I'm here in the mountains, in the foothills of the Catskills.
Rick Danko
When I was younger, I had big visions of changing the world.
I like a lot of bass players. I like a lot of tuba players too.
I saw Ronnie Hawkins play near my hometown, Port Dover, Ontario, and I saw him play there on New Year's Eve and the following spring I booked myself to be his opening act on maybe five shows, and he hired me after the first night.
As time goes on we get closer to that American Dream of there being a pie cut up and shared. Usually greed and selfishness prevent that and there is always one bad apple in every barrel.
Country artists, I met a lot of them when I was five, six years old. I had an uncle who was a country and western singer and I met Lefty Frizzell when I was five or six years old in those shows that would come through Toronto from Nashville.
Getting older, I realize I've had a very fortunate life. I've had a budget that's allowed me to do just about any silly little thing the mind could conjure up, and I'm still alive and here.
By doing something positive in this world, you're helping people and the future. We're all trying to help the world... make it a better place to live. We're actually still changing the world, aren't we?
When I used to play nightclubs, you had to play Top 40 or favorite oldies that maybe people could relate to.
After convincing myself that was maybe you should at least help out your neighborhood, I really started to think about it later on in life.
My first payback to society in life, was The Dolphin Project.
Paul Butterfield and I had a band together at one point.
Also a portion of my sales go directly to Greenpeace.
The Band was always famous for its retirements; we'd go and play and get a little petty cash together, and then not see each other till it was time to fill our pockets up again.
You have to remember the band played from 1960 to 1965, every night. You get into a rut playing nightclubs every night, and you didn't want to run it into the ground.
When I was a kid a growing up in Ontario, Canada, Lake Erie was so polluted, I never thought it would ever, EVER be turned around where they could start cleaning it out in my lifetime!
The pressures, I don't really like to think about the pressures, I like to solve them, you know what I mean. I could sit here and complain about pressures but nobody wants to hear about pressures.
I am using soybean based ink, which is recyclable.
The Band is sounding real good. We've been doing some dates together and they've been going well.
I grew up not far from where Motown was founded, maybe 300 miles from Detroit and I've always liked - I used to like the way they made records. I still do, I just haven't had a chance to hear as much. They used to entertain me.
I love to play; a stage is a safe place for me to be. It's not that way for most folks, but I'd be lost without it.
I started working with Bob in 1965. We did go through a lot of changes from 65 to 74, a lot of changes. By 1974, everything had straightened itself out.
Then, there was Greenpeace, I remember that when they first started out with the boats in the waters, and the guys in the boats between the whales and the boats that will hunting the whales with spear guns.
When CD technology first came out, it was just so much waste.
You put a song on the record or on tape and you stop singing it. You just don't sit around and sing it anymore unless you're performing. That's kind of sad.
