MC: You’re diving deep into the Van Halen part of your catalog this year, which once would have been an ambivalent experience I’m sure. What’s it like to play those songs now?

Hagar: I love it. I love those songs. I’m very proud of them. We made some great records with that band, really special... and people still love ‘em, y’know? 

MC: And with Eddie gone now do you feel a kind of responsibility to make sure that music lives on and still gets played on a stage?

Hagar: Y’know, thank God for that music. I remember right after Eddie died and we were doing the birthday shows [on Santa Catalina Island in California]. It was terrible timing; Here we are putting on this big party, celebrating Sammy’s birthday instead of Eddie’s funeral. That felt horrible. But when Mikey and I got onstage and played the first Van Halen song, “Right Now” we had a moment of silence and we looked at each other and it was like, “Oh, man, we’ve got a job to do. We need to keep this music alive. We need to play this song better than we’ve played it in our lives. here we go...” It was so spiritual, just wonderful. That was the healing, right then and there. To know we can never play with Eddie again, that’s the craziest feeling in my head.

MC: There was talk about that maybe happening at the time back then.

Hagar: Even when we were arguing, I knew we would play together again someday. You don’t make music and legacy like that and say, “Nope, that’s it, sorry.” I just knew there would be a reunion. It didn’t happen, but Eddie and I had our own reunion, and that was great.

MC: When did you last connect with him?

Hagar: It was probably around February [2020], before COVID. For Eddie’s birthday [in 2015] I said [via social media], “Hey, happy birthday, dude. I hope you’re good,” and I was sincere. I wasn’t trying to get back in the band or anything like that. And he got back to me, “Oh, thanks, hope you’re doing well, too.” Then my birthday came up, and I didn’t hear from him. (laughs) But then George Lopez was really the guy who instigated this; he was like, “Sam, I was just with Eddie. He’s not doing too good and you need to call him, man. He loves you.” And I was going, “He loves me? I thought he hated me?” and [Lopez] goes, “No, no, he loves you.” OK, gimme his number,” and I just called straight-up. I said, “Ed! I’ve been trying to get ahold of you through your brother, through this person and that person...” I’d say, “Give Eddie this message for me; if he ever feels like wanting to patch it up, call me.” I kept throwing him the ball. And then he finally goes, “Why don’t you just call me?” I said, “that’s what I’m doing, man,” and we just laughed. It worked out beautifully. We were texting like teenagers for the last few months before he died. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be able to take it.

MC: Your first idea for a Best of All Worlds tour was actually for Van Halen, with both you and David Lee Roth on board. You’ve invited him to make guest appearances with you this year, too. Magnanimous, but... dangerous?

Hagar: With David? (laughs) Yeah [a Van Halen tour] would’ve been a fuckin’ circus again like the Sam and Dave tour was [in 2004]. But it would’ve been good for the fans, man. It would’ve been the best. Dave, he just brings a strange element of trying to take over things and make other people look bad and make himself look good. I hate to say that about the guy, but that’s who he is. He’s always been like that, so it ain’t like he’s changed. I would have no problem with it now because I would be like, “Who cares?” I’m a grown man now. This is silly stuff. But It would’ve been great. I don’t want to put any negative spin on it. I would’ve sucked it up and done it in a second, and I think people would have loved it. 

MC: As “a grown man” now, what do you see when you look back at that kid who sang for Montrose all those years ago?

Hagar: That guy was very, very young and green but wanted it bad. I became a solo artist too soon; in Montrose I had a seasoned guy like Ronnie Montrose to guide me, but we got out on tour and bumped heads, so I got thrown out of the band because Ronnie was a hard guy to get along with, God rest his soul, and I was trying to get the other guys to side with me. So as a solo artist I was too green. I didn’t know what I was doing yet. I thought every song I wrote was great. I could care less about fame; it was more important to just sing and play guitar and get out on stage. I wasn’t looking for a free ride; I was, “I’ll get out there and sing until I’m rich and famous. I’ll make it.” But I was young and inexperienced, and then as I got better and realized what the business is and writing better songs... I just matured slowly, but that slow maturing is what made me who I am today. If I would’ve made it in my early 20s and got rich and famous I would probably be burnt out now. A lot of guys that make it overnight don’t last as long as me. But my work ethic made me what I am, so by the time I made it, it was like, “Oh, I enjoy this work. I ain’t trying to make it anymore; I just dig this.”

MC: Alongside the music, where did the famed Hagar business sensibility come from?

Hagar: From being dirt poor growing up. The first money I made my good Italian mom was like, “You gotta save your money! You gotta invest it or you’re gonna end up broke and a drug addict and in jail!” (laughs) So she kind of instilled it in me. I never invested; I don’t like to make money with money. I want to DO something and make money, so I always invested in myself. I did some real estate... and then building the Cabo Wabo in Cabo [San Lucas], that was not a business deal; it was strictly passion. And that turned into an unbelievable business that led to the tequila and the rum and everything else... Everybody thinks I’m smart. I’m not sure I’m that smart (laughs); I’m just a pretty lucky guy and I surround myself with good people.

MC: Because of those extra-musical business interests, a lot of people put you in the same boat—if you will—with Jimmy Buffett. A fair comparison?

Hagar: Oh, sure. I think it’s kind of in your face. The big difference between Jimmy and myself, God rest his soul, is my stuff is in your face and it’s more high-energy, and Jimmy of course was like subliminal music. It was like background music for your relaxation and your party having fun, but it wasn’t all up in your face. People that don’t know either one of us, they get us confused, but we’re not really confusable. It’s just two different styles. 

MC: And you were friendly?

Hagar: Of course. He was so kind, man. I can’t say enough about Jimmy. He changed my songwriting. I never wrote songs like that until after I got hip to Jimmy—the songs that are those types of lifestyle songs that I started writing later on. It just influenced my lyrics. I started writing about my life and my lifestyle instead of just rock ‘n’ roll, fast cars and loud music—which is great but [Buffett] certainly expanded my lyrical content, and God bless him for that, man. He was a great songwriter. 

MC: You’ve really enjoyed being in the booze industry, haven’t you?

Hagar: There you go—now you hit it. I really do. It’s big fun and it’s creative, as well. It was such a square industry... so a guy like me jumps in and gets so excited about a blend or this or that, a new project, and it’s fun jumping in that game. It seemed like it needed a little shot, and Cabo gave it its first one and now look at all the celebrity brands; there’s got to be, what, 20 tequilas out there with people’s names on them. But nobody did what I did, and I’m doing it again.

MC: Is there a key to doing it “right?”

Hagar: Y’know what it is? We make the product. We own the product. We start it from scratch. We don’t go to some producers and say, “Hey, I want to put my name on your stuff” like everybody else is doing. We invented it. We owned it, from the bottle to the juice in there to the marketing plan. And that’s what’s so rewarding and fun.

 MC: A year does not go by when Sammy Hagar isn’t on the road, playing. Where does that drive come from?

Hagar: I feel like I’ve got to tour before my voice goes. I was singing those songs last night with an acoustic guitar, and I’m thinking to myself, “Damn, I can still hit those notes!” I was on a boat with some friends and they were going, “You can still sing those songs?” I’m like, “Fuck yeah I can!” But I don’t know for how long, so I better get out there and give my fans a little treat before I can’t do it anymore. 

MC: Is that something you’re really concerned about?

Hagar: So far I can do it, but I know there’s gonna come that day—everyone can tell ya—when, “Man, I can’t sing that anymore.” I feel like some kind of semi-superhuman being or something because I shouldn’t be able to sing like I do. I really shouldn’t. I’ve abused my voice my whole life, screaming and yelling and singing—not with drugs and alcohol, not cigarettes, anyway. Alcohol, a little bit of drugs but not cigarettes or weed. But I’ll tell ya, the more I sing the stronger it is. If I don’t sing and then went on tour and tried to sing five nights a week, a two-hour show, that would not be good. I’d start losing my top range and I’d get really hoarse and start sounding more gruff—and I sound gruff enough at my age now. I like the scruffy voice, but... I just think giving it proper rest, but don’t let it get out of shape. It’s like an athlete, like boxers when they take two years off. Muhammed Ali, the greatest fighter of all time, he took a couple years off and came back and was never the same. I know so many singers who take so much time off and they come back and can’t sing. They open their mouth and it’s not there and then you’re head goes, “I’m done! I can’t sing anymore.”

MC: Do you have a technique for keeping your voice strong?

Hagar: I stay in shape, that’s all. I go down to my basement and crank up my Les Paul and a little Marshall and I scream my ass off a couple times a week. (laughs) I recommend that to everybody. Just don’t take too much time off.

MC: What are the hardest of your songs to sing now?

Hagar: Oh, the damn Van Halen stuff. Because I didn’t play guitar I didn’t care what key they were in; I just sang and then I picked up a guitar and was like, “What the fuck? I can’t hit that note” and Eddies’ going, “Well, you just hit it...” (laughs) But, like, “Dreams,” a song like, “When It’s Love,” that chorus—(sings) “I can’t tell you but it lasts forever.” Every now and then you slip around that a little bit, but I can do it. 

MC: Losing these people, whether it’s Jimmy or Eddie or whoever, does it put a little more rocket fuel behind you to keep doing it and maybe do more while you’re still here?

Hagar: No. I mean, these people dying around me make me look at my mortality, but I’m so damn driven that I don’t need any more motivation. My wife’s trying to close my fuel factory over here; she says, “Look, you gotta stop and enjoy life.” I said, “I’m enjoying life.” This brings me joy, to have an idea. The creativity is all it is for me. It isn’t the money. It was at one time; when I was broke on my ass, I wanted to make money. But once you get enough money, then you’ve got to figure out what really makes you happy— and it’s not money. And I hate to say that to somebody who’s struggling. It will make your life easier to have money if you’re struggling, but it’s not gonna make you happy unless you know what to do with it. And what makes me happy is having an idea, whether it’s a song or a beer or whatever, and seeing it through and seeing it win and seeing my fans happy with me, seeing my cantinas full, seeing my tequila and my rum fly off the shelves and stuff like that. And just seeing the audiences at my shows singing along with me, every word to the song. That friggin’ makes me happy, and that’s all you can get.

MC: So what effect has looking at mortality had on you?

Hagar: It’s like when I wrote the song “Father Time” that was on the Crazy Times record...At my age I’m looking at how many years I’ve got left, and so I’m still driven and I’m gonna get ‘em all done, but I’ve got to start to prioritize a little bit, not taking awhile to swing as something but do something I feel I can get done and it won’t make my life too complicated. My time’s spent on the beach, at the dinner table and creating, and that’s it—boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That’s everything. 

MC: Does it impact the kinds of songs you write, too?

Hagar: Absolutely. I think any artist my age that just goes out and writes silly pop songs—unless it’s a really good one, like Paul McCartney would write, or Paul Simon—but an average rock guy like myself, I’m sorry, I don’t want to write about “I Can’t Drive 55” and “One Way to Rock” right now. I don’t mind singing them on stage, but to sit down and write that song again, I just don’t’ feel it in my heart. I want to go into my head and into my soul more.

MC: What have you been working on recently?

Hagar: Musically right now I’ve been on a real cool kinda streak. I wrote a couple of blues songs for Joe Bonamassa. I’ve known him a long time, little by little; we’re not great friends or anything, but I wrote this song and I thought, “God, this is just such a good, real blues song.” It’s called “Fortune Teller Blues,” and I thought, “Who can I give this to? Billy Gibbons? Nah; I love ZZ Top, but they’re more rock-blues. I need a more traditional blues guy, like Robert Cray or someone like that.” And then I thought, “I’m gonna send it to Joe,” and he got back in 10 minutes and said, “I love this song. Can I do it?” And I said, “Absolutely” and we did a duet on it and now I’ve written another one like that. I’m writing more like Jimmy Buffett, but with a blues twist instead of a lifestyle twist, which is kind of interesting. I don’t know if I’m gonna make a record or not, but I’ll get around to it some day, I think.

MC: It’s not like you have to put out an album every year like you once did.

Hagar: I’m not driven to do a record again. I lose a few hundred thousand dollars every time I make a record these days. I don’t mind that, but I have to really be in a mood to go in and record. But I’ve been in a mood for writing, and I’ve been writing some really cool stuff and it’s gonna drive me crazy eventually, and I’ll go in and make a record—no matter what I say. (laughs) 

Contact info@redrocker.com for more

CHEERS TO THE RED ROCKER

SPIRITS HAVE BEEN an integral part of Sammy Hagar’s entrepreneurial spirit over the years.

He started during the late ‘90s with Cabo Wabo tequila (sold to Gruppo Campari for a reported $80 million in 2007), then continued with Sammy’s Beach Bar Rum (in partnership with Rick Springfield), Santo Spirit with food celebrity Guy Fieri and Sammy’s Beach Bar Cocktail Co.— along with restaurants and nightclubs in Mexico and other locations.

Now the Red Rocker is in the beer business—which is something he’s long wanted.

Last October, Hagar formally launched Red Rocker Lager in partnership with the Detroit-based Red Rocker Detroit brewery. “I tried to make beer first,” notes Hagar. “My fans back in the ‘80s, when I was in my heyday, were beer drinkers, man. They didn’t know nothing about tequila. I’ve been trying to make beer forever.”

Hagar’s opportunity finally came about four years ago, when businessman Eric Schubert, who at the time was developing an app-based on-demand delivery service and looking for partners. He reached out through channels to Hagar, who proposed doing it with beer. “They came to me,” Hagar recalls, “and I said, ‘For a beer? Hell yeah! American made? Double hell yeah! Made in Detroit, triple hell yeah!’ It just felt right to me.”

Red Rocker Lager is being brewed in Detroit’s historic Corktown neighborhood by Schubert’s son Cameron, who worked with Hagar to perfect the recipe. The company describes it as “golden, medium-bodied... light, crisp and refreshing, with just a touch of sweetness,” and Hagar likens it to the original recipe used by the Mexican brewing company Modello. 

The Lager has been in production, quietly, for about a year, and Eric Schubert estimates it will be available in several states by the summer. “I’m real proud of it,” Hagar says. “It’s not like this just came out of the woodwork in the last week or so. I’ve been working on this for frickin’ over 20 years, before I made tequila. So it’s about time.”

Don’t, however, expect Hagar to write a song for the Lager like he did with “Mas Tequila” back in 1999. 

“I think pretty much all my songs fit with beer—with any booze,” Hagar explains with a laugh. “I write songs for driving in cars—which is not symbiotic with drinking. But if you get an a convertible, the top down and crank up some of my music—‘Badmotorscooter,’ ‘One Way to Rock,’ ‘Heavy Metal’—those are car songs. And if you’re sitting in a bar or a pub or your backyard having a barbecue, the music works good, too, with beer and food.

“I’m pretty versatile,” he adds. “My music touches on a lot of angles. My lyrics and my lifestyle, it goes pretty good with everything.”

Tattooed, pierced, multi-racial: Kane Brown is an eminent arena-packing music sensation blazing his own path to country music fame. First emerging on social media singing covers, and releasing a crowd-funded EP in 2015, he has earned 10 chart-topping No. 1 singles on country radio. Now headlining sold- out international tours and stadium dates, his latest collection is aptly titled Different Man.

Growing up with an imprisoned father, Kane Brown moved between hardscrabble northwest Georgia and small town Tennessee—sometimes living in a car with his mother, and suffering a stepfather’s physical abuse. Remarkably, he kept his life on course. For this exclusive MC interview, he speaks of collaborative songwriting, show-stopping stagecraft, the strength of family, and the ever-expanding inclusion of modern country music. 

Music Connection: We enjoyed hearing your duet with Elvis Presley on “Blue Christmas” this past holiday season. The King and the Kane—that is quite a combination. 

Kane Brown: Honestly, I was so excited. I did a rendition of the song last year. And when they came back and said they were going to throw him on there, I was blown away. It was out of this world crazy. I got to talk to some of the people who worked with him, and they said they saw a great amount of similarities—with both of us breaking barriers, with people telling us, “No, you can’t do this,” but we did it anyway.  This was awesome, coming from people I’ve met who actually knew him. But I would never compare myself to The King. 

MC: One of your new tracks, “I Can Feel It,” is built on a sample from “In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. The result is certainly a dramatic reset of traditional country songwriting. 

KB: We were originally trying to get Phil Collins out to the Stagecoach Festival in Coachella that I played. We were in the writer’s room the next day, and he was still on our minds, and the song just wrote itself. I haven’t had a chance to play it live yet, but we’re going to use it for a huge onstage production. It’s going to be amazing. I haven’t met Phil Collins, but hopefully if this song goes to N0. 1, I will get a chance to.

MC: What is it like playing Stagecoach? 

KB: It is so much fun. The first year I played at maybe 4:00 p.m. The second time was right before direct support, and this time I got to headline. It was the best feeling in the world. We also got the big screen right when they switched it from Coachella (Valley Music and Arts Festival), so I had even more reason to be excited. I remember showing up, and just seeing that huge LED wall which is what I love in production. When I saw that, I was ready to go. I had so many friends, and people I work with in the industry show up, it was surreal.

MC: Your most recent album, Different Man, begins and ends with songs about Georgia, your birth state. Why are there so many classic songs about Georgia?

KB: Georgia, of course, is my home. I would die for The Dawgs (the University of Georgia’s Bulldogs football team.) It’s beautiful place, with beautiful songs about it. I ain’t got much else to say, other than that.  

MC: Your song “Bury Me in Georgia” is a barnburner. The guitars on that track are like flame throwers. 

KB: Yes, that’s (producer-guitarist) Dann Huff for you. 

MC: We saw a self-effacing reference to your musical abilities, with the modest description that you play “Campfire guitar.”

KB: I’ve got your basic chords. When I was doing covers, I learned off of YouTube. It’s funny now when I see people covering my songs, and teaching others how to play them, so it’s a full circle moment. I’ve got your G-B-A-C-C minor… then I get to the bar chords and I give up. I’m not going to be a shredder, or the guy who is solo playing. I like to run across the stage. 

MC: As a co-writer, what do you bring to the collaborative environment?

KB: Songwriting is so difficult. Once you find your place, that’s what you’ll be good at. I look at myself as kind of like an A&R of the writer’s room. Sometimes I will bring the title. I used to do that more, much earlier in my career. Now when I come in, I know which people I work well with and which writers will work the best together.

MC: Can you tell us more about this selection process?

KB: It’s what I’m feeling. There are some writers who can do everything, and others who do sad ballads. So if I’m feeling depressed, I’m going to bring my guy Josh Hoge in.  I mean he can do everything—he’s on “Bury Me in Georgia”—but that’s his sweet spot. 

MC: You are also the artist who will personify the song onstage, and project its narrative.  

KB: If any writer is working with an artist, and you have an idea, and that artist isn’t loving it, move onto something else. I’m not afraid to say “no.” Not every artist will, but if I don’t like something, I’m going to tell them. And these are the people I write with. And they’ll say, “OK—let’s move on and find something else.” I also try to write songs that will most likely be singles. It’s pointless for me to write a song that’s just a cut, unless it’s a story song that’s going to touch people, regardless. But even those will go to radio. 

MC: Nashville writers have spoken to us about the concept of “Putting furniture in the room” in lyrics—creating tangible, visual impressions. 

KB: The more imagery the better: I just wrote a song the other day with the lines, “The floor is covered with shattered shards of glass.” I was real upset, and I got inspired; that’s why I wrote that lyric. I really try to just be different. A lot of songwriters are just saying the same thing. I heard a Morgan Wallen song that was about beer, which has been done many times in country, right? But the way this song, ”More Than My Hometown,” said it is, “I love you more than a California sunset/More than a beer when you ain’t 21 yet.” That’s what’s clever, and different; a new way of writing about something that others have written about before. 

MC: Your songs feel conversational and real—especially when the lyrical tone is darker. 

KB: I don’t always release those songs, because I love my marriage (laughs). But as an artist, you have to break out of the box, because within your group of fans not everyone is happy, and they will relate more to the sad songs. Everybody breaks down at some point. If you’re not singing about them, then you’re not appealing to them. The hardest part is writing a song, and not lying. If you sing a song with deep emotion, people are going to portray that song as you. 

MC: Your song “Grand” has songwriter Mike Posner in the writers’ credits. We think of him as a fascinating, and seemingly inexhaustible lyricist. 

KB: Yeah. He’s also one of the sweetest guys in the world, with great energy. Sometimes if you get in the room –especially with first writes – you can check out if you’re not into it. With Mike, there’s no checking out. Positive energy, nice guy, lots of lyrics, stays focused the whole time. You don’t see him picking up his phone, he’s always working. I love writing with him.

MC: Do you book blocks of time for writing songs?

KB: I have my own publishing company, Verse 2 Music, a joint venture with Sony Music Nashville. It’s Kent Earls and me. I brought him over with me from Universal (UMG). Kent is the head of all the writers, so he books their schedules and he books my schedule. Right now I’m trying to get an album out, so I am trying to write as much as possible. That’s when I will book my own schedule. I recently put a studio in my house, so I never have to leave home again. I have people come over all the time. 

MC: Which program do you use for recording, Logic or ProTools?

KB: We have both on the computer, but my preference is generally ProTools. 

MC: Do you have a live room?

KB: Yes sir.

MC: Neighbors don’t come banging on the door complaining about the noise?

KB: Nah, we’re pretty secluded. 

MC: We read that “I Love Country Music” was written at a writers’ retreat.

KB: We’ve been doing writers retreats here in Tennessee—but this time we went down to Florida. Writers’ retreats are when you get a bunch of writers that you work with a lot. You go out away from y’all’s house—no babies, no girlfriends, no wives, and no distractions, and you just write. We were on a lake when we wrote that one. 

MC: Different Man has 17 tracks—that’s a generous outpouring of music. 

KB: I forgot that’s how many songs are on that album. Mostly I was trying to make everything uptempo. I’ve tried to stay away from the slow songs. I look at my live shows, and think single-wise, and just try to write songs that are rocking as much as possible. Those are the hardest songs to write. We got a good amount on Different Man. I wish there were a couple more that were singles. 

MC: “Pop’s Last Name” is a beautiful sentiment

"I grew up without a father

He’s been locked up since ‘96

But there’s another man, he ain’t here no more

That raised me as a kid"

MC: Is it difficult to be that revealing within a song?

KB: I’m an open person. I will always tell others how I am feeling. If you upset me in any way, I can’t fake that smile. My face is going to show it. It really comes in my writing too. A lot of times I have even deeper lyrics. I have people who have to tell me, “I don’t know boss, that’s awful dark—that’s out there.” I don’t feel like it’s bad at all being vulnerable. 

MC: A line from the song says: “He said, ‘knowledge over power.’”

KB: he never really told me that, but I remember we didn’t have money, so he’d have to fix stuff. This is what I’ve learned since being an artist. I thought that line would be something he would say if he did have money. For me, coming from where I come from, and knowing what I knew, whenever I didn’t have money, I’d rather know how to fix something than have the money to pay someone else to do it. 

MC: On your 2023 “Drunk or Dreaming Tour,” you headlined Fenway Park in Boston, selling out all 37,755 seats in the venue. How do you maintain intimacy on that massive scale?

KB: I was so excited. The adrenaline was crazy. But when you get up there, you really only see the people in front of you, and the flashlights in the stands. It almost feels like a club. I know it sounds weird to say, but you don’t see how big the atmosphere is until I started walking the stadium and it was crazy. I’ve learned to go out and perform, and try to make everybody feel like I love ‘em, as much as I do, even though they are a baseball field away from me. 

MC: In the past you have told stories from your life as well, to keep the human elements in the show. Now you’ve this epic production and pyro happening. 

KB: Yes sir. I think that’s the hardest thing for me. It’s been two years since I switched to this big live performance thing as opposed to my storytelling. I’m really excited for this next tour. We finally got a B stage where I can do the intimate-type stories. I used to do a fan favorite that made everyone tear up called “For My Daughter.”

"They say history repeats itself

Well, I guess that’s up to me

Yeah, I grew up without a dad

I’m gonna be the best one I can be"

There were video projections of my family and me. I want to incorporate more of that into my show, rather than just the pyro and energy. 

MC: Do you work with a creative director on your live presentations?

KB: Yes. He’s been with me for six years now. His name is Alex Alvga. He also does my music videos. He’s super talented. 

MC: You now have a record label, 1021 Entertainment—a joint venture with Sony Music Nashville, and also the Sony-affiliated publishing company, Verse 2 that you mentioned. One of your signees to the publishing company is your co-writer Levon Grey. How did you meet him?

KB: I found him in Alabama. He did a couple of songs on social media, and tagged a couple of other artists along with me. I researched him, and reached out. He was writing all of these songs by himself. I said, “Man—if I get you in a room with me and a couple of other writers, I wonder what we could create?” I brought him in, did the A&R thing I was telling you about, and we wrote “One Mississippi” the very first time we ever wrote. 

MC: On Different Man, you assumed co-producer responsibilities. What does that expanded role entail?

KB: It’s just a little more paying attention. When I came in as a new artist, I used to go in with Dann Huff, give him the demos, and think that my job was done. “This is what I have, and I’m going to trust you to turn it into what it should be.” With this album I knew exactly what I wanted—I was going more into this show thing. I was telling Dann what I wanted. I could hear sounds. People ask me, “What do you listen to?” I literally don’t listen to any music other than what I am writing. The radio might be on every now and then, but other than that, I will listen to a song I wrote last week a thousand times—try to hear different sounds, and lyrics.  

MC: Clearly, with your success, more artists of color, and LGBTQ+ representation, country music is changing. 

KB: I think it’s wide open right now. Country music is changing like crazy. People said I was the frontrunner and I didn’t know how to take it. I’m glad that I’m not the only one now. I’m in my own kind of lane and I feel comfortable, but I didn’t feel that the first couple of years. 

MC: Your visual identity projects your music, and it’s all you. 

KB: You’ve got to be yourself. Coming in, I tried to be like everyone else. Growing up, I went to an all white school called Soddy-Daisy High School in Chattanooga. There were four colored kids in the school: Hispanic, Black, mixed. I was always in cowboy boots, all Bass Pro Shop. I’d go fishing, and we were mudding (off-road driving) everyday. 

MC: Was it to a country soundtrack?

KB: I’d listened to country music since I was a baby, because my mom loved it. I got back into country music around the time that Florida Georgia Line was hitting, so I got to experience all of that. I moved in with a roommate, and he was telling me that I had no swag, he’s like “Bro—you’ve got to be different. Swag out, and make people look at you.” I started doing that, and that’s when I went viral. People thought I was a rapper, and I stood out. 

Contact: Jennifer Vessio – 1220 Entertainment, jennifer.g.vessio@gmail.com 

Meg Kehoe – Sony Music Nashville,
Meghan.Kehoe@sonymusic.com

Quick Facts

• Kane Brown’s father claims African-American and Native American heritage. His mother is Caucasian. 

• One of Kane Browns classmates at Lakeview Middle School in Fort Oglethorpe, GA, was future country star Lauren Alaina. Breaking through as a first runner-up on American Idol, she encouraged Brown to audition for the show. He was rejected for sounding too much like Idol’s Scotty McCreary. 

• X Factor tried to put him in a boy band, which he declined. Instead, he did his own covers online. His cover of Lee Brice’s “I Don’t Dance” went viral, with 60K shares overnight. A version of George Strait’s “Check Yes or No,” captured seven million views. 

• Working for the home improvement store Lowes in Hixson, TN, Brown would sing in the aisles. His fellow red vest employees encouraged him to enter a talent show. He has since partnered with the store for the 100 Hometowns restoration project with the first recipient the local Boys & Girls Club. 

• His first six song EP, Closer, financing with Kickstarter crowd funding, hit the country charts and attracted major label interest. 

• Brown’s eponymous record-breaking debut album produced Diamond No. 1 hit “Heaven” and six-times Platinum No. 1 hit “What Ifs.” With his debut effort, Brown became the first artist in Billboard history to top all five country charts simultaneously.

• Working outside of the country idiom, Brown has collaborated with hitmakers like Khalid, H.E.R., Becky G and Marshmello.

• Kane Brown and his wife, singer-songwriter Katelyn Jae Brown, recorded a chart-topping duet “Thank God,” for Different Man. It became his 10th No. 1 single.

• Brown performed at NBC’s Christmas at Graceland—staged in December 2023 at Elvis’s Memphis home—featured with artists including John Legend, Post Malone, and Lana del Rey.  

• The first black artist to headline Fenway Park in Boston, Brown will return on his 2024 “In the Air” Tour.

Headlining coast-to-coast shows with her Joy’All Ball, joining the Beck and Phoenix Summer Odyssey tour, and in performances from Madison Square Garden to The Hollywood Bowl as a member of The Postal Service on their historic 20th anniversary tour with Death Cab for Cutie: With the release of her fifth solo record, Joy’All, Jenny Lewis is undeniably high-profile.  

From a show business family, Lewis successfully survived her extensive childhood acting career to first emerge musically with Rilo Kiley, a band whose pensive songs became touchstones for a coming-of-age generation in the new millennium. Her solo debut Rabbit Fur Coat (with The Watson Twins) cast her as a sympathetic chanteuse cloaked in vintage fashion, imbued with quirky, approachable cool. 

As the title might indicate, the Blue Note/Capitol release, Joy’All, helmed by Nashville producer Dave Cobb, is charmingly upbeat, in contrast to the paradoxical asides, existential truths, and new chapters of hard-won wisdom that are revealed within. 

Music Connection: Greetings, Jenny. It certainly seems as if there is a huge upswing in your media visibility at this moment.

Jenny Lewis: I think it’s just all happening at once. I’ve been in The Postal Service for 20 plus years. I’ve been doing my own music since 2006, and then I’ve been in a bunch of side projects. So, I’m always doing a couple of things at once, but the culmination of this 20-year anniversary tour with my album release so close by is definitely a lot. I hope people aren’t going to get sick of me—because I’m sick of myself! 

MC: When do you sleep?

JL: I sleep on a tour bus in the fetal position, with earplugs, a sleeping mask, and a night guard. It’s very cute. 

MC: You are featured on a new segment of the television show, Austin City Limits. It is so interesting how the songs from the latest record translate in a live context. “Love Feel,” for example, is a barnburner. 

JL: Austin City Limits is so cool, because you get to do your full show, 70 minutes, or whatever you’re playing on the road, and then you get to pick the songs for the edited segment. But they make you pick the songs as soon as you walk off of the stage. So, you’ve just done this incredible thing with multiple cameras and a live audience, and then they say, “Okay—pick the songs now.” So, in keeping with the album cycle, obviously the new ones are the most exciting, but that was my third performance on ACL, so I had to remember what I had played in 2014, and with Rilo Kiley. So, it’s kind of a stressful situation.

MC: You write by yourself, correct?

JL: I do. I have, in my career, also written with my boyfriends, who I have happened to be in bands with. My co-writing has been pretty much limited to within these relationships. I never have done co-writes with any other writers in Nashville, or artists.  For me, the most important thing has been finding my autonomy as an artist in the world, and honing in on my true voice. On this record, I really wanted it to be conversational. And going into the studio with Dave Cobb, talking about what we were going to make, I made it very clear to him that I wanted the vocals and the stories to be very present, as if we are having a conversation throughout the record. 

MC: Joy’All is so mellifluous, so when lyrics come in that are edgier, deeper, and darker, it’s an interesting contrast. There is a lot of air in the sound of the record, enhancing the vocal clarity. 

JL: It’s very sparse. We cut it live on the floor at RCA Studio A in Nashville. It is just incredible to be in that building, and we cut it to tape. Dave is a big fan of miking the drums Beatles’ style, and it was a very small band. After we cut it live, Dave wanted me to play all of the keys, and all of the other additional parts. So, he would hum something, and I would play it on the piano, or the Mellotron, which we used quite a bit. 

I think he wanted to keep it true to the demos that I had cut at home in Nashville on my iPhone, because I don’t have a computer, so I do everything in Garage Band. And then when we mixed the record I thought, “This is a Nashville record, I’d love to have some pedal steel, and some extra bits, frequency-wise.” So, we had Greg Leisz play pedal steel on a handful of songs, and then added Jon Brion, who shares a space with Greg Koller who mixed the record. I got to be in the studio with Jon as he was listening to the songs and finding those moments, like on “Apples & Oranges,” it’s a B-bender guitar.

MC: “Apples & Oranges” reminds us of Tommy James and the Shondells. 

JL: Oh wow, you picked up on that! We had a “Crimson and Clover” tremolo on pretty much the entire track. Initially, we went overboard, but it’s in there. So you are feeling that tremolo, but it’s more in the mix now. I’m a big Nuggets (historic ‘60s garage bands) fan. I love all that. I would love to make a record one day that is as rough sounding as some of those recordings. 

MC:  You are certainly candid in sharing what seem to be autobiographical elements in your songs. 

JL: I am creating a story. There is a twist in Rilo Kiley’s “Does He Love You.” That’s not a true story, but there are elements within the story that ring true. That song was inspired by “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” by Rupert Holmes. I wanted to write something with a twist in the last verse. Real life is interesting. I have had such an interesting 47 years on the planet: growing up in a musical family in Hollywood, in the Valley, a ton of family stuff went on, so it’s always been right there for me to channel and write about. I’m just trying to get it down on the page, because it keeps happening. It’s wild stuff!

MC: Having grown up in a show business family, one of the lessons you probably learned early was it is not all glamor and glitz. 

JL: In my family we were working class musicians, three generations of vaudeville performers, dancers, musicians; Las Vegas and Alaska lounge performers. My dad was in prison for a couple of years. He taught guitar to some of the guys up there. Music is the through-line in good times, prosperous times, and in tragic times. It’s always the music that has kept us together, and luckily I am a songwriter—the first songwriter in my family. So, I’ve been able to carve out a little spot for myself, because I am creating the material. But I come from covers, because my whole family would do them. And they were so good. But they didn’t write for some reason. That’s what differentiates me from the rest of my crew. 

MC: The process of writing the songs for Joy’All came from an online songwriting workshop. Tell us about it. 

JL: Part of the record was written during a songwriting workshop that Beck put together in 2021 during the pandemic, while we were still at home. I had about half of the songs for the record already written. The workshop included a very eclectic and awesome group of people.  Adam Green (Moldy Peaches), Sean Lennon, and Devendra Banhart who was there in the beginning. We would have prompts: write a song with 1-4-5 changes; write a song of all clichés—which is “Love Feel.”  The prompts would come, and we would write and record and send the song to the group a day at a time. It’s not something that I had ever done before. I write from this magical channeling zone. You don’t know where it comes from, and then a year later you are like, “Oh, that’s what that song is about.” Writing with prompts, you will never run out of things to write about. 

MC: Songwriters will talk about sometimes channeling lyrics and melodies that seem pre-existent. 

JL: There are different ways to it. Some people sit down every day to write. I imagine Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie, The Postal Service) is very regimented with his schedule in writing. I’m writing every day, but it’s a little more freeform; not sitting down, but I’m out in the world where something will occur to me, and I’ll grab my voice notes, and go back home and figure it out on piano or guitar.  

MC: Do these fragments then become the centers of songs?

JL: For the most part, a feeling or an idea, or I will be jamming in my music room. I have this drum machine that J.J. Cale used on his records, so I might hit that, and I’ll have my guitar or bass, pick a key, and then something will come out of that. I will typically carve it into existence over a period of time. But sometimes songs arrive fully formed like “Just One of the Guys,” from The Voyager. That one just arrived, and I don’t know how it happened. Then the homework comes. I am always editing up until I record the song. And I’ll record it on my phone and work on the lyrics as I’m overdubbing drums, bass, and keys. I will do everything, and the lyrics come out of the production, as I’m figuring it out. Once I am going in the studio I will continue to edit the lyrics until the day of— moment of, occasionally.

MC: We think of the meaning of words versus the sound of words. We like the use of the word “ruminate,” in the line from “A Puppy and a Truck” that says “…Time to ruminate/What the fuck was that?”

JL: (Laughs) If there is a word for the pandemic, it would probably be “ruminate.” I spent March to October 2020 at my house in California, until I took a flight to Nashville that fall. I took it very seriously, and in some ways it was very good for me. I was totally alone. I had nothing on the books for the first time since I was a kid. When you are a performer, there is always this underlying anxiety. If you have a show coming up, it’s just part of the gig.  So, all of that went away. For the first time in my life, I felt totally free. Obviously, I was scared, and experiencing everything everybody else was, but I felt off the hook.

MC: For some, it was a good excuse to grow a beard. I bet you didn’t.

JL: I didn’t grow a beard, but I grew two marijuana plants that were, like, six feet tall. I grew them legally! They were beautiful. I did it totally on my own. Grew, trimmed, cured, jarred…it was absolutely incredible. 

MC: And you acquired a dog, Bobby Rhubarb, immortalized in your song “A Puppy and a Truck.”

JL: I was never able to have a dog before. I’ve been on the road for 26 years, out there playing music, so my real life has definitely taken a back seat.  Having a couple of years at home and being able to take care of an animal like that has changed me in such an amazing way. And I’ve become a bit of a stage mom, as is the family tradition. So Bobby Rhubarb has an Instagram account, and when we go out in the world some people say, “Oh look! It’s Bobby Rhubarb!”

MC: The song “A Puppy and a Truck” is so likeable. 

JL:  Thank you. I was very dear friends with Jimmy Buffett and his family. I was so lucky to be able to spend time with them, and learn how to be off the road. Jimmy had two dogs, they were with him everywhere, and there was this joy for life. And if you are hanging out with the Buffetts, you are getting in the water, even if you don’t want to. I’m not a beachy or boaty person, but they were like, “Get in the water Lewis,” and the dogs were there. Jimmy inspired “A Puppy and a Truck”. We miss him so much. 

MC: You reference the late Nashville artist from the early ‘60s, Skeeter Davis, as an influence on Joy’All. She is an artist who is sometimes underestimated. 

JL: We know her songs, but we don’t know it’s her singing them. What a great songwriter. I made the record and I was doing the album cover photo shoot at my house in Nashville with my friend Momma Hotdog—Bobbi Rich—and we went into this vintage store to look for something for me to wear. On the wall of this place called Black Shag Vintage was a green and white striped suit. We pulled it down, and it said it had belonged to Skeeter Davis. The reference for the album cover was a classic Skeeter Davis photo, and I’m wearing her costume on the cover of Joy’All. There are these signs from the universe that you’re on the right path. If you pay attention, they are there. 

MC: You toured with Harry Styles—what an interesting pairing. 

JL: It was the first show out of the pandemic that I did in the fall of 2021. I was terrified. I was vaccinated, but I am asthmatic. There were a lot of emotions. Harry picked me to open the tour—it wasn’t a business thing. It was everyone’s first shows back. The crowds were so loving, and so open, and beautiful, and sparkly with feather boas—a beautiful way to come back to playing music and a massive undertaking. I had never done a tour this big, but it felt intimate because we were in our bubbles. There was no press, no one backstage, and we didn’t eat in restaurants. So it was like the biggest indie tour that ever existed. It felt DIY, although it was massive. 

MC: A question based on your lyrics from the title song, “Joy’All.” Do we all get a little bit wiser every day?

JL: I think we do. That’s the paradox of being a human being—we are getting wiser but our bodies are deteriorating. You come into the world so innocent, but the older you get, you learn a little more. Hopefully, you learn to be more compassionate—especially to be more compassionate with yourself, which is so important.  

MC: Your astrological sign is Capricorn. Do you like to plan?

JL: I’m a Capricorn, so I’m climbing the mountain steadily, slowly but surely. As a kid, I used to make these handmade calendars. I couldn’t wait until the end of the school year. I am a planner by nature, but I’ve been doing a meditation practice since the first of the year, so I am trying to be more in the moment. With my schedule, I am forced to plan about three days in advance. I’m trying to enjoy the day, the moment, and the hour. 

Onstage, especially doing this tour with The Postal Service, we played three sold out shows at the Hollywood Bowl. And there were a couple of moments where I just had to say, “Take all this in right now. Take a breath and look out, because this is as wonderful as it gets. This may not happen again. Be present in the moment. Be grateful.” I looked out, and I wasn’t nervous at all. 18,000 people out there, and I felt so connected to L.A., so connected to 20 years of this record, and my other records. It’s important to be in the moment, and appreciate these beautiful times. 

JL: I think we do. That’s the paradox of being a human being—we are getting wiser but our bodies are deteriorating. You come into the world so innocent, but the older you get, you learn a little more. Hopefully, you learn to be more compassionate—especially to be more compassionate with yourself, which is so important.  

MC: Your astrological sign is Capricorn. Do you like to plan?

JL: I’m a Capricorn, so I’m climbing the mountain steadily, slowly but surely. As a kid, I used to make these handmade calendars. I couldn’t wait until the end of the school year. I am a planner by nature, but I’ve been doing a meditation practice since the first of the year, so I am trying to be more in the moment. With my schedule, I am forced to plan about three days in advance. I’m trying to enjoy the day, the moment, and the hour. 

Onstage, especially doing this tour with The Postal Service, we played three sold out shows at the Hollywood Bowl. And there were a couple of moments where I just had to say, “Take all this in right now. Take a breath and look out, because this is as wonderful as it gets. This may not happen again. Be present in the moment. Be grateful.” I looked out, and I wasn’t nervous at all. 18,000 people out there, and I felt so connected to L.A., so connected to 20 years of this record, and my other records. It’s important to be in the moment, and appreciate these beautiful times. 

Contact Jillian Condran, jillian@nastylittleman.com

Quick Facts

•The song “Psychos” from Joy’All became the first Jenny Lewis song to hit No. 1 on the Adult Alternative Airplay chart. 

•The Jenny Lewis touring band is currently comprised entirely of female musicians. 

•As an actress, Lewis appeared in over a dozen teen movies, including Troop Beverly Hills. Cast in a multitude of episodic television guest spots, she also played Lucille Ball’s granddaughter in the short run of the Life With Lucy sitcom.

•Her 2014 full-length The Voyager was an emotional compendium influenced by Rilo Kiley’s demise, and the death of her father, Eddie Gordon. 

•Among Lewis’ past side projects was the duo Jenny & Johnny, with Johnathan Rice, with whom she shared a 12-year relationship. 

•Following her breakup with Rice, Lewis shared an apartment in New York with Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent. With friend Tennessee Thomas and Erika Foster, she performed as Nice As Fuck, and released a one-off collection in 2016.

•Also in 2016, Lewis flew to Haiti with Jackson Browne, to join a cast of global musicians in a benefit project called Let The Rhythm Lead: Haiti Song Summit, Vol.1. In her song “Under The Supermoon,” Lewis finds solace from the world’s problems among her new Haitian friends. She performed the song with Browne and Malian vocalist Habib Coite’.

•A line in “Under The Supermoon” chronicles her reaction to the 2016 Presidential election with this couplet: “I’ve never had such a fright/I gasped on election night.” 

•Past Lewis recordings have enlisted illustrious players like Ringo Starr, Jim Keltner, and Benmont Tench from The Heartbreakers. 

•The video for “Puppy and a Truck” includes a character wearing a dog suit. As he removes the dog head in the concluding shot, the character is revealed to be Harry Styles.

Music Connection: As we’re doing this interview, you’re playing Washington, D.C., tonight and you just played Little Caesar’s Arena in Detroit a couple days ago. How did it feel to play for a home state crowd and see family?

Danny Wagner: It was beautiful. The entire day was completely surreal. I set my own personal record for longest amount of time with goose bumps leading up to the show. But the show was a success and we had so much fun seeing family and friends. It was so great having them all in one place.

MC: How did you all come about working with Starcatcher producer Dave Cobb?

Wagner: It was almost inevitable at some point that we’d end up doing a project with him. The story of us meeting him actually dates back to the first album we recorded, Anthem of the Peaceful Army. We were recording that in Nashville where he was recording at the time and he actually popped into the studio one day during our tracking. We were all very young and we had the chance to meet him. And at the time we knew of him because of the Rival Sons who we were all huge fans of. And the man has worked with so many incredible acts. 

And then we met him a couple other times just hanging around Nashville. We were just waiting for the right moment, and he was always on our radar. But we wanted to make sure that us, the music we had and the position we were in, were equally as ready to make that leap into working with him, because we knew it would be a big leap. And over the pandemic we met him one more time and it was kind of off to the races. 

We met him at RCA Studios and he had instruments set up for us to come in and jam on, just keeping the meeting organic. And we started jamming and it was like someone stuck a rock and water just flowed. It was amazing, and we quickly realized it was a fantastic fit. And three or four of those jamming moments, Dave actually took the live versions and stuck them on the album. When we went back a couple of months later, agreeing to start the album, we already had a couple of the songs underway. That’s one of his famous tricks. He captures bands at their most vulnerable and most natural states which I think is incredible.

MC: So, he wanted to catch you in more of an impromptu state, with no filters?

Wagner: Yes. The type of music we grew up listening to is just so organic and human. It’s tough to find that in yourself in such a modern-day recording setting, because everything can be bandaged up. Movie magic can be transferred to music and there’s musical magic. And there are all sorts of things you can do. So, he really captured us in our most honest state, which I thought was special. I feel this new album represents us as human beings and as writers and musicians in our most human state.

MC: I listened to a podcast recently and Jake talked about your playing and writing process. He said it was all very instinctual, so what you’re saying makes sense.

Wagner: It certainly does. And to an extent, we’ve been known to have that instinctual writing. From the very minute this band formed we were off to the races as far as the four of us collaborating and writing. It came so naturally, and that’s what started igniting the fire for us personally. We realized we could do this and started producing songs left and right all the time. 

MC: Talk a little more in depth about the writing process behind the new album?

Wagner: On this new album we only went with a couple of songs pre-written, and not even completed, really. We basically went into the album with nothing, no preparation. We wanted to capture some of the magic in the studio. And, I say, mission accomplished! It came together intuitively and instinctually and very flawlessly, to be honest.

MC: Tell me about the concept behind Starcatcher. I was reading that there are references to fantasy vs. reality and spirituality as well. What’s it all about?

Wagner: The easiest way to describe the album is to break it down into two parts. Sonically, we covered a little bit of that. We really wanted to go back to our roots, so to speak. We wanted to go back to those early days and harness what got us into rock & roll and music in general. We tried to capture that sound, which involves recording live in a room, and creating a feeling in a song by playing it, not just adding all these little effects. We wanted to emotionally deliver that in performance. And thematically, we’ve spent the past few albums in the last few years creating a world in which we live in the Greta Van Fleet universe, expanding on these concepts and themes we’ve talked about over the last few years. 

For instance, The Battle at Gardens Gate was almost a sequel to the first in a way, where the first album laid some groundwork and The Battle at Gardens Gate started introducing figures and characters and landscapes. With this current album we wanted to represent the dichotomy of all of it—the fantasy and reality, the love and hate, and just play with the dichotomies of these wide ends of the spectrum and everything in between. 

MC: What about your lyrics?

Wagner: I can’t always speak for all of the lyricism, because we like to leave things up to interpretation, if you will. And I think that’s a beautiful thing. I love when I can hear a piece of work and I can have my own interpretation of it and can discuss with someone else their own interpretation of a song. That really gets things going. But, loosely, we wanted to capture this incredible dichotomy that’s relatable to the world we live in. 

MC: So you have those kinds of personal conversations with fans where, in addition to, perhaps, comments on your drumming or guitar solos, they approach you to discuss the lyrical content of songs?

Wagner: Absolutely. Right after the first few singles had been released. Just walking around towns and meeting certain people, they immediately gravitated to those types of conversations. I found it incredibly endearing as an artist that it goes beyond just the surface of what they’re hearing. And in a day and age where I feel like our ability to focus is just diminished quite a little bit, that means a lot. Shorter songs seem more stomach-able and record labels are pushing for that surface-level two–minute song. So, it’s really cool to have these in-depth conversations with fans and what the songs mean to them. And then they ask what they mean to us. The lyrical content tends to take on its own meaning. Sometimes I’m shocked to hear their interpretations, where I have to step back and say, wow, I never even thought of things that way. But it totally makes sense and is not that far off from the main idea.

MC: You’re currently on tour. How do you write on the road and find the time to do it?

Wagner: So, the one fun thing about us is we never stop writing, ever! And it’s a blessing, because we have endless ideas and it comes from all four corners of this band. We basically take every opportunity we have with instruments because there is often limited time when you’re always traveling.
    On show days we have a room that is dedicated to creativity, warm-ups and rehearsals. It’s filled with every instrument we’d need. On a typical show day we show up and do sound check. After that we’ve got about six hours before a show. So, we’ll find that room and get ourselves grounded—not even playing fully fledged ideas, but just loose ideas we’ll come back to at another time. We never block off time in our schedule for writing. It just all comes naturally in various different places.

MC: What are you currently listening to, and what bands, in your opinion and besides you guys, are carrying that rock & roll torch?

Wagner: That’s a fantastic question. Our music tastes are so eclectic and vast that it’s shocking to people. They think we’re just a rock & roll band and assume that’s all we listen to. But we’re really all over the place. We’re constantly trying to seek out older and more independent acts, because a lot of it was just lost in time. Personally I’m a massive folk listener. There are a couple artists I’ve been listening to lately. One of them is Laura Marling. She just released an album this year. I’ve always been a Fleet Foxes fan and they continue to release a lot of music. 

More in the rock & roll vein, there’s this band out of Detroit called Mac Saturn, and it’s cool because their upbringing shares a lot of parallels with ours. They’re doing their first album at the same studio in Royal Oak, Michigan with the same crew and people. And that’s how we met them, through the same producers and people who got us running. They’re awesome guys and their music is incredible. And they have this amazing stage presence, which I think is an incredible art in itself. 

You hear a lot of music, and if you’re hooked on the music it’s great. But, when their show blows your mind, then that’s just something super special. But them, First Aid Kit and Rival Sons all are contenders for holding that flag for the rock & roll march. Rock & roll is very far from dead and diminished. It’s ever present and riding its own groove in the shadows at the moment. A lot of these bands are able to tour the world and sell out theaters and arenas. It’s incredible to see and it speaks for itself. It’s very much alive and well.

MC: It’s very nice to hear someone like you in your position saying this, because there are a lot of naysayers out there. What you say is hopeful.

Wagner: Well, it’s nice to hear from someone like you, as well. You do kinda feel like you’re in your own universe or niche, if you will. It almost seems like a rock & roll fanbase requires a slightly higher attention span because the music is much more in depth. You’re not spoon fed, so to speak. We live in this world where we’re not always everywhere, but we are at the same time.

MC: You must have a very special relationship with your record label that gives you the freedom to create as you have?

Wagner: Absolutely. And, historically, I’m talking 40 or 50 years ago, there’ve been nightmare stories of rock & roll bands and their labels. It’s always been a tricky dynamic between the industry and the musicians themselves. So, naturally, as we were exploring and ready to take that next step years and years ago, we all had a bit of hesitation with record labels. We didn’t want to sacrifice all of our creative control. That was something that terrified us because we wouldn’t be who we are without our creative control. But, fortunately, we’ve been blessed with a good relationship with our record label and they have been incredibly supportive. 

They’ve shown up to the studio when we’re recording. One terrifying but comforting example of that was when we were recording Battle of Gardens Gate they had the record label come out before the songs were finished. We played the first six songs or so. And one of them, “The Weight of Dreams,” was nine-plus minutes long, with guitar solos that go on forever. And, to us, it’s this expression of energy and it captures our live essence. And [the label rep) sat down in a chair and said, “That is fantastic! That’s rock & roll!” And we were thinking hopefully they’re not coming in expecting us to have 2:45-minute songs. We do have a couple shorter songs. We try to provide a little bit of all of it. But, yeah, it is quite a blessing to have a relationship with our label to maintain creative control to pursue our passion in writing.

MC: You’ve been a consistent entity as a band since 2012, survived a pandemic, and are now picking up momentum with a current tour. What are your secrets for making it all work?

Wagner: That’s a fantastic question. I think what keeps us going is the ability to travel to so many different demographics and fan groups across the globe, and meet so many different types of people. And they all share the same love for what we do. We feel their energy and we take that and put it back out into the world. It goes so much further than people think. In a world of darkness, criticism, technology and social networking it’s really amazing to get out in person and play these shows for real people.
    But, also, it took a few years to kind of get used to it. It essentially went from a very home-based lifestyle—in high school with our regimens and routine—to traveling the world and having zero schedule. All of a sudden you’re thrown into a lot of situations where you had to grow up a lot quicker than you thought. It’s a very different lifestyle, especially with eyes on you at all times and anxiety is very high most of the time. But after a few years of doing it it started to become all that we knew. 

MC: What was the process to adjust?

Wagner: You just become accustomed to being on the road. It’s also about being adaptable and being able to listen to what you need at all times. It’s okay to be a little selfish on the road, because you have to take care of yourself. I need to go to bed at this time. I might not wanna stay up and hang out with the other people who are doing what they need at the moment. So, it’s a lot about listening to what you need and there’s a lot of trust involved, too. At the end of the day I am very happy to be out on tour. I live for the chaos and I love it!

MC: Live for the chaos. That sounds like a song title (laughs)! 

Wagner: It might be. I liked the way that came out.

MC: What regions around the world seem to really respond to your band?

Wagner: It’s interesting to learn, as you’re traveling the world and doing shows, there are a lot of different countries that share certain genres of music as their favorites. There was the whole British Invasion thing in London and the U.K. And they’ve always liked rock & roll. So, it wasn’t surprising that the first time we went over there we did decently well. 

But there were some interesting countries that seemed random at the time, but make sense, like Italy. We’d go over to Europe and do these month-long tours and it was always Italy where we were able to seek out much larger venues than some other countries. South America is another one. They love music, in general, and it doesn’t have to be just rock & roll. They just love live music. We’ve done a bunch of Lollapaloozas down there and the fans will follow you to the gates sometimes at airports. It’s crazy, almost like Beatlemania down there.

MC: Is there anything else we haven’t covered?

Wagner: We’re just very thankful for the support we’ve gotten for the new record. We were at a vulnerable state in recording it. And it’s a very personal record for us. So, thank you to everyone that’s taken it under their wing and to dive into the lyricism and given it so much life. But, also keep an eye out for what’s next because we’re constantly writing. It almost seems like we’re a year ahead of everyone else in the world.

Contact kendall.abelman@sacksco.com

Quick Facts

•Kyle Hauck was the original drummer for GVF from 2012-2013. He also came up with their name.

•GVF has been nominated three times for a Grammy Award.

•GVF won a Grammy Award in 2019 for the EP From the Fires.

•Their latest album Starcatcher debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard 200.

•To date, GVF has released two EPs   and three studio albums.

Cooper also came up with a new stage show he debuted at the end of April and has been on the road all year since, both on his own (including the Freaks on Parade 2023 tour with Rob Zombie and a support slot on Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe’s The World Tour) and with the Hollywood Vampires, the all-star collective with Johnny Depp and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry that launched during 2013. 

Other projects he maintains include his Solid Rock Teen Centers in Phoenix, AZ where he resides, and Mesa, AZ and his “Nights With Alice Cooper” radio show that’s currently on hiatus due to an ownership change with his syndicator but that he hopes to bring back in the near future. And don’t be surprised when he pops up at a Comic Con near you. The road has been a long one, but Cooper is happy to keep it under his wheels for the foreseeable future...

Music Connection: Road is your 29th album. Do you still get excited about putting something new out?

Alice Cooper: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I never have gotten bored with the idea. A lot of people just go, “Well, why are you still going?” I go, “Look, I love writing songs. I love recording songs. I love making albums that are thematic albums. I love working with Bob Ezrin and all the great musicians we play with. And I love hearing it on the radio and going out and playing those songs in front of an audience.” I say, “That’s what I do. What am I gonna do—go home and play golf? I play golf anyway. I play golf in the morning and rock & roll all night.” So, no, there’s no thought of retirement here. 

MC: As the Road song says, the dead don’t dance...

Cooper: (laughs) That’s right. Everybody is retiring now. This is gonna be the great rock & roll retirement year. I talked to Gene Simmons (of Kiss); we did a show with him in France and he says, “December, it’s over.” And you always go, “Yeah, yeah, that’s gonna go on forever” and he goes, “No, it’s over. December,” pretty vehement about the fact it’s gonna be no more Kiss live shows. And Aerosmith, same thing. Elton, the Eagles. So I’m gonna be the last band standing. 

MC: It’s appropriate, then, that you have this new album that completely celebrates being on the road and really lays out why you love it.

Cooper: I see the fun in the road. I see the disasters. I see the humor. If you don’t know how to navigate the road, it’s gotta be awful. But I’m in a great situation; I finally maneuvered myself into a point where Sheryl is in the show, so I don’t have to leave her at home. And without her, the way our show runs, we can’t really do it without her. She does all the high vocals in both bands...

MC: And she cuts your head off every night.

Cooper: (laughs) Yeah, and that. So that’s one problem solved. I don’t have to leave home; I take home with me.
    And secondly, I’ve got the best touring band out there and they’re all best friends and I never hear anybody griping about, “Oh, I don’t get enough solos,” stuff like that. Everybody in that band cares about the show as much as I do.
    So all the ducks are in a row and all we’re doing is having fun out there. It does get a little bit exhausting, the travel, but you just have to put your mindset into the fact that for the next four months we’re gonna be living in and out of a suitcase, in a hotel, on a bus, in an airplane—”Alright. Great. It’s gonna be fun!”

MC: What led you to make Road this way, with the road band?

Cooper: I felt this was the way I can show this band off. I went to Bob Ezrin, I said, “I want to do an album with my live band,” and honestly I haven’t done that since The Eyes of Alice Cooper (in 2003). That was the only other time. We would write the song in the morning, rehearse in the afternoon and record it that night, live in the studio, and I think you could tell. There was a freshness to it. It didn’t have time to get old. Same thing with his. They brought the songs in; I said, “I want everybody to write songs about the road. I don’t care what the concept is, as long as it’s about the road, some angle about the road, and then Bob and I will do surgery on it and we’ll turn it into what we want it to be for this album.” And that’s what happened. 

MC: Sort of like giving the inmates the keys, or some of the keys, to the asylum.

Cooper: Exactly. Everybody brought songs in and Bob and I just kind of took off in the studio and started constructing them the way we wanted them to be, then we brought it back and the band would come in and play it live in the studio.
    I said, “I want you to play it live, every bed track is gonna be live” and then we would just pick the best bed track and I’d put the vocal on. It really shows how good the band is, to take a brand new song, play it live and make it sound like they’ve been playing it for years.
    I like the freshness of it. If it speeds up a little bit, if it goes a little bit left or right, as long as the feel of that song is great, that’s what I care about. I don’t want to make a perfect album.

MC: The opening track, “I’m Alice,” sounds like your next show opener. 

Cooper: It has to be. When I got done with that song, Bob and I looked at each other and went, “Opener!” And that’s Alice again, exaggerating, talking about himself. I’m not talking about me; I’m talking about Alice talking about himself, and of course he’s an overblown, egotistical, condescending villain—so of course he’s talking about how wonderful he is. I think that’s just part of it; Alice is talking about, “Okay, here’s the album. It’s all about me. It’s all about the road, and here we go!” 

MC: A few of the songs address Alice as this hated character, the pariah you were, or he was, back in the ‘70s when you started out. That’s not really the case anymore, though.

Cooper: I think that there’s still a smattering of people out there that don’t get it. There are people that are so out there they get Ozzy (Osbourne) and myself and Kiss and Rob Zombie confused. One day a guy walked up and said, “Oh, man, I thought it was so cool when I saw you bite the head off a bat,” and I go, “That was Ozzy.” They put us all into one little place and they think we’re all the same guy somehow. But I want the Alice Cooper character to still have that danger involved, to still have that certain amount of villain involved. So, yeah, I paint him that way on the album. 

MC: There are some other great and archetypal characters on this album. “White Line Frankenstein,” for instance.

Cooper: I know guys like that in both Europe and in America—truck drivers, bus drivers. When they’re done with our tour they go right to another tour and I’m going, “So, you basically live in the cab of this truck? This is, like, your world?” I take each character as they come along and exaggerate them, so now I’ve got this guy who lives in his truck—he’s a White Line Frankenstein. All he sees is white lines all day on the highway, and there’s probably white lines in other places in his life. But he is the king of that cab. He’s the Frankenstein of that cab, and he loves it. 

MC: “Go Away” seems like a timeless tale of the rock & roll road.

Cooper: It’s one of those things where every guy, I think, in his career has had that one girl that obsesses and cannot give you up and will go to space to find you, or go to the Bermuda Triangle to find you. I think everybody’s had one or two characters like that in their life. I just said, “Yeah, that’s a common denominator with most rock guys to find that one somebody who’s so obsessed, and that (song) is a funny way of talking about it—”Could you please just go away?”

MC: You preceded Road this year with deluxe reissues of the Killer and School’s Out albums as well as a new Quadio mix of Billion Dollar Babies. What’s it like having your past and present coexist in the marketplace like that?

Cooper: Those (reissues) never affect me. I never, ever think about them. They just happen. It doesn’t affect the show. It doesn’t affect the new album. Every day somebody comes up to me and says, “Hey, it’s the 64th anniversary of Lace and Whiskey” and I go, “That’s nice.” I honestly can’t keep up with any of that stuff. As much as I enjoy the history of Alice, I just don’t live there. People remind me all the time of anniversaries and this and that, and I do appreciate it. I understand how the fans, especially the collectors, love those things. But I don’t live in the past. 

MC: Let’s ask you to, for just a second, though. Muscle of Love, the final album with the original Alice Cooper band, turns 50 in November. What’s your 2023 perspective on it?

Cooper: There were a lot of great songs on that album, but it wasn’t cohesive. The album didn’t feel like it was locked together by one idea; and as much as the production is great on it and everything like that, it still missed the Bob Ezrin cohesiveness. The band didn’t want to work with Ezrin, but I did. I was the one going, “No, we gotta stay with Ezrin.” Like I said, (Jack Richardson and Jack Douglas) did a great job on production. The album sounded great. I just felt there was something missing in it that (Ezrin) would usually get out of us. But, I mean, I listened to “Man With the Golden Gun” the other day, and I listened to Teenage Lament ‘74. There were some really good songs on that album. I just felt like we were sort of reaching for straws there. 

MC: That was the second album you released that year. What a different time that was.

Cooper: But it was that era where that’s what you did. You did an album and then you’d tour and then while you were touring you were writing the next album, and then as soon as that tour was over you went in the studio and did an album. And then you toured again. In fact, there was a period of time where if you were to say to me, “I want to send you this” I’d go, “I don’t live anywhere. Send it to the next Holiday Inn,” because we didn’t really live anywhere for a long period of time. It was just touring and recording. 

MC: What wisdom do you have now that you’d impart on those guys if you could time travel back to 1973?

Cooper: Y’know, you’re bulletproof at that point. You don’t mind that you just did 64 cities in 72 days. As long as there was beer, we were fine. It’s the most exciting time of your life; not only are you out there on stage doing this kind of show, but it’s successful and people are paying you, which is something we weren’t used to. I could tell them whatever, but they wouldn’t listen. (laughs) 

MC: You put together a new show this year, which is always notable.

Cooper: We had the Haunted Castle for a couple of years, which was really a lot of fun to do. That was sort of like what my Friday night horror movie would look like if I had a Friday night horror movie. But this show is totally different. Like anything else, we have to do the hits; the audience wants to hear the hits, so it’s how do you decorate those hits? How do you put them into a storm form or some kind of new way of looking at the show? So, we added some new things and really made use of video technology more than we ever have before. 

    Like, when Alice does “The Ballad of Dwight Fry,” you can see all the facial things he’s doing, right up close. We just kind of got tired of people not being able to see some of the real intricate parts and details, so we made that a real focus this time out.

MC: How hard is it to put a set list together every time you go out?

Cooper: It happens while you’re doing it, really. We take a set list into rehearsals and it’ll change seven or eight times—”Ah, that song doesn’t go into that song right. Let’s put this song in there,” that kind of thing. It’s putting a puzzle together, really, just connecting the dots in the right way. But I’ve got people who have done this for 50 years. Sheryl and I have been putting a show together like this forever. And musically my (band) can learn a song in an hour, any song, so we’re not crippled in any way.

MC:  Something else exciting this year was having “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” from Alice Cooper Goes to Hell (1976) show up on the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 soundtrack. 

Cooper: Y’know, I was at the new Ant Man movie and Michael Douglas and Catherine (Zeta-Jones) were there. They said, “You gotta come down to the premiere, so we went down and there was a guy from Marvel and he was a big Alice Cooper fan and he says, “I’ve got one of your songs in the new (Guardians of the Galaxy) movie.” I said, “Really?!” I didn’t even know about it, but I’m a big fan of the Guardians of the Galaxy. I think they’re really funny. It’s what Marvel should do. It’s all that action, all that great CGI stuff, with a sense of humor. 

MC: How did it feel to have the Hollywood Vampires back in action this year?

Cooper: I’ll tell you what; the band is as tight as I’ve ever heard it. The band is really, really good now. We’ve had enough time off, so everybody’s ready to get back out there on the road.
    It’s funny, ‘cause I hadn’t seen Johnny in three and a half years because of the Covid thing, and he was playing with Jeff Beck here in Phoenix. So I went backstage and I opened his door and went, “So...what’s new? Did I see you on TV or something?” (laughs) We were laughing ‘cause of the whole Amber (Heard) thing. I said, “I have either the best idea or the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life.” He goes, “What?” I go, “You and Amber do a remake of War of the Roses,” and he started laughing, and then he kinda went, “Not a bad idea...” I mean, who wouldn’t want to see that? The press for it is just built-in, you don’t even have to push it. Just let it happen and report on it.

MC: The group put out a live album (Live in Rio) earlier this year. What are the prospects for new Vampires music? 

Cooper: We haven’t had time, really, any chance to record anything new. We had a lot of live tapes, and this band is great live. We were surprised that the Wembley show was voted the best show of the year at Wembley, which had a lot to do with the fact the band was really good and tight and unique, so we were really proud of that. It’s basically a bar band, but it puts out a really good vibe, a really fun vibe on stage and yet it’s still a little dark. But in the end people are just having a great time, ‘cause all the songs that are being played are songs everybody wants to hear.

MC: You’re working on some other new music too, right?

Cooper: Well, I can’t talk about that one too much, but let’s just put it this way—it’s historic and at the same time really kind of quirky. Sometimes you’re working and you go, “Really? Okay, let’s go with that and see what happens.” So, that one will be really cool. What I like is it’s a very creative time now. We put a new show together this year—that’s always the most creative time you can have—and there’s a lot of laughing and a lot of “Let’s try this” and it doesn’t work and all of a sudden something works that you’re never expecting to work... That’s really why I do this, for the creativity and these adventures we’re having. There’s so many of them now; it’s really inspiring. 

Contact Zoe Hines, zoeh@grandstandhq.com

Photos by Jenny Rischer

Cooper & Crüe

By all rights, Alice Cooper should have cut the heads off the founding members of Mötley Crüe during the past couple of years. 

The shock rocker—who, of course, has his own noggin lopped off every night of his own concerts—served as the special guest for nearly the entirety of the Crüe’s Final Tour during 2014-15. On Jan. 28, 2014 announcing the trek the four Crüe members—Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee—signed a binding Cessation of Touring Agreement preventing them from going on the road again under the band name.

And part of the punishment for breaking the deal was a trip directly to Cooper’s guillotine. 

Flash forward to 2019 and Mötley Crüe, fresh off the success of the Netflix film adaptation of its band biography The Dirt, decides to reunite for The Stadium Tour, co-headlining with Def Leppard. The Covid-19 pandemic delayed the outing until the summer of 2022, but Mötley was nevertheless back on the “Wild Side.”

“We did that Final Tour and that’s it, and then, of course, when they came back out I went, ‘Okay, so I’m the big liar,’” Cooper says now. “But I laughed about it, and their explanation was, ‘We’re Mötley Crüe, man. We don’t believe in contracts.’ And I said, ‘That’s so perfectly rock & roll, and so perfectly Mötley Crüe.’”

By accounts, the Cessation of Touring Agreement was able to be set aside if all four of the signees decided to play together again. That ultimately resulted in more drama, of course; after the 2022 leg guitarist Mars, who’d long suffered with ankylosing spondylitis, a form of arthritis, since he was 17, retired from touring but with the intent of remaining in the band. The Crüe, however, hired John 5 as his full-time replacement, setting off dueling lawsuits. 

The current Crüe, meanwhile, made good to Cooper by having him open the six U.S. dates on The World Tour, a continuation of The Stadium Tour. “They said, ‘It’s gonna be Mötley, Def and you,’ and I said, ‘That’s fine,’” explains Cooper, who did the dates alongside his continuing Too Close For Comfort Tour. “I don’t care when we go on. We’re gonna do our show no matter what. I’m past the ego thing of, ‘We have to go on last!,’ that whole thing. We’re gonna do our show, I don’t care what slot we’re in.

“Tommy Lee recently said that the worst thing you can ever do is have Alice open for you. I thought that was great, a nice compliment.”

As the wave of Latin music reaches new heights in the U.S., Colombian-American singer-songwriter Kali Uchis has been one step ahead of all the action. Her genre-defying sound of soul, R&B and hip-hop―plus the cheeky fusion of Spanish and English songwriting―has earned her a spot as one of the hitmakers to watch. 

Born Karly-Marina Loaiza, Uchis grew up between Colombia and northern Virginia as the youngest of five children. She was kicked out of her home at the age of 17 and was forced to live in her car. She first gained mainstream prominence after releasing her debut EP Por Vida for free download on her official website. The tracks featured production by high-profile acts such as Diplo, Kaytranada, and Tyler, the Creator. This caught the attention of Virgin EMI who she eventually signed with. 

Uchis’ eagerness to work with other artists is what generated the most buzz early in her career. By the time Uchis released her debut album Isolation, she had already been nominated for Grammy awards through her featured appearances on Daniel Caesar’s “Get You” and Juanes’ “El Ratico.” She eventually earned her first Grammy in 2021 for Best Dance Recording with Kaytranada for their collaboration “10%.” 

The artist’s second studio album and first Spanish-language album Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios), released in 2021, spawned the viral single “Telepatía,” which became her first solo charting hit in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. It is also the Billboard Hot 100’s longest-running Spanish song by a solo act this decade with a 23-week streak. Earlier this year, she released her third album Red Moon in Venus, which debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, marking her first top-10 album on that list. Uchis is not an artist who’s following a playbook; she’s making music on her terms. She’s not conforming to the industry standard, instead embracing her heritage and bilingual talents. It is this honest approach that has won the hearts of many new fans. 

Music Connection: You just turned 29, happy late birthday. Looking back at your career did you ever imagine accomplishing so much in your ‘20s? 

Kali Uchis: No never, my ambition was to be able to provide for myself. I never dreamed of accomplishing any of these things.

MC: You grew up in Virginia, your family is from Colombia. What inspired you to pursue music?

Uchis:  I also grew up in Colombia, I went to school there at first. I came back to the United States to finish. I still would go back every year―I had my house there, my family, everything. When I was visiting home in Colombia, I first came up with the name Kali Uchis and shot one of my first music videos.

    I always knew that I was a creative person. When I was graduating high school what I was doing for money was creative things. I had gotten myself a camera and was shooting artwork for other artists and shooting music videos―most of the artists in the VA area are mostly rappers, very much a rap scene.

MC: What do you love about music?

Uchis: I have always loved writing music. Writing music is something I remember doing from the moment I could pretty much speak and write, in general. It was something I was always doing. I grew up bilingual from the moment I learned language, so I learned to read and write Spanish before English and I learned to mix it a lot. We used to speak Spanglish pretty much my whole life. That was always something that was very much intertwined for me as a writer. It was just something that made sense to me. I didn’t feel like I chose to be an artist, I just feel like I was born an artist. It was something that I felt was my purpose. My ambition was not really in regards to fame or accolades.

MC: What did you listen to growing up, who were your inspirations?

Uchis:  I really looked up to women in music who had their own sound, were really strong and had unique voices. I always loved Sade. When it came to Latin music, I just loved all the strong vintage singers, like Claudia de Colombia―women who sang with their hearts, as soon as you heard them singing you knew who it was. For me it was always important to find my own voice, to not be too inspired by anyone else because what I’ve always liked is people who have their own voice.

MC: Virginia doesn’t have the biggest music scene; what tactics would you use early on to get your music heard?

Uchis:  I feel like the internet really was what helped my main fanbase find me at such a young stage of my career. I was developing myself as an artist in the public eye online, I didn’t keep anything to myself. Like my first project, Por Vida, people think it’s an album but really it was just a free project that I put on the internet. So, a lot of things just happened from word-of-mouth, people just discovering me, talking to each other.

MC: You eventually moved to Los Angeles and have been living here for a couple of years. What is it about the L.A. music scene that you love?

Uchis: When I first put on my first project, the one I was telling you about, people were reaching out to me and sending me stuff―it was a lot of people from L.A.

Coming from a small music scene that was more so centered around rap and hip-hop and me very much being more of an alternative sound to what was around me, I immediately felt that there was a lot more work. L.A. definitely had a bigger scene and scope of producers to work with for me and I’ve always loved it.

MC: Was there someone who helped you navigate the industry in L.A.?

Uchis: No, when I came to L.A. I was just very much on my own. I had a manager at that point, but they didn’t live in L.A., they lived in Texas. It was a young person who didn’t know what they were doing, either, so I was very much on my own.

MC: That must have been tough. How did you guide yourself through the industry?

Uchis: A lot of people were reaching out to me to take meetings at that point. I’ve never been too much of a social person. I never went to events or did the whole shake hands, rub shoulders with everybody type of thing. Moreso I was just of the mindset that working on perfecting and solidifying myself as an artist, that my work would speak for itself. It was still early for me, I was more interested in just making as much music as I could.

MC: You recently announced your new tour, Red Moon in Venus Tour Part II. Most of the dates have sold out, congrats. How surreal is it to headline arenas for the first time?

Uchis: Thank you, it’s crazy for me because, like I said, coming from essentially somewhere that really didn’t have the support, didn’t really have that community. I remember when I was starting there were a lot of people who really didn’t see the vision or thought I was always gonna be a very niche artist. That I wasn’t going to have a big enough fan base to sell these large types of rooms, so it’s really nice to be able to do and to still be able to have a career this much time later. You know? When everyone doubted you, it’s a good feeling.

MC: Do you ever feel nervous hitting the stage?

Uchis: Normally no, it’s kind of rare when I do. It kind of just depends on what’s going on in regards to backstage type of stuff. Sometimes things aren’t going as planned when it comes to it―might be an issue with your outfit, it might be an issue with production. Those types of things will add to show anxiety for sure, but if everything is going as planned, I’m pretty relaxed before a show.

MC: Are you and your dancers rehearsing in a large space so that you feel comfortable on a big stage arena?

Uchis: I’m going to do these new rehearsals soon. I’m assuming they are going to be like the Coachella rehearsals. At first you perform with the room taped down so you see the dimensions of the platform that you are going to be on, the stairs that are going to come down, stuff like that. So, you kind of get an idea how many paces you are gonna count, things like that. Then toward the end of the rehearsals they bring in the actual production so you can really feel it. It’s a little bit of a process.

MC: The tour is in support of your third studio album Red Moon in Venus. What is the inspiration behind this album?

Uchis: When I looked at the entire body of work, I felt like the overlying message was definitely love, but in all its different dimensions. I think that it talks about self-love, love in regards to heartbreak, love in regards to newfound love, but all of it was really just love in general. I felt the world needs more love and more honest expressions of that. It’s kind of the only album I have where the whole album is about love.

MC: You are the only songwriter in the entire album. Were any of the tracks hard to write or easy to compose?

Uchis: I don’t want to say any of them was necessarily hard to write, but I think “Blue” was maybe the hardest to put out, because it might be one of my most vulnerable songs. It’s hard sometimes to talk about a difficult time. Relationships go through a lot of ups and downs and a lot of people don’t like to talk about the downs of a relationship, you know, unless it’s a breakup song. I think that’s probably on the album the most vulnerable for me, just because it’s not a breakup song, it’s about being in a weird place in a relationship. 

   I think probably the easiest one that came the quickest was probably “I Wish You Roses.” I wrote that song without any music and I recorded the whole thing with just my voice. A lot of songs were written like that, but I feel like that was the easiest.

MC: How do you deal with writer’s block?

Uchis: Now that I’m three albums in, I’m being a lot more conscious about particular projects. For instance, while I was making Red Moon in Venus, the majority of the time I was also working on my fourth album, which is coming really soon―which is my Latin album. So, it’s a fun way to not get writer’s block and restrict myself, not feel limited in regards to my expression. If I want to make a song in Spanish one day or something more dancey, something that doesn’t feel like Red Moon in Venus and it could feel more like the other project I’m working on, then I put that there.

MC: How has your songwriting evolved from album to album?

Uchis: I would say it’s the same process. Most of the time, randomly a melody and lyrics will pop into my head. At times that I don’t expect it. I might be on a plane, I might be in the shower, I’ll be somewhere where it’s hard for me to record the melody at the time, but as long as I can pick up my phone and get a recording and kind of write something down in my notes, I revisit it later when I’m in the studio and I sit on it. I never really know when inspiration is going to spike, so it’s very much a spontaneous process.

MC: You’ve collaborated with so many amazing artists, including Tyler, the Creator, Kaytranada and Don Toliver. What is it about collaborations that you love?

Uchis: I think it’s always fun, especially when you respect another artist. I very much build my own world when it comes to the aesthetic of an album or when it even comes to my brand as an artist. I very much like to focus on being in my own lane and keeping everything that has to do with me about me. When I’m working with another artist, I kinda get a break from that for a second. It’s fun, it’s fresh.

MC: Which one of your collaborators has given you the best advice?

Uchis: I want to say the person who’s probably given me the most advice out of all my collaborators is definitely Tyler. My first collaborator ever in my career. I feel like I definitely always have seen him like a big brother. I’ve always been able to come to him when I had questions about what is normal in the industry in regards to anything from label deals to management commissions to all types of stuff. I think it’s really important for artists to understand their worth, their value and what is the norm.

MC: You create music in both Spanish and English. Was there any pushback early on to focus on only one language?

Uchis: I think it’s really sad. I’ve had so many smaller bilingual artists be like “Man you really inspired me, I want to make music in English, too, but my label says I just gotta stick to the Spanish, ‘cause that’s what’s working for me.” For me, it was the opposite. I had dabbled in Latin songs. One of the first songs I ever put out was a cover of “Porque Te Vas” by Jeanette and on my first album I had a reggaeton song “Nuestro Planeta” with Reykon, who’s really big in Colombia. So, I have been doing stuff like this before, but my audience was mainly from the United States, because the rest of my album was in English and my songs that did well were in English. From the label perspective, especially at that time, Latin music wasn’t a thing.

    That was always my plan, my second album was going to be in Spanish. I had to turn in Isolation, which dropped in 2018, and let everyone know what I would like to focus on next is a Latin album and the conversation was very much like “We’re not going to put our resources into this.” I went ahead and chose to still do the album because, like I said, that was always part of my plan―English, Spanish, English, Spanish. I’m of the belief that if God gives you something you should use it. I feel like it’s a slap in the face of God to not write music in Spanish, as well, if I’m a bilingual artist. That’s how I grew up and that’s a part of who I am, not just as an artist but as a human being. For me it wouldn’t feel right to limit myself to only English music when that’s not who I am. So, I was like oky then that’s fine you guys don’t have to support it, but that’s something I’m going to do. I didn’t expect for it to be received well or the way Isolation was. So, we just dropped it [Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios)]. Then randomly around February was when “Telepatia” really started picking up. It ended up being my most mainstream song. In hindsight, everybody started becoming more supportive of me doing Latin music.

MC: I used to hear “Telepatia” all the time on the radio. Why do you think Latin music has had a big resurgence in the U.S.?

Uchis: Yeah, they still play it sometimes. There’s really no way to say for certain. I think a lot of American artists who speak English became more open to working with Spanish-speaking artists and Latin American artists. Once that bridge was more established everybody wanted to cross it.

MC: What made you join a major label instead of remaining independent?

Uchis: I didn’t have any way to record music at the level I wanted to. I had no way to get studio time, so for me it felt like my only option at that point in my life. I feel like the only people who can remain independent are usually when you have some type of support or you have somebody who has money that’s able to fund what you got going on. 

MC: Looking back at your career, would do anything different?

Uchis: There is so much I would do differently, honestly. I think I would definitely work on developing myself more as an artist privately before putting everything on the internet. Even though that is how my fans first found out about me, I just didn’t realize at the time that’s what people do. People develop themselves as artists first. I started performing when I barely had one or two songs out, so I feel like I spent a lot of time working harder instead of smarter. 

MC: What was your best career move?

Uchis: Staying true to myself. Not compromising my sound or my brand or who I am or anything. That’s the reason why my fans connected with me in the first place, they can feel it’s very much me, all of it.

MC: You have had a busy year, what else do you have coming up?

Uchis: I’m going to drop a new single by the time your interview comes out, it has El Alfa and JT (from City Girls).

MC: That’s so cool, what is it called?

Uchis: It’s called “Muñekita.” It was really fun for me because I don’t really slip into that sound as much. It feels like when you’re in a room with all your cousins taking turns doing little dance battles. It’s that type of energy. I wanted it to feel like a party, so that’s why I put El Alfa. I feel like he’s classic for that summer sound, I just love his energy on the song. Then I was like “We need one more person, we need a girl” and I feel like JT was perfect because she’s coming out into her own as a solo artist this year. I felt like bringing two artists together who are from such different worlds is always exciting for me. I don’t think anyone would expect me and JT to make a song together, or me and El Alfa to make a song together, or even more me, Alfa and JT. It is such a random combination and I feel like stuff like that is fun and exciting. •

Contact ethan.jacobs@sacksco.com, reid.kutrow@sacksco.com

And yet it’s true. The unassumingly handsome Illinois native’s barrel-aged vocals struck an instant chord with listeners when he shared a single verse through social media. Listeners practically demanded he give them more. Overnight, Zimmerman went from making car-tuning videos to pursuing music as an occupation.

Perhaps as important as his voice and artistic presence is Zimmerman’s pure heart. In an industry where calculated artifice thrives, the budding superstar possesses an innocence that’s beyond rare. Audiences clearly sense his realness and no-bull nature, critical character qualities in the country genre. Despite his rapidly building fame, it appears Zimmerman isn’t about to forget who he is or where he came from. 

That said, he’s also standing on the precipice of mega-stardom. Religiously. The Album., Zimmerman’s full-length debut, was released on May 12th. He has performed at CMA Fest and opened for Morgan Wallen. Next year, he’ll be doing an international tour with stops in England, Scotland and Ireland, in addition to major North American cities. Things are about to change in a big way for this diamond in the rough. MC spoke with Zimmerman about discovering his artistry, industry advice (both giving and receiving), plus his musical influences.

Music Connection: You’ve blown up fast. You’re 23, right? 

Bailey Zimmerman: Yes, sir.

MC: How have you had to adjust?

BZ: I’ve gotten used to everything as I’m going. Getting blown up is kind of like living in the biggest small town. When I lived in my small town, my truck was known to everybody. Everybody would swarm up and want to talk. It’s kind of like that if you timesed it by the world. 

MC: Why was TikTok the social media platform that worked for you?

BZ:I started watching TikTok just because everybody was [saying], “You need to get TikTok.” So, I started watching. I followed people like Zach Bryan and TooTurntTony. At the time, my buddies were all doing TikTok [videos.] And I was like, all right, I’ll try to do TikTok. So, I built my own lifted truck. I always wanted to build one, but never had the money. Somehow, I got some money, so I built one with my brother. I started filming it and putting it on TikTok.

I was in my brother’s shop listening to “Stay” by Black Stone Cherry and tried to sing it. I’d sing in the truck and shit. I thought everybody could sing. You just sing it like they do. I put it on Snapchat, because I thought maybe I would get some girls. [Songwriter] Gavin Lucas, his dad drove my bus when I was a kid, so I’ve known him. He said, “I didn’t know you sang.” I said, “Me, neither. I just tried yesterday.” He’s like, “Everybody’s been sending around that video. You want to listen to the songs I’ve written?”

We got together, and two or three weeks after that we sat down in my uncle’s body shop. He goes, “You think you can write a song?” And I was like, “Yeah, dude. I think I could.” So, we wrote the first verse of my first song, “Never Coming Home,” and videoed it. I listened to it over and over, because I was so pumped. I wrote a dang song! I got home and called Gavin. It was one or two in the morning. “Hey, man. Do you care if I post this on TikTok?” The next day, my phone was going crazy. This is about five hours since it had been posted and it had almost two million views. 

MC: How did you wind up at Warner Music?

BZ: That’s a crazy story. I almost signed this real bad deal in Miami that would’ve ruined my career before it even started. But before that, I was singing for maybe a month and “Never Coming Home” had millions of streams. This dude Rohan [Kohli], that is an A&R at Warner Nashville, DMed me. I didn’t know what the hell Warner was. He goes, “We’d love to have you down here for a meeting.” I hung up the phone and was like, “I wonder what they want to have a meeting about.”

Drew Baldridge is a country artist who had some hits back in the day. He’d been mentoring me for the last couple weeks. I called him and said, “I’m going to Nashville.” He said, “What for?” I said, “I’m meeting with some company. Warner or some shit.” And he’s like, “Warner Nashville?” “Yeah, I think that’s what it is. They want to have burgers.” He said, “You’re meeting with one of the biggest labels in the world.” I’m like, “Badass. What does that mean?” I met with Cris Lacy and Rohan. Best burger I ever had. 

I paid my mom back. She gave me $1,500, because I didn’t have no money. I said, “Mom, I quit my job. I’m going to be a singer.” I put my phone in her face. “Look, this song is going big.” It was the day it came out. I quit my job the day the song was put on TikTok. I was like, “If you give me $1,500, I think I can be a country artist. I just need $1,500 so I can record this song for $3,000.” 

MC: You hadn’t performed.

BZ: No, I’d never performed. I didn’t even know if I was going to be an artist. [Laci and Kohli] said, “What are you going to do? Write more songs?” I said, “I guess. I don’t know if I can.” And it’s worked out since. 

MC: What made Warner Music win the bidding war?

BZ: Everybody wanted to go with UMG, and I wanted to go with Warner. I loved the way Cris treated me. I get on the call day of decision. “Bailey, where do you want to be, label-wise?” My manager, Chief [Zaruk], had done this before with Nickelback and Florida Georgia Line. I was scared to go against what he was wanting. But I grew some nuts and said, “I want to go with Warner, because Cris has treated me with nothing but respect. It feels like Warner is more of a family and they’re going to take care of me.” 

And Chief goes, “We’re glad you said that, because last night we flew in for a meeting with UMG and all they wanted to talk about was fishing stories.” He said, “Cris Lacy called at midnight. She said, I know you’re in town and want to talk to you about Bailey.” So, Chief goes, “Meet us at Miranda’s.” Cris Lacy showed up with a binder full of BZ motives. This is what I want to do. This is what I think he is. I think he can do this. I think he can do that. I think we can change the world. 

I’m getting chills right now. I give it to God. I love my family here. They treat me so damn good. 

MC: You’re in the best place in the world for country songwriters. Did Warner hook you up with cowrites?

BZ: I’ve cowritten, but not with a lot of random people. I usually write with my producer, Austin [Shawn]. I met him when I moved to Nash, because I needed a producer. I kept writing with Gavin Lucas and Austin Shawn for a long time. And then Heath Warren came into the mix for “Rock and a Hard Place” and Jacob Hackworth and Jet Harvey. Chandler Walters is one of my really good writing buddies. Chandler plays steel for ERNEST. He’s 20 years old and the most talented dude. Then Tucker Beathard came and now he’s a part of my writing scene. There’s an artist from TikTok named Matt Schuster I write with. I can’t do, “Hey, at 11:00 AM you’re going to go into this room and write a hit with these people.” I cannot do that.

MC: What’s your writing process? How do songs come out of you?

BZ: It’s usually in the morning. Me and my dog Marley, we’ll do our stretches outside and then I’ll take a shower. And when I’m showering, I’ll throw on lo-fi beats just to get a tempo in my head. Usually, I just think about shit I’m dealing with. That’s kind of where my ideas come from. I’ll get out of the shower and have a melody. 

Then I’ll go to the couch and grab my guitar. If I don’t play a cool riff within the first five minutes, I’ll set it down and won’t write all day. But I’ll know if it’s good, because I’ll play something and go, “All right, there it is.” I’ll get the feel of that chord progression and then start putting the words, melody and thought that I had in the shower into that. 

I’ll write a first verse and maybe a chorus melody, and then I don’t mess with it. I’ll try to get a hook, a first verse with a fire first line, and a vibe for the chorus. And then I take it to the writers I trust. I don’t trust myself to write by myself and not mess it up. I’ve got all these boys that really know how to write songs. Why would I mess around for four hours trying to write a song when they can do it in 20 minutes? 

MC: All your songs are based in real stuff? Nothing is fictional?

BZ: It’s feelings and thoughts. “Fix’n To Break” is like a feeling. It says—are we fixin’ to break up? Are we fixin’ to lose what we’ve built? That one is a real feeling, because it’s so hard to ask that question in a relationship. You’re both thinking it and usually it’s like, “Are we good? Do you not love me anymore?” And then it’s the beginning of the end. 

Every song I sing, I relate to or I wouldn’t sing it. I don’t think they could come off as sincere if I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t have that punch.

MC: You’re playing Fenway.

BZ: We’re going to play Fenway. We played MGM [Music Hall at Fenway] with Parker McCollum, which was badass. But then we go back with Morgan [Wallen]. 

MC: What’s it like playing venues of that size?

BZ: Just like playing anywhere else. My stomach hurts like a mother trucker before I go on. And then about two lines into “Religiously,” I feel really good. I’m ready to jump around. It’s fun as hell. It’s something I’ll never take for granted. Waking up every day and getting to play shows like that is the reason you do music. It’s the craziest feeling.

MC: Your album has two songs that are on your EP.

BZ: Three songs from the EP are on the album. “Fall In Love,” “Where It Ends,” and “Rock and a Hard Place.” 

MC: Why are they on there?

BZ: Just because they’ve been such a big part of me. “Rock and a Hard Place” is what I am. This is the reason I’m doing what I’m doing. “Fall In Love” is the reason I’m doing what I’m doing. “Where It Ends.” Man, that song came so easy to me. I just felt like there’s no way it can’t be on the record. And it’s such a bop. They’re all cool songs that fit into the album very well.

MC: You’ve got a bunch of videos. On “Never Leave” you do a bit of acting. Did you take lessons? 

BZ: No.

MC: Do you want to act?

BZ: Yeah. I’ve never acted before. I just took what I saw in movies and tried to do it myself. I do want to act, though. To be on Yellowstone or some shit would be really cool, to be a cowboy or something. I think I could crush it, baby.

MC: What did it mean to you to play the Grand Ole Opry?

BZ: Honestly, I didn’t even know what the Opry was. When I came to Nash, I learned quickly. I made sure I knew what I was talking about, but I didn’t know before 2021. 

MC: Do you have musical influences?

BZ: A lot of old rock is kind of my thing. Obviously, country. Like Craig Campbell, “Outskirts of Heaven.” Craig Morgan, “Wake Up Lovin’ You.” Great song. FGL [Florida Georgia Line], “Cruise.” I listened to a lot of that stuff. But when I was younger, my mom was a rocker, so we didn’t listen to country music. We listened to Linkin Park, Tesla, Hinder, Nickelback, Three Days Grace, Three Doors Down… There are so many. Puddle of Mudd, Velvet Revolver…

MC: You could’ve been a rock guy.

BZ: I wanted to, at first. Now that I’ve learned who I am as an artist, I don’t want to do that anymore. But I wouldn’t mind doing it a little bit. Like, if me and HARDY came up with some crazy rock thing, that would be a lot of fun.

MC: You could pull a Garth Brooks and switch it up.

BZ: I would. I’d do it, too. I had a song called “Change” that was basically Nickelback. I could do rock stuff. It’s just tough on your voice.

MC: Do you have advice for artists?

BZ: If it seems too be too good to be true, it’s probably too good to be true. A lot of people out there are going to blow smoke up your ass. They’re going to tell you one thing and mean something else. And they’re going to give you the runaround. 

You have to be your own best cheerleader. You have to be the one saying, “You can do it. Your songs are good enough. You’re good enough.” Because nobody is going to champion you until you champion yourself. If I wouldn’t have believed in myself, I wouldn’t have gone nowhere. 

I got to hang out with Colin Stough from American Idol today. I was trying to give him insight. I’m a straight shooter and see shit for what it is. There’s a lot of sketchy-ass stuff in this business. A lot of people will make you believe something and it’s not really that. They give you the runaround. You sign and then you’re fucked for however many years. One of my buddies, he just got out of his deal. It’s been four years where he couldn’t release any music, because they had him so tied down. 

Don’t be too quick to give everything away. I had to, because of what was going on. I had to have a label. But if you ain’t got a couple singles popping through TikTok, don’t be signing record deals, because you won’t make money for a long time. 

MC:It sounds like you dodged a bullet with that deal in Florida.

BZ: They were going to give me $20,000 for 87% of my masters. And they were like, “We’re going to give you an apartment. We’ll get you a brand-new Range Rover.” And it’s like, hold the fuck on. I called Chief from my front porch. He’s like a dad to me now. I said, “What’s a 360?” My thought was a 360 deal means they take care of all my stuff. That’s not what a 360 deal is. I said, “You’re telling me I can sign with you AND a label?” And he’s like, “Yes, dude, you HAVE to sign with me, because I’m not going to let a label take advantage of you. And first order of business is you’re not signing that damn deal.” 

MC: You could fight and win, but then you’d be indebted to lawyers.

BZ: There are some shady people out there, man. Being self-aware is one of the biggest things. Who are you around? What are they talking about? This guy that’s trying to sign you? Watch how he treats that guy who opens the door for him. 

MC: Have you met artists who’ve given you advice?

BZ: Morgan [Wallen] gives me advice all the time. I was talking to him about how I don’t want to take an advance for my tour, because they’re going to make more money in the backend. “Should I tell them I don’t want any money up front and just bet on myself?” He said, “Absolutely.” 

ERN[EST] had one of my favorite mottos ever. I was having a hard day. He said, “Take your shoes off.” “What the fuck is that going to do?” And he’s like, “Take your shoes off and stand in the grass. Just chill out.” I’ll go outside and sit in the grass for 30 minutes praying, talking to God. That’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever heard—“Take your shoes off.” It grounds you and puts you back on earth. 

Contact Mary Catherine Rebrovick / Warner Music Nashville

615-585-4521, marycatherine@wmg.com

    Just for fun, the two began recording songs independently. They eventually uploaded their creations onto YouTube and SoundCloud, where the unknown players developed an instant and unexpected following. This development was particularly surprising considering the act’s left-of-center creative perspective. Incorporating elements of disparate genres such as electronica, folk, and reggae into their sound, Milky Chance’s concoctions are as confounding as they are catchy and effervescent. Their video for first single “Stolen Dance” subsequently earned millions of views and garnered accolades from the press. The song topped the charts throughout Europe during 2013. 

    Fast forward to today. The unlikely stars continue to rack up listens on Spotify. Their fame stretches around the globe, from the European Union to Mexico, Australia and beyond. By way of expanding their sound, Rehbein and Dausch added Antonio Greger and Sebastian Schmidt to the mix. Happily, these new additions are also friends from the same school where they met.

    Milky Chance just released a fourth album, Living In a Haze. Featuring guest appearances by Canadian vocalist Charlotte Cardin and Malian musician Fatoumata Diawara, the disc is brimming with idiosyncratic lyrics over gently burbling beats that are both strange and oddly familiar. Every track works its way slowly into your subconscious. Like a lightning bolt from out of nowhere, there comes the sudden realization you’re hooked.

    Lead singer Rehbein opened up with Music Connection at the start of the band’s most ambitious tour ever. The moment was also shortly before the new disc dropped, infusing the chat with undeniable electricity. Throughout the conversation, Rehbein’s amiable personality shone through, and his candid demeanor shed light on exactly what it means to spearhead a musical phenomenon the entire globe is clamoring over.

Music Connection: Congratulations on the release of your new album. You must be excited for people to hear it. Does it ever get less thrilling? What’s different about releasing an album this time around?

Clemens Rehbein: We know the situation, because it is our fourth album. But we still have the thrill. It’s always exciting to share new music with people. Every album means a lot to us and so does this one. It’s always lovely to see the fans’ reactions to new music. That always makes us really happy and grateful.

MC: Were you surprised by the positive reaction you got early in your career, especially from the press? 

Rehbein: During that time, a lot of things happened. It was only years later that we realized what really happened and what all that means. In the early years, we were overwhelmed from time to time. It’s easier in retrospect to understand what happened to us, you know?

MC: It’s got to take a bit of adjusting.

Rehbein:Yeah, definitely. It was kind of crazy, because in the beginning we didn’t have any vision or ideas of being a band. We were just recording these songs for fun. It got big very quick, so we had to grow with it. But right now, we feel like we are in a good state. Over the years, we went our path and found our identity as a band. 

MC:As Germans, why did you decide to sing in English?

Rehbein: That wasn’t even a decision, actually. I think mainly it was because 95% of the music we listened to was English. When you listen to English music and songs, you learn what people say, how you can say things in songs and all that. It’s the same with language. If you’re surrounded by Spanish, you’ll probably learn to speak Spanish. 

But also, I felt like it’s easier to write in English. It sounds way better. German is a tough language to write lyrics, even poetry. It sounds harsh sometimes. English is way more soft. It’s probably one of the most used languages in music. That was just the way to do it for us. It felt natural somehow.

MC: English lyrics are probably more marketable than German lyrics.

Rehbein: Of course. It makes it way easier. 

MC: When you write, do you start with lyrics or beats? And how do you bring them together?

Rehbein: It can change from song to song, but mainly we start with the music. Then, the lyrics come right with it. Most of the time when we meet in the studio, we either have an idea of something, whether it’s a chord progression, a rhythm, a melody or something like that. And then we start jamming a bit. When we’re trying to find melodies and all that, we start mumbling. Not actual words, but then there’s words coming. And within that process, you maybe find one line or sentence and go from there. 

Then it all happens at the same time. Sometimes, we build a beat. We play with the guitar while singing some fancy words and the lyrics come out. With one song on the new album, “Golden,” Philipp had a lyric, so we started with that. But then also we went from there and started with the music right away. 

MC: When you’re writing, do you think about synchronization possibilities? Can you write a song to get placed in a movie or a commercial?

Rehbein: I don’t think so. We never have anything in mind except the music itself. We’re driven by being in the moment. We work intuitively, so whatever comes out, whatever feels right, is what we go for. We never go into the studio and say, “Maybe we should write a song about this and it should sound like that.” We just see what takes us.

MC: Your music has all kinds of influences. One that people often mention is reggae. Do you agree that’s part of your musical DNA?

Rehbein: That’s definitely one part of our DNA. We love to listen to reggae music. Right now, I’m listening to lots of roots reggae, like in the last few weeks. Not more than other genres, I would say. We just love music in general. We listen to so many different kinds of music and love getting inspired by it. I think that’s what music is about. We never felt like going in just one direction. There is so much out there, and you want to let it in and do something with that. And I think that’s beautiful. There are so many genres coming from different countries. It connects us in a good way. So, we’re influenced by many different styles. But also reggae.

MC: What would you classify your music as?

Rehbein: We would probably never put it anywhere. Genres help to describe a little bit, to get an idea of it. But also nowadays, I feel like genres are not as clear and strong as back in the day. Boundaries are really fading, in a positive way. I love that. 

It is like a mixture between analog and digital music. That’s what we always say. It’s influenced by many genres, like folk music, singer-songwriter and reggae music, music that you don’t program. But we’re also deeply influenced by electronic music and all that. And we’re always trying to merge that together somehow. We love that, moving between analog and digital. 

It’s also something that we’re coming from, because the internet came up when we were 10 or something. We were born in more of an analog century and then moved into the new digital age. And we feel at home with both of these. I think you can hear that in our music.

MC: Yeah, genres should be mixed. How did the pandemic affect the band? It didn’t seem to slow you down any. You recorded plenty during that time.

Rehbein: For us, it actually was good somehow. Talking from a privileged position, we didn’t have any financial struggles or anything like that. That is very lucky. And we kind of took a break that we probably wouldn’t have taken. Creatively, it was good for us, because we had time to calm down and go to the studio daily. We really dived into the creative process and creating music. Without having any schedule or touring plans felt freeing for us. That was helpful, to be creative and try new things. It brought us to where we are now. 

MC: What about virtual reality? Are you interested in using that? Are there other ways you want to use technology to enhance the Milky Chance experience?

Rehbein: That’s an interesting question. I’m not that into VR. Our music is influenced by studio technology. But besides that, we are very analog dudes. We love doing things with our hands, like craftsmanship. Of course, we do socials and stuff like that, but we’re not very much into [technology].

MC: Have you been following what’s going on with AI? Do you worry about that? 

Rehbein: We’ve discussed that a lot within the band. We’ve had several discussions about AI technology and how it will or can change society in ways we don’t even know about yet or that we cannot imagine right now. I think there are going to be potentially so many jobs replaced by AI. It feels like there will be such a big step in that technology that we, as human beings, really have to roll with it. Everybody’s trying out what AI can do. To me, it is frightening and also mind-blowing. It will open a lot of discussions on many levels, social and ethical. What do you think about it?

MC: I think it has a place in creativity. Art that’s created by AI is just as legitimate as art created by humans. But it’s going to create confusion to where nobody knows what’s real anymore.

Rehbein: It’s a dangerous thing. If you look back in history, people have always used inventions in the wrong way. And I think you can use AI as a weapon on many levels. That frightens me. It’s more about how people deal with it, not the technology itself. Because you could do great things with it, really use it as a tool to fix things. But this is not how the world is, unfortunately. There will be people misusing it, probably.

MC: Tell us about your Milky Change initiative. How are you working to create less of a carbon footprint?

Rehbein: It’s not only about reducing our footprint, which is hard to do on tour. That is something we had to learn. First, it’s about putting the topic on the agenda and having a dialogue with other people working in the environmental area. For us, it’s just using our platform to inform about the issues. And of course, we’re trying to make steps, but we also limit it in a way, especially when we’re talking about going on tour. But we’re trying to do better and do things differently. It’s all about making progress. 

MC: You’ve got someone spearheading your strategy for being environmentally conscious.

Rehbein: Yeah, it was the end of 2019 when we hired a new member on our team. Since then, she’s been our sustainability manager. In the beginning, it was a lot of analyzing. Like, if we want to reduce our footprint, first we have to know how it works. If we look at one show, what is creating the footprint? The fan travel, our travel, the power supply of the venue... So that was interesting. It was really digging deep into numbers and all of that. And learning from that, trying to adjust where we can. 

It’s not easy, especially when you’re touring internationally. There’s no other way to travel than by plane. And there’s no sustainable way of flying. You can buy carbon offsets. That’s a little step, but of course it doesn’t make the carbon footprint better.

MC: What can artists do to make themselves more environmentally conscious?

Rehbein: The most important thing is to speak about it. That’s also something we do. Every artist has its tour rider and we created our green rider. It says no plastic back stage, local organic catering, all that. Also, reaching out to the venues. If they supply electricity, where is it from? Is it a sustainable source, green electricity and all that? Venues probably will not change that fast, but if more and more artists demand it kindly, the whole touring industry will start thinking about it. 

We feel like we just joined a community, because we’re not pioneers. There are artists that have been around for 20 years being environmental activists, using their reach and platforms to talk about it. And I think the more we artists do that, we put more and more attention to it. There’s less time [than ever before] to make big steps and we need politics to do that, otherwise it will take forever. So, the most important thing is to speak about it, build a big discussion and amplify.

MC: How do you stay fit on the road? What’s your strategy for staying healthy?

Rehbein: Trying to eat healthy is important. Take a walk outside. Do sports or yoga. Take care of your body, which also is important for your mental health. We’re lucky, because we all know each other from high school. We’re close friends. So, if someone’s not feeling good, we can talk about it. Whatever it is, we talk about it. We have a safe space for us and help each other. 

Also, we’ve known our crew for years, so it really is like a big family. It’s very intimate and we’re all close. We know each other well. We’re in this together. We’re like a community and help each other out if things are not easy. I think that also is a big part of it.

MC: Are there times when you get on each other’s nerves during a long tour? How do you work that out?

Rehbein: Not dramatically. If someone needs some space, we all feel that. You can always take a walk or do stuff on your own. I think that’s the way to do it. We never fight or anything. We get along well.

MC: What’s your advice to younger musicians?

Rehbein: We don’t like giving advice because, though we’re all aiming at the same target, there are individual ways to get there. Sometimes, this feels right for this person. And that is the right thing to do for this person. But for the other person, maybe, it is totally the opposite. There’s not only one way. For example, being successful. What is success? For some people, success means something different than for others. 

So, giving advice is hard. But for us, it has always been important to trust our intuition, especially when we make music. The music that we do has to feel good. It has to feel right. It has to be the music that we want to do. We have to feel comfortable with it. 

Music has been our passion and still is. Creating and making music gives us a good feeling and we always try to keep in that space. Of course, there are people on the outside having opinions and all that. Critics and hearing other people’s opinions can be helpful sometimes. But also trust yourself.

MC: What’s it like trying to break an American audience?

Rehbein: It just happened to us. We were never like, “We want to tour in the U.S. one day.” It was more like, at the end of 2014, we got so much attention that came to us and we just took the opportunity.

Contact Rachel Jacobs - Shore Fire Media, rjacobs@shorefire.com; James Rainis - Shore Fire Media, jrainis@shorefire.com; Milkychance.net

As improbable as that combination seems, when it comes to the annual Keeping The Blues Alive Foundation cruise hosted by the guitar phenom, the thematic refrain revolves around expecting the unexpected. The same can be said for Joe’s career.

Picking up his first guitar at the age of 4, and playing chords by age 6, Bonamassa was sitting in with the best in the business by 12 (including B.B. King, Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker). His objective at the time was to raise money for his first Fender amplifier (as a collector, he now owns over 400 amps and 400 guitars).

Having worked with various groups, and playing diverse genres to find himself artistically, Bonamassa’s music always returns to the blues and—without ever having a hit single (and not yet a household name, despite releasing 48 albums since 2000)—he holds the record for the most No. 1 albums on Billboard’s Blues Albums chart. With an upcoming 26-date U.S. Fall Tour, and the recent release of a special edition Fender amp, he joins Herbie Hancock for the L.A. Phil Jazz Series at the Hollywood Bowl in August.

Music Connection recently sat down aboard ship with the busy Bonamassa, for the following Q&A.

Music Connection: What is it about the blues, in particular, that pulls at your heartstrings? 

Joe Bonamassa: It’s kind of where it starts and ends. We’ve been on so many different musical journeys over the years. When I write a song that’s a little out of my wheelhouse or genre, I always go, “Well, how do we make this bluesier?”—it defaults to that always. The thing about blues is the definition is so vast; everything fits under that giant umbrella that we’ve defined. There are people who think I have no blues in me, and that’s okay. My thing about the blues is we always have to be open-minded, because there’s so many different ways you can infuse it into music. It’s really kind of a blank slate to paint on. 

MC: Absolutely. Let’s talk about the cruise and the KTBA Foundation. Was it something you always wanted to do? 

JB: The Foundation was founded in 2011. Our fortunes had turned and we wanted to give back. It started humbly with $10,000, and we were giving away checks to schools for instruments and supplies. During the pandemic, we pivoted to raise money for musicians who got the rug ripped out from under them. Show simple proof that you had some dates canceled in 2020, and we had a $1,500 check for you. That’s when we started raising hundreds of thousands. There were government grants available with a lot of red tape you had to wade through. We didn’t want to do that. 

I was in the airport around the GRAMMYs and saw a friend who had won. He came up to me to say that he had applied to the Fueling Musicians thing and wanted to thank me. That’s why I do all of this. It’s why we work so hard on this cruise: for those unseen benefits that happen. Here’s a kid in his 20s. $1,500 for him will move the needle. […] It’s the thing I’m most proud of in all of this—in my entire career—the fact that we were able to raise money. We had corporate sponsors and I put in 50 thousand of my own money. We had stream-a-thons, too, which was great. Artists would donate their music, filming in their pajamas like everybody else, and we put together sessions so people could donate. The first one raised $125,000, which was awesome. Of course, charity fatigue sets in, and now we’re back to the boat. 

MC: So, musical impact aside, is this your legacy work? 

JB: It is. Our business model is the legacy. There’s no real hit song per se. There are hits among the fans, but it’s not playing on classic radio every day. If you build it, they will come. If you do it the right way, and not try to skip steps, you’ll have a long-lasting career. It was brick and mortar: brick by brick, fan by fan, gig by gig. 

MC: Backing up to 2015, when you did the first cruise, what has changed? 

JB: We’ve perfected the fan experience in the sense that, on the first one, all of these things were kind of new. KISS was out, I think Kid Rock was doing one of these—it’s the same boat. There were less of them when we got involved. They convinced me the first year that it was in my best interest, the fans’ best interest, to line everybody up for four hours and meet every single person on the boat. It wasn’t fun for them. It wasn’t fun for me. Everybody got seasick, and it was four hours of just life. I’m not meeting you; I’m just standing there and I’m alive, you know? So, we stopped that. I’m trying to do more activities that reach the fans. 

MC: A lot of people say they were addicted after their first cruise and they return every year. They say the experience and the interaction they get is really organic. They love that they can just speak to the human side of their idols. 

JB: They’re really good about that. I can just go into the restaurants and say “Thanks for coming.”

MC: Now that most musicians are back working, the fundraising is focused back on school programs. How do schools hear about you?

JB: It’s a word-of-mouth thing. With schools, there is so much red tape now to even accept money from people. Our team does a really good job and, every once in a while, I’ll see someone from the Foundation pop up at a school with a check for them. The whole Foundation has taken on a life of its own. It’s good work. If you have a guitar program of 20 guitars and 19 of them are missing strings, rusted and unplayable, trying to get $200 worth of guitar strings would take forever through the bureaucracy. That $200 in guitar strings—by the time everyone voices their opinion—will probably cost $10,000 in sweat equity.

MC: So, was the label a natural evolution? Was that always part of it? 

JB: We did Reese’s [Wynans] record in 2017. We were just going to put it on J&R Adventures and I had just started producing records (Reese got me into it). Josh [Smith] and I are in the studio with Joanna Connor, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Jimmy Hall and Larry McCray, Mike Zito, and Mark Broussard. For me, it’s all or nothing. When I get into something, I’ll do six a year. 

MC: I’ve noticed that, a pattern of “to the wall”?

JB: It’s obsession. We decided to put a charitable spin on the thing. If you’re making blues records in 2023, you’re guaranteed to make a small fortune by starting with a large one because nobody’s buying music. But that’s not why we do this. With  Larry McCray, we went up to Bay City, Michigan. The guy’s got no gigs, nothing going on, because his manager kind of kept him down for years. His manager died and he’s been on our list for years. How does this happen to a person who is so deserving, so freaking talented, so good? He’s a sweetheart, but he’s a badass. I said, “Larry, do you want to make a record?” and he said, “Yeah, I’ve just been waiting for somebody to give me an opportunity.” 

It’s the same thing with Joanna Connor. I’m at Kingston Mines [blues club] in Chicago and said, “I’m tired of seeing you on YouTube. I’m tired of seeing Slash saying ‘This is my favorite new discovery’ on YouTube.” She’s been in the scene 35 years. 

Same thing with Joanne Shaw Taylor, she’s been kind of skipped around. She was on Sony in the U.K. and was just never serviced the right way business-wise. Jimmy Hall sang with us down at the Ryman in 2020. He said, “Man, I’m going to be 70 years old and I still sing like a bird. Would you make a record?” I said “Yeah, let’s do it.”

MC: So, each artist was someone you worked with, or found along the way, and kept tabs on?

JB: Once we started this thing, people started knocking on the door. We’ve turned down more people than we’ve done, for the simple reason that the artist has to have a couple of things (like Eric Gales’ willingness to work with us), understanding that we’re going to do things differently than he or she has done in the past. I don’t care if you play with everybody. I need you to sing and I need songs—that moves the needle. If you can sing your ass off, and can deliver a good song, that immediately brings you up steps on the ladder. If it’s just another showcase of your prowess on the guitar or whatever, it’s just the same thing you’ve been doing. Some people just want the “Instagram moment.” It’s not worth their time or mine if we’re not going to really focus on moving them in their career. If you can make two consecutive great records, then you really get traction. 

    You don’t have to place first in American Idol. A lot of guitar players and people in the genre are reluctant singers. I was one of them until I met Kevin Shirley. Whether you like my voice or not, I’ve really applied myself and learned how to sing. The thing about all of that is when I’m in the room as a producer with Josh [Smith], there are people I’ve had to really sing the lines to and I’ll say, “Let me cut it—you sing to me.” We’ve done it that way and all of them have come out better vocalists. I had one singer tell me they normally get this stuff in two takes. I said, “Great. You give me two great takes, we’re good. You give me two shitty takes, we’re going to go 15 deep.” I know when it’s the right project when I want it more for them than they do. 

MC: Your production is really powerful. Talk to me about your team…

JB: I mean, it takes a village. 

MC: It does. But you’ve been with Kevin [Shirley] for a while and you’ve had your differences. What is it that keeps your relationship going? 

JB: We disagree like family members. I gave him my word. I told him that once we got established and started doing these things, he would produce everything until I retire, and that’s it. That’s what keeps us going. Kevin has my number. He knows when I get lazy, he knows what I’m capable of, and he wants it more for me than I do. 

MC: So that’s where you get it from?

JB: That’s where I got it from. I learned all my production techniques from him and Tom [Dowd]. Those were the two mentors. Tom produced my first solo album, and I watched him in the studio working with us. It was a collegiate-level course on life and music. I saw the same things in Kevin. Kevin is the best musician in the room, no matter who’s in the room. He may not know the numbers, but he hears it. He knows when it’s grooving and when it’s not, and he knows how to fix it. We have this great relationship [of] almost 20 years. 

MC: For artists who follow your career, what advice might you give them? 

JB: If you don’t bet on yourself consistently, how is anybody ever going to bet on you? Have that confidence and say, “I’m going to rent the room and I’m going to put my show on, regardless if I’m invited or not.” That’s been our mantra for 16 years—we’re going to bet on ourselves. A lot of artists are scared to do that because they want a guarantee, so their careers get truncated based on the whims of others. If you’re hot, everybody takes your phone call. The minute you sell one less ticket on a Tuesday night, one less record, or the next big thing comes in, the machine gets behind that. You got famous, [but] you’re like, “Wait a minute, what happened?” You got left behind. The music business slowly phased you out and you didn’t even know it because you were too busy trying to ingratiate yourself into a system that had no interest in your career. That’s a life lesson for a lot of people. So why not just bet on yourself? If you win, you’re going to win big. If you take a hit, okay, but at least you did it on your own terms. Learn how to market your gigs. It doesn’t cost much—everybody’s got a phone, an Instagram page.

MC: So where does that fearless mindset come from? I mean, the Royal Albert Hall show…?

JB: That was the bar mitzvah. It was a very strange kind of trajectory. We came in at the very end of pre-social media, so my first records were marketed in a very traditional way. People had heard of me from my first band, but it was just small pockets. We had initially very little success in the U.S. We would go into towns and we’d have to market this thing. We had 20 people, played our asses off and got 50, had 50 people to get 100… the word-of-mouth spread organically. When we hit Europe in 2002, there was instantly natural name recognition, meaning there were 200 people as a baseline, then 300. We’re in Europe and England with these crowds because I was playing British blues. I thought everybody played like Peter Green and Eric Clapton, [but] nobody was doing it—they were doing Stevie [Ray Vaughan] stuff. It’s a bunch of fedoras and Strat guys, so I come in with a Les Paul and this kind of throwback to the sixties British blues boom, and I cut right through. I had my own lane immediately. By 2009, we had worked the market to the point where we could do one show in the country—at Albert Hall. Mr. Clapton comes, we’re on PBS, and we’re off to the races. It was the watershed moment, but even on that PBS special, it wasn’t PBS doing it. That was us. We put all of our money in. 

The DVD came out and did okay, and then a PBS affiliate in Albany asked for a one-hour edit. They were raising a record amount of money because, in 2010, I was by far the edgiest thing on PBS. It would have been Lawrence Welk, the Celtic Women, Reading Rainbow—and this guy. It was also a perfect storm because cable was changing. It was on big-time TV. We found out extremely fast the power of television. This is the break we’d been waiting for. We went from selling 750 tickets to 3,000, in one year. It was the thing we always hoped would happen, but we also kept ourselves in the game and kept positive, [knowing] eventually we were going to figure out something that’s gonna connect. 

MC: So, was it always “Say yes and figure it out”?

JB: It was always [about] reinvesting in our business. We started in 2005 with four long shows. We bet all our proceeds from that tour on funding the two shows at the very end to see how it would go. We did Jacksonville, Florida, and we did Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the biggest offer I could get in Fort Wayne was $4,000. We did the same 1,200 people in the Embassy Theater that we were doing in the club, and we made $25,000. All through the years, we were just reinvesting in our business.

By 2010, we were promoting our own shows worldwide. I don’t have a booking agent. Promoters and agents will make you think putting on a concert is as complex as splitting the atom. It really isn’t. Our biggest obstacle in theaters and performing arts centers is Broadway. Hamilton will take two weeks, so the routing is very complicated sometimes. We book things far out. I think we have schedules up to summer of next year, with holds on venues. 

MC: Blues is very traditional in its roots, and you strike me as very much a purist. Where do you think music is going? Do you see yourself moving with it, or standing firm? 

JB: I think you’re going to start seeing people come out who had decent careers but who weren’t great songwriters all of a sudden having this metamorphosis. You’re going to see AI get involved, and there’s going to be people like myself who say, “I don’t care how shitty my song is, it was written by this human—and only this human.” 

MC: So, you’re putting your flag in the ground? 

JB: I’m sticking the flag in the ground. It’s a personal integrity issue for me. There are great songwriters in every generation, and they all have a certain personality, but AI is going to get really dicey. You’re going to see singer-songwriters who—and it’s not their fault if they decide to—check their integrity at the door. They’re just desperate to get a break. I understand that, but you’re going see people asking where did this song come from? “Oh, you know, I just locked myself in a cabin with my computer.” 

I always say, “Man, I’m 46 this year. Whether I live to 85 or 100, I’m checking out right at the right time. This world’s going to get really crazy in the next 40 years.” What happens if your favorite album… [it] turns out some computer wrote it? Is it plagiarism? I don’t know. Who owns the IP? 

The big data conspiracy theorist in me says, if I say, “Hey ChatGPT, go write me the best Joe Bonamassa song of all time,” and out comes “The Somber Ballad of Jonathan Henry II.” I write that song, put it out, it sells millions of records and wins all the GRAMMYs. Somebody who chooses to access the data goes, “Hey, I have your search engine and our algorithm wrote that for you.” Is that a Milli Vanilli situation where you have to give the GRAMMY back? We’re about to head into some very uncharted waters. The easiest thing to avoid that is to write your own damn song and just try to write the best songs you can. Not everybody is Bob Dylan. 

MC: Looking back, what would you say is your best advice? 

JB: Never compromise. If you know you’re good at something—it may not be the hippest thing—be the best damn accordion player in the world! If you’re rocking the sousaphone and have that drive and that thing, be the best damn sousaphone player in the world, or at least be the most enthusiastic—and be an entertainer. People lose sight of what business we’re in. I’m not a guitar player, a singer, or a songwriter. Those are tranches in the business. It doesn’t matter how good my guitar playing is, or how good the songs are if I just stand up there in my flannel shirt, stare at my shoes, and it’s boring?! 

Contact Jon Bleicher at Prospect PR, jon@prospectpr.com

Photos by Munachi Osegbu

Just a few years ago, being a Sparks fan was like being in a cult.  Like Jonestown without the Kool-Aid and mass suicide, Sparks attracted different types of fans for different reasons. It depended on when (as in what period of their long and increasingly illustrious career) and where (as in the geographic location ranging from couldn’t get arrested to being all the rage) the listener discovered them, but once initiated, Sparks was everything to all of them. 

The Los Angeles born and raised, UCLA-schooled brothers Ron and Russell Mael were discovered by Todd Rundgren (with whom they still collaborate, just check his last album for “My Fandango”), who in 1972 signed them to the Bearsville label where they put out two records that didn’t exactly make them hometown heroes. Maybe their Cali flavors of post-Beach Boys meets Zappa-adjacent avant-garde meets their Anglophile love of post-British Invasion power pop/psychedelia was too quirky? So, they fled failure and anonymity, went across the Pond, and Being There’d their way into the U.K. glam/glitter scene of Marc Bolan/T-Rex, Sweet, Slade, Queen (and according to MOJO magazine, tried to poach Brian May) and experienced their own version of a Ziggy-meets-Bay City Rollers mania. This is why, back home in L.A., fanatics like Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Go’s, and so many others, thought they were a British band when she established her own Sparks fan club. (A few years later she’d be singing “Cool Places” with them.) 

Sparks’ glitter period is also when future punk rockers like Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols and Siouxsie Sioux of the Banshees fell in love with them. The brothers’ euro-disco/proto-trance/synth-pop records would, uh, spark Joy Division and Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys and Duran Duran and a slew of other Second British Invasion bands. Next, their sojourn in France obviously captivated a young Daft Punk, Air, and they gave hit songs to national favorites, Les Rita Mitsouko. Actually, like Bowie, each of their incarnations yielded another groundswell of future groundbreakers and hitmakers to the point where their impact on rock and pop music is almost incalculable. It’s as if the number of bands Sparks’ve incited outnumbers the people who have even heard of them. 

And the inspiration has never stopped, they surpassed 50 years of their family business as each decade begat new disciples. There is something Rundgren-ish or Zappa-esque about them. On the one hand, an acquired taste, but also so catchy they’re too infectious to dismiss. Yes, they’ve been different things to different people, but more and more they are all things to an increasingly larger group of people who have become obsessed completists. And that probably has much to do with the wild success of Edgar Wright’s 2021 documentary, The Sparks Brothers, where the director was, almost miraculously, able to celebrate the Maels’ eccentricities while emphasizing their accessibility and ubiquity. 

Sparks are not nostalgic, they don’t look back at milestones and accolades. In fact, they are still outdoing themselves at a rate that can almost make them blush. They have wowed audiences at Cannes with their musical film, Annette, and are now back with their 25th album, a serving of art-pop perfection, The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte, the video for the title track featuring Oscar winner and Sparks fan, Cate Blanchett. This month Sparks embark on a world tour which sees them playing prestigious venues like the Royal Albert Hall in the U.K. and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles where they will, undoubtedly, be greeted as the hometown heroes they always were. Who knows, maybe a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction isn’t too much to ask for next?

Music Connection: The Girl is Crying in Her Latte offers new palettes of sounds. Can you talk about how discovering new toys, new gear, new software, new plug-ins, etc. yields new works for Sparks?

Ron Mael: We don’t have to worry about the clock and the time in the studio, because it’s our own time, our own place. Also, we are able to accumulate new sounds through software. In some circumstances we still write the songs in a traditional way–you know, piano and singing–but we are also writing it from an inspiration, from a sound, or something with new software. Russell in particular is always seeking out new software, and it isn’t only to just color a thing after the fact; sometimes it’s something that will inspire you to actually create something new. 

Russell Mael: The most important thing is the song. We had a small studio set up in my place, but we were always dependent on an engineer to come in and use it. At a certain point I thought, I have this equipment sitting here, I should learn how to use it. Over time, I became more self-sufficient, and I became more interested in what’s out there sonically. There’s lots of companies now that have amazing software and sound libraries in all different styles. There are amazing orchestral and synthesizer libraries. 

We’re not purists, either, with synthesizers. We don’t think in terms like “Oh, I’m going analog.” If you can get a sound that is virtually indistinguishable from the hardware version of an instrument, then we don’t see that as cheating. Sonically, when you have to be so purist as to say that it has to be coming from a real Moog as opposed to a real Moog that has been sampled to be used for software, then it becomes a real strange argument as to what is really necessary or better. Also, it’s how you use any of that stuff, whether it’s hardware or software. Because I know some bands using great vintage gear, and in the end it’s “eh uh eh uh” and you go, “Okay, it’s vintage, but so what?”  

Ron: We’ve kept a lot of those old pieces of equipment just because they’re cool. We have the RMI [Electra-Piano] and the Echoplex that we used on the recordings of the first island albums, Kimono My House and Propaganda, and then we have the Roland Jupiter 8’s and the early drum machines, just because you hate to get rid of that stuff, it’s so beautiful and cool. But we like to work fast, and you know there’s tuning and reliability and space issues that makes us think, “Let’s just save those for the museum tour.” 

MC: You’re not hung up on nostalgia, sometimes performing an entire new album before offering the greatest hits. Many bands are afraid of losing the audience to the bathroom break, but it’s like you have the confidence to say, “This is what we’re doing now, come along or get left behind.” 

Russell: We agree totally. If you are shying away from your new material, then there must be some issue with it. There are obviously certain songs that we want to do from the past, that fans expect and enjoy, but we like to balance that with what we are doing now because we’re proud of our new material. I think people come away from Sparks shows, especially new or younger fans who don’t have a reference point of the past, as all of a piece. As opposed to, “Oh I want to hear songs from…” whatever golden era they may think is Sparks’ golden era. 

MC: It’s obvious that the success of Edgar Wright’s The Sparks Brothers doc made the tent bigger for people with no previous reference/access point? 

Russell: He kind of emphasized that Sparks’ history is equally valid throughout our entire career. That there are even albums that went under the radar, but now when you go back to inspect those albums, there were circumstances as to why they were under the radar, as opposed to quality issues. And now we even enjoy doing some of the more obscure songs live, because now in the context of a whole show people have even more difficulty distinguishing what period something is from, because it all sounds like it’s of a piece. 

MC: In a very Bowie-like way you have many incarnations, which at first glance can seem drastic and incongruent, but there’s stuff on the new album that still evokes your first record, so can you talk about that throughline?

Ron: We are fortunate enough that through all things where we kind of soaked up influences, our sensibilities are strong enough, that it’s always going to be us. For better or worse, it’s always going to be the Sparks sensibility in whatever we do, so we’re not afraid of moving in a different direction where we ever lose our way, because we know that the way we think of music and lyrics is always going to be there, in a general sense, and those other things are just a shell around all of those things that we are. 

MC: Can you talk about the astounding feat of performing 21 albums in 21 nights that you did in England back in 2008? 

Russell: It was something that our manager Sue [Harris] had the audacity to come up with.  The concept that was “What could you do for the release of the next album?” Which was Exotic Creatures from the Deep, our 21st album. So, she thought of this idea, what if you do every one of your albums from start to finish—and in order—as kind of a statement. At first, we said, “Oh yeah, it sounds real cool,” but then we got down to the brass tacks about how we were actually going to do that. 

We ended up rehearsing for four months to do those shows, but it’s something we think was an amazing achievement that no other band will ever do—or that even has that many albums—because the amount of focus that you have to have to do that is pretty intense.  It was a really special event, and was also a great leveler, in a way: when you hear all those songs done live, taken away from their recorded versions, it does become like it’s all of a piece, and you see how some albums have slipped by at the time. We thought some of those albums were lesser, just because they didn’t have a massive hit off them, but we heard them again and thought, “There’s nothing wrong with this album at all!” And the people who came to all those shows kind of realized the same thing. There are songs on albums like Introducing Sparks that went under the radar at the time. 

MC: You are with a major label again, Island Records, but have been operating for years as something like The House of Sparks, a boutique production company putting out high-end, curated music, videos, films, collectables, apparel and other merch with a fierce DIY spirit. Can you enlighten us about taking control of your art and brand. 

Russell: In the end, it’s always the first choice to control and present what you’re doing 100 percent the way you want to present it. We, along with Sue our manager, have a pure vision of what Sparks is and should be, and that way you can have things in your own hands. The downside is that sometimes you might not have the infrastructure to get it out to the rest of the world in the way, let’s say, that Island or Universal can do, with their reach. But as far as the actual material that you have and the way you present it, from the packaging and even the videos that we ended up doing on our own, there’s something to be said for having your own autonomy. Then your fate is in your own hands, and it’s something that you can be proud of. Having to be dependent on huge budgets to be able to move is paralyzing, so if you can avoid that there are more ways to work in the music field. 

MC: Sparks also has an impressive social media presence, yes?

Ron: You have to be active in giving people things. Even if it’s not your music. Something. During the pandemic, for better or worse, once a week I did a reading of a song lyric. It wasn’t like we had 10 million people watching it, but it’s trying to maintain a connection with people in a non-traditional way. We are always aware of making albums in the same way that we made albums all through the time, but there has been a huge change in the way that people hear things, and you have to be aware of that and adapt to it. 

MC: Can you talk about signing with Island again after so many years?

Russell: It’s pretty amazing that we signed with Island, who signed Sparks for what became Kimono My House in 1974, the album that really put us on the international scene. They signed a band that was uncompromising in 1974, and now, getting close to a half-century later, they signed Sparks again. But it wasn’t based on nostalgia or “Weren’t they wonderful? Wouldn’t it be nice to have their name around our label?” They responded to what Sparks is doing now musically, and they really love the new album, and that, for us, makes the whole story of being back with Island the most satisfying. It’s that they see the same spirit and adventure that Sparks had in ‘74 now applied in a fresh and new way in 2023 on the new album, so I think it is an amazing story to be back with them. 

MC: Sparks will play the historic Hollywood Bowl in July. As born-and-raised Angelinos, how does it feel to play such a large, legendary venue? 

Russell: Touring has been going up and up for Sparks in the last several years because of this real awareness of the band, due in large part to Edgar Wright and the documentary. And the Annette film was well received around the world. We’ve been able to play to bigger and bigger audiences, so now to be able to play the Hollywood Bowl, especially being from Los Angeles. . . it’s the most iconic venue you can possibly play in L.A., so we’re really excited about that. 

MC: This may be more of an observation, but I’ve noticed about how in the beginning Sparks was a music group that dabbled in art, but by now you’ve become a complete art project that uses music as the vehicle. You are more than a band, you are art.

Ron: When we first started off, we were attempting to emulate bands like The Who and The Kinks, bands that were bands, but ones that had a theatricality that wasn’t present in the L.A. bands. The personalities of the people in the bands gave it a theatricality that’s only there in rock music. Through the years we’ve always felt that the visual side of things is something that is incredibly important. It doesn’t diminish what we were doing musically; to us it’s all part of a piece. 

We’ve always been aware that what we’re doing is not just a traditional rock band, and that we are kinda both in and out of the role of rock musicians. But we’re not doing music from a distance, I mean, we’re totally invested in the kind of music that we like, and we can’t really work in a way that isn’t in some way at least adjacent to rock and pop. We are also aware that we bring additional elements to what we’re doing. You don’t have to be one thing, and that sometimes it causes problems as far as some critics being unable to pigeonhole us with, “What is it?” or “I don’t get it.”  

MC: I’ve heard you talk about being dada, and I see you like musical dada. And with your obsession with cinema, I also see you as being musical cinema, does that make sense?

Ron: We kind of see the songs when we write them in a cinematic way. That doesn’t mean you’re using soundtrack sounds or anything, but they are cinematic in that they are somehow larger than life, and we always felt that that was an essential part of the bands we always started off really admiring early on, and hoping we could kind of continue in that tradition. 

MC: Russell?...

Russell: Ditto. Everything he said. 

Contact Ken Weinstein, Big Hassle Media

weinstein@bighassle.com

Visit allsparks.com; bighassle.com