I sang the guide vocal on Saturday night. A lot of the bg's you hear on that version are me & BW.
Matt J

I sang guide vocals on some tunes. Other tunes had no vocals & we put down harmonies to add meat to the song along with a scratch lead vocal so Brian & Joe can listen to it.  Building as they go but changes will be made as the songs evolve. Some tunes were in demo form still ( now with very nice harmony bg parts) & others were in a more finished state. Always fun to work with Brian in the studio & he was enjoying the hang time while work was in progress. Blondie, who remembers me from when I was 5, was a pleasure to work & sing with & has such an incredible voice. I hope the tunes with his lead vocals makes the album. So so cool & so Blondie. Awesome vibe! Very productive & very intense 3 days of studio time.

Hello all,
I thought I should post & clarify some points here. Got a call from BW management asking me if I was available to sing in the studio with Brian. I spent the past 3 days putting down lead & backing guide vocals on 8-9 tunes. Hopefully they'll keep some of my work but I do know others will sing over what I put down. They're fleshing out new tunes & they are very good, catchy songs. You will be thrilled & surprised. Scott was in for a day working on a tune & it was Brian, Blondie & me the other two days. This is studio work folks & apparently Jeff was not available for this little stretch. It happens & is not a big deal. Brian sang really well, better than I've heard him sing in awhile, was in good spirits & he was assigning me parts on the fly while I was in the vocal booth. Blondie sounds absolutely amazing &, strangely enough, we have a great vocal blend together. It was a very positive experience overall. I believe Dad, aka Al, will be in the studio with Brian in Feb fyi.

I'm actually just stating the facts as I know them, not necessarily defending any one person. I've seen some less than flattering comments not only about Adrian, but Foskett & myself as well.  As a lead & backing vocalist for the band for roughly 8 years, I definately have witnessed some painful performances by others & have taken part in painful performances myself. Just a fact of life onstage. I will say that the BB bands going out nowadays benefit greatly from state-of-the-art in-ear monitors, which definately help the vocalists to not have to over-sing (over loud wedges, guitar amps, drums, etc). There's no reason for anyone to sound bad with that kind of onstage control. Pretty cool.

Hey all,
I'll put in my two cents here. Falsetto is damn hard to sing in a live setting with a full band--period.  Unless you're in a great venue with a great sounding stage , etc it's gonna be "live" & you, the performer, do the best you can with what you're able to do on that given show.  A loud house mix & crappy concrete box of a stage can make for a rough gig. There are shows I've performed where I can't find the pitch & I have to completely change my monitor mix, in mid show, until I find the sweet spot. Then there are venues that are so well put together & streamlined that performing live & singing is incredibly fun & it sounds fantastic. Comparing anyone to Brian's leads, which were done by the writer of the music, in a controlled environment & double tracked, is a non issue. No one, even Brian, will sound like those recordings (obviously) because a live show is a different beast in every way. Try to take it easy on the guys that are already filling HUGE shoes. I appreciate that you all are passionate about the music & you want it to sound a certain way but, as Carl was fond of saying, "it is what it is".

 Ambha Love is involved in some of the recordings, as is Christian. Christian is touring with his Dad & is deeply involved in his own music & Ambha is still in School. What we generally do is lay down the music & available vocals & add whoever is not present at a later date (if they're available & want to do it). I also want to address a part of my previous post where I said that I didn't think Cal Saga didn't have a future beyond the 50th. My reasoning & thought process behind that comment  was that Carnie & Wendy go out regularly with Wilson Phillips & I work sometimes with 5 different bands during the summer months. So I figured that, aside from doing some appearances for the 50th, we wouldn't have the vehicle (a giant world tour) or the available personell (& a bucketload of money to move 10 people around) to continue. We'll see where it goes.

Matt J

Hello all,
In regards to Cal Saga, I was in the studio last week with Carnie, Justyn & Adam working on Vegetables (Wendy & Carl B recorded their parts days before). It sounds really good. Cal Saga initially was an effort to pay homage to our parents for the 50th tour & I never really saw it having much of a future afterwards. What happened is that, while rehearsing & recording last summer , we got to catch up with each other &  had such a great time together that we didn't want it to end. So, we're still talking (while juggling our respective lives & families) about which songs move us & when we can get together to re-record them. We'll have 5 songs done by next month & a couple more by April.
My Dad is a strong supporter of this concept & he's always available for advice, ideas, etc. It's gotta be a trip for him to see all of us together singing the same songs that he & his partners worked on decades earlier.
As for being onstage with my Dad, it's still a whirlwind of feelings & emotions. He sings his vocals with raw ability & decades of onstage experience, while playing rhythm guitar mind you, & never seems to wear out. He really shined on the 50th reunion Tour & all of us were really proud of him.
Some random memories:  I remember, as a small child, sitting by the monitor board (just offstage) waiting for the encore so I could go out onstage for a few songs. I remember that the crew & back-up band were like extended family to me &, when I'd come out on tour during a school break, I'd get bearhugs from Dennis & the crew (always commenting on how big I was getting & how I should come on the road more often) & always a warm hug & smiles from Carl. Mike was always friendly but also removed & Brian simply wasn't on the road at that time.
 I toured with the Beach Boys from '88 to '98 & learned from these guys, every night, onstage. I started as an assistant road mngr & was soon pulled onstage to fill in for missing percussion or vocals. It was a trial-by-fire experience that was terrifying & incredible at the same time. I learned my craft onstage in front of thousands of people every night. I'd get coached in the van or on the plane, sometimes onstage before or during a show. Someone would lean over to me saying "my voice is going. Sing this part in the next song". Rattled the crap outta me. I eventually auditioned for the guys, on a day's notice, after they let Adrian Baker go. My first gig as a member of the band was two weeks later in Helsinki, Finland in front of 700,000 people at an outdoor festival. I was a wreck! I learned after the show that the concert was broadcast live to another 5 million people in Northern Europe. That was what my experiences were like while performing in the beginning. Another incredible chapter in my Beach Boys memories.
 Now, if I were to find myself backstage at a Beach Boys concert I probably wouldn't know too many people. The connection, along with a lot of the personel, are gone. All things must pass, I guess. But I have incredible, rich memories from my childhood (& later as a performer) of the guys, bits & pieces of certain concerts, backstages, trips to different parts of the world. So, when I'm onstage with my Dad I'm always hyperfocused , like a lazer, on doing the best job I can because I know I'm representing him & The Beach Boys music & filling very big shoes while performing, sometimes, in front of fans that know the music & have seen a lot of shows. How does it feel to sing the lead on God Only Knows in front of an audience? Always a mixed bag of emotions because I always think of Carl & how beautifully he sang it.  Big Shoes. I'd rather have him back singing the lead & me playing sleigh beels & wood blocks & singing bg vocals. But, I just try to dig in & own it, while I'm singing it, & do the absolute best job I can. The same goes for all the Brian vocals. Very big shoes to fill. When I go onstage, I really really go to work.
Hope all of this rambling helps answer some questions & gives you a little peak behind the scenes.

Matt J

Glad I could help in answering your questions. And yes, Big Sur was a great place to grow up back in the 70's & 80's. Very removed from the L.A. lifestyle, very rustic. And I don't mean Vail, CO rustic. I mean rustic, as in 30 miles from the nearest grocery store rustic. Or, when an El Nino winter pounded us, we'd have hurricane force winds ripping through Big Sur & 20-40 yard sections of highway would slide into the ocean & no electricity for a week. It was, & still is (when Mother Nature lets it all hang out), a wild & partly untamed part of CA.

Hi all,
The wagon shot was taken on my Dad's ranch in Big Sur. The guy with the beard is my Mom's younger brother Lynn Sperry. He was the ranch caretaker during that time.

Matt J

I think we were winding down on the recording, shooting a couple of music videos, doing press &  getting ready to rehearse, in Nashville, for Fanfare.  We spent two or three days of rehearsing on a big soundstage with all of the Nashville session guys (that were used on the S & S tracks) with Mike Meros & Richie Cannata added in to the band. We did some appearances after Nashville, with Brian, to promote Stars & Stripes (Letterman x2, Regis & Kathy Lee  x2, Grand 'ol Opry, Crooke & Chase, Farm Aid,  & more I can't remember) 
 

I sang on "Howdy from Mauii". We recorded our vocals in Nashville while working on Stars & Stripes. I honestly can't remember who sang on the track & I haven't heard it since. I also sang on Collin Raye's Christmas album (can't remember the tune) during that same time period.

Yeah, some of the audiences were not big. The Riviera is at the very end of The Strip & it's very hard to promote in Vegas, believe it or not, unless you have a huge hotel w/ tons of promotion $$ & a building-sized marquee on The Strip. But we had a chance to perform multiple shows in a two week period & the band got really tight. We had a great response from buyers who came to check out the show & got future gigs from playing at the Riviera. All in all it was a success. Al/ Dad still has the goods & can sing as strongly as he ever has & also happens to play superb rhythm guitar.
I wasn't in Vegas Aug 5-7 due to prior commitments w/ The Surf City AllStars.

Pretty sad to see the mean-spirited comments here. Granted, the Eternal Ballad song is not one of our shining moments, & we knew this going in. This was for a private event & we were hired to perform this poem to music.  Now, I'm tempted to add a comment of my own concerning some of you that posted below. But I'll keep my feelings in check & not air it out where the whole friggin' world can see it. 

Again folks, thank you for all your kind words & comments.  Al Jardine's Endless Summer Band doesn't use in-ear monitors because we don't tour enough to justify the expense of a system like that. Old school onstage wedges/monitors are readily available wherever we play & it's just easier that way. Plus, all of us in that band are old-school & wedges/onstage monitors are what we're comfortable with. The last two years I was in The Beach Boys (96-97) we used in-ears & it was not a fun experience for me. The falsetto bandwidth in such tiny speaker drivers (in the in-ear monitors) was such I could never really hear myself over the other singers. I really need to hear a little of the front house audio (main speakers pointed at the audience) & a lot of myself in a wedge/onstage monitor so I'm not over singing & screwing up the vocal blend (& blowing my voice out) to really get dialed in w/ pitch. I sing those parts w/ a lot of power (on the uptempo tunes) & back off the mic &/or sing softer & easier for tunes like In My Room, Surfer Girl, God Only Knows, etc. So I split the difference & had one in-ear in & popped the other out & had a wedge at my feet. Best of both worlds.  At the Reagan Event, we didn't have in-ears & were given wedges/onstage monitors while everyone else in that band had their custom molded in-ear monitors. In that kind of set-up all guitar/piano amps are off-stage. All you hear are the drums & the front house. In my case, I had NO sound whatsoever but I made it through without a hitch. Fun event.

Thanks for the kind words.

My Dad does fiddle w/ his amp. Stage volumes at showtime change drastically from soundcheck volumes (& during the actual show from song to song). Remember also that everyone else onstage has in-ear monitors. We (Dad & I) always use wedges & he commented to me after soundcheck that this was going to be interesting not being able to hear the other instruments onstage. On the two tunes I sat in on (Rhonda & Fun Fun Fun)  I found I had absolutely no monitor (someone had moved it during the previous set change) so I sang next to a piano I couldn't hear & key'd off of the house & the little I could hear from my Dad's wedge downstage. That's showbiz!!