1 week Ago
Musicians rarely become more prolific with age – but didn’t get the memo. Having broken out of mid-90s Louisiana as a kid guitar slinger, the 47-year-old has just followed up last year’s album with a horn-driven second volume. .
I do feel like I’m on a roll. Like, I have four different albums I’m working on right now. I look at the albums as companion pieces.
The songs all came from the same writing session down in Muscle Shoals, and musically, spiritually, the whole vibe, I think they make a cohesive statement. It started for me when we did [2019]. I started wondering what would happen if we put horns on our cover of Buffalo Springfield’s .
It made it even more badass. I think horns add another dimension. These days you seem less worried about showing off your guitar technique.
Once you become secure in what you’re doing, you’re able to take an objective inventory of your strengths and weaknesses. For me, I felt like the strength in my playing is not necessarily the technical prowess or speed – although I can play fast – but conveying emotion. It’s about playing the right note at the right moment, and just penetrating the soul with it.
If I wanted to put in the time to learn how to play like that, I absolutely believe that I could. Without a doubt. There’s no hesitation in me saying that.
And I don’t mean that from any standpoint of arrogance, it’s just that I do believe I have the determination and the faculties. Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox! Well, the short answer is no, I don’t believe it will ever have the substance or depth. But the more likely answer is that, as with anything, people will become conditioned and learn to accept it.
First, it’s shocking. Then it becomes the norm. If you look at pop music, maybe I sound like a dinosaur, but it’s generally trended in a downward direction.
The bar is not very high right now, but people have become accustomed to it because that’s what they’re being fed. I think AI could follow the same pattern. They’re not huge cigars, but they’re of the premium nature, to be sure.
Joe and I have a lot in common. It’s not every day you can talk to someone who’s almost had the same experience. I mean, it is not normal to find two people who start a career in the entertainment industry as children and grow up in that industry and become successful.
It’s like the one per cent of the one per cent, right? It was as if the world around me didn’t exist. That was the spark that lit the fire in me. He autographed my first Stratocaster: ‘Kenny, just play with all your heart’.
"I went home and I wept that night": Actor Timothée Chalamet on filming the emotional scene where Bob Dylan visits the ailing Woody Guthrie in hospital and plays him a song "To this day I don’t know how Brian Robertson got back to the hotel. He had been missing for a day": Through thick and thin - on the road with Thin Lizzy in 1976 "I couldn’t believe no one had done a song about a white guy trying to be gangsta": The story of The Offspring's global smash Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) Henry Yates has been a freelance journalist since 2002 and written about music for titles including and . He is the author of Walter Trout's official biography, , a music pundit on Times Radio and BBC TV, and an interviewer who has spoken to Brian May, Jimmy Page, Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie Wood, Dave Grohl, Marilyn Manson, Kiefer Sutherland and many more.
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