Madison All-stars Generation Jones premiere new music on Max Ink Radio

and Generation Jones is the collaboration of Madison music scene All Stars and by All Stars

I mean musicians who define their scenes both nationally and locally led by Mama lifetime achievement winner Michael

Massey on keyboards and vocals the band is filled out with Kyle Henderson on bass and vocals and you might remember him from the band the producers who enjoyed much

MTV fame and

Moral Magellan on drums and you might have seen him on MTV too

Playing drums on the back of a truck with his band the Georgia satellites and then there's award-winning francey

Phelps on vocals and Michael's old band me from their band Chaser from right here in Madison famous band

From the ease and 90s there Michael John Rip on guitar

Michael Massey and Kyle Henderson are here in the studio with us tonight Michael Kyle. Welcome to Maxine radio. Hey rocker. Rocker. Thanks for having us. Yeah

Michael, you know, you just won a lifetime achievement award. I mean, how did that feel to be so greatly recognized by your peers?

They don't give that award to anybody that's not old

Yeah

To be real, you know, it was overwhelming. Yeah, you don't set out to to do that in your life and to be recognized by your peers

It's a pretty overwhelming and then have your whole life kind of put out there in in a slide presentation, right? Sure

Well, you know

You sometimes wonder gosh, I could have done more really. Yeah, you always think you could have done more

Well, that's what's interesting is you know, you already have a lifetime achievement award, but you're still doing stuff

There's more you add to it. Yeah, that's pretty cool

We just listen to a quick rendition of your bands resume and it's pretty incredible

Tell us about generation Jones and how this collaboration of stars came together. Can I tell the quick story of how we have a band

I love the fact that you rocker said that the band is led by Mike Massey

Say I'm always saying Mike Mike you're the band leader just just no

With him. He's always rejecting no one is the band leader. It's a democracy. I was talking

To Kyle Henderson on the telephone one morning. This was 2022

and he said I want to start a band and I want it to be with you and

My somebody called my phone beeped in and it was Moro Magellan

Wow, I said Kyle. Let me call you back and so Moro calls and and he says Mike because Moro and Mike Ripon

I were a trio in the early 2000s for a while so we had a lot of fun. Moro said I want to start a new band

And I want it to be with you. I said I said well, what do you think about Kyle Henderson me Mike Ripon you?

He goes I'm in the cow hold right? Yeah, exactly. So so you know what literally the band came about in two minutes on the telephone for two of us

Yeah, wow without how did they go from your your side their cow? Well, I was just

frustrated because the producers really have wound down

And we play maybe five or six times a year or something like that which is great

But still I wanted to do something up here and I wanted to do with Mike

We had worked together before and I knew his stuff and I loved his stuff and so I just decided okay

Forget this I I've tried a couple of other things can't really seem to put something together that I really like

So I'm going back to Mike and say and look let's do this. We've talked about this for a long time

Let's get back together. Let's get the band back together and and do it and so we did classic now

Where does the name generation Jones come from?

Mike's throwing them into me because there's my idea. I like to put it like this rocker. It's really a generation Jones

The idea is generation Jones is sort of the second half of the baby boomers and the whole point of that was to try to make it short

If you look at people who graduated from high school in 1961 62 all the dudes had flat tops

Skinny ties skinny lapels, you know, and the the women had beehives, you know, that's yeah

Ten years later if you look at people who graduated from high school in 1972 to 75 let's say we all had shag haircut

Huge lapels giant ties sideburns exactly all that stuff

There was a real cultural difference between these two sections of what they at that point called the baby boomer generation

So somebody in the they group whoever they are that make these types of decisions right and you know a verbal calls or whatever

Decided to distinguish these two sections of the baby boomers and call the second one generation Jones

And so that's how we started now we have somebody who's not in that group and that is fancy our amazing

Female singer

But she's an old soul so she fits right in what group is she from oh?

I don't know I don't know I think it's either Gen X or the one what is the one following is that millennials following Gen X?

I think she's yeah, she's got to be Gen X

Call in call right now

Because the millennial start in 81

Oh, get this if you remember in the cusp of that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh

That's funny. Well now talk about rating songs with so many creative

Musicians and you know people in this band

How do you guys kind of write songs? I mean what comes first riff lyric concept? It's it's been an amalgam of different things

Maybe finally, which is song we're not going to play today, but it's an incredibly interesting song

Call came down with an idea for a person chorus and I added pre-chorus and bridge to it

And then it became a song and then it took a while for actually the for us to settle on a groove that that really

Pfitted generation Jones, but it became just an amazing song. So it's really

Everybody kind of adds a little bit to the writing

Don't give me the right to which we're going to play is

Mike Ribbon. I threw that together and then the band made it

Generation Jones after the initial ideas

Now in a moment we're going to listen

From the first single from your new album, which we don't know the name of

It's going to be called don't give me the right this song

Which is said to be released later this year talk about this new album. And do we have a name for you?

We've been recorded. Kyle's got a good smirk on his

He can take off from this, but we got derailed because I

Unfortunately fell into a boat with cancer. So we had we lost a lot of momentum at that point

So you know what was going to be a full album is now we've got four songs in the can

We've got five more that are sitting in different states of of disrepair and and and creativity

And we're working on it

But we want it we decided we're going to release some singles and just get excited about the music in pieces

So I mean a lot of people these days are releasing the singles for you than an album. So that's true

That's true and

Now we're where you guys recording this and who's producing are you doing in studio or doing it on your own?

What's your we do it in Mike's place Mike

My as a place out in Barnabelle where he's built a studio down at his basement. That's where he was

And I just revealed where Mike Massey lives

Oh

Docs him

Everybody go down there. You can get free studio time right now

Maxing radio there's a there's a quick trick not far from that

So anyway, we've we've recorded there. He has a great setup and then he and Mike has taken it to

Tony Trilia to do some mixing mastering stuff like that

Tony C is doing the mixing mastering and again producing we're kind of poor co-producing. We're all producing it

I talk about him where where we know him from

Tony was the drummer and chaser. He's been I've been in bands with Tony since I was 15 years old

And he's been in 17 rhinos. He's a okay, sure. He's a

Very accomplished. He's been around and a lifelong friend. So, you know, it's it's and he's done a great job

Yeah, it's very cool. Oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah, they sound great

Generation Joan plays

Festa Italia coming up on me 30th in Fitchburg

I'll will you to you know, will you be too full of spaghetti wine and garlic bread to be able to play bachi ball

No, that's a good question. No, I love bachi. Oh, I love it. Oh, love it. Oh, man. Is it hard? It's fun

There's an art. There's an art to it. There's an art to it. Oh, yeah, you see those old guys that is throwing those balls and you think

Ah, they can't do anything

They have the secrets to winning

They've probably been doing it for a life. Absolutely. Yep. I mean, I could see it because when we were younger

We did much more dangerous things like

Charms right right? Yeah, throw it up. Where it comes out? Nobody knows

Don't want to hit you in the head. Yeah

How can we keep up with news release and shows online with generation Jones

Gen Jones band dot com

G-E-N-G-O-N-E-S band dot com now, you know, it was pretty crazy because you told me that

You had went through this bout of cancer and the first song that we heard carrying me home was the first song that you said you recorded

Talk about that experience kind of coming back from that and and being able to perform music again at

Really at the you know, at a high level that you want because I think that's what's important when you come back

You know, absolutely. I was actually quite surprised

This was March of last year and I had just really kind of just finished the chemone radiation and and the end of December

um

And the voice came back really fast and strong and and interestingly because there was a possibility that you might not be able to sing again because I had severe radiation

The 35 treatments on my neck and and vocal cords and they were all in it was included

And chemo had the possibility of ruining my hearing as well. Wow, so it was

It was a gift scary to sing that song and that's why that song feels really special to me

Plus some the content and and yeah of the song is is giving my wife all the credit to

To help me me through all the things that it's a lovely powerful tune that we are thrilled to play

Wow, we'll be playing again here on maxing gradios. I don't worry people. You'll be able to hear it again

uh

Kyle and Michael. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us tonight on maxing gradio

We really appreciate it

We're going to listen to your first single from the album the unknown album

The album that shall not be named

That's what we should call it. Yeah

Don't it's this song is called don't give me the right to and briefly tell us about this song before we take a listen

Well

Mike Ripon I wrote this

You had the initial ideas and then like I say the band always puts its flavor on something to give and make a sound like generation Jones

uh

It's interesting when you're when you're of a certain vintage as we are

You know what what do you write about what is important and you know the whole gist of the song is

It may you know it took me until I was about 53 or 54 years old to realize that it wasn't all about me

Yeah, so so that's what this song is about. It's like it's how you interact with people and and how you feel like maybe

I've been slighted but but it's not about you. It's how you react to other people and and and and think about other people's

Experiences and and where they are in life and and give them benefited the doubt wow

What a great philosophical philosophical

Thought behind that song. Well, let's check it out right now. This is the brand new song from generation Jones

Don't give me the right to you're listening to maxing gradio. We are local music