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By Jeb Wright
Transcribed by Eric Sandberg
Charlie Huhn is coming up on two decades as the lead vocalist/guitarist for Foghat. Way back, in the mid-1970s, a younger Charlie was named as the replacement singer in Ted Nugent’s band.
Replacing Derek St. Holmes was no easy task but Charlie did it and did it well. His first album with The Nuge was 1978’s Weekend Warriors. Now, 40 years later, Charlie and I look back on the album and his time as the vocalist of one of the top touring and recording acts of the day.
You can check out Charlie in the modern day with Foghat, singing and jamming out the classic tunes “Fool for the City” and “Slow Ride.” Four decades ago…he was a true weekend warrior!
Read on to take a peek back into the history of the music we love!
Jeb: Can you believe this old Ted Nugent album Weekend Warriors is celebrating its 40th anniversary?
Charlie Huhn: It's such a cool anniversary and I'm just totally honored to be involved with that. When I look at those Gold and Platinum albums on the wall…it was such a fun experience. Being from Michigan, getting away from the cold and snow to record that album in Miami. It was the first album I ever recorded. Working with Tom Werman and Lew Futterman...watching Cliff Davies doing all the engineering. Watching Ted work his ass off. It was just a real great experience.
Jeb: Did you get that gig because you were a Michigan boy or was that just a coincidence?
CH: I lived in Michigan when I first got with Ted but we did most of our work, rehearsals and writing down in Florida. We would come off the road and Ted would say "Let's just work here in a nice environment." So the writing and recording for Weekend Warriors was done in Miami.
It was a fun time for me, living in a hotel...before that I was lucky to have a gig where I spent one night in a motel. Staying for a month in a hotel, with the pool and the beach, I felt like I'd made it.
Jeb: How did you get the gig? Did you audition? Derek leaving was a big deal!
CH: Yeah, bless Derek's heart, and Rob [Grange]. Ted was auditioning people. I first found out about it through a hunting buddy of Ted's who knew me from a band I had in Grand Rapids. Ted came to see me and he liked what he saw. He made some compliments and he made some complaints. Then months went by and I was like "When is this gonna happen?" Finally, I got the audition. I won the job and I couldn't have been happier. It was a great moment.
Jeb: Where was the audition held?
CH: In Ann Arbor. It was a recording studio in the basement of Al Nally's music store. Al and Ricky Medlocke were real close. He provided Marshall stacks for all the Detroit area bands back in the ‘60s. Henry (H-Bomb) Weck was the engineer and he still has the tape of my audition. Henry was the drummer for Brownsville Station.
Jeb: Have you heard your audition?
CH: No. I think I've heard one track "Snakeskin Cowboys." I was pretty good back then [laughter]. But Derek's great, and so was Rob and it was difficult sometimes when things would get political but I was honored to get the nod and the rest is history.
Jeb: Were you around for the creation of these songs or did Ted just say "Come sing this stuff?"
CH: Ted had them all written. I thought that was pretty cool. It was great the way he presented it and we all did our parts. As far as the recording goes, I was pretty much hired as a singer. I did background guitars on stage, but Ted let me play on a couple of songs. I was honored.
It was similar to the time I played with Gary Moore. He said "C'mon, play on a couple of tracks." I said "Are you kidding me? That's OK, you've got it under control." He said "No, come on!" I would burn off a rhythm track or double a lead with him and it worked out great.
Ted was in a different mode back then. Weekend Warriors was a transitional time for him. That song, and the double leads on "Need You Bad", I could handle it and it worked out great. It was an honor for me to be able to do that.
Jeb: So you played on "Need You Bad?" That's one of the best songs on the album.
CH: Yeah. Because I was going to have to do it live so it was great to be able to do that. And Tom Werman was in the studio as the Assistant Executive Director and producer and Lew Futterman was there and they were coaching me along. Cliff Davies had me under a microscope, which was all cool...I was the new guy.
Jeb: Ted gave you almost all the vocals on that album. Ted sang "Good Friends And A Bottle Of Wine" and "Name Your Poison."
CH: Right. I sang most of them and on the next album State of Shock it was about the same percentage. On the third album Scream Dream Ted sang most of the songs but he used my guide vocals to help him along. Still, they were all great songs.
Jeb: I've always loved Weekend Warriors and, to your point, it was a transition, with Rob going all the way back to the Amboy Dukes. And with Derek...we've talked enough about this in past interviews...Derek was the singer, but Ted was the star.
CH: But still…that's why Derek was hired. Lew Futterman signed Ted and invested money in him with the understanding that Ted would need a lead singer to be successful. That shows you the foresight of an executive producer who has a tremendous track record for establishing hit acts.
Jeb: I agree, Lew is a classic name, but also at that time, Tom Werman was producing everybody.
CH: Yeah, Mötley Crüe, Cheap Trick and probably a bunch of others. But it is so cool when you're working with these guys and you see how they work. You do a vocal and they say "All right, let's move on." and you say "Was it all right?" and they say "Yeah! Let's move on." I'm like "OK, cool!" That was my experience.
Cliff was a real perfectionist and I didn't mind working on a vocal for four hours. That's nothing like what Joe Elliott had to go through with Mutt Lange. These producers are perfectionists and they know how to get the best out of everyone. It's really a fun experience. It really whips you into shape.
Jeb: My grandmother bought me Weekend Warriors on vinyl for my birthday. I remember dropping the needle on it for the first time. Of course my first thought was "Aww somebody else is singing, but in retrospect I look at it as a pretty seamless transition.
CH: Thank you. there is always the political aspect to it with the purists' arms folded and scowling. They were big shoes to fill and I've had to do that several times, so it's OK. And after the hecklers are silenced everything's cool.
Jeb: When was the last time you listened to Weekend Warriors?
CH: I play "Weekend Warriors" and "Need You Bad" regularly with my side projects that I do for fund raisers and benefit shows. As far as actually listening to the album, it's been a while...probably a year.
It was something I was honored to be in and happy to do. I felt great doing it. I was left a little bit of room to bring my creativity and what I can do...what they knew I could do. The parameters were wide open and it felt good. That was the first time I heard myself on the radio on KLOS. I was with my buddies playing in Southern California and "Weekend Warriors" comes and the radio and my buddies were all looking at me going "aaaaaah!"
Jeb: Some of songs on Weekend Warriors I love the most are deep cuts, particularly "One Woman." It's a bluesy song that no one seems to remember, but I love it!
CH: That was kind of a challenge to sing but it's all a learning process. I had to work on developing a delivery for that. I've got perfect pitch, I've had it since I was a kid, but I had to learn to bring the emotion into that slow blues song. These guys keep telling me, "You've got to be in the groove!" and I'm this classically trained guy who studied Music Theory, which doesn't have a chapter on 'being in the groove.' I said "OK, I buy it, I'm in." It's all part of the learning process. I thought "One Woman" was a great track. It was fun to be able to do that. We did play that one live.
Jeb: Then you have "Venom Soup" which sounds like it's right out of 1978. A bit dated sounding but...
CH: But it's cool. It was kind of a diversion from what Ted was doing at the time. Ted was doing a lot of these 'comedy-porn' rock songs, which was fun but hey, who hasn't done those? That's his personality. A song like "Venom Soup" was digging back to the Dukes era.
Jeb: With a harder edge. The guitar solo on that one is a mother. Your history is not singing that kind of hard rock but you really hit some powerful notes on that. Did you really have to stretch out?
CH: Yeah, and that was all part of what I mentioned earlier, them giving me a little bit of room to experiment. They gave me an opportunity to prove myself. All this time, I'm the new guy and I don't want to step on anyone's toes or do anything wrong. It was all part of this package of it being the first album I had ever done. I was already able to do certain things and other things had to be worked on.
I think what finally went down on that track was something that I could sing comfortably and was also acceptable to everyone. It wasn't too much of a departure from the original idea. Ted wasn't in listening to those. He let me do my thing and trusted Cliff and Tom and Lew, so that was Ted being lenient on me.
Ted was the boss, he wrote all the songs and he knew that, even if my vocals strayed a little bit from his that was OK.
Jeb: Now I have to bring up my favorite song on the album. "Smokescreen."
CH: Oh my God! It's just a great track! Back in the day songs like "Stormtroopin'" "Just What The Doctor Ordered" [Ted Nugent, 1975] and "Cat Scratch Fever" [Cat Scratch Fever, 1977] and "Smokescreen" was another one. Those kind of haunting, minor key rock songs. I really enjoyed it. I also liked "Saddle Sore" [State Of Shock, 1979].
At the time, Ted was enjoying all this fame and notoriety but he had a lot of turmoil in his personal life. A lot of that came out in his songs. I could tell. By the time he rolled out the demos for his next album there were some lyric changes that he and I worked on that actually made him feel better. It's very interesting to see where artists get their stimulus for writing. Some of those songs from Weekend Warriors were him reaching out, which was kind of cool.
Jeb: How long had you hung around with Ted before he made you go out with him and shoot something?
CH: Oh Jeez! It was either we'd be out shooting something or he'd be driving a car with me as a passenger and try to run over a rabbit up on someone's lawn! I shot out at his ranch in Jackson early on.
One time we were in the studio and he had a 45. I'd never held a 45 before and he said "You want to shoot it?" "Sure!" He said "Aim it at that tree" and then he covered his ears. I had no idea how loud a 45 was. My ears rang for an hour. He was laughing at me. He had set me up. But it was fun. I'm a pretty good shot. He's the king. He loves archery and he loves threadbare [a bow with no sights] a re-curved bow, you name it. Everything's cool.
Jeb: Making your first album and going out on a major rock tour...it must have been like a dream.
CH: Oh it was, because we went right out and started playing some of the big festivals and we had photo shoots with major photographers...Meadowlands stadium had 88 thousand people...we were just rockin'. Fortunately, I had a little bit of experience with the band I worked in after college. We opened up some big shows at colleges, otherwise I would have crapped my pants [Laughter].
Jeb: As an insider, what was the world of rock like in the ‘70s? Rock was just exploding. It wasn't political as much anymore, it was more the "sex, drugs and rock n' roll" era.
CH: I remember feeling fortunate that I was in a band at the top of its game, but it was also being treated like royalty. Limos, first class airfare, having a road manager, getting a wake up call, everything was taken care of and it was just like "Oh my God!"
We would fly everywhere while the crew was in a bus. We could stay out at the bar all night and sleep in and we didn't have to leave until 1PM and still get there for soundcheck. It was like a dream.
The shows all came off flawlessly because it's all professional. My monitor guy had worked for Paul McCartney. We had 10,000 watts worth of monitors. You had to wear earplugs then. That was the tail-end of the "Who can be the loudest era."
Hard rock survived disco. Disco tried to kill it but so many people wanted to see bands like Foghat, Ted Nugent, Journey, Cheap Trick and Aerosmith survive. It was so much fun working with everybody back then, just to be a part of it was mind-boggling.
Jeb: Is there one particular gig that stands out to you more than any of them?
CH: At one show, at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, these girls jumped out of the balcony onto us as we were trying to exit the stage. It kind of made you feel like a celebrity. Playing Madison Square Garden and the Boston Garden for the first time...selling out Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland with 88 thousand people. You just cannot believe how many people are out there. You just raise your arm up and they go "Ahhhhhhhhhh!" It was just crazy.
Jeb: Did you guys record any of the Weekend Warriors tour?
CH: We never professionally recorded with intent to release but we made board recordings every night. I have a box full of cassettes that Dancer, our sound man, recorded. They're early board mixes that only have what was coming through the microphones. They're a little bare sounding, but you get to hear some of the dialog and you can hear how tight we are. We didn't do any real live recordings until Live At Hammersmith 79' [released 1997].
Jeb: I love that album. I bought that when it first came out. I love the intro to "Dog Eat Dog."
CH: You know, we did two shows a night there. They would turn the house, it was amazing. The bar was up four flights of stairs, stage left. The stage actually sloped up and you had to remember that. It was like being on a cruise ship.
Jeb: Ted has possibly become more famous, for people under forty, for his mouth rather than his guitar. What do you think is a misconception people have about Ted.
CH: They probably don't think Ted is someone with a good heart...that he's just this brash person that's always looking for attention, but he does have a really great heart. He takes care of his people. He's active with a number of charities. He takes care of kids and advocates teaching them gun safety.
Jeb: I think so too. I've probably interviewed him twenty to twenty-five times. He always has me back when he's in town and talks with me. He seems like a pretty good guy to me.
CH: He stayed clean throughout that whole drug era and he was focused and he worked hard. A lot of things he says gets in the way of people finding out who he really is.
Jeb: What did you learn from being exposed to that kind of work ethic? Has it served you well throughout your career?
CH: Oh yeah. You almost take it for granted. When you watch the way great artists, who are songwriters, the way they've prepared...they tell you this goes here, then do that. We just take all that work they've done for granted.
On the other hand I could watch Gary Moore write a song impromptu, the same with Lonesome Dave [Peverett], these guys are prolific writers, and none of these guys have egos. They're not demanding, dominating...crushing...
Jeb: Not even Ted?
CH: No! I was in the band and everything was cool as long as I played my parts it was fine. It's tough to put up with people whose egos get in the way and all of a sudden there's social issues or whatever.
Jeb: That's something I noticed hanging around you guys in Foghat recently. You guys are the most un-egotistical band I've ever met.
CH: That's nice of you and it's interesting you say that because that's exactly the same personality that the last two bands I've been in have tried to portray. Working with Jerry Shirley and Humble Pie, his attitude was be as nice as you can. We need the work. Don't be a jerk. Be nice and thank people. Be gentlemen. It's that 'gentlemen' thing that Roger [Earl] has going on with this band and is what Foghat is known for.
Jeb: It comes across and it's genuine.
CH: Oh, that's cool. It's a lot of fun. Instead of trying to one-up people, just be a nice person and it's working. Not only are we good people but we're good players too. We're getting a lot more work than we did when I first started. I can remember when we had one show and it was nine months away. Then it was like "Holy crap! We've got a show!" Now we're booking so many shows, we must be doing something right. It's just an honor to be in a band with a bunch of guys who so talented and have good self-direction.
Jeb: Getting back to your time with Ted Nugent. Can you tell me about a time that Ted told you to pick up your guitar and jam with him. Were you gutsy enough to jump in or were you "uh oh?"
CH: We would jam occasionally at soundchecks. One time we were playing a Friday show and Cliff and Dave Kiswiney and I started out this slow blues riff and Ted started ripping these blues leads. I said "I've never heard Ted play blues before!" He knew all these riffs and my jaw dropped. I had only heard him play his own riffs. I would take a lead here and there but life ain't long enough for Ted to get enough leads in!
Jeb: Ted gets a lot of accolades for his speed, he can fly. But the thing that I've always loved about him is his right hand. That thing can go a million miles an hour. He can do some crazy, rhythmic stuff.
CH: Oh yeah. Of course back in the Amboy Dukes days he was proclaiming he was the fastest guitarist in the world. Hell yeah!
Jeb: To wrap up, the studio albums you played on were Weekend Warriors, State Of Shock and Scream Dream?
CH: And then there was Intensities In Ten Cities [1981) which was ten different live tracks from ten different shows.
Jeb: And they were all new songs. A lot of people slagged that album, and it is a little rough, but I think it's kind of fun.
CH: Yeah, even though all the songs are in the key of A [laughter].
Jeb: Where does Weekend Warriors rank with you among those four albums? Which album is number one? I'm guessing State Of Shock.
CH: No! Weekend Warriors is number one! Scream Dream is a close second in my opinion. I think the writing had more of its own identity on those too where on State Of Shock we had a Beatles cover. I think on Weekend Warriors and Scream Dream it was more Ted. Scream Dream was pretty Ted because of lyrics like "You got to pretend your face is a Maserati..." C'mon, give me a break!
