeff, can I ask you a question?

JC: Sure. Go ahead.

CI: Since you're from the area. And you're kind of a guy who's a factotum. I think I can say that on the air...

JC: You can say whatever you like here. You're a big pop star.

CI: Arlene Schnitzer. What did she do to get an auditorium named after her?

JC: Well, I think she's been a great benefactor to the community and she also coughed up a load of dough to get her name plastered on there.

CI: (sound effect: Chris coughing and hacking into the mic) That's kind of a good visual, isn't it? There's actually a bronze statue out front of Arlene of Arlene coughing up the dough.

JC: We'd better do a song...How about something from the new album?

CI: O.K.

Chris and band play.

CI: Hit that coffee cup one more time for me.

JC: Percussionist and multitalented Kenny, brought in an old set of xylophones to the ...

CI: This is a Grumbacher Xylophone. A lot of people look at this and say, "I can't believe that you bring this into the studio". We were here, I guess we got here about six this morning, and we had to unload it. This is a beautiful instrument, for people who can't see it. It's over 14 feet , seven inches long. This is a performer model. There were seven of these made originally in Budapest. There's only one other that's longer. Each of the legs is bronze and granite and weighs over a hundred and fifty pounds. We took it apart, brought it up here.

JC: This is a $14,000 dollar instrument, if you can find one...which you can't. It's really priceless.

CI: Jeff, you're one of the few people who has realized that!

JC: You've always had you uptempo moments, but I've never heard you cut loose quite like you do on the title track of the new album, "Speak of the Devil." What happened on that?

CI: This was a kind of reactionary thing. The last album we did was the "Baja Sessions." Very laid back. Kind of Hawaiian. (Chris and band break into a hula tune.)

JC: Ladies and gentlemen. The blues skies of Hawaii beckon. Aloha. That's an old Bing Crosby song.

CI: It is. How'd you know that? That's one of my favorite tunes.

JC: A lovely thing.

CI: This is a stupid story, but I like telling it. When I was about sixteen I went into a junk store and I got a '78 of that. I picked it up and it was 50 cents. I didn't have 50 cents, I only had 30 cents. I picked it up and I walked around the store. I asked them if they'd sell it. I kept walking around the store, trying to think of how I could get the money together. I didn't end up getting it. Then years later, I recorded it on a record of my own. So I got my chance at it.

JC: I think it's really cool that you would acknowledge Bing Crosby. I think he doesn't get enough credit. A lot of people don't remember him, that he was the first musician to utilize a microphone correctly, to play it like an instrument. I think Bing was great.

CI: People usually remember you by what you did after you got famous. A lot of artists, they do some great work, become famous, and then people remember them for their TV commercial, or their game show. Or their Pork Sausage, "Jimmy Dean!"

JC: Or your orange juice in the case of Bing Crosby.

CI: (imitating Bing) Give me my Minute Maid. Hand me my club. I'm gonna hit my kid.

JC: (imitating Bing) Where's my belt. Time for Gary's beating.

CI: (imitating Bing, again) Come here Gary. Take one right on the nose.

JC: Just kidding. Just kidding. In recording, "Speak of the Devil" you had what you called, "Experimental Friday." What was that all about?

CI: That wasn't about music, it was about sexual experimentation. We stopped it after one Friday. Everyone was tuckered out. It was scary. Our bass player knew no bounds.

KJ: He didn't honor the "Safe word."

CI: That's right. Rumplestiltskin. We actually came in on Fridays and just brought along any weird instrument we could find. I remember my bass player bringing in a 5 foot plastic pipe. I said, "What is this?" He just dropped it on the floor and looked at me all excited. He said, "Doesn't it sound great?" So it's on the recording someplace.

JC: Wound up using it, eh? As a sound effect somewhere.

CI: On the end of "Speak of the Devil" we've got a silvertone amp being kicked hard and the old springs just...can we do some of "Speak of the Devil?"

JC: Please. The acoustic version!

Chris and band play live on Kink

CI: Come back in the room now, Kids. We're just having some fun on the holidays.

JC: I kind of missed the screaming on that...like you do on the album.

CI: Kenny didn't scream.

KJ: I have to save it for tonight.

JC: Super Magic 2000 is a real different track. What's with the gunshots at the beginning of that?

CI: The producer actually got a few drinks in him. He actually was standing up in the studio firing. It works for us. What the heck. Can we do a Christmas song?

JC: Sure, go ahead.

Chris and band play "We Three Kings" with more than slight variations on the lyrics. Followed by "Rudolph."

CI: You know what I like about Gene Autry? Every damn thing. He'd never say "Santa Claus". You know what he said?

JC: Old Saint Nick?

CI: Santy Claus. Boys and girls, Santy Claus is comin' to town.

JC: Reminds me of Chico Marx talking about the "Santy Claus" in one of the Marx Brother's movies. Do you still take your board down to ocean beaches?

CI: Almost every day. Actually, I was in Oregon and I surfed. I thought it was cold in San Francisco!

JC: Damn frigid up here.

CI: Yeah. And sharky!

JC: Yes.

CI: Yeah. There have been a couple of shark attacks up here but it only adds to the piquancy of the surf, I find.

JC: Makes it extra piquant.

CI: He jumped right on that, didn't he? (laughs) He reads the Reader's Digest, too. You can't throw him off.

JC: "How I increased my word power?" I couldn't do anything without that. That, and lookin' at the back's of album covers.

CI: No monosyllabic pop band, we!

JC: Chris, are you a lonely guy on the beach or is life O.K.?

CI: Life is real good. In fact, most of the time I go surfing I take a date with me. In San Francisco there's a girl who surfs down there. People always think that girls that go to the beach just sit there and get a tan, She rips! She tears it up. It's funny because she helped me get off the beach when I got injured and she helped load me into an ambulance. About a year later I helped load her into an ambulance. I ripped my hamstring, she tore out her shoulder. We still go and surf all of the time.

KJ: We loaded you onto a plane to Australia shortly after that.

CI: That was good. Want to see another tune? I've got one in my bag.

JC: A very special tune for Kink listeners?

Chris and band play a Christmas tune.

JC: Happy holidays from the Chris Isaak Trio here at Kink. That's an old Willie Nelson song, right?

KJ: We can't stop you!

CI: You've been down here at the radio station too long

JC: Too long, man. I've been playing "Stump the jock. Now maybe it's time to jump...

CI: It's so nice to hear, Jeff. So many times we come down to stations nowadays and they've got some kind of guy with a big (Chris imitating a big Radio Broadcast Professional Voice) "Hi! It's good to be on the radio!" voice, and he doesn't know anything but what's on the top ten.

JC: Well, I used to try to do the broadcast professional thing but I finally came to my senses. Announcing is weird. God bless us each and every one. Chris, you've been in some very good movies, "From the Earth to the Moon" is a fairly recently one...a mini-series with Tom Hanks.

CI: I played a guy who was burned up in a space capsule. They dress you up in this costume of a space outfit, which was very accurate. But, it's not made out of flameproof material. I'm sure it isn't tested as much as a real suit would be. Those suits cost like a million bucks or something.
So, I'm in this space suit, we're stuck inside the space capsule, which is actual size, and we're filming through a little port. They start the flames up for this scene where we're suppose to be on fire.

JC: And you're wearing the paper mache suit.

CI: Yeah. They have one wall covered with gel that's on fire. The flames are going up and they say, "Don't worry. We have a guy right here." And I look and he's over at the snack counter. We're in a huge warehouse and he's like 500 yards away, down where the donuts are.
They set fire to this thing and I'm thinking...I'm being apprehensive here. I'm watching the plastic walls melt and start crinkling up. The guy next to me is screaming. At about that point I said, "Get me outta here, man. This ain't good."

JC: Everything is going to be fine.

CI: They tried to tell me, "Don't worry, You've got your space suit." I said, "You idiot!"

JC: "It ain't a real space suit!"

CI: You know, that reminds me of a movie I did in Japan. The first thing I did. I was boxing in Japan. This was years ago. Vic Morrow was in this movie. I was all keyed up. Vic Morrow! From combat! He walks in with kind of a pissed off look, that look he always had on. He always looked kind of upset.
He walks in and there are all of these Japanese being very courteous to him, "We're so glad to have you here, Mr. Morrow!" And he looks at his gun they gave him with his outfit. He looks at the gun and says, "What's this? What the hell is this? This isn't a space gun. I want a space gun." I just remember that to this day. Vic Morrow, telling them off for not having a real space gun. He goes, "This is a 45. I want a space gun."

JC: That was your introduction to movie actors and film acting.

CI: I remember it was his birthday, too. They baked him a birthday cake and they didn't have anyone there who really spoke English except for me. So for some reason I was elevated from extra to interpreter. Vic said, "How did they get all of you guys here?" I said, "Vic, we would do it for free just to be here with you." And he looks around and goes, "Oh brutha." (laughs)

JC: And then, in about 1988, you were in this brilliant, if depressing, docudrama on the life of the late jazz trumpeter Chet Baker called, "Let's Get Lost". What was that experience like?

CI: Chet baker was a very, very cool guy. I sang with him, actually. I got to sing with him on a song called "Imagination." I remember him coming up to me and I said, "Do you know theses songs? What can we do together?" He talked really slowly. I think he was on methadone or else he had a bad cough, but he was really slowed down when he was talking. He said, "How 'bout if we do "Imagination?" You know the song, "Imagination"?

JC: ..makes a cloudy day sunny...

CI: This Guy!. Let's take this guy on Hollywood Squares with us! We'll win a fortune.

JC: Name that tune. I'm sorry, I'm showing off.

CI: Anyway, Chet says, "How 'bout the song, 'Imagination'?" Well, I knew of it but I didn't know all of the lyrics. I'm a vocalist, I can't just fake it. So I said, "Well Chet, I don't know all of the lyrics." He goes, "Oh, I'm sure you do." (laughs) And with that we start recording and they're filming. I listened to him sing the first verse and second verse and then I thought, "O.K. I memorized those two verses." He did a trumpet interlude and then I came back and sang.

JC: And it just came to you through osmosis or...

CI: It came to me through intense concentration and a lot of blood and sweat.

JC: It's a nice tune. You write some pretty good ones yourself. Could you maybe do one of the perennial Chris Isaak favorites?

KJ: Perennial? It comes back every year, right?

JC: You can't kill it.

CI: What do you want to do? Name one.

JC: You know what I want to hear? If you can stand it I can."Can't Do a Thing."

CI: Sure.

Chris plays "Flying" instead.

JC: Just one more question. How can somebody who writes such passionate, serious songs be such a goof ball?

CI: I'm not going to kid you, It's the steroids.

JC: O.K. It's the great duality, dichotomy of Chris Isaak. Thank you very much for stopping by.

CI: If anybody is going to come down and see us play, I just wanted to mention this. If they come at the end of the show we're going to hang out and sign autographs and stuff. And just say "Hi" to people. It's not something the we enjoy, it's court ordered but, still.(laughs).

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