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In the meantime, you also have The Meatbats - or Chad Smith's Bombastic Meatbats. This came about because of your work with Glenn Hughes. So why isn't he in the band?

[laughs] "Because it wasn't really his thing. And besides, then it would've been another Glenn Hughes record, and he would've sang - and we just made that. The jams the other guys and I came up with were so solid and funky that we just decided, 'Fuck man, we've gotta let the world hear this stuff!'

"So that's what we did. We went to my house, wrote the songs out, recorded 'em with a producer named Jono Brown, and that was that. It's fun material. I think people'll get off on it."

The record has a cool retro vibe. It feels like the best Billy Preston record that Billy Preston never made, particularly the song called Oh! I Spilled My Beer.

"Awesome! Ed would be thrilled to hear that. In fact, we have a song called Need Strange that we still refer to as 'Billy P' - not to hard to figure out why! [laughs]

"You know, Ed's totally into the retro keyboard sound. He plays Clavs, Wurlies, all those things. Billy Preston - absolutely. It wouldn't be wrong to say he wasn't an influence on our music."

The record has a very loose feel. Did you record it live?

"All live - by design. We wanted to sound like a live band jamming. We didn't fuss over it at all. Well, there were a couple of fixes here and there, a few piano overdubs, but no big deal. We didn't record it in parts."

Next: More Meatbats, and Chickenfoot plans

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