Michael McDonald - Good morning. How are you?

Cliff - Excellent, by the way Motown is an excellent CD.

Michael - Well, thank you very much.

Cliff - It must have been tough choosing the songs to record?

Michael - That was one of the harder aspects of the whole thing. I have to say most of it was a heck of a lot of fun. We recorded over in Europe for the most part and a little bit everywhere like Nashville, Nice France, London, Los Angeles and New York.

Cliff - I know you're touring right now so the Motown stuff must be a great part of your current tour?

Michael - It's part of the show that we do. We're doing about six songs from the record which is a great lion share of the album. We still do a lot of the stuff from my solo career years and the things that I did with the Doobie Brothers like "Takin' It to the Streets, "It Keeps You Running" and "What a Fool Believes."

Cliff - Tell me and this is going back a couple of years. I think you were opening for Cher?

Michael - Right.

Cliff - And doing a Doobie Brothers tune and she came on stage with you.

Michael - Oh yeah, it was "Takin' it to the Streets." Yeah, she joined us on that and later on in the tour over in Europe. I actually came out on stage and sang with her on stage and did a duet which surprised her. It was fun she was great to us and we had a great time touring with her. She was just so gracious and gave us much more time than opening acts usually get and everyday we got a sound check and things that are usually unusual in that position.

Cliff - If you look back at your body of work over the years you've worked with so many people from Carly Simon, Steely Dan it just goes on and on. Is there anybody out there that you'd love to work with?

Michael - Gosh, probably so many I would be hard pressed to mention just one.

Cliff - Is there anyone out there that really impresses you?

Michael - There are a lot of new groups out there. I'm actually going to hopefully do some work with Warren G. We were talking about possibly writing something together and recording it. I was thinking it would be nice to haul someone in like the Chili Peppers to actually play the track that we do. We were talking about some ideas for a song and and we got into maybe doing a funk thing and so one of the ideas I had in my head was to get someone else to participate as more of a rhythm section you know. There are a lot of people that I admire that I'd love to work with from the old school all the way to present day bands. One of my favored groups for a long time was Vertical Horizon. They're a group that came out just a couple of years ago but there are a lot of groups, it would be hard to just pick one.

Cliff - Michael you have two kids tell me about their musical ability?

Michael - Well, they most definitely have talent. My daughter has just a great little voice, she's quite the personality and my son plays guitar and had a band for a little while but he recently has gotten into film editing. He loves editing film and special effects so he's taken more of an interest in that and of course comic books and everything else that comes with being his age. My daughter loves sleepover's that's her big (laughing) endeavor in life right now.

Cliff - Mine just turned nine and yours is eleven, right?

Michael - Yeah.

Cliff - What she's into at that age is Spy Kids and sponge Bob and that kind of thing.

Michael - Oh yeah, definitely.

Cliff - It's been a lot of years correct me if I'm wrong but did you sing with the Muppets?

Michael - No, but we did a track on one of the Sesame Street albums. It was actually Carly Simon's sister who had written the song. She had written the music to Winkin Blinkin and Nod, a fairy tale poem thing and the Doobie Brothers had done a version of that.

Cliff - So you didn't do a duet with Kermit or anything. (Laughing)

Michael - (laughing) No, unfortunately I didn't I'm sorry to say.

Cliff - Where are calling from today?

Michael - We're in upstate Connecticut today and tomorrow we're in the Washington D.C. area.

Cliff - So is this tour going to have you in Canada at all?

Michael - I wish but it doesn't look that way. As a matter of fact, I was talking to someone else today and I was hoping this record would open up some opportunities to get over there north of the border, Toronto at least or a few other places but so far we haven't managed. It's been quiet a while since we played in Canada.

Cliff - I think the last time I say you was with the Doobies.

Michael - I don't doubt that except I think we played in Toronto a few years ago. I think it's been around eight years now.

Cliff - Motown is you latest project and on it you do some classics man "Reflections," "How sweet it is," "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and of course the current single "I Heard it Through the Grapevine." You really have breathed new life into some very, very great old tunes.

Michael - Oh, you're nice to say that. You know it was a great joy to make the record as you can imagine. You know it's such a phenomenal story the Motown thing even today as we're releasing a version of Grapevine you hear Marvin Gaye's version every bit as much as anything almost as much as when it was a hit. It s a phenomenal part of American Pop history.

Cliff - Do you have to consider that when you're going to do a cover of a song and how does that come to play as an artist when you're picking a tune to do. Especially if you know that it is so recognizable say with another specific artist?

Michael - Well, it's definitely kind of a daunting aspect of it. You think, gosh, do I want to take this on or should I. I think I actually said I don't know if we should do this when it was such a classic, historical document as a record and I don't know what we could bring to it that would be anything short of a poor imitation in retrospect in hindsight. I guess it would have been hard to do a project like this without touching on some real classic performances and that being one of them. Gladys Knight's performance was no less a classic performance of the same song. Its one thing to remake a classic old record and it's another thing to remake a classic record that gets just as much airplay today. So you're actually competing on radio with the original record. That's kind of an unusual situation I think which is a testament to how great these performers are and these performances were.

Cliff - Well, congratulations on the success so far. I know we're playing the hell out of it. It's been a pleasure talking with you.

Michael - Same here Cliff, thank you.