MONDAY

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Mr. Edmond's official site
• "Q&A: Babyface fires up a soft rock 'Playlist'"
• "Babyface works out 'Playlist' for winter trek"

E-mail a friend

Singer-songwriter discusses love and being painfully shy. (2:43)
 

Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds to this program. His terrific career in music includes success as a songwriter, producer, and, of course, performer, along the way earning a slew of Grammy awards, including three consecutive producer of the year awards. His latest project is mostly a collection of songs written by some of his favorite artists. The disc is called "Playlist," and his U.S. in support of the CD kicks off November 23rd in Oakland. Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, nice to see you.

Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds: Hey, man, how you doing?

Tavis: You all right?

Edmonds: Hey, I'm good.

Tavis: Good to see you. Great CD.

Edmonds: Well, thank you.

Tavis: Well, most of your stuff is - all your stuff is, but.

Edmonds: Oh, well. (Laughs)

Tavis: This one, a departure, though. You're doing other people's stuff that you happen to like.

Edmonds: Yeah, yeah. These are all artists that I grew up listening to - the other artists that I listen to. And these are artists that made me want to pick up the acoustic guitar and learn to play to begin with. Because when I was growing up, I listened to the R&B stuff, so it was like Temptations and Jackson Five, Earth, Wind & Fire - they came later.

But there was another part of me that also listened to the AM station, which was all the White people music.

Tavis: That's what happens when you grow up in Indiana. Babyface and I both did. People ask me all the time, how do you - I'll be in the car with somebody, or doing something and a song'll come on, I'll know the lyric from top to bottom. Like, how do you know that song? And I say, “Just grow up in Indiana for a few years.”

Edmonds: Exactly, exactly.

Tavis: And your options are limited. We had, like, one Black station.

Edmonds: Exactly.

Tavis: That was TLC.

Edmonds: Yeah.

Tavis: TLC, the only Black station at the time in Indianapolis, so if you weren't listening to TLC, all you had was other stuff. But what a blessing, though that you hearing that helped you pick up the guitar.

Edmonds: Yeah. Yeah, it helped me pick up the guitar, because once again, if you listened to TLC, there wasn't a lot of acoustic music in R&B. And that was the first guitar I had, was an acoustic guitar. It was someone else's, but still, I heard that music and I could play this on this guitar. It can make sense.

Tavis: Had you taken lessons or you just picked it up?

Edmonds: I just picked it up. It was my brother's guitar; it wasn't even his, it was a friend of his. And he brought the guitar in the house and he said, "Don't nobody touch it."

Tavis: And so of course you touched it.

Edmonds: Of course I had to touch it, but when he wasn't there. Because otherwise, I would have been - I wouldn't be here today, so.

Tavis: So when you picked this thing up, how did you - you just started strumming the thing? How'd you figure this out?

Edmonds: I watched him play, and he used to play this little thing that I was trying to learn how to play, but the problem was he was right-handed, so it's a right-handed guitar, and I'm left-handed. So when I picked up the guitar, I tried it his way. Of course, it didn't make sense, so I turned it over, upside down, and so I had to teach myself, there was no one to teach me. So it just kind of -

Tavis: I'm just curious, how does being left-handed challenge, change, the way one plays acoustic, or is there no difference, really?

Edmonds: Because the strings are - it's a right-handed guitar, so the strings are put on a particular way. So if you're playing right-handed, the low string is on the bottom and the (unintelligible) it's the other way around. Low strings on the top and on the bottom. So the high strings are on the top. So for me, that didn't work. So I turned it -

Tavis: Your sound was all off.

Edmonds: I turned it the other way, my sound was off. And the way you do your chords, it's all backwards. So, but I didn't know it was backwards. Since I was picking it up, it made sense to me however I played it.

Tavis: I'm so excited, because you're here tonight and tomorrow night, one of my favorites, one of your favorites, James Taylor, is on the program. I've been waiting for years. And JT and I are friends, but we've just never had the occasion to sit and do an interview together.

Edmonds: And talk, yeah, that's great.

Tavis: So JT's coming here tomorrow night, and he's is a fan of yours. You cover one of his tunes on the CD.

Edmonds: I covered two of his songs.

Tavis: Two, in fact, exactly. How did you become a James Taylor fan?

Edmonds: (Laughs) Growing up in Indianapolis. (Laughter) And listening to the radio. He was everywhere, but he's a great artist, he writes great music, and it's soulful. And I think that's what - all the songs that I did on the record, I think they were still very soulful songs. And that's why I related to them.

Tavis: How, then, did you go from picking up this guitar, flipping it over, learning how to play it, to becoming not just a songwriter but a prolific - you are without question, in my judgment, the greatest song writer of our generation. How does that happen?

Edmonds: Well, thanks for the greatest songwriter thing. I don't know about that one. But I think that in growing up in Indianapolis, when I picked up the guitar, I picked up just not to learn how to play it, but I picked it up to write songs.

Tavis: So you knew when you picked it up that you wanted to write songs, not just play it.

Edmonds: Oh, I picked it up specifically to write a song for a particular girl. (Laughter) I wasn't going to play it for her, but.

Tavis: Yeah, you wanted to write it for her. Okay, I got you.

Edmonds: I wanted to write it. And that's what made me want to - I wrote this song called "Here I Go Falling in Love Again," and it was, like, one of the first things that I wrote. But that's what inspired me from being - what made me a songwriter was early years, from kindergarten on, I was in love. I was always in love.

Tavis: With a different girl, like, how often?

Edmonds: Whatever the girl was that year.

Tavis: Okay. (Laughter)

Edmonds: I'd stick to one, and usually get my heart broke. In fact, most of the time. But they didn't know it. (Laughter) I never said anything to them about it. But I just -

Tavis: Now, wait, wait, wait. They didn't know you'd been heartbroken, or they didn't know you were in love with them?

Edmonds: They didn't know I was in love of them.

Tavis: Okay. (Laughs) I thought I'd better get a clarification on that, yeah.

Edmonds: Well, yeah, it started in kindergarten, and I remember all their names.

Tavis: Wow.

Edmonds: And so kindergarten, first grade, yeah. There was a lull between second and -

Tavis: Okay, I'm going to put you on the spot. You ain't got to call last names, because I don't know where they are and who's watching now, but who was kindergarten? First name?

Edmonds: Debbie.

Tavis: Debbie. Who was first grade?

Edmonds: Hope.

Tavis: Hope?

Edmonds: Yeah.

Tavis: I'm just going to do one more. So who was second grade?

Edmonds: Second grade, there was a lull.

Tavis: There was a lull. (Laughter) There was a lull in the second grade. All right, go ahead.

Edmonds: Second, third, fourth, nothing was happening. In fifth, it started to be something but it was like no, that's not really anything. And in sixth grade, then it really started.

Tavis: You were on and popping in sixth grade. You came back.

Edmonds: Well, yeah, big time. That was, like, the biggest one, and it lasted the longest.

Tavis: And who was sixth grade?

Edmonds: That was Rhonda.

Tavis: That was Rhonda.

Edmonds: And Rhonda lasted until the eighth grade.

Tavis: Wow, that's a long time for a sixth grader.

Edmonds: Yeah. (Laughter) And there was a lot of drama with that, that came with that. In fact, my first connection with her was by writing a love letter. But it was a love letter for this guy, Teddy, who had this big Afro, light-complexioned guy, had the big Afro, the jock. I feel your pain too (unintelligible).

Tavis: (Laughs) Yeah, exactly. I've been there a few times. So Teddy convinced you, or Teddy made you write this letter?

Edmonds: No, he didn't know how to - he saw her and thought she was amazing, and he wanted to talk to her, and I knew I couldn't. So I wrote the love letter, he signed his name, he gave it to her, and the next day there were boyfriend and girlfriend.

Tavis: So you knew then that you could actually write a song that worked, and not just write songs, but write a song that actually connected.

Edmonds: I didn't know. I just wrote what I was feeling, and it worked for him. And I often thought if I had given her that, maybe I should -

Tavis: You weren't light-skinned, and you didn't 'fro.

Edmonds: Yeah, I think that was it, but the truth is that she actually liked me. But I didn't give her a chance, because I was too shy.

Tavis: And you know what's amazing about that, I'm fast forwarding now from - and it makes sense on one level, but on the other hand I'm a little confused, and you'll have to explain. When one listens to your music, women love your music and they love the lyrics, and as you well know, some of us brothers tease you from time to time and say, “Babyface, come on now.“

(Unintelligible) I'll cook you dinner, I'll wash your clothes - Negro, please, you done gone too far with it. So one would never have known that you were heartbroken that many times as a kid, given the kind of stuff you've written as an adult, and continue to write.

Edmonds: Well, how could you write that without being heartbroken?

Tavis: Fair enough.

Edmonds: If it comes to you naturally, if you're the guy that gets the girl all the time, then you're not going to be sensitive to their needs. You're not going to really care. You're not going to care at all, as a matter of fact. Whoop, next, next. Where if you're the guy that's always pining for - and I think that's the thing. The most interesting thing to me about my growing-up years and the being in love, it wasn't a sexual thing.

It was purely emotional. In sixth grade, I had no idea what sex really was, which is far different from all the guys like Teddy Gains (sp) and everybody. They'd be - I said name.

Tavis: Oops. We're going to bleep that out.

Edmonds: That's all right, Teddy knows who he is.

Tavis: Teddy bleep.

Edmonds: But they would come in in sixth grade, come in talking about boy, I just got some and, boy, I know you're getting some. And I'd be yeah, yeah. I had no idea what they were talking about. In fact, I looked up in the dictionary to find out what that word meant. And so the closest derivative to it was the word pus. And that was like - and I looked it up, and it was a yellowy discharge. So I kind of didn't have any real interest (unintelligible). (Laughter)

Tavis: He said, “I don't want to nowhere near the yellowy discharge.”

Edmonds: (Unintelligible) to do that yet. So it was really about just this emotion of just having a girl, holding hands, and there was an innocence about that. And I think because of that, it allowed me to feel things more, and to write it in music, and for those reasons, I think.

Tavis: Now, because I am from Indiana, as are you, obviously, and well, because of that, I have met your mother on a number of occasions. And I don't know if your mother belongs to the same church affiliation that I grew up in - my mother and my whole family, I've been in church my whole life. So I don't know if your mother was in the church then, because if she was, I wanted to ask how you navigated coming out of this very strict Pentecostal upbringing background and yet being able to cross over as a secular artist, writing stuff that is about love. Love is God, God is love, and yet it's not looked upon that way in the kind of church that I and your mother.

Edmonds: My mom, yeah, she was Pentecostal, Grace Apostolic Church.

Tavis: Grace Apostolic, yeah.

Edmonds: And so it was very strict there, but she wasn't as strict on us. She let us make that decision. And my father was not, and so we used to try to use him many times, saying, "Daddy, do we have to go to church?"

Tavis: Do we have to go to church? Exactly.

Edmonds: And he'd be like, "Yeah, you got to go today." And so we used to go to him. My father passed away when I was in eighth grade, and so my mom had the reins then at that point. "You're going, you're going." And so it was a great experience. I would go, we'd go to church every Sunday, but I was a little taken back by it many times because I had friends that went, and friends that were, I would say, hypocrites. Young kids that would come to school, they'd act very holy, and then when they'd be at school, they were far worse than I could ever be.

And so it kind of - I was in and out of it in that sense. But when I would go to church on Sundays, I'd go and sit there and listen to the choir - the one thing that would pull me in was that choir.

Tavis: And Grace has got a nice choir.

Edmonds: They're really a good choir.

Tavis: Especially the bishop's choir.

Edmonds: Exactly.

Tavis: Yeah.

Edmonds: And so when the bishop would start preaching, that's when I would go outside and listen to James Taylor.

Tavis: Wow.

Edmonds: I'd go get in the car and turn on the AM station, because on TLC then at that point there was nothing but the gospel, the other local churches.

Tavis: So the bishop would get up to preach - which is a tragedy, because (unintelligible) can hit it now.

Edmonds: He could.

Tavis: But you would leave Bishop (Unintelligible) after the choir sang to go to the parking lot to listen to JT.

Edmonds: Go to the parking lot in the car, turn on the radio, and that's where I got my schooling for most of the music like that, from James Taylor to Bob Dylan.

Tavis: Help me understand, then - I want to just move away now from this girl and the woman thing. That's important, but there's something deeper in your lyrical content. There is an appreciation of value and embrace you have of love. And I'm always enamored and inspired and just enthralled with artists who get the love thing.

Stevie gets it. You can't be a Stevie Wonder and not get that Stevie gets the love thing. Babyface gets the love thing. I'm trying to understand if you had this relationship with the church that was, at best, uneven, how you got the love thing.

Edmonds: I don't think - I think the main thing is that I felt love from my mom. I felt her support in anything. I felt it from my dad, even though my dad was - he passed away when I was really young. I kind of felt like I was his favorite out of six boys. I kind of just felt like when he looked at me that I felt kind of special, like I had something special.

And I was very shy. I was very quiet and very shy, and it was the music that gave me a voice. Other than that, I don't know that I would have ever said many words at all. I was, like, as I say, I was painfully shy. So shy to the point where the first girl that I was crazy about, the whole Rhonda girl, when she finally called me to talk to me, I would hang up on her.

She walked over to the house next door to me, because my brother and my cousin were trying to hook me up. And she came over next door when I was playing basketball, I hear this "Kenny?" I turned around and looked, and there she is, standing. What do I do? I run. (Laughter) And so what I'm going to say? I don't know the words to say. I know how to write it, but I couldn't say it.

And so that was just a lot of things that I was holding inside, and so it's got to go somewhere. And I think the whole idea of love is that when you spend - when you're a quiet person but you feel like you're a good person, you pick up the positive things around you. And I think the positive things that came from my mom, I think the positive things that were about the church, the things that I felt that made me feel good about the church, and I didn't judge the church totally because of someone that I could look at. So I was able to look at the difference between the two.

Tavis: And you obviously got both lessons. You got the James Taylor thing in the car during the sermon, because we hear that on the CD. But you also got, obviously, the love thing, and you got an appreciation of the church. I've seen you in concert many times, and as you well know, obviously, since you're the guy on stage doing it, there's a part in your concerts oftentimes where you just have a little church on the stage.

Edmonds: Yeah, it'll happen sometimes.

Tavis: It'll just break out. Is that planned, or just breakout?

Edmonds: No, no, it just comes.

Tavis: Aretha does that. You can't go see an Aretha show at any point in time, Aretha, coming out of the church, would just break out into having church. Between "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" and "Freeway of Love," you're going to have some church.

Edmonds: She's totally that. I never saw myself as, like, a church artist. There's guys that I know, I even worked with a group back there, The Ambassadors.

Tavis: Came out of Grace.

Edmonds: Yeah, came out of Grace.

Tavis: Donny Golder and Remus Wright, and -

Edmonds: Tommy Hill.

Tavis: Exactly, Tommy Hill.

Edmonds: And they were great, and they were, like, that was, like, my closest connection to really working with gospel music in that way. And the way they could sing, I just never felt like I was that kind of singer.

Tavis: Let me go back to your being shy. You and I have known each other for years, and I've actually never told you this, so here we go on live television. Before I met you, though, because by your on admission you were painfully shy, somebody said to me, "I met Babyface, and he wasn't all that." And I'm like, "What do you mean by that? He a huge talent."

They said, "He's so shy, he wouldn't even talk to me, he wouldn't say nothing. He just kind of - I met him backstage, and he stood in the corner before he went on the stage, he wouldn't say a whole lot." So I'm defending to because you my homeboy, you from Indiana. I ain't never met you, but I'm like come on, the cat couldn't be that shy, it couldn't have been that bad.

And then I end up meeting you, and I (unintelligible) say, "That Negro did not talk to me, either. He is so painfully shy." And I only raise that now because I've watched you over the years, and you're still shy, but you've come out of that to some degree. And I'm just trying to figure out how you have navigated kind of coming out of that shell, being as shy as you used to be?

Edmonds: That's a good question. I don't really know the answer to that. The thing is, once you get to know me, once I know you, then it's a whole nother story.

Tavis: Then you never shut up.

Edmonds: Yeah. I might shut up, but I'm going to be a lot sillier than people would imagine.

Tavis: Okay.

Edmonds: And it is one of those things where when you're shy sometimes, sometimes it just comes over you and you can't do anything about it. You don't know how to get out of it at that moment. You got to walk away and then come back and then try to start over again. And more recently - and I think it has probably a lot to do with just confidence in general.

You're a very confident man, and I think you've probably always been confident. And with that, being sure of yourself, you don't second-guess yourself. You just kind of, like, put it out there. And I've met a lot of people and been fortunate enough to meet not just singers but also people like people in your line of work, because I'm really more amazed at the things that you do. How you can sit and talk to people and just rattle things off off the tip of your tongue.

Tavis: It doesn't pay as well, Kenny.

Edmonds: Well - (laughter). I ain't talking about getting paid.

Tavis: But I'm trying to talk about that. No, I'm just teasing, go ahead.

Edmonds: No, but it is that kind of thing, that I think that's such a talent. That's an amazing talent. That's an amazing thing to have, to communicate. Because you're doing what I want to do.

Tavis: But that's what you do better than anybody I know. It's called communication.

Edmonds: Yeah, but I got to sit off to the side and do it. It's not like it can roll off -

Tavis: But I'm sitting up here talking to you because your life and your legacy has given me something to talk about. So I'm asking questions. What you do is to sit down in a room by yourself and make up stuff out of the ether. That's why I haven't - and this is not about sucking up to each other. I have great respect for artists, because again, what I'm doing is responding to somebody sitting here.

If you weren't sitting here, I'd be talking to myself. But you sit in a room by yourself and create stuff, and you put it down and you put a lyric with some music, and every one of us gets turned on by it, and we take your stuff and use it to communicate with other people. That's a gift.

Edmonds: I will not argue that's a gift, and I definitely feel blessed, but I also have to say that with that same thing in mind, that for a person like you, it is also a gift to be able to sit down to those people that maybe hold it in, to bring it out and share it with the rest of the world. Because everybody isn't tough. Everybody won't give it, and you don't always know their story.

And there are certain people that can sit and talk to you and make you feel comfortable and give it, and there's a talent that comes with that. And so I pay respect to you for being able to do it.

Tavis: So there you have it, Kenny and I love each other. (Laughter) It's Indiana; you don't want none of this. Anyway, before I let you go, tell me about the tour for the new CD, "Playlist."

Edmonds: We're just getting started, just doing a few dates to begin with. I don't tour a lot, and so this is kind of the first time kind of going out in a little while, and it's going to be fun. Some of the dates I'm taking Brandon and Dylan out with me and stuff, and it'll be fun for them to see me in that aspect, because they haven't really been able to -

Tavis: The kids.

Edmonds: Yeah, my kids, yeah. They haven't really been able to see that before.

Tavis: I don't want to get into it, because you've been asked a thousand times, I suspect. How have you handled the very public nature - everybody knows that you and Tracy split up, since you mentioned your two kids. How does a shy person who's a very private person deal with that kind of public airing of your business?

Edmonds: I think we - being shy or being private is what kind of helped. Ultimately it was because we were able to kind of navigate through things without it being so public when we were - especially when we were first separating. As it gets bigger, and obviously she's getting married, and who she's marrying, it all gets kind of big.

For us, it's like we're still a close unit and we have our kids together, and so we try to just do everything we can to protect them and make sure that they're straight.

Tavis: And how are your brothers doing? Everybody knows - your fans know two of your brothers were in "After Seven."

Edmonds: Yeah, yeah, and they're out doing dates and stuff, and doing well.

Tavis: I have so enjoyed the opportunity to talk to Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds. By the way, the name, for those who don't know the story, the name "Babyface - " I'm sure somebody's asking, why you didn't ask him where that name came from? Bootsy Collins.

Edmonds: Bootsy Collins.

Tavis: Bootsy Collins gave Kenny Edmonds the name "Babyface."

Edmonds: That's a true story, yeah.

Tavis: True story. So there you have it. Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds' new CD is called "Playlist." It covers some of his favorite tunes, so now you get a chance to hear what he likes to listen to. Covers some of his favorites and a couple of new tracks on the CD that you'll enjoy as much as you enjoy everything else that Babyface does. I enjoyed talking to you, man.

Edmonds: Thank you, buddy.

Tavis: I'm glad you came on.

Edmonds: Thank you.

Tavis: Good to see you.