Hanging Out With Huey Lewis is Becoming a Regular Occurrence For Me

Last week, I saw Huey Lewis and the News for the 7th time. The first 3 times were in the 80's and those were glorious days. The 4th time was during my senior year of high school and that already felt like it was for nostalgia purposes.

In 2003, I saw them twice - once at Bowery Ballroom. And of course, in 2008, I saw them at Coney Island and met them for the first time.

At the Bowery show, I was a bit disappointed because I wanted to hear more hits than I did. I wrote this in my 2003 music writeup.

An Open Letter to Huey Lewis

Dear Huey,

The year began with high hopes. It ended with dashed dreams. I need to take 2004 off from you. Two shows within a week of each other in August will do that even to me. The Bowery show was a lot of fun to be so close to my idol from my childhood. I knew that I shouldn't expect too much and when you did most of your most recent album "Plan B", you lost me. I'm sorry Huey, even though my dad once described that record as a "stone groove", it is not very good. I respect that you are still playing new songs in a club setting, but come on, not for an hour. We want the hits. And when you finally delivered them, I was happy. The Wolf Trap show with my family seemed particularly uninspired. So unless you plan on playing my wedding, I need a break.

And what is up with no Chris Hayes, "The Kid", in the band anymore? You can't just lose your guitar player like that and expect me not to care. I mean, you already lost Mario "Bad Boy" Cipollina on bass a few years ago. And why is Bill Gibson on drums not wearing those tighty white shorts anymore as he pounds on the skins? Sean Hopper on keyboards is not looking so hot these days, is he? At least, Johnny Colla on saxophone is still super fine. Your name is Huey and you've just heard the news. Happy 2004.

Yours truly,

A disappointed fan

A lot has changed since I wrote that bitter letter. Hell, I've met the man twice now. Plus, Hot Tub Eric told me that he had heard that his recent Memphis show was all Stax stuff until the encore. So I was knew what I was getting myself into when Dave and I went to go see them last week at the Gramercy Theatre - a fairly small venue for an act that can sell out Wolf Trap.


Not even close to the great drink specials SHR concocted for the big tribute show that I put on 3 years ago.

The show was good - he did an hour of Stax stuff which was fun. And then an encore of 6 songs including 5 fan favorites that you'd expect to hear. All told, it was a fun night.

But then the night got much better. I had a chance to chat with him again! Granted, this wasn't nearly as random as running into him at the Nick Lowe show at The Bell House. Brendan had given me an after show party pass. So it was easy. Still, meeting one's childhood idol never gets old.

I needled him about not playing during I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll at the Nick Lowe show. I teased him about always having a harmonica in his pocket so he should have played. He didn't think it was funny and assured me that he didn't have a harmonica and that Nick Lowe probably didn't even know he was there. Um .... I quickly changed gears to baseball and we spoke about whether or not Barry Bonds should go to the Hall of Fame.

Huey paused when I asked him the question and really thought about it. We both are in agreement though -the man deserves to be in. We talked a bit about steroids and Mark McGwire. I said that without steroids, McGwire was Darrell Evans to which Huey replied, "Darrell Evans should be in the Hall of Fame."

He mentioned that Tony La Russa was his good friend and I asked him how people like La Russa acted like they didn't know what was going on. He mentioned that they all had their blinders on. You tell 'em Huey! I think I might have made a bad joke about him being on steroids when he recorded Sports and Fore! but I can't quite remember the context. Oh yeah - I forgot the best part. When I first went up to him, he said, "We've met before right? You look really familiar."

For the record, I have no idea who the guy in the middle is.

Huey marveled at the fact that he got to hang out with Dave twice in a 3 month time frame.

And because I didn't post this before, check out this bit on Jimmy Kimmel. Hilarious stuff.