For many listeners of the KWVH radio station show Toddy and the Pooch Unleashed, they are treated to the sweet sounds of old school Rock and Roll from the Rolling Stones to the Stone Roses. But most of the time, they are just playing the recordings of the biggest hits.
To the shock of just about everyone – including host Todd Crusham – Toddy and the Pooch Unleashed hosted one of the biggest names in the music industry live in the studio last Wednesday night.
Author Malcolm Gladwell recently called him the “hands down the most important songwriter of his generation.” The 12-time Grammy Award winning musician, two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Wimberley Valley resident Paul Simon made a surprise guest appearance in what amounted to the interview of a lifetime. Locals gathered around the “fishbowl” studio at the radio station just off the Wimberley Square just to get a glimpse of the famous musician in person.
Simon made a name for himself as part of the legendary musical duo known as Simon and Garfunkel with childhood best friend Art Garfunkel before splitting up and making a name for himself.
Perhaps his most famous album is Graceland which earned him the Grammy for Album of the Year.
As for how the interview came together, it was a family connection that helped Crusham to be acquainted with Simon through his brother Kyle who had been helping Simon’s wife Edie Brickell with her last two albums.
“My brother Kyle for the past five years has been working with Edie Brickell, Paul’s wife, and produced her last two albums,” Crusham said. “I got to meet and be around Edie a bunch in the past five years when she was in town and go to the recording sessions… That’s how it led me to Paul. I got to meet him on a couple of occasions and became generally acquainted with him. It just kind of came that way, and I lucked out on it because Edie has been on the show a few times before and hung out with me at the studio. She was very friendly and kind and was also supportive of the show and told Paul about it. They both just agreed and decided to come on.”
By coming to Wimberley, Simon wanted to give the community a special memory that everyone could remember forever.
“When I found out about it, Paul said ‘Yeah I would like to come on’,” Crusham said. “In a funny way, it was a treat for me but he (Paul) wanted to give a gift to Wimberley. He recognizes who he is and what he means, and I think he really wanted Wimberley to have this. At first I didn’t know if he wanted to publicize this or let people know, maybe sneak in one night and be on the show for a little bit. But he allowed us to let the folks know, and we had a nice big crowd out to watch the show from the patio. He said this was going to be the biggest audience at the radio station. So Wimberley loves Paul Simon.”
“I heard it was going to be a possibility for a week,” Crusham said. “When you have someone on the level as Paul Simon, you just never know if things are going to come up. It wasn’t really confirmed until Tuesday evening. I got the call that he was going to do the interview and that he was also going to bring a documentary crew which has been working with him for the past year. So when he gave the confirmation, it was ‘Oh this is really happening.’ Even though I had met him before, I’ve never had a chance to have a conversation with him.”
The difficulty for the radio crew wasn’t just the fact that Paul Simon was coming down to the radio station but rather having to do something that the crew has rarely done before.
“Our show was never an interview show before,” Crusham said. “We’ve never had someone where we just did an interview, so it was really new to us. We were jumping in the deep end from interviewing nobody to now interviewing Paul Simon. We were very glad and appreciative that he gave us so much time. I thought he was going to be there for about an hour, but he stayed for two and a half. He just talked about the songs he liked and at the end of the show he and Edie played in the studio live for us and the audience.”
Part of the challenge of interviewing a legendary musician was stepping up their game, though Simon did help them out.
“We were trying to figure out how to interact with Paul and how to make him comfortable,” Crusham said. “Obviously he has done this 20,000 times. He has been interviewed since 1955. It wasn’t just about how we are new and unique but how we make him comfortable and feel ok to talk with us while also making us comfortable. We were nervous and on the edge. Even though we consider ourselves very musically knowledgeable, you just cannot hang with someone like Paul Simon who has lived it, did it and was actually there… What Paul did was send us a list of his favorite songs from his teenage years, so we had a starting point on what songs he might want to talk about, that he might play, or what they meant to him and influence his work.”
When talking about what songs influence his career, Simon not only talked about how the songs influenced him but then physically showed how the songs influenced his songs.
“That happened a lot when he talked about multiple songs,” Crusham said. “He was saying, ‘Ok this is where I got the initial idea from another song. For example, the Ellis Brothers song Mystery Train is where I got the rhythm and the beat for my song ‘Late in the Evening,’ which was a hit from 1980.’ When we would play Mystery Train, Paul was singing Late in the Evening right on top of it to show how the two songs were very similar. That was a special part of the night watching him do that.”
At the end of the day, this was an interview both Crusham and the entire Toddy and Pooch Unleashed team will remember forever.
“Really every minute with him was a gift because you would never believe this could happen in Wimberley here on KWVH on our little show.”
