Better Each Day Podcast Radio Show with Bruce Hilliard

Hello and welcome to the Better Each Day podcast where you can meet today's guest Greg Martin, musician, radio personality and kindred spirit I came to realize as I edited this episode.

Greg and I trailed off several times. I kept most of the chat and hope you find it interesting.

The Kentucky Headhunters are an American country rock and Southern rock band consisting of Doug Phelps (lead vocals, bass guitar), Greg Martin (lead guitar, background vocals), and brothers Richard Young (lead and background vocals, rhythm guitar) and Fred Young (drums, vocals).

The new album is That's a Fact Jack and it rocks!

UK blues/rock band Bonham-Bullick is going to release its self-titled new album on April 29. Bonham-Bullick is Deborah Bonham on vocals and Peter Bullick on lead guitar.

Today’s guest is the Bonham half. recording artist Deborah Bonham, who is the sister of the late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham and the aunt of drummer Jason Bonham who is the current drummer for Led Zeppelin.

What’s it like being part of the Led Zeppelin family, literally? You’ll hear her being humble and respectful. That’s got to be part of the recipe. Being a kick ass vocalist that “gets it” is the craft. But what’s the show about…for anyone? What happens between the artist and the beholder? Listen to Deborah Bonham address that magic connection between performer and audience and how a band her brother was in made it happen.

Here to announce her new album Bonham-Bullick and what goes into that secret sauce is Deborah Bohham.

Hello hello hello and welcome to the Better Each Day podcast where recording artists’ share their backstories and their music and any embarrassing moments they care to share. I’m Bruce Hilliard and thank you for being here.

The '60s — an era when television was still a modern marvel, and viewers only had a few channels to choose from — TV variety shows were one of the most important influences of pop culture. Thus, Beatles fans were especially eager to show their support for their favorite boys by watching them on the small screen whenever they scored a televised gig. The band's February 9, 1964 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show was a particularly historic moment. According to the show's official website, it was their first live American television appearance.

The boys played five of their most popular songs at the time: "All My Loving," "Till There Was You," "She Loves You," "I Saw Her Standing There," and "I Want to Hold Your Hand." The performance drew 73 million people to their TV screens.

I love the song list because it starts out with an up tempo, new to American ears “All My Loving” and immediately segues into “Till There Was You”, a ballad from a popular broadway hit and movie…a song that would prevent the parents from switching the TV to Disney.

It worked like nothing our generation could have ordered from a genie. Annoying enough parents (check), introducing new music (check) and making it look so f’ing fun and easy everyone watching wanted to be part of it.

When I say “annoying the parents” I mean that in a way that points out that the Beatles never harshed anyone and didn’t intend Armageddon by wearing their hair a hair longer than the normal Brylcreem buzz of the day and the radical suits and ties. Punkers in a tux.

In honor of the iconic broadcast's 58th anniversary in 2022, the Better Each Day Podcast collected snips from the anals (I shouldn’t go for that one any more) of time for a scrapbook of memorabilia. We had just witnessed a seismic cultural shift."

Fans started their own unofficial clubs, as well. Many of them amassed private collections of Beatles memorabilia. One Oregon club possessed a whopping "30 Beatle books, 9 Beatle records, over 2,000 Beatle bubblegum cards (some are duplicates) and 3,000 Beatles pictures."

Beatles fans who wanted to show off their affinity for the band with merch had a vast array of products to choose from. According to Consequence of Sound, in 1964, the Wall Street Journal declared that Beatlemaniacs across America were buying "Beatle wigs, Beatle dolls, Beatle egg cups and Beatle T-shirts, sweatshirts and narrow-legged pants." Beatle wigs? That's right. Plenty of the band's biggest admirers saw them as the perfect accessory to sport at concerts. The pop-on mop-tops were so popular that Lowell Toy Company, their officially licensed manufacturer, once told a reporter, "We're turning out about 15,000 a day, but we've got a backlog of 500,000 orders."

The wigs were only the tip of the iceberg. According to American Profile, young Beatles lovers in the '60s could also purchase officially licensed Beatles Halloween costumes, complete with flame-retardant masks. Beatles-themed board games, stockings printed with the boys' faces, Beatles-branded hairspray, and "Big Beat Beatles Bongos" were available, as well.

My personal goal is to become famous, say something the journalist can spin, make everyone like me and have a Pez dispenser mass produced in my likeness.

Accents and trends: Start with kids. Someone didn’t come here from England in the 1700s and suddenly proclaim (with a thick southern accent) “Hey there whisker biscuit, what say we pop a few poppers and Q up some ribs!”

No. It’s the next generation of Americans, those little snots, that lead our societies off on their new...

Hello hello hello and welcome to the Better Each Day podcast where recording artists’ tell you the backstories and their music plays a few tales of its own. I’m Bruce Hilliard and thank you for being here.

I’ve had the pleasure of producing this show for over five years without the use of sponsors. Why, you ask.

Because I’m not selling out for anyone I tell you! That’s why I eat: (multiple ads for 60s food and deodorant).

That was Love Potion #9, the home game. I’ve got new songs coming up in the next episodes but while listening to the old TV sounds I couldn’t help but flash on my dad and his accidental influence on my writing…at least subject matter.

While Dad was sitting in his recliner sipping a scotch and reading the newspaper, he, on more than one occasion, would comment on an article about a teenager getting killed as the result of a high speed chase.

His point, and the one that stuck with me for all these years, is that teenagers, especially guys, are wired to run when chased. If the police would give these guys a break they wouldn’t run and end their lives way too short.

Dad’s message, courtesy of a few scotches and the evening news, led to my story song about Joey. He was the young man that had it all and accidentally killed a peer in a tavern brawl. Joey had his eyes on a lady, the bad guy calls her a slut and Joey pops him in the snot locker and the guy “droped like a rock.”

Joey freaks and hears voices. He hears the angels sing and they tell him to run.

With Valentine’s Day a few weeks from now, I take you from the morbid story of Joey’s hormonal imbalance leading to headlines to a syrupy love song. This song is about searching and finally finding the place you belong…and the people that make it exist. The title is Sweetest Thing I’ve Ever Known.

There’s a sneak at where it's going. But for now that's all I got.

Hello hello hello and welcome to the Better Each Day podcast where recording artists’ tell you the backstories and their music plays a few tales of its own. I’m Bruce Hilliard and thank you for being here.

Today's guest, Dale Bozzio is the co-founder and lead singer of Missing Persons, one of the 80s most distinctive bands…set apart by her distinctive, flat out sexy looks that MTV drooled over. A look that led her to the cover of Hustler Magazine.

Dale has just released her autobiography, entitled Life is So Strange –

Dale’s interview was originally scheduled for last week but she was down with the bug and graciously sharing a few nose stuffy words with us.

Hello hello hello and welcome to a new year of recording artists’ backstories and music plus a few tales of my own. I’m Bruce Hilliard and I thank you for being here.

The opening minute was me inappropriately flirting with today’s guest.

Carla Williams wanted to be a country music singer from the beginning. She put her dreams on hold to raise four kids and grow a successful business.

Well here we go. Carla morphed into the late Karen Carpenter and now she's back at it…and her forthcoming album is a tribute to Karen Carpenter and includes a who's who of the really good Nashville music scene.

From Carla's bio:

This Mobile, AL mother of four isn’t your everyday minivan soccer mom. Carla Williams' unique twist on country bridges high energy angst, throaty vocals and sound reminiscent of Patsy Cline and Karen Carpenter.

“Inspiration for great country songs comes from real life experiences,” says Carla. This NSAI and SESAC writer uses everyday occurrences to develop new songs. “I want to feel these songs, put a lot of emotion behind them and I think in order to do that you have to have lived it!”

Hello hello hello and welcome to a new year of recording artists’ backstories and music plus a few tales of my own. I’m Bruce Hilliard and I thank you for being here.

It’s heading into even more short days and long nights in Aberdeen. The rain always lives up to its reputation at the foot of a national rain forest that gets up to 150 inches in the west side. Roughly 90% of that crashed down on the kids without their jackets on in the elementary school playgrounds during recess.

Since it’s a new year I grabbed my high school yearbook, 1972. New year, old yearbook, makes sense but I can’t explain it.

The first thing you notice is the black and white photos. All the zeitgeist plus some really revealing words from my friends. The time capsule we call the High School yearbook and the friends that get to sign your yearbook. Sometimes you’d hand your book to a buddy to sign and it went off on its own meet and greet…off on its own tour getting thoughts and autographs for us all to reflect in years to come.

I sat down with a cup of coffee and started reading through one of them this morning. Priceless. Kids this age are where the term special needs comes from. Here we are entering the second half of our teenage years. Our bodies are looking grown up but we’re kids--our undeveloped prefrontal cortexes are being blitzkrieged by surges of raging hormones…rendering us helpless morons.

How can this be? We look and sound old enough to make sane decisions but somehow we just are not.

We have learned to read and write reasonably well but we have the social skills of a toddler. Please know, we were kids, and good ones. I am about to delve into my investigative journalism skills and read from the Aberdeen High School ‘72 yearbook. I flat changed the names and maybe took a few poetic edits but for the most part, this is my sophomore year experience hand written in balloony longhand.

Here’s one from my girlfriend Gorcon (I used a Klingon name because her real name was Cinderella). And pretend this is a teenage girl’s voice:

Dear Brooster the Rooster,

This year really has ended fantastically, and it's all because of you. I am sorry for all the griping I have done about certain people. But you know how it is. I guess it’s because I’ve been hurt so many times before and I couldn’t stand it another time.

I really like your family. I just wish they could feel the same about me. It hurts Bruce. I hate to be compared to someone, especially someone with certain advantages. Maybe someday.

I hope you will never hesitate to tell me anything because I feel that I have let you in a great deal. I’ll never forget the party when we kissed for the first time. Then there was the kegger at Alice’s Restaurant (it was actually a cow pasture a few miles out of town). The all nighter in the bleachers.

You have been so good to me. So understanding. But most of all, so much fun. Camping until 5:00 a.m. in a bush, dropping me on the floor, crashing my mom’s car while sun burning my boobs, trips to the beach, Harborena dances, track season and the naked lady in the Safeway parking lot.

It seems impossible for so much to happen in only one month. You are the greatest person I have ever known. I don’t say things I don’t mean unless I’m just kidding. I meant everything I said and I always will.

Love always,

Gorcon

She broke up with me that June.

So how can that be? We’re at the height of our sex drive, we’ve been down Heartbreak Road and pretty much know everything there is to know about love.

This excerpt is from my senior yearbook. It was written by my buddy’s girlfriend, both seniors. She wrote on the opening page:

Bruce,

Gol, it’s almost all over! It gets...

Hello hello and Happy New Year to all. Recently I had the pleasure of talking to a couple of former residents of my childhood home on 10th street in Aberdeen WA. They lived there as kids in the late fifties and moved out when their father died in 1960.

For years I wondered what had happened to those kids, roughly my age, that lived there before us. It turns out they used the same rec room for shows and rehearsals as we did years later. There was a room that just called out for audiences and performers.

They knew the neighborhood and some of the same teachers and businesses that have since passed. I think it's always comforting to know that the house you once lived in, had spent special occasions in, slept and grew in is still there and being cared for properly. Houses have soul.

But the music in the house, and I noticed this right when we started to move in, seemed to be there for the taking. There was a jukebox full of 78 rpm records left behind. There was that but there was an inherent sense of “hey, my uncle has a barn, let’s put on a show” to it. And they did and so did we.

We had rock bands as we got older and into the 70s. What started as little kid marionette shows and really crappy cover bands morphed into a band that would open for Heart and the Ramones and would carry on a tradition in Aberdeen. A tradition of good music that doesn’t really have a start and a finish.

But, I have to say when I got off the phone with the former kids of my house, for the rest of the day I felt I’d just seen a great movie. An unforeseen feel good flick.

In this show we’ll feature a few of my friends, Dean Backholm and the Murchy Brothers that played in this particular basement rec room for some formative years when we cranked our amps up to 11 and shook the glasses off the bar shelves.

Our next guest can relate to this band start up thing. Chris James is the current main vocalist of the Burrito Brothers, be they Flying or Notorious Burrito brothers. The band that laid the eggs for the Byrds and the Eagles.

Love is a River from the Flying Burrito Brothers’ Notorious Burrito Brothers album. And my life brothers that were a huge part of the Aberdeen 10th Street rec room Ed Sullivan show, here’s On the Harbor by the Murchy Brothers.

And Montreal by Dean Backholm.

My new friends that used to occupy my childhood home before me, Morry and Judy, are awesome and I’m so glad we talked for an hour or so. It sounds like an episode to me. It already sounds like “hey, my uncle has a barn, let’s put on a show!”

Well, I know now they moved to California. Thanks so much for the listen. Let’s make 2022 a year of less blame and shame and more Better Each Day.

Hello hello and Merry Christmas to all. There’s been a generous response from our listeners regarding hometown nostalgia material on the show. Being from middle- everything Aberdeen WA in the early baby boomer years, there are endless small town-everywhere stories for you.

I somehow gravitate to stories about my Dad, Dr. Glenn A. Hilliard, DVM. (reverb)

Christmas is extra special when your dad is a veterinarian. A vet is the guy you call on Sunday night because your kid, a human kid, has a fever. The reason the callers would call the vet and not an MD?: “I can't call my people doctor, it’s Sunday evening.” So they called Dad, the town veterinarian.

Sometimes it was serious. Or sometimes just a comforting word from a trusted doctor was all it took. The call was always during dinner. It wasn’t uncommon to hear the the caller’s voice freaking out in Dad’s ear with “my cow broke his leg, fell in the river, drifted downstream for a spell and is stuck on a snag and gettin’ dark.”

When I was a small boy I was told by classmates that “your dad…he killed my cat.” Later in life I heard my peers say “Thank God for you dad, he saved my cat.” Even as a snot nose kid I knew my dad wasn’t in the business of killing cats. He was crazy devoted and had a gift both earned and inborn.

It’s raining and dark. It is evident Dad is the only vet available in the entire free world, so out he goes to save a cow…on a Sunday night. A cold outside but warm inside Disney, Ed Sullivan Bonanza Sunday night.

Christmas was a special time for Dad’s employees at the Aberdeen Animal Hospital. He always felt Christmas day was a day for people to be home with their families. So, in order to accommodate his helpers, Santa Dad would give them all Christmas day off. This meant Dad worked Christmas day and we spoiled baby boomers got to open presents on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve…a night of magic.

This changed everything for us present openers. My two brothers and I were always stoked to open presents on Christmas Eve to allow the Christmas day off for “the girls” as he called them.

Christmas Eve, like every day at closing, dogs and cats are fed, treated and cages cleaned. I was sure to tell the animals I could get them out on good behavior. But on Christmas Eve there were secret little boy conversations with the inmates. The cats especially. They’ve always got a plan.

Hello hello hello and Merry Christmas little orphaned kittens. Don’t worry. My dad won’t let nothin’ happen to ya. He’ll keep all of you until he finds homes for you.

Kittens are fun but even more so--sometimes I’d take a cage full of puppies out for a roll on the floor. Puppy breath.

There was a certain silence in the animal world on Christmas Eve, just me and Dad this year.

Wet food, dry food, an occasional pill, special tuna for the meow meow that won’t eat.

Some of the animals were there strictly as hotel guests for the holidays. No Bing Crosby at this dive. It was clear the fuzzies were a bit broken-hearted about not being home with their families. As the evening got closer and closer to dad and I locking the doors and heading home for the annual Christmas Eve unwrapping, the gang gets gradually louder until it sounds like a rock concert with a dog and cat mosh pit.

Class, class, class, SHUT UP!!! Thank you. All they need is some lovin’.

Finally we’re done with the tasks required to secure Noah’s Arc and go home to see what's under the tree. The lights are out. It’s dark except for the glow from ultraviolet lights. We’re almost out of the building when there’s a scratch at the front door. I could see through the glass it was a large brown dog with a sad expression.

Dad opened the door and in limped a big wet dog with no signs of an owner. He looked tired and neglected. Dad had him up on the table, treated and bandaged his right front paw. I gave the patient a milk bone and...

Hello hello hello and merry Christmas from the corner of Christmas Street and Better Each Day. Come on along and take a walk with me.

You're here just in time for an eggnog and my Christmas 2021 song Hello Hello Hello. It's about being committed to the Christmas fruit cake boom boom room for believing in Santa. “I believe in Santa Claus and giving.”

Christmas Street can be anywhere, anytime. It doesn’t need to be a street. It can be in a Victorian home or visiting the mother ship. In this story it’s down a gravel logging road near North River. It doesn’t matter where my North River is, just come along for the ride.

We’re riding with my dad in his veterinary van on a quest for the perfect North River Christmas tree. It’s December 1960 something. I’m about 10 and he’s about 42. It started snowing. The good stuff. The road is getting narrower with more snow and the thought of meeting a fully loaded log truck coming head on sucks even more than the cigarette smoke.

Dad finished his Winston and lit another one as we parked where only the Lewis and Clark Expedition would have dared…somewhere out in the cold wilderness where anyone could easily get carried off by a pack of bandicoots.

This is one of those areas where people disappear and later reappear as a bat. I made that up. But time seems to be moving at the speed of a parked car.

The 27 mile trek in the snow uphill both ways was just about to begin. The hunt for, not the Home Depot tree or tree farm tree or Bigfoot, but the majestic tree that roams with its herd in the hills of the Pacific Northwest jungles…the aromatic but ever so elusive wild Christmas tree. We walked. The snow was morphing from creamy to crunchy style under my boots.

Somewhere along the way Dad got far enough ahead of me to secretly drop some raisins in the snow along the trail. Why? You ask. It’s the trick where later when we walk by the little SunKist pile together, the funny one who planted the raisins cries out “hey, Santa’s reindeer have been here” as he picks up a handful of raisins and eats them. The unsuspecting recipient says “oh major ew” and hilarity ensues. Always a fav.

After two weeks we ran out of supplies and began eating each other. No we didn’t but that’s probably a better show.

Now, most of the trees in nature don’t look like they’ve been pruned. In fact most of the trees down North River way looked a bit like a Charlie Brown tree.

The scenery was getting whiter and I spotted an eight point buck not far away…just as Dad went to eat some of the raisins, at least what he thought were raisins. Yep. Once he got his mouth back we spotted what was to be one of the three wild trees required to make one domestic Christmas tree.

The trick was to take three trees home, cut them into thirds and use the best sections. Each tree was carefully selected by the master himself for high end, mid or bottom. The thirds were attached with dowels. The concept defies any known grafting techniques.

The snow was really coming down as we slid our three donors to the van. It was a Kodak moment ingrained in my mind forever. Even more impressive was Dad’s knot acumen. He could sinch down a load that would make a Peterbilt log truck proud.

Dad was busy tying off the trees, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. It was dusk. A snowy dark December dusk. I watched until I drifted off into a song. A song about a hot snow angel that shows up if you wish hard enough.

When I woke up I was 66-years-old, thrice divorced and living in a van…

The tree, as I’ve come to find out, once decorated, looked awesome like they always do. The experience is among some of my fondest childhood Christmas stories.

Special thanks to the co-writer, flautist and vocalist on Snow Angel. She is Victoria Lye and I wish you, Victoria, and your loved ones a Merry Christmas in...