We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.

For more than a half-century, John Oates played music alongside Daryl Hall. Together, the duo created some of the most indelible hits of the 1970s and 1980s — among them, “She’s Gone,” “Rich Girl,” “Maneater,” “Out Of Touch,” and “Private Eyes” — making them MTV stars and leading to their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.

In recent years, Hall and Oates parted ways professionally amid lawsuits and acrimony, although the pair recently settled their differences via arbitration. Luckily, however, both men have well-established solo careers, with Oates releasing his first album in 2002, Phunk Shui, and issuing a steady string of records since. These full-lengths allowed Oates especially to explore his eclectic musical inspirations, which he gleaned from growing up in Philadelphia.

His new solo album, Oates, is a laid-back throwback to the soul and R&B that put the city on the map, with warm grooves, yearning vocals and blues-funk flourishes. But the album also touches on bossa nova (“Dreaming About Brazil”) and other genres, as evidenced by an uptempo, electro-pop take on Marc Cohn’s “Walking In Memphis.”

When I connect with Oates, he’s checking in from his home in Aspen on a rare chill day. “I just got off an awesome mountain bike ride, way up into the back country,” he says. “It was incredible…. This is my summer vacation before I hit the road. I’m trying to get fit, you know?” Indeed, Oates is gearing up for a solo tour to support the album and putting together a setlist.

“I’m shifting my brain over to the live performance mode, getting ready to get on stage,” he says. “I was doing an acoustic show for the past three years with an acoustic quartet — cello, percussion and pedal steel — and I’m playing acoustic guitar. All of a sudden, [now] I’m playing electric guitar. I’m plugging into an amp. I’ve got a kickass band, some young guys who are really, really great from Nashville. And so I’m really excited.”

Oates (2025)

In 2023, you released some reggae versions of songs like “Maneater.” In 2024 you released Reunion, which was more Americana-focused. And this one has a little bit more groove and an R&B influence. What led you in this direction for this new record?

JOHN OATES: All these recordings are really part of my musical DNA, just different facets of it. I love a lot of different styles in music. And having been a professional musician for as long as I have been, it’s interesting to me to try different things.

Reunion was an album that I really wanted to make, because it showcased the singer-songwriter, acoustic side of me — not only the songwriting, but the playing as well. The musicians I surrounded myself with on that particular record were the cream of the crop in that genre: Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, Sierra Hull, Jim Lauderdale.

Right after that album was released, I did a songwriting session with Devon Gilfillian, a young R&B singer. We met in Nashville and hit it off and made arrangements to write together. We wrote a song called “Mending.”

I think we both tapped into our Philly roots during the songwriting, and that opened a door for me. I said, “Wait a minute. I just got finished with this really cool, very introspective, pristine, acoustic-type world that I’ve been in.” But I didn’t forget about my old Stratocaster and plugging into an amp. And, wait a minute, what happens when I’ve got a real drummer and a bass player? The energy just kind of flowed.

As a creative person, you never know when you’re going to meet someone, or find someone that’s going to shoot you in a new direction.

OATES: Yeah, and it’s part of the collaborative process. It’s really that magic that happens when two people start sharing creative ideas. You never know where it’s going to take you. Keeping an open mind to that possibility is really the key to the whole thing.

When you were looking for musical collaborators beyond Devon for this record, who did you want to go to? Who did you want to enlist as these songs were coming to life?

OATES: I didn’t have a game plan. There was no master plan. I just took it as it came. These two projects kind of blended together from one to the other. I’ve been doing an acoustic live show for the past two-and-a-half, three years, and I have a guy named Nathaniel Smith, who’s just a genius cello player.

One day, during soundcheck [of] my acoustic tour, he started playing this cool cello riff, really funky. He’s not a traditional cello player like a classical player, although he can do that; he’s really much more inventive. And he started playing this funky thing, almost like a bass line. And I said, “What’s that?” And he said, “Oh, I don’t know.” I said, “Get your phone out. Record that.”

He did, and when we got back to Nashville a little while later, we actually brought Devon in on that as well. That ended up being the song “Real Thing Going On.”

Ron Artis II, I met him playing a show somewhere in Nashville. Here again, we hit it off, and we talked about writing, and then we wrote a really cool song. It’s all natural with me. I don’t really try to force anything. When it feels right, it is right. I guess that’s the way I measure things.

Do you have any younger artists that you’d love to collaborate with that you haven’t yet? Anybody you’re really impressed by?

OATES: I just did a song with Spencer Sutherland. He’s like a rock star, 24/7. We wrote a song together just recently, and we’re working on some other stuff too. He asked me if I would sing some backgrounds on his last single, and I did that, and from there we started writing. I just did a single with another young artist named JT Loucks. I met him in Nashville through some mutual friends.

When I collaborate, I go out of my way to work with younger artists, because I’ve had very little success with working with artists of my own genre. I’ve done some work with older artists, artists who are closer to my age. It’s funny, the shared experience of people your own age tends to be almost like treading water, in a weird way. It’s hard to describe. But there’s no spark to take it somewhere else. It’s almost like we’re both pulling from the same well of inspiration, and that ends up being kind of static.

Whereas when I work with younger artists, I bring a level of expertise and experience that they don’t have, but they bring a new perspective and a new way of looking at things, and an energy that perhaps I don’t have. And that’s a really powerful combination, and it’s been proven to work really well for me.

[Laughs.] I guess I’m an anti-agist — or maybe I’m an agist. That’s a terrible thing to say. But I don’t think of myself as old. Of course, no old people do. But that’s the way it goes.

Going Back To The Hit Factory To Record “Enough Is Enough” With Lawrence (2025)

I love that you collaborated with Lawrence on Oates. It made so much sense to me. And they’re such an effervescent band.

OATES: Effervescent is a great word to describe them. I was actually right here in the house in Colorado listening to their albums, and I was taken with that same effervescence, that joyful [vibe]. Among all the young pop groups, they seem to tick all the boxes for me, in terms of: They’re great songwriters; they’re great singers; they’re great instrumentalists; they have a great band. They don’t use samples; they don’t use tracks. Everything was real and organic. It really resonated with me, because that’s what I do. My old man approach to the same thing. [Laughs.]

I said, “Damn, I wish I could write a song that sounds like Lawrence.” And so I started writing this song, and the more I got into it, I said, “You know, this really does sound like them. I’ve kind of ripped them off in the best possible way.”

I’m writing all the lyrics, and “enough is enough” was the theme. The psychological implications of that title, you can go in a lot of directions with that. [Laughs] It was feeling really good, and I couldn’t come up with a second verse. I was listening to “Don’t Lose Sight,” which is one of [Lawrence’s] big songs. And as I got into their lyrics, I realized that they were talking about the same thing that I wanted to do with my new song, except they were doing it from their point of view.

“Don’t Lose Sight” the way I interpreted it — you’ll have to ask them, I think I’m right — was really about their reaction to the music business. Don’t lose sight of what’s important in being a creative, just because the business and the outside world is trying to make you conform to something. Don’t lose sight of what’s really important to you. I took some of the words from “Don’t Lose Sight” from their song, and I interpolated them into my song. And I thought, “Well, okay, I’m stealing from them, but I haven’t stolen from them yet, because I’m going to give them credit.” [Laughs.]

I got ahold of my booking agent, who knows them, and I said, “Would it be weird if I sent them this song? But with the caveat that, ‘Hey, I’m totally cognizant of the fact that I’m using your words. This is not a ripoff here.'” I sent it to them, and they loved it.

The cool thing was, [to record] we booked the Hit Factory, which was the first place Daryl and I recorded in New York in the late ’70s, after we stopped recording in Los Angeles. So it was that full-circle moment. Clyde [Lawrence] played keyboards, and then we all sang the backgrounds, and [Clyde and Gracie Lawrence] sang their leads, and we put them on the track. And it really took it to a whole other level. I’ve never done anything like that before. 


What was that like going back to the Hit Factory? What kind of memories did that bring up for you?

OATES: A lot of memories. The guy who started it was a guy named Eddie Germano, who has since passed away. However, his son, Troy, now runs the Hit Factory. And Troy was like, 11 or 12 when we were there in the ’70s. I’ve known him since he was a little kid. Now he actually runs the studio.

And, of course, the studio itself physically has moved from up Midtown New York to down in Soho. But to get together with Troy as an adult now, running his father’s legacy studio — there were so many really amazing things that came together in that.

Performing As The Anteater On The Masked Singer (2023)

You also have a cover of Marc Cohn’s “Walking In Memphis” on Oates, and I wondered if that was because you performed it on The Masked Singer, or if you were a fan of the song before that.

OATES: That was definitely because of The Masked Singer. I’ll tell you, The Masked Singer, that was an outlier for me. I was asked to do it, and it was at a time when I had some free time, and I thought, “Okay, this is weird. Do I really want to do this?” And I thought, “Well, it’s going to be interesting,” since the world really recognizes the sound of Hall & Oates through Daryl’s lead vocals. His vocals are so significant and so signature to the sound of Hall & Oates’ big hits.

And I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if I start singing and people don’t know who it is. That was kind of cool. But what wasn’t cool was singing in that fricking costume. That was crazy. Plus, I didn’t really like the costume, to be honest with you. I think they were thinking anteater, “Maneater,” maybe some would make that tenuous connection.

But I gotta tell you the story of my final episode, my final experience there. It was a Sunday night, and I was playing the Newport Folk Festival. And it was something on my radar for years. I always wanted to play Newport Folk Festival. It was Sunday and we went on at around 5 o’clock in the evening, [but] I had to be in Los Angeles the following morning at 8:30 a.m. in the studio.

So I got off the stage at the Newport Folk Festival, got in a car, ran to Boston’s Logan Airport, got the red eye, landed in LA at 2:30 in the morning, went straight to the hotel, laid down for a little bit, took a shower, put the crazy costume on, and went to the studio. I had to sing at, like, 9 a.m.

That’s not ideal!

OATES: I went through the first song, and then I got eliminated at that point, and I had to go through something they called the sing-off, or whatever it was, against another character. And I started fainting inside this costume. I started getting woozy. And started getting dizzy, and I didn’t think I was going to make it through that last song and probably sound like shit.

So when they eliminated me and I had to take the head off, it was like one of the happiest days of my life. [Laughs.] I was never so glad to lose a competition in my life. I was done. I made it through, I guess, three rounds, or whatever it was, it was crazy. But it was a great experience. You know what, life’s all about great experiences. And at least I could say I did it.

The other thing about that costume was they had this big head with a nose. I couldn’t see [straight ahead]. They had me doing choreography, and I’m on a stage, so the only way I could know where I was walking was by looking up at the rafters of the building, and saying, “Okay, now I’m going to take 10 steps to the right.” But all the time I’m singing and performing.

And I had these gigantic, size 15 shoes. They were these huge clodhopper-like boots. But they took a pair of sneakers in my size and glued them inside the boot so that I had to put them on, then they laced up the sneakers inside the boot so I had to walk with these giant shoes.

Performance-wise, have you ever run into anything in your career that challenging, or was that by far the most challenging?

OATES: That was one of the most challenging things, because I wanted to sing as well as I could. And they do a really good job with the music side of it. In the post-production, they fix everything, and they tune your vocal, and they do all sorts of stuff. So they have it down. And the people are fantastic. The staff was great. Everyone I worked with was great. It was just [that] I was really out of my element there. [Laughs.]

So I didn’t really answer your question, but the first song I sang was “Walking In Memphis,” and I did love that song. They gave me a list of songs. I grabbed that one and, and I did a demo on it at home because I wanted it to be a little bit more uptempo and a little bit more my style. And so I said, “Well, you know, I’ll record that too. Why not?”

His First Band The Masters’ Debut Single “I Need Your Love / Not My Baby” (1966)

I was poking around on Discogs, and your first single with your college band, the Masters, goes for incredible amounts of money online. I think there’s one for sale right now for $275.

OATES: Woo! [Laughs.]

I don’t know if you have any copies lying around…

OATES: I have a few, I have a couple. Not many. I’ve got like, two or three, I think.

What are your strongest memories about working with the band, and how did that really shape you as a young musician?

OATES: It was the first band I joined. I joined a band in seventh grade, and they were all older than me. They were in ninth grade. There was one guy who played guitar and, as it turned out, I was a better guitar player than him, so he switched to bass. And that became the band.

All through my junior high school and high school years, we played shows. So I worked my way through high school playing in a band. I never really had a job or anything like that. I’m one of the lucky ones when it comes to that. And it was great. I mean, we got as good as we were ever going to get.

We got to the point where we wanted to make a record. And in those days, we just literally looked in the Yellow Pages and found a recording studio in Philadelphia and called them and said, “Hey, can we make a record?” And they said, “Yeah.” It was, I think, like 200 bucks or something like that.

We went down to Philadelphia and made the record. Actually, it didn’t turn out very well. The engineer was a guy who had a bunch of hits in the ’50s, rock hits, and he said, “You guys are pretty good, but you need some help. You need some guidance.”

And we found a guy named Bobby Martin, who was an arranger, and we hired him. And we went back in [the studio] a second time and recut the song with him helping and doing a horn arrangement and making it much more professional. Bobby Martin went on to be one of Gamble & Huff’s biggest arrangers. He arranged a bunch of stuff for the O’Jays, the Stylistics, and things like that.

In those days, [when] you’d make a record you’d have a tape, but you’d also make what they call an acetate. I went down to a place called the Record Museum in Philadelphia on Walnut Street. And it was literally a record store with obscure 45s and obscure LPs and things like that. And I walked in with my acetate and the guy behind the counter said, “What do you got?” I said, “Well, we just recorded the song. Wanna hear it?” He put it on the turntable and played it. He said, “Oh, this sounds pretty good.”

He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I don’t know. We’re looking for a record contract.” He said, “Step this way.” So we went into the back room and he pulled out a contract. And of course — duh, yeah, of course. No questions asked, no lawyers, no reading it. Of course not. Which is important for things to come in my fricking career. So that’s how I got my first record contract.

How did it do? Did that get on the radio?

OATES: It was the second song ever released on their own label. The Record Museum had an imprint called Crimson Records, and the only other song that ever came out, to my knowledge, is “Expressway (To Your Heart)” by the Soul Survivors.

Okay, that’s pretty good then.

OATES: At the same time, right around that time when the record got released, they got it on local Philadelphia radio. And Daryl’s group, the Temptones, had recorded a song at the exact same time. We didn’t know each other. And those two records were being played simultaneously on the Philadelphia R&B stations. That’s how we kind of got to know each other.

The music scene in Philadelphia was so small. Everybody knew each other, you know. And there was only one, one real studio, where Gamble & Huff eventually made all their big hits.

Growing Up As A Musician In Philadelphia (1960s)

What an amazing place to grow up as a musician, as there’s history everywhere you look. I mean, as it’s happening, you’re not thinking about that. But in hindsight, we can look back.

OATES: Yeah, you’re 100% right about that. I was born at the right time, at the beginning of rock & roll, and I got a chance to develop and grow up in the Philadelphia area with this incredible legacy of Philadelphia radio. Some of the earliest AM stations to ever program rock & roll as a full-time format was Philadelphia. And a little bit later, you had the birth of FM underground radio, where they were playing albums and long cuts and things like that.

Simultaneous to that, the folk scene was very, very big in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Folk Festival is the oldest American folk festival next to Newport.
I could go to the Uptown Theater and see all the great soul acts of the time. I saw everybody. I saw Stevie Wonder do “Fingertips” when he was 12. I saw James Brown and the Temptations, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, the Miracles.

And then I’d go to the Philadelphia Folk Festival and sit literally on the grass in front of a stage that was maybe 10 inches high, like a plywood platform, basically. And I saw everybody. I saw Doc Watson, Joan Baez, Mississippi John Hurt, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee, Hedy West. That’s why my styles are so eclectic and diverse, because I have all these influences from the source.

Performing At Live Aid In Philadelphia (1985)

Speaking of Philly: One of the things that’s been in the news lately is that Live Aid was 40 years ago. Obviously you were at the Philadelphia version. What do you remember most about that day?

OATES: A lot. At the time, Mick Jagger had made a solo album, and our guitar player in the ’80s Hall & Oates band was G.E. Smith. Great guitar player, and G.E. had played on Mick’s solo album.

Mick was invited to do Live Aid, and needed a band, basically. So through the connection with G.E. Smith, the word was, “Hey, do you want to back Mick Jagger up?” [Oates takes a joking tone] “No, no. We don’t want to do that. Why would we want to back up Mick Jagger?”

So that happened. And then the fact that it was in Philadelphia, the fact that we were pretty much at the top of the world of pop music at the time, it just seemed to make sense that we would have, I believe, the headlining slot, or the second-to-last slot, that evening. [Hall & Oates’ performance ended up being at 9:50 p.m., behind Jagger’s set and a Keith Richards-Bob Dylan-Ronnie Wood set before the grand finale.] And it was a big deal. But for us, it was pretty normal, because at the time, we were playing giant shows everywhere. And as I said, we were at the top of our game at that moment in the ’80s.

I remember wanting to go there really early that day — unusually for me, because normally I’d go an hour or two before the show. But I really wanted to experience the whole thing. I knew that it was unique and groundbreaking, and that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see all these various acts and to be part of it. So I went in the afternoon and stayed there all afternoon, just wandering around, listening to everybody, standing on the side of the stage.

And then when we finally got to go on, we brought Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin up, and we reprised our Apollo Theater thing that we did with them. Mick came out, and brought Tina Turner out. It was unbelievable. I’m blown away that we were part of it, and really proud that we had that very singular moment in rock history.

Cowriting Icehouse’s “Electric Blue” (1987)

How did you end up cowriting this?

OATES: I was sitting at the bar at the Mayflower Hotel in New York on Columbus Circle. It’s not there anymore. And [Icehouse vocalist] Iva Davies was sitting at the bar next to me. We had never met, but I recognized him, and we started talking.

And it was in the late ’80s, when Daryl and I weren’t really touring so much, and we weren’t recording that much. We were taking a bit of a hiatus. [Iva and I are] shooting the breeze, and [I was] saying, you know, “I love Australia. Been there a few times.” He goes, “You want to come down to Australia, and maybe we could write a song?” I’m like, “Hell yeah, let’s go.”

So he brought me down to Australia, and it was great. I loved it, but we didn’t get anything. We worked for a few days, and nothing was happening. And I was depressed, because he brought me all the way down there and I felt responsible for, like, “I gotta come up with something.”

At the time he had just started to learn how to windsurf. It was a new sport that was just happening at that time. So he said, “Let’s just take a break and go to the beach.” And so I said, “Yeah, sure. Why not?”

So I’m sitting on the beach; he’s windsurfing. And in those days — I don’t know if it’s still true — but the beaches were all topless in Australia. I’m sitting on the beach, and this beautiful girl comes walking toward me, and she’s topless, and she had these incredibly blue eyes. So I’m trying my best to look at her face. [Laughs.] And I’m going, “Electric blue.” And I went, “Oh, okay.” And that was it.

He came in from windsurfing, went back to the studio and said, “I got an idea.” And so then I came up with the chorus of “Electric Blue.” And if you listen to it, it sounds very much like “Out Of Touch.” [Oates sings both songs to demonstrate.] So it was me ripping myself off in the best possible way.

I think you’re allowed to do that, though, if you wrote the song.

OATES: Hell yeah! … It’s interesting that you brought that up, because I’m actually going to play that in my new solo show this summer. I’ve never played it.

People over the years have said, “Hey, have you ever played ‘Electric Blue’?” I’ve just never played it. And so we’re going to learn. In fact, I just spent yesterday writing the chart out for the chord changes.

Covering New Radicals’ “Someday We’ll Know” With Todd Rundgren (2003)

Well, one of my favorite covers that you’ve done over the years is the New Radicals’ “Someday We’ll Know” with Todd Rundgren on vocals. How did that come about?

OATES: The New Radicals song is just a great song. And we were making an album, [and] I think we just needed an extra song. It was just one of those things [where we weren’t] overly thinking of this stuff, just saying, “That sounds like a good song. Let’s try that.”

One thing that I would always like to clear up — over the years, there always seemed to be this misconception that Daryl and I were this calculated pop group that could just whip out a #1 record at the drop of a hat. Far be it from the truth. I mean, we totally just did things. We were the exact opposite of overly calculated. And the New Radicals song was a perfect example of it. It was just a really cool song.

We did “Family Man,” which was a Mike Oldfield song. And Mike Oldfield obviously being an instrumentalist, predominantly, he had one song on his album with a female singer, I can’t remember her name. [Editor’s note: Maggie Reilly.] And they did “Family Man.” One of our techs in the studio brought it in. We were getting ready to record, figuring out what we’re going to do that day. And he said, “Hey, have you heard this?” We put it on the turntable and listened to it and said, “Oh, that’s a cool song. Let’s do that.”

And same thing that happened with “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” that cover. We had made the Voices album, and we thought we were done. We thought it was complete. In those days, what we would do is we’d have a listening party, because we were very, very strict about not letting anyone in the studio when we were recording. Record companies weren’t allowed to hear anything we were doing. They had to take it on blind faith that we’d hopefully do something good [Laughs] and not waste all their money, which is really our money, which I didn’t know. But that’s another story.

We’d have a listening party, and we’d invite the record companies down, maybe some key radio people, management, friends. We brought them down to Electric Lady [Studios], we played the Voices album, and yeah, it sounded really good.

After the party, we said, “Let’s go get some pizza.” So we were on 8th Street, in New York in the Village. We walked out of the studio and within half a block, there was a pizza place. We sat down, and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” came on the jukebox. And we both went, “Wow. You know what, we could use another song. Let’s do that.” So the following day, we went back in the studio with the band, and we cut the whole thing in two hours, and we were done, and we said, “Yeah, now the record’s complete.”

Living Next Door To Hunter S. Thompson (Late 1990s/Early 2000s)

When you moved into your house right now, you lived next door to Hunter S. Thompson, and you had to move his car off your property. How random!

OATES: [My wife] grew up on a farm in Illinois, and we met here in Aspen, Colorado. We were looking for a place, and I was oriented toward getting a place in town. And she wanted a place where she could have some animals and things like that. So she found this piece of land outside of Aspen, about six, seven miles.

We went there one day with the real estate agent, who was a friend of mine. All there was on the property was a little cabin and a little horse barn, because the house that had been there had burned down. And we’re looking around trying to figure it all out, and all of a sudden we hear, like [Oates makes some gunshot-like noises].

And then we hear the shotgun pellets on the little metal roof of the cabin that we’re standing right next to. And I said, “What’s that?” And he said, “Oh, that’s your neighbor.” [Laughs.] “That’s Hunter. And he’s kind of sending a warning shot across the bow.” And so we’re like, “Okay, is this going to be a problem?” [Laughs.] He says, “No, no, probably not. Normally, he’s asleep during the day, and he’s only up at night. So this should work out fine.”

We bought the property, and in that little cabin was the red convertible, the Fear And Loathing convertible. And the first thing we said was, “Why is his car on someone else’s property?” He goes, “Well, this is Woody Creek. That’s just how it is here.” And we got to learn that this is a very unique place on Earth.

We wanted to turn the little cabin into a guest house while we built our house, so that way we could live there and turn it into an apartment. But first we had to get rid of the car. The keys were in it, so I put a battery charger on it, jumpstarted it, started it up, pulled it out of the cabin — which was really like a garage — and drove it up to his house and parked it directly in front of his door and just left it there.

And he never said a word to me about it. It was as if the car just appeared at his house. [Laughs.] He was great. We got to know him pretty well. If he liked you, he was a true Southern gentleman. But he loved being Hunter Thompson. You know, the cigarette holder with the slouch hat and the glass of whiskey and the motorcycle. That was him.

Acting On Will & Grace (2006) & The Goldbergs (2020)

Over the years, you’ve dabbled in acting a little bit here and there…

OATES: [Laughs.]

…you were on Will and Grace. How did that come about?

OATES: [Laughs.] Let’s not demean the term “acting” by saying what I or Daryl was involved in. Daryl is very good friends with [Will & Grace executive producer] Jim Burrows. I believe they were neighbors in upstate New York, and so it came through Jim Burrows. He came up with the idea for us to guest on it. It was fun. It was nice.

You were recently on The Goldbergs as well. You played a singing janitor.

OATES: I played a janitor, yeah. Typecasting, huh?

The J-Stache Cartoon Trailer, Where Oates And His Mustache Are A Cartoon Crime-Fighting Team (2009)

For a while there, there was some news that you were potentially going to do a cartoon involving your mustache. There was a trailer release, but then nothing happened. What happened with that?

OATES: That was just a flawed idea, to be honest with you. There was a publishing company who had the rights to some of our music, and they were trying to look for unique ways of promoting the catalog, really. It was basically about the catalog. And so someone came up with it, and it was called J-Stache, and the mustache was going to be a superhero, which is kind of funny. Dave Attell did the voice of my mustache. [Laughs.] So I don’t know. It had its moment.

Sometimes the best laid plans or the ideas that seem good on paper, when you have them executed…ehh.

OATES: Exactly. That was one of them.

Yacht Rock

One of the other genres that’s been talked about a lot is yacht rock. Do you feel that your music is yacht rock? Is it miscategorized? Do you have any strong feelings about that?

OATES: I just don’t like the label. To me, it’s odd. It’s weird. I don’t know what that means, and I never understood it. But, you know, on SiriusXM, it’s the biggest, most popular station. And there’s great songs that are under the yacht rock umbrella. I don’t necessarily feel that Daryl and our songs really fit as much into that format as some of them do, perhaps.

But the one thing I would say — if you look at the Hall & Oates hits, there’s not one of the Hall & Oates hits that sounds like the other one. Which is very unique. Stylistically, you can’t lump the Hall & Oates catalog into a yacht rock genre or a soft rock genre. They’re all over the place.

And that’s something I’m very proud of, that our hits have always been… there was never a sequel. There’s no “Rich Girl II” or “Maneater II.” They’re all totally different. And that’s something to be pretty proud of.

And when you look at other veteran artists, that’s not always the case.

OATES: In the days of the big labels, it was a common thing for, “Well, you had a hit. Let’s follow it up with something that sounds like it, so that radio can not have to think too hard.” And it’s true, that pressure was always there. Always there in the background. But we never succumbed to it, which is good.

Performing Some Shows With Actor William H. Macy (2025)

OATES: He’s my neighbor. We could walk to his house. And actually he lives right behind the house that Don Henley used to live in, and Jimmy Ibbotson from the Dirt Band lives up the road. It’s a very unique little neighborhood. Bill Macy’s niece used to be our nanny. We took her on tour when she was, like, 13 and our son was six. And now she’s getting married next weekend, so that’s one of the reasons I’m here. We’re going to go to her wedding.

Bill is a very unique guy. Obviously, his acting speaks for itself, but he writes these quirky, really great little songs, and he plays ukulele. So we ran into each other. I had two acoustic shows left over from the acoustic tour, one in Steamboat Springs and one in Denver. And I said, “Hey, would you want to open the show for me?” And he was like, “Really?” I said, “Yeah. Why don’t you do it? It’ll be weird. People won’t know what to expect.”

And so I put him on the bill and we called the promoters, and they said, “Well, what’s he do?” [Laughs.] And I said, “He’s really great. He tells stories, and he has these really cool songs.” People went nuts. They loved it. And so I think we’re going to do a couple more things like that.

Has he ever really done stuff like that before?

OATES: He’s done private parties, but he’s never done it on a full stage with a PA and the whole thing. But he’s a movie star, and he’s so charismatic, and he’s so smart and interesting. He just tells these wacky stories. What’s really cool is he doesn’t play too much off his old characters that people know him from. But at the same time, you get that movie star thing. But he really delivers on a musical level.

Maybe he’ll get a record deal out of that. That would be wild. He could go on tour doing his thing.

OATES: You never know. I’ll probably be opening for him pretty soon.

How do you structure your own solo sets these days? Because you have so much to choose from.

OATES: I very consciously avoid doing Hall & Oates songs. I do a few, but it’s not really what it’s about. I think the Hall & Oates songs are so classic, and they stand alone and speak for themselves.

I don’t know what [Daryl] thinks about it, but I feel that I’m doing them a disservice by not doing them the right way. I do a few that are meaningful to me: I’ll do “Out of Touch,” I’ll do “She’s Gone.” I do a reimagined version of “Maneater” that’s neither like the original, but it’s also not reggae. It’s kind of this hybrid of the two.

But I have eight or nine solo albums. I also have been doing part of a show that I call “the songs that made me,” where I like to play a lot of the influential songs from my childhood, songs that really made me want to play the guitar, made me want to sing. Curtis Mayfield, Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, Allen Toussaint, some of the New Orleans early rock that I liked, stuff that came out of Memphis. You know, the Steve Cropper, and that Stax-Volt era.

My solo show is more a reflection and an example of who I am as an individual. That’s really what it’s about. I do a lot of my solo stuff, I do some interesting, unique covers, and I pop in a couple classic Hall & Oates hits, and go from there.

I like that, because you’re so big into music history and reverence for that.

OATES: Exactly.

I saw Cyndi Lauper this summer, and it was a storytelling show where she was talking about her own history and doing different things from her catalog. She didn’t actually do some of her biggest hits. But it fit her and the story she wanted to tell.

OATES: And that’s exactly what I’m doing. I think it’s appropriate for artists of a certain age and of a certain experience and of a certain success level, to be able to do something like that. For me to go out there and trot out a set of Hall & Oates hits, here again, it’s like treading water. It’s been done. And I’ve moved on. And I think it’s important to realize that.

Oates is out now via PS Records.