When Ringo Starr needed a utility player in his All Starr Band who was capable of doing everything from hitting the high notes in “With a Little Help From My Friends” to nailing the sax parts on Men at Work’s “Who Can It Be Now?,” he turned to Warren Ham. When Olivia Newton-John needed a new band member who could duet with her on Grease classics while recreating John Travolta’s vintage dance moves, she turned to Warren Ham. And when Toto needed a multi-instrumentalist and singer able to handle complex flute, harmonica, percussion, and sax parts, not to mention some of their more difficult harmonies, they also turned to Warren Ham.
Ham has also enjoyed stints with Donna Summer, Cher, Kansas, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers. Simply put, there’s almost no role in a touring rock or pop act that he can’t handle with ease. And right now, he’s waiting for the pandemic clear so he can get back on the road with Ringo and the newest iteration of Toto.
We phoned him up at his house in L.A. to hear how he became rock’s ultimate utility man.
How has your pandemic year gone?
It’s been good. I’ve been Covid-free, thank God. My wife and I got our Covid shots back in February. I’m currently doing a movie thing as a musician and background extra that’s coming out. I can’t really talk about it because they don’t want us talking about it. You know how they are. They want everything to be hush-hush until it actually comes out, but it’s a big movie. It’s big stars and everything, and I’m in the band. I’ve been around a lot of people recently, but they’ve been testing me a lot.
I feel good about being around people because I’m vaccinated. I did lose a cousin during the holidays. I know how serious it is. I think everybody was a little confused about it at first, but it’s definitely a dangerous disease and you have to take precautions. I don’t believe in being too overly cautious, but I encourage everyone to get the vaccine.
It’s been a while since you played live.
The one thing we did is a livestream with Toto back in October. That’s coming out in late June. That was a lot of fun. Of course, we all took precautions. That was before I took the vaccine. I wore a mask. We all social-distanced and we took the proper precautions. The livestream turned out so well that they’re making a DVD of it.
Do you miss the crowds?
Oh, yeah. For me, that’s the heart and soul of the music business. I thrive by being in front of an audience. I know that Ringo does too. I’ve been working with Ringo for the past seven years. I just spoke to him recently and he still wants to be cautious, so it seems like this time next year before we work again.
Toto was supposed to go out this summer to Europe, and now that’s been pushed back a year too. Everything has just been put on the back burner as far as live is concerned. To be honest with you, it’s little frustrating. I’ve taken up a few things like this movie thing and a few sessions here and there. But for me, I’m really a live guy. I prefer that.
I want to go back here and talk about your life. What’s the first music you remember hearing that left a big impression on you?
I was raised in Fort Worth, Texas. My family was into gospel music. My mom played piano and sang, and my dad was a bass singer. He almost ended up with the Blackwood Brothers, which was a famous gospel quartet. He was on his way to Nashville to join them as a bass singer when J.D. Sumner, the bass singer for Elvis, decided he wanted to come back. And so my dad lost the gig.
Anyway, that’s the kind of music we were into, the Blackwood Brothers gospel quartet music. That’s what I was raised with. I recorded our first record when I was only five. I got to sing lead on it. I was just raised up in that atmosphere of music. I got into country music after I played gospel music. I played mandolin and my brother played guitar. We played around at things like the school variety show and things of that nature.
And then, of course, I got into rock & roll, like everyone else, when the Beatles came out. My brother was older than me. He played guitar and he got into rock & roll before I did. I began to follow him around to his gigs. Then the guys in junior-high wood shop figured out that I could sing. They needed a singer because everyone played guitar and drums. I ended up singing with just about every garage band in the Dallas–Fort Worth area at one time or another.
You play a lot of different instruments. Did they all come naturally to you?
I was a singer at the beginning, but then I started playing harmonica at 15. Then the band I was in got turned on to Jethro Tull and I went, “Ah, I gotta do that. I gotta take up the flute.” That was at 17. And at 20 I decided to pick up the sax because saxophone is in the woodwind family. It’s similar fingering, but different mouthpiece and so on and so forth.
In the early years, did you see any big concerts around Texas that really stayed with you?
Yeah. Our band opened for Spirit one time. My brother was in a group called the Yellow Pages, which went out with Eric Burdon and the Animals. He kind of led the way for me. He came out to California and worked with Sonny and Cher.
In the early Seventies, I auditioned for a group called Bloodrock. They had a bit hit record called “D.O.A.” They were in the Dallas–Fort Worth area and they had a deal with Capitol. And so I graduated high school in 1971, and after that, it was either join Bloodrock or join the Army and go to Vietnam. I thought, “Hmmm.” [Laughs.]
It was a no-brainer. I ended up working with Bloodrock and I had a writing-publishing deal with them. We did about three records and got dropped by the label.
How do you think you grew as a musician during your time in Bloodrock?
That’s when I began to co-write with the organist, Steve Hill. We wrote quite a few songs. I grew that way. And I grew musically since they made me the frontman. I was not only singing, but playing saxophone, flute, and harmonica. That is how I was thrust out into the front, in front of people. I had done this on a local level, but now this was more of a national level.
We began to tour around the country. We flew and we drove, we did planes, trains, and automobiles, and all that sort of stuff. This is the early Seventies.
When you joined Bloodrock, they were morphing into more of a prog group.
Correct. I was part of the reason that the sound changed. We began to experiment with more types of music like Gentle Giant. The original Bloodrock was more of a forerunner of heavy metal. We took it in a different direction. Some people really liked it, while others wanted the old Bloodrock back. It was just one of those kind of things.
I was just listening to “Thank You Daniel Ellsberg” off the Passage record. I haven’t heard many rock songs about the Pentagon Papers.
That was due to our drummer. We had this blues vibe going on with that and the drummer [Rick Cobb] had these lyrics about Daniel Ellsberg. He was way into the political thing at that time. I didn’t know much about it. I’ve never been that political. I try to stay apolitical since it gets so weird. But we did write that song as a sort of protest song about what was going on in Vietnam. Everything that had happened in the Sixties had carried over into the early Seventies, with Nixon trying to get out of Vietnam and the whole Watergate fiasco and all that stuff. That is where that song came from.
What happened to the band?
We did a few records, but we got dropped by the label and I moved back to Texas to go to college. That’s when my brother and I formed the Ham Brothers. We began to play a lot around the country, and we had a big following in the North Texas area.
How did you wind up touring with David Gates of Bread?
Like I said, I had moved back to Texas and my brother and I had a band going on. We had friends that had worked out here on the West Coast, Dean Parks being one of them. He’s a guitar player that played a lot with Steely Dan. And there was David Hungate, who played bass with Toto. We had a connection. My brother knew Jeff Porcaro and knew those guys, and he had played on the Sonny and Cher TV show.
One night, my brother and I were playing a club called the Hop in Fort Worth. And Dean came in with David Gates. They were checking my brother out for the guitar chair and me for the backing vocal and saxophone and flute and so on. They ended up hiring us for his tour.
That’s how we ended up with David Gates and Bread. And we rehearsed up north of Seattle in Bellingham. It was [Wrecking Crew and Bread keyboardist] Larry Knechtel’s ranch, which is beautiful. That whole tour was a really fun experience.
Bread was this big band in the Seventies with a lot of huge hits, but you never hear about them these days. Why do you think that is?
I don’t know. But David was the primary writer. The last I heard of David, he wound up in Nashville doing sting arrangements and things of that nature. I really lost track of him. But his songs are so poignant. “If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can’t I paint you” [from the 1971 Bread song “If”]. Those kind of lyrics were coming out of that guy. And he had a real great voice. It was still in the soft-rock vein that I had come to know with Bloodrock. It’s still that same kind of vibe. But David was always the force behind that band, pretty much.
During your time with David, they were in a dispute over the name rights to the band.
I didn’t know too much about that. Like I said before, I try to stay out of any and all politics, in all situations. I knew about that, but I figured that wasn’t any of my business and I let them deal with it.
Tell me about how the Cher period started.
We just did the one tour with David. That was largely because when we played the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Cher was there with one of her girlfriends. She had already separated from Sonny. She came backstage and she knew my brother from the time he had played the Sonny and Cher TV show with David Hungate, Jeff Porcaro, and Dean Parks. There was a connection there already.
Anyway, she came backstage and expressed interest in us being in her band to play in Vegas. She had this big revue that she was doing in Vegas. She had dancers, singers, and a full orchestra, but she needed an actual rhythm section. My brother and I both ended up in that situation, and I was one of the background singers. She also featured me on a couple of lead vocals and things. She was very generous. I did that for about three years, from 1979 to 1981.
What was it like to be in Vegas for that long, doing the same show every night?
[Laughs] Well, Vegas is a party town. There’s a lot of room to get in trouble. We worked a lot. It was two-week stretches at a time and sometimes we did two shows a night. It was a little bit of a grind, but I was young and healthy. And I enjoyed Vegas for the most part, though Vegas can get on your nerves after a while.
What songs are you singing lead with her?
“Those Shoes” by the Eagles was one. I sang lead on the first verse, and she came out in the second verse. It was a duet. I was really thrilled to do that, and we did it on Johnny Carson. There’s actually a clip of it you can see on YouTube.
Being on national TV and playing to those big crowds in Vegas must have been a real thrill.
It was a real thrill. I got to meet lots of famous people. Jack Nicholson was in the dressing room one night. Muhammad Ali came. It was all these people. Cher is a big star. It was good times. It was crazy times to some extent. But for the most part, it was a great experience to be involved with that.
How did Black Rose get going?
That was a project Cher wanted to do with [guitarist] Les Dudek and [keyboardist] Mike Finnigan and [drummer] Gary Ferguson and [bassist] Trey Thompson. She wanted to do a rock & roll record. James Newton Howard produced it. We were all getting pretty crazy during those times. [Laughs] It was a fun gig while it lasted. It was a short-lived thing. We did one record.
It’s interesting that it was just called Black Rose. It wasn’t called Cher and Black Rose, or anything.
She specifically wanted us to be a band. She wanted us to be like Toto or something or any of the rock bands. It was just the name of the band with her as the front person.
It was often compared to Blondie since the sound was so New Wave.
Yeah. It was in that early-Eighties time period. We all got haircuts. I got a guy to cut my hair off. He made me real punk-ish.
You go on tour and you’re just playing these new songs and no old Cher hits.
We were just doing the new record. We were opening for Hall and Oates. I remember that.
Did people in the crowd want to hear “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” and stuff? Were they surprised by what you were doing?
I think by that time, we were playing to a different audience. When we were paired with Hall and Oates, it was that kind of an audience. I don’t think they were used to seeing Cher in that role, but she was trying to break out.
She was also trying to do some movie things. That’s why Jack Nicholson was in the dressing room that night in Vegas. I think they were talking about doing Witches of Eastwick, but I didn’t know that at the time. I was asleep on the couch. I woke up and there’s Jack and Cher. I got up to leave, but she introduced me and he shook my hand. That was a moment.
How did your Kansas chapter start?
After three years in Vegas, I needed a break. I needed to get out of Vegas. I was just starting to feel like the guy in Leaving Las Vegas. [Laughs] I needed to leave Las Vegas while I was still walking around. And I got a call from one of my friends that was in the business. They were auditioning singers. And so I went and auditioned and I knew Kerry [Livgren] from years back. I think Kansas actually opened for Bloodrock once.
I knew Kerry from a distance. And I auditioned. I didn’t get the lead vocal spot, but they wanted me in the band anyway to sing high background parts and play instruments. That’s really where that wound up. I wound up working on the record [Vinyl Confessions] and the tour that year.
Tell me about making the record.
I play harmonica. They were mostly using the new singer, John Elefante, and some of his new songs. My wife and I went down to Atlanta, which is where they were living, to rehearse for the tour. I just remember playing the harmonica on the record. I don’t remember if I sang backup. But when they started rehearsing for the tour, I went down to Atlanta and spent a couple of weeks learning the parts that Kerry was showing me. I played keyboards, flute, saxophone, and vocals on that tour.
Kansas music was very challenging, and that’s one of the reasons I really wanted to do it. I wanted to continue to grow musically. It was a real thrill to play with those guys, and it was a nice change of pace for me.
How did the crowds respond to a new singer? This was a big change.
They loved Kansas regardless of Steve Walsh not still being there. Steve is a great singer and great entertainer, but people still wanted to come and hear the songs and see Kansas and hear “Dust in the Wind” and “Carry On Wayward Son.” We did a big live show in Omaha and they made a DVD of it. It was a real successful tour. I think John did a great job of filling in for Steve Walsh.
By this point, you’d really established yourself as a utility player. You could come into a band and basically do whatever they needed.
Correct. I was becoming that. I had been a singer earlier. But as I learned to play more instruments, I focused on that because I realized that was kind of where my bread and butter was. It was where I could make a living in music. I focused more on that. I’m doing that to this day, by the way.
It makes you very employable. You can do the job of about three or four different people. It saves them a lot of money.
Yeah, hopefully. That’s the idea behind it. But I still spend a lot of time trying to hone each instrument that I play and do it as well as I can do it. I was actually practicing my tenor saxophone this morning before you called.
How did Kansas morph into AD for you?
Well, Kerry Livgren and [Kansas bassist] Dave Hope became Christian. And I was a Christian from my earliest days, even though I went through some wild years, like everybody does. You want to sow your wild oats. I went through that period, but I had always been a Christian from my earliest days. I was singing gospel music and was raised in the church. I never really left it in my heart and mind.
Dave and Kerry were relatively new converts and they were really inspired to do some gospel rock music. Basically, it got to the point where Kerry just wanted to write songs like that and it wasn’t jibing with the members of the rest of Kansas. They weren’t on the same page as that, so to speak. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way it is. I’m not making a judgement on that one way or another. It’s just that people go in different directions after a while and they want to try different things.
This was one of those times when Kerry and Dave wanted to see if it would work, so we went in that direction with AD. The music was very similar to Kansas. Instead of the violin, we had the flute and the saxophone. Of course, you still had Kerry’s writing style. He was the primary songwriter. And I contributed a little and Michael Gleason was the other singer. He had some great songs, too.
We tried it for a couple of years and I was really proud of the music that we produced during that time. I think it holds up. I think the message we were trying to convey still holds up. I’m really proud of that time period, but it was a hard market to be successful in.
You were coming out of a huge Kansas tour. This must have been a very different kind of tour in terms of the venues you played and whatnot.
Totally. It wasn’t the same level. There was some confusion on parts of the listening audience. They didn’t know what to make of it. And people from the Christian realm didn’t know what to make of it either. Here we are coming with this really strong music that isn’t exactly like Keith Green or someone like that. It’s more in-your-face kind of stuff. It was kind of a tightrope to walk. And it was really hard to make it fly economically.
I feel like many artists are afraid to sing about their faith because it puts them in a box of “Christian artist” and it becomes difficult to break away from that.
Yeah. I think record companies like to do that. They like to have you in a certain format. For them, it’s easier to sell a certain format. But I don’t necessarily agree with that. They want to pinpoint you in a certain area: “OK, here is where you belong.” It’s not necessarily that way. I think that Bono has been able to express his religious convictions in a very creative way and still be successful with it. I think that’s a great thing. For whatever reason, we weren’t able to make AD as successful as I would have like to have seen.
Going back a few years, how did you wind up touring with Donna Summer in 1983?
Boy, that was really a godsend, I gotta tell you. I was out of work. It was in-between gigs. I don’t know what happened, but someone said that she was auditioning people. And Snuffy Walden, a guitar player friend I know that had worked with her before, suggested me. There was a little bit of a hint of who I was, and then I went down and auditioned and got it. I ended up working with Donna, on and off, for years. At that time, she had also gone Christian in her beliefs.
What was your role on that first tour?
I played the saxophone, keyboard, and I sang. I don’t remember doing any harmonica or flute at the beginning.
I was watching some videos of the tour. It was very theatrical, with costume changes and dancers. I didn’t see much of the band. Were you hidden?
When I first started with Donna, she had us behind a scrim. It was this big thing that hid the band. You could only see our shadows. We did that for the first couple of years that I worked with her. And then she finally had the band out with her and everything. When she did “She Works Hard for the Money,” she began to show the band more. She was moving into that rock & roll direction as well.
This was an interesting time because she had new MTV-era hits, but there were also the disco songs that made her famous. Some of them were pretty risqué.
There were some she didn’t want to do. When she first converted, she was like, “I can’t do that anymore.” Sometimes you gotta compartmentalize and realize that it’s a business, without sacrificing too much. She eventually came back to doing most of those songs again. But for a long time, she didn’t want to do “Love to Love You Baby.” We didn’t do that song for years. We were doing “State of Independence” and the stuff that Quincy [Jones] had produced and the stuff that Michael Omartian had produced, like “She Works Hard for the Money.” She was more interested in doing the newer stuff.
How was she as a boss?
She was great. She was a star, though, just like Cher was a star. And she was a diva. What can you say? She was a powerhouse vocalist. But she was always very sweet. It was just another experience. I have to say that all my musical experiences have been quite different, but it gave me a lot of variety in my approach to music. It’s helped with my overall musical growth.
How did you first wind up in Toto in 1986?
That was another situation very much like the Kansas situation. I had heard that they were looking for another singer. I got the opportunity and went down to audition. It was just like the Kansas thing where I thought I nailed it and thought I had it, but then Joseph Williams came along and he got the job. But then it was the same situation as Kansas. They called me and said, “We still want you to be in the band and do your thing.”
There I was, again, in the band. It wasn’t the spot that I wanted, but it was still a good situation to be in. I was singing high background vocals. It was great. I was playing a lot of sax and harmonica and flute. I even had a duet with Joe. It was great. I got to meet a lot of great musicians, like [percussionist] Luis Conte. And of course all the Toto guys, Jeff [Porcaro], Mike [Porcaro], Steve [Porcaro], and David Paich and Steve Lukather.
These are some highly skilled musicians. Playing alongside them must have really forced you to up your game.
Absolutely. You gotta bring your A game. That’s another thing. Being around the best musicians in the world really forces you to improve. It inspires you to improve, but it forces you to bring your A game all the time. I’m really grateful for the opportunity.