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we picked him up and took him out to eat and here we are, he recorded on two tunes. One
more that is coming out soon too - that’s a secret for you!

BiTS: Do you have a favourite track on the album?

EN: On the new one, “Badder to the Bone”, I would have to say ‘Queen of the Nile’ because I
just can’t get over the solo Lance played. When I played the song for them, it was just me and
the piano and the guys came in, Jason Kott on bass. He’s fabulous, Peter Keys from Lynyrd
Skynyrd on bass. I played piano and the drummer was Tim Grogan. They’re all out of Nashville
and we rented the studio and my friend Mike Puwal - I’ve known him since 1997 - we’ve been
working together for years. He’s kind of my right-hand man when it comes to co-producing
and helping me in the studio.

They did it in one take, Ian. One take.
And Lance, I was so blown away by
what he played, I was a little out of it
after that - I can’t believe what I just
heard and didn’t even ask him to do
another pass. You usually do two, three,
four passes for safekeeping, but I just
decided that was it. Okay, let’s keep
going and thank God nothing happened

to that track because he did that in one
take. We did the whole song in one take,
and I wrote it and arranged it.

BiTS: Tell something about ‘Lockdown
Love’, which sounds as though it might
have been a real experience for you.

EN: It was. Every word in that song is
true [chuckles]. My friend Mike Puwal. I
was at his house in Nashville. We were
finishing the album and I said Mike, I’ve
got an idea for this song. I want it to be
really rocking, like a Led Zeppelin kind of thing and we came up with this track. He came up
with this track on guitar and I said yes, that’s it. I took out my notebook of lyrics and my
melodies and I sang it down to what he had and there was ‘Lockdown Love’, and I added
background vocals and everything. But yes, it’s a true story. I ordered food on Amazon
constantly. I mean, it was a nightmare and then went down the hall and started working out
again, but it’s true. That song is hilarious. It makes me laugh [chuckling].

BiTS: I read somewhere that although you talk in the song about eating lots of stuff and being
constantly in the refrigerator and all the rest of it, that you actually lost weight during the
pandemic.

EN: I did. I did that. I’m one of those people who eats for a while and then I stop. Okay, that’s
enough, the jeans are a little tight. I did end up losing weight. I went to Florida; I did write a lot
of these songs in Florida. We did escape the lock-downs and I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to
get in the car. We drove to Florida. I took my keyboard. We got this place. I stuck the keyboard
in the window, looked at the palm trees, and I finished writing. That’s where I wrote ‘Queen of
the Nile’, ‘King Kong’. All those songs I wrote on the piano staring at those palm trees and then
I went to Nashville and laid it all out in the studio there and at Tempermill in Detroit.