The Weekly Pour Podcast w/ Jim Vallance

Summer of 69 - Bryan Adams, Don’t Forget Me When I’m Gone - Glass Tiger, Touch of Poison - Lita Ford, Rag Doll - Aerosmith, and Tease me Please Me - Scorpions.

What do these songs, and so many others, have in common? The answer is Jim Vallance.

Called a “master” by Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Jim’s accolades describe the highest level of artistic and commercial achievement and include induction into the Canadien Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the British Columbia Entertainment Hall of Fame, just to name a couple!

We are thrilled to welcome songwriter, arranger and producer, Jim Vallance to this episode of The Weekly Pour Podcast. 

Listen, Like, Subscribe. 

Connect with Jim Vallance:

http://www.jimvallance.com/

Connect with TWPP:

Email: theweeklypourpodcast@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheWeeklyPourPodcast 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theweeklypourpodcast/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theweeklypourpodcast 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/08rkvK6o1UIDK1AUA8k287?si=d1ee338073e54d0d 

iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-pour-podcast/id1616425052 

iHeart: https://iheart.com/podcast/99535328/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Hi folks, this is Rick Amber Triumph. This is Mark Merrill, also known as Johnny B Bad.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

I mean, this isn't a best-selling mother.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

I threw the best-selling in there. Best-selling mother, Dick Wybro. I'm Melanie from Second Shooter. This is Jeff of Second Shooter. Hey everybody, it's Brian Allen from Bridges of Blaze. Hey, this is Sammy Lee, drummer of the Ben Red Ring. Yo guys, it's Mark McKinney. Hey, this is Frank Fletcher. Melonigos, this is Billy Sheen. Hey guys, this is John Karabi. What's up, everybody? It's Logan from All the Pretty Things.

SPEAKER_04 0:33

Hey guys, it's Lemonie. What's up, guys? Sandra Carson here from Paralandrum and the Leg Project.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

My name is Reggie, and you are listening to the Weekly Poor Podcast. Thanks so much for joining the most amazing Tucson out there. It's time once again for the Weekly Poor, the show that knows everything about absolutely nothing. Here, your host, TBT and Days.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Weekly Poor Podcast. Now, let me ask you a question. Summer of 69, Brian Adams, Don't Forget Me When I'm Gone, Glass Tiger, Touch of Poison from Lita Ford, Ragdoll, Aerosmith, and Tease Me Please Me from The Scorpions. What do these songs and so many others have in common? The answer is Jim Valence, called a Master by Aerol Smith Steven Tyler. Jim's accolades describe the highest level of artistic and commercial achievement and include induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and the British Columbia Entertainment Hall of Fame, just to name a couple. We're thrilled to welcome songwriter, arranger, and producer Jim Valence to this episode of the Weekly Poor Podcast. Welcome, Jim. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us. And uh we hope you enjoy the next hour.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

Thank you. I enjoyed your intro. There's uh quite a few of my friends on there.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Excellent. Uh we I we spent a whole lot of time putting that together. Took hours. So uh starting off, you're uh you're located in New York right now, right? I am okay, good deal. Um, I will skip the whole how's the weather? What did you do yesterday? We've done a lot of research on you today and and for the past couple weeks once uh once Ace told me that uh that we got you hooked up. And uh yeah, we're gonna skip that stuff and we're gonna get right into it. I'm sure that Ace will jump right in.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Yeah, we're at in New Hampshire, first of all. Sorry? We're at in New York. I'm always I always ask people in New York because they're not going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03 2:45

73rd in Broadway. 73rd in Broadway.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

So you're in the city.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

I am on the uh right on the 2-3 express train.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yeah, been there one time, uh, visited uh Manhattan one time. Yeah, not not the best day. Not the best day, but we made the best of it.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Yeah, just avoid Times Square. It's a it's a nightmare.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

We drove right by. Well, we didn't drive, but we were on a bus. Right by it. Right by it. But uh you've you've uh been a collaborator for many, many just megastars. Uh that's one of the first things I noticed. Uh I'm I'm a bit of a songwriting nerd in the sense that I read credits into songs, and I read liner notes and things like that, and your name would always come up, of course, in the Brian Adams stuff, but then it would pop up in other places. Uh if you would, uh you know, maybe go back to the beginning a a little bit and tell us how you got into uh songwriting. I know you were you were in a band in Prism, uh a band called Prism in uh the late 70s, uh and wrote songs for them, arranged some music, I think, for them. I did.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

Played drums on the album.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Right, right. So how how did all that get started?

SPEAKER_03 4:06

I mean, I mean, to go right back to the very beginning, I mean I was born in in May 1952, but life really began in February in 1964 when I saw the Beatles on TV, and it I was 11 years old, it just completely scrambled my brain. I knew right then that's what I wanted to do. And uh begged my parents for a guitar or a drum kit or anything at all. It took a couple of years, but they they finally gave in. And then um I got a tape recorder, too, for Christmas or her birthday, a little tiny reel-to-reel. And so now I had a guitar and I had a tape recorder, and I just kind of needed to record stuff, so I wrote my own little things to put on tape. I mean, they were very rudimentary and and you know, early, early days, but I got interested in you know writing, playing, recording, just about almost all at the same time. And then that just continued through my teens and kept um you know trying to write songs, listening a lot, like you were saying, reading the credits and you know, finding out who was doing what. Like I love the monkeys, but you look at the credits and and they didn't write their own songs, they had a whole team of people behind them. And so I got real curious about that. And of course, Lennon and McCartney were writing their own songs, uh, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards. So I was really drawn to that when I knew that bands were actually writing songs, or there were people who were writing songs for bands, then it just increased my interest in wanting to do that.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

So you were always wanting to at least write songs, if not play drums in a band. Which which which were uh which would you say took a precedent? Uh the writing of the songs or or playing the drums in a band?

SPEAKER_03 5:48

I mean, it kind of evolved, you know, together and and apart. I mean, my first band in high school, I was a drummer. So drums became my my main instrument. I mean, I play guitar and piano not super well, but you know, um, to write songs you only need to know four or five chords, and I know six, maybe. Um but uh yeah, drums was my sort of bread and butter all through my teens and then into my twenties, even I was a session drummer in Vancouver, playing on McDonald's commercials and you know, whatever work I could get around the city. Um but always writing songs, always uh, and but had nowhere to go with them. So I had all these songs I'd written. I'm not a singer, I had no aspirations to be an artist. Um so when Prism came along, um, and they said, you know, who's got some songs? I do, you know, so I ended up being the main writer in that band just because I had been writing and cataloging all this music for, you know, all through my teens and early 20s.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Right. And you're not the first person, uh, artist-wise, that was uh A uh saw the Beatles on uh Ed Sullivan and was instantly uh just blown away by that whole uh experience. Uh gosh, I can't even name how many people talk about that. Uh Paul and Gene, Kid, they talk about it a lot as a huge influence on them. And then um the same thing, you mentioned they write their own songs and uh back to back to Gene and Paul and Kiss, they kind of modeled their songwriting uh aspect after that because you had uh everyone's name on every song. Uh you know, like the Beatles. That was kind of their thing. So uh you know, you're not the first person to uh to to say that. So you know the Beatles obviously were a big influence. Do you feel like uh do you feel like you tried to write in any particular way uh like Lennon or McCartney or anything like that early on?

SPEAKER_03 7:47

Yeah, I mean I tried it all. I mean, if you listen to my early music, it's actually probably so close to existing songs that it would be uh you know considered plagiarism. So my early songs were just really copying other people's songs, and then you have then you'll learn to sort of you know cast a wider net and and and be careful not to copy too closely. But uh if I listen back to some of my way early tapes, I mean I was also a big fan of the band, Robbie Robertson's writing. And I've got some early songs that I mean that never been released and never will be, but you know, trying to sound like the band and sing like Lee Von Helm. And then for a while I was into prog rock and wrote a few things. I was a big yes fan around um Close to the Edge album, and I did some writing back then that was sort of you know an attempt at prog rock that was way too close. I mean, it sounds more like yes than would be permitted, but so I I literally you just you just copy your heroes uh and then kind of slowly, you know, put your own thing into it. And um I mean that's how I learned to be a songwriter, just literally trial and error.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Right, because eventually the copying becomes an homage. You know, eventually it's like, oh, that sounds like Led Zeppelin, or that sounds like the Beatles, that kind of thing. Um you know, after uh you were in prison for the first record as as a as a band member. I was and and this website you have is exhaustive in information, and it's fantastic. So whoever put this together with you uh deserves a big pat on the back because it's great. Uh but the second record, you're not you're not on the second record or in the band at that point, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:33

No, I'd quit the band after the first album. We we did an album uh and then we went on tour, and that's when I discovered I hated touring. Uh because we were a new band and uh there was no there were no perks. We were five guys in a rental car uh eating uh you know microwave tacos from gas stations. It was really no fun. Um, so I did one tour and then um similar to Brian Wilson in the Beach Boys, you know, he decided to you know step away from the band and just go into kind of a uh background kind of a role, writing and arranging. So I continued with Prism uh writing, not as much as I had on the first album, but I did continue contributing to their albums. And we all remain friends, I mean, even to this day. Um, but I I was not cut out to be a touring band member.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Well you even say uh at one point uh you were embarrassed to be in a rock band, which is uh an interesting statement, uh, and you came up with a a uh stage name.

SPEAKER_03 10:34

Yeah, I don't I I don't think that uh quote. I mean, there's there's stuff on Wikipedia, there's there's stuff out there that uh people say I said that that's all that's quite true. Yeah, I never said I was embarrassed to be in a rock band. Someone else must have said that on my behalf.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Uh yeah, I I pulled it right from the the website uh uh and uh I thought that was an odd thing to say. Uh you know, but uh I don't know if it was because you were playing the Dixie Land music before that. You you talk about playing Dixieland music uh with a band in the streets.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

Uh yeah, we buffed on the streets of Vancouver. We just you know uh played on the street corners for for coins.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Which uh I don't know who decided that Dixieland was gonna be what you wanted to play in uh in Canada, but that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_03 11:25

We we tried everything. Like I said, cast a wide net. I mean you you never know what's gonna work.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Right, right, and you don't. And and uh uh even that first Prism record isn't exactly the same as the second one, right? Uh the the second one's got a little more punch to it, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03 11:41

I think so, yeah. I mean again, bands grow and evolve. So uh and it was a different band. Uh uh by the time that Prism did the second album, uh there was quite a turnover of personnel. I mean, I quit and two other people joined, so it was in some ways it was a different band.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Right. I mean, at one point you changed lead singers, uh uh I I believe, uh which that's that's a big thing right there.

SPEAKER_03 12:04

Uh yeah, way early on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Right, and I'm new to just listening to this, uh just digging into your background. But uh I got into the second one just yesterday. There was some good stuff on there. I really liked uh quite a bit of it. Uh specifically, I was uh on the first record, I was trying to hear you uh play drums because I I I wanted to see how you sounded. So uh after Prism, though, where do we go after Prism?

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Well, so I quit I quit Prism in 70, 1977, and then just went back to my you know previous job, which was playing drums on McDonald's commercials and wedding receptions on the weekend, that sort of thing. And then one day I was in a music store in Vancouver, um, and I ran into this 18-year-old kid who was just kind of hanging around, and I was introduced to him, and uh Brian Adams. And he was, you know, uh he had quit school, he was living with his mom, and um just kind of hanging around, you know, he didn't have a whole lot going on, and neither did I. So we we exchanged phone numbers and got together a couple of days later and wrote a song the first day and and the second day and the third day, and we just kept going. I mean, that was I met him in January 1978. Um, I mean, we we worked really hard at our songwriting, uh, and we didn't really get any traction until Brian's third album in 1983. So, you know, that was a long gestation period. We, I mean, we worked hard with not a lot to show for it for a bunch of years until things started to come together.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Well, what made you stick with Brian that long? Um there's a I mean, I'm trying to look it up, but the the first record um was uh wasn't that more of a dance record?

SPEAKER_03 14:03

Not really. Brian did a dance single uh really early on. Again, he was, you know, he was still a teenager. His his real voice hadn't quite arrived yet, the the Brian Adams we know today. He was singing in a different style, and he had come out of a band called Sweeney Todd, um, which was not really prog rock, but I think the vocal style was more in the vein of say Supertramp or Yes. It wasn't you know Rod Stewart Don Henley, which is more of a direction he went later. Uh so when I first met him, uh he was still trying to figure out who he was as an artist, and we we did a dance single, and it was a fairly big hit in the in the clubs, uh, even in New York. It did quite well. But then by the time we got to the first album, we were steering more towards pop, and then by the second and third album, it was you know full on rock and roll when Brian's you know true voice arrived.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Was it just uh the the motivation to want to succeed that kept it going? Because I mean, you know, you're talking by the third album before, you know, really starting to hit it. Is that what it was, just that motivation and and that drive to not give up that just kept you guys going in that direction?

SPEAKER_03 15:16

Well, I mean, to be honest, um we didn't have a plan B. I mean, you know, when you you know decide on music for a career, I mean, you're stepping off the ledge. You know, you're uh I mean I remember when I was 18, you know, graduating high school, I had no interest in college. I just wanted to be a musician. And my parents were horrified, like, you can't you can't make a living at that. I said, well, I I want to try, you know, and and they they weren't really, they weren't thrilled, and I don't want to say they weren't supportive, but they they really just didn't buy, they didn't buy it at all. So I went out into the world and and literally starved, you know, all through my late teens and into my early 20s, just trying to make a living at it. You know, like I said, playing at bar mitzvahs and wedding receptions and you know, any work you could get, 25 bucks for a weekend type of thing, and hoping I could make my rent at the end of the month. So by the time I met Brian, I'd had a little bit of success with Prism, but now I'm back on my own again with no real plan. And uh, you know, nothing to fall back on. So, you know, I I think to pursue a music career, I think you have to be prepared for you know uh rejection and and disappointment and uh and even failure, but you just you just keep going because you because you believe. And I and I really, once Brian and I kind of got together, I I believed in in him as an artist and as a talent. And and I mean he was just unstoppable. Just being in a room with him was was like the energy was was so intense. You you could you could not believe that he wasn't on the way to somewhere. We just didn't know how how long it was going to take or how quick or whatever. But we just kept going and we we felt we were getting better, like each album, the songs got better. We we got better as writers, Brian got better as an artist, we gathered better people around us, like like Bob Clearmountain, the engineer and producer, and um Brian moved from the Canadian Record Company to the Los Angeles Record Company of AM, and we got more international support down there. So you could see, you could kind of see it growing, even though it was very it's like you know it's like watching grass grow. It's it's very slow, but you know, check back on a week and it's you know you can see the you can see the difference. So we just hung in for that that first five years when we didn't have a whole lot to show for it. But uh we believed that it was all about believing.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Right, and he would have had to have seen something in you, and vice versa, for this to work.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

Yeah, obviously. We we just clicked. I mean, literally, right from the first day, the very first day we got together, there was just something about our you know common influences and and um our our work ethic. I mean, we we worked hard and we were not afraid to work hard, and we never stopped working hard. It's not easy.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

It's not easy. No, and and at this point, uh you're you're still in the songwriter mode. Uh you know, he's he's the performer.

SPEAKER_03 18:35

No, no. Oh, it was it was he was a full-on writer. I mean, he was extremely extremely gifted. So we we we co-wrote 50-50 right from day one. But right, he was he was the performer, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Right. That's that's what I meant. He he was you know, you were still in the in the background role, you know, while this thing's going on. But but but in the meantime, before things are are hitting, you guys are trying to make ends mean by also songwriting uh for other people or or or whatever you can do, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:05

Yeah, I mean that was I mean early on, that was a real big boost for us. Is so like I said, I met him in 80 in 78, and we still hadn't got a whole lot happening, but in 82, 1982, the phone rings one day, and my wife answers, and she goes, Jim, it's Michael Jackson.

unknown 19:26

I went, What?

SPEAKER_03 19:27

So I go, hello? It was hello, this is Michael James Jackson, uh Canadian record producer. And uh he because he was Canadian, he was aware of us, of me and Brian. And he said, Um, do you have any interest in writing a song for KISS? Because he was producing their next album. And yeah, we were way interested. So uh long story short, we ended up writing two songs for that album with um I think we have both with Gene Simmons. And that was a big boost for us early in our our writing career. And and again, gave us that extra win in our sails to just keep going.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Yeah, that was an interesting read on the website when I was going through, uh, like like Ace Ace was talking about, you know, you can get through 12 pages in two weeks because there's just so much info. Uh, but reading about the KISS thing, I I I had to chuckle just because of the extra verse that needed to be added, you know, for uh for credit's sake, we'll say.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

I mean, in fairness, I mean, you know, if you want a song on a kiss album, you know, the band members are gonna want to want a piece of it. Um, so yeah, Gene, Brian and I wrote a song, the two of us, and then Gene said, I think it needs a third verse. And Brian and I said, Oh, no, no, it's fine the way it is. No, no, no, no. It needs a third verse. Which he wrote. Oh, okay. And and you know, it was all fair. He didn't take any more credit than was deserved. So, you know.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

I think uh and and and I knew this long ago that you guys had written uh War Machine and uh Rock and Roll Hell, right? Those are the two. Um that's by far and away my favorite KISS record, Creatures of the Night. And when I saw that you guys had collaborated on that record, uh that was just always such a shock. Not that you couldn't do it, but you didn't expect it. And uh, you know, you're like, man, this makes it even cooler to know that Brian Adams and Jen Vallins have uh, you know, collaborated with Kiss on this fantastic record because it is it's a great record. And uh Brian has even released uh his own versions of those two songs now that are out.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

Yeah, recently, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

And those are new recordings, right? He just recorded them recently. Those aren't old demos or anything, right?

SPEAKER_03 21:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Right. Uh so that's a big boost for you. Um and do you get more work from there?

SPEAKER_03 22:00

Well, I think that's always the case. I think every every time you have uh a bit of success, more people, I and when I say people, I mean people in the industry, people managers, record companies, producers, um, people start to notice and they go, oh, maybe we'll ask we'll ask them for a song. So yeah, it really did. I mean, that that put us on the map. And then we started getting uh asked to write songs for other people, and it kind of, you know, so then we had almost two careers, writing for Brian and then, you know, writing for other people. So it kept us really busy all through the early to mid-80s.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Right, which uh in the meantime, you're working on on getting these albums going with uh with Brian. Uh uh I uh Remember was a uh a standout single. I I love that song. Uh that that to me uh almost has the sound that we hear later on on Cuts Like a Knife. Uh Lonely Nights, that's a fantastic song. I I play that song all the time. And you know, those those were things that were getting on the radio eventually, especially Lonely Nights, right? That that eventually was getting you guys some some airplay, uh not just in Canada, but uh a little bit here in the States, right? And then uh and then Cuts Like a Knight comes out and things start really taking off.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

That was 1983, yeah. Right, that was the album that that really started, yeah, to make to make things happen.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

So did you know that it was going to be good when you went in in writing this, or or how did you feel about the the writing sessions for that record?

SPEAKER_03 23:39

Well, I mean, like I said, I I I think as the years went on, and album to album to album, uh, we always tried to up our game and and and write better. I mean, you never go into a room and say, today let's write a really bad song, you know. But but nor do you go into a room and write a good song every day. I mean, we've got hundreds of songs that'll never see the light of day because they didn't um you know rise to our to our standards. So, you know, you you you might write four or five songs and then the fifth one is the one you go, yeah, this is this belongs on the album. Um so you need to you need to kind of police yourself, you know, like like set standards and then stick to them. And and the song isn't finished till it's finished, and it's not good till it's good. You just you we I mean you mentioned um uh summer 69 in the in the in the introduction. I mean, we rewrote that song three times before we thought we got it right. And even then, even then we weren't really sure that it almost didn't go on the album. We still weren't sure we had gotten it right. And you know, is it now 40, 45 years later when I hear it on the radio? I can't remember what we didn't like about it, but at the time we were it's kind of all bent out of shape. It's not it's not ready, it's not right.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

And I find that funny, uh, there's always that song that uh a band either needs another song for the for the the album, the producer says you need another song, and they come up with the the hit, or there's one like what you're just talking about where we're not sure, let's not put it on there, and then you change your mind back and forth, back and forth, and that song is is synonymous with with Brian Adams. Uh I I spoke to two people today, younger, way younger than I am, um uh, and uh told them that I was gonna have you on the show, and you know, and then of course Jim Valence is not a household name, but Brian Adams is, and I said, Well, do you know Brian Adams? No. But I said, How about the summer of 69? They start singing the song. They know that song. It's it's synonymous uh with with you and especially with Brian, because he sings it. Um you said you write a lot of songs. Is there a uh a process where uh how long does it take you let's say to write one good song? Are you setting a day? Are you revisiting every two days? And do you ever take do you ever take a song, throw it to the side, and revisit it years later?

SPEAKER_03 26:18

I think we have. Yeah, I can't think of which one. I mean, that doesn't often happen, but yeah, there's been a few cases of of that. Well, hang on, uh, Aerosmith, um uh we didn't come back and rewrite it, but there was some Aerosmith stuff I wrote with Stephen and Joe in like 1987 that wasn't uh deemed good enough for the album back then. And then 30 years later they decided they had another listen and they released it. So it wasn't like we went back and rewrote it. But like I said, Summer 69, we we started it and we spent maybe two or three days, and um and it wasn't even called Summer 69. That wasn't even the song title, it was called Best Days of My Life, and we left it for about a month and came back and looked at it again and then did some more work on it, and then I think we went even back, like I said, a third time. So that was a song that if you really stretched it out from the day we started to the day we deemed it finished, it would have been a few months. But um trying to think of a song like uh Ragdoll that I wrote with Aerosmith. Um on the first day that I met them, Stephen and Joe came over to my studio and we just had a quick chat, got acquainted, picked up our guitars, and just started jamming. So that was like lunchtime, and by dinner time we had pretty much that song sketched out, not the lyrics, and it was called Rag Ragtime, wasn't called Ragdoll. But there's an example of like in one day we got most of a song done, and then the next day Steven and I just sat at the picnic table in my backyard and sketched out the lyrics, and it was still called Ragtime, and it wasn't until about two weeks later that we changed the title to Ragdoll. So, you know, you're always you know trying to make it better, but you also need to know when when you're finished. You can you can keep you know changing uh uh forever. I mean, I've worked with some artists, uh one uh artist in Vancouver who I wrote with years ago. Uh, she was really talented, but we wrote a song and I thought it was really good. And then she went away, and I thought she was going to record it, but her producer uh was also a songwriter, and he said, Let's do some more, and and they wrote more and more and more, and they kind of took the song up over the hill and down the other side. So, you know, um it was better the first time it was finished than not as good the second time it was finished. So again, you need to know when you're done.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Right, because you can overdo it. Uh you can overdo it with the production as well. Uh, you mentioned Ragdoll, and uh that seems to me like the most uh eclectic thing for you to ever write. How do you feel about that? Do you feel like it's I mean, you have these straight up rock songs with Brian on on Reckless, and then you have this uh this bouncy uh song with Aerosmith that uh sounds like Aerol Smith, but uh I wouldn't recognize you in that song at all.

SPEAKER_03 29:26

Well, uh you know, I serve the artist. So again, if if you want to make a living at songwriting, you've got to get songs on a record. The record's gotta sell, and then eventually you get paid, and you can buy groceries and and afford your rent. If you get real precious about who you are and what you do, and it's like, I'm not gonna write something that sounds like Aerismith, I'm gonna show Aerismith, you know, what I can do. That's that's not how it works at all. So um when I'm with a band, and I'm a I'm a chameleon, so I I've written, you know, for soft artists, um, maybe not the most appropriate word, but say, you know, like Michael Bublet and Anne Murray. And I've written for heavy artists like Scorpions, Kiss, Alice Cooper. Um, you know, so you just Ozzy, who I adore, what a lovely guy. And so you you go in a room with an artist and you climb inside their head. You know, it's like you you go, what uh what would Ozzy want to say? Even though you're in the room with them, you're you're you're in his world now. And there's there's a couple of things you you want to have happen. One is you want to write a song that you like, you want to make sure Ozzy likes it, and you want to make sure it sounds so much like Ozzy that it gets on the record. So there's a whole kind of a strategy or game to play. Um, and whether it's Michael Bouvelet or or The Scorpions, it's it's still music. It's a song, you know, it's got lyrics, a verse, a chorus. And um, I mean, you know, Paul Anka did a cover of heaven, so you can take almost any song and do it in any style, you know. So um if you're writing with Aussie, you're writing in in an Aussie style. Um it's it's really that simple. I I'm and again, I don't mean to say it's easy, but it's it's a strategy, it's a strategy.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Right. And and you wrote uh with Ozzy, uh, one of them was I want you. And uh that and this may and I read what you wrote, and you can tell us about it, but I read what you wrote on here uh about writing that song. But when I first heard that song on Osmosis, I think it is, um love that song because it's so intense and it's heavy and it's intense and all this. But the story about writing it's a bit comical, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 32:02

Well, yeah, we just uh I mean we we sketched out the song. It it didn't have a lot of lyrics, but we had the we had a melody and a and a structure for the song. So we just sat down. Uh I don't have any lyric in front of me, maybe you do, but we just sat down and we wrote way too many lyrics. Like way more than we needed. And and the more we wrote, we actually started to laugh. And just to crack each other up, we'd we'd write something really silly, stuff that never ended up in the song. But but it was just it was just it was a fun session. I mean, Aussie's a really funny guy, so you know, we just were sort of entertaining each other, but at the end of the day, we you know, we got serious also and finished the song. But uh yeah, some of the lyrics were just like jokes.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Right. And and just getting each other going. It's probably a good way to break the ice if you if you don't know an artist very well. Uh it's something like that. You you're you're cutting up a little bit, you're getting everything loose, and then and then you get down to work.

SPEAKER_03 33:03

Uh yeah, that's true. I mean, even with Steven and Joe, like the the first day they came to my house, we didn't start writing right away. We actually had some tea and cookies and and talked for probably an hour about you know common influences like, you know, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles and the Stones, and talked about our our kids and and all kinds of common stuff, you know, um, to get to know someone as another as another human, as another person. And then once you've sort of established a little bit of camaraderie, then you pick up your guitars and and uh it just feels a little more a little more natural. But I mean these are wonderful people. I I feel so so blessed to have spent time with you know Ozzy and Steven and Alice, and you know, they're they're really special people. I'm I I I really feel lucky.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

It's one of the stories that I was reading on the website as well. Um I I was flipping through all of the Aerosmith songs, uh, and then I get to other side, and this kind of goes a lot with what you were talking about earlier, how you know, when you're collaborating with that artist, you're you're just writing and getting things done. Well, the story in here is that you had it done, sent it by mail on a cassette, we remember what those are, and then by the time you got it back, everything was all mixed up, and you know, for for what it's worth, you weren't pleased to begin with.

SPEAKER_03 34:30

Yeah, well, um I I was in Vancouver, uh Stephen was in Boston at his house, and I wrote um uh a track and recorded it. So no no lyrics, no melody, just a structure. And it had a verse and a chorus and a verse and a chorus. And this is before email and before MP3. So literally, I put it on a cassette and and put it in an envelope and mailed it to Boston. And Stephen opened the envelope, put it in his Walkman, and he and he sang along with it, recorded his vocal, put the cassette in the mail, and sent it back to me. And I played it, and now it's got lyrics and a melody, and I went, no, you you you got it wrong. You sang a verse over my chorus and a chorus over my verse. He he misunderstood my intention. And I was I was quite disappointed. And and we were we're on the phone, and and Stephen says, No, no, no, listen again. I I you know I think I I did it right. And he he was right. I mean, it just took me a little, you know, a minute or two to kind of get into what he was hearing. Um, but yeah, that I mean again, you just have to be open-minded and be open to I mean, collaboration really is, you know, two, three people in a room. And it's not about being precious about your idea, it's about the best idea wins, and then the song is the best it can be. So as you bounce ideas around the room, it's all about how good can the song be? And in this case, it was just me and Stephen, and it was a long distance. But um I didn't like what he did, and I listened again, and then I did like it.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

It just amazes me, because you know, you you talk to people, people ask about a song, Alaska band, Alaskan artist, whatever, and they'll say, you know, this was based on you know whatever life experience they had, you know, when they went fishing with their grandpa or whatever. It it amazes me going through your entire discography and every song that you've you've worked on, and you know, whether it be you know lyrics or the the composition, where does this where do all these ideas come from? Did you always have like a uh a super unique like like imagination to just pull things from, or does it just literally come natural to you?

SPEAKER_03 36:58

You know, it's a bit of a mystery. There's a a great interview, I don't know if you've seen it, Ed Bradley. It's years and years ago, Ed Bradley interviewing Bob Dylan on 60 Minutes. It's a really great interview. And Ed says to Bob, How did you write all those early songs? And Bob says, I don't know. I don't know how I did that. It just kind of came to me. And you know, I couldn't say it better. It it really is a mystery. Um, you you sit down in a room with another person or another two people, and you're staring at a blank piece of paper. And uh by the end of the day, you've got lyrics and a melody, and you know, uh the the beginnings, not always a finished song, but you know beginning song, and you go home, you come back the next day, listen to it, and go, oh no, you know, yeah, that's worth uh that's worth finishing. But I I I can't explain it. I've I've just always liked doing that. I I remember maybe a very early example of sort of um validation, maybe was I remember in grade five, I was living in a town in Canada, a small town called Kamlux, and there was um um all the schools in town, there was a competition to write a write a poem about Kamlux. Uh I think it was the centenary of the of the city or something. And so I uh I just I wrote us what I thought was kind of a silly poem, and I submitted it and I and I won. I won the contest. And it was like, oh wow. You know, so I I didn't do it to try to win, I just did it because it was fun. And then I I I I got five dollars for you know winning the contest. And I think that kind of a seed, it was like, oh, I can I can do this, you know, this is something I know how to do. Um, and then after that, it's really all about seeing that blank page get get filled up with lyrics. You just you just do it. And and I don't mean to be flippant or you know, but it's it's it's a mystery, even to me. I've been doing it for 50 years, and I and I still don't really understand how it happens, it just does.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

Yeah, it's definitely a gift because uh I took a stab at it in bands that I've been in, and I am terrible at lyric writing. Uh so yeah, it's definitely uh a gift. I have to ask you though, uh you wrote a song for BTO called Jamaica. Uh this was this literally happened just a few weeks ago. The wife and and my daughter, we were driving somewhere, and we listened to Rick Springfield a lot. Uh we love Rick Springfield. Uh Christina was a song, and I said, wait a minute, I remember something that Jim Ballins wrote this song for the BTO called Jamaica. I had never heard it though, but I knew that Rick had flip-floped the lyrics around, so I had to hear what you wrote. Um which was of course it is what it sounds like. It's a song about you know Jamaica. But Rick Springfield hears it and says, Well, I I like the music, but I don't like the lyrics. And he changes this whole thing, and uh, of course you get a songwriting credit on it, and uh and it's a great song, it sounds great. Uh what do you think about that when someone when uh something like that happens? Does it matter to you because you still get the songwriting credit, or are you uh uh offended at all, or do you care?

SPEAKER_03 40:34

No, it's I mean it's it's it's great. Um, I mean BTO didn't have a lot of success with with that album. So I I I wrote the song all by myself called Jamaica, and BTO recorded it. And then uh three or four years later, Rick's guitar player uh played Rick this song, Jamaica, because he thought it had a great guitar part in it. And Rick liked it enough, but didn't like the title Jamaica. And as you said, he rewrote the lyric completely. So I was quite surprised that the first I heard about it was after it was already finished and recorded. Um but yeah, I mean, to have a another song just you know come come out of the blue unexpectedly. I mean, those are always nice surprises. And and then I, you know, that kind of opened the door too. Uh then I ended up writing some stuff with Rick after that. We became friends and and co-writers. And um, and apparently the song Christina, I think to this day he still uses it as his encore or closer when he does concerts.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

I've seen him uh uh three times and and he's played it. Yeah, and it's it's a great song, and he kept everything but the lyrics. That's what's so funny. He didn't change yeah, he didn't change anything. Uh he might have beefed it up a little bit instrument instrumentally, or you know, a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 41:50

Yeah, production-wise, yeah. But the same melody, same band track. He just he just rewrote the lyrics and called it Christina instead of Jamaica. And it's good. I I mean I I I'm really pleased.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

Yeah, and and being the songwriting nerd like uh you know, I am uh on stuff like that, I'll listen to both. And I'll just sit there all the time and think about how how this happened, you know.

SPEAKER_03 42:11

Well, your question was interesting. Like, was I was I offended or anything? I I I had a chat once uh with False, and I and I'm a big fan of his. I read that uh the Simon A Garfunkel's first hit, which was Sounds of Silence. Sound of Silence, the Sound of Silence? Sound of Silence, yeah. Yeah. Um, they'd recorded it as a folk duo. So it was just acoustic guitar and uh and the two vocals, Simon Garfunkel. And uh they released it and nothing happened to it. It just died. And Paul had kind of given up on the music business. He'd gone to London, to England. I think he might have been busking around over there. And a producer in the USA took the Sound of Silence into the studio with the two vocals and acoustic guitar, added bass and drums and electric guitar, and released it without even asking Paul, without his permission at all. And and I'd read this book where Paul is a real stickler for detail, like he's he's you know, OCD, like everything has to be just perfect. And I asked him, What did you think when you first heard it? Because you it was done without your permission. So you would have just heard this completely different version of your song. And he said he was really pleased. He says, How would you not be pleased having a record go to number one, you know? So um, I mean, same for me. Like, I gosh, if someone wants to take one of my songs and make it different and make it better, I'm I'm in.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

Right. And then uh, you know, of course, all these a lot of your songs get covered, and the sound of silence, silence, excuse me, was covered by disturbed and turned into a huge hit uh what 40 years later or or whatever. Yeah. What they did with it was uh amazing, just making it so much more dramatic.

SPEAKER_03 44:05

Yeah, truly.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

My wife uh plays that all the time. Now she won't listen to the the original at all, but she loves that version.

SPEAKER_03 44:14

Yeah. Well, it's a good song. I mean, it's a really, really good song, and you can do anything with a good song.

SPEAKER_02 44:21

Yeah, we we talk about collaborations a lot and and talk about uh uh how they're written and all that. And and one thing that that Ace and I were talking about just earlier today was that a lot of people don't even realize that the artist or the band or whatever, they're not always writing their songs. Um and I would totally encourage anybody that hasn't gone to your uh website to definitely go to it, uh jimvalance.com, and go look at your all of your achievements in in in the way of songs and music, because there's stuff on there that even I, you know, as a fan, I had no idea you were involved in. And I I wrote some of them down, like LA Guns. I had no idea that you helped out with It's Over Now. And that's one of my favorite songs ever from LA Guns. Um, Tease Me, Please Me from Scorpions, an absolute epic song that I absolutely love. And and Ace already mentioned uh I just want you from Aussie. Um, but then there's there's stuff that was just a little bit earlier as you know, as the the as rock was coming back in you know late 70s, early 80s, uh to the middle eighties, when you get Loverboy with Dangerous. And I listened to that again, I think it was just yesterday, and I was like, man, it's such a good song. And to give credit where credit is due, I can't find a song that you've done that I don't like. So that's all credit. Well, it's a unique thing when people don't realize that, and then they look, and we've mentioned it on the show before, like you know, Islands in the stream, that that Dolly and Kenny sang, it was run by Bee Gees. Yep. And it I encourage people to you know pull out those notes, you know, from your CD or or look at the credits on your your uh electronic version of the songs and actually look and see who actually did those. Because if you see, for instance, Gene Simmons, you're gonna see the rest of the band, and then you might see somebody like Jim Valance or a Brian Adams or something like that. What does get me though is, and I I get you know, people getting credit for for taking part in it, but when you got 15 people on a list for a song, that just drives me insane.

SPEAKER_03 46:49

Yeah, don't get me started.

SPEAKER_01 46:53

Notorious for that. You know, it doesn't three minute pop songs, I I don't think. You know, that's just people wanting to get credit. Yeah, you faded out a little bit there, Ace.

SPEAKER_03 47:09

Yeah, we lost it for a second. I think we're good.

SPEAKER_02 47:17

Yeah, it it you see those. Go ahead and say what you said again over.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Uh I I was saying it doesn't take 15 people to write a three-minute pop song, uh in my opinion.

SPEAKER_04 47:28

Yeah, I can't figure that out at all.

SPEAKER_01 47:31

Uh and you said you can do anything with a good song, uh, an example, we you know, uh kind of what we're talking about. What about love, big heart single. But yeah, you didn't write that for heart. That was written for uh a band called Toronto, uh early on.

SPEAKER_03 47:49

Canadian band, yeah. I I wrote that with them for one of their albums, and I think we wrote like 15, 15 songs, and there's only back in the day, there was only room for 12 songs on an album. And what What About Love didn't make it, so it was an orphan. It the song just I actually forgot about it, completely forgot about it for a couple of years. And I think I wrote it with Toronto, the band Toronto, in 8082, I think. And then in 1985, I get a phone call from Capitol Records in Los Angeles saying, Congratulations, you've got the first single on the new Heart album. And I went, What song is that? And they said, What about love? I went, What? How did you get that song? I had completely forgotten about it. And somehow it found its way to Capitol Records, who played it for Ron Nevison, who was producing Heart. And Ron played the song for Ann and Nancy, the Wilson sisters, and they hated it. They hate it, they said, We're not recording this, we hate it. And and Ron said, you know what, just I'll make you a deal. Let's record it. If you still hate it, I promise I won't put it on the record. And long story short, they recorded it, they liked it, and it ended up being their their comeback, their comeback single.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

It's a good song, it's epic.

SPEAKER_03 49:20

Yeah, I like it. Yeah. But but for so but they didn't, and that's fair, you know. I think they like it now.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

Uh well, uh to be fair, they were in a hot a hard place at that point with the record company, and that's why Nevison was there to, you know, pull something out of them, and and they weren't going to be writing all their songs at that point in time. So, you know, you're gonna have to make it your own is one way or the other. And that song is endured and endured, and it fits to me right in with everything else they do.

SPEAKER_03 49:55

Yeah, no, that was a real gift. I'm really that one.

SPEAKER_02 50:00

In the in the world of in the digital era that we're in now, have you noticed like an uptick and I guess I guess uh more recognizable songs that you've done in the past? Because I know and I'll use this flat out, TikTok. That and a couple of the other platforms are were started for people to just you know do music things, you know, whether it be lip syncing or just have it as as background music or whatever. One of the songs that I can know that I've heard has been that song by heart. And you see a lot of videos, people doing things like that. I just wondered if you, as the you know, as a composer or songwriter, all that, if you've noticed like any kind of uptick in, I don't want to say popularity, but we'll call it what it is, whether it be popularity or just more interest in your songs. I guess the the residual checks would be the answer to that. Right.

SPEAKER_03 51:01

I mean, I don't I don't really keep track that much of uh I mean back in the day, um I'm talking 1980s, 1990s, the business model was you know really simple to understand. You you made a record, it went into the store, people went to the store and bought the record, paid for it, took it home, and six months down the road you got a royalty check. So if you sold one record, you got paid once. If you sold a million records, you got paid a million times. It was an understandable, transparent business model. I'm sure there was a little bit of maybe shenanigans going on in the background somewhere, but I think 90% we we got paid what we were owed. I have no clue today. I don't understand Spotify, I don't understand TikTok. I I don't know the business model. It's it's foreign to me. So um I can't even answer your question. I I I don't know how it works. I mean, the the royalty stream is still okay, and I have a couple of songs apparently that have surpassed the billion streams on Spotify. But you you keep reading that you know a billion streams and you and you get uh a thousand dollars. You know, it's like I I don't even know. I I I just I give up. I just um if a check arrives, I'm grateful, but I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't tell you where it came from or how or why. So it's a mystery to me.

SPEAKER_01 52:28

And to get a gold record uh in today's uh market is hard because it counts sales, streams, uh purchases, uh all this stuff. Uh and it might take forever to get a gold platinum record. So yeah, I don't understand it either. It was so much simpler uh back in the day.

SPEAKER_03 52:47

Oh good, I'm glad I'm not the only one.

SPEAKER_01 52:50

No, you're not the only one. Uh real quick, because we we're getting short on time, I I want to ask you a little bit more about uh uh the Brian Adams stuff uh with Reckless. Um because uh there was something lacking uh at one point when you recorded these early demos with a couple songs, uh like One Night Love Affair, uh Summer 69, we talked about. Uh I read an article uh a couple weeks ago where Brian says he felt like he was missing the rock. Where's the rock in some of these songs? Uh, did you feel the same thing that something was missing and you had to punch it up a little bit on a couple of those songs on that record?

SPEAKER_03 53:30

I mean, that that might have been what happened in the studio once they got in with Bob Clear Mountain and the band. But um, and I wasn't there for that. I I wasn't part of the the recording sessions. But no, Brian and I, I mean, we wrote uh I think we we didn't have a lot of extra songs. In fact, we were we were kind of short on on Reckless when it when it came to the end. You know, like I said, there's room for 12 songs on an album. I think we had 10. And then Summer 69 was a maybe, and then that went on. And then I think Run To You was a very last-minute um edition. We actually wrote Run to You for Blue Oyster Cult. If you know their song, Don't Fear the Reaper, with that, you know, guitar riff. So we thought, oh, we'll write a riff, they'll love it. We wrote, you know, Run To You and sent it to them, but they ended up not recording it. And so that song was just kind of hanging around. And I think it was Bob Clearmountain who said, why don't we put that on the record to get the the count, the song count up to 12 songs. But no, I don't remember, at least from my end, and just me and Brian from the writing part of it, no conscious effort to rock a bit more, but maybe once Bob and Brian got in the studio, maybe there were some conversations along along those lines, but I I wasn't uh part of that.

SPEAKER_01 54:56

Well, and you mentioned the blue oyster cult uh thing, but there's a bit of a more to that story because uh apparently you wrote it with them in mind, um, and they didn't use it. Uh the manager calls you, right, and says uh they didn't like it, or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 55:14

Yeah, we heard they didn't like it.

SPEAKER_01 55:15

Yeah, yeah, but years later, what what happened years later? What did you hear?

SPEAKER_03 55:20

Well, I mean, actually, really recently was just a couple of months ago. So we sent the song to Blue Istricult in 1984, 84 maybe, yeah. And then we heard they didn't like it, so so Brian recorded it. And literally a couple of months ago, I'd never met him before, but uh uh Joe Boucher, who was the original bass player for Blue Extracult, uh, excuse me, sent me an email out of the blue and said, you know, he said, I want to set the story straight. He said, we never even heard the song. He said he said our our manager or our record company, someone might have heard it, but they didn't play it for us. Like, you know, 40 40 plus years later, I I find out it wasn't what I thought at all. And and he he says, I wish we had recorded it, you know. He he he loved the song, but yeah, no kidding.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

So I mean, every great song.

SPEAKER_03 56:20

Yeah, every song has a story, like you know, that one, that that's a great story. You know, what about love? That long, circuitous route to heart finding it. I mean, I mean, that's you know, one of the things I love as a as a fan. I mean, I'm just a nerd for the the small print and this, just like you guys, you know, the small print and the stories behind the songs. I mean, I I I live for that. I I you know read voraciously about you know, Beatles and Stones and you know uh all of those things. I'm always learning something new. So yeah, I love the stories.

SPEAKER_02 56:54

What uh what does the future hold for you right now? Are you still writing all the time and and you know, shopping songs, or are you just kind of going with the flow now?

SPEAKER_03 57:07

Well, I mean, people say I'm 72, 73, real soon. And you know, people say, Are you retired? And I said, No, just tired. So, you know, I I I I I did it for 50 years every day. And I I still love music, I'm still a musician, but I I'm not you know full on. I'm not doing it like I like I used to. I'm not you know chasing the next song cover or or song project. So um I'm I I I might be done, but I'm not saying retired yet. I'm um not using that word yet.

SPEAKER_01 57:44

Well, I'm sure it depends on what comes along. If someone comes along that you like working with, or someone you've never worked with, uh and I don't know who that would be. Maybe you could answer that question. Is there someone that you have never worked with that's still active that you'd like to work with?

SPEAKER_03 58:01

Well, I mean, you know, it wouldn't it be great to write a song with with Paul McCartney, but I don't think he needs any help.

SPEAKER_01 58:09

But he's still active. What's that? He's still active.

SPEAKER_03 58:14

Yeah, I mean he's amazing. 80 something and still still touring, doing like you know, three-hour shows. Remarkable.

SPEAKER_01 58:25

Definitely, definitely. Uh well, we we're getting uh short on time. We got just a couple minutes. Uh I I had a couple other cursory things uh uh about uh the follow-up to uh uh Reckless Into the Fire. Uh you know, that you know Reckless sold 12 million copies, uh roughly. Into the Fire is a really good record uh in retrospect, but didn't do as well. Do you have any idea why maybe it it didn't sell as well?

SPEAKER_03 58:56

Well, I mean that was one time we really did sit down and Brian and I and talk about let's do something different. So we had um, you know, each album had had, you know, we'd got better as writers, and I think to your point, I think each album rocked a bit more. And we didn't know where to go from Reckless. We'd kind of you know rocked ourselves into a into a corner. And so we had to try something, instead of trying to do something better, we decided to try and do something different. And so lyrically, you know, all the songs on Reckless, and in fact, all the albums before, the lyric content was more kind of relationships, you know, boys and girls and and that sort of thing. And then on Into the Fire, we went more political, topical. We wrote a song about uh, you know, uh Chief Joseph, a Native American tribe. Um about the First World War called Remembrance Day. So we we really stretched out lyrically. And I think we may have lost some of Brian's fans in the process. We maybe changed a bit too much. And then after that, you know, the next album after that, Brian went back to more of a of a rock thing, you know, with Mutt Lang uh waking up the neighbors. Good album. Well that's amazing. Um but yeah, I I I don't know. The fire is their their favorite Brian album, so um, you know, there's people who liked it, but yeah, it didn't sell as well as Reckless.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:30

Right, and and it's a good record. Uh I I I will tell you though, uh, as much as I was into music, that one flew under the radar for me in '87. Uh, you know, and I I didn't know it was even out. And I think part of it was you still had that overhang uh from Reckless still uh on the radio. Uh you know, and that sort of thing. Uh so it's hard to do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:56

Yeah. It did. It did everything, everything that came after it. I mean, it's still, I think it's still Brian's definitive album in many ways. Reckless.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:08

Yes, yes, and and and it probably still carries the bulk of his set. Um he says he's putting out a rock record coming up, and I hope I hope so, like a real rock record-like. Not a clone of Reckless, but something in that vein. Uh, because you know, uh I you know, I've kind of lost my way with some of the stuff lately out there that he's he's done. So I hope it's uh I hope it's accurate. I look forward to it. I'm excited about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:36

Well, he's so good. I mean, he I saw him perform not too long ago. He sings better at 65 than he sang at 25. So he's just uh he just gets better. I don't know how he does it, but he's a remarkable guy.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:48

It's like a fine wine. We all just get better with age. Yeah. Well, listen, Jim, uh, our time is up. I want to thank you so much for stopping by with us this week. Um, I want to ask you if you would mind just holding on for just a second. I'm gonna let everybody know that we'll be back next week. Um, please, if you haven't had a chance to uh actually go in and check out Jim, please go to his website, like we said again, jimvalance.com. Um, and and look at those, look at those tracks. Look at all the stuff that that you have when you're listening to stuff. Check and see who those songwriters of are. Check and see who some of those songwriters are, and you'd probably be surprised that some of your favorite songs from 70s, 80s, and 90s probably had this guy involved. Uh, once again, I want to thank you, Jim, for joining us. Everybody will see you next week. And uh, thanks. This has been the Weekly Poor Podcast.