107.1 KGSR. This is Jody. And I know it's a good day when I look across from me and I see Ray Davies sitting right there. Welcome, Ray. You did the keynote speech this morning for South By Southwest...

A: I did, yeah. I did. At 10:30 in the morning. It's the same old cliché. I arrived really late last night, you know, about 13, 14 hours on the plane and a few hours sleep and I did that. Yeah, it was really nice. It woke me up anyway. I think they liked it, too.

Q: Did you prepare some spoken remarks or did you --

A: Well, you know, people always say I'll make it up as you go along. But I had kind of an outline of something I wanted to say. And, yeah, since I've been doing this storytellers thing, - it's been about four or five years now - I've found that preparation is good and then improvise on it. And that's the way I work these days.

Q: Good, because that's how we're going to work here.

A: Oh, is it? So I throw this script away, do I?

Q: Yeah, let go of it. Well, what was the gist of what you had to say this morning to the hopefuls?

A: Well, basically, saying I'm here under false pretenses, really, because I was meant to have had my solo album almost ready, certainly half of it recorded. But it was held up for various reasons, personnel problems and my tour is on tour in England at the moment. And I flew over especially for this today -- the next few days. And so the idea was to do this because I agreed to do it. The idea was to -- last year. You know, I'm not -- didn't have anything to play that was new. So I spoke about how I go about writing songs for this album. It's going to be my first-ever solo studio album.

Q: And the Kinks' first record, what, 1963, something?

A: First credited recording was '64, January, February '64.

Q: So almost 40 years and your first solo album. We're not talking about the Storytellers, which was a live project. Do you approach it differently' Do you feel like you don't have to write for the band now and you can write in a different fashion'

A: I feel like an estateless person, at the moment, because the band was my kind of home. You know, my passport for all those years had The Kinks stamped on it. And now I've come -- I've left that country and going to a foreign land, a musically foreign land and discovering who I am. I've made about two albums with the demos that I've rejected.

Q: Why is that?

A: Because there's more stuff. You know, I'm just -- I haven't rejected it, I've just -- I think part of the speech I actually lost the thread of it this morning, but I said, with the Kinks, we had such a demand for the music, I'd go and virtually finish writing the song on the session. So we didn't have a chance to do demos. Now, it's demo mania. That was the -- that was part of the things I was talking about is, people have to sort of explain what they're going to do so much. And we were so lucky because we had a three-single deal with the Kinks. First two singles were complete flops. Then I had this song "You Really Got Me." It was a number one in England. It did very well here. And after that - because they didn't let us record it straightaway. After that fight, they let me do anything I wanted. And so we just went -- I said, "Look, I've got this song, let me record it." And it was out within two months. I mean, it just can't happen like that. But now, as I say, 'demo mania.' I was also talking about characters within songs. For some reason, I picked up this character of Ralph Cramden, who used to be on The Honeymooners.

Q: Alice.

A: Yes, that's it. That was his wife's name, was it?

Q: Yeah.

A: Yeah, the Jackie Gleason character. I thought, if I had a record label, I'd sign The Honeymooners. I'd have the sewage worker on the drums.

Q: Art Carney.

A: Art Carney. Alice would be on the keyboards and maybe -- you know, it would be a fantastic group. It's material that comes from character. I love that.

Q: And I know you love that. And you've done, you know, concept records and television films. For some reason, I thought that the liberation of writing with the Kinks and especially after seeing the Storyteller show, which had so much autobiographical material, I thought we might get, you know, Ray Davies in the first person in some of this stuff.

A: Yes, you will, I think. It's just confronting it. Think of it this way: Someone who's been suddenly released from, um, not prison. It's cruel to say that Kinks are like prison, because they're not. I love them. I love the time with them. It's being let out into the world as an individual for the first time. That's what I'm going through. And I'm actually enjoying that process of finding out who I am as a singer.

Q: And it's been an unfolding process, because your book came out and the Storytellers tour had evolutions. So it hasn't just been like last year that this all began. And there never was a press release in the papers, The Kinks have broken up and Ray Davies is a solo artist.

A: No, we still owe an album to somebody. I mean, we're still talking about an album down the line. I must get this album, my solo album, done. But my -- I know Dave, my brother, would like to do it. And I've talked to Mick Avery, who was like the first incarnation. And Mick, you know, he should play drums more. He plays in little bar bands now. But he's getting lazy. He plays golf. That's sort of a period -- a horrible period to go through if he takes up golf. I must salvage him from that.

Q: Please. Ray Davies is our guest. Ray Davies of The Kinks, Ray Davies of the Storyteller show that you might have seen in town a couple of years ago. And Ray Davies, a man who hurt his finger, is on tour in England, but yet has a guitar next to him. And it really is beckoning you, Ray...

A: I know. It's a lovely little Gibson. I just saw it here -- lying here. I'm also not really a musician. I've just discovered that as well. I only found that out about a week ago. I put songs -- I organize songs, ideas in songs. And I write them. I'm not a singer/songwriter. That's my take on it.

Q: If you were to pick up that guitar right now and sing "Waterloo Sunset", you would be a musician and a singer/songwriter instantly.

A: Yeah. It's just a strange -- my strange attitude I've got towards -- see, The Kinks were not a -- and I don't want to put their musicality down. It wasn't just music. It was an ideology almost. We had a -- we said, "We're going to make an album called Low Budget." It became like a political thing for us. Even though the music itself wasn't political, we had our little agenda. And the fact that we made music was neither here nor there. It was just what we wanted to do. When I had horns in the band, when we toured with a horn section, one of -- the trombone player said he loved the way I used to voice them, arrange them internally, because the trombone would take the top part. It was like the trumpet and saxophone. Make the trumpet play low, the trombone high. That's the way I like voicing things. So I'm kind of a musical songwriter.

Q: Well, try it.

A: I'll try. Oh, God. I hate being put on the spot You see, my prominent finger is broken. That's the chord of E major. It's a lovely little -- well, that's a lovely guitar. It's Gibson. I'll only sing a song if they'll let me take the guitar.

Q: I'll talk to Ed Hamell. You play the song, then we'll bargain.

A: I'll play you a verse. Jet-lag voice.

{Waterloo Sunset (Partial)}

A: You see the problem I'm having with that finger and the voice.

Q: No, my eyes are closed. I'm listening through headphones. Keep going.

A: I'll get the audience to sing this bit now.

Ray Davies in Austin, 1983

A: And that's all she wrote for the time being.

Q: You took us to Paradise. Ray Davies is our guest.

A: Take it to the pub, I think.

Q: Well, you know, maybe I've been there before I came here and that's why I'm in Paradise.

A: That's nice, thank you. Sorry about the performance.

Q: No, no, hold on to that. We're not leaving yet.

Ray Davies is our guest and he has a pushy host and -- because I'm happy to have you here. You know, Waterloo used to be the name of Austin, Texas. So if you go around, there's Waterloo Records and Waterloo Ice House and Waterloo Brewing Company. And there's a lot of that a lot of that going on.

A: There's something that sort of pulled me here.

Q: That's right.

A: Yeah. I'm thankful, at least I found a new guitar I can take with me.