Rick Gerber Interview
Doug Burke:
Welcome to Backstory song. I'm your host, Doug Burke. And today we're here with Rick Gerber of the band Badfeather. Rick Gerber is the songwriting multi-instrumentalist front man for the classic rock, funk and soul jam band, Badfeather. He writes songs across a wide range of genres and his band's energetic performances get the audience up on their feet, moving to the beat. Rick writes songs of personal experiences, and then adds multilayered musical instrumentation to create songs rooted in Rock's history, but nonetheless very contemporary.
What song would you like to talk about first Rick?
Rick Gerber:
When my car was stolen, about five years ago now at Christmas time, all my music gear, all my books... I did not believe in the Cloud. I did not believe in digital. I just for sook it-
Doug Burke:
You took it for granted.
Rick Gerber:
I did, but I had to remember all the songs that were my books, because they were stolen. And obviously, those thieves who stole the car, probably, threw them in the garbage. I had to go back through and remember and rewrite onto the computer, and make sure they're in the Cloud now.
Doug Burke:
Did you have recordings to go from on any of them?
Rick Gerber:
Some of it, but playing live so much, I don't... Making an album is like a year... it takes me a year. I just recorded a brand new album and I lost the files when my computer crashed. I got to start it over. I think a good song to talk about would probably be Lady December, and I wrote that shortly after my car was stolen. All the people that heard about it... My sister, she jumped out of it and she got me on the news. I was on the news. Have me interviewed on the radio. She started to GoFundMe. I didn't even know what a GoFundMe was, and all these people reached out to me. And out pour of people offering me their guitars, because both my guitars were stolen. It was a big deal and my piano, all kinds of... Everything my amp, my pedal board, my favorite boots, my favorite shirt, because my car is my mobile office. I'm always gigging. That happened, and in hindsight it's probably the best thing that could happen to me, because it just taught me... It put me on another level. It really did. And maybe those people that stole my shit needed it more than I did. I don't know. So I wrote this song and it's called Lady December. And one of the people who reached out to me, who got me my start in Tanglewood, he called me, he found out, saw on the news, called me, and he said, "Rick, go to the guitar store and get any guitar you want." And I'm like, "Bill, you don't have to do that." He's like, "Rick, go to the guitar store and get any guitar you want." So I went and got my brand new Gibson and then I went home and I was thinking about it. I was a wreck. It messed me up, so I sat down and I wrote the song. The first verse goes, "Walking through the ways of the summer, wasting precious time in the winter. Never really sure about the answers, because they're all just questions anyway." And I was in such a bind in my life right there, where I was questioning everything, and there were no answers, because there were still questions. That was a paradox for me. Do you know what I mean? I just-
Doug Burke:
Yep.
Rick Gerber:
Every question was still a question. There was no answer. And the next part of the verse goes, "I will get through with compassion, I was waiting on the sky to rain. How far are we owned by our possessions? Pretty things just get in the way." And here I am sitting here having to let go of my guitar that I bought when I was a kid. My Gibson, then I worked three jobs to buy, my Gibson songwriter. Have to let go man, so I think that's a pretty plain lyric. I can write pretty metaphorically sometimes, but... And then the chorus says, "It's all mind over matter. Keep your eyes on the prize, it'll get better. Somewhere through the confusion and the clatter, lies the one thing that you truly crave." And obviously when something that bad happens to you, you have to look through the ether, and see what it is really wanted or needed. Yes, possessions are just possessions, but they do... Like Chuck said, "You're not fucking khakis." But I think things that you have in your life, I think they define you. People who smoke things, smoking defines them, and that's why they still smoke. But someone like me or maybe someone like you, my records define me, my music. All these records in this house, they define what I've done in my life, and the books that I've read on my shelf, those things define me. Those are possessions that I cherish. And so the next verse, nobody knows the answer, nobody knows the way, but hope and love are essential. What are we without loving anyway? And that was just all the people that reached out to me, all that love, so that was heavy. And then the last part of the verse says, "Walking through the tide of stormy water, I was waiting on the wind for a change. Somewhere out there lies your fortune. It might be money or it might be happiness." My stuff being stolen wrote that song, and it's on Badfeather's record.
Doug Burke:
I'm stunned that there's no anger. Like when you found your car, how did you feel?
Rick Gerber:
Luckily, I was sitting in on a gig and I was playing the guitar for this band, because there was a keyboard player. So luckily, I didn't have my keyboards in the car, that would have... Because my keyboards are so expensive and they're hard to replace. I dropped... My little brother was in town, it was Christmas. My sister was house sitting in this huge mansion, the CEO of a Costco, it's his house. He was always gone. So her and her husband and their kids were living there, and I was dropping him off and I was pretty tired. I wanted to go home. I was still living in Ogden. And I dropped my little brother there and she's like, "Just come in and have a sandwich." And so I go inside and eat a sandwich.
Rick Gerber:
I walk out and my car was gong. I'm just looking around. And it's kind of on a hill, so I'm like looking down the Hill going, "Maybe it rolled down the hill." Not thinking, "Oh, it's stolen." I get my brother, and I'm like, "Did I parked there, Alex? Am I just exhausted? What's going on?" Sure enough, we realized it was stolen, got in my brother-in-law's car, and we drove all around trying to catch them and find them. And then I went back and I laid down in my sister's spare bedroom on the spare bed, and the world spun out of control. And then the next morning... I didn't sleep for two days. I couldn't sleep.
Rick Gerber:
And then by the next two days, I was being interviewed on the news, and I would have never done that. That was all my sister. I'm grateful for it. No, I wasn't mad.
Doug Burke:
And the community came out for you. You've got such resolution, to think-
Rick Gerber:
Well, think of all the things-
Doug Burke:
... of a song. You've so moved on, it's amazing.
Rick Gerber:
All I can do is move forward. You can only move forward. You can't move backwards, you'll never get anywhere. All the outpour of that love and that people, it was enough to make the experience what it was. And now I just look back on it and realize this is all just fleeting your health, your dog, the love of your life, those are the most important things. Your mind and heart are probably the most important, so it was just an experience. There's days I miss that guitar, and I definitely, I dream still that I'm playing that guitar, playing my original Telly, and I wake up and I'm like, "I have my guitar," and it's not there.
Doug Burke:
If it was in a pawn store or a thrift store, would you know it was yours?
Rick Gerber:
Mm-hmm. Yes, and I would pay for it. I would buy it back. I wouldn't even try to get it back for free. I would buy it back.
Doug Burke:
Are there any markings on it that people might recognize if we put this out there?
Rick Gerber:
Oh, yeah. It's a Gibson songwriter. the back's worn down. There's no paint on the back, and specks of blood in there from my drunk friend, at my wedding, bleeding all over my guitar, and there's little blood specks in there, but -
Doug Burke:
On the inside of the body?
Rick Gerber:
Yeah. There faintly now, but-
Doug Burke:
So we could get a DNA tested.
Rick Gerber:
Yeah, I'll have to call Joe, and be like, "I need your blood bro." But anyway... Well, it's-
Doug Burke:
Good stuff. You mentioned crave, the things you crave is one of the -
Rick Gerber:
Well, yeah, the things you crave-
Doug Burke:
What are the things you crave?
Rick Gerber:
Resolution and hope that... When people complain and say America's so bad, it's hard for me to believe that there's more bad than there is good. Most of all, I just want to say thank you to all the people who reached out to me, but... But no, the things I favor are harmony and understanding and resolution and friendship and being able to get past that kind of stuff, because it's hard. That was just one thing... And we've all had our car stolen with our gear in it. Honestly, everyone's had that experience in some capacity.
Doug Burke:
Thank you.
Rick, what song do you want to talk about next?
Rick Gerber:
Beautiful Heart of Darkness. It was a song heavily influenced by Prince. This was long before he passed. Well, maybe, a few years before he passed. And I was always fascinated by how he could tell a story and write a song with just so little chords, so much space. I wrote this three chord song called Beautiful Heart of Darkness. And I'm an avid reader, and I love Joseph Conrad, and I loved... What is the film that loosely based on-
Doug Burke:
Apocalypse now.
Rick Gerber:
Yeah, Apocalypse Now, and I just thought it was all so lovely, the darkness into the light, and so I said, beautiful heart of darkness. I think I was having a conversation with a friend and I just said that title for some reason in jest, and it stuck with me and it inebriated in my brain, and then I sat down in my studio before I... This is when I still lived in Ogden, before my car was stolen. And I just wrote the song in one fell swoop. The lyrics came, the chords came, and I was always fascinated by Prince's falsetto, so I wrote it in F, because F is a good key to sing falsetto. It's also a love song, just... I don't know, to everyone, like the brevity. I was pretty close to getting divorced. I still love my ex-wife to death, she's my best friend. One of the best people I know, but our time was fading. I think this song has elements of her. Shortly after we were divorced, and I've dated some really beautiful, wonderful ladies, and then I got dragged to a Trey Anastasio show, this was after I recorded the song and released the album. This was a year later. And this woman comes up to me, just this beautiful woman, and she spills water on my boots and just keep standing there, and she's so awkward. And she said, "I really liked your song, Beautiful Heart of Darkness." I was like, "Oh." And I was so impressed that she liked it, and I didn't get her phone number. I want it to, but I didn't. It's just not the way I am, and then we just kept crossing paths, and I fell in love with that girl. I think that songs more for her than anyone, and I didn't even know her when I wrote it. That's kind of crazy. It's kind of cool music does that. Music is such a... What did that song can mean for me, can mean something completely different for somebody else. I strongly believe that this song wrote itself for her, but we're not together anymore, but I still love her very much. Probably more than anyone. The lyrics go, "Your kisses roll right off my tongue, it makes it loser feel so good. You fall from grace so gracefully, I long just to be there. Your electric eyeshadow moves through my world. Your eyes are so interior, your lips of blood red burgundy. I long just to be there." And I think, I was just calling out to her and she heard the song and she approached me. I don't even think I was attracted to her or anything. I was more fascinated by her. And then I met her and then we started spending time together and we were just friends. And I realized, I think those lyrics speak her themselves. She was that girl that I was looking for, that I was singing about.
Doug Burke:
But you hadn't met her when you wrote the song.
Rick Gerber:
No.
Doug Burke:
But you had an idea of a girl you were thinking about-
Rick Gerber:
Mm-hmm.
Doug Burke:
... in the song? It wasn't based on a person-
Rick Gerber:
No.
Doug Burke:
... you had met at that point?
Rick Gerber:
No. I thought it might've been about my ex-wife, but it really wasn't, because at that point we were done and we were just going through the motions. And shortly after we were divorced, and it just wasn't about her anymore, and I wasn't writing songs for her anymore. She got a lot of songs out of me, a lot. And they're all really good songs and she deserves them. The next lyric is, "I call you up on the telephone, ringing, unplugged from the wall. Pick you up on a motorcycle running, in a picture film rated-R." Just wordplay, just a sexy idea that picking up a girl on a motorcycle in a movie. It's something that I think we can all see. "Uncharted vowels and syllables, anagrams, and abbreviations. You spell it out for me when I'm talking about your love." Again, that's about that girl, and I didn't even know it, because she's very good with words. And her words always like melted my heart, my beautiful heart of darkness. And so, again, it was about her. And then it goes to the chorus and the chorus is, "I want it. I want it so bad or I don't want nothing at all." Again, her. And then the next verse is, "You sing such pretty songs wrapped in despair, cut note throats wrapped in your hair, undaunted, dark and delightful. I long just to be there." And this girl is the kindest, most sweetest human, but she has this darkness. She has this darkness. That I never was able to pin down. Maybe that's why we're not together, because I could never find the fortitude to figure it out for her or for myself. Or I don't know if it was my job, I thought it was my job. And then, back to the chorus, and then the end, the last part of the song. And I think initially that song too is me just seeing out, again, into the ether, and I'm so infatuated with that, that just unforeseeable and just the beautiful heart of darkness. The dark and the light, all right there. The good person struggling to find the good, but always having the influence of bad there. And then through love, I think that's the hardest thing for all of us to find, true love, undefinable love. I wrote that for that girl, but that's all past, and new horizons and new songs and new chapters are underway.
Doug Burke:
I've been there when you... for the band sing the song, and that chorus at the end, everybody sings-
Rick Gerber:
Yeah, everybody sings.
Doug Burke:
... along.
Rick Gerber:
Everybody sings.
Doug Burke:
And especially the, I wanted all-
Rick Gerber:
"I want it. I want it so bad or I don't want nothing at all."
Doug Burke:
Or I don't want... "I want it. I want it so bad or I don't want nothing at all."
Rick Gerber:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's easy. When you're writing a song... There's so many forms of songwriters and so many forms of writing music, but for me, it's finding a story that I can believe, so that other people can believe. And then most importantly, finding that phrase. And there's so many songs. Tom Petty and the Beatles, and they took every damn good phrase and already wrote it into a song and told the story from the phrase. But "I want it. I want it so bad or I don't want nothing at all," it just came. Most of the songs I write come in one fell swoop. I sit down and just write it all at once. That song I wrote in one sitting, and then I showed it to Badfeather. No, actually it started as a Lady Legs song, my band with Talia Keys. Some of the members of Badfeather were in that band, and then when we broke up Lady Legs, we started Badfeather, and we carried that song over, obviously, because it was a damn that song. Good rock and roll song, Beautiful Heart of Darkness. It's on my record, Signal Path. This song I wrote some years back. The same girl I'm telling you about, and this is the last you get, you know who you are. I've moved on. We were together for a long time, and there was a point where we broke up. Before we got back together, I woke up and I had this feeling I knew we were going to break up. So I wrote this song about this, these two people who break up and they then realize years later that they were meant to be together, but it was too late, and they had moved on and it was time to move on. Like I said, going backwards, it's just not very productive. And so I wrote the song, but we were still together, and so the irony is that I wrote it for her to sing, so I wrote it as a duo. Before I tell the rest of the story, I'll just give you a little idea. So it starts with the female. And then the man. Then she in turn responds, "Somewhere out there in the world..." And somewhere he's think… Anyway, it keeps going. It's a very long song. I wrote that, and then we broke up. I think we were broken up for three months, and then we got back together and I wrote this woman a whole album. And like I told you, my computer recently crashed and I was almost done with it, 12 songs all about this woman. And she sang on some of the songs, and we had started to work on a song together before we broke up again, so that's gone. And that's fine, I still plan to do the song with someone else, and it's still for her. But the crazy thing about this song is, I've been hustling this game for a long time. Now that I'm like not teaching school anymore and I'm not... I just try to do music, I have the hustle. I end up doing a lot of covers. I don't get to play my original music unless I'm doing Badfeather. But Badfeather's a production, Badfeather's not a band where we're going to go play the hog wallow every week. So I met this producer who I've been working with, who's helping me sell my music to movies. There's a whole new thing I'm learning. I showed them like 50 of my songs, he liked this song the best. He took it, he scrapped these lyrics. He scrapped these lyrics. It's okay, because when you're selling a film and you're selling to other people, it's not about how I think people should hear it, it's about what people hear, and this guy's a professional producer who sells music for a living. And he believes in me, he's a good man. He's a great, great, great man, and he took the song and he didn't... We rewrote the lyrics together. We sat down and we rewrote the song. This song was two songs and we just sent it out and it's about to sell. This is called, I've had enough. The new one is called Slipping Away, and I'll read you those lyrics. This version of the song is a little in the dust, but the next part is the female says, "The days have gone by and I miss my friend, where did it turn? Why did it end?" And then the man says, "She's so far away, and I've moved on. She still lingers and haunts my song." They've both moved on, and they can't get away from each other for some reason. Then the lady says, "If I had my way, love would come knocking. He'd come back to stay and we'd go out walking." And then he says, "If I passed her by, just a face in the crowd, I would stop time and turn back around." And it goes back to that chorus, "She's had enough, I want more. I'm looking through the window and she's walking out the door. I can't explain love, when it rains, it dries up. When the sun turns its back and the moon is all done." And then the last set of verses, she says, "I've known several lovers, but there is no other, let me tell you, brother, I miss my old man." And then he says, "I've had many affairs, but I don't really care. My heart went away when she wasn't there." And then she says, "I'm happy for him. I ran into a friend. She said he was looking good, and on the mend." Then he says, "I still think of her and wish her the best. I'm out on the road, and I carry her on my chest." Back to the chorus, and out. So now enter my... My producer takes this song and it's quite lovely, I'll show you the recording. It's a lovely song. It's been really hard for me to accept this and to move into a new level of songwriting, because I can't just write whatever I want. I write about books I've read, or I write in that tone or if I've been reading Vonnegut, then I start to write like that, but that's not how this works. This is a very fickle machine. And it's been a really intense learning experience for me. We were going to call it Curtain Call, but then we rewrote the song eight times. There's eight sets of verses here, but I'm not going to read all this to you. This is the different version of that song that my producer took and we rewrote. And it goes on, "Deep in my heart, the hurt still remains. The fire went out when you changed your name. Laying on the ground is our masterpiece, years of regret without relief." Back to the chorus, "There's not much left in this old six string, heavy are waves crashing in, and watch it all slip away, as I live out my last days." And we turned it into singing about just a washed up musician who's been divorced and, oh, shit, maybe that's me. Dammit. Anyhow, it still rings true to my heart. I wrote these lyrics as well with my producer. It's crazy. I sent this to a very dear friend of mine, she was like, "It made me cry. Oh, my God." And then I sent her the original and she's like, "The new one, I believe the new one more." It's weird, how a song, it's so beautiful, how much... In my life, by John Lennon, everyone is going to take that song for themselves. And those are probably the best songs, that you think it means something that it doesn't mean, because you believe it and you hear the way you want to. And that's probably why music changes the world, because everyone gets to interpret it for what they want, and they can learn from it, build from it, and be wiser from it. And that's why the best songs are written, and that's why sometimes it's hard for me with rap and degrading women or... Not just saying it's rap, but there's certain elements where it can't be a great song if it's not truth. If it's not going to make some kind of change, even a small change. And I think all music does make a small change. And I think all music has its place, dubstep, reggae, everything. But for me, as a songwriter and as a human being, I think that there's only a certain amount of music that can be written that can really change the world.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, it's interesting. The first version is sort of a two character song, whereas the second version is a one character song, just you, a single person.
Rick Gerber:
I didn't write it about me, but now that we're sitting here analyzing it, it's pretty much about me. I didn't even... I was writing just thinking of crazy harder, thinking about that musician who had it and then lost it. That's not me, but there's certain... definitely elements of this song that are about me. It's really intense, this whole thing that's happening to me. It's a whole new thing in my life. All the other upside down things that have happened to me lately, this is a whole new chapter in my life. It's really interesting, and I wanted to share that with you because-
Doug Burke:
It's beautiful.
Rick Gerber:
I probably wouldn't pick this song if this double sided coin wasn't there. I would have picked up more popular song.
Doug Burke:
I think it tells a story that every person who's broken up with someone goes through.
Rick Gerber:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Is that?
Rick Gerber:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
It's a breakup song.
Rick Gerber:
It's a breakup song. Yeah, I hadn't even broken up with her yet, when I wrote it. But I knew...
Doug Burke:
We all ended up broken up, when you break up.
Rick Gerber:
Well, for me, I just believe in love. I even believe any institution of marriage still to this day, even though I've been divorced. I don't... I definitely believe in love. I like to love one person, and that song kind of says, "You can be madly in love, but sometimes you have to be gone."
Doug Burke:
So the song has the ocean metaphors of waves.
Rick Gerber:
Mm-hmm. That's the newer one.
Doug Burke:
The newer one, and we don't have ways here in Utah.
Rick Gerber:
But doesn't that mean, you can't imagine them.
Doug Burke:
Heavy are the wavelengths.
Rick Gerber:
Yeah. Well, I mean-
Doug Burke:
Were you on a beach at all or -
Rick Gerber:
No, I was in a living room.
Doug Burke:
In your head, were you thinking of the ocean?
Rick Gerber:
No. So-
Doug Burke:
What does the waves mean?
Rick Gerber:
Writing this... No, actually we started writing this in a studio and we sat there with his engineer, me, Dave Radcliffe, he's my producer, he's an amazing songwriter, and... We sat there, we have a big dry erase board, and we wrote out a basic skeleton over my song, a new song. And I was sitting there going, "What in the hell is going on right now?" And they sat there and we wrote the basic lyrics, then we picked the best words that carried for the song. So wave, I don't quite remember... I sing a lot about the ocean. I love the ocean. I long for it. I think we all do. And waves very well could have been a better word than something else We used. The song that's going to sell, that you're going to make money off of it, you're going to have royalties from is the song that this film picks about the guy driving down the road thinking of his life, and how it can like move through the movie or commercial. It's finding the right word sometimes. And Dave will be sitting there writing and he'll just have his head in the notebook just writing words, writing words. And I'm like, "What about this?" And I'll say this elaborate piece of poetry. And he's like, "No, that's not going to work, Rick. I know you like these big words and stuff, but it has to do the rhythm, it has to carry the song. It's not live. It's not... This isn't a passion project. This is work. This is..." But it's still heartfelt. It's very heartfelt. It's a very heartfelt song.
Doug Burke:
I like it. I hope it's a big hit for you.
Rick Gerber:
Yeah. Man, we'll see, you know what I mean? I don't try to get my hopes up anymore, I just keep working.
Doug Burke:
Okay. Thank you very much-
Rick Gerber:
Yeah, it's a pleasure.
Doug Burke:
... Rick.
