I'm Not Listening

We Walk This Road is a mixture of original material written as a collaborative effort between Robert Randolph, producer T-Bone Burnett, Tonio K and Peter Case with covers spanning a century of American music, as interpreted by Randolph and Burnett. Randolph told the story of this song to Crosswalk: "One day we were all having lunch together while T-Bone and Bob Dylan talked on the speakerphone. We were all just eating, laughing, joking. Next thing you know, we come down [to the studio] and we were just jamming. The drummer started playing, and everyone joined in. So we got this little groove thing going. T-Bone starts mumbling some words, singing along. So we agreed that we had a nice piece of music, and that we should take a break and try to write some lyrics to it. While we were doing that we were watching a presidential debate on TV, and we all agreed that we just wanted to be told the truth. So that's where the lyric 'Keep on talkin', I'm not listenin' came from. We just started writing all these lyrics about anything that was relevant to that."

Tonio K is an American singer-songwriter whose songs have been recorded by the likes of Chicago, Al Green and Vanessa Williams as well as collaborating on music with Brian Wilson and Burt Bacharach. He told us that he got involved on We Walk This Road after T-Bone Burnett called him and said, "Hey, I'm producing a record for Robert Randolph and he's got a bunch of tracks and licks, but no songs. Do you want to get involved?" "And I went, 'Sure,'" he added. "So that was a whole thing that went on for over a year." (Here's our full interview with Tonio K.)