Here I am with one of my true heroes in music and dear friend Graham Parker at the premier party for “This Is 40” where GP makes a triumphant return to the populace with his music and is a witty actor to boot. I join him in a club scene early in the movie playing slide guitar and singing backups on a great song “Local Girls” off off his “Squeezing Out Sparks” album. Pan to 30 years earlier and I was listening to this album non stop on a boom box while playing hand ball on Fire Island, NY. We listened to The Kinks Live record and GP on breaks waiting for the ferry to come in so we could make a few bucks pulling peoples luggage on wagons. http://www.thisis40movie.com/pdfs/This-is-40_Production-Notes.pdf We met for several years later after my first record “North American Long Weekend” came out and BMG put us on a tour bus together on a tour called “Tellin Stories” – my first time in a bus and my first time getting to jam with Graham! We had oodles of fun, the tour was curiously sponsored by Hennessey (so we had enough to drink) and myself, Radney Foster, Jeff Black and GP went in a round on stage every night. We stayed in touch and GP asked me to do some touring opening up as well as playing with him. At one point we did a album of his called “Your Country” in LA together and played on the Craig Kilburn show as a duo. So I salute my friend and master of lyrics and music and I am so glad mr. Judd Apatow decided to grab GP for the theme of the comeback artist in This Is 40 (which by the way is a slamming and truthfully hilarious comedy that could set some couples straight I think), and I am so thankful n turn GP grabbed me for my debut on the silver screen. Here we are jamming in upstate NY last year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGchZZ7AjTg and so we rock on!