. geepg. i'm tavis smiley. six-time emmy nominee, hugh laurie. the long-running fox series "house." can the copper bottom band performing classic songs from his second blues album. the conversation with hugh laurie coming up right now. ♪ contributions to your pbs

station from viewers like you. thank you. with six emmy nominations for "hit-or-miss" on fox, hugh laurie is in this thankful edition. now on his second blues cd "did it rain" -- we start our conversation, first of all, cut from the cd called "evening." ♪

♪ even though i try how can i go on ♪ ♪ ♪ evening ♪ i don't care if i don't awaken since my baby's gone ♪ ♪ ♪ since my baby's gone every artist i talk to either loves or hates the way they sound. >> hate. it's always been that way. i can't stand myself on voice mail, anything. i think that's the natural state. i can't -- i cannot understand people who are happy to look at

themselves, hear themselves. it's a mystery to me. i admire it. my god, i wish i could do it, but i can't. >> how does one -- how does one judge -- how does hugh laurie judge whether or not he is happy with a project? how do you figure out if you are not enamored by your own sound? >> i'm resigned to perpetual -- i need about ten years to go by, and i can look back on something and i think that was okay or i can hear something and say that was okay. at the time i don't think it's possible. the only thing you can do is surround yourself with people you trust and hope that they will see any the right direction and say that's not really happening or, you know, i think that's what we can do. otherwise, you can get so tied up in your own head, you know, on the tiniest things. sometimes things that no one else would notice. >> it's one thing, hugh, i

suspect to not be in love with the sound of your voice, but it's abundantly leer to me that you know what you love in terms of music when you hear it. i mean, you know the stuff that inspires you. >> i do. >> you know what turns you on. >> completely. completely. >> what was that back in the day? >> well, i suppose the first -- i'm not completely sure what the first song was. i think it was a willie dixon song. i was probably 8, 9 years old when i heard this song. i heard -- i suppose tv the first blues song i heard, that first blue note, and it hit me like a thunderbolt, and i have been vibrating ever since. it was a sort of magical kingdom that i could go to through that door that opened. muddy waters, i suppose my first great hero. didn't want to be, you know, a boy who wants to be a guitar player, and muddy waters was just the king. he was king bee. he was it. >> yeah. you started singing or playing

first? >> oh, playing. playing. the singing is -- this is a recent arrival. i'm getting better at it. it's something that i should have done -- it's something i should have done -- well, all of this stuff is -- i should have done more of when i was young. there isn't a human being alive who doesn't wish they had worked harder at a musical instrument. nobody is right. nobody -- i have never met anybody that says i'm really glad i gave up the clinet. nobody says that. >> i kick myself every day that i stopped playing saxophone and piano. >> do you touch it at all now? >> if i walk across the piano, if i walk past one, i'll stop. >> you will? >> the saxophone thing, though, i wish -- >> the flame is still burning. >> it's never too late. >> they do say that. i'm not sure if they're right. they do say it. >> they do say that. >> yeah. >> when you look back on your life and your career, how --

this is an possible question. let me ask you anyway. how to you think -- i ask myself this all the time. how do you think things might have been different had you been more committed to your musical gift early on in your life? >> well, it wasn't -- it wasn't that i wasn't committed. i mean, my love for this music has been an absolute constant throughout my life. in terms of actual performance of putting myself out there and doing it, i -- it's so hard to know. i mean, i realize i'm now in this incredibly blessed position of being able to play with this band and go out on the road and put on these shows, which is -- but, of course, that only happened after 30 odd years of being an actor. it's not like a shortcut, being an actor. i wouldn't add veez it as a shortcut. it's so hard to know. i mean, you know, music is --

it's one of the mobilest callings i could think of. it's the highest of all the art forms for me, and certainly, for example, if my kid said to me i want to -- i want to give it all up, whatever it is that they're doing, and i want to take my saxophone and go out, i would say may god go with you. this is a great and noble that you're doing. that's a brutal and pitiless thing in every way, and it's only getting more so with many others. we all know the industry, it's a tough luf, but, my god, it's a beautiful one. >> i have echoed what you said a moment ago, hugh. i've been asked 1,000 times during the course of my career about this show. in particular why it is i talk to so many artists like yourself, and it's because i believe that music is the noblest, the highest of all the art forms. i know why i feel that way. why do you feel that way?

>> i just know -- well, here's -- here's a tiny piece of evidence. after a hard day's work of doing anything, anybody doing any job anywhere, who goes home and says, honey, i've had a terrible day. why don't we do a scene from cory elanis to unwind? nobody does that. >> yeah. >> what people do is their last refuge when times are hard and when times are not, when times are sweet, the first place people want to go and the last place people go is music. they want to -- they want to lose themselves in music, be transported by music. its ability to soothe and to console, to enliven, to inspire is like nothing else that i know of. whether it's people want to dance or they just want to let it wash over them, it has a

power that language for all its great beauty and sophistication cannot ever quite address. even the greatest poets, i think, cannot quite get to the places that music can get to in the human -- i was going to say mind, but it's actually the entire body. it somehow infuses the entire body. >> if i take your point, so that any gift that is pregnant with that kind of power, any gift that's that noble has to be, i think, free with the kind of respect that a vocation like that demands. >> i completely agree. >> and some artist dozen that, and some artists don't. >> i completely agree. absolutely. one of the things i'm so keen to do in the show that we're doing on the road now is to express in the most respectful terms -- i mean, without it becoming, you

know -- to express my admiration and my love for this music as respectfully as i can. the only thing i could say, i suppose, is that -- i can put my hand on my heart and say that everything we do in the show is sincere. we don't do anything or i couldn't imagine us doing anything that is just to reflect. oh, we don't really like this, but it will probably go well, you know? this will get them on their feet. i can't really do that. i can't imagine doing that. the songs we play are the songs we love, and i love them as much today as i did yesterday and will tomorrow. it's sincere is what i mean. >> give me some sense of the show. give me -- when this project first came out, we talked about it on our radio program. >> right. >> i have been listening to it since it came out and loving every piece of it, and now you mentioned that the you and the band are on tour and going to different places and different venues. give me some sense of what i'm going to see, what we are going to see when we see ow the road.

what's the show like? >> well, it's what i wanted it not to be. i didn't want it to be a recital. i wanted to t to be -- to have a theatricality to it, for it to really be a show with a catalyst, and i hope that we have -- i believe -- let me go further. i know that we have achieved this. i'm so proud of the show that we're doing, and i know that if i was sitting there, i would love it. that sounds cocky, i know. >> no. if you can't buy it, you can't sell it. >> exactly. yeah, exactly right. so i hope that it's a show that will do all the things that you hope any piece of entertainment will do. it will make people laugh, that it will make people think, that it will make people cry, it will give people chills at times, it will make them dance. you know, i hope it's all in

there because all those things are in this music. all human life is in this music. it is -- it encompasses everything. >> you think music still has the power, the resonance to do that in this day and age, and maybe the question isn't so much a question about music as to whether or not we're open to allowing music to impact our lives in that way, to move us in those ways? >> i think so, yes. i mean, i think -- you know, it's a strange thing about the world. everything seems to be speeding up year by year. everything becomes more fragmented. we seem to be addressing our communication with each other and with ourselves in smaller and smaller pieces. you know, it's 140 characters this year, and maybe someone will come out with a thing, can you do it all in ten characters. is that the way we're thinking about our lives? i think music does now and always will transcend that kind

of -- that sort of fragmentation. music is the refuge. it's the place we go to escape, to find comfort and find peace and happy binehappiness, peace,. if that time ever does disappear, i'm out. i no longer -- i no longer -- i hand back my ticket for a ride on this spinning globe because i can't imagine what life on this earth would be like without that, without music. i can't cob receive it. >> give me the good and t bad, the up and down. you know, you take my point. of coming into this kind of exposure for your music after you are a star.

>> well, i suppose -- >> what's the up? what's the down? >> well, the up -- the most obvious part is i don't necessarily have to hammer on doors, you know, take the skin off my knuckles trying to break through to an audience to get people to come to the show. you know, people -- first of all, they're curious to see what the hell -- when i understand. i would be doing the same. i suppose if there's a down, you know, that -- coming with that is the difficulty of transforming what people expect you to do. they're used to seeing you in one particular way, and why should they devote any energy to seeing you in another way? that's also understandable. my responsibility to the music is my love for the music is to keep going.

not necessarily just think about, you know, tonight's show and tomorrow's show and -- but actually think ten years from now i'm going to be still trying to express these songs that i found that i love that i think can move other people as much as they move me. this is something i can share. i will determine to persevere. i'll keep on persevering. >> i suspect whether you know this or not -- i suspect that in every one of those shows -- this will change over time. i suspect with every one of those shows there is a slice of the audience, to your earlier point -- that give you the been fit of the doubt that will buy a ticket to see you because they want to see you in this other -- >> right, right. >> -- base. they walk in with an attitude that says prove it to me.

how do you respond to that piece -- that slice of the audience that's on their hands saying, okay, prove it to me? >> the funny thing is that side of it doesn't bother me at all because that's me. i would be doing that. i know that if someone persuaded me to go and see -- >> i know i would have a feeling of oh really? >> it's absolutely right. that's as it should be. nobody should get -- nobody should get a free pass. i'm expected to win people over just through the show itself, and i hope -- i do hope and i believe -- well, i know it, actually, because we've had these sort of conversations after the show that, you know, there have been people who come knowing nothing about what to expect, knowing nothing about this music, actually, not even knowing the name, can you believe it, betsy smith, and

during the course of the show, i hope -- i mean, i talk about betsy smith a little bit, and gene maclean sings a betsy smith song, and i hope that by the end of it there are, you know, young or old, there are people who are going, wow, i -- you know, the name range a bell, but i didn't really know anything about it, and they go back and listen and they become connected to this music in a way that they wouldn't otherwise have done, and if that even happens just to one person in a show, that's -- i consider that a victory. >> let me ask how seriously you take the role and the responsibility you just now sort of earmarked to educate the audience as much as to entertain them because i was just in new york a couple of days ago, and finally got a chance to see audra and donald and her lady day. >> right. >> five-time tony beener.

she's barely 43 years of age. she has five of these things already. she's all that and then some. >> i knew the show was going to be great, and i went back afterwards to talk to her, and i said how moved he was, how pleased i was at the dhaegs she gave the audience because it's a wonderful performance, but you are learning about betsy smith. you are learning about lady day. are you learning about the prez. she's -- she's giving you as she acts a history lesson. i get the sense to what you said a moment ago in your show, you're weaving some of that -- >> i do. i can't help it. partly because i'm a bit of a nerd, and i just can't help talking about this stuff because i love it so much. i don't want to -- i hate people to think that it's some sort of dry musicality. >> no crib notes. >> well, i think they -- i think they add to the pleasure of it. i mean, when you learn, for

example, that led belly was in two separate situations, once in louisiana and once in texas was released because of the songs he wrote. the governor of texas actually, i believe he got off a live sentence in sentence because the state governor was so -- fell in love with the song "good night irene." he just said you can go. >> that didn't work with james brown. >> kids, don't count on it. i would -- i can only think -- that just sort of adds to the pleasure. i think it changes the way you listen. once you know that, that you have that little fragment about somebody's life, that's part of the fun of it in a way. it sort of adds to the way you hear it and the way you respond

to it. this is -- this is a song written by a real, you know -- this wasn't a committee just sort of rolling out the stuff. this was a guy who lived a life and a hell of a life too. here's a life that's in these songs. his imagination is in these songs. i think it just sort of -- i think it adds to the texture of the evening. >> i love the stuff that you have been doing on these projects, but you have been doing other people's stuff. >> yeah. >> so what's the question i'm about to ask? >> the question is when will i set out in my own little row boat and actually do -- well, have i got that right? >> you are -- >> i -- it's possible that the next go-round, the -- it's possible. i mean, it's something that i wanted to do and have done.

i mean, i have -- i write songs. i'm just so conscious of the fact that already so many uncovered treasures out there. you know, some of the songs we do, you know, not -- barely have been heard since they were recorded in 1809, 100 years ago, and as long as there are those precious jewels lying out there, i feel the world doesn't necessarily need more songs. theb the world doesn't need more of anything really. the world has plenty of plenty. >> good point. >> i do think at some point i have to take my courage in both hands and say, yes, this is me, and the moon in june, i wrote that line. what do you make of it? >> i like it. i like it. >> there's something in it. >> the first thing -- i love

this cover. you got to tell me whose idea this was. i love it. >> it was my idea. i wanted to -- well, i always have loved that peanuts thing, but i wanted to do -- somewhere some image that managed to combine a sort of gravity, the seriousness of what -- what this means to me, but also the knowledge that i don't want people to think that i'm not aware of how odd this is that i'm doing this. you know, that some people may go, you know, what am i -- i'm going to be sitting at a piano with a manu script and sucking a pencil, and this is my creative soul. i want people to know i know how hard it is. it's a lot to ask people to swallow, and i want people to know that i understand that. that was the idea. >> and "didn't it rain" is a great transaction, a great song. where do you love it so much,

and why did it -- >> the sister is just huge for me when i was growing up, and we're doing two songs in the show. she was just an enormous influence on me, and her sort of spirit and her cool. she was just so cool standing there with that white fender. she just -- she gets the hair on the back of my neck going just thinking about her, let alone hearing her. she as a central figure. >> i wanted to do something with this album was to have a more female voice to it. he was aware the first time around it was a group of men hammering away on guitars. i mean, i was very proud of it. don't get me wrong. i'm very are proud of the first album. i wanted the second one to be --

in my mind a lot of this music actually comes from women. these were huge stars. i even wonder sometimes whether all music actually comes from women, whether it's the fist fwlimerring of music is a mother soothing a baby maybe. that's where we -- that's what it all comes from. it is so primal. it is so -- i wanted to get that -- not to do something romantic, exactly, but to do something that's more a conversation between men and women. >> mission accomplished. >> why, thank you. >> mission accomplished. >> i mentioned earlier we had a chance to sit and talk to you with our radio show on this project, and how fortunate are we now that you have toured the country now. if you can get in to see this guy over the summer, you will not want to miss hugh laurie and his band as they are doing their thing on the road. the latest project from hugh

laurie is called "didn't it rain." you having fun on tour? are you enjoying it? playing for these people. >> it's sort of indecent how much i enjoy it. i feel like someone is going to come, and a waiter is going to come with the check any moment, and i'm going to be -- i'm braced for it because i'm sort of having too much fun. it shubt really be legal. i apologize. >> if you are enjoying him on "house," you'll really enjoy him on stage. have a good tour. that's our show tonight. thanks for watching, as always. keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show visit tavis smiley@pbs.org. >> hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me for a conversation with the men behind sing like a freak, and jennifer holliday will perform. see you next time.

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>> rose: welcome to the program, we begin this evening with the "new york times" cairo bureau chief david kirkpatrick. >> the new egyptian government established with the military takeover last year has shut down all of the unsympathetic media. media which was listening to or sympathetic to the muslim brotherhood so, now when you flip through the television dial you see private networks that are pro cc, state-owned networks pro cc and only one netwo broadcasting in arabic that is critical of the cc government and that is al jazeera. and the pro military or pro cc egyptians often speak of al jazeera like it is basically itself a terrorist organization with satellites. >> we conclude this evening with steve inskeep in a conversation about national public radio. >> in radio you gean