SPEAKING WITH MONTE AND HENRY ABOUT THE OUTLAWS…

OUTLAWS : i love this band from my teen and crazy years. I used to listen to Green Grass few times a day with friend and girlfriends, at the beginning of everything, during the Seventies. Green grass was a looong trip, as You don’t love me from the Allmans, as Everyday i have the blues from the Marshall and as Freebird from the Skynyrd. Now, a few years later, I have spoken with Henry Paul and Monte Yoko. They were together in Henry’s home in Nashville, speaking about the future of the band. Monte lives in Orlando, Florida. Henry has a big recording studio in Nashville and his involved in a new Dixie superband called Brothers of Southland, with “dangerous” Dan Toler, Jimmi Hall, Reese Wynans and Steve Gorman. Hughie passed in september. Our conversation starts here….

WALTER GATTI – Hello dear Monte and Henry, very proud to speak with you. Hughie Thomasson: how do you heard about the sad news?
MONTE YOHO – The band had just returned from a Labor Day weekend show in Laughlin, Nevada. We were to be off for a week and then head back out to Nevada and on to the west coast. It was Sunday night, just a few days before we were to depart again, when I got a call from my road manager at 2:00 AM. He gave me the tragic news that Hughie had passed away. I was completely in shock. All I could think of was the phone calls that I had received some years ago, from my friend Henry Paul, relating to the death of Billy Jones and Frank O’keefe. I just couldn’t believe it then and it is still hard to actually grasp.
HENRY PAUL – The band’s drummer Monte Yoho called me just minutes after getting the news. It must have been just after midnight about an hour after he died…

WG – Please, share with me some of your memories about Hughie….
HENRY – There are so many. Hughie and I were coming home from a club gig one evening back in 1973. He was driving his brother high performance  Dodge Road Runner and we had our girlfriends in the the car with us. He ran off the road going over 100 miles per hour and we were lucky we didn’t die. After that night I nick-named Hughie Buster Flame the stock car driver. The name Flame stuck and he was called that from then on.
MONTE – My memories go back a long way with Hughie. All the way back to when we were really just kids. Now I like to remember his ever present blazing guitar in front of me for so many years together and the look on his face when he turned back smiling at me saying “hit them as hard as you can.” We’re a ROCK GROUP!

WG – So many years from the day Billy Jones passed…
MONTE – I would have to say the day I met Billy. I was hitch-hiking home from the Atlanta Pop Festival in 1968 when a brand new 68 Chevy Camaro pulled up to give me a ride. It was Billy and from that point on I had made a life long friend and band mate.
HENRY – Billy was always complex, sensitive and extremely talented. I always thought Billy was the musical glue that held the band together. He did so much to complete the sound of the band.

WG – About the Outlaws: which are the new projects about the band
MONTE – Right now Henry and I are in process of getting the band stabilized as well as thinking about new music to  record at some point in 2008. I think our focus would be on the keeping the music, as well as the show, as true to the original Outlaws as possible. I want it to feel like it did in 1975 and would love to relive that entire building process.
HENRY – The original Outlaws enjoyed wide popularity from the first record on. After many years and the loss of three of the five original members Monte and I have decided to put the band back together this year and tour and record a new album later this year. I have written many new songs for the new album and plan to collaborate with the new members to finish it. The new members are: Chris Anderson (lead guitar,vocals) Billy Crain (lead guitar,vocals) Brett Cartwright (bass guitar, vocals) and Jon Coleman (keyboards,vocals).

WG – The golden days of the southern rock are so far: what do you think about ‘the 70 and the ‘80?HENRY – I think the golden days of southern rock are from 1969 with the introduction to the Allman Brothers Band to the late seventies with the release of Hurry Sundown.
MONTE -  I loved the seventies! The late sixties, for me, was an entire learning process. It was about life, culture, and of coarse a lot of music. By the seventies I think that I was truly ready to put what I had learned from that in to some sort of style of my own and finally get a chance to make music that I did. I formed friendships and band mates that would ultimately take me there during that decade. The eighties brought yet more dramatic change. I seemed at times to get quite lost in that decade, as did a lot of bands that had been in the mainstream for so long. For me, it was more learning and more attempts to find the music.

WG - In ‘76 you were on stage with Who and Little Feat….
MONTE – That time was an almost surreal time for me. There I was surrounded by my heroes, both in The Who and Little Feat. Plus, it was the first time in Europe for all of us. Beyond getting to share the stage with such legends, in some of the greatest venues imaginable, we got to know them personally as well. There were several “nights out” on the town with a lot of different band members. I actually made it through a dinner party at this Greek restaurant in London with Keith Moon at his best. Crashing his Rolls through the front door, dressing as a waiter and pouring a bottle of wine over another patron’s head, and smashing every piece of dinnerware he could get his hands on. Come on!  You can’t even make stuff up like that! And best of all, a ring side seat to watch Little Feat and The Who, every night! That was a real tour indeed!

WG – Henry, whats about the Blackhawk future?
HENRY - Blackhawk has a new studio album ready for release and has recently recorded a new live album for release later in 2008. We have many tour dates here in the States so it should be another busy year for the band.

WG: Monte do you still work with Cedric? Any plan about the Cajun connection?
MONTE – The answer is a very big YES! I talk to Cedric all the time. In fact, I’m going to call him today and see what he’s been up to. I value Cedric’s input on everything that I do. He is always there for me when I need an opinion on anything, especially music. Cedric wants me to come to Missouri sometime next year and play on a record with him. I will definitely make myself available!

WG – Please, could you tell me what kind of music do you heard today (while you are not playing YOUR music, of course…)?
HENRY – I love to listen to native American music, Celtic music, and many different singer songwriters like Shawn Calvin, Jann Arden…
MONTE – For me that’s a hard one. I really listen to everything. I keep up with most of the country being played today, a lot of the rock and pop, and even some big band and Broadway stuff. My wife is a musical theater performer so it has made me a lot more a where of that particular music group. I dig it a lot!

WG- Last question: I whish to know something about the “birth” of GREEN GRASS AND HIGH TIDE …..
MONTE – That song started in the late sixties as sort of Hughie’s tribute to fallen Rock heroes like Brain Jones, Jimmy Hendrix, and Janis Joplin…The more we played it in the bars the more it took on it’s arrangement. By the time we recorded that song we had been playing it live for over five years. It had a lot of time to grow! As for the live version, that seem to grow each year as well. Someone would just take off on something, the rest would follow, and soon you had written a new piece of the song…