Huey Lewis

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HUEY LEWIS STILL HAS GOOD “NEWS”

by Ernie Thomas

San Francisco singer/songwriter, Hugh Cregg III, changed his name to Huey Lewis, formed a sextet called, The News, and became an MTV superstar in the 1980s. Everyone loved Lewis, because he was an “everyman” kind of guy.

Athletic looking, handsome but not pretty, and introduced himself to America as a blue-collar kind of guy with his first hit single, “Workin’ For A Livin’.

Today at age 55, Lewis remains someone that everyone can relate to like an old friend. He is the same down-to-earth and cordial guy he has been throughout his career. He also remains as passionate about the music and performing as always. Only now, Lewis puts more emphasis on enjoying the ride instead of just getting to the next stop.

“We’re going out for five weeks straight this time, which is like a year for us these days,” laughed Lewis. “It’s a lot less hectic now than it was then.”

During the 1980s, Huey Lewis & The News were on the road almost non-stop. “These days, I’d say we do about 85 to 90 shows a year. That seems to be the right number for us,” he said. “We you don’t work too much, it’s just a ball being on the road and playing shows. When you work too much, it gets to be a grind and you don’t enjoy yourself.”

Lewis began to try and balance his personal and professional life between 1988’s albums Small World 1991’s Hard At Play.

“We had spent the better part of a decade making records, going out on the road, making another record, going back out on the road... So we decided to take a little more time off between those two records and spent time with our families,” he recalled. “You have to stay sharp, which means you have to work, but you don’t need to drive it into the ground. We came to realize that.”

Lewis genuinely seems to like his place in the grand scheme of things these days. While he is no longer riding high on the charts as he once did with songs like “Hip To Be Square”, “Walking On A Thin Line”, “Heart And Soul,” “The Power Of Love” and “I Want A New Drug”, Lewis can still sell a lot of concert tickets and make a comfortable living with music.

“Making a living with music is all I ever really wanted,” he said, recalling how he spent part of the late 1960s hitchhiking across Europe living a bohemian lifestyle and feeding himself by playing harmonica in the streets for coins.

“I really prefer the level of fame I’m at now,” laughed Lewis, who had never very comfortable in the role of pop idol and MTV star. “Hey, I can still get a good table at a restaurant and I’m not bothered while I eat.”

Naturally, Lewis wants the public to support his newer music, but he seems okay with knowing that his next album is not likely to move anywhere near the 9-plus million copies that his 1983 breakthrough album, Sports had sold by the end of that decade.

“Of course I want people to buy our records, that’s why we make them. But having big record sales is not the primary goal for us anymore. As a band we’ve sold a lot of records, won a lot of awards, and have had our share of hits,” he said.

“The challenges for us now is on a creative level,” he continued. “Nobody is out there waiting for the new Huey Lewis & The News record these days like they once did, but when we do put one out, the fans are still there. So we really try to give them the best album we can and we try to have as much fun as we can doing it.”

The newest item to be added to The News catalog is a recently released concert DVD titled, “Live At 25”.

“It’s not a 25 year perspective of the group. It’s a current snapshot of the band today. It includes a mix of the old stuff along with the newer stuff we’ve done,” he explained.

“We’ve sort of re-invented ourselves as a band over the last ten years. We’ve got four of the original guys, the bass player has been with us for about twelve years now, the horn section for ten and the guitar player for three. In all, we’re a nine-piece group. We’re a more rhythm and bluesy band, more of a rootsy band than we were before,” he continued. “We’ve restructured all of our old stuff and rearranged it and given it a new setting. This new DVD reflects that place where Huey Lewis & The News are at this moment.”

Lewis loves the way the old songs sound today. “When we originally recorded a lot of those, we did them on machines. We used drum machines and sequencing stuff and all that new technology stuff, so even though they were bluesy bar band songs, they were recorded piece by piece and put together. A decade ago, we threw all the machines away and started playing everything live and it all grooves a lot more. That’s the way we record now too!”

Following this tour, which wraps in late September, Lewis has set his sights on heading back into the recording studio. “When we get home, we’ll get back to writing and spend the whole fall making a new record,” he said.

While there is no working title yet, Lewis fans here in Merrillville may get a little preview of some where The News boys will be taking the music with that next album. “You never know, we might be doing a couple of things,” he teased.

For the first time in his career, Lewis is without a record label and is thrilled to be a “free agent” these days.

“We had really bad luck with our last label and the label before that one,” he reflected. “Though we had great luck in the beginning of our career, but bad luck in later years. The irony is that we’ve been a band for 25 years and we haven’t been with a record label who has kept the same president for more than two or three years.”

In the end, Lewis summed up the longevity of his band by noting that he and the band had never set themselves up to be trendy.

“We got the band started just before the whole video thing and the MTV thing hit, so we never worried about our image like a lot of the bands do today,” he concluded. “We were more concerned about the music and writing a good song. In the end, that old has served us well. We were sort of anachronistic then and we still are.”

Huey Lewis & The News perform at Star Plaza Theatre in Merrillville on Sunday, July 31

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