When Huey Lewis and The News take the stage Thursday, fans will hear a lot of their favorite pop songs such as "Power Of Love" and "If This Is It."

But the band's going to work in some old soul songs, too.

Lewis and his band's latest album is "Soulsville," a collection of 14 covers of soul songs out of the Stax Records catalog including tunes by Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and Wilson Pickett.

When we talked to Lewis last week, he told us how they decided to revisit those songs as well as his acting gigs and performing the band's older material.

Q. Was soul music your favorite music growing up?

A. Hard to believe, isn't it? A white kid from Marin County listening to soul music. It was our favorite radio station, KDIA. The guys in my band it was our little statement. Back then, in California, everybody else was into psychedelic music.

Q. Where did the idea for "Soulsville" come from?

A. The idea was, "Hey, you guys should do a Stax covers record." Clearly, it's not the most original record. But you can't do a Motown record. There have been eight of those. Stax was our stuff anyway. It's pretty raw, but I've always liked Memphis stuff.

But rather than do the Chestnuts and lend them the contemporary version or some original treatment, why not go deeper in the catalog and do songs they haven't done before and do them faithfully?

Q. How did you pick the songs?

A. We all picked a bunch of songs and had a meeting. Everybody brought their top five songs. The ones that meshed were the first batch of five that we recorded. We recorded them in our little recording studio and they sounded fantastic. They're so well arranged that they recorded like butter,

Then we hit on the idea to do it in Memphis with Jim Gaines, who did "Sports" and "Fore!" with us and then did some big albums with others. He's semi-retired in Memphis now. So, it was great to work with Jimmy again. He said, "Oh yeah, we got to go to Ardent." That's the history studio, so we went there to cut.

Q. Were those hard songs to do? I imagine doing an Otis Redding song would be pretty intimidating.

A. The Otis Redding song was the hardest. Some of them shouldn't be done, so we chose this song. I was apprehensive.

But the version that exists on the record of "Just One More Day" is a complete performance of everything. There's not one overdub and not one fix.

I was in the booth singing, the horn section was in A and everyone else was in B. We had a video feed that connected everyone. We cut it. Then we'd go in and listen to it. No overdubbing the whole thing.

The whole album went that way. We'd do two or three takes and move onto the next tune. We were cutting five tracks a day.

Anyway, we cut it, went in to listen to it. I was going to record all the vocals later, but I said, 'Check the vocal out. It's pretty good, too." It was almost like the soul gods said, "It's OK. Here's your Otis Redding song, We'll give you one."

Q. I've always thought Huey Lewis & The News had some soul in it. Did this album feel like a natural progression?

A. That's a very great point. My favorite singer of all time was Johnny Taylor. I was in the band Clover and we were in England. I saw the new wave thing. I saw all these bands doing soul music with a horn section. I thought, "I could do that. If that's soulful, I'm super-soulful."

The idea of (Huey Lewis & The News) was to play new wave stuff in a soulful way. I never though we were playing rhythm and blues music.

With this record, we tried to stay dead faithful. Me in my own vocal phrasing. And We even hired Memphis background singers.

I was listening to playback of one song and I thought, "That sounds like Huey Lewis & The News." At that moment, I realized how influenced we were by this stuff. I had been influenced by Johnny Taylor. My singing style had been. Now, I see it in "Power Of Love," even. But, I never was hip to it when we cut this stuff.

Q. At 61, your voice sounds great. Do you have to take better care of your voice?

A. You do. Obviously take better care of yourself. There are some things that I do better than ever. I'm smarter about my note choice and I know what to do. You never think of a high note as being high, you just go straight through it.

I still wish I sounded like Johnny Taylor, but there's only so many things you can do. (Laughs)

Q. How did you learn the harmonica? It's an instrument that a lot of people play, but not a ton that play it well and you've been known for it.

A. Before my sophomore year of high school, my parents got divorced and I got sent away to prep school in New Jersey.

When I came back, my mom had rented out a room to a musician, Billy Roberts, who played "Hey Joe." He had a belt that held harmonicas and gave me a bunch of his old harmonicas and I fooled around with them.

Between high school and college, my old man made me take a year off and bum around Europe. He said, "You're a year young — you skipped second grade — you need to go do that." My mom, who was hanging out with beatniks," said, "That's the smartest thing your father ever said."

My mom have me a Bob Dylan record and the boarder gave me a bunch of harmonicas. I stowed away to Europe and bummed around and played harmonica in Europe and North Africa. No one played harmonica in North Africa, so I played Marrakesh and made good money. I played my way through Europe and then went back to Cornell and joined a band.

I though, "I got some woodshedding to do," so I learned how to play and I was a harmonica player until I joined Clover. I sang a little bit in Slippery Elm until I joined Clover. Even then, I only played a few songs.

That was the 70s, and the voices were (sings like Foreigner and Journey). When I saw the punks and thought, "Wow, that is cool." They didn't care. They didn't give a (care). They were thumbing their noses at the stuff that was on the radio.

The Clash — Joe Strummer, we saw his first gig at The Roundhouse when we landed in England. They were spitting on him and he was spitting on them back. It was outrageous. We couldn't believe it.

What I thought was cool was that he was singing "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" and he didn't bother to do (sings "whoa-oh-oh" in the style of Foreigner/Journey).

Q. Have you been writing new material?

A. We are. We've got a couple things. We wrote a handful of things and played them live a couple years ago. You never know with a song. One is pretty good and the others aren't, to be honest.

I have another song that I'm really high on. I don't even know what the market is for these things and I don't know where you sell them. We're gonna finish out this year with the "Soulsville" stuff and come up with another plan like we always do.

The funny thing is that we've sold less records of "Soulsville" in its entirety since it's been out than we used to sell of "Sports" daily.

Q. Outside of performing, do you ever go back and listen to your old songs?

A. I hear it on the radio all the time. It's interesting to see the production style progress. Coming out of the new wave was a dryer, tighter sound. When they loosened up in the late '80s with the big echo (sings "Won't you forget about me") and had to have the reverb on that snare drum. That's what was going. They were all like that.

Q. You've done some acting in the past. Anything coming up?

A. I'm in showbusiness. I'll do anything for attention or money, usually in that order.

I've done some stuff for "Hot In Cleveland," a multicam series with Betty White and Valerie Bertinelli. It's really a fun show. I have fun with that.

And I'll do anything that's creative. I haven't done "Dancing With The Stars." Frankly, I can't find a reason to do it. I've been offered, but I can't find a reason to do it. My buddy Jimmy Kimmel tells me I should, but I can't find a reason to do it.

Q. A lot people know your cameo in "Back To The Future." How did that come about?

A. I really like to act, but I don't want to play myself. Most of what I get (for acting offers) is I'm gonna come in on set and be Huey Lewis. That's no fun.

I said to ("Back To the Future" director Robert) Zemeckis, "I'll tell you what: If you don't credit me and disguise me and make it an inside joke, I'll do it." He's a great guy, Zemeckis.

Q. You still tour a lot, too. How do you like it?

A. I don't know how much is "a lot." We do about 65 a year. That's a lot less than Chicago or Earth, Wind And Fire and a lot less than the Doobies. Those are our contemporaries, you know. We run into them all the time where we play. Like, they always just played the night before.

This date in Omaha, this is gonna be great. We love playing those old theaters. It's a real sound-good thing. We love these dates. They're intimate, but they don't pay that much, but we do them because they're great for the audience and for the music.

Contact the writer:

402-444-1557, kevin.coffey@owh.com

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