– Preston Frazier 

How are you? 

– Steve Porcaro

I am fantastic.

 – Preston Frazier 

It’s good to hear new music from you. This is a fantastic album, ‘The Very Day’. 

We last discussed your new music back in June 2016.

– Steve Porcaro

I hate that it’s been so long. It’s been nine years. I can’t wait to show everybody now that I’ve got the blinders on, now that I’m not touring, now that I’m not doing film.

Now that I’m in the enviable position of being able to focus solely on my music, you will be seeing a lot more of it, a lot more often.

 – Preston Frazier 

You sent me one of the singles, probably three or four years ago. 

I know you’ve been doing some limited shows in L.A.

I know you’ve been here and there in Nashville as well, with David Garfield, but you’ve been a busy man.

– Steve Porcaro

I’ve been swamped working on this since I stopped touring, and the last three or four years. The other things have just been short activities I’ve been doing with friends.

This is what I’ve been focusing on, and this was going to be a double album, a double CD.

I have worked on that much music. It was hard to figure out, as a friend of mine, Patrick Leonard, and I had been in a similar place in our lives, wanting to get our own stuff out. I sent him everything. I said you help me pick a single CD because this is too much, so the good news is that my follow-up to this is already halfway done. I’m going to have a real good jump on that.

I want to do an album a year, I want to because this is all I do now.

– Preston Frazier 

And I know he was swamped as a producer and as a go-to. Session person, and I saw his credit on your album.

After ‘Someday Somehow’ in 2016, when did you start the process for ‘The Very Day’?

– Steve Porcaro

Pretty much right away, but I was still touring with Toto quite a bit. And, back in the old days, I would set up quite an elaborate setup when I went on the road.

When I was touring, the only way ‘Human Nature’ or something got finished would be by me. I would be up all night in a hotel room, working on the demo on a four-track, spending two hours setting up a studio in a hotel room, working for two or three hours, and then tearing it all down again, because I’m doing one-nighters, I don’t have the energy or the wherewithal to do that anymore.

I want to prioritize my health and spend quality time with my family. When I would get home from the road with Toto, I didn’t want to be in the studio all the time; I wanted to be a human being, a father, a brother, and a son.

Now I’m able to do just this.

The arduous thing of traveling, all that stuff would own me; I could only do one thing at a time, so I started working right away. Still, it wasn’t until I stopped touring in October 2019 that I began working on all this in earnest.

– Preston Frazier 

Steve, was it more difficult for you, since you produced this album yourself, to move the projects forward than it was with ‘Someday Somewhere’ when you had Michael Sherwood to produce? 

– Steve Porcaro

The thing about Michael Sherwood was that his work habits were as bad as mine. As far as us indulging each other.

It would be scary to have a producer, and believe me, there are several guys I respect and would love to work with, but they have limited time for my project before they move on to the next one. 

The truth is, I have so much fun in the studio, especially when I’m able to do whatever the hell I want to do, and I can experiment, and I can try things, and I can get, quite frankly, very indulgent, and experiment and do things that don’t work.

I worked on two albums’ worth of material, and it was tough for me to choose what to include on this record.

Do I leave off the truly indulgent, the eight-minute Prog Rock stuff, like “Water from the Sky”? Then I thought, ‘Hell no!’ I want people to see who I am and what I’m about.

I found the right balance of what the record company would consider singles, as well as more adventurous, proggy material. 

I want to release that eight-minute thing as a single, because I’m a longtime Yes fan!

– Steve Porcaro

During the recording of the last album, Toto XIV.

I was busy with my TV show. So they were doing some of that stuff without me, which bothered me because I wasn’t involved from the ground up. They’re doing that with my pal C.J. Vanston.

– Preston Frazier 

I didn’t like the sound of the drums on ‘Toto XIV’.

– Steve Porcaro

On ‘The Very Day, ’ Shannon Forrest handled all the drums, and he engineered them like he did for Michael McDonald on his last solo album. It sounds beautiful, all of it. The guitars, keyboards, drums, Lenny Castro’s conga playing, and his percussion are all excellent. Shannon taught Lenny how to engineer. Lenny really surprised me. Lenny always loved games. He loved computers and he loved electronic toys, but Lenny is what I call a pure musician. Now he’s an excellent engineer!

It requires some genuine, practical knowledge of engineering. Knowledge that I certainly don’t have, but Shannon does, and Shannon has a fantastic studio and an amazing collection of microphones. He really knows his stuff and knows how to engineer.

Like Simon Phillips, Toto was fortunate to have a skilled studio engineer as well.

– Preston Frazier 

Sonically, ‘The Very Day’ is different than ’Someday, Somehow’. There are a lot more acoustic keyboard sounds on the album. Was that a conscious choice by you? 

– Steve Porcaro

No, but thank you for pointing that out. 

I just turned 68. I was supposed to retire at 65. And in a way, because all of a sudden I’m looking around on the coast, it’s clear and I can do whatever the hell I want to do and indulge myself.

I was a pack rat. I saved every cassette motif that was always sitting next to a piano at The Manor (studio) with David Paich. 

In fact, the next single is called “Saints and Angels.” I had just digitized a massive bin of literally hundreds of cassettes. The beginnings of the song came from those tapes. 

It wasn’t numbered like all my other cassettes. It just said ‘Steve and Dave’ and I put it on, and it was David playing piano, four chords over and over again, and me scatting, singing this melody on top of it.

I sent it to David. I said, ‘ Do you have any memory of this whatsoever?’  He said, hell no. You know, he had no idea where it was from.

We finished it. We brought in Stan Lynch to assist with the lyrics. 

I wanted to keep it very simple. I wanted to write a love letter to the state of California, and drop as many names of beach communities as I could, Stan Lynch came in and totally got the concept. As a matter of fact, it’s Stan playing drums on it with Leland Sklar on bass.

 Lee came over to my place, and Stan did it at his studio, which is also great.

That’s my new religion, Preston: finishing things! When you’ve got a studio, when you’ve got drum machines, when you’ve got all these toys, it’s so easy to start something,

“2 Time Lover”, the Jude Cole tune, that chorus, I’ve been sitting on, I’m embarrassed to say, for 40 years!

I got tons of new stuff, too.

Finishing is my mantra. 

– Preston Frazier 

“Saints and Angels” features the excellent Jason Scheff on vocals, formerly of Chicago.

 – Steve Porcaro

I sing plenty on this album. 

I know I have my hardcore Steve Porcaro fans that remember the guy who sang “Takin’ It Back” on the first Toto album, and they want to hear that guy sing everything I do.

But it’s me thinking more of myself, as a songwriter. Believe me, you wouldn’t rather hear me sing “Human Nature”!

“Human Nature “was right in my range, but Michael Jackson took it to another level.

Quincy Jones and his production took it to another level. It was always still my baby. I still consider that my baby.

I’m always grateful to John Bettis for writing those amazing verse lyrics.

For me, it’s about nurturing the songwriter.

You could look at a song and think, ‘Steve could have sung that.’

Believe me, I had finished “Lea” before Joseph (Williams) was actually in the band. I had finished a vocal on “Lea” painstakingly, with all those guys producing me and putting me through what it went through.

But then, when Joseph was in the band, there was finally a singer in the band that I could really see singing my songs.

I also wanted to be able to perform my songs live because I knew I would never be able to sing them back then.

I know since then, I’ve done “Takin’ It Back “ a couple of times live, and “It’s A Feeling” too.

So, Jason singing “Saints and Angels” worked well, and we’ve been working together a lot.

I have been performing live gigs with Jason and collaborating on writing projects together. He’s just an incredible talent musically, a fun and funny guy, and a pleasure to work with.

– Preston Frazier 

The song sounds like the perfect blend of Chicago and Toto, thanks to the horn arrangement by David Paich, the excellent rhythm section, and the outstanding keyboards. 

– Steve Porcaro

I wanted to keep it simple. I want to keep it to these four bars.

I could imagine Los Lobos doing it. 

I want a bar band to be able to play that song. 

– –Preston Frazier 

Talk a bit more about my favorite song on the album, “Water From The Sky,” which features Marc Bonolla.

It’s got great lyrics, a great soundscape, epic guitar parts, and it’s a Prog Epic!  I love it.

– Steve Porcaro

I love that you like that. I’m eager for people to hear it.

It started with a cue from the TV series ‘Justified’. Marc Bonilla had helped me with Marc, who wound up doing all the guitar solos and other stuff.

He’s such an underrated musician, just a fantastic talent.

 I was conducting various experiments with the vocals, creating block harmonies, utilizing my sound effects, and doing my thing.

That big orchestral climax was actually from my first movie, which James Newton Howard helped me get, “Metro”, but no one ever heard it.

There was a big action scene in the movie, and you barely heard what I had done, but I thought it was one of the most extraordinary things I had written.

– Preston Frazier

Another standout song, because it’s a little bit different, is a song called “Tonight”.

Which features Tab Two have? Would you talk about that song?

 – Steve Porcaro

Leeds Levy was a friend who was very big in the publishing world, on the publishing side of things played me this band, these guys from Germany. It was mainly these two guys. And he played me this band that had one of the guys’ trumpet players.

It was an acid jazz thing.

I decided to write a song and use this as an instrumental chorus.

And I followed this form of “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty, as far as the intro.

 I wrote a lyric and finished it.

That wound up being “Tonight”.

– Preston Frazier 

Let’s jump to one that features Michael McDonald, the song “Change”.

Was it a holdover from ‘Someday, Somehow’, since it features Michael Sherwood and Julius Robinson as cowriters?

 – Steve Porcaro

Mike Sherwood was my go-to lyricist, but Mike would also be very involved musically.

He always had great musical ideas and amazing ears. We were kindred spirits in too many ways, but we really enjoyed each other’s company.

I had written a batch of motifs that I had completed. Mike heard all of these things as being potential Michael Jackson things.

Things to pitch to Michael. I have rough versions of all of them, and “Change” was one of them.

Julius is a friend of Mike’s who used to help Mike with lyrics.

Julius took his lyrics to another level. Mike brought Julius in to finish the lyrics on “Change.”

It was something I was going to pitch to Michael Jackson, but we lost him.

I always thought it was a powerful song, and I wanted to share it with the world. I wanted to finish it, you know, and bring it to a conclusion.

– Preston Frazier

Let’s go back to the first song on the album, “Marilyn,” which you co-wrote again with Stan Lynch.

– Steve Porcaro

Yes, “ Marilyn“ was just a couple of years old. I had written while I was waiting for dinner to arrive. I wrote that song, made those changes, wrote the lyrics for the most part, and just brought Stan in after I was finished. I made the lyrics better than they were. Stan just helped me out with the lyrics.

– Preston Frazier 

It’s another song that features a fairly elaborate horn arrangement, with some truly exceptional horn players, including Larry Williams and Chuck Finley.

– Steve Porcaro

Yes. Here’s the story. Here was my mantra on this album. And even in my life, to be honest with you. I was always Jeff’s little brother.

I thought I would be 31 years old for the rest of my life. One morning, I woke up to find that my hair color had changed. I had this realization about life. Time is short. 

I was working on this record and creating some horn parts. I used to love doing horn parts and coming up with horn lines and synthesizing them. I have a fantastic collection of samples, but I’ve caught myself spending hours on it.

I wanted to get these horns and samples and all this stuff to sound like brass, to sound like a brass section, to sound like real horns.

I realized then that I should focus on other aspects of the song and production with my time.

At that point, I decided to bring in real horn players. I have nothing to prove. 

Jerry Hey still writes superb arrangements, as does David Paich. 

The one on “Saints and Angels”. As I mentioned, Jerry Hey handled the one on “Change.”

I want to do what only I can do.

To me, that’s my uniqueness, being the way I write songs, and having the final say, and the germs of these songs, every one of these songs starts with me.

Touring with Toto is not my lane. It was for a long time, but now I want to do what only I can do.

Toto has other musicians touring now to perform those keyboard parts, and they’re doing a fantastic job. Luke always puts together an incredible band.

I’m just getting going. I want to improve and become faster at doing this, and share these ideas with others.

 – Preston Frazier

‘The Very Day’ is a great album. I’m looking forward to it coming out on October 3rd.

And then moving forward with your next project. Steve, thank you for your time. 

– Steve Porcaro

Thank you, Preston