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down-home sort of R&B and when I would take a solo, it was like Jimi Hendrix or Mick Box from
Uriah Heep or something, which not necessarily, it didn’t quite fit the content but it was a great
crowd pleaser, if you know what I mean? I’m down on my knees. I’m on my back. It was just
funny. Same thing on ‘Rainy Night In Georgia’, he gave me a solo [sings] ‘Rainy night in Georgia’.
I’m like [howling]. It’s like such a not – and he would say, hey man, somebody get me a drink.
Randy Dynamite’s getting ready to take a solo. And it was like that. I only played with him like a
couple of weekends. I was in the house band at this place called Mozambique. They called me
for it. I wasn’t necessarily seasoned enough, if you know what I mean. And now if I did that gig,
I’d probably approach it a little less wild. Something a little closer to the content of the music.
But then I was young. I was just like, oh, man, I’m in front of people. Let me let it out.

BiTS: Tell me Randy, about The Boneshakers. When did you start The Boneshakers and why?

RJ: Well the idea of The Boneshakers sort of started when I first came to LA. I came to sort of
help. Don was becoming more and more a name in production there and he said why don’t you
come out to LA, and
I figured I’ll come
out for a while? I
had been going out

and flying out and
playing on stuff for
people and stuff
like that and then
flying back to
Detroit. He said
why don’t you
come out and we’ve
got some gigs
coming up and
they’re rehearsing
bands and we’ve
got to go to France,
but I’m not going.
You can just run the
Was (Not Was)
thing while I’m doing this. So that was sort of how it started, but the idea of The Boneshakers
when I got to LA, when I actually moved there, I could see that Was (Not Was) was becoming

less of a priority to Don and David. They had other things that they were doing to make money
from. This is how they were surviving anyhow. And so when we came back in 92 after the Dire
Straits tour, I really made an effort, really, really made an effort to write music for something for
myself and it started with that arrangement of ‘Cold Sweat’. That ‘Cold Sweat’ arrangement was
just something I was sitting around listening to B.B. King and then literally, I was talking to a
friend.

Actually a guy named Jack Chant, who was part of the Was (Not Was) production from Detroit
and he said you should do a James Brown cover. He said nobody really does a really cool James
Brown cover and as I was trying to figure a way to do James Brown without it sounding like
James Brown and ‘Cold Sweat’ was the first thing that I did and then I bumped into a guy named
Jon Butcher from Jon Butcher Axis. He was living in LA at the time and we bumped into each
other and I was a fan of him, and I thought he was a great player, so we started writing songs
together and then that was what started as The Boneshakers, us two and then he got a call to go