(upbeat music) - [Shirley] He has a new album and a renewed outlook on life and his career.

Hometown legend, John Oates, joins us on "You Oughta Know."

♪ I'm getting ready ♪ (upbeat music) - Welcome to "You Oughta Know."

I'm Shirley Min.

The world came to know John Oates as 1/2 of the R&B pop duo, Hall & Oates.

Well, now, he's making his dreams come true.

And he tells us about his journey to this place.

But first, he performs a song off his new album, "Reunion."

Here's John Oates.

- I'd like to do a song that's the title track to a new album that just came out recently.

And the album is called "Reunion" and so is the song.

So here we go.

(gentle music) ♪ You can look to the stars for an answer ♪ ♪ When it's right at your door ♪ ♪ You can wait all your life for a chance ♪ ♪ That could be something more ♪ ♪ You'll find your course when you set it ♪ ♪ Ain't it clear when you get it ♪ ♪ The light at the party burn bright ♪ ♪ I'm leaving early tonight ♪ ♪ I'm making ready for my ♪ ♪ I'm getting ready for my ♪ ♪ I'm getting ready for my reunion ♪ ♪ I'm making ready for my reunion ♪ ♪ Well, you might find a hundred roads ♪ ♪ That will take you away ♪ ♪ But there's only one that will bring you home to stay ♪ ♪ When the time is right, are you ready ♪ ♪ Feel the pull, keep it steady ♪ ♪ The lights at the party burn bright ♪ ♪ I'm leaving early tonight ♪ ♪ I'm making ready for my ♪ ♪ I'm getting ready for my ♪ ♪ I'm making ready for my reunion ♪ ♪ I'm making ready for my reunion ♪ ♪ You know that the lights at the party burn bright ♪ ♪ I said I'm leaving early tonight ♪ ♪ I'm making ready for my ♪ ♪ I'm getting ready for my ♪ ♪ I'm making ready for my reunion ♪ ♪ Oh yeah ♪ ♪ I'm making ready for my ♪ ♪ Said following ♪ ♪ Said following the light ♪ ♪ I'm making ready for my reunion ♪ ♪ Oh yeah ♪ ♪ I'm making ready ♪ ♪ Yeah, I'm making ready ♪ ♪ Following ♪ ♪ Ooh, following the light ♪ ♪ I'm making ready for my reunion ♪ - We are so excited to have a native son return to his hometown roots.

John Oates, welcome to "You Oughta Know."

- Oh, thanks, Shirley.

It's a pleasure to be here.

- I'm so excited to have you here- - I can feel.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- When your name comes up, you hear John Oates.

- Mm-hmm.

- I think most people will then run this playlist of all your hits that you've had over the years as Hall & Oates - [John] Sure.

- Your discography, though, goes well beyond the band, Hall & Oates.

So let's talk about "Reunion," which is your sixth solo album.

- Mm-hmm.

- How has your music, your style changed from your first solo album to where we are now with "Reunion?"

- Well, that's an interesting question and with a, unfortunately, a long answer.

You know, it took me a while to find my personal musical identity.

After being, you know, working with Daryl for so many years and my entire musical life, you know, kind of wrapped up in the Hall & Oates, you know, experience and everything.

So I moved to Nashville.

I started exploring Nashville in the late 90s, but really moved there in the early 2000s.

And I found in the Americana music community some kindred spirits and people who had the same roots, similar to the roots that I learned here in Philadelphia, at the Philadelphia Folk Festival and at the Uptown Theater on North Broad Street.

So I was able to, in a way, what I had to do was to go back to go forward.

So I had to go back and revisit the things that made me who I am as a individual musician, and then use that as a jumping off point to create something new.

And so, I know it's a long-winded answer, but.

- No, we like long answers and we like long stories.

You know, "Reunion" though, the title track.

it has such a beautiful sound.

I really love the song.

- Thank you.

- And I feel like we're hearing other influences and maybe some of your earlier influences.

Before we talk about the story behind "Reunion," talk about like the sound progression of your solo albums.

You know, are we hearing what influences earlier in your career?

What influences are we hearing now in this sixth album?

- I am a product of my influences, just like so many musicians.

That's not unique.

But now, what I do is, as I said earlier, I went back to rediscover the things that made me want to learn to play the guitar, what made me want to write songs and sing.

And I use that now.

And so what "Reunion" is really, it's a very personal album.

It's very heartfelt.

It's very mature in a way because I'm talking about subjects that are really relevant to me as a man my age, right?

And it's not a pop album by any means.

So, you know, it was one of those things where there's songs on this album that I wrote years and years ago, but I never had it anywhere to put them.

I didn't have a context.

All of a sudden, I had a group of songs that seemed to really work together.

And when you make an album, I think it's important to have continuity and to have, you know, songs that seem like they flow and they're coming from the same place.

So what I did was I gathered up all the songs that I've had on the back burner and said, "Okay, I've got those.

Now, I have some new ones like 'Reunion.'"

And it really came together in very good way.

People have called it, you know, my most, you know, heartfelt and cohesive or coherent album, which I probably agree with.

- I think you can hear how personal it is to you.

- [John] Thanks, yeah, yeah.

- Tell me what the inspiration or the meaning is behind "Reunion."

- Well, it's a pretty deep story.

My dad is 100, and just turned 101.

But last year, he wasn't doing well at all and he was talking about his next step, you know.

He was talking, my mom had passed away years before, and he was talking about reuniting with mom.

And when he did, that really struck me.

It was very, very, very personal.

And I thought about that, and I thought, "Well, what is the real meaning of the word reunion?"

'Cause so many people think, "Oh, high school reunion, whatever, family reunion."

But it's really, if you break down the word, it's reuniting.

And then I thought about what I just said to you about reuniting with my creative self.

And I thought, at the same time, my dad is talking about whatever reunion he was going to be experiencing.

I was experiencing a reawakening and a revisiting this earlier version of me.

- [Shirley] Yeah.

- So that's how it came together.

And I wrote this, I co-wrote it with a guy named AJ Croce, who's the son of the great Jim Croce, Philadelphia native.

So there's a lot of Philly connections here.

- Yeah.

- I just, I met him.

We didn't know each other.

We were doing a show together in Nashville, and we were put in the same dressing room, and was really cool.

He was a great guy and we hit it off immediately.

We had a lot of, there's just seemed to be a synergy there, right?

So when I had the idea for the song, I was thinking, "You know, he might be someone who could really bring something out, you know, that I might be missing."

'Cause collaboration is really magical.

- Yeah.

- You're creating some, you know, it's more than the sum of its parts.

So I wrote it with him and he's fantastic.

In fact, he did a version of it, his own version, which I believe he's going to release early next year.

- The creative process for you, you know, you talk about writing "Reunion," writing these songs and then pulling them together for the album.

What is the creative process like for you?

And, you know, 'cause sometimes you'll hear an artist say, "Oh, I wrote this song in 10 minutes."

- [John] Right.

- You know, what is it like for you?

- It can happen.

Well, I think the best way to say, the rule is that there's no rules.

I mean, at least for me.

Some people, you know, some people like to have lyrics first, and then they write or music first, and then I just take it however I can get it.

You know, it's really, you know, I guess the best way to describe it is, it's kind of like exercising.

- Mm-hmm.

- When you don't exercise, it's really hard to get started.

- Yes.

- Same with me with writing.

When I'm on tour and I'm not writing a lot but I'm playing live, it's a completely different, you know, it's very extroverted and energy-oriented.

But then when I'm writing, it then, all of a sudden, it becomes very introverted and very, you know, you're looking at finer points of things.

So I like to be home, I like to settle into a groove, and then things just start happening.

- You seem really content, happy, calm, peaceful.

Have you always had this kind of aura to you?

- I don't know.

I like to think I'm pretty grounded.

I had really, my parents were great.

I lived, you know, I was brought up in a really nice family household.

I have a younger sister.

We get along great.

So I think the, you know, kind of real middle class upbringing, and I think it's helped me in good stead over the years.

You know, I like to look at things in a kind of a holistic Daoist kind of way, you know.

I think that what is meant to be will be.

And I just try to be kind and, you know, and make the most out of every day.

- [Shirley] Well, I like that.

- Yeah.

- Mentality.

For over 50 years, you know, you and Daryl Hall were creative partners.

That is a really long time.

- [John] Yes, it is.

- Now, there's a legal battle, and I think it's stemming because you wanna sell half of your business, the whole Oates enterprises.

Let's talk about why you wanna sell, where things stand now.

- Well, it's a very complicated issue and a lot of legalities I can't really talk about.

It's actually almost over, which is good.

- [Shirley] Okay.

- And I think that's one of the reasons I feel so good because it was traumatic and very difficult.

You know, 50 years is a long time to do anything with anyone.

- [Shirley] Right.

- You know, not many relationships last that long.

I feel blessed and very grateful and really proud of the fact that Daryl and I were able to sustain a working relationship for that long.

That, to me, is a success in life, you know.

But now, you know, as I've seen the horizon kind of getting a little closer, you know, especially talking about things like "Reunion," I wanted to see where I could take some things, and I needed to, I wanted to break away completely because it was the only way I could give 100% of my attention and my passion to what I was doing, whereby I couldn't really do it when I was juggling, wearing two hats.

You know, I had my Hall & Oates hat and I had my John Oates solo hat, and it was too complicated and too hard to do that.

And I thought, you know, as I get near, you know, I don't like to talk about this, but if I get near my creative end of, ending of my creative life, I wanna make the most of it as much as I can.

And I wanna, you know, feel that I've really given it my 100% attention.

So that's where we're at.

- Right.

Do you think that you will ever perform as Hall & Oates again?

I mean.

- I don't think so.

I think, really, I think we had a golden era, you know.

The music of the 70s and 80s, I think, will live forever.

I think many of our songs will live forever.

And I love the fact that those songs should be, you know, listened to and cherished and appreciated sounding exactly like the way they did when we were really at our creative high point.

I don't want to start trying to reproduce the past anymore.

- Yeah.

And sometimes every relationship you have, it kind of nears its end, people grow apart.

- It runs its course, exactly.

- Correct.

- Yeah.

- When you started out your career, so I've established with you that I'm kind of a super fan, but I was reading that you would write in sketchbooks.

- [John] Yeah.

- Very early in your career.

And then it, I don't know if you were writing lyrics, notes, do you still write in sketchbooks?

- Not as much.

Okay, I graduated from Temple University in 1970.

Daryl and I were friends, but we weren't working together at the time.

So I was doing playing folk clubs and blues bands and things like that here around Philadelphia.

And I was about to leave.

One of my dreams as a kid was after I graduated from college, I wanted to go to Europe because my mother's side of the family's from Italy, and my father's side of the family's from Spain and England.

So I said, "I have to see the mother country," so to speak, right?

So I took my, I had a backpack and a guitar, and I thought to myself, "I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what's gonna happen, but whatever it is, it's gonna change my life."

So I started writing in a journal, literally the day I graduated from Temple University.

And I kept a journal through the entire decade of the 70s.

And not knowing it, but what ended up happening was I chronicled the entire creation of Hall and Oates, of what happened, how it happened.

And so I didn't intend it to happen but it worked out pretty well.

- Where are those journals now?

- Well, I have them.

I think I have 15 volumes.

- [Shirley] Wow.

- I wrote more than one a year.

And those journals became the basis for my autobiography called "Change of Season," which came out in 2017.

- I love that.

You are local, as we mentioned, grew up in North Wales.

You just said you graduated from Temple.

How does it feel to be back in Philly?

- Oh, it always feels great to be back in Philadelphia.

It's a thing.

Philadelphia is a very unique place on Earth, you know, and I can talk from experience 'cause I've been everywhere.

- Yeah.

And it's hard to explain.

- It is hard to explain.

Philadelphia people are really proud of the city, and they're totally unique, and it's too complicated to go into.

You probably don't need to.

But, you know, the food, the love of the sports teams.

You know, just everything about Philadelphia is unique and it's great to be back.

- Are you still in Nashville?

- Yeah, we're in Nashville, but we have our house in Colorado, which we were living in before we moved to Nashville.

And we're still, you know, we're kind of going back and forth, but Nashville's the hub for the music business.

- [Shirley] Yeah.

- And it's great to be there.

I've become part of the music community there and it's a wonderful place to make and create.

- Well, Philly was, it still is, this great music city.

- Yeah.

- Who were your musical influences?

- Well, you know, I think I feel like I was born at the exact right time because in the early, in the 60s pretty much, Philadelphia had the Philadelphia Folk Festival where you were having all these roots and authentic originators of this great American popular music, the folkies, the blues people, but the originators were being rediscovered and brought up to the northern cities, especially the college campuses during what they were, what was called the folk revival.

So as a kid, I got to go to the Philadelphia Folk Festival, sit on the lawn and see Doc Watson and Mississippi John Hurt and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and all the new folkies like Dave Van Ronk and Joni Mitchell, and people like that.

Then at the same time, on a Saturday night, I could go to North Broad Street to the Uptown Theater and see the greatest solo performers of all time.

You know, I saw Stevie Wonder do "Fingertips" when he was 12.

You know, The Temptations, The Miracles, James Brown, Otis Redding, Sam & Dave.

So that is who I am.

I'm some weird amalgamation of these folk roots and these urban soul that, really, I got to experience firsthand.

- And it works for you.

You mentioned the Uptown and the artists you saw performing there.

What do you think the connection is you have with that theater?

We had produced a documentary about it.

- Yeah.

- Kind of reminiscing and looking at its history.

Do you feel like you have a connection to that theater?

- Oh, absolutely.

It was a, you know, it was part of what was called in those days, the Chitlin' Circuit.

You know, you had the Apollo Theater in New York, you had the Howard Theatre in DC, you had the, you know, the Uptown in Philly.

And this was a circuit where the sole performers just went around and played.

And on a Saturday night at the Uptown Theater, you could see four, five, six of the most amazing performers.

And it was how they interacted with the audience, how they turned the audience on, what worked, what didn't work.

And so as a young musician, I was absorbing all this, you know.

And to this day, it's the core of who I am as a performer, and especially from a live performance point of view.

- Yeah.

A time when musicians played instruments.

- Ah.

Yes, well, we're, I've never left.

So I'm still waving the old school flag, you know, yeah.

- And you have a big award coming up.

- Yes.

- Tell me about that.

- I am about to be awarded the Nashville, it's called the BMI Troubadour Award, which is a really prestigious award.

I'm so proud and humbled by the fact that they chose me.

People like John Prine, John Hiatt, you know, Lucinda Williams, Billy Gibbons from the ZZ Top.

It's an award that is given to a musician or an artist in Nashville who has contributed somehow to this great legacy of Music City.

And I went to Nashville early on in the 2000s when it was predominantly a country music thing.

But Nashville has changed completely.

And I mean, if you, I mean, you have people like Post Malone now making country records, Beyonce, whatever.

But that the whole texture has broadened.

There's so much amazing music coming on Nashville.

And I think one of the reasons perhaps that I've been honored is that I came there as a kind of a 80s pop star, and I integrated myself and became part of a new musical community.

And I think, hopefully, it was, you know, was one of the reasons that Nashville began to spread its creative wings, so to speak.

And other people began to see Nashville as a place where you could make all sorts of music, not just country music.

- Before I let you go, I wanna ask about your appearance on "The Masked Singer."

- Okay, if you must, yeah.

- [Shirley] What was that like?

How was that experience for you?

- Well, I can blame my PR gal, Sarah, for that one.

You know, there wasn't a lot going on at the time, and Sarah said, "Would you like to do 'The Masked Singer?'"

And a friend of mine had done it.

And, you know, and I saw, I was kind of aware of it, but I didn't realize what it was really about.

And I watched, I knew the show was big, a big show.

So I said, "Okay, you know what," and what I thought was interesting because Daryl's voice was so known as the sound of Hall & Oates, right?

I thought it would be kind of interesting to see what happens if people don't know who I am, but I'm singing, and if they can identify me.

And, you know, I had had done some interviews with one of the judges, and I thought maybe she would figure it out, but she didn't.

It was kind of funny.

But anyway, so I said, "Okay, well, let me give it a try."

But I have to say that I was, honestly, when I finally got unmasked, I was really happy because that suit, the anteater suit was, I couldn't see out of it.

I mean, I could go on and on about how crazy it was, but it was, but, you know, it's a positive show.

It's really up, you know, everyone's positive about it.

And it was fun while it lasted, and I'm glad I did it for the experience.

- Well, finally, what do you want our viewers to know about you, John Oates now as you kind of continue your solo career?

- Well, you know, I am a troubadour in a sense, you know.

I'm doing shows that are called an "Evening of Songs and Stories."

I love to tell stories about how songs are written.

I love to give people a glimpse of behind the curtain of the creative process.

I think it's really important.

And I think people enjoy that.

And where I'm at in my life, you know, I don't need to play Madison Square Garden anymore.

I've done it.

We did Live Aid, you know, in Philadelphia.

It was the biggest show that we had ever, live show that would ever been done back in those days.

And I've been all around the world many, many times.

So I feel now that I want to do quality, intimate shows that really give me a chance to connect with an audience.

And I'm playing smaller venues and it's fun and not very stressful, which is nice.

And I just want to enjoy my life and enjoy making music.

- Well, you still sound incredible.

- Well, thank you.

John Oates, thank you so much for being so generous with your time.

- This is wonderful, great interview.

- Thank you for being on "You Oughta Know."

- This next song is a song that I wrote for a wonderful organization called Teen Cancer America, and all the proceeds for this song go to help the kids who are recovering from cancer.

It's called "Get Your Smile On," all right.

♪ I said baby get your smile on ♪ ♪ Smile it down on me ♪ ♪ Baby, get your smile on ♪ ♪ Smile it down on me ♪ ♪ Spread a little sunshine on a rainy day ♪ ♪ Oh yeah ♪ ♪ Flash a little smile blow the clouds away ♪ ♪ Be a beacon in the night ♪ ♪ Be a ray, ray of light ♪ ♪ I said baby get your smile on ♪ ♪ Smile it down on me ♪ ♪ 'Cause it looks so good on you ♪ ♪ Feels so good to me ♪ ♪ Come on get your smile on ♪ ♪ Oh, come on get your smile on ♪ ♪ Say now smile is just a grin turned upside down ♪ ♪ Oh yeah ♪ ♪ If you're looking at some bad, bad times ♪ ♪ You can turn it all around ♪ ♪ Be the sunlight on a cloudy day ♪ ♪ Be the dawn when the darkness fades ♪ ♪ Said baby get your smile on ♪ ♪ Ooh, smile it down on me ♪ ♪ 'Cause it looks so good on you, feels so good to me ♪ ♪ Come on get your smile on ♪ ♪ Come on get your smile, smile on ♪ ♪ Oh baby say ♪ ♪ Come on baby ♪ ♪ Oh, it looks so good on you ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ ♪ Yeah, it feels so good to me ♪ ♪ I said, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby ♪ ♪ Baby, baby, baby, get your smile on ♪ ♪ Smile it down on me ♪ ♪ 'Cause it looks so good on you ♪ ♪ Feel so good to me ♪ ♪ Come and get your smile on ♪ ♪ Oh, come and get your smile, smile on ♪ ♪ Baby, get your smile on ♪ ♪ Smile it down on me ♪ ♪ Baby, baby, get your smile on ♪ ♪ Smile it down on me ♪ ♪ Smile it down ♪ ♪ Ooh, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby ♪ ♪ Smile it down on me ♪ (audience cheering) - His performance is one we here at "You Oughta Know," cherish and will cherish forever.

All right, that is our show.

Thanks so much for watching.

Have a good night, everyone.

♪ Lights at the party burn bright ♪ ♪ I'm leaving early tonight ♪ ♪ I'm making ready for my ♪ ♪ I'm getting ready for my ♪ ♪ I'm making ready for my reunion ♪