Journal's Huey Lewis interview draws wide attention

An interview with musician Huey Lewis is garnering widespread attention for the Whitefish Review.

The editors of the local literary journal sat down to chat with Lewis in Missoula in September and subsequently published a transcript of the two-hour long conversation for its issue No. 24 earlier this month. In the weeks since, the interview has drawn attention from the likes of Vanity Fair, People, the Today show and the Daily Mail.

Review founding editor Brian Schott says the interview and other similar ones in the journal have been based on the idea of getting the subject of the interview to dig deeper.

“I love that long form of journalism and getting to know the person,” he said.

Lewis is a Grammy-winning singer and songwriter and sings lead and plays harmonica for his band Huey Lewis and the News. He owns a ranch outside Stevensville.

In the interview, Lewis talks about how he found Montana, fly fishing and his new projects. He also opens up about his struggles after being diagnosed with Menier’s disease, a condition that causes hearing loss and ended his touring career.

Lewis says in the interview that it’s hard for him to hear speech and music is impossible.

“This has absolutely ruined everything,” Lewis says of the hearing loss. “I try not to let it get me down. In the first two months of this, I was suicidal. I can honestly share that with you.”

Lewis talks about the album his band is releasing and the musical he is writing, but also how he deals with days when he can’t hear.

“We went fishing the day before yesterday with my neighbor Andy Carlson and my ranch manager Joe and we had a great day on the river and everything,” he said. “I had fun. I couldn’t hear anything. But I had fun.”

Schott noted that while most of the media that wrote about the interview concentrated on Lewis’ comments on suicide, and although that was a powerful moment, the interview had much more depth.

“We listened and it was good for him to be able to speak his mind,” Schott said. “The heart of the interview is about his hearing loss, but it’s about more than that.”

Lewis says that fly fishing initially drew him to Montana and later he knew he wanted to buy property in the state.

“I have fly fished all my life,” he said. “The first band I was in, I came to Montana with one of the other band members. We were traveling to the Weiser Fiddle Convention in Idaho and went north and fished our way to the Bitterroot. When I saw the valley I just went, ‘Wow, that is spectacular!’ I fell in love with it.”

Schott says the interview has gotten attention around the world with emails coming in to the Review from Germany and England. Some of those are from folks who also suffer from the same disease as Lewis and want to share possible solutions and others are thankful to hear a similar story as their own.

“People are writing emails to thank us for publishing his story, but also to thank him for being brave enough to share his story,” Schott said.

While Schott says the attention is nice, after 12 years the business model for the Review is still struggling to make it sustainable.

“We obviously love what we are doing or we would have quit long ago, but we continue to be in need of additional support from the community and people who believe in the arts and want to see unreasonable projects like this survive,” he said.

This isn’t the first time the Review has gotten a big interview — they previously interviewed Tom Brokaw, David Letterman, Michael Keaton and Jimmy Kimmel.

Schott says the editors are intentional in the interviews, looking to have frank conversations with the subjects, while ensuring that they’re delving deeper in the interviews with folks that have often been interviewed hundreds or thousands of times over their careers.

“We want to talk to smart, creative people who are at the top of their careers and grant them the time to talk about themselves,” Schott said. “I do a lot of research ahead of time, but a lot of the trick is to think on your feet and the conversation often goes in different directions that you wouldn’t have expected.”

Schott says one of the reasons the Review has focused on including celebrity interviews is to bring an interest to the journal from readers that might not otherwise pick it up.

“It’s great that our work is being shared with a larger audience,” he said. “We always hope that someone would become interested in the journal that might not otherwise — that’s why we’ve always had a mix of pop culture in with art, poetry and fiction.”

The Whitefish Review is for sale at local bookstores, as well as nationally in Barnes & Noble bookstores, and for order online at www.whitefishreview.org. The nonprofit journal does not have advertisers and relies on donations, grants, and subscriptions to stay in business.

To read the interview, visit www.whitefishreview.org.