Huey Lewis Has a New Album

Huey Lewis spoke to Billboard about Soulsville, his upcoming album from Huey Lewis & The News.

On why he recorded a Stax Soul album: It was actually my manager Bob Brown's idea. I was a little wary because I'm a big fan of this stuff. But I figured there's no harm in trying and working the songs up. I was wary because some of these performances are so great they shouldn't be repeated. But I think we've done it justice and we'll turn a lot of people on to this stuff.

On why it took so long to do a new album: We're not spring chickens. And the public isn't clamoring for new Huey Lewis & the News material. We have written a few things, but you want it to be meaningful, so it becomes increasingly harder.

It's interesting to contrast the market now to the Stax period when the music was created by black and white people-integrated musicians-in a segregated society. Now society is integrated but music is more segregated than ever. We've always enjoyed the gray areas of music and unfortunately there's not a big commercial market for it. But I must say, now that we've got this thing out of our system I've actually got some ideas.

On promoting the album: We're going to tour, and I know we're going on Jimmy Kimmel's show at some point... Commercially, I don't know. It would be wonderful if people would listen to it. That's all we hope for.