The Voice of Mann

"I played on his demo for a lot of reasons," Washington, currently completing his own new album, Next Exit, says by phone from Philadelphia. "When I first heard Billy, it was at a musical presentation, and his voice struck me. I met him through my son, who has a studio, and was working with him. I found out he writes, too. I realized he's more than a one-dimensional guy. When he came to our house, I got to know him, and I realized he's a great guy away from the bandstand. And another reason is that I always look for ways to learn from different people, even if they're younger than me. I like to do different kinds of things, not just for the sake of being different, but to enhance what is going on and to learn. Plus I can beat him shooting pool."

Billy Mann is at the keyboards now, singing a song. It's a rich and gorgeous song full of smart lyrics about teen angst, about remembering youth's green glories. It shoots shivers through the two people listening. A Jackson Browne song this grand could not be so obscure as to be unrecognizable. It's not a Springsteen piece, or Boz Scaggs. It must've been a hit, at least an A.O.R. hit, for somebody sometime. Mann is asked the title. "It doesn't really have one," he says. "It's just something I wrote when I was about sixteen."

Have mercy. "The exuberance of youth," says Freeman with a smile. "He has a great energy, and I don't want to knock that out of him. I want to capture that energy on record." Mann chimes in, "I'm just a kid." Maybe, but he's a kid with a voice that's going to knock music lovers across the land right on their futons.

"Neither of us believed the other - everybody's a singer, everybody's a producer - but a week later we were recording.